3 Notions of God: Animism - Polytheism - Monotheism

When all the needs, such as sustenance, security, love and freedom, are met, it is then that the question of meaning of life surfaces to our consciousness. If death did not exist perhaps we might never ask ourselves what life means; we’d simply live in symbiosis with nature. Perhaps this discursive thinking did not even exist – after all, animals live without knowing that they will die and perhaps for this reason, they don’t think.

Death – self-consciousness or discursive thinking – and the existence of God seem to be intimately linked. With the thought of death emerges the awareness of self-existence and the necessity or desire for self-preservation. Death provoked the thinking that gave rise to the three fundamental questions of where I come from, where I am going, and what is the meaning of my life. From this musing is born the need to always exist, and thus the desire for God. This desire would not have surfaced in the first place if there was no possibility of meeting it.

Throughout the ages the concept of God has been evolving along with the human person’s increasing awareness of himself and his environment. We can distinguish three stages in this evolution: animism, polytheism and monotheism. These stages, however, do not succeed one another in the sense that the new does not replace the old; that is, animism did not disappear with the introduction of polytheism, nor was it extinguished completely with the rise of monotheism. None of the previous stage has disappeared, but it coexists to a lesser extent with the succeeding one.

Another way of looking at the evolution of the notion of God is from the perspective of the dialectic between the spiritual or supernatural and the material or physical. From the time death dug an emptiness into our physical body (understood as a living matter), the spirit was born to fill this emptiness. From that moment, not only the human being himself but everything else became a spiritual being. The spiritual mastered the material because only the spiritual thinks and knows that it exists since the material is crude, coarse and inanimate.

In the early days of the human civilization, the spiritual factor dominated the material one. With the rise of civilization, the spiritual gradually diminished, notably during the Renaissance, and thus even before the rise of the philosophical atheisms of the nineteenth and twentieth century (Feuerbach, Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche), but especially after these centuries, reaching the very bottom, to the lowest of the low.

With the emergence of the New Age’s religious syncretism, there seems to be a rise in the spiritual factor because people, even though they are averse to any institutionalized form of religion, do declare themselves as being spiritual. This vague, diffused and non-institutionalized spirituality seems to have much in common with the first stage of the religious sentiment, the animism. Are we returning to the beginning, like the myth of the eternal return?

Animism
He sustained him in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste; he shielded him, cared for him, guarded him as the apple of his eye. Deuteronomy 32:10

When the human race became aware of itself, it also became aware of its misery and disadvantage relative to other living beings, to which Nature seemed to have endowed with everything. Completely helpless, and at the mercy of the forces of nature and other animals, the human person found himself like Moses in the desert, as the verse above states.

Under this circumstance, our ancestors lived with the belief that everything was animated; both the objects such as the animals, plants, rivers, rocks etc., as well as the natural phenomenon like thunder, lightning, wind, rain etc., and even the universe itself possessed a soul, that is, spiritual or supernatural qualities, meanings or power.

A bit like magic, animism is based on the belief that the world, both in its entirety and its parts, has a soul or spirit. Even the air we breathe is populated by spirits that are impersonal forces and can be invoked or summoned and manipulated by shamans, mediums, magicians, sorcerers and witches using spells, rituals and magic words.

Animism believes in the existence of a supreme God, to which one cannot access directly but only by means of these spirits, and since their designs may be contrary to humans’, they need to be appeased permanently. The animist lives continually with the fear of displeasing some spirit, hence he wears amulets or talismans to protect himself.

Unlike the organized and institutionalized religions, animism survives in the minds of people through oral tradition, without any institutional help. Therefore compared to the organized religions, it is a “disorganized” religion, still practiced today by indigenous tribes where they still exist: in North and South America, Asia, Africa, Australia and the Pacific Islands.

Apart from this, in the modern world all forms of superstition and divination such as astrology, fortune telling, witchcraft, and casting of spells are remnants of animism that remain popular and are still widely accepted. Objects that give good luck and rituals to avoid bad luck continue to be part of our daily life such as enter with the right foot, and wearing good luck charms like the rabbit foot, the horseshoes, the four-leaf clover…

The New Age religion which claims to be the synthesis of all religions, contains a lot of neo-paganism or animism. Coming to think of it, even the Franciscan spirituality can be viewed from this perspective, by calling the wolf and sun brothers, and the water and moon sisters, Saint Francis seems to be giving back to these realities the soul that they once possessed.

Monotheism, more than polytheism, fought against all forms of animism. The Catholic Church, as we sadly know, went so far as to create an organization like the Inquisition to cleanse from the belief of any and every animist manifestation.

After the gradual purging of materialism which has been increasing since the Renaissance, today most people do realize that a material object cannot have spiritual power and that only a spiritual being can have spiritual power. However, there are still some who are superstitious, always reminding us of our animism past.

If we compare the evolution of the notion of God with human development and maturity, animism corresponds to childhood – children in fact have the tendency to see everything around them as having a soul, they talk to their dolls and toys, they live in a world animated by fairies, witches and wizards, and they believe in Santa Claus and magic; Walt Disney, in his films for children, knew well how to explore this side of our childhood fantasy.

Polytheism
Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god. Isaiah 44:6

As we have already said, as the human person advances his knowledge and dominion of the environment this latter becomes more and more materialised. All the realities that the human being knows, controls and dominates tend to eventually lose their souls, their grip and power over man, in some way; it passes to the inventive spirit of the human being.

In this way, the material sphere keeps increasing while the spiritual one keeps decreasing. Whatever man dominates will ceases to have power over him as it loses its spiritual power to become a well controlled reality. The human person steals the souls of the things each time he gains knowledge of them, and as the world and everything in it become more and more materialized, the person becomes more and more spiritualized, thus becoming the only spiritual being.

There are however realities that the human person cannot dominate with knowledge. These are each time fewer and fewer in number, and when faced with those that the human being finds himself completely helpless and impotent, and at their mercy, he calls them gods. In this way, animism is succeeded by polytheism, the belief that the principal realities, powers and forces of nature are dominated by gods. In fact there is a god for every reality, being the master of that same reality.

The gods proliferated in such a way that the more important they were to man’s survival, the greater their importance, and the greater the number of their faithful. For example, the gods of fertility, of war, of love etc., saw the formation of great religions around their cult. Hinduism is the first great religion and continues to be still practiced by more than a billion people. The main gods of the Greek and Roman mythologies are the following:

Zeus/Jupiter – The youngest son of Cronus and Rhea (see Titanic Home) is the leader of the gods who live on Mount Olympus. He imposes justice and order by throwing lightning built by the cyclops. Zeus had several wives and love affairs with goddesses, nymphs and humans.

Hera/Juno – The third wife of Zeus and the queen of Olympus. Hera is the goddess of marriage and childbirth. She is vindictive against the lovers of her husband and to the children that Zeus had with them. For the Greeks, Hera and Zeus symbolize the male-female union.

Hades/Pluto – Even though he is the brother of Zeus and Poseidon, he does not live on Mount Olympus. Hades, as the god of the dead, rules his own territory: the world of the dead. Despite his role, he is not like the devil, a god associated with evil.

Poseidon/Neptune – The elder brother of Zeus, he is the god of the sea; with a movement of his trident, he causes storms and earthquakes.

Athena/Minerva – She is the goddess of wisdom and the daughter of Zeus with his first wife, Metis. Her symbol is the wisest of all birds, the owl. Skilled and expert in arts and war, Athena carries a spear and a shield called Aegis.

Hermes/Mercury – Son of Zeus with the goddess Mayan, the messenger of gods is the protector of travellers and merchants. Represented by a man in winged sandals, Hermes has a dark side: at times he would deliver lies and false stories. Already in those days there existed the “fake news” of Trump…

Apollo/Apollo – The god of light (represented by the sun), the arts, medicine and music. He is the son of Zeus with the titan, Leto. In his youth, he used to be vindictive but later he became a calmer god, using his talent to heal, for music and predictions of future.

Artemis/Diana – Twin sister of Apollo, she is the goddess of hunting, represented by a woman with a bow – contradictorily, she is also the protector of animals… Artemis is the chaste goddess (virgin), who becomes furious when threatened.

Hephaestus/Vulcan – Son of Zeus and Hera, Hephaestus was born so weak and ugly that he was thrown into the sea by his mother. Rescued by the nymphs, he became a famous craftsman. Impressed with his talent, the gods brought Hephaestus back to Olympus and named him the god of fire and forge.

Aphrodite/Venus – The name of the goddess of love means “born of the foam” because it is said that she came out of the sea. Aphrodite is the most beautiful of all goddesses. Despite being the wife of Hephaestus, she had several love affairs – with gods such as Ares and Hermes, and also with mortals.

Ares/Mars – The terrible god of war is the other son of Zeus and Hera. On the battlefield he can kill a mortal with only his war cry! Father of several heroes – humans who were protected or sons of gods. Ares was also one of Aphrodite’s lovers.

The way in which a certain lord governs and instructs the reality entrusted to him is explained by a myth. A myth is a sacred tale or legend that is transmitted through oral tradition from one generation to the next; when its human authorship is lost, it is then attributed to a god. The story itself seeks to explain the truth of each thing and how it works within a pre-scientific mindset. Myths allowed human beings to know their environment and gave a plausible explanation of how things are and how they processed. These stories are not historical, but they are true in the sense that they convey the intelligibility of the primitive man concerning each reality.

Take as an example the myth of the god of time called Cronos, the term from which we derive the words chronometer, chronology and chronicles. Cronos, as the painter Goya depicts so well in one of his paintings, was a god who gave birth to children and after giving birth, he ate them. It seems gruesome, but it explains well what time is – each day that we get up and see the light of the sun, we are giving birth to one more day and at dusk, before going back to sleep, we consume this very day. Each day of our life is one more day in the morning and one less day at nightfall.

The Greco-Roman world presents the celestial world in parallel with the terrestrial world – what happens in Heaven also happens on Earth and vice versa. The vices of the gods are similar to the vices of the humans, so that there is no progress, for the gods are not role models that humanity can emulate. As Feuerbach would say, it was not God who created Man in his image and likeness, but rather it was Man who created God in his image and likeness.

Monotheism
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Isaiah 64:8

The prehistory of monotheism can be traced to when man began to group all these gods and gave them a leader – Zeus in Greek mythology and Jupiter in the Roman. From here to monotheism is a mere step. The first human being to proclaim that there is only one god was the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, also known as Amenhotep IV, who reigned Egypt in the fourteenth century before Christ, long before the Greek and Roman culture.

When Amenhotep IV ascended the throne, many gods were worshipped in Egypt, Amun being the king of gods. Initially he allowed the worship of the traditional gods of Egypt, but soon he took measures to establish the sun god, Aton, as the supreme god of all Egypt. In the ninth year of his reign, Akhenaton declared that Aton was not merely the Supreme god, but the only god. This was a radical step and the first instance of monotheism in all history.

At his death, the people of Egypt plunged right back into polytheism. But the root, the idea or intuition was launched. Akhenaton realized that a country where its citizens venerated various gods is a country divided socially and morally and thus more difficult to govern. For the pharaoh, monotheism had the goal of uniting the country and its people.

The idea did not spread among the Egyptians of that time, but it was received years later by a people, then slaves in the land of Egypt – the Jewish people. As we have said before, in polytheism the gods were similar to men; the virtues, vices, divisions and conflicts that are seen among the gods were also seen among humans, so that there is no normativity or role model among the gods for humans to follow.

Consequently, the greatest discovery of the Hebrew people is that of a personal God, who is the paragon of all human aspirations, all that is good and perfect. Because the Jews were nomads and moved from place to place, they did not worship the local gods or idols as it would be -- troublesome -- to carry them, hence they searched for a concrete reality that was everywhere – they looked up and found that reality in Heaven.

The sedentary peoples tend to be polytheistic while the nomadic peoples tend to be monotheistic. The Turkana, a nomadic people of northern Kenya, have the same word for designating Heaven and God. The Mongols, the Turks and the Tartars worshipped a common god named Tengri, the god of the blue sky.

From here to the appreciation that God is a spiritual being was a very small step that the Jews took: for them, God is spiritual and is everywhere, inside their minds and above all inside their hearts, at all times and in all places. He is a personal being because he is a God of peoples, of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. They also appreciated that he is a God who created everything and everyone.

When Egerton Young first preached the gospel to the Red Indians in Saskatchewan the idea of the fatherhood of God fascinated men who had hitherto seen God only in the thunder and the lightning and the storm blast.

Upon hearing the missionary addressing God as Father, an old chief said: "When you spoke of the great Spirit just now, did I hear you say, `Our Father'?"  "Yes," said Egerton Young.  "That is very new and sweet to me," said the chief.  "We never thought of the great Spirit as Father.  We heard him in the thunder; we saw him in the lightning, the tempest and the blizzard, and we were afraid.

So, when you tell us that the great Spirit is our Father, that is very beautiful to us."  The old man paused, and then he went on, as a glimpse of glory suddenly shone on him.  "Missionary, did you say that the great Spirit is your Father?"  "Yes," said the missionary. "And," said the chief, "did you say that he is the Indians' Father?"  "I did," said the missionary.  "Then," said the old chief, like a man on whom a dawn of joy had burst, "you and I are brothers!"

Barclay commentary of the New Testament

The evolution and progress of monotheism in relation to polytheism is the union between humans under the same God whom they can call Father. The French Revolution, however secular it may seem, would not have been possible in a country with polytheistic worldview such as India, where the existence of several gods justifies the existence of castes and that men are not created equal. Human equality and dignity cannot coexist in polytheism, they are the conquests of monotheism.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

3 Fundamental Questions: Origin - Destiny - Meaning

Introduction
After writing about Nonviolent Communication last year, I felt an inner force compelling me to write about the mystery of the Holy Trinity this year. At first I thought I could answer this call with a small text that would more than exhaust the topic and I’d still have plenty of words left over.

It was then that I had the revelation or the intuition that it was not possible that the One and Triune God had not left his stamp, his seal, his mark on everything that he has created. The Trinity, or the tridimensional characteristic of God, is not only true of God but should also be true of all that God has created. If each creature is a metaphor of God, an image, a reflection of its Creator, then it would make sense that God would have left his DNA, his identity, in everything that he has created.

If we prove that the tridimensionality is transverse to all that God has created and if, as the Franciscan spirituality affirms, through the creatures we can reach the Creator, for all of them are a manifestation of his creative love as the Creator, then it is irrefutably proven and without any doubt that God is one in three and three in one because everything around us is exactly the same one in three and three in one. God being triune could only have created things that are like himself, tridimensional.

Christianity recognizes in other religions or conceptions of God “semina verbum”, seeds of truth; however, it presents itself as possessing the full truth. If we prove that everything that God creates is tridimensional or has a tridimensional characteristic, then it is proven that the Christian faith can stand before all other views of God --Judaism, Islam and other faiths – as containing the full truth about God.

Throughout this new year and perhaps in the successive ones, I will try to discover the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, the tridimensionality of God in all his creatures and to verify that the universe, this world and each one of the many realities it contains are intrinsically and extrinsically trinitarian or tridimensional in nature.

Where do we come from? Where are we going? What’s the meaning of life?
Before the age of six or seven, it is quite common to hear children talk about themselves in the third person. For example, “Peter doesn’t like soups,” says Peter about himself instead of, “I don’t like soups”. A child only becomes aware of himself, that he is alive, around the age of six or seven.

When he eventually reaches that age, also known as the age of reason, he realizes the existence of his own being. On this very day he also realizes his finitude and limitation, that is, that one day he will cease to be alive, cease to exist or cease to be. It is precisely this thought of death that inexorably puts together and brings to the consciousness the fundamental questions of his origin: where do I come from; of his destination: where am I going; and of the meaning of his life: who am I. What is the meaning of the life that was handed over to me? That is, why and for what do I live and what do I do with my life.

As the realization of death, of self-awareness, and the three basic questions occur at the same time in the development of the child, we can assume that in human evolution the ability to think is the daughter of death. The perception of our finitude as an undeniable and inevitable event dug within our material body an immaterial emptiness to which we gave the name soul or spirit, and the ability to think  being one  of its many manifestations. Feuerbach says, “man's tomb is the sole birthplace of the gods”. In the face of the cessation of the life of the matter, the life of the spirit is born.

These questions cannot be answered by science, no matter how hard many try or have tried over the course of centuries. Science tells us the HOWs but not the WHYs. It tells us how things work, the elements, the nature, life, the cosmos, but not the whys of all this.

By the age of five a child starts to ask many questions, he questions everything and everyone. He is a bombardment of questions – one question is not yet answered when two or three more are already formulated. What is interesting is that the child asks more the whys of things and less the hows of things. He wants a rational explanation for the way things are, rather than how they work. He can investigate and discover how things work on his own, which in fact he does. A child doesn’t ask how a tablet, a computer or a cellphone works, this he finds out for himself.

As we get older, however, we lose this inquisitive spirit and start to accept uncritically everything we are told, and we begin to suffer from mental laziness. Because of this and other attitudes that we had when we were children but lost them as we got older is why Jesus admonishes us when he said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3

Theism – Atheism – Agnosticism
Confronted with these three fundamental questions, there are also three possible responses or three different attitudes: theistic, atheistic and agnostic. In response to the existence of God, which is fundamentally the backdrop behind every question about origin, destiny and meaning, the theist answers positively, the atheist negatively, and the agnostic neutrally or “I don’t know”, “I don’t care to know” or “I don’t want to know”.

In fact, the postmodern man is no longer religious or atheistic, but rather agnostic as he no longer asks questions, but lives grounded in pure worldliness. He says that since there is no way to know, to fully know, therefore he doesn’t even want to find out and hence expels this subject totally from his conscience by ignoring it.

Faced with these three questions related to faith, both the religious and the atheists are believers. Since the existence of God can neither be proven nor denied by science, both the affirmation and the denial of God’s existence are matters of faith. Therefore, both groups are believers – the religious believe in the existence of God and the atheists believe in God’s non-existence.

The agnostic, however, is cut from a different cloth. While the atheist lives preoccupied with the problem of the existence and non-existence of God, the agnostic doesn’t even bother with the problem. He is, therefore, the true atheist. As a metaphor, the same thing happens with the theme of love: whoever hates has already loved and can love again. Hatred somehow connects two people, even if negatively; it is said that a child prefers to receive a slap in the face from a parent than to be completely ignored.

The agnostic is the one who completely ignores God, he does not care nor is he concerned about the subject, he does not inquire nor bothers to know. He is the lukewarm character described in the Book of Revelation (3:16), the one who is neither cold nor hot, but rather lukewarm and whom the Lord vomits out of his mouth.

Agnosticism means the lack of full knowledge of God to be able to believe fully since the agnostic intends to use with God the same method of acquiring knowledge that he uses with physical material things; this method does not work with God and it does not work with people.

To know means to control, to gain power over what is known to the point of being able to manipulate the known object. If I know how the phenomenon of rain works, then I gain the possibility of controlling it to the point of making rain if I wanted, which in fact has already happened. Evidently it is not possible to know God in this way, even for those who believe in his existence, our mind is only a speck compared to his mind; it is logical that the part can never encompass the whole.

On the other hand, God is a personal being and people in general do not reveal themselves to us, do not open their hearts or their minds if they suspect that we want to control or manipulate them. As my father used to say: Don’t you ever open your heart, even in situations of great pain, for the one who uncovers his heart betrays himself.

People only reveal themselves if we give them some assurance that they can trust us. This type of trust only happens in the context of love – love leads to trust and knowledge: the more you know the more you love, the more you love a person the more you know her. It is to the extent that we love that we know. Therefore, to love makes us vulnerable and susceptible to betrayal.

Both the atheist and the agnostic would like to put God in a test tube in order to analyse him, but this is not possible with God or with a human person. As Jesus very well said, God only reveals himself to those who love him, that is, to those who take the leap of faith and choose to believe: “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” John 14:23

There are some who distinguish two kinds of agnostics: those who have no interest in the topic because for them there is not enough evidence to prove the existence of God, these would be a type of non-practicing atheists; and those who not only see no reason for themselves to believe but also see no reason for anyone else to believe either, which makes them more like true atheists than agnostics, these are the agnostic fundamentalists. To both groups we say that it is not possible to know God in the way that they want to know him, categorizing him as a thing, but it is possible to know him in the same way that a person can be known.

How would the world be, its human and scientific development and progress, if all of us in all things took on the agnostic attitude? There would in fact be no scientific progress, because it is impossible to know everything about any given subject. Science in all its branches is shrouded in mystery; there are things that we know and things we don’t know; there are things that the more we know, the more there is to know. If we conclude that because we don’t know enough and reject knowledge on this basis or turn our backs on  knowledge, then there will be no human progress in any of its facets or knowledge.

In conclusion, it is impossible to know everything about God because he is a mystery; but it is possible to know each time more and more about him. The same thing happens in any branches of science; it is impossible to know everything but it is possible to know each time more and more. The only difference between the scientific knowledge and the knowledge of God or of another human person is in the method.

Because people are made to be loved and things to be used, it is possible to know things without loving them, but it is not possible to know people or God without love. Whoever does not have faith in God very likely won’t have faith in people either, and whoever does not love people can fall into the trap of loving things and using people.  Whoever does not love does not know God and does not know other people. 1John 4:8

The picture that is shown in this article was not chosen casually; it is a painting by the French artist Paul Gauguin which is titled precisely as, Where Do We Come From? What are We? Where Are We Going? questions that we can see inscribed in French on the upper right corner of the painting. On its own the painting is the answer that this artist gave to these questions and which he left to humanity before his failed suicide attempt. For him this was his legacy to humanity, the highest point of his career.

As we can see by studying the painting from left to right that it is divided into three major panels which look to answer each of the questions in the order Gauguin posed. The panel on the left of the three women with a child answers the question of where we come from; the center panel answers what we are or the meaning of life and the right panel, where we are going. To these questions Gauguin answers with symbolism that only a Christian could recognize.

Where do we come from?
The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. Genesis 2:7

Science points out that we came from Africa, more precisely we were born in the Rift Valley five million years ago; but from where did the species before us and life on this planet, and the universe come from?

A Christian answers this question by saying that we come from God who for us is love, the Father, the creator and the sustainer of our life. The One who gave us the whole creation for us to take care and for it to perfect us.

An atheist says that we come from Nothingness, contradicting the modern physics after the discovery of the Big Bang, which says that the world had a beginning and will have an end, many atheists continue to assert, contrary to the laws of thermodynamics that the world always existed and will continue to exist. The agnostic pretends not to know and ignore this question altogether and would probably say, “I don’t know and I don’t care to know”.

In each act of creation, in each of the seven days of creation, God concluded that what he has made was good. There is no self-interest here on his part, he created us because he loves us, because he likes us, for the pure pleasure of creating us because he rejoices in our existence.

Where are we going?
Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when He is revealed, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is. 1John 3:2

In search of his own identity, a doll of salt after a long pilgrimage through desert land, came at last upon the sea. Fascinated by this strange and moving mass, completely different from anything he has ever seen before, he asked:
-What are you?
With a smile, the sea answered:
-I am the Sea.
-But what is a sea? asked the doll.
-Come, touch me and you will know.
The doll of salt put a foot in the water and immediately saw it disappear.
-What did you do to my foot? he asked, startled.
-To know me, you need to give something of yourself, the Sea answered.
The doll of salt went into the sea and, as a wave covered him completely, said with a sigh:
-Finally I know who I am.

Thou has made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee. Saint Augustine

Created in the image and likeness of God, our life is a pilgrimage to the Promised Land. During the course of this pilgrimage, we are making it like that leaky bucket with holes on its sides that loses its water and, unlike its companion, arrives at its destination almost empty. Dismayed by this, the leaky bucket thought of itself useless compared to its companion who always arrived full, without losing even a single drop of water, until one day the owner of the two buckets made it see that on its side of the road grew beautiful flowers that it, without knowing, had watered every day.

In our pilgrimage we are spreading happiness and joy, peace and justice, living as if there were no other life, making the Kingdom of God already present among us, but knowing that however much we contribute for its building up, we will always have to say, “We are not there yet” – in its entirety, in its fullness. In its entirety it is with God alone. Therefore, although we do not gather here much of what we have sown, we will gather all and much more than we have sown when we are with God. “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9

For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come. Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. Hebrews 13:14-16

We came from God, the loving Father, and we walk towards the light of faith and hope for God, the righteous judge who is slow to anger and rich in mercy and forgiveness (Ephesians 2:4). As for the atheists, they walk towards death. They walk towards Nothingness, as Heidegger defined a human being as being a being for death, because death which for us is only a passage to eternal life, is the final station of his journey since he came from Nothingness. The agnostics journey towards the cliff with their eyes closed or walk without a purpose, without a goal and, as the proverb says, for those who don’t know where to go, there are no favorable winds.

In the womb of a mother there were two babies. One asked the other: “Do you believe in life after childbirth?” The other answered: “Of course. There must be something after childbirth. Perhaps we are here to prepare for what is coming later.” “Rubbish,” said the first. “What kind of life would that be?” The second said: “I don’t know, but there will have more light than here. Perhaps we can walk with our own legs and eat with our own mouths. Perhaps we will have other purposes that we don’t understand now.” The first one retorted: “That is absurd. The umbilical cord provides us with nourishment and everything else that we need. The umbilical cord is very short. Life after childbirth is out of question.”

The second insisted: “Well, I think that there is something and maybe it will be different from what is here. Maybe we will not need this physical tube.” The other contested: “Besides, if there is really life after childbirth, then why has no one ever returned from there?” “Well, I don’t know,” said the second, “but surely we are going to meet Mother and she will take care of us.” The first responded: “Mother? Do you really believe in Mother? That is ridiculous. If Mother exists, then, where is she now?” “She is around us. We are surrounded by her. We belong to her. It is in her that we live. Without her this world could not exist.” Said the first: “Well, I cannot see her, therefore it is logical that she doesn’t exist.” To which the second replied: “Sometimes when you are silent, if you concentrate and really listen, you will sense her presence and hear her loving voice.” (A story told by a Hungarian writer to explain the existence of God)

According to the famous Pascal’s wager, let us suppose that there are two friends – one an atheist and the other a religious – who wager a sum of money on the hypothesis of the existence or non-existence of God and life after death. The atheist bet that God does not exist, and the religious wager that he does. Upon the death of both if the atheist wins, that is, if there is nothing beyond death, he will not be able to collect the prize as he will not even know whether he won or lost, the religious will also not know if he lost.

If on the other hand there is life after death and God sustains it, then the religious won this eternal life and the atheist lost it. We conclude therefore that whoever believes has everything to gain and nothing to lose; whoever does not believe has everything to lose and nothing to gain.

What is the meaning of life or what are we?
But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God. John 1:12

He is the image of the invisible God, (…) all things have been created through him and for him. Colossians 1:15-17

(…) many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” John 6:66-69

Our identity is to be children of God, but this only happens if we accept God as the Father. Jesus of Nazareth is the incarnation of the second person of the Most Holy Trinity, made Man to show us the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). Truly as God and Man, he came so that we may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10); he is our daily bread (John 6:51), the vineyard of our joy (John 2:1-11), and the meaning of our life (Matthew 5:13-14). He alone has the words of eternal life, words that in addition to helping us to live this life meaningfully, lead us effectively to eternal life. (John 6:68)

On this path, in this pilgrimage, we are helped, consoled and inspired by the constant presence of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity, who helps us to concretize and apply the Gospel in each and every place, time and situation.

For the atheist, he who believes that we come from Nothingness and that we are going to Nowhere, the logical conclusion is that life has no meaning. Something that begins with nothing and ends in nothing cannot mount to great things because nothing plus nothing equals nothing. The atheist lacks reasons to live.

The agnostic pretends that these questions do not concern him, he lives in the present moment, disconnected from the future and the past like the rest of the animal kingdom. Like them, he does not question himself, and with a sleeping conscience when faced with danger he hides his head in the sand, like an ostrich, living up to the proverb, “Eyes that do not see, hearts that do not feel”.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC