We've become so used to reading Massimo Introvigne the sociologist - who applies the study of man in society to his observations and commentary on religious affairs - but in the new Bussola Quotidiana, of which he is one of the distinguished contributors, his first essay is more fundamentally religious...
How the masses become
the people of God
by Massimo Introvigne
Dec. 9, 2010
The great cities - ingluding Rome, the city of the Pope - are today mostly 'anonymous agglomerations', in which even in the most boisterous company, one ends up still ending lonely and alone.
It's a sad world, where December 8 is not the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Those who bustle about among the lights of entertainment and commerce often "do not even think about it, nor do they even remember that today is the feast of the Immaculate", the Pope said yesterday during his traditional act of veneration of the Immacolata in the center of Rome.
Those words describe a 'mass', which in the words of the Venerable Pius XII, is the opposite of 'people'. In a people, no one is anonymous. In a mass, everyone is anonymous. And to the latter, who have lost even their identities, who no longer know whom to turn to, the Pope shows them an advocate, our advocate - Our Lady.
Mary is truly our advocate who continually defends, protects, and intercedes for us, even if we don't know it. "Even if evryone speaks ill of us," Benedict XVI assures us, "she, our Mother, will have a good word, because her immaculate heart is in tune with God's infinite mercy".
In the darkness and shambles of a world that has become anonymous and cold, the presence of such an advocate assures us that hope is never lost. Accept the mercy of God that comes through Our Lady. That is how the mass turns into people.
Consequently, the city lights up, it becomes like "a constellation where God knows everyone personally by name, one by one, and calls us to shine forth with his light". No one is anonymous in the eyes of God and of Mary.
To each of us - truly to each one of us personally - the Immaculate repeats with the words of the Pope in Piazza di Spagna: "Do not fear, son. God wishes you well, he loves you personally. He thought of you before you came to the world, and because of this he has come to meet you, he became like you, he became Jesus, God-man, similar to you in everything but without sin. He gave himself for you, up to dying on the Cross, and thus he gave you a new life - free, holy and immaculate".
It is not rhetoric. In the world, there is evil. But keeping our gaze on the Immacolata makes us find "the strength to reject evil in every form, and to choose good, even when it costs us and means going against the current" - with the Pope, against evil, and under the mantle of the Madonna.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/12/2010 08:07]