Fr Giussani and the Mysteries of the Light

The passages read during the recitation of the Luminous Mysteries, climbing the Holy Steps to the Sanctuary of Loreto

1. The Baptism in the Jordan River
They were there with their mouths and eyes wide open, looking at him, listening to him, paying close attention. Suddenly, someone in the group, a young man, broke away and started walking along the path next to the river, going north. And John the Baptist at once stared at Him and cried, “Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!”
[Il tempo e il tempio (Time and the Temple), p. 44]

Within one fundamental act a man is made immanent to the mystery of Christ in the life of the Church. This act is Baptism, the act by which Christ takes hold of man and takes him into Himself. This is an identification with Christ which becomes decisive for man’s physiognomy. It touches his most intimate fibers, transforming him.
[Why the Church?, p. 187]

2. The Wedding Feast at Cana
The miracle of the wedding at Cana is one of the incidents that indicate most clearly of all Jesus’ conception of life. Any aspect of existence, even the most banal, is worthy of a relationship with Him and, therefore, of His intervention. Any kind of event is decisive or revealing of the “fact” of Jesus whose action toward what is human is realized in an extreme, detailed, and concrete manner.
[At the Origin of the Christian Claim, pp. 49-50]

3. The Announcement of the Kingdom of God
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near” (Mk 1:15). Every day of our life, every instant, every step on our journey echoes this, because it is fulfilled, because everything that can be said to us is said, everything: that “man does not live by bread alone,” that reality is not appearance, that reality is Christ, the Word that issued from God.
[“Homily for Easter 1979,” unpublished]

4. The Transfiguration
The instant of time has meaning as Christ’s return, and that day will be the day of glory. But every instant is the instant of glory, and the glory of Christ in the instant is the transfiguration of the content of the instant, it is the transfiguration that takes place in what we do. This transfiguration is the truth of the human, it is the truth of what we do, the origin of a different humanity.
[Tutta la terra desidera il tuo volto (All the Earth Desires Your Face), p. 38]

5. The Institution of the Eucharist
All that we are cries out to God the prayer that is at the center of the Mass. Everything must become the Body and Blood of Christ, part of the mystery of Christ who has already liberated the world by His death and resurrection, but who vests our actions with the possibility of collaborating with this liberation. The whole world needs our faith, needs for our life to be changed by faith, needs for it to become Christ’s death and resurrection working in history.
[Dalla liturgia vissuta: una testimonianza (From the Lived Liturgy: A Testimony), p. 22]