Christmas Is a Seed of Hope

Christmas is a Seed of Hope because God enters into our history in order to transform and recreate it in a new direction. This is best understood from the victims, the poor, the landless and the homeless. You’re called up on to make a life project of love and common cause with the least; the whole of your life should be compassionate and merciful.

In pondering the mystery of Jesus’ Christmas, this year I was struck by the phrase of the evangelist Luke who says that Mary put the baby Jesus “in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn”. The reason for this birth, which is very squalid humanly speaking, is plausible, Nazareth’s family was poor and could not afford the inn! I then asked myself, if Jesus were to be born today, in our opulent society, where would he be forced to be born? Since there are fewer stables and, in any case, not as poor as that of Bethlehem, Jesus would probably be born today in the places frequented by the poor and the homeless: makeshift places, unhealthy, maybe abusive... where human beings should not live but animals in Bethlehem. Who could consider a child born in such conditions? Who could recognize in him the Messiah, the Son of God? I leave the answer to you.

But it is not of the physical place where Jesus could be born today that I want to talk to you but of the spiritual one which is our daily life. Today, unfortunately many people exclude Jesus from their horizon, there is no place for him! His presence is not welcome because, just as the poor annoy the rich, so the Son of God annoys those who care only about the bank account, those who trample on the rights of the poor, those who do not look in anyone’s face and deny their “inn” to those who cannot pay, those who think only of themselves or at most of those close to them. 

How many people even today as in the days of Jesus find the doors of our 'inns closed! In our society the presence of Jesus, in the poor, is no longer welcome because there is less and less room for the values that He represents: faith, gratuitousness, honesty, justice, solidarity, humility, sobriety, respect for the different...  for creation! Everything is more monetized than ever, even our time, so as to become slaves, moved as we are by a frenzy that corrodes us from within and leaves no room for inferiority, reflection, enjoyment of the present moment, in a healthy break from daily toils to give time, for example, to meaningful and gratuitous relationships, to commitment to the common good, etc. And then we complain that people are distrustful, afraid, depressed, that families break up, that our compound is insecure, that our society and our world are so divided. 

The reason is obvious, though we might be church goers in our real life often we put God aside! God is the opposite of us and that is why, in Jesus, he wanted to be born poor, humble, merciful, just, true, able to give his life out of love. This is the lesson he wished to give us starting from the birth of his son Jesus.

So, if we want to live a different, authentic Christmas we should try to be less superficial, soberer, more open to those who suffer or are in need, more capable of true relationships and not only virtual, more just and capable of building communion and not division. 

Let us simply try to follow more consistently that Christ of which great majority of us bear the name. Then He, who in Bethlehem found a place only in a stable could finally be born in the “inn” of our life and make our CHRISTMAS a really MERRY one!!!

I wish you and all your family members a Christmas full of blessing and a new year 2023 full of initiatives that motivates you to collaborate with the plan that God carries through you.

The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully

Ref. Joan Chittister, The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully, New York: Blue Bridge, 2008, pg. 179-183.

Humility must be cultivated if we hope to grow in love and compassion as we age:  If we learn anything at all as time goes by and the changing seasons become fewer and fewer, it is that there are some things in life that cannot be fixed. It is more than possible that we will go to our graves with a great deal of personal concerns, of life agendas, left unresolved etc. So has life been wasted? Has it all been for nothing?

Only if we mistake the meaning of the last period of life. This time of life is not meant to solidify us in our inadequacies. It is meant to free us to mature even more. This is the period of life when we must begin to look inside our own hearts and souls rather than outside ourselves for the answers to our problems, for the fixing of the problems. This is the time for facing ourselves, for bringing ourselves into the light. We are invited to consider aging as an opportunity to grow into our true and larger selves.

Now is the time to ask ourselves what kind of person we have been becoming all these years. And do we like that person? Did we become more honest, more decent, more caring, more merciful as we went along because of all these things? And if not, what must we be doing about it now?

Can we begin to see ourselves as only part of the universe, just a fragment of it, not its center? Can we give ourselves to accepting the heat and the rain, the pain and the limitations, the inconveniences and discomforts of life, without setting out to passively punish the rest of the human race for the daily exigencies that come with being human?

Can we smile at what we have not smiled at for years? Can we give ourselves away to those who need us? Can we speak our truth without needing to be right and accept the vagaries of life now without needing the entire rest of the world to swaddle us beyond any human justification for expecting it? Can we talk to people decently and allow them to talk to us?

Now, this period, this aging process, is the last time we’re given to be more than all the small things we have allowed ourselves to be over the years. But first, we must face what the smallness is, and rejoice in the time we have left to turn sweet instead of more sour than ever.

A burden of these years is the danger of giving in to our most selfish selves. A blessing of these years is the opportunity to face what it is in us that has been enslaving us, and to let our spirit fly free of whatever has been tying it to the Earth all these years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hunger A challenge for all due to lack of Solidarity

Hunger is defined as that need or desire to eat and provide the necessary nutrients to the body for its development.  Those who do not eat well can fall into a situation of malnutrition, famine or chronic hunger.

The Declaration on Social Progress and Development specified, in 1969, that it is necessary to “eliminate hunger and malnutrition and guarantee the right to adequate nutrition”. Likewise, the Universal Declaration for the definitive elimination of hunger and malnutrition, approved in 1974, says that everyone has the inalienable right to be free from hunger and malnutrition in order to fully develop and preserve their physical and mental faculties.

In 1992, the World Declaration on Nutrition also recognized that "access to nutritionally adequate and healthy food is a universal right". These are very clear statements. Public conscience has spoken unambiguously. However, millions of people are still marked by the ravages of hunger and malnutrition or by the consequences of food insecurity. Is the cause of the lack of food? Absolutely not. It is generally recognized that the earth's resources, considered in their totality, can feed all its inhabitants. 

The challenge facing all of humanity is, of course, of an economic and technical nature, but above all of an ethical, spiritual and political nature. It is a question of lived solidarity, authentic development and material progress.

The hunger challenge, the planet could provide everyone with the food ration they need. To respond to the challenge of hunger, it is first necessary to address its many aspects and its true causes, but the realities of hunger and malnutrition are not all precisely known. 

A scandal that has lasted too long: hunger destroys life

Hunger should not be confused with malnutrition. Hunger is a threat, not only to people's lives, but also to their dignity. A serious and prolonged lack of food causes the deterioration of the organism, apathy, loss of social sense, indifference and sometimes even cruelty towards the weakest, children and the elderly in particular. Entire groups are condemned to die in degradation. This tragedy, unfortunately, is repeated in the course of history; however, there is awareness, more than in other times, that hunger constitutes a scandal.

Main victims: the most vulnerable populations

The poor are the first victims of malnutrition and hunger in the world. Being poor almost always means being more easily attacked by the many dangers that compromise survival and having a lower resistance to physical illness. This phenomenon has worsened and threatens a growing number of people in most countries. In the midst of a poor population, the first victims are always the most fragile individuals: children, pregnant or nursing women, the sick and the elderly. Other human groups at great risk of nutritional deficiency should also be noted: refugees; those who have been displaced in their own countries; victims of political events.

Recognizable causes

Climatic factors and cataclysms of all kinds, as important as they are, are far from being the only causes of hunger and malnutrition. To properly understand the problem of hunger, it is convenient to consider the whole set of causes, temporary or lasting, as well as their interrelation. The main ones, grouping them according to the usual categories: economic, socio-cultural and political.

Root cause, Hunger is born, first of all, from poverty. People's food security essentially depends on their purchasing power and not on the physical availability of food. In spite of everything, the history of the 21st century teaches that the scarcity of economic resources is not fatal. 

Finally, the fight against hunger requires a commitment to reality, from different fronts:

The Person. We are not alone in our inner universe, we are free with others or not at all. The subject is the I - you - community, and together we are one. Feeling united with other human beings is the solidarity of the person: unity in diversity. The motto would be: hope in yourself, with a communal hope that begins with man and ends with God.

The family. The family is the first school of solidarity; by active or passive, to be supportive is learned or not, in family. Austerity or extravagance are also discovered in childhood. Eating habits entail habits of great social importance. And while the family is the basic unit of survival, sometimes it is the primary unit of consumption.

The school. The educational environment is essential to educate in solidarity and in the fight against hunger. Here there is a silent violence that begins with indifference. Many educators, cloistered in the enlightened culture of modern individualism (individual), lack horizons of hope in their educational ideals, be they secular or religious. Therefore, an awareness of solidarity that goes from nursery school to the university world is urgently needed.

 

Getting Older Is Wonderful

 

The instinct of conservation and the lack of faith, make us have horror of irremediable aging. We have made youth a myth. "Youth, divine treasure, said the poet, and losing youth we consider a drama.

It is sad to see mature and post-mature people, try to defend themselves from baldness, gray hair, wrinkles ... They do not, of course, manage to deceive anyone, least of all stop time.

All the plastic surgery operations they undergo, neither preserve the youthful beauty, nor subtract a single day from their advanced age. All these vein attempts to drink in the fountain of eternal youth only show that we have lost the meaning of life and death.

Age not only makes us put temporal things in their proper measure (something that young people have not yet learned) but they bring us closer and closer to God, our ultimate end. The elders have an advantage over the boys. They are already reaching their full realization; they are reaching the goal.

The great St. Paul writes to us: "That is why we are not discouraged. On the contrary, while our exterior is being destroyed, our inner man is renewed day by day. The light and soon-passing trial prepares us for eternity a wealth of glory so great that it cannot be compared. We, then, do not look at what is seen, but at the invisible, since the visible things last a moment and the invisible things are forever." (2 Cor.4,16-18)

And it is not that we meekly resign ourselves to the inevitable. It is on the contrary the joyful awareness that we are being called by God.Gray hair and wrinkles are the signs of this joyful calling. And diseases and ailments tell us the same thing: the goal is already near. Soon you will see God.

The great Saint Ignatius of Antioch, an old man on his way to martyrdom, joyfully advances to the encounter with God and writes to the Romans: "My love is crucified and the fire of earthly desires is no longer left in me; I only feel within myself the voice of a living water that speaks to me and says to me, 'Come to the Father. I no longer find delight in the material food or pleasures of this world."

How wonderful to come to understand that death is the beginning of true life and that all this has been nothing but an essay, a path, an invitation!

What Is Intimacy?

Intimacy could be described as our capacity for closeness and tenderness toward things. It is often revealed in moments of risky self-disclosure. Intimacy lets itself out and lets the other in. It makes all love possible, and yet it also reveals our utter incapacity to love back as the other deserves. None of us can go there without letting down our walls, manifesting our deeper self to another, and allowing the flow to happen.

True human intimacy or divine intimacy is somewhat rare and very hard for all of us, but particularly for men and for all who deem themselves important people, that is, those who are trained to protect their boundaries, to take the offensive, and to avoid all signs of weakness or neediness.

Many of us are afraid of intimacy, of baring our deepest identity to another human or even to God. Yet people who risk intimacy are invariably happier and much more real people. They feel like they have lots of “handles” that allow others to hold onto them and that allow them to hold onto themselves. People who avoid such intimacy are imprisoned in a small and circumscribed world. Soulful intimacy is a gateway into the sacred realm of human and divine love.

We long to love from the fullness of our undefended hearts and we long to be loved unconditionally and without reservation. . .. The dual yearning of the human heart finds its satisfaction in the struggle to know ourselves at our most vulnerable levels. The deeper we know ourselves, the deeper is our capacity to know others intimately. . .. It is our deep hunger for this level of loving that moves us beyond our resistance, fear, and shortcomings to see what is special and unique about us. It allows us to see the profound core of another and to have that core be fully seen in ourselves.

Conclusion

We all desire true and intimate love. This longing seems to be hardwired into our beings. We have to want very strongly to love and to be loved or we will never go to this strange place, and we will never find our True Selves. So, God obliges and creates us in just that way, with a bottomless and endless need to be loved and to love.

 

 

HAPPY FRIENDSHIP DAY 14TH FEBRUARY, 2022

 

Friends are made

Being friends is a state of human enrichment.

The life of friendship is structured by words, silences and attitudes.

Charity does not exclude anyone, not even enemies. However, the fact of loving those who are further away does not exclude loving those who are closer with more intensity. A fundamental principle is that charity is ordered, that is to say, that the love towards those closest to us is greater. Among those who are closest are, after relatives, friends. Friendship is such an important phenomenon that happiness cannot be found without a friend. Moreover, among the deepest pains that can be found in life is the betrayal of a friend. Aristotle affirms that friendship is "one of the most indispensable requirements of life" Hence the need to learn to be friends.

What Is Friendship?

Friendship is the relationship between two or more people that produces happiness, company, help. Friendship leads to overcoming loneliness, because if there is an authentic friendship there is a communication of intimacies. Between friends you can say things frankly, even unpleasant things, that you would never hear from a sycophant or a stranger. In friendship there is a mutual understanding that allows you to open your heart with confidence.

True friendship does not only attend to the advantages that one finds, but also seeks to provide joy to friends. Leibnitz said that "to love is to enjoy the happiness of the other"

Friendship, as selfless love, produces deep peace and, furthermore, friends are enriched by the personality of others. The atmosphere of trust that is created in friendship allows you to speak and be heard, fear disappears even if there is mutual demand. Before friends it is possible to give the best of oneself, which a stranger or an indifferent would not value.

Friendship is forged slowly. At first it emerges as a spontaneous sympathy based on light and changing data: a greeting, a friendly conversation. This first sympathy is very superficial and can change. The next step lies in the will: the friend is chosen or loved. They will choose according to its own virtues and its scale of values. Mutual acceptance will come later, and thus begins the atmosphere of friendship. This friendly environment must be taken care of so that it is not lost. Friendship is the greatest of riches. Shakespeare said: "in my friends are my riches"

Friendship, Human Phenomenon

Friendship is a natural phenomenon typical of the social nature of man, who finds in other similar a relationship of affinity, sympathy, which leads him to join them by affection.

Gentiles and sinners loved only their friends. The study of friendship in Antiquity can help us to know the difference and superiority of Christian friendship.

Friendship In Classical Antiquity

a) Pythagoras. Of the ancients, the one who dealt most with the theme of friendship was Pythagoras. He even went so far as to found some fraternities or associations in which friendship was sought to be lived in the most perfect way. These communities disappeared perhaps because they became a separate group, separated from the others, before whom they showed themselves with indifference and a certain air of superiority.

b) Socrates. Plato describes in his Dialogues Socrates' thinking about friendship: it is based on love and regulated by virtue. Friendship arises from the need for something that is not possessed and is needed. Later there will be a rapport between friends.

c) Aristotle. He masterfully deals with this theme in the Nicomachean Ethics. The core of his thought is that friendship is an activity by which two or more associate to achieve happiness. "It is necessary to share the existence of the friend, something that is achieved by coexistence and by talking and penetrating each other's thoughts" The union to which friendship tends leads to the consideration of the other as another self. For Aristotle, friendship is marked by the end to which it is directed. Similarity or rapport is not enough for friendship to be good, it has to seek good ends, only then is it true and grows. Bad friendship is rather complicity. Friendship, in Aristotle, is an emulation in virtue. The optimal way to achieve happiness is friendship.

d) Cicero. More than a treatise, he wrote an essay on friendship. As a thinker he says that the friend is "another me" and "half of our being" Friendship is only achieved when there is virtue: sincerity, perseverance, etc. That is why it is necessary to exclude "the greatest plague of friendship, which is flattery, flattery and servility because, give it whatever name you want, it must be exposed as the vice of light and false men who say everything to please and nothing to love of truth"

This same moralizing attitude continued during the Roman Empire, albeit with some skepticism.

In The Old Testament

In the Old Testament, the same atmosphere in which the Greco-Latin thinkers arrived is breathed, but with a strong religious component that strengthens and elevates friendship. On the one hand, friendship requires virtues: "a man who is kind in dealings will be more esteemed than his brother" (Prov. 18, 24), and he will add: "the good advice of a friend is sweetness to the soul" (Prov. 27, 9)

Wisdom books contain many sayings about friendship. The Ecclesiastic distinguishes the true from the false friend; about the good friend he says:

"A faithful friend is a powerful protector, whoever finds him finds a treasure. Nothing is worth as much as a faithful friend, its price is incalculable. A faithful friend is a healthy remedy: those who fear the Lord will find it. Whoever fears the Lord is faithful to friendship, and as faithful he is, so will his friend be" (Eclo. 6, 14-17)

The fundamental reason for friendship places it above all in the love of God above all other human considerations. That is why Leviticus will say: "Love your friend as yourself" (Lev. 19, 18) Our Lord Jesus Christ refers to this precept, showing that every man has the right to be a friend, overcoming the distinctions of race, country, social level, and so on.

Finally, friendship is not only something necessary, but something beautiful. Indeed, we praise those who love their friends, and having many friends is considered one of the best things, and we even identify in our opinion good men and friends. (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, lib, VIII.)

May this day 14^TH February 2022, help us to be true friends to each other.

https://nsingarobert.blogspot.com

nsingarobert4@gmail.com

Robert., NSINGA

Peace According to Christian Existence

 Peace as an empirical phenomenon

Looking at peace from what is apparently visible, it would be a state of human relations at the social level, without war and without violence. And from the plane of the entirely personal and private one can speak of a state of serenity undisturbed by human passions or by pursuit of interests.

But peace at a macro level, although more concrete, is public peace understood as concord and harmony between the citizens of the same community or the same State. But curiously, this public peace would not necessarily arise from a private or personal peace, as deduced from social analysis, but would arise as a result of a "collective feeling", or common meaning by virtue of which citizens accept a civil obedience concretized in laws and a repression of the violence that an individual or many exercise against others. In this case, despite the importance that this "collective feeling" may have, it is not the reality of peace in itself, but a manifestation of it and that only becomes effective, specifically, by subjecting it to acceptance. of repressive regulations by citizens.

Up to this point, peace would seem to be only an effect produced by the creativity of human beings, but nevertheless, humanity is aware that this human product is one of the greatest achievements it can achieve, as stated throughout history.

Peace as an exclusive gift of God

It must be stated in general that peace, as it appears in the Bible, is the supreme state of human existence that lives in harmony with nature, with its brothers, with itself and with God. It is not the product of legal and political existential security, nor is it a result of the harmonious relationship between the individual and society; rather these earthly realities are founded on peace itself and therefore this is a previous reality that has always existed in man himself. It is the gift of God in him.

But what do we mean by the gift of God? Peace is not simply a thing or an object other than God himself, nor is it an action exercised by him other than himself. This means that if peace is God himself giving himself to man in his own self, it is a divine existential already given in man himself, which not only guides but dynamizes the harmony of man with his brothers, with the world, with himself, Himself and with God, to the extent that each human being becomes aware of that reality, opens himself to it without resisting, and creatively becomes an agent of that same harmony with his brothers.

The search for peace

In the common language of our people and in a simplistic vision, peace would be a commitment that would come to us from the parties that generate violence or the product of an agreement between them, as a generosity of the agents of violence. Therefore, the search for peace could be an interested pressure from all citizens based on that commitment in order to be able to live in peace and be allowed to enjoy the accumulation of their assets. On the other hand, such an arrangement would be nothing more than an opportunity seized on the basis of the continuous threat and the actions of unlimited barbarism to obtain the greatest possible amount of all kinds of interests; therefore, what would be sought would be these same interests.

Hence, this vision of the search for peace cannot be consistent with what peace is in its pure reality, as a transcendent value and therefore as a gift from God.

In this context, the meaning of the word of Jesus in the Gospel of John is clear: "My peace I give you, not as the world gives it to you, but as I give it to you." (Jn 14,27). Here peace is the risen Christ himself giving himself to believers, in communion with each one of them, making them capable of God's peace and configuring them as witnesses of it.

 

 

                                             

What It Means to Be a Father Today

The 'good father', an image widely spread by consumer societies, is that of a 'provider': the one who satisfies all the material needs of the home. So that "the children don't lack anything," he works double shifts and even on weekends. The father cannot satisfy his present needs, when others have already been created for him. He thus wears himself out feverishly, without giving himself a break to enjoy what is important: the unique experience of watching his children grow up.

Parents who have managed to overcome the atavistic traditions of being mere providers share the joy of raising children and speak of "a new dimension in family life."

Despite the angry reproaches of those who seek to perpetuate the age-old taboo that when the father becomes emotionally involved with the child he becomes 'soft as a second mother', and that if he participates in the care and attention of the child he becomes simple, every day there are more parents present in the operating room at the time of the birth of their children, in the prenatal and postpartum courses to be trained in baby care.

It takes two to beget a child. Two are also needed for its development. The feminine intuition allows the mother to establish a vital communication with the child from the very moment of her birth. She interprets the signs of fear in the infant and gently reassures him and guides him gently.

The father's voice is extremely important: it gives security, trust in the future, establishes the limits of child behavior, and closes the circle of love that should surround the child. The father provides a unique and essential element in the child's upbringing, and his influence is powerful on emotional health. The mother tells him: "be careful", and the father tells him "one more", encouraging the little one to climb another rung to reach the top. Together, holding hands, father and mother guide the offspring on the path of life.

The father of today is open to the subtlest needs of the son: the emotional and the psychic. He transcends self-concern and his busyness, and gets to see the son on his own terms. He promotes the environment that allows him to develop his potential in a framework of responsible freedom, not domination.

He does not stop at the periphery, but knows the son up close. He guides him without aggressiveness, with motivated and reasoned firmness, along the path of the values ​​that he wishes to inherit. Today's father has given himself permission to see with eyes of love the offspring of his womb. He notices in the son, beyond the present limitations, the accumulation of possibilities that he is about to realize. And next to him enjoy every step of his development.

Conclusion

There are many good parents, there are few good parents. I don't think there is anything more difficult than being a good father. On the other hand, it is not difficult to be a good father. A soft heart is enough to be a good father; On the other hand, the strongest will and the clearest head are still not enough to be a good father.

A good father loves without thinking, the good father thinks to love. A good father says yes when he is yes, and no when he is no; the good father only knows how to say yes. The good father turns the child into a little god who ends up in a little demon. A good father does not make idols; he lives the presence of the only God.

A good father blows the fantasy of his son by letting him create an airplane with two old pieces of wood. A good father loves the will of his son, saving him efforts and responsibilities. A good father tempers the character of the son by leading him along the path of duty and work. And so, the good father reaches old age disappointed and belatedly repentant, while a good father grows in years respected, loved, and in the long run, understood.