The Courtyard of the Gentiles

The Vatican has created a space for dialogue between believers and non-believers called the "Courtyard of the Gentiles". This name evokes the only place in the Temple of Jerusalem that could be frequented by non-Jews. It was, in fact, the place where sacrificial animals were bought and sold.

The Jerusalem Temple was divided into courtyards, which consisted of concentric rectangles, arranged according to "Sacredness" level: from the least sacred, the Courtyard of the Gentiles open to everyone, to the most sacred, the Sancta Sanctorum. Following this scale, the first would be open to anyone, the second to Jews only, the third to men, the fourth to priests, and the fifth, the "Holy of Holies", only to the High Priest.

Specifically, the dialogue between believers and non-believers, which took place in Guimarães and Braga on November 16 and 17, filled me with confidence; however, designating it the “Courtyard of the Gentiles" certainly makes sense in historical and metaphorical terms, but it is not immune to the possibility of a certain pejorative connotation.

"Gentiles" was the derogatory term the Jews gave to non-Jews, and there were even Pharisees who vehemently believed that God created the Gentiles to feed the fires of hell (where the "bad" Jews would also end up). From this point of view, I believe that, in this day and age, calling "non-believers" "Gentiles" is like calling them "Infidels", the term the Muslims give to all those who do not profess their faith.

When we were little, if there was one thing we hated the most, it was being called names; we should avoid the temptation to call others names based on our worldview – that is, the way we see and are in the world. For this very reason, the Inuit of Northern Canada do not like to be called Eskimos; that is the name we give to them, not the name they identify with. I doubt that non-believers in general, or those who simply do not profess our faith, like to be called "Gentiles".

On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines… Isaiah 25:6

If I had to find in the Old Testament a metaphorical term for this space of dialogue between men and women of good will, I would call it the Banquet of Isaiah. Isaiah is, without a doubt, the least nationalistic and the most universalist prophet of Judaism, an authentic "Christian" avant la letre.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Celebrate and live your Faith

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

Someone once said that the Christian life unfolds between the Church and the marketplace. "Ite missa est”, the priest would say in Latin as he dismisses the Christians after the Sunday Eucharist. This expression not only means that the Mass has ended but also that we are now on a mission. The Christian is either in Mass, celebrating his faith, or on mission, living out his faith. Celebration and life are inseparable. We celebrate what we live and live what we celebrate.

It is impossible to be a Christian without having a personal relationship with Christ, which is expressed in prayer, and without celebrating that same Christ in the Eucharist, in communion with others who share the same faith. If prayer and penance are the individual celebration of Christ, the Eucharist is the communal celebration of Christ with the community to which we belong, for one cannot be a Christian alone.

Celebrate What You Live, Live What You Celebrate
We deceive ourselves in thinking that even without any public or private manifestation of our faith, we are still Catholics. But this is not true. Those who cannot live according to what they believe will, sooner or later, begin to believe according to how they live.

Everything valuable in life can only be achieved with effort; passivity, the “dolce fare niente”, leads to nowhere, for in life what is good either costs money, effort, or both.

The engines of an airplane not only propel it forward but also keep it in the air. In fact, when the pilot wants the plane to descend, the first thing he does is reduce the engine power, and thus the plane gradually descends. However, if the speed is reduced below 200 km/h, the plane will fall. In this world, due to gravity, what does not have the strength to rise, falls.

Our fallen nature and our instincts already exert a gravitational pull toward evil; to overcome evil and grow as people, we must strive and counteract this pull. Prayer, confrontation with the Word of God, and all religious practices are essential aids. Without them, we are at the mercy of our instincts and the values society promotes. “Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). 

Jesus himself experienced that the weakness of human nature requires the help of prayer as an exercise in self-awareness, to keep us in a constant state of alertness, and as a request for divine assistance, for, as Jesus said, “(…) apart from me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

To say that someone is a "non-practicing Catholic" is a contradiction, a fallacy. There are no "non-practicing" pianists, singers, or footballers. The gifts, talents, or skills we have, if we do not use them, we lose them. Faith is one of these gifts that only last as long as it is lived and exercised. “What is not used, atrophies,” as the saying goes.

“Love is like the moon: when it doesn’t grow, it wanes”. Faith is the same; it is either growing and strengthening, or it is waning and weakening. The liturgy of faith consists of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, prayer, and listening to the Word of God.

Love also has its liturgies: if it is not expressed in words, poetry, songs, caresses, and intimacy, it begins to fade. Faith leads to the practice of good works, and these make faith grow. Love is the same; to love is to want the good of the other and to put yourself at the service of that good.

Eucharist and Charity
The Eucharistic bread being broken is an image or a symbolic act that reminds us that to be Christians, other Christs, we must share our bread with those in need. In this sense, the Eucharist, beyond being the celebration of the passion, death, and resurrection of the Lord, is also a sacrament of remembrance.

Not only of historical facts but also a symbolic act that reminds us of other gestures of Christ (such as riding a donkey into Jerusalem, washing the disciples’ feet, or driving the peddlers out of the temple). All this shows us that the ritual celebration of the Eucharist only has value for those who also celebrate the existential Eucharist, that is, those who share the bread with the poor.

The authentic Christian, the 100% Christian, is the one who not only celebrates the memory of the Lord with the community in the Church, but also individually in his or her life, who gives alms, helps, and puts into practice the words of Matthew 25: "I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat…". Those who only break bread in the Church but do not do so in life are half Christians, just as those who break bread in life but not in the Church.

Christ is in the bread that is given as food; thus, we too must become bread for others. We must share our time, energies, and resources, to the point of giving even ourselves. Christ is bread, bread is Christ, and the bread we share is Christ given to others. In this way, Christian practice merges with Christian praxis. The Eucharist extends throughout life. "Ite missa est": the ritual ends, and the existential begins. When we share the physical bread after the spiritual one, we recognize Christ in others.

Conclusion – Faith is an attitude toward life that is celebrated in the sacraments, especially in the Eucharist, and is lived out in charity toward others. Life cannot be divorced from celebration, nor can celebration be divorced from life. Those who do not celebrate what they live do not live what they celebrate.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Religions' Village - The Golden Rule

To promote tolerance and interreligious dialogue, with the aim of ending "holy wars" and achieving peace in the world, the second Aldeia das Religiões (Village of Religions) took place in the village of Priscos, Braga (Portugal), between the 25th and 28th of October 2012 (the first was held in Brazil in 1992).

"Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you" is the best-known version of a rule that a Canadian missionary christened as the Golden Rule because, with a few variations, it exists in every religion on our planet. I will mention a few:

Hinduism - This is the supreme duty: do not do to others what could cause pain if it were done to you. Mahabharata 5:1517

Buddhism – In dealing with others, do not use ways that would be painful to you. The Buddha, Udana-Varga 5.1

Confucianism - A word that sums up the basis of all good conduct: kindness. Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you.  Confucius Analects 15:23

Judaism - What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah; everything else is commentary. Go and learn it. Rabbi Hillel Talmud, 31

Islam - Do not consider yourself a believer until you wish for others what you wish for yourself. Prophet Muhammad, 13 of Nawawi Hadiths 40

Christianity - In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you; this is the law and the prophets. Matthew 7:12

By formulating the Golden Rule in the negative, these religions only tell us what we should avoid; Christianity, on the other hand, in expressing it in its positive form tells us what we should do. Although the Islamic formulation is also positive (which may be due to the undeniable Christian influence on this religion, born 600 years after Christ), it expresses a desire and does not command an action. It therefore does not go beyond the level of good intentions...

What makes me good is not my effort to avoid evil, but my effort to do good. While negative formulations and the expression of a desire leave me in the "dolce fare niente", the Christian formulation, the commandment of Christ, takes me out of my passivity, my inertia, my laziness or my comfort zone, making me an activist for justice and peace.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Faith, the Currency of Humn Relationships

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

Human beings are not only autonomous, free, and independent beings but also profoundly relational. We are born from a relationship of love, and we grow as human beings if we are loved unconditionally. We may have everything in life, but without love, we have nothing. We may reach the top of society, but if we do not love and are not loved, we will not be happy. More important than knowing why we live is understanding who we live for.

Human life is born and develops in relationships with others. These relationships can be analyzed by the sciences, especially by the human sciences, but they possess something that goes beyond the scientific realm. Science serves to know things, but it is not enough to know people. Faith and love are the foundations of human relationships, and neither can be the object of scientific study.

Knowing and Loving
Knowing something implies mastery and control. If I know the principle that regulates the rain, I can manipulate it, as the Chinese did before the Olympic Games to ensure it would not rain during the ceremony. However, God is not known in that way. God is known as people are known through intimacy and relationship.

A person only reveals and makes himself or herself known when he or she is loved. Conversely, when an enemy knows us, we become vulnerable. Just like a person, God only reveals Himself to those who love Him. We cannot know God or another person without getting personally involved. God and human persons cannot be reduced to laboratory objects. Loving implies commitment; knowledge without love becomes manipulation.

Faith: The Basis of Trust in Human Relationships
Faith is a reasonable leap, supported by reason. It is like someone walking along a path and, upon reaching a precipice, needs to jump to the other side. Faith is moving towards the future or seeing the present from the perspective of a reality that has yet to be materialized. It’s like sailing without a visible route or like a child leaping into his parent’s arms, trusting that he will be safely caught by his parent.

In terms of knowledge, faith does not fit into logical deductive analysis. It is more related to synthesis and intuitive knowledge. Having faith is intuiting that something is right, even without absolute guarantees; it is like writing a blank cheque, lending money or a book, trusting that it will be returned. Faith is taking a risk and betting on the uncertain.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity was, for a long time, an act of faith, born from Einstein’s own intuition, and only recently have we obtained proof of its validity.

When I accept a cheque for a service rendered, I believe it has funds. It would be offensive, and I could lose a friend if I refused it and asked for cash instead. When boarding a plane, I trust that the authorities have done their work to prevent any danger and that the pilots are prepared and well-intentioned. When eating in a restaurant, I trust the food’s quality without demanding it be analyzed beforehand. In some cultures, like in Ethiopia, the cook tastes the food in front of the guests to ensure safety, showing how trust is at the center of all human interactions.

In marriage, I believe the union will be for life. Even with a bank loan, the bank, after properly checking, grants loan based on the belief that the client will repay the amount. Even credit cards operate on faith. We speak of "faith in the markets" like we speak of "faith in God”.

Even self-esteem is related to faith in ourselves. We may or may not believe in our abilities, and this belief influences how we set out in life. Often, we take risks without being sure, hoping that success will confirm our talents.

If God does not exist, human life lacks meaning
If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile (…) Then those who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. 1 Corinthians 15:17-19

The enigma of human existence is deeply connected to the existence of God. If God does not exist, then human being, in a way, also ceases to exist as a person, and his or her life loses its meaning. Philosophers who followed the idea of the "death of God" — Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Søren Kierkegaard — stated that without the existence of a higher being, life becomes absurd. For life to have meaning, there must be criteria to guide our existence that are not the result of human creation — principles that transcend our origin and have authority over us.

Sartre stated that "Hell is other people”. Just as the soldiers of the high priest arrested Christ, God was imprisoned by Feuerbach, judged by Marx and Freud — who, ironically, like Annas and Caiaphas, were also Jewish — and finally sentenced to death and executed by the Nietzsche’s “Pilate”.

Ironically, with the death of God, humanity also died, because life lost its meaning. After Nietzsche, philosophers became thinkers of the absurd and nausea, like Sartre, not so much in response to the "corpse of God”, who has no body, but to the corpse of Man.

However, after recognizing that human existence is intrinsically linked to the existence of God, and even though God pre-exists and exists independently of man, human beings are the creatures for whom God exists. Only a creature conscious of itself can attain consciousness of the existence of God.

As we mentioned when talking about animism, it was the realization of the death of our physical body that gave rise to our spiritual "self"; it was the recognition of death as an end that shaped our understanding of existence as a "being”. Existence is temporal, but "being" is eternal. The desire for eternity, contrasted with the reality of our temporality, made us believe in the existence of God, the creator of all things, and fueled our thirst to know Him.

Another irony of fate: now the other, my fellow human being, with whom I used to live in harmony in society, as Sartre states, has become hell for me. And according to him, the only way out of this hell would be to eliminate it.

At the height of their absurdity, these thinkers even came to deny the trinitarian nature of human beings. A human being does not exist in isolation, but in coexistence with two others — the father and the mother. Either three exist, or none exist. How can others be hell? It is love for one’s neighbor, as for oneself, that guarantees equality, a fundamental principle for society and for human beings as social beings and members of society.

Without love for one’s neighbour, life in society would be impossible, and without society, individual life itself would cease to exist. If everyone thought like Sartre, this world would truly be a living hell.

On the other hand, it is the love of God above all things and people that guarantees us true freedom, an essential principle for the dignity of the human person. Without freedom, there is no full human life, no individual. We are only freed from things and people when we give our heart to God and accept His lordship.

If we do not submit to God, who makes us free, we end up submitting to other human and worldly realities — power, pleasure, wealth, popularity, physical beauty — becoming slaves to these realities and, consequently, idolaters, that is, worshippers of idols.

Conclusion – Without Faith, human life is not possible. To live as a free, autonomous and independent individual, a human being needs to trust in himself or herself. To live in society, in the family, in the community, in society at large, it is essential to trust others and be trustworthy.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

"Land, blood and the deceased"

This is how the Bishop of Porto described the people of the north, and the Portuguese people, in general, to missionaries during a conference. Such a profound knowledge of the idiosyncrasy of the Portuguese people does not seem to have been well translated by the bishops themselves when they preferred to keep the Assumption of Our Lady as a national holiday to the detriment of All Saints' Day.

Saying this does not make me suspect of being one of those clerics who think that expressing love and gratitude to our heavenly Mother makes us less Christ-centered. I pray the Rosary every day and always at the end of Mass I invite the people to say one Hail Mary, to thank her through whom the bread from heaven and the incarnate word of God, Christ, came to us.

I have lived in and visited many countries in the Catholic world, and in nowhere have I seen a cult of the deceased like that of the Portuguese, both in Portugal and abroad, in communities scattered all over the world. Our people are so generous that, after having a Mass celebrated for their loved ones, they always add another Mass for the most abandoned souls in Purgatory - those who have no one to remember them by. In abolishing this holiday, is the Church not shooting herself in the foot?

The faithful departed and All Saints, that the holiday brought together, for the convenience of the people, are an expression of the Communion of Saints expressed in the Apostles' Creed. In my village of Loriga, and in many parts of Portugal, people express this same Communion of Saints in the community procession to the cemetery, to visit the remains of their loved ones.

The feast of All Saints is our feast... the only one in the liturgical calendar that does justice to and celebrated the efforts, not of the beatified nor the canonized, but of so many Christians who, in their daily lives, seek to become more like Christ by responding to the call to "be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).

In the civil world, in matters of general interest, governments consult the people in a referendum -- "Voice of the people, voice of God". This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council: a council that made the Church less pyramidical and more circular; less hierarchical and more of communion; less ecclesiastical and more accessible and available. Could not the people have been consulted on this matter in some way? After all, the feast of all the saints of God was our equivalent to the tomb of the unknown soldier that all countries have and proudly maintain.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Wealth that generates poverty

The secondary school in the municipality of Amares, district of Braga, celebrated this year on 17th of October with great emphasis the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. In this context, I was invited to help raise awareness among students on this topic, which is one of the Millennium Development Goals.

If the world's population, today at 8 billion and counting, were all to consume and pollute at the combined rates of the Americans, Europeans and the rest of the wealthy countries, this planet of ours could only last for 3 months, otherwise we will need the resources of 10 planet Earth to keep this going.

The level of poverty in which 80% of the population lives is neither fair nor healthy; there is still a lot of infant mortality, people still die of malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, typhoid fever and other infectious diseases, that have long been eradicated in wealthy countries, diseases for which cures have long been found.

On the other hand, the standard of living of 20% of humanity is neither fair nor healthy; it is our standard of living that causes us to die of cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and many others.

Some die of poverty and others die of plenty. Isn't the world globalized? And isn't globalization something like the principle of communicating vessels? – Do not two vats of water, one full and one empty, naturally level when there is a communication between them? Why don’t we see this?

Because the rich countries applied a valve at the intercommunication channel so that the flow can only occur in one direction...

If we lowered our standard of living while the poor increased theirs, we would all live better, with more justice and health; neither will we die of diseases linked to poverty, nor will we die of diseases linked to wealth. But since we do not want to lower our standard of living, then we have to find mechanisms so that they will always remain poor. Die Martha, die full...

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Quantum Physics and Faith

“If quantum mechanics has not profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet. Everything we call real is made up of things that cannot truly be understood as real.” — Niels Bohr

Physics is the mother of science
Physics is, in itself, a worldview, in other words, a matrix of our thinking. It is not the same to observe the world from Newton's mechanistic and materialistic perspective as it is to see it through the lens of quantum physics.

Contemporary thinking no longer explains reality based on Newton’s mechanistic physics, but on the theory of relativity and quantum physics. However, most thinkers, scientists, and even theologians still have their minds shaped by Newtonian physics.

The world of politics, universities, the media, and the economy is a world of cause and effect, where a cause always produces the same effect; thus, it is an atheistic, materialistic, and mechanistic world. Quantum physics, being new, will still need time to establish itself as the new worldview, and when it does, it will make belief much easier.

Universities, politics, and intellectuals are therefore outdated, behind the times and out of sync with the new reality. They live in an obsolete worldview. To update themselves, they must divorce Newton and marry Heisenberg. The world does not look nor work the way they believe it does.

Talking about the miracles of Jesus in the light of Newtonian mechanics, where reality works like a perfect machine in the unalterable routine of a clock, is more difficult than approaching the same topics from the perspective of relativity theory and quantum physics, where fixed and absolute laws of nature no longer exist, but is replaced by statistical probabilities.

Heisenberg’s principle goes even further by suggesting that reality, far from being fixed and predictable, has a high degree of uncertainty and unpredictability. Quantum physics challenges even common sense.

For Einstein, matter is a form of energy and energy is a form of matter; 95% of the universe is made up of dark matter, which is invisible. How much easier it is to talk about the resurrection of Christ’s glorious body and the spiritual body we will have after death!

Quantum Mechanics
Quantum mechanics profoundly alters our paradigms, challenging the logic that has governed science and our lives, breaking down boundaries that once seemed insurmountable, and putting an end to dualisms that opposed realities that we thought were opposites, such as:

Matter and energy
Static and dynamic
Visible and invisible
Tangible and intangible
Predictable and unpredictable
Material and spiritual
Scientific and philosophical

Let us examine some of these oppositions in more detail:
Matter/Energy – The heart of matter is as intangible as energy. The world of atoms and subatomic particles is essentially energy. Although we can measure and weigh atoms, the particles that compose them are made up of electric charges and are in motion, thus exhibiting the properties of energy. In essence, matter is describable and quantifiable, but in existence, it is energy, as it reacts, creates waves, and manifests an electric potential.

Visible and solid matter is composed of invisible elements, and the deeper we penetrate into the center of matter, the less mass and more empty space we encounter. Subatomic particles are, in fact, manifestations of energy. Therefore, what once seemed solid and visible is now reduced to electromagnetic waves. Thus, our body and everything that exists materially are nothing more than condensed vibrating energy.

Matter/Spirit – Materialism loses its rationale, since matter consists of invisible, almost spiritual elements. The atom, which is the "soul" of matter, is as invisible as the human soul within the body. Therefore, it is not only human beings who have a soul; matter, somehow, also possesses it.

Inert/Alive – It is no longer evident that only organic matter has life. Subatomic particles show us that life can also exist at the level of quarks, although distinct from the life we know.

Visible/Invisible – The boundary between the visible and the invisible is also blurring. The mass of an atom accounts for less than 1% of its total volume; the rest is empty space, i.e. the distance between the nucleus and the electron.

Static/Dynamic – The matter that makes up objects appears static, but this is an illusion. In reality, everything is in motion. The electron orbits the nucleus of an atom at 2,200 kilometers per second.

In quantum mechanics, visible matter is composed of invisible elements; it appears static when, in fact, it is in motion, and although it seems different from energy, it is merely one form of it.

The Dignity of the Human Person
"You have made us for Yourself, Lord, and our hearts will be restless until they rest in You." — Saint Augustine

Atheism is an intellectual conjecture, while agnosticism is an intellectual laziness, typical of a small minority that lives comfortably in the consumerism of an affluent society. The majority of the world’s population are religious, and this has been the case throughout history and in all cultures.

The evolution of species has resulted in a thinking human being, who either opposes or stands above the rest of Creation, just as the thumb opposes the other fingers of the hand. This fact indicates that humans have a destiny distinct from that of other living beings.

Only humans yearn for eternity and thirst for God. If there is thirst, there must be water to quench it. Therefore, the desire for God, present in every human being, is proof of His existence.

Belief is a Free Choice
Despite all the efforts of scientists to understand the mysteries of the universe and reduce the domain of religion, they have never found an unequivocal proof that compels people to believe or not to believe. Science studies the "how”, but not the "why”. Answers to the latter questions are found in the realm of faith and religion.

This being so, scientists will have to admit that the faith in a God creator of the Universe and the creation of human beings at His own image and likeness is a more plausible and logic position than the one of atheists and agnostics, that we and the Universe comes from nothing. Can nothing create something?

In Nature we do not see anything that creates itself, there is always a creator outside the creature, so how can the Universe create itself. That the Universe always existed is a position that science itself has abandoned since the discover of the BIG Bang and the Universe in expansion.

Conclusion - As long as our minds remain confined to Newton's outdated mechanistic physics, atheism seems obvious. But embracing quantum physics reveals a fluid, unpredictable reality where the boundaries between material and spiritual, visible and invisible, blur. This challenges atheism and opens new paths to deeper faith.

Year of Faith

What do I have that you seek my friendship?
What are you interested in me, my Jesus,
that at my door, covered with dew,
you spend the dark winter nights?

Oh, how hard my heart was,
for I did not open it to you! What a strange delusion,
if from my ingratitude the cold ice
dried up the sores of your pure feet!

How many times the angel said to me:
"Soul, lean out of the window now,
you will see with how much love to call”!

And how many, sovereign beauty,
"Tomorrow, we will open it” she would reply,
to answer the same thing tomorrow!
Lope de Vega

We always hear it said that faith is a gift from God, and in a way, it is, because as St. Paul says, it is the Holy Spirit who cries out within us, ‘Abba! Father!’ (Galatians 4:6); or as Jesus says in John 15:16, "You did not choose me, but I chose you...". However, if faith is fundamentally a gift from God, would not God be seen as unjust because He did not give this gift to those who call themselves atheists or agnostics?

God only loves those who love him, I like to repeat rhetorically in my sermons. Of course it is false, but it is only false in theory; in practice, it is as if it is true. What warms us is not the sun directly, but rather the feedback or response from the earth. In fact, the higher up and the further away from the earth we are, the colder we get (some of us may have seen on the information panels that the outside temperature of a plane at 10,000 meters is minus 50 degrees Celsius).

Salvation is free but it is not automatic; God feeds the birds of the air but He does not put the food in their nests; they have to look for it. What saves us is not so much faith as a gift of God, but faith as a choice and as a response to God's gift. God loves everyone equally; He loved Hitler and Francis of Assisi in the same way. The difference between them lies in their response to God's gift: negative in the former, positive in the latter.

Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. Revelation 3:20

The door can only be opened from the inside, Jesus has no way of opening it from the outside. It is in accepting God's grace that we are saved, it is in rejecting God that we are condemned. Faith can be a gift from God, but it is also a human choice. In the face of our freedom, Almighty God is powerless because He created us to be free. 

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Missionary Animation or Mission?

In the days when Europe was mostly Christian, it made sense for the missionary institutes “Ad Gentes” to make the people of God aware that the Church does not exist for herself, but for the Mission, and that the purpose of the Mission is to build the Kingdom of God. As a result of this missionary animation of the people of God, Europe took the Gospel to the four corners of the world.

While still maintaining a Christian worldview, Europe is no longer Christian. To be a missionary, one must be a believer; it is not possible to carry out missionary animation among non-believers; what one does among non-believers is Mission.

We cannot give what we do not have; in other words, we cannot exhort those who do not believe, or who doubt, or have a weak faith to share their faith and be missionaries. That is why the best way to do missionary animation here and now is to do Mission, and the best missionary witness is to be here and now what we once were a long time ago. Someone once said that the best way to honor a father is to be a good father.

The number of faithful has fallen and the number of priests has fallen even more, but the places of worship have not. The few existing pastors have several parishes under their care, and are often absorbed in the pastoral care of a small and scattered flock. Faced with this problem, many members of missionary institutes ad gentes have exchanged their nets for their staffs.

Is it by shepherding the few sheep that remain that we fill the void of the many that have left the flock? Those of us who are fishermen must adapt our hooks, nets and fishing techniques to the new situation, not change our profession; we cannot stop being what we are by vocation. But if we had to be shepherds, we should at least be Good Shepherds, and a good shepherd is like a fisherman, because he is the one who leaves the 99 to go in search of the 1 lost sheep.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Believing after Nietzsche

“It is through our virtues that we are most severely punished.” - Nietzsche

Nietzsche approaches his criticism of religion from a moral or ethical standpoint, understanding that morality does not derive from true human nature, but rather from a religion that prevents man from being happy. It is our own virtues, or the effort we make to embody them, that punish us and make us unhappy.

Biography of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Nietzsche made morality and religion the target of his battles, considering his personal war against both as his greatest victory. "Beyond Good and Evil" is at the heart of this war, marking the beginning of his critical and negative writings, as he himself declares in Ecce Homo (1888), published posthumously.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born in Röcken, Germany, on October 15, 1844. He was the son, grandson, and great-grandson of Protestant pastors. At the age of five, he lost his father and was raised by his mother, grandmother, and older sister. In 1869, at the age of 25, he was hired by the University of Basel as professor of Classical Philology.

Master Morality vs. Slave Morality
In his books, On Genealogy of the Morality and Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche demonstrates that morality is neither innate, immutable, nor derived from human nature, but rather a product of history. In prehistoric times, when the line between human and animal was not yet well defined, some men subjugated others according to the law of the strongest, a rule that also prevailed among animals. The victors became masters, while the defeated became slaves.

The masters, upon triumphing, judged reality based on themselves and their actions, due to the privileged position they gained after their victory. For them, “good” was everything that represented their way of being and acting: violence, war, adventure, risk, power, pleasure, cruelty, physical strength, action, freedom, and autonomy. These values placed them in a position of superiority over others.

The masters, those who can, want, and are in charge, externalize all their instincts, acting without limitations. They may kill, steal, violate, gorge on food and get drunk because no one questions them — they set the law. An example of this, even today, is the boss, who has more freedom to express his instincts than the employee.

The priests, resentful of their defeat and eager for revenge, unable to physically overcome the nobles, devise a plan to surpass them mentally. Like the fox that unable to reach the grapes, declares them sour, so do the priests with the master morality.

In this way, the slave morality is born. Unable to impose themselves on the real world, they invented an ideal, ascetic, spiritual world — God. They retreat to monasteries and deny real life, calling it a “vale of tears”, in order to focus on the afterlife, where they will be happy again. They deny earth in order to affirm heaven, transferring the value of life outside of their own existence.

In the name of God and the afterlife, they renounce this life, their sexual instincts, power, pleasure, and everything they once possessed when they were masters. Values now become pacifism, humility, obedience, poverty, prudence, fasting, abstinence, equality, and fraternity.

Nietzsche identifies the Jews as a “priestly people”, and slave morality is indeed the morality of Judeo-Christianity, which gradually took hold. Both Judaism and Christianity were born out of slavery: the Jews were slaves in Egypt, and the Christians, for centuries, were the poorest class, persecuted by the Roman Empire until they ultimately prevailed over it.

Master morality is autonomous, with values defined from individual experience; while slave morality is heteronomous, with values imposed externally, stemming from norms like “God said” or “the Bible commands”. Master morality is vital, based on the body and its needs and appetites, while slave morality is abstract, denying and sacrificing real life.

A critique to Nietzsche´s genesis of morality
Nietzsche’s dichotomy between master and slave morality is undeniably original and thought-provoking, shedding light on the historical dynamics of human ethics. However, it also risks oversimplifying the complexity and richness of moral systems. His association of slave morality with values like humility, altruism, and meekness—which he claims arise from ressentiment, a reactive and vengeful stance against the powerful—may unfairly diminish the genuine and proactive motivations behind these virtues. These values are often rooted not in weakness or resentment but in a deep recognition of human interconnectedness and shared vulnerability.

The origins of these so-called "slave morality" values might be better explained by human nature itself rather than a reactionary moral framework. Empathy, cooperation, and the desire for fairness are traits deeply embedded in human evolution, vital for the survival and flourishing of communities. Nietzsche’s critique overlooks these natural and constructive aspects of moral development.

On the other hand, the master morality Nietzsche celebrates, with its emphasis on dominance, strength, and self-assertion, appears to mimic the “law of the jungle” or the survival of the fittest. This perspective is problematic as it could be used to justify oppressive systems or behaviors, prioritizing the powerful over the vulnerable. Such valorization risks promoting a worldview that dehumanizes those perceived as weak and legitimizes exploitation, undermining the moral progress that has sought to secure dignity, equality, and justice for all.

Moreover, Nietzsche’s emphasis on individualism in the master morality over communal values reveals a blind spot in his philosophy. His famous proclamation of the “death of God” and celebration of the Übermensch (Superman) reflect his rejection of traditional morality and communal obligations. Yet, this rejection seems detached from the realities of human interdependence, where societies thrive on mutual support and collective responsibility.

Nevertheless, Nietzsche’s critique remains valuable for its originality and its challenge to unquestioned moral assumptions. He rightly identifies the dangers of moral systems that portray the natural world as a “vale of tears” and discourage human agency. However, a more balanced approach might seek to harmonize the strengths of both master and slave moralities, emphasizing individual flourishing alongside collective well-being. Such an integration would honor Nietzsche’s insights while addressing the broader and richer dimensions of human ethics.

Theism and Atheism
Regarding the existence of God, Nietzsche follows in the footsteps of his atheist predecessors. For him, faith in God stems from a feeling of impotence that man experiences in relation to the realities around him.

Feuerbach, Marx, and Freud, for example, all had links to Christianity, either through their theological training or their parents’ conversion. It seems that atheism is born from theism, or it is a kind of inverted theism, a dialectic similar to the relationship between matter and antimatter in the universe.

The atheist thrives in dissatisfaction, always haunted by doubt, seeking more proof to convince themselves that God does not exist. The theist also doubts, but this doubt culminates in a cogito ergo sum. The theist chooses to believe, finding in faith a meaning for the universe, the world, and his own life, while the atheist settles into the emptiness, which can cause torment and suffering.

Nietzsche, for example, ended his days in madness. Other atheists fill this void with the pursuit of power, pleasure, beauty, or money, dedicating themselves almost religiously to these causes. Many atheists, in fact, could be considered more polytheistic than truly atheistic.

Conclusion - Contrary to Nietzsche's proposal, master morality—rooted in the exaltation of instincts and unchecked individualism—fails to bring true happiness, instead it may foster social injustice and conflict. In contrast, Christian morality, far from being about submission, is grounded in love and values that uplift human dignity. As the cornerstone of Christian ethics, love offers a path to transcendence, guiding individuals beyond mere survival to a life of authentic meaning and purpose.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Banner of the Itinerant Mission

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives... (Lk. 4:18)

Hello, I am a priest from the Portuguese Consolata Missionaries who have worked in Ethiopia, Spain, England, Canada and the United States. I have always seen myself as an itinerant and since the age of ten I have never lived in one place for more than four years; only God knows what lands I will be sent to yet. Meanwhile, while working in Portugal, I heard Pope Francis say that the Internet is now the sixth continent so I took this message and created a blog in Portuguese three years ago, in 2012.

This year a group of Canadian pilgrims I met in the Holy Land challenged me to do the same in English. Initially I refused but when one of them offered to do the translation, I had no more excuses. I ask God’s blessing upon the translator who wants to remain anonymous for helping to reach the people of goodwill in this World Wide Web.

The Dove - Represents, obviously, the Holy Spirit.  The Mission is Trinitarian because it started with God the Father who sent His Son and is being continued in the "here and now" of the human history by the Holy Spirit who animates, inspires, gives strength and courage to the mystical body of Christ which is the Church. The Author and the Landlord of the Mission is always God.

The Heralds - The three gospels, Mark, Matthew (10:10) and Luke (9:3) agree that the disciples should not have two tunics, bread, money or bag. Mark though to make the journey easier and faster, adds staff and sandals as we see in the picture. Since Mark (6:8-9) wrote his gospel long before the others did, we take his account as the one that is closest to what Jesus commanded.

The City - Is where the majority of the world's population lives nowadays. Centre of power and government even for those who do not live there. To better spread the Good News,  Peter and Paul set up camp in Rome, the capital city of the world at that time; nowadays disciples must also take the salt and the light of the gospel right into the power and decision-making centres of the world.

The Paschal Candle - Is the "i" of Mission and the "i" of Itinerant. Represents the Good News that the heralds are carrying into the city:

• The faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus;
• The proclamation that he is the Lord;
• The declaration that he is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of the universe;
• He is also the way, the truth and the life and the most reasonable and convincing answer to the questions that every person who comes into this world asks himself: "Where do I come from? Where am I going? What is the meaning of life?"

The atheists and the agnostics who answer these questions by saying that they come from nothing and are going nowhere, what answer could they possibly give to the third question? Surely they will have to admit that something that springs up from nothing and ends up being nothing cannot possibly be something other than nothing or nonsense. 

"Go first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matt. 10:6) - Europe was entirely Christian when the gospel spread to the other continents; today, far from being Christian, it even denies its Christian root. Re-evangelization of the western civilization, which continues to exert power and influences over the rest of the world, has become a form of mission “Ad Gentes”.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

In search of the lost sheep

Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? (Lk.15:4)

The first ones to visit the infant Jesus were the shepherds; however, to continue the work of his ministry Jesus chose fishermen so that, without losing their techniques, only changing their catch, they were transformed into fishers of men.

These fishermen in the first 300 years after Christ converted half of the population in the world of that time; it was only afterwards that, the need to have shepherds to guide and govern this flock came about. Since then, and almost up to our times, the Church has lived with the belief that, just like before, the sheep would always increase as the sheep multiply inside the sheepfold. The reality however, is that for a long time the sheep have been multiplying outside the flock. In many Christian families, the children do not live by the faith they have received from their parents. In many cases the parents themselves also end up leaving the church after their children have abandoned it.

The Church has come to terms with this reality and proclaimed a New Evangelization in countries that were once Christian. Therefore the Mission is not only going out to distant lands but also caring for those who have lost their faith and helping them see that life has no meaning without it.

We are now once again in a desperate need of fishermen or shepherds who act like fishermen, that is, good shepherds. A Good Shepherd is the one who leaves the 99 to look for the one lost sheep.  Or, ironically referring to the actual situation, leave the one to go in search of the 99.  In search of the sheep or the lost sheep, I suppose this is what is meant by the New Evangelization which, in my view, has not yet gone beyond discourses of good intentions at the level of synods, conferences, and lectures. So far little can be seen from the point of implementation of plans or concrete achievements.

In the years following the Second Vatican Council, the problem of dissension was not so contentious, and yet the Church at that time came up with solutions to cope with it. Many religious orders engaged in Popular Missions; preachers were dispatched to all parishes and as the result many rejoined the flock.  Another initiative was the “Cursilllos” which still exist today was a worldwide initiative, there were others at local level.

Now the desertion of the faith and religious practices have turned into an Exodus that is far more serious and widespread, and it is sad to realize that the Church this time does not yet have a solid strategy…

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Believing after Sigmund Freud

Religion and religious sentiment permeate all spheres of human thought and life. Karl Marx saw the effects of religion or a certain religion on the economy and the relationship between the rich and the poor. Freud saw this same religion from another perspective, from that of trauma, especially those of a sexual origin.

If, for Marx, religion alienates human beings from a sociological and economic perspective; for Freud, this alienation operates at an unconscious and psychic level. Religion, in this sense, is an ideology that prevents human beings from being free, from being themselves, from accepting reality and accepting themselves as they are.

Biography of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Sigmund Schlomo Freud was born in Freiberg, Moravia, then part of the Austrian Empire, on May 6, 1856. The son of Jacob Freud, a small-time merchant, and Amalie Nathanson, of Jewish origin, he was the eldest of seven children.

Like Marx's father, Freud's father was also a Christian convert from Judaism. In this regard, he went so far as to say that he had always considered himself a German, until the day the Jews began to be persecuted. Later, as a refugee in London, he considered himself a Jew.

At the age of four, his family moved to Vienna, where Jews had better social acceptance and economic prospects. Freud graduated in medicine from the University of Vienna, later earning a master's degree in neuropathology. From neurology, he moved to psychiatry, and from there to psychology, studying the unconscious until he dedicated himself exclusively to psychoanalysis.

Freud worked alone for ten years on the development of psychoanalysis. In 1906, he was joined by Adler, Jung, Jones, and Stekel, and in 1908, they all gathered at the First International Congress of Psychoanalysis in Salzburg.

Religion as an Obsessive Neurosis
Freud sees religion as a repression of man's basic instincts, especially sexual ones. This is because religion perverts the natural instincts of human beings, declaring them evil, impure, ugly, dirty, and animalistic, and as such, they must be repressed.

Religion is also a moral code that makes individuals feel guilty for experiencing and expressing their instincts. This topic would later be revisited by Nietzsche in his "slave morality" concept, contrasting Judaeo-Christian morality with the morality of the Lords, or, in other words, natural ethics.

According to Freud, this repression inevitably leads to an obsessive neurosis: the body begs something, the mind does not grant it, the latter ends up short-circuiting and the fuses blow. Just as Marx saw socialism and communism as solutions to the alienation of religion, Freud believed psychoanalysis would resolve this issue—by removing the past traumas, the person reconciles with himself and his true nature.

Like Marx, Freud also knew very little about religion, focusing more on its role in a repressive and puritanical society. His theory was more than anything a reaction to puritanism, just as Marx's was a reaction to the inhumane capitalism of the time, stemming from England's first industrial revolution, where even children worked in factories from dawn to dusk.

So far, the only one to address the subject of religion from a theoretical perspective was Feuerbach in his work, The Essence of Religion. To paraphrase the title of this work, Marx and Freud dealt with the subject of religion from an existential perspective, in other words, how religion served as a weapon of the rich against the poor (Marx) or as a repression of human nature by Puritan ideology to control basic instincts.

Religion as an Infantile Illusion
For Freud, religious sentiment is an infantile illusion, something like believing in Santa Claus. Human maturity occurs when the child abandons the Pleasure Principle and embraces the Reality Principle. Religion keeps human beings in an eternal state of childishness because it is an illusion and thus not real.

In his work, The Future of an Illusion, Freud is convinced that religion is nothing more than a chimera that had its function in ancient times, but which we must now get rid of in order to find truth. As science advances, the future of this illusion becomes increasingly uncertain.

His Protestant pastor friend Pfister, probably with Pascal in mind, responds to this work by saying: “If reality boils down to a materialistic and random view of life, what future can we hope for? On the other hand, if a God of wisdom and love has come into this cold and materialistic world, we can wish for happiness here and now, and hope for a brighter future.

The donkey hopes that it will be able to nibble on the carrot; hope is what motivates it, hope is what gives it a reason to live. It is the hope that it will be able to eat the carrot that motivates its present and makes it trot towards the future. The present act of trotting forward to reach the carrot is motivated by the hope of reaching it. Without this hope, the present would be stagnant and meaningless.

Whoever has no future, whoever has no hope, walks in circles. They revolve around themselves, and in this way fall easily into monotony and, the nausea that the philosophers of nothingness, Nietzsche and Sartre, talk about. Without a future, the present is nauseating no matter how pleasant it may seem. Sartre experienced this, as did Nietzsche before him and Camus after him: "If you come from nothing, there is no Faith; if you go towards nothing, there is no Hope, and most likely there is no Charity, making life meaningless and nauseating."

The life of an atheist who says that he comes from nothing and goes to nothing is meaningless. Those who live immersed in pure worldliness live in a present without a past or future, as the philosophies and spiritualities of the Far East like Buddhism recommend. Only animals have no past, no historical memory and no future purpose in life. Humans are only human if they live all three times -- past, present, and future -- in harmony.

Faith in God the Father opens us up to the Hope we find in the Son through his resurrection, and this motivates a present of Charity, leading us to see Christ in every person. And whoever sees the Son sees the Father, as Jesus said to Philip. Hope is the only begotten child of mother Faith, just as Christ is the 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.

The three virtues work in our lives like a GPS: Faith connects us with God, 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 way and roadmap to holiness.

Freud Does Not Seem to Know that Dreams Command Life
They do not know that dreaming
is a constant in life
as concrete and outlined
as any other thing,
like this grayish stone
where I sit to rest,
like this calm creek
in its easy startles,
like these high pine trees
that in green and gold sway,
like these birds that crow
in drunkenness of blue.
They do not know that dreaming
is wine, is foam, is yeast,
a joyous thirsty little animal
whose sharp snout
pokes through everywhere
in endless restlessness.
(…) They do not know, nor dream of,
that dreaming commands life.
That whenever a man dreams
the world leaps forth
like a colourful ball
into a child’s little hands.—António Gedeão

As António Gedeão says in the excerpt of his poetry quoted above, dreams command life. Illusion is in fact dream; in Spanish, illusion does not have the same sense as a chimera, of imagining something false, but rather the sense of dreaming of a better future by already doing something in the present to make that dream come true.

Human beings do not pose problems that do not have a solution; if a problem exists, it is because there is a solution to it, because as the people say, what does not have a solution is already solved. Likewise, humans do not dream of the impossible; they would not dream of water if water did not exist.

Einstein's theory of relativity was a dream, an intuition. In this sense, dreams are the antechamber of reality. A dream is a utopia in the Greek sense of the word, something that is not reality now but can be, and often becomes so, in the future.

The Best is Yet to Come
The Lord likely created hope on the same day he created spring. —Bern Williams

We are not walking towards the sunset of our lives but towards the dawn of eternal life. Therefore, no matter how happy we are, the best is yet to come; no matter how much suffering we have to endure, decrepit, limited, sick, and old, the best is always yet to come. It is not in the circumstances and vicissitudes of the here and now that we place our trust, because we know that we have no permanent city here, but we seek the one that is to come (Hebrews 13:14).

It is said that a parishioner, a woman of great faith and hope in eternal life, was suffering from an incurable disease, leaving her with very little time to live. She prepared her own funeral so that it would be a lesson to everyone on the faith and hope that animated her. When she died, in the coffin, between the fingers of her hands, instead of a Rosary, were a knife and a fork.

The priest explained to the congregation, shocked by her boldness, saying that during her life, she had never missed a parish gala dinner and that whenever she returned her plate with the cutlery, she was told to keep the fork and knife because the best was yet to come.

Death is, therefore, not the end, but the passage to the best that is to come. This motivates the Christian's life, no matter how painful or limited his or her present may be.

Conclusion - Freud says religion is an infantile illusion, like believing in Santa Claus... But the Santa Claus that children believe in really does exist... He is the image of God the Father who loved the world so much that He sent His Son and it was Christmas.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Believing after Karl Marx

"Until now, philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." — Karl Marx

Karl Marx is more a sociologist and economist than a philosopher. Although he continued his atheistic philosophical reflection, he accepted Feuerbach's ideas and tried to apply them in the fields of economics and sociology in his criticism of capitalism. As he himself says, he is not interested in theories that lack practical application that can change the world.

He aims to understand how religion has performed over time, what it has served, and who it has served. He discovers that it has been an instrument of oppression used by the ruling classes against the poorest. This is a simplistic view, which even Marx himself must have recognized, but it is the one that best serves his theory. In other words, dialectical materialism is at the service of historical materialism.

Biography of Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Karl Marx was born in 1818 in the city of Trier, then a territory of Prussia, into an upper-class German family. His father was a successful lawyer and government advisor. At the age of seventeen, Marx went to study law at the University of Bonn, following in his father's footsteps.

However, the young university student got involved in parties and fell into a bohemian lifestyle. To put an end to this, his father, Heinrich Marx, transferred him to the University of Berlin. There, the defiant younger Marx discovered philosophy, the field in which he would earn his degree.

At the age of 23, Marx defended his thesis in Philosophy, obtaining a doctorate, which enabled him to enter an academic career. However, due to his criticism of the Prussian government, he was prevented from teaching at universities, forcing him to work as a journalist.

Marx's radical positions led to his expulsion from various Prussian, German, and French territories, and ultimately, he was expelled from Cologne, Germany, in 1848. In England that same year, he published the Communist Manifesto together with Friedrich Engels. From 1843 until the end of his life, Marx survived on inheritances, financial support from Engels, and from occasional articles he wrote for newspapers. It was in London that he wrote his most important work: Das Kapital.

Religion as the Opium of the People
The son of a Jewish convert to Protestant Christianity, Marx was even married in a church. However, he was a revolutionary. In his emblematic work, Das Kapital, he analyzed the evils of capitalism and viewed religion as an obstacle to progress—that is, to the evolution of capitalism towards socialism and communism.

Marx fully agrees with Feuerbach: God is a projection of man, and religion is therefore "the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, the spirit of a spiritless age. It is the opium of the people”. As well as being a projection, religion is a drug, an alienating behavior that prevents us from being ourselves, from taking the reins of our destiny or the helm of our boat. In short, it is an obstacle to progress.

Marx's atheism is more economic and social than philosophical. He has no interest in the essence of religion, be it Jewish or Christian, and is in fact ignorant of Christ or the social principles of Christianity.

What interests him is the role religion plays in society. Thus, Marx's atheism may be due to the type of religion practiced at that time, which in itself may have had little to do with Christ’s Christianity. Indeed, the classless communist society of the future could very well be the Promised Land of the Jews, the Kingdom of God of Jesus of Nazareth and the Christians.

What in Feuerbach was just a philosophical idea, in Marx it is a manifesto, an operative idea. However, it should be noted that Marx firmly believed that both capitalism and religion would collapse on their own, without the need of an intervention, like a fruit that ripens, rots and falls from the tree.

Nonetheless, his followers understood that they needed to be given a push, and that is precisely what Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Zedong did with militant atheism, which resulted in the deaths of millions of people during most of the 20th century. Poor Marx, realizing while he was still alive that there were so many versions of his theories, even declared himself a non-Marxist.

Listen, Marx
To Marx, I would say that so far it has been more the religious who have brought benefits to humanity than the atheists, who brought gulags, dictatorships, and religious persecutions, resulting in the death of around 30 million people throughout the last century. Religion can be seen as the opium of the people when it is disconnected from life and social reality, but in essence, it is not the opium of the people.

As Karl Marx said, the human being is the moment when nature becomes aware of itself. Of all living beings, we are the only ones with the capacity to think and have some control over our destiny and life. It makes no sense that our fate should be the same as that of a louse or flea: nothingness. If that were so, I and many others would rather not have been born than share the same fate with lice, cockroaches, and fleas: nothingness.

Here lies the absurdity of atheism: it makes no sense that an intelligently ordered universe, which has progressed as far as human life, should suffer the same fate as the rest of living beings. Why would we have come this far? So that we would be more aware of our misery, and suffer more than all other living beings?

Precisely at the moment when we become aware of ourselves, of our existence, and the relative power we have over it, we also realize that one day we will die—that is, that one day we will cease to exist. At least animals, which also die, are spared this suffering of knowing. They do not think, they do not know they exist, and therefore, they do not know they will die.

Why, then, do we have consciousness? To masochistically experience suffering, pain, anguish and anxiety in the face of death and our miserable condition compared to other living beings?

Animals have no power over their own lives: nature has implanted a "chip" in their system known as instinct, which automatically governs their lives. Living beings travel on autopilot; they cannot err, nor are they ever right or wrong—or rather, they are always right, always fulfilling the vocation for which they were created. Unlike them, humans have some power over their life and can transform it into heaven, or hell by making mistakes. Wouldn’t it be better if we too lived on autopilot, given that we all share the same end?

To animals, nature is a prodigal mother, giving them everything, even clothing them. When they emerge from their mother’s womb, they are already equipped with everything they need to live. Human beings, on the other hand, are born as the most vulnerable and helpless of all living beings and it takes them a long time to reach adulthood: years of education, school and university, and then, in order to survive, they have to work most of the day to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, while our fellow animals eat, sleep and play, their days away. What is the point of all this? Wouldn’t the animal’s life be better if everything truly ended in insignificance?

Conclusion - Although certain types of religion can become alienating, the religion of Jesus, far from being opium, is rather the leaven of a more fraternal world, based on equality and justice.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Believing after Feuerbach

Religious sentiment belongs to human nature, is part of it, and generally refers to God as man’s friend – every religion tends to establish a relationship of friendship with God. Atheists, on the contrary, deny that religious sentiment is innate to human beings and tend to see God as man’s enemy, an obstacle to his self-realization, growth and progress.

There have been cultures and civilizations without science and technology, but there has never been one without religious sentiment, without religion. This is because self-awareness, which emerges in human life around the age of 6 or 7, is contemporary with the certainty that one day we will die.

Because of cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am, I know that one day I will cease to exist. The three questions that every human being asks of himself or herself – where I come from, where am I going, and what is the meaning of life – surface in the consciousness on the day he or she becomes self-aware. Religion is the answer to these three questions.

Biography of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872)
Born in Rechenberg in 1804, Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach was a German philosopher known for his study of humanist theology. He was a student of the philosopher Hegel, but abandoned his Hegelian studies to take up studies in the natural sciences in 1828.

His most important work is called “The Essence of Christianity”, in which he discusses the true essence or anthropology of religion and concludes that all religion is a form of alienation in which people project their concept of the “human ideal” onto a higher being. Feuerbach makes the transition from German idealism to the historical materialism of Karl Marx and the scientific materialism of the second half of the 19th century.

Religion as Man's Projection
Homo homini Deus est – Christianity set itself the goal of satisfying man’s unattainable desires, but for this very reason, ignored his attainable desires. By promising man eternal life, it deprived him of temporal life, by teaching him to trust in God’s help, it took away his trust in his own powers; by giving him faith in a better life in Heaven, it destroyed his faith in a better life on earth and the effort to achieve it. Christianity gave man what his imagination desires, but for that very reason, did not give him what he truly wants.

For Feuerbach, theology is pure anthropology, for it was not God who created man in his image and likeness, but on the contrary, it was man who created God in his image and likeness. Everything that is said about God belongs to man; the images of God and everything we know about him is anthropomorphic. Man, projects all his aspirations, desires and ideals outside of himself, onto an abstract being he calls God. “God is nothing more than the human spirit projected towards the infinity”.

“My first thought was God, my second thought was reason, my third and last thought was man”. This brilliant philosopher began his career as a student of theology, later abandoning it to become a disciple of Hegel. Feuerbach was the first great atheist of modern times. A real blaze of fire, which is what his name means. In truth, I believe that all those who came after him said little or nothing truly new, merely repeating his basic ideas with other words.

For this reason, Feuerbach is the great inspirer and precursor of Karl Marx, in the sense that he is the first to proclaim and fight for man’s emancipation from the tutelage of religion, which weakens him and deprives him of his own power. For Feuerbach, “Morality that does not aim at happiness is a word devoid of meaning”. And he warns us that “whenever morality is based on theology, whenever what is right becomes dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, and infamous things can be justified and imposed”.

As brilliant as it may seem, Feuerbach’s criticism of faith and religion is nothing more than sophistry. Man’s projection outside himself says nothing about the existence or non-existence of God: God can exist with or without projection.

Human projection, precisely because it is human, has more to do with human nature than with God’s nature. Thus, human projection can explain why the thought of God has always existed in the minds of all men at all times; but it has nothing to say about the hypothetical existence of God. On the contrary, the persistence of the very thought of God in our minds is more proof of God’s existence than of His non-existence.

If a person is thirsty or has a desire to drink water, it is because there must be water to quench his thirst; it is more logical to think that water creates the desire than to think that the desire creates water; especially since, chronologically in the history of the Universe, long before the appearance of man, there was already water; therefore, water pre-exists the desire to drink it. I believe that if water did not exist, neither would thirst.

Returning to the sequence of Feuerbach’s thoughts from God to Man, unfortunately, Feuerbach did not stop at the third thought, God – Reason – Man. After having lowered and degraded God to the category of pure human conjecture, he did not stop there but continued with his fourth thought which was the sensible, with the fifth which was nature, and with the sixth which was matter, going so far as to foolishly state that “man is what he eats”.

In other words, when you degrade God, you end up degrading the creature He created in His image and likeness as well. According to the book of Genesis, God took us from matter (clay) and made us as persons in His own image and likeness. If we deny God’s existence as a person, we also deny our existence as persons, because we owe it to Him.

If we are not a person, then we return to what we were before God created us, that is, matter. In conclusion, what Feuerbach is doing to the human being is a Darwinian involution…

Conclusion – For Feuerbach, it was man who created God in his own image, projecting his aspirations and ideals onto God, and not the other way around. However, the human desire for something transcendent can be proof of God’s existence. There is no thirst without water and no water without thirst.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Self-Knowledge

"Know thyself" - Oracle of Delphi (469 B.C.)  
"You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" - John 8:32  

After discovering who I am, the place I occupy and the time in which I live, through the practice of self-awareness, the search for the meaning of my life requires me to question my identity, to know myself, to understand who I am, what I am, and how I am.

To live life meaningfully, I need to know my talents, natural inclinations, and tendencies, my flaws, my way of being and acting, so that I know what I can count on before deciding what to do with my life.

A Continuous Process
Human beings are not physical objects that can be delimited, measured, and weighed, nor can they be placed in a test tube; they are not static and thus are not the same over time; they grow, change, and transform. There are as many general rules as there are exceptions, so a final definition is not possible, because human beings always escape any kind of conceptualization.

Although it is not possible to define the human being completely and once and for all, we can nonetheless find constants, feelings, emotions, ways of acting and thinking that repeat themselves, revealing a certain type of character and personality that can guide us in living the present moment with meaning. These are inconclusive conclusions that serve to formulate other questions and to gradually give direction and purpose to our lives.

The Johari Window
This technique helps us to understand clearly the relationship we establish with others and with ourselves. Like the traditional windows in our homes, it is divided into four small panes and two intersecting areas. The first area concerns what others know and do not know about me; the second concerns what I know and do not know about myself. From the intersection of these four areas, various types of "self" emerge: the open self, the blind self, the hidden self, and the unknown self.

The Open Self: This is made up of the attitudes, values, and behaviors that I know and others also know about me. This is the public self, an area that contains information that is known to everyone: name, age, facts, talents, etc.

The Blind Self: This is made up of things I do not know about myself, but others do. This is proof that human beings are social beings. Our individuality is formed in continuous confrontation with others, starting with those who are most significant to us, like our parents and siblings.

We are incapable of seeing our face as it truly is. The image we see in the mirror is always a distortion of reality since there are no perfect mirrors. Others see my face as it really is; thus, one of the keys to my intimacy, to my self-knowledge, lies with others. One who is inside the forest sees only trees and not the entire forest; the other brings me objectivity and a global view of who I am…

 "Who do people say that I am? (…) But who do you say that I am?" (Mark 8:27, 29). Others may have a very different idea and image of me, and theirs is just as true as mine. I am, at the same time, what I think I am and what others think I am.

It is important to maintain a friendly relationship with a person who is significant to us, so that he or she can always give us feedback on who we are and how we are perceived by others. Even Jesus himself needed this feedback from His disciples.

The Hidden Self: This is made up of what we know about ourselves that we choose not to reveal to others, out of fear or for other reasons; it is what we call our privacy and intimacy, feelings, and past experiences we prefer not to disclose. In general, if this area is too large, we may be judged as lacking authenticity.

It is psychologically healthy to have someone who knows everything or almost everything about me; it is essential to have a friend with whom I am an open book, with whom my self is fully open. But, for safety’s sake, there cannot be too many of these people.

It is not without reason that people say, "May God protect me from my friends, for I can defend myself from my enemies," or, "Do not reveal your heart, even in pain, for he who bares his heart betrays himself”.

The Unknown Self: This is made up of all the material in our unconscious that sometimes surfaces without warning when something unexpected happens; it is information about ourselves that is still undiscovered and unknown to us or to others; areas of recognized talent, potential, motives, or childhood memories that lie dormant, influencing our behavior in ways unknown to us.

The unknown self is subject to a maxim of psychology that could well have been inscribed in the modern-day Oracle of Delphi: what we know about ourselves we can control; what we do not know controls us. It is in this sense that Jesus advises us to know the truth, for only by knowing the truth about ourselves can we be free, can we have our lives in our own hands, possess ourselves so that we can give of ourselves.

As for the unknown self, we are a mystery to others and to ourselves. We are not a mystery only to God. In this sense, we can compare ourselves to an iceberg: there is a large part of our personality that is not directly and voluntarily accessible, like a database for which I do not have the password.

However, it is not entirely concealed and locked away like a safe. There are moments and circumstances in which the unconscious reveals itself; these are moments that are out of our control and which we must take advantage of. We can say that these are messages that our unconscious sends to the conscious, messages that must be understood, decoded, and used in daily life.

Lapsus Linguae: These are statements we inadvertently make without meaning to and sometimes out of context; this is what people call "a slip of the tongue” that reveals the truth. It is a way the unconscious reveals itself to the conscious. Since they are unconscious, the person who says them is not aware of them, but a friend or a therapist can reveal them through feedback.

Dreams: We all dream, we always dream and dreams are always exclusively about us. Each object, each character, is part of us. Dreams are always subjective, never objective: if I dream about my father, it is not truly him I am dreaming about but the kind of relationship I have with him, how I perceive him, etc.

Working on or analyzing a dream is like traveling into the subconscious. Often, dreams are metaphorical, phantasmagorical, or even ridiculous; these are ways the unconscious draws our attention to something.

Body Language: What I say, what I do, is conscious; body language is unconscious, only the other person is aware of it and can interpret it. Because it is unconscious, what I say through body language is truer than what I say out aloud. In fact, as we say in Portuguese, "gesture is everything”, and much of our communication is non-verbal. It says more than what I say in words because I do not control it.

Growing as a human being is synonymous with growing in self-knowledge. This knowledge is not solely the result of introspection; a psychotherapist once said that no amount of introspection or self-examination will be enough to know ourselves. We can analyze ourselves for weeks or meditate for months and not advance even an inch; it is like trying to smell our own breath or making ourselves laugh by tickling ourselves.

Introspection is obviously a factor in the process toward greater self-knowledge, but it is not the only one. The process consists of two other factors that act in the form of a dynamic triangle.

What I learn about myself through introspection is complemented by feedback from people who are important to me; in this way, the four selves are harmonized and somehow fused into a single self. When I live in a loving relationship with people who care about me, their feedback can help me know more and more about my unconscious.

The Adventure of Living  
"The situation makes the thief" – Feedback on who I truly am is not always given to me by others, but by the situations in which I find myself and the experiences I go through. Mistakes, failures and successes say more about me than introspection. To know who I am, I must observe my behavior, whether or not I meet what is expected of me. I can only know if I have a talent when I try to use it when the time is right.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained" – I do not know whether or not I have a talent until the day I am confronted by a situation that requires it. Winston Churchill and what he represented to England in World War II cannot be understood without it. It was this man's response to the challenge of the moment, WWII, that made him great. Heroes, saints, are made and known when they are put to the test, when faced with great challenges.

Tools for Self-Knowledge
There are psychological theories that have become very popular and can help people know themselves better. In the line of religion and mysticism, we have the Enneagram; in the line of Freud's existential psychology, we have Transactional Analysis; in Jung's line, we have Myers/Briggs.

Conclusion - Self-knowledge is an ongoing and never-complete process of uncovering who we are, harmonizing our talents and limitations in order to live with meaning, purpose and authenticity.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Self-Consciousness

But when he came to himself, he said, “How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father...” Luke 15:17-18

The moment the prodigal son asked his father for his share of the inheritance, he was dazzled by the prospect of the pleasures that awaited him, and while those pleasures lasted, he was out of his mind. Often, pleasure makes people unrealistic and unconscious, while pain has the power to bring them back to reality, as happened with this young man.

From Unconsciousness to Consciousness
Before the "Big Bang”, which occurred about 15 billion years ago, all the matter of the cosmos existed in the form of an invisible subatomic particle that was extremely dense and hot, which eventually exploded, giving rise to the expanding universe. As temperatures started to cool down, the atoms that make up matter began to cluster into increasingly complex molecules, which came together to form membranes that gave rise to primitive cells.

All forms of life on Earth—viruses, microbes, bacteria, plants, animals, and humans—share common elements, since they all come from a common trunk. The cell is the simplest form of life; the first organisms formed on Earth were unicellular, like the amoeba, which still survives today in the contaminated waters of Africa. The transition from single-celled organisms to more complex life forms composed of multiple cells took about 3 billion years.

Since life comes from a common trunk, we can conclude that ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis, meaning that the process of development of an individual of the human species, from conception to adulthood, recapitulates or synthesizes the history of life on this planet. Our organism in its adult state is composed of about 37 trillion cells; but at the moment of our conception, when half a cell from our father joins half a cell from our mother, we too started off as single-celled organisms

What happens at the level an individual reflects what happens at a global level; life that began with a single cell has diversified into many species of living beings over billions of years of evolution. In similar way, from the moment of our conception until we are fully formed independent beings still inside our mothers, the evolution of species is recapitulated.

From birth to adulthood, we relive human evolution that, five million years ago, began to diverge from the primates, our closest ancestors. Just as a baby first learns to walk and then to talk, humanity has also evolved to the point of self-consciousness. In the context of evolution, for Karl Marx, Man is the moment when Nature becomes aware of itself.

Self-consciousness is the capacity for introspection; it is to turn inward, recognizing oneself as a different and separate individual from the environment and other individuals. Self-consciousness is the subdivision or duplication of the individual who becomes at the same time both the subject and the object of his own thoughts.

Cogito ergo sum, said Descartes, but it can also be said senso ergo sum: I feel joy or sadness, pleasure or pain, therefore I exist. Self-consciousness is the meaning I attribute to my day-to-day experiences in the overall context of what my life is for me.

Someone once said that we are awake when we sleep, and asleep when we are awake. We become aware of who we really are during sleep, in dreams. Dreams reveal our true identity, because no matter how many characters appear in them, they are merely parts of ourselves.

Freud and all of psychology thereafter placed great importance on dreams, as they hold one of the keys to our true identity. When we are awake, we wear masks that not only veil our identity from others but also from ourselves. In fact, the word person means just that: mask, characters we portray during the day.

Being Alive is Not the Same as Living
A life that is not self-reflective is not worth living. Socrates (469 BC)

At around the age of 7, children become aware of themselves, that they exist, that they are alive, but at the same time, they also become aware of their finitude, that they will not always exist, that one day they will cease to exist as they do now. It is death that gives meaning to life; or rather, it is the existence of death that drives us to seek meaning in life.

In this sense, being alive is not the same as living. Animals are alive, but since they do not know that they will cease to exist one day, they end up not knowing that they exist, that they are alive; since they do not know they are alive, they do not live. They do not live because they do not have much power and control over their own lives; they blindly obey their instincts, thus functioning as automatons.

Only human beings really live because they understand that, between the present of their lives and a sure death, they have the time and energy to shape what they desire from their existence.

To Be Conscious Is to Turn Off the Autopilot
Often, I lock my car with the remote control, and after walking away a short distance, I ask myself if I had really locked it; if I am not sure, I walk back to the car and check. Like this, we all do things automatically without thinking—things we do routinely without being conscious of them at the moment of doing them.

More often than we care to admit, we have the autopilot on: our behavior is reactive, much like that of animals; a given stimulus is followed by a given response, predicted and predictable. When we behave as if we are on autopilot, we lack awareness; we are not in ourselves but outside of ourselves.

What we say or do is not the result of a proactive decision after assessing the reality or situation, but of a more or less instinctive, pre-determined, repetitive, and routine reaction. Something akin to a reflex, like when I involuntarily pull my hand away from a hot surface to avoid getting burned.

• To be aware means to realize everything that is happening inside and outside of oneself.
• To be aware means to be installed in the present, in the here and now.
• To be aware means to have the soul where the body is.
• To be aware means to self-observe.
• To be aware is to be fully present in each of one’s thought, sensation, emotion, and action.

Prayer is an Exercise of Self-Awareness
When the prodigal son came to himself, he returned to the Father; while he was far from the Father, he was also far from himself; while he was outside of his Father’s home, he was also outside of himself; while he was dissociated, divorced, with his back to God, he was also dissociated, divorced, and with his back to himself.

Deus interior intimo meo, said St. Augustine, God is nearer to us than our innermost being, therefore prayer is not only an encounter with God but also an encounter with oneself; it is not only a dialogue with God but also a dialogue with oneself. Prayer is first and foremost an exercise of self-consciousness.

Those who pray know themselves better than those who do not pray. If God, as St. Augustine says, is beyond our innermost being, beyond ourselves, we cannot reach God without first passing through ourselves; we cannot know God without first knowing ourselves better.

Conclusion - In moving from an unconscious existence to a profound self- awareness, we realize that to live is not just to exist; it is to shape our destiny, becoming the conscious author of our own story.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC