Homily of H.E. Mons. Claudio Gatti of April 1, 2009
Eleven years ago, more or less at this time, I was speaking to those who were in Marisa's room and the most significant sentence I uttered, that I have engraved in my mind and heart, is when I said that for me it is a source of pride and glory to suffer for the Eucharist. I don't want to recount that day again because, if you are interested, it has already been written in detail in the books that have been published, but this evening, together with you, I would like to reflect on what happened in this community, a small particle of the Church but alive and vital. We must joyfully keep in mind the memory of events describing this story, because you will see how from smiles came tears, from joy came sadness and from delight came suffering. I entrust to you the memory of what happened and the younger ones will have to pass it on to their children. The Church will not forget this day which, as Our Lady has told us several times, will become part of her history, and if I wanted to condense the emotions, the reflections that gathered within my soul on this day, I believe that we could describe everything that happened with this double expression: from death to life, from the condemnation of men to the glorification of God.
From death to life: death is not only physical. I had the joy of undergoing the moral death which is the hardest from every point of view because while physical death places us in the blessed contemplation of God, moral death instead leaves us on earth and makes us feel that others have profaned something beautiful and great that God has placed in our hearts. Death scares those who are not prepared, but when there is a preparation, everything is accepted and here, then, what comes to mind is what we have just read to you and was already said last Sunday: "Christ, in the days of His earthly life, offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to God who could save him from death and for His full abandonment to Him he was fulfilled". It is not a contradiction, because Christ came into the world to do the Father's will and accordingly he should have consumed his life on the Cross after an awful passion. Thus our resemblance to Christ is emphasized in the moments when suffering becomes more atrocious, but we must also remember another sentence found in John: whoever loves his life loses it and whoever hates it in this world will keep it for eternal life. In the word life, being the greatest and most beautiful gift that God has given us, we must contemplate everything that belongs to it: honor, fame, friendships and relationships with others; therefore, if God asks for a renunciation of all this, we lose nothing but we manage to transform it into grace and joy according to the law of the Cross. Loving and hating are antithetical expressions. Christ does not tell us that we must hate life, but makes us understand, while addressing a Jewish audience, that man must not consider life the maximum of what he can reach because beyond life there is God, His love and His grace. This life that Jesus speaks about is a life that begins during our being on earth and reaches perfection when we will be before God, therefore losing life means regaining it, hating life means placing it in the best situation.
From the condemnation of men to the glorification of God. This glorification does not necessarily have to take place exclusively in the afterlife, but it can also come during earthly life. In fact, Peter says: “We have left everything, but in the end what can we get?” Jesus replies that he will receive a hundred times as much on earth and will also have eternal life. When the man, both religious and political, unjustly condemns his brother and believes he has won, right at that moment, he receives the most resounding defeat because he becomes like Cain who killed the just Abel. The new Cains who show up along the centuries always kill Abel, the innocent brother, out of anger, jealousy and envy, but Abel will receive the reward and Cain will receive a sentence and even a heavy sentence during his earthly life, as happened for the first Cain. Therefore the glorification of God also takes place during the earthly life; in fact, it may seem that one is defeated, but in that very moment the defeat turns into victory.
Our example is enough to make this conviction take root within you. It had already been announced several times that 1999 would be the year of triumph and victory, indeed, on the anniversary of my priestly ordination, March 9, 1998, in an apparition Our Lady told Marisa to write 666 which is the number of the beast; thereafter, she told herto turn upside down the three 6s and put the number 1 in front of it. In this way she had obtained the year she said would be of our victory: 1999. Our Lady repeated it other times until January 1, 1999, but then it was not so, because God asked the Seer and the Bishop for the strongest immolation and a rather painful one for you too, for what you could have said to relatives, friends and acquaintances and then did not occur. Despite this, God said that the greatest triumph in the entire Church history was born from that immolation.
On 10th January 2002, through the immolation of the innocents, the Triumph of the Eucharist took place in the Church through the courage, suffering and prayers of a simple and humble Bishop, of a simple and humble Seer and of simple and humble people. This is what God manages to do: even the defeats that seem the most burning are then transformed into luminous victories. In fifty, a hundred or a thousand years it will not be said that there was no victory in 1999, but that there was the triumph of the Eucharist decreed by God and we will speak not of those who unjustly condemned the Bishop, but of the one who has been convicted. God can overturn human plans, this is why this day must be committed to memory and must not be the exaltation of an individual but the exaltation of God's action. If you do this, it means that you will have understood exactly what I am trying to make you understand, therefore this day must be characterized by this expression: in actual fact we are witnessing the passage from death to life, from the condemnation of men to the glorification of God.
Finally, I cannot fail to quote Paul when he says that the sufferings of the present time do not have a value proportionate to the glory that will be shown in us. So Paul also talks of the passage from the condemnation of men to the glorification of God; this is not my invention, however beautiful, but it is a truth present in the Word of God. So all this long labor for the reconstruction of the Church will also come to the end; those who have been chosen by God to do this work have been praying, suffering and sacrificing for decades, but there is no suffering that is proportionate to glory. In Heaven the people closest to God are those who have been most powerful during their lifetime only if they have fulfilled their office well; therefore what guarantees us a place closer to God on the other side is how we lived life on earth and the humblest, simplest and most unknown person during earthly life could be now before us and then very high in Heaven. A handful of years are nothing compared to eternity, but even if they are moments that have worn us out and stressed us out, Jesus said to us: “come to Me all of you who are weary and oppressed and I will give you rest and peace”. I have always said, and today I say it again and again, that it was my Mass celebrated every day and the Eucharist that saved me. I believe that in my entire life I haven’t celebrated it just a few times, only when I was very sick, otherwise, even when I was feverish or had some health problems, I have always celebrated it and this saved me. It is the Eucharistic Bread that saved the Seer and the Bishop and do remember that God will judge us on our love for the Eucharist. Those who deeply and authentically love the Eucharist will also love their brothers and sisters, so by loving their brothers God will judge us, precisely on love.
Only God can change situations. I look ahead and perhaps I can glimpse the dawn of the resurrection that you cannot see because you do not have the knowledge of facts and situations that have been manifested to us by God.
As you will remember, it was written that the fifteenth station of our Via Crucis will be written when our resurrection will take place and I think I will have to start writing it shortly. Let us truly keep our hearts steady, let us bend our knees before God's plan, let us make an effort to welcome the plan in the best possible way and continue to beg him to hasten his promises, but above all to give the Bishop and the Seer the strength to go forward.
On 25th March of this year, feast of the Annunciation, Our Lady said to Marisa: "Little Marisa, go on for a little while longer, along the path that must take you to Heaven". She then turned to the Bishop: "Excellency, your journey will be harder, but I will be close to you". The paths of the Bishop and the Seer will never be disunited. Our Lady has always been close to Jesus even if she was not physically in bilocation, therefore it is not true, and she said it, that Jesus neglected her, as someone said in a document against which, except us, no one objected. As Our Lady was always close to Jesus, so the Bishop and the Seer will continue to be united and when she is in Heaven, she will be closer to me and the union will be stronger. In fact, in the preface that is recited in the Mass of the dead it is written that the relationship is not interrupted, but it is transformed and is for the better, because the physical one is loosened and the spiritual one is perfected, which is the authentic one. Between me and God there is a spiritual relationship and it is all the more beautiful. Between me and a soul who is in Heaven there is a spiritual relationship which is stronger than what can exist between me and each of you as long as you are alive. With this reflection the Mass now resumes and is offered to God so that He may soon make His voice resound, as He said to Jesus: "This is my beloved son" and say to Marisa: "This is my beloved daughter, come, enter in Heaven where I have been waiting for you for a long time".
Praised be Jesus Christ.