The real cause of poverty

Oxfam, the international confederation of 17 organizations that fight against poverty in the world, declared at the world economic forum in Davos 2015 that, at the present rate, next year the 1% of humanity will own more than the 99% that is 52% of the world wealth. Faced with this situation, we would like to ask Mr. Adam Smith, father of modern capitalism, where is the invisible hand that should seek the common interest when each one is seeking his own self-interest.

The contradiction of capitalism
While strolling along the beach a tourist, from a rich country, came upon a fisherman relaxing in his boat, peacefully smoking his pipe, as the sun started to descend into the horizon.
"Why are you not fishing?" asked the rich man.
"I’m done for the day," answered the fisherman.
"And why don’t you go again?" continued the rich man.
"Because I've already caught enough for the day".
"And why don't you fish more than you need?" persisted the rich man.
"And what would I do with so much fish?" inquired the fisherman.
"You would sell them and make lots of money; from that you could put an engine on your boat. So you could fish in deeper waters and catch even more fish, then perhaps you could have two boats and have people working for you and you could become rich like me."
"And what would I do then?" asked the fisherman.
"Ah then you could enjoy life," replied the rich man.
"And it’s not that what I’m doing right now?" concluded the fisherman with amusement.

This story is quoted, in one of the books by Anthony de Mello, with the intention of satirizing the capitalist ideology: first we create a surplus of goods; then, based on the deep psychology of human nature, through advertising and marketing we can create fictitious necessities, which lead people to consume more. The consequences of this ideology are:

• Immoral dilapidation of the planet's resources, especially in the poorest countries and without major advantages to them;
• Contamination of human ecosystem with unbreathable toxic gases resulting in greenhouse effect, causing an increase in global temperature and climatic changes, which are already being felt and are of major concern for the future.
• Deterioration of people’s health in richer countries, caused by pollution of the atmosphere, contamination of farmlands, seas and rivers, and by excessive consumption of genetically modified foods, produced with chemical fertilizers, treated with pesticides and processed with dyes and artificial preservatives.
• Widening of the gap between the rich and the poor; the wealth that ever fewer people possess is inversely proportional to the poverty that ever more and more people endure.

The world population has already surpassed 7 billion people. Environmentalists say that, if each one of these 7 billion people were to live like we do in Europe, North America and Australia, the planet could sustain the lives of its inhabitants for only 3 months; then there would be no more resources and the pollution to the sea, the atmosphere and the farmland would be such that life would not be possible.

We can conclude that our way of life is detrimental to the majority of people, who could never attain the same standard of living and is harmful to the planet in which we all live. How can this problem be solved? In order that all the inhabitants of this planet can live with dignity, and with the absolute minimum, the wealthy need to consume less so that the poor could consume the essential. As the wealthy do not want to lower the standard of living they've attained, nor do they want the planet to die, they’ve created mechanisms to make sure that the poor remain poor.

An unjust globalization
This last stage of capitalism has brought economic growth, at planetary level, but did not include uniformly all the inhabitants of the planet. There are mechanisms which make the wealthy nations even richer and the poor nations each time poorer.

The physical principle of communicating vessels tells us that if a reservoir full of water is communicating with one that is almost empty, the water level will eventually become the same in the two vessels. Globalization i.e. the intercommunication between all countries should bring about more equality, but this is not what’s happening; because at the present moment globalization, the flow of goods and people, is not free from impediments unlike in the principle of communicating vessels, but has a valve implanted. A valve is a mechanism that ensures that the flow occurs in only one direction. For example, the duodenum is a valve, between the stomach and the intestine, and its function is to make sure that food passes from the stomach to the intestine, and not return to the stomach.

If globalization followed the natural principle of the communicating vessels, it would be fair, but the existence of a type of "duodenum" between the wealthy countries and the poor ones makes globalization a modern form of exploitation.

Some years ago, the economy replaced politics as the controlling power in the world; now we are witnessing the moment in which finance i.e. making money with money without creating wealth, is replacing economy as the controlling factor. For politics, the world was a forum, a large parliament; for economy, the world was a large market; for finance, the world is simply a casino, where a few win fortunes at the expense of many others not so lucky who, even after gambling away home, spouse and children, were unable to avoid bankruptcy.

Economic-financial feudalism - We are marching blindly in the direction of an economic and financial feudalism. The fusion of large multinational companies, with the resulting monopoly of the entire sectors of the world economy, is threatening democracy; the enormous power, concentrated in the managers of these companies, escapes the criteria and scrutiny of politics and the rulings of the government in the countries where these companies are headquartered and operating.

In democracy the power rests with the people who delegate it, for a period of time, to the politicians; the people can always call them to account.  In this sort of modern feudalism the power of the people is fictitious; the true power rests on the managers of the large companies and corporations; the politicians have no real power in as much as the nowadays kings in constitutional monarchies: they reign but they do not govern. Financed and elected by endogamous elites, the politicians of today are only puppets who implement the financial interests of these managers who prefer not to show their faces and are accountable to no one, because money buys everyone and everything.

In the parliament of any country, sit members who once elected by the people are forced to prostitute for companies, groups and oligarchies so that when the time comes to pass laws, they look after the interests of these big groups, who have paid them under the table, and not the interests of the people who elected them.

Dematerialization of products - We are also witnessing a dematerialization of products. When we buy something we pay each time less for the cost of raw material and each time more for the cost of labour, marketing, advertising, packaging, trademark etc... For example, if the price of a cup of coffee is one euro, only two cents go to who picked the coffee beans, 8 to the owner of the plantation, 10 to transport, 10 to the importer, 10 to the bulk seller, 10 to the processor, 10 to the distributor and 40 to the one who sells it to the consumer. A large number of people who live at the expense of one product... Only this mechanism, by itself, makes the rich consumers live at the expense of the poor producers.

Denationalization of products - The 'made in', labelled on products, is purely fictitious and many products no longer come with this information. Each product is made from parts that are produced in different countries, especially in the poor ones where labour is cheaper and companies can run their businesses as they please without any supervision. For example, Nike used to pay 80 cents, a month, to children in India, who worked round the clock, and then sells the tennis shoes, they made, to United States for $150 American.

From the ecological point of view, it makes no sense that a kilogram of California grapes be exported to Germany by plane, generating in the atmosphere a kilo of carbon dioxide. But it happens... It is also not very logical that crabs, caught in the North Atlantic, be deshelled in Morocco, packaged in Poland and consumed in Germany...

Genesis of Terrorism
Needless to say that this situation, in the world today, is the breeding ground for the perpetual sort of terrorism we have been witnessing since September 11, 2001. Global disparity is fundamentally incompatible with global security. The fact that the "World Trade Center" was targeted for terrorism, is not a mere coincidence.

To fight against terrorism only through the army and police is to repeat, again and again, the legend of the dragon with 7 heads: for each head that was cut off 7 others emerged. The more effective fight against terrorism, throughout the world, is to work towards justice and peace.

Healthy economy at the expense of workers' health
We are starting to break away from the past balanced distribution of time: 8 hours of work, plus 8 hours of rest, plus 8 hours of social activities, when the hours of work are for many people 10 and up to 12 hours per day, we are returning to the same conditions of the first industrial revolution. The excessive production led to excessive consumption and to physical and psychological illnesses, because it reduced human beings to production and consumption machines.

This leaves little time for important aspects of life such as rest, family life, friends and amusements. Since now, to survive and pay the bills, both parents have to work and children are at school the whole day, and family only meets on weekends. The consequences are poor marital relations that end up in divorce rates increasingly higher each year and poorly educated children who end up in institutions.

Jesus said that the Sabbath is made for man and not man for the Sabbath. The economy is at the service of man and not the other way around. What is more important: the health of the economy or the health of the man, who sustains the economy? We could be a lot healthier, and existentially happier, if we were to work less and consume less. The economy is in fact healthy, in the western world, but at the cost of a man who is getting sicker each time, at all levels. To this concern, never sounded so truthful the words that Jesus once said: For what profits a man who gains the whole world, if he loses his life?” (Mk. 8:36).

Fr- Jorge Amaro, IMC

"Felix Culpa"

Oh necessary sin of Adam, Which Christ blotted out with his love; O Happy Fault that merited Such and so great a Redeemer. (Easter Proclamation)

The Latin expression "Felix Culpa" derives from the writings of St. Augustine regarding the fall of Adam and Eve, which devastated human nature with the stain of original sin, and like a genetic disease has been passed down from generation to generation.

In light of Christ's resurrection, St. Augustine reinterpreted in a "positive" way the sin of Adam and Eve, extending in this manner, the positivity of the present to the negativity of the past.  For this reason the Church has inserted this declaration of the saint into the Pascal Proclamation sung before the Liturgy of the Word at the Easter Vigil Mass, during which the resurrection of Christ is proclaimed.

In our everyday life we encounter examples of reinterpretation of the past in the light of the present: for example, the woman who gives birth; in the face of the great joy she feels holding her baby in her arms, she quickly forgets the pain of the labour or looks at the pain remotely.  The fact that the bottle is half filled with wine is irrelevant; what matters is one's interpretation of the fact: for the pessimist the bottle is half empty, for the optimist it is half full.

"There are no misfortunes to which blessings do not follow"
The horse of an old farmer escaped to the mountains. "Bad luck," declared his neighbours with sympathy, to which the old man retorted, "Bad luck or good luck who knows?" A week later the horse returned with a herd of wild horses and this time the neighbours congratulated the farmer of his luck. His response was the same "Good luck or bad luck who knows?" It was then that the farmer's son while trying to tame one of the wild horses fell and broke his leg.  All but the old man saw this as bad luck, he insisted on repeating "Bad luck or good luck who knows?" Some weeks later the army passed by and recruited all the capable young men for service, except the son of the old farmer who was still walking on crutches..."

The apple from the Garden of Eden was very good to look at; much of what apparently looks good can be bad and vice-versa, what appears bad can be good.  The words good luck or bad luck only make sense to the superstitious; the believer sees all that happens, good or bad, as divine providence directed towards a happy ending.

In the same way that the antimatter exists in opposition and in function of the matter, God created the possibility of evil, as an alternative to Himself, so that man would be free to love or to reject Him. It was the misuse or abuse of this freedom that created all the concrete evils, of which mankind has been suffering since that time.

In this way, since nothing existed before God and the possibility of evil was created by Him, we can conclude that God is indirectly responsible for the evil in the world. By placing that tree in the garden God knew the risk that He was taking.  On the other hand, the alternative of not creating the possibility of evil would make us into robots, puppets, extensions of God but not personal beings, free, autonomous and independent like God willed us to be from the beginning.

For the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). With the death of His Son, God has paid the price for having created the possibility of evil so that man can be free. The divine providence tells us that nothing happens that is foreign to the will of God. If God allows evil it is because He has in mind a greater good. The same divine providence invites us not to interpret any happenings, whether individually or as a community, disconnected from His plan. Each event ought to be seen as a piece of a puzzle, which only God has the whole vision; it is up to us to have the faith that God is guiding our personal story as well as that of humanity to a greater good and a final triumph.

We all have examples in our lives of how "there are no misfortunes to which blessings do not follow". It was a quarrel between St. Paul, Barnabas and Mark that led the latter to leave the group and to follow St. Peter instead, in this way we had a gospel born out of the preaching of St. Peter, the Gospel of Mark; as we had later another born out of the preaching of St. Paul, the Gospel of Luke.

When St. Anthony of Lisbon went to Italy, his job was to wash pots and pans. It was only when the preacher, who was assigned to preach at the ordination of a priest, fell sick that St. Anthony was taken out of the kitchen and put in his proper place, the pulpit; where he very quickly proved to be a superb preacher.

It was illness and the time of convalescence that changed the lives of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola and many other saints. Felix or blessed illness we can say because it made them stop and come off the path of life they were taking. We would not have them as saints if it was not for the sickness that made them reconsider their lives and its worth.

"Felix Culpa" of Our Life
"God writes straight with crooked lines" and goes one step ahead of us. The failure of plan A, with the fall of Adam, God quickly orchestrated a plan B; when humanity killed his Son, God raised him up.  When we look back at the history of humanity we can see all the crooked lines where God has always written straight.

"Happy Fault" is an exclamation made in the present over something that happened in the past.
"Happy Fault" is the positive present view of a negative past reality.
"Happy Fault" is the reinterpretation of negative past in light of positive present.

The parable of the wheat and weeds (Matt. 13:24-30) points out that in the world and in society as much as the wheat and weeds are interwoven, evil and good are also interconnected that it is difficult to distinguish one from the other therefore it is better not to be hasty, but to trust in the divine providence and wait until the end when everything will be crystal clear.

The Happy Fault  Is not only applicable to the history of salvation of mankind but also to our personal story of salvation. We can only feel saved when looking at the negativity of our past  and perceive it as our "Happy Fault".

The first step is to take accountability of all that we did and all that has happened to us.  We cannot blame others, say that it was the devil that tempted us, or appeal to our inherited genes, blame our social environment or our parents. It is true that all these are factors that mold us and contribute to make us the person that we are today; it would be a mistake to deny their importance, but once we are aware of our past then it becomes our responsibility if we let it ruin our present and future. Since there are no perfect societies, families, parents and education, we need to take responsibility for the wrong that was done unto us and forgive the wrong doers; the same approach must be taken to everything wrong we did in our past. Only in this way can we take full control of our lives.

By being responsible does not mean to settle and wallow in the type of guilt that is false, unhealthy, cruel, abusive and depressive; these are the "quicksand" of a spiritual suicide. To get out of this stalemate it is necessary to look at our life in its entirety, chanting our Happy Fault and prove to ourselves that in our own life there are no evils from which good does not come.

In life we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. Each negative fact is a gift that life gives us. Every present comes inside a box; the box can be viewed as the negative fact, its content or the gift on the other hand, is a lesson that this negative fact provides us or what we can learn from it.

I met a young woman who could not overcome the trauma of having been sexually abused by her uncle and so being able to chant her Happy Fault, until the day when she realized that her negative view of sex in some way had freed her from a life of promiscuities, unwanted pregnancies and abortions that were the realities for some of her friends.

There are no perfect families, nor parents, nor perfect uncles, nor cousins, nor teachers, nor catechists; way before we become self-aware, before we know who we are, sin has already touched us in a thousand and one ways.

Chanting or declaring "Happy Fault" at the wrongdoings of the past does not change them into good, nor justify, nor excuse us or those who practiced them; it only helps to reinterpret them in light of our present situation in order to place them in the general context of our lives and acknowledge that at times they came for good so it is up for us to look at them in a less negative manner. This is the path to be redeemed from our past.
 
What Matters is the final result
If the wicked turns away from all their sins that they have committed and keep all my statures and do what is lawful and right, they shall surely live. None of the transgressions that they have committed shall be remembered against them; for the righteousness that they have done they shall live.(...) But when the righteous turn away from their righteousness and commit iniquity (...) None of the righteous deeds that they have done shall be remembered; for the treachery of which they are guilty and the sin they have committed, they shall die. (Ezek. 18:21-22, 24)

This scripture passage suggests that what really counts is how we are at the end of our lives; what counts is the present moment; who and what we have become. The positivity and negativity are like the scaffolding in the construction of our life.  As proposed by the prophet Ezekiel, God doesn't have memory of the good and the evil that we did during our life; what is important is not so much the acts but the attitudes; or it is the person we turned out to be, in the final outcome of our lives. It is therefore the final result that counts; for this reason, as the Spaniards say with some irony "may God take us right after we've confessed".

Inspiring us in the parable of the talents, we can be certain that God does not ask of us what He did not give us; inspiring us in the parable of the sower, we can be certain that God does not ask anyone to give Him back 100 percent; He is equally happy with 60% or even with 30%, what is important is that we don't hide the talent but render an account of it; He asks only that we make an omelet with the eggs that we were given and never conclude, to ourselves that we don't have enough eggs to make it.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Things money cannot buy

God commands in the next world, money commands in this one.  There is nothing that money does not make you do; everything and everyone has a price.

What is your price? We hear this so often spoken in the movies; money buys everything and everyone; nobody resists the Mammon.  People who go to the point of selling their honour, their dignity and the truth, do so, on the hope that money will buy them everything that is essential for self-fulfillment and happiness. The truth though is that money, far from buying everything, cannot even buy what we really need in life.  For this reason it is not difficult to find people who are depressed and unhappy among the rich, and people who are happy and self-fulfilled among the poor.

Money can buy a bed, but not sleep; it can buy food, but not appetite; it can buy books, but not intelligence; it can buy luxury, but not beauty; it can buy a house, but not a home; medicine but not health; social gatherings but not love; toys or amusements but not happiness; a cross but not faith; an expensive plot in the cemetery, but not a place in heaven. There is nothing more valuable than life and life is a gift from God; love, which is the source of life, is free and cannot be bought or sold. In conclusion, money only buys the material goods that are essential to stay alive; but has nothing to do with what life really is; in fact, life is not a commodity that can be bought, sold, or owned.

Princess Diana of Wales had everything that a young woman could ask for in life: youth, beauty, power, money, fame, blue blood and two precious sons.  Nevertheless she was not happy because she lacked the most important thing which is love, and money can't buy it.  To look for love, she abandoned everything and it was in that search that she lost her life.  There are others who having the essential, which is love, do the opposite, spending their lives busily searching for everything that the princess had and despised, and in so doing they end up losing what is the most important, love which they already had and took for granted.

Like Diana of Wales, St. Benedict of Nursia, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis of Xavier, St. Anthony of Lisbon, St. Isabel of Portugal, Nuno Alvares Pereira, Beatriz da Silva etc., the saints of the Catholic Church, for the most part, were from the upper-middle class, educated, young, handsome and beautiful, rich and some from nobilities. They, however, abandoned everything for Christ, as St. Paul had done, "I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." (Phil. 3:8)

The Worth and the Worthlessness of Poverty
The poverty exalted in the Bible is not the kind that prevents human beings to sustain their lives and live with dignity. From the beginning, the Sacred Scripture presents us with a God who, far from being neutral or impartial, fights against this type of poverty. In fact, God is on the side of the poor against the rich, as seen in the Canticle of Mary (Luke 1:53).  Rejoice in the fall of the rich as such, but not in the fall of men. God wants conversion of the sinners not their death.  God is probably the only one who differentiates between sinners and their sins, condemning the sin, saving the sinner.

As religious, monks, friars and nuns, our vow of poverty arises from the beatitudes that Jesus proclaimed in the Gospel of Matthew: the choice of poverty (Mt. 5:3).  This choice although inspired by the freedom from attachment to money, which can dominate the heart, is also motivated by the wish to be witnesses of God's love for the last, the marginalized, and the rejected by sharing in their condition.  We are looking to share in the condition of the poor in the same way that was done by Jesus "that though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty we might become rich." (2Cor 8:9)

The Vow of Poverty
As the religious vows of chastity, obedience and poverty make references to values that are eternal, those who embody them are turned into sacraments, ambassadors, signs and symbols of eternity for other Christians.  While living already, in the "here and now", the values that everybody is called to live hereafter in heaven, they see and censure realities such as money, power and pleasure for what they really are, meaningless to real life.

As to the vow of chastity, since in heaven there is no death, there is no need of marriage (Mt. 22:30). To live in chastity, or universal friendship, is what awaits us all.

As to the vow of obedience what the religious want to censure is the love for power, which so many have; the mania of wanting to get to the top, thinking that once there, there is no need to obey anyone.  By obedience, the religious want to demonstrate that it is by doing God's will that we find fulfillment.

The need for material goods is related to the fact of having to sustain life in its biological implications. In heaven, we will have a glorified or spiritual body (1Cor 15:44), made in the image and likeness of the physical one but not the physical body itself.  Since it is an immaterial body, there is no longer need to possess or store material goods.

Many people live with the illusion that, by possessing more means of life or resources, they will live longer or can prolong life.  Experience itself proclaims the truth that one cannot love both God and mammon.  To possess much more than what is necessary to keep us alive, prevents us from “storing up treasures in heaven" (Mt 6:19-20), and spending life cultivating human values.  It is these values that give meaning and relevance to our life, both individually and collectively, and sustain it in eternity as part of our spiritual body, with and in which we will live with God.

Living the vow of poverty, in the context of a religious community, highlights the value of sharing common goods, as well as the value of using and managing responsibly without owning them.  We firmly believe that only God is the true owner of everything that people think they possess.  We own nothing, not even ourselves or our lives; we are only stewards of our time, talents and treasures and of this stewardship, we will one day render account.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Money has never made anyone rich

-  "Rabbi, what are your thoughts concerning money?” the disciple asked his master.
-  "Look through the window," says the master.  "What do you see?”
-  "I see a woman with a child, a cart drawn by two horses and a man on his way to the market."
-  "Good. Now look into this mirror and what do you see?"
-  "What do you want me to see, Master? I see me, myself, obviously."
-  "Then consider this: the window is made of glass, the mirror also.  A fine layer of silver behind the glass is enough to make the man see only himself."

A Whole and a Part
The human life is founded on two principles: freedom and equality.  For human beings to live authentically they have to be free and independent; however, since they don't live alone but coexist with others, the value of freedom needs to be harmonized with the value of equality.  Others with whom human beings coexist are equal to them in dignity.

Freedom defines humans as personal and individual beings; equality defines them as social beings. The love of money is regressive because it causes a person to regress and stay in the egocentric stage of child development thus denying the principle of equality.  Human beings are defined, at the same time, individually as a whole because they are free and independent; socially they are defined as a part since they are always part of a family, a people, a society within which they establish relations of equality.

These two principles correspond to the two Commandments:
Love your God above all things - is the only guarantee of freedom; to give God our heart, in paying homage only to Him, we are free from everyone and of everything; we can consider ourselves free only when our love for God is above all other loves.

Love others as we love ourselves -  is to say that I am equal to my neighbour and my neighbour is equal to me, that the love I owe myself, I owe in equal measures to my neighbour; the esteem that I ought to give others should not be any less than my own self-esteem. Social life is only possible when there is altruism, when the other is "an alter ego", meaning another me; it is through sharing at all levels, including material goods, that life in society is possible.

With psychoanalysis in mind, we should never incorporate, declare or make ours what does not belong to us. Since we are temporal beings, our belongings are fleeting; in reality we are owners of nothing, only God is the Lord of all and everything, for all eternity.  One has never seen a U-Haul truck as part of the funeral procession that goes to the cemetery.  People who define themselves by their possessions are poor because they live with the insecurity of losing what they will eventually lose anyway.  People who define themselves, by who they are, possess a wealth that not even death can corrupt.

Coming to terms with the fact that we are not owners of anything not even of our own lives, we need to sincerely consider ourselves as stewards, both of our life and our resources for which one day we will be called to account.

When in our mind we are able to substitute the chip in our brain that says "owner” with "steward" a sense of dispassion and detachment from material goods invades our mind. This new mentality is indispensable for spiritual growth, as a person who is free and independent but at the same time part of a community. When all worship God as their father, all should relate to each other as brothers.

To Be or To Have
St. Anthony, St. Benedict, St. Francis of Assisi and many others, also men from other religions, relinquished their possessions as they saw in them an obstacle to personal growth.  They realized that they could not serve both God and money (Lk.16:13) and that to have and to be were antagonistic.

The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in his book titled "To Have or to Be?" focuses on this theme, for him there are two ways to live, one based on "to have" and the other on "to be". For Fromm, the one who has is defined by what he owns and these belongings define who he is; Fromm noted that only by living in the manner of "to be" one is truly free. Living in the way of "being", people are active and are subjects of their actions; living in the manner of "having", people are busy, preoccupied and doing things that are even against their will.

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Mt.6:19-21)

Those whose worth are defined by what they have are insecure, they live in the fear of thieves, of changes in economy and politics, of rise and fall in the stock market, of suffering, of illness, of death, they suffer from chronic anxiety in relation to health and to all that they have and could lose. If I am what I am no one can threaten my safety nor my sense of self-worth, because my center, my heart, is focused on what I am inside not on what I have outside my being.

"Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell". (Mt.10:28)

While the "to have" is something that is consumed with use, the "to be" is something that grows with practice; think how much we can do with our talents and virtues; these increase when we use them while material goods decrease when they are used or given away. For those who live in the way of "to have", to love is to possess another and  feel jealousy when a potential rival comes along. For those who live in the manner of "to be", to love is to give up ourselves and surrender to others, wanting their good and putting ourselves at their service.

Greed is the Poverty of the Rich
"The less you are and the less you express your own life, the more you have, and the greater is your  alienation," said Karl Marx. Jesus expressed this long before when he said, "No one can serve both God and mammon" (Lk16:13). This means that in our lives, we cannot conjugate or express at the same time the verbs, to Have and to Be; since they are antagonistic, one excludes the other.  "A wise man is also poor or becomes poor" (Seneca); those who are wealthy materially are, by general rule, spiritually poor or vice-versa.

A poor man who is happy with what he has and does not waste his life in the search of more material wealth, is rich; whereas a rich man who is never satisfied with what he has and uses up all his life looking to have more, is poor.

It is a like an anorexic teenager self-deceived by a false perception of reality; she is so stubbornly determined in becoming slimmer that every time she looks at herself in the mirror she still sees her body as fat.  Her psychological disease prevents her from seeing the reality and instead of focusing on the thinness she has, she is focused on the thinness she can still obtain thus forcing herself to lose more weight risking death if not cured of her false perception of reality.

The rich is poor because his attention is not focused on what he already has, but on what he thinks he can still get thus spending all his time and energy on this objective.  Since there will always be someone richer than him, he always sees himself as still lacking something, so he sees himself as poor.  The poor is rich because he is content with what he has and spends his time and energy on being; the rich is poor because thinking he doesn't have enough, invests all his life on having more.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Possessors or possessed?

The secular clergy do not explicitly make vows of chastity and obedience, nevertheless, just like us, they are called to live by these two virtues.  Poverty is the vow that most characterizes the religious and one to which the parish priests to not make.

The religious live in a community, for this reason a religious order may even be rich but its members poor; because they don’t profit from that wealth.  The parish priests live alone, some are even poorer than the religious brothers but there are others who have amassed great wealth, resulting in disagreements among the nephews as they fight over who is to eventually inherit it. Because of this it is jokingly said: "To whom God does not give children, the devil gives nephews".

Primum vivere, deinde philsophari (To live comes first, then philosophize)
Some, concerned with high philosophies, forget that they have to work to sustain the basic necessities of their existence.  To this St. Paul said, "Anyone unwilling to work should not eat" (2 Th.3:10).  It is work that generates the income that allows them to maintain the vital functions, or to stay alive.

“In truth, 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” (Mk 8:35).  To live and to stay alive are the one and the same for animals, but not so for humans.  It is true that to live it is necessary to be alive, but the meaning and the purpose of a human life are certainly not just to stay alive.

On the contrary, you don’t live life by keeping it but by giving it up day by day or at once for something, a good cause, or someone.  In this the gospel is clear; you lose what you retain and gain what you give away. Living is using up all one’s time, energy and resources in pursue of a dream, an ideal, an ambition that has to do with a noble cause. In this regards my life is of absolute value to others but of comparative value to myself. The good cause to which I devote my life is the absolute not life itself.

Material goods, therefore, have nothing to do with life but only with staying alive, to maintain the vital functions. Whoever dedicates his entire life to amassing wealth, which is only a means of life, is not really living it; he is simply preserving what eventually he will lose as he has no power to preserve it indefinitely. He may well arrive at the point of possessing enough wealth to afford to live not only one but two or three lives. But, like everybody else he has just one and one that was not well lived but foolishly wasted. Those who live their lives as if they are never going to die will end up dying as if they had never lived…

Psychoanalysis of Ownership
When we read the popular tales that speak of money turned into feces, and vice versa -- according to Freud -- it is only a reference as to how the concept of possessing money or other goods, first originated in our psyche.

In the narcissistic phase of development, feces are very important to a child, for the simple reason that they came out -- or originated --from his own body; this also reflects the elevated value or esteem the child places on himself.  The mother reinforces this characteristic when she becomes overly concerned with the child during episodes of constipation.  When finally, the child has a bowel movement, he shows and exhibits with pride the feces to his mother who becomes overjoyed.

According to Freud, when the child, after a bowel movement, contemplates his highly regarded feces, that came out of him, he feels that he has lost something of value that belonged to him which should have stayed inside; realizing that he is unable to put them back, he declares them his which essentially or symbolically means he wants to incorporate and return them into himself.

As it is said, from the point of view of psychoanalyses, the love of material goods has its roots in the narcissistic phase, or the anal phase, of a child's development.  In this phase, the child is predominantly egocentric; he hasn't developed the capacity to feel affection for others, not even the capacity to love or to hate which are realities that belong to the next phase of development, the genital phase.

Possessors or possessed?
 “If riches increases, do not set your heart on them” (Ps. 62:10).
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Lk. 12:34).

Unfortunately the rich young man in the gospel of Matthew (19:16-23) decided to keep his riches when Jesus invited him to choose between material wealth and spiritual wealth. The gospel says that he became sad in face of his own decision; material wealth can be a source of pleasure which is followed by sadness most of the times. On the contrary, spiritual wealth is always a source of joy; a joy that springs up from the inside, like the water Jesus offered to the Samaritan woman, and becomes everlasting.

The rich young man refused to follow the master at the prospect of losing his wealth, his false sense of security paralyzed him.  To follow the master was what motivated him to approach Jesus in the first place, but his riches got hold of him and would not let him go. He was not the master of his own destiny; he was not able to give himself up and follow Jesus, because he was already taken, or possessed by the things he thought he possessed.

What happened to the rich young man happens to all who give their hearts to wealth, it is like selling one's soul to the devil.  From that moment onwards, possessing becomes an illusion since we only possess in accounting terms because psychologically as well as spiritually we are possessed. In financial terms we may have a large bank account but as soon as we give our hearts to that money and start loving it, then the psychological and spiritual realities show that the bank account has us.

If the object of love is the material goods, then a strange symbiosis occurs, between the person and the material goods that he loves.  Symbiosis is defined as a relationship of mutual benefit and dependency between two living organisms.  There is a trade off or sharing between the two; the material goods share the matter, so the person who loves material goods becomes materialized; the person shares his spirit, so the material goods become in a way spiritualized. The love of wealth turns a person into matter and matter into a person; so the subject who previously was said to own has now become owned.

Money is a good slave as it can be used to do lots of things, but a bad master because it may enslave you if you let yourself be seduced by it. When and if that happens, from that time on, it is the wealth that controls your life and not the other way around.  Since material goods only keep us alive, those who spend most of their time and energy looking for them live just to stay alive, and that is a tautology.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Person of the year

Where are the prophets
That in the old days gave us
The hope and the strength to walk.

In the cities, in the countryside
Among us they are.

Simple thing is death
Difficult thing is Life
When fighting becomes pointless

We were taught the rules to put up with each other
But we were never taught how to love. 
(Song by Ricardo Cantalapiedra translated from Spanish)

The Religious Life as a Prophecy
The tradition of selecting the Person of the Year started with Time magazine in 1927.  The designation is often given to someone who was the news maker of the year, someone who has been admirable, who did something for the humanity, who had an outstanding charisma, and who responded most appropriately to the challenges of his time; someone who was in some sense a prophet.

For example, Barack Obama was the Person of the Year in 2008 and 2012 for being the first black president of the United States, with all said and done in a country where slavery was only abolished in 19th century and racism in 20th century, after Martin Luther King. In 2013 Pope Francis was named the Person of the Year because in a few months he won the admiration of millions of people with his simplicity and symbolic gestures.

In the Old Testament tradition, a prophet is the right man for the right moment; he is the one who knows how to interpret the people’s present situation in light of God's will, who is a messenger, and at times also an intercessor between God and men. As a natural and charismatic leader he would condemn behaviours that were not righteous in the eyes of God, but he would console and instill hope in the bitter times as well, such as during the Babylonian exile.

I am no prophet, nor a prophet's son; but I am a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees (Amos 7:14). Unlike the priests in Jerusalem and the doctors of the law, the prophets did not arise from the establishment, or from lineage. It was the Spirit who here and there, in the most crucial moments, would arouse a guide for His people.

In our day we have no ruler, or prophet, or leader, no burnt-offering, or sacrifice, or oblation or incense, no place to make an offering before you and to find mercy. (Daniel 3:38)

As it is evident from this verse the prophet was an important figure for the people; without him, the people felt disoriented, confused, forsaken, alone, insecure...

According to the canonical distinction, there are two types of clergy today: the regular clergy or religious and the secular clergy. The secular or diocesan clergy is more affiliated with the world; they are the shepherds of the Lord's flock.  In this sense, their role is very similar to that of the doctors of the law and the priests of Jerusalem.

The religious, on the other hand, are somewhat set apart from the world so to better understand and help the world, as only by being outside the forest can one see the forest.  In the Old Testament tradition their role is more in tune with that of the prophets.  The religious is called to be a person of the year, a Nobel Prize winner, a superstar for a particular time and place.  He is a prophet who knows how to read the signs of time and says the right word at the appointed time; he recognizes the problems at hand and points to the solutions with his words, actions and talents.

The religious life is in general associated with the Prophetic Mission of the Church.  During the Middle Ages while the states were warring among themselves, it was in the monasteries where culture was maintained; it was from them that schools, universities and hospitals were created.  To the point that even the civil registry was started by the Church recording information of the baptized faithful; which the State along with the Republic took from the parishes in 1910 in Portugal.

Symbolic Acts of the Prophets of Israel
The actions of the prophets in the Old Testament were so bizarre compared to the current secular standards of sanity, that in the present days they would have been institutionalized, or at least be receiving intense psychotherapy.

These prophets were not only proclaimers of the word, they also embodied the teachings with their lives, talents, bearings and actions; all these were part of the message; their choice of clothing and even their body and body language.  Thus testifying with their whole being how transforming and mystifying can the Word of God be.  Words could vanish in the wind but the symbolic and dramatic actions of the prophets spoke much louder and were much more difficult to forget.

• Isaiah, stripped off all his clothes and wandered about naked (Isa. 20).
• Jeremiah, hid his underwear under a rock and after some time came back to look for it (Jer. 13).
• Hosea, deliberately married a prostitute and gave the name "Lo-ruhamah" meaning  "without compassion" to his daughter (Hos.1) 

With the coming of Christ, we can look back and see these prophets as forerunners, not only through prophesies where they spoke of His life, but also through their prophetic actions.  Christ is, after all, the Word incarnate in the richest and most perfect way possible . And, like the prophets, Christ's behavior was at times bizarre, disconcerting and puzzling according to the social standards and conventions at the time.

He was after all, someone who promised that he will rebuild the temple in three days, ate with prostitutes and tax collectors, drove out demons into a herd of pigs, cured a blind man by rubbing his eyes with mud he made with his own saliva, and he walked on water. But the most shocking and dramatic action was without any doubt washing his disciples' feet.  He wanted to perform the most humble act so that his disciples would never forget what he had already said in words: The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mk.10:45)

Consecration as a Symbolic Act
The life of a monk, a friar or a nun is already in itself a symbolic act as they live here and now the  life that all people is called to live in Heaven.  A life that embodies the values of the gospel is like a guiding star that indicates the true path to God, a finger pointed to Heaven.  It exposes the senselessness of certain realities of this world that people tend to self-indulge. Like a lighthouse, a religious is also a beacon that exposes the dangers of navigation, the dangers of losing our life during the pilgrimage to our heavenly home.

In this way the three Evangelical counsels can be seen as gestures or symbolic acts that speak for themselves like the dramatic and symbolic acts of the prophets in the Old Testament:

The vow of Poverty - Declares that possessing material goods beyond what is strictly necessary to maintain life can be an impediment to spiritual growth. As the gospel says, where your treasure is, there is your heart, whoever gives his heart to the riches, sells his soul to the devil; he no longer owns but is somehow owned by things he thinks he possesses.

The vow of Chastity - Considers the value of sex; contrary to what the society wants us to believe; sex is not a necessity of the individual but of the species, nor is it intrinsic to love, it is only one of the many expressions of love.  If love in its natural and physical expressions creates the family and family ties, then in its sublime expression, it creates universal fellowship and solidarity.

The vow of Obedience - Declares power and freedom of comparative value; according to the gospel, power is not to dominate but to serve the needs of others.  As for freedom, I am free until I make my fundamental choice, once I have made it life consists of being faithfull to the commitments made. “Keep the rules and the rules will keep you”, If you observe and obey the rules of the commitment you have freely chosen for your life, these very same rules will protect you and give you a sense of security, identity and purpose.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

"Je ne suis pas Charlie" (I am not Charlie)

Because I understand that freedom of expression, like all freedoms, has limits, and it is bullying to ridicule other people’s beliefs, and because unlike Charlie Hebdo’s lawyer, I do not recognize the "right to blasphemy" or insult, I maintain that the abominable massacre of the 12 journalists of the said newspaper was more an attack on the rule of law than on freedom of expression per se.

The Politically Incorrect "But"
Being against is not always a defect, and being in favor is not always a virtue. "Following the crowd" can be synonymous with solidarity, but it can also be a form of sheepishness that nullifies individual thought, turning people into a mass, and often a brute mass that has lynched many innocent people throughout history, one of them being Jesus of Nazareth. In order to exist as autonomous, free, and independent people, we must keep our critical spirit alert and not uncritically join in with those who shout the loudest.

My condemnation of the horrendous massacre of the twelve journalists does not mean I agree with all the cartoons they have produced; nor does the fact that, in my opinion, they have sometimes, not always, abused freedom of expression mean that I justify the appalling crime perpetrated by the two savage extremists. I do not join the chorus of those who say "Je suis Charlie," even at the risk of being politically incorrect, in other words of being a black sheep, because I think I can and have the right to condemn the act without having to identify myself ‘totally’ with Charlie.

When I say "Je ne suis pas Charlie," I mean that although I identify with the victims, as human beings who had their lives unjustly taken, I do not identify with the blasphemy, insult, and ridicule in some of their cartoons.

There is no such thing as Absolute Freedom
There are no unlimited freedoms; my freedom would only be more or less unlimited if I existed alone in the world. Since I coexist with others, my rights are limited by the rights of others. In fact, my rights coincide with the duties of others and vice versa; my freedom, therefore, ends where someone else's freedom begins.

I condemn with the utmost vehemence any attack on human life, from legalized abortion, euthanasia, death penalty, to all forms of physical, sexual, verbal, and psychological violence. Violence is rarely the solution to any problem, and always creates more problems, because violence always begets violence. This is called a spiral of violence, because as it grows in intensity, it spreads by involving more and more people in the same conflict.

We all know that those who were physically, sexually, verbally, or psychologically abused as children often become abusers themselves as adults. It is also well known that when two or more people are in conflict, physical violence almost always follows verbal violence, insults, and slander.

Human life is a gift from God; only God has power over life and death. Anyone who takes the life of their fellow human being is stealing a prerogative that belongs to God alone; by putting themselves in the place of God, they are being atheists. Therefore, it is impossible to kill in the name of God, who is life and love.

The spokesperson for the Muslim Judicial Council issued a statement saying, "Freedom of expression is to be respected, but it has limits when it borders on what could be perceived as hate speech. If someone criticizes your workplace, your car, your shoes, there's no problem; but when someone insults, humiliates, or degrades a personality that is central to the heart of the Muslim religion, they exceed the limits of freedom of expression."

Let me cite some examples of Charlie Hebdo's cartoons, which in my opinion abuse the right to freedom of expression: there is one that depicts the Prophet Mohammed with a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse about to explode — the subliminal message being that Islam, in its essence, is violent, extremist, and terrorist, which is false.

Another depicts the Pope lifting the host at the moment of consecration, but instead of the host, it is a condom—I classify this cartoon as a blasphemy against the Eucharist, which is the central act of the Church's life, and I do not see how any Christian can look at it without feeling terribly offended.

Among the cartoons I agree with, I would like to praise the one on the cover of the latest issue of Charlie Hebdo in the aftermath of the murders. With a green background, the color most used on the flags of many Muslim countries, we see the Prophet Mohammed weeping, holding in his hands the popular poster which reads "Je suis Charlie", and above it, in clearly visible letters, "Tout est Pardonnė" (All is forgiven).

Since unconditional forgiveness to those who harm us and love of enemy are characteristics of Christianity, this cover is the best response that the Western world, which is Christian at its roots, whether it recognizes it or not, can give to the barbarity of Muslim extremism. I fully identify with this cartoon.

An Attack on the Rule of Law, Rather Than Freedom of Expression
I would argue that the interpretation of the facts as an attack on freedom of expression, although it is the official and politically correct stance, is in my opinion biased. With their heinous and unjustifiable act, the killers of the journalists went against the rule of law rather than against freedom of expression. In a state governed by the rule of law, no one takes the law into their own hands, no one takes revenge; no one is a judge in their own cause, and no one executes sentences — in this case, the maximum sentence, the death penalty.

The injured party, the Muslim world, could have defended itself in the courts. This time, instead of using the money to finance the fanatic terrorists who kill innocent people like the 12 journalists, the Muslim countries could have used it to hire the best lawyers to take Charlie Hebdo to court for blasphemy, insult, and lack of respect for the beliefs of millions of people.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Year of the consecrated life

Purify my heart, let me be as gold and precious silver.
Purify my heart, let me be as gold, pure gold.

Refiner's fire, my heart's one desire is to be holy, set apart for You, Lord.
I choose to be holy, set apart for You, my Master, ready to do Your will.

Purify my heart, cleanse me from within and make me holy.
Purify my heart, cleanse me from my sin, deep within. 
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IvXA0yRDwY)

Upon reflection on the consecrated life, the theme chosen by the Church for this year, it came to my mind this song that was sang so often by a group of young Christian singers whom I used to attend to when I lived in Canada.  The lyrics of this song touches the essence of how a consecrated life should be lived; what it means to be consecrated and the process to follow for all those who enter the Religious Life.

Set apart for You, Lord - The Jews set apart for the Lord the offerings of the first fruits of the harvest and every male firstlings among the livestock. Everything that opened the womb was set apart for the Lord as an act of thanksgiving; every firstborn son was offered to the Lord and presented at the Temple to be redeemed in exchange for a sacrificial offering, which for the wealthy was an ox, for the less affluent a lamb or kid and for the poor, as it was in the case of Jesus, a pair of turtledoves or pigeons.

"To Consecrate" an object means to remove it from ordinary use and to set it aside and reserve it for a particular and exclusive purpose. When a chalice or another object is consecrated, it is reserved or kept for a sacred use, in the case of the chalice, the Eucharistic celebration.

It is in this sense how we should interpret the "fuga mundi" (flight from the world) of the religious in the Middle Ages. It was not a matter of escaping from the world so as not to be "contaminated" by it, but to be called to a Mission, to depart from the ordinary way of life and to live in a challenging way.

Inside a forest we cannot see the forest, we only see trees; in order to see the forest we need to go out of it.  The consecrated separates himself from the world in order to understand it better, and contribute to it in a particular way; so he departs from the world and does not live an ordinary life in order to dedicate himself to the world in an extraordinary way.  He withdraws from his own little world to give of himself to the entire world.  He puts aside his cozy and comfortable life, to be mindful of the lives of others especially of those in need..

Purify my heart, let me be as gold, pure gold - I entered the Consolata Missionaries when I was ten years old, my main reason for joining was my search for adventure; to know the world, and in particular Africa.  For this reason I strongly refused to enter the seminary of the diocese in the beginning. Once in the seminary, however,  I found out that each of my colleagues had also their own peculiar reasons to be there; I remember what drew one of my classmates was the thought that he would be playing soccer every day. 

With the passing of time and the formation we received, these childish reasons were refined and purified.  It was this that our founder, Blessed Joseph Allamano, had in mind when he counselled the first missionaries to "do goodness in a good way". Jesus denounced the hypocrites and the Pharisees not because they did not comply with the law of fasting, praying and practicing charity but because they did the right thing for the wrong reason.

Hypocrisy is a constant threat to the religious; therefore there is a need for a continuous purification of our purposes. The heart is what drives everything in our body; it is the center of motion, emotions and motivations and for this reason, we need a heart that is pure, cleansed of all false intentions.  Purified and cleansed internally of all our sins, as the song says because the evil is within us not outside of us.

Refiner's fire, my heart's one desire is to be holy - The objective of being pure as gold is achieved by fire; not the kind of fire that devours and destroys but the kind that refines.  It is the fire that purges all impurities and appraises the gold; the stronger the fire the purer the gold.

Saint Francis of Assisi would roll over naked in the snow to overcome temptations of impurity and some other saints would self-flagellate.  It is not necessary to go in search of unnatural ways to atone for our sins since life itself presents us with enough situations where we can atone naturally, by simply carrying our cross every day (Lk.9:23). For example, when I was in Ethiopia there came a time when I did not eat for 5 days and another for 7 days; I consider this much easier than to eat what is strictly necessary for day to day without giving in to gluttony when I am at table.

The only aspiration of the religious is to be holy as God is holy (Lev.19:2); this is the objective of the continuous purification of motives and intentions, a purification carried out by the fire of the Holy Spirit.  If we are docile to the Spirit, like the clay is in the hands of the potter, His fire will purify our thoughts, our intentions, our motivations, even the subconscious impulses of instinct.

Holiness is found when sin is scrutinized. When we work hard in our life to look for defects, sins and imperfections then we are on the road to holiness. In this regard, St. Francis of Assisi who was already regarded as holy by all who knew him, used to say of himself that he was a great sinner.

Ready to do Your will - Our founder used to say "First the saints then the missionaries"; to be holy refers to our essence, what we are called to be, our vocation; to be missionaries refer to our existence, what we are called to do, our way of living and serving in the world.

It is only after we purify our essence, our being, that our existence, how we live and act in the world, is pure.  We are only truly ready to do God's will when we are holy; when our whole being surrenders to the will of God. This is only possible when we deny ourselves (Lk. 9:23) so that we can say, like St Paul, "it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me"(Gal. 2:20). It is only when Christ lives in us that we are truly Christian, and empowered to continue in the here and now the work that Jesus began in Israel some 2,000 years ago.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Christmas: Platonic love, incarnate love

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Inmaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Self-Esteem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Bullying

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Every saint had a past every sinner has a future

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC