As we have seen in the previous posts, even some scholars who claim to be Christians argue that no earth-shaking event took place after Jesus' death, except for some compelling visions and dreams. According to them, some of the apostles felt that Jesus was still with them spiritually and over the years the Church came up with a tradition of Him being raised physically. From the beginning of my "journey" towards conversion I felt that this version of the birth of Christianity was just not good enough. Of course I was delighted when I found out that the Anglican bishop N. T. Wright supported my opinion, because I found support in my faith as well.
Wright wrote that the resurrection narratives, had they been fabricated, would have contained "words of the Lord" to explain what happened, or some embroidery from biblical tradition, which is present in all the other gospels stories. Of course he doesn't believe that the gospel stories are fabricated, but he maintains that the evangelists would have tried to be consistent with the rest of their work. Jesus would have been depicted as a radiant heavenly being, like in the transfiguration narratives, or perhaps like He was described in the gospel of Peter. Most scholars believe that this gospel is later than the canonical gospels but it doesn't belong to the Gnostic tradition. It narrates how two men came down from heaven while a loud voice was heard ranging out up there, and how the stone which had been laid against the entrance to the tomb rolled away by itself. Then the two man, whose heads were reaching the clouds, entered the tomb and came out supporting a third man, supposedly Jesus, whose head was over-passing the heavens. They were, by the way, followed by a speaking cross. This is how ancient people wrote works of fantasy. The canonical gospels, on the other hand, sound truthful precisely because they are vague and contradictory, like the account of an inexplicable event would be.
When I make this claim, my son objects that whoever wanted to fool the reader would have used these expedients. What he doesn't acknowledge is that this form of literary subtlety was unknown in ancient times. Back then, writers either did "reportages" or used hyperbolic images to describe fantastic events. The practice of adding details to make an invented story resemble reality came in use only three hundred years ago. If my son were right, the evangelists would represent a unique case in history.
In the gospels, the risen Jesus is sometimes unrecognizable and sometimes He's solidly physical, as if He belonged to two dimensions at once. These properties don't resemble anything in pagan or Jewish tradition, It's like the evangelists are saying: I don't understand what happened, but this is what I was told and I can't change it because it's an extremely serious matter.
Wright insists that ancient people knew as well as we do the difference between visions and reality. "Cognitive dissonance" is the state in which individuals or groups fail to come to terms with reality and live instead in a fantasy that corresponds to their deep longings. He maintains that this can't be the case with Jesus' resurrection because the gospels narratives indicate that something unexpected happened after the crucifixion, something so compelling that the apostles had to turn their lives around completely. This led them to leave their families behind to organize their missionary work. They certainly didn't act like people who live in a dreamlike state.
According to Wright, all the explanations other than the reality of the resurrection mean "to stop doing history and to enter into…a new cognitive dissonance in which the relentless modernist, desperately worried that the post-Enlightenment world view seems in imminent danger of collapse, devises strategies for shoring it up nevertheless".
"The story of Jesus of Nazareth", he writes, "offers itself as…the arrival of God's kingdom precisely in the world of space, time and matter, the world of injustice and tyranny, of empire and crucifixions…But it's the real world…that the real God made and still grieves over…and that was decisively and forever reclaimed by that event, an event which demanded to be understood not as a bizarre miracle, but as the beginning of a new creation".
ON THE ROAD TO JERUSALEM. ------------------------------ For thus says the Lord: I will spread prosperity over Jerusalem like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing torrent. As a mother comforts her child, so will I will comfort you; in Jerusalem you shall find your comfort.
Friday, April 6, 2012
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Can Someone Who Doesn't Believe in the Resurrection Call Himself a Christian?
In Jesus For The Nonreligious, the Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong writes that in the twenty-first century we have to accept the fact that miracles just don't happen and never did. In his opinion, since some of the narratives in the gospels are inspired by the Old Testament, the entire texts are nothing but fabrications. All we are left with is the old Jeffersonian idea that Jesus was a great moral teacher, whose life was so whole that He was fully in contact with the ineffable entity that we call God, a God who did not raise Him from the dead.
Of course Shelby Spong attended the Jesus Seminar (see previous post), where John Dominic Crossan expressed his view of the birth of Christianity, namely that living with Jesus had the most profound effect on the apostles, who after His crucifixion felt that they had to put their own lives on the stake in His name.
My son thinks that this is the most beautiful interpretation of Jesus' story, for it gives Him back his exceptional value as a human being. Yet, to see Jesus as nothing but a moral teacher leads inevitably to a complete distortion of the circumstances of His death. The truth is that a Messiah was awaited and Jesus' disciples thought He was the One. His crucifixion, given their religious belief, could only mean that they were mistaken, for the Messiah was not supposed to die, especially not by the hands of the Romans. This is why any historian who looks at the gospels through the eye of a first century Jew knows that something must have happened to bring the apostles back to their first conviction, namely that Jesus was the awaited Messiah. Love was simply not enough to motivate them, in fact they fled when He was arrested and He died alone.
Jesus was certainly more than a teacher. The historicity of Jesus' healings has been sufficiently established (see my old post titled Miracles) and traces of the Old Testament in the gospels have nothing to do with their basic truthfulness. In fact, if one turns this problem on its head, there are plenty of prophecies in the Old Testament that confirm that Jesus was the Messiah.
As we have seen before, there are historic criteria to establish what is credible and what is not when it comes to ancient documents. For example, the star over Bethlehem could be an embellishment, but the account of Joseph of Arimathea burying Jesus' body is an historic claim. Yet, here is how Crossan comes to the conclusion that Joseph of Arimathea is a creation of Mark: The evangelist describes him as a member of the council that condemned Jesus; therefore Crossan wonders why, after His death, he felt the duty of giving Him proper burial. He reasons that, if it was out of human compassion, he would have buried the other two crucified criminals with him. Even Matthew and Luke, writes Crossan, realized the inconsistency of Mark's story, in fact Matthew does not say that Joseph was a member of the Sanhedrin and Luke says that he did not agree with its decision. According to Crossan Joseph didn't act coherently, therefore he never existed.
I must admit, of course respectfully, that it strikes me as ridiculous that a worldwide famous scholar, in spite of the fact that he claims to be a Christian, would dedicate so much effort to disprove the credibility of the gospels and, after many pages of pondering, would come up with THIS: Let's psychoanalyze a two-thousand year old Jew who may or may not have felt regret for the death of the young prophet. And this is only an example of Crossan's way of reasoning.
But let's return to Spong. He writes that after the shameful death of Jesus His disciples weren't able to wrap their mind around the idea that He wasn't the promised Messiah after all. His message was one of love and forgiveness and God had to be His inspiration. He admits that an unresolved inner turmoil such as this one must have required more than three days to develop into the determination to follow up with Jesus' ministry al all costs, so he argues that the three days mentioned in the New Testament are only a liturgical symbol and that it took from six months to a year for the apostles to start spreading Jesus' message. Unfortunately, there is not a shred of evidence that supports this theory, which bypasses the fact that not only the apostles were willing to die in the name of Jesus, but also many disciples who converted to Christianity. After six months or even a year, who could have been persuaded that a man crucified by the Romans was divine? The Jews, even those who had met Jesus, would have by then associated His death with His defeat.
When my faith still didn't have deep roots, another author made me doubt the reality of the resurrection maintaining that Christianity took off thanks to the brothers of Jesus and that the early church destroyed all evidence of their leading roles. Once again, not only there is no historical evidence of such a plot, but it's hard to come up with a plausible reason to justify it. N.T. Wright writes that several movements in the first century were linked through family dynasty, therefore it would have been a natural development for the early Christians to choose James the brother of Jesus as the new Messiah, yet it didn't happen. The Jewish
leaders wrote to James urging him to stop the blasphemous growing belief in the divinity of Jesus, but he did just the opposite and for that he was stoned to death. Even Josephus, the Jewish historian of the time, describes James as "the brother of Jesus the so-called Messiah".
I was silly enough to let myself be troubled by these abstruse theories, but then I realized that what generates them is the fact that even those who don't believe in the resurrection acknowledge the need to find an explanation for the birth of Christianity, Their books are nothing but a confirmation to my faith.
Of course Shelby Spong attended the Jesus Seminar (see previous post), where John Dominic Crossan expressed his view of the birth of Christianity, namely that living with Jesus had the most profound effect on the apostles, who after His crucifixion felt that they had to put their own lives on the stake in His name.
My son thinks that this is the most beautiful interpretation of Jesus' story, for it gives Him back his exceptional value as a human being. Yet, to see Jesus as nothing but a moral teacher leads inevitably to a complete distortion of the circumstances of His death. The truth is that a Messiah was awaited and Jesus' disciples thought He was the One. His crucifixion, given their religious belief, could only mean that they were mistaken, for the Messiah was not supposed to die, especially not by the hands of the Romans. This is why any historian who looks at the gospels through the eye of a first century Jew knows that something must have happened to bring the apostles back to their first conviction, namely that Jesus was the awaited Messiah. Love was simply not enough to motivate them, in fact they fled when He was arrested and He died alone.
Jesus was certainly more than a teacher. The historicity of Jesus' healings has been sufficiently established (see my old post titled Miracles) and traces of the Old Testament in the gospels have nothing to do with their basic truthfulness. In fact, if one turns this problem on its head, there are plenty of prophecies in the Old Testament that confirm that Jesus was the Messiah.
As we have seen before, there are historic criteria to establish what is credible and what is not when it comes to ancient documents. For example, the star over Bethlehem could be an embellishment, but the account of Joseph of Arimathea burying Jesus' body is an historic claim. Yet, here is how Crossan comes to the conclusion that Joseph of Arimathea is a creation of Mark: The evangelist describes him as a member of the council that condemned Jesus; therefore Crossan wonders why, after His death, he felt the duty of giving Him proper burial. He reasons that, if it was out of human compassion, he would have buried the other two crucified criminals with him. Even Matthew and Luke, writes Crossan, realized the inconsistency of Mark's story, in fact Matthew does not say that Joseph was a member of the Sanhedrin and Luke says that he did not agree with its decision. According to Crossan Joseph didn't act coherently, therefore he never existed.
I must admit, of course respectfully, that it strikes me as ridiculous that a worldwide famous scholar, in spite of the fact that he claims to be a Christian, would dedicate so much effort to disprove the credibility of the gospels and, after many pages of pondering, would come up with THIS: Let's psychoanalyze a two-thousand year old Jew who may or may not have felt regret for the death of the young prophet. And this is only an example of Crossan's way of reasoning.
But let's return to Spong. He writes that after the shameful death of Jesus His disciples weren't able to wrap their mind around the idea that He wasn't the promised Messiah after all. His message was one of love and forgiveness and God had to be His inspiration. He admits that an unresolved inner turmoil such as this one must have required more than three days to develop into the determination to follow up with Jesus' ministry al all costs, so he argues that the three days mentioned in the New Testament are only a liturgical symbol and that it took from six months to a year for the apostles to start spreading Jesus' message. Unfortunately, there is not a shred of evidence that supports this theory, which bypasses the fact that not only the apostles were willing to die in the name of Jesus, but also many disciples who converted to Christianity. After six months or even a year, who could have been persuaded that a man crucified by the Romans was divine? The Jews, even those who had met Jesus, would have by then associated His death with His defeat.
When my faith still didn't have deep roots, another author made me doubt the reality of the resurrection maintaining that Christianity took off thanks to the brothers of Jesus and that the early church destroyed all evidence of their leading roles. Once again, not only there is no historical evidence of such a plot, but it's hard to come up with a plausible reason to justify it. N.T. Wright writes that several movements in the first century were linked through family dynasty, therefore it would have been a natural development for the early Christians to choose James the brother of Jesus as the new Messiah, yet it didn't happen. The Jewish
leaders wrote to James urging him to stop the blasphemous growing belief in the divinity of Jesus, but he did just the opposite and for that he was stoned to death. Even Josephus, the Jewish historian of the time, describes James as "the brother of Jesus the so-called Messiah".
I was silly enough to let myself be troubled by these abstruse theories, but then I realized that what generates them is the fact that even those who don't believe in the resurrection acknowledge the need to find an explanation for the birth of Christianity, Their books are nothing but a confirmation to my faith.
Friday, March 30, 2012
The Resurrection According to Crossan
For decades, Christian historians have refused to investigate Jesus' resurrection on the ground that, if it happened, it was a miracle worked by God and therefore belongs to the field of theology. For example John P. Meier, the author of A Marginal Jew, never wrote about this subject, although he painstakingly analyzed the canonical gospel in all their aspects. Why then not to extend his study to the resurrection narratives, which are their focal point?
At last, the British scholar N.T. Wright published a book titled The Resurrection of the Son of God. He's apparently the first scholar who argues that faith can grow on a rational ground.
In the ancient pagan world, he writes, what came after death was the existence in the form of soul, a sorrowful existence devoid of the pleasures of life. The ancient Jews instead, and precisely the Pharisees, believed that God's people would be bodily raised from the dead at the end of times, either in a luminous body or in a plain human body. Ancient men and women, however, knew that when people die they stay dead. They were not inclined to believe any kind of absurdity they happened to hear. Not only Wright, but also C.S. Lewis before him, wrote that the notion that ancient people believed in magic is false. There had been very little of it even in the Middle Ages, but it grew in 16th and 17th century, right when modern science was developing.
In The Birth of Christianity, John Dominic Crossan holds a different position:
"That the dead could return and interact with the living was a commonplace in the Greco-Roman world…Not only were visions and apparitions accepted…as a possibility in the early first century, they are also an accepted and even commonplace possibility in the late twentieth century….Why, against the first century context, does vision, apparition or resurrection explain anything, since such events were not considered extraordinary let alone completely unique?"
Crossan is arguing against those who maintain that Christianity was born because of the apparitions of a dead man. Of course, he implies that these apparitions lacked certain qualities that would make them equivalent to reality, as if the man in question was alive again. Also, when he talks about the dead interacting with the living he uses as an example the mythical story told by Virgil in the Aeneid. In Italy, kids study that poem in middle school. It sounds like a myth and nobody ever claimed that it was more than that. Furthermore, he reports data from a recent study: Fifty to eighty percent of bereaved people experience an overwhelming feeling of the presence of the lost loved one and these types of experiences can't be classified as hallucinations or delusions. They are, in fact, part of the grieving process.
Crossan admits that grief related visions alone could hardly have motivated the apostles. What did it, according to him, was the powerful effect that the living Jesus had on their lives.
Crossan was co-director of the Jesus Seminar, where each participant scholar put to vote every passage of the canonical gospel to establish their credibility. He's a Christian because he loves the Jesus of history and can appreciate what he accomplished in all its magnitude. Bodily resurrection, for him, means that "the embodied life and death of the historical Jesus continues to be experienced, by believers, as powerfully efficacious and salvifically present in this world". This is beautiful but misleading. I think that there is more than that to be found in the birth of the Church,
It's obvious that when the early Christians spoke of Jesus being raised three days after the crucifixion, they were speaking of an event unknown to any culture or religion. Something unique must have happened to make Jesus and His resurrection become the center of Christianity.
At last, the British scholar N.T. Wright published a book titled The Resurrection of the Son of God. He's apparently the first scholar who argues that faith can grow on a rational ground.
In the ancient pagan world, he writes, what came after death was the existence in the form of soul, a sorrowful existence devoid of the pleasures of life. The ancient Jews instead, and precisely the Pharisees, believed that God's people would be bodily raised from the dead at the end of times, either in a luminous body or in a plain human body. Ancient men and women, however, knew that when people die they stay dead. They were not inclined to believe any kind of absurdity they happened to hear. Not only Wright, but also C.S. Lewis before him, wrote that the notion that ancient people believed in magic is false. There had been very little of it even in the Middle Ages, but it grew in 16th and 17th century, right when modern science was developing.
In The Birth of Christianity, John Dominic Crossan holds a different position:
"That the dead could return and interact with the living was a commonplace in the Greco-Roman world…Not only were visions and apparitions accepted…as a possibility in the early first century, they are also an accepted and even commonplace possibility in the late twentieth century….Why, against the first century context, does vision, apparition or resurrection explain anything, since such events were not considered extraordinary let alone completely unique?"
Crossan is arguing against those who maintain that Christianity was born because of the apparitions of a dead man. Of course, he implies that these apparitions lacked certain qualities that would make them equivalent to reality, as if the man in question was alive again. Also, when he talks about the dead interacting with the living he uses as an example the mythical story told by Virgil in the Aeneid. In Italy, kids study that poem in middle school. It sounds like a myth and nobody ever claimed that it was more than that. Furthermore, he reports data from a recent study: Fifty to eighty percent of bereaved people experience an overwhelming feeling of the presence of the lost loved one and these types of experiences can't be classified as hallucinations or delusions. They are, in fact, part of the grieving process.
Crossan admits that grief related visions alone could hardly have motivated the apostles. What did it, according to him, was the powerful effect that the living Jesus had on their lives.
Crossan was co-director of the Jesus Seminar, where each participant scholar put to vote every passage of the canonical gospel to establish their credibility. He's a Christian because he loves the Jesus of history and can appreciate what he accomplished in all its magnitude. Bodily resurrection, for him, means that "the embodied life and death of the historical Jesus continues to be experienced, by believers, as powerfully efficacious and salvifically present in this world". This is beautiful but misleading. I think that there is more than that to be found in the birth of the Church,
It's obvious that when the early Christians spoke of Jesus being raised three days after the crucifixion, they were speaking of an event unknown to any culture or religion. Something unique must have happened to make Jesus and His resurrection become the center of Christianity.
Monday, March 26, 2012
More on "Is it Reasonable to Believe in the Resurrection?" (Part 2)
Since I'm fascinated by this subject, I'm planning to post twice a week for a total of probably six posts. It's going to be my work for Lent!
The New Testament offers mixed information about the risen Jesus: He was unrecognizable, he walked through closed doors, yet he could eat food. Do these contradictory descriptions mean that nothing actually happened except for different forms of delusion? I don't think so. I believe that what happened was real and powerful, but hard to describe. Those who don't believe in miracles explain these contradictions stating that the apostles simply underwent a life changing spiritual experience and that the evangelists translated it into symbolic images. Those who believe in miracles think that everything that is said in the resurrection narratives is true and that the properties described are peculiar to the "glorified body" mentioned by St. Paul.
In my opinion, the less likely explanation for the Easter apparitions is that nothing happened except for a spiritual experience, I have noticed that the scholars who hold on to this theory (at least those I happened to read) mention only in passing Paul's Corinthians 1,15, or they don't report it in its entirety. Paul wrote that Jesus appeared to Peter and then to the twelve apostles. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of them, Paul says, still living. Later he appeared to James and finally to Paul himself. This claim is so vast and precise, one has only two choices: Either Paul was lying or he was describing what he experienced and what the apostles told him. Corinthian 1,15 is no subject for interpretation and it was written no more than twenty years after Jesus' death. Paul was a great mind, respected as a man of culture. He was persecuting Christians before his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus and he died for his faith. I chose to believe him.
However, we don't know to how many Christian brothers Paul actually spoke. From his letters to the Galatians we learn that he met Kephas (Peter) and James (Jesus' brother) three years after his conversion, and then he went to Syria and came back to Jerusalem after fourteen years. In Jerusalem he might have met some of the people who saw the risen Jesus. Where they all gathered together when they saw him? To find an answer to this question was important to me because my son insisted that they had suffered from a phenomenon of mass hysteria, so I spoke to a priest at my parish. He told me that Jesus appeared to each disciple individually.
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Theology teaches that it's a property of the glorified body to be in several places at the same time", he answered.
According with Hinduism, after we die we can be everywhere at once because infinity and eternity stretch in all directions. I strongly believe that Jesus' resurrection in a glorified body is not an oddity, if one looks at Christ as a being who has transcended time and space.
My son says I believe because I consciously made this choice, since there is no rational argument to sustain a belief in the divinity of Jesus. I can understand his point of view; I thought just the same only a few years ago. Then I started wondering if I wasn't rejecting religion because I was afraid to be tricked by my psychological needs. I needed strength, comfort, atonement and hope, but I refused to look for them where I felt I could find them. My son thinks that I'm forcing rationality where it doesn't belong. Or does it? In spite of his reasoning I feel that my faith in Jesus is based on logic. It is rooted in my belief that there is no better explanation for the birth of Christianity than his resurrection.
Here is how Garry Wills describes the apostle's sudden change that took place three days after his death:
"These Christians were not expecting the Resurrection. They did not believe it, even when the women first announced it to them. They had, remember, all scattered and hidden as Jesus was condemned and executed…Yet this band of cowards was suddenly changed into an energetic body of effective evangels, spreading their faith, firmly offering the claim that Jesus lives".
As the risen Son of God, Jesus confronted Caesar and the emperors that followed him until, more than 325 years later, Constantine surrendered to reality: Christianity had won.
The New Testament offers mixed information about the risen Jesus: He was unrecognizable, he walked through closed doors, yet he could eat food. Do these contradictory descriptions mean that nothing actually happened except for different forms of delusion? I don't think so. I believe that what happened was real and powerful, but hard to describe. Those who don't believe in miracles explain these contradictions stating that the apostles simply underwent a life changing spiritual experience and that the evangelists translated it into symbolic images. Those who believe in miracles think that everything that is said in the resurrection narratives is true and that the properties described are peculiar to the "glorified body" mentioned by St. Paul.
In my opinion, the less likely explanation for the Easter apparitions is that nothing happened except for a spiritual experience, I have noticed that the scholars who hold on to this theory (at least those I happened to read) mention only in passing Paul's Corinthians 1,15, or they don't report it in its entirety. Paul wrote that Jesus appeared to Peter and then to the twelve apostles. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of them, Paul says, still living. Later he appeared to James and finally to Paul himself. This claim is so vast and precise, one has only two choices: Either Paul was lying or he was describing what he experienced and what the apostles told him. Corinthian 1,15 is no subject for interpretation and it was written no more than twenty years after Jesus' death. Paul was a great mind, respected as a man of culture. He was persecuting Christians before his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus and he died for his faith. I chose to believe him.
However, we don't know to how many Christian brothers Paul actually spoke. From his letters to the Galatians we learn that he met Kephas (Peter) and James (Jesus' brother) three years after his conversion, and then he went to Syria and came back to Jerusalem after fourteen years. In Jerusalem he might have met some of the people who saw the risen Jesus. Where they all gathered together when they saw him? To find an answer to this question was important to me because my son insisted that they had suffered from a phenomenon of mass hysteria, so I spoke to a priest at my parish. He told me that Jesus appeared to each disciple individually.
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Theology teaches that it's a property of the glorified body to be in several places at the same time", he answered.
According with Hinduism, after we die we can be everywhere at once because infinity and eternity stretch in all directions. I strongly believe that Jesus' resurrection in a glorified body is not an oddity, if one looks at Christ as a being who has transcended time and space.
My son says I believe because I consciously made this choice, since there is no rational argument to sustain a belief in the divinity of Jesus. I can understand his point of view; I thought just the same only a few years ago. Then I started wondering if I wasn't rejecting religion because I was afraid to be tricked by my psychological needs. I needed strength, comfort, atonement and hope, but I refused to look for them where I felt I could find them. My son thinks that I'm forcing rationality where it doesn't belong. Or does it? In spite of his reasoning I feel that my faith in Jesus is based on logic. It is rooted in my belief that there is no better explanation for the birth of Christianity than his resurrection.
Here is how Garry Wills describes the apostle's sudden change that took place three days after his death:
"These Christians were not expecting the Resurrection. They did not believe it, even when the women first announced it to them. They had, remember, all scattered and hidden as Jesus was condemned and executed…Yet this band of cowards was suddenly changed into an energetic body of effective evangels, spreading their faith, firmly offering the claim that Jesus lives".
As the risen Son of God, Jesus confronted Caesar and the emperors that followed him until, more than 325 years later, Constantine surrendered to reality: Christianity had won.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Is it Reasonable to Believe in the Resurrection?
Easter is approaching, so I've decided to write a number of posts about Jesus' resurrection. For me, it was the central issue during the process of my conversion.
I will start with a few considerations regarding how atheists look at this huge Christian belief. For them it's just a fantasy, based on airy notions. They claim to be truth-seekers, but what is theological reflection if not a search for truth? An ultimate truth that belongs to a different dimension, therefore can't be within our grasp.
I must admit that I'm baffled by those atheists who are also scientists. To me, modern physics has given us a glimpse into a world so mysterious that it's impossible not to feel awe, at some level the same awe that religious people feel in the presence of the mystery of God. Introducing his lectures on quantum mechanics, Feynman wrote:
"Because atomic behavior is so unlike ordinary experience, it is very difficult to get used to, and it appears peculiar and mysterious to everyone…We choose to examine a phenomenon which is impossible, absolutely impossible, to explain in any classical way…We cannot make the mystery go away by 'explaining' how it works. We will just tell you how it works."
The very same words could be used to describe Jesus' resurrection, especially in light of the last studies of the Shroud of Turin. Any attempt to replicate the image impressed on the linen has failed, except for by means of radiations, which by the way should be so conspicuous that cannot be obtained in a laboratory.
Christians believe in the resurrection also because they find the historical data convincing. In my opinion, if atheists took the time to examine this data with an open mind, namely abandoning the prejudice that "it couldn't have happened", they would look at Christianity with more respect. The physicist John Polkinghorne expressed what I'm clumsily trying to say with these insightful words:
"Scientists who are carefully reflective about their activity do not instinctively ask the question 'Is it reasonable?' as if they were confident beforehand what shape rationality had to take…Instead, for the scientist the proper phrasing of the truth seeking question takes form 'What makes you think this might be the case?"
This is exactly the type of inquiry an open minded secular person should ask to the Christian. The latter, on the other hand, should resist the temptation to answer, but should instead present the non-believer with a number of volumes it may very well take a year to read! Unfortunately, an atheist would never waste so much time to investigate the resurrection, for he would take for granted that is not even a possibility. Countless times I've presented my son with the books I was reading, but he never allowed himself more than a distracted glimpse. His argument is that sociology argues that there are always plausible explanations for the birth of a religion. To me, this is a generalization. Nobody denies that religions are born in similar circumstances, namely in a socio-cultural context where people need to gather around a charismatic leader to find their spiritual dimension. However, this doesn't mean that the difficulties for the religious movement to establish itself are always the same, or that the leaders are all inspired by God.
I'm a Christian because I believe that Jesus was raised from the dead and that the historical context in which Christianity developed is revealing of divine intervention. Of course the atheist doesn't see it that way. In his flat world, exceptionality has no place, and Christ becomes just one of many.
I will start with a few considerations regarding how atheists look at this huge Christian belief. For them it's just a fantasy, based on airy notions. They claim to be truth-seekers, but what is theological reflection if not a search for truth? An ultimate truth that belongs to a different dimension, therefore can't be within our grasp.
I must admit that I'm baffled by those atheists who are also scientists. To me, modern physics has given us a glimpse into a world so mysterious that it's impossible not to feel awe, at some level the same awe that religious people feel in the presence of the mystery of God. Introducing his lectures on quantum mechanics, Feynman wrote:
"Because atomic behavior is so unlike ordinary experience, it is very difficult to get used to, and it appears peculiar and mysterious to everyone…We choose to examine a phenomenon which is impossible, absolutely impossible, to explain in any classical way…We cannot make the mystery go away by 'explaining' how it works. We will just tell you how it works."
The very same words could be used to describe Jesus' resurrection, especially in light of the last studies of the Shroud of Turin. Any attempt to replicate the image impressed on the linen has failed, except for by means of radiations, which by the way should be so conspicuous that cannot be obtained in a laboratory.
Christians believe in the resurrection also because they find the historical data convincing. In my opinion, if atheists took the time to examine this data with an open mind, namely abandoning the prejudice that "it couldn't have happened", they would look at Christianity with more respect. The physicist John Polkinghorne expressed what I'm clumsily trying to say with these insightful words:
"Scientists who are carefully reflective about their activity do not instinctively ask the question 'Is it reasonable?' as if they were confident beforehand what shape rationality had to take…Instead, for the scientist the proper phrasing of the truth seeking question takes form 'What makes you think this might be the case?"
This is exactly the type of inquiry an open minded secular person should ask to the Christian. The latter, on the other hand, should resist the temptation to answer, but should instead present the non-believer with a number of volumes it may very well take a year to read! Unfortunately, an atheist would never waste so much time to investigate the resurrection, for he would take for granted that is not even a possibility. Countless times I've presented my son with the books I was reading, but he never allowed himself more than a distracted glimpse. His argument is that sociology argues that there are always plausible explanations for the birth of a religion. To me, this is a generalization. Nobody denies that religions are born in similar circumstances, namely in a socio-cultural context where people need to gather around a charismatic leader to find their spiritual dimension. However, this doesn't mean that the difficulties for the religious movement to establish itself are always the same, or that the leaders are all inspired by God.
I'm a Christian because I believe that Jesus was raised from the dead and that the historical context in which Christianity developed is revealing of divine intervention. Of course the atheist doesn't see it that way. In his flat world, exceptionality has no place, and Christ becomes just one of many.
Friday, March 16, 2012
My True Wedding
So my wedding day has come and gone. I wish we could do it again; it was beautiful.
For the first time, at age 55, I wore a white dress at my wedding: when I married my first husband I wore a purple sweater and a long light-golden skirt with blue flowers. That's all I remember of that day. I have no recollection at all of the ceremony in the church: In Italy, back then, everybody got married in the Church, even the non-believers, and that was my case. I was raised Catholic but I left the Church at age 13, when I finished high school in a religious institution. Going to a school run by nuns didn't exactly make me fall in love with Christianity. I hated our sober uniform and the obligation to daily prayers. Later, at the School of Art, I found everything I wanted: Freedom, excitement and, of course, boys. My first husband was a young teacher, although he didn't teach any of my classes. We got married when I turned 21. On the day of our wedding I completely lacked emotions, and soon enough I started having negative feelings about our marriage. We separated three years later.
I married my second and current husband at the Courthouse, just the two of us. Marrying him again in the church, in the presence of our son, was very sweet. We have already spent a life together and it wasn't always easy, but we made it because we always loved each other and because the Lord loves us. Now we have His blessing and His encompassing forgiveness. Our son, who is an atheist, tried very hard to avoid coming to church, but I didn't let him off the hook. He came with his best friend and they were our witnesses.
Later we had a nice reception with our friends, who were wonderful and affectionate. I'm going to create a photo-album on Facebook, so we'll never loose the memories of this precious moment.
And so I'm finally allowed to take the Eucharist. I was afraid that it wouldn't mean anything to me, as it didn't mean anything when I was a young girl. But I should have had no fear. Communion is a very intimate moment with Jesus Christ, almost sensual: I eat and taste my redemption.
In my love for Christ there is an element of my love for my husband. When I met Jesus, like when I met my husband, I recognized them as one would recognize a loving face in a crowd. The attraction was irresistible. They both turned my life around, but it was Jesus who changed me to the core of my being and gave me peace.
For the first time, at age 55, I wore a white dress at my wedding: when I married my first husband I wore a purple sweater and a long light-golden skirt with blue flowers. That's all I remember of that day. I have no recollection at all of the ceremony in the church: In Italy, back then, everybody got married in the Church, even the non-believers, and that was my case. I was raised Catholic but I left the Church at age 13, when I finished high school in a religious institution. Going to a school run by nuns didn't exactly make me fall in love with Christianity. I hated our sober uniform and the obligation to daily prayers. Later, at the School of Art, I found everything I wanted: Freedom, excitement and, of course, boys. My first husband was a young teacher, although he didn't teach any of my classes. We got married when I turned 21. On the day of our wedding I completely lacked emotions, and soon enough I started having negative feelings about our marriage. We separated three years later.
I married my second and current husband at the Courthouse, just the two of us. Marrying him again in the church, in the presence of our son, was very sweet. We have already spent a life together and it wasn't always easy, but we made it because we always loved each other and because the Lord loves us. Now we have His blessing and His encompassing forgiveness. Our son, who is an atheist, tried very hard to avoid coming to church, but I didn't let him off the hook. He came with his best friend and they were our witnesses.
Later we had a nice reception with our friends, who were wonderful and affectionate. I'm going to create a photo-album on Facebook, so we'll never loose the memories of this precious moment.
And so I'm finally allowed to take the Eucharist. I was afraid that it wouldn't mean anything to me, as it didn't mean anything when I was a young girl. But I should have had no fear. Communion is a very intimate moment with Jesus Christ, almost sensual: I eat and taste my redemption.
In my love for Christ there is an element of my love for my husband. When I met Jesus, like when I met my husband, I recognized them as one would recognize a loving face in a crowd. The attraction was irresistible. They both turned my life around, but it was Jesus who changed me to the core of my being and gave me peace.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Kafka, a Troubled Soul Who Longed for God
Today I'm quite distracted, because tomorrow my husband of 28 years and I are going to marry in the church! Therefore this will be a brief post based on quotes, so I won't have to do too much thinking.
In his books, Monsignor Giussani often quotes troubled Italian writers and poets such as Giacomo Leopardi and Cesare Pavese, to show how the soul of deeply human individuals longs for meaning and ultimately for God, even when God is relegated to the role of pious fantasy.
Reading a collection of Franz Kafka short stories, letters and aphorisms, I found a few that I want to share with you. He was one of my favorite writers when I was a non-believer and he still is, only I look at him in a different way. I have great compassion for this man who suffered so much and could never put into focus his intuition of the divine.
"Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return."
"A first sign of nascent knowledge is the desire for death. This life seems unendurable, any other unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wishing to die; one prays to be conducted from the old cell that one hates into a new one that one has yet to hate. There is in this a vestige of faith that during the change the master may chance to walk along the corridor, contemplate the prisoner, and say: 'You must not lock up this one again. He is to come to me'."
"The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble than to be walked upon."
"If there is a higher power that wishes to use me, or does use me, then I am at his mercy, if no more than as a well-prepared instrument. If not, I am nothing, and will suddenly be abandoned in a dreadful void."
"I am dirty, infinitely dirty, which is why I make so much fuss about purity. No people sing with such pure voices as those who live in deepest hell; what we take for the song of angels is their song."
"A faith is like a guillotine, as heavy, as light."
"What is laid upon us is to accomplish the negative; the positive is already given."
"Once we have granted accommodation to the Evil One he no longer demands that we should believe in him. The afterthoughts with which we justify our accommodation of the Evil One are not ours but those of the Evil One."
"There is only a spiritual world; what we call the physical world is the evil in the spiritual one, and what we call evil is only a necessary moment in our endless development".
In his books, Monsignor Giussani often quotes troubled Italian writers and poets such as Giacomo Leopardi and Cesare Pavese, to show how the soul of deeply human individuals longs for meaning and ultimately for God, even when God is relegated to the role of pious fantasy.
Reading a collection of Franz Kafka short stories, letters and aphorisms, I found a few that I want to share with you. He was one of my favorite writers when I was a non-believer and he still is, only I look at him in a different way. I have great compassion for this man who suffered so much and could never put into focus his intuition of the divine.
"Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return."
"A first sign of nascent knowledge is the desire for death. This life seems unendurable, any other unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wishing to die; one prays to be conducted from the old cell that one hates into a new one that one has yet to hate. There is in this a vestige of faith that during the change the master may chance to walk along the corridor, contemplate the prisoner, and say: 'You must not lock up this one again. He is to come to me'."
"The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble than to be walked upon."
"If there is a higher power that wishes to use me, or does use me, then I am at his mercy, if no more than as a well-prepared instrument. If not, I am nothing, and will suddenly be abandoned in a dreadful void."
"I am dirty, infinitely dirty, which is why I make so much fuss about purity. No people sing with such pure voices as those who live in deepest hell; what we take for the song of angels is their song."
"A faith is like a guillotine, as heavy, as light."
"What is laid upon us is to accomplish the negative; the positive is already given."
"Once we have granted accommodation to the Evil One he no longer demands that we should believe in him. The afterthoughts with which we justify our accommodation of the Evil One are not ours but those of the Evil One."
"There is only a spiritual world; what we call the physical world is the evil in the spiritual one, and what we call evil is only a necessary moment in our endless development".
Friday, March 2, 2012
Let's Talk About Suffering
Suffering is a recurrent subject in discussions about religion. Even the most faith oriented people can't help wondering why there is so much suffering on earth, not to mention the non-believers. One of their refrains is: "If there was a loving God, this wouldn't happen". Even the philosophers David Hume hold this opinion!
I cautiously attempted an answer in my first post, titled "The Ultimate Question". But it's Lent, the time of Jesus' suffering, so a few more random reflections seem appropriate.
The Christian aim is the perfect world, heaven on earth. The prophet Isaiah predicted the coming of a new Garden of Eden, where all the wars, diseases and misery would disappear. Christianity, as opposite to Eastern religions, doesn't wait for the end of this illusion that is our world, but only for the end of its imperfections.
Christianity teaches that God doesn't intervene in the world, but it doesn't explain exactly why He doesn't. Of course I might be wrong, but I have my own answer: When he created the world, He put in motion a sort of chain reaction that we call "Evolution", and chaos, or evil if you want, is still present in it. He can't step in here and there to fix it. It's in our hands; we have to make it work.
This may sound like a paradox, but it's precisely for this reason that I believe in miracles. Now and then, one of us truly opens his or her mind to God, and through this person He can act in the physical world.
Faith is offered to everyone, and when someone answers the call all the way, he or she can work miracles, even after death. But why not all prayers are answered and miracles occur so rarely? Perhaps the recipient, or the one who makes the plead, must have complete faith in a positive result. Jesus, in fact, couldn't perform miracles when faith hindered.
However, these difficulties have a good outcome, if one looks at it globally. Try to imagine what would happen if prayers were answered each time. If the faithful were to survive every disease, then the existence of God would be evident, and we would have to obey Him.
But why does He care so much for us to have free will, if it is the cause of so much pain? Wouldn't the world be perfect without it? In a sense it would, but we wouldn't be human anymore. Animals can't choose, they only respond to their instincts. In order to be human, we must be able to choose, there is no way out. God created an imperfect world for our own sake, so that we could evolve from our animal condition.
But are human beings really endowed with freedom of choice? This is an old philosophical problem, with huge religious implications. Christianity, in fact, places the concept of free will at the core of its theology. In Genesis, Eve chooses to eat the prohibited fruit. Human beings are free to choose evil over good. God doesn't manifest Himself because He wants humans to freely open their hearts to the divine. Even nature was created to follow its course, and if a tsunami has to occur, so be it (tectonic plate movements are said to be necessary to create a moderate climate on the Earth's surface).
In one word, free will is the cause of every suffering. Even Jesus surrendered to it. Think of the time of Jesus. The Romans would crucify up to five hundred rebels in one day, most of them Jews. The emperors were mostly crazy maniacs who believed to be gods. Cruelty was accepted as a part of everyday life: for the average Roman citizen, going to the Coliseum to watch people tortured and killed was the equivalent of a modern evening at the movie theater. Yet God didn't strike the Romans with thunder; instead, he sent Jesus on earth.
Let's face it: The possibility that Jesus could have put humanity on the right track during His lifetime was nonexistent. He represented God's extreme measure, His "sacrificial lamb". I'm baffled at the offense that atheists take when they hear this expression; their lack of insight is astonishing. The God of Christianity is for them a sadist who required a human sacrifice to forgive our sins. But what really required Jesus' death, and His resurrection, were actually the circumstances. Nothing else would have shaken the world enough to change it. Not so, for example, at the time of Nazism: by then the rest of the world knew that to exterminate innocent people is wrong. When a Roman emperor died, the next would let the atrocities at the Coliseum go on, but when Hitler died, the killing of the Jews was over. God used human beings to end Nazism, and it took twelve years instead of the three hundred that were necessary to Christianity to defeat the evil of the Roman Empire.
"God is weak and powerless in the world," wrote the theologian Bonhoffer, "and that is precisely the way, the only way, He is with us and helps us".
I cautiously attempted an answer in my first post, titled "The Ultimate Question". But it's Lent, the time of Jesus' suffering, so a few more random reflections seem appropriate.
The Christian aim is the perfect world, heaven on earth. The prophet Isaiah predicted the coming of a new Garden of Eden, where all the wars, diseases and misery would disappear. Christianity, as opposite to Eastern religions, doesn't wait for the end of this illusion that is our world, but only for the end of its imperfections.
Christianity teaches that God doesn't intervene in the world, but it doesn't explain exactly why He doesn't. Of course I might be wrong, but I have my own answer: When he created the world, He put in motion a sort of chain reaction that we call "Evolution", and chaos, or evil if you want, is still present in it. He can't step in here and there to fix it. It's in our hands; we have to make it work.
This may sound like a paradox, but it's precisely for this reason that I believe in miracles. Now and then, one of us truly opens his or her mind to God, and through this person He can act in the physical world.
Faith is offered to everyone, and when someone answers the call all the way, he or she can work miracles, even after death. But why not all prayers are answered and miracles occur so rarely? Perhaps the recipient, or the one who makes the plead, must have complete faith in a positive result. Jesus, in fact, couldn't perform miracles when faith hindered.
However, these difficulties have a good outcome, if one looks at it globally. Try to imagine what would happen if prayers were answered each time. If the faithful were to survive every disease, then the existence of God would be evident, and we would have to obey Him.
But why does He care so much for us to have free will, if it is the cause of so much pain? Wouldn't the world be perfect without it? In a sense it would, but we wouldn't be human anymore. Animals can't choose, they only respond to their instincts. In order to be human, we must be able to choose, there is no way out. God created an imperfect world for our own sake, so that we could evolve from our animal condition.
But are human beings really endowed with freedom of choice? This is an old philosophical problem, with huge religious implications. Christianity, in fact, places the concept of free will at the core of its theology. In Genesis, Eve chooses to eat the prohibited fruit. Human beings are free to choose evil over good. God doesn't manifest Himself because He wants humans to freely open their hearts to the divine. Even nature was created to follow its course, and if a tsunami has to occur, so be it (tectonic plate movements are said to be necessary to create a moderate climate on the Earth's surface).
In one word, free will is the cause of every suffering. Even Jesus surrendered to it. Think of the time of Jesus. The Romans would crucify up to five hundred rebels in one day, most of them Jews. The emperors were mostly crazy maniacs who believed to be gods. Cruelty was accepted as a part of everyday life: for the average Roman citizen, going to the Coliseum to watch people tortured and killed was the equivalent of a modern evening at the movie theater. Yet God didn't strike the Romans with thunder; instead, he sent Jesus on earth.
Let's face it: The possibility that Jesus could have put humanity on the right track during His lifetime was nonexistent. He represented God's extreme measure, His "sacrificial lamb". I'm baffled at the offense that atheists take when they hear this expression; their lack of insight is astonishing. The God of Christianity is for them a sadist who required a human sacrifice to forgive our sins. But what really required Jesus' death, and His resurrection, were actually the circumstances. Nothing else would have shaken the world enough to change it. Not so, for example, at the time of Nazism: by then the rest of the world knew that to exterminate innocent people is wrong. When a Roman emperor died, the next would let the atrocities at the Coliseum go on, but when Hitler died, the killing of the Jews was over. God used human beings to end Nazism, and it took twelve years instead of the three hundred that were necessary to Christianity to defeat the evil of the Roman Empire.
"God is weak and powerless in the world," wrote the theologian Bonhoffer, "and that is precisely the way, the only way, He is with us and helps us".
Thursday, February 23, 2012
The Beatification of Luigi Giussani
It is with great joy that, on this first day of Lent, I announce that first steps have been taken towards the beatification of Monsignor Luigi Giussani, the Italian founder of Communion and Liberation. He's probably the main reason why I'm Catholic, yet I'm afraid that I wouldn't have paid any attention to the CL Movement if I were still living in Italy. Over there all intellectuals identify the Movement with the extreme political conservatives, pretty much because of the same issues which are dividing America, namely issues related to sex. But at School of Community we have already read four books written by Msgr. Giussani, and there is absolutely nothing political about them, nor there is any talk about sexuality.He writes about faith from an intellectual point of view, reminding us at the same time of a very simple concept: If our faith doesn't change us into better persons, then we are not following Christ.
Msgr. Giussani made a real effort in articulating the rational aspect of faith, especially in "The Religious Sense". His writings are often on the same wavelength with those of Pope Benedict, who said:
"Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a Person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction."
Going to School of Community meetings I realized that we participants share a common experience: We are experiencing the presence of Christ in our lives as something that coincides with our inner self, and the rational aspect of this consists in the awareness that to deny it would mean to deny ourselves. We are magnetized by Jesus' exceptionality. This is already a miracle, which works through those pages that were written about Him two thousands years ago and that sound bizarre to many. Those who don't grasp His presence in the Gospels block the intelligence of their heart with rationalism. But we acknowledge an experience that is mysterious, but it's still of this world. Msgr. Giussani described it perfectly:
"There is a factor here inside…that decides this companionship, certain results…and resonances…of which you hear the echo, taste the fruit, see also the consequences, but you are not able to see it directly. If I say 'So, then it doesn't exits', I'm mistaken, because I eliminate something of experience."
At the same time, we feel that Christ is outside of our being, for we have changed and we know that we haven't done so out of will or self-convincing. We are aware that we couldn't have accomplished such an internal revolution on our own. We opened our heart to Jesus and He did it for us. Jesus doesn't speak of the truth, rather He IS the truth, and brings with Himself all the consequences of this recognition. His presence is unexplainable, surprising, yet real. We can only perceive it if we go beyond the limits of our reason, but the only rational thing we can do is to acknowledge it, for if we deny it we would have to deny ourselves.
"Faith is the subversive and surprising modality of everyday things." said Msgr. Giussani . How does it come about? By grace, I feel I received it by grace. My only merit is that I freely said yes to it and let it define myself. I did not create Jesus in my mind, rather I met Him, and my faith is the product of this encounter. But it wouldn't have lasted if I had not felt His companionship and its consequences in my life. A beautiful theory wouldn't do it for any of us. It would be like talking about love instead of living with our beloved.
Jesus said:
"I am with you, always, until the end of ages."
And He meant it.
Msgr. Giussani made a real effort in articulating the rational aspect of faith, especially in "The Religious Sense". His writings are often on the same wavelength with those of Pope Benedict, who said:
"Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a Person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction."
Going to School of Community meetings I realized that we participants share a common experience: We are experiencing the presence of Christ in our lives as something that coincides with our inner self, and the rational aspect of this consists in the awareness that to deny it would mean to deny ourselves. We are magnetized by Jesus' exceptionality. This is already a miracle, which works through those pages that were written about Him two thousands years ago and that sound bizarre to many. Those who don't grasp His presence in the Gospels block the intelligence of their heart with rationalism. But we acknowledge an experience that is mysterious, but it's still of this world. Msgr. Giussani described it perfectly:
"There is a factor here inside…that decides this companionship, certain results…and resonances…of which you hear the echo, taste the fruit, see also the consequences, but you are not able to see it directly. If I say 'So, then it doesn't exits', I'm mistaken, because I eliminate something of experience."
At the same time, we feel that Christ is outside of our being, for we have changed and we know that we haven't done so out of will or self-convincing. We are aware that we couldn't have accomplished such an internal revolution on our own. We opened our heart to Jesus and He did it for us. Jesus doesn't speak of the truth, rather He IS the truth, and brings with Himself all the consequences of this recognition. His presence is unexplainable, surprising, yet real. We can only perceive it if we go beyond the limits of our reason, but the only rational thing we can do is to acknowledge it, for if we deny it we would have to deny ourselves.
"Faith is the subversive and surprising modality of everyday things." said Msgr. Giussani . How does it come about? By grace, I feel I received it by grace. My only merit is that I freely said yes to it and let it define myself. I did not create Jesus in my mind, rather I met Him, and my faith is the product of this encounter. But it wouldn't have lasted if I had not felt His companionship and its consequences in my life. A beautiful theory wouldn't do it for any of us. It would be like talking about love instead of living with our beloved.
Jesus said:
"I am with you, always, until the end of ages."
And He meant it.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Messaggio alla Chat Italo-Americana
(New post in English below)
Scrivo brevemente in Italiano per chiarire la disgustosa questione nata sulla chat italiana che purtroppo mio marito, un rispettato accademico, si diletta a frequentare. Non ho mai parlato in questa sede e in termini negativi ne di lui ne di nostro figlio, per i quali ho il massimo rispetto e tanto amore. Mi dispiace soltanto che mio marito insista ad avere a che fare con la gentaglia della chat. Ma lui si giustifica facendo appello a personaggi famosi come Macchiavellii, che alla sera amava frequentare le cantine.
Scrivo brevemente in Italiano per chiarire la disgustosa questione nata sulla chat italiana che purtroppo mio marito, un rispettato accademico, si diletta a frequentare. Non ho mai parlato in questa sede e in termini negativi ne di lui ne di nostro figlio, per i quali ho il massimo rispetto e tanto amore. Mi dispiace soltanto che mio marito insista ad avere a che fare con la gentaglia della chat. Ma lui si giustifica facendo appello a personaggi famosi come Macchiavellii, che alla sera amava frequentare le cantine.
Am I a Conscious Woman?
Strangely enough, the first chapter of the next book we are going to read at School of Community is closely related to my last posts. I didn't know that when I wrote them, in fact, looking at its title (At the Origin of the Christian Claim), I thought it was all about Jesus.
Instead, the book begins with an examination of the religious experience in general and of its dizzying inherent quality. Giussani writes:
"I, a human being, am forced to live out all of the steps of my existence imprisoned within a horizon upon which a great inaccessible Unknown looms".
In the Old Testament God says:
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts and your ways are not my ways".
Throughout history and all over the world, man has felt the urge to figure out God's ways.
The first chapter of The Origins of the Christian Claim is appropriately titled Religious Creativity of Man. Here is a quote:
"When faced with the mystery he perceives as the determining factor of his life, man recognizes his power, and since he cannot bear to entrust himself "sine glossa" to an Unknown, he tries to imagine It in relation to himself, according to his own terms".
Giussani appreciates this effort, which dignifies religious imagination.
Well, in my post titled The Human need to Penetrate the Unknown I wrote precisely these words: 'Let's use our imagination.
He continues:
"When he becomes aware of the existence of many religions, the conscious man feels that, in order to be sure of the truth of the one he has chosen, he has to study and compare all of them and then decide".
Isn't this precisely what I've described in my previous post? Am I, then, a conscious woman? Not so fast.
Giussani quotes a famous historian of religions who states that this is an impossible task:
"Most of us (historians) are really familiar with only one poor little sector of the immense domain of religious history".
And so Giussani concludes that "hoping to know all religions in order to choose the best is utopian, and whatever is utopian is a false ideal".
He argues against the idea of creating a universal religion which takes the best from them all, an idea born with the Enlightenment and which, as I mentioned, is called "religious cafeteria" by its critics.
Giussani writes:
"This (idea) does not consider that what might be the best for one man might not be the best for others".
Let me elaborate on that. In my experience, those who make up their own religion end up with an overly inflated ego.
So, what is our best option according with Giussani?
"Man is born into a certain environment, at a particular moment in history, and it is highly probable that the religion his surroundings profess will be the expression best suited to his temperament."
Didn't I write that one of the reasons I chose Catholicism is that, after all, I'm Italian?
He continues:
"Perhaps an encounter in life will draw attention to a doctrine, a morality, an emotion more suited to our reason matured over time or to our heart with its particular history. In that case, we could well change, convert. But the suggestion that we follow the religion of our own tradition remains a basic unpretentious directive. In this sense, all religions are 'true'. "
Apparently, my thoughts are the same thoughts of many people of faith, and Monsignor Giussani would have approved of them. But for us Christians, the issue is not to attempt to imagine God, but rather to recognize Him in Jesus Christ.
Instead, the book begins with an examination of the religious experience in general and of its dizzying inherent quality. Giussani writes:
"I, a human being, am forced to live out all of the steps of my existence imprisoned within a horizon upon which a great inaccessible Unknown looms".
In the Old Testament God says:
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts and your ways are not my ways".
Throughout history and all over the world, man has felt the urge to figure out God's ways.
The first chapter of The Origins of the Christian Claim is appropriately titled Religious Creativity of Man. Here is a quote:
"When faced with the mystery he perceives as the determining factor of his life, man recognizes his power, and since he cannot bear to entrust himself "sine glossa" to an Unknown, he tries to imagine It in relation to himself, according to his own terms".
Giussani appreciates this effort, which dignifies religious imagination.
Well, in my post titled The Human need to Penetrate the Unknown I wrote precisely these words: 'Let's use our imagination.
He continues:
"When he becomes aware of the existence of many religions, the conscious man feels that, in order to be sure of the truth of the one he has chosen, he has to study and compare all of them and then decide".
Isn't this precisely what I've described in my previous post? Am I, then, a conscious woman? Not so fast.
Giussani quotes a famous historian of religions who states that this is an impossible task:
"Most of us (historians) are really familiar with only one poor little sector of the immense domain of religious history".
And so Giussani concludes that "hoping to know all religions in order to choose the best is utopian, and whatever is utopian is a false ideal".
He argues against the idea of creating a universal religion which takes the best from them all, an idea born with the Enlightenment and which, as I mentioned, is called "religious cafeteria" by its critics.
Giussani writes:
"This (idea) does not consider that what might be the best for one man might not be the best for others".
Let me elaborate on that. In my experience, those who make up their own religion end up with an overly inflated ego.
So, what is our best option according with Giussani?
"Man is born into a certain environment, at a particular moment in history, and it is highly probable that the religion his surroundings profess will be the expression best suited to his temperament."
Didn't I write that one of the reasons I chose Catholicism is that, after all, I'm Italian?
He continues:
"Perhaps an encounter in life will draw attention to a doctrine, a morality, an emotion more suited to our reason matured over time or to our heart with its particular history. In that case, we could well change, convert. But the suggestion that we follow the religion of our own tradition remains a basic unpretentious directive. In this sense, all religions are 'true'. "
Apparently, my thoughts are the same thoughts of many people of faith, and Monsignor Giussani would have approved of them. But for us Christians, the issue is not to attempt to imagine God, but rather to recognize Him in Jesus Christ.
Friday, February 10, 2012
What I went through before choosing Catholicism
As we have seen in my previous post, in Hindu religion Avatar is the consciousness of God that takes on a human body and, when necessary, comes on earth to put humanity on the right track. But if, as modern schools of Hinduism maintain, Krishna, the Buddha, Muhammad and Jesus were all Avatar, how do we explain the diversity of their messages? Is it possible that it was somehow distorted by the receiving cultures?
At the beginning of my conversion, although Jesus had conquered me, I wanted to make an educated choice and read about other religions, but most of all about the origins of Christianity. I found out that Gnostics were an integral part of early Christian communities and that they were labeled as heretics in the second century. The realization that there had been a controversy within the early Christian movement intrigued me. We came to know more about it only in 1945, when the Gnostic Scriptures were found in a sealed six-foot jar buried near the town of Nag-Hammadi in Egypt.
The main heresy of Gnosticism consists in the idea that Jesus was a spiritual entity. Some Gnostic texts go as far as affirming that He didn't suffer during the crucifixion because He wasn't a human being. The interpretation of His suffering was a very controversial subject among Christians. While some Gnostics condemned orthodox for coercing naïve believers to undergo martyrdom claiming that they would gain eternal life, Tertullian wrote that "gnostics purposefully looked for false theological means to avoid martyrdom and even spoke of martyrs with contempt." Generally, in fact, they managed not to be persecuted. They were criticizing the faith of most believers and, as a result, dividing the Church.
However, Gnosticism wasn't limited to the wacky belief that Jesus wasn't human. It had many aspects, in fact, to say it with Tertullian, gnostics agreed only to disagree. From the gnostic gospels the figure of Jesus comes across even more mysterious and hermetic. For example, the gospel of Thomas depicts Jesus as a teacher or a prophet, but also as a divine being. In this gospel Jesus sounds like a Vedic sage: We won't know God unless we know ourselves. In other words, we need to understand that our true self is the soul, which is united with God. The reality we see is only real from our perspective, which will shift in the afterlife, and this world will become unreal. This gospel is a collection of Jesus' sayings, many of which are similar to those in the synoptic gospels. Thomas teaches that we have to look for the divine within ourselves, for we are made in God's image. For Thomas, the kingdom of God is already on earth, but we don't see it because we don't understand the world we live in, trapped as we are in the dichotomy between past and future.
I was surprised to learn that self-knowledge was at the core of the Gnostic Scriptures. In fact, the word "gnostic"means knowledge or insight. Like in Hinduism, self-knowledge is knowledge of God and salvation doesn't come through faith alone, but through meditation. In the second century, Valentinus was the leader of a branch of Christianity which gave an allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures that were going to be chosen as the New Testament by St. Irenaeus of Lyon. The latter labeled Valentinus as heretic and had him cast out of the Roman Church. He wrote a huge treatise against Gnosticism, affirming that "heretics read wildly, concentrating on the enigmas".
In the Gospel of Mark, the apostles ask Jesus why He talks to the crowds only in parables, and He answers:
"The mystery of the kingdom of God has been granted to you. But to those outside everything comes in parables, so that they may look and see but not perceive, and hear and listen but not understand, in order that they might not be converted but forgiven".
Jesus seems to imply that people have different levels of insight; therefore He's giving His teachings according to their ability to comprehend. As for those left behind, forgiveness will have to be enough. Thus, the gnostics found ground for passing their teachings only to persons who had given proof of being spiritually mature. The initiation of an adept lasted five years, and during this time he or she participated in meetings where his or her role would change continually. Men and women, in fact, rotated as priests following a principle of equality.
Valentinus' followers didn't bother to argue with orthodox Christians because they considered them at a lower level of understanding for taking the Bible literally. Valentinus quoted the passages where God shows His vindictive nature to argue that humans have created a lesser God, the God of creation, who is portrayed as a craftsman and not as the ineffable First Principle, the God of Love.
There are other similarities between Hinduism and Gnosticism. In the Gospel of Mary of Magdala, she is the most spiritually gifted and Jesus reveals to her how the souls ascend to heaven in a mystic vision where the soul, superior in knowledge to the negative powers which try to send her back in a different body, succeeds instead in reaching God. The belief in reincarnation is an interesting aspect of Gnosticism. Unlike Indian religions, it doesn't mention the rebirth of the sinner in an animal body where, quite obviously, there would be no chance for him to correct the mistakes made in the course of his life. In the Apocalypses of Paul, for example, the sorrowful soul is cast down again, into a body prepared for it.
Like Hinduism, the Gospel of Mary of Magdala describes the existence of different spiritual planes, the lowest inhabited by lost souls. According to this gospel, a human being is composed of body, soul and mind. The mind is the most divine part of the self, which rules and leads the soul. Knowledge will allow the soul to escape the domination of the flesh. The spirit is part of the divine, not of the human being. Wisdom and visions are perceived by the mind, which acts as a mediator between the soul and spirit.
In the Gnostic Scriptures there is no hell and sin doesn't exist as such, but people produce sin when they follow the desires of their material nature, so punishment is self-inflicted. Consequently, gnostics didn't believe in baptism as a tool to erase original sin, but as first symbolic step towards Christianity.
Like Hindus, they believed that sex has a mystical meaning.
At this point I should probably tell you why I have expanded so much on Hinduism and Gnosticism. It all started with me trying to explain my random posts about the afterlife, remember? Well, I hope you have concluded that those posts were not so random after all. On the contrary, there was a lot of pondering behind them. See, I was interested in Buddhism in my youth. Having fallen in love with Jesus later in life, I had to believe that we have a loving Father in heaven, and that Jesus was the Way. I went through a period where I though that the truth lied between Christianity, some aspects of Gnosticism and Hinduism (these last two agreed on reincarnation, which was part of my Buddhist back-ground). But in the end I changed my mind.
Gnostic and Hindus thought that through self-knowledge we can become like God. But, even if we could find God within ourselves, could we really understand Him? For the father of orthodoxy, St. Irenaus, it was heresy to assume that human experience, even through meditation, could ever comprehend God. Only one Gnostic source, Allogenes, agrees with Irenaus and teaches that we cannot attain knowledge of the Unknown God and that we should see gnosis as a tool to achieve spiritual development. True gnosis, for Allogenes, means to recognize the limits of human knowledge, and I agree with him.
The Dalai Lama, whom I went to see when he came to Rome in the 90s, advised people of faith to make up their mind and follow one religion. I found an answer to my need of reflecting upon my choice in Communion and Liberation. After all, Catholicism is the religion that stemmed from the early Christians. And, last but not least...I'm Italian! Do I believe or accept all its teachings? Honestly, no. But I bow before the Mystery, on which Monsignor Giussani insists so much. As I said before, I have problems with the catholic concept of hell, and that's what prompted my post on Medjugorie: It was an answer to the problem of the afterlife that worked without involving reincarnation. I'm not saying that reincarnation is not a possibility. What I'm saying is that nobody can claim to know what happens in the afterlife, so I'm comfortable speculating about it.
I believe in what I have experienced. I have felt my father's presence after he died. I feel Jesus' presence and He has changed my life. So I believe that there is life after death. And I believe that, sooner or later, in a timeless space, I'll be with Jesus.
At the beginning of my conversion, although Jesus had conquered me, I wanted to make an educated choice and read about other religions, but most of all about the origins of Christianity. I found out that Gnostics were an integral part of early Christian communities and that they were labeled as heretics in the second century. The realization that there had been a controversy within the early Christian movement intrigued me. We came to know more about it only in 1945, when the Gnostic Scriptures were found in a sealed six-foot jar buried near the town of Nag-Hammadi in Egypt.
The main heresy of Gnosticism consists in the idea that Jesus was a spiritual entity. Some Gnostic texts go as far as affirming that He didn't suffer during the crucifixion because He wasn't a human being. The interpretation of His suffering was a very controversial subject among Christians. While some Gnostics condemned orthodox for coercing naïve believers to undergo martyrdom claiming that they would gain eternal life, Tertullian wrote that "gnostics purposefully looked for false theological means to avoid martyrdom and even spoke of martyrs with contempt." Generally, in fact, they managed not to be persecuted. They were criticizing the faith of most believers and, as a result, dividing the Church.
However, Gnosticism wasn't limited to the wacky belief that Jesus wasn't human. It had many aspects, in fact, to say it with Tertullian, gnostics agreed only to disagree. From the gnostic gospels the figure of Jesus comes across even more mysterious and hermetic. For example, the gospel of Thomas depicts Jesus as a teacher or a prophet, but also as a divine being. In this gospel Jesus sounds like a Vedic sage: We won't know God unless we know ourselves. In other words, we need to understand that our true self is the soul, which is united with God. The reality we see is only real from our perspective, which will shift in the afterlife, and this world will become unreal. This gospel is a collection of Jesus' sayings, many of which are similar to those in the synoptic gospels. Thomas teaches that we have to look for the divine within ourselves, for we are made in God's image. For Thomas, the kingdom of God is already on earth, but we don't see it because we don't understand the world we live in, trapped as we are in the dichotomy between past and future.
I was surprised to learn that self-knowledge was at the core of the Gnostic Scriptures. In fact, the word "gnostic"means knowledge or insight. Like in Hinduism, self-knowledge is knowledge of God and salvation doesn't come through faith alone, but through meditation. In the second century, Valentinus was the leader of a branch of Christianity which gave an allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures that were going to be chosen as the New Testament by St. Irenaeus of Lyon. The latter labeled Valentinus as heretic and had him cast out of the Roman Church. He wrote a huge treatise against Gnosticism, affirming that "heretics read wildly, concentrating on the enigmas".
In the Gospel of Mark, the apostles ask Jesus why He talks to the crowds only in parables, and He answers:
"The mystery of the kingdom of God has been granted to you. But to those outside everything comes in parables, so that they may look and see but not perceive, and hear and listen but not understand, in order that they might not be converted but forgiven".
Jesus seems to imply that people have different levels of insight; therefore He's giving His teachings according to their ability to comprehend. As for those left behind, forgiveness will have to be enough. Thus, the gnostics found ground for passing their teachings only to persons who had given proof of being spiritually mature. The initiation of an adept lasted five years, and during this time he or she participated in meetings where his or her role would change continually. Men and women, in fact, rotated as priests following a principle of equality.
Valentinus' followers didn't bother to argue with orthodox Christians because they considered them at a lower level of understanding for taking the Bible literally. Valentinus quoted the passages where God shows His vindictive nature to argue that humans have created a lesser God, the God of creation, who is portrayed as a craftsman and not as the ineffable First Principle, the God of Love.
There are other similarities between Hinduism and Gnosticism. In the Gospel of Mary of Magdala, she is the most spiritually gifted and Jesus reveals to her how the souls ascend to heaven in a mystic vision where the soul, superior in knowledge to the negative powers which try to send her back in a different body, succeeds instead in reaching God. The belief in reincarnation is an interesting aspect of Gnosticism. Unlike Indian religions, it doesn't mention the rebirth of the sinner in an animal body where, quite obviously, there would be no chance for him to correct the mistakes made in the course of his life. In the Apocalypses of Paul, for example, the sorrowful soul is cast down again, into a body prepared for it.
Like Hinduism, the Gospel of Mary of Magdala describes the existence of different spiritual planes, the lowest inhabited by lost souls. According to this gospel, a human being is composed of body, soul and mind. The mind is the most divine part of the self, which rules and leads the soul. Knowledge will allow the soul to escape the domination of the flesh. The spirit is part of the divine, not of the human being. Wisdom and visions are perceived by the mind, which acts as a mediator between the soul and spirit.
In the Gnostic Scriptures there is no hell and sin doesn't exist as such, but people produce sin when they follow the desires of their material nature, so punishment is self-inflicted. Consequently, gnostics didn't believe in baptism as a tool to erase original sin, but as first symbolic step towards Christianity.
Like Hindus, they believed that sex has a mystical meaning.
At this point I should probably tell you why I have expanded so much on Hinduism and Gnosticism. It all started with me trying to explain my random posts about the afterlife, remember? Well, I hope you have concluded that those posts were not so random after all. On the contrary, there was a lot of pondering behind them. See, I was interested in Buddhism in my youth. Having fallen in love with Jesus later in life, I had to believe that we have a loving Father in heaven, and that Jesus was the Way. I went through a period where I though that the truth lied between Christianity, some aspects of Gnosticism and Hinduism (these last two agreed on reincarnation, which was part of my Buddhist back-ground). But in the end I changed my mind.
Gnostic and Hindus thought that through self-knowledge we can become like God. But, even if we could find God within ourselves, could we really understand Him? For the father of orthodoxy, St. Irenaus, it was heresy to assume that human experience, even through meditation, could ever comprehend God. Only one Gnostic source, Allogenes, agrees with Irenaus and teaches that we cannot attain knowledge of the Unknown God and that we should see gnosis as a tool to achieve spiritual development. True gnosis, for Allogenes, means to recognize the limits of human knowledge, and I agree with him.
The Dalai Lama, whom I went to see when he came to Rome in the 90s, advised people of faith to make up their mind and follow one religion. I found an answer to my need of reflecting upon my choice in Communion and Liberation. After all, Catholicism is the religion that stemmed from the early Christians. And, last but not least...I'm Italian! Do I believe or accept all its teachings? Honestly, no. But I bow before the Mystery, on which Monsignor Giussani insists so much. As I said before, I have problems with the catholic concept of hell, and that's what prompted my post on Medjugorie: It was an answer to the problem of the afterlife that worked without involving reincarnation. I'm not saying that reincarnation is not a possibility. What I'm saying is that nobody can claim to know what happens in the afterlife, so I'm comfortable speculating about it.
I believe in what I have experienced. I have felt my father's presence after he died. I feel Jesus' presence and He has changed my life. So I believe that there is life after death. And I believe that, sooner or later, in a timeless space, I'll be with Jesus.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Is Jesus the only Avatar?
Prompted by my random posting about the afterlife, an anonymous reader from Australia left a comment with several links to websites dedicated to Avatar Adi Da Samraj, obviously in the attempt to shed some light on my confused mind. I want to thank the anonymous reader for his/her concern, but I also want to take this opportunity to say something about how I came to be or, I should say, to remain a Catholic.
Hinduism and its concept of the afterlife aren't new to me, for in the process of my conversion I have taken them into consideration. In fact, although I had fallen in love with Jesus, I did not assume that Christians were the only holders of the truth. I found parallels between Hindu philosophy and western culture. Let me give you some examples.
In Hinduism, the Vedic Hymns precede all forms of life, including the gods (like in the Gospel of John: In the beginning was the Word…). The hymns don't separate nature from Brahman, who is the only reality, ultimate and impersonal. Dreams are as real as reality, which is also a dream from which those liberated from samsara, or the endless cycle of death and rebirth, are awakened. Shan Kara (788-820), one of the two most influential Indian philosophers, maintains that reality is entirely originated from speech, meaning that what we can describe is more real than what is really out there. In other words, we sort of create or shape reality through language. For Shan Kara, the world as we know it is an appearance, namely it exists in relation to the minds to which it appears. We split up reality in concepts to be able to deal with it. In the absence of the observer, reality is a whole.
Ideas like these are not as foreign to our culture as one may think. Marcus was a 300 C.E. prophet who had a vision suggesting that the whole alphabet, and all human speech, can become a mystical form of divine truth. He believed that the restoration of all things will take place only when the illusion of separateness will be overcome. Plato also maintained that the intelligible world is more real than the one of sensory reality.
Thomas of Aquinas describes God very much like Shan Kara describes Brahman: utterly simple, timeless, changeless and ineffable.
Hindu philosophy states that "the effect is in reality no different from the cause", meaning that we are one with Brahman, although we are actually separated from Him because diversity belongs to the realm of appearances. This concept is not so different from what Aquinas wrote, namely that we are the "effect" produced by God, a reflection of Him and dependent on Him. But Shan Kara sees the act of creation in a negative way, because it's the result of Brahman's desire for "another".
In the place of Hell, in Hinduism there are the laws of karma, which unfold during our lives on earth. Our salvation is not to improve the world, but to escape it. For Shan Kara, the concepts of individual soul and of personal God are illusions. His God is beyond good and evil, and is not concerned with His creation.
Instead, the Indian philosopher Ramanuja (1017-1137) is much more close to our own view of religion. He teaches that Brahman can be seen as a personal God and possesses qualities in their higher forms. The universe is the product of His creative activity and the soul is real and eternal. The true self is not pure consciousness beyond experience; on the contrary, it can experience a state of bliss in knowing Brahman. We don't have to renounce the world; rather we have to learn how to live in it freely.
Modern Hindu thinkers have rethought the old, depressing idea of reincarnation: Instead of an endless cycle of rebirth, where a soul might reincarnate from a human to an animal body, the process of rebirth is now seen as a constant progress towards the final goal.
Hindu theology is not incompatible with the Christian theory of Incarnation, if one sees Jesus as an Avatar, or God-Man. Avatar is the first soul that ever manifested itself in the universe. When incarnated, the God-Man realizes his divine status, but at the same time is fully human. The Avatar does not reincarnate, because he is the consciousness of God that takes on a human body. When humanity is driven by corruption and anger, the God-Man comes on earth to bring it to a new level, where spiritual awakening is available to all. Modern schools of Hinduism maintain that Krishna, the Buddha, Muhammad and Jesus were all Avatar, and here the similarity with Christianity ends.
As we have seen, it's possible to compare different theologies and find affinities between them. But ancient Buddhism denies the existence of a Creator, and Muhammad doesn't describe God as a forgiving Father.
How are we to explain these fundamental differences? As a Christian, I believe that Jesus alone was Avatar, whereas the others were interpreting the Unknown according to their personality and culture. Jesus Christ took upon himself the evil forces that ruled the world and crushed them under the weight of His Passion. He loved humanity more than anyone else ever did. As opposite to eastern religions, Jesus did not deny the reality of the self and of God's creation; rather he brought it to a higher level. He taught that it's crucial to improve ourselves and to care for other people. He said that He lived in each and every one of the poor on earth and that the Father lived in Him. Therefore God is within us. For Jesus there are no boundaries between us and the rest of the universe, provided that we are able to live up to this communion of souls.
In my youth I practiced Buddhist meditation, so turning to Christianity I had to learn how to appreciate the theatricality of the Old Testament prophets and their fearless attitude toward the establishment. They did not behave like Hindu sages, but as shameless, rebellious God messengers. They were angry, because their people did not understand the will of Yahweh. The ancient prophets had deep religious insights, for their God cares for His creation's outcome.
On the other hand, it's obvious that Hindu philosophy can be read in Jesus' words. The kingdom of heaven as He describes it was a revolutionary idea in ancient Judaism, but not in Vedanta. Jesus said that the kingdom is not only with the Father, but it is present here and now and at the same time is within us. He describes it as a mustard seed that grows until it becomes a large bush. Similarly, Brahman is said to be greater than the greatest and smaller than the smallest. Jesus is speaking of karma when He says "As soon as you sow, you shall reap". But most of all, Jesus preaches detachment from earthly affection, like eastern religions do.
To be continued….if you have the patience to read more!
Hinduism and its concept of the afterlife aren't new to me, for in the process of my conversion I have taken them into consideration. In fact, although I had fallen in love with Jesus, I did not assume that Christians were the only holders of the truth. I found parallels between Hindu philosophy and western culture. Let me give you some examples.
In Hinduism, the Vedic Hymns precede all forms of life, including the gods (like in the Gospel of John: In the beginning was the Word…). The hymns don't separate nature from Brahman, who is the only reality, ultimate and impersonal. Dreams are as real as reality, which is also a dream from which those liberated from samsara, or the endless cycle of death and rebirth, are awakened. Shan Kara (788-820), one of the two most influential Indian philosophers, maintains that reality is entirely originated from speech, meaning that what we can describe is more real than what is really out there. In other words, we sort of create or shape reality through language. For Shan Kara, the world as we know it is an appearance, namely it exists in relation to the minds to which it appears. We split up reality in concepts to be able to deal with it. In the absence of the observer, reality is a whole.
Ideas like these are not as foreign to our culture as one may think. Marcus was a 300 C.E. prophet who had a vision suggesting that the whole alphabet, and all human speech, can become a mystical form of divine truth. He believed that the restoration of all things will take place only when the illusion of separateness will be overcome. Plato also maintained that the intelligible world is more real than the one of sensory reality.
Thomas of Aquinas describes God very much like Shan Kara describes Brahman: utterly simple, timeless, changeless and ineffable.
Hindu philosophy states that "the effect is in reality no different from the cause", meaning that we are one with Brahman, although we are actually separated from Him because diversity belongs to the realm of appearances. This concept is not so different from what Aquinas wrote, namely that we are the "effect" produced by God, a reflection of Him and dependent on Him. But Shan Kara sees the act of creation in a negative way, because it's the result of Brahman's desire for "another".
In the place of Hell, in Hinduism there are the laws of karma, which unfold during our lives on earth. Our salvation is not to improve the world, but to escape it. For Shan Kara, the concepts of individual soul and of personal God are illusions. His God is beyond good and evil, and is not concerned with His creation.
Instead, the Indian philosopher Ramanuja (1017-1137) is much more close to our own view of religion. He teaches that Brahman can be seen as a personal God and possesses qualities in their higher forms. The universe is the product of His creative activity and the soul is real and eternal. The true self is not pure consciousness beyond experience; on the contrary, it can experience a state of bliss in knowing Brahman. We don't have to renounce the world; rather we have to learn how to live in it freely.
Modern Hindu thinkers have rethought the old, depressing idea of reincarnation: Instead of an endless cycle of rebirth, where a soul might reincarnate from a human to an animal body, the process of rebirth is now seen as a constant progress towards the final goal.
Hindu theology is not incompatible with the Christian theory of Incarnation, if one sees Jesus as an Avatar, or God-Man. Avatar is the first soul that ever manifested itself in the universe. When incarnated, the God-Man realizes his divine status, but at the same time is fully human. The Avatar does not reincarnate, because he is the consciousness of God that takes on a human body. When humanity is driven by corruption and anger, the God-Man comes on earth to bring it to a new level, where spiritual awakening is available to all. Modern schools of Hinduism maintain that Krishna, the Buddha, Muhammad and Jesus were all Avatar, and here the similarity with Christianity ends.
As we have seen, it's possible to compare different theologies and find affinities between them. But ancient Buddhism denies the existence of a Creator, and Muhammad doesn't describe God as a forgiving Father.
How are we to explain these fundamental differences? As a Christian, I believe that Jesus alone was Avatar, whereas the others were interpreting the Unknown according to their personality and culture. Jesus Christ took upon himself the evil forces that ruled the world and crushed them under the weight of His Passion. He loved humanity more than anyone else ever did. As opposite to eastern religions, Jesus did not deny the reality of the self and of God's creation; rather he brought it to a higher level. He taught that it's crucial to improve ourselves and to care for other people. He said that He lived in each and every one of the poor on earth and that the Father lived in Him. Therefore God is within us. For Jesus there are no boundaries between us and the rest of the universe, provided that we are able to live up to this communion of souls.
In my youth I practiced Buddhist meditation, so turning to Christianity I had to learn how to appreciate the theatricality of the Old Testament prophets and their fearless attitude toward the establishment. They did not behave like Hindu sages, but as shameless, rebellious God messengers. They were angry, because their people did not understand the will of Yahweh. The ancient prophets had deep religious insights, for their God cares for His creation's outcome.
On the other hand, it's obvious that Hindu philosophy can be read in Jesus' words. The kingdom of heaven as He describes it was a revolutionary idea in ancient Judaism, but not in Vedanta. Jesus said that the kingdom is not only with the Father, but it is present here and now and at the same time is within us. He describes it as a mustard seed that grows until it becomes a large bush. Similarly, Brahman is said to be greater than the greatest and smaller than the smallest. Jesus is speaking of karma when He says "As soon as you sow, you shall reap". But most of all, Jesus preaches detachment from earthly affection, like eastern religions do.
To be continued….if you have the patience to read more!
Thursday, January 26, 2012
The Human Need to Penetrate the Unknown
My son's main interest in the field of philosophy is Ethics, and this represents a further obstacle for him to accept the idea of a God. He maintains that the principles of Ethics are universal and therefore must be extended to a hypothetical creator.
I firmly believe that, although God created us in His likeness, it is impossible for us to understand His mysterious ways. Yet, I sympathize with my son. As a matter of fact, two weeks ago, in my post about Medjugorje, I said that I had finally found my favorite explanation concerning the afterlife. Thanks to the Blessed Mary's apparitions in the small Yugoslavian village, I could insist with my son that God, after all, is not a cosmic dictator. In part I wrote that post for his sake, but it also satisfied my own need to figure out God.
Atheists or believers of different faiths, we all try to pin down the Mystery, but its wings are more powerful than our will. This is the subject of the religious Sense last chapters.
Giussani praises reason for yearning to penetrate the Unknown, because this is the driving force that brings us closer to God. But at the same time he reminds us of the futility of the attempt to unravel the Mystery. He writes:
"Reason…degrades the object by identifying it with itself, with something it fully comprehends, that is, within the confine of its experience, because experience is the horizon of the comprehensible".
Instead of reducing the Mystery to our own measure, let's use our imagination to figure out the laws of Ethics that might rule our life on earth and the afterlife, assuming that the two are connected. Perhaps there is a cosmic battle going on in the heavens, where Good and Evil fight each other with unfathomable weapons. Maybe the suffering of good people on earth serves the purpose of saving souls by the thousands. It sounds unjust, but what do we know about cosmic battles?
At Mass, we repeat again and again that Jesus offered Himself as a ransom for many. Should we take this statement as a metaphor or should we take it literally? Atheists despise this cruel God who demanded the ultimate sacrifice of His son to save those who had gone ashtray, but what if Jesus' death was necessary to reestablish a cosmic balance between Good and Evil? These may sound like absurd speculations, but my point is simple: It's dizzying, but the only rational position is to admit that we live suspended upon the Beyond, waiting to cross its borders.
Jesus' advent did not unravel the mystery, but it made it more approachable: the Beyond is inhabited by a loving Father, whose Son walked the earth as any other human being. God become man, He has a face. Almost five years after my conversion I still don't really know how to pray, but I can sit in contemplation before that face and be filled with awe, hope and joy.
I firmly believe that, although God created us in His likeness, it is impossible for us to understand His mysterious ways. Yet, I sympathize with my son. As a matter of fact, two weeks ago, in my post about Medjugorje, I said that I had finally found my favorite explanation concerning the afterlife. Thanks to the Blessed Mary's apparitions in the small Yugoslavian village, I could insist with my son that God, after all, is not a cosmic dictator. In part I wrote that post for his sake, but it also satisfied my own need to figure out God.
Atheists or believers of different faiths, we all try to pin down the Mystery, but its wings are more powerful than our will. This is the subject of the religious Sense last chapters.
Giussani praises reason for yearning to penetrate the Unknown, because this is the driving force that brings us closer to God. But at the same time he reminds us of the futility of the attempt to unravel the Mystery. He writes:
"Reason…degrades the object by identifying it with itself, with something it fully comprehends, that is, within the confine of its experience, because experience is the horizon of the comprehensible".
Instead of reducing the Mystery to our own measure, let's use our imagination to figure out the laws of Ethics that might rule our life on earth and the afterlife, assuming that the two are connected. Perhaps there is a cosmic battle going on in the heavens, where Good and Evil fight each other with unfathomable weapons. Maybe the suffering of good people on earth serves the purpose of saving souls by the thousands. It sounds unjust, but what do we know about cosmic battles?
At Mass, we repeat again and again that Jesus offered Himself as a ransom for many. Should we take this statement as a metaphor or should we take it literally? Atheists despise this cruel God who demanded the ultimate sacrifice of His son to save those who had gone ashtray, but what if Jesus' death was necessary to reestablish a cosmic balance between Good and Evil? These may sound like absurd speculations, but my point is simple: It's dizzying, but the only rational position is to admit that we live suspended upon the Beyond, waiting to cross its borders.
Jesus' advent did not unravel the mystery, but it made it more approachable: the Beyond is inhabited by a loving Father, whose Son walked the earth as any other human being. God become man, He has a face. Almost five years after my conversion I still don't really know how to pray, but I can sit in contemplation before that face and be filled with awe, hope and joy.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Jesus, a Perceptible Presence
A reader of this blog sent me a link with the conversion story of an English psychiatric nurse turned published poet. This woman and I have a few things in common: We are about the same age, she lives in Rome (where I used to live before I moved to the USA) and she was not a believer for most of her life.
I was moved to tears when I read about her experience:
"In that church, there was an icon of Christ and, prayerless, I would simply look at him. It was on one of these occasions that I spoke aloud to the face and asked for help. There was no visual or aural hallucination, or anything; as a poet, I can use as a metaphor to tell what happened. The nearest I can come to describing it is to say that it felt like I was an amnesiac in a fit of quiet panic, and suddenly someone walked into the room that I recognised.
Later, I would read Simone Weil’s account of a very similar experience: “Christ lui-même est descendu et m’a prise.” It was unlike anything I had ever experienced and was impossible to replicate internally. I had and have no doubt that it was the presence of Christ. That, earlier in the spring, my breaking apart had allowed God enough of a crack in my intellect and defences to let me know him. Now I was open enough to let Christ embed himself in me".
Witness like this move me and reinforce my faith, because my experience of the divine is similar. At times I've had a strong perception of Jesus' presence, for me He is real and alive in the Spirit. Father Giussani defines Him a "perceptible Presence", and the members of my School of Community interpret this as a metaphor, where His presence becomes evident in people's actions and goodness. This is beautiful, but for me there is more to it. There is that "Lui- meme", "Lui stesso", Jesus Himself who dwells among us. The risen Jesus.
Last week, at School of Community, we read about "the experience of risk". Giussani wonders why it is so difficult for man to read the existence of God in the reality that surrounds him, why man remains paralyzed before the real. I still experience this difficulty when I try to see the hand of a Creator. Without the Incarnation I wouldn't believe in God. But Jesus came on earth and suddenly God was not so hidden anymore, nor did he want to be. The "risk" for me is that of loosing contact with Him, of ending up thinking that He is a projection of my mind. How do I avoid this risk? I hold on to my love for Him and to the perception of His love for me. When love feels real, it's hard to believe that the object of our love is just a product of our imagination..
I was moved to tears when I read about her experience:
"In that church, there was an icon of Christ and, prayerless, I would simply look at him. It was on one of these occasions that I spoke aloud to the face and asked for help. There was no visual or aural hallucination, or anything; as a poet, I can use as a metaphor to tell what happened. The nearest I can come to describing it is to say that it felt like I was an amnesiac in a fit of quiet panic, and suddenly someone walked into the room that I recognised.
Later, I would read Simone Weil’s account of a very similar experience: “Christ lui-même est descendu et m’a prise.” It was unlike anything I had ever experienced and was impossible to replicate internally. I had and have no doubt that it was the presence of Christ. That, earlier in the spring, my breaking apart had allowed God enough of a crack in my intellect and defences to let me know him. Now I was open enough to let Christ embed himself in me".
Witness like this move me and reinforce my faith, because my experience of the divine is similar. At times I've had a strong perception of Jesus' presence, for me He is real and alive in the Spirit. Father Giussani defines Him a "perceptible Presence", and the members of my School of Community interpret this as a metaphor, where His presence becomes evident in people's actions and goodness. This is beautiful, but for me there is more to it. There is that "Lui- meme", "Lui stesso", Jesus Himself who dwells among us. The risen Jesus.
Last week, at School of Community, we read about "the experience of risk". Giussani wonders why it is so difficult for man to read the existence of God in the reality that surrounds him, why man remains paralyzed before the real. I still experience this difficulty when I try to see the hand of a Creator. Without the Incarnation I wouldn't believe in God. But Jesus came on earth and suddenly God was not so hidden anymore, nor did he want to be. The "risk" for me is that of loosing contact with Him, of ending up thinking that He is a projection of my mind. How do I avoid this risk? I hold on to my love for Him and to the perception of His love for me. When love feels real, it's hard to believe that the object of our love is just a product of our imagination..
Friday, January 13, 2012
The Afterlife according to the Blessed Virgin Mary of Medjugorje
As I've said before, after Christmas my son decided to read the Gospels. His main objection to Jesus' words is that they introduce the idea of Hell. I understand his point of view. As a matter of fact I've struggled with the concept of eternal punishment myself, finding a way out in the fact that Jesus' language was appropriate for an eschatological prophet.
Of course His words can be interpreted in different ways, and unfortunately I must admit that I don't like the Christian interpretation, where our only chance to be saved is to behave and convert during our earthly life. What about a good boy who does not believe in God (as you know I'm related to one)? Or what about an evil person who became evil because was abused as a child? For this reason I believed in reincarnation even after I returned to Catholicism. I found hints in the Gospels about the possibility of reincarnation: Jesus, for example, tells His apostles that Elijah had already returned but had not been recognized, and they realize that He's referring to John the Baptist. This may very well mean that Elijah reincarnated into John the Baptist, doesn't it?
However, I was never completely at ease with this mix and match of religions I was doing. My Catholic friends, and even my atheist son, wanted me to fully adhere to one faith, accusing me of picking and choosing what I liked bests from different belief systems. I defended my position, maintaining that no one can claim to know what happens in the afterlife. I still hold the same opinion, but I don't like to be labeled as a "cafeteria" believer.
Well, I think I've found the answer to my problem, and it comes straight from the Mother of Jesus. I'm reading a book about the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Medjugorje, Yugoslavia. One of the visionaries, Mirjana, allegedly asked Her how a merciful God could condemn people to Hell for eternity. The Blessed Mother answered that souls who stay in Hell do so by their own choice. To avoid misunderstandings, let me quote Marjana:
"If a person goes to Hell…Don't people pray for their salvation? Could God be so unmerciful as not to hear their prayers? Then the Madonna explained it to me. People in Hell do not pray at all; instead, they blame God for everything. In effect, they become one with that Hell and they get used to it. They rage against God, and they suffer, but they always refuse to pray to God".
Unmistakably, this means that great sinners have the possibility to repent in the afterlife, and that nonbelievers can still believe and fall in love with God after they die. Hell is for those who don't want to be delivered from it by God, whom they reject. However, according to the Blessed Mother, most people go to Purgatory, where they can deal with their issues.
I know that the Catholic Church does not accept Medjugorje apparitions as indisputably true, but I embrace the Madonna's explanation because, for the first time, I'm completely satisfied with a description of the afterlife. God is not a tyrant, and we are truly free.
Of course His words can be interpreted in different ways, and unfortunately I must admit that I don't like the Christian interpretation, where our only chance to be saved is to behave and convert during our earthly life. What about a good boy who does not believe in God (as you know I'm related to one)? Or what about an evil person who became evil because was abused as a child? For this reason I believed in reincarnation even after I returned to Catholicism. I found hints in the Gospels about the possibility of reincarnation: Jesus, for example, tells His apostles that Elijah had already returned but had not been recognized, and they realize that He's referring to John the Baptist. This may very well mean that Elijah reincarnated into John the Baptist, doesn't it?
However, I was never completely at ease with this mix and match of religions I was doing. My Catholic friends, and even my atheist son, wanted me to fully adhere to one faith, accusing me of picking and choosing what I liked bests from different belief systems. I defended my position, maintaining that no one can claim to know what happens in the afterlife. I still hold the same opinion, but I don't like to be labeled as a "cafeteria" believer.
Well, I think I've found the answer to my problem, and it comes straight from the Mother of Jesus. I'm reading a book about the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Medjugorje, Yugoslavia. One of the visionaries, Mirjana, allegedly asked Her how a merciful God could condemn people to Hell for eternity. The Blessed Mother answered that souls who stay in Hell do so by their own choice. To avoid misunderstandings, let me quote Marjana:
"If a person goes to Hell…Don't people pray for their salvation? Could God be so unmerciful as not to hear their prayers? Then the Madonna explained it to me. People in Hell do not pray at all; instead, they blame God for everything. In effect, they become one with that Hell and they get used to it. They rage against God, and they suffer, but they always refuse to pray to God".
Unmistakably, this means that great sinners have the possibility to repent in the afterlife, and that nonbelievers can still believe and fall in love with God after they die. Hell is for those who don't want to be delivered from it by God, whom they reject. However, according to the Blessed Mother, most people go to Purgatory, where they can deal with their issues.
I know that the Catholic Church does not accept Medjugorje apparitions as indisputably true, but I embrace the Madonna's explanation because, for the first time, I'm completely satisfied with a description of the afterlife. God is not a tyrant, and we are truly free.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Meditating on Facebook
As soon as we came to the USA twelve years ago, my husband plunged into the Internet world never to resurface again. He found solace in the unending sources of information and exorcised his nostalgia finding new friends online.
On the contrary, I was always very suspicious of these mysterious gadgets called computers and of the entire concept of virtual reality. I insisted on consulting my Encyclopedia Britannica and on writing letters to be sent my mail for quite a few years. But I could type, so I didn't have to face too many difficulties when I decided to write a book about my conversion. Sitting for hours in front of a computer screen, I started to explore its possibilities. That hellish machine seemed to have a mind of its own, but little by little I was able to come to terms with it. I'm still computer-impaired, as you can see from the look of this blog, but at least I've learned how to send emails and post my writings.
Recently I've joined Facebook, and that opened a surprisingly surreal world for me. Ghosts of my past emerged from the laptop, carrying with them floods of lost memories. I found on Facebook people I hadn't even thought about for years, and all of a sudden I had a chance to take a glimpse into their lives. I found people I used to care for, or they found me, and we both marveled at how much older we looked in our recent picture. Children had become adults and adults had become elderly in the silent flowing of time. Some had moved, some had stayed put, but everyone had changed one way or another. I was able to reestablish some good relationships that were lost because of the distance, and I was content when somebody answered a "Friend Request": Even if it didn't have a follow up, it was still a sign of human connection. I felt that the memories we shared still have a place in our lives; time has not erased them.
Strangely enough, it sort of make sense to think that past, present and future all exist at the same time, in agreement with the discoveries of modern physics. It's even more surreal to think that the moments we create together are lived in a different way by each one of us. A woman sent me a Friend Request today. I knew her when she was a little girl and I was living with her father, with whom I broke up after a four years engagement. How do I look in her memory? She obviously must have an image of myself that I've lost, which means that I exist in a dimension that is foreign to me; I'm perceived in a way that I can't figure out.
But this is also true as far as the present is concerned. How does my husband see me right now? Is his image of me built on our life together, on our good and bad moments? And who am I in the eyes of my son? Does a part of him still see me with the eyes of a little boy looking for his mother?
Perhaps only God can see my true essence, which will blossom in His Holy Presence, making me whole.
On the contrary, I was always very suspicious of these mysterious gadgets called computers and of the entire concept of virtual reality. I insisted on consulting my Encyclopedia Britannica and on writing letters to be sent my mail for quite a few years. But I could type, so I didn't have to face too many difficulties when I decided to write a book about my conversion. Sitting for hours in front of a computer screen, I started to explore its possibilities. That hellish machine seemed to have a mind of its own, but little by little I was able to come to terms with it. I'm still computer-impaired, as you can see from the look of this blog, but at least I've learned how to send emails and post my writings.
Recently I've joined Facebook, and that opened a surprisingly surreal world for me. Ghosts of my past emerged from the laptop, carrying with them floods of lost memories. I found on Facebook people I hadn't even thought about for years, and all of a sudden I had a chance to take a glimpse into their lives. I found people I used to care for, or they found me, and we both marveled at how much older we looked in our recent picture. Children had become adults and adults had become elderly in the silent flowing of time. Some had moved, some had stayed put, but everyone had changed one way or another. I was able to reestablish some good relationships that were lost because of the distance, and I was content when somebody answered a "Friend Request": Even if it didn't have a follow up, it was still a sign of human connection. I felt that the memories we shared still have a place in our lives; time has not erased them.
Strangely enough, it sort of make sense to think that past, present and future all exist at the same time, in agreement with the discoveries of modern physics. It's even more surreal to think that the moments we create together are lived in a different way by each one of us. A woman sent me a Friend Request today. I knew her when she was a little girl and I was living with her father, with whom I broke up after a four years engagement. How do I look in her memory? She obviously must have an image of myself that I've lost, which means that I exist in a dimension that is foreign to me; I'm perceived in a way that I can't figure out.
But this is also true as far as the present is concerned. How does my husband see me right now? Is his image of me built on our life together, on our good and bad moments? And who am I in the eyes of my son? Does a part of him still see me with the eyes of a little boy looking for his mother?
Perhaps only God can see my true essence, which will blossom in His Holy Presence, making me whole.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Is God a Dictator?
At School of Community we are currently reading the last chapters of "The Religious Sense" by Monsignor Luigi Giussani, the founder of Communion and Liberation. I quote from the back cover: "This is a book for all faiths and no faith…Christians, Buddhists and Jews celebrated the spiritual and religious renewal that Luigi Giussani's work has inspired throughout the world (1997 United Nations Conference)".
I love all his books, and from now on I'll blog mostly about what I gather from these readings.
During our last meeting we talked about the freedom that can be experienced in the faith. As I anticipated last week, my son has started to read the Gospels and, having a problem with authority, he's taking them the wrong way.
Is God a dictator or a peace-maker? Is He someone who enslaves us or someone who sets us free? Apparently, it's a matter of opinion. Those who embrace Him find in Him unexpected, all-encompassing freedom. But others reject Him on the ground that not only His existence is not proven, but it's also undesirable.
Questioned about the possibility of the afterlife, Bertrand Russell said that, should he die and find himself before a Creator, he would tell Him: "Sir, you did not give me enough evidence".
Christopher Hitchens, author of "God is not Great", died a couple of weeks ago. He wrote:
"It would be horrible if it were true that we were designed and then created and then continuously supervised throughout all our lives…and then continue to be supervised after our deaths…It would be like living in a celestial North Korea. You can't defect from North Korea, but at least you can die. With monotheism they won't let you die and get away from them. Who wants that to be true?"
As a Christian, Hitchens' misconception seems to me huge, but understandable. God may be mistaken for a tyrant by anyone who doesn't experience His love. Converted at the age of fifty, I've found true freedom for the first time in my life in Jesus Christ. It is the kind of freedom that Buddhists strive for, achieving it, if they are diligent enough in their practices, after years of meditation. It is freedom from attachment, suffering and sin. It's nothing but peace.
We Christians believe that God chose not to impose His presence on the human race; that's why He doesn't offer us evidence of His existence. Jesus actually died to preserve our freedom of choice: We are free to believe, as were the people of His time, that He was a failed prophet crucified by the Romans or the Son of God raised from the dead. But atheists are angry at God precisely because He gave us the option of accepting Him or rejecting Him. And yet, our society has come to value freedom as the most important aspect of civilization. Why then is it so hard for them to appreciate it when it comes from God?
I have posed this question to my son, and the answer was that there is no freedom where there is punishment, even if punishment consists of being separated from a God they didn't love. It seems to me that, given these premises, God just can't win. For the atheist, the act of creation itself implies dictatorship, for whatever system of relationship with His creatures the Creator would choose, would be an imposition on them. Therefore they don't want a Creator, and they are ready to give up eternal life to eliminate God.
I want to conclude quoting Giussani: "To be conscious of oneself right to the core is to perceive, at the depths of the self, an Other".
Can being in contact with yourself right to the core enslave you? Of course not. It can only set you free.
At each School of Community meeting, the partecipants share their everyday experiences related to the reading. Would you like to do the same here? How do you experience freedom in God? (Moving around my posts I've lost all your comments. ..I hope to get new ones!)
I love all his books, and from now on I'll blog mostly about what I gather from these readings.
During our last meeting we talked about the freedom that can be experienced in the faith. As I anticipated last week, my son has started to read the Gospels and, having a problem with authority, he's taking them the wrong way.
Is God a dictator or a peace-maker? Is He someone who enslaves us or someone who sets us free? Apparently, it's a matter of opinion. Those who embrace Him find in Him unexpected, all-encompassing freedom. But others reject Him on the ground that not only His existence is not proven, but it's also undesirable.
Questioned about the possibility of the afterlife, Bertrand Russell said that, should he die and find himself before a Creator, he would tell Him: "Sir, you did not give me enough evidence".
Christopher Hitchens, author of "God is not Great", died a couple of weeks ago. He wrote:
"It would be horrible if it were true that we were designed and then created and then continuously supervised throughout all our lives…and then continue to be supervised after our deaths…It would be like living in a celestial North Korea. You can't defect from North Korea, but at least you can die. With monotheism they won't let you die and get away from them. Who wants that to be true?"
As a Christian, Hitchens' misconception seems to me huge, but understandable. God may be mistaken for a tyrant by anyone who doesn't experience His love. Converted at the age of fifty, I've found true freedom for the first time in my life in Jesus Christ. It is the kind of freedom that Buddhists strive for, achieving it, if they are diligent enough in their practices, after years of meditation. It is freedom from attachment, suffering and sin. It's nothing but peace.
We Christians believe that God chose not to impose His presence on the human race; that's why He doesn't offer us evidence of His existence. Jesus actually died to preserve our freedom of choice: We are free to believe, as were the people of His time, that He was a failed prophet crucified by the Romans or the Son of God raised from the dead. But atheists are angry at God precisely because He gave us the option of accepting Him or rejecting Him. And yet, our society has come to value freedom as the most important aspect of civilization. Why then is it so hard for them to appreciate it when it comes from God?
I have posed this question to my son, and the answer was that there is no freedom where there is punishment, even if punishment consists of being separated from a God they didn't love. It seems to me that, given these premises, God just can't win. For the atheist, the act of creation itself implies dictatorship, for whatever system of relationship with His creatures the Creator would choose, would be an imposition on them. Therefore they don't want a Creator, and they are ready to give up eternal life to eliminate God.
I want to conclude quoting Giussani: "To be conscious of oneself right to the core is to perceive, at the depths of the self, an Other".
Can being in contact with yourself right to the core enslave you? Of course not. It can only set you free.
At each School of Community meeting, the partecipants share their everyday experiences related to the reading. Would you like to do the same here? How do you experience freedom in God? (Moving around my posts I've lost all your comments. ..I hope to get new ones!)
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Remembering Christmas in Italy
Here we are, my family and I, on our eleventh Christmas in the USA. For the first time we receive the Italian TV channels and that increases our nostalgia. Actually I should say my husband's nostalgia and mine, because our son doesn't miss Italy.
I miss Christmas in Rome, with the life size Nativity in Vatican Square. On TV I'm watching Piazza di Spagna at night (over there it's already late, six hours later than here). White Christmas lights are wrapped around the trees and shining decoration is hanging from the branches like fruit.
My son was nine years old at the time of our last Christmas in Italy, and I took him to every Nativity display both in Rome and Naples, so that he could have some memories. Unfortunately he doesn't remember much, but I do remember the huge villages full of shepherds dressed in real fabric in Santa Chiara Monastery, and most of all the live Nativity with camels, elephants and sheep at Naples' harbor. What a night, and what beautiful songs!
We do our best to recreate the Italian Christmas atmosphere. My husband and I have built a typically Neapolitan Nativity in our living-room. I painted on carton board a night sky full of stars and high mountains dotted with small houses. We struggled with aluminum foil to make it look like a stream. Dipping brown paper in a bucket of liquid glue, he made papier-mâché hills, a lake, and of course a barn where, according to the tradition, Mary gave birth to Jesus.
It might seem awkward to you, but the Neapolitan Nativity, which in Italy is called Presepe, also includes a restaurant complete with chunks of prosciutto and mozzarella hung from the ceiling. We brought our hand-made terracotta figures from our country, and besides the classic Nativity characters we have two small terracotta tables with people sitting around them, happily having dinner. Jesus, as you probably know, loved to share good meals with his disciples, so the pizzeria is not so out of place after all!
My husband and son like to keep the Presepe tradition going, but their are not believers. However, this last Christmas I felt that something was changing. My husband found on U-Tube the Neapolitan version of an old Christmas song and kept listening to it all day long. He said that it was touching, because it showed that Baby Jesus was a human baby born in a magic world where, although it was winter, flowers were blossoming, birds were singing and sheperds were waking up in the middle of the night at the beat of their heart. I thought what he said was important because, from personal experience, I would say that the first step towards faith is to understand Jesus' humanity. Isn't it for this reason that he became man?
Our son also manifested his will to take an important step. He said that when he's done with studying he will read the Gospels, and he will do it with an open mind. I hope he will perceive Jesus' humanity, his frustration and his suffering. I hope that next Christmas will mark another step towards faith for them.
Here in the States Christmas is fun because of the outdoor lights that decorate people's houses, but there isn't much to see about the Nativity. To preserve the spirit of Christmas I sculpted the one you see right here, on the right.
Merry Christmas to all! See you next week.
I miss Christmas in Rome, with the life size Nativity in Vatican Square. On TV I'm watching Piazza di Spagna at night (over there it's already late, six hours later than here). White Christmas lights are wrapped around the trees and shining decoration is hanging from the branches like fruit.
My son was nine years old at the time of our last Christmas in Italy, and I took him to every Nativity display both in Rome and Naples, so that he could have some memories. Unfortunately he doesn't remember much, but I do remember the huge villages full of shepherds dressed in real fabric in Santa Chiara Monastery, and most of all the live Nativity with camels, elephants and sheep at Naples' harbor. What a night, and what beautiful songs!
We do our best to recreate the Italian Christmas atmosphere. My husband and I have built a typically Neapolitan Nativity in our living-room. I painted on carton board a night sky full of stars and high mountains dotted with small houses. We struggled with aluminum foil to make it look like a stream. Dipping brown paper in a bucket of liquid glue, he made papier-mâché hills, a lake, and of course a barn where, according to the tradition, Mary gave birth to Jesus.
It might seem awkward to you, but the Neapolitan Nativity, which in Italy is called Presepe, also includes a restaurant complete with chunks of prosciutto and mozzarella hung from the ceiling. We brought our hand-made terracotta figures from our country, and besides the classic Nativity characters we have two small terracotta tables with people sitting around them, happily having dinner. Jesus, as you probably know, loved to share good meals with his disciples, so the pizzeria is not so out of place after all!
My husband and son like to keep the Presepe tradition going, but their are not believers. However, this last Christmas I felt that something was changing. My husband found on U-Tube the Neapolitan version of an old Christmas song and kept listening to it all day long. He said that it was touching, because it showed that Baby Jesus was a human baby born in a magic world where, although it was winter, flowers were blossoming, birds were singing and sheperds were waking up in the middle of the night at the beat of their heart. I thought what he said was important because, from personal experience, I would say that the first step towards faith is to understand Jesus' humanity. Isn't it for this reason that he became man?
Our son also manifested his will to take an important step. He said that when he's done with studying he will read the Gospels, and he will do it with an open mind. I hope he will perceive Jesus' humanity, his frustration and his suffering. I hope that next Christmas will mark another step towards faith for them.
Here in the States Christmas is fun because of the outdoor lights that decorate people's houses, but there isn't much to see about the Nativity. To preserve the spirit of Christmas I sculpted the one you see right here, on the right.
Merry Christmas to all! See you next week.
Friday, December 16, 2011
A Messenger of Christ
First, a message to my readers: This is the last time that I re-post. Starting next week I'll try to write about what I get from my weekly meeting with my School of Community (Communion and Liberation). See you soon!
The weather has been chilly for a couple of weeks. I was already bracing for winter when a glorious sun emerged from the clouds, warming up the air. Immediately, I run to my summer closet, unpacked a pair of shorts and walked past my balcony to sit on the fire-escape, where I could have a better view of the courtyard. For some reasons, this reminded me of a day, about five years ago, when I was sitting on some steps waiting for a bus. My car was broken and I had missed the bus, but I wasn't upset. It was a beautiful summer day and I was content, as I always am when I can sit in the sun. Yet, as I recall, I had reasons to be worried. You know, the usual staff: loss of jobs, uncertainty about the future and so on.
At the time, my interest in Jesus Christ had just begun. I was going to church already, but I hadn't met my CL friends yet and I was quite alone in my faith. As a was waiting for the bus, a tall Hispanic man walked by and, completely out of the blue, said to me:
"Don't worry, madam. Jesus will take care of you."
I was surprised, but something inside of me instinctively assented. I smiled back at him and said:
"Of course!"
And, at that moment, I actually had no doubt: Jesus was going to take care of me and my family.
Five years later, I must confirm that He has kept His promise. I've had moments of doubts, when the rational aspect of my personality was still peeping out, sometimes overbearing. But today I look back at that first messenger of Christ with gratitude. He had no reason to talk to me that way. I wasn't crying or asking for help. True, I was sitting on some steps, but so what? I didn't look desperate! I always make a point of being nicely dressed when I go out, and I never live the house without wearing some make-up and a pair of earrings. I believe that Someone up there wanted to send me a message. That's why that man spoke to me.
"Don't worry about tomorrow: tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil."
I love this saying for the lightness that brings into our life. But it's easier said than done. How can one not worry about tomorrow when one doesn't know where the next meal will come from? And yet, in my experience, Jesus' sayings work precisely because they are so extreme. Only aiming at the impossible I can get half way.
Take for instance "Love your enemies". I might not be able to go that far, but if I try to love them I will overcome my resentment.
This is the meaning of "transcending our humanity". Let's reach higher. Get past our limitations. Leave behind the everyday evil, for there is plenty of it without us adding more. Let's go through life like children climbing up the hill on a sunny day and then rolling down only to climb up again. Let's play in the grass and then lay on our back looking at the sky. Let's bring home some flowers, arrange them in a vase and put them on the table. Soon they'll be surrounded by the most delicious dishes we have ever tasted. It's going to be an abundant meal, for Jesus came because we may have life, and have it more abundantly.
The weather has been chilly for a couple of weeks. I was already bracing for winter when a glorious sun emerged from the clouds, warming up the air. Immediately, I run to my summer closet, unpacked a pair of shorts and walked past my balcony to sit on the fire-escape, where I could have a better view of the courtyard. For some reasons, this reminded me of a day, about five years ago, when I was sitting on some steps waiting for a bus. My car was broken and I had missed the bus, but I wasn't upset. It was a beautiful summer day and I was content, as I always am when I can sit in the sun. Yet, as I recall, I had reasons to be worried. You know, the usual staff: loss of jobs, uncertainty about the future and so on.
At the time, my interest in Jesus Christ had just begun. I was going to church already, but I hadn't met my CL friends yet and I was quite alone in my faith. As a was waiting for the bus, a tall Hispanic man walked by and, completely out of the blue, said to me:
"Don't worry, madam. Jesus will take care of you."
I was surprised, but something inside of me instinctively assented. I smiled back at him and said:
"Of course!"
And, at that moment, I actually had no doubt: Jesus was going to take care of me and my family.
Five years later, I must confirm that He has kept His promise. I've had moments of doubts, when the rational aspect of my personality was still peeping out, sometimes overbearing. But today I look back at that first messenger of Christ with gratitude. He had no reason to talk to me that way. I wasn't crying or asking for help. True, I was sitting on some steps, but so what? I didn't look desperate! I always make a point of being nicely dressed when I go out, and I never live the house without wearing some make-up and a pair of earrings. I believe that Someone up there wanted to send me a message. That's why that man spoke to me.
"Don't worry about tomorrow: tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil."
I love this saying for the lightness that brings into our life. But it's easier said than done. How can one not worry about tomorrow when one doesn't know where the next meal will come from? And yet, in my experience, Jesus' sayings work precisely because they are so extreme. Only aiming at the impossible I can get half way.
Take for instance "Love your enemies". I might not be able to go that far, but if I try to love them I will overcome my resentment.
This is the meaning of "transcending our humanity". Let's reach higher. Get past our limitations. Leave behind the everyday evil, for there is plenty of it without us adding more. Let's go through life like children climbing up the hill on a sunny day and then rolling down only to climb up again. Let's play in the grass and then lay on our back looking at the sky. Let's bring home some flowers, arrange them in a vase and put them on the table. Soon they'll be surrounded by the most delicious dishes we have ever tasted. It's going to be an abundant meal, for Jesus came because we may have life, and have it more abundantly.
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