Halloween

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

To have or not to have a passport...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

I did not loose what I had given away

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it." (Matthew 16:25). Here is proof of how the digital and the spiritual are similar and that the gospel is the truth and the way to follow, in all the realities and situations of human life.

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

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

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

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Atheists or Polytheists?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nature abhors emptiness
"When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but not finding any, it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' When it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first." Luke 11:24-26

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

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Young people who waste their youth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Holy & Sexy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Philip - The patron saint of the "Itinerant Mission"

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

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

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

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

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

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

A certain Islam of today versus Christianity two thousand years ago

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Mary's Visitations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Inner versus external beauty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

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