«From v. 14 to v. 25 is a lesson which should always be repeated by the masters of the spirit to themselves; to the pharisaical souls who see the grain of dust in the eye of their brothers and who harshly censure them, but do not see the girder of anti-charity that is in theirs and which crushes their spirit under the weight of egoism and pride; and it should be repeated to poor souls - oh! less guilty than those pharisaical ones, even if they are guilty and feel sorrowful because they acknowledge being so, and humility and repentance are already an absolution - and to the poor souls who have sinned and who cry fearing the Lord, Judge of their own weaknesses.
Because these 12 verses are the rules in [how] men are judged and the measure in judging what will be the judgement of God towards repentant sinners.
He who wrote them is Paul, a Pharisee, son of Pharisees, disciple of Gamaliel, of that Gamaliel who was a walking encyclopedia on all the doctrine of Israel. Paul, at first the ferocious persecutor of those whom he believed were an anathema, then the Chosen Vessel of justice, the perfect apostle, heroic in evangelizing and repressing his old I, worthy of rising with the elect part of his soul to the third heaven and hearing the mysterious divine words. A man, therefore, who through the intransigence of his first period of life and through the heroism of his second period of life, one could have thought of having always been above carnal stimuli.
If he had been so, however, he could not have been "the Apostle of the Gentiles", of those namely whom the freedom permitted by Paganism would make, except for a few exceptions of naturally virtuous spirits, more brutish than creatures endowed with reason and consciousness. Only Jesus, the Man-God, was able to understand sinners even though He had not sinned. For every other master, it is a sorrowful good to have more or less caved in to the devil, to the world and to the flesh, because in the knowledge of the strength of temptations and in ones' own weaknesses, one acquires wisdom in order to be a master and doctor to disciples and sinful brothers.
I would like for you to observe the rule of the divine Master in choosing His apostolic body and the seventytwo. In the first, only John was a virgin. In the second, less than a few, almost still children when they became disciples, [there was] not one who did not bite into the appetizing fruit, the path to every other weakness giving in to sin. They were men. Nothing more than men. Sons of Adam. And incitement would agitate itself like a snake in their bodies. A touch of carnal concupiscence was alive even in the most just ones amongst them, that is, in those who had already dominated a lust for gold and pride of life.
However, no one was without imperfections. Not even the same John, the seraph of the disciples of the Teacher. Easy to anger like his brother, he merited the name of "son of thunder" by the One who loved him. The apostle of Love, perfect in his love for the Teacher, became the apostle of love by contemplating the meekness, charity and mercy of the divine Martyr from dawn to sunset of that paschal Friday, and he laid down the garment of wrath forever before the most holy nakedness of the King of kings who stripped Himself even of His divine immortality in order to know death and save man.
Jesus God, scouring the Earth - and He could have done so if He had wanted to do so - would have been able to find in the inhabitants of the then three continents, twelve and seventy-two just ones, more just than the twelve and seventy- two whom He chose in Israel. Because God, the Creator, had placed (and places) a sublime gift in the soul of every man which develops, in the best ones, into a sanctity of life that becomes for them their knowledge of the Divinity: the natural law. And whoever observes it and acknowledges it as having come from the supreme Enty, from God, or from the highest deity in their own religion, can without erring say to himself that it is a spirit naturally united to the true God, One and Trine. Therefore, the universal King could have, with His will, called to Himself from the three continents the twelve and seventy-two, just as through the voice of the stars He had called to His cradle the three Wise Men, and could have had, in that way, a Body of just ones at His service. However, He did not do so.
He took some very human men. Raw materials, shapeless, with many impure parts. He shaped them. He suffered in doing so due to the defections and betrayals on the part of some of them. But at His Ascension, He left a teaching Church capable of continuing in His steps for the redemption of the world. Capable through the doctrine and the example it received from the Word; capable through the help of the Holy Spirit received from the risen Jesus the first time in the Cenacle, and a second time in the same Cenacle, ten days after the Ascension, as per divine promise and through the direct action of the Holy Spirit so that the twelve could be filled by the Holy Paraclete and so that they would then be able to communicate it to their assistants in the priestly ministry; and in the end, capable because, instructed on Its different members through the knowledge of their own weaknesses, of their struggles as men in order to shape themselves in justice, of their relapses, It would not be incapable of being a teacher, but would know how to understand, have pity, support and guide those who would all come to Christianity, weak because they were men, extremely weak in spirit because they were Pagans and Paganism being the doctrine of materialism and uncontrolled pleasures.
This is the prologue to the lesson drawn from the verses which I have indicated to you and which I will explain tomorrow because your state [of health] does not allow a lengthier effort.»