November 3, 1955 If universal history is humanity’s fifth Gospel, personal events also are for each of us. Seen from God’s perspective, they appear designed to bring us from being scattered back to unity with God. Detachment from people dear to us and losing distinctions can become a way of clearing out all human factors and leave us alone with God. Thus every day takes on the value of a divine adventure, if it is used to ascend along a ray – our ray – that connects us to God’s sun. Life has been called a march toward death, but it is progress toward freedom, the peak where the Father awaits us. So it is a march towards life, one that never ends. December 19, 1956 Christian wisdom, in asking us to renounce ourselves, is not really about renouncing, but gaining. In place of human ambitions, divine ambitions ignite. It recommends we put God in place of our ego, and by doing so, lift ourselves up from the human level to the divine one, together with the Trinity. It is humility that works limitless greatness. This is why eventually, from that height, the world appears wretched, riches appear chaff and great things turn to sand. So renounce ourselves to be always to be with God, transfer the eternal into time, make the earth a paradise. Suffering becomes raw material for greatness; the cross becomes the stairs to the eternal Father. December 26, 1956 Life is a unique opportunity given us to love. October 16, 1959 In response to individualism today, people nourish their collective lives and give socialization a central role in study and education. It is a movement that helps guide us toward our brother and pushes us to ascend towards God linked together. Yet there is also a danger in doing this: that in the fury of staying with those around us, we forget how to stay with God. Our brother is valuable as a ianua coeli (gate of heaven), but if one cannot see the Father behind him, one risks substituting the desolation of individualism with the desolation of the group. It is the Father who accompanies us, helps us, enlivens us. This is why, with the delusions that rain down each day on the human experience, he reminds us that there is also a divine experience. Or better, that the communion with our brothers passes to the Father, and from the Father returns to our brother. Igino Giordani