The Good Samaritan

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.”

Which of these three, do you think, was neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’ (Luke 10:30-37)

Jesus’ second best known parable after the prodigal son is no doubt the parable of the Good Samaritan. Western culture was influenced so much by this parable that today the term "Samaritan", rather than referring to an inhabitant of Samaria, applies to any person who is caring and compassionate, and helps those who are in need.

How to inherit eternal life
This parable is inserted in the context of a dialogue that Jesus has with a lawyer who quizzed him on what one must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus, like a good non-directive psychotherapist following the style of Carl Rogers, helps him to find for himself the answer to his own question by referring him to his reading of the Law. The lawyer says in response what Jesus wants to hear; that is, instead of mentioning the actual laws, he gives to love the status and importance of a law, guessing that is precisely what Jesus would have done.

The answer given by the doctor of the law is a synthesis of the Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets, and he arrives at it by combining the love of God described in the Book of Deuteronomy (6:4-8) with the love of neighbour outlined in the Book of Leviticus (19:18).  Jesus applauds this association and simply exhorts him to put it into practice if he wants to enter into eternal life.

Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. (1 John 4: 20)

From this text we can conclude that the love of God that does not manifest itself in the love of neighbour, is not real nor genuine. On the other hand, we can only love our neighbour when we understand that what we do to others, we are doing it to God, and as the Gospel says, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matt.25:40).

This ensues from the reality that the love of God is the primordial and the most important love, because it   is only when we see God as our Father that we see others as our brothers. If God is not the Father of all, then my neighbour is not my brother but rather my rival, my enemy, someone whom I envy or fear. Regardless of how well-off our biological siblings might be, we do not envy them. In this same way when I truly love God like a Father then every person who surrounds me, rich or poor, big or small, near or far, is my biological sibling since God being the Creator of all is the Father of all.

Christianization of grammar
Who is my neighbour? – Like the other lawyers who approached Jesus before, this one also does not come to affirm his teachings. The first question is only a preparation to his second one, in which he intends to denounce the fact that Jesus does not accept differences between people. Therefore, the second question assumes that there are people who can be considered as neighbours and others, on the contrary, not. And so it was with the Jews; they were God’s chosen people; therefore for them a neighbour was someone of the same tribe and religion; the rest were Gentiles or pagans, and as such were not included as their neighbours.

Distinction of persons does not exist for Jesus. This is the message he intends to convey with the parable of the Good Samaritan. In the middle of the Judean desert lies a wounded man; no one knows who he is since nothing is said about his identity. His face must have been badly battered since no one could tell his ethnicity from his facial features; he is probably half dead or unconscious and as he was unable to speak, no one could guess from his language, dialect or accent which tribe he came from. Similarly, one could not get any information from his clothing since he had been stripped of them.

Jesus does not give any details about the poor man’s origin because they are not important. The only thing that matters to Him is that he is a human being. Human dignity is not dictated by a person’s ethnicity, language, religion or politics, but simply by the fact of being a human person.

 God is the Father of all so that when we pray the ‘Our Father’, no one should be excluded from the pronoun “our”. In fact, if we took our faith to its logical conclusion, we would have to modify the grammar and abolish all personal pronouns except three: I + You = We.

Seeing myself as a free autonomous being, “I” am distinct from everything and everyone that surround me; then I look around and recognize an alter ego, a “You”, different from me, but of same dignity; finally, the fact that we need one another, on terms of equal rights and duties, a new entity comes about as a “We” that means a “You” and an “I” together; apart from these, the remaining pronouns we can discard since they are discriminating.

The pronouns “he”, “she”, “you” (in plural) and “they” establish irrelevant differences regarding the dignity of the human person. Making distinctions where they are not important is oftentimes a disguised form of discrimination. Once more, as we are Christians, the ‘our’ of ‘Our Father’ should encompass all people without distinction and discrimination.

Habitat on anatomy
Science tells us that human beings come from a common stock. With the Greek philosophy in mind, the dignity of a human person is to be linked to the essence and not to the accidents of life. What Jesus wants this lawyer to understand is that the differences in ethnicity, gender, social position, class, color of skin, type of hair etc., are accidents, that is, they are the vicissitudes of our existence and have nothing to do with the essence. The dignity of the human person refers to the essence and not to the accidents. Jesus tells this parable hoping that the lawyer, his interlocutor, by himself would arrive at the conclusion that the neighbour of each human person is every human person.

Born out of a common origin in the Rift Valley of Africa some five million years ago, the physiological characteristics that are evident in human beings today are due somewhat to the morphological and climatic conditions of their surroundings where they have inhabited for many thousands of years. For example, it is noted that the skin colour is proportional to the distance from the equator: the closer a person lives to the equator, the darker the skin: the Congolese are the darkest human beings on earth; the north Africans are much lighter than the Congolese while the southern Europeans are lighter than the north Africans and the northern Europeans are even lighter than the southern Europeans.

Just as the distance from the equator has shown correlation with the skin colour, so it seems to have something to do with the colour of the eyes and hair: in Northern Europe, blues eyes and blonde hair predominate, central Europe brown eyes and brown hair and southern Europe till the equator black eyes and black hair. The size of the nose seems to be related to air temperature as in addition to filtering the air, the nose also heats it, so that in cold countries people tend to have larger noses.

The temperature and the incidence of sun also seem to have something to do with whether the hair is curly or straight. The frizzy hair of the Africans forms an air box which allows air to circulate, in this way protecting the head from the sun’s ray and from the heat. Similarly, the Asian eyes are related to the extreme climate of the Asian steppes where it is very cold and bright during the winter, and very windy and dusty during the summer.

The French Revolution “avant la letter”
In the western culture it was the French Revolution that did away with birthrights, the nobility and its so called “blue bloods”, and came up with the ideals that have been the corner stone of democracy: we are all equal at birth and equal under the law. But long before we were equal under the law we were already equal under God.

If we look closely, we will note that the ideologies of the French Revolution were not really the discovery of the revolutionaries of those days, but were already implicit in the commandment to love God and neighbour.

Freedom – This is implicit in the commandment to love God above all things since it is only when we love God above all things and persons, that we have the proper order and hierarchy in our hearts to become truly free. For in paying homage to a Transcendent Being I too transcend and rise above all things that are not of God; it is then and only then that I am truly free.

Equality – This is implicit in the commandment to love a neighbour as I love myself; another person is an alter ego, or another ‘I’, from where the concept of altruism arose.  By being another ego or another ‘I’, this person is therefore not a stranger but someone of equal dignity, rights and duties. In the very same way that I love myself I should love anyone who is in front of me, not more not less; the measure of my self-esteem is the measure of my love for the other; other than this, there is no better affirmation of equality.

Fraternity – This word is derived from the Latin word ‘frater’ which means ‘brother’. One of the hallmarks of Christianity is the conviction that God is the Father of all, which makes us all His children and therefore siblings among us. For this reason, all that I do whether good or bad, I am doing it to a brother; furthermore, as Matthew (25:40) says, it is actually Christ, our elder brother, whom I am doing it to.

With the fairy tale of Cinderella and Prince Charming in mind, there is a proverb that states that love either springs up between equals i.e. people of the same social status, or makes people equals, that is, raises the partner of lower social status to the level of the higher one. We conclude then that fraternity and equality are one and the same thing. Consequently, we are left with the love of God as the way to attain freedom and the love of the neighbour as the way to attain equality, justice and peace. Freedom or love of God is the corner stone of individual human life, and equality or the love of our neighbour the corner stone of human social life. They are complementary since one cannot exist without the other.

This being said, social differences like the caste system in India should never be accepted let alone be practiced in any reasonable society. Similarly, it is also unacceptable that the Muslims consider infidels all those who do not worship their god and do not live according to the Sharia law.

Religion as opium?
We disagree, of course, with Karl Marx when he affirmed that religion is the opium of the people. Religion per se is not an opium, but in practice it can be. A religion that creates differences between people, that leads me to relate with others differently, is the opium for the people because it alienates me, alienates others and creates hatred and strife. A religion that sets me apart from others, dehumanizes, prevents me from helping others and seeks excuses for not doing so is an opium. A religion that does not teach me ways to get out of my comfort zone, from my egocentricity, is not a religion at all.

Religion comes from the Latin word “religare” which means relation, therefore a true religion is one that motivates the greatest number of possible relations that are based on love. Therefore, the priest and the Levite that bypassed the person in need of help to avoid being tainted so that they could practice their religion, that is, to offer temple sacrifices, found in religion an excuse for not helping; such a religion is indeed the opium of the people.

Any particular religion is turned into the opium when it becomes an ideology that justifies and rationalizes natural selfishness and inactivity, to the point of killing the compassion that surges up naturally when one is confronted with human suffering and even animal suffering. Such a religion is a superstructure, in the language of Karl Marx, which dehumanizes individuals.

The priest and the Levite, something similar to a priest and a deacon of our times, are by their nature pontiffs; that is, bridges between God and men. Their function is to intercede to God for their fellowmen; to take God to men and men to God. While going to the temple to intercede for abstract men and women, they passed by a flesh and bone man lying at their feet.

Compassion then comes from the one least expected, from a man of trade in whom one would normally expect to find greed and a pursuit of personal gain in all circumstances. Again mercy comes from the one for whom time is money and all activities had to be lucrative. Being a businessman, if anyone had “excuses” to pass by it was the Samaritan, and yet, it is precisely he who stops and puts aside his agenda and tends to the afflicted man.

Perhaps by not being religious, the natural feeling of compassion is not ideologically suppressed, and so compassion and mercy, attributes of God not seen in those two clerics, are found in this Samaritan instead.

The Samaritan does not only feel compassion but more importantly, he acts upon it; there are many who feel but do nothing about it. His compassion is what makes him set aside his itinerary and personal life and put them on hold. Not only does he give his time and his ride while he himself continues the journey on foot, but he also opens his purse and pays the innkeeper for all the expenses needed to look after the wounded man, even offering to pay for any unforeseen ones should the case arise. The Good Samaritan becomes an icon of God’s mercy, and an example that Jesus invites us to follow with this parable.

Mercy:  is the fundamental law that dwells in the heart of every person who looks sincerely into the eyes of his brothers and sisters on the path of life. Misericordiae Vultus by Pope Francis.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Lost & Found - The two sons

The parable of the prodigal son is probably the most renowned short story of all times. It is indeed a masterpiece and in some way the ex libris of the Gospel. Traditionally known as “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”, it is also recognized as the parable of the two sons because the less commendable attitude of the elder son is also an integral part of the story; for this same reason some call him the less wicked of the two bad sons, and finally, by transferring the focus from the sons to the Father, there are also those who call it the parable of the Merciful Father.

Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.” So he divided his property between them.

Then Jesus said… - Jesus introduces this parable by linking it to the previous two, that of the lost sheep and the lost coin. The ones lost inside the house but still within the fold, that is, the coin, the 99 sheep and the elder son, all come to symbolize the Pharisees. The others lost outside the fold, that is, the one lost sheep and the prodigal son, both represent the publicans, the prostitutes and sinners in general. For Jesus, both groups are sinners in need of forgiveness, both are sick and in need of healing. In truth, as the Scripture says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6). Christ died for all because all are sinners.

Father, give me the share of the property… - According to the Jewish law, a father could not dispose of his property as he wished. In this situation, the elder son had the right to two thirds and the younger son to one third of the property (Deut. 21:17). In this third parable, the drama is brought into focus. It no longer deals with the loss of a sheep, or a coin, and not even parts of a property; what concerns this father is the loss of his son.  In order to understand his affliction, let us recall Jacob’s anguish when he judged that he had lost Joseph, at that time his youngest and most favorite son by Rachel, the woman he loved at first sight and for whom he had to labour 14 years.

The tragedy of this father, implicit in the parable, is the ingratitude of his younger son. To ask for the inheritance before the death of his father, is like telling him: “For me you have already died and therefore the inheritance must be divided; what or who you are means nothing to me, only what you have; since I no longer want to live with you, I am not waiting around for you to die; I want now what already belongs to me!”

So he (the father) divided his property between them – Despite being profoundly offended by his son’s ingratitude, the father neither argues nor tries to convince him that what he intends to do is wrong. He knows all too well that life will teach his son with heartaches what he could not teach him with love; failures and sufferings are oftentimes the integral part of the learning process. In fact, we generally learn more from our mistakes than from our successes; in this sense, in good faith “there is no evil out of which good does not come".

In respecting the freedom of man, the Almighty God reveals his powerlessness. We can compel children to do what is good, but with adults, goodness must come from their own free choice. Alike God many parents have to stand by and watch in desperation as their children destroy their lives through vices or laziness without being able to do anything.

Women are nowhere to be found in this parable because women in those days did not own any properties nor could they inherit any; but we see one father with attitudes and traits that are traditionally more in tune with those of a mother from which we can say that the woman, meaning the female character, is also figuratively present in this parable.

A few days later (…) gathered all he had and travelled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, (…) he began to be in need. (…) But when he came to himself he said, “How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!

He came to himself – It was necessary to fall deeply before he would come to himself and take responsibility for his situation; he had to suffer deep hunger pangs, and fall to the state of being a pig keeper, the most impure of all animals whose pods he could not even have to ease his hunger, before he became aware of his wrongdoings.

Deus intimior intimo meo est (St. Augustine) – God is beyond my inmost self so that the path to God is through my innermost being; therefore when we walk to God, we walk towards a greater awareness of ourselves. Similarly, when we return to God like the prodigal son did, we come back to ourselves; but while being outside of self, like the drug addicts and alcoholics, the prodigal son walks haggardly fleeing from God and from himself.

He does not embrace the reality of being a child of God, hence in some way, he goes back to his “animality”, to the time of evolution of species when human beings still primitive did not have the awareness of selves. While possessed by a passion or a vice, when we do evil we walk outside of ourselves and lose self-awareness, self-control, and identity.

I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.’” So he set off and went to his father...

He decides to go back home not out of remorse but out of hunger... primum vivere deinde filosofare… by returning he still only has his own self-interest in mind; he goes back because he is hungry and needs more things; he does not go back because he misses his father, but rather in his father’s house even the servants are better off than him as a pig keeper. He is not worthy of being a son, as he says in his preparatory speech, nor does he appear interested in being a son.

The prodigal son wants to impose a penance on himself; he wants in some way to make restitution, to compensate for what he has done, but the father does not let him finish the speech that he had prepared beforehand and embraces him after hearing only part of his confession. God does not need our restitution nor our penance to forgive us; God forgives and forgets. But then, why purgatory? It is a necessity of our human nature and not that of God; because God forgives us more easily and more readily than we forgive ourselves.

But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But the father said to his slaves, “Quickly, bring out a robe – the best one – and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” And they began to celebrate.

At a distance, it is not the son who first sees the father, but the father who sees the son whom he has been waiting for because he has never stopped waiting, never forgot him nor did he get on with his life, as people usually do. On the contrary, he never gave up on him but lived in the hope that he would return one day. When we move away from God, the place that we occupy in His heart is not taken up by someone else and so it remains always empty until we come back to Him if ever we do come back.

The son makes a small attempt to reconcile with his father, but it is the father who makes the biggest move towards reconciliation because he never gave the son up as hopelessly lost. So when the son eventually appears as a labourer, without any resentment and full of compassion the father receives him back as a son, embraces him, something that no boss does to a worker, kisses him like one kisses a beloved son, and treating him as an equal, he does not let his son kneel before him. He then places a signet ring on his son’s finger as the seal of power and dresses him in the better garment of a beloved son, like Jacob did for Joseph. Finally at the end he orders the fatted calf to be killed to celebrate and rejoice at his son’s return.

Now his elder son (…) heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.” Then he became angry and refused to go in…

The son who transgressed learned a lesson; how often do we need to be deprived of things before we appreciate their worth. The younger son understands now what the love of the father is because he had denied it and had fled far from it. The elder son never comes to understand it. It is precisely in this sense that St. Augustine develops his theology of “Felix Culpa” referring to the fall of Adam, and Luther adds his paradox “pecca fortiter, sed crede fortius”, if one sins, sin greatly because only a great sin is cause for a great conversion. The “peccata minuta” of the elder son, however, is not enough to dissuade him from his sinful life.

‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!” Then the father said to him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”’ (Lk. 15:11-32)

The sin of the younger son is his rejection of his father’s paternity, and the sin of the elder son is the same; he also does not regard himself as a son but rather as a hired hand, perceiving his father as a righteous taskmaster whom he obeys not out of love but out of fear. Like the rich young man and the Pharisees who never transgressed a single commandment, and who only complied with the letter of the law because, as Jesus put it so well, their interiors were full of filth and so is the interior of the elder son as is clear by the way he describes his brother’s dissolute living. The elder son is, in some way, like those who only behave well before law enforcers and authority; the ones rightly depicted by the saying “when the cat’s away, the mice will play.”

If the elder son had been a true son, he would have shared his life and belongings with the father and behaved according to the “freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). Furthermore, if he had been a true son, it would not have been necessary for him to ask for a young goat because he still had the inheritance that was due to those who are and behave like children of God (Matt. 25).

How the prodigal son spent his father’s money we do not find out from the narrator but from the elder son; throughout the text there is no mention of prostitutes until the elder son mentions them; this is the sort of accusation that a puritan mentality would make in order to ask for a harsher punishment. In the Church we have not yet gotten rid of that sort of moral theology that judges all sexual matters as serious and mortal sins but turns a blind eye to the sins of social justice.

Furthermore, if we psychoanalyze the emphasis the elder son gives to the way his brother spent the money, we come to the conclusion that after all the prodigal son only did what his elder brother always wanted and wished to do but never had the courage to do so. It is, therefore, a question of envy what the elder son feels for his brother.

Unlike the younger son who is genuine in his calling of ‘Father’, the elder son upon addressing the Father does not treat him as such. He also does not treat his brother as a brother referring to him only as “this son of yours”. When God is not the Father, then others are not brothers, but rather enemies or rivals towards whom we feel envy, resentment, and hatred. Many speak of the love of neighbour as being the most important thing and as the proof that we love God, but it is only when we love God that our neighbour is truly a neighbour and not a stranger or a rival.

A catechist after having told the parable of the prodigal son to a group of children asked them to recount it in their own words. One child retold the parable as such until the moment the prodigal son appeared on the horizon. Then he said that when the father saw the son he grabbed a club and began to run towards him.

On the way. he met his elder son who asked him where he was going, and the father told him that he was going to meet his brother. Upon hearing that his brother had returned, he too grabbed a club and they both went to meet the wretched prodigal son; after beating him with the clubs and discharging their anger for what he had done, they took a deep breath and looking at each other satisfied said, ‘Now let us feast, eat and drink to the health of this rascal!’

This child expressed what any father in this world would naturally have done, but this is not the way God is - for my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are yours ways my ways, says the Lord (Isa. 55:8).

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

This year in Jerusalem

Last night while I slept
I dreamed that I was standing in front of the temple
in the old city of Jerusalem
There I heard the voices of children
who seemed to me like angels from heaven singing
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, lift up your gates and sing
Hosanna in the highest, Hosanna to your King.

Music from Stephen Adams; Lyrics from Frederick E. Weatherly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85WZUMDk8E8

Just as Christmas ceased to be, for many, the celebration of the birth of Jesus, to be the feast of Santa Claus and the physical and affective warmth of family intimacy that contrasts with the cold and snow outside the house; In the same way, Easter has ceased to be the commemoration of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus, but the feast of the egg and the bunny, which symbolize the rebirth of nature in spring after the long lethargy of winter.

We do not know for sure when Jesus of Nazareth was born or when he died. The placement of his birth on the winter solstice and his death and resurrection on the spring equinox was intentional; But the intention was not, as many think, to Christianize the pagan celebrations of these astronomical events and climate change.

The intention was clearly theological: Jesus was born as the days begin to grow, at the end and beginning of a new solar year, for He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of all that exists. Just as our planet derives its life by revolving around the sun, so Jesus is for us the sun around which we revolve in order to obtain life.

On the other hand, Jesus died and rose again when the earth is reborn from the apparent death of winter; If autumn reminds us of old age and winter of death, spring, which, as the song says, always comes and goes, reminds us of the eternity we have conquered with the rebirth of Christ.

The prehistory of our Easter
The Passover Supper is a ritual meal, which every Jewish family celebrates, to commemorate the liberation of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. As the Book of Exodus (23:8) commands, during the meal the story of the people's departure from captivity must be recounted. At the end of this supper the diners declare in a joyful tone, "Next year in Jerusalem."  

Jerusalem has always been the object of the longing of the Jews of the Diaspora, expelled from their own homeland; their lament in the Babylonian captivity is well known: if I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be withered! Let my tongue be caught in my taste, if I do not remember you, if I do not make Jerusalem my supreme joy! (Psalm 137:5-6)

This phrase with which the Passover meal ends is seen by many as anachronistic; Israel being a modern state today, occupying more or less the same land it occupied in the time of King David; living today comfortably both the Jews of Israel and those of the Diaspora, it makes no sense to repeat this phrase.  and much less for the Jews who live in Jerusalem permanently, unless the phrase has a more eschatological meaning.

In this sense, for traditional Jews, it refers to the coming of the Messiah and the rebuilding of the temple; For liberal Jews who do not accept the idea of the Messiah, nor of a temple-based Judaism, the phrase can have numerous interpretations that have more to do with an ideal, utopian and even heavenly Jerusalem that is to come than with the Jerusalem where I now find myself.

Christ's Last Supper
Then he took the cup, gave thanks, and handed it to them. They all drank from it. And he said to them, "This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for all. Assuredly, I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine again until the day I drink it new in the kingdom of God." After the singing of the psalms, they went out to the Mount of Olives. Mark 14:24-25

Some say that Christ's Last Supper was modeled on the traditional Passover meal of the Jews, others opine that it is something new. As the Passover meal of the Jews commemorates the deliverance from slavery in Egypt, while that of Christ marks the moment of a greater deliverance, that of the whole human race, whatever the conclusion of the discussion may serve, serves our purpose.

Just as the Jews of all times say at the end of the Passover supper, "next year in Jerusalem" meaning the hope of a better world, as well as in the continuation of life in the heavenly Jerusalem, Jesus at the Last Supper with his disciples says:  "I will not drink of the fruit of the vine again until the day I drink it."  In the Kingdom of God, he affirms that this future is about to come and is fulfilled in himself.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem...
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to you! How many times have I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Now your house will be desolate. I tell you, you will not see me until the day comes when you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.' Luke 13:34-35

Until that utopian future arrives, the old city continues to be the scene of violence between Palestinians and Israelis. At this moment, as I write these, lines in the monastery of St. Anne where I am staying doing a Bible course for three months, near the lions' gate about 400 meters from here a Palestinian woman tries to stab an Israeli soldier, who seeing her life in danger shot her killing her.

A few hours later, near the Damascus gate, a Palestinian shot another soldier, wounding him; his colleagues chased the Palestinian, so he shot again and wounded another; Finally, the soldiers shot him, killing him. Also on the same day, two Palestinian youths fired on an Israeli bus; As they fled, they were stopped by traffic and even there in public, the soldiers fired at the car with bursts of machine gun fire, killing its occupants and injuring some people who happened to be there.

Heavily armed with machine guns, wearing a bulletproof vest, carrying backpacks full of ammunition, Israeli soldiers do not wear handcuffs as they never take prisoners; They always shoot and kill every Palestinian who makes an attempt on the life of a Jew, then they destroy his house and deport the whole family.

Jerusalem is divided into 4 blocks: the Muslim, the Jewish, the Armenian Christian and the Arab or Palestinian Christian, because the three religions of the book have it as a holy city. For Judaism it is holy because it is built around the Temple, the center of the Jewish faith. For Christians, because Jesus visited her many times as the good Jew that he was, he died in her and rose again.

For Muslims, it is holy because they claim that the Prophet Mohammed travelled from Mecca to Medina and from Medina to Jerusalem in one night, from where he ascended to heaven, more precisely in the Temple in the Holy of Holies, where the Mosque of the Rock stands today; consequently, for Muslims Jerusalem is the third holy city after Mecca and Medina, for this reason it was invaded shortly after the death of the prophet.

Against the ascension to heaven of Mohammed in the image and likeness of Jesus, the historical fact of Muhammad's death, probably by poisoning, and his tomb in the green mosque of Medina speaks. To give more strength to the legend of the prophet's ascension to heaven, Saudi Arabia, against the advice of many Muslims, currently wants to destroy the mosque and the tomb, exhuming the body of the prophet, burying it in an anonymous grave.

Unfortunately, for those who today demand total control over Jerusalem, this visit can only have been a dream, as much as it pains them to admit that there is no evidence or proof that Muhammad traveled in the flesh to Jerusalem, as there were no supersonic planes at that time.

What the Muslims claim as historical fact, the prophet himself claims to have been a dream whose historical context was to convince the most skeptical that he belonged to the lineage of the prophets of Judaism, Abraham, Moses, Jesus. Still in relation to this visit to Jerusalem, Aicha Mahammad, Muhammad's favorite wife, later insisted that it was never a real trip, but a spiritual experience.

The connection of the Muslim faith to the city of Jerusalem is extremely tenuous when compared to that of Judaism and Christianity. The real reason why Muslims claim Jerusalem as a holy city for them is because Judaism and Christianity, which they have always wanted to supplant at all costs, declare it holy before.

Throughout the year in the streets of Jerusalem we observe Jewish and Christian pilgrims from all over the world; the only Muslims we see are those who live here; In fact, the city is formatted for this type of pilgrims, everywhere you can see Jewish and Christian souvenir shops and none for Muslims; the lack of Muslim pilgrims alone is overwhelming proof that this city is not important to them, and many of them do not even believe that Muhammad was ever here.

Since the Muslim religion is a mixture of Judaism and Christianity, adapted to the Bedouin culture, from Mohammed to the present day they look at these religions with a certain envy and grow up with the mentality of "us too", if the others are we are too, if the others have we also have it. The invasion of Jerusalem is no different from the invasion and extermination of Christianity throughout North Africa and Turkey; and in Europe from the Iberian Peninsula to Posters, in France, where it was stopped.

Already possessing two holy cities, by declaring Jerusalem the third, settling on the hill of the temple, the heart of the Jewish faith, they left the Jews without a holy place, with only the western wall of the temple, in front of which they still pray and lament wounded in their faith and nationalism as one who has a thorn buried in the flesh.

Today a forbidden place for Jews, the Temple Esplanade, is occupied by two mosques: the Al Aksa Mosque or the Silver Dome Mosque, and the Rock Mosque or the Golden Dome Mosque, built on the Holy of Holies of Solomon's Temple, the rock being the place where Abraham was going to sacrifice his son Isaac. The golden dome can be seen from any angle of the city and its surroundings for what is today, anachronistically, the ex libris of Jerusalem.

The conflict between Israel and Palestine is fundamentally a political rather than a religious conflict; religion, however, is invoked and instrumentalized by both parties as an excuse to avoid making concessions, because what is sent by God is not discussed or questioned or abdicated.

A bridge is not built in the middle, but by the banks it intends to join. On Israel's side, it is essential that they recognize the right of Palestine to a homeland, as they had and the world gave them. On the Muslim side, it is important that you recognize that much of your behavior is governed by myths, legends, and beliefs that defy reason, so it is important that you purify your faith of everything that is in direct collision with science and even common sense.

This year in Jerusalem
On this mountain, (referring to Mount Zion Jerusalem) the Lord of the worlds will prepare for all peoples a banquet of succulent delicacies, a banquet of delicious wines. (…) he will take away the veil that covered all peoples, the cloth that shrouded all nations; He will destroy death forever. The Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and will wipe out the reproach that weighs on his people from the whole earth. Isaiah 25:6-8

As a missionary, over 30 years of ministry, I have celebrated Easter in different countries and locations. Inspired by the traditional phrase of rejoicing, which the Jews exclaim at the end of every Passover meal, I feel like saying with equal joy and with the same hope: This year in Jerusalem! This is the fourth time that I have come here, and I hope that it will not be the last time that I will set foot on the land that the Redeemer trod, but it is the first time that I celebrate the Lord's Passover where it took place 2000 years ago.

Jerusalem means a city of peace, and yet, anachronistically, today divided into four antagonistic peoples who continually fight each other, it is difficult to find a place that has been the scene of so many wars. Let us pray that one day Jerusalem will live up to its name and fulfill Isaiah's prophecy of a banquet of delicious delicacies and rich wines. 

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Lost & Found - One Sheep and one Coin

“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” (Lk. 15:4-6)

The lost sheep
Jackals, hyenas and wolves are the sworn enemies of sheep. For the most part animals kill out of necessity, but wolves, however, are not content to just kill a sheep and eat it in peace. On the contrary, their aim is to slaughter the entire flock and not relent as long as there is a sheep still left standing; it seems that they take great pleasure in killing.

When I was a child and a shepherd, I used to take my small flock far away from the village to the mountains; there, in unchartered territory, to prove how indispensable I was to the sheep, I used to play a sort of hide and seek game with them -- I would hide from the sheep and watch their reaction. So long as I was in their sight the sheep would eat in peace keeping one eye on the grass and the other on the shepherd, but once they lost sight of the shepherd, the bell around their neck would immediately go silent as they would stop eating. Then, after raising their heads and looking in all directions and not seeing the shepherd, they would disband and break into a mad dash towards the direction of home. I would then come out from my hiding place, give a loud whistle and they would return and graze again in peace.

Keeping this in mind, if a shepherd was taking care of a flock by himself, it is truly inconceivable that he would leave the flock, placing the 99 sheep in danger, to look for the one lost. He would at the very least first ensure the safety of the 99 and only then go look for the lost one.

This shepherd is special, however, for he uses an unusual type of mathematics: for him, 99 is equivalent to 1, and 1 is equal to 99. God does not have the same priorities that we humans have; the 99 were left behind for the single one. When a mother of nine who lost one of her children was told as a way of consolation that she should not cry as she still had eight left, she promptly responded, “I know I still have eight left, but I do not have the one I’ve just lost”.

The place where we occupy in God’s heart cannot be occupied by anyone else and in this fact that we are all unique to God resides the dignity of the human person. Therefore when someone is lost, God awaits patiently for his return and eventually when he does come back, as we see in the parable of the prodigal son, he is given the very same status that he had before he went away. Upon his return, he once again occupies the place in the Father’s heart that belongs to him alone which had been left empty since he went astray.

According to our ways of thinking, however, the 99 have every reason to be resentful, and we see this very sort of resentment being acted out by the older son in the prodigal son’s parable. One can only imagine that if the 99 sheep had a say, they would voice out their resentment towards the lost sheep by saying that no one had thrown him out of the flock but he had chosen of his own accord to leave the sheepfold and therefore must now suffer the consequences of his actions.

To top it off, when the shepherd finally finds the lost sheep, he does not drag it home kicking and screaming, but rather lays it on his shoulders, and not only gives a great feast but has the audacity to say that ‘there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous who need no repentance‘(Lk. 15:7).

Ministry or Evangelization?
Unlike this Divine Shepherd, the Church tends to pay little attention to the lost sheep, saying that we still have the 99 to take care. To look after these 99, a multitude of ministries came about:  campus ministries, youth ministries, ministries to the sick and homebound, etc.

According to statistics, however, time has reversed the parable; now only one remains in the flock while the other 99 are lost. This change in reality should have triggered a change in the pastors’ attitude and yet they remain as passive as they were before, now devoting themselves to fattening up the one and only sheep in the fold, and probably consoling themselves by saying that they still have one left…

Since we have only one sheep left in the sheepfold, are we not deceiving ourselves with the use or abuse of the word ‘ministry’? When we talk about campus ministries or health ministries, is it not a great assumption on our part to consider the thousands of students in a university or the hundreds of patients in a hospital as part of our flock?

If we were to use the word ‘mission’ in lieu of ‘ministry’ we would do more justice to the reality; we would then be more honest with ourselves and perhaps by confronting this harsh reality head on we would change our passive attitude of a shepherd to the proactive one of ‘fisher of men’, which Jesus wanted so much for us to be.

Mercy & Mission
‘For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus.’ (Rom. 15:4-5)

In this sense, we can relate to mercy as a form of Mission and Mission as a work of mercy. It is precisely this message that is depicted in the logo of the Jubilee Year of Mercy proclaimed by Pope Francis. To go in search of the lost sheep is at the same time a work of mercy and the mission of the new evangelization. In fact, in the logo, the guise of the lost sheep upon the shoulders of the Good Shepherd comes not in the form of a sheep but rather of a human being, that is, the prodigal son.

Not having a better consolation than to live out the Gospel which cherishes us, let us be its witnesses to others so that they too can experience the same consolation that we do, and be missionaries in the same sense as Isaiah who says, ‘Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.’ (Isa. 40:1)

The lost coin
‘Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.“ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’ (Lk. 15:8-10)

We would not be outraged at Jesus’ attitude towards the 99 if we thought that for him the 99 were as lost as the one; the difference is that both the lost sheep and the prodigal son were lost outside the fold; whereas the coin, the older brother, and the 99 sheep that never left the house or the sheepfold, were nonetheless also lost, divorced from God and from their own selves.

A silver coin was a day’s wage in those days and therefore, it was much that was lost. The woman swept the house in the hope of finding it, and in finding it she celebrated just as God celebrates for each one of us who is found.

Those who go to church are the worst
It is true that this grumbling has served many as a poor excuse for not going to Church and participating in the sacraments, and yet still considering themselves as Christians though non-practicing ones. However, the bad examples that the practicing Christians give, in the paths of life, make this statement unfortunately quite often true; in many churchgoers there is little evidence that their participation in the Church liturgies and sacraments has had any positive impact on their lives.

So it would be helpful if we could create some sort of mechanism by which Christians can make an examination of conscience as to the real reasons why they participate in the sacraments. They need to verify the place that religious practice occupies in their lives and to check if it is the engine of a new life of continuous conversion and progress, or if on the contrary, it alienates and justifies a certain manner of living or the general state of things i.e. modus vivendi or status quo…

When I lived in Ethiopia I saw how ignorance killed many people stricken with tuberculosis. The Ethiopian patients after taking the antibiotic Streptomycin for only two months would consider themselves cured and discontinue the treatment. We well knew that they were not completely cured and that when the illness returned, it would be caused by the much more virulent and drug-resistant strain of the bacteria from which many died.

Consequently, the World Health Organization alerted to the misuse of antibiotics for small inconveniences because this abuse rendered important antibiotics ineffective as the bacteria acquired resistance to the drugs. Similarly, this also happens at the ecclesial level, the sacraments are like the authentic antibiotics that kill harmful bacteria or in this case, the tendency to sin; but when they are abused, or they become a routine, they too cease to bear any fruit.

The same can be said of the Word of God which the practicing Christians hear often but not with a right state of mind, hence it runs the risk of sounding ‘déjà vu’ as these Christians become so accustomed to it like a body that becomes so used to an antibiotic, that the Word no longer exposes and kills the harmful germ of sin that it would normally be able to quash.

Furthermore, using the metaphor of the parable of the sower, if the Word of God sounds déjà vu, it means it no longer penetrates into our hearts since we are as hard as the soil on the pathway where the seeds are eaten up by the birds before they had the chance to penetrate into the soil and germinate (Matt. 13: 4). This is what happens to the Word of God that is proclaimed to a wandering mind, a mind that does not pay attention.

At the end of this reflection, and examining the message behind both the parable of the lost sheep and of the lost coin, we reach the conclusion that the 99 sheep were not any less lost than the one that drifted away. In the Lord’s sheepfold, not all that stay in it belong to it, and similarly not all that belong to it are in it.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Lost & Found - Who are the sinners?

In big shopping centres, churches and generally anywhere where large crowds gather, there is always a designated place to look for things that were lost or to leave things that were found. Children are frequently lost because they are not yet independent and do not know their way around. Existentially there are a lot of lost people and many of them are not even aware that they are lost. The Gospel is the best store for the lost and found. It gives you the awareness that indeed you are lost and at the same time shows you the way to find yourself.

There are no chapters more renowned in all of the New Testament than Chapter 15 of the Gospel according to Luke. It is called the gospel within the Gospel because it presents and represents the essence of Jesus’ message of mercy towards sinners. In fact, it is called the Gospel of Mercy.

To eat with sinners
The Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ (Lk. 15:2)

The Master speaks in parables whenever he needs to explain something abstract, such as the Kingdom of God, or when people question or criticize his behaviour. Chapter 15 of this Gospel is composed of three parables on mercy; these parables were motivated by the criticism of the Pharisees over the fact that Jesus eats with sinners, that is, the socially outcast.

Who were the sinners? – St. Augustine once said, “Homo simul justus et peccator” - we all regard ourselves as being a bit righteous and a bit of a sinner. To consider ourselves fully righteous would be like saying that we are already holy, and for all our conceit, none of us would dare to say this.

In Jesus’ time, however, this was not so; the teachers of the law, the scribes and the Pharisees, looked on themselves as being righteous, and on everybody else as being sinners. Sinners were the tax collectors because they were allied with the Roman invaders, the prostitutes for their immorality, the shepherds for spending much of their time apart from the community, and as a general rule, all the people who were not as dedicated to the fulfillment of the Law with the thoroughness of religious professionals as the Pharisees.

To eat with sinners – “Mix with the good people and you will be like them, mix with the bad ones and you will be worse than them” says a proverb – Jesus had already been accused of associating with sinners, now however the accusation is even stronger, he sits at the table and eats with them. In our modern western mentality, this act of eating with a bad person does not have any negative implications attached to it, but this was not how people thought in Jesus’ time. In the Middle East, food was seen as the fountain or the source of life and those who shared of the same source were united to one another in the way they lived.

This is why in Ethiopia, even today, the Muslims do not eat the meat that the Christians eat, and vice versa. In the cities where the Christians and the Muslims live together, there are butchers for the Muslims and butchers for the Christians. In the act of slaughtering an animal, proper prayers are said, so that if the animal is killed by a Muslim then the meat is for the exclusive consumption of Muslims; if a Christian eats of it then he would be considered a Muslim.

In order to point out this way of thinking as wrong and contrary to the Gospel, one of my colleagues ate of the meat that had been slaughtered by a Muslim butcher; when the Ethiopian Christians heard of this they no longer considered him a Catholic priest and would avoid receiving the Eucharist whenever he was the celebrant.

For the Pharisees therefore, if Jesus eats with sinners then he too is a sinner and he shares in their sinfulness. But Jesus thinks differently, he eats with sinners not to become a sinner or sinner-like, but so that they can become like him. In being friends with the sinners and eating with them, Jesus shows that God’s kindness is intended to lead sinners to repentance (Rom. 2:4).

The mystery of the Incarnation – Jesus lived with sinners not to join them in their sinful ways, but to show them that the good news of repentance is available for everyone, including them. There were many sinners who in fact, after experiencing Jesus’ welcoming openness, absence of criticism, kindness and unconditional love, recognized their own sinfulness and repented; a clear example of this is seen in the case of Zacchaeus (Lk. 19:1-10).

From the psychological point of view, Jesus’ ‘savoir faire’ approach to sinners in order for them to change their lives, is unparalleled. Indeed, he used the best strategy for as we say nowadays, “one does not catch flies with vinegar”. It is not with criticisms that we win sinners over and get them to change their ways.

Jesus always accepted people just as they were, unconditionally entering into their homes and eating with them, despite of knowing that according to the Mosaic Law that in so doing it would render him impure. In life, far too often husbands, wives and friends establish a set of unspoken conditions in how they relate to one another and some even going as far as requiring and demanding a change of behaviour in others.

Instead of accepting others unconditionally as they are thus proving that we love them, we try to customize others to meet our needs like we customize a computer for our own personal use, thus proving that who we really love is ourselves. Contrary to this, if we followed Jesus’ approach as shown in the episode of Zacchaeus, it is when we accept others as they are that they eventually change. On this same note, it is not with hatred that we win over our enemy, but with love since hatred makes the enemy more hateful and more antagonistic. In other words, hatred makes our enemy stronger while love helps us triumph over our enemy, turning him or her into a friend.

Jesus died for us when we were still sinners (Rom. 5:8). Jesus’ death is the culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation by which, according to St. Irenaeus, “God became man so that man may become God”. By lowering himself, Jesus is working to elevate us to the category of children of God.

The mystery of the Incarnation was already foretold in the message of the prophet Hosea. This prophet deliberately married a prostitute, so that she may become chaste and return to the time of their courtship. With this action, the prophet wanted to say that God was married to an unfaithful people, who was prostituting themselves with the false gods of Baal; in contrast, God, represented by the prophet, is faithful and did not lose hope to guide the people back to the faithfulness of the betrothal days, that is, during their crossing of the desert from Egypt to the Promised Land.

Call everyone because all are sinners
When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does you teacher eat with tax-collectors and sinners?’ But when he heard this, he said, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’ (Matt. 9:11-13)

Jesus could not have said this to the Pharisees and the doctors of the law without a touch of irony amid some sarcasm. God does not want from us impersonal sacrifices and rituals, but rather that we recognize our sinfulness and acknowledge that we are indebted to him, accept his forgiveness and his mercy, and afterwards, as it is seen in the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matt. 18:21-35), that we in turn be merciful to those who have sinned against us and are indebted to us.

“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1John 1:8). For Jesus there is no one who is righteous before God, we are all sinners and in need of his divine mercy. As St. John perceived very well, those like the Pharisees and the doctors of the law who consider themselves righteous are liars and dishonest, they not only have a false image of themselves but also of God.

The three parables which follow one another in Chapter 15 of the Gospel according to Luke are also called the Gospel of Mercy as they all show the reason why Jesus not only associated and ate with sinners but also why he chose some of them to be his apostles.

The first two, the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin, serve together as an introduction to the greater parable of the Prodigal Son; the subjects that are drafted in the first two parables are later best explained and developed in the third. On their own these first two parables also have a lesson to impart but more importantly, they serve the purpose of getting the listener's attention to the upcoming parable of the Prodigal Son.

Luke sets off the alarm in the common sense of listeners with the most unusual behaviour of a shepherd who risks the welfare of 99 sheep by abandoning them in the wilderness to the mercy of wolves, to go looking for one single sheep that is lost. To top it off, unaware of the danger the 99 are in, he goes off and celebrates a feast after having found the lost one. In the same manner, it also seems very extravagant that a woman calls her neighbours to celebrate after finding the one coin that she had lost inside her own house! However, it all makes sense when these parables are followed by the parable of the Prodigal Son; they serve the purpose of awakening a listener’s attention and heightening his concentration and expectation of the third parable.

By making the main character in the first parable a man and the second a woman, Jesus wants to tell us that he has come to call all sinners without distinction of gender, nationality, social status, or any other distinctions. On the other hand, when we examine the three parables as a whole, Jesus wants us to realize that we are all lost but can be found, that is, we are all sinners who can be recipients of the divine mercy available to all mankind.

Therefore the sheep and the prodigal son, who became lost by going outside the flock and who abandoned the Father’s house, are as likely sinners as the coin and the oldest son who stayed lost while inside the house. The first group of sinners who left the flock and house were the publicans, the prostitutes and harlots in general; the sinners inside the flock and house were those who considered themselves righteous like the Pharisees, the doctors of the law and the scribes.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Mercy in the the face of Misery

Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s mercy. (...) Mercy has become living and visible in Jesus of Nazareth, reaching its culmination in him. Misericordiae Vultus

Throughout the Old Testament, God revealed himself as being ‘merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,’ (Exo. 34:6-7). God now reveals his true face in Jesus of Nazareth who incarnated the mercy of God throughout his mortal life, and this was shown in countless episodes of his public life.

Compassion for the crowds
‘When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. (…) When he went ashore, Jesus saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. (…) I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way.’ (Matt. 9:36, 14:14, 15:32)

The Greek word ‘splagchnizomai’ used here to mean ‘to have compassion’ has the deepest meaning when it refers to mercy, commiseration or having pity for someone. It comes from ‘splanxna’, which means ‘the inward parts’, and describes the degree of compassion that moves and shakes a person to the depth of his being. Having goose bumps would probably be the closest physical manifestation of this feeling. Apart from its use in certain parables, it is only used in the gospels in the episodes that we will study here: Matthew 9:36, 14:14, 20:34, Mark 1:41 and Luke 7:13.

The bread of the soul – Jesus feels compassion for the crowd, for people in general, because they walk aimlessly like sheep without a shepherd. Pope Paul VI used to say that the hunger of the spirit is much worse than the hunger of the body. An undernourished spirit can never be independent because it cannot direct itself, thus never achieving self-fulfillment and happiness. Before the errant crowds who had not found the meaning of life, Jesus taught and showed them the way, the truth and the life, and presented himself as the model they needed to follow.

‘All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way…’ (Isa. 53:6). Jesus gave us the reasons to live, as individual persons and as a people of a flock which he shepherds.

Health – Filled with compassion for human sufferings caused by various diseases, Jesus healed the sick; afflicted by the misery of others, he could not bear to see anyone suffer and so he would promptly put an end to these sufferings.

The Latin word ‘salutem’ meaning salvation is derived from the word ‘salus’ meaning health. They can be used interchangeably as in “una salus victis nullam sperare salutem” meaning “the only salvation for those who have been defeated is not to wait for salvation”, from the poem ‘The Aeneid’ by Virgil. Therefore instead of saying that Jesus is our salvation, we could very well say that Jesus is our health.

As a matter of fact, Jesus spent a great part of his earthly life as a physician, healing many from all kinds of illnesses because without health there is no life. Jesus brought health to our body, health to our psyche, health to our soul and spirit, health to our moral conscience and past life, or in other words, health to our entire being.

The bread of the body – Because of their spiritual hunger, the people were starved for the Lord’s words, for he spoke with authority, therefore they stayed with him for three days but at the end they became bodily hungry. Because of this, Jesus would not dismiss them without first giving them something to eat so to restore their strength for the journey home. The apostles however were thinking of sending them home to look for their own food, but Jesus insisted that the apostles provide it for them…

Primum vivere deinde philosophari – Jesus knew all too well the Maslow’s theory of hierarchy of needs for human motivation which states that it is only after the basic needs are met that one feels the need to meet the spiritual ones. This being said, Jesus was concerned not just with some aspects of human life, as the disciples would have preferred, but with all its aspects. This is why he could not let the crowd go without first giving them something to eat… Bread for our mouths, and the satisfaction of our material needs are what we also ask for in the ‘Our Father’ prayer that he taught us.

Compassion for the marginalized
‘As they were leaving Jericho, a large crowd followed him. There were two blind men sitting by the roadside. When they heard that Jesus was passing by, they shouted, ‘Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!’ (..) Jesus stood still and called them, saying, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, let our eyes be opened.’ Moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes. Immediately they regained their sight and followed him.’ (Matt. 20:29-34)

Jericho, the oldest city in the world, was built 9,000 years before Christ. In the Bible, it is the symbol of sin. The parable of the Good Samaritan tells us of a man who fell into the hands of thieves on his descent from Jerusalem to Jericho, meaning falling from grace to sin. Jesus wants to save humanity from sin, which is why he went to Jericho, incarnated as a member of the sinful human race. The Gospel tells us that Jesus had already left the city accompanied by those in the crowd who had experienced salvation and were now following him as disciples.

On the fringe of this path that led to salvation, there were two blind men who could not walk along the road because they could not see. They heard others speak of the one who is the way, the truth and the life, and they did not want to miss this unique opportunity to encounter him themselves. as there indeed opportunities that appear only once in life. So in spite of the objections coming from the crowd, who told them to be silent, they cried out even louder clinging to the only lifeline which was the Lord.

 Jesus asks them what they want because they may not have wanted to change their lives and may only have wanted a few coins to prolong the life of dependency which they led without having to work; in life many in fact prefer that they are given fish and not a fishing rod to fish. Therefore Jesus respectfully inquires first and only after hearing their response that they do want to change their life and to abandon Jericho i.e. sin, that he is overwhelmed with compassion and heals them.

In the Gospel according to Mark (10:46-52), the blind man is alone and must have been well-known for he had a name, Bartimaeus; he is encouraged by those who initially wanted him to be quiet when Jesus calls him.  He is so eager for salvation that he springs up to go to Jesus, throwing off the cloak that covered him and connected him to a life of dependency that he wants to leave behind.

Compassion for the excluded
‘A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ ‘(Mk. 1:40-41)

In those days and to a large extent even today, as I have seen in Ethiopia, there is no disease more terrible than leprosy; it disfigures the face and kills the person socially long before it does so individually. The lepers still today are forced to leave their families and to live in a secluded village for lepers only.

During the time of Jesus, they lived hidden and had to cry out ‘unclean’ if anyone inadvertently approached them in places where they lived. The leper is seen as a living dead, and a dead living. When Jesus sent his disciples on the Mission, he told them to cure the sick and cleanse the lepers, (Matt. 10:8).

The leper in the passage above broke the Law of Moses by approaching Jesus; however instead of sending him away, Jesus responds to his cry of despair with understanding and compassion. Jesus too broke the Law when he touched the leper; for him the leper was not unclean, but rather a desperate soul crying out for help.

Compassion and projection
‘(…) A man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; (…) When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’ Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’ The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.’ (Lk. 7:12-15)

He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow – By revealing the identity of the deceased, St. Luke uses the least number of words to describe the most painful situation, the most excruciating pain that a human being has to bear. The norm in life is that parents die before their children and not the children before their parents; it is almost against the law of nature that a mother should bury her son. “I will not bury my son, it is my son who will bury me” were the words that a desperate father once said after hijacking the operating room of a hospital, forcing the doctors to do surgery on his son while pointing a gun at them because he did not have the money to pay for the operation.

To make matters even worse, as the Gospel tells us, this woman was already a widow. Her only son was also her only hope of life because women in those days could not own any properties. Jesus saw the situation and even from afar was filled with compassion so that, when approaching her, it was he who took the initiative to address her because he wanted to console and dry her tears without delay.

I believe that Jesus projected on the widow of Nain all the pain that his own mother, Mary, would feel when she herself also being a widow would have to bury him, her only son. Therefore Jesus did for the widow of Nain what he would not be able to do for his own mother. He could dry the tears of the widow of Nain, but he could not dry the tears of his own mother. There is no image more heartbreaking than the Pietà by Michelangelo, the whole antithesis of Christmas, which depicts the adult Jesus dead on the lap of his mother.

Mercy in the face of Misery
‘The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’ (…) ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ (…) When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one, sir.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’ ‘(Jn. 8:3-11)

The Jews wanted to put the merciful attitude of Jesus towards sinners in contradiction with the Mosaic Law presented in the Book of Leviticus (20:10), which commanded that such woman be stoned to death. This attitude of Jesus is all the more commendable if we note that after two thousand years such thing still happens in Muslim countries governed by Sharia law.

This is not the first time that Jesus is placed before a dilemma. If he does not condemn her he is transgressing the law; if he condemns her he contradicts his own merciful attitude towards sinners. Like in all other situations, Jesus does not comply with the terms of the dispute; with his silence he invites the accusers and also the woman to do an examination of conscience.  Before the insistence of the accusers, Jesus questions their authority as judges. According to St. Augustine, Jesus while writing in the sand with his finger was recalling that God wrote on the tablets of the Ten Commandments also with His finger, thus affirming that he is now the true judge, the one who is more powerful than Moses. In so doing, Jesus neither disrespected the law nor did he contradict his mercy.

Our human tendency is to throw away the baby with the bathwater as we are not able to distinguish between the sin and the sinner. Just like the Pharisees, we also tend to condemn more the sinner than the sin, but the fact is that we too are not exempted from judgment; it is hypocrisy when sinners judge sinners. In this, like in the other episodes, Jesus condemns the sin without condemning the sinner.

This woman was used first as an instrument of pleasure by the one who committed adultery with her then as an object of delight for all those who contemplated her nakedness and rejoiced in her shame. In their attempt to stone her, the Pharisees wanted to use her as a scapegoat for their own sins; people in general wanted to use her as an object for the type of sadistic pleasure that involves all the popular and cruel spectacles of lynching.

Humiliated to see her sin exposed and shamed in front of the crowd, the woman was disgraced for losing her reputation and was thrown to the ground by the weight of the torture that awaited her. It is likely that in the face of so much misery that she herself was probably wishing for death.

After exposing the hypocrisy of those who had exposed her, and after all had acknowledged that they were not innocent either, only two persons remained. As St. Augustine observed, ‘relicti sunt duo miseria et misericordia’ meaning ‘there were left the two, misery and mercy’. In order not to vex her further, without looking at her but with a gentleness, empathy and mercy beyond telling, Jesus addresses her as a person and speaks to her with an immeasurable tenderness, giving her back both her life and her dignity: ‘‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one, sir.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’’

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Love and Eternity

Look how beautiful you are, being at your side, truly I feel closer to God… Antonio Machín

Time and space
Time is a continuum, a non-spatial happening, in which events occur apparently irreversibly from the past, through the present, into the direction of the future. Space is a three-dimensional reality in which the whole of matter exists.

As spatial-temporal being, Man occupies a given space, for a given time. He is, therefore, a limited being because he is confined to a finite space and time because the occupancy of this space has its days numbered. Love however, undoing the limitations of time and space, makes man eternal.

Love
It is not easy to define “love”. It is a word that has been so over used and abused that it now has many meanings, some of them varying even from person to person. Fleeing from this complexity and confusion, which the tangle of different concepts and realities covered by the same word can generate in our heads, we could reduce the concept of love into two terms: more ethical, goodwill, and other less ethical or more natural, desire or attraction that one feels for the beloved.

Love as goodwill
St. Thomas Aquinas defined love as wanting the good of the other. Agape in Greek, translated as Caritas in Latin, is love that decentralizes from oneself and makes the other person the object and reason for our existence. This is the type of love that allowed St. Francis of Assisi to kiss a leper, towards whom he initially felt repulsion, and which allowed Christ and his followers to love their enemies.

Love as a desire and attraction
Uniting these two concepts of “Eros” and “Filia”, love is an intense feeling of desire and attraction, for a person with whom one seeks to unite spiritually, emotionally and sexually, in an intimate and romantic relationship.

It is true that these two meanings of love can, and even must, combine into one only. However to make things simpler in this reflection, let us put aside the first definition given since most people understand, the more commonly spoken love outside the religious context, the romantic love and not the love of goodwill.

To love is to experience eternity in the here and now of our existence
I was lifelong collector of moments of eternity, Arthur Rubinstein.

For the lovers, or those in love, every moment of staying together seems short, and they only become aware of “fugit tempus” after many hours have passed without them noticing. During these hours, when love made them forget both time and space, they experienced eternity. When you and the person you love are together, space occupied with her thins out and time stops because you lose awareness of both, only you and the beloved exist.

Only love pulverizes, makes disappear and annuls time and space; therefore eternity does not exist only in eternity, but it may already be experienced here by someone in love as proof of its existence. Human being is drawn to eternity and accesses it through love here and now in a simulated way, in addition to through space and time in a real way.

When the lovers are together they lose the notion of time and space and virtually experience eternity thus proving that it exists. Only love can lead us to real eternity because God is love. As suggested by Arthur Rubinstein, the more moments of eternity we collect, the more eternal we become.

Quality time
The time dedicated exclusively to nurturing a person, or loved ones, as well as a free time activity, a hobby. For example, a dad decides not to go to the bar at night in order to spend quality time with his wife and children; a boyfriend decides to put aside his books to spend quality time with his girlfriend.

Time is money and the time allocated to acquiring money is not as healthy as time dedicated to love; time thus spent does not make us lose the notion of time and space like love does which proves that money is not an eternal good but a temporal one; similarly, it does not satisfy us because our hearts are made to love people and not material things. Unlike human beings, time for animals is all spent canvassing for what they need to survive; mortals will we be, as they are, if we imitate them in the use of our time.

Eternity -- Love – God – are concepts that are self-explanatory. The above mentioned singer, Anthony Machin, felt closer to God in the company and in the contemplation of the beauty of his loved one. God is eternal, He exists outside of time and space which He himself created. 1 John 4:8 says that he who loves not has not come to know God, because God is love.

Whoever does not love does not know God and does not have access to eternity, because eternity is God and God is love; and if God is love then the only way to know Him is by loving. Love is the gateway to heaven and makes this earth Heaven for those who love. Since love leads to eternity, this same eternity is experienced in the here and now by the one who loves.  It is through love that we are drawn and called “to be like God”, that is, when we love, we partake of His essence and we are like Him.

Love is stronger than death
Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a divine flame. Song of Solomon 8:6

If love exists then God exists because He is love; it God exists then eternity exists, and if eternity exists then love is eternal, and if love is eternal it is not as strong as death, as the beloved in the passage says, but rather it is stronger than death. The Portuguese poet, Camões, says that love is the fire that burns without being seen… The beloved in the Song says that such flames are divine and therefore eternal.

Ars lunga vita brevis, love is an art and as such it is eternal; life although brief, when it is spent to cultivate love it becomes eternal, because it is only love that crosses the threshold of death and directs it to eternity.

Camões comes to this same conclusion on recounting the biblical love that Jacob has for Rachel in one of his sonnets. Because of this love for her he was forced to serve his uncle Laban as a shepherd for seven years; after which his uncle instead of giving him Rachel he gave him Lea, the older sister, instead with the excuse that he could not marry the younger sister without first marrying the older one.

The sonnet closes with the words of Jacob who to prepare himself psychologically to serve his uncle another seven years to have Rachel exclaims: “More I will serve, if I do not, so long love so short life”. Love is in fact eternal, it cannot be fully made known in time, hence it leads us to eternity to carry out its fullness; love gives us eternity when we devote our transience to it, the time of our life.

It is also for this reason, as Jesus did, that it is possible to die from love and for love, because he who dies for love never dies because love is eternal. He who for love gives his life, never loses it; on the contrary, as Jesus assures us, it is he who wants to save his life who will lose it. (Lk. 9:24)

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The refugee boy who didnt drown

... he loves the stranger and gives him bread and clothing. Thou shalt love the stranger, for thou wast a stranger in the land of Egypt. Deuteronomy 10:18-19

The Refugee Crisis
In order to properly assess the refugee crisis, like any other issue, and to avoid the reductionist views to which prejudice and xenophobia lead, there is no way to frame the issue in a broader spatio-temporal context. A historical look of greater geographical breadth tells us that since the human race was born in Africa, in the Rift Valley 5 million years ago, it has never stopped moving.

From there it populated all the continents, and it was in the interaction with the different habitats that peoples with physiological, cultural and linguistic differences emerged. These characteristics were demarcated into three human groups, not races because we all came from a common stock: Negroid, Caucasian and.

Development does not always mean human progress. Nationalisms, and the consolidation of borders between nations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, made the natural displacement and mixing of peoples more difficult, increasing racism and xenophobia. In the ancient world, peoples moved with relative ease, there were no well-defined boundaries or guarding of them. That is why we can say that there are no races, no pure races, all the people are made up of other peoples.

We tend to mark differences between the Portuguese people and other peoples, and yet we too are a people made up of various ethnic groups, of other peoples: Iberians, Celts, Greeks, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Jews, Alans, Suevi, Vandals, Visigoths and Moors.

Situation in Syria
Ruled since the 1960s by the Al-Assad family, Syria belongs to the group of Muslim countries that have resisted Sharia rule. The current President Bashar Al-Assad was neither overthrown by America, like Saldam Hussein, nor by the Arab Spring and America like Gaddafi.

But by abusing force against the Arab Spring to stay in power, it has created a complex civil war between different ethnicities and religious groups that are fighting, not only against the dictator, but also among themselves, in coalitions that change every day. Taking advantage of this confusion is the Islamic State, in uncontrolled areas of Iraq and Syria. This time, Syrians found themselves trapped between the regime, rebel groups and the religious extremism of the Islamic State.

It's not hard to understand why they flee their country. The regime of Bashar al-Assad mercilessly kills civilians with chemical weapons and drum bombs; The so-called Islamic State commits all kinds of atrocities as we know, murders all who are not with them, tortures, crucifies, rapes and subjects women and girls to sexual slavery; other groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra do the same.  

Syrians flee back and forth within their own country; in fact, one third of Syria's population is now a refugee in their own country; another 4 million have left the country, of which 95% live in neighbouring countries such as Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan. The richest states of the Persian Gulf did not accept any refugees, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Baharain, Kuwait, Iran.

The world was not prepared for a refugee crisis on this scale, so many of the camps do not have sufficient resources so these populations are subject to hunger, cold and disease. Losing hope, some have decided to seek asylum in Europe, after a journey by land and sea exploited by traffickers, they arrive on the shores of a Europe that turns its back on them and erects walls to prevent them from entering. They have been debating how to divide them among themselves for months and have not yet reached an agreement.

Conspiracy theories, prejudices, clichés, xenophobia and Islamophobia
Opinions for all tastes are circulating on social networks; Generally negative, full of cliché prejudices and racism. For the most part, these opinions say nothing about the subject; They shed more light on the personality of those who create them and sustain them than on the subject of refugees. I collected some of them to exhibit them.

It is true that the richer Arab countries, those of the Persian Golf, have not helped them, but as stated above, the overwhelming majority of refugees live in the Arab countries neighboring Syria.

On the other hand, the Middle East is not a stable area where everyone wants to live; If they are Shiites they fear Sunnis or vice versa, if they are Christians they fear both, if they are atheists all three. The fact that some of them do not help should motivate us to help more.

 "First are our homeless!!" the unemployed, fighting child poverty, etc.  - You will always have poor people with you, Jesus says, inequalities and problems will always exist, if we wait to solve these first, and then dedicate ourselves to others, we will do nothing for one or the other. "First the bread that is in the oven", this is an urgent problem that requires a solution now; There are men, women and children exhausted after a long journey living in camps, in subhuman conditions, who will not survive this winter.

"If they are refugees, why are most of them men?!" There are women and children, whole families among the refugees, but it is easy to understand the fact that many of them are men. In our immigration, men also went first. The men go in search of a better place and conditions, so that they can then bring their families, without having to subject them to a journey that could lead to death.

"Refugees are a Trojan horse of the Islamic State!" The current refugee crisis is a direct consequence of the civil war in Syria. What is commonly understood as the Islamization of Europe is a phenomenon that has been going on for a long time and is largely more of an Islamophobic myth, or a conspiracy theory, than anything else.

Even if the EU were to accept the 4 million refugees, and all of them were Muslims, the total number of Muslims would only increase by 1 percent, from the current 4 percent to 5 percent. The conspiracy theory also says that Muslims grow more than Christians; The fact is that once here the growth rate is the same as that of other Europeans. In Syria, the population was declining before the civil war.

They also say that crime increases. Experience tells us that when they get a job they start to pay into the system and Europe really needs them. By accepting them, and integrating them into our society, we have more to gain than to lose.

Faced with the so-called "potential" Islamization of Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel believes that the best response is not to close the doors, or to fight those who have already entered, but to return to the Church, have the courage to be Christians, foster dialogue, and deepen the Bible anew. This is what the undisputed leader of the European Community, the daughter of a Protestant pastor, who was nominated for the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for her adequate response to the refugee crisis, even though she has lost popularity in her own country, tells us.

The refugee boy who did not drown was, as we all know, the baby Jesus. To avoid the wrath of Herod, who wanted to kill the boy, the Holy Family fled to Egypt. Fortunately, Egypt at that time was not like Europe today, and the baby Jesus was able to grow "in wisdom and grace" in Egypt until the death of the dictator.

"Deja vue"
When Germany wanted to get rid of 5 million Jews, there were several solutions on the table to the problem, before the final solution that we all know. One of these solutions was to put the Jews on convoys to Spain and from there on boats to America. The American nations refused to receive them and from Canada came the answer, none are too many.

One may find these comparisons an exaggeration or just the fact that he mentioned this episode of the Second World War. But the news says that this is the main refugee crisis after the Second World War and not long ago, at a demonstration against refugees in Eastern Europe, one of the slogans lamented that the concentration camps were not open.

Braking with the wheels or braking with the engine
When on motorways we encounter slopes of more than 6%, it is advisable to brake with the engine and not with the wheels. By braking with the engine, we reduce the speed at its origin, overcoming inertia and the force of gravity, in an efficient and safe way; On the contrary, when we do not act on the origin of the movement, but on its manifestation in the wheels, we destabilize the car and can cause an accident, because one wheel can brake more than the other and because we do nothing about the inertia and force of gravity, which continue to push the car forward.

It is true that we must stop the movement of refugees, but we must stop it at its source, not when they are already on our doorstep. When the European Union had an agreement with Gaddafi's Libya to prevent refugees from crossing the Mediterranean, it was braking with its wheels. Britain wants them to stay in France, the French want them to stay in Italy, the Italians want them to stay in Greece, and the Greeks, like the rest of the Europeans, want them to stay in Turkey. The same is now being done with the agreement with Turkey to prevent them from moving over to Europe; Or what some countries do that let them pass so that the problem has the next country. While this is happening, some Eastern European countries are already building walls on their borders.

It would be trying to resolve the conflict in Syria, which is difficult; the Syrians alone have already proven over 4 years that they can't; the world powers are as biased as the factions inside Syria. The last peace conference, held in Vienna, revealed that the world in relation to Syria is also divided in a kind of "cold civil war"; I fear that as long as it does not end, that is, as long as the United States, Russia and Iran do not come to an agreement, hostilities in Syria and the flow of refugees will not end.

The Refugee Boy Who Didn't Drown
It's been a few months since the body of a refugee boy washed ashore, unleashing a wave of solidarity. Let us remember this Christmas that the child Jesus, fleeing from the wrath of Herod who wanted to kill him, also had to seek refuge in another country. As it was for the good of humanity that the escape of the Holy Family succeeded, so are all escapes and so are all escapes.

Fr. Jorge ours, IMC