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

The Lesson of the Butterfly

One day a small opening appeared in a cocoon, a man sat and watched the butterfly for several hours while it tried to move its body through the small hole. After some time, it seemed that the butterfly had ceased making any progress. It appeared to have done all it could and still had not managed to enlarge the hole.

The man decided to help the butterfly; he grabbed a pair of scissors and cut open the cocoon.  The butterfly was able to get out easily. Its body was small and withered, and its wings were wrinkled. The man continued to watch it, hoping that at some point the wings would open and stretch to support the body, and that it would become tough. None of this happened! On the contrary, the butterfly spent the rest of its short life crawling around with a shrivelled and shrunken body and wings and was never able to fly.

Helping does not always help
The man, in his kindness and desire to help, did not realize that the tight cocoon and the effort required for the butterfly to pass through the small opening, was the strategic plan that God had created so that the fluid in the butterfly's body could be pumped to its wings, thus enabling it to fly once it had freed itself from the cocoon.

There is help and then there is help... We should all be good Samaritans, but we should not replace others; that would be patronizing. We can help to solve other people's problems, but only they can solve them. We can lead a horse to water, but we cannot make it drink... Forcing an adult to do good is always bad... Positive help is giving a rod and teaching how to fish, and not giving a fish. Giving a fish creates dependency and makes the ones helped lazy.

Today's psychotherapy follows the principle of non-directiveness, which is a derivative of the old Socratic maieutics; the psychotherapist does not ask questions out of curiosity or to get to know the client, but to help the client to get to know himself and to find within himself the solution to his own problems, the motivation and willpower for change.

Babies of Africa and babies of Europe
In the field of education, Freud discovered that human maturity occurs when the pleasure principle is abandoned and the reality principle is embraced; or as Christ would say, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23). Children in Africa makes this transition much earlier than children in Europe.

In Europe, when a baby cries, he is immediately attended to, which is why many babies do not even cry anymore, all they have to do is pout to get what they want, and what else could this be but a threat, an ultimatum? The baby creates the belief that it is enough to cry for things to magically appear, settling into the pleasure principle. Unlike the overprotected European babies, the African babies cry and cry and are not attended to, so they soon get used to the harsh reality; if they feel cold, hungry, thirsty or wet, they put up with it, so they soon wake up to a world without Santa Claus and fairy godmothers and mature sooner.

Many parents, who went through difficulties when they were children, say that they do not want their children to go through what they went through; as a result, they are paternalistic and coddle their children thinking that they are helping them; they forget that they are what they are today precisely because they went through these very same difficulties and prevailed.

The cross is against the law of minimum effort
Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things to enter his glory? Jesus questioned the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:26). Everything good in life has a price, either money, work, effort or all three at the same time.

The law of minimum effort has motivated the technological and scientific advances in all material aspects of human life, but this does not apply to the psychic, ethical and spiritual aspects; in these realms, the law of maximum effort to get the greatest benefit continues to prevail; "Sorrow well milked is the cream of joy", say the pastors of Serra da Estrela. A victory is not celebrated without a battle, and the tougher the battle, the more joyful the victory celebration will be.

There is no resurrection without death. Christ could not have entered his glory without leaving this world, where he became flesh; the exit would not have been smooth because the life was not smooth. Christ paid the price for his freedom and non-submission to the political, economic, and religious power; he paid the price for his boldness in confronting and denouncing the injustices of the social and religious establishment of his time.

Great challenges make great men
"The situation makes the thief", say the people, is also valid in a positive sense. It is the situations, the great challenges, that make heroes out of those driven by challenging ideas, and cowards, and opportunists, out of those driven by selfish and petty interests.

It was the enslavement of God's people in Egypt that created Moses; it was the hemlock that praised Socrates and unearthed him from the oblivion of history; it was the Trojan war that created the myth of Achilles; it was the Second World War that created Winston Churchill; it was India's independence that created Gandhi, it was apartheid in South Africa that created Nelson Mandela. It is not the man that makes the situation, it is the situation that makes the man.

I asked for strength and God gave me difficulties to make me strong
I asked for wisdom and God gave me problems to solve
I asked for prosperity and God gave me intelligence and strength to work
I asked for courage and God gave me danger to overcome
I asked for love and God gave me troubled people to love
I asked for favours and God gave me opportunities
I received nothing I wanted
But I received everything I needed. Author Unknown

Live life without fear, face all the obstacles that come your way because "God gives the cold according to the clothes"; have faith, God will not allow you to be tested beyond your strength because "there is no evil from which good does not come".

Conclusion – Other than patronizing people by trying to solve their problems, help them to help themselves. Giving a fishing rod emancipates and empowers, giving a fish weakens the person and creates dependency.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Migrants and emigrants for the sake of the gospel

"Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you." Genesis 12:1

"For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it." Mark 8:35

In one of the municipalities most affected and deserted by emigration, such as Ribeira de Pena in the district of Vila Real (Portugal), we the Ad Gentes Institute missionaries, held a Missionary Week under the motto Migrants & Emigrants for the sake of the gospel. Since the discoveries, the country that "gave new worlds to the world" has also contributed to their population. There are Portuguese in every country of the world. Someone once said that the Portuguese have a very small cradle but a very large cemetery.

"Expanding the faith and the empire"
When we began to be a destination for immigrants of other countries, because despite being poor, we belong to a rich club, the European Community, we thought that the bloodletting of our country was over, but here we are faced with the current financial crisis and are called, and even invited by our government, once again to emigrate.

Soon after gaining the same geographical identity as over 900 years ago, which we still have today, with our backs to Europe, we set out to sea. For Camões, the legitimate interpreter of the soul of the Portuguese people, the ultimate reason that led us to venture out and leave our land, to go out to sea in search of new lands and new people, was always to "expand the faith and the empire".

In fact, our caravels, among noblemen and bourgeois merchants, also carried missionaries. One of the greatest missionaries of all times, St. Francis Xavier, traveled in our caravels toward India and later to the gates of China. We have therefore always been a country of emigrants and missionaries.

Migrants for the sake of the gospel
Like many other inland municipalities, Ribeira de Pena has fallen victim to migration, from the interior to the coast, from countryside to the city; the kind of migration that gave rise to the expression, "Portugal is Lisbon, the rest is just landscape".

Using migration as a metaphor for the New Evangelization, the first objective of the missionary week was to convey the idea or raise awareness that every Christian is a missionary, that is, a migrant who goes out for the sake of the gospel.

The week started with a sending off ceremony presided over by the bishop of Vila Real, Dom Amândio, who sent the missionaries, torch in hand, symbolizing the light of the gospel, to the various parishes in the municipality.

To end the week, the people from each of the parishes and villages in the municipality gathered at a different point, on the outskirts of Ribeira de Pena, and walked, praying the Missionary Rosary, to a strategic point where all the communities met. From that point, all the communities united, around 300 people, and began a Way of the Cross towards the Church of the Saviour where, to end the missionary week, adoration and benediction of the Blessed Sacrament was held.

Here -- faith is what saves us
In addition to the youth walk to the sanctuary of Our Lady of Guidance and the visit to the sick throughout the municipality, a different highlight of the week was the meeting in various cafes and bars in various communities. If Mohammed does not go to the mountain, the mountain goes to Mohammed -- If people do not go to Church, the Church goes to the people.

The topics of dialogues differed: in the more rural cafes, they focused more on the practice of religion; in the cafe Black & White, frequented more by young people, the dialogue centred on more fundamental and philosophical topics, the existence of God, the meaning of life, abortion, Christian religion versus Muslim religion... The experience was positive and bears repeating.

Emigrants for the sake of the gospel
In addition to migration from the countryside to the city, Ribeira de Pena has also been plagued by emigration abroad, with France being the most chosen destination. Today, the entire municipality has no more than 6,000 inhabitants. This has not stopped us from inviting the people to participate in the mission without borders, the Mission Ad Gentes, especially through prayer...

Using emigration as a metaphor of Evangelization Ad Gentes, the second objective of the missionary week was to renew Christ’s commission to "Go and make disciples of all nations", which is the motto of the diocese of Vila Real for this year.

Leaving for the unknown is difficult for both emigrants and missionaries, both feel the fear and leave in hope that everything will work out; the emigrant leaves to receive, the missionary leaves to give. It is also difficult to leave one’s country, family and friends. The motivations are different, the emigrant is driven by necessity, the missionary is driven by faith and love. While the emigrant goes to gain his life, the missionary goes to give his life.

Prayer of the Missionary Week
Lord Jesus Christ
You said to your disciples,
"Go and make disciples",
Send over us your Spirit
And renew in our hearts
Your missionary commission
To be messengers of the gospel
And prophets of hope and love
And this like Mary your mother,
A docile and obedient yes to your will,
By word and by example
Let us make disciples of all nations.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Carnival without Lent

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. Luke 9:23

It is commonly known that Carnival was born out of Lent. In the old days, Lent used to be very long, more than forty days of fasting, abstinence, penance, and sacrifice. Something like a period of mourning; there were purposely no parties or celebrations of effusion and joy, and no weddings were celebrated during Lent.

During this Lenten period, Christians were exhorted to do exercises of introspection that would lead to greater self-awareness, that is, to be aware of their life and responsible for their daily behaviour in an attitude of self-criticism with a view to a metanoia, that is, a change of mind and life, a conversion.

The days of Carnival, which preceded the Lenten season of penance and discipline, were the opposite of Lent. While during Lent you do not eat meat, during Carnival you eat meat galore. Carnival day, i.e. Shrove Tuesday, precedes Ash Wednesday which marks the beginning of Lent. In the Italian and French tradition, it is called “Mardi Gras”, or “Fat Tuesday”, because it is the day on which meat was abused as a way of saying goodbye to this food until Easter.

If Lent is a time of melancholy, dolence and introspection, Carnival is a time of joy, extroversion, and revelry; if Lent is a time of discipline, Carnival is a time of unruliness; at Carnival take no offense is play time; "It's Carnival, anything goes”.

Breaking one day many of the rules, fasts and diets, a monk said to his scandalized and dumbfounded disciple, for a bow of arrows to work well, it cannot always be tense. Our people wisely say, "you only live once”.
 
The evil of our time is that Carnival no longer precedes Lent. We are back to the "bread and circuses" of the Romans as the only modus vivendi. There is Carnival, yes, and it is becoming more and more refined, but there is no Lent; Carnival stayed while Lent disappeared even in the Church where it still exists today. but in a light or decaffeinated mode.

The Devil fleeing from the Cross
The world has become accustomed to tobacco without nicotine, coffee without caffeine, Coca-Cola Light without calories, beer without alcohol; this paradigm of roses without thorns has easily extrapolated to other realities and areas of individual and social life, so that today we also have Christmas of the consumerist Santa Claus, without the birth of Jesus; Easter of the chocolate bunnies and eggs, without the death and resurrection of Jesus; Halloween, that means, All Hallows’ Eve, without the Feast of All Saints.

Extrapolating even further, we have sex without love of the one-night stand, living together without commitment, with the belief that it is possible to live without inconvenience, and hassles, suffering, discomfort, sacrifice, work, a definitive effort without a cross.

In a world where reality and the truth of things are contradicted, where we want both the sun on the threshing floor and the rain on the meadow, where we want our cake and eat it too, the words of Jesus inviting us to embrace the cross, sound counterculture and against the current.

We know from exorcisms that the devil flees from the cross; we are just like the devil when we flee from the cross because we shun that part of life. Life is not possible without suffering, sacrifice and effort. Although human maturity, as Freud says, implies abandoning the pleasure principle to embrace the reality principle, the world stubbornly settles on the pleasure principle.

Unlike the rest of the world, we Christians are called not to "run away in fear. As the Spaniards say, we are called "to take the bull by its horns", in embracing the cross and the suffering that life throws at us to a greater good and a better future.

Embracing the cross without being masochistic
The cross is the desert that the Jews crossed to reach the promised land; and despite the temptation to reject that cross, inspired by hunger and a return to the meat pans of Egyptian slavery, the Jews understood that freedom had a price, and they were willing to pay for it by moving forward and embracing the cross.

This story has become a paradigm for abandoning all repetitive, obsessive, and addictive vices and behaviours. Egypt is the substance or behaviour to which we are addicted, and which deprives us of our freedom; the promised land is the full freedom and regaining control of our life; at the center is the desert, that is, the cost of purging, purification; the temptation to go back to addiction is caused by the withdrawal syndrome. Without pain and sacrifice, we cannot give up drugs or alcohol, or start a diet, and be faithful to the end.

Everything good in life costs and has a price, either money, effort, or both. The joy of victory is not felt without the ardor and sacrifice of battle, and the more difficult the battle, the more intense is the joy of victory and its celebration. But there is no joy of victory without the ardor of battle.

The cross is always the means to the desired end. The student's cross is to force himself to study instead of going from party to party; the cross of those who want to lose weight is their diet; the athlete’s cross is the strict diet, the way of life and the training in which he invests hours to gain seconds to his own record.

Gymnasium and gymnastics of the Cross
Christians do not go looking for the cross, they only need to accept it when they come across it. In this sense, at first glance, the Lenten practices of fasting, abstinence and sacrifice may seem artificial and masochistic, but if we think about it, they serve to strengthen our willpower, spirit, freedom, and independence from the things of the world. In the same way as what we do in a gym, meaningless exercises, running and swimming without a goal, is aimed to strengthen the body, boosting health.

Conclusion – Carnival can be a liberating catharsis when followed by Lent. Without it, life becomes bread and circuses; that is, living for oneself on the margins of values, ideals, and commitments.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Prayer of the Itinerant Mission

Our Lady of Consolata

Intercede for me

That the Holy Spirit may inspire me:

Where to go

Whom to meet

And what to say...

Lady of Good Counsel

Star of the Evangelization

Direct my path

So that I will announce Christ

And the consolation of His Gospel to all

Amen.

The core of this prayer was not penned by me. It was adapted from an English prayer given to me by a Polish-Canadian lady from Toronto whom I did not have the pleasure of meeting when I worked in that city.  I came to know her during a guided tour of the Missionary Exhibition that took place in Fatima from May to October 2012.

At the end of the tour, at the exhibition, I had the opportunity to speak with this lady about what brought her to Fatima, and how through her prayer her two sons came back to the faith and Christian way of life.  At the end of our conversation, she gave me a prayer card with Our Lady of Fatima on one side and a prayer on the other. 

Once at home, I read the prayer whose central message said:   Dear Mother, take me by your hand and tell me where to go, whom to see and what to say...  All of a sudden I realized that the lady could have been my Archangel Gabriel.  My encounter with her had been for me the equivalent to the Annunciation of Mary. It was a confirmation from above that I was on the right path and that the Itinerant Mission is what God wants for me here and now.

Where to Go - While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, 'Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them'...So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus. (...) And now, as a captive to the Spirit, I am on my way to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. (Acts 13:2,4; 20:22)

Whom to Meet - Then the Spirit said to Philip, 'Go over to this chariot and join it.' So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah.  He asked, 'Do you understand what you are reading?' (Acts 8:29-30)

What to Say - When they bring  you to trial and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say, but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. (Mk. 13:11)

The Mission comes from God and is the property of God, first of the Father, then of the Son and now of the Holy Spirit. The Church, docile to the voice of the Holy Spirit, is merely a facilitator.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Academic hazing, a permitted bullying

The trees once went out to anoint a king over themselves. So, they said to the olive tree, “Reign over us.” The olive tree answered them, “Shall I stop producing my rich oil by which gods and mortals are honoured, and go to sway over the trees?” Then the trees said to the fig tree, “You come and reign over us.” But the fig tree answered them, “Shall I stop producing my sweetness and my delicious fruit, and go to sway over the trees?”

Then the trees said to the vine, “You come and reign over us.” But the vine said to them, “Shall I stop producing my wine that cheers gods and mortals, and go to sway over the trees?” So, all the trees said to the bramble, “You come and reign over us.” And the bramble said to the trees, “If in good faith you are anointing me king over you, then come and take refuge in my shade; but if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon.” Judges 9:8-15

The good side of hazing
Leaving secondary school and entering university is a milestone in the lives of today's young people. In a way, hazing is like a rite of passage from adolescence to youth and adulthood, from high school to university. It is also the celebration of a victory, the achievement of getting into college, and the culmination of many years of effort to achieve the required grade point average. Many try but not all succeed, so wearing the black outfit of a university has its own flair and is a badge of success.

Hazing helps integration, it creates an identification with the university, and with colleagues; it also creates bonds of friendship and creates a community. Hazing can transform the shapeless mass of a crowd of students at a university into the familiarity of an academic home that the students had become accustomed to in their secondary school.

Hazing consists of ridiculous and silly games or rituals that make you, the hazing committee and the large audience laugh following someone as if you were his or her shadow; fetching things with your mouth from a jar full of flour; making a declaration of love, kill an ant with a shout, cutting the grass with a nail clipper, etc...

This being the case, and if this were always the case, hazing would be positive because it would act as icebreakers, dynamics of knowledge, communication, affirmation, confidence, cooperation to intimidate the more timid to come out of their shells and integrate into the group. All this wrapped in an atmosphere of celebration, laughter, comedy and partying.

Institutionalization of bullying
For some years now, the practice of hazing, supposedly still complying with the tradition and reason for which it was created, has been going downhill. In many cases, it is no longer innocent fun, but a joke in bad taste, an attack on the dignity, decency, and moral and physical integrity of the young people who are made to undergo it. It is easy to resort to humiliation, insults, violence, alcohol and sex. Students have been traumatized, physically and psychologically, with lifelong problems and even some deaths have occurred, so we can no longer consider hazing anything but crimes.

One freshman recounted being insulted for hours, covered in excrement and forced to stay that way until the excrement dried up; another freshman was suspended by his feet upside down from the top of a bridge; others were forced to drink alcohol going from bar to bar until they fell over drunk.

Faced with the prospect of hazing that awaited her, a highly intelligent freshman with a very high-grade point average, had a panic attack the day before she entered university; her parents had to travel a very long distance to come and calm her down, and her boyfriend had to beg the hazing committee to be lenient with her.

A completely reckless, arbitrary, and unbalanced activity, which is not limited to a space or a time, nor regulated by certain rules, practiced by the worst university students on young people who are vulnerable because they are young and want to fit in, can only lead to problems.

There are several elements that have led to this deviation, and it would be good for the Ministry of Education, deans and teachers to take them into account so that hazing can return to what it once was and stop being what it has become: unlimited limit 

• They are rarely practiced on campus during the day, but often at night and off campus. Deans and professors may see this as an advantage, but the lack of any supervision can only lead to abuse.
• It is no longer just on the first day of classes, but goes on all week, for several weeks, every year and often every year of the course and has even happened after the course.
• The peer pressure, and the fear of being ostracized, is such that young freshmen are willing to submit to anything in order to fit in well; this puts them in a very vulnerable position, susceptible to being abused.
• The secrecy and silence surrounding these practices is mafia-like, and where there is mafia there is impunity.
• It is incomprehensible how a rite of passage into adulthood can consist of uncritical submission to an authority of weak moral character, the Dux (The leader of the committee that enforces hazing).
• If hazing is the welcome to university, it would be logical for the brightest student to oversee this activity, but the reality is that the opposite is true; the one who oversees hazing, the Dux, is the most idiotic, the one with the worst student.
• The one who has existentially settled at the university; the one who wants forever to be a student, as the fado says; a Peter Pan who does not want to grow up so he can continue to live parasitically off the sweat of his parents and the taxpayers. This is how failure, laziness and irresponsibility are rewarded. A former university Dux said in an interview with TVI that he was always invited to all the university’s public events, to all the parties and sprees, and was even better known and more popular than the Dean.
• The absence of any rules or standards makes these practices dependent on the discretion and arbitrariness of the Dux and other members of the hazing committee. The lack of character and psychological maturity can lead these gentlemen to project their resentment of their academic and existential failure onto hopeful freshmen in the form of revenge, by hardening the hazing. "If you want to know a villain, put a stick in his hand" The Dux, or Duce as the dictator Mussolini was called, is the least suitable person to do hazing.

 Conclusion - Hazing helps the integration and identification of the new students with the university; it can transform the shapeless mass of a crowd of students at a university into the familiarity of an academic home. It consists of ridiculous and silly games or rituals that make you, the hazing committee and the large audience laugh. The negative side of it is that it can become bullying if not supervised.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Life in three time frames

Today's man is strongly influenced by the spirituality of "presentism" coming from the Far East and by the philosophy of life of consumerism, which appeals more to our basic instincts and less to our reason, seeking to disconnect our actions in the present from their causes in the past, and their consequences in the future. The aim is to get people to live in the pseudo-eternal present of a consumerist nirvana.

When, in the last stage of our lives, we live in the true eternal present, Heaven, then the past and the future will no longer be important; but until then, and as long as we live limited by the coordinates of space and time, the past and the future are of the utmost importance.

Life is like a play in three times and three acts. Anyone who lives in the past is a dead living, because the past is no longer happening, it cannot be acted upon, it is closed, it is passed; "Water under the bridge does not move mills".

Anyone who lives in the present disintegrated and without reference to the past is a living-dead, because without the memory of the past, he is a reed shaken by the wind, and since he does not know where he comes from, he does not know who he is, he has no identity. Anyone who lives in the present disintegrated and without reference to the future, without a dream, without a project, does not know where he is going, and "for those who don't know where to go, there are no favourable winds".

Those who live only in the future miss out on many opportunities in the present and forget that for this future, in order to be possible, must have one foot in the present, that is, there are things in the present that must be done to prepare the project to be completed in the future; if the future is the roof of the house, the present is the foundations and the walls.  A future without a present is a utopia, a fantasy; it is living in limbo in an eternal "standby".

Human life is the result of a balanced and harmonious living of the three times between which it follows We live in the present and only in the present; but by looking to the past, we discover who we are and the meaning of our lives; and by projecting ourselves into the future, we find the motivation for our living. The present is just one piece of the puzzle that in its totality includes the past and the future.

• The past is the reason, the present our action, the future our motivation.
• The past is the tradition, the present the action, the future the innovation.
• The past is what we were, the present what we are, the future what we are going to be.
• The past has been, the present is existing, the future is transcending.
• The past is God the Father who created us out of love, the present is God the Son who saved and saves us by giving us health here and now; and the future is God the Holy Spirit who animates, inspires and give us strength in our journey.
• The past is faith, the present is charity, the future is hope.

Faith identifies us with a past
Humanity’s heritage is not just made up of historical monuments, but of everything the human race is and has done over the 5 million years of its existence on this planet. All of this is genetically incorporated into the DNA of every child that comes into this world, it is something like Jung’s collective unconscious, it is part of us and defines us as such. The past is made up of all this.

Libris ex libris fiunt, when I want to create something new, in any field of knowledge, I have to research what already has been done in that area, in order to add to the fruit of my work.  Only God has the ability to create out of nothing.

Faith in a personal God, creator of everything and everyone, who revealed himself through the prophets and then in his Son, who sent us the Holy Spirit, already has a history. My adherence to this faith leads me to be a part of this history and gives me identity and a sense of belonging to a people and a community.

The same is true on an individual level; I know what I am and what I am capable of when I look back and see how my talents and shortcomings have performed in various circumstances that life has thrown at me throughout my personal history. It is the approval of this past that gives me the sense of self-worth, I need to relate properly with myself, with God, with others and with my surroundings.

Even God, who lives in eternity, outside of space and the becoming of time, to present himself to mankind, made use of the fact that he had lived with them in the past, presenting himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob...

Hope projects us into the future
As the stubborn donkey didn't want to walk, the young man tied a carrot to the end of a string, which he hung on a stick, then mounted the donkey and put the carrot two feet in front of the donkey's snout. Hoping to bite the carrot, the donkey kept on walking, not realizing that the carrot was also moving.

Hope is faith with wheels; the dynamic faith that projects us into the future.  We all need a "carrot" to walk on. The dream is the engine of life; what inspires our present is not in the present.

Martin Luther King was one of those who, projecting into the future, mortgaged his life on the struggle for equality between blacks and whites; a dream that he knew would not come true in his lifetime. The day before he was assassinated, inspired by Moses who after 40 years of desert wandering, saw the Promised Land, which he did not enter, from the top of Mount Nebo, he said: I am grateful to God because he has allowed me to see the Promised Land, I may not enter it with you but I am certain that we, as a people, will enter it one day.

You can only live meaningfully in the present if it is impregnated with the future.  To live in the present without the presence of the future is to drift. And when the present is painful, it is hope for a better future that helps us endure it.

Charity fills our present
Unlike the past and the future, the present is in our hands, in it and only in it are we free to act. The present is the here and now of our lives, which should be full of actions, acts of charity and love. For us Christians to live is to love and to love is to serve, to place ourselves at the service of those who need it most.

Putting into proportion what Mother Teresa of Calcutta did, and how much there was to do in the face of so much poverty and misery, a journalist once said, "What Mother is doing is like a drop of water in the ocean"; to which she answered with much humility, "Yes, but if I didn’t do it, the ocean would have one less drop of water".

God does not ask us to revolutionize the world, or to make it better, he only asks us to do our best. In the parable of the talents, the one who achieved more is not praised more than the one who achieved less; in the parable of the labourers in the vineyard, those who worked all day did not receive more than those who worked for only one hour; in the parable of the sower, those who produced 100% are not exalted more than those who produced 60% or those who only produced 30%.

Much or little, all the Lord asks of us is that we bear fruit. That our lives be productive; that we leave here more than what we find here. That we be part of the solution and not part of the problem; in other words, that our living and acting be a contribution to solving the problems of this world and not a contribution to making them worse.

Three virtues, three popes
There are those who want to see an incarnation of the theological virtues in the lives of the last three popes of the Church.  John Paul II, the one who crossed the threshold of the third millennium, is the Pope of Hope; Benedict XVI, who wrote an encyclical on faith, proclaimed the Year of Faith and his whole life as a theologian focused on the reasonableness of faith, is therefore the Pope of Faith; Pope Francis, by the name he chose, for his words and gestures, is the Pope of Charity.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Disguised

(...) And in that golden parlour
Of noble and serious ambience
To hear sing the fado
There is always a disguised
Mysterious character

But one night there was someone
Who said to him, by way of talk,
"Disguised, note well
That today there will be no one
Disguised in this room!"

And before the admiration of all
Discovered that the disguised
Was the King of Portugal
There was regal hand kissing
And then he sang the fado.

(lyrics by Joao Ferreira Rosa)

Life inside a golden cage
The curious story which this classic fado alludes to may never have happened in Portugal, but there is nothing stopping it from happening, and happening again, in any time or place. This is because it highlights an inescapable truth; it is said that the powerful in general -- kings, emperors, presidents or popes -- are the best-informed people, and in a way, this is true, but the opposite can also happen.

The information that reaches them is neither first-hand, second-hand nor third-hand; often the news has passed through several people and as "who tells a tale adds a detail", by the time it reaches the recipient, it is overly filtered and/or laden with connotations and interpretations that place it further and further from the truth and reality. Sometimes the information may not even reach the recipient because it was withheld by someone who, according to his criteria, deemed it irrelevant.

Often the concentric circles of people that surround a ruler, or someone important, are veritable walls that prevent him from having a clear and objective view of the world around him, and the problems he is called to solve. As an anecdote: someone used to define pontifical secrecy as what everyone knows except the pope.  

Frequently those who are considered powerful live inside a golden cage and have less freedom than the rest of us... One of those who traditionally lives inside a Golden Cage, with very limited freedom of movement, is the Pope. Contrary to this fact and in line with the Disguised, the Swiss Guard, in charge of Pope Francis’ security, confirms that he has "already ventured out at night, dressed like a regular priest, to meet with the homeless of Rome".

Mediators
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, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being. (Hebrews 1:1-3)

For a long time, "isolated" in heaven, God also had his circle of intermediators and messengers, who clouded God's messages to his people, with their own personality, prejudices and ideas. "Omnis traductor traditor" says a Latin proverb; a translator or interpreter is always a traitor, that's why God was unable to communicate fully with humanity.

At Christmas the invisible was made visible
The Bible tells us that God is spirit. Spirit is immaterial and therefore invisible and incommensurable to our senses. We are spatial-temporal beings, God lives in eternity, a Kingdom completely different from ours. We cannot see radio, television or cellphone waves, and we need suitable devices to capture them. Since God is spirit, only our spirit is prepared to capture him.

"Though he was in the form of God (...) emptied himself, (...) being found in human form" (Philippians 2:6-7). At a certain point in human history, God decided to strip off his divinity and dress up, or disguise himself, as a human being. "Tired" of sending messages, he decided to visit and live among us. From within our humanity, which he fully assumed, he showed us by his word, his behaviour and his deeds how man is and should live.

"He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him" (John 1:11). Jesus, God made man, was born in a manger in Bethlehem, grew up and was educated humbly in a village on the outskirt called Nazareth. He was trained as a carpenter, and was endowed with a nondescript physical appearance. According to our natural expectation, God should have come in glory and full of power, with thousands of angels flanking him on both sides. His voice should have sounded like a thunder. His face should have been brilliant like the sun.

This is why it was difficult for the people of that time to recognize him as God; they did not understand that God had to come in a humble way, to be our friend and our brother, to speak to us from within our human nature and condition. As we would naturally expect, one day he will come for the second time, in full glory as the King of kings, to judge and close the human history of which he is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Advent a time of Hope

The word that Isaiah son of Amos saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. In days to come the Mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, 'Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths;' (...). 

He shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!" (Isaiah 2:1-5)

For us Christians, the year begins with Advent. In this new year that we are beginning to travel by meditating on the mystery of Christ, the only way, the truth and the life, optimism and hope are our best travel companions.

The motivator, guru, teacher and guide for this time is the prophet Isaiah, consecrated as the ex libris of Advent. He makes us dream of a better world, where instruments of war are transformed into instruments of peace; where natural enemies, like the wolf and the lamb, become friends.

Mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the highest of the mountains – Is God the highest mountain in your life? What are your priorities? Do you love God with all your heart and all your mind? Do you love God more than everyone and everything else: family, friends, power, fame, honour, wealth, pleasure? If any of these realities is a priority in your life, then you will always be in conflict and rivalry with those who also have this reality as a priority. An example of this is the envy that King Saul had of David’s growing fame.

Those who have power, wealth, fame and pleasure as their main objective in life are unwilling to share any of these goods, because they live with the belief that they never have enough. Those who worship these goods isolate themselves and see others as potential enemies and rivals. They are like many dogs with one bone; the one who lacks power, fame, and wealth envies the one who has them and will do anything to get them; the one who has power, fame and wealth looks at others as a constant threat.

If instead of these idols you choose the primacy of God, who is Father and Creator of everything and everyone, you will discover that others are not rivals, but brothers and sisters, with whom you can share everything. In fact, things were made to be used, people to be loved. Those who use people and love things live contrary to the natural order.

When everyone loves God above all things, enmity and rivalry between people are extinguished because there is enough God for everyone. Why doesn’t anyone envy a saint? Because everyone can be a saint; holiness is available to everyone; the holiness of one does not deny or rival the holiness of another.

All the nations shall stream to it – Do all run to Jerusalem? Do you love God with your whole being or are you a divided person because some parts of your personality and character do not submit to you? Are you free and in control of yourself, or do you depend on people, habits and substances that exert power and control over you

Let us go up to the mountain of the Lord – The Temple Mount dominates the entire city of Jerusalem. Going to Jerusalem today is equivalent to going to Church to receive the sacraments. The sacraments instituted by Christ, and their practice by the faithful, have already proven over the length and breadth of 2000 years that they are indispensable for Christian life. If you have stopped going to church, where are you going now? To the football game? To the shopping centres?

That he may teach us his ways – If you do not read or listen to the Bible anymore, or do not make community with other Christians, or heed the counsels of the Church, who then is your teacher or guru? Where do you find guidance and help to live your life meaningfully? From the television, which presents the most ignoble programs during prime time? The hunger of the spirit is much more painful than the hunger of the body.

That we may walk in his paths – How can you walk in his ways if you do not know what they are? If you have no contact with God, nor with the Christian community, nor with the Word of God, how can you walk in his paths? "Whoever does not remember God lacks every good thing", says the people.

They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks – Homo homini lupus, we are violent beings by nature, but we can transform our weapons of war -- swords, and spears -- into weapons of peace, ploughshares and pruning hooks. Lester Pearson, the first prime minister of Canada, used to say: "We prepare for war like precocious giants, and for peace like retarded pygmies”.  In fact, we seem more motivated and creative when preparing for war than when preparing for peace.

Microwaves, GPS and atomic energy are some of the many inventions and artifacts that were created for war and only much later found their peaceful application. If anyone can help us redirect our basic personality, it is St. Paul, who proclaimed Christ and his gospel everywhere, with the same vehemence and conviction with which he once denounced and persecuted the followers of Christ and his gospel.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Mission to the end of Time

"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, (...) And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." Mathew 28:19-20

"(...) When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" Luke 18:8

Christ’s missionary mandate took place when, before ascending to heaven, he fulfilled his mission as the one sent by the Father. Thus began the mission Ad Gentes, or the mission of space, as Christ sent his disciples all over the world.

But as spatial-temporal beings that we are, mission also has a historical and temporal dimension, Intra Gentes, which consists of passing on the gospel from generation to generation to the ends of time. In short, mission Ad Gentes to the ends of the earth and mission Intra Gentes to the ends of time.

Recap of what was said before
The witness of authentic Christians arouses the faith of those who witness it; those who dare to make the choice of faith will come, through their experience of God, to the full conviction that they have not believed in vain; this experience, that is, the personal encounter with Christ and the establishment of a loving and intimate relationship with him, leads to salvation, in other words, to health of body and soul, to conversion, to a change of life.

Finally, this new Christian in turn begins to bear witness to the salvation that God has worked in his life, and he too can awaken faith in those who come into contact with him. It is in this sense that we missionaries always insist that every authentic Christian must be a missionary or he is not a Christian. We began with testimony, and we return to testimony as the beginning of the process that leads: to the choice of faith - to the experience of God - to a change of life, and - to the mission, which is nothing other than singing, like Mary, our personal Magnificat, that is, bearing witness to the wonders that the Lord has worked in us.

Mission Intra Gentes
As the disciples began to put into practice the mandate they had received from the Lord in Jerusalem, converts were springing up everywhere. These new Christians were invited to gather into small communities. St. Paul was the founder of many of them, those in Corinth, Ephesus, Thessalonica etc.

While St. Paul and the other apostles continued their toil as "fishers of men", a name that the Lord himself had given to his apostles, someone had to look after these small, newly formed communities. Thus, came about the first shepherds to look after the sheep of the Lord's flock. Titus, Timothy, and Philemon were some of these collaborators to whom the Apostle entrusted the communities he had set up.

Therefore, already in apostolic times, as a logical consequence of the mission Ad Gentes – that of taking the gospel to the whole world – the mission Intra Gentes was born, that is, the mission that takes place within the bosom of a people and consists of passing on the gospel from generation to generation to the ends of time. We can therefore conclude that the mission Ad Gentes is the mission of fishermen, while the mission Intra Gentes is the mission of shepherds.

The mission Intra Gentes, like every welfare state, is based on the ethical value of solidarity between generations: those who work now contribute a percentage of their salary so that their parents, the previous generation, can enjoy a pension. In social state, solidarity is with the previous generation; in mission Intra Gentes, it is with the next generation. Like all education, Christian education is also aerial: when parents live their Christianity authentically, they awaken faith and the same experience in their children.

With all that it has done for the spiritual and material progress of peoples, the mission Ad Gentes has been called by some "the washed face of the Church". Plagued by scandals and dropouts, the mission Intra Gentes appears to have a less presentable face. The gospel seems to be progressing at the forefront and regressing at the rear.

In the Western world, during the Ancient and Middle Ages, passing on the gospel from generation to generation was a relatively easy task; since the Renaissance, the flock has been losing sheep. The attempt of the Second Vatican Council to adapt the Church to the modern world has not reversed this trend; today the problem is alarming. Proof of this is the constant concern of the popes, from Paul VI who declared the first Year of Faith, then John Paul II launched the New Evangelization, and later, Benedict XVI declared the Year of Faith the second time in the Church.

"Faith either holds fast or fades away"
"I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word" (John 17:20). In his priestly prayer, Christ thought of all those who, from generation to generation, would receive the Good News. Our faith in Christ is apostolic because since the apostles it has been passed down from generation to generation, like the baton in a relay race is passed from athlete to athlete.

I am with you always, to the end of the age. We can take it for granted that Christ will always be with us, but will we always be with him?

When the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on earth? It is an enigma and a possibility; parents, catechists, teachers, pastors, and educators in general are failing to pass on the faith to future generations, who are becoming increasingly unbelieving. A faith that is weakened from generation to generation could end up disappearing from human history altogether; it is possible that when Christ comes the second time, to judge the living and the dead, he will find no faith on earth.

When a radio or television signal arrives weakly at a place, it is necessary to erect an antenna tower to strengthen the signal. As someone once said, "Faith either holds fast or fades away". The passing on of Christ from generation to generation is the equivalent of Christ’s resurrection for that generation and for the generations that follow: not passing on is the equivalent of his death for both the present and the future generations.

Christ is being resurrected from one generation to the next, or is dying from one generation to the next. If the current trend continues, one day the historical death of Christ could become the death of Christ in history. In order not to be part of the problem, let us be part of the solution; that is, in this relay race or chain of transmission of the faith, let us not be the weakest link. We are always in a time of mission because it only ends when Christ is all in all (1Corinthians 15:28).

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Mission to the end of the Earth

"Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation." Mark 16:15

Christ did not come into the world to save only those who lived in his country during the 33 years of his earthly life. He was aware of being, in his person, the salvation of humanity, both for those who lived during his existence in the world, and for those who lived before him, as well as for those who will live after him.

Just as a stone thrown into the middle of a lake causes waves in the shape of concentric circles, which from the center extend outwards to the ends of the lake, so Christ appearing in the middle of human history extends his salvific action to the ends of the earth and time.

The Church is Christ here and now
Since we are spatial-temporal beings, that is, we occupy a space for a time, Christ founded the Church to continue his Mission for all times and places. The Church, as the mystical body of Christ, represents Christ in all the here and now of human history.

Every Christian is a missionary, just as every seed has the vocation to be fruit, just as every man has the vocation to be a father and every woman to be a mother. A glass only proves that it is full when it spills out some of the liquid it holds: "The mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart", a Christian as a whole cannot fail to proclaim by words and deeds what animates him. The neighbour who felt cured by this tea or that remedy does not stop urging her friends to try it too.

Everything in life, including life itself, is a gift.  You only have gifts when you give them, and they are lost when they are not shared and exercised. Just like the gift of singing, painting, writing, playing football etc., which increase when they are exercised and shared, the gift of faith does the same. Those who do not exercise their gifts, as the parable of the talents suggests, lose what little they have.

Through the Mission Ad Gentes, the Church is called to go out of herself, to leave the comfort zone of passively shepherding the 99, and set out, like a fisherman or a hunter, in search of the lost sheep, facing the dangers and risks of going like a lamb into a world full of wolves.

What motivates and inspires missionaries of all times is the zeal for the gospel like that of the great apostle Paul, whose goal was to take the gospel to the ends of the world of his time, to Spain, and that of St. Francis of Xavier who took the gospel till his last breath to the gates of China, where he died.

Asia, the Mission's new frontier
Two thousand years have passed since Christ sent us out into the whole world to proclaim the gospel to every creature; and although we have evangelized Africa and the Americas well, most of the people in Asia, the largest continent on this planet, have still not been exposed to the light of Christ. We are far from being able to say that our mission is accomplished, so let’s get to work, we can't sit back.

"To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (...). To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (...) so that I might win those outside the law. (...)I have become all things to all people, so that I might by any means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel…". (1Corinthians 9:20-23)

In Asia, especially in Japan and China, but also in India, the Church has not been able to emulate the great apostle Paul, who managed to purge Christianity of Judaism by making it more credible to the Gentiles of his time.

The Jesuit Mateo Ricci was a true follower of St. Paul in his effort to purge the gospel of western culture in order to bring it to Chinese culture. But just like before, in the days of St. Paul when the fundamentalists of the Jerusalem community tried to obstruct his effort to inculturate the gospel into Greco-Roman culture, but were unsuccessful, those in Rome during Mateo Ricci’s time did the same and unfortunately, were successful.

And here is our Achilles heel. The Mission in America was easy, because in the face of a primitive culture, the gospel was imposed rather than proposed, a little by the sword and a little by the cross. In Africa, the Mission triumphed because it went hand in hand with material progress: schools, hospitals, the fight against hunger etc... during the Ethiopian famine, the Orthodox Coptic Church even accused us of buying proselytes with flour.

In Asia, we were up against a different culture, in no way inferior to our own, and we had neither the courage of St. Paul to inculturate Christianity into the pagan world of his time, nor the wisdom of the Church Fathers to inculturate Christianity into the superior Greco-Roman culture that reigned in Europe at that time.

We still have time to make the Church more universal, in terms of diversity of cultures, and not wait for the world to become more and more westernized.

As the greatest theologian of the last century, Karl Rahner, used to say, God in His infinite mercy will save all those who, through no fault of their own, did not have the opportunity to know Christ and his gospel; but will we be saved, those who had a duty to proclaim Him but did not?
 
Conclusion - Just as a stone thrown into the middle of a lake causes waves in the form of concentric circles, which from the centre widen towards the periphery to the ends of the lake, so Christ, emerging amid human history, extends his saving action to the ends of the earth and to the ends of time.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Bypass of Faith

Our grandfather who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name...

There are small Christian communities where a missionary can only visit from time to time. On one such visit, a missionary priest met a catechist who was teaching the children an unusual version of the Lord’s Prayer. God was not invoked as Father but as Grandfather...

That catechist was simply doing what all good catechists should do: starting from the existential reality of each person so as to be able to proclaim the Word of God, in a way that is understood and suited to his or her reality. The concept of Father was not understandable by children who were being raised by their grandparents because their parents had died of AIDS.

The AIDS crisis is very serious in Africa; of the 35 million people infected with the HIV virus in the world, 25 million live in Africa. "Al perro flaco todo son pulgas" or "It never rains it pours" says a Castilian proverb. It was the last straw for Africa, already decimated by so many other diseases due to the level of underdevelopment in which it still finds itself.

The witness we receive from our parents is not being passed on to our children because the faith of the present generation of parents seems to be affected by the equivalent of the AIDS pandemic in Africa. Parents transmit life to their children, but they do not pass on the faith, without which life has no meaning.

Faith is to life what the operating system is to a computer; without it, nothing in the computer works because it is the basis on which all programs function. It is sad to live without knowing why we exist and what we are existing for; studying in order to have a profession, to work, to eat and to enjoy ourselves are very poor reasons; human life is more than this and this is not why we are so radically different from other species of living beings.

The natural thing would be, as in other times, for parents to pass on the faith they have received to their children; that after mommy and daddy, Jesus would be the third word the little ones would learn; and that the lap should be the first pew in the Church and where the first catechesis takes place. But this is not the case, today's parents if they baptize their children is out of tradition or superstition; if they send their children to catechism, it is so that they can make their First Communion, which is also out of tradition and the equivalent of rites of passage in other cultures.

All this indoctrination is seen as a bore by parents and children alike; neither of them ever has a personal relationship with Christ, so both look at religion with ignorance and prejudice; from their simplistic minds, they conclude that religion is of no use in everyday life.

Where parents fail, the grandparents can be quite successful. When an artery is blocked and the normal flow of blood is impeded, a bypass is performed. The same thing can happen when it comes to passing on the faith from generation to generation; when parents abandon the faith they received from their parents and do not pass it on to their children, grandparents can take on this task and reach out to their grandchildren. Many are already doing precisely this in the hours they spend with their grandchildren, because they know that faith is as vital to a child as the blood coursing through their veins.

The child has only two parents but four grandparents; it would be sad if none of the four took on this commitment of bypassing the faith to their grandchildren.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Failures in the transmission of the Faith

The transmission of the Christian faith, from generation to generation since the Apostles, has been weakening; Christ’s flock has diminished drastically; today there are more lost sheep than those that remain in the fold. What is happening? The causes could be numerous, and I am listing just a few, and maybe the readers of this blog can discover others...

A doctrine is passed on, not a personal relationship with Christ – Christianity is not a doctrine, an ideology or even a philosophy of life. Christianity is above all a personal, intimate and loving relationship with Christ. Few educators of the faith (clergy, parents, catechists and teachers) have this type of relationship with Jesus; and since no one can give what he or she does not have, what these educators of the faith pass on to the next generations is a doctrine and precepts that Western culture has largely assimilated over the centuries.

For this reason, there are too many Christians who are Christians from a sociological, cultural or cosmovision point of view, and not enough Christians who put their faith into practice, striving to be like Christ in their daily lives; not enough Christians who celebrate their faith in community; not enough ethical Christians who are good people and who fight for a better world, sometimes at the risk of their lives.

Lack of pedagogy – Post-modern man, especially the young, has made himself the measure of all things. There are no objective, universal and eternal truths; only what he discovers for himself is true, has value and is normative, not what is imposed on him from outside by whoever it may be.

Faced with this reality, we present not a "new evangelization” as proposed by St. John Paul II, but rather an "evangelization anew" as proposed by Cardinal Martini. The solution is not to evangelize again, but to evangelize in a different way.

It is true that Christ continues to be the only way, the truth and the life, and there is no equally valid and viable alternative for living human life to the fullest and with meaning.  But now, in order for this truth to be operative, post-modern man has to discover it himself, within his own being.

Something similar happens in psychotherapy. The discoveries that the psychotherapist makes and declares to the patient as a diagnosis not only have no value for the patient, they can even be counterproductive. What truly has therapeutic value, and can be the beginning of an inner transformation, is what the patient discovers about himself and for himself with the help of the psychotherapist.

It is on the basis of this principle that two major currents of psychotherapy operate, the non-directive of Carl Rogers and the Gestalt therapy of Fritz Perls, as well as the theories of social intervention of Paulo Freire.

What these authors do is adapt Socrates’ old maieutics -- the art of helping to give birth. The truth is either already inside of us or we have the ability to discover it.  Jesus of Nazareth used this very method in his way of evangelizing.  He dialogued with his interlocutors and by way of parables, he revealed the truth of everyday life that they knew, he questioned them, exhorted them and helped them discover eternal truths that they did not know:

• "Simon, what do you think? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tribute? From their children or from others?" (Matthew 17:25)
• Which one of these three, do you think, was neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? (Luke 10:36)
• "A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?" (Luke 7:41-42)
• The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard see, yeast, treasure hidden in a field, trader of pearls, a net cast into the sea, an owner who went out early in the morning, the ten virgins... (Matthew 13:31-32)

Lack of icons or points of reference – Icons are images or people that remind us of the truths of our faith; when we look at them and contemplate them, we are magically transported from the immediate present to the eternal of God; in a generic sense, an icon is anything that evokes in us something beyond itself; icons are thus points of reference of our faith, reminders and continuous invitations to incarnate our faith in the here and now of our personal story.  In short, they are the salt of the earth and light to the world, without them we would all be more lost and people of little faith would find no help. Let us look at some examples:

• Some priests, religious men and women, without any external sign to identify them, opt to walk around camouflaged;
• Crucifixes and images have been removed from public places and from the walls of our homes;
• Celebrities, politicians, scientists, arts and sports celebrities declare themselves agnostics, as if this were now in fashion, and if they happen to be religious, they understand that faith belongs in the private domain;
• Instead of swearing their oath of office on the constitution, many US presidents swear it on the Bible and do not start or end a speech without invoking God’s name; European politicians, when they are religious, are embarrassed or afraid to admit that they are Christians, for fear of losing the votes of the agnostics perhaps.
• The first pew in the Church was the parents' lap and Jesus was the third word that a baby would learn after papa and mama...

Science and technology as the new religion – A growing number of people have replaced faith in God’s omnipotence with faith in the pseudo-omnipotence of science and technology. Science and technology are indeed important, because they solve countless problems and make our lives more comfortable; science and technology tell us or answer us the "how", but they will never tell us the "why" or the "what for".

The agnostic will say that nobody cares to know the "why" or "what for"; it is true, as the atheists say, that man is the moment when nature became aware of itself. It is precisely from this moment that human beings seek meaning in their lives.  Every individual, the moment he becomes aware that he exists, which is around the age of 6 or 7, asks himself where he came from, where he is going and what meaning life has; in contrast, animals do not do this because they are not aware that they exist.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC