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„Everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.“ – the first letter of John tells us. Love/loving is – maybe now, first of all, a state that lets us immerse ourselves in a certain bliss. Love is a state of security and confidence, that gives security and protection. And it strikes sometimes very suddenly and with full force. Continue Reading
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“Rejoice” – in Latin “Gaudete” – is the motto of the third Sunday of Advent. “Rejoice in the Lord always! I shall say it again: rejoice!” We can read this in the letter to the Philippians. On the Advent wreath, the pink candle is lit today.
““I feel like I’ve won the lottery and want to hug the whole world!” – “I’m bursting with joy!” – Maybe, or hopefully, everyone knows the feeling of infinite joy that some event brings with it. It is a feeling that makes one hover above the ground, that produces “butterflies in the stomach”.
The Holy Scripture often speaks of joy. We can find more than 200 places in the Old Testament and over 100 in the New Testament. The Holy Scripture presents the joy of God as a source of power (“…, for rejoicing in the LORD must be your strength! “, Neh 8,10b), which allows one to maintain one’s inner balance even in unpleasant situations. Joy is the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
Service to a neighbor may also give joy to the servant, for joy can be incredibly contagious. As an Asian saying goes, “Thousands of candles can be lit by the flame of one candle without their light getting weaker and joy does not decrease if it is shared.“ Continue Reading
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“If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”
A wisdom that immediately irritates us. Why do I have to suffer the pain twice and be humiliated to achieve peace? – Not a few will ask what good it is. It is nothing more than a wisdom that the ancient Greeks had already recognized over 2500 years ago, namely that of amnesty. There it was prescribed by law and carried out in all its consequences. What does that mean?
The past cannot be undone, as we all know from often painful experiences. The call and desire for revenge, retribution and (supposed) justice is strong. But how can we escape this spiral of abuse, murder, manslaughter and ongoing mutual violence? It is a dilemma that has plagued human history for millennia, and we see the best example of this in the events in the Middle East. War and suffering only lead to new war and suffering – a seemingly endless cycle of horror. Continue Reading
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If you think about these lines for a moment, you get the idea that hope always arises when there is dissatisfaction or uncertainty. In view of the almost obvious threats to our actually wonderful earth, this probably applies to the majority of people. There are many reasons for this:
Whether they are affected by climate change because they are losing their land and homes,
or whether they fear for their jobs because decisions are being made over their heads that they cannot influence – both are sources of their insecurity.
Or whether their children cannot receive any or only a poor education for their future, or their own country no longer offers a future due to mismanagement and corruption or through war and permanent criminal activity.
Whether the country was destroyed by natural disasters and only temporarily rebuilt or not rebuilt at all, or whether man himself has dried up lakes, diverted rivers, destroyed and devastated the land through technology and pollution, rendering it unusable for generations.
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Dr. Rowan Williams, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, addressed the Synod of Bishops in the Vatican about the central role of contemplation in helping people rediscover the beauty of the Christian faith.
Drawing deeply on the writings of some of the great Catholic authors and theologians from the time of the Second Vatican Council, Continue Reading
