"Walk in my presence..."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Cross, registered trademark ®

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC