Matera in celebration.
As per schedule Msgr. Antonio Giuseppe CaiazzoArchbishop of the Diocese of Matera-Irsina and Bishop of Tricarico, opens the feast of Maria SS. della Bruna, patron saint of the city of Sassi with this homily given at 4.30 in the morning in Piazza San Francesco d’Assisi in Matera during the Mass of the shepherds and the youth.
Here is the full text:
“Dear,
On Saturday evening, during the traditional lighting of the Christmas lights, a composition of sunflowers in the shape of a sphere was raised, to indicate that the light that truly illuminates the hearts of men is Christ.
The evangelist Luke indicates Jesus Christ in the sun that is now rising, light that conquers the darknessbut here in the sky above us there is also the morning star, which indicates the rising sun, and is identified with Mary, our Madonna della Bruna.
The beginning of this new day, in the history of Matera, represents the love song we heard in the first reading.
Beautiful, powerful, engaging image, expressed in the search and need for love between a man and a woman.
This image, which anyone can grasp and understand, has become the parable of the Lord’s love towards Israel first and, with the incarnation of Christ, towards his Church afterwards. Christ is the Groom, the Church is the Bride and Mary is the image of the Bride.
All of us, especially this morning, around Mary and under her watchful gaze, we feel, and we really are, a Church, therefore a Bride in need of love, of being loved in order to live the fruitfulness of life that our city, our land, the entire world needs.
Il the desire for love, and therefore for brotherhood, is rooted in the deepest part of the human being, often not captured in its essence due to our limitations.
And that’s why we are thirsty, we feel a strong desire for fullness and life, we feel the need to live a more dignified and more beautiful existence.
We who are children of Mary and who recognize her as our Mother, cannot ignore what Jesus says: “You are all brothers” (Mt 23:8).
There are three images that we get from the first reading and that we can summarize with the seal: “Put me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm”; with death: “For love is as strong as death”; with fire: “its flashes are flashes of fire, a divine flame” (8.6).
Il seal highlights that love, and therefore marriage, cannot be considered a private affair between two people.
It must necessarily show its beauty that others must recognize and admire in all its holiness, because it comes from God.
Don’t you think, dear young people, that we are living in a period in which love, although so much praised, is experienced as possession, in which the loved subject becomes a personal “thing”, to be possessed, used and, in some cases, destroyed?
How do you explain the many femicides that, unfortunately, we witness every day?
These are sick loves that have their origins in pathological and selfish deviations and render every type of human relationship sterile.
The seal that the Song of Songs speaks of is the one that was imprinted on the heart and arm of the Madonna della Bruna who was able to welcome true love and made it a treasure for all of us, conceiving and giving us Jesus, infinite Love.
When God thought and planned to create everything out of love, he called human beings to be adoptive children to make us brothers.
It is the only way forward so that with the our mutual love, a gift of the Holy Spirit, may the Father’s family be built up over time (cf. Gen 12).
This is our true identity: children of God and brothers among us.”
