The Magic of Christmas

During the days of the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, when the Jews were under the threat of many persecutions, the rabbi went to a particular place in the forest to meditate.  Once there he lit a bonfire, recited a particular prayer and the miracle that his people was saved from the imminent tragedy happened.

Later when he passed down to his disciple the task of interceding for the people, the latter went to the same secret place in the forest and once there he addressed God in this terms: “I no longer know how to light the fire, but I can still recite the prayer,” and again, the miracle happened.

The years passed until one day when a tragedy was about to again strike the people and it was up to Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sasov to perform the deliverance ritual, he said to himself: “I do not know how to light the fire nor do I remember the words of the prayer, but I can still find the secret place, I guess this will have to be enough for the miracle to take place," and so it was, on heading to the secret place in the forest, the miracle of deliverance of the people took place.

After many more years had passed, it was Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn’s turn to perform the deliverance ritual from the tragedies. Seated in his armchair, holding his head in his hands, he spoke to God in this way: “I know that I’m unable to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, and I cannot even find the secret place where my predecessors used to go. The only thing I can do is to tell the story,” this he did and the miracle also happened.

Christmas traditions
The traditions which have been associated with Christmas make this holiday the richest of all the holidays symbolically and also the most popular of the western culture. Each of these traditions by itself does not encompass the full meaning of Christmas but does help to explain a part of it.

Christmas is Santa Claus, a respectable old man who does not hide his age nor tries to appear younger, and who breaks into kindness by giving presents to children, patting them on the heads and placing them on his laps. The red of his suit has nothing to do with that brown soda pop, as they say spitefully, but rather with the red vestment of a bishop. Historically, Santa Claus is associated with the bishop Saint Nicholas hence the word Santa Claus; mythically, he represents God the Father who gives us his Son as a gift. Christmas is the time when the Pope gives his Urbi et Orbe address and blessing to the entire world.

Christmas is the countless blinking lights that decorate and illuminate our cities and towns. Christmas is the streets and windows of all the shops decorated for the occasion that invites the customers to come in and buy gifts. Christmas is the nativity scene, the life-sized ones in our plazas and the smaller ones in our homes which evoke the true story of Christmas. Christmas is the Christmas tree, conical evergreen trees that point to Heaven, illuminated, embellished and found in strategic locations in our cities and towns, and also in our homes.

Christmas is the cold that leads to the lighting of a fireplace which exudes physical and human warmth. Christmas is the dark night that gathers all men by the light of a candle. Christmas is the house with windows glowing of warm amber light and smoke in the chimney, which contrasts with the dark landscape of white and freezing snow.

Christmas is the well-wishing cards received by the dozens, that are displayed, and which are now becoming scarce. Christmas is the family reunion, united in love and harmony for the Christmas night. Christmas is the Christmas dinner: potatoes cooked with codfish and cabbages, drizzled with raw olive oil, the stewed Christmas octopus served with potatoes and kale, the roasted turkey with savory stuffing at the center of the table, the English pudding, and all the traditional desserts according to countries and regions.

Christmas is the stockings hung by the fireplace, the joy of the parents who give gifts and the wide-eyed children frantically opening them. Christmas is the large bonfire in the churchyard keeping the parishioners warm prior to the Midnight Mass. Christmas is the song of the angels of “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of goodwill” accompanied with bells.

Christmas is the Christmas songs, the “Silent Night”, the English “Christmas carols”, the Spanish “villancicos” and the Portuguese “Janeiras”. Christmas is to kiss the Baby Jesus; Christmas is the longing of the Christmases of the past that will never return; Christmas is the sadness, for not being able to be cheerful, when we are alone or far from those we love… Christmas is all of this and so much more…

 “Jesus is the reason for the season”
There are many in our society who spend this season without any reference to the real meaning of Christmas, and this has led some Christians to stand up and shout, in defense against what Christmas has become, that “JESUS IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON!”.

It is true that nowadays only some people know the story of the visitation of Angel Gabriel to Mary, the incarnation of the Creator to a creature and the Divine Word who became a man, God is one of us, God-with-us, who came to teach us within our human nature how we ought to live this God-given life. Few know that the Child God, called Jesus, was born in a stable in Bethlehem and was born of Mary and placed in a manger which served as his cradle; and that the angels sang “Glory to God” and the poorest of that region, the shepherds, could not contain their joy at his arrival.

Paraphrasing the tale told above, the magic of Christmas happens every year at the appointed time despite the lack of knowledge of the true story. As if it was embedded in our genes, Christmas with its magic and spirit is triggered every year when winter comes.

Its arrival has the same effect as the fairy dust in the fairy tales; it modifies the thoughts, the feelings and the actions of everyone. At Christmas time, to do good seems the most natural, and everyone has more will power and motivation to avoid doing evil. In the big cities, crimes go down. There are truces in wars, and men stop for a moment being wolves with their peers.

“Queen for a day”
Christmas is the dream and the paradise of a future world that is fairer, more peaceful and more fraternal. The reality of the present day is far from this dream, but it seems that on Christmas Day this dream does seem to come true.

It may be just like the notion of “the queen for the day”, but it is enough for us not to forget that our goal is in fact that every day should be like Christmas Day, as it is portrayed by a certain Christmas store in Quebec City, Canada, that is purposely open every day of the year.

Christmas is not and will never be what it used to be, but whatever it may become, its magic and spirit will never be lost and so we will always have Christmas, even if it is only once a year, because we cannot do without it.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Prophet Isaiah – a Christian “avant la lettre”

Moses and Elijah appearing beside Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration represent the Law and the Prophets, a makeshift way of referring to the books of the Old Testament. For the Jewish people, Moses, the legislator from Mount Sinai, symbolizes the Law, to whom 5 books of the Pentateuch are attributed. Similarly, Elijah, who decimated the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel, symbolizes the prophets since the Hebrews regarded him as the greatest of all prophets. So great was Elijah that he did not experience death like the rest of the mortals but while alive was taken up into heaven and is expected to return as the precursor of the Messiah to announce his coming.

Different from the Jewish perspective, the Christian point of view, which understands the Old Testament as a preparation of the New, regards Isaiah as the greatest of all prophets. Unlike Elijah who was tendentiously nationalistic and somewhat xenophobic, Isaiah is universal and is accepting of all peoples and races. Every year during Advent, he delights us with his idyllic vision of an open and inclusive society where peace and harmony reign among all peoples despite their differences:

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. (Isaiah 11:6) In this renewed world where the swords are changed into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks (Isaiah 2:4) Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel but of the world because it is there that the Lord of the Universe will prepare for the peoples a feast of rich food and of well-matured wines. (Isaiah 25:6)

In fact, Christ in his speech to inaugurate his public life quotes this very same prophet to say that the Word of God prophesied through his mouth as a promise is fulfilled today in Jesus himself, the Incarnate Word. The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed … (Isaiah 61:1-2, Luke 4:16-22).

It is Isaiah who 300 years before Christ came speaks to us of the circumstances of the birth of Jesus, showing us in his vision the mystery of the incarnation of God; a virgin shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14), which means God-with-us.

It is also Isaiah who anticipates for us the Passion of the Lord in his song of the Servant of Yahweh and gives us the meaning of the atonement of the passion and death of the Lord: Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases… He was wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities… He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter… (Isaiah 53:4-7)

Isaiah does in the Old Testament what the author of the Letter to the Hebrews does in the New. As such, the author of the Letter shows that the New Testament, the New Covenant, is not radically different nor opposed to the Old, but rather it is its natural extension and above all, it is the realization of the promises written there. In this way, Isaiah with his universalism personifies and advocates, already in the Old Testament, a novel idea -- that the Kingdom of God which Christ came to bring is for everyone, that is, salvation is for all and not just for Israel. Above all, he foretold already in his time, in an ultra-nationalistic milieu which has always characterized Israel as the chosen people, that salvation is for all without the distinction of nation, people or language.

These two characters are like a pivot that joins the two testaments. Isaiah, on one hand, extends from the Old Testament to the New connecting the testaments from back to the front and on the other hand, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, connects them from the front to the back, viewing the Old as the pre-history of the New.

Like a tree that in order to grow upwards by stretching out its branches, needs to simultaneously grow downwards by deepening its roots into the ground, so the author of the Letter from the New Testament goes into the Old Testament to find there the promises that he saw accomplished in the New, that is, the “unfinished business” that are now consummated, the seed that was sown which now has given fruit, and how the whole history of salvation is directed to the coming of Christ.

Like an old man who plants a tree from which he will not live long enough to taste of its fruit, so is the Prophet Isaiah’s utopian dream of a world to come in which there is no “chosen people” because God the Creator of all is also the Father of all. The utopian vision of a world where we see a common roof, a town that all call home, a table as round as the world where wolves and lambs partake of the same meal, a world that has no use for weapons, where tools of destruction are transformed into tools of construction.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews is the ambassador or the envoy of the New Testament in the Old since he tries to conceptualize and explain the New using the very same theological concepts of the Old. In going back and finding the roots of the New in the Old he represents the New in the Old.

Similarly, Prophet Isaiah is also the ambassador or the envoy of the New in the Old as he, despite living in the time of the Old Testament, surprisingly upholds views that are more in tune with the New Testament. In projecting himself into the future, out of a xenophobic setting, Isaiah is a true representative of the New Testament’s universality of salvation in the Old Testament. Therefore, we can call Isaiah a Christian “avant la letter”, and the author of the Letter a Jew converted to Christianity.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Mercy, Not Sacrifice

This homeless Jesus has left a place for you to sit.

Be merciful to him or those in a similar situation, as

he is always merciful to you….

I have had enough of burnt-offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. (...) Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. (...) New moon and Sabbath and calling of convocation --- I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. (...) When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. (...) Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. (Isaiah 1:11-17)

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt-offerings. (Hosea 6:6)

The prophets of the Old Testament were the right people for the right moments. Their voices and their oracles came from an analysis of the reality, the practical problems of the people, in the light of the word of God. The suggested solutions to the various problems and situations were of divine inspiration. These prophetic messages would always destabilize the existing “status quo” because very often the analyses were critical of the social structures and the way of life that had nothing to do with the will of God.

Religion that does not transform life is the opium of the people
Once there was a Muslim who ran after his enemy with a knife in his hand in order to kill him. As he was running, the Muslim heard the voice of the Muezzin at the top of the minaret of the nearby mosque calling the faithful to prayer. Suddenly he stopped his persecution, dropped his knife, spread his rug on the floor facing Mecca and began to pray. After finishing his prayer, he rolled up his rug, once again picked up his knife and continued his pursuit of the enemy.

This is just a caricature of how the practice of religion can become completely dissociated from real life. This same or similar situation can happen to many faithful in all religions. When Karl Marx said that “religion is the opium of the people”, he was probably referring to Christianity; however, what he said can be true of any religious tradition.

The churchgoers are the worst kind – says an old expression. In fact, we often observe that the practice of a religion’s prescribed rituals does not make its faithful better individuals; in many situations, they behave even worse than the atheists or agnostics. It is as if after having paid God dues with their practice of the religious precepts, the rest of their lives were no longer any of God’s business.

Mercy as the sacrifice of oneself
The prophets of ancient Israel were unanimous in condemning a life separated from religion and a religion separated from life; in other words, they condemned a cult or religious practice that could cohabit, condone and justify injustice and corruption. Therefore, in situations when it is not possible to have both justice and mercy together with sacrifice, if God had to choose, already from the Old Testament onwards, He has always preferred mercy to sacrifice.

Jesus reminded the Jews of his time that God, his Father who sent him, maintains this same choice when he tells them decisively: Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” (Matthew 9:13)

In preferring mercy to sacrifice, God is in no way rejecting sacrifices for He did not come to abolish the law but to perfect it. The sacrifice of His Son on the cross came to replace all the ancient sacrifices. In fact, at the very moment of Jesus’ death on the cross, the veil of the Temple to the Holy of Holies, was torn in two so as to say that the type of sacrifice of the old law has ended and the sacrifice of the new law has now begun.

The new law is the law of love, and for this reason, the worthy sacrifices are no longer those of lambs and goats but what Jesus said and put into practice, that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. That is, it is no longer to give what I can and the rest I keep; nor it is to give things outside of myself, but rather it is the giving of my very self. Most of all, the sacrifice of my ego is what is most pleasing to God, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”(Luke 9:23)

Be not surprised, sweet friends, of my furrowed brow, I live in peace with men and at war with my guts. This is the existential sacrifice of which the renowned Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, alludes to in this proverb: I battle with myself to be at peace with men, by sacrificing my instincts or basic tendencies such as anger, revenge, pride, selfishness, and even my thoughts; all this I sacrifice so to live in love and peace with my peers.

In preferring mercy to sacrifice, God is to have both things in one because there is no mercy that does not involve sacrifice; not the sacrifice of things that are mine but do not comprise me, but rather the sacrifice of my very self or a facet of my ego.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, we see these two worlds colliding. The world of the old covenant as symbolized by the priest and the Levite who, obsessed by the sacrifice of the external things outside of themselves, passed by on the other side of human need without feeling compassion and the world of the new covenant as represented by the good Samaritan who, faced with human misery, answers with mercy by sacrificing himself for the half dead wretch, deliberately going out of his way and putting aside his life and his business.

This parable emphasizes the importance of how a religion that exists supposedly to make us more human can, in fact, do just the opposite. It was precisely their religion that emptied compassion from the hearts of these clergies and impeded them from saving the one who urgently needed their assistance.

The sacrifices of the old law, the sacrifices of things outside of me, might do me well but they only concern my person. The sacrifice of the new law, mercy or the sacrifice of myself is good for me as well as for others. With this in mind, to fast by keeping what I did not eat to be eaten later is a fast of the old law that perfected only me; to fast by giving what I have rationed to those who need it is a sacrifice of the new law, because it makes me a better person and at the same time puts me in solidarity with the poor and the marginalized.

Be perfect versus be merciful
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48)
Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. (Luke 6:36)

What do I gain with the perfection of another person? Nothing. I could even suffer if that person uses his perfection and moral superiority to criticize or humiliate me. On the other hand, I have nothing to fear of the one who is merciful because faced with my misery he will be supportive and compassionate.

Christianity is not like Buddhism, a means of perfection and individual spiritual progress to belong to an alleged elite state of enlightenment. To reach perfection without taking into account others is not perfection at all. An individual improvement, that in some part of its process does not lead to the betterment of others and of the world in general, is negative because it will establish more social differences, and this will end up creating more injustice. In Christianity, my spiritual progress goes through social progress and vice versa.

In Christianity whenever you approach God, He always asks you like He did Cain, “Where is your brother?” and by responding, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” we all know is not the answer that God wants to hear from His children… (Genesis 4:9)

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Confessing directly to God

Figure 1 The confessional is the only “tribunal” where 

the defendant admits his guilt and leaves acquitted.

It is very common to find Catholics who say that they do not need a priest to be reconciled with God. They say, “If God knows very well our sins, and it is He who forgives, then why do we need a priest? We can confess directly to God”. In fact, in the sacrament of reconciliation, the priest is only an intermediary who mediates between the penitent and God. He acts “in persona Christi”, that is, he represents Christ who is, in fact, the one who forgives.

Mediators were in the past associated with capitalism and because of this, nowadays they are poorly regarded. Mediating between producers and consumers, they are seen as parasites of society because they are the ones who benefit the most and always in any business transactions.

The consumer seeks to buy directly from the producer because he can buy the goods cheaper, and the producer seeks to sell directly to the consumer since he can sell at a higher price. Ever increasing are the cases where the intermediaries are kept away from these transactions. Whether we like it or not, the practice of the sacrament of reconciliation has been adversely affected by this negative ideology concerning the person of mediation.

However, regardless of what has been said, the sacrament of reconciliation continues to make sense for reasons that have to do with the unchanging human nature as well as for biblical and theological reasons.

Reasons from human nature
Humans are intrinsically social beings because the uniqueness of an individual -- his character and personality -- is the result of his interactions with others; beginning with parents, followed by siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins, teachers, catechists, school friends etc. Because he is formed by them, these interactions, more than introspections, are privileged means for a human being to know himself as a person.

It is said that the face is the mirror of the soul because it is the part of our body that defines us the most; and yet it is precisely the face that is also the only part of our body that we ourselves cannot see directly. We see its image in a mirror but we do not see it as it is because there are no perfect mirrors. Only other people see it as it really is; in this same way, in order for us to see our innermost self, we need the help of others.

The Johari Window, a technique to help people better understand their relationship with themselves and others, tells us that our “Self” is divided into 4 quadrants and in these four areas we are only aware of ourselves in two of them:

• Open self – This part is made up of everything that I and others know about me from my sharing, through activities, public projects, general awareness, as well as through feelings shared.


• Blind self – This area is made up of my body language and all sorts of mechanisms that others are aware of but are unknown to me. I could have a speck on my face which is visible to others and not to myself; only others can help me discover this aspect of my personality. It is only those who are outside the forest that can see the forest, to those inside they can only see trees. Even Jesus in order to know this aspect of himself asked his disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” We need the feedback of others to truly know who we are.


• Hidden self – This is made up of the secret motives of my behaviour: hidden feelings, my privacy, and secrets; that is, what I know but do not want others to know about me.


• Unknown self – This part is made up of my defense mechanisms, and all that Freud calls the unconsciousness. It is the source of behavioural variations for which neither I nor others can explain. Since to know means power and control, what I know about myself I can control, what I do not know controls me. Therefore to gain more and more ground into my unconsciousness, I also need the help of others.

In order to achieve the fullness of life, the human person must have the freedom of movement and expression, be independent and the lord of his own destiny, autonomous and responsible for his own choices. In this sense, a human being does not obey any situation outside of his moral conscience which is supposedly well-formed and informed.

However, as the maxim says, “No one is a fair judge in his own cause”. Furthermore, the moral conscience is not always well-formed and informed; on one hand, there are moral consciences that are too scrupulous, that see evil where none exists and find faults beyond what is reasonable; and on the other hand, there are moral consciences that are too lax, that do not see their own depravity.

One example of this is found in the case of King David who committed adultery with the wife of Uriah the Hittite and then sent the latter to the forefront of a battle to be killed. Despite having done all this, it was necessary for Prophet Nathan to tell him a parable that mirrored the gravity of his sin for David to realize what he had done (2Samuel 11-12).

It is true that when I have medical problems I turn to a doctor; when I have mental problems I turn to a psychologist; to whom then should I turn for moral problems when my conscience accuses me? How can I get rid of my guilt without someone’s help?

Studies have shown that practicing Catholics, because they have the sacrament of reconciliation at their disposal, have less of a need for psychologists and psychiatrists than Protestants who do not have this sacrament. Being social beings, we can only get rid of certain stuff that poisons our souls by talking it out and having a qualified person listening to us.

In other words, the guilt nagging our conscience pertaining to a past event and the obsession with any trauma are psychological and moral mechanisms from which, on our own, we cannot set ourselves free. This is graphically represented in the movie The Exorcist, where the girl is physically liberated from the demon only when it came out of her to enter the Jesuit priest who was performing the exorcism. In a similar way, we are only truly set free of issues that bother us when someone who is qualified psychologically and morally listens to us with empathy.

We really need a friend, a priest or a psychologist to do this safely; we cannot vent alone to a wall.  For this reason, Jesus has given to the priests the faculty to forgive sins on His behalf, both individually in the confessional and in a general absolution within a penitential community celebration.

The Jews used to experience a liberating purgation when they projected all their guilt onto a goat, hence the word scapegoat. There are certain sins and certain guilt that we cannot get rid of on our own, and to confess them directly to God will not help if that is all we do. We need to take charge of them, cry on some concrete shoulders and only then are set we free of them.


Biblical or theological reasons
But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins – he then said to the paralytic – ‘Stand up, take your bed and go to your home’. (Matthew 9:6)

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. (Matthew 16:19; John 20:23)

Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. (James 5:16)

The priest, the man of God consecrated to represent Christ “the scapegoat” for the sins of all mankind, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, is in himself a sacrament, that is, a visible person who represents the invisible God. He is the one who continues the work of Jesus, which includes the faculty to forgive sins. He is the pontifical bridge between God and man who, as we are not yet with God, already lives on earth the life that all will live in heaven. Therefore he represents Christ and is his ambassador to continue here and now on earth what Christ started over two thousand years ago in Israel.

General or individual absolution?
For there to be a sacrament, there has to be someone who represents Christ; this someone is the priest who through the sacrament of Holy Orders is vested and entrusted with the same faculties that Christ exercised while living among us.

It is not indispensable that the priest hears or knows all our sins as it happens in communal penitential celebrations and individually when we confess to someone who does not speak a language that we are familiar with, as it occurred in the early years of the missions. What is indispensable to have the sacrament is the presence of the priest.

In the Gospel of Mark (2:1-12), Jesus said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven”. Jesus forgave the paralytic’s sins without knowing or hearing the paralytic confess them. His sins were forgiven because so great was his faith that he believed that Jesus could heal him.

When the feeling of guilt is unbearable we need spiritual direction to unburden it, then in such cases, an individual confession is more comforting and appropriate. Since we are social beings, from the pastoral point of view, psychologically and pedagogically, individual confession and absolution are preferred because they are more powerful in delivering us from the burden of guilt and produce a joy that is by far greater than the one we may obtain from a mental confession and a general absolution.

However, when this is not possible and it is entirely impracticable then in a community celebration where after an extensive and intensive examination of conscience guided by a priest is carried out which leads to awareness of our sins and impels our hearts to repentance, a general and communitarian absolution given by the priest has the same theological and sacramental value as an individual one.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Conditioned forgiveness

“… Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew 6:12-15) 

God only forgives us if we forgive others
The Our Father is more than just a simple prayer. It is the most concise or the all-encompassing summary of Jesus’ message; it contains everything that we need to put into practice to have life and to have it abundantly. In Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, forgiveness is not only part of the body of the prayer but it also merited an added comment from Jesus as a “Post Scriptum”.

Of all the themes enumerated in this prayer, as if it were a list, Jesus commented on only one – forgiveness -- to make it clear, leaving no room for doubts or false interpretations, everything he has to say on this subject. This appendix addendum was presented in verses 14 and 15 which came, as we have said earlier, outside the body of the prayer.

In order to make people think, very often in my homilies I ask the congregation whether God loves us unconditionally, to which all unanimously answer ‘yes’; then I follow with the question of whether or not God also forgives us unconditionally, and without much thought they also all answer ‘yes’ because they think it is logical that this should be the case.

When I contradict this collective agreement that God forgives unconditionally by saying that unlike God’s love for us, his forgiveness is not unconditional, but rather that “some conditions do apply”, that it comes with some requirements. All are taken aback by that and many, again without much thought, are too quick to say that my doctrine is false.

Many Christians pray the Our Father prayer probably more than once a day yet are not fully aware of what they are saying and what the prayer demands of them. From the added comment that Jesus himself made, we can only conclude that despite loving us unconditionally, God does not forgive us unconditionally. Therefore we better satisfy His conditions first before asking for His forgiveness. In order for us to be forgiven for having offended God, it is “conditio sine qua non” that we should first forgive others who have offended us.

In fact, in the prayer that Jesus taught us, when we say, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, we are telling God that as we have already forgiven others, that is, we have already done our part, that He should now also do His part and forgive us in turn. We place the forgiveness that we should grant others as a pre-condition to the forgiveness that we ask from God; in other words, we ourselves see that forgiving others is the condition to receive God’s forgiveness for ourselves. What allows us morally to ask God for forgiveness is the fact that we have already forgiven from the heart those who have hurt us.

“…the measure you give will be the measure you get.” (Matthew 7:2). Just as the love we have for ourselves ought to be the same measure of love that we should have for our neighbours, we cannot wish to have God for ourselves and the devil for others. We cannot hope for God’s forgiveness if we do not truly and fully forgive those who have offended us.  This truth may be as hard to accept as was Jesus’ discourse on the Eucharist in the Gospel of John which caused many followers to desert the Lord.

And forgive us our trespasses in a greater way than we forgive others – As a matter of fact, the hardness of this language on forgiveness provoked similar dissent as that over the Eucharist; in recent time, the Brazilian charismatic priest Marcelo Rossi, giving deaf ears to the words of Jesus in verse 12 because of its hardness, replaced them with his own, as cited above.

Revoked pardon
Word of a king cannot be withdrawn – Let us recall the promise that King Herod made to the daughter of Herodias, and let us also recall the words of Pilate with respect to the words he wrote on the sign placed at the top of the Lord’s cross. A king does not go back on his word, on what he has said and promised. Much less God, the King of the Universe, would take back His word.

However, the parable of the Unforgiving Servant described in the Gospel of Matthew (18:23-35) suggests that on the subject of forgiveness, God can even go back on His word. The parable recounts the story of a slave who owed an exorbitant sum of money to his Lord who, having compassion on his slave, forgave him his debts. However, as this servant did not forgive someone who owed him a much smaller sum of money, the Lord took back his word and revoked the pardon that He had previously granted.

When God goes to the extent of taking back something that He has already given, something that a sensate person would never do, this shows how adamant God is about that single condition to obtain His forgiveness, that is, we must be ready to forgive those who need our forgiveness as much as we need God’s.

Allowances
“Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” (Matthew 18:21-22)

Always hitting on the same key, these are the verses prior to the parable that we quoted above where God withdrew the pardon He had previously given. God does not give us respite. We are to forgive and forgive not just once or twice but always, unceasingly and without getting tired just as God does with us. We can never say ‘enough is enough’ and we can never give up on someone because God never gives up on us.

Not taking anything away from the difficulty of forgiving someone who has hurt us, the following points can be of help:

1. Take into account the person’s upbringing: the traumas suffered during infancy, the bad parents, the bad teachers. A perfect upbringing and education do not exist; since Freud, no one argues the effects that the first years of life have on the rest of our lives. To overcome these deterrents is not easy and many never succeed. In view of this, to what extent is a person responsible for what he does? If the courts of justice take into account these determinants then why don’t we also when we are called to forgive?


2. Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do. This was the reason the Lord gave to forgive those who killed him. When we do evil things, most of the times we act under the influence of a powerful emotion; strong emotions fog up the mind the same way excessive alcohol does, and the person ends up not knowing what he says nor what he does. The prodigal son was out of his mind when he decided to abandon his family, as it was well told in the Gospel, and as the parable says, when he came to his senses he returned to his family.
   
   
3. The sin is one thing, and the sinner is another. The person who commits a wrongdoing also does many good things but often we do not see the good, only the bad. Furthermore, it also happens that when a person who has always done right by us does one single bad thing against us, we end up condemning him forever for it. We report to the four winds the evil that someone has done, the good that this same person does not even in private do we acknowledge it; we criticize his wrongdoings and envy his goodness. Like God, we need to make the distinction between the sinner and the sin, so as not to “throw away the baby with the bathwater”.


4. We are often hypocrites, criticizing others for the same wrongdoings that we ourselves do, or may one day come to do if given the same circumstances. If we can honestly conclude that we would do the same then to forgive is to put into practice the precept of the Lord that tells us, do to others whatever you would like others to do to you.


5. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.  Matthew 5:44 – I would say that more than an exhortation or an advice, Jesus is giving us the technique that miraculously works. None of us like to pray for those who hate us, and yet, if we make the choice to do just that and commit ourselves to do what is right, going against our instincts, we will find that after some time the feeling of hatred starts to weaken and eventually disappears altogether. Give it a try and you will see for yourself. The Gospel cannot be wrong.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Forgive and Forget

An ex-prisoner of a Nazi concentration camp was visiting a friend with whom he had shared this painful past experience. “Have you forgiven the Nazis for all they did to us?” he asked his friend. “Yes, I have,” his friend answered. “Well I haven’t and I never will, I still hate them to the depth of my soul.” Upon hearing this, his friend told him pleasantly, “If this is how it is, then you are still their prisoner.”

Like a computer with a large operating memory and without a hard disk to store the data, God forgives and forgets. For Him who lives in the eternal present, the past has no value. Along the path of life, both good and evil contributed to what we are today -- good works that shaped our good characters and bad choices that we made which dealt us invaluable life lessons because oftentimes we learn more from what we did wrong than what we did right. God is not interested in the particulars, however, but only in what we turned out to be today at this present moment.

“Up stream mills are not turned by passed waters”
Not to forgive is to choose to remain in a cell of bitterness, serving the sentence for the crime of another person. Mahatma Gandhi

God forgives, forgets, and turns the page. Just like the water that always flows freely and does not adhere to anything, so is God who does not hold any grudges. “Up stream mills are not turned by passed waters” says a proverb, but unfortunately, unlike God, the human mind defies this natural law. Many disturbances of the past keep turning inside of our hearts and minds in the present. Like an old scratched vinyl disc, the past is replayed over and over again in our head and is manifested in our behaviour.

A traumatic past is continuously and obsessively projected into the present, thus forcing the people in our present relations to play the roles of the monsters who have hurt us in the past, and making us react in the very same way we did then.

It is only by forgiving the people who have hurt us in the past that we are freed from the prison of resentment and other harmful emotions that are running loose inside of us -- and because we are not even aware of them, they control us instead of us controlling them. It is only when we truly forgive that we are completely set free from our past and all that went wrong with it. Furthermore, it is only by forgiving that the grip which otherwise they have on us is released.

It has been told that in Heaven Cain used to avoid the company of Abel until one day the latter not understanding the reason for his brother’s behaviour decided to confront him. “Hear me out, why are you running away from me? After all, aren’t we brothers?” Downcast and ashamed, Cain uneasily asked his brother, “Don’t you remember what happened down below on earth between you and me?” “I have a vague idea,” said Abel. “Was it you who killed me or was it I who killed you?”

For as long as the remorse lasts, the guilt also lasts. Cain had not yet forgiven himself… If God forgives and forgets, and turns the page, then for our own good and mental well-being we are called to do the same, forgive others as well as forgive ourselves.

It is true that the facts are not entirely forgotten from the cognitive point of view because God has endowed us with memory, but if we really succeed in forgiving then the hurtful facts are recalled in a different way, without emotion. They no longer cause us stress or anxiety, nor hate or resentment because they truly remain in the past and in some cases are even forgotten cognitively like Abel showed in the story.

Sin is a debt owed
…erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. (Colossians 2:14)

“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”, this verse comes from the Gospel of Matthew’s version of the Our Father. In the commonly recited form of this prayer, the word ‘trespass’ which replaces ‘debt’ does not confer the real biblical meaning of what is a sin or an offense.When we sin, we incur a debt against the one we have sinned; our relation with this person, that is, the order, the equilibrium and the harmony of this relationship are not restored until this debt is paid. This idea to satisfy, compensate or reward the one we have injured arises from the fact that we feel indebted to that person.

We need to regard sin as a debt owed in order to truly understand what St. Paul was telling the Christians in Colossus. He spoke to them in fact of an extensive invoice listing in great detail both the sins of mankind and their own sins. This bill which he described is a document of our debts, which by itself speaks against us because it reports all the evil that we have done.

In Christ, however, God the Father eliminated or cancelled this debt; in the original Greek text St. Paul does not use the term chiastrein which means to cancel by placing an X over the entire body of the invoice. He does not use this term because even after we cancel a bill, we can still read it again and afterwards maybe regret having forgiven the debt. Rather, the term that St. Paul uses is exalaifein, which means to delete.

In those days there were no papers, instead, they used and reused papyri and animal skins again and again. For this reason, they wrote with an ink that was easily erasable like we did until recently with chalk and blackboard. Once deleted, the bill can no longer be re-read. But so that there is not a single trace of such a bill left, God crucified it,that is, destroyed it completely as if it had been incinerated. It can no longer be re-read not only because it was deleted, but also because it simply no longer exists.

He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins,we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.(1 Peter 2:24)

In taking on our sins, Jesus somehow embodied, that is, turned himself into the old Bill that contained all the sins or debts that mankind owed to God; by dying on the cross, he destroyed this bill forever. If in Jesus God forgives and forgets our sins,then we are also called to forgive and forget the sins of others as well as forgive ourselves for all the evil that we have brought onto ourselves.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

If Muhammad does not go to the mountain...

To each their own – In human relations it is inevitable that conflicts arise, and the outcome of long heated discussions between individuals with different personalities and opposing views on the same topic are oftentimes quarrels and breaking off ties.

Quite often neither of the parties involved are aware of being offensive; in fact, both may even feel that they have been offended. This difference of opinion most likely occurs because both parties are accountable for being simultaneously the offender as well as the offended. As the saying goes, “it takes two hands to clap”.

In order to re-establish peace and harmony, the offender must ask for forgiveness while the one who was offended must be willing to forgive. When everyone does what they are supposed to do to restore communication, the quarrel ceases and a stronger and more lasting peace is reinstated between the parties.  They are now appeased even though initially they may have had to contradict and suppress their natural instincts and swallow their pride.

Easier said than done. In reality, this way of resolving arguments does not happen very often. On the contrary, too often the offender never asks for forgiveness and the one who was offended never pardons.

It is expected for Muhammad to go to the mountain
So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5:23-24)

This Scripture passage asks the aggressors to recognize their fault and apologize. But if they fail to do so and in order to prevent a stalemate or a state where no one involved in the conflict makes a move, the Gospel exhorts the offended party to approach the guilty one. This situation is described in detail in the Gospel of Matthew (18:15-18).

In the Bible, one of the very first questions that God asks man is, “Where is your brother?” (Genesis 4:9), to which I cannot simply shrug and say that I do not know since I am not my brother’s keeper, as Cain did. If we seek to love our neighbour as ourselves we will then realize that we are indeed our brother’s keeper.

When we place ourselves before God, like the faithful in the passage of Matthew’s Gospel, He acts as a mirror and makes us see who we really are and how we relate to others. It is, therefore, impossible within this context not to recall the evil that we have done to our neighbour. If we ignore the voice of conscience prompting us to seek forgiveness from our brothers and sisters, then we are hypocrites; we can pray all we want and carry out all sorts of religious and pious practices but God will continue to turn His back on us for as long as we do not seek to reconcile with our neighbour.

The first commandment tells us to love God, the second to love our neighbour, but how can we love God whom we cannot see if we do not love our neighbour whom we can see (1 St. John 4:20)?  It is therefore only when we love our neighbour that we manifest and prove that we love God. This is presented in chapter 25 of the Gospel of Matthew: Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it for me…

The final judgment, as described in this chapter by the evangelist, touches upon the commandment of love of neighbour and not on love of God. So it is in a way a civil judgment and not a religious one. With this in mind, we can conclude therefore that any religious practices that do not lead to personal growth, to become a better person and to improve our relations with others, act like opium and lead to alienation.

Many Muhammads do not go to the mountain
When I was young I used to love to play with my cat and was always amazed by its agility. To put this to the test, I used to lift my cat up by its four paws and let it fall on its back but regardless of the distance to the ground, it was always able to turn itself around just in time and land on its four paws.

Very much like my cat, many offenders always land on their feet as they never admit that they have done anything bad and look for subtle ways to excuse themselves from any wrongdoings. They deceive themselves by rationalizing their bad behaviour, telling themselves that they did it without meaning to and that it was not done with any evil intentions. However much it costs some to admit, where there is smoke there is fire, i.e. where there is an offended there is an offender, and there is never an offense that is done for a good reason or for the good of the offended, but rather all to the contrary.

Time heals everything except old age and madness – Then there are those who know well enough that they are responsible and accept the fault, but because of their pride they reason that to apologize is to humiliate themselves before others so they hope that time will heal the wound of the one whom they have hurt. Psychology, however, teaches us that this is not what happens. When we ask for forgiveness the offense is removed; when we do not ask for it, the offense remains in the heart and mind of the one offended and probably building upon all the previous hurts, magnifying it and poisoning any future relationships.

Not to seek forgiveness is similar to a deep wound that for all intents and purposes appears to have healed externally because it closed so fast; however, internally the layer right beneath the surface begins to fester, generating pus and changing colour. Then when one least expects it, the wound erupts, creating a much messier situation than was originally intended.

Oftentimes we are astounded and left speechless when witnessing an episode of disproportionate outburst in the face of what seemed to be a small offense. What we didn’t realize is that this seemingly small offense is only the last drop needed to break down the dam of animistic resistance and the resilience of that person.

Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. (Ephesians 4:26-27) – As St. Paul suggests, it is better to always ask for forgiveness every time we sin and never let an occasion go by without doing it so that there is never a build-up of guilt and resentment.

What makes it difficult for some people to ask for forgiveness is the possibility of not receiving one in return, as well as the likelihood of having to face the anger and being humiliated by the person they have offended.

If Muhammad does not go to the mountain, then the mountain must come to Muhammad
If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church… (Matthew 18:15-17)

If Muhammad does not go to the mountain, then the mountain must come to Muhammad – This is the most popular formulation of the old saying. Historically, however, the saying was first formulated the other way around, If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain. This version first appeared in chapter 12 of Francis Bacon’s Essays published in 1625.

Perhaps making a reference to the Gospel of Mark (11:23) when Jesus told his followers that if they have faith they can move mountains, Muhammad made the people believe that he had the power to call a hill from the other side of the valley to himself and from the top of it offer his prayers for the observers of his law. Again and again, Muhammad called the hill to himself but the hill did not heed or obey so it remained standing still. Not feeling at all embarrassed or humiliated in front of his followers, Muhammad said unabashedly, “If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain.”

In order to prevent a standstill, the calm before the storm, the Sargasso Sea of human relations, or the cold war, the Scripture above has something to say to the offenders as well as the offended. To the offenders, it urges them to seek forgiveness from whoever they have offended. In the event that they do not do so, and fail to fulfill their duty, then we, the offended, can and should forgive them in our hearts like Jesus did on top of the cross.

However, to forgive from our heart alone is not always enough and it is not instructional, neither for us the offended nor for them the offenders, because it is a passive behaviour.  The ideal reaction, in this case, is a proactive assertive behaviour: to go to the offender with a white flag hoisted as suggested by the Gospel passage above. First by ourselves, then with one other person preferably a friend of ours, and go as many times as needed gradually including more people, to give more weight to our cause.

When Jesus forgave his offenders from the cross, he did so in his heart alone because suspended on the cross he could do nothing else. At any other time, however, he showed us how to be proactive as when the servant of the high priest struck him on the face and despite being bound and surrounded by soldiers, Jesus asked the servant, “If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong. But is I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?”  (John 18:23).

We are not to approach the one who offended us with accusations, this would be an aggressive and counterproductive behaviour because faced with a verbal attack the natural tendency of everyone is to defend oneself. In the hope that our aggressor will take responsibility for his acts and therefore become remorseful on his own, all we can and should do in front of him who have offended us is to take on the responsibility for the consequence of his action; that is, to impart to our offender, not the harm that he did to us but the harm that we have suffered or are still suffering as a consequence.

As the Gospel suggests, when someone who has hurt us does not apologize, then to avoid a stalemate and a cold war of resentment we should go and confront him, not with his wrongdoings but with the pain and sorrow that he has caused. This denounces his offense more eloquently than our accusing voice would have and is infinitely more efficient in eliciting an apology from him.

Grammatically, the assertiveness although a proactive action uses the passive voice, in the hope that faced with our misery the one who has caused it would acknowledge his own fault, be merciful towards us, and ask us for forgiveness.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Sun is setting in the West - Part 2

The decline of a civilization means the appearance of a barbarian war-bands. And it is clear that, in one way or another, it is only a matter of time before the increasing senility of the countries that make up the Western world will see them succumb to invaders. The result will be the final extinction of the Western Civilization, along with its wealth and power, and a return to the Dark Ages. - Arnold Joseph Toynbee

The ineptitude of the political power
Following periods of absolute monarchy and republican fascism, the West is now becoming so used to democracy that it is taking it for granted, resulting in a general disinterest in politics. Like a runaway train without a conductor, Western countries are no longer masters of their own destinies, nor do they seem interested in reclaiming that role. On the one hand, it appears that they trust in their government too much, and on the other, they cannot be bothered with them because they believe the politicians do not actually rule on their behalf. In other words, the governing of the “Polis” (which means city in Greek) is no longer performed by the politicians.

In today’s world, the economy controls the politics, the markets control the economy, the finances control the markets, and the stock exchange controls the finances. The stock exchange is like a big Casino where money changes hands without ever producing wealth, each time concentrating into the hands of fewer and fewer individuals. This year of 2016, according to Oxfam International, 1% of this planet’s inhabitants possess more wealth than the remaining 99%; more precisely, this 1% owns 54% of the world’s wealth.

The public is somehow aware that some covert authority not easily identifiable is in fact in control and that the politicians are only puppets in the hands of the truly powerful who want to remain invisible, possibly because they fear for their own safety. As a result, the citizens have lost interest in electing their representatives because they know implicitly that whoever they elect will not be representing them but rather those CEOs and advisers of large multinational companies whom the people did not elect or know anything about.

The voter turnout for any given major election in the democratic West is in the range of fifty percent of eligible voters. In Portugal, the voter turnout was 46% in the last general election and 51% in the presidential election. It brings one to question the validity of these results when almost half, and in some cases more than half, of the eligible voters did not cast their votes. Before this political irresponsibility of so many citizens, would this not make a good case to make voting compulsory like in some countries? At least for a determined period of time as a teaching tool?

What was kept silent about the Bataclan
After having invoked and recited the Nicene Creed to the contrary: “I believe in one god the almighty Satan…”, at the very exact moment when the jihadists burst into the theater with machine guns, spraying bullets in all direction into the crowd, the American rock group the Eagles of Death Metal was in the middle of their performance singing a song pledging servitude and love to the devil. The fans were dancing and singing with the group, making the satanic ‘devil horns’ salute whom at the moment they were worshipping. The lyrics of the ‘song’ to the devil said: Who will love the devil? Who will sing his song? I’ll love the devil, I will kiss his tongue, I will kiss the devil on his tongue…

Despite the silence that political correctness imposed on this reality, some dared to observe the irony: they called upon the devil and he appeared. This is not, however, our interpretation because on that fateful night the terrorists’ targets were not only the Bataclan but also outside of Stade de France, the country’s national sports stadium, and in cafes and restaurants at random. Not all, therefore, were devil worshippers; many were there only to watch a soccer game or to have dinner with family and friends. No one deserved to die, not even the so-called devil worshippers if that was what they were and were not there just to have some fun.

There is absolutely no possible rationale that anyone can come up with to justify the actions of those Islamic terrorists. What makes me wonder, however, is why the young people at Bataclan and so many others have traded their rationally reasonable and plausible faith in the existence of God, and its revelation in Jesus of Nazareth - unquestionably the most perfect example of what it is to be human - for the superstitious belief of the devil’s existence, the personification of evil, violence, war and anarchy.

Like a reckless and rebellious infant, the Western world is biting the hand that feeds it. From any unbiased historian’s standpoint, it is undeniable that the Church, or Christianity, was and still is the “Mater et Magistra”, mother and teacher, of the Western culture. For all that the society tries to deny it, the values that the world calls civic values are the “copy and paste” of the Gospels.  There was, however, not a single mention of the Church, or of Christianity, in the European Constitution drafted by the ex-President of France, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing – did he do this out of ignorance or was it on purpose?

One piece of evidence which shows that the Church still influences the Western culture appears in the Principle of Subsidiarity which became the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and one of the principles of the European Union which was formally enshrined by the Maastricht Treaty in Article 5. The Subsidiarity Principle did not derive from politics but from the social doctrine of the Church, which appeared for the first time in the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno of Pope Pius XI in 1931.

Starting with France, then Europe and the rest of the Western World, the society is in decline because being surrounded by luxury, and living in abundance of pleasure and pure worldliness, it has lost its faith, the guiding star, the ideals of Christian humanism, the reason to live… going forward one can only expect the worst, as the saying goes, “To whoever does not know where to navigate, there are no favourable winds."

Here come the barbarians – with a new age of darkness
The evidence, unfortunately, is that the West is not even remotely interested in mounting a defense of its values in the face of Muslim fanaticism. Worse still, there are signs that the West is even prepared to sacrifice some of its core values in order to appease those who have always despised these values. – Lee Harris

In the 8th century when the Muslims invaded Europe, and what was left of the Roman Empire of the East Byzantium, they destroyed and took control of the holy places and prevented Christians from visiting them. The West had a strong moral at the time: inspired by the ideals of chivalry, the nobles were truly “noble”, and were ready to give their lives for values greater than their own existence. The Crusades were primarily a movement of legitimate defense of Christian ideals.

“Enough is enough”, we have overly apologised for what some of these knights did and are even trying to hide the very concept of the Crusade behind a taboo because the Crusade has been deemed to be not politically correct. There is no denying that there were some abuses of power and self-indulgences committed by the Crusaders which are not morally justifiable; however, the problem with political correctness is that by swinging in favor of the Islamic world, we only get to see the flaws of the Crusaders while concealing their virtues. The politically correct people forget that if it was not for the Crusaders at that time, today they themselves would be prostrating five times a day while facing Mecca at the call to prayer of the muezzin atop the minaret.

The grey matter of the West has abandoned humanism, that is, the philosophical and ethical thinking, and is completely self-absorbed in science and technology. Without ideals, the Western Civilization suffers from AIDS… in other words, from a cultural immunodeficiency syndrome which makes it an easy prey to Muslim fanatics, who even manage to recruit our own young people those who were both born and brought up in the West. Why are these youngsters so easily deceived by the negative ideals of fanaticism? The answer is quite simple, it is because they grew up in a world devoid of ideals. Worse than having negative ideals is not having any ideals at all. The West has forgotten that “having a good life” from the materialistic point of view is not enough. Humans, especially the young, need to know what to live for.

The teenage phase of personal growth is a time to dream of a better world; the young are naturally and instinctively idealistic. If the Western society of Christian origin, even if it disclaims it, no longer offers nor educates its youth in the ideals of Christian humanism, they will end up seeking some counterfeit ideals elsewhere. In fact, far too many of them are now running away from the so-called values and ideals of secularism that the Western society offers them to opt for the sort of fanaticism that the Islamic State are imposing instead.

The Islamic terrorism that has plagued the West in recent times is not the work of Muslims who come from abroad, but of our own young people who were born in our countries, grew up in our neighborhoods, and went to school and were formed in our universities, but they do not belong to us because they do not share our ideals.

No one gives up their life for the so-called “secular values”
The so-called secular values do not aspire the same motivating form of action and behaviour that religious values do, simply because no one gives their life for them. One evidence of this is seen by the choice of the cover of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on the first anniversary of the massacre of some of its cartoonists, the January 6, 2016 issue.

On this cover, God is portrayed as an old man carrying a machine gun with blood on his hands and clothes. The special feature of this representation of God is that behind his head, with long hair and white beard, is a triangle that we all know as being the hallmark of the triune God of the Christian faith.

This portrayal of God is a cowardly criticism of the Muslim religious violence. The publishers of this magazine, who reserve for themselves the right to insult, throw the stone and then cowardly hide their hands behind their backs. They knew that they had nothing to fear from the Christians because we turn the other cheek. So it was easy and safe for them to use and abuse the “Christian God” in order to criticize the “Muslim God” and his followers.

It is very much like that employee who receives a slap on the face from his boss but unable to strike back for fear of losing his job, he slaps his wife when he gets home, and the latter slaps the oldest child in retaliation, who then slaps his younger sibling, who then slaps the dog or the cat.

When making the innocent God of the Christians as the scapegoat for the Muslim violence, the publishers of Charlie Hebdo made, inadvertently and ironically, a profession of faith in Him who indeed without guilt died for the sins of others -- Jesus of Nazareth. To Him they should thank for having helped them psychologically by absorbing innocently their rage that should have been directed at those who caused it, the Muslim fanatics.

Why is it that the nihilists, the atheists, the agnostics and those who live without God in pure worldliness, unlike the Christians, are not willing to give their lives for their ideologies and ethical values? The answer is simple. No one gives their life in exchange for nothing; Christians give their transient life for eternal life, while the nihilists as they have nothing with which to exchange it for cling selfishly and desperately to the only thing they have, a temporal life.

If these same groups were threatened with death to convert to Islam, as it was and is still happening to many Christians right now especially in the Middle East, it is likely they would convert in order to save their skins because it would be most unusual and almost ridiculous that they would exchange their life for the “nothing” in which they believe. In fact, to this day I have not heard of any martyr of atheism, agnosticism or nihilism.

This is precisely because no one is ready to give up their life for secular or nihilistic values, as it was proven by the cover of Charlie Hebdo magazine on January 6, 2016. Unlike when we stopped the invaders at Poitiers in the 8th century, this time we are hopelessly defenseless. Just like the Roman Empire was at the mercy of the barbarians in the 5th century… so are we now at the mercy of the new Huns, Vandals, Vikings and Visigoths, that is, the Muslim Fundamentalists.

Who will stop them this time at Poitiers if they are already within us like a Trojan horse and keep on advancing? Can we expect another landing in Normandy if America at that given time still remains Christian?

Reveling in false security, the West is so proud of its military might. For as long as the guns do not shoot on their own, the army continues to be primarily made up of young people who are becoming fewer and fewer in number in a West that is getting dangerously and progressively older.

The better solution to this problem was presented by the one who is presently perhaps the most influential politician in the world after the president of the United States, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the daughter of a pastor who said in response to the people regarding the potential Islamisation of Europe that instead of giving credit to conspiracy theories they should return to the Church and read the Bible like they used to.

The West should pay attention
All we wanted to say is that there are certain factors within the Western world that may cause its own collapse:

• Moral degradation, lack of moral values and ideals to inspire and engage the young people
• Lack of interest in politics as shown by electoral abstention
• Low birth rates
• Fragmentation of family
• Extreme individualism, lack of sense of community and the common good

With these last two articles, it has not been my intention to be a prophet of doom and gloom. The prospect that history inexorably repeats itself is a sociological belief similar to predestination as a religious belief, it is not a principle nor a law of historical science. The role of the prophecy and its biblical meaning is not to guess what will inevitably happen, but to warn and prevent it from happening.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Sun is setting in the West - Part I

Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder. Arnold Joseph Toynbee

France as a social laboratory
The French Revolution is one of the many examples of how France, perhaps due to its geographic location, has been and continues to be the test tube of social ideologies which then influence the rest of Europe and eventually the rest of the Western world.

Would it be for this very reason that the same country that blocked the Islamic advancement into Europe, at Poitiers in 732 A.D., is now suffering from a new type of attack and invasion?  In the matter of a very short time, France was twice the victim of Islamic terrorism: in January 2015, against the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, and again in November of that same year throughout Paris, just outside of a sports stadium, in the city restaurants and bars and in the Bataclan theatre where a rock concert was underway.

With a view towards greater integration policies among member countries of the European Union, the former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing drafted the Constitution of the European Union. Approved by the Commission, it was destined to pass in all the parliaments of Europe had it not been defeated in a French referendum. After this defeat, Europe was never able to recover from the blow; today it is experiencing a profound identity crisis and a progressive disintegration.

For some time now this country has been the victim of a voracious, insolent, obscene and militant secularism, inspirer of the grotesque caricatures of the magazine Charlie Hebdo against Islamic and Christian faith, but never against the faith in atheism. Since the caricatures of Islam are well known because they triggered the notorious attack on the magazine, I point out two particularly shocking and blasphemous ones against the Christian faith: The Holy Trinity in a sexual “ménage à trois”, and Pope Francis being sodomized by a transvestite.

Despite the secularism and militant nihilism against religion, France is still a Catholic country as 63% of its population declare themselves as such. Once known as the “beloved daughter of the Church”, where is today the France that defended Christianity so well, and gave the Church and the world so many notable saints and theologians? Now downcast, it has lost its former glory and assertiveness, and in fear and shame allows itself to be vexed by unprincipled people, as if ashamed to be Christian.

Having been the country that stopped the advance of Muslims in the past, today it is the country in Europe with the most Muslims, making up 7.5% of its population, followed by Germany with 5.8%, England with 4.8%, Spain with 2.1%, and Portugal with 0.3%.

Can history repeat itself?
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience. – George Bernard Shaw

History is made not only of evolution and progress, but also of involution and regression. Since the time of Egypt of the pharaohs, to Mesopotamia, Israel, Greece, up to the time of Rome, each country, each empire made its contribution to the Western civilization which has been progressively developing economically, politically and culturally, until it reached its height in Greece and Rome.

From Egypt, we inherited medicine, astrology, and the origins of the written alphabet; from Mesopotamia-Babylonia, the first code of law -- the Hammurabi Code -- and agricultural techniques; from Israel, monotheism as the religious worldview and the Bible as the source of ethics; from Greece, philosophy, science, and democracy as a form of government; and from Rome, the Republic, the organization of the State, the law, the roads and the bridges.

It seems unfathomable that a superior culture in all aspects including military power could have succumbed to a bunch of uncultured barbarians coming from the North and East of Europe who plunged the continent into centuries of darkness. What caused the downfall of the Roman Empire? How could a superior culture be defeated and fall prey to a much inferior one?

As the renowned British historian Arnold Toynbee cited above, civilizations die from suicide not by murder. The barbarians only struck the final nail in the coffin; they only delivered the decisive deathblow to a civilization that had been dying for a long time. The Roman Empire ended by implosion. It fell on its own sword - it took its own life.

Rome was not built in a day nor did it collapse in a night. It was a gradual process that started with the moral degradation and decline of the civic values that had built the empire in the first place. It was the breakdown of the ideals, and the moral and ethical values which motivated and guided the day to day lives of the people. When these values disappeared, the lives of the people changed and with it, the society. Therefore, the morals, the ideals and the values which gave meaning to life in the Empire collapsed long before the Empire disintegrated politically, economically and militarily.

You cannot serve God and wealth. (Matthew. 6:24) – In the context of the Roman decline, God symbolizes the spiritual and authentically human values while money represents the temporal ones. Moral and human decline, as always, begins with the accumulation of wealth that makes possible a life of pleasure and luxury, thus creating the dissolute living of the ruling class.

From the ruling class, corruption spread like a wild fire to all levels of the Roman society. The lust for power led to political instability; the constant wars of succession forced the legions to abandon the defense of the borders to restore order and discipline inside of Rome. Furthermore, the increasing gap between the rich and the poor turned the Empire into a giant with feet of clay, a vulnerability that the barbarians were able to exploit.

Many factors which contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire, after 500 years of absolute dominance over the West, are now in progress in the Western world, making it even possible that history could repeat itself and that the adversaries, this time the Muslims, could cause the West to plunge into a second Middle or Dark Ages, as the American historians like to call it.

There were much fewer atrocities under the Caesaro-Papism (union of Church and State) rule of the Middle Ages than there are presently in the Sharia ruled countries. Some examples of their well-known atrocities are the bombings by the Afghanistan Taliban of the centuries-old statues of Buddha carved in rocks, the stoning of women caught in adultery in most Muslim countries, the cutting off of hands of those who steal, even if they were children, the dream of Erdogan, the President of Turkey, to restore the Ottoman Empire, the duplicity of Saudi Arabia as friend of the West while funding terrorism or any form of Islamic militancy, the dream of Iran to wipe Israel off the map and to possess atomic bomb, the atrocities of the Islamic State in beheading any opponents of Islam, even children for simply having missed prayer on Fridays…

The dysfunctionality of the family
As the germ cell of the family’s social fabric, family values are always the cornerstone of an ascending culture. This was true of the society in ancient Rome during its time of expansion and in the West just after World War II to the seventies. The real human and spiritual values thrive better in a frugal society than in one of abundance. In fact, it was noted that the increase in material excess that the consumer society brought to the West was proportional to the decrease in the living out the spiritual and human values. Furthermore, as it was also seen in the Roman society, gradually with each new generation the family unit began to fragment and weaken.

As in ancient Rome, starting with the decline of moral values, husbands and wives gave in to the compulsions of human nature and adultery became rampant. The number of failed marriages and dysfunctional families increased and divorce became the easiest solution to any types of marital conflict. Nowadays the divorce rate in the United States is at 53%, France at 55%, Spain at 61% and Portugal at 70%.

Unstructured and dysfunctional families resulted in more and more children and teenagers being institutionalized as the State has been forced to remove them from their negligent parents. In ancient Rome, the education of children and young people was carefully and painstakingly assimilated to instill the values of patriotism, the formation of character, the control of emotion, and the importance of obedience and respect for the laws. The same was true in the West up until the eighties.

Nowadays schools do not officially teach values; the only place where these were taught was in the subject called Religious and Moral Education, which has been eliminated from most schools. The few that still offer it to their students have downgraded its importance by slotting it at the end of an afternoon of spares, thus forcing even the most ardent students to give up.

A misguided concept and an inadequate application of “democracy” in the area of education have lured many parents into giving up their position of “authority” as educators for a position of equals with their kids thus pretending to be just their friends. This being so they have neglected to form and inform, and teach and discipline their children; instead, they are giving their kids more freedom than they are able to manage responsibly. The end result is that they grow up like little bourgeois with an easy and paved life that has made them weak, lazy, unprepared for life, irreverent, disobedient and living in a world of fantasy where they have only rights not duties, where they only consume without contributing.

With the loss of family values, the solidarity between generations is also lost. The proof of this is the growing isolation and loneliness in which many of our seniors live. Who does not remember the heat wave of August 2003 where in Paris alone 14,000 seniors died in their apartments. Many of the bodies were left unclaimed and therefore their funerals were paid by the State. Not even dogs die in this way in this day and age… ironically, in Portugal it is a crime to abandon a pet, but it is not a crime to abandon an elderly.

Negative birthrate
Recently on television a condom commercial showed a father shopping with his son inside a supermarket; on passing a shelf of potato chips the son grabs a bag and puts it in the shopping cart, the dad however takes the bag and puts it back on the shelf; the son defiantly grabs the bag again and puts it back inside the cart, the dad again removes it; after three times the child becomes hysterical and begins to kick the cart and the shelves until all the items fall to the ground. In the face of the expressionless father and adult onlookers watching the child screaming and getting completely out of control we hear the commercial message, “if you had used this condom (brand)… this would not have happened…

Any reasonable person watching this scene would conclude that the child is poorly disciplined; but the commercial wants the viewers to conclude that children are the result of failure of other brands of condom. The growing individualism and egocentrism in the West have influenced the birth rates; some married couples even contemplate the possibility of only getting pets in place of having children. Many of these pets are treated like family members, establishing with them the bonds appropriate with human beings; large fortunes are even spent on the welfare of these animals.

I recall the incident of a cat that was connected to a machine to keep it alive artificially. When the veterinarian recommended turning the machine off because its vital organs were no longer functioning, he was labelled cruel by the cat owner’s family.

The irrationality of abortion
Despite the population getting older and without enough offspring to replace the present generation, the West continues to legalize and perform abortion as a method of contraception. On this and other matters like the case of Galileo Galilei, the Church has been unjustly and wrongfully accused and stigmatised as being pre-scientific. In the case of Galileo, the reality is that he failed to provide credible evidence that could prove his theory; he was just not able to do so because it was scientifically impossible given what was available at the time. Similar situations occurred in regards to Einstein’s theory of relativity which only now can it be proven to some extent.

The truth of the matter is that the Church far from being opposed to has always been on the side of science, and some of her members are well-known leaders in their field of expertise; for example, the Belgium priest Georges Lemaitre developed the Big Bang theory, the monk Gregor Mendel is known as the Father of Genetics…

In the case of abortion, it is the society that places itself against science, because it is scientifically indisputable that human life begins at conception, that is, when the sperm, which is half of the human cell, unites irreversibly with the egg, the other half, approximately one hour after the conjugal act, forming a new human cell with an indivisible and unchangeable genetic code that is unique in the entire history of life on this planet. 

Once formed, the fertilized egg, the new being that is self-programmed, only needs to be left alone in the womb for nine months. To justify abortion some groups seek to redefine the beginning of human life at any other time after conception, doing so non-objectively in order to defend their ideology; outside the time frame of conception, any other time to which we allocate the beginning of human life will never ever be scientific, but rather arbitrary and at the service of an ideology.

While this is taking place in the West, Erdogan the President of Turkey whose dream as we have said before is the restoration of the Ottoman Empire, declares himself against family planning, birth limitation and gender equality saying that these are principles of Western ideology and are not applicable to the Muslim world; according to him, no one should interfere with the plans of Allah; the duty of a woman is to be a mother, the more children she has the better.

The function of prophecy
So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” Jonah 3:3-4

In the Bible a prophecy was never intended to be a prediction, but rather a reprimand or a warning: “If you continue to live in this or that way disaster will occur….” The people of Nineveh as we know converted after hearing the prophecy and what the prophet Jonah announced that was to come did not happen. The same can happen to the Western Civilization, by way of a revolution or evolution it can change its present course thus avoiding the decline towards which it is heading.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Seeking Forgiveness

So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. (Matt. 5:23-24)

The word religion comes from the Latin religare meaning to relate. Christianity consists of two types of relation: to love God above everything and everyone, and to love our neighbours as we love ourselves. These two commandments are inseparable both in theory and in practice.

It is not possible to establish a relationship with God when I have broken relations with others. As long as I do not repair these broken relations with my neighbours, God will turn His back on me; therefore, all my efforts to relate with Him will be counterproductive, that is, my efforts to establish a relationship with God will amount to nothing as long as I am angry with my neighbours. Furthermore, to paraphrase St. John, how can you ask God for forgiveness whom you cannot see, if you do not ask for forgiveness from your neighbour whom you can see.

Inevitability of conflict in human relations
Conflicts are unavoidable in human relations. Conflicts divide people into aggressors and objects of aggression. In order for peace to be restored, the aggressors need to ask for forgiveness, while the ones who have been aggressed need to forgive. To forgive and to ask for forgiveness are therefore two sides of the same coin. This is because there are times when we are the aggressors and at others we are the objects of someone’s aggression, for throughout our lives there will be plenty of occasions for all of us to ask for forgiveness and to forgive. For some it is more difficult to forgive, for others, to ask for forgiveness.

When forgiveness is not asked for or granted, the aggressor and the aggressed cannot move on and end up tied to a past that both refuse to leave behind, resulting in the pair living in a condition of continuous present perfect, that is, in a state where the action that started in the past continues into the present.

Those who do not ask for or grant forgiveness hold a grudge forever. Something that has happened in the past at a particular place is happening again and again at all times and all places since the feelings felt there and then are still being felt here and now. The offender who has not asked for forgiveness is still offending and now not only the one whom he offended but also himself, since not having asked for forgiveness has made him a victim of his own pride. The offended who is not able to forgive, on the other hand, not only is still being offended but is also paying for something that he has not done.

Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. (Eph. 4:26-27)

An offense done in the past should have remained in the past; as St. Paul advises the Ephesians not to let even one day go by without interchanging forgiveness between the offender and the offended; and if we let one day go by then more likely a second day will also go by and then as St. Paul warns, we give an opportunity for evil to infest, as we start to nurse our grudge thus infecting the whole of our person.

When the offender and the offended do not take the responsibility to face each other in forgiveness, the offense nursed by both grows and drains them of their energy; it then becomes omnipresent in the mind and heart of the pair, hurting and bothersome like a pebble in the shoe. It places the two in an unstable climate of cold war with the possibility of an imminent conflict always likely to erupt.

To forgive and to forget
Oftentimes we hear the expression that the one who has not forgotten has not forgiven. In a way it is true if by not forgetting it means that we are still resentful and still holding a grudge. Does this mean that in order to really forgive, we have to have an amnesia of our past or have a sort of selective Alzheimer?

The answer lies in the different ways of remembering the offense; first, a forgiven offense comes less frequently to mind than an unforgiven one; second, a forgiven offense when it does come to mind does not generate the negative feelings it previously used to do, it acts now like a deactivated virus. It does not have the ability to evoke anger, hatred or resentment in the offended towards the offender. On the other hand, an unforgiven offense comes to mind often and every time it does, it makes the hatred and resentment grow in intensity.

The ball is in your court
“A thief believes that everyone is a thief” – Most offenders project their personality and capability over the ones they have offended and do not apologize because they are afraid of not being forgiven. Since the offense brings pain to both parties, and chains both to the past, each one should be made responsible for his own part in the conflict, and do what is expected of him to resolve it without being calculative about what the other one is doing to help the cause.

Our enemies are not those who hate us but rather those whom we hate – Most of the time the offended stops being angry at us the moment we ask for forgiveness and the relation is restored and oftentimes the friendship even grows deeper.

I know my offense, and recognize where I have failed like the prodigal son. I make the first move to apologize to the one I have offended. If that person forgives me then all is fine, but even if I am not forgiven, it is still equally okay; the ball is now in his court even if he refuses to forgive me; the stress, the anxiety and the remorse from the guilt that used to surround me disappears from my mind and heart because I have unloaded it and freed myself of it by doing what was required of me and what was within my reach. I cannot force the other person to forgive me; if he decides to stay in the past then he will be there alone without me.

To ask for forgiveness is not humiliating
For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. (Lk. 14:11) – Whoever admits his mistake and apologizes in a way is humbling himself, but this humility will surely lead to exaltation. However, whoever does not admit his mistake and does not apologize is acting out of pride, self-exaltation and arrogance which will surely lead to humiliation.

Oftentimes what prevent us from asking for forgiveness is the fear of being humiliated by the person we have offended, but in reality when we humble ourselves by apologizing for our offense we are placed in better light in the eyes of the person we offended.  On the other hand, when we do not admit to our mistakes and do not apologize we might feel good within the walls of our pride and arrogance, but in reality we look pathetic and are downgraded in the eyes of the person to whom we owe an apology. If we manage to put aside our natural feelings and embrace the reality, we will all be better off, more in peace and in harmony with both God and our neighbours.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC