The weapon preferred by the devil to make a massacre of souls is envy. Unfortunately.

A weapon with which the devil makes massacres of souls and prayer groups is that of envy. 

It arouses contests, jealousies and competition among church members. It is not news: just read the apostles in the Gospel: the Lord announces his imminent passion and they, as soon as they sense that their Chief is about to be killed, what do they do? They discuss with each other about who is the greatest to take his place as a successor!

Or, let’s think about what the mother of St. James and St. John asks the Lord: “Make that when you reign, they will sit one on your right and one on your left”, that is, in other words, let them become the most powerful and important after you.

This way of thinking, these disputes, these serpentine thoughts that break the strongest bonds, but have no reason to exist!It is necessary to make a true experience of God’s love to understand the words that St. Peter, the first Pope, declares in Scripture: “God does not make people’s preferences”. Many have responsibilities of great importance in the church, others have the most humble tasks, but who will dare say or think that one is more important than the other when the Lord himself has lived them both with the same intensity of love? Who can say that God prefers a person consecrated to a married person when Our Lady has lived both vocations (as a child in the temple, as a young bride)? Who can say that God loves him / her more than me?

The demon instigates people against each other, arousing these thoughts of envy. How to fight them? First of all, remembering that a puzzle has many pieces but that only one is missing, however simple it may seem, the puzzle is not complete. Remembering that for one soul Christ would have gone on the cross exactly as he did for the whole of humanity.Remembering that if it is true that God loves everyone, he loves everyone in a particular and unique way. The tasks that He entrusts to each one, the different vocations, etc. they must not be a reason for division because they are not the fruit of merit! They are free gifts that will need to be accountable.

Why to him and not to me? These are questions we must take from our heads! “Who among you is the smallest, these and me the greatest” does this mean? St. Luke, who reports this discourse in his Gospel, uses the same words at another time, that of the dialogue between Christ and the good thief on Golgotha. The “smallest”, we could say, from the moral point of view, a thief nailed to the cross, is the first to receive the gift of reigning with Christ in paradise. The apostles who first contested the primacy now where are they? Under the cross there is only John, one hanged himself and the other ten have fled. 

Let us ask ourselves seriously what we would have done and ask God for the grace to be last and to be able to always put others before us, following the example – and this time really – of the Most Holy Mary who recognized herself and was exalted to the rank supreme from God the Trinity.

of Cristiano MG