Consolata Missionary to Console his mother

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

How I conceptualize the genesis of my vocation
Today, many years later, as I look back at the genesis of my vocation, I can understand two expressions that explain how God is always at work in human history and how he always manages to "pull the strings" or "makes good things happen", even in adverse situations, because God wants to lead human history along the path of salvation.

"God writes straight with crooked lines" – Known and translated into practically every language, this Portuguese expression dates back to the sixteenth century. It is used, and even abused in theology, to say that despite the crookedness of man’s ways, God always manages to get His will done. He does not need straight lines to write straight; He always writes straight even when the lines are crooked. He writes on and between the lines, leading human history to a happy ending.

"Every cloud has a silver lining" – It means much the same thing as the previous proverb. God can make good come out even from evil; nothing is impossible for God, as the Scripture says. This thought was already in St. Augustine’s mind when he called Adam's sin "Felix culpa".  Adam sinned and that was bad, but God "took advantage" of it and devised a plan B in preparing the world for the sending of his Son.

Promise or grace?
It was on October 13, 1951, when my mother at the age of 35 eloped with my father, who was 13 years her junior. They got married at 3:00 a.m. in the parish church of my hometown, Loriga, in Serra da Estrela. Since Mass could not be celebrated before dawn, they left for Fatima on a pilgrimage. There, only God knows if my mother made a promise or if she asked for a grace, since she could not remember when we talked about it many years later.

She asked for the grace to have a son who would be a priest or, fearing that she could not conceive due to her advanced age, she promised that if she had children, one would become a priest. My older brother entered the Divine Word seminary in Tortosendo, Portugal, but after one year he returned home. It was not his vocation. 

In those days, struggling with the Oedipus Complex, I lived with the belief that my mother did not love me, in part because she rarely demonstrated any signs of affection. She hardly ever touched me unless it was to slap me; even worse, she teased me a lot, making fun of me along with my two older brothers. And she gave me nicknames to make the whole family laugh, which I did not find it funny at all. 

Today I know that my mother always loved me, but in her own way, a love that manifested itself more in deeds than in physical or verbal expressions. I also learned from my father that she suffered from not knowing how to or being able to express her affections. I saw this in the cold manner she treated my nephews, her grandchildren. But this was the darkness from which God used to call me since I was a child.

This coldness and distance contrasted greatly with the affection my teacher, Miss Soledade, had for me, who, unlike my mother, was very affectionate, especially towards me. It did not make me feel good to receive affection from someone who did not have to give it to me and not receive it from someone who should give it to me. Disgusted by such kindness, one day I kicked my teacher and I remember with regret that she cried and ended up with a nosebleed; she punished me, but she did not take revenge or stop liking me.

Kids’ stuff?
Because of my brother dropping out of seminary, my mother cried for a whole week because of the non-fulfillment of her promise or non-realization of grace. Seeing the days go by and her tears continuing to flow, I thought, in my childish mind, that this was the best opportunity to win my mother's love. It was then that I told her not to worry, that I would enter the seminary and become a priest. 

My mother paid little attention to that promise, as she must have thought it was just kids’ stuff. But there are children who determine or decide what to do with their lives very early on; I was not the only one. In fact, I compare myself to another child, a Canadian who, at the same age as me, also decided what to do with the rest of his life. His name is Ryan Hreljac who, upon hearing that the main cause of death for many children in third world countries was the lack of clean, safe water, he raised funds to build a well in Africa. After the first, others followed; today, not yet 30 years old, he is a hydraulic engineer and continues to build wells in Africa.

During my school years, the promise I made to my mother was not a recurring thought, I would even say that it was forgotten, wiped from my mind. I lived a normal childhood, like a wild colt, always going on adventures with my friends. In those days, there was no patch of land that I did not know well, that I had not explored. 

I remember that I used to look at my village with a certain disdain, as it is surrounded by mountains, without great horizons: I nicknamed Loriga a bowl. When I went to Portela de Arão and looked out over the vast expanse of land that overlooked Seia, Viseu and Guarda, I remember being drawn to the horizon...

In fact, this taste for adventure and the unknown world made me try to run away from home one day. In those days, I was probably fed up with my family, and the school where the teacher beat me every day. At home, my mother made fun of me, as did my older brothers, and my father was very strict, which meant I was beaten by him almost every day. 

One day, before dawn, I quietly sneaked out from home to meet up with the friend with whom I was going to run away from home. We went up to the school rooftop, huddled together, awaiting the first light of day so we could set off towards that horizon... 

The only problem was that my mother had heard the door creak and sent my father to make sure all the children were in bed. My father raised the alarm when he did not see me. That day happened to be the market day. He went straight to the school rooftop, called me and asked me what I was doing. I did not say anything, but he thought I had gone early to wait for the stallholders, because my parents had promised me days earlier that they would buy me some new boots at the market that day. The truth is that I was going to run away from home and my parents, to this day, never found out.

Moreover, life was hard, my family was poor. The sardines were split three ways, often at night we went to bed with only a plate of corn porridge, without sugar or milk. I remember one day, my brothers and I caught a snake with a trout inside its mouth; we killed the snake and brought the trout home, thinking we were going to eat it... 

But that was not what happened, because on that very day my mother had nothing to make for the dinner that I was going to take to my father at the factory; the trout came to my mother like a great blessing. 

One egg mixed with a lot of flour and a few pieces of cod was a meal for the whole family. It was not customary, but I always made a point to celebrate my birthday and that day required eating one entire egg all by myself. On one occasion, my birthday came and there were no eggs in the house. I went to check on the chickens, as I was often the one who looked after them. 

I groped and felt that one hen was about to lay egg; I followed it to the haystack and it nestled down in the middle of the hay. I stayed close to it and, as it was slow to lay egg, I fell asleep and woke up when I felt something warm in my hand: it was the egg and the hen had laid it right into my hand. I hurried home and fulfilled my own birthday tradition. To this day, I still celebrate my birthday with a fried egg.

Around this time, a missionary visited our school and told us about his adventures in Africa; I was immediately captivated. I was a mediocre student and probably would not have taken the exam if my teacher, Mr. Coutinho, had not asked each one of us what we wanted to be after primary school. I was quick to answer: I wanted to be a missionary. 

My teacher had been a seminarian and was a believer who never missed a Sunday Mass; when he heard my answer, he set off to place me right next to his desk. I immediately saw that, although he did not give a damn about me, he was now going to push me to prepare for the final exam in fourth grade. And so it happened, with his help I passed the final exam that gave me access to the preparatory cycle. 

I knew what I wanted
After the final exam in elementary school, I rushed home from school as usual with the news that I had passed, my mother asked, "What do you want to do now?" "I want to be a missionary," was my immediate answer. My mother rejected the idea, saying, "Do you want to end up like your brother? Go in and not finish the year like he did?”,"No," I replied, "I will get to the priesthood!" I said, "Do you not remember the promise I made?" It is likely that she still remembered the promise, these are the things that mothers keep in their hearts, because the fact is that when I reminded her of the promise, she began to take my words seriously.

We immediately started looking for a seminary and contacted the old seminary where my brother had failed. There were no vacancies or the conditions and the tuition fees were too high; the same happened at the Comboni Missionaries of Viseu. Unable to find a place in these two missionary congregations, my mother asked Fr. Barreiros, the parish priest of my hometown, for help. The latter, forgetting my missionary vocation, tried to send me to the diocesan seminary in Fundão. 

It was the same for my mother, but I embarrassed her when I vehemently refused to enter the diocese; my dream was to be a missionary, which she understood because apparently, she had considered this vocation in her younger days. 

We reached an impasse that lasted for days, when my parish priest wanted to send me to the diocese with my mother's half-approval, but I would not give in. Finally, my parish priest relented, telling my mother that he had found a more favorable missionary congregation, the Consolata Missionaries of Fatima, with a minor seminary in Vila Nova de Poiares, near Coimbra.

Once the necessary contacts were made, I went there. I was only ten when I left home for the first time, in October. My father took me there, and the world came crashing down around me when I saw him leave. Back home I lived very independently of my parents, but they, my friends and my siblings were all I ever known. 

When my father left, I felt very alone for the first time, without my family, without my friends, and I cried bitterly; this was the price I had to pay. However, the thought of leaving, of going back to the familiarity of my home, never entered my mind.

Determining factors in my vocation other than my mother
Come to think of it, there had to be other factors that contributed to the genesis of my vocation other than my mother. These factors exist and my mother was perhaps just the trigger that made me decide. Let me then list them, both the negative and the positive ones. 

I was a happy child among my street group of friends; we were 3 Jorge(s), two Fernanda(s) and one Carlitos. At school, I was a poor student academically and was very unhappy there, getting beaten almost every day at a time when physical punishment was acceptable and expected in school. Many days, I skipped school, and no one would notice because I left and returned to the house at the appropriate time like someone who had been to school; but I spent the days alone in the hills. 

In addition to these two negative factors, there were other positive factors that have guided my life. A missionary had come to my school and told us about Africa and his adventures there. He got us all excited with his stories about Africa, and me as I have always liked adventures and foreign lands. 

My mother had been a catechist and a singer in the parish and had revealed to the family that at one point in her life she had thought of becoming a missionary.  

Western movies and comics had always fascinated me because of the adventures they depicted in which the cowboy always played the role of the good guy, the savior, without asking for anything in return for himself. I was fascinated by the fact that after liberating the town from bandits, the cowboy never agreed to marry the girl who had fallen in love with him in the meantime, nor did he accept the sheriff's star offered to him by the townspeople. The movie always ended with him saying goodbye, riding west, in search of another city where justice and peace needed to be restored.

The year I was due to take the fourth and final grade of primary school, and because he considered me a bad student, Professor Coutinho put me at the back of the class, along with the students he had decided not to propose to take the national exam of the fourth grade. One fine day, however, a few months before the exam, he asked the students what they wanted to be after the fourth grade. I said I wanted to be a missionary. The teacher listened and fell silent.

The following day, when he arrived in school, he called me and changed my seat to the desk next to his desk. That meant that he was going to send me to take the exam and that he was going to push me, giving me a special preparation so that I could pass the exam, which I did. Later, I learned that he had been a seminarian. 

Is this vocation mine or my mother's?
After the years at Poiares, I went to Fatima, then to Abrantes, then to Cacém, Valladolid and Madrid. I saw many of my classmates drop out of school while I did not have a single vocational crisis. I faked a crisis after finishing high school in Abrantes in order to make sure that I would remove any influence my mother had on my vocation: I convinced her that I was leaving the seminary and all summer she thought that in fact I had left; either she did not believe me or she did not make a big deal out of it.... 

After the summer break, I went to college in Cacém, my choice, not hers. My other crisis was artificially brought on by Fr. Darius, who convinced me that this was not the life for me; he was so convincing that I accepted it.... I spent perhaps the only night of my life in vigil and during the night I realized that it was not true, that this was really my vocation and I told him so the next day. He accepted it, so my departure did not happen.

After many vicissitudes and doubts on the part of my instructors, never on my part, at the age of 28, on May 4, 1985, a month after my birthday, I was ordained in the chapel of our seminary in Fatima by the then bishop of Guarda, Dom António dos Santos. It had all started in Fatima with my mother's promise, and everything was fulfilled in Fatima. 

Today, when people ask me how my vocation came about, they expect a very different answer from the one I give them, because they think that it came about in my youth, like many people’s today, or even in adulthood. They are amazed when I tell them that at the age of six, I wanted to be what I am today. 

Conclusion – The need to console my mother led me to discover my vocation as a Consolata missionary, a vocation that has given me the opportunity to bring the consolation of the Gospel to thousands of people.  

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Mission is Consolation

"The customer is always right"
Once upon a time, a monkey and a fish became friends and spent their days playing together in and around the river. One day, while they were playing, the river grew because of the heavy rain that had fallen in the mountains. 

With his agility, the monkey quickly clung to the branch of a tree. Thinking that his friend was in trouble, he threw himself into the water, grabbed his friend, and put him on a branch; but as his friend writhed in protest, the monkey said, "Yes, my friend, if it were not for me, you would have drowned."

This tale may well illustrate and help to interpret Martha's accusation of Mary in Luke's Gospel. In this case, Mary, more than Martha, was able to interpret the needs of the Master who, on his way to his death, needed calm, quiet and consolation more than a good meal (Luke 10:38-42).

The recipients of the Mission, the poor or the marginalized, know better than we do what they really need. For this reason, the Mission is nothing more than a proposal: the Mission and evangelization, more than an “a la carte” menu, should resemble a self-serve buffet, where it is the recipients who choose what they need. 

Jesus, in fact, on many occasions asked the person in need, "What do you want me to do for you?" (Mark 10:51), even when it was clear to everyone what that person wanted and needed. 

Jesus knew, even then, that there are people who, incredible as it may seem, do not want to get out of their misery, who have become so accustomed to it, to the point of saying, "the evil that I know is better than the good that I do not know". For example, we all know that there are beggars who would rather beg than be reintegrated into society, homeless people who almost ideologically prefer to stay homeless. 

In business, we are used to hearing the advertising slogan that the customer is always right. The bottom line of any business is to sell, so advertising meets the needs of buyers or consumers rather than sellers. "The customer is always right" because it is the customer who keeps the business going, it is the demand and not the supply that drives the business. 

My needs or yours?
The story goes that a missionary was sent to a remote place where the chieftain and landowner abused the peasants, renting out his land to them and charging them an astronomical two-thirds of their harvest, or having them work for him directly for a pitiful wage.

When the missionary, coming from Europe with his cultural baggage, became aware of the situation, while speaking to them in the sermon on the Beatitudes he described the injustice of their situation at the hands of the landlord and at the end, when he thought that, according to his worldview, he had illustrated well the situation of the peasants, he paraphrased the fourth beatitude (Matthew 5:6) and shouted: 

Faced with your situation, do you not hunger and thirst for justice?
To which they replied almost in unison: 
"We, Father, what we have is a common hunger for bread and a thirst for water.  

As a general rule, sociologists and anthropologists agree on the following list of human needs: survival, protection, meaning, autonomy, interdependence, honesty, empathy, well-being, regeneration, transcendence.

Abraham Maslow places these same needs in a hierarchical pyramid from the perspective of what is most important and most urgent, understanding that the human beings do not, for example, need personal fulfillment until their basic needs are met.

The satisfaction of a lower need leads to the desire for the subsequent higher need, and so on, moving all the way to the top of the pyramid; similarly, the unsatisfaction of a need immediately below a higher need that was being met, will result in an immediate unsatisfaction of that higher need.

Thus, at the base of the pyramid are physiological needs, followed in an ascending direction by the needs for security, social needs, status needs, self-realization needs, and spiritual or transcendence needs.

This is therefore the reason why the peasants in the story cited above did not yet have a need or hunger and thirst for justice, because they were underfed. There are still those who do not understand this concept and project the image of themselves and their needs onto others – instead of seeing reality as the others see it. An example of this is the invasion of Iraq by the United States to impose democracy. This is based on the assumption that what is good for us must be, and has to be, good for others. 

We forget that adults cannot be forced to do good in the same way as children. For adults, the good has to come from their own choice. The father of the prodigal son knew well that his son was going down the wrong road, but he still had to let him go. 

Human and gospel values do not contradict or clash with each other; "consolation" that does not respect the freedom and idiosyncrasies of others is not consolation, but colonial paternalism. 

Going back to the matter of business, "the customer is always right" because it is the customer who is the law of demand that rules the market, which kicks things off and sets everything in motion. In the same way, it is the real needs of others from their perspective that should provoke our charity. This must be a response to the cry of the oppressed and not the a priori application of schemes that have more to do with us than with the poor we want to serve.

Conclusion – There is no true consolation without empathy, that is, without putting ourselves in other people’s shoes and trying to see reality from their perspective. 

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

"Walk in my presence..."

One more year and we are brought closer to the celebration of the faithful departed; those who have gone before us in life, in space and time, and are already enjoying eternity with God. 

The revelry of summer is long gone, the green is turning into red and yellow, the trees are losing their leaves and all of nature is preparing for the lethargy of winter. It is as if everything is dying; but we know that it is only a passing death, just as our death is a passage, but it makes us think about the meaning of life. 

Whenever we look at our life as a whole, we cannot help but search for the meaning of all this and ask ourselves again:  where do we come from, where are we going, and what is the meaning of our life? For atheists and agnostics who answer nothing and nowhere to the first and second questions, they logically answer nothing to the third question as well. Believers, however, answer them differently:

We come from God - God has thought of us from all eternity; if we have always been in the mind of God, even before the "Big Bang", we will not be eternal only after this life since we were already before this life; in other words, we have always existed; we already existed before we existed in space and time, and we will return to eternity where we have always been and existed, at least as a project.

We go to God - Our life is not a succession of springs, summers, autumns and winters, nor do we live from January to January. Our journey is therefore not a vicious circle, but a straight path. We are walking towards the Promised Land, which is the Kingdom of Heaven. God and his Kingdom are the goal of our lives. 

That is why we seek first the Kingdom and its justice; that is, the common interest, because the rest, our individual needs, everything we need, will be given to us in addition (Matthew 6:33).

The meaning of life - If God simply is and He is at the beginning and at the end of our life, it is only logical that we live already, here and now, in God and with God. May we love God above all things; may we put our trust and security in him alone; and may we, like Abraham, walk in his presence, because as St. Luke says in the Acts of the Apostles, “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). 

For God, who created us without our consent and collaboration, does not save us without our consent and collaboration. Our life consists of becoming more and more conformed to Christ the Way, the Truth and the Life (Romans 13:14).

There are those who do not live with God and for God, but justify their lives in other ways, seeking power, pleasure, wealth, fame and popularity. This is an illusion, because these “goods” are short-lived and leave us empty and dissatisfied.

Power and control
"Power and control freaks," as they are called in English. This is a psychological illness when the main goal is to want to have more and more power and control. Usually, those who seek power and control over others do not have it over themselves. They forget that ruling themselves, and not others, is the greatest empire of all.

The truth is that we are born completely powerless, in absolute dependence on others. During our lives, no matter how great our power, it is never absolute, or total, but only lasts for a short time. As for control, we don't even control our own sphincters, which is why we need diapers at the beginning of our lives, and many of us will need them again at the end. 

If without power we are born and without power we die, what little power we may have during our lifetime is fictitious and fleeting. It is better to replace it with love, with the power of love.

Hedonistic pleasure
Some people run away from suffering, from pain, like the devil runs away from the cross, and are eager to seek only what gives them pleasure. They forget that suffering is part of life. They forget that evil is as easy as walking down a street while good is as difficult as walking up a street, that nothing good comes from laziness and the "dolce fare niente", and that everything is achieved through effort, blood, sweat and tears. 

Furthermore, they also forget that the joy of victory is greater than any physical pleasure, and that it cannot be achieved without the risk and fury of battle. That suffering is part of life because we are born into it and die into it, and throughout our lives it is through suffering and sacrifice that we pay the price to live our lives with dignity and meaning, and to achieve happiness and self-realization.  

That is why, in fact, it is not death that we fear the most, but suffering; that is why, the fear of death or the suffering it entails is the fear of true life, because it also entails suffering.

Love of wealth
May the spirit of God be with you that you may see that all things are good, but woe to you if you love creatures by forsaking the Creator... Francisco Benzoni

Naked we came from our mother's womb and naked we return to God's bosom, from where our mothers also came from. We do not own anything, because we cannot own anything indefinitely; not even our own life can we possess it indefinitely. 

Fame and popularity
We are nobody when we are born because there is no such a thing as blue-blood. For the first 6 years of our existence, we don't even know that we exist. Many people spend their time in a coma, in a more or less vegetative life; others, in the last years of their lives as in the first, lose their self-awareness again when different stages of dementia strike. The great Ronald Reagan, because of Alzheimer's disease, did not know that he had been the president of the United States several years before his death.

Just around the corner
The plane we are on crashes, or we suffer a car accident, as the driver, the occupant or as a pedestrian, or we suffer a cardiovascular event, or we are struck down by cancer and from one moment to the next, without knowing or suspecting anything, we find ourselves surprised before the Creator. 

Let us live therefore in holiness and justice in His presence, every day of our lives (Luke 1:75). And may it be said of us, as it was said of Jesus: “He passed through this world doing good” (Acts 10:34-38).

Conclusion - Since we know neither the day nor the hour of our departure from this world, let us walk every day and every hour in the presence of God; in this way, we will be prepared at any time and at any place to see Him face to face.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Cross, registered trademark ®

"Ichthus", the first symbol of Christianity
During the first nine centuries of Christianity, artists did not paint or sculpture the cross of Christ, because it was regarded as a brutal instrument of torture. 

Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of the Christ" dennotes well the reality and brutality of this form of Roman execution. 

He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross, (Philippians 2:8). As St. Paul says, the Word became flesh, became a human being and accepted all the limitations and vicissitudes inherent in this condition, even death itself and, among the many forms of death, the worst of them all, the death on a cross.

This is why the first symbol that Christianity adopted was not the cross, but the fish; not so much because the first disciples were fishermen or because part of Christ's ministry took place by the lakeside, but because the initials in Greek of the confession of faith in full, of Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior of the world, formed the word "Ichthys" which means fish.  

In fact, the symbol of the fish drawn in the air or on the ground was used as a password, sign and countersign between two strangers to identify themselves as Christians, at a time when Christianity was a clandestine and therefore forbidden religion.

The Cross of Christ and the Commandments
Even when the gospel invited them to embrace the cross, early Christians naturally ran away from it. Even today, our Protestant brothers and sisters do not like the representation of Christ on the cross, because they say that he is risen and therefore, is no longer on the cross. We Catholics are not masochists, we know that he is risen, but we do not want to forget what he went through for us. 

The cross of Christ is our flag, the North, South, East and West of our existence. Made of two poles, one vertical and one horizontal, it also symbolizes the two commandments of love: the vertical pole is to love God above all things, which invites us to an ascending life, to rise above everything and everyone, proving that only in this way we are truly free, autonomous, and independent of everything and everyone. Love subjugates us to the object loved; if the object of our love is first and foremost God above all others, people, and things, then we are truly free. 

The horizontal pole represents the second commandment of love, to love our neighbour as ourselves, which leads us to the principle of equality: I am neither inferior nor superior to anyone, so that before God we are all equal, since he is our Father, we are all brothers and sisters.

Misery and Mercy
For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me (Psalm 51:3) – In looking at the cross of Christ, we must see our own ugliness. What led Christ to the cross were the sins of the people of his time and of all times: stupidity, anger, distrust, institutional corruption, betrayal of a friend, denial of another, running away from the rest, cruelty, injustice, scapegoating, fear, envy, etc., the complete collection of human dysfunctions. 

In the cross of Christ, human dysfunction is revealed and exposed. St. Peter puts this same idea clearly by saying: ‘… you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses.’ (Acts 3:15) So, the author of life has come, and we have killed him; therefore, in the light of the cross of Christ, no one is innocent. He was killed for our sins, our sins killed Him, for our sins he died." 

In the cross of Christ, we encounter our patent sin, our misery, but we also clearly see divine mercy at work. Jesus took upon himself our sin which ultimately killed him; if he remained dead, it would have been his end as well as ours, but since he rose from the dead, in his resurrection he gave us back the life that sin had taken from us and would take from us. 

In the cross of Christ, human misery meets divine mercy; in the cross of Christ, divine mercy conquers human misery. In the tree of paradise, human misery has won; in the cross of Christ, divine mercy conquers.

Salvation and Health
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. (John 3:14-15)

Salvation and health have the same word in Latin, “salus”. According to the reading, the symbol of medicine is in fact also a religious symbol. Christ himself identified with the serpent that Moses raised in the desert to heal the Jews who had been bitten by poisonous snakes. 

In Adam and Eve, the whole human race was bitten by the serpent which spread its venom and infected the human race. In this episode from the book of Numbers that Jesus quotes and identifies with, we already see the idea that would later lead scientists to discover that the antidote to a snake’s venom is taken from that same venom. 

Once the venom has been injected into a large body like that of a horse, the body reacts to the venom by creating antibodies. These antibodies injected into the body of someone bitten by a snake will neutralize the effect of the venom. 

There is a type of white blood cells in our blood called neutrophils which, when faced with an invasion of bacteria or viruses, ingest these same bacteria, germs or viruses, resulting in their own death, thus preventing a generalized infection; they die to save us. 

"Life for life", as the firefighters' motto goes. Metaphorically, Christ, like a neutrophil, took upon himself the poison of the ancient serpent spread throughout the human race, swallowed it, and it killed him. But from his side came blood and water, which are the antibodies we need to fight sin. The water of baptism and the blood of the Eucharist conquer sin. 

Conclusion – The great sins that the protagonists of Christ's death committed are the same sins that we still commit today. Christ died for our sins because it was our sins that killed Him. 

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Mountains of the Bible

The men who defied Everest did not give up at either the first or the second defeat. In fact, the expeditions failed one after the other and there were not a few who lost their lives.

During a commemorative ceremony in which Mallory and her valiant companions were remembered, the speaker expresses and sums up the spirit and sentiments of that assembly. Looking out the window, he went to Everest saying:

Everest! I speak to you in the name of all brave men. You have defeated us not once, not twice, but many times. However, one day, we will be the ones to win, because you cannot grow more than you are; We can...

Mountain attraction
The mountain has always exerted an attraction on Man because it challenges his courage, his spirit of adventure, creativity, strength and resistance. 

The mountain is the highest point on earth and, at the same time, the lowest point in heaven. It is the place where heaven and earth touch; where Man ascends to God and God descends to Man. This implies, on God's part, a kenosis, a debasement whose culmination was the incarnation of his Son. On the part of the human being, it implies an ascent, an overcoming of nature fallen by sin, towards new life in Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

The Ziggurat

The first temples of ancient Mesopotamia, called ziggurats, were built in a helical shape, like spiral staircases. This structure was not accidental, but rather an architectural symbol of the spiritual path that every human being is called to follow if he wishes to be united to God.

St. John of the Cross, in his book The Ascent to Mount Carmel, interprets this ascent as a journey of purification and self-transcendence. The author invites us to abandon everything that is an obstacle to union with God — goods, affections, desires — in order to reach the summit of spiritual life.

Saint Teresa of Avila, companion of John of the Cross and reformer of Carmel, proposes a similar path in her work The Interior Castle. It uses the image of a castle with concentric walls, where the spiritual journey is made towards the most intimate center of ourselves, where God dwells. As St. Augustine said: "Deus intimior intimo meo" — God is more intimate to me than I am to myself.

This idea of spiritual progress, self-overcoming and purification also appears in the work of Dante Alighieri. In the Divine Comedy, Purgatory is represented precisely as a ziggurat, a mountain that gradually rises to Paradise.

The Mountains of the Bible
Mount Hermon - (or "holy mountain") is the highest mountain in ancient Israel, peaking with snow until June, when it rises 2,814 meters above sea level. Some scholars believe that Mount Hermon was the site of Jesus' transfiguration, a supernatural event in which Christ appeared in His true glory as the Son of God, revealing His identity as the Messiah and fulfilling the law and prophets (Matthew 17:1–8). 

If this was not the case, it was at the foot of this mountain, where the Jordan River opens the Rift Valley, which extends to the Red Sea, in Ethiopia, to the Indian Ocean, in Mozambique, that the apostles discovered the identity of Jesus of Nazareth as the messiah who was to come, the son of God. 

On Mount Moriah – Abraham's faith is put to the test when God asks him to sacrifice his son Isaac. By overcoming this test, Abraham becomes our father in the Faith learning that God must love him above all things and all people.  

On Mount Sinai – Moses receives from God the Ten Commandments that constituted at the time an educational pedagogy to constitute the Jews in the People of God with an idiosyncrasy of their own.

On Mount Carmel – The prophet Elijah challenges and exposes those who have abandoned the true faith in a God who made them free to underlie a countless number of idols that enslave. Today idolaters pretend to be atheists or agnostics, but if we look at their daily lives, we see that they have little idols that they worship and around which they orbit.

On Mount Nebo – Moses sees the promised land without entering it. Martin Luther King said the day before his assassination, "You have granted me to see the promised land, it is possible that I will not enter it with you, but I am sure that we as a people will one day enter the promised land. The dream of a more just and fraternal world, the Rhine of God, must always inspire the struggle of our daily lives. 

On the Mount of Beatitudes – On this mountain, Jesus, the new Moses, proclaims his Sermon on the Mount, proposing the Beatitudes as the only and urgent path to true happiness. This mountain is the new Sinai of the New Testament.

On the Mount of Transfiguration - There, Jesus revealed his divine identity to the disciples, preparing them for the trial of his Passion. This mountain is, therefore, the new Mount Nebo of the New Testament: a foretaste of glory before the painful crossing of suffering.

On the Mount of Calvary – Jesus finds his death paying the price for having been who he was and lived as he lived. For a moment injustice seemed to have the last word, but Jesus rose again, making justice triumph over injustice, grace over sin. The resurrection of Jesus led the Church to understand the salvific value of His death. Calvary is the new Mount Moriah: there the Father offered his beloved Son for the salvation of all. There Jesus was tested like Abraham on Mount Moriah. 

On the Mount of the Ascension – Christ ends his earthly mission and ascends to Heaven, taking our humanity with him. The angel who appears exhorts the Apostles to come down from the mountain and take the Gospel to every corner of the earth. This is the new Mount Carmel: after contemplation, mission follows. Not a violent mission like that of Elijah imposing the truth, but a peaceful mission proposing the truth. 

Conclusion - The Bible is marked by a spiritual geography where each mountain speaks to us of a step in the history of salvation — and in our own inner journey. To climb the mountain is to accept the challenge of faith, purification and surrender. But no summit is an end in itself: each mountain points to Heaven, but also to the mission below.

Like Abraham, Moses, Elijah and Jesus, we are called to ascend — not to flee from the world, but to see from another perspective and then to descend transformed, bringing to others the light, hope and promise that we have received from above.

The spell-binding attraction that mountains exert on us and the surreptitious call that urges us to climb them must correspond to a desire for growth, for overcoming of oneself at every level. 

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Primacy of Peter

And I tell you, you are Peter (which means rock), and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heave. Matthew 16:18-19

Mark (8:27-30) and Luke (9:18-21) also refer to this episode of Jesus' journey to Caesarea Philippi, to the sources of the Jordan River, at the foot of Mount Hermon, where the Rift Valley begins, the longest and deepest on the planet where Homo sapiens first appeared. 

The three synoptic evangelists agree in the matter of Peter's confession. We do not know whether his confession of faith in Jesus as more than a prophet, as the Messiah, was an individual conviction or whether he acted as a spokesman for the group. In both cases, he shows his leadership in the group. 

The statement about the keys, however, along with the word Church, appears only in the Gospel of Matthew, and only once as shown above. This being a fact, the power of the keys is therefore questionable, and yet throughout history in the Catholic Church, it has been given an exaggerated importance.

Whoever has the keys to a temple has the power to open and close it, to open for those who want to enter and close for those who do not. It is the power to excommunicate, and to understa
nd that this excommunication, this condemnation, has equal value in heaven as it does on earth. It was the power of the keys that justified so many unjust excommunications and all the crimes of the Inquisition. 

We can therefore agree with the Protestants and the Orthodox, as the other gospels do not mention it. However, the fact that Simon, son of John, the leader chosen by Jesus, who already exercises this leadership during Jesus’ lifetime and later in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, is undeniable: only the blind, the Protestants and the Orthodox who blinded by their ideology, do not see it. 

Proof of this leadership during the time of Jesus is the fact that the sons of Zebedee, the other two members along with Peter of Jesus’ inner circle of apostles, wanted to provoke a coup d'état and usurp the power that Peter had when they shamelessly asked the Lord to sit one on his right and one on his left in the kingdom. If Peter did not have or exercise leadership, there would have been no need for this blatant coup d'état on the part of James and John (Mark 10:35-45).

In the listing of the apostles, the three synoptic gospels, (Mark 3:13-19, Matthew 10:1-4; Luke 6:12-16), agree in placing the name of Simon, whom the master nicknamed Peter, first. In this case even the Gospel of John joins the chorus of the Synoptics when in John (1:42), Andrew takes his brother Simon to Jesus, and Jesus gives Simon the new name Peter. 

According to the Acts of the Apostles, after Jesus’ earthly departure, the one who kickstarts the Church with a great public speech is Peter, but later it is Peter who speaks for the group in the Sanhedrin, it is Peter who is first thrown into jail for proclaiming the good news, and it is Peter who miraculously escapes the tightly guarded prison. It is Peter who points out the need to choose someone to take the place of Judas Iscariot to complete the important number 12, and he also qualifies the choice, and finally it is Peter who at the Council of Jerusalem reconciles the two factions of Christianity, that of Paul to that of James, the brother of the Lord. 

Scripture often speaks of the apostles in general. Of the twelve, some are named no more than when the list of the apostles is enumerated; others are named a couple of times. Without a doubt, the most emblematic figure of the twelve is Peter. In addition to being part of the twelve, he was also part of Jesus' inner circle, along with the two sons of Zebedee, James and John. He was the spokesman for the group and the leader consecrated by Christ Himself.

Public opinion poll
Jesus did not need to know what others thought of him for reasons of self-esteem or to see if he had to take his ministry in a different direction. The question was more rhetorical and preparatory to the more important one, which was: "But who do you say that I am?"

Faced with this personal question that Jesus addresses to each one of us, we cannot answer like Pilate, by hearsay; we must look for the answer within ourselves, this answer must be our own; we cannot live our entire life with the faith that our parents lent us at baptism.

Experience – Preaching – Faith – Experience: this is the process of faith that allows us to give a personal answer to the above question. Like the tonic that our neighbor took and was cured, everything begins with experience; the experience is not a secret that can be taken to the grave, because it produces such joy that we can only feel-good preaching it, spreading it, as if we had just won the lottery.  

The experience in itself must lead to preaching, to proclamation, and this is nothing other than bearing witness to what God has done in us. In fact, the content of Christian preaching is nothing other than saying, "The Almighty has done great things for me," that is, telling how the Lord has saved us, just as the neighbor testifies about the tonic that healed her. Such a convincing proclamation generates faith in those who hear and witness it, and this faith leads us to take the tonic, that is, it leads us to taste, to experience Christ.

The question was not so much "Who do you say that I am" but rather "what experience do you have of Me, what do you conclude after seeing and hearing, eating and drinking, and living with me". Nobody gets drunk by saying the word “wine”, even if they say it thousands of times, but by drinking it.

Petrus simul justus et peccator
"Homo simul justus et peccator," as St. Augustine said, which also applies to Peter; Jesus did not choose Peter because he was a saint. We can see that he was not, and the apostles did not wash their dirty laundry at home, but chose to expose it, thus showing us the personality of the apostles, especially Peter’s, with his lights and shadows. Peter himself reminds Jesus that he is a sinner when he says, "Depart from me, for I am a sinner”. 

Jesus chooses him not for what he was, but for what he could become with the help of God's grace. In fact, proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah was not a deduction resulting from systematic thought, reflection or study, but rather from an intuition of the Holy Spirit, for it was not the flesh that revealed it to him, as Jesus himself later told Peter.

Peter was an impulsive and enthusiastic man, but also fearful and even cowardly. At one moment, he grabs the sword and cuts off the ear of the high priest’s servant to protect Jesus, and at another, out of cowardice denies knowing the Lord. At one moment, he says he would never leave Jesus and advises him not to go to Jerusalem, and at another, he is one of those who flees, and even later from Rome to escape persecution, as the "Quo vadis" tradition says. At one moment, he shows himself fearless in the storm – “tell me to come to you" – and then he gets scared and sinks, not because of the storm, but because of fear.

Rock & Roll, Peter & Paul
The Gospels – All four gospels mention Peter's prominent place among the group. Peter's town, Capernaum, and more specifically his own home, is the base from which Jesus comes and goes in his ministry. He was so close to Peter and his family that he even cured Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever, the only miracle that was barely justified.

Group Spokesman: we have left everything, what reward will we get?... Let us make three tents here.... You are the Messiah.... To whom shall we go? You alone have the words of eternal life... Jesus often preaches from Peter’s boat; the miraculous catch of fish takes place in Peter's boat; the storm at sea happens in Peter's boat.

Paul’s Letters – the gospels were written after Peter's death and, for this reason, could be said to represent the ideology of the Church, not the will of Christ. Paul's letters were written during Peter's lifetime and therefore, relate the same. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul recounts his conversion saying that he went to Jerusalem and spent 15 days with Peter, and that he did not see any other apostles.

Paul corrects Peter in front of everyone for ceasing to enter the houses of the Gentiles and eating with them once he was among the Jews in Jerusalem. He openly criticizes Peter for this incongruous behavior, this hypocrisy, but he does not deny or stop respecting his authority. In fact, he tries to win Peter over to his group against those of James, the Lesser. If Luther had done as St. Paul did, who, despite their differences, respected Peter’s authority, the Church would not be divided today.

Like the wheel of a bicycle
Without a central figure to carry out the Petrine ministry (or Peter's ministry), there is no unity. The Church is like a bicycle wheel. All the spokes point and are connected to the center, and it is from there that they contribute so that the wheel stays strong. If one of the spokes breaks, the wheel starts to warp and zigzags. 

In fact, outside the Catholic Church, both the Protestant and Orthodox churches are many, small and divided, because there is no unifying figure like Peter was for the twelve in the first Church and like Peter’s successor is for the Church throughout time and space.

Conclusion – One, large, universal, and free is the Catholic Church founded by Christ on the rock of Peter. Many, small, divided, and national are the Orthodox and Protestant churches founded by humans. 

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Life: Gift - Loan - Rental?

"I want to spend the night in this caravan shelter," said a pilgrim. 
"How dare you call my sumptuous palace a caravan shelter?"
"And whose palace was it before it was yours?" asked the pilgrim. 
"It was my father’s," replied the nobleman.
"And where is your father now?"
-He is dead.
- And whose palace was it before it was your father’s?
- It was my grandfather's...
"And where is your grandfather now?"
-He is dead...
"Whose palace will it be after your death?"
- My son’s...
"Then," concluded the pilgrim, "a building in which different people live for a certain period, wouldn’t you agree that it is a caravan shelter?"

We are stewards of “our” lives, not owners
Naked we all came out of our mother's womb and naked we all return to God's bosom, we are not owners of anything, because we cannot own anything indefinitely, not even our own life can we own indefinitely. 

As Christians, we should get rid of possessive pronouns from our vocabulary and replace them with “administrative” pronouns instead. In our lives, instead of using, the verbs “To have” and “To Possess”, we should use the verbs to use and to administer. Things were made to be used, not possessed, or loved; likewise, people were made to be loved, not possessed, or used.  

We really do not own anything. Of all the resources we claim to own, and as the poet says, just as we were not consulted at the time of our conception, that is, no one asked us if we wanted to live or not, we can conclude that not even our life is ours. 

"Done, next breast," said a woman breastfeeding her child. We are put into this life like a windup toy
or a battery powered toy, in both cases our life lasts for as long as the winding mechanism or the battery last. We have no control over the time of our life because we are not the masters of time or life., because we are not the masters of time or life.

We are stewards, not only of the material or spiritual (talents) resources that we use in life, but also of life itself constituted of time - energy - fundamental option, that is, our vocation or mission and of the place we occupy in the world and in society. 

God is the owner of everything that exists, including us. Although, unlike other creatures, we were created in His image and likeness, we are merely stewards of our lives and will one day have to give an account of this stewardship. 

"God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting; your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians." Daniel 5:26-28 

The prophet Daniel interpreted the dream of the king of Babylon. At the conclusion of his interpretation, he told the king that by putting on one side of the scale what he could have been and on the other what he was at that present moment, or what he was called to be and what he has become, that is, his conquests and his defeats, his good deeds and his evil deeds, the negative side outweighed the positive. 

Things were made to be used, not possessed, because they are not an end in themselves, but only a means of life; they are at the service of life. People were made to be loved, not to be possessed or used, because they are an end in themselves and never a means. 

Perversity is when one loves things and uses people to have more things. Those who relate to things in this way see life only through lenses of power and possession. For them, to love is to possess things and people; they can never be happy, because no one likes to be used or possessed, themselves included. 

Life as a gift
One day a peasant knocked on the monastery door; when the brother doorkeeper opened the door, the peasant gave him a magnificent bunch of grapes. "These are for you," said the peasant, "for having helped me in times of scarcity." The brother doorkeeper received the grapes with great joy and thanked him. Later, when he was about to eat them, he thought, "I'd rather give them to the Abbot, I think he deserves them for the way he runs the monastery." 

The Abbot received them with the same joy as the brother doorkeeper and when he was about to eat them in his cell, he remembered that they would delight one of the brothers who was ill. The sick brother received them with joy and immediately thought of the brother cook who had looked after him so kindly. As soon as he appeared with his lunch, he gave them to him. He admired the beauty, fragrance and perfection of the grapes and thought of giving them to the brother sacristan, since they were reminiscent of those offered at Mass. 

The brother sacristan received them and understood the symbol, but he didn't want to eat them, because he thought of the youngest novice who was in a vocational crisis and gladly gave them to him. Finally, the brother novice remembered the first person who had opened the monastery door to him and gave them to the brother doorkeeper. In this way, the brother doorkeeper understood that the grapes had really been destined for him and no one else, so he savoured them slowly one by one. (Summarized and adapted from Paulo Coelho's The Circle of Joy).

This story illustrates perfectly that life is a gift, yes, but a gift that is not meant to be possessed but given away. In theology and in books on spirituality, we often find the expression "gift of life", expressing that life is a gift, a gift from God. If it has been given to us, then we own it, which, as we have said, is not true, because we have no way of retaining this gift indefinitely. 

For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. Matthew 16:25

The other person’s life is an absolute value for me, my life is a relative value for me. Life is to be given away, to be consumed in the service of others or of a human cause. Our life does not revolve around us, it is not and should not be about us, but about something outside of ourselves because it does not justify itself. It is not and should never be self-referential. 

We use our life, time, and energy to cultivate human values that are worth more than life itself. These values are absolute because they are the reason for life. They are the values we live for, the values to which we dedicate every minute of our lives and for which we would be willing to give up this very life in a heartbeat for them if it was required of us. 

Each of the values, talents, or gifts that shape our lives, we have them to be used for our own good and for the good of others. If we stop using them, we stop having them or we lose them. In this sense, while it is true that we only give what we have, it is also true that we only have what we give. 

On the other hand, to live is to love, and to love is to give oneself to the other. When we give ourselves, we are no longer in our own possession. In fact, that is why we are never more vulnerable as when we give ourselves to another out of love. The other person has an immense power over us and can abuse that power if his or her love for us is not reciprocated, that is if he or she does not give himself or herself up to us too. 

In a Christian marriage, love is always trinitarian, that is, the two give himself or herself to the other, without anyone possessing anyone, because God is the one who possesses both -- I give myself to God through you, you give yourself to God through me. The two give themselves to each other without either of them owning the other. 

Life as a loan
‘For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. Matthew 25:14-18

Whatever the circumstances of one’s birth, whether one is the child carefully planned by the parents, who even choose the sex of the baby, or the child of a couple, neither wanted or planned, who comes into the world by accident, or the child of one night stand, an illegitimate child born out of wedlock, or the child of a prostitute, or even the child from a rape, all of them are equally children of God.

If God has willed them to come into this world, whatever the circumstances of their birth may have been, all of them, absolutely all of them, without exception, are children of God and their lives are viable and precious. God has endowed each one of His children with a project, a place in the world and in society, and sufficient talents to make this life viable in carrying out the project that He has designed for each of them.

God is, therefore, the architect of our life, He is the one who has the designs, the plans, and the calculations for the construction of our life, a construction that ends with our death and passage to eternal life to the bosom of God. 

The plan as well as the talents and limitations to carry it out are revealed to us little by little, as the need arise. We do not receive the shingles for the roof until the foundations are dug and firmly set. 

The parable of the talents illustrates that life is a loan, a credit that God has given us to manage. As in the parable, we must give an account in the end, that is, the loan must yield profits. 

We all receive certain talents and not others. Everyone receives the talents necessary to make their life viable, but no one receives all the talents. The important thing is to develop, to make the talents received bear fruit and not to hide them and then admire or envy the talents that others have received, trying to live other people’s lives, which one can never succeed in doing.

The act or attitude of envying the talents of others is tantamount to hiding one’s own talents, because when our eyes focus on a distant object, they cannot focus on whatever is near at the same time. When we look at other people’s talents, we cannot see our own, so it is as if we are trying to live a life that is not ours and, of course, we'll never live happily, with meaning and fulfillment. By trying to be who we are not, anyone can beat us and be superior to us; by being who we are, however, no one can beat us. 

From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded. Luke 12:48

The fruitlessness of the cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, even though Jesus sowed great many seeds there, is also strongly criticized. Perhaps if this sowing had been done outside of Israel, in the Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sodom, the result would have been different. Therefore, the Last Judgment will be more lenient towards Sodom than towards these cities. Prophetically, only ruins remain of them today. (Luke 10:13-16)

Life as a rental
There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. Matthew 21:33-34

The Psalm says that the Lord's vineyard is the house of Israel, but when we hear this gospel, we must personalize it. The Lord’s vineyard is each one of us. Or rather, it is our life, and we are the ones who rent it, we are the caretakers. We must bear fruit, make the vineyard yield, this must be our concern, that our lives bear fruit, that they are full of good works. But the spirituality that has been inculcated in us says that we must keep ourselves clean, avoid evil and sin, but it does not say that we must do good.

Positive Spirituality
The mania for cleanliness is a psychic disorder. There are people who spend their lives washing their hands, and maybe they can stand before God with clean hands one day, but God will tell them that their hands are empty... Our spiritual life focuses on avoiding evil, not doing good. That was what the rich young man had always done, keeping the commandments that only told him what not to do.  

Christ's commandments are positive: to love God above all things and all people, our neighbor as ourselves, and ourselves as God loves us. These are commandments that imply positive action, unlike the 10 commandments that only exhort us to avoid evil, not to intentionally do good.

At the end of our lives, we will not be judged for the evil we did, but for the good we have not done but could have done. We will be judged for having been bad Samaritans, for having witnessed brothers and sisters in need and, being able to do something, we did nothing, we waved them aside and told ourselves that it was none of our business, that it was not our problem.

Nature abhors emptiness
‘When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but it finds none. Then it says, “I will return to my house from which I came.” When it comes, it finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings along seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So will it be also with this evil generation. Matthew 12:43-45

By basing our lives in avoiding sin, we are like trying to empty our souls of evil, forgetting that nature abhors emptiness. It is a law of physics whose application in the spiritual field is proven in the gospel quoted above.

There is no such thing as emptiness in nature, it can only be created artificially. There is no such thing as an empty bottle because it may be empty of wine or water, but never of air. If we want to remove the air from a bottle, we can extract it artificially with a machine, creating a vacuum, or we can naturally fill it with wine. 

At the Last Judgment, those who are saved are those who helped the Lord in the poor and the destitute and gave him something to eat, something to drink, welcomed him when he was a stranger or a pilgrim, clothed him when he was naked, and visited him when he was in prison or in hospital. The damned were not the evil ones, but those who turned their backs on all the opportunities that life gave them to do good, because their only concern was to avoid doing evil, (Matthew 25:31-46).

A New Examination of Conscience and a New Confession
Based on Matthew's text on the Last Judgment, you need to stop occupying your psyche with evil and occupy it with good; use your time and energy doing good wherever and for whoever crosses your path, as there will be no shortage of opportunities, instead of using your energy to fight evil inside of yourself by trying to eradicate it on order to become empty of evil. 

"He who has no money has no vices" while you are busy doing good, you cannot do evil, because you will not have the time or inclination for it; as good occupies in your mind and heart the place that was previously occupied by evil, it makes room for good in the same way that wine when it enters the glass, naturally expels the air.

Based on this same philosophy, there is a drug that fights cancer without attacking it with chemotherapy or radiation; what this drug does is to destroy the blood vessels that feed cancer cells; without food, they die. 

When we fill our lives with good works, when we spend our time doing good, evil disappears of its own accord. We cannot do good and evil at the same time; when we occupy our time with good, evil disappears for lack of time to do it. 

In a positive spirituality, there are only sins of omission. My examination of conscience will consist of reviewing my day-to-day life and identifying the situations that required me to act in solidarity; my sins to confess will be the times when I could have done good and chose not to.

Conclusion – Life is a gift to be given away, not to be possessed. It is a loan that we will one day pay back with interest, and a rental for which we must pay rent. 

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Your life is not about yourself

‘For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. 

But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. (…) But his master re plied, “You wicked and lazy slave!” (…) So, take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  Matthew 25:14-18, 26, 28-30   

No one came into this world by chance. The child of a prostitute who was conceived from sex for hire, the child of sexual violence or rape, the child of a one-night stand, the child of an "accident", all these children were called to life and came into the world because God in his infinite and mysterious providence willed it so. 

The child conceived from the love of a man and a woman who are promised to each other for life and are faithful to each other, is not superior in dignity to any of the above. God loves them all equally. There are no illegitimate children where God is concerned, all are legitimate children of the Father of everything and everyone. They may not have the love of their earthly parents, but they never lack or never will lack the love of the Father of their parents, God.

To gain a life or to lose a life
For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Matthew 16:25-26

It is often said about those who work and are always on the go that they are "making a living". In this sense, making a living is synonymous to earning life; but seeking sustenance for life and life itself are not the same thing. Just as living and being alive are not the same thing. 

Those who waste their lives (time and energy) looking for material means to live seem to be no different from the rest of the living beings on this planet. Gazelles, lions, tigers, and leopards, all living beings spend their days looking for means to stay alive or to survive. That is why animals do not live, as they do not exercise any power or control over their own lives, they survive or are alive. 

Unlike other living beings, human beings have the power and control over their own lives, they can make of it whatever they want, they can turn it into a heaven or a hell, depending on how they manage the time and energy given to them. 

‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’ (…)  “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, (…) you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So, it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’ Luke 12: 15-17, 19-21

There are people who accumulate enough assets in their lifetime to sustain themselves for another two or three more lifetimes. But are they going to have those lives or even increase in years the life they have, because they have accumulated more than they need for a lifetime? No… So, we can conclude that life is not about earning a living. 

Life is not about getting fatter, it is about getting thinner; life is not about winning, but about losing. Life is not a centripetal force, swirling inwards, pulling the wool over one’s eyes, but rather a centrifugal force: it is sharing, giving out goods and even giving oneself to others, consuming oneself, expending oneself for a cause. Therefore, anachronistically, life is lost when it is withheld and gained when it is given away.

Your life is not about yourself, you were born for a mission
For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Mark 10:45

For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. Luke 22:27

No one asked Jesus what was the purpose of his life, but if they had, that would have been the answer He would have given. 

For others, my life is an absolute value, but for myself, it is a relative one; the reason I live is absolute for me, because my life does not revolve around me. If I were the reason for my own life, living would mean surviving, that is, maintaining vital functions, preserving life. But this is not the truth about life; life is time and energy dedicated to a cause. Human life is not self-referential. 

Beethoven's life revolved around music; Picasso's life revolved around painting; Einstein's life revolved around physics; Nelson Mandela's life revolved around equality between blacks and whites. The life of Jesus, the Son of God, revolved around the salvation of humanity. 

No one is happier than the one who is useful, and no one is more useful than the one who loves and understands that to love is to want and seek the good of others, as St. Thomas Aquinas stated so rightly. 

Talents are like the gifts of the Holy Spirit: they are directed both towards your personal gain, in the pursuit of happiness and self-realization, and towards service to the community; and it is to the extent that you are useful to the community that you validate yourself. Those who are useless to others are useless even to themselves. 

Talents, the implements of life
"The worst misfortune that can happen to you, young people, is that you are of no use to anyone and that your life serves no purpose." Raoul Follereau

God, the architect of our life, has devised a project for each one of us. No one comes into the world without a plan. From our interaction with Him in prayer and with the signs of the times, we must discover what project God has for us and for which He has equipped us with sufficient talents to carry it out and make it feasible in our lifetime.

So instead of envying the talents of others, as teenagers often do by filling their bedroom walls with posters of "idols," let us turn to ourselves and find out what our talents are. There may be some hidden talent that we never thought we had.... 

Being envious of the talents of others is equivalent to hiding our own talents, all the while blaming God for unfairly giving more talents to others than to us. God cannot be unfair; he gives enough talents to make our lives viable and worth living. When we are in front of a window, we can either focus our gaze at the window itself, or look beyond the window at the beautiful scenery. 

What will be impossible to do is to focus both at the window and at the scenery simultaneously.  When we focus at the scenery, the window will be out of focus, and similarly, when we focus at the window, the scenery will be out of focus. This is to say that when we are focussing on the talents of others, we are putting our own out of focus like as if they did not exist. 

We cannot beat others at being themselves. But at being ourselves nobody can beat us.  So, we must not pretend to be who we are not meant to be and will never be.

Just as the situation creates the thief, so it is great challenges that create great men when they step forward and take risks in trying new things, and it is only in so doing that they know whether or not they are up to the task. It was the Second World War that created Winston Churchill, and so it is with all great men in human history. 

No pain no gain, talent that is not used is talent irretrievably lost. Talents that are not discovered or used do not lead us to the purpose God has set for us, and if we do not reach that goal, our life is futile. What is useless is garbage, and what is garbage is burned off. That is what hell is all about.

Conclusion – The aim in life is not to be happy, but to be useful. So, anyone who does not find his self-realization in rendering a service to society, is both useless to society and to himself, and will inevitably be unhappy.  

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Holy Mary

To this form of thanksgiving the Church of God has wisely added prayers and an invocation addressed to the most holy Mother of God, by which we piously and humbly fly to her patronage, in order that, by her intercession, she may reconcile God to us sinners and may obtain for us those blessings which we stand in need of in this life and in the life to come.

This is what the Catechism of the Council of Trent says about the second part of the Hail Mary. It is not known who wrote it, but it is the result of many years of reflection, liturgical practices and lots of prayer. It began to be included in some breviaries of the religious orders of the past until it came into regular use by the people of God around the 15th century. Like all traditions, it was not taken from the Bible, but it is rooted in it.

Holy Mary – Unlike Eve, who was proud before God and wanted to usurp God’s power by submitting to the serpent, the symbol of evil, Mary, humble before God to whom she submits, crushes the serpent's head. By becoming the Mother of God, Mary achieved through humility what Eve wanted through pride "to be like God" (Genesis 3:5). Eve, the pretentious one, wanted to be like God in omnipotence, while Mary, the humble servant of Zion, wanted to be like God in holiness.

If Abraham is our Father in faith, then Mary is our Mother in faith; in Mary, faith and hope throughout the ages find their fulfilment. 

Mother of God – An enthusiastic Protestant proselytizer gets on a bus and exclaims, "This is the letter and this is the envelope that contained it, we keep the letter and throw the envelope in the trash. Christ is the letter, and Mary is the envelope." "Is your mother also an envelope you throw in the trash?" Someone asked...

And it is not true that you throw away the envelope. Lovers who keep their love letters keep them inside their envelopes. Christ is a love letter from God to humanity. Mary is the flagrant, colorful envelope that contains that letter; whoever is a mother is always a mother. Furthermore, the envelopes also contain the address of the sender of the letter; we need this to respond, just as we need Mary's mediation.

A mother is the one who carries a child in her womb and has contributed genetically to its formation; Mary is a mother in both of these senses. If Mary is the mother of Jesus and Jesus is God, then Mary is the mother of God. This is an inescapable syllogism.

She is not the mother of God in the sense that she is the origin of God or that she came before God and is the origin of Jesus’ divinity. She is the mother of God because she contained God in her womb and because she contributed genetic material to the human form that God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, took in Christ.

Pray for us sinners – The new Eve, the new Abraham, the new Jacob, Mary is also the new Moses. Abraham interceded before God for Sodom and Gomorrah; Moses continually interceded for the people until he could no longer hold up his outstretched arms. In the new and eternal covenant established by Christ, the role of intercessor fell upon his mother Mary because there is no human creature closer to God than her. Even during her Son’s earthly pilgrimage, Mary exercised this role of intercessor and mediator of all graces. Jesus' first miracle at the wedding feast in Cana is performed at Mary's request, (John 2:1-11).

Now – “Passed Waters Do Not Move Mills". Life takes place in the present; however, there are people who are held hostage by traumatic and guilt-ridden events of the past that act as curses in the present and prevent them from taking charge and being responsible for their own behavior. 

Sin is done in the past and forgiven in the present; Jesus' forgiveness sets us free and undoes the shackles of the past; this is assimilated in the context of our whole life in a positive way. With Jesus we chant our "Felix Culpa" in the present; "there are no evil out of which good cannot come", "God writes straight with crooked lines". 

The three theological virtues explain and shape our life, which consists of three stages. We live only in the present, but it is the faith we bring from the past that gives meaning to our present, and it is the hope that projects us into the future that animates and inspires our present. Charity must be the only action we do in the present; to live is to love, both God and neighbour.

And at the hour of our death – "I want to die," said my mother in agony when she saw death coming to take her to God. Jesus said, "No one takes it (life) from me, but I lay it down of my own accord!" (John 10:18). If we love God above everything and everyone, death does not deprive us of anything or anyone. Letting go of the little we have in order to cling to the Much that is God should not be difficult. Let us live in the hope that the best is yet to come.

Amen – So be it, I believe this is our stamp, our signature underneath, we endorse to everything we have said above.

Conclusion – The first part of the "Hail Mary" concerns the past and the role of Mary in the history of the salvation of humanity. The second concerns what Mary is in the present and future, and her role in the salvation of each one of us. 

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Hail Mary

It is undoubtedly the most popular and recited prayer by Catholics; it is repeated 53 times in the rosary alone, which is so beloved by the wise and the simple alike; it is also recited in many other situations and circumstances. 

Like the Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary is also divided into two parts; but unlike the former, the Hail Mary is not entirely biblical. In an ascending movement, the first part, taken from the Bible, consists of 5 steps that go up to Jesus. In a descending movement, the second part is also made up of 5 steps that descend to human reality -- our death. 

It cannot be understood by the advocates of "sola fide sola scriptura solus Christus", because it harmoniously unites Scripture, the Word of God, described in the first part, with Tradition, that is, the history of the Christian community’s faith throughout the ages, reflected in the second. Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega, the center of history, is the core that unites the two parts.

The Hail Mary is a compendium of salvation history; it unites heaven, represented by the angel Gabriel, with earth, represented by Elizabeth, Mary's cousin. It combines the past, the Annunciation and the Visitation all the way to Jesus, with the present, when we ask for Mary's intercession "now", and the future, when we ask for her intercession also at "the hour of our death". 

Hail – It means rejoice; rejoice, daughter of Jerusalem, the Lord is in your midst. This is how Mary is greeted by the angel Gabriel, who, a few verses earlier, introduced himself to Zechariah, saying, “I am Gabriel, I stand in the presence of God…” (Luke 1:19). Mary is human, and humans because of sin, do not stand in the presence of God. However, the Archangel Gabriel recognizes in Mary a dignity superior to his own; furthermore, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is already deduced here, namely that Mary was conceived without sin.

Mary – It means enlightened and illuminating. Illuminated inwardly by the Sun who is Christ, being herself like the illuminating moon; and just as the light of the moon exists only in reference to the sun, so Mary is a finger always pointing to Christ

Full of grace – Grace is the presence of God; the angel recognizes that Mary is full of God’s presence. Full of grace because she was conceived without original sin. Because she was the mediatrix of the principal Grace, which is the gift that God gave to humanity, Jesus, Mary is now the mediatrix of all the graces that God grants to those who love Him. 

The Lord is with you – Mary is the dwelling place of the God Most High; Mary is the new ark of the covenant; while the old ark contained only sacraments of the presence and wonders that God worked in his people, Mary contains the same God made man. Mary is also both the temple and the spouse of the Holy Spirit. 

The old ark contained manna, the manna that the people ate only to be hungry again; Christ is the new manna that satiates for eternal life. The old ark contained the tablets of the law, the Ten Commandments; Christ is the new law, the law of love that sums up the commandments and goes beyond them, because he invites us to love without measure, whereas the commandments only told us what not to do. If the old ark contained Moses’ staff with which he guided his people and worked wonders, the new ark contains the Good Shepherd, the one who gives his life for the sheep and tells us that we should only recognize one authority, one Father, one Teacher, one Lord who is God.

Blessed are you among women – After the Angel’s Annunciation, the Visitation to her cousin Elizabeth begins. If in the Annunciation Mary related with God, loving God, praying, contemplating, then in the Visitation Mary relates with her neighbour, loving her neighbour by helping her cousin, acting and putting God’s word into practice in concrete works of charity.

We make Elizabeth’s greeting our own. In fact, the first beatitude of the Gospel is spoken by Elizabeth, inspired by the Holy Spirit, to Mary: "Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” (Luke 1:45) 

Mary is the faith of Abraham from generation to generation, which finds in Mary its broadest and ultimate fulfilment. Through Mary, not Jacob, Abraham has descendants more numerous than the sands of the sea, since he is the father of all believers outside the meager borders of Israel.

Blessed is the fruit of your womb – The wheat that God sowed in Mary's womb has become for us the bread that gives us life and eternal salvation. (Canticle of Fatima)

A disciple is one who listens to the word of God and puts it in practice. Mary listened to the word of God from the Angel and put it into practice by accepting and incarnating it. So, Mary is mother because she was first a disciple; she is the fertile ground par excellence, because in her the seed of the Word bore 100% fruit. Mary is also the fulfillment of Jacob's dream: the ladder that connects heaven and earth. 

Whenever we recite the Hail Mary, we are uniting heaven, represented by the angel Gabriel, with earth, represented by her cousin Elizabeth. By means of Mary's ladder, God descends to earth and Christ ascends with humanity to the Father.

Jesus
Strange as it may seem, the Hail Mary prayer is a Christ-centered prayer. He is the subject, the raison d'être of the prayer; it is in him and through him that Mary is praised. He is the center of the prayer that unites its two parts. 

Just as a stone thrown into a lake makes concentric circles that travel until they reach the borders of the lake, so Christ, when he came into the world, occupies the centre of human history, his action gradually making itself felt, until he is all in all, (1 Corinthians 15:28). Jesus is the cornerstone (Acts 4:11), the foundation of the Church, the one who holds everything together in a harmonious and secure whole. 

Conclusion – The words of the Angel, followed by Elizabeth’s words, make up the biblical part of the "Hail Mary" prayer which ends with JESUS, who is the center and the glue that binds the Bible to the Tradition of the Church, which is represented in the second part of this prayer. 

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Charismatic Jesus, Systematic Paul

May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything! As for those who will follow this rule – peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God. From now on, let no one make trouble for me; for I carry the marks of Jesus branded on my body. Galatians 6:14-17

Those whom Jesus chose to be his apostles and those who followed him during his life and afterwards were simple folks. None of the greats of his time became his disciple, neither from the world of politics, nor from the world of the Jewish religion, nor from the intellectuals of the time; none became followers of Jesus. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were sympathizers, but it was not until after Jesus’ death that they gave their lives to the cause. 

Just as the charismatic St. Francis of Assisi needed a systematic and organized Friar Elias, the happened with Jesus of Nazareth. Someone was needed to systematize, to interpret in the light of Judaism and the world of that time the meaning of Jesus' coming, for Israel and for the whole world.

St. Paul was a contemporary of Jesus, but he did not live with Him or know Him personally like the twelve apostles and many other disciples. However, he was the first great theologian that the Church had; he was the one who was best able to interpret and find the meaning of the historical facts that the other apostles experienced, preparing Christianity and endowing it with a theology so that it could enter into dialogue with the Greco-Roman world. 

I Boast of the Cross of Christ
The cross as an object or symbol does not carry the meaning it did 2,000 years ago as it does today. Today it is the symbol of Christianity, which is why we see it on the steeple of every Church; it is also a symbol of health in pharmacies, and of salvation and relief in the Red Cross. 

At the time of Christ, for Jews, Greeks, and Romans alike, it was an instrument of torture, an object of ignominy, scorn, and shame. After the Roman victory over the rebellious slaves led by the gladiator Spartacus in 71 BC, the Romans crucified 6,000 rebels along the 200 km of the Appian Way, between Rome and Capua. The worst that could be said about a person is that he had died on a cross. In terms of reputation for the victim and his family, it is the modern-day equivalent of dying from AIDS.
 
The World is Crucified to Me and I to the World
The reason why St. Paul boast of the cross is not primarily because both the cross and suffering are a means to salvation, but rather, in this context, because it was the cross of Christ that made all things clear. In the judgment of Christ, it was the powers of this world who were truly judged, and in the cross of Christ, it was this world with its values that was truly crucified.

It is in this sense that the apostle says, the world is crucified to me and I to the world. In the resurrection of the Crucified One, it was proven that the world with its powers, hatreds, divisions and strife that led to Christ’s condemnation and death, is unjust and is itself judged, condemned and crucified. Saint Paul also died to that world, because he now obeys another power and is governed by other values. 

Neither Circumcision nor Uncircumcision
Circumcision was the physical mark that distinguished Jews from non-Jews. Saint. Paul says that this is worthless, serves no purpose, does not lead to salvation and is no guarantee of anything. The same can be said of uncircumcision. 

It was St. Paul who rescued Christianity from the heavy burden and heritage of Judaism. Only he, a convert from strict Jewish observance, was able to cut the umbilical cord and emancipate Christianity from Jewish tutelage once and for all.

For Paul, the previous world, with its racist, blue-blooded or sexist discriminations and classifications, ceased to make any sense after Christ.

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.   Galatians 3:28. 

With a single sentence, Paul interprets very well what the world of human relationships should be like after Christ. Any discrimination based on race, social position or status, culture or sex no longer makes any sense. Dignity and respect are due to all human beings because all are brothers and sisters of Jesus and children of the same Heavenly Father.

Peace and Mercy for God's New Israel
With Christ’s resurrection, a new creation is inaugurated; a new way of seeing and living life. This new way of living life also forms a new people of Israel which is the mystical body of Christ, the Church in which we are all invited to participate: 

For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are his offspring.” Acts 17:28

I Carry the Marks of Christ Branded on My Body
A new flock, a new mark to distinguish those who are and are not of Christ; the physical mark that replaces circumcision: the five wounds of Christ that he, seated at the right hand of the Father, wears as historical proof of his incarnation, death and resurrection. 

Some saints, who most identified with Christ, like Francis of Assisi, were marked with the five wounds of Christ; those very same wounds, imprinted in our national flag, have always been the pride of Portuguese people. These are marks that remain like a tattoo and always remind us of how much God loved us to the point of giving his life for us.

Conclusion – Jesus preached, performed miracles, healed, and went around the world doing good. Paul, not part of the Twelve, was the one who best interpreted the life of Jesus and its meaning for humanity. 

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC