INTRODUCTION

The experience of faith, that we announce and share, means the real acknowledgment of Jesus like Lord (He is with you) and the conversion (fundamental) to the Gospel’s justice. It means a brand new relationship with respect to God (Only one God and only one Lord), and a new relationship with respect to the others, and also with respect to oneself. It means a new life (Rm 6,4).

Paul knows it by his experience. The one who met Christ is like if he was born again, a new man (2 Co 5,17). In some way, when meeting Christ he has been created again. The depth of this relationship may be expressed in this manner: It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me! (Ga 2,20).

The discovery of this event pulls Paul out of himself, tears his old centres of interest, turns over his values hierarchy, changes the foundations of his world: All those things that I might have considered as profit, I reckoned as loss compared with the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sale I have let everything fall away and I now consider all as garbage, if I may gain Christ. May I be found in him, without merit or holiness of my own for having fulfilled the Law, but with the holiness which comes through faith in Christ, the holiness given by God which depends on faith in Christ Jesus (Phil 3, 7-9).

The new life offered by Jesus of Nazareth is manifested like a conversion experience. The Decalogue’s moral ideal is not only accomplished to the last I (Mt 5, 18), but it is also overcome. Jesus proclaims in a global form, the orientation of the Christian existence, configured by the gift of God, and the conversion to the justice of the Gospel, a justice that overcomes that of the scribes and Pharisees (5, 20), of publicans and gentiles (5,46-47), a justice similar to the one of the celestial Father (5,45 – 48), the justice of the kingdom of God. It is the justice of the Christian community that in that Magna Charta founds its own identity. And it is the justice offered to the world, which – with that salt- may be preserved from corruption and – with that light- may be liberated from darkness (5, 13-16).

In a special way, the new life announced by Jesus is celebrated in the sacraments. The sacraments are personal acts of Christ himself. Like the second Vatican Council says, “Christ is always present in his Church, above all in the liturgical actions”, “he is present with his strength in the sacraments so that when somebody baptizes it is Christ himself who baptizes” (SC 7). The sacraments are meetings with Christ. Like Saint Ambrosias says: “Christ, you have manifested yourself face to face: I meet you in your sacraments” (Apology of prophet David, 12,58). And Saint Lion Magnus, “What was visible in Christ, has passed to the sacraments of the Church” (Sermon 74,2). The sacraments are community celebrations, from which Paul says: you are the body of Christ (1 Co 12,27). Being community, the Church is light of the people (LG 1), a sign raised in the middle of the nations (SC2), universal sacrament of salvation (GS 45).