ConAltriOcchi blog – 以不同的眼光看世界-博客

"C'è un solo modo di vedere le cose finché qualcuno non ci mostra come guardare con altri occhi" – "There is only one way to see things, until someone shows us how to look at them with different eyes" (Picasso) – "人观察事物的方式只有一种，除非有人让我们学会怎样以不同的眼光看世界" (毕加索)

Category Archives: English post


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We are fragile creatures, but preserved by the Father’s love

The beginning of the Lenten time waiting for Easter

Today it is first day of the Lenten season, which will bring us to the Easter Triduum after 40 days, the heart of the liturgical year. In the Ash Wednesday, the Church makes a simple gesture that commemorates the fragility of the human nature, the fact that we are creatures.  In the Christian view, being creatures, though, means not only precariety, a sort of “negative” connotation characterizing the human beings, their nature and potential. Being creatures implies the existence of a Creator God, who loved us “since when we were in the maternal womb” and looks after us.  Certainly a Creator God, but first of all our Father. The “Credo”, the profession of the Christian faith says: “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth”. It is probably not a coincidence that God be mentioned first as a Father and then as a Creator and that the word “almighty” (which can also be scary and associated to a sort of super-power that is not necessarily good) is combined to the “role” of God as a father and not as the creator.  God is a father that can do everything for his children, by virtue of His love for them. In this human creature that is desired, loved and preserved by God, who is willing to do everything for His creatures up to even die to save them, the Holy Spirit lives. The Spirit – “the Lord, the giver of life”, the love between Father and the Son – will be with us as a consolator everyday “until the end of the age.”

Let us then live this Lenten time with hope, in reflection, meditation and prayer, remembering to be fragile creatures but, most importantly, to be loved and preserved by God, our Father. This can help us not to live this path in a fearful and sterile penitence, but as a time for conversion to the Gospel – the joyful news of the resurrection of Christ that changed radically and forever our life. Actually, not only the life of our own, but that of others, because the Gospel is “contagious”.  

It is very meaningful what is last year Pope Francis said in his homily during the Mass of  Ash Wednesday: “Returning to the Lord ‘with all your heart’ means to begin the journey not of a superficial and transitory conversion, but rather of a spiritual itinerary with regard to the most intimate place of our person. The heart is, indeed, the seat of our feelings, the centre in which our decisions, our attitudes mature. That ‘return to me with all your heart’ involves not only individuals, but is extended to the community as a whole. It is a convocation directed to everyone: ‘gather the people. Sanctify the congregation; assemble the elders; gather the children, even nursing infants. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her chamber‘”. 


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The first time that a pope meets the Orthodox patriarch of all Russia

Another surprise from Pope Francis has come these days. After the news of the visit to Sweden at the end of the year on the occasion of the anniversary of Luther’s reform and the first ever interview made by a pope fully on China to AsiaTime online and published in the past few days, here comes the joint announcement of the meeting between Francis and Kirill on February 12. A meeting that was discussed, desired and prepared for a long time, but its realization still comes with surprise and emotion.

The Risen Lord says: “you must go and tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you to Galilee’” (Mk 16.7). The Risen Lord goes before us everywhere, as he did at the upper room and at Emmaus, wherever men build their cities, everywhere they love. Today the Risen Lord precedes us in the land of Cuba, where through the encounter between the Bishop of Rome and the Patriarch of Moscow the Christian people becomes even more and more visibly one flock in the footsteps of the one shepherd. In the land of Cuba, land traditionally atheist, which a few months ago had rejoiced for the “reconciliation” with the United States thanks to the mediation of the Pope.  Cuba today seems almost “return” the favor in an evolving history where faith exceeds doubt and human logics. Furthermore, it should not be overlooked that Francis and Kirill will meet at an airport, that is a meeting place, a place of passage, a crossroad between people in an increasingly interconnected and globalized world. 

A history of division and excommunications is the one between the Catholics and Orthodox, which has not only hurt the Church and the Christian community as a whole, but also offended the faith of the simple and questioned the credibility and the “feasibility” of Christian love and brotherhood.  As Christians, how can we announce the brotherly love and peace if we are separated? Here is the scandal that it is now time to stop, overcoming old divisions and claims, while looking with pragmatism and mutual respect to the history and tradition of each side. 

Today Pope Francis builds on Paul VI’s legacy. In his well-known trip to the Holy Land, in fact, Paul VI embraced the Patriarch of Constantinople Athenagoras and together they cancelled their mutual excommunications. Pope Francis collects the seeds sown by the Second Vatican Council, of which he even further confirms the centrality in the life of the Church – not only in words, but with concrete, objective, field choices that leave no room for doubt or ambiguous interpretations, unless there are improbable manipulations. 

Kirill makes this gesture of reconciliation in a time when the bishops of the Orthodox churches agreed to convene this year a pan-Orthodox Synod. Since the second Council of Nicea (787 a.C.) it has been for more than twelve centuries that the various Eastern Churches do not meet together on the occasion of a council.  This is also a sign of the times, a hope for reconciliation and unity.  

The next February 12 in Cuba Francis and Kirill will show that the Christian way to overcome the “hostility” and break down the “barriert” is reconciliation. Revived strongly through the extraordinary Jubilee of mercy, reconciliation becomes the ordinary way to follow for each of us, a via sacra that exceeds the boundaries of individual churches to reunite ideally in the one Church of Christ. Francis and Kirill are well aware that reconciliation and unity must be pursued with all means not only as basic conditions of the Christian community, image of Christ’s body. In fact, how to deal with the challenges and evils of the modern world by proclaiming and bringing the Gospel if first we the Christians are not united? Poverty, which still affects a large part of humanity; international migration and in particular the growing number of refugees fleeing from wars and totalitarian regimes; the  side effects of globalisation, which affects the weakest and contribute to consolidate an economic system based on profit and social inequalities; the crisis of values because of rampant materialism and consumerism, which invade even emerging countries and the Western world of Christian tradition; the plight of Christians living in the Middle East and in many parts of the world where they are a persecuted minority; the difficulties of the Christian churches – the decline of vocations, the difficulties of clergy and religious, the new pastoral problems.  

We hope and pray that this meeting will be a fruitful seed that bears much fruit – ut unum sint! 


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A God Who accepts us as we are

Homily of the Forth Sunday per Annum
Fr. Francesco Pesce 
It is not always easy to believe in the God of Jesus Christ. Sometimes it is easier to believe in a God that “distributes miracles”, a God whose love we need to deserve rather than a God that accepts us for whom we are.
Jesus, on the contrary, invites us to look at things more deeply and to see better. Our God is one that walks with us, that gives His help to a foreign widow in Zarephat, and that heals lepers. A God that walks with us daily and that does not look at our merits or memberships, but at our needs and, most importantly, a God that accepts and loves us the way we are.
Believing in a God that first looks at our merits or memberships results in representing a Church that defends itself, that excludes those without or with just a few merits to show off; a Church that becomes an elitarian and closed institution that does not receive nor attracts anybody but a few “elected”. A Church that is not able to influence everyday life, which passes just to the ring road of our lives, stopping in TV programmes or in the lobbies as appropriate.
On the contrary, believing in the God of Jesus Christ, who first of all look at our weaknesses and needs, translates into building “a Church which goes forth”, where pastors have the smell of the sheep (not only of the incense), and where no one feels excluded or left behind.
Around Jesus there have always been and yet there are groups of fanatical and violent people and also extremists that use religion and the Church for their own interests. Pope Francis knows this very well and recently warned against the fact that there are people that do not serve the Church but use the Church for their own interests.
This passage of the Gospel – “But he passed through the midst of them and went away” – represents an extraordinary warning to all of us and for the whole Church. Jesus passes over, He leaves. He leaves when faith joins forces with power; He leaves when clericalism prevails over the people of God and the Gospel. He leaves when the Gospel is reduced to the moral law and it is not its foundation, or when you defend abstract principles and concrete privileges instead of understanding and accompanying ordinary situations.
The Lord goes towards and remains where faith is simple and sincere; where hope is not rhetoric, but confident expectation of a promise that will be fulfilled; and where the charity is sensitive to the cry of the poor and reaches out to every brother, without judgment, pre-condition, or “preference of people.”


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Let us announce and take the Gospel to the poor

Homily of the Third Sunday per Annum
Fr. Francesco Pesce
That Saturday at the Synagogue, Jesus took the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah and as the Greek text says, he found that passage after he had looked for it. In fact, the Greek verb is eurisko – from which the well known exclamation eureka! comes from. Jesus perhaps chooses a passage that was not expected to be read and instead He looks for and then finds purposedly to read it at that time.
It is Chapter 61 of the Prophet Isaiah:
“The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me;
He has sent me to bring good news to the afflicted,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
release to the prisoners”.
What is this “good news” Isaiah refers to and Jesus echoes? The “good news” that the poor are waiting for (the poor are again the first ones this joyful announcement is addressed to) is the end of poverty. The prisoners await liberty, the blind are hoping to be able to see, and the oppressed desire to be relieved from their burdens.
In our world, we are witnesses (or often rather “willing” or “unarmed” spectators), to the many forms of poverty (material, moral, spiritual) injustice, abuse, disability, vulnerability…We ourselves, in our own lives, have our poverties too. We are prisoners of so many things and we are oppressed in some part of our hearts. But, as Isaiah predicted and Jesus reminded us: “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God…he comes to save you.” (Is 35) and “the truth will set you free.” (John 8,32). That salvation, that truth is actually the Lord Jesus, who is the fulfillment of Scripture, namely the realization of the “good news”. Therefore, it is important for all of us to have consciousness, to be sure that there is a reference point, a “Polar Star” to look at. We need to be aware that we walk across a path already traced and – using again Isaiah’s words – “smoothed out” by the Lord in the desert, sometimes the desert of our lives, our societies….We need to keep our eyes on him and follow him, by being led by the Holy Spirit, while being confident that we will not lose the way. Many times we look for something but we cannot find it (e.g. the solution to a certain problem, the answer to a question, the courage to make a choice …) because we only rely on our capacities,  we plan based on our reasoning, and we only consider our priorities…..We do not understand that we have to “overthrow” the way we think, see and do things: because first of all we have already been “found” by the Lord, and especially loved and “saved” by Him.
St. Luke continues to write: “Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, ‘Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing‘.”
Certainly we need to be informed., properly briefed; we must read, pray and meditate the Word of God. But after all that, we then have to close the “book”, “roll it up” as Jesus did, to put ourselves at the service of those who wait for their liberation and that have their eyes on us and expect from us a word of comfort, a clear stand on an issue, a gesture of hope, maybe even to break something…Let us remember what the Lord told us:  “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”
Today there are millions of children, women, entire peoples that are waiting for us and watching us. Thinking “smaller”, there are so many people who expect a response from us in our daily lives – our neighbors, colleagues, family members and the many poor who are on the streets of our cities…It has been for too long time that our Western world, our homes, and sometimes even churches look like the community of Ezra described in the First Reading. A community that was closed to the external world in its self-sufficiency and forgot the needs of the poor. Many people are awaiting their liberation and keep their eyes on us. We, as Christians, what are we doing?
Our role as Christians is first of all to contribute to building a society that is “liberated”. All of us are first of all baptized in the Holy Spirit Who frees the oppressed. We must feel the pressing urgency of this task, of this mission – the liberation of the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized.


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Misericordes sicut Pater

Perché il blog 

Significativamente e con grande gioia inauguriamo questo spazio di riflessione e condivisione nell’anno del Giubileo della Misericordia, che ci ricorda la profondità e la bellezza della nostra realtà di figli – amati e perdonati dal Padre. Come parte della comunità ecclesiale, anche con questo blog, desideriamo accompagnare “le gioie e le speranze, le tristezze e le angosce degli uomini d’oggi” (Gaudium et Spes, 1), “misericordiando” e mettendo al centro il Volto di Dio. Grati a Papa Francesco  e incoraggiati dal suo esempio, pensiamo che sia possibile e importante annunciare il Vangelo e testimoniare una “Chiesa in uscita” anche attraverso i mezzi di comunicazione sociale e della rete. 

Why this blog?
Significantly and with great joy we are opening this space for reflection and sharing in the Jubilee Year of Mercy, which reminds us of the depth and beauty of being children of God – loved and forgiven by the Lord, our Father. As part of the Church community, with this blog too, we wish to accompany “the joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the people of our time” (Gaudium et Spes, 1), “using mercy” (“misericordiando”) and by putting at the center of our life the face of God. Grateful to Pope Francis and encouraged by his example, we think it is possible and important to announce the Gospel and witness a “Church which goes forth” through social media and Internet.
为什么这个博客?
欣逢慈悲禧年之际，我们怀着极大的喜悦搭建了这个反思与分享的平台，这是一件非常有意义的事，它让我们回想起作为天主子女的美好与奥妙，因为我们都被天父所宽恕和深爱着。作为教会团体的一份子，我们希望透过这个博客来参与“今天人们的喜乐与期望、愁苦与焦虑”（牧职宪章1），并把天主的慈悲面容带进那些有需要的人们的生活中。非常感谢教宗方济各，是他的榜样带动我们，让我们觉得透过社交媒体和互联网来宣传福音是一件可行的事，这样可以为“正在发展的教会”做出见证。