October 2021 - The Gospel according to the Gospel

Happy salt (Mk 9.50a)
“Salt is a good thing; but if the salt becomes insipid, with what will you give it flavor? ».
Salt loses flavor if it meets presumption, if it wants to become me, if the gift wants to become overbearing ostentation.
If the salt experiences the amazement of being salt without any merit, it will remain salt that gives flavor, salt amazed at salt, at having been chosen to make others tasty. This is the happiness of salt: that others are salty and have all their flavor.
Those who have met Love should no longer stay in their own skin for the desire to make it known.
This is true evangelization. Today people are disconcerted because few speak of God, rarely do they meet someone who has met Love. Salt too many times has lost its flavor and the world goes upside down, not towards God but towards evil. But whoever has encountered Love is salt that tastes of God. Today we Christians should compete to revive the Church, to give it the same vigor as in the early days.
It is possible, but how many times we get lost in our bad mood, how many times we talk about love and communion as a task to be done and nobody believes it. I would like all of us by truly encountering Love to become men and women of God, not men and women of the apparatus, because the apparatus is useless. But to keep this love alive we must pray in proportion to our commitment.
Do we do a lot, a lot of activities?
We must pray the same.
And the more you pray, the more your service expands.
The measure is prayer, the measure is to read the Word of God and try to live it. Then we will be salt that has the flavor of the encounter with a Love that wants you to become love like Him.

Inside the heart of God (Mt 8: 11-12)
"Now I tell you that many will come from East and West and will sit at table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the children of the kingdom will be cast out into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" .
Faith is a gift that those who are "inside", those who attend churches and sacraments, those who speak of God do not always really receive.
Adam was inside and did not believe in God. Abraham was a pagan and he listened to him. If one is not "inside", he does not attend churches and sacraments but does not steal, he is moved by those in need, a child, an elderly person, a sick person and leans over him with respect and emotion ... if he keeps his word, he guards a secret, he does not betray his friend, he is loyal in speaking, he does it out of pure love, perhaps he is not inside, but he is in the heart of God. The Master teaches us that there is a sin, the greatest of all. It is the sin of feeling good because you are inside.

God's net (Mt 13:47)
"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net cast into the sea, which gathers all kinds of fish."
What a beautiful hope the network is. The net envelops the world, it wants to welcome all good and bad.
The network awaits everyone, good and bad.
The good guys are not the top of the class who are not wrong.
The good guys make mistakes, they keep making mistakes, they suffer from their limitations, they can't make it but they don't get discouraged.
The good know each other, therefore they do not judge anyone, they show mercy to everyone because in their poverty they have experienced it. The good know what it means to feel guarded by Jesus, welcomed, caught in his net, never judged, encouraged, always forgiven.
Therefore the good do not judge, they do not get discouraged, they share bread with those who do not have it, they do not make a difference in persons, they do not tire of welcoming, of having mercy: the same that they receive.
In God's net there is room for everyone. Those who refuse mercy throw themselves out on their own.

Ernesto Olivero
Editorial
NP October 2021