Worldview, Culture and Human Nature

Human nature, culture and worldview are implicitly linked concepts, because each one has to do with the other two. Let us first try to define each of them individually and separately, and then see what makes them interdependent on each other.

HUMAN NATURE
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.  Genesis 2:7

Life on our planet has a single origin. As different as plants and animals may seem to us today, every living thing on our planet has common ancestors. Life comes from a common trunk.

The human being is one of the 8.7 million living species that inhabit this planet. He belongs to the animal kingdom, to the class of mammals, to the subgroup of primates or hominids, and is a cousin/brother of the monkeys, gorillas and chimpanzees, with which he shares 98% of the DNA. He is the child of a still unknown father, having been born 5 million years ago in East Africa, more precisely in the deepest and longest valley on our planet, the Rift Valley.

Unlike other living beings that have evolved little or nothing at all over the past millions of years and have lived and still live today in the same habitat, the human being has evolved to the point of transcending his original habitat. He left Africa a little over 200,000 years ago and colonized the entire planet not only geographically, but also in terms of dominating all other species of living beings.

Why did only our species evolve? Since we and we alone are, in Karl Marx's view, the moment when nature gained consciousness of itself. It is a mystery that science has yet to unravel. We know that through evolution, we are descendants of a primate that, in order to satisfy its needs and to survive, instinctively began to adapt to its environment, then seeking to make the best use of the environment’s resources. It first lived like the animals in symbiosis with nature.

In his effort to know the environment in order to better adapt to it, the human being developed his cognitive abilities, to the point of taking possession of his environment. This is the way the Homo sapiens came about; now, more than adapting to the environment, they sought to adapt the environment to themselves.

What defines us as human beings
Millions of years of evolution have made us human, without ceasing to be animals. Biologist Konrad Lorenz has found numerous similarities between human and animal behaviours. Many of our reactions and decisions when faced with life-threatening situations are more animal-like than rational.

At the end of the day, we have not lost the reptilian brain common to all vertebrates, nor the mammalian one common to all mammals. These brains predate the authentically human one, the neocortex, and are, so to speak, closer to our being, because the reptilian brain that commands all vital and survival functions is always connected; the mammalian one is almost always connected, but sometimes disconnects; the neocortex is almost always partially disconnected. So, for a behaviour to be authentically and genuinely human, the connected neocortex must disconnect the other two, especially the reptilian one.

In this sense, there are characteristics that seem to be uniquely ours, but are in fact common to other animals close to us on the evolutionary scale; the only difference is that in us they are more developed. For instance:

- Acquiring knowledge and have the ability to transmit it socially through some form of language, other animals, like the orcas, also have it. Adapting to the environment and the changing conditions of life, many animals are also capable of this, like the cockroach that defends itself from all the poisons we invent to kill it;

- Living in community, other animals also do this, like the ants, lions, ducks, geese, bees, elephants, chimpanzees. The only difference is that ours is more complex and perhaps more democratic, where, of course, democracy exists;

- Loving our children to the point of giving our lives for them, noble as it may seem, this is something we have in common with any mammal, it is pure maternal instinct. What we truly have that is unique is everything that is located in the neocortex, the largest of our three brains. Let us then see what is uniquely human and identifies us as such.

Self-consciousness – cogito, ergo sum
Only the human being gains self-consciousness, around the age of 6 or 7. Self-consciousness is the splitting of our psyche into two, which allows us to be observers and observed, the ones who know and at the same time the topic of our knowledge. "Know thyself," Socrates shouted in the early days of Western philosophy.

This self-awareness of ours does not only concern the present. Since human life takes place in three times that are always interactive, this self-consciousness extends to the past as historical memory that gives us feedback of who we are: the knowledge of our talents, values, defects, and limitations such as death. Only human beings are aware of their own finitude, that one day they die and cease to exist, at least in space and time.

Knowledge of the past, of who we really are, is then used by our reason to extend into the future and program it, using the imaginative capacity and abstract mind that only humans have to project beyond the immediate. Certain philosophies of the Far East urge us to put both the past and the future aside. They forget that those who live in an eternal present, without a past or future, are animals not humans.

Cogito, ergo sum – Descartes’ maxim, “I think, therefore I am”. In the pure present in relating with others, society, the physical and geographical environment, self-consciousness, or reason works like a computer, that analyzes, collects data about a given problem, and projects possible solutions.

In addition to self-consciousness and reason, human life is based on two values: freedom and equality.

Freedom
While all animals live in symbiosis with nature, which regulates, governs and guides them by means of their instincts, the human being is the only animal that has emancipated himself from nature. Freedom, autonomy, independence are the values on which the human life of the individual, of the person, is based.  As we said, there are other animals that live in society, but in these societies the individual does not exist for itself, it is a slave of the society to which it belongs.

Man is free in relation to others, he is not anyone’s slave, nor does he live for anyone else, but for himself; he is free in relation to his animal substratum, because he has the power to control his basic instincts and postpone immediate gratification.

The human being is the only one who holds his life in his own hands, who has power to give it a meaning and a direction. He has free choice, free will, which allows him to decide on the totality of his life, as well as on each of its parts. You can make mistakes in the decisions you take, and you may have to pay for the harmful consequences of your choices.

Part of freedom in relation to the environment, to others and to oneself, lies in the ability to transcend oneself; in relation to matter, through scientific and technological progress; in relation to material things, by developing the spiritual self, both in his relationship with God and with things and others, expressing himself symbolically through culture, art, music, religion, habits, customs, clothing, etc.

Equality
The human being is an intrinsically social being, is born from a loving relationship, grows up and becomes an authentic human being only if he or she is loved unconditionally, and always lives as a member of a family, as part of a community, organization or institution. Individually one is either a father or mother, son or daughter, grandfather or grandmother, aunt or uncle, nephew or niece. There is no human existence beyond these categories, and belonging to any one of them, puts you in a relationship with the others.

The other person is another ‘I’; not a ‘you’, not an external entity, strange, foreign, distant, but my neighbour, so close that he or she is another ‘I’, an alter-ego, from which the word altruism comes from. Love is the highest value in social life, to live is to love. Empathy, mercy, and compassion are what hold individuals together in groups.

What is due to me is due to him, because he is a human being just like me and we all come from the same common trunk born in the Rift Valley 5 million years ago. Equality and coexistence in society are based on the principle that my rights are my neighbour’s duties, and my duties are my neighbour’s rights.

Life in society makes individuals citizens with rights and duties. Law is born to govern society, and ethics, which discerns what is best and more appropriate, defines the guidelines of social behaviour. Life in society created written and spoken language for communication between individuals, with the aim of working as a team to foster unity, peace and harmony.

Can human nature change?
Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ So, God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:26-27

We were created in the image and likeness of God and if God does not change, then human nature does not change either. If human nature changed, then God would have to incarnate again and again throughout history, in each of these hypothetically ever-changing human natures to also be for these generations the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Since human nature does not change, it is God and his Word collected in the Bible that inspires and leads to God, both the men who lived 2,000 years ago and those who will live 10,000 years from now, if we still exist as a species.

Human values are proof that human nature does not change, neither in time, from one generation to another, nor in space from one culture and another. The concepts of justice, truth, honesty, fidelity, love, compassion, etc. are invariable over time in all cultures. The feeling of love that Cleopatra and Mark Antony experienced is the same as that of Romeo and Juliet experienced years later, as lovers experience and will experience in every time and place.

Separated by time, place and culture, the prophet Amos and Bishop Oscar Romero used exactly the same gauge to discern what is just and what is not. Mahatma Gandhi used the same concept of nonviolence that Jesus used centuries earlier. The peoples of the Fertile Crescent built pyramids and offered human sacrifices to their gods. But just like the Sumerians and the Egyptians in the fertile crescent, the Mayans and the Aztecs in Central America also built pyramids and yet these peoples never knew of each other’s existence.

Human nature, what the human being essentially is, does not change. In philosophy, the essence, the being does not change; what changes are the accidents, the variables, the circumstances. Our understanding of human nature may vary and change, just as we may discover in ourselves talents that we thought we did not have; yet they were already there, though unknown to us. We may acquire new ways as we adapt to our environment, for example, losing our tails because we no longer climb trees, but what is essentially human remains unchanged in time and space.

CULTURE
How is it that human nature does not change if we have diversity of cultures and languages, and language is considered to be the soul of a culture? There are two factors that caused the diversity of cultures and languages throughout human history.

The first was the absence of communication between peoples. For this same reason, in an increasingly globalized future, the diversity of languages and cultures will cease to exist or will be greatly attenuated. The second was the geographical factor: different peoples lived in different latitudes and longitudes, with climatic differences.

The diversity of cultures and languages would therefore be the adaptation of human beings to different geographical topographies. For example, it is not the same to live on the mountains as by the sea; as for different climates, it is not the same to live in the tropics, with two seasons, as to live in a temperate zone with four seasons, or in the Arctic.

The indigenous peoples living in the Arctic have numerous words for "snow", while in Ethiopia, in Africa, the same word is used for snow as for frost, which are two different things. On the other hand, we notice that the languages of the Nordic peoples because of the cold factor are more consonantal, and the mouth barely opens, while the languages of the tropical peoples are more vocal, causing the mouth to open fully.

The colour of the skin, eyes and hair, the shape of the eyes, nose, mouth and lips, as we have explained in previous texts, are also an adaptation of human beings to the environment in which they have been living for at least 25,000 years. If a tribe of Pygmies from the Congo were to move to Norway today, 25,000 years from now, they would be indistinguishable from the Norwegians.

Barring some minor differences, the adaptation of human beings to their environment is common to other animals. The adaptation of the environment to themselves, creating culture, is proper only to human beings. Only humans create a culture as an “artificial” habitat, in the correct sense of the word "ars facere", making art. In this sense, man is a cultural being, because he is not content with what nature gives him but creates a second nature in which he lives in, that is culture.

The human being made in the image of God is a creator like Him. The only difference is that while God creates out of nothing, the human being creates by combining and mixing the elements of creation. Culture is like the house that the human being builds with elements that nature supplies. Nature does not give houses, it is man who builds them; the diversity of houses represents the diversity of cultures, because it points to the place where they are built - sloped roof where it snows, flatter roof where it does not snow. The same can be said of clothing and everything that the human being makes, invents or manufactures with his creative mind, to make life more comfortable.

The tree is nature, wood, chair, and table are culture; hair is nature, hairstyle is culture; sound is nature, words and music are culture; fire is nature, anvil and barbecue are culture.

The Tarzan myth teaches us that in humans, the cultural factor is more important than nature. If a human baby is raised by chimpanzees, he will be like a chimpanzee. On the other hand, if a baby chimpanzee is raised by humans, with the same education as a human baby, it will never be human. If in a sparrow’s nest, we place a masked weaver's egg, when this masked weaver is an adult it will not make its nest as a sparrow does on top of a branch, but like a masked weaver, suspended from a branch. The human being is born an animal and becomes human through education and acculturation. The animal is born already practically in an adult state, it needs no time for socialization.

Culture is at the same time the adaptation of the human being to the environment and the adaptation of the environment to the needs of the human being. Culture is this interaction between the environment and the human being, and the human being and the environment.

WORLDVIEW
God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Genesis 1:31

We can use the biblical text of the creation of the world as a metaphor for the relationship between worldview and culture. Culture is God's creation, looking at it and seeing it as good is God’s worldview of what he has created. God who is love has a loving view of all that he has created, out of love.

God created the world, and man from the world created by God created culture. Worldview is man's view of what he created. Unlike God, not everything he creates is out of love, and since he creates many things out of hatred, like the instruments of war, in the end he cannot say that what he has created is good.

To paraphrase the expression "God made the world, the Dutchman made Holland", God made the world, man made culture, man adapted or customized this world, like someone customizing a computer to meet his needs.

The worldview is an abstraction of culture, because it makes culture an object of study. Worldview is the knowledge that I have of my culture, the mental image or representation, consciously or unconsciously, that I have of my culture.

Every human being has a worldview, because it is what guides him in life. At the same time, the worldview possesses us, because whatever we do or think, we do it within and in the context of a worldview. In this sense, the worldview seems to encompass culture because it is a set of ideas that an individual has about the world, and these ideas are the product of the culture in which he or she is embedded. As our culture goes, so will our worldview or view of the world be.

The worldview is the basis of all cultural manifestation that is made up of motivations, assumptions, beliefs, commitments, certainties, and ideas, through which reality is experienced and interpreted, from the subjective-private level to the objective-institutional level shared by society.

Conclusion: Human nature is what we are, our essence, culture is our existence at a particular time and space. Worldview is the sense we make of our essence and our existence.
 

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Worldview and Religion

The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion. Thomas Payne

The first impression, or what first comes to mind, is in psychology the most important. In the case of the difference between the concept of worldview and the concept of religion, what first comes to mind is that the worldview seems to encompass religion and not the other way around. That is to say, every worldview includes a religion.

However, when we study religion itself, we realize that every religion has a worldview, that is, a way of conceiving and interpreting reality as a whole, and not only the part that refers to the religious feeling or religious nature of the human being. This is why we must conclude that there are no defined boundaries between the two concepts because one encompasses the other; that is, if every worldview has a religion, then every religion has a worldview.

Religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam can be considered as worldviews. The same can be said of ideologies or anti-religions that deny and repress the religious nature of human beings, such as Marxism or historical and dialectical materialism, atheism and agnosticism in general. These too can be considered as worldviews. Both faith and the lack of it give a determined shape to human life.

A worldview seeks to answer fundamental questions such as: Does God exist, as the Creator of everything and everyone, or has the Universe always existed? What is there beyond the universe? Where do I come from, where am I going, who am I, and what is the meaning of life? Where am I? How should I or should I not live my life? What values should I cultivate and what flaws should I fight against?

Both religion and worldview provide answers to these questions. If they answer the same questions, then they have the same field of study, so they could be considered synonyms, or better still, they are one and the same.

The words ethics and morals are one and the same, that is, both refer to human behavior; the first of Greek origin and the second of Latin. The word ethics is used more in the civil world, while the word morals is used more in the religious world. Thus, we understand worldview as corresponding to ethics, because it is used more in the civil world, and religion corresponding to morals, because, obviously, it is used more in the religious world.

The religious phenomenon: "Mysterium tremendum et fascinans"
There are no people, however primitive, where religion is not.  Bronislaw Malinowski (1884 - 1942)

There have been and there are societies in the past and present without science, art without philosophy, but there has never been a society without religion. Henri Bergson (1857-1941)

Religare – This is a Christian concept, that is, it is the Christian way of conceiving the religious phenomenon. It assumes the concept of separation. Sin separates us from God, religion connects us back to God because, through religion, God forgives us.

Rudolf Otto's Latin definition of religion is still valid today: Mysterium tremendum et fascinans.... Trembling because it invokes in us feelings of fear, respect and reverence. Fascinating because it provokes in us feelings almost contrary to the former, of attraction, joy and trust. In the Bible, that is, in the biblical religious tradition of Judaism and Christianity, these feelings translate into the often-repeated binomial of fear of God and love of God.

When the agricultural society, especially with the cultivation of cereals, allowed a certain social stratification, the figure of the priest was among the first to emerge, because religion in primitive societies encompassed culture in general, that is, all other activities or everything that was not agriculture.

The priest was the person who performed religious rituals to the deity, he read and interpreted the sacred texts and maintained the place of worship. He was an intermediary between the deity and the people. In all Jewish religions, of Sumer, Egypt and Rome, and in Buddhism and Hinduism, and in traditional African or Latin American religions, this has always been the function of the priest.

Shamans and mediums would be other more sophisticated versions in seeking a relationship and communication between this world and the spiritual and divine world of the spirits and the dead. There is a resurgence of these practices with the New Age religion, which is a sincretism of many religions, including traditional American, Asian and African ones.

In primitive societies, the civil and religious leaderships were united in one person and one position. We see in the Bible that Samuel not only performed the functions of a prophet, but also those of a king and leader of the people and those of a priest, interceding for the people before God; the same happened with Moses. Already in Jesus' time, the priest also had the function of a physician, by being able to declare whether someone was cured of leprosy or not, in order to be integrated back into society. (Matthew 8:4)

“Religion is what makes the poor not kill the rich.”  Napoleon Bonaparte
"If God did not exist everything would be permitted." Dostoyevsky

Atheists would not recognize the truth of this first statement coming from someone as unreligious as Bonaparte, who ironically gives religion the status of a police officer that is more effective than the real ones, because people are more afraid of hell or eternal death than of temporal suffering and dying.

Atheists will argue that there is an ethics that needs not be based on religion, but reality, however, seems to point to the fact that if human beings were one day scientifically certain that there is no God or life after death, the boundaries between good and evil would blur. The idea that good leads to Heaven and evil to Hell, is implanted in the collective unconscious of humanity.

If this were to disappear, if in the collective unconscious or conscious this idea was not present, surely 1% of humanity could not have more wealth than the remaining 99%, as is the case today. Lucky for the rich that more than 80% of humanity believes in the existence of God and life beyond death. It is their greatest guarantee that the status quo is maintained. If this was not so, there would be no law, no police and no army that could contain the fury of the poor. So, Napoleon was right in his own way…

In every age, in all places where human beings have lived, the religious phenomenon was born through spontaneous generation: where there are human beings, there is culture as a way of understanding and living life, and there is religion as a way of answering questions that cannot be answered by science. In this sense, science has conquered ground from religion; but can it completely nullify it?

Secularism or the death of God has made us good consumers, but bad citizens, individualists lacking solidarity and empathy with human pain, because it was religion that brought us together in community as children of the same Father God. Without God, nothing unites us as human beings, and everything becomes permissible, as Dostoyevsky says. There is no social ethic that is founded on itself without the foundation in God.

Agnostics are not interested in religion because it is not possible to know God; God cannot be known by the scientific method because he is a person, and people are not the object of science either. People are not known by those who do not love them. To know a person without loving him, without getting involved with him, without making oneself known in return, would be to manipulate him, just as the scientific method does to things.

On the other hand, mystery involves both religion and science. In each and every science there are known matters and unknown matters; that is why one continues to investigate and research to unravel them. One does not know everything about biology, physics, chemistry. The more one knows, the more there is to know. That is why mystery involves both religion and science.

But religion, depending on the answers it gives us to the fundamental questions, also shapes our lives, it tells us how we should or should not live. On this matter, science also has no opinion, nor does it tell us what is the meaning of life or how we should live it.

Religion, culture and development
Every culture has its own way of conceptualizing God; hence the fact that there are various religions. In addition to the cultural factor, the diversity of religions has also to do with the level of development or progress.

With a rampant rate of globalization that aims to put all men in contact with each other, what counts most is no longer the diversity of cultures, but the level of development. More than western or eastern culture, we speak of north and south. There is only one model of development, just as there is only one human nature. More than diversity of cultures, there are developed peoples, less developed peoples and primitive peoples.

Development has been connotated with the Western world, but I would connote it with human nature. There is no alternative development model to the so-called Western one. The East (China and Japan) does not present an alternative development model to that of the West because there is just no other alternative.

There is no development model that does not include the steam engine, electricity, propulsion engines, trains, airplanes, cars, television, radio, telephone, computer, Internet, paper, newspapers, books, schools, universities... The presence or absence of these and many other elements defines the level of development of a people, and this level of development influences people's lives more than cultural nuances.

For example, the writings of Chinese and other Asian peoples are not different from the writing of western peoples because of a cultural factor, but because of a development factor. All writings began in a pictorial form, that is, by representing things by drawing a picture of them. The Egyptian hieroglyphics and the cuneiform writing of Sumer and Mesopotamia are pictorial ancestors of the Greek and Roman alphabets that are in use in the Western world today. As far as writing is concerned, the alphabet is more developed than pictorial writing, because it is simpler in the computer age and because it makes speech more fluid among a greater diversity of concepts and words.

Just as there is a scientific, technical and human development or progress, there is also a progress or development in the field of religion, that is, the conceptualization of God and the experience of innate religious feeling in human beings.

Animism
It is the first conceptualization of the divine. Our ancestors lived in the belief that everything was animated; both material objects, animals, plants, rivers, rocks, etc., such as natural phenomena, thunder, lightning, wind, rain, etc. and even the universe itself, possessed a soul, that is, spiritual or supernatural qualities, meanings or powers.

In Portugal there is a much-repeated phrase that tells of this time period, "In the time when animals could talk". It is not that such a time ever existed, but the belief that animals spoke, had a soul and a personality did exist.

The ancient religions belong to this category; animism still exists today, but only in peoples who somehow live separated from global civilization like the aborigines of Australia, the indigenous peoples of North America, as well as the isolated people in the Amazon and certain African tribes.

Witchcraft, New Age, magic and so many other superstitions are remnants of animism or new expressions of it in Western society. The granting of spiritual power to certain objects such as the charm, the horseshoe, the rabbit’s foot, etc., are modern remnants of animism that today are nothing more than superstitions.

Polytheism
As we said, as the human being got to know and dominate his environment, the latter materialized. All the realities that the human being knows, controls and dominates, these lose their soul, their power, in some way; this passes to or is absorbed by the inventive spirit of the human being. In this way, the sphere of the material has increased, and the sphere of the spiritual has decreased. What human beings dominate ceases to have power over them, above all, it ceases to have spiritual power, to become a controllable material good.

With progress, human beings have managed to dominate many realities, but not all; those that still resisted being mastered acquired the nature of deities. Animism is succeeded by polytheism, the belief that the main realities, powers and forces of nature are dominated by a god. In effect there is a god for each reality, being the lord of that same reality: Venus, the goddess of love, Mars, the god of war, Neptune, the god of the sea, Cronos, the god of time... Polytheism still exists today in certain religions such as Hinduism.

Absolute monotheism
The prehistory of monotheism happens when human beings group all these gods together and give them a leader – Zeus in the Greek mythology and Jupiter in the Roman. From here to monotheism is just one step forward. The first human being to proclaim that there was only one god was an Egyptian pharaoh named Akhenaten, also known as Amenhotep IV, who reigned in Egypt in the 14th century BC, long before the Greek and Roman cultures.

Sedentary peoples tend to be polytheists; nomadic peoples, on the contrary, are monotheistic. The Turkana, a nomadic people of northern Kenya, have the same word to designate Heaven and God. The Mongols, the Turks and the Tatars all worshipped a common god called Tengri, the god of the blue sky.

From here to intuiting that God is a spiritual being was just a short step taken by the Jews, who were also nomads. For them, God was spiritual and was everywhere, inside our minds and especially in our hearts, at all times and all places. He was a personal being because he was a God of people, of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. They also sensed that he was a creator God of everything and everyone. Today, absolute monotheists are therefore the Jews and the Muslims.

Trinitarian monotheism
It is the Christian version of monotheism or, in the age of relativity theory, it is the relativization of the absolute monotheism of the Jews and the Muslims. If man was created in the image and likeness of God, and God is love, love implies a relationship of at least two people; the objective of married life or a relationship, is not two people looking at each other, but the two looking in the same direction, that oftentimes takes the shape or modality of a child but could be some other human goal. So, neither Love or God are “mono" nor "stereo", but three-dimensional.

This God who is a community of love created man in his own image and likeness, so that human beings too are one and triune, and is called to be a community of love; to the Trinity of God corresponds a human trinity.

The human person is free, autonomous, indivisible and independent, and yet he is not self-explanatory, he needs two other persons: his father and his mother, with whom he forms a triangle. Father, mother, child are the only categories of human life; every human being always belongs to two of them.

A man is not a father without having a wife and a child; a woman is not a mother without having a husband and a child, every human being is the child of a father and a mother; there are no single mothers. The Trinity consists in that one individual does not exist alone but coexists with two others; the existence of one always implies the existence of two others, with whom he has affective ties, forming a triangle of love.

Atheism
For atheism, there is no God apart from the universe or in the universe. It claims that the physical universe is all that exists. Everything is self-sufficient matter. Karl Marx’s philosophy on Feuerbach’s thoughts – on the part of philosophy as to his dialectical materialism and on the part of economics as to his historical materialism. Another atheist exponent on the part of psychology was Sigmund Freud.

Believers cannot scientifically prove the existence of God; non-believers cannot scientifically prove his non-existence either. Hence atheism is the belief in the non-existence of God. A belief that goes against the innate religious feeling in human beings.

This religious feeling is somehow referred to by the joke that says: the man is a communist until he becomes rich, a feminist until he gets married and an atheist until the plane starts dropping from the sky. There is also the one who conceives himself as an atheist because it is fashionable and because he has not yet adapted his vocabulary to his new belief, goes so far as to say, "I'm an atheist, thank God”.

Nihilism
Where do I come from, where am I going, and what is the meaning of life, are the three questions that every human being asks himself when, at 6 or 7 years, he reaches self-consciousness, that is, he knows himself as a person. If we come out from nothing and go to nothing, as atheists say, what meaning does life have? Can something that begins in nothing and ends in nothing have any meaning at all? In this sense, nihilism is a natural fruit or product of atheism.

Without a future, the present is nauseating, however pleasant it may be. This is what Sartre experienced, Nietzsche before him and Camus after him: "if you come from nothing, there is no Faith, if you go to nothing, there is no Hope, the most certain is that there is no Charity, so life lacks meaning, it is nauseating.” In the face of this, you either commit suicide like Nietzsche, or you overindulge in the pleasures of the material world and die from some kind of overdose, or you become a philanthropist and enjoy the joy that comes from the good you do for others, because there is more joy in giving than in receiving.

Agnosticism
Since it is not possible to know God, or know him fully, the agnostic, as we have said already, is not interested in the subject, he sets it aside. However, as we have also said, it is not only God who is half shrouded in mystery, so is all sciences. Therefore, this attitude of a-gnosis, that is, of denying the knowledge applied to the sciences, would paralyze scientific progress because it would paralyze research. Since I can't know everything about biology, physics and chemistry, I'm not interested, I don't want to know them at all.

I suspect, on the other hand, that this attitude, from the most human point of view, is that of avoiding answering the three fundamental questions of the human being: where I come from, where am I going and what is the meaning of life, to avoid falling into nihilism. In other words, the attitude of an ostrich that, seeing danger, hides its head in the sand.  

Hard evidence of God's existence
If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also 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. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.  1 Corinthians 15:17-22

To paraphrase St. Paul, if Christ did not resurrect, if there is no God or life beyond death, we are the most wretched of all living beings inhabiting this planet. The evolution from non-consciousness to consciousness, or as Karl Marx puts it, we are the moment when nature gains consciousness of itself, would be meaningless. What did we gain consciousness for?

So that we can be aware of our misery? So that, unlike other living beings, we know that one day we're going to die? To feel sadness whenever we have another birthday and see how our strength is waning, our external beauty is disappearing and diseases gaining ground? At least other living beings are spared this suffering, because they do not know that they are going to die or even that they exist, because they are not conscious of self.

What is the point of having a choice? So that we can fall into a thousand and one traps and make our lives a living hell? At least other living beings are always happy, they don't have the ability to ruin their own lives and become unhappy.

And what's all the work and effort for if we were all end up the same way? And if the end of human beings is the same as that of a flea or a cockroach, in what way can a human being be superior to these living beings? Unless he is superior in suffering, in sadness and in despair if, in fact, the end for all is nothing.

If there is thirst, there must be water; otherwise, there would be no thirst. All the experiences of those who have been between life and death, between here and beyond, speak of a light, of an immense happiness. No one, so far, has spoken of nothingness, of emptiness, of ceasing to exist.

According to Pascal's famous argument or wager, let us suppose that two friends - one atheist and one religious - bet a sum of money on whether or not God and life beyond death exist. The atheist bets that God does not exist, the religious bets that he does. At the death of the two men, if the atheist wins the bet, that is, if there is nothing beyond death, he won’t be able to collect the prize, he won’t even know that he has won and that the religious has lost.

If, on the other hand, there is life beyond death and God sustains it, the religious has gained this eternal life and the atheist has lost it. We conclude that whoever believes has everything to gain and nothing to lose; whoever does not believe has everything to lose and nothing to gain.

Conclusion – The concepts of religion and worldview encompass each other. Every worldview has a religion or an anti-religion, and every religion has a worldview.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Worldview, the Matrix of Our Mind

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. John 1:1-4

Almost all of humanity subscribes to and agrees with these first words of the prologue of John’s Gospel, which affirm the belief of a creator God of everything that exists and everyone who exists.

Trying to situate Jesus in the context of time and space, we notice how the horizon and the meaning of his entry into human history is amplified with each gospel written. Mark, the first to be written, in Rome and for the Romans, the shortest and the most incisive and direct, begins with the Baptism of Jesus and seeks to prove that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God.

Matthew, the second to be written, for the Jews, establishes a genealogy of Jesus in which Jesus is said to be the son of David, the son of Abraham. Luke, the third to be written, by a Greek for the Greeks, also establishes a genealogy, but he goes beyond the ancestors of Israel to the first man and first woman, Adam and Eve. Finally, John, as text quoted above says, begins the story of Jesus of Nazareth long before Adam and Eve, outside of our planet, of the cosmos, of the universe, to the beginning of creation.

A worldview seeks to integrate all the elements of a culture or religion in a harmonious way that makes sense. Each of the gospels placed Jesus within an increasingly bigger context, and at the end, John concluded that Jesus not only had to do with the Baptist movement, but that he also is a descendant of David, Abraham, Adam and Eve, and that by being there at the beginning of creation, he is the second person of the Holy Trinity.

Looking at the world as God sees it
The best way to look at the world is certainly to do it with the eyes of its Creator.  Whoever is inside a forest cannot see it, he only sees trees. To have an entire view of the forest, it is necessary to go out of it, to situate oneself as an observer outside of it, but at the same time inside of it. There is no one better than God who knows and has an overview of the world, its nature and its meaning.

Not only because He is the one who created it, but also because only He can completely transcend the world for being at the same time immanent and transcendent. That is, only He can truly come out of the forest to look at it from the outside; we humans can never fully have that perspective. Therefore, looking at the world from the perspective of its Creator, with the eyes of God, is always the best way. Without God, the world lacks meaning because nothing that exists can explain itself.

Abstraction and transcendence
The human being, made in the image and likeness of God, is also to a lesser degree immanent and transcendent in relation to the world. He is immanent because he lives in it, is subject to its laws, and cannot live without the world. He is transcendent because he has the capacity to abstract himself from it, a capacity that comes from the fact that he is different from other creatures as he alone possesses self-consciousness.

Self-consciousness is the split of our psyche that gives us the ability to be immanent and transcendent in relation to ourselves, the world, and all that surrounds us. By being self-aware, we can be in the forest and out of the forest, because we can be observers and observed in relation to ourselves and the world around us. Being able to observe ourselves, we are at the same time the subject and the object of our own observation.

Self-consciousness gives us the possibility to look at our inner and outer world, everything around us, with some objectivity. Self-consciousness is a certain objectivity within subjectivity, because it allows us to observe, to judge, and to be objective and fair.  Although it is said that “nobody is a fair judge in his own case”, it is also true that if we have a healthy self-criticism and recognize our mistakes, have been honest, sincere, and genuine, we can be fair judges even in our own case.

Self-consciousness gives us the possibility to observe the world and to interpret it, that is, to put it inside ourselves, to assimilate it and to make a map of it that we keep inside which helps us in our relationship with the world around us, with others, and even with ourselves. This inner map, this interpretation, our way of conceptualizing the world is our worldview.

"Against facts there are no arguments"
This well-known proverb basically means that there is no point discussing what is obvious, what is objective, what is staring at us in the face. It is a waste of time to argue against what is happening right under our nose, there is no point in trying to explain it, because the fact speaks for itself and says it all.

Facts belong to the realm of the objective, of what is common to all, so without a minimum of objectivity, known as common sense, public opinion, common denominator, life in society would not be possible. But  objectivity is opposed to subjectivity; the same fact can have as many interpretations as the number of people interpreting it. “Each person has his own verdict”, it is also said.

It is not enough to only see what we see, but it is necessary to understand what we see as well. The disciples of Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35) fled Jerusalem, leaving behind the fact that they were disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, because the facts of his death had disconcerted, demoralized, scandalized, confused, and despaired them. It is one thing to see, it is another to know how to interpret what we see, to find the meaning of what we see. Appearances are deceiving as things are not always what they seem.

Jesus helped the disciples interpret the seemingly scandalous fact of his death in light of Salvation History described in the Bible. Often, in order to know the meaning of a specific fact, we have to place it in the context of a larger picture. It is always true that those who are in the forest do not see the forest, they only see trees; to see the forest they must get out of it.

Definition and synonyms
“The whole manner of conceiving the world and humanity’s place in it, the widest possible view which the mind can take of things.” James Orr

A "life-system" rooted in a fundamental principle from which was derived a whole complex of ruling ideas and conceptions about reality. Abraham Kuyper

"A perspective on life, a whole system of thought that answers the questions presented by the reality of existence."  Francis Schaeffer

"A set of presuppositions or assumptions held consciously or unconsciously, consistently or inconsistently, about the basic make up of reality.”  Sire James

"A comprehensive framework of one's basic beliefs about things." Albert Wolters

“It is … an interpretative framework … by which one makes sense … of life and the world.” Norman Geisler

Worldview, the vision of the cosmos, of the universe, of the world, of our small world, general view, comprehensive view, general perception of the world, perspective, optics – all these terms are synonyms that translate the German concept of "Weltanschauung" which means "way of looking at the world" ("welt" – world, "schauen" – look), point of view, perspective, or conception of the world.

There seems to be a consensus that the term worldview derives from Immanuel Kant’s use of the term "Weltanschauung" in his book, Critique of Pure Reason. The concept that Kant sought to define has always existed; human beings, from the most primitive, consciously or unconsciously, have always had a vision of the world that gave meaning to their lives, by which they guided their steps and made their decisions.

A worldview is an ordered and structured set of beliefs, ideas, values, concepts, and opinions that shape the image that a person, a collective, a culture, an era, has of the world and from which the person interprets his nature, the meaning of his life and everything that exists.

A worldview is a mental representation that a person or culture makes of the world or reality; a way of interpreting and conceptualizing everything that exists and giving it meaning. This conceptualization or mental representation becomes a frame of reference of our being and our presence in the world, that is, it constitutes an abstraction or internal map to which we refer consciously and unconsciously to situate and guide ourselves in the external reality.

It is the compass that shows the north so we do not get lost, the east so we can orient ourselves, it is our Global Positioning System (or GPS) that tells us at every moment where we are, the place we occupy in the world, the place we want to get to, that is, our purposes, our goals, our dreams and the road that take us there.

Worldview is my concept of the world and the life  that exists in it, it is the foundation, the cornerstone of my life. It has to do with my philosophy of life, my optics, or the lenses through which I see and interpret reality. The worldview is the matrix of a culture, similar to the motherboard of a computer, which is that large green board that we find when we dismantle a computer, that has all the circuits printed on it, and to which all the chips, memory, disk and other components of a computer are fixed.  

The worldview is like the operating system of a computer. It may be Windows, Macintosh, or Linux system that makes the computer work. A computer without an operating system does nothing, it starts up and displays a screen with nothing on it.  Today's computers do everything, they are used in every institution and cell of individual and social life. There are programs to handle text, images, music, mathematical calculations, etc. Each program, however, is grounded in the operating system.

Using this metaphor, the worldview is the operating system of a particular culture. This culture may be made up of many and varied things, like the programs of a computer, but they all rest on a single common foundation: the operating system of the computer, the worldview of the culture. To paraphrase the book of the Acts of the Apostles (17: 28), it is in Him that we really live, move, exist, and have our being...

Conclusion – A mental representation or map of the world, the worldview is our personal and collective way of conceptualizing and interpreting the world, as well as our identity and the meaning of our existence in it.

                                                                                        Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

XII Mystery - Coronation of Mary as queen of heaven and earth

A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.  Revelation 12:1

In his Apostolic Exhortation "Marialis Cultus", Pope Paul VI wrote that the Solemnity of the Assumption is joyfully prolonged in the celebration of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which occurs seven days later. A mother of a king is a queen, the queen mother. It was not an inherited kingship as the son of a king is a king, it was a hard-won queenship, a queenship that hurts.

It was a crown of glory preceded by a crown of thorns, or the prophetic sword of much suffering referred to by old Simeon that Mary had to go through for the sake of her son. Mary's queenship is therefore a queenship by merit, something akin to a Nobel Prize for her good service to humanity.

St. Paul, in one of his letters, talks about athletes who sacrifice themselves with strict diet and exercise only to win a crown that withers. If this happens to them, how much more will it happen to us if we want to win, like Mary, an eternal crown of glory. We must accept and endure the sufferings that come our way.

Mary and the Empress St. Helena
In thinking about what is said in this text, because there is no historical basis for the things we understand to happen in Heaven, I thought of another woman who, like Mary, achieved great heights despite starting very low, and who also like Mary, lived 100% at the service of her son. This is empress St. Helena who lived at the service of her son.

Saint Helena was not born to any noble family in Rome, she was born in Asia Minor and, as her name implies, she was not Roman, but Greek. She married the Roman emperor Constantius Chlorus who went on a military campaign in Asia Minor. Her son is Constantine I who became Roman emperor in York, England, in 306. He conferred on his mother the title of empress. Later, she converted to Christianity, as did her son because of the great influence she had on him.

In her last years of life, she made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. At that time Jerusalem was still called Aelia Capitolina, after the troops of Emperor Titus destroyed it. In place of the Holy Sepulchre and Golgotha, they had built a temple to the goddess Venus.

Helena had this temple destroyed and, in its place, built the great Church of the Holy Sepulchre, on the very site where she found the true Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Helena built many other churches, which were later destroyed by the Muslim occupation. The only two that remain standing, and which were the main ones, are the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

Many images of St. Helena represent her embracing the cross, the same cross at the foot of which Mary wept for the death of her Son. As Mary rejoiced at the Resurrection of her Son and the end of her suffering, Helena represents the end of the suffering of her son's disciples who, until her and her son Constantine made Christianity the state religion, had suffered Roman persecution and the martyrdom of being eaten by beasts in Roman arenas. Helena is the first Christian empress or queen; Mary is the Queen of queens, the Queen of heaven and earth.

Queen Mother
Salve rainha, Salve rainha, Senhora minha mãe de Jesus (Portuguese Marian Canticle)

Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae, vita dulcedo et spes nostra salve. Ad te clamamus exsules filii Hevae.
Ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes, in hac lacrimarum valle. Eja ergo advocata nostra, illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte. Et Jesum benedictum fructum ventris tui nobis post hoc exsilium ostende. O clemens, o pia, o dulcis Virgo Maria. (Hail Holy Queen in Latin)

In my student days in England, the Queen Mother of the late Queen Elizabeth II was still living. The Queen Mother was a person much loved by the people. She too was a queen, not because she reigned, but because her husband had been a king. She had the title of queen consort and, at that time, Queen Mother of Elizabeth II.

Mary is the Queen Mother because she is the mother of Christ who is the King of the Universe. The Mother of Christ, head of the Church which is his mystical body, is seated at the right of her Son as the queen adorned in gold of Ophir from Psalm 45:9.

Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae (Hail Queen, Mother of Mercy) – Mary is queen because she is the mother of Jesus, and our queen because she is our spiritual mother, a merciful mother like God the Father. A mother who because she is the flesh of our flesh, totally human, is a bridge to her Son. A "Pontifex maximus" to access her Son because she, like Empress Helena, knows how to access the heart of her Son and obtain from Him, for us, all the graces we need, just as she already did at Cana apparently with his initial opposition.

Queen of angels, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, confessors, all the saints, and of peace, as the litany says in her praise. Mary is above all the queen of our hearts where she reigns with her beloved Son.

The Queen Mother in Israel
…at your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir.  Psalms 45:9

In the biblical episode about King Solomon’s ascension to the throne, we notice the king's reverence for his mother Bathsheba, when she went to visit him as the 1st book of Kings, chapter 2, verse 19, says:

So Bathsheba went to King Solomon, to speak to him on behalf of Adonijah. The king rose to meet her, and bowed down to her; then he sat on his throne, and had a throne brought for the king’s mother, and she sat on his right. 1 Kings 2:19

This attitude of Solomon immediately refers to Psalm 45 quoted above. The Hebrews kept this tradition until the Babylonian exile, when they no longer had kings. From that time onward, one begins to expect the coming of David’s new son, the Messiah. According to tradition, Mary is also from the tribe of Judah, like Joseph, that is, she also belongs by birth to the royal family.

In fact, Angel Gabriel already greeted Mary with the salutation of ‘Hail’, a greeting used for the emperors of Rome. She was destined to be the queen of heaven and earth, so she was already queen of heaven and earth when she accepted to be the mother of God’s only begotten Son, the King of the Universe.

At that very moment, when she conceived the king, she became queen. On the other hand, by being conceived without original sin, Mary was already born predestined to be queen. Mary's immaculate conception makes the blue blood of humanity, created by God without original sin, to flow through her veins. By being conceived without original sin she was already conceived as queen.

‘You are the glory of Jerusalem… you are the great pride of our nation!... you have done great good to Israel, and God is well pleased with it. May the Almighty Lord bless you for ever!’  Judith 15:10

Conclusion – Mary is Queen of Heaven and Earth because she is the mother of Christ, King of the Universe. Her coronation is something akin to a Nobel Prize for her services rendered for the salvation of mankind.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

XI Mystery: The Dormition and Assumption of Mary

"My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generation will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name…’  Luke 1:47-55

Just as Mary initiated Jesus into this world and took him everywhere when he was small and launched him into public life before his time at the wedding in Cana, so now it is Jesus who takes her to Heaven in a glorious body like His own and introduces her to His world where He is Lord of the Universe.

The exaltation of the humble servant of Zion
All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.  Matthew 23:12 – The Assumption of Mary is the exaltation of the humble that the gospel speaks of, and in this case, it is of a humble servant of Zion whom the Lord had already set his eyes on before her birth, thus making her conception immaculate.

With humility she endured the vexation of finding herself pregnant without being able to explain the origin of her pregnancy; with humility she endured her son's sufferings when he began to encounter opposition from the leaders of Israel; with humility and abasement she endured his death; now, by merit she is exalted and ascends to Heaven to be always with the One she begot, the firstborn Son of God.

Assumption and Dormition are the same thing. The East celebrates it more as Dormition, while the West more as Assumption. In my homeland, it is celebrated more as Dormition. Since I was a child, my village has celebrated Dormition with a skiff or coffin where Our Lady is found lying inside. On August 15th, this skiff is placed where the coffin of the dead is usually placed for the funeral Mass. Thus, the Mass of the Assumption of Mary into Heaven is like a funeral Mass with the body present.

History of the dogma of the Assumption
By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.  Munificentissimus Deus, Pius XII November 1, 1950

The declaration of the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, body, and soul, into Heaven is quite recent. However, this and all other dogmas have a long history of almost 2000 years of theological reflection, popular piety, and spirituality, and in some cases, even heavenly confirmation, as with the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in the Lourdes apparitions.

The first allusion to Mary's passage from this world into Heaven took place in the 4th century; in 377, Epiphanius of Salamis stated that no one knew whether Mary had died. The oldest account is the so-called "The Book of Mary's Rest", of which there is only an Ethiopic Coptic translation, understood to be from the 4th century, although it may well have been from the 3rd century.

Our Lady’s Assumption into Heaven also appears in the book "De Transitu Virginis", a work attributed to St. Melito of Sardis in late 5th century. This book tells us that the Apostles came carried on white clouds, each from the city where he was at the time, to watch the Dormition of Mary. This story is continued centuries later, with an appendix according to which Thomas, as usual, did not attend this funeral of Our Lady, and when he arrived later, they had the tomb opened, which they found was empty.

Where this Assumption or Dormition took place is not known, some say in Jerusalem, others say in Ephesus where, according to tradition, Mary lived the last years of her life with St. John, in the well-known "House of Mary" that is still there today and is open to visitors.

With her Assumption into Heaven, Mary fulfills what St. Irenaeus said: God became man so that man might become God. This is how the dream of Eve, who wanted to be God, is fulfilled. Mary became like God by being a mother. Through obedience, being part of God's intimate family is open to all of us: "my mother and my brothers are those who hear my Word and put it into practice".

Assumption as union with God
"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you," St. Augustine.

We are in the world, but we are not of the world. This subtle difference in the meaning of the verb to be is expressed in Portuguese by two different verbs. We are (estar) in the world, but we are (ser) from Heaven, we are from God, from where we came and to where we will return. The best way to be in the world then is to live detached, and we only achieve this way of being in the world if we set our priorities right, that is, if God is the one we love the most, both in theory and in practice.

I will always remember my experience of crossing the fast-flowing rivers in Ethiopia: one should not look at the water that is flowing very fast, but rather look at the riverbank that is not moving. The first time I had to cross one of these great rivers, I started looking at the water and started becoming nauseous, dazed and in danger of being swept away by the current. Upon seeing this, the young men accompanying me shouted, "Abba, don't look at the water, but look at the riverbank."

This can be a metaphor for our life. Let our eyes be fixed not on what moves which is temporal and fleeting, but on what does not move, that is, on God who does not change and is eternal, so that we are not carried away by the current of the present, so that we will not let ourselves be inebriated by current pleasure nor despair by current pain. We will only cross the river of life well if we keep our eyes fixed on God in Heaven. If not, we will be swept away by the current, whatever the trend, fashion, power, wealth, the things of the world.

In search of his own identity, a salt doll traveled thousands of kilometers across a desert, until he finally reached the sea. Fascinated by the strange, moving mass, completely different from anything he had ever seen, he asked:
-Who are you?
 With a smile, the sea replied:
-I am the sea.
-But what is the sea? asked the doll.
-Come, touch me and you will find out.
The salt doll put his foot in the water and immediately it disappeared.
-What did you do? he asked, startled.
-To know me, you must give yourself to me, replied to the sea.
Then the salt doll went deeper into the sea and, before a wave completely covered him, he said with a sigh:
-I finally know who I am. Tony De Mello

If we want to get to know God already here in this life, we must get involved. We cannot know God without getting involved. It cannot be a cold knowledge in which we do not get ourselves involved, as if we were doing that oxygen experiment with algae and sun where we with our knowledge are only observing and recording.

In this case, we are not directly involved, but with God, if we are to know Him, we must love Him. The same thing happens when we begin to know a person who is a stranger to us: little by little we begin to like that person not least because knowledge between people and about people is affective; and so, it is with God. Only affective knowledge is effective, that is, it is real and has effect.

Assumption as Levitation
An interesting experience to have in New York, if we visit the NASA museum, is the experience of weightlessness: it is like flying, over there even French fries and water droplets can fly. Flying has always been the dream of every human being; in fact, it seems to be a frequent recurring dream of many of us. I personally dream often that I am flying.

The Assumption is a spiritual experience that is felt by those who detach themselves from the things and affections of this world. The saints levitated because their ties to this earth were few. Saint Teresa of Avila said, "I live without living in me, and I expect a life so high, that I die because I do not die..." Assumption is like levitation, when we let go of what binds us to this world, the affections for temporal goods and even for people.

The mystery of the Incarnation and the emancipation of women
If a particular rat poison is potent, that is, if its effect, the death of the rat is too close to the cause, that is, the ingestion of the poison, then other rats easily associate the death of a mate with the poison and the poison is never touched again. Hence the best poison for mice is an anticoagulant, death only happens if the mouse is wounded in an accident or fights another mate; in this way, the cause is far from the effect so the mouse cannot make the association.  

In the early days of humanity, when our intelligence did not surpass that of a mouse today, men still did not know where babies came from, because the effect, that is, birth was separated from the cause, that is, the sexual act, for too long, nine months.

At this time the woman, and only she, was the future and hope of the human species, she brought forth new beings into the world. As the result, the first deity to be worshipped was a goddess: the goddess of earth and female fertility. Earth is still today a feminine term in almost all languages. It was also the woman who invented agriculture. Because the woman was regarded as the origin of life, god was conceived in feminine form at that time.

When the connection between coitus and the birth of a baby was established, the woman gradually lost all social prestige. To the principle of the female deity was added the male consort. Over time, the male consort expelled the goddess from heaven, and he was left to rule alone. The woman is now only the ground that the man works on and dominates, God sends the rain like the man sows the semen, the whole new being is contained in the man’s semen, the woman is only the receptacle.

In this new concept of God, Yahweh is the king and the lord, and the kings at that time did not have a queen, but a harem of concubines. The woman was then treated like the earth in agriculture, "Be fruitful and multiply, rule the earth...” and the woman disappeared from the social scene and from the heaven inhabited by a king, almighty and loner God. The woman was the last to be created and the first to sin.

Christianity is an emancipating factor for women. Let us see, in non-Christian societies women are debased and mistreated. Even today, in Africa, the woman is the one who works, the man does nothing; the woman is sold, forced to marry at the age of 15 to middle-aged men. In Japan, she serves as a dish in restaurants, even today. In Asia, it is in the Philippines that women are most emancipated. Muslims circumcise the woman so that she never has sexual pleasure.

The Annunciation was the beginning of this emancipation of women. God, to come into the world, needed a woman, not a man. And it was not only the womb that He used; it was also the ovum. With Mary's life, the woman returned to Heaven in Assumption, as the mother of God’s only begotten Son.

No man was born without original sin, only her; God did not need the man's sperm, but the woman's egg. Mary points to the feminine face of God, just as Jesus of Nazareth, her Son, points to the masculine face of God.

Conclusion – The Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven is the logical outcome of Mary’s life on earth. Conceived without original sin, she gave birth to the author of life, becoming the mother of God. Mary brings Jesus into the world, and Jesus brings his mother into Heaven.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

X Mystery: Mary, Mother of the Church at Pentecost

When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James, son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.  Acts 1:13-14

The Church or the Kingdom of God?
"Jesus announced the coming of the Kingdom of God, but what came was the Church." -- Alfred Loisy (1857-1940)

There is a discontinuity between Jesus of Nazareth and the Church; in fact, whereas the word "Ekklesia" appears only twice in the gospels, and only in the Gospel of St. Matthew, (16:18) and (18:1), in two very debatable texts, the expression Kingdom of God, or Kingdom of Heaven as Matthew prefers, appears 127 times.

There is, therefore, a striking contrast in the New Testament between the word CHURCH, which appears 112 times and almost only in the Acts of the Apostles and the Letters, and the word KINGDOM which appears 162 times, and of these, only 35 times in the book of Acts and in the Letters while the remaining 127 times are found in the gospels. This demonstrates how important the Kingdom of God was for Jesus and how of little importance this same Kingdom was for the nascent Church founded by Christ.

The Church, as the mystical body of Christ, can have no other purpose than to continue the work of Christ. Therefore, the purpose of its existence is not to implant itself in every corner of this earth, but to take the Good News of the Kingdom to every corner of the earth.

The main objective is not to produce more and more Christians, to increase the number of its members, but rather to unite all men and women of good will, whether they are from other religions, or atheists or agnostics, so that together they work towards the building of a better world, a more just and fraternal society, where justice, peace, harmony and love reign among all peoples. If this had been the true objective of the Church from the very beginning, as it was of its founder, there would have been no fundamentalism such as the Inquisition, nor holy wars such as the ones driven by the Crusades.

The Church, the leaven of the Kingdom of God
The Church is the way that Christ prepared to be with us in the here and now, in all the "here(s)" and "now(s)" of human history. Christ could have only one human life, but his Word is eternal for all times and all cultures; He himself was not only the Way, the Truth and the Life for the people of his time, but also for the whole human race till the end of time; for this to be so, he had to leave someone to continue his work.

It makes no sense for the eternal Word of God to become incarnate, that is, the only begotten son of God to acquire human nature, the creator to become a creature, just to save those who lived during his time on earth.

It is true that the word Church, as we have said, appears only twice or even just once in all the gospels, but the fact that Jesus chose, from the very beginning, his own collaborators for the work of the Kingdom shows that Jesus wanted to leave a structure that could and would continue his work. Already in his lifetime, Jesus sent his disciples to cities and towns where He himself thought to go, (Luke 10:1), and then sent them out into the whole world (Mark 16:15-18).

The proof that these disciples of his would be his representatives on earth is the fact that he equipped them with the same powers and faculties that he had, (Matthew 21:21; John 14:12). In this last text from John, Jesus also tells the reasons why he passes all his powers and faculties to his disciples: "because I going to the Father".

Furthermore, although he was leaving, he also assured his disciples that he would be with them until the end of time (Matthew 28:20). In fact, when Saul was persecuting Christians, Jesus did not ask him "why do you persecute my disciples?", but rather, "why do you persecute me?" (Acts 9:4). Finally, in his priestly prayer, Jesus prays not only for his disciples, but also for those who would believe in his testimony (John 17:20).

The Church does not exist for itself nor should it preach itself, because its Master and founder did not preach himself: the Church exists for the Mission, that is, to continue the work of its founder and the purpose of the Mission which is the Kingdom. The Church is what we are, it is our identity, the Kingdom is our mission, what we do. The Church is the yeast that leavens the world until the world becomes the Kingdom of God.

Mary and the Kingdom of God
He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.  Luke 1:51-53

Almost all the images of Mary, represented both in statues and paintings, show a woman reserved in words and actions, humble and even submissive, serene, peaceful and sad... they do not reflect this facet of Mary, the Mary of the Magnificat, or at least the part of the Magnificat that I quoted above.

Whenever I read, recite or meditate on this part of the Magnificat, the image of Mary that comes to mind is that of the bare-chested woman waving the flag of the republic in her hand, at the command post, leading the people in the French Revolution. This image does more justice to the content of the prayer of the Magnificat.

It does not seem plausible that the woman in the images representing Mary could have said that God is going to overthrow the powerful from their thrones, and that he will take from the rich and give to the poor. But whoever said this seems to be truly the mother of the one who did just that: Jesus of Nazareth. "De tal palo tal astilla" says a Castilian proverb, "Offspring of fish knows how to swim" says its Portuguese counterpart, or in English “Like father like son” which in this case is more appropriate to say “Like mother like son”. Mary seems to announce in these sentences the kingdom that was to come with her son; a kingdom of Justice and Peace.

Ecclesiae Mater
"Mother of the Church, that is to say of all Christian people, the faithful as well as the pastors, who call her the most loving Mother" and established that "the Mother of God should be further honoured and invoked by the entire Christian people by this tenderest of titles".  Paul VI on 21 November 1964 at the end of the Second Vatican Council

Mary is the mother of the Church because she is the mother of each and every one of her son's disciples (John 19:25-27). Since each of her son's disciples is "ipso facto" a member of the Church as well, therefore Mary is the mother of the Church.

Mary is the mother of the Church because she is the mother of its founder, because as a disciple of her son, she followed in his footsteps along with other women, and did not abandon the company of his disciples after the death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven of her son.

Christ is the head of his mystical body which is the Church; and the birth of the Head is also the birth of the Body, which indicates that Mary is, at the same time, the mother of Christ, the Son of God, and the mother of all the members of his mystical Body, that is, the Church. Mary's divine motherhood did not end with the birth of Jesus; she was throughout her life on earth, and now in Heaven, intimately united to the redemptive work of her son.

Mary is the mother of the Church because as she assisted in the birth of her son, she also assisted in the birth of the Church, for she, like the other female disciples of Jesus, was with her son's male disciples on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended upon them in the form of tongues of fire.

More than mother of the Church, she is "Mater ed Magistral" ("Mother and Teacher", the title of John XXIII’s encyclical) because she was already a teacher in the things of the Holy Spirit, she had already conceived by the work and grace of the third person of the Holy Trinity, so she more than anyone else could instruct the apostles on how to prepare themselves to receive Him. More than mother, she was a catechist, as she prepared the apostles to receive Confirmation. We can say that she was the Godmother at the Confirmation of each of her son's disciples.

Conclusion: Mary is the mother of the Church because she is the mother of the one who founded it, and by the will of the son expressed from the top of the cross, she is the mother of each of his disciples, members of the Church, who together form the mystical body of Christ. If Mary is the mother of Christ, the head of the mystical body that is the Church, then she is also the mother of the body.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

 

IX Mystery: At the Foot of the Cross of Her Son, Mary Becomes our Mother

Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.  John 19:25-27

Solidarity despite the pain
There is nothing that makes you more aware of yourself, more self-conscious, than pain. Provoking pain is really one of the best ways to call yourself to attention, even if it is brought on by biting your own lip or digging a fingernail into a nailbed.

Jesus suffered in his body from exhaustion on his way to the cross, from the lack of food and sleep, from the feeling of asphyxiation caused by being nailed to a cross, from the loss of much blood caused by the scourging and the crown of thorns driven into his head, and from the nails that were hammered into his wrists and ankles.

Jesus suffered in his heart because he had been handed over to the high priests and the Romans by one of his own, one who ate, slept and accompanied him everywhere; he suffered because the rest of the disciples had abandoned him, he suffered because the ungrateful people, the same people who had benefited from his miracles and who had previously acclaimed him as ‘Hosanna, the Son of David!’, are now shouting, "Crucify Him!", putting pressure on Pilate to do their will.

He suffered in his soul because God His Father who during his life was so close to Him and to whom he often turned, with whom he communicated before the most important moments and miracles, this omnipresent Father was now distant or Jesus felt this way when he said, "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34).

Even though he was suffering this triple forms of pain – in his body, heart, and soul – Jesus still thought more of others than of Himself. Pain absorbs us, makes us focus on ourselves, and we easily forget about others. Think about the times when we suffered a strong pain, like a toothache: it seems that everything and everyone disappears around us, only we exist, only we matter.

Jesus, despite his personal suffering, was able to empathize with his poor mother who, like the widow of Nain, was going to be left alone in the world. And even on the cross without much he could do, he entrusted her to his beloved disciple. He who had already given us everything, who had given himself, now gives us his beloved mother as an inheritance. We inherit so many things from Jesus, even his own mother.

Before Jesus, we were only creatures made in the image and likeness of God; with Jesus we are adopted by God as His children, and as Jesus entrusted his mother to the beloved disciple, to the extent that we too are disciples of Jesus, we are adopted by Mary his mother as her children as well.

The only son of his mother who was already a widow
As we contemplate Mary at the foot of her son's cross, we cannot fail to recall the episode of the widow of Nain who was about to bury her only son, being already a widow and thus alone in the world. This suffering was also destined for Mary and prophesied by Simeon.

"In hunting, love and war, for one pleasure comes one hundred sorrows", or "Those whose objective is to love, will meet suffering on the way ". There is no love without suffering, and Mary's love for God's plan and the only begotten Son of God, also her son, brought her more pain than pleasure, more suffering than joy. And this ultimate suffering was the worst of all...

"I'm not going to bury my son, my son is going to bury me," said a father who hijacked a hospital operating room and forced the doctor to operate on his son because he did not have the money for the lifesaving surgery. There can be no greater psychological pain than to watch one’s child suffer and die, while unable to do anything...

In the natural order of events, first the parents die, then the children. Therefore, to watch a child die goes against the natural order of things disabling the lives of the parents, as they leave this world without being able to leave their inheritance to their child, be it genetic or material.

Mary, our mother in heaven
In Heaven, in Heaven, in Heaven, /One day I will see her, (Mary)/
O pure Virgin, thy tenderness /Comes to soothe my pain; /Day and night shall I sing/ Of the beauty of Mary!

Before the apparitions of Fatima, little Lucia who never missed the rosary with her family or in the church, had as her favourite Marian canticle what is cited above. "To heaven, there shall I see her " referring to Mary; little did she know that she was going to see her here on earth, because to see her in heaven she would still have to wait almost one hundred years.

With my mother I will be /in holy glory one day/Together with the Virgin Mary /in heaven I will triumph.
In heaven, in heaven, with my mother I will be /In heaven, in heaven, with my mother I will be.

This other canticle also shows the affection the Portuguese people have for Mary. The songs before and after the apparitions of Fatima demonstrate how much the Portuguese people love their heavenly Mother.

The second part of the Hail Mary prayer lacks this detail, this affirmation that she is our mother. It should be like this: Holy Mary mother of God and our mother, pray for us, your sinful children, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.

Like Abraham was to the people of Sodom and Moses to God's people, Mary was already our intercessor. Now with much more reason, she intercedes for us because in interceding for us, she is interceding for her children. As Abraham is our father in faith, Mary is our mother in faith; it was her faith, her "fiat", that brought salvation to all of us.

Mary, the feminine face of God
Some Jewish woman once asked another Jewish woman, that happened to be a university professor, who was in her opinion the most famous Jewish woman. And they did not like to hear from the lips of this Jewish professor by ethnicity and religion that, whether they liked it or not, Mary is certainly the most famous Jewess in the world, and I would even say of all humanity, because she is the mother of the incarnate Word, of the only begotten Son of God.

Within our vision of God which will always be somewhat anthropomorphic, if Jesus represents the masculine face of God, then Mary represents the feminine face of God. Our love for Mary reminds us of the times of old, when humanity, still in a primitive state of evolution, understood that God was a mother.

To do justice to those times, Pope John Paul I said that God, more than a Father, is a Mother. In Rembrandt's painting of the prodigal son, we see in fact that the father of the prodigal son has one feminine hand, the one over his son's heart, and the other a masculine hand.

Eve, our progenitor, Mary, our mother
Eve was not our mother, but our progenitor: she only gave birth to us, but she did not educate and raise us. The mother who educates, raises and feeds is called in Ethiopia "Injera enat", that is, the "bread mother" which often does not coincide with the one who gave birth to the child.

During my novitiate, I had as a colleague and student of theology, a young man who called his aunt his mother and his mother his aunt. The one who had given birth to him, he called his aunt, and the one who had raised him as a mother and who was biologically his aunt, he called his mother.

They were two sisters: one had my colleague by accident, but later met the man of her life, who did not accept her son, so her sister, who was not thinking of ever getting married, stayed with him so that the sister who gave birth would be free to start a new life with her fiance.

My colleague had no filial feelings toward his biological mother whom he called aunt, and yet it was she who had given birth to him; he had filial feelings only for the one who had raised him with much love, educated and guided him through life, dedicating herself exclusively to him, because she had never wanted to get married. And yet, at a biological level, she was only his aunt.

In human beings, biology counts for little. We call her Mother Teresa of Calcutta and I suppose no one would dare to deny her the title of mother. However, as we all know, she was never a mother biologically, although she behaved as such to many orphaned children and even adults, who saw in her the mother they never had.
 
The devotion of the Christian people, at least of the Catholics and the Orthodox, to Mary is part of the closeness we have with our own mother on earth. She is closer to us than our father, and often, we make her the intermediary between us and him, because we share more confidence with our mother than with our father.

She is always by our side and accompanies us more than our father. This experience makes the Christian people have a special devotion to Mary and project on her the same experience, the same kind of relationship that they have or had with their mother.

Mary is our mother because, like every mother, she is attentive to the needs of her children, as she was at the wedding in Cana, and she is still visiting us today in Guadalupe, Lourdes, and Fatima. Mary is our mother because she educates us with the gospel of her Son when she tells us, “Do whatever he tells you". Eve was our progenitor; Mary is our mother in heaven who accompanies us in our earthly life until we are united with her in Heaven.

The picture illustrating this text depicts St. Bernard, a great lover of Marian devotion, receiving the maternal milk of the Virgin Mary. An image that shocks our today’s mentality, but which was very much in line with the medieval Marian piety that exalted the breasts of our heavenly mother as that woman in Luke’s Gospel exalted them.

Also known as originated from Saint Bernard is the Marian prayer called the "Memorare" which exalts Mary as mother and, as such, an intercessor for us in Heaven:

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary,
that never was it known that  
anyone who fled to your protection,
implored your help, or sought your intercession,
was left unaided.

Inspired with this confidence,
I fly to thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother.
To you do I come.
Before you do I stand,
Sinful and sorrowful.
O Mother of the Word Incarnate,
Despise not my petitions,
But in your mercy hear and answer me. Amen.

Conclusion: Eve is our progenitor, Mary is our Mother, for it is she who educates us, giving birth to the Word of God in human form, the role model of humanity: Jesus of Nazareth.

Fr Jorge Amaro, IMC