3 Theological Virtues: Faith - Hope - Charity

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13

The classical treatises divide virtues into two groups: human or acquired and divine or infused. Among the acquired virtues, four main ones are noted: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance. Among the infused virtues are Faith, Hope and Charity; they are also called theological virtues because they are not the result of human efforts, but a gift infused by God in his children.  

In my view, however, neither the human ones are purely human, for we are always under the influence of the divine Grace, nor are the divine ones purely divine because human consent and effort are always required. In this regard, St. Augustine said that every good thing we do is by the grace of God, that is, it is a gift.

Faith – It is an attitude, conviction or belief in the existence of a Supreme Being who is both immanent and transcendent and who has historically revealed himself in Jesus of Nazareth, His only son, who lived among us, died, rose again and ascended into Heaven to prepare a place for us, leaving us the Holy Spirit to guide and accompany us on our way to this place. We relate to God through Faith.

Hope – More than an attitude of reasonable trust in the face of the uncertainty of the future, our Hope has a name, it is the salvation that God promises and offers us in Jesus Christ, His son. His resurrection from the dead makes death a passage to the afterlife and not a final destination. We relate to ourselves through Hope, that is how we react to our inner restlessness.

Charity – It is the virtue that regulates our action and the way we situate ourselves in life in relation to creation and to other people. Charity regulates how much I am part of other people's lives and how much others are part of my life. We relate to others through Charity: I am worth insofar as I serve; whoever does not live to serve is not fit to live.

The virtues in the Trinity, the Trinity in the virtues
Faith in God the Father opens us to the Hope we find in the Son through his resurrection, and motivates a gift of Charity, making us see Christ in each person. And whoever sees the Son sees the Father, like Jesus told Philip. Hope is the only-begotten daughter of mother Faith, as Christ is the only begotten Son of God the Father, and just as the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, so Charity proceeds from Faith and Hope.

God the Father is our Faith, Creator of Heaven and Earth; Faith is our past, our historical memory, being our Father, it is He who explains our being. God the Son, historically Jesus of Nazareth, is our Hope, in him we have an older brother who lived, died and rose again, opening the gates of Heaven to us and a graceful way out of this life. The Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son is Charity that comes from Faith and Hope.

If Faith and Hope are thought and feeling, Charity is action; it is the way we occupy our place in the world during the time God has given us to live. To exercise this virtue, we need the person of God who came to stay, the Holy Spirit who dwells in us in the form of the seven gifts or talents, and who inspires, guides and encourages us in the here and now of our lives and on the way back to the Father.

Virtues and time
O time turn back / Bring me everything that I've lost / Have mercy on me and give me the life / The life I've already lived. Manuel Paião 1984

When we have already lived a few years, the past begins to be longer than the future; the memories of this past spring to our mind more than the projects of the future. I can understand the author of the song mentioned above in the sense that the recollection of the joys and pleasures of the past, causes sadness in the present; the longing of the remembrance of past pleasures is oftentimes not a joyful feeling but a sad one.

In contrast, the memory of the past sacrifices made at individual level to achieve an ideal at the community level when we dedicated ourselves to someone, when we put our lives at the service of a cause, brings us joy in the present. It is as if it is still happening: the joy of the victory of battles won in the past still resonates and makes us feel it in the present, giving a boost to our self-esteem and making us say, "It was all worth it..."

Human life is spatiotemporal, that is, we occupy a space, our place in the world, our being and how we are, our role in the whole history of humanity, for a period of time. This time is, like everything, tridimensional, that is, it is subdivided into past, present and future. These three times are interactive, that is, neither the future is only about the future, nor the past only about the past, nor the present deals only with the here and now. The three are real, the three are alive, the three influence each other and coexist.

Both the three times as well as the three virtues are interactive, as we have said. However, each virtue relates more with one time than with another. Of course Hope has to do with the future, being Faith projected into the future where its content is found. Charity must occupy our present and Faith is the virtue that inspires our past.

2 Timothy 4:7 – "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." Faith comes from the past to give us self-esteem, a feeling that it was worth it and that our struggles were not in vain. Hope comes from the future to tell us "do not be afraid"; Charity arises from the present to give us the priorities that overcome our stress in saying, "strive FIRST for the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well". (Matthew 6:33)

Grammatically, our existence is not defined in simple present; the present continuous does not serve us either. The grammatical time that most reflects what happens to us at the level of existence will be a mix of present perfect with present continuous. Applying this time to the quote of St. Paul would be "I have been keeping the Faith." In the present perfect, the action began in the past, continues in the present and is opened to the future.  

Faith and the past - between depression and self-esteem
A psychiatrist said that a Christian must have a poor memory of the past. I would not say that we should forget what went wrong in the past so we could live without depression and with a minimum self-esteem. What we need to have is a benevolent vision of our past, we must reconcile with it and with all the people who were part of it, including ourselves of course. The past has of course gone, but it continues to be reinterpreted in the present.

Certain facts that were part of it have already had several interpretations throughout our life. As we know more about ourselves, that is, as we have an overview of our life, it is easier to fit in a positive way each negative fact of our past life. There is an interesting Portuguese and Spanish proverb that I assume is the popular version of the “Felix Culpa” theology that says: “There are no evils from which good does not come”. On the same wavelength, another says that God writes straight on crooked lines. Human lines are crooked but God even on these lines he writes straight.

We must be able to chant our Happy Fault (Félix Culpa) about our past so that it comes to our present in a positive way, and not negative, haunting us. Like Jules Verne on his voyage to the center of the Earth, we have to travel back to our past to flood it with the light of our present (because, as a proverb has it, “where the sun does not enter, the doctor does”) and thus prevent this from invading our present in a sneaky, clandestine and negative way.

What we know about ourselves, of our past, we can control; what we don't know about ourselves, controls us. That is why this pilgrimage journey from the present to the past is necessary. By returning to the present after this journey to the past, I am able to establish Faith as the guiding thread of my life; like in a pearl necklace, this thread binds each of the facts of the past in a harmonious way that positively explains how I came to be what I am today.

This thread that binds all the facts together in a positive way is our faith in Christ, the center, origin and destination of our lives. Like the Earth revolving around the Sun, our (liturgical) year is spent around his Person and his Word, from his birth to his Ascension into Heaven, in a helical movement from the past to the future.

This makes events of every Christmas, every Easter and every Pentecost always old and always new; where I was at Christmas last year is not where I am now. Therefore, every feast is always same and always different in this helical journey around Christ towards the future.

Hope and the future - between anxiety and Hope
Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” (…) your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and is righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ‘So do not worry about tomorrow, (…) Today’s trouble is enough for today.  Matthew 6:31-34

From the moment we are adopted by God as his children, we should no longer worry. Children live occupied and always try to be occupied, not preoccupied. They leave the worries to their parents, who are the ones that should be worried about the well-being of the child. This must be our relationship with God our Father: we must be busy with the affairs of the Kingdom of God and leave to him our livelihood, our clothing, our future.

As we have already mentioned in other texts, the biblical man walks towards the future backwards, being guided by the past. As we walk with our back to the future, the horizons are broadened and each particular fact is seen and placed in plain sight as a piece of a puzzle. On the other hand, that same past provides me with the navigation tool for the future. At sea, both on the surface of the water and under it, submarines are not guided by sight, but by instruments; the same goes for airplanes in the air. Our past is the instrument of navigation for the future because, as much as we want to, we do not know the future; but since it is known to God, it is in him that we trust.

(...) if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.  1 Corinthians 15:14

Where we come from, where we are going and what is the meaning of our life are the questions that every human being asks himself from the moment he knows himself as a person. Only Christ is the complete answer to these questions.

In Christ we put our Hope that our death is a birth to eternal life, not the end of life, an eternal death. It is this future that gives meaning to our present, and without this future nothing of the present would make sense. If, as atheists and agnostics believe, we come from nothing and head towards nothing, if nothing is the beginning and nothing is the end, how can the middle be something of meaning? How can something have meaning when it begins in nothing and ends in nothing?

Without the future, the present is nauseating no matter how pleasant it may be. This is what Sartre experienced, Nietzsche before him and Camus after him: if you come from nothing, you have no Faith, if you go to nothing, you have no Hope, the surest thing is that you have no Charity because life lacks meaning, it is nauseating.

(…) I know the one in whom I have put my trust… 2 Timothy 1:12

We are not heading towards the sunset of our life, but towards the dawn of eternal life. Therefore, no matter how happy we are, the best is yet to come; no matter how much we suffer or how much we are decrepit, limited, sick or old, the best is to come always, it is not here in the circumstances and vicissitudes of the here and now that we put our trust in, for we know that we do not have a lasting city here, but we are looking for the city that is to come. (Hebrews 13:14)

Charity and the present - between stress and tranquility
‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’  Matthew 11:28-30

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives sleep to his beloved...  Psalm 127:1-2

Our present can be invaded by the remorse of the past or by the fear, worry and anxiety of the future. In this way, we become stressed, disoriented, paralyzed, not knowing where to go and what to do, like Marta (Luke 10:38-42) who went around like a headless chicken.

The Master calls us to go to Him, to accept His yoke, His law, His way of proceeding and doing things, and then we will find rest. It is the Lord who guards the city: dawn does not last long before morning come. All we have to do is not to save for tomorrow what we can do today.

The priority is the Kingdom of God and His justice, everything else comes after. We often realize that we have been sweeping other people’s houses, and upon return, we find our own house swept clean as well. It is in helping others that we help ourselves. It is in helping to solve the problems of others that we find ours magically solved. That is why others do not come to increase our stress, they come to eliminate it. This is what it means to "strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."

When you ask for a favor, ask someone who is busy, and not someone who is unoccupied, because the latter will tell you he still got a lot to do. The problem of stress is fundamentally a problem of priorities. We often self-sabotage when under a lot of stress, we do what is the least important first, putting aside and compulsively delaying what truly counts.

Trinitarian Fatima: My God I believe, I adore and I love you...
My God, I believe, I adore, I hope and I love You. / I ask pardon of You for those who do not believe, / do not adore, do not hope, and do not love You.

The seer and "evangelist" of Fatima, Lucia, told the then Cardinal Ratzinger that the "practical" aim of all the apparitions was to make the people of God grow in the theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity, which are present in the message since the first prayer taught by the Angel: "My God, I believe, I adore, I hope and I love you..."

A simple and singular prayer, that is also complete; an invitation to Christians to live the three dimensions of human time: Past - Present - Future, drawing inspiration from the three theological virtues: Faith - Hope - Charity. Human life takes place exclusively in the present; a present that, when it is full of Charity inspired by the past of our parents’ Faith, is without fear or anxiety because of the Hope that projects us into the future.

The virtue of Faith: "I Believe" – Faith is the philosopher's stone that makes us see life and reality with different eyes. Faith is a step we take beyond what is rational and yet reasonable; it is a risk, a decision, a fundamental option. It is the key that opens the door to Salvation – in other words, door to Heaven in the future, but which in the present, in the here and now, translates into peace, happiness and feeling good, physically, spiritually, psychologically and morally.

The virtue of Hope: "I hope" – The theological virtue of Hope is Faith projected into the future that gives a sense of security in the present moment. A Christian does not need anxiolytics because he has no anxiety; perfectly anchored in Faith that translates, in the present, in the here and now, into Charity to God and neighbour. "He who does not owe does not fear" says the proverb; a Christian does not fear because he is not indebted to anyone, not to God, not to men.

Faith also assures Christians that, no matter how good or how bad the present moment is, everything is fleeting and their story will have a happy ending. The end of their story is already assured in the death and Resurrection of the Lord. If we have the Faith that allows us to believe that even the hairs of our head are numbered, as the gospel says, we live in the certainty that even though the present moment may be of suffering and anguish, the best is yet to come and our story will have a happy ending. Therefore, fear and anxiety disappear and the ups and downs of our lives are lived in Hope and Faith in divine providence and not in fear.

"In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph" – It is in this Faith and in this Hope that the little shepherds of Fatima lived, especially Lucia, who would soon lose the companionship of her cousins. Realizing that she was going to be alone in the world, Lucia must have felt a great sadness, which led Our Lady to ask her, "And you suffer much for this?" Then, as a way of comfort and consolation, she said, "My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God," or to heaven that had already been promised to her, Jacinta, and Francisco since the very first apparition.

The virtue of Charity: I adore... and I love you – We live only in the present, inspired by the past and confident in the future. The present of our life must be full of Charity; Charity, or Love, can only be lived in the present moment. "Don't keep for tomorrow what you can and should do today." Good intentions do not save anyone, not even ourselves. Charity cannot be a project, but an action in the present time. Charity cannot be postponed.

I adore you - The present moment must be full of love of God. Finding time and seeking a place to be with Him, like Jesus used to do and like Francisco of Fatima also used to do, isolating himself from his companions, by hiding behind a wall or in a deserted place, or spending school time in the Church of Fatima, consoling the Hidden Jesus.

I love you – When we love God as Father with all our heart, we look at the other with different set of eyes; he is no longer our enemy, our rival whom we fear or envy, but our brother whom we desire all the best in the world. In this sense, love of God does not exist without love of neighbour and vice versa, that is why for Jesus, the two are part of a single commandment of love.

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

FAITH
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Proverbs 3:5-6

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (…) And without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.  Hebrews 11:1, 6

We walk by faith, not by sight.  2 Corinthians 5:7

To have faith is to sign a blank page and let God write whatever he wants. St. Augustine

Faith - a sixth sense - transcends the intellect without contradicting it. Gandhi

The first of the three virtues is the foundation for the other two. Faith was, in Roman mythology, the goddess of trust, daughter of Saturn and Opis. To have Faith means to believe, trust, bet on, or adhere to a person or group of people or a doctrine. To believe, to credit, means the same as to rely on, but it has a different etymological root, because the concept of believing derives from ‘cor’ which in Latin means heart; to place the hand over one’s heart is a symbolic gesture that means to believe, to trust, and even to commit oneself, to be loyal, faithful.

Faith is the mental acceptance of the truth of a doctrine, an affirmation, or existence of a Supreme Being, for which there are no immediate ascertainable certainty. Similarly, the Bible, in turn, defines Faith in Hebrews 11:1 as being the firm foundation of things to be expected, and proof of things that are not seen.

Faith is a reasonable leap prepared rationally, like someone who is walking along the road and reaches a point where he has to jump over to the other side of the precipice; Faith is a leap into the future or a visible present reality starting from a hypothetical future not yet present. Faith is to navigate on the sea or in the air or under the sea without the sight of the way or route we go through. Faith is the child who throws himself into the air into the expectant arms of his father or mother.

From the point of view of knowledge, Faith does not belong neither to analysis nor to deductive logical knowledge; Faith has more to do with synthesis and intuitive knowledge. To have Faith is to intuit that something is right without all the guarantees; it is to write a blank cheque, to lend money or a book and believe that it will be returned. Faith is to bet and to risk.

Einstein's theory of general relativity was for a long time an object of Faith; it was born out of an intuition of its founder; it was only a short time ago that we began to have evidence of the veracity of this theory. The new quantum physics that admits invisible and imperishable realities contradicts and is quite different from Newton's mechanical physics, where reality seemed to function perfectly, like a Swiss clock.

Rational, irrational, reasonable
Many scientists who once looked at Faith as superstition, but with the theory of relativity and the new quantum physics, are now forced to recognize that not all scientific knowledge arises from deductive logic and are susceptible to be proven empirically in the immediate. These scientists are dualists because between the rationality of science and the irrationality of superstition, they do not recognize a reasonable, intermediate, plausible and humanly understandable concept.

Fides quaerens intellectum (Faith seeking understanding) – St. Anselmo's great maxim speaks of Faith as a form of knowledge that enables the intellect to go beyond itself, to jump over to the other side if there is no other way to get there. Faith is not irrational because it strives to understand, and since it is not immediately verifiable like science of our time, it is therefore reasonable.

The First Vatican Council, in fact, defines Faith as a reasonable gift. Reasonable is a mixture of rational and irrational. To have Faith is to read the signs of the times, unnoticeable details that indicate to us that something is about to happen. We humans only know that there is a fire when we see or smell the smoke, the jungle animals know there is a fire nearby long before they see or smell the smoke. In many other atmospheric and natural phenomena, animals are very intuitive in order to protect themselves from imminent disasters.

Faith identifies us with a past                                                                              The heritage of humanity is not only made up of historical monuments, but also of all that the human race is and has done throughout the 5 million years of its existence on this planet. All this is genetically encrypted in the DNA of every child who comes into this world, it is something like Jung's collective unconscious, and it is a part of us and defines us as such. All this is in the past.

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

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

The same is true at the individual level. I know what I am and what I am capable of by looking back, seeing the performance of my talents and my shortcomings in the various circumstances that life has thrown at me throughout my personal history. It is the approval of this past that gives me the sense of self-esteem that I need to relate properly with myself, with God, with others, and with my environment. If I am trapped in my past, hostage to my past, I am not free for others or for God.

Even God who lives in eternity, outside of space and time confinement, in order to present himself to men, made use of his coexistence with them in the past, presenting himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob...

HOPE
(...) because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel (…) Colossians 1:5

(…) remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.  1 Thessalonians 1:3

(…) with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, (…) Ephesians 1:18

Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. Hebrews 10:23

It is likely that the Lord created hope on the same day that he created spring. Bern Williams

They do not know nor dream /That dream commands life /And that as long as man dreams
The world jumps and advances /Like a colored ball /Between the hands of a child. António Gedeão

While there is life, there's hope. Marcus Tullius

The second, of the three virtues is the daughter of Faith, just as Jesus Christ is the Only Begotten Son of the Father and indeed it is in Him that the anchor of our Hope rests. As St. Paul stressed, "If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain (1 Corinthians 15:14); everything falls apart like a deck of cards if Christ has not risen, our whole life lacks meaning and foundation like a sand castle. Christ is the only guarantee of life beyond death because He himself passed this threshold, not as God that he was, but as the man whom he incarnated, Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus' message is not just about configuring our present and saving our past, it is also about the future since it is about something that is already here, but not yet in its entirety: the Kingdom of God. It is the project of building the Kingdom that links the past, the present and the future, which leads us to walk in an archetypical dynamic of Egypt – Desert - Promised Land.

Christian Hope is the virtue through which we desire and work for the kingdom of Heaven and eternal life. By placing our Faith in Christ and his promises, we rely on our strength but also in the complementary help of the Holy Spirit. Christian Hope is the fulfillment of all that God has promised his people since Abraham.

Hope projects us into the future
Since the stubborn donkey did not want to move, the young man tied a carrot hanging at the end of a stick, he then mounted the donkey and held the carrot two feet in front of the animal’s nostrils. Hoping to bite the carrot, the donkey kept moving forward not realizing that the carrot was moving too.

Hope is Faith on wheels; the dynamic Faith that propels us into the future. We all need a carrot to entice us to move. Dream is the engine of life; it is not in the present, but it is what inspires our present.

Martin Luther King was one of those who, projected into the future, mortgaged his life in the fight for equality between Blacks and Whites; a dream he knew would not come true in his lifetime. The day before his assassination, drawing inspiration from Moses who, after 40 years of walking through the wilderness, saw the Promised Land, which he did not enter, from the top of Mount Nebo, King said, "I am grateful to God because he has granted me to see the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land."

For those who do not know where they are going, there are no favorable winds - One only lives with meaning in the present if it is imbued with the future. To live a present without the presence of a future is to drift. And when the present is painful, it is Hope for a better future that helps us to bear it.

About the Kingdom of God, theologians say that it is present, "already" among us since Christ came to us, but “not yet” in its fullness. Paraphrasing this idea, we can say that: while Faith helps us to look at the present as an “already”, Hope compels us to judge this very same present as a “not yet” in its plenitude.

Hope helps us to disengage from the present and to continue walking knowing that, regardless of how good the conditions we might be living in, this is not yet the Kingdom. The Hope that traces out for us the course of the future gives us a goal, a way to go, a knowledge of where to go.

There is no evil that always lasts, nor good that always endures - It is Hope that uninstalls us from the present when it is rosy, telling us that we have not arrived yet, and it is Hope that takes us out of despair from a present situation. Life is made up of ups and downs, just like the electrocardiogram and electroencephalogram. Hope makes us not lose our head at the top and not to despair at the bottom.
 
Not all optimists have Hope, but all who have Hope are optimists; don't look at a bottle as half empty, but as half full. Hope is the positive way of interpreting the present, of seeing it through the filters of the signs of the times, imbued with a bright future for everyone because God wants it so for everyone; He wants us to have life and have it in abundance.

CHARITY
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith without works, and I by my works will show you my faith. James 2:14-18

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.  1 Corinthians 13:1-3

Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 1 John 4:8
Let all that you do be done in love. 1 Corinthians 16:14

The third of the three virtues proceeds from Faith and Hope, just as the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son; and it is indeed the Holy Spirit who sustains us in the living and practicing of this virtue. While Faith underlies, and Hope inspires and motivates, Charity acts, for it proceeds from Faith and Hope as the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

It is in Charity or by Charity that we validate Faith and Hope or that we prove that we have Faith and Hope. If there is no Charity, Faith is dead, and if Faith is dead, Hope which is its daughter was never born. The value of Faith and Hope lies in their role as the foundation of Charity and in making it possible.

Through Charity we know who has Faith and who has Hope. On the other hand, it is in Charity that Faith and Hope feed and grow. It is Charity that feeds back Faith and Hope, making them both grow. Charity leads to more Faith and Faith leads to more Charity.

Now we enter into the finest theological virtue that is the result of the previous two: if we have Faith, it means that we believe in God's revelation, and if we have Hope, it means that we have the inspiration to persevere, this also means that we have in us the values that have been given to us from God's revelation, in order to practice them.

It is here that Charity comes in — which is the visible face of Faith — it is Charity that confirms Faith and Hope, so we have as a statement: "Faith without works is dead", since it would mean that we do not adhere to God's revelation. This would imply, in other words, a denial of the commandments: to love one’s neighbour as oneself, to help the poor, to teach the needy, to evangelize, etc.

Charity is Love, just as it is a form of friendship with God. God Loves us, so we must love God, and if God loves us it means that we too must love our neighbour, therefore we have the order: love of God, of oneself and of others. If in Faith we love God above everything, it is in Charity that we love our neighbour as we love ourselves.

Charity fills our present
Obras son amores que no buenas razones... (Works are love not fancy words…) Castilian proverb

Unlike the past and the future, the present is in our hands, in it and only in it are we free to act. The present is the here and now of our life that must be full of action, of acts of Charity and Love. For the Christian, to live is to love and to love is to serve, to put oneself at the service of those who need us the most.

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

God does not ask us to revolutionize the world, or do THE best, he only asks us for OUR best. In the parable of the talents, the one who achieved more is no more praised than the one who achieved less; in the parable of the labourers in the vineyard, those who worked all day received no more than those who worked only one hour; in the parable of the sower, those who produce 100% are no more exalted than those who produce 60% or those who produce only 30%.

Much or few, all the Lord asks of us, is that we bear fruit: that our life be productive and that we leave here more than what we found. Furthermore, that we are part of the solution and not part of the problem; that is, may our living and acting be a contribution to the solutions of this world’s problems and not a contribution to make them worse.

We will be judged by how much or how little we love
It is in Charity that the Love of God manifests itself in love of neighbour and vice versa. As Christ is in the poor and the needy, it is by loving the poor and the needy that we live the gospel and that we love God.

In the end we will be judged by how much or how little we have loved; according to Matthew 25 the questions in the final judgment are already there, it would be bad if we did not pass a test where questions are already known. These questions are not about Faith nor about Hope; in regards to salvation, Faith and Hope are secondary; they are worthy to the extent of whether or not they have increased Charity.

The final judgment is not about Faith, what religion or practice we had, nor about Hope, but exclusively about Charity. I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was naked, I was in prison, I was sick, I was a pilgrim, an outsider, a foreigner, and you gave or did not give me assistance.

The matter of final judgment is not a Shakespearean question of to be or not to be, but rather a little more positivist or pragmatic of to do or not to do. Hell is paved with good intentions, so it is by works, by fruits that we know a person, it is by how much you do that we know how much you are worth.

Since it is our doing, our working and not our being that goes on trial, we are not at an advantage over the agnostics, atheists, Muslims or the faithful of any other religion. What is important is what you have done, and on this regard, although Christianity has the fullness of truth, all religions have some truth in them, as they are all meant to guide their followers to self-realization, happiness and heaven.

Many with few means (I am referring to the faithful of other religions) have gone further in perfection than others, such as Christians despite having all the means of holiness at their disposal. Let us be aware that: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked”. (Luke 12: 48)

Conclusion - The three virtues work in our lives like a GPS. Faith connects us to God, it is our guiding star or satellite, telling us where we are and what we are, that is, sinners. Hope tells us where we want to go and what we want to be, that is, saints. Charity is the only means and the road map to attain holiness.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

3 Commandments of Love: Myself - Neighbour - God

Loving God and loving neighbour are the two commandments of Christian life; "God above all things" makes us transcend from the world, it lifts us up to God in a vertical movement; "neighbour as myself" suggests a horizontal movement, it makes me think of the equality between me and all the other children of God. When we join the two lines, vertical and horizontal, we get the cross of Christ, that is, in addition to all that it already means, the cross of Christ also serves as a graphic representation of these two commandments.

If I propose to write about the so-called double commandment of love, it is because I have discovered a third aspect of it, that is, the commandment of love is not double after all, but triple; this third aspect is understood, hidden, but it is there. The reason for this is that man is the measure of all things. Each one of us, as an individual, is the measure of all things. Our vision and understanding are always subjective; objectivity is the sum of many subjectivities.

Self-esteem or love of oneself is implicit in the second commandment. They say that the measure of love is to love without measure, but such love does not exist because whether we like it or not, we love the other, our neighbour, and the Other, our God, to the extent that we love ourselves. He who does not love himself, can hardly love his neighbour and God.

The entity closest to me is my own person with its flaws, virtues and vicissitudes; if I do not accept myself as I am, I will find it hard to accept the neighbour as he is, or even God as He is. The image that I composed which illustrates this text has this idea implicitly. Theologically, we love God first, then the neighbour, and lastly ourselves. Psychologically, it is the other way around, first myself, then the neighbour and finally God. This is because when we truly love our neighbour, we are already "ipso facto" loving God.

The nature of love
To love is to want the good of the other.  St. Thomas Aquinas

Love is the most misused word in all languages. Much of what is passed off as love is not love at all but instinct, and affective or sexual attraction. However, they commonly fall into the category of love since no other word or verb comes to us. Take, for example, the expression "to make love", referring to the realization of the sexual act. Love is not made and, if it were made, then "love is works, not words”, as the Castilian proverb says.

By their fruits you will know them, says the gospel, the fruits are the works. It is in what we do for the loved ones that we show how much we love them. "Making love" has nothing to do with works, it is just one of the many expressions of love, like kissing, embracing, caressing. However, as these expressions of love can also be expressions of lust, it is only by works that we truly know who loves and who doesn’t.

When I say "I love you", what I really mean to say is that I want you to love me
If we are truly honest with ourselves, we will realize that most of the time when we say "I love you", what we are actually saying is that we want to win the favor of the other, that is, we want the other to love us. Saying "I love you" is the same as throwing the ball to see if the other one catches it and says "I love you too". The moment you say it, you belong to me, I won your love.

Upon hearing this, Don Juan or Casanova would set off immediately for the next conquest, because to love was to subjugate the other, to conquer her, to possess her, to have her at his mercy. This happened and still happens because she who truly loves submits herself, hands over herself, gives of herself. If both experience this, very well; if not, if only one gives and the other possesses, the one who truly loves, that is, who hands over her heart and soul becomes vulnerable and susceptible to abuse.

To love is not to seek the love of the other, but to seek to love the other. To love is not to possess, but to be possessed, to love is not to conquer, but to be conquered, to love is not to win, but to be won over, to love is not to submit the other, but to submit oneself to the other. One does not kill oneself for love. In true love there are no crimes of passion: those who kill for love do not show that they love the other, because to love is to want the good of the other. He who kills out of love shows that he loves himself, only himself and no one else.

There are no reasons to justify killing, but there are reasons to justify dying; no one has greater love than he who gives his life for his friends, Jesus says in this regard. Those who think and even say "if you're jealous because of me, it's because you love me" are much deceived. There is nothing more false than this statement. The exact opposite is true: if he is jealous because of me, it's because he wants me to love him and only him. He who truly loves leaves the other free, and because he wants the good of the other and can accept that this good does not pass by him. Although saddened, he will let the other go without jealousy, revolt or revenge.

The Greek language has different words for different types of love, which also helps us to clarify and discern about the origin and nature of our feelings, instincts and thoughts concerning love.

Storge – This is the love between parents and children, and between siblings, a love based on blood ties. It's an instinctive love; it is unconditional because it is instinctive: we will always love our father, our mother and our siblings, no matter what they do. The same is true among mammals closest to man in the evolution of species.

The love of a mother is greatly exalted. A mother gives her heart and soul to her child, she lives for him and is willing to die for him. It is the sign and symbol of true love. However, when we broaden our field of vision, we see the same happening among animals closest to the humans in the evolution of species: in all mammals and even in birds.

Storge masquerades as true love, although it is difficult to know what percentage of this love is pure instinct. In a woman it will become evident later that it was not love after all, but instinct, when the figure of a mother hen, more obvious while her children are like chicks, turns into a possessive mother-in-law who does not realize that her children are no longer of educational age like the chicks.

This behaviour is even worse than in animals, because the latter at least lose their maternal instinct when their young reach adulthood. In contrast, the human mother never loses this feeling, never grants or consents to the autonomy, independence and freedom of her child.  

Eros – We continue in the domain of instinct: the instinct of blood ties in storge, the sexual instinct in eros. Everything we have said above about what is normally understood as love fits to a large extent here and in the concept of philia, because much of what we call love is pure sexual or affective attraction.
 
Eros or erotic love is purely physical attraction to the body of the other, he does not take into account the rest of the other’s life, person, vicissitudes or problems. For erotic love, the other exists only as a body that I want to possess, manipulate, use for sexual pleasure.

There are many crimes committed within the framework of this love which is pure sexual attraction. Many politicians, clerics and great men of science and culture ruin their careers and lives, letting themselves be dominated by this powerful instinct, abusing others and even innocent children, ruining them for the rest of their lives, and can turn them into future abusers when they reach adulthood.

On the other hand, in the past, it filled the orphanages with children brought into the world outside the framework of a man's love for a woman. Many of these children fell into the world of delinquency, drug, and prostitution. To combat the plague of orphanages, society legalized infanticide by calling it abortion and created around the murdered children an industry that uses their remains for various purposes, even in cosmetics.

Philia – In the love of friendship, we continue in the sphere of instinct and attraction. If storge is the natural attraction for the members of the same family and eros the sexual and physical attraction, then philia is the affective attraction for the personhood of the other, not anymore for his physical appearance, but more for his spirit, for his way of being, for his intellect, for his virtues.

As a sexual attraction, eros leads us to establish a relationship with people of the opposite sex or the same sex in the case of homosexuality. Affective attraction, on the other hand, usually occurs between people of the same sex, remembering our friends in childhood and adolescence, and these are friendships that remain often throughout the lifetime.

The love of friendship, in a certain sense, is superior to erotic love because it is an attraction not to the physical, but to the person, to how the person is. Since it is psychological and affective, it is morally superior, although we continue in the domain of attraction; I am attracted to this person because he or she complements me, because he or she has what I don't have, because he or she helps me to be better. This is not yet a free and unconditional love, for it is full of interests even if they are not material.

Agape – When the word love appears in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, which was originally written in Greek, the word that appears is agape, which is translated as caritas in Latin, charity in the Neo-Latin languages. Of the four concepts of love, this is the only one that honors the word love. Others use the word love, but are the fruit of instinctive attraction to another person, to their body or spirit, or because they have common genes.

This is the only 100% unselfish and unconditional love that is not connected to anything that the other has or possesses that might interest us -- his body, his spirit, his material goods, his way of being, his intelligence. It is this love that the rest of the text will deal with, unselfish, unconditional, oblative love. The love that defines God, the love with which God loves us.

If you want to know if anyone loves you with this love, all you have to do is to ask them this simple question: why do you love me? The question leads implicitly to a trap, because whatever the answer is, the other denounces himself, revealing an interest. Let's look at some possible answers:

Because you are beautiful… One day when I am old and stop being beautiful, would you still love me?
Because you have a perfect body... One day when I grow fat, will you stop loving me?
Because you are good in bed… One day, with age, when I am impotent, will you stop loving me?
Because you are rich… If one day I lose all my money, will you leave me?
Because you have a good heart… If one day my life sours, will you stop wanting me?
Because you have a good character... If I get depression or mentally ill, will you stop loving me?

Whatever the response, it will most likely reveal a selfish interest, something one person does not have and seeks in the other. Where there is self-interest, there is no true love, for love to be true it needs to be purified of all selfishness. Only unconditional love is real love.

The question has only two valid and positive answers. The first would be to answer "I don't know"; the second would be to say "because you are you"; "because there has never been anyone and there will never be anyone like you." We are all unique, not only in the history of mankind but in the history of the universe because we have an unreproducible genetic code. On the other hand, on a theological level, the place we occupy in God's heart can only be occupied by us.

Love is not a feeling, it is a need
As we have already said when talking about Nonviolent Communication, over the centuries, love has been presented at the same time as a need, a feeling and an action. In NVC, however, the same reality cannot be at the same time a need, a feeling and an action.

Feelings when they are positive is the alarm bell of needs that are met, and when negative they are the alarm bell of unmet needs. On the other hand, actions are required or motivated by needs. What happens at a psychological level happens at a physical level: if I feel satiated, the need to eat is met; if I feel hungry, the need to eat is not met. The same is true of all physical or psychic, moral or spiritual needs.

Love is not a feeling because it is not an adjective that qualifies a noun. As Rosenberg points out, feelings are volatile and ephemeral; with the exception of grief, we cannot focus on a feeling for more than 40 seconds.

Of course, love involves feelings because these tell us whether or not the need to love and be loved is being met or not. For example, the feeling of empathy reveals that my need to love is being met; by contrast, the feeling of jealousy reveals that my need to be loved is not being met.

Love as a need arouses feelings, but it does not arouse a specific one, since it arouses many and varied ones. It leads the person to act, but not to carry out a single specific action; the acts of expression of love are many and varied, they depend on many variables that lead us to express it in one way or another.

The feelings of love
"Where there is smoke there is fire" – the smoke is the feeling, the fire is the need. Each of our feelings is intrinsically related to a particular need. The feeling will be positive if the need is met, negative if the need which the feeling refers to is not met. 

Positive – (When the need to love and to be loved is satisfied) Joy, enthusiasm, hope, pleasure, confidence, satisfaction, attraction, contentment, etc.

Negative – (When the need to love and to be loved is not satisfied) Sadness, homesickness, depression, longing, loneliness, despair, bitterness.

The actions of love
Benevolence, kindness, generosity, giving and receiving, help, serving others, listening, praising, supporting, helping, caressing, etc.

Love is a right and a duty
Loving and being loved is the first human need, after the physical needs. There is no human life without love; to live is to love. Throughout our lives we will have this need. Therefore, because it is a human need and because there is no authentic human life without love, to love is, at the same time, a duty and a right.

As an inherent need of human nature and human dignity, all human beings have the right to be loved and the duty to love. As children, the priority is to be loved, for it is by being loved unconditionally that we learn to love unconditionally. As adults, the priority is to love; if an adult has the priority to be loved more than to love, he is not a mature adult. He is one of those adults that we see so often in soap operas, who uses a thousand and one strategies and tricks to get someone's esteem and do little or nothing to love someone else.

At the educational level, love is a duty of adults towards children, an inherent and innate right of children in relation to adults. Outside the sphere of education, the need to love and be loved remains for the rest of our lives, so it is always, at the same time, a right even if we do not claim it, and a duty even if we do not exercise it.

However, God will continually ask us "where is your brother" (Genesis 4:9). To answer that we are not our brother's keeper is not an answer that satisfies God or our moral conscience. It is also worth remembering that the matter of the final judgment is the same matter of life: love. If you loved, you lived; if you didn't love, you didn't live, you were a living dead, that is, the body was alive, but the soul was already dead. With the death of the body, you return to the nothingness from which God had created you. He took you from the nothingness intending to make you into a somebody; but unfortunately, you did not collaborate with his grace so you go back to nothingness, which is eternal death.   

"Love is like the moon: when it does not increase, it decreases" – This is a very interesting Portuguese proverb. And what kind of love is it referring to? Only to the erotic and affective love, that is, to the romantic love. Everything in life is dynamic, but love is not, because it is not a feeling. It evokes feelings when we love and feelings when we are loved, but it is not, in itself, a feeling because it has no ups and downs.

As an inherent need of the human person, love does not grow or fade, it always remains the same. God's love does not grow because it is not deficient, incomplete, or imperfect; this is the love with which our parents love us: it neither grows nor fades. If God is love, Man, created in his image and likeness, is also love, because only in love, with love and for love can he live. That's why you either love the other or you don't. Those who truly love cannot love any more or any less.

Religion and life
The Jews have two contradictory passions: that of deducing countless laws from the initial 10 commandments and seeking to legislate all aspects of individual and social life. As the result of too many laws, another passion arises, that of breaking down and discerning what is the most important commandment.

When the Pharisee asked Jesus about the most important commandment, he expected Jesus to answer him by quoting what is considered to be the Israelite Creed recited every morning: "Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart." Jesus, in fact, lived up to the Pharisee’s expectation, but he added another commandment that the Pharisee did not expect, which was also in one of the books of the Pentateuch, so it was also a Law of Moses. In doing so, he revolutionized the relationship between religion and life.

In so doing, Jesus made a personal synthesis of the entire Old Testament, by saying that in the observance of love of God and neighbour the whole Old Testament is summarized, that is, the law, the five books of the Pentateuch, and all the books of the prophets. In addition to the synthesis, Jesus gives us in this double commandment a personal interpretation of the Old Testament by establishing a relationship between life and religion, between the relationship with God and the relationship with others.

Until Jesus came, life and religion were divorced from each other, very far away was the commandment of love of God from the commandment of love of neighbour. Despite 2000 years of Christianity, this divorce continues between faith and life. They are like the two lines of the railroad tracks which never meet, which always remain distant or equidistant from each other, without religion influencing life or life influencing religion.

"I heard that you sold an old car as new at an exorbitant price," says one friend to another, "and as far as I know, you are a practicing Catholic; what do you tell the priest when you go to Confession?" The dishonest salesman replies, "I tell the priest my sins, not my businesses."

This is much more than a joke, it is very real. The expression "practicing Catholic" is not understood as someone who embodies faith in life, but rather as someone who goes to Mass on Sundays and attends the sacraments, goes to confession and takes communion at least on Easter Sunday, abstains from meat on Fridays during Lent and fasts twice a year. Sadly, this is a practicing Catholic, and not a person who lives differently from others, who is salt of the earth and light of the world as Jesus told us to be.

It was not only on this occasion that Jesus sought to unite the practice of faith with everyday life. In fact, even at the beginning of the Bible, Yahweh asks Cain the whereabouts his brother Abel and Cain replies that he does not know, that he is not his brother's keeper. But the case is that we are our brothers’ keepers. At all times, we should know how they are doing. We cannot pass by on the other side, like bad Samaritans, when we meet a needy person in our way; this person is my neighbour and this is the conclusion of the parable of the Good Samaritan; this is why I cannot pass by on the other side.

"Each one knows of himself and God knows of everyone" This proverb also reveals religion as a private practice that does not interfere with my social life or question it. Jesus, however, tells us “So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” Matthew 5:23-24

If this is not clear to you, St. John the Evangelist asks you how you can love God whom you cannot see if you do not love your neighbour whom you can see; and if you think you know a lot about God, he even says to you, "he who does not love, does not know God." Finally, the entry into Heaven depends on the practice of lay acts of love, not on the practice of religious acts; the so-called religious acts are the liturgical expression of faith.

What counts are the works: by their fruits you will know them. At the end of our life, we will not be judged by who we are, by how much or how little faith we have, but by the way that faith has been translated into works. I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was in hospital, I was in prison, I was an outsider, and you helped me or did not help me. Jesus transformed a simple act, like giving a glass of water, into a religious act when he said, "Whoever did this did it for Me, and whoever did not do this, did not do it for Me"; the Christian religion is a lay religion, for Jesus there is no difference between the lay and the religious.

LOVE MYSELF AS GOD LOVES ME
Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.  1 John 4:8

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

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

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

Genesis of self-esteem
Self-esteem is the result of all the experiences and interpersonal relationships that the person had in his life. All the people we have met in the course of our life, especially in the early years of our existence, have had a positive or negative effect on how we see and evaluate ourselves.

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

How low self-esteem develops
Children who have been abused and violated physically, sexually or verbally, who have been used as objects or manipulated in any way, who have never or rarely been cuddled, who have constantly received negative messages about themselves, who have been ridiculed or ignored, criticized and never praised for their successes and achievements, and have been unfavorably compared to others, these children will suffer in the future from a low self-esteem from which it will be difficult to free themselves.

How self-esteem develops
By contrast, children educated positively will have self-esteem. They are those who often hear words of praise, "I trust in you," "I know you're trying" in face of failure that was preceded by effort, and who hear "you did your best," "I'm impressed with you, thank you for being honest", "I'm proud of you", etc.

Do not miss any opportunity to praise a child. We take for granted many of the things our children do without recognizing them. We should always reinforce the desired behaviors, congratulate when children make the right choice in any situation, do not let this choice go unnoticed, validate the achievement with a smile and a hug, avoid the addiction to praise in the negative: "It's about time you did it...” This is more a humiliation, than a compliment. Avoid demoting and comparing children with other children.

Where it should not be based
Paraphrasing the gospel, some base their self-esteem on quicksand, on changing realities, and as the result, one day they can feel good about themselves and the next day depressed.

Physical appearance – This is not a good reason to like yourself because we all get old. Unlike inner beauty, physical appearance is not something that can improve with age, so what is now a source of pride will be a cause of shame tomorrow. Moreover, as was proved in the episode of selecting David as king, God looks on the heart of the person and not on his outward appearance (1 Samuel 16:7).

Performance – If on the one hand, our self-esteem is based on our performance, it will be linked to our successes and failures: it will rise when we succeed and fall when we fail. On the other hand, others may be more successful than us; should we therefore feel less worthy? Regarding my past performances, God has already forgiven me in Christ (Col. 2:13). As for the present, He loves me unconditionally (Rom. 5:8). As for the future, I can do all things through him who strengthens me (Phil. 4:13).

Wealth – Material good is another unstable foundation to base our self-esteem on. Today we have it, tomorrow we don’t. Earthly treasures are subject to moth, rust and thieves, while heavenly ones are sheltered from these vicissitudes of life. Furthermore, as Jesus says, even if a man lives in abundance, his life does not depend on his possessions (Lk. 12:15).

Opinion of others – This is another unstable foundation that makes us dependent on others: adapting our behavior to what is popular. We end up becoming actors, no longer ourselves, and we cannot be happy when we are not ourselves. We seek fame, becoming dependent on it. Let us take as a warning Christ’s experience of the fickleness of a crowd’s adulation: Palm Sunday is very close to Good Friday.

Where to base it
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.  Eleanor Roosevelt

Self-esteem is the evaluative perception of ourselves – A set of beliefs, perceptions, thoughts, evaluations, feelings and tendencies of conduct towards ourselves that configure and determine our way of being, keeping and acting in the world and with others.

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

Without inferiority or superiority complex, true self-esteem is a realistic, sensible and honest view of ourselves: our virtues and our flaws, our talents and limitations, our values and our beliefs. Just as we benefit from our successes, we should also benefit from the mistakes of the past, understanding them as lessons learned.

Low – is unaware or devalues one’s own talents; overvalues one’s own limitations, is insecure.
Normal – has an objective, is sensible and has a healthy self-critical self-knowledge of one’s own talents and limitations.
High – is unaware or devalues one’s own limitations; overvalues one’s own talents, is a bully.

Unconditional self-love is not selfishness: on the contrary, it is the measure of love for others. First, I am called to love myself; second, I am called to love others with the same measure as I love myself. Self-love, self-esteem or self-empathy, far from being connoted as selfishness, it is the basis on which all kinds of relationships I establish with others and with God are built.

There is therefore no true altruism, whether to one’s neighbour or to God, without the prior existence of self-esteem or empathy for oneself. On the other hand, it is the love for others and for God that make self-esteem not selfish. The three loves balance each other in a constant dialectical dynamics. It is the other, my neighbour, who forces me to go out of myself, and it is the Other, God, who motivates and inspires my acts of love.

LOVE MY NEIGHBOUR AS MYSELF
You shall love your neighbour as yourself. Leviticus 19:18

Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.  1 John 4:20

As we have said above and as the illustration of this text indicates, first comes the love of self, since it is this that constitutes as the measure of all things, that is, I must then love my neighbour as I love myself. If the measure of love of neighbour is that with which I love myself, what should then be the measure of my love for myself?

The measure of love is to love without measure and who loves us without measure is God. Finally, it seems that the foundation of love is self-esteem or the love we have for ourselves; but this is not so, because the true measure of love that we must have for ourselves is God. We must love ourselves as God loves us.

I have found it easier to love others unconditionally than to love myself unconditionally. We are very critical of ourselves and often to the point of being destructive; when God has long forgiven us, we still do not forgive ourselves or forget what we have done, spending the rest of our lives confessing the same sin, offending God in the process, since we do not forgive or forget, we believe that God also does not forgive or forget.

To love ourselves, we need to prove to ourselves that we deserve it, we need to see works done, and when we do not see them, we become depressed. We are perfectionists and therefore we are never happy, we forget that God accepts both 60% and 30%, but we are only happy if we reach 100% (Matthew 13:8).

Everything begins in God, everything ends in God, he is the measure of love, not us, because we will never be able to love ourselves as He loves us, neither with the same intensity nor with the same quality. The love we have for ourselves will never be as adequate as what God has for us.

The other one that crosses in my path
Little children let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. 1 John 3:18

It is told that a rich man was driving his luxury car, the latest model of a prestigious brand, on a night when it rained heavily. Suddenly, a battered, dirty and skinny girl shivering from cold passed before him. The man, feeling compassion for the girl, vented in a prayer saying "how can you allow this, my God?". In this, he heard a voice in his conscience say to him, "Indeed I do not allow this; that is why the girl passed before you so that you can do something for her."

We can go out looking for someone to help. But it is no necessary, they come to us in a thousand and one ways, crossing our path. I always marveled at the fact that the gospels always presented Jesus to us in the midst of a task, never presenting Jesus to us inactive, doing nothing, and yet always being willing to go here or there, to help this one or that one. It is this availability that Jesus possessed and that we too must possess in our daily lives.

We must also have our eyes and ears wide open to realize the needs of others, as Mary, the mother of Jesus, was at the wedding in Cana; others are often ashamed to ask us, as happened also at this wedding: we must be diligent, for many times the needs of others are quite evident.

Many loves do not go beyond words and feelings. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, it is clear what it means to love one's neighbour. It is not saying I love him or feeling compassion for him, but rather to get out of my routine, my schedule, my program, my life and let the other one in. It is putting aside what I was doing to devote myself to the other.

The golden rule
‘In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.  Matthew 7:12

Unlike Judaism which is negative, with commandments that only tell us what we should not do, Christianity is positive because it is based on the commandment of love. While Judaism is about how to avoid evil and what evils to avoid, Christianity is about doing good based on the commandment of love. No one is good because they avoid evil, but because they do good things.

A Canadian missionary discovered that there is a version of this maxim in all religions and for this reason he called it the "golden rule" – and found that while in other religions, including Judaism, the rule was negatively formulated: "Don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you", in Christianity, this same rule as we see in the gospel is formulated positively.

Christianity is the "religion" of initiative; we do not expect the other to come to us, we go to the other, moved by the sole purpose of loving the person. What I want for myself, I must want for the other too. We often project ourselves on others, but almost never on those who suffer; we should use this defense mechanism of projection on the other to ask ourselves the question "what if I were the one who was in trouble, how would I want to be helped if I was the one in need?" The answer to this question should motivate our action towards the needy.

LOVE GOD MORE THAN MYSELF
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.  Deuteronomy 6:4-9

For all intents and purposes, the Creator always knows more about the creature than the creature knows about himself. The Creator loves the creature more than the creature loves himself. The Creator knows all about the creature's past, present, and future, therefore, he is capable of defending the creature’s interests more than the creature himself.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Matthew 10:37

All the creature can and must do is to surrender himself into the hands of the loving Creator, just as a baby without hesitation throws himself into his father's arms. Thus, we can understand the classic text of love of God which is the creed that every Jew recites when he gets up in the morning. Love of God above all things, above all people, complete and absolutely exclusive, above the love we have for ourselves.

Doing God's will
He who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me; and he who loves me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and I will manifest myself unto him.  John 14:21

Jesus says that his food is to do the will of the Father (John 4:34). Food and drink are things we take several times a day, we cannot spend too long without doing them. What a beautiful metaphor from Jesus' lips to demonstrate the union between him and the Father. This same union must exist between us and God.

Only the one who makes a machine knows how it works, the machine itself does not know it; we are a machine created by God, in everything equal to a machine, with the difference of us being self-conscious and being able to disobey the rules of operation of our machine. However, when we do disobey, the machine malfunctions and stops working or does not work perfectly as when it obeys God's instructions.

If there is an immutable human nature, there is only one unique way of operating the machine not two. Therefore, let us do God's will by keeping his commandments and everything will be fine, for without him we can do nothing. (John 15:5)

Where is our freedom if all we have to do in life is to obey God as Jesus did? Our freedom is in the fact that we can choose not to obey although disobedience always bring disaster. I compare God to an air traffic controller.

He knows how many airplanes are flying in his airspace, he knows their speed, their route and their altitudes, and he gives commands to each aircraft in order to avoid air collision. The pilots may choose not to obey the air traffic controller, but they know that when they do that they are in for trouble, to themselves and to others as they put everyone’s safety at risk

Because God loves us and knows us more than we do ourselves, obeying Him is always in our own best interest; obeying Him is the best thing to do.

God only loves those who love him
Often in sermons, to get the attention of those who are half asleep, I throw a grenade in the middle of the audience by saying, "God loves only those who love Him." Then those who consider themselves theologians object and say no, that God loves everyone equally, and even quote me the Bible, that God makes rain fall both on the just and the unjust.

And it is true, in theory God loved both Hitler and Francis of Assisi. However, their lives were not the same; if the two had the same quantity and quality of God's love, why were they so different? Francis accepted God's love; he echoed it by loving God back; Hitler did not. The sun, before reaching our planet and warming and illuminating it, passes through space where the temperature is 300 degrees below zero. Why? Because there is nothing in it that echoes and welcomes that light and that heat. The only way to echo God's love is to love Him too.

"Love is paid with love" - As the Scripture says, God loved us first and always loves us, but if I don't echo his love in me, it is as if he does not love me. Only with love can we echo God's love in us. To love, either we respond with love or we are ungrateful. Therefore, although in theory God loves everyone equally, only the one who accepts this love, only the one who is open to God's love, feels the effects of this love. The act of accepting God's love, of being open to God's love, is to love God.

Conclusion - If you want to be happy, love yourself as God loves you, your neighbour as yourself, and God more than yourself.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC 

3 Requests of the Lord's Prayer: Bread - Forgiveness - Help

The prayer Jesus taught us is much more than a simple prayer to be recited occasionally. It contains the summary of what is most important in the gospel; it is, in this sense, an entire pocket gospel because it contains what we must know, practice and transform into our daily behaviour.

If a boyfriend were to recite a love poem every day to his beloved, but no matter how beautiful the poem is, one day his girlfriend will get tired of it, even if it was written by him. More than reciting formulas, prayer is a personal and existential encounter with God. That is why the Our Father “prayer” did not arise originally, in my opinion, to be a prayer that we recite every day or occasionally in a mechanical and repetitive fashion. In fact, the disciples did not ask Jesus to teach them a prayer, but to teach them how to pray.

Since it is composed of several loose utterances unrelated to each other, it can be taken as a list, like a shopping list we make so as not to forget anything we have to get when we go to the grocery store. Understood as a list, it concerns the protocol of our relationship with God, that is, how our prayer should be structured, how we should address God, how we should praise Him, and what we should ask, and when and how we should ask. Therefore more than a prayer, it is fundamentally a practical guide to praying.

Matthew's and Luke's versions
The Lord’s Prayer in the Gospel of St. Matthew is more elaborate, it arises in the context of the great Sermon on the Mount. It was, therefore, pronounced ex cathedra and is part of the treatise on prayer. It is the version that we use liturgically. Luke's version is shorter, although it contains the essentials. In their respective gospels, the two versions appear in different context.

In the Gospel of St. Luke, the prayer arises from a disciple's request: because Jesus was praying, it emerges from the desire of the disciples to imitate the Master and learn how to pray from him. Here too the disciples want something systematic for posterity. St. Luke continues to prove the power of prayer, the fact that God is always listening is what is concluded from the parable of the persistent friend that Luke puts right after the Lord’s Prayer.

Structure of the Lord’s Prayer
It contains an initial preamble or greeting, followed by two parts with each containing three requests; the requests of the first part have to do with the glory of God and the second with the needs of the human being.

Preamble
•  Our Father
•  Who are in Heaven

First part - About the glory of God
1.  Hallowed be your name
2.  Your kingdom come
3.  Your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven

Second part - About the needs of man
1.  Give us this day our daily bread
2.  Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us
3.  Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

PART ONE - ABOUT THE GLORY OF GOD
Father
When Egerton Young first preached the Gospel to the redskins of Saskatchewan, the idea of God's fatherhood immediately fascinated these people who had hitherto seen God only in thunder, lightning, and the roar of storm.

Upon hearing the missionary invoke God as a father, an old chief exclaimed, "In speaking of the Great Spirit as you have just done, have I heard you say, 'Our Father'?" "Yes," said Egerton Young. "This is too new and sweet for me, " continued the chief. "We Indians have never seen the Great Spirit as a Father. We heard him in thunder or saw him in lightning, storm, and snow, and we were terrified, afraid."

"The notion that the Great Spirit is our Father is new but sublime for us." The old chief paused, seeming to meditate... it was then, that suddenly, in a glimmer of glory, his face lit up like lightning and cried out. "Oh Missionary, did you say that the Great Spirit is your Father?" "Yes, " said Egerton. "And," the chief continued, "do you also claim that He is the Father of the Indians?" "Evidently, " said the missionary. "Then!" exclaimed the elder, as if he had made the greatest discovery, "you and I are brothers!" William Barclay, New Testament Commentary

We too are used to calling God our Father that it no longer resonates in our hearts and minds like it did that first time in the heart and mind of the Indian chief. It is important to be aware that before Jesus came we were not children of God, but only his creatures, created in the image and likeness of God, but nonetheless only creatures, not children. I can shape a lump of clay into a doll, but this doll is not my son because I did not beget him; it is only my creation, for it was created by me.  

God has only one son who, as the Creed says, is begotten not created. If the creed were to speak about us, it would say that we were created not begotten. (God) destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will… Ephesians 1:5

And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. Romans 8:17 – According to the Roman law which is basically what is used throughout the world, the adopted son has the same rights to inheritance as the begotten son.

Jesus calls God Father, but only within the circle of apostles and never outside of it. This means that the divine fatherhood is only available to those who accept Jesus as the son of God and a brother, our older brother, because it is only through Christ the only begotten son of God that we are adopted children.

God is our Father, but he is not a patronizing sort of father, because he is also Our Lord. Being our friend does not mean that he "turns a blind eye" to our injustices nor will he be on our side against our enemies when they are the ones who are right. God is not on the side of one against another, for he loves everyone, but he is on the side of justice and truth and against injustice and lies; in this sense, he is against those who practice injustice and lies, but only to the extent that they practice them, not forgetting that ultimately God wants the conversion of sinners, and not that they die and perish.

Our
Polytheism in fact led to division and hatred among men; the rivalries among the gods of Olympus in Greek mythology mirrored the rivalry among men. If there are several gods, mine is superior or inferior to yours and there is no relationship between us. In contrast, one God who is the Father makes us all brothers and sisters.

Even when I am reciting the Lord's Prayer in the intimacy of my room or in my thoughts, I cannot say My Father, but must say Our Father. Even in the intimacy of my room, God can ask me the question he asked Cain, "Where is your brother?" To this question, Cain's answer is not appropriate because, in fact, we are always the keepers of our neighbour, we must always know where he is and how he is doing.

When we say Our Father, we are not excluding anyone from any country, language, people, or nation. We are all brothers and sisters because we all belong to the human race and we all come from a common trunk; all our ancestors lived in Africa 5 million years ago. For Christians, there are no foreigners and therefore we are always called to be good Samaritans whenever and wherever a human being is in need.

Who are in Heaven
Transcendence – Because God is in Heaven, he is transcendent, he lives separate from everything he created, he does not depend on anything he created; in other words, he is not confined within creation. In this sense, it is not possible to know God fully. This is completely logical: if our little mind was taken from his great mind, then the part cannot engulf the whole.

The Creator knows everything about the creature, and knows more about the creature than the creature knows about himself. The creature, however, never knows everything about God or about himself because in his essence there is a bit of the divine essence, that is, we participate in the mystery of God. God is a mystery and we, because we are created by Him, are also a mystery to ourselves, and this means we will never know everything about ourselves.

Immanence – God's transcendence does not make Him a stranger to the things he has created. God is in the heart of each thing, not as if he were another piece of a machine, or another element that makes up nature, but rather he is in the very heart of everything. That is, God, and not the atom, is the most fundamental part of everything he himself has created.

As for ourselves, " Deus interior íntimo meo", that is, God is beyond our inner self, he is also in the very heart of our being, he dwells within us. It is not a matter of pantheism here, to say that God is and remains in the heart of everything does not mean that everything is God.

In pantheism, God loses his transcendence, but God is as immanent as he is transcendent. Beyond each thing there is still God. Each thing can lead us to God according to the spirituality of Francis of Assisi, who saw God in creatures, but none of them nor all of them in their totality was God; there was more God beyond each of them and all of them together. All creatures have the seal, the mark, the stamp of God, but none of them nor all of them in their entirety can contain God.

Against pantheism which encloses God within his creation, we affirm panentheism, that is, God is immanent, he is the soul of everything and of the universe as a whole, but he also grants freedom and autonomy to all that he has created, being therefore transcendent. It is not creation that contains God, it is God who contains creation. As St. Paul says in Acts 17:28, "In him we live, move, and have our being." Therefore, we too are called to transcend ourselves from creation because we are of God, even though we are in the world.

Being (Ser) and being (Estar)
Genesis 2:7 – Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. We were created from the same elements that the earth possesses, but life is a direct gift from God. God who lives, transmits his life to us in his breath. Life is always his, he exhales or blows into our nostrils and we begin to live, and at the end of our life he inhales and his divine breath returns to Him, since life is his and has always been his.  
 
We are the only creature created in the image and likeness of the creator; therefore, even though we are in the world, we are from heaven, we have no permanent home here but are journeying to our heavenly homeland where everything originated, where our life originated and has its headquarter. Only in Portuguese and Spanish languages there is a difference between being (ser) and being (estar). We are (estar) in the world, but we are (ser) not of the world, for we are (ser), like God our Father, from Heaven.
 
Our essence is divine, for we are created directly by God and adopted as children in Christ. That is why we are not from here, we are as extraterrestrial as ET and we must behave like extraterrestrials. Today we are here, tomorrow we are in Heaven; while we live here, we are not from the place we dwell.

Hallowed be your name
"Hear, O Israel. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart." "You cannot serve both God and money." These are two of the many warnings against the temptation to idolize, worship, or venerate other realities or people other than God. This temptation is very common; a French fries that English footballer David Beckham dropped while walking down a street in New Zealand appeared on eBay and there were people offering money for it!

Another temptation is superstition. All superstitions imply that God is not all-powerful, and that there are powers, natural forces, and realities that his omnipotence does not control; in other words, that there are events that escape his foresight and providence. While faith is a belief that is not all rational but is reasonable, superstition is a completely irrational belief. Superstition has been condemned in the Old Testament throughout the history of Israel. The same also happened since the early Church of the new people of Israel, which in the Middle Ages, and because of excessive zeal, committed authentic crimes in burning witches.

Christians offend God whenever they say that this gives good luck or that gives bad luck, or when they wear charms, horseshoes, keys, small horns, etc., to which they confer spiritual powers; a thing, a material reality, precisely because it is material, cannot have powers in the realm of the spirit. Only a spiritual being can have spiritual powers. Superstition is somehow a remnant of the stage of conceptualization of the notion of God called animism. In animism all physical realities have a soul; therefore, as man began to know things, he was robbing them of their souls which were then passed to him, things ceased to have power over man because he came to know them and dominate them.

As the knowledge of nature grew, it lost its dominion over man. There are, however, certain realities that man could not fully know or dominate, and to these realities he called gods and thus was born the polytheism that attributed a god to every reality that man could not fully know or dominate. Thus was born Venus, the goddess of love, Mars, the god of war, Cronos, the god of time and Poseidon, the god of sea.

The relationships we maintain with our dearest beings can be ones of pure idolatry when they become the center of our existence. When a lover says, "Without you my life has no meaning" he is idolizing his beloved; only without God life has no meaning and we must love God above all other creatures. "Whoever loves father and mother, son or daughter, brother or sister more than Me is not worthy of Me."

Of course we do not bow down before repulsive idols, but we all have a tendency to deify realities, people or things closest to us and make them special objects of our affection. The Portuguese people use the expression "I love" with God as much as with any other reality; to love means to submit oneself to: we do not submit ourselves to chocolate, codfish, etc., but only to God.

Your kingdom come
Preaching the Good News of the kingdom was the main reason for his coming into the world, and an obligation for Jesus. “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose.” Luke 4:43.

Jesus did not come only to save men singly, to take them to Heaven after their life on this earth; Jesus does not have only one plan for man as an individual, but he also has a plan for man as a social being; he well knows that the social structure makes the person and that persons make the social structure; an unjust and cruel society makes men unjust and cruel and vice versa.

The Kingdom of God, that is, a society where justice and peace reign and where God governs, is already present among us, it is already a reality in the present, visible and palpable. But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you, (Luke 11:20). It is a fact that our world is far more ethical than at any other time in the past and this is largely due to the widespread of the gospel that has become the measure of the human being.

Being already a reality here and now, the Kingdom of God is not yet present in its fullness. Hence the inclusion of the request "your kingdom come" in the Lord’s Prayer. We are the continuation of Jesus' work, and it now depends on us that the kingdom extends to the whole world until Christ is all in all.

Kingdom of God - Mission - Church
The word Church, that is, Eklesia from the verb Kaleo or to convoke the assembly of the faithful, appears only twice in the gospels and 110 times in the rest of the New Testament. By contrast, the expression Kingdom of God appears 127 times in the gospels, and only 27 times in the rest of the New Testament. If the mouth speaks from the abundance of the heart, that is, if we tend to speak much of what is most important to us, and little of what is not, we can conclude that the concept of the Church was not important to Jesus, for he only spoke of it twice or perhaps only once in Matthew 16:18, when he said to Peter "you are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church". Contrary to the concept of Church, the Kingdom of God was of great importance to Jesus.

The Church gave itself more importance than its Master and founder gave it. By giving itself too much importance, it took away the importance of the Kingdom of God which was the project that Jesus had for this society and this world. Somewhere along the course of history, it came to proclaim itself as the Kingdom of God on earth.

Since Jesus has other sheep that are not of this fold (John 10:16), that is, from the fold of the Church, it is necessary to affirm and reaffirm that the concept of the Kingdom of God is more comprehensive than the concept of the Church, that the Church is within the Kingdom of God, and that the Kingdom of God is not contained by the Church. We are saved to the extent that we are citizens of the Kingdom of God and not to the extent that we are citizens of the Church, because the Church has to do with who we are, the Kingdom of God has to do with what we do; according to Matthew 25, we are not judged by who we are, but by what we do.

By placing the concepts of Kingdom of God, Church and Mission in the right order and perspective, we must say that the Mission of the Church is to evangelize, to proclaim the Kingdom. The Church exists for the Mission of taking the gospel everywhere; the purpose of this Mission is not to implant the Church, but the Kingdom of God, to establish the Kingdom of God here and there, that is, to fight for justice and peace, for a better world.

Jesus and Adam Smith
Jesus said, "Seek the Kingdom of God first, and the rest will be given to you as well." It is the same as to say seek first the common good, and the personal good will be given to you as well; or in terms more related to Economics, seek first in a disinterested way the common good, and a mysterious hand will take care of your personal good.

By contrast, Adam Smith, the father of modern capitalism, said "Let each one selfishly seek his own interests and a mysterious hand will take care of the common interest"; this would be true if men were all equal, if everyone had the same purchasing power, the same education, the same intelligence, etc. which is not true.

This is the law of the fittest, the law of the jungle. In truth, the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Altruism, the common good, can never be the sum of all selfishness. The good, in this case the common good, can only be achieved by seeking it directly; what is natural to man, what is achieved without effort, is the evil; the good requires effort and in the case of the common good, it oftentimes requires the sacrifice of the personal good.

Your will be done on earth as in it is Heaven.
‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord”, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven.’ Matthew 7:21

The Jews liked to say the same thing twice with different words so that it is better understood. For example, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want/ He make me lie down in green pastures (Psalm 23:1-2). The second statement explains, amplifies, defines and interprets the first. We therefore have in the second affirmation of the Lord’s Prayer a perfect definition of the Kingdom of God, which is a society on earth in which God's will is done as it is in Heaven.

That is why the Kingdom of God is of the past, the present and the future. Anyone who at any time does the will of God is a citizen of the Kingdom of God. As the world is far from being the Kingdom of God, this is a reality for which we must pray and work towards, continuing the work of Jesus of Nazareth when he walked on this world.

We must do God's will and not ours because God knows us better than we know ourselves; He knows everything about our past, present and future; furthermore, he loves us much more than we love ourselves.

In addition, God is the architect of our life, it was He who created us for a reason, for a purpose. In this sense, He is the one who has the plans of our makeup. Every good engineer consults the architect and the blueprint so that the building is as it was designed.

When this does not take place, the City Hall requires modifications so that the construction respects the plan or else it does not give the authorization to be inhabited. How tragic it would be if after our death we were to present ourselves before God with a construction that does not respect what He had designed for us. It is in prayer that we know the will of God.

PART TWO – ABOUT THE NEEDS OF MAN
After doing justice to the glory of God and his plan for our world, now is the time to ask for our own personal needs. In this regard, in this second part of the Lord’s Prayer, the totality of God encounters the totality of Man. God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit; man is pure indigence, "without me you can do nothing" (John 15:1-8), says the Lord. Man's needs refer to the three times in which his life takes place: the present, the past and the future. The second part of the Lord’s Prayer refers to these needs, one for each time.

First, we ask for bread that is needed to sustain our life on earth, thus bringing to God's presence our needs of the present time.

Second, we ask God for forgiveness for the evil we have done, thereby bringing to God's presence our past to be redeemed.

Third, we ask for strength and help in temptation, thus trusting in divine providence as we place our future in God's hands.

In these three brief requests we learn to place our past, present and future in God's hands. But this is not only a prayer that brings our whole life – present, past and future – to God's presence, it is also a prayer that brings the totality of God into our life.

When we ask for bread to sustain our earthly life, we are addressing our prayer to God the Father, the Creator and sustainer of life. When we ask for forgiveness, our attention is directed directly to God the Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer. Finally, when we ask for help in future temptations, this request leads us to think immediately of God the Holy Spirit, the comforter, the guide, the guardian, who gives strength and encouragement.

Admirably, the second part of the Lord’s Prayer presents the totality of man in his past, present and future to the totality of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus teaches us to bring our whole life to God's presence and to take the totality of God into our lives.

		MAN
		Needs	Time
GOD	Father	Bread	Present
	Son	Forgiveness	Past
	Holy Spirit	Help	Future

Give us this day our daily bread
"Primum vivere, deinde philosophari" – First, we ask for the bread that is necessary to sustain our life on earth, thus bringing to God's presence our needs of the present time. As it was God the Father who created us and brought us to life, it is to Him that we must ask for bread or any other material need. Therefore, when we ask for bread to sustain our earthly life, we are addressing our prayer to God the Father, the Creator and sustainer of our life.

If God is our Father, we are his sons and daughters, we are his children; there is no worse sin than to behave like adults with God, with the presumption that we are already emancipated and self-sufficient. Only those who are like children enter the Kingdom of Heaven. We must reacquire the virtues we had as children in a natural way:

A child is humble – He looks from bottom up, since all adults are bigger than him; he accepts his condition without any inferiority complex; he is naturally obedient without any intention to outdo anyone.

He lives occupied but not preoccupied – He doesn't worry about tomorrow, about what to eat or what to wear. These worries do not concern him, he leaves them to his parents. He plays, runs, laughs, lives life to the fullest and leaves the worries to his parents. The occupation of children is to play, that of adults is to work. God feeds the birds of the sky, but he does not throw food into their nests.

He is aware of his indigence – He never tires of asking and knows that "he who does not cry does not suckle". A child who goes to the grocery store with his parents and does not ask for anything is not a normal child. The child knows that he cannot take care of himself on his own; he knows very well that without his parents he can't do anything. That is how we should be with God.

He trusts his Father completely – Again, if we take a child by the hand in a supermarket and that child doesn't ask us for anything, he is not a normal child. When we have nothing to ask from God, it is not because we don’t need anything, but perhaps because we have become adults and are only relying on our own strength to satisfy our needs. We have stopped being children to God, we have emancipated ourselves from God.

Everything that the child sees, he asks; however, he knows intuitively that not everything that he asks for the Father will grant him, but he also knows that the Father will not leave him lacking for anything that is essential. Paraphrasing the gospel in an opposite sense, not knowing well what suits us, like children, we ask for snakes instead of fish, stones instead of bread, and scorpions instead of eggs (Luke 11:11-13). The no's are just as educational as the yeses: when a child receives everything he asks for, he ends up not knowing what he wants.
 
Forgive our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us
We ask for God’s forgiveness for the evil we have done, thereby bringing our past into God's presence to be redeemed. When we  ask for forgiveness,  our attention is directed directly on God the Son,  Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer, who came into the world to save us, that is, to bring us health from the diseases we have contracted in the past and which still afflict us in the present, psychologically, spiritually and physically.

Before God we are never righteous - The day we stop being sinners, we will be lost. St. Francis of Assisi is perhaps the one person who came the closest to full imitation of Christ, to the point of being called by many theologians as the alter Christ. He did not see himself as a saint, but as a sinner; in fact, he used to walk through the streets of Assisi shouting "I am a great sinner". The day we look at ourselves in the mirror of our moral conscience and find no sins, it will not be because we do not have them, but because we are no longer aware of the evil we have done; it will be because we have stopped growing spiritually and are on our way to spiritual psychosis.

The righteous sins seven times a day, says the Bible, and he is just; many of us, not being righteous, how many times do we sin a day? Without self-criticism there is no spiritual growth. The day we find no sins in ourselves, we stop growing because there is no spiritual progress without an exercise in self-criticism.

Our moral conscience is like a sieve through which the flour passes out of the mill; if the sieve has a fine mesh it will remove from the flour all impurities, resulting in a white flour. If the mesh is course, it will let all impurities pass through; when we end up having a permissive conscience, a course mesh, we will turn a blind eye to the evil we have done.

God loves unconditionally, but does not forgive unconditionally – God's love is unconditional, He makes rain fall on the righteous as well as the unrighteous. God loved both Francis of Assisi and Hitler. As the parable of the sower says, it is not the fault of the sower or the seed, but of the field whether the seed grows or does not grow.

To love is one thing, to forgive is another, the sine qua non condition for obtaining or not obtaining God’s forgiveness is whether or not we forgive or not forgive those who offended us, as the Lord’s Prayer says. God does not forgive if we do not forgive. In the parable of the forgiveness of a great debt, God took back his forgiveness already granted because the one he forgave, in his turn, did not forgive those who owed him a debt.

In all of the Our Father prayer, Jesus only comments on this part. In Matthew's version, he says clearly after the prayer, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew 6:14)

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we are literally asking God to forgive our offenses to the same extent that we forgive those who offended us. So when we say or think "I will never forgive you, I will never forget the evil you have done to me" and then pray "forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," we are literally telling God "Never forgive me, never forget the evil I have done to You as I do not forgive or forget the evil they have done to me." We better not pray the Lord's Prayer until we decide to first forgive.

The charismatic Brazilian priest Marcelo Rossi skirted this issue with an "Our Father" prayer of his own making in which he said to this regard: "forgive us to a greater extent than we forgive those who have offended us". This Our Father would be much easier to pray, but this is not the prayer that Christ taught us, so it must be scrapped.

The forgiven servant who did not forgive
... his lord summoned him and said to him, “You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you?” And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he should pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’ Matthew 18:23-35

If there are still any doubt that God's forgiveness is not unconditional, but is conditional to the forgiveness we grant, here is the parable with the conclusion that Jesus himself draws of it: "Forgive, and you will be forgiven (…) for the measure you give will be the measure you get back." (Luke 6:27-38). We cannot want God for ourselves and the devil for others. We cannot love God without loving our neighbor.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil
We are asking for strength and help in temptation, so we trust in divine providence and put our future in God’s hands. When we ask for help in future temptations, this request leads us to immediately think of God the Holy Spirit, the comforter, the guide, the guardian, which gives strength and encouragement.

Temptation is positive – We are used to seeing temptation as something negative, that is, as the prologue to sin. We forget that Jesus was tempted throughout his life, like us, and did not fall into temptation, that is, he did not sin.

Just like "the situation makes the thief", great men and great villains are not born as such, they are made in response to great challenges. Temptation in Hebrew is "fataná" as it is in Amharic, the national language of Ethiopia. "Fataná" not only means temptation, but it also means examination, testing. How do we distinguish bad students from good ones without tests? How do we distinguish good politicians from bad politicians without situations that function like tests, where some may become corrupt and others not?

Just as a piece of steel is tested at a pressure greater than that it will be subjected to in use, God will also test us before using us in the construction of his Kingdom. Temptation is a test or an examination that shows us the exact position in which we find ourselves on the path of spiritual progress. Overcoming this test is a step forward that makes us stronger and prepares us for future trials; failing the test makes us weaker and more likely to fail next time.

The Lord’s Prayer in various languages – It is only the Portuguese and Spanish versions of the Lord’s Prayer that are in accordance with this theology. The Italian version says, "Non ci indurre in tentazione", that is, we are asking God not to lead us into temptation. In the French version, it says, "Ne nous soumets pas a la tentation", that is, do not submit us to temptation; in English it is said, "Lead us not into temptation" i.e. do not lead us into temptation; in Amharic "weda fatana atágban", do not place us into temptation.

God cannot deliver us from temptation because he did not deliver his own son from it; what he can do is to help us overcome it. Temptation is part of human nature, it is with temptation and by temptation that we exercise our freedom, because it presents us with an alternative. What we can ask for, and in fact the Portuguese and Spanish versions do that, is for God to help us to overcome temptation; "no nos dejes caer en la tentación", that he supports us in temptation.

Conclusion: As a Trinitarian prayer, the Lord’s Prayer is the encounter between divine grace and human indigence. We ask the Father for the bread that sustains us in the present moment; the Son for the forgiveness that heals our past; the Holy Spirit for help to face the future.

                                            Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC