Alive means present!

The joy of the gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept His offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness.

I never tire of repeating those words of Benedict XVI which take us to the very heart of the Gospel: “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”

Pope Francis

Try to imagine that girl who was at home and received the announcement: Our Lady. The ultimate example of something that couldn’t be reduced to the prior events which made up her present reality.

Just think of what the shepherds must have felt at the Angel’s announcement, or the wise men at the announcement of which the star was a sign. A radical newness; new at an absolutely new level: it could not be and is here; it could not be because we never would’ve thought of it, we couldn’t imagine it and it’s here.

Christianity is the event of this announcement. Announcement not, first and foremost, in that I hear it, but inasmuch as it presents itself to me: something that’s outside of us and that proposes itself deep within us, but is outside of us. Christianity is a presence within your daily life, a presence that guarantees an unimaginable change, unimaginable.

Luigi Giussani