I desire mercy, not sacrifice

18 JULY (Mt 12, 1-8)

It is just that today we ask ourselves: What is the true religion? What does it consist of? What is the heart of its truth? What are the ways that we must always run through to keep it pure, holy and pristine? What makes it impure? What transforms it into an unclean thing? Can we affirm that is mine, yours, ours the true religion which we find ourselves living in? It is necessary to respond to these questions with a conscience enlightened by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, but also with a heart free from any historical conditioning, the result almost always of either personal or community sin. But it is always sin that obscures the truth of religion in us.

True religion has only one name: holiness. Holiness has only one meaning: concrete love. Concrete love is always a love that you live in a particularly unique history, which is only of now, this instant. This is the true religion: knowing in every moment, every hour, every day, what it the practical love to be lived towards every one of our brothers that God puts before our eyes so that we see him in the light of the Holy Spirit and we love him with his heart full of most pure love of mercy, compassion, pity and great commiseration.

True religion requires, demands and asks that we live in perfect unity with the Holy Spirit and the Father of Heaven, since we are called to see with the wisdom of the Spirit all the historical reality and to love it with the heart of the Father. This perfect unity cannot be established, constructed and governed if you do not become the holy body of Christ our Lord. But not any Christ the Lord, but the ecclesial Lord Christ, to say it clearly the Christ of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. This is the true Christ with whom we must form one ecclesial body, if we want to live of true religion. Therefore, it is a perfect relationship with the Most Holy Trinity, in the Church, with the Church and for the Church.

Entered into the truth of this relationship, elevating through it toward the Father and the Holy Spirit, drawing light from the Body of Christ; at any time, we can know how to love concretely and we can sanctify our every moment. Whatever we see we do not evaluate it starting from our eyes and our hearts, but from the eyes of the Holy Spirit and the Father’s heart. This vision must be perennial. If even for a single circumstance we depart from this vision, we immediately pass from the true to the false religion. From God we immediately enter into our hearts and it is a true spiritual disaster. From our heart goes out every evil thought and every word of judgment and condemnation. Our heart does not love. It only knows how to hate, envy and drive away.

At that time Jesus was going through a field of grain on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “See, your disciples are doing what is unlawful to do on the Sabbath.” He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry, how he went into the house of God and ate the bread of offering, which neither he nor his companions but only the priests could lawfully eat? Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests serving in the temple violate the Sabbath and are innocent? I say to you, something greater than the temple is here. If you knew what this meant, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned these innocent men. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

True love, true holiness, is always finding a way to comfort, to give life, to create hope, to support our brothers who are in trouble. This is the true mercy, true love and the true holiness. Before a hungry man, our human laws and also every other ritual and non moral law of God, end. We must put ourselves at the service of the hunger of the brothers. We need to find them a way of salvation. Ignoring their hunger is passing instantly into the false religion. Whoever ignore does not love. While it is proper of the true religion to always love in fullness of truth and mercy.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints make us of the true religion.