Chastity as second innocence

"For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.  Let anyone accept this who can." (Matt. 19:12)

"I am still a virgin!", "I am no longer a virgin!"
By the tone of voice and the emphasis used when a young man/woman affirms: "I am still a virgin", or "I am no longer a virgin" we discover immediately the way he/she conceptualizes and lives his/her sexuality. Regardless of them being said with sadness or pride, these two expressions point out the various misunderstandings in regard to sexuality and virginity.

The first sexual intercourse marks a woman physically, psychologically and even culturally differently compared to a man:
Physically - The woman loses her hymen, by which she is no longer physically or technically a virgin; for the man nothing is lost and nothing is gained in this respect.

Psychologically - For both, the act may have been positive, if it took place within the context of love, or negative, if it was sought only for pleasure, and even traumatic, if it was induced by violence.

Culturally - The patriarchal culture, still dominant throughout the world today, regards the first sexual act in an innocuous way or even positively in the case of a man, but negatively or even stigmatizing in case of a woman.

For many people, virginity or chastity is something that is as permanent as a castle in the sand, waiting to be surrendered to the waves of marriage, 'defended' until this takes place or simply to avoid problems. With marriage, the castle ceases to exist and therefore no longer needs to be defended.

Virginity, as synonym of chastity, is a value and a virtue both for men and for women, and is lived by both in the same way; it is therefore not physical, nor something one has at birth and soon to be lost and never to possess again.  The values and virtues that distinguish us and give shape and meaning to our life are not innate, nor are they possessed naturally, on the contrary, they are the result of rigorous discipline and personal efforts with the help of God's grace.

Sigmund Freud proved that the so called chastity, purity or virginity, of children is a myth; far from living in a state of purity, an infant lives in a habitat of lust, without censure, in very subtle ways of sexual self-gratification. It is only by the fourth, fifth and sixth year of life that, through education, the child learns to conform and to live within certain standards of decency.

From that moment on, until the age of 12, 'chastity' appears to be the natural dwelling of children. With the onset of puberty, little by little, nature appears to return in full force claiming its rights.

Slaves of sexual freedom
With the studies of Freud, Wilhelm Reich and others at the end of the 19th century and the sexual revolution of the 1960s, in a short time we went from a negative vision, puritanical and Manichean, of sexuality to a vision of sexuality free from all and any moral constraints. The present day society prostituted sex, understanding it as a consumer good and using it subliminally to advertise anything; in this way, it managed to disconnect sex from reproduction, from love and even from responsibility, spreading the idea that making love is like drinking a cup of water. Not even the risk of AIDS, and other sexually transmitted diseases of the 1980s, managed to stop this permissive liberal tendency.

The society is so eroticized and permissive that most find it difficult to be chaste, especially those adolescents and young people who are awakening to the vicissitudes of sexual desire, or 'libido', as Freud called it. The first sexual experience occurs increasingly earlier and many, despite being physically ready for it, are not psychologically, morally and spiritually prepared.

The results are there for everyone to see: an elevated degree of promiscuity that leads to breaking of existing ties, divorce rate of 51% in Portugal, 43% in Canada and 40-50% in US, as well as to choosing to live together, instead of marrying.

There are fewer and fewer people who manage to pass from the purity and innocence of childhood to the matured adult chastity without going through negative, traumatic and stigmatizing sexual experiences; increasingly are those who learn from mistakes they have committed, like in Jesus' parable of the prodigal son. They undergo a similar experience to that of Adam and Eve, banished from the paradise of innocence because of their disobedience. However, the saving power of Jesus available to all secures them a second chance, a second innocence.

From prostitute to virgin
"Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. 18:3)

There are values and virtues that children have naturally and that we adults, at Jesus' command, are called to acquire in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven; for this to occur, in some way, we need to be born again, like Jesus advised Nicodemus. When Jesus says blessed are the poor, he is not referring to those who are born poor and live in poverty, due to their economic and financial conditions, but rather to those who are rich and decide to be poor; that is, exchanging material wealth for spiritual wealth.

The same applies to the value of innocence, virginity, or chastity for the Kingdom of Heaven; it is not a question of innate innocence or virginity, because of ignorance and lack of experience at a time when the sex hormones, testosterone and progesterone, were not at their peak of production; but rather it deals with a conscious virtue acquired by the grace of God, by prayer and by daily efforts.

The prodigal son and Mary Magdalene both learned what ‘true love’ is after having experienced something that appeared to be love, but was not. After knowing Christ, Mary Magdalene whom some scholars referred to as being a prostitute, becomes a virgin because she followed the Lord. In the same way the prodigal son, only understands what true love and freedom are after having abused both values, and having suffered the consequences.

The virgins for the Kingdom of Heaven are those who, whatever may be their past, choose to live and to love without the physical expression of love, which leads to the formation of a small human family, in order to be placed at the service of a larger human family. They choose to be and to live like Jesus, their master and their Lord, who was also a virgin so to dedicate the best of themselves, their entire being, their time and energy to the Kingdom of Heaven.                               

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Chastity as energy sublimation

The formula of human life
My passion to simplify things, led me to think of a formula for human life; using Greek, which traditionally has been the language of Science, I came up with the idea that human life is the sum of four different elements or dimensions: Eros + Thanatos + Cronos + Logos

Eros & Thanatos - Life Instinct and Death Instinct, affection and aggression, are in Freudian language the positive and the negative poles of human energy.

Cronos - Is the dimension of time; we are spatial and temporal beings; we occupy a space for a duration of time, which corresponds to the years we live.

Logos - Refers to the awareness that we are alive and free to do whatever we want with our lives. In the case of animals and plants, their time and energy are regulated by nature, since they are not aware that they exist they have no power over their existence. Logos is our fundamental option; it is what we decide to do with our lives; to what and to whom we are going to devote all, and each one, of our days.

The energy of human life
Eros & Thanatos are, instincts of life and death, affectivity and aggressiveness, ying and yang, centripetal and centrifugal forces, love and hate, positive and negative poles of the electricity or energy with which we do everything that we do. Without energy nothing works, in society, the same applies to human life.

In human beings all their actions should be inspired and decided by Logos, by reason; but the truth is the instincts, of Eros and Thanatos, not only provide the energy to perform all acts, which reason decides upon, but they also motivate, nurture and direct many other acts which reason seems unable to control. In spite of millions of years of evolution from irrational animalism, our behaviour is still more influenced by instincts than we would like to admit.

All human acts are a mixture of affection and aggression, even the most polarised ones; for example, one would think that the education of a child would be exclusively a matter of affection but, as we all know, a good education should consist of a balance of rewards when the child behaves appropriately and punishments when he doesn’t.

If affection has to do with unconditional love, supporting, nurturing, caressing and praising the child’s achievements, aggression has to do with punishment, discipline, setting limits and regulations, and enforcing them. Too much affection would patronize and spoil the child; too much discipline without affection would impact his self-esteem and eventually make him violent.

Sublimation
In his book, "Civilization and Its Discontents", Freud states that when aggression and affection are unrestrained, that is, left to their own devices, they have an immeasurable potential for destruction; they can destroy what they have helped to build. Human beings abandoned animalism when they won control over these two forces, when they succeeded to tame, or managed to put restraints on them in order to be used in a positive, constructive and cultural way.

The taboo of incest – Throughout the ages this taboo has been acting like a "bridle" on Eros. For the majority of people it has become almost a second nature as they don’t feel sexually attracted to those with whom they have blood ties. But in the beginning it was not like that, it had to be enforced and even today for some. Without this prohibition the inbreeding would in time wipe out the human race.

"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" – Belongs to the Hamurabi code of laws, the first that ever existed. It seems very negative the way it is quoted in the scripture and yet throughout the ages it has acted as a bridle for Thanatos because it sets limits and regulates the instinct of aggression and vengeance that tends to escalate and spread uncontrollably leading to destruction as we all know.

Sublimation consists of the substitution, modification or transformation of the natural expression of an impulse or instinct into one that is socially and culturally, more acceptable and constructive. An example of a destructive energy transformed into a constructive energy is the transformation of a bull in bullfights, into an ox that plows the land and pulls a cart.

Looking at things from this perspective, human civilization can be considered as a history of sublimation of Eros and Thanatos, which has been the intelligent use that humanity has made of these forces or basic instincts. In the very same way, our own personal history also consists of the efforts to divert our natural affection and aggression from their natural and primordial target, in order to promote human values.

Chastity as diversion of energy
Now we can better understand the religious vow of chastity; it consists of diverting the natural affection of a man and a woman from its primordial objective, to marry and have children, channeling it towards a more cultural goal. Priests, nuns and religious choose not to have spouse in order to establish a broader fraternity; they choose not to reproduce biologically, and not to have children themselves, with the goal to amplify and extend their fatherhood and motherhood beyond blood ties.

The giving birth of a child, or the contribution of genetic material, makes a person a progenitor, not, per se, a true father or mother. There are authentic parents who are not the progenitors of their children, since they are adopted, and progenitors who are not good parents. True fatherhood or motherhood involves the complete dedication, the gift of self to the children, the continuous and constant following up until they become adults, and also the courage to cut off “the umbilical cord” and give the children their space and freedom, when they eventually become adults. In this respect, no one would deny the motherhood of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, even though she never gave birth to any of her children.

Considering the fact that, over the course of evolution, family ties have had more to do with instincts than with pure affection, we can conclude that a society, in which the social interaction is based solely on family relations, will always be very fragmented and weak. A kinship that extends beyond the limits of blood ties, can be a link or cement that unites families; more specifically, it can help to resolve conflicts that arise between rival families and contribute towards peace and understanding among all, just like the cartilage between bones allows for the smooth articulation of joints, preventing pain that arises when bone touches bone.

To summarize, the natural course of amorous instinct is the formation of a family, where the relationships are based on blood ties. Chastity sublimates, or diverts, the same instinct from its natural goal to give it a cultural goal - the universal fraternity. The love between people who are not related, by blood ties, acts as a unifying element of society.

Marcuse called this, "diffuse eroticism" and Freud called it "an amorous instinct cut off from its primordial objective”, and gives the example of St. Francis of Assisi as the man who best sublimated his Eros energy; the one who got the most benefits out of spreading his eroticism by treating everyone and everything as brothers and sisters: brother sun, sister moon, even addressing his enemies as brother wolf and sister death.

Some would say that this concept of love is not natural. In truth, it is not because it transcends nature, but, in the same sense, human culture or civilization itself is opposed to nature. In fact what is truly natural in Man is not what is given by nature, but what he himself achieves through his creative mind.

Chastity is like a dam
The Love within the vow of chastity can be compared to a dam. The water from lakes and rivers is not useful because it occupies or flows in the lowest part of the land. Unless you have an engine you cannot use that water. When you build a dam you elevate the water and level it with the land so now you can irrigate the fields and transform a desert into an oasis, creating and nourishing an agricultural and rural society; it can also be used to generate electricity, creating and nourishing industrial cities where the urban culture blooms.

It is true that dam represses, and compresses, obstructing water from its natural flow to the sea; that is why its walls have to be strong and concave. On the other hand, within the limits of what is possible, the added value and the benefits we get from the power of water to produce energy, and the use of it for irrigation, fully justify the repression.

Just like the concave walls of a dam, sublimation of Eros requires that the person possesses a strong and robust character, to contain the natural impulse of Eros which is manifested in sexual desire and in natural parenthood, and thus be able to channel his or her energy towards a kinship that is more universal.

The good that is done to others, as the results of this universal fellowship, fills the heart of the chaste person with joy; to realize that others are better off thanks to his or her actions, greatly compensates for the effort and the sacrifice involved in the process of sublimation.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Universal Love without matrimony

We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.
Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

The pattern of western movies
During my childhood, and adolescence, I used to like to watch western movies on the television.  Today, thinking back, it is clear to me that these films influenced, I would even say, forged in some way my future. What does a missionary have to do with a cowboy hero you might ask? They are really not all that different; in fact, they share the mystique that moves them, the love for justice and freedom; they only differ in the way they act.

The majority of western movies have a similar narrative: As the movie starts at the sound of a music characteristic of this type of films, we see the cowboy riding his horse in the direction of a town.  Upon his arrival, he quickly notices that there is something wrong happening in that place. The roads are deserted and the few people whom he sees are hiding in fear, behind their windows. Despite sensing a feeling of terror, which hovers in the air, the cowboy rides in, and after tying his horse, walks boldly with self-confidence and in a relaxed manner in the direction of the bar, which he opens with a kick at the swinging doors...

It is there that he encounters the villains who had already killed the sheriff, and all those who had opposed them, and instilled fear in the rest of the townsfolk. While ordering a whisky, from the bartender, he is approached by one of the bandits who challenges him; the whisky usually ends up in the face of the bandit and as soon as he reaches for his pistol, the cowboy has already shot him down and pointed his gun at the rest of the bandits. From this first confrontation it is evident that our protagonist is a tough guy and, unlike other men in the town, is not easily intimidated.

Upon leaving the bar, with the same ease he entered it, he meets the townsfolk and he learns about the seriousness of the situation. He inspires them with confidence and courage, and together they eventually come up with a plan and start to work on the liberation of the town. Oftentimes he teaches them self-defence skills, which they quickly learn, gaining this way confidence in themselves.

As in most movies there has to be some romance to awaken the interest of the viewers, the cowboy movies are no exception. So during the preparations for the final battle, a woman falls in love with the main character, thus starting a romance which unfolds simultaneously with the work of liberation.

Eventually comes the long-awaited day. With the help of the town’s people, the cowboy defeats the villains. Here the pattern of the western movies differs a little; in some movies when the people look for the cowboy to thank him, he is not anywhere to be found, only his silhouette can be seen riding at a gallop against the light of the sunset to the music that was played at the beginning of the film. In others the cowboy stays only long enough to say good-bye to those he loved, and to whom he risked his life, for true love, for truth and for justice, without asking for anything in return.  It is only fitting that the folks offer him to settle there, to be their sheriff, to marry the lady... To this day I haven’t seen any western movie in which the cowboy accepts the townsfolk’s offers and settles down which would be the happy ending everybody is waiting for: “married, had many children and lived happily ever after".

He was offered power, money and love... What more could a person want under the sun? Despite of it all he refuses and does not stay, because justice, truth and peace, to what he is committed, and for what he risks his life, are asking him to remain free... If he were to accept and stay in that town, other towns would not be set free.

Inclusive embrace
Like the cowboy, the missionary loves universally. The entire world is his homeland and humanity is his home. He hungers for Justice and thirsts for Peace. To them, and for them, he lives each moment of his life and is always ready to give everything up, at each one of these moments.

Throughout his life, the missionary strives to love all others, equally and freely, without exception. His objective is not to belong to any one, but to be one with all. In today's society, where so much emphasis is placed on sex and where masculinity became synonymous to sexual performance, a missionary, like Jesus in his lifetime, embodies a non-erotic manner of loving. In a world where so many seek sex without love, the missionaries strive to love without sex.

A closed embrace includes some people, but excludes many others. The missionary does not close his arms around anyone in particular, this is not to say that he loves less intensely. Like a parent with many children, in the here and now of his life, the missionary loves with all intensity the person who stands in front of him, without depleting his love on that person, because like a loving parent he never runs out of love.

Although today's society tends to place sexual instinct at the same level as other individual physical needs, such as eating and drinking, the truth, which few want to admit, is that, while eating and drinking are paramount to the survival of the individual, sexual drive is only paramount to the survival of the species not of the individual.

As in all living beings sexual intercourse is oriented towards the survival of the species. The urge is felt by all so that some will eventually transmit life. Entirely neutral, sexual activity adds nothing, takes away nothing from the individual.

Therefore, the individual does not need the completion of the sexual act to preserve, to affirm or to increase his masculinity or her femininity. Men and women are different as well as complementary to each other in all areas of their masculinity and femininity, not only in their genital organs.

Love can exist and subsist, without sex because there is an infinite number of amorous situations where sex does not apply, and should never apply; on the contrary, sex without love should never happen, it makes no sense, because it transforms and degrades a person into an object of pleasure. Even in the case of consensual sex between adults where one is the object of the other and vice versa.

To love, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, is to desire the greatest good of the other. For this reason the proverb which says "actions speak louder than words" asserts that love manifests better in deeds than in lip service, just like faith. Contrary to what is often said: having sex is not "to make love", because love manifests itself in deeds, grows or dies with and because of them.

Far from being the only way, sexual intercourse is just one of the many ways to say “I love you”; and it does not apply, nor is it lawful, nor moral in many situations to express love in this way. But, even in amorous situations in which the sexual expression is correct and adequate, by itself, it neither adds nor subtracts anything from the level of love existent prior to the expression.

The necessity is to love and be loved
"All you need is love" as the Beatles used to sing in the sixties. In fact, after the basic needs, which exclude sex, to love and be loved is the only necessity and condition without which human life neither exists nor survives. No one will ever reach full maturity, as a human being, if he is not loved unconditionally during childhood and loves unconditionally as an adult.

Whoever in adulthood seeks to be loved, more than to love, is essentially behaving like a child. And since society does not tolerate adults who behave like children, they will seek to be loved in a distorted way, with deceit, manipulation and psychological games; we see this portrayed in the soap operas that occupy the prime time TV.

Since for the one who is mature, to love comes before being loved, he can endure not being loved sometimes; what he cannot endure is not to have an outlet for all his love capacity. Jesus in his earthly life, sought always to love and to serve the poorest and the most marginalized, and he cried over Jerusalem because his love was not accepted…. Jesus did nothing in order to be loved but neither did he reject it when love came his way.

Universal Love, Universal Parenthood
Every man and every woman have a natural vocation to be a father and mother. The missionary is called to fulfill this, not in a biological or physical way, but in a psychological and spiritual manner. Even for those who are biological parents, the most important thing is not the brief moment of conception, but the long years of the educational process.

The missionary is not a father by bringing more children into the world, but by contributing to the education and humanization of those who are already here. His or her parenthood is not measured by the number of biological children they have, but by the lives they have positively influenced. Their mission is to inspire others to live in a more just, peaceful, and fulfilling way.

The missionary, like the solitary cowboy in films, never stays in one place. They continue on their path, carrying with them an insatiable desire for justice, their love for truth, and their thirst for peace. For them, life is not about settling down in one place but about moving forward, freeing the captives, and proclaiming a love that knows no borders or conditions.

And just like in cowboy films, their departure leaves an indelible mark. Although they don’t seek glory or recognition, the love they have sown flourishes in those they have touched, transforming hearts and entire communities. In this way, their mission continues, beyond their own life, in every act of love and justice they have inspired.

The missionary loves without expecting anything in return. They love in freedom, with arms always open, ready to embrace the next person who crosses their path. Because, for them, life is an adventure where love is the only compass that matters. Of the missionary, it can be said, as it was said of Jesus: "He went about doing good."

Conclusion - The missionary, like the solitary cowboy, is driven by a universal and selfless love, seeking justice and peace without being tied to anything or anyone. Their life is a continuous act of giving, where love is expressed through deeds beyond conventional relationships. Committed, but not attached.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

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