An interview with Fr. José Medina 

“Christ the King Boston High School.” “Hello, may I speak with Salve Fr. Medina?” “I’m sorry, but he’s in class now.” “OK, I’ll call back tomorrow.” The next day: “Christ the King Boston High School.” “Hello, is Fr. Medina available?” “I’m sorry, he’s celebrating Mass…”
Science and faith, yes. But it is only a problem of method: you need to call him directly on his extension. After several attempts, he respondes: “Hello friend, how are you? An interview on faith and science? Good, I have something to say.”
José Medina received his degree in Civil Engineering at Madrid, was later ordained a priest at Rome, and today is principle of a high school in Boston. For many years he taught physics. Sì, potrebbe avere qualcosa da raccontare sul tema di questo mese.
“When I became a priest, fr. Massimo Camisasca sent me to America and said to me: I think you should be a professor, but see what you think. At the time I had no great desire to continue studying, but I trusted Don Massimo’s words and sought to build some relationships in the world of education. Decisive at that time was my meeting with David Schindler. His lectures, besides rekindling in me the desire to study, put me in touch with various authors, in particular von Balthasar, who conveyed to me a striking intuition.”

What is the intuition that you are speaking of?
That the truth can never be exhausted, comprehended, grasped entirely. This struck me very deeply. This, moreover, is an intuition that is very common among scientists, although not in popular science, nella divulgazione. An example would be the force of gravity. It is said: objects fall because there is gravity. This is not true! The theory is not the reason why things fall. The reason why things fall is a mystery. We don’t know why they fall. The cause of motion is, in its deepest sense, unknown. Gravity is a great mystery: we know that it exists, but we don’t know why it exists. Another example would be entropy. Thermodynamics shows us that nature tends to disorder, not towards order. That it has a destructive capability, and never constructive. And so, where does the order come from? How does one explain this opposition?
So, in teaching science, the most important thing to bear in mind is that every theory describes, but does not explain. Every science, therefore, has an aspect that is mysterious.

Isn’t this just a question of semantics?
Every scientist must be very precise in the choice of the words which he uses. Using incorrect words, one risks impoverishing reality. A reduction is necessary in order to formulate a theory; but it must always be accompanied by the awareness that reality itself is greater. When a Newton depicts a world without air, it is useful, because it helps to understand; but it can give the illusion that we understand everything, and this is not the case. There is, however, a person through whom we can understand all this better.
Who is this person?
Albert Einstein. His greatness was that of questioning what had been considered unquestionable, such as time and space. He broke the schema according to which time and space are absolute. He, too, then ran the risk of becoming a slave to his reduction: to explain the expansion of the universe, which could not be deduced from his theory, he introduced a constant which made his numbers work. But at the end of his life he realized that he was mistaken. Einstein is the greatest example of openness in a scientist to the mystery. He is the most religious scientist who ever existed.
What do yo umean by openness of science to the mystery?
Science today is reduced to technology, and thus to power. To ways of creating things, or for using them better. But the original position of the scientist is not this: it is that of a person moved by reality. It is a position of contemplation, a virginal attitude. No one more than Einstein expressed this being moved, this love for reality just as it is. It is a matter of knowing reality ever more deeply, without the pretense of possessing it. The problems arise when science (but also philosophy, theology…) is treated as power, and not as being moved by the real.
And faith?
Since science is this movement, then faith and reason, theology and science are not opposed to one another. The big bang and creation speak to us of the same thing, though in different language. The very dogmas are an understanding of what is man before the mystery. The problem is that science understood as power does not accept the accompaniment of theology. It could in fact accept theology as a friend with who seeks to understand together the reality with which both are faced. In their genuine essence, they are in dialogue: they each seek greater understanding and should help one another, not wanting to be more powerful than each other or proving the errors of the other. Faith and science walk together in a progressive understanding of the knowledge of things.

A beautiful image…
It is a beautiful challenge. But in it science must recognize its inability to explain the why, the ultimate reason for things. It is like an ultimate limit, which some scientists reject. And in doing so they reduce reality to their explanations.
Please sum up three basic principles to remember.
One: the way words are used is fundamental. One must learn to use words correctly.
Two: study is contemplation before the mystery of reality.

photo: The material around SN 1987A

foto Juan Fco. Marrero

The Holy Father has named .

To all of the members of the Fraternity of St. Charles

Dear brothers,
This morning the Holy See announced that the Holy Father Benedict XVI wished to appoint me bishop of Reggio Emilia – Guastalla, thereby joining me to the College of the successors of the Apostles.
It is a decision that honors me, but especially one that honors our Fraternity.
The close bonds of affection and vocation which exist between me and all of you require that I say something more to you. I would have desired to remain with you always, occupied wholly and only with all of you. Not only have I done nothing to pursue other tasks, but I have done everything I could to avoid them – to the point of expressing to my highest Superiors my wish to continue to serve the Church by serving your lives. In the end, I have placed myself under the will of the Holy Father.
Certainly, the practical forms of our relationship will now change, but nothing can remove my fatherhood towards you. And this will remain so, while taking nothing away from the new people that is now entrusted to me. We know from our experience that love can, by the Spirit’s gift, spread itself without diminishing.
Speaking with the confidence which I can allow myself with you, I do not hide from you that, as the day of my episcopal consecration draws near, I have experienced moments of dismay. To leave those who have lived with me for many years in an intense bond of shared responsibility, to leave each of you, to leave the daily rapport with the seminarians, to live in a new city, to face new responsibilities… all of this has been a source of great pain for me. In the end I have abandoned myself to the will of God and have regained peace, placing myself in the arms of the mother of God, Mary most holy.
I thank each of you for the witness of obedience that you have given me during these twenty-seven years. Above all for the intense communion that we have lived, both in the many happy hours, and in the times of trial. I would like to mention many names, indeed the names of all of you.
Allow me here to simply mention Gianluca Attanasio and Paolo Sottopietra, who have been my two closest friends and invaluable collaborators during these last twenty years. With them I also remember Msgr. Paolo Pezzi, now archbishop of Moscow, the first bishop from the ranks of our Fraternity.
I am certain that your prayers for me will not be wanting, nor the help from heaven of our holy patrons and that of Fr. Giussani. I will have much need of them.
I hope to see you soon, both at my episcopal consecration and at my entrance into the Diocese – and then to receive you personally when, passing through what will by then be my new city, you wish to visit me.
I know already that I have your promise, indeed your desire, to love and obey my successor and his collaborators, just as you have done with me.
God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus (Phil 1,8).
One by one, I embrace you in the Lord, who is our peace.
don Massimo Camisasca

Rome, 29 September 2012
Feast of Sts. Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, Archangels

Already when I was three or four years old, and my family lived in the city, I looked out the window at the trees in the courtyard and watched the shadows swaying, shaken by the night wind. They filled me with a sense of wonder and terror. A few months after, we moved into a small village, situated in the heart of a forest of tall trees. Once, on a cold and windy day, while my sister and I were walking in the woods, she stopped me and said: “Listen”. Then I heard the deep creaking, almost moaning, of the gigantic trunks that leaned almost imperceptibly in the wind. “They are talking to us,” she continued. I never thought that the trees were strange monsters speaking in code. I understood that they were the active signs of a mystery that was making itself known to us through them.

Certainly nature does not show us only a benevolent face. I will always remember a dialogue I had with a family that had lived on the slopes of Mount St. Helens, a volcano that became active again in 1980. They did not want to talk about that catastrophe, and they told me that they could not stand hearing platitudes about beautiful and kind nature. That destructive power inspired awe, but certainly not good feelings.

Still, that same power of creating and renewing life also speaks to us from an unstoppable positive and imaginative force. For five summers I worked as a teacher in a Catholic summer camp. How easy it was to speak of God, as we watched the clouds of stars in the sky after a long day of exploring the river, or admiring the great blue heron that glided over us, or after having had a close encounter with a bear, surprised to bump into our sleeping bags.

Once, during a walk with a girl, I was taken aback. “Why must you always bring God into it when you talk about nature? Why can’t you just see the trees as trees?” she asked harshly. I did not know what to say.

Today I would say that the mystery is the essence of the appeal of nature. It makes us want to know it and understand it, giving us a kind of nostalgia for its face, that it reveal itself and reassure us. Today like yesterday, when I close myself in my house to escape the icy wind that howls outside, there I can still hear a voice, and the question still arises: “Who are you?”.

ilsussidiario.net

House of Formation, January 14^th 2012

Dear Brothers,

To introduce us to the profound meaning of what happens to you today and in reflex to us, let us place ourselves on the same wavelength of the question that Andrew and John directed to Jesus: Master, where do you live? (Jn 1.38).

As well as this evening we also ask: “Where do you live?”. To be able to stay with Him, we must know where he lives. Your “yes” today is placed on the path that you are completing here in the seminary, a path in which you learn where Jesus lives and how to stay with him. To know Jesus, to know Him interiorly, profoundly, to experience him constitutes the fullness of our existence.

The question of the two future apostles responds to a question of Jesus, who asks them: what are you looking for? (Jn 1.38). We too are asked this evening by Jesus whether we really seek him. We too respond: “yes, we want to find you, we want to stay with you, to learn from your voice the wisdom which guides and governs the world, to learn from your heart the charity which heals the wounds and makes possible unity”.

“Where do you live?” is a question which makes one immediately think of a home. To stay with you, we must come to your house. The theme of the house runs the course of the Old Testament. To give a house to God was the dream of David, the realization of Salomon and the project of renewal following the exile.

The psalms remind us: The one thing I ask to the Lord, this alone I seek: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to taste the sweetness of the Lord and admire his sanctuary (Psalm 26.4); Blessed is he who lives in your house: always sings your praises (Psalm 83.5); Lord, I love the house where you dwell and the place where your glory dwells (Psalm 25.8); for what joy when I said to myself: let us go to the house of the Lord (Psalm 121.1); We will quench ourselves of the goods of your house, of the holiness of your temple (Psalm 64.5).

To you as well this evening you are being given a house. This house in which you have lived these past few years is revealed in this liturgical gesture as being the house that God has assigned you forever. On  the depth with which you enter this house depends the good and happiness of your life.

To enter this house certainly means getting to know the people which make it up, recognizing the profound links that make us one body. Above all the discovery of the reasons which generated this house, the motives through which God willed and follows our story with paternal benediction.

A recent translation of the Bible translates the question of the apostles: where do you dwell? This expression brings us to a more profound consideration of the story told in the Gospel. Through the question of the dwelling, the apostles want to discover what is the secret and profound place in which Jesus lives, the place in which his heart reposes and is nourished, where he remains. At the same time this point inaugurates his public life, the long and frenetic itinerary of the journey which will bring him to the village of Judah, to Galilee and to Samaria, Jesus constantly remains near the Father. One cannot go if there is not, at the same time, a place where one remains. He came from very far away, he is the eternal Word of God that has become man, but always remaining near the Father. It is here where he would like to bring his own, it is here where he would like to bring us.

To go to the Father we must become one with him. Indeed he said: Who sees me, sees the Father (cfr. Jn 12.45). To know the Father, we must know him. To remain in the Father we must remain in Him. For this reason the Gospel of John, which opens with this revelation that Jesus makes to us of the place in which he remains, will close, in the fifteenth chapter, with an insistent reminder to remain. In seven verses the verb is repeated nine times.

We discover in this way the more profound and true meaning of our house: it does not exist to close ourselves in it, but instead to open us to always new dimensions of the life of the Father. Whoever is faithful in little will receive much. Whoever embraces the humble dimensions, which are sometimes scandalous for their weakness and poverty, of our human companionship, will be guided to experience God, to know God, He who we cannot contain and which our mind cannot measure.

This, in the end, is the truest secret of the celebration this evening: through daily and apparently banal things, we are guided towards profound and abundant joy.

I wish to each one of you to live and to renew each day this experience: within the house of men, lives the house of the Father, in which you will live forever. Amen.

Time goes by a different speed. The cold even threatens the heart. But everything can begin again starting with a friendship. A visit at the mission of the Fraternity of St. Charles in Novosibirsk.

This is the fifth time I have come to Siberia to visit our house. The first time was in 2007, shortly after Paolo Pezzi’s ordination in the Episcopal Cathedral in Moscow. Since then I have returned each year in October. Alfredo Fecondo, a philosopher from Abruzzo and Francesco Bertolina, a mountain spirit transplanted to these high Valtellina plains.

I never take this leap into a different world that requires me to visit a distant home for granted. Siberia is always a special challenge, and knows how to catch me off guard. Here, time flows at a different speed. When you arrive, you must be ready to slow down, like when you are suddenly in front of a wall of cars lined up on the highway. Accepting that you must put the brakes on, and quickly, is the only way to understand and to be immersed in this reality.

A far away home
Novosibirsk is a barrier of cold that imprisons people in their homes for many months a year, which reduces the willingness of initiative to the bare minimum. It is a city of one million and half people. The members of our group who live here know maybe a hundred people and can count their friends on the fingers of one hand or a little more. It takes a long time to feel at home here.

We are in the former Soviet Union. The barrier to overcome is not only that of the temperature but also the invisible barrier of a bureaucracy that reminds one of the exact measure of one’s insignificance. “One could say, with Milosz, that if we are here it is thanks to the powerful” says our philosopher, smiling from behind a plate of spaghetti with garlic, olive oil and a lot of red pepper. “We are all in debt, and by definition out of place. If we make good, however, we can stay.”

The distance between Novosibirsk and Italy, even more than geographical, is psychological. It is the distance of exile, of the deportation experienced by millions of unhappy people under the Tsars and under Stalin.

For all these reasons, “Novo”, as the Italians familiarly call the Siberian city, is a place where one goes only if on is sent. “We feel that we are sent. We need to hear it every day,” Alfredo explains. This is the reason that I travel to visit the houses. I want to strengthen our missionaries’ link with the roots, that is, with the communion that sends them to the ends of the earth. I am going there to stay with them, and I am going there to repeat the words that root us all together in the certainty of the most crucial links that we have, those that arise from faith and vocation. One cannot, in fact, give hope to anyone, without living in hope and certainty.

When I arrive here, I always have to force myself not to count, not to measure. I have to accept that things are the way they were. Only then do I again find the path to understanding that the logic by which I judge things is different, it is always another thing, one of the pure gratuity of a presence.
Perhaps this is why God has called Francesco Bertonlina here. “He can drive two hundred kilometers to go to a place where only two old ladies live,” Bishop Joseph Werth said to me, “And he does so as if it were easy. He’s a good priest.” What seems like a waste, an unreasonable investment of time and energy actually pushes my eyes to see the true utility of it. So, slowly, things are revealed that at first glance one does not see.

A cry in the university…
Fecondo’s work at the university of Akadem Gorodok, slowly emerges while I listen to his stories. Fec, as his friends call him, studied in the Philosophy Department to get a doctoral degree. But what will he do with it? “I won’t tell you what I’ll do with it. I’ll tell you what I see now. I see that I’m entering their atheistic world, into the way they think, into the mindset in which they are formed. Here, communism has left behind only a desperate nihilism”.

One day his thesis advisor, sitting in his office, asked him gravely: “Why are you here?”. “They know who we are,” Fec says. “So I told him the truth: ‘You know…I am a Catholic priest’. I saw him jump in his seat. It seemed like a spontaneous reaction, as though he did not expect it. From that moment, a challenging relationship began. There were still warnings in the old style, when I would say a few words too many in front of the students, but underneath it all, there was a relationship of respect. A few days ago, suddenly, he said: ‘In the future, you could work on the area of ancient Rome’. This was an opening that I had not been expecting”. Among the professors of the department, the dominant mindset is still Marxist: materialism, even its psychoanalytic version. “Deep down, they think that history, not Marx, was wrong!” Fec smiles. “I have a polite relationship with many of my colleagues, however. They ask me questions, and listen to me. They are interested in the Greeks. They hate Plato, it is true, for his openness to the transcendent, “but also because he said that atheists should be put in jail,” Fec adds, laughing. “They study Democritus.” Dp they look to his theory of atoms for the reasons for a materialistic hope they feel betrayed by? “One day a colleague of mine asked me, seriously: ‘Why do you think Epicureanism ended?’. The question had a hidden implication: that it was Christianity’s fault! So I said: ‘I think it ended by itself because it did not have sufficient internal push to last’”. Fec reflects a little, saying “But there is a cry in these people! They are searching for something”.

…and in the southern villages
Francesco also told me about this cry, the cry of the many desperate people that he meets, the suicides and homicides, the abandoned women, the brothers born each to a different father who then disappeared forever, and the men drowning in alcohol. “Husbands are often shadows. Even when they are there, you see only their shadow,” the serious mountaineer joked. The land of the southern villages of Novo is black like the coal it contains in its bowels, and like the desolation of hearts, where the ice is not only outside, but also in.

For several months, Francesco has been working with Father Viktor, a priest of the Diocese of Novosibirsk, fresh from studying in Rome, who the bishop instructed him to help. Together they try to overcome the bureaucracy of the provincial districts of the South and to register the Catholic communities in new villages. Perhaps they will even be able to build a new church in the capital of the province in which they reside. This new aid is of great comfort to Francesco. Here solitude is a faithful companion.

Sitting in front of me, he talks incessantly, like a raging torrent. “I met a twenty year old girl from the villages, who now lives here in Novo, not far from our house. She had a brother from another father. This boy had been in prison. Here, if you end up in prison one time, life gets tough, nobody will offer you a job, so he was jailed again. I knew when he would come out again and I had agreed with his sister to go and meet him. I know that I cannot solve these people’s problems, I just wanted to understand the situation and perhaps help in some way. Maybe only by comforting them. Once he was freed, however, he almost immediately went to live in another province, and so we never met. Then the phone call came a few weeks ago from his grandmother. She told me, crying, that he had hung himself”. Francesco also cries as he says this. “I cannot tell the story without reliving it,” he says. “I was so sorry! Sometimes I think about the great gift that the presence of a priest is for these people. Certainly not even I realize it often. And sometimes, before the mystery of the fact that I cannot reach them, I ask: ‘Who are you, O God? Who are you?’”. He pauses. Then he says: “It’s the same question, I think, that St. Francis asked himself.”