Saint Paul of Tarso can be considered the first great missionary of the Christian Church. His work as proselyte and contribution to spreading the Gospel throughout the Mediterranean find no equal. His excellence is even more remarkable because of his conversion, from the fierce persecutor of Christians to their pastor and defender. Though he had not personally known Jesus, he was among the most fervent and passionate of his disciples. His own life is a testimony to divine greatness and saving power of Grace.

Saint Paul was born in Tarso, Cilicia, around 5-10 AD. His family was of Jewish origin, but had Roman citizenship. Paul, or Saul as he was called then, grew up in a Jewish culture, and his studies followed the rules of the rabbinical school.

Sent to Jerusalem to study, he had the first contact with Christians, which seemed to him a sect of dangerous subversives that must be extirpated by any means, in the name of the Jewish law.

Growing up, his anti-Christian fervor turned into a real mission. Saint Paul, before becoming the one the important figure we know today, contributed to the arrest and condemnation of countless Christians.

It was while chasing a group of Christians fleeing to Damascus that Paul was caught up by a sudden vision. A light from heaven struck him, making him blind, and a voice asked him, “Saul, Saul, why do you pursue me?” And he: “Who are you, Lord?”; and the voice said: “I am Jesus, the one you pursue. Now rise up and enter the city, where you will be told what you must do “(Acts 9: 3-7).

It was not easy for Saul to understand that call, nor to adapt to his new life. Riddled by his own people, looked suspiciously by those who were accustomed to seeing him as an enemy, he began his preaching armed only with his enthusiasm. The meetings with Peter and the other Apostles made him aware of the life and the Word of Jesus. From then on he began a series of apostolic journeys, often accompanied by the apostle Barnabe and other disciples and friends. He knew persecution and imprisonment by the hand of Jews and Romans, but never stopped, animated by an inexhaustible zeal, and desire for the truth. His mission led him to the martyrdom, in Rome.

The Letters and the texts he left are the foundations of the Doctrine of the Church as we know it.

In his studies and preaching, he analyzed all the arguments related to the earthly life of men and the way to salvation.

In Saint Paul, the Church sees one of his greatest, wisest men, and the first of his preachers.

Pentecost is perhaps, after Easter, one of the most important festivities of the Catholic Church. It’s the celebration of the descent of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Most Holy Trinity, after the Resurrection of Jesus and, in a sense, the very birth of the Church.

It originally coincided with the Jewish celebration of Shavout, a celebration dedicated to the harvest in the period following Easter. On this occasion, the Jews thanked God for the fruits the land gave to them. Later on, it also became the commemoration of the day Moses received the Ten Commandments on top of Mount Sinai.

Today Catholics celebrate the Pentecost 50 days after Easter. The remembrance of the Jewish holiday is still there, especially in the thankful approach of the faithful to God. In fact even in Christian Pentecost we speak of a great and precious gift God wanted to give to His people: the Grace of the Holy Spirit. In the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, Mary and the Apostles gathered to celebrate Pentecost with the usual pilgrimage to Jerusalem, like many Jews. The Holy Ghost descended upon them in the form of a roar from the sky and tongues of fire, which flashed each one of them. From that moment on, they were able to speak any language.

The sanctifying features of the Holy Spirit are a symbol of unification and inspiration for the apostles who, after this miraculous meeting, feel they have to begin their ecumenical mission and create the Church. Before this episode, the Holy Spirit was not described as a divine person. Only in the New Testament, the vision of the Spirit of God as an impersonal force that plots the destinies of the universe is joined together with the cult of His personality: the Holy Spirit becomes a personification of God’s love towards His children, infinite wisdom used when teaching the disciples of Jesus to become promoters of truth and salvation among men. It is often depicted as a white dove, or like the flame tongues that would have touched Mary and the Apostles.

The Holy Spirit offers many gifts to those who receive it: wisdom, intellect, advice, strength, science, pity, and fear of God. All faithful benefit from the Baptism before and the Confirmation after. Pentecost is a celebration involving all faithful and especially their families, held in the grace of the Holy Spirit and more united and strong against the difficulties of every day.

Very few men of faith can be compared to Sant’Agostino d’Ippona. He was not only a great theologian and bishop, philosopher and doctor of the Church. Sant’Agostino d’Ippona put his higher sensitivity and genius in the service of Faith as a priest, but also as orator, writer of some of the most beautiful and intimate pages that ecclesiastical literature can recall.

A great man, an elevated mind who discovered Faith after long inner labor: it is perhaps because of the sufferings of this research that his reflections are so deep, and so strenuous his defense of orthodoxy.

Born African, Roman for culture and mentality, Christian for education taught by his mother, Sant’Agostino was a teacher of rhetoric and grammar in Tagaste, Carthage and Rome.

He moved away from Catholicism when very young, and followed for some time the Manicheans, seeking the truth and wisdom he was looking for through rationalism, materialism and dualism they professed.

Only later, and mostly because of the preaching of St. Ambrose, he came to the conclusion that the journey to Jesus was through Church and the Holy Scriptures he had given it.

When he came to this new revelation, he renounced teaching and the marriage, and took the vows. After many trips he settled in Hippo and founded a monastery. He later became bishop. He led a lifetime of asceticism, devoting himself to study, theology, and preaching, as well as charitable works for orphans, poor and infirm. His long journeys led him to be the chair of numerous councils and to stand up as proud defender of faith against heresies.

Sant’Agostino d’Ippona was certainly the first and one of the greatest Christian philosophers. His many works speak of the search of God, but always through self-knowledge, deep reflection on man’s nature, eternity, time, freedom, and evil.

The moral doctrine he spread is a doctrine based on love, a love that from his writings emerges in an almost sensual, profoundly and desperately human way.

A magnificent speaker, a formidable dialect master, he studied the works of his opponents, respecting the diversity of thought. Among his most important works we remember: the Confessions, the City of God, the Speeches, and the Letters.

His image is among the most common statues of saints; His depictions recall his life and the greatness of his intellect throughout the Christian world. Sant’Agostino d’Ippona is still considered as one of the Fathers of Western spirituality: a master of faith and life, shepherd of souls and inspiration for hungry minds looking of knowledge and beauty. The superior beauty which in his mind and works coincided with God.

Confraternities are associations of laic Christians who decide to gather together to promote aggregation, increase devotion and worship, and perform charity, penance and catechesis. They’ve existed since the origins of Christianity in Roman times, and quite likely the first confraternities took inspiration from secular institutions before them, such as Roman collegia or Greek fraterie.

Over the centuries they have assumed different denominations from region to region from confraternities to caritas, consortia to sodalitium, gilda or schola, or even company or congregation.

Regardless the name, confraternities usually start within the Church. Only the ecclesiastical authority can recognize its validity and change its statute and everything that has to do with it.

Those within the brotherhood maintain their laic state, unlike the first confraternities in which only members of the clergy could participate. They do not have to take the votes, and they can follow their human, working, and family lives.

Starting as prayer’s communities, collective reading of the scriptures, but also to assist infirm and poor, orphans and foreigners, medieval confraternities frequently practiced self-depravation and other forms of cruel penitence to invoke divine mercy. In particular we recall the battenti and the disciplinati, who in the 11th century would scorn themselves in procession to commemorate the Passion of Christ.

From the sixteenth century, the tendency of confraternities shifted more to the practice of charity, the creation of hospitals and shelters, and common devotional practice. In particular, we recall the “Bianchi”, dressed in a white flax-colored sail with cap and a red cross on the chest.

Amongst other things we have to thank the confraternities for the preservation of much of the artistic and cultural heritage of the church, works and documents preserved in their archives, such as the Seven Works of Mercy painted by Caravaggio for the Church of Pius Monte della Misericordia of Naples and The Stabat Mater of Pergolesi made for the Arciconfraternity of the Knights of the Virgin of the Seven Sorrows of Naples.

The contribution of the confraternities was fundamental against the spread of Protestantism in Italy and in the struggle against heresies. They still play a crucial role today in the life of laic Christians, bound together by their desire to face the small and great vicissitudes together. The traditions of the past have remained in the colors of the gown that the members of confraternities wear, and the medallions of the confraternities that portray the effigy of the group they belong to.

The Dominican’s Rosary Movement shows both the desire for community devotion and the desire to promote Dominican Spirituality and the philosophy of love linked to the Holy Rosary.

Dominicans daily lives involve searching for truth and intimacy with Jesus, pursued by daily actions, but above all by faith and meditation research associated with the Rosary.

For Dominicans, Virgin Mary’s love, from whose holy hands Saint Dominic received the Rosary, becomes a means for approaching Christ and his saving light. The Rosary is intended as a tool of personal and communal meditation and prayer, but for preaching. The task of the Movement’s members is to carry Mary’s spiritual values ​​and invite those who haven’t found them, get to know them and make them enter their lives as a tool of salvation and faith. Common reflection and prayer in the name of the Blessed Virgin Mary serves as a crucible for spirit and forge in order to create new men.

Another of the objectives of the Dominican’s Rosary Movement is to welcome those who, curious about this profession of Faith and form of devotion, want to know more about it. The task of the father responsible for the Dominican Movement of the Rosary is to bring everywhere the experience of reflection and prayer, as a testimony of faith and example of a path even to those who haven’t yet understood its steps.

The Movement also offers and organizes occasions of common prayer and meeting, pilgrimages in sanctuaries and conferences aimed at reflecting on the mysteries of the Holy Rosary. Those who can’t afford long journeys are invited to the Regional Rosary Rallies, but there are also more ambition and complex proposals, such as group holiday, opportunities for common meditation and devotion to the Virgin Mary.

The main idea of Christian religious symbolism was born from the desire to idolize banned images in early Christianity and the need to hide this worship. The early Christians had to resort to symbolic representations, signs, abstract forms like the cross, the stylized fish, in order to feed their devotion and hide from their persecutors. In some cases, ancient symbols already existed, though their meaning was completely different for them.

Here is a list of some ancient Christian symbols:

• JHS or Trigram (ìJЙΣ in Greek alphabet), which is used to shorten the name ΙΗΣΟΥΣ (“Iesous”, Jesus).
• Icpescehthys, the stylized fish used by early Christians. Ichthys is the Latin transliteration of the Greek word ἰχθύς, “fish.” For Christians it became the acronym for Ιησοῦς Χριστός Θεoῦ Υιός Σωτήρ (Iesùs CHristòs  THeù HYiòs Sotèr), or “Jesus Christ Son of Savior God”
• Chi Rho is the monogram of Christ, made by the superposition of the first two Greek letters of Christ’s name, X and P
• The dove, sweet and gentle animal, always been a symbol of purity and innocence, becomes a symbol of the Holy Spirit.
• Alpha and Omega: first and last letters of the Greek alphabet means that Christ is the beginning and the end of everything according to a quote from the Apocalypse.

There is no doubt that many Christian symbols and religious traditions of Christianity have their origins in ancient rites and symbols belonging to ancient religions and pagan cults. However, beyond words and symbols, it is crucial to analyze the way these rites and symbols were used, and the meaning given to them.

Some symbols, removed from a specific context, can take on a completely new and different meaning from the initial one. Unlike words or signs, drawings or objects, which represent exactly what they mean, symbols combine two realities, the effective representation and its conventional meaning, that can change from context to context.

Let’s analyze for example the symbol of the eye inside the triangle, which symbolizes the divine providence of God and the Trinity: that symbol is also used elsewhere, for instance in Freemasonry; or the inverted cross, which refers to the martyrdom of Pietro the Apostle, crucified upside down, but it is now often associated with satanic cults as well.

Talking about the cross, its meaning has changed dramatically overtime: for the Romans it was a symbol of shame and ignominious death, used for torture and execution, while in the New Testament, being it associated to the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus, it has become a symbol of salvation and eternal life.

Even many Christian symbols related to Christmas have pagan origins, though they should be analyzed in the right context. Christmas coincides with the winter solstice, a date traditionally linked to several ancient cults devoted to Sun and Light. In the Old Testament, the next coming of Jesus was announced as a renewal of the qualities of light and sun. The symbolism of light is therefore always connected with Christ. The Light: the Fire that burns the evil and dispels darkness, and purifies; the Sun, which gives new energy, fertility and fecundity. All this comes together, from a Christian perspective, in the figure of Jesus the Savior.

The rite of the mistletoe started during the Celtic area. It is a parasite plant, which sprouts and grows on the branch of another. In the Christian community it has been linked to the figure of Jesus, not raised like all other men, but a guest of humanity.