Reflecting Heaven

The present moment

Jesus ensures that Divine Providence watches over us, and in the same way that the Father feeds the birds of the air and flowers of the fields, Jesus nurtures the rational creatures, liberating us from the anxiety of insecure lives, usually considered as a pit full of dangers. He lightens the spirit from one of the most tormenting woes, due to which existence becomes an agony and not living; it reaches the point that one’s heart is projected to the future. Each day has enough troubles of its own, and each day has its own daily bread. The life lived here is that of the present moment: who can assure us of tomorrow? Therefore, we must not be anguished even for a future we do not know and which may not come. This thought simplifies existence and makes it easier.”

Igino Giordani, The social message of Jesus, New City, Rome, 1966 p. 302

The friends of Jesus

Jesus’ friends are the beggars, sinners, farmers, the sick, fishermen, troubled women, children, and Pharisees and rich doctors in good faith: the population, in short, with its classes. He passes in their midst, and there is always a crowd trailing him, by his side, invoking and acclaiming him, and also protecting him from whistleblowers, assassins, and ministers of the people’s exploiters. It is a crowd that expresses with sweet gentleness through the mouth of a peasant, its grateful admiration: happy the womb that bore you! Blessed be the womb of Mary, a commoner, and wife of a carpenter.»

Igino Giordani, The social message of Jesus, New City, p. 326

The Gospel’s bricklayer

According to a passage of the Gospel of the Nazarenes – cited by St. Jerome – the man with the arid hand was in reality a labourer who addressed the Lord saying: “I was a bricklayer and earned a living with my labour. Please, oh Jesus, restore my health, so I wouldn’t have to beg to my shame.”
And the sick hand was healed, and the labourer ran away with joy because he was ashamed to beg, holding out that hand which would have been able to earn him a living. And Palestinian society counted one invalid person less. Jesus commanded begging, in his law; but with his miracles also enabled the person bestowed, to do without, and return to work: and in this way healed the social wounds on two sides.
By taking up the immediate issue, he could have resolved the labourer issue of his time; but this wouldn’t have given us the spirit with which to resolve this also in the other centuries, not to say that practically he would have had to unleash a social havoc which would have shocked on first hand, the labourers themselves.

Igino Giordani, The social message of Jesus, New City, cit. p. 342

His friend, Lazarus

“See how much he loved him,” the people around said upon seeing him cry. And after having experienced, as a man, the anguish of love violated by physical death, he overcame it, as God: but the impulse for supernatural action was moved by the natural sentiment, as if man had precedence over God. Also from his example, far from being considered a weakness, mercy becomes a primary precept, an expression of love in the face of the miseries of other men; he healed diseases, accompanied the miraculous act with a smile, a gesture, and a word of affection. To the woman suffering with hemorrhage Jesus paternally said: «My daughter».

Igino Giordani, The social message of Jesus, cit. p. 360

The estranged

Upon meeting us, the estranged should meet Jesus, if our life were a reflection of his. Only by imitating Jesus can we build our personality, giving it supernatural features. The natural gifts will serve as raw material.
If you become holy, you will reflect Jesus and make him be known and loved. What matters is to reflect heaven, and, if the mirror is nice, it is due to the heaven it is reflecting. In reality the mirror is not nice, but the reflected heaven is. If the saint is an object of admiration, it is because the Lord took possession of his soul: «it is God who is admirable in his saints.» This is the only thing the saints have done: allowed themselves to be possessed.

Igino Giordani « New Humanity » 2013/6 p. 629-646