Christmas: Platonic love, incarnate love

Oh flowers, oh flowers of the green pine,
Do you have any news of my beloved?
Oh God, and where is he?

Oh flowers, oh flowers of the green bough,
Do you have any news of my sweetheart?
Oh God, and where is he? 

(from Cantigas de Amigo written by King D. Dinis of Portugal (1261-1325))

When Portugal was still part of the Kingdom of Leon the language that was spoken throughout the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula was Galician-Portuguese. A language originated in the artistic world, so that the first writings in this language were the songs about friends and love that the troubadours sang on their way to Santiago de Compostela from France.

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder" – What really characterized these songs of love and friendship was the fact that the lovers were far apart. Meetings were scarce and so, consumed by longing, the lovers lived their love platonically in their imagination and fantasy, fuelled by scarce news and letters. When after a long time, even years, the lovers finally meet, the joy was indescribable...

It was also this way, the love between God and man, man and God was for a long time. A platonic love that was nurtured by the messengers, the prophets whom God sent into the world. Until one day... "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son," (John 3:16).

In Jesus of Nazareth, born in Bethlehem, humanity and God, God, and humanity, finally meet. This encounter is symbolized in the parable of the wedding guests (Matthew 22:1-14); the wedding in which God marries his son to humanity. A wedding in which the destiny of humanity is united with the destiny of Christ, and vice versa.

Religion and revelation
"Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son..." (Hebrews 1:1-2)

This phrase, from the letter to the Hebrews, can sum up all religions other than Christianity. Religion, from the Latin "religare", means relationship with God and with one’s neighbour. Ever since the human species has been conscious of itself, it has believed in the possible existence of a higher being, transcendent to everything and everyone because it is the creator of everything and everyone. At all times and in all places, man has sought to communicate with this divine being, God, to obtain his favour.

Cellphones, television and radio waves cross our space and we do not hear or see them, but we know that this is the case because when we have the right instruments, we can detect them. Similarly, God also sought to communicate with man and man with God; but this communication is not accessible to everyone either, it is necessary to have a special sensitivity to enter into this communication.

There have always been people with a special sensitivity to communicate with God. In the biblical tradition, the prophets were the designated catalysts for God’s plans for the people and the people’s petitions to God. Communication, however, was not without its difficulties; as in the field of telecommunications, there was a lot of "interference"; the prophet’s personality and character, his defects and prejudices, filtered the message and it did not reach the recipient as it had left the sender. On the other hand, very often these prophets understood that Heaven was closed and God was cloaked in silence.

"O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest" (Psalm 22:2).  The people of Israel were never satisfied with this communication, which was so lacking, and lived in continual restlessness.

"'Come,' my heart says, 'seek his face!' Your face, Lord, do I seek" (Psalm 22:8). True love never gets used to absence.

Christianity is not a religion, because it does not consist of man’s effort or attempts to reach God; on the contrary, Christianity is a revelation because it is God who seeks man and reveals himself to man. As Jesus said in the gospel, "You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name" John 15:16.

Christmas the day of encounter
"All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." Matthew 11:27

No matter how hard he tried, man could never reach God on his own; that is why, unlike all other religions, Christianity believes that, because is a Revelation, God did not send messages, he came himself.

At Christmas, we celebrate the great truth that God is not wrapped in silence, but in swaddling cloth and laid in a manger. With the birth of Jesus, God breaks the silence, eliminates the distance and undoes the inaccessibility. Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us, at our doorstep; our travelling companion in life as he was with the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

In Jesus, the true God and true man, the long-awaited meeting of humanity with God and God with humanity finally takes place, a full communication without interference without intermediaries.  The love that was platonic for so long is now tangible.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Inmaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary

Origin of sin and original sin
God created man in his image and likeness; with sin we lose God’s likeness, but we still retain his image. We are no longer as God created us; the sin of our parents has spread through space and time, profoundly altering human nature. Man built his own hell, typified by the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The flood, to destroy everything and start over, with Noah's family, was the first plan to save the human race. The descendants of Noah soon returned to the sin of their ancestors.

"The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge" (Jeremiah 31:29). Without knowing Mendel's laws of heredity, the Hebrews were already aware that certain evils passed from parents to children. In fact, the sin of Adam and Eve corrupted them, not only existentially as people, but also genetically, so that the consequences would be suffered by the entire human race.

Usurpation of the criterion of good and evil
Man’s pseudo-emancipation, wanting to be like God, having usurped the prerogative of good and evil from God, was the origin of sin or the original sin, which is passed from generation to generation because it has modified the DNA of the human species. Evil has taken root within the human race in such a way that, as Jesus said in Matthew 15:11, "it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles". It is, therefore, not a bad upbringing that makes a person evil; evil is already inside the person.

While the criterion of good and evil was in the center of the Garden of Eden, and belonged exclusively to God, earth was the Kingdom of God; there was peace, unity, consensus, because everyone was submitted to a single criterion. When man, wanting to be like God, placed himself at the centre, stealing the prerogative of good and evil, brought division, then war, subjectivity, arbitrariness, relativism and discord ensued. Everyone wants to be the center. There cannot be two centers; if I have the criterion of good and evil, then you do not have it or I do not recognize that you have it.

Nobody does evil thinking that he is doing evil; Hitler, when he killed 5 million Jews, thought he was doing humanity a service; suicide bombers who kill themselves, killing innocent people, believe they are sacrificing themselves for a greater good; Muslim extremists kill in the name of God...

We are apples with bugs
Parents who work hard to educate their children are stunned when they start lying, stealing and doing all kinds of mischief that they never taught their children. Evil is within us and does not need to be taught. As the psychologist Jung would say, evil belongs to humanity’s collective unconsciousness. Each evil act that an individual carries out is installed in that collective database in such a way that the individuals who are born after, are born with the ability to do all sorts of evil without needing to learn anything because we are all connected to the collective database where everything humans have done evil and good is engraved.

Many people, when they see an apple with a small hole in it, think that the hole was made by a bug when it entered the apple, when the opposite is true, the hole was made by the bug when it came out of the apple.  The bug was an egg that an insect laid inside the apple when it was conceived, that is, when it was still a flower.  We are all apples with a bug, evil is inside us and it only needs a certain situation to reveal itself.
 
It is not as the proverb says, "The situation makes the thief". Everyone, sooner or later, is faced with situations in which they can steal; we are all capable of stealing from the get-go. Stealing or not stealing is going to depend on the degree of education in human values we have at the moment of temptation. Only this degree of education in human values can counteract the innate tendency in all of us.

From Eva to Ave
There are two reasons why God came to us in human form: the first is to tell us, in a definitive way, what God is like, and the second is to tell us what human beings are like and what they should be like. Christ is in fact the measure for the human being, the template for humanity, the one with whom all individuals must measure themselves because he is the norm, he is the model, the paradigm. Christ is the man that God created in Adam, before Adam disobeyed; in fact, Jesus showed, by his words and deeds, that he remained obedient to God all his life.

Just as Christ is the second Adam, Mary is the second Eve. Ave is in fact Eve in reverse. Christ, the son of the Most High God, could not have Eve as his mother, after the sin; for this reason, at the moment of her conception, when the half-cell of Joachim joined with the half-cell of his wife, Anne, God acted to prevent the ruined genes that had been passed down from generation to generation since the sin of Adam and Eve from also passing on to Mary.

Mary was conceived without original sin, because she was destined to be the mother of God’s son. It makes no sense to be incarnate in the human nature that Adam and Eve modified with sin. That is why Mary, who was to be the mother of the Lord, was preserved from this negative inheritance common to all mortals.

In Ethiopia, there is no negative association with the stepmother figure. Often one is the biological mother and the other is the mother who raises and educates. The latter is called "Ingera enat" or the bread mother. When I was studying theology, I had a colleague who called his biological aunt mother, and his biological mother aunt. My colleague had been rejected by his biological mother and taken in by her sister, who raised him. There was so much love between them that when she was terminally ill with cancer, she did not die until she saw her son (biologically her nephew) ordained a priest.

Eve is the biological mother of all the living beings, Mary is our bread mother, of that Eucharistic bread which is her son who was born in a town called Bethlehem, which literally means house of bread, and whom she laid him in a manger, a container where food is eaten, so that we could all be fed by him.

Eve is our progenitor, but she abandoned us to our fate, Mary is the one who provides for our needs when at Cana she says, "They have no wine" (John 2:3).

Eve is the one who taught us to do evil, Mary is the one who educates us and teaches us to do good by pointing to her son and saying, "Do whatever he tells you" (John 2:5).

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Self-Esteem

Then God said: "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” Genesis 1:26

Importance of self-esteem
Everything leads me to believe that the way I see myself is more important than the way others see me. Anwar el-Sadat

The human being is always a subject and never an object; however, in self-knowledge, the same person is both subject and object; subject because he wants to know, object because he himself is the object and objective of that knowledge. After becoming aware of ourselves, knowing ourselves and who we are, the third question is whether or not we accept ourselves as we are.  

Self-awareness and self-knowledge are more acts of our intelligence than our will. Owning and accepting ourselves is an act of the will. If knowing ourselves is like looking in the mirror, self-esteem is liking what we see, and accepting ourselves as we are. One thing is what I am objectively, that is, how others see me, another is the image I have of myself, which is always subjective, that is, how I see and value myself.

The positive or negative way a person sees himself necessarily affects the way he acts. Low self-esteem can lead to behavioral problems. For example, when ten of the spies who had been sent to explore the land of Canaan saw themselves as grasshoppers compared to the tall stature of the inhabitants of Canaan, they manifested their low self-esteem, from which and because of which they concluded that they were incapable of taking possession of the land (Numbers 13:31-33).

Genesis of self-esteem
Self-esteem is the result of all the experiences and interpersonal relationships that we have had in our lives. Each and every person we meet in the course of our lives, especially in the early years of our existence, has had a positive or negative effect on the way we see and evaluate ourselves.

A child does not know himself by what he thinks he is, but by what others tell him he is; if they tell him he is bad, then he thinks he is bad; if they tell him he is good, then he thinks he is good; if they love him unconditionally, he will come to love himself unconditionally; if they despise him, he will also despise himself.

How low self-esteem develops
Children who have been physically, sexually or verbally abused or violated; who have been used as objects or manipulated in any way; little or never caressed, constantly given negative messages about themselves; ridiculed or ignored, criticized and never praised for their successes and for doing the right thing; compared unfavorably with others. These children will suffer from low self-esteem in the future, which will not be easy to get rid of.

How self-esteem develops
On the other hand, children who are positively educated will have self-esteem, if they often hear words of praise, "I trust you", "I know you are trying hard" in the face of failure that was preceded by effort, saying "you did the best you could"; “I'm impressed with you”, “thank you for being honest”, “I’m so proud of you”…

Don't miss any opportunity to praise good work and good choices. We assume many of the things our children do without acknowledging them. Always reinforce the desired behaviors. Congratulate children when they make the right choice in any situation, do not let this go unnoticed, authenticate the act with a smile and a hug. Avoid the habit of congratulating negatively: "It's about time you did that..." This is more a humiliation than a compliment. Avoid putting children down and comparing them with other children.

Where it should not be based
To paraphrase the gospel, there are those who base their self-esteem on quicksand; on changing realities, so one day they may feel good about themselves and the next day depressed.

Physical appearance – This is not a good reason to like ourselves because we will get older. Unlike inner beauty, it is not something we can grow into, so what is a source of pride today will be a source of shame tomorrow. Furthermore, as the episode of David’s choice as a king proved, God looks at a person’s inner self and not at their external appearance (1 Samuel 16:7).

Performance – If our self-esteem is based on our performance, then it is linked to our successes and failures; it goes up when we succeed, and down when we fail. On the other hand, others can be more successful than us, so should we feel less worthy? As for my past performances, God has already forgiven me in Christ (Colossians 2:13); as for the present, he loves me unconditionally (Romans 5:8); as for the future, I am capable of all things in Him who gives me strength (Philippians 4 13).

Wealth – Material goods are another unstable foundation on which to base our self-esteem. Today we have, tomorrow we may not; the treasures of earth are subject to moth, rust and thieves. Those in heaven are protected from the vicissitudes of life. Furthermore, as Jesus says, even if a man lives in abundance, his life does not depend on his possessions (Luke 12:15).

Feedback from others – Another shaky foundation that makes us dependent on others is adapting our behaviour to what is currently popular; we become actors and not ourselves, and we cannot be happy when we are not ourselves. We seek fame and are dependent on it. We will have the experience of Christ, that is, crowds were cheering him on Palm Sunday, and soon after on Good Friday, the crowds were shouting, “Crucify him”.

Where it should be based
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Eleanor Roosevelt

Self-esteem is the evaluative perception of ourselves – a set of beliefs, perceptions, thoughts, evaluations, feelings and tendencies of conduct in relation to ourselves that shape and determine our way of being and acting, and how we are in the world and with others.


True self-esteem is rooted in our relationship with God... (John 1:12). True love is unconditional; God loves us unconditionally, our parents love us unconditionally, and we must love ourselves unconditionally.

Without inferiority or superiority complexes; true self-esteem is a realistic, sensible and honest view of ourselves; our virtues and our defects, our talents and our limitations, our values and our beliefs; capitalizing both on our past mistakes, understanding them as lessons learned, and our successes.

Low – we are unaware of or undervalue our talents; overvalue our limitations; we are insecure
Normal – we are self-aware, sensible, objective and make healthy self-criticism of our talents and limitations
High – we ignore or undervalue our limitations; we overvalue our talents; we are braggarts

Evidence that you do not have
Exaggerated self-criticism creates in you a habitual state of constant dissatisfaction with yourself. You are a perfectionist; you feel bad when things do not turn out as perfectly as you want. Failure can affect you deeply. You have a neurotic and scrupulous guilt complex; you condemn yourself for behaviours that are not objectively bad; you exaggerate the magnitude of your mistakes; you never completely forgive yourself. You have strong depressive and pessimistic tendency; you see everything darkness in your life, in your future; you generally lack appetite and have no zest for life.

You do not recognize your talents, you are chronically indecisive, and not for lack of information, but for an exaggerated fear of making mistakes. You do not solve your problems, on the other hand, out of an exaggerated desire to please others; you dare not say no for fear of displeasing others; you are easily influenced by others

You are hypersensitive to criticism from others, becoming resentful; but you yourself are hypercritical of others. You are irascible, get angry about everything and nothing; you like to blame others; you brag, play the clown, are aggressive and complain just to get attention.

Evidence that you have
You believe in certain values and principles, you are willing to defend them, even when faced with opposition; you have enough self-confidence to modify these values if new experiences indicate that you were wrong. You are able to act as you see fit, trusting in your own judgment, without feeling guilty when others do not share your opinion. You trust your ability to solve your own problems without being cowed by failures or difficulties. You are willing to ask others for help when you need it.

You do not waste time worrying excessively about what you have done or what happened to you in the past, or what might happen to you in the future. You learn from the past and project yourself into the future, but you live intensely in the present, in the here and now.

As a person, you feel equal to others, neither inferior or superior; you recognize differences in status, professional prestige and economic position without feeling envious. You take for granted that you are interesting and valuable to others, at least to those with whom you associate in a friendly way. You do not allow yourself to be manipulated by others, but are willing to collaborate with them if it seems necessary and convenient. You are sensitive to the feelings and needs of others; you respect sensible rules of coexistence and understand that you have no right or desire to grow or enjoy yourself at the expense of others.

Conclusion – Love God above everyone, love everyone as you love yourself, and love yourself as God loves you.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Bullying

In 2013, right here at a school in Palmeira (Braga), a young boy committed suicide because he could no longer stand the systematic and persistent bullying to which his classmates had subjected him. Because silence is part of the problem, I want to be part of the solution at the start of this new school year with these lines. As I regularly visit schools to talk about the Mission, I want to help them better fulfill their role of forming not only intellectually but also humanely to be people who will take over the reins of our world tomorrow.

Bullying in chickens and pigs
During my years of specialization in Moral Theology or Ethics, I had a special admiration for the work of Konrad Lorenz, the founder of Ethology, the comparative study of human and animal behaviour. Without wanting to undermine human dignity, Lorenz concluded that many of our behaviours are also exhibited by animals, especially those closest to us in evolution.

The 5 million years that separate us from our closest primates, for better or for worse, have not been enough to transform or end the animality that is an integral part of our being. Although we are self-conscious, we exercise more or less control over ourselves, our feelings and thoughts, what we have in common with other living beings, our animal instinct, is by far what most motivates and determines our day-to-day behaviour.

When I was looking after laying hens, chickens and pigs, I noticed that whenever one of these animals was injured for whatever reason, the others would go and bite or poke at the wound until they killed the injured. Knowing this, as a child we would look inside the pen for any chicken or pig that had an open, bleeding wound so that we could remove it in time and put it elsewhere until the wound healed, before the others killed it.

"It never rains but it pours" says a Spanish proverb. Bullying is what hyenas do by chasing a thin, injured horse that is barely standing and is about to die. Bullying is the vulture chasing a baby, who is crawling with hunger and without energy in the Darfur refugee camp in Sudan to a place where there is food. I am referring to a photo that went around the world and caused the death, by suicide, of the photographer who won an award for it but did not help the child or know whether or not the child had been eaten by the vulture.

Bullying among humans is, in my view, modelled on this animal behaviour. Those who practice it seek out the weakest, the most timid and vulnerable colleagues, for they do not mess with the strong, with those who can stand up for themselves. If Konrad Lorenz were alive, perhaps he might validate my observations and conclude that bullying is animal behaviour after all, and therefore irrational.

This kind of behaviour does not only exist in schools. Bullying is what the Pharisees did when they brought a woman caught in adultery to Jesus to be stoned. Bullying is what the soldiers did to Jesus by kneeling in mockery in front of him crowned with thorns saying, "Hail King of the Jews"; bullying is the cruel, blood thirsty people, without pity or mercy, in front of a Jesus covered in blood shouting, "Crucify him!" Bullying has been all the lynchings in human history, when angry people turn into the most irrational beast and the most monstrous animal. Human beings can become more irrational than animals, in fact, as Lorenz noted, they are the only animals that kill within their own species just for the sake of killing.

Psychology of the bully
Most bullies are physically stronger and taller than their peers, they specifically seek out the weakest, the most timid and the least equipped to defend themselves. Ignored and abused at home, at school they strike back or seek the respect and love they do not get at home.

Those who are not loved unconditionally at home, seek this love on the street or at school in inappropriate ways, getting into trouble with others to get notice, to gain popularity and friendship, but all they get is a false love based on fear.

When they reach adulthood, they are antisocial and more prone to commit crimes, beat their wives and children, thus producing a new generation of bullies.
 
Psychology of the victim
Victims are generally more sensitive, cautious and calm than other children; they are socially inept, never initiate a conversation and isolate themselves from their peers. As they have a negative view of violence, they flee from confrontations and conflicts and radiate anxiety, fear and vulnerability, which are sniffed out by the aggressors, in the same way a dog sniff out our fear and anxiety before attacking us.

Their fear and physical weakness, low and submissive tone of voice, are part of a body language that gives them away and attracts the bullies to them. Frequently these children are rejected, not only by the bullies but also by other classmates; they end up developing a negative attitude towards school, and when they start getting bullied, they become even more anxious and fearful, which increase their vulnerability and the possibility of being further victimized, thus entering a vicious circle and spiral of stress that leads many to suicide.

The one standing at the door is as guilty as the one robbing the house
Often the victim is in such a fragile state that, out of fear or shame, he does not report the bullying or seek help, thus ends up suffering alone... for this reason, anyone who knows a case or contemplates an episode of bullying and does nothing has an added responsibility; silence and inaction make us an accomplice.

Therefore, the opposite of bullying, is not not-bullying but being a good Samaritan, helping by condemning and reporting such behaviour.  If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem; your silence makes you an accomplice and a murderer if the victim commits suicide, like that young boy did in Palmeira.

The silence of the majority of the German people in the face of the genocide of 5 million Jews made them accomplices. Mafia bosses count on the silence of those who, even by chance, are witnesses to their actions. Without silence there would be no mafia. Without silence there would be no bullying. Our silence is therefore culpable, and part of the problem because it always leads to impunity of the perpetrators and the fatality of the victims.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Every saint had a past every sinner has a future

"'Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?' (...) Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them,

'Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.' (...) When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.  Jesus straightened up and said to her, 'Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?' She said, 'No one, sir.' And Jesus said, 'Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.'" John 8:1-11

" Who is without sin be the first to throw a stone ". Because we are all sinners in one way or another, our common misery should arouse compassion for one another. Instead, most of the time, it prompts criticism; a scathing and hypercritical criticism, because no one is free of guilt. Jesus advises us not to judge so that we will not be judged; he also warns us that the measure we use with others will be the measure used with us on judgment day; furthermore, about this mania of ours to point finger, he says in a reproving tone, "Why do you see the speck in your neighbour's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?" (Matthew 7:3)

The human eye cannot focus near and far at the same time; for this reason, those who criticize others abundantly, that is, those who focus far and put their attention on the faults of others, are very likely deficient in self-criticism, that is, they do not focus near to see their own defects.

But why do we focus better far than near? And why do we take pleasure in exposing the sins of others in order to humiliate them? Because all humiliation is an indirect and undermined form of self-exaltation; by pointing the finger at someone, I am drawing attention from others to myself, and subliminally saying: "I am not like that" and "I am better"...

Unlike man, God does not want the sinner to die, but to be converted and live (Ezekiel 18:23). God, who forgives and forgets, is more interested in our present and our future than in our past; he believes in our potentials and recognizes our talents better than we do, because he gave them to us and it is on this basis that he forgives and invites us to change; what God did in sinners like Peter, Paul, Augustine and so many others, he can do in us also. They all had a sinful past, but for God it was their future of holiness that counted.

St. Peter, the coward
St. Peter, the one who even said to his friend and teacher, "I would give my life for you" (Luke 22:33), but when confronted by a servant girl as being one of Jesus’ companions, he denied it three times, and went as far as to insist that he did not even know him.

St. Paul, the accomplice in murders
St. Paul is the classic example of conversion, which in Greek is called metanoia and means to change one's mind and way of thinking. Our lives are governed by our thoughts or ideas; many of these are preconceived and irrational, which means that our behaviour is also inappropriate.

Conversion as metanoia involves confronting thoughts in order to change them. There is a theory in psychotherapy that starts from this principle. The Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) is based on the concept that emotions and behaviours are the result of cognitive processes; and that it is possible for human beings to modify these processes to achieve different ways of feeling and behaving.

On meeting Christ on the road to Damascus, Saul changed his mind, changed his way of thinking regarding Jesus, and if before he had persecuted Christians, and had even connived in the execution of many (Acts 7:54-60), now with the same conviction and fervour he proclaimed Christ.  He ended up being, among the apostles, the one who travelled the most, the one who suffered the most for the gospel and the one who was most intent on educating and guiding the small Christian communities born out of his preaching with letters that contained his meditations and reflections on the mystery of Christ.

St. Augustine, carefree living
The great St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, who together with St. Thomas Aquinas are, respectively, the "Plato" and the "Aristotle" of Catholic theology, was not born a saint but a sinner, like the rest of us. At the age of 15 and 16, he led a life of a rogue; at 17, he started an affair with a girl which lasted 14 years; from this union, which never resulted in marriage, a son was born who lived until his teens. The incessant prayers and tears from his mother, St. Monica, led both Augustine and his father to the grace of conversion.

Misery and Mercy
Returning to the sinful woman; after everyone had abandoned their so-called authority to judge, she was left alone with Jesus; as St. Augustine himself said, misery and mercy remained; human misery represented by the sinful woman and the divine mercy represented by Jesus.

God's response to human misery is his divine mercy. There are many people who are trapped in their past who are unaware that there is no sin or human misery greater than divine mercy, and that the holiest of saints were also sinners and if they, despite of their misery, had a future, then so do we, everyone has one.  Every saint had a past as a sinner, every sinner can have a future of a saint.

Conclusion – You can only be a saint to others, to yourself and in front of God you are always a sinner. The day you stop being a sinner, you stop being a saint.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Halloween

The origin of "All Hallows’ Eve"
Halloween is celebrated every year on October 31st in the United States and Canada.  But it was not in these traditionally Protestant countries that this holiday first came about, whose name derives from the term "All Hallows’ Eve", which means the Eve of All Saints.

In fact, All Hallows’ Eve and All Saints’ Day, as well as the day after, the Day of the Faithful Departed, are the Christianization of festivals that the Celts celebrated, especially in Scotland and Ireland, many years before the arrival of Christianity in those lands.

Halloween has its origin in an ancient Celtic festival called Samhain, which in Gaelic means summer’s end. The Celts, who lived 2000 years ago in northern France and the Iberian Peninsula, in Scotland and Ireland, celebrated the new year on November 1st. This day marked the end of summer and harvest, the falling of the leaves and the beginning of the dark, cold winter; a time of year that could not fail to be associated with the end of human life, with death.

The Celts believed that on the night of October 31st, their new year’s eve, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead begins to blur and almost disappears; the ghosts of the dead returned to earth and roamed around looking for bodies to inhabit.  As the living did not want to be possessed by spirits, they dressed up in costumes and paraded through the streets, making lots of noise to confuse, frighten and scare away the spirits.

The parade passed through the streets of the village until it reached a large bonfire created by a Druid priest outside the village.  The bonfire was lit primarily to honour the sun god, to thank him for the summer harvest, but it was also a means to ward off the furtive spirits. If a person showed signs of already being possessed by a spirit, he was sacrificed as an example to dissuade other spirits from possessing another human body.

By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered most of the Celtic territory. During the 400 years they ruled the Celtic lands, the Roman festival known as Feralia, which commemorated the passing of the dead, was combined with this traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.

In the 8th century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1st to honour all saints and martyrs. And November 2 to honour and pray for the eternal rest of all the faithful departed.  These two festivities incorporated some of the traditions of Samhain. The Church did not manage to Christianize all the traditions and customs of the Celts, and some survived until they were brought to America by the Irish immigrants, who fled the potato famine of 1846.

Halloween today
The Enlightenment, rationalism, the great scientific discoveries of the 19th century and the technological advancement of the 20th century have led to a veritable witch-hunt of superstition. We can say that Western people are generally less superstitious today than they were centuries ago. In this context, Halloween is the day when we laugh at superstitions; and when we laugh at them, we break their spell, and they no longer have any power over us.

In fact, nobody is afraid of the costumes and masks that are paraded on this day, but we would have been scared of them in a different context. Humour dispels the fear, the power, and the placebo and suggestive effect that superstitions have on people; as long as we laugh at superstitions, we do not take them seriously; while we have fun with them, they have no power or effect over us; when we are afraid of them, then yes, they are as powerful as a dog that attack us after sniffing out our fear.

Superstition and faith
Disheartened by the coldness of decades of atheism, and theoretical and practical rationalism, which fought faith as if it were superstition and superstition as if it were faith, many have taken refuge in a new religion called New Age. This New Age is a syncretism, or Russian salad, of the main religions on our planet, associated with all types of superstition, sorcery, and witchcraft.

Very close to us, as an exponent of this type of thinking is the Brazilian writer, Paulo Coelho. The box office success of films like Harry Potter and the series about the occult and vampires can be seen as a reaction to the atheism and materialism that marked the second half of the last century.

The difference between faith and superstition is that faith is reasonable and plausible; there are always reasons that help and support our faith in God and man; everyone who believes has reasons for doing so; superstition, on the other hand, is completely irrational, it is blind faith.

To believe that a black cat is bad luck, and that a rabbit's foot and horseshoe are good luck, is to assume that these material objects have spiritual powers hidden within themselves; this is an irrational belief, because what is material cannot have spiritual power; only a spiritual being can have spiritual power; matter is always matter. God and our neighbour are the only object of our faith. Superstition, on the other hand, has as its object material realities, things, animals and artifacts.

This leads us to reflect on the difference between an icon and an idol. For the superstitious, the black cat, the horseshoe and the rabbit's foot, are idols, because these objects have value in themselves, they are believed to have a spiritual power hidden in them.

An icon, on the other hand, is like an idol, a material object, but it has no value in itself; in fact, its function is to invoke a reality that is beyond itself and transport us to this reality; the wood, carved in a figure of Jesus, has no value in itself but evokes and transports us to the One who does have great value for us; the image is not Christ but represents him.  

Protestant iconoclasts accuse the Catholics of worshipping idols (images of Jesus, Mary and the saints), because they do not know the difference between an idol and an icon.  

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

To have or not to have a passport...

New evangelization versus Mission Ad Gentes "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Matthew 28:19

In the missionary commission, Jesus sent his apostles all over the world to make disciples of all nations and peoples, and not just of only one nation or people, i.e. his own. Today, however, obsessed with the decline of the faithful and the "New Evangelization" as the only solution to this problem, the Church, especially in Europe, has turned inward and placed "Mission Ad Gentes", the purpose for which Christ constituted it, on the back burner.

As a proof of this tendency, the Portuguese Episcopal Conference itself, which in its entire history only recently produced a document on the Mission, even placed the New Evangelization and Mission Ad Gentes in the same commission.

In the past, there were diocesan priests who wanted to become missionaries; today the movement is reversed; more and more missionaries are becoming diocesans. After having possessed the most perfect vocation in the Church, as our founder Joseph Allamano used to say, they now turn their backs to the Mission; after being fishers of men, they are now content to be shepherds; after being eagles, they are now content to be farmyard hens.

On the other hand, perhaps to "theologically" justify staying here, the concept of "Ad Gentes" has been watered down; today any pastoral activity is considered "Ad Gentes". When everything is "Ad Gentes" nothing is "Ad Gentes". What belongs to everyone belongs to no one; salt and sugar disappear from sight when they are diluted; the "Ad Gentes" turns into "Ad Nientes".

If the aim of the twelve apostles had been to convert all the people of Israel, and if they had remained in their own country, Christianity would not have the universal dimension it has today, and the Jews would not have converted either.

The thesis of Otto Kuss’ book "The Third Church at the Gates" argues that it will be the evangelized from other countries, who will once again evangelize the old continent. The new evangelization will therefore not be carried out by us, but by those to whom we went to evangelize many generations ago; in fact, there are already among us, missionaries, clergy and lay movements from these countries among us, perhaps trying not to achieve a "New Evangelization", as John Paul II understood it, that is, to evangelize again, but rather an "Evangelization Anew", as Cardinal Martini understands it, that is, a new way of evangelizing.

There was a time when Europe gave, out of its abundance, to the universal Church; today, in the face of scarcity, it is natural to think more of oneself and to close in on oneself; it may be natural, but it is not evangelical.

This is not what we learn in the Old Testament, in the episode of the widow of Zarephath who made a loaf of bread for the prophet Elijah from the last bit of flour that she had reserved for herself and her son, before they both died of hunger. The same idea is highlighted in the New Testament, in the episode of the poor widow who gave from what she needed to survive. From the point of view of the gospel, it is not those who withhold who have, but those who give.

Pastoral maintenance
"What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?" Matthew 18:12

The sad reality is that parishes do not go out of their "business as usual" routine, which translates into maintenance ministry that can be graphically represented in the inversion of the parable of the lost sheep: all that the shepherd does is keep and entertain the one sheep in the fold and does not care about the 99 that are lost.

In fact, going in search of them is the work of a "good shepherd" and the good shepherd is more like the fisherman, because he leaves his comfort zone to go in search of the lost. Since I do not see any major "New Evangelization" initiatives in our Church, could this have been invented to counteract and take away strength from the Mission Ad Gentes? And therefore, a pretext for doing neither?

A citizenship card or a passport?
When we are born our name is written in the civil registry, and later we are given a national identity document, which defines us legally in the same way as our DNA defines us biologically. Later we are given our baptismal certificate, when our name is registered in the Christian community book.

The citizenship card only defines us as Portuguese in Portugal, while the passport, although it is no more than a duplicate of the citizenship card, defines us as Portuguese in the world; it opens for us the doors to all the countries that make up this planet. Everyone in Portugal has a citizenship card, but not everyone has a passport; similarly, everyone registered in the baptismal book is a Christian, but not everyone is a missionary.

"Every Christian is a missionary", it was said here a while ago, and theoretically this is true, but in practice this is not so; there are Christians who are Christians in name only, they are Christians of course, but just as a candle does not need to be lit to be a candle, but they are not missionaries, i.e. they are unlit candles.

Like all talents, faith grows when it is shared and declines when it is not shared; it either spreads or it is extinguished; Christians who are not missionaries, who do not share their faith, sooner or later, like any talent that is not exercised, they lose what they do not give, thus ceasing to be Christians.

A missionary is someone who aside from having a citizenship card, which defines him within the country, also has a passport, which defines him outside the country and enables him to respond to Christ’s call to leave his country and his people, and go into the whole world proclaiming the Good News.

The Christian is a member of the Church, the missionary is a member of the Kingdom of God, which is the objective of the mission. Christ founded the Church to spread the Kingdom of God in the world, not for the Church to be a castle in the middle of a world without God as King.

"The seventy returned with joy, saying, 'Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!' He said to them, '(...) do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." (Luke 10:17-18, 20)

As Christians, our names are written in the parish book; if we want them to also be written in heaven, we have to be more than Christians in name only, we have to be missionaries. Not every Christian is a missionary, just like not every disciple is an apostle. Christ called the twelve as disciples and send them out as apostles; it is as apostles that their names are written in heaven, not as disciples. (Lucas 10, 20)

Salvation is for everyone; we are saved to the extent that we contribute to others being saved; in the same way, we are happy only when we contribute to the happiness of others. The Mission is something for all Christians; Christ said these things not in the context of the mission of the 12, but rather in the context of the mission of the 70, meaning the members of the Sanhedrin, who were the representatives of the Jewish people. Similarly, all Christians are called to be missionaries, from far and near.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

I did not loose what I had given away

The fact
With the intention of creating more space in my external hard drive, to make room for the countless photos and videos I recently took in Ethiopia, I deleted my backup copy of everything I had on my computer, thinking it would be only temporarily.  

Unfortunately, after a few days of using the Photoshop program to process the photos, the computer crashed. Faced with the crash, in order not to lose any information, I wanted to copy, one more time, all the documents in the computer to the external hard drive but I ran out of time because what was damaged was precisely the computer's hard drive.

The meaning
Disaster... I have lost everything... I have lost the breadth and depth of years of work; how could this have happened to me, who have been using computer since they became popular, and who have always been so careful to keep a backup copy and sometimes even two... I am lost, I thought... this is like dying, or worse, like having the Alzheimer's, losing my memory; many of the material that I had on my computer I need them here and now and in the future.

Digital and spiritual
It was in 1989, when I arrived in Ethiopia, that I met my American friend, the late Father George Cotter, of happy memory.  He was doing research in the field of cultural anthropology and collecting Ethiopian proverbs. The collection of these proverbs was stored on a small laptop, with green monochrome screen, with less than one megabyte of memory and a 20-megabyte hard drive.

To avoid carrying around trunks full of books, as many missionaries do, I left all the books behind in Portugal, and only took a cabinet file with thousands of data sheets to Ethiopia, which was the way, in those days, of storing information in an orderly manner.

When I saw George’s little machine, I thought it would be the solution to my problem. As a missionary, I have already traveled a lot, I have never been in the same place for more than 3 or 4 years, since I was 10 years old, and I still have a lot of traveling to do. The computer allowed me to carry the house on my back like a snail; much lighter than carrying books.

It was then that the philosophy of going digital began to emerge in me. Since I am here today and gone tomorrow, I can only take with me the essentials; and everything that is valuable to me can be digitized. If we think about it, digital is synonymous with spiritual; both are immaterial and intangible realities that need an increasingly small material substrate in order to exist and subsist.  Today, if we printed all the information contained on a small external disk, we could fill a house with books, music records, photo albums and large wheels of films. I don't know if it would be possible to "print", or somehow to materialize the mind and the spirit contained in our brains...

The magnitude of the loss
Everything I currently own is digital and on my computer: my diary; the books I need and cherish, I digitized them and put them there, it was a colossal job over many years; my sermons; published articles and those yet to be published; in pure text alone I had 8 gigabytes, more than 3000 documents.

All very well organized by themes and folders: PowerPoints that I made on countless themes; lectures; formative meetings; retreats; my favourite music, some I already bought digitally, others I scanned myself; photos of places I have been and the activities I have done there: Spain, Ethiopia, Canada, England, the United States and Portugal, which took me weeks to scan from old slides or negatives; there were more than 12,000 all catalogued by theme, place and year; and finally, about 100 message films, many of which I bought on CD and transferred to the drive for convenience. A total of 120 gigabytes of information, which in a moment evaporated into nothing...

"I did not lose only what I’d given away"
After two nights of poor sleep and bad dreams, I started to think that some of the documents were in emails; others I would have given to friends and people who had asked me for them. In particular, a folder called slideshows came to mind, where I had put the work of one summer.  

I digitized the old slideshows, made up of slides synchronized with a cassette soundtrack. They were fabulous slideshows with many stories and messages that no one had remembered to turn into PowerPoint. I digitized the sound and image, and manually synchronized the two; it was a job that took the entire summer and resulted in a folder of some 15 slides. As I realized that it would be valuable material, I later gave a copy to a catechist, along with many books on psychology and spirituality.

"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). Here is proof of how the digital and the spiritual are similar and that the gospel is the truth and the way to follow, in all the realities and situations of human life.

Everything I gave away from my digital work has not been lost; everything I kept for myself has been lost. While it is true that we can only give what we have, it is also true that we only have what we give. Let us be reminded here of the parable of the talents: those who did not "give", who did not make their talent pay, lost it; those who "gave", that is, put themselves at risk of losing their talents by trading with them, had a good profit.

If for some years, a footballer, a singer or a painter cease practicing his art, that is, “giving” it, or putting it at the service of the community, after a while he will lose his talent for that same art and craft; because by not giving, he lost it...

A happy ending...
I was thinking of contacting the people I gave my files to in order to recover some of them, when the computer technician called me to let me know that, after three days of working on the damaged drive, he was able to recover all but three videos of Ethiopia made recently.  Thank you, God...

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Atheists or Polytheists?

"Appearances can be deceiving"... Many atheists, that is, those who argue against the existence of God, as well as agnostics, those who do not even argue, have in practice, simply replaced the "Christian" God for a myriad of little gods, to whom they knowingly or unknowingly worship.

Natural perception of the divine
From birth, children perceive the world around them as "a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste" (Deuteronomy 32:10). They are scared of everything and everyone, therefore they need to cling to something or someone they can trust and when they find them, they smile, hold out their hands and develop a relationship.

Phylogenesis repeats or recapitulates ontogenesis: in other words, in the development and evolution of a baby until maturity, we see the evolution and development of primitive man to the present day repeated or recapitulated.  The extreme experience of loneliness and insecurity, that the baby notices, is identical to what the primitive man felt. Faced with a world he neither knew nor could control, he too sought the protection of a superior being, anthropologically defined as “tremendum ed facinans”"awesome and fascinating".

At all times and places, ever since he became aware of himself, modern man has always been religious, that is, he always understood that the ultimate meaning and reason of his existence and life were outside of himself, transcending him, and therefore he sought to reconnect and create links with this superior and transcendent being.

Atheism or emancipation?
Atheism only emerged when man gained a certain confidence in himself, after science and technology provided him with better means of sustenance and greater knowledge and control of the forces of nature.

It is therefore no coincidence that atheism only arose where science and technology were most developed, in the West; and it is also no coincidence that atheists are usually people who have some financial, social, political or intellectual power to which, ironically, they cling to religiously.

What seems like atheism at the time is perhaps emancipation; while man felt insecure and unprotected, in relation to the world around him, he sought the love of God as his Father; with the development of science and technology, man not only gained a certain control over the world around him, but also a greater confidence in himself, to the point where he could say what those who built the Titanic said before its maiden voyage, "Not even God can sink it"...

Feeling that he has come of age, that he no longer needed a Father God, and just as it happens in Freudian psychology: the child in his process of emancipation antagonizes his father; Nietzsche even declared God dead to welcome the coming of age of man, what he called the superman. But God did not disappear to the many who hate him, nor did he die to those who declare him dead.

The Christian God is dead, long live the ancient gods of Olympus
Having abandoned the relationship with the transcendent God that made him free, modern man soon began to deify or idolize immanent domestic realities with which he has reconnected.

Thus, most of those who declare themselves atheists are actually polytheists, that is, they deny the true God in their lives in order to submit to human and worldly realities to which they devote or misspend a great deal of their time and energy. It is rare to find atheists who do not establish “religious” ties and bonds with these realities.

Consciously or unconsciously, today’s man has recreated the ancient gods of Olympus. For the Romans, as for the Greeks, each reality was governed or tutored by a god: Venus or Aphrodite, the goddess of love; Bacchus or Dionysus, the god of pleasure; Chronos, the god of time; Neptune or Poseidon, the god of sea etc... Jupiter or Zeus, the chief of the gods.

In ancient Olympus, there were no gods for realities such as peace, fraternity, love (understood as service to others), generosity, mercy, and justice. These are both human values and attributes of God. There were only gods for material and worldly realities that reflected the nature of the fallen man.

The Bible warns against the temptation to give the value of “God” to worldly realities, absolutizing or idolizing them; you cannot serve both God and money (Luke 16:13); you cannot serve power, pleasure, fame, youth, physical beauty, science, technology and so many other realities.

"Loving God above all things" (Deuteronomy 6:5) means relativizing all things, absolutizing God alone and cultivating human values that ultimately are themselves attributes or definitions of God. By denying the existence of God, whom we must love above all else, modern man’s love, relationship or reconnection falls on all things, thus transforming modern man into a polytheist, divided, worldly and materialistic.

Nature abhors emptiness
"When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but not finding any, it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' When it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings 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." Luke 11:24-26

Both theists and atheists can fall prey to the temptation of idolatry; however, the latter are more exposed than the former; on one hand, because they are closed to the transcendence and are at the mercy of immanence, living in pure worldliness; on the other hand, because they try to create a vacuum within themselves in an almost artificial way, and nature, and also human nature, has a horror of emptiness.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Young people who waste their youth

"Youth is wasted on the young"... is a popular saying usually quoted by adults, about how young people waste their youth. Youth is the time when the body and mind are at their full potential but usually lack the wisdom, motivation and willpower to manage it. It is a case of saying, "God gives nuts to those who have no teeth and teeth to those who have no nuts"; when there is energy there is no wisdom, when wisdom comes the energy is gone...

It is true that we all learn from our mistakes, but life is so short that it is better to learn from the mistakes of others as well, because there is not enough time to make all the mistakes ourselves and learn the lessons, we need from them... In my opinion, there are three dilemmas that young people have to face and the choices they make regarding them will affect the rest of their lives.

Hormones versus mind
The explosion of hormones that the young body is subjected to is very intense and teenagers feel that their bodies are demanding activities and actions from them.  Insatiable consumers of audiovisual gadgets, cellphones, video games, television, computers, and movies. Young people favor sensory and emotional experiences to the detriment of mental and rational activities.
 
The body, with its demands, governs the mind and not the other way around; their identities, personal and social, are not built on rational values or categories, such as duty and commitment, but on their sensory experiences. Without sensory stimuli, today's young people are like toys without batteries.

Any form of institutional regulation is perceived as an intolerable restriction on freedom and personal fulfillment. Traditional ideals and norms, as well as obligations and values, have been replaced by the imperatives of happiness and individual rights. Young people adopt a "light" morality, without obligations or sanctions, where everything that is pleasant is good, and vice-versa, where feeling good is synonymous to well-being.

Self-absorbed and whirling around themselves, many young people see life not as time and energy dedicated to someone else or to a human value, but as a consumer good, so in practice they can conclude: "I consume, therefore I am".

Immediate pleasure versus deferred pleasure
The unrestricted satisfaction of all desires is not conducive of well-being, nor is it the way to happiness or even to maximum pleasure. (ref. Erich Fromm, To Have and To Be)

The second dilemma is between immediate pleasure versus deferred pleasure; or even exchanging today’s immediate pleasure for tomorrow’s joy. A young body is capable of enjoying the most varied and exquisite pleasures, in terms of intensity and quality, without any immediate harmful consequences; furthermore, today as never before has the consumer society offered so many means of achieving all kinds of pleasures and sensations.

The power of temptation, combined with the mentality of enjoying while there is still time, leads many youths to succumb and become addicted to substances, or obsessive, repetitive and addictive behaviours, which lead to the loss of freedom and the harm of the body and the future... As someone once said, "Use -- Abuse --Out of Use..." The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm warned a long time ago that unlimited pleasure does not lead to maximum pleasure but to pain.

Within the scope of the ability to delay gratification, an experiment was carried out with 5-year-olds who were given one marshmallow and told that if they refrained from eating it for some time, the reward would be an extra marshmallow. The children who resisted the temptation to eat the first one, and waited to be rewarded a second one, were more successful in life than those who could not wait.  

Unbridled pleasure of the body leads to sadness of the soul. Inner joy often requires the sacrifice, or suffering, of the body but it is more rewarding than pleasure because it lasts longer. The memory of the good done, especially when we contribute to the happiness and well-being of others, is like the water Jesus promised the Samaritan woman, which gives everlasting joy...

Contrary to this reality, the tendency among young people is to seek more and more immediate gratification; in the field of drugs, they are getting increasingly purer and more synthetic, leading to quicker addiction; in the field of alcohol, the "shot" has replaced drinking at length, in quantity and in time. For this reason, lacking the realism that confers the past, and the idealism or utopia that confers the future, today's young people have nothing to fight for, they only have one life to live in the sense of consuming it.

We do not mean, however, that being stoic is good and being hedonistic is bad...In fact, pleasure itself is good, as long as it is not the principal motivation for any human act. Enjoying life in the present is good, as long as it does not compromise and ruin the future; the pleasure of drinking is good, when the main motivation is health and socializing; the pleasure of food is good, when it takes health as its main motivation; the pleasure of sex is good, when it is an expression of love in the context of a commitment between a man and a woman.

Someone once said that today’s young people are like the greenhouse fruit; they go from green to rotten without ripening. This is an exaggerated generalization, however there are many young people who fit into these parameters.

Minimum effort versus maximum effort
The law of minimum effort has governed and inspired progress, science and technology, since the emergence of Homo sapiens; while the Neanderthals adapted themselves to nature, the Homo sapiens adapted nature to their minds and needs. We only need to look around us to see how the scientific discoveries of 19th century, and the technical applications of 20th and 21st centuries, have improved material life. Since the invention of the steam engine, human labour has become less and less physical and more and more intellectual.

As the number one consumer of all technical advances, young people can be led to believe that personal and spiritual progress is also governed by the law of minimum effort, and take the attitude of the hare towards the tortoise, in the race to the finishing line. If the law of minimum effort governs material progress, personal and spiritual progress continues to be governed by the law of maximum effort.

Similarly, Freud defined maturity as the change from a life based on pleasure principle, like how it is with children and adolescents, to a life based on reality principle. For this reason, if in material progress, we must be Homo sapiens, or in other words, adapt reality to our mind, then in spiritual and personal progress, we must be Neanderthals, that is, adapt ourselves to reality and the nature of things.

If material life is descending, and all the saints help it to descend, then spiritual life is ascending. Instead of postponing pleasure and not responsibility, young people do exactly the opposite, like a Peter Pan, postponing responsibility and enjoying pleasure.

Conclusion – Young people have a huge potential and energy but oftentimes lack the motivation and willpower to use it in a constructively way. To avoid falling in the trap and whirlpool of sensory pleasures, they need to know that their lives is not about themselves

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Holy & Sexy

Your clothes conceal a lot of your beauty, yet they hide not the un-beautiful.  And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy, you may find in them a harness and a chain. Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your skin and less of your raiment.

(...) Some of you say, "It is the north wind who has woven the clothes to wear." But shame was his loom, and the softening of the sinews was his thread. And when his work was done he laughed in the forest. Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean. And when the unclean shall be no more, what were modesty but a fetter and a fouling of the mind? And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.  Khalil Gibran: The Prophet

Gone are the days when some judges, ruling on rape cases, influenced by a chauvinistic and puritanical sexist mentality, blamed the woman for going to certain places, at certain hours, dressed in a certain way.

Since everything was created by God and God is good, Manichaeism, which sees the soul as good and the body as evil, makes no sense; nor does puritanism, which sees sex as something dirty, a necessary evil and a “remedy for concupiscence" even in the context of marriage. These harmful ways of thinking are a consequence of the influence that Plato's philosophy had on some prestigious Christian thinkers, but they are not authentic Christianity. There is therefore no incompatibility between being holy and being sexually attractive.

Dressing has long since outgrown the function for which it was created in the evolution of the human species. Fashion in clothing has more to do with art than with the protection from cold or modesty. The artistically well-dressed human body is just as attractive, if not more so, from every point of view including sexual, than a naked body.

But are certain forms of dress just sensual or are they also deliberately provocative? Probably both; so for what is sensual, let us admire it, and for what is provocative, let us take note of Buddha’s advice...

As Buddha walked from village to village followed by his disciples, he was accused by the villagers of being a pedophile; his disciples asked why he didn’t defend himself against such false accusations and insults, he replied: they insult me but I don't feel insulted.

Fashion provokes, but no one needs to feel provoked... It would be good if everyone were sexually mature, that is, if sexual instinct were subjugated to affectivity, but we know that this is not the case; therefore, in countries where justice is dysfunctional, where impunity reigns, can we trust in the coercive and dissuasive power of the law to contain the unbridled instinct of some citizens? Perhaps there is still some wisdom in the saying "Free yourself from air, then I will free you from evils".

In the context of road safety, the English has the concept of defensive driving. The equivalent to what I was told in Ethiopia by older missionaries, "Here you need to drive your car and the other person’s car". Is this not a case of "defensive dressing" in risky situations? Forcing women to cover their bodies with burkas only justifies and perpetuates sexual and affective immaturity.

The sexual and affective maturity of men should evolve, to the point where women can express their creativity in dressing freely, without feeling intimidated. In the meantime, every woman should have the practical intelligence to know, in each occasion and in each location and circumstance, how to dress; adapting to the time and people, expressing herself artistically, but always taking into account where, when and with whom she is.

In Vale Paços, on January 28, 2014, a 13-year-old girl, after leaving school, was taken at knife-point by an unemployed 35-year-old man to a remote place where she was raped; the man was caught by the police and confessing to the crime, the man said that on seeing the girl, he could not resist the attraction.

Conclusion – Sexual attractiveness and physical beauty is not evil de perse, because like everything was created by God. Physical beauty and inner beauty can coexist in a person, they are not aways divorced or dissociated.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Philip - The patron saint of the "Itinerant Mission"

The Spirit said to Philip, "Go over to this chariot and join it." So Philip ran up to it, heard the Ethiopian reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah and asked him, "Do you truly understand what you are reading?" He replied, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him.  (ref. Acts 8:26-40)

Philip, the evangelist travelled one of the busiest roads of the ancient world, from Gaza to Egypt.  There the Holy Spirit ordered him to approach an Ethiopian traveler returning home after worshipping in Jerusalem.  The Ethiopian was one of the many people disenchanted with loose morals and the worship of many gods in the ancient world, who sought the meaning of life in austere ethics and in the one God of Judaism.

"Nothing new under the sun", we could say in reference to the way people live nowadays; our world holds many similarities with the ancient world.  Those who say they are atheists or agnostics, are in fact worshipping many false gods, such as power, money, the multi-faceted pleasure, physical beauty and fitness etc.

After worshipping and configuring, for a while their lives to these realities, they start to feel the loss of their freedom become alienated ending up tasting nausea and emptiness. This is the  time when they need someone to show them the way to the one true God; the God of Joy, the God to whom alone you should pay tribute in order to really become free from all earthly affectations.

Very much like Philip, the heralds of today, if they want to hear the voice of the Spirit, to tell them where to go, whom to meet and what to say, they must place themselves at the crossroads of the lives of men and women of our time.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

A certain Islam of today versus Christianity two thousand years ago

"Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" (...) Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, 'Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.' (...)

When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, 'Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?' She said, 'No one, sir.' And Jesus said, 'Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do no sin again.'" John 8:1-11

What was common practice in Jesus' time is still common practice today, after 2000 years, in some fundamentalist Muslim countries. Every now and then the newspapers report cases of women caught in adultery and how they are slaughtered by stoning.

The internet is full of photos and videos of these barbaric executions, which are not ordered in the Quran; in fact, there is no mention of stoning being prescribed for any crime in the entire book of the Quran; according to the Quran, adultery is punishable by lashes. When we compare this practice, which is still common today, with the one that Jesus advocated two thousand years ago for the same sin, it is surprising and moving...

On the other hand, the death penalty is always an injustice because laws exist to judge acts and not the totality of a human life; even when the crime is murder, the death penalty is a worse crime than the crime it seeks to sanction. Those who committed murder were most likely possessed by extreme anger or rage; those who hand out the death sentence do so in cold blood, in full use of their mental and rational faculties.

Since the dawn of humanity, all cultures and civilizations on this planet have been, and to some extents still are, patriarchal sexist or, as we commonly say, macho and chauvinistic. In addition to Eve in the Jewish tradition, and Pandora in the Greek tradition, all cultures blame women for the manifestation of evil in the world, they are the scapegoat.

If in Europe and the Western world in general, North America and to some extent South America, Russia, Australia and New Zealand, women are more respected, it is because something of the mentality of Jesus, and the spirit of Christianity, has influenced the culture.

In a large part of the Black Africa, women are the only ones who really work, in the agriculture they invented and in the home; men devote themselves to war, when there is one, hunting, fishing and governing the tribe; I have seen women in Africa carrying a heavy load on their head, another in each hand, a baby in the belly and another on their back, walking for kilometres while their husband went along empty-handed. In many countries even today, it is still considered normal to kidnap a girl for marriage, and female circumcision, to deprive women of sexual pleasure during intercourse.

In modern day Asia, women are still subjected to shame. Child prostitution is very widespread; take Japan for example, a country that is so advanced, it is the only one that does not accept the UN laws on child pornography. In Japan and China, there are restaurants where food is served on the naked body of a teenage girl.

This is unthinkable in the Western world, not even in the Middle Ages. In India, and in other Asian countries, impunity reigns when it comes to raping women and disfiguring their face with sulphuric acid. The only Asian country where women are somewhat respected is the Philippines, precisely because it is a culture that has been more or less shaped by Christianity for 500 years, since Spanish colonization.

Even a cursory reading of the gospels is bound to surprise the most inattentive and impartial reader by Jesus’ attitude towards women; he treats them as equal, defends them and includes them in his group of disciples, something that has never been done before.  Jesus was undoubtedly the greatest defender of women of all time.

Conclusion – Jesus is the only founder of religion that has looked at women as being equal to men and the only one that has never uttered a derogatory statement against women. 

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Mary's Visitations

"In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth." Luke 1:39-40

Chapel of (dis) apparitions
Some time ago, here in Fatima, I participated in a meeting for priests and religious that culminated in a Mass at the Chapel of the Apparitions.  I was shocked by the fact that the president of this celebration made no mention of the importance of the place where we were celebrating the Eucharist; he did not mention, not even once, Our Lady of Fatima nor did he make much mention of Mary in general.

When I told another colleague what had happened, I was told: "You know, I don’t really believe in these apparitions either.” As devoted as I have always been to our Lady, and a believer of her apparitions, the accusation made against Pope Paul VI of having imposed Fatima on the Church immediately came to mind. At that time, the Pope defended himself by saying that it was not he who imposed Fatima on the Church, it was Fatima that imposed itself.

"The Virgin appears to all the fools"
With this Spanish proverb in mind, the Church is aware that there are many apparitions that are not genuine; so, it uses all kinds of scientific investigation, which corresponds to "the devil's advocate" in the beatification of saints, to disprove them. The Church only takes its hat off and bows before something that is genuinely supernatural.

"Against facts, there are no arguments"
A scientific investigator, dispassionate and impartial, applying all the methods and instruments of modern scientific investigation to Guadalupe, Lourdes and Fatima, the three great apparitions that the Church proposes to its faithful, cannot fail to be astonished by the halo, of mystery and supernaturality, that surrounds facts, whose explanation is irreducible to reason and science.

Faced with this, there are two free but always faith-based options: to deify science, believing that in the future it will be able to explain what today it cannot; or to believe that God is behind these facts, and in this case, that Mary really is visiting her people.

From now until the end of the world, Heaven can no longer say anything new
The reason why I am writing these lines is not to propose again Mary’s apparitions because of the inexplicable mystery that surrounds them, but to reflect on the theological reasons that justify them.

Of course, neither Guadalupe, nor Lourdes, nor Fatima are dogmas of faith. Heaven, in Jesus Christ, the eternal Word of God made flesh, has already said all it has to say; it makes no sense for it to speak again after God has sent his only begotten son; in fact, when he returns, it will be to judge the living and the dead.

Mary's visits
We explain and justify that Mary is our mediator and intercessor in heaven with the episode of the wedding feast in Cana (John 2:1-11), in which she presents the needs of the guests to her son, while at the same time exhorting them to do everything he says; and why not explain and justify Mary's visits with the episode of her visit to her cousin Elizabeth? (Luke 1:39-45)

Mary, in her visits, does not bring a new gospel, a new message, but, like the Holy Spirit to whom she is espoused, she recalls the forgotten parts of her son's message (ref. John 14:26) and reinterprets them in the "here and now" of human history. In fact, one of the important factors in the authenticity of these messages is their agreement with the gospel.

Mary continues to visit those to whom she is mother, at pivotal moments in the history of her children, to help incarnate the eternal Word of her son in those moments and places.

Guadalupe – Support for evangelization
How could the indigenous people in Mexico in 1531 have willingly accepted the religion of the Spanish conquerors, explorers and murderers if Mary had not appeared to a humble indigenous man? In fact, the indigenous people, who until that time had been reluctant to accept Christianity, converted en masse after the apparitions.

Lourdes – Heaven confirmed
The important part of the Lourdes message is the confirmation from Heaven, in 1858, of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, instituted by Pope Pius IX four years earlier in 1854.

Fatima - "Penance and Prayer" is the solution
Between the two world wars, Maria proposed at Fatima, among other things, "Penance and Prayer" as a means to confront, at that time and even today, materialistic and atheistic communism, as well as materialistic and consumerist capitalism which is no less atheistic.

Conclusion – Since Mary visited her cousin in time of need, she has never stopped visiting the Humanity to tell her son we have no wine and to tell us to do what His will.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Inner versus external beauty

"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.

And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell -- and great was its fall!" Matthew 7:24-27

"Mens sanna in corpore sano", it is well known that the health of the body and soul go hand in hand and are self-reinforcing. The same does not happen between a person’s physical beauty and his or her inner beauty.

"The face is the mirror of the soul" – In the attraction that we feel, for someone who is physically beautiful, seems to be an implicit and irrational belief that this person is also nice; that the beautiful appearance is nothing more than the sign and symbol of inner beauty, strength of character, maturity, self-control, generosity etc...

There are beautiful people who are unpleasant – In reality, in many people I have met, this correspondence between the two types of beauty, not only does not occur but it seems to be self-excluding. There are those who capitalize on their physical beauty, using it like a credit  card, in the belief that with it everything in society is an open door; that everyone’s admiration and love are guaranteed. By thinking this way, these individuals do not apply themselves or make an effort to develop their inner beauty, and so they are often snobbish, unpleasant and proud.

• Beauty is innate, while charm or beauty of soul and character is acquired through effort, "No pain no gain", as they say in psychotherapy, if it does not hurt, if it does not cost anything, then there is no gain. Everything truly good in life costs either money or effort, or both.
• Beauty is an individual asset; it only benefits the person who possesses it. It is not relational, because it leads the person to put himself or herself on a self-erected pedestal and from others, he or she only requires their admiration. Charm is a social asset; charming people go out of themselves and establish relationships with others on an equal footing, creating peace, harmony and happiness.     
• "Those who see faces do not see hearts" – Physical beauty only serves to attract people; it is the inner beauty that bonds them to each other in long lasting relationships of love or friendship.
• Beauty does not grow over time; on the contrary, it degrades; creams and plastic surgery only stop the degradation for a while; charm is likely to grow over time; with a little self-observation, self-criticism, self-discipline and willpower, a person can set himself or herself on a trajectory of continuous growth, towards perfection.

 Those who adopt the primacy of charm over beauty age well; inner beauty is the best cosmetic for beautiful people, because it maintains their beauty regardless of their age; furthermore, like time, charm ends up improving the appearance of less beautiful people.

Those who adopt the primacy of beauty over charm age poorly; over time, the unpleasant, bad character, psychic and affective immaturity, the anger and resentment end up degrading the physical beauty on which the person has built his or her life; and like a house built on sand, great was its ruin.

Conclusion – As the good wine ages well, those who cultivate their inner beauty in time will also turn beautiful on the outside. Whereas those who rely on their outward appearance and don’t cultivate inner beauty, ion time their inner ugliness will ruin their physical beauty just like wine turning into vinegar.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC