CHRISTMAS: A CALL TO ACTION ...

There are men and women whose lives we cannot ignore: Simón Bolívar, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther King, Marie Curie, Gandhi, Teresa of Calcutta, Marx, Rosa Parks, Edith Stein.... What did these men and women do to make the impact they had on the history of humanity? What they did was to simply live, and make of their lives, a call to action.... Among them is a man who produced the greatest impact in the history of humanity: JESUS ​​OF NAZARETH. We count 2018 years of history since his birth in the small village of Bethlehem. This event is what marks the holiday season in the world. If there are messages, lights, gifts, trips, vacations, premieres, family reunions, music and parties, it is because we celebrate another anniversary of his birth.

December, then, reminds the world of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, but with the celebration of his birth we remember, above all, his great contributions to the history of humanity and what his whole life, his deeds and his words symbolize and mean not only for his disciples, Christians for all ages, but for every man and woman of good will.

Thus, above all, the entire life and work of Jesus of Nazareth contains a proposal, an invitation for all human beings to build a better world through recognizing that we are brothers, children of the same God, who as we were taught by Him, we call a good, compassionate and merciful Father. A recognition through which we can achieve the happiness we all long for by loving one another, serving, forgiving, sharing, expressing solidarity, tolerating each other, understanding each other. This proposal of LOVE clashes with all forms of selfishness, injustice, discrimination, violence and death.

The proposal of Jesus of Nazareth, with his message and the testimony of his life, are, permanently, a call, an invitation and a challenge to the whole world to make our existence on earth a better and kinder space and time for every man and woman who comes to this world.

The celebration of Christmas, the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, on the other hand, reminds us of and marks us all a course, a path, a life philosophy, a logic, principles, values, a meaning for life that normally is neither our path nor our logic. Thus, while we build a life and a society in which what matters is to have, to pretend, to enjoy at whatever cost, to take care of and protect ourselves selfishly, to hoard, to accumulate, to run over and to crush to climb, to get ahead, to rise above others.... Jesus of Nazareth will always remind us of another logic, another direction for the life of men on earth if we want to be happy: the logic of the nativity scene of Bethlehem, of humility, of humbling, of detachment, of the total giving of one’s life, the logic of service to  others, especially the neediest, to the very end, the logic of forgiveness, the logic of love, even to the cross....

Finally, the celebration of CHRISTMAS also reminds us all - not only Christians - of the importance of the human, of the truly human. The deep and Christian meaning of Christmas contains and reveals to all this truth: God cares about humanity and everything that is deeply human. He cares for the child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in the manger, for the man who preached in Galilee and washed the feet of his disciples, for he who healed lovingly and was given to all without measure, for he who came into conflict with the legal and cultural institutions of his time because he placed love above all else, to the point that he died hanging on a tree. Christians confess the Son of God; they confess everything that resembles the Father, and recognize in Him the sum and perfect revelation of God's divinity in his humanity and the plan for man that God has for every man. So, from the first Christmas, until today, nothing that is human can leave us indifferent. Because it is in the deep humanity of Jesus that we are  revealed the absolute divinity of Jesus himself.

We can try to avoid the meaning of Christmas with a thousand expressions and terms. In the name of ideological pluralism and respect for a thousand beliefs, we can try to avoid the meaning of Christmas or confuse it with another holiday, with other breaks during the year, but we cannot help but recognize that the proposal of Jesus of Nazareth’s life and work is still a call, an invitation for the construction of "a new heaven on a new earth," for the construction of a personal and social life according to another logic, another criteriology ... according to which we can love one another in absolute respect for the dignity and fundamental rights of every human being: with love and absolute respect for man and for all men.

Christmas is, then, a bimillennial memory of what happened in Bethlehem; it is a gift from God for the world in the child in the manger, but it is also and above all a proposal, an invitation, a call, a challenge, a task, a commitment.... MERRY CHRISTMAS!

EASTER: Transformation and Abundant life

On Ash Wednesday, Catholic men and women initiate a time of preparation for the celebration of the most important confession of faith and Christian rejoicing: EASTER, celebrating the RESURRECTION of JESUS CHRIST.

For Christians, since the earliest confession of faith in Jesus Christ, Easter has two fundamental meanings: NEW LIFE and ABUNDANT LIFE.

Following the death of Jesus, the early disciples experienced a transformation in their lives: although they were the same people, they were different. Many texts from the Gospels and the entire New Testament show us how TRANSFORMATION and NEW LIFE became the experience that enabled the early Christians to confess the crucified One as the LIVING ONE of all time. For example, they were no longer afraid, but valiantly preached the gospel openly around the world; they no longer felt like servants, but sons; they experienced a renewal of their minds, the way they viewed God (now as Father) and others (as brothers and sisters); they no longer felt stuck in their traditions (bound to the legal and cultural categories of the Old Testament); they were RENEWED.

Such TRANSFORMATION and NEW LIFE implies a life that is full, happy, eternal. Just as it is expressed on the lips of Jesus himself as a synthesis of his mission: “I have come that you might have LIFE and have it more ABUNDANTLY” (Jn 10,10).

These two basic aspects in the principal confession of the Christian creed contain an enormous and hope-filled program of life for every man and woman of good will and for the society and the world that we are committed to build.

Therefore, all of us must assume the daily task of becoming better human beings (“metanoia” = “conversion” as it is called in Christian theology), the task of being transformed into better citizens, fulfilling in the most practical way our professional and personal roles. We urgently need fathers and mothers who fulfill their responsibilities to the best of their ability; the same is true for students, athletes, artists, physicians, professionals in every area of knowledge, as well as politicians, legislators, business leaders, those in the armed forces, and leaders in all the social vocations. Better human beings will provide and build —in consequence— social structures that are more consonant with our better dreams and longings…[highest aspirations?]

Any diagnostic that is made today —however superficial— of our social, cultural, economic and political structures will reveal the need for change in the heart of every human being, of their principles, values, priorities, perspectives and their way of seeing others and the whole world. In the same way, a constant in social studies is the need to build a society that is more equitable, just, united, pacific, fraternal; that is to say, with lower levels of hunger, inequity, misery, violence and a thousand kinds of death.

This is where we see the true value of the central message that is transmitted to all men and women of good will in the Christian celebration of Easter through the confession of faith in the One who was crucified and rose again. Therefore, Easter is the celebration and the “step” (the meaning of the Hebrew word for Passover) from a life that is not abundant to a life that is fulfilled, from the routine of a life anchored to the past to transformed lives and social structures, renewed and full, offering and promoting abundant life to others.

May the Christian celebration of Easter be the celebration of our daily TRANSFORMATION into better men and women so that we might have social spaces full of LIFE.

Our Joy, Our Hope!

Two thousand years ago, the first Christians, a group of men and women who followed and accompanied Jesus of Nazareth throughout his public ministry, happily confessed that the Crucified, “the one killed by hanging him on a cross,” had changed their lives. He had taken them out of an old human condition and transformed them into new men and women: with new mentality, a new way of being and acting in the world. From that point on they believed, confessed, proclaimed and celebrated that Jesus was alive; that the Christ was resurrected; that the last word from God “the Father” about his Son’s life was not death; that the resurrection of Jesus meant triumph of life over death, triumph of good over the manifestation and experience of evil in the world. These facts bring to human history the view of a new horizon and a possibility to see the hope that does not die.

Transformed by the once dead whom they now confess is alive, they can so confess precisely because of the change which he brought to their lives. The first Christians go out to the world to share and to preach with words and actions the good news of the Resurrection. At the same time they consign in writing their confessions of faith, together with historical facts which occurred in their small, new, fraternal and Eucharistic community of believers.

All this shows that the Resurrection is, more than a doctrinal body, the foundation of Christianity. It is a new life experience of transformed life, abundant life; and a manifestation against evil, sin and death.  The resurrection which we celebrate is a conviction which is manifested and sustained with a new lifestyle. Through it, Christians devote themselves and hope for the construction of a better world; that is to say, a more divine world in its profound humanity.

Through Christ’s Resurrection, Christiany as well as each Christian, rises to propose a more equitable world: more just, more solidarious, more visible, more fraternal, more human. They would be against all manifestation of evil, against all inhuman and dehumanizing experiences, against all aggression to human and humanity, against anything which damages the image and likeness of God in his creatures.

The Resurrection, therefore, is a confession of faith. It is the liturgical feast, but   --above all--  it is the personal and ecclesial commitment to be in and for the world daily; a space/time of hope among hopelessness; a sign of joy among sadness; a space of mercy among so many forms of selfishness, division and violence; an opportunity for peace in the middle of war, pain and death.  This is the evangelistic task of the Church. In it resides the reason to be and to exist of the Christian Community, and gives it its identity and its mission in the world.

Never before has it been more opportune, never more convenient, but also never more compromising to have the celebration of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ  --our celebration with him and in him--  in a world in crisis, in a society urged with men and with new and transformed structures. Never before has there been the present urgency to live and to share what it means to confess that Christ lives!

 “Easter”  (Greek: Pascha) comes from the Hebrew word which means “to pass”:  “to pass” through the Red Sea, “to pass” from death to life, from sin to grace, from life without Christ to a life in Him; from hate to love, from indifference to a solidary commitment; from a world without God to a world constructed for humanization which is deification  

May these days of “Passover” celebration mean the renovation of our most important Christian commitment in a personal and ecclesial manner: to be (for a world in crisis) a sign of the new and abundant life which Christ offers to us.  Happy Easter! Blessed Pascha!

Remember That You Are Dust . . .

Each year, Catholics start the Lent Season with “Ash Wednesday”. During that time, the Catholic Liturgy invites believers to begin a time of action and reflexion on our lives: reflexion on its meaning, its origin, its missions, and its final destiny.

It is, therefore, a “heavy” time for “metanoia,” that is “the conversion” which --in theology and Christian life-- means the adaptation of our being, existence and actions to the life of Jesus Christ himself: An adaptation to his Gospel, to his values, to his convictions, and to his proposals for life. This proposal invites us to spend our lives in service of the Gospel --in other words, to spend it in the service to others, especially the ones in greatest need-- and in that way obtain eternal life, a happy life, a full life.

Lent, therefore, becomes a biblical, pastoral, liturgical and existential walk for the believer as a person and for the Christian community in general. This walk begins in ashes and ends with the night of lights, the night of fire and light: the holy night of Easter, the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Lent symbolizes, shows us, and reminds us of one “step”, one joy, and one route to follow permanently: the walk from nothing to existence, from darkness to light, from death to life, from the insignificant to an abundant life in God through His Son Jesus Christ. To convert ourselves means to destroy, to leave behind, to burn, to make into ashes the “old man”, the man-without-Christ and to cover ourselves with the “new” man, the man-in-the-spirit, who is a new fire in the world.

On Ash Wednesday, while the Minister puts ashes on the forehead of the penitents, he says alternatively, the following two expressions: “Repent and believe the Good News” and/or “Remember that you are dust and to the dust you shall return.” This act and these words express very adequately our nature, our absolute dependency from God, our pilgrimage toward a definite homeland, our transitory existence.

Lent, and Ash Wednesday in particular, are liturgical times which invite us to turn our sight and life towards God and towards the principles of the Gospel. Therefore, if Lent is a time for conversion, for improving the process of personal and communitarian humanization, then Lent coincides with the life itself of all believers; it coincides with the existence and the mission of all the Church; and it coincides with the vocation of the entire human community.

Lent is an invitation to change that which we must change, as we search for a way to be better and happier. It is an invitation to construct, instead of destroy; to search and return to a way of life that is more just, more united, and more human. Lent is a call to search diligently for new ways to be and to make a new Church while being better and more authentic disciples of the “Crucified and Resurrected.”

We go through the liturgical Season of Lent –the same as through our own existence—with our sight focused on the Easter Sunday and on the final celebration in God: a celebration of abundant life which opposes all discrimination or degradation of the human being or of its dignity. It opposes all forms of abuse and violence; all forms of lying, of evil and of death; all forms of corruption and division; all forms of oppression and marginalization. All of this because Easter, as the point of arrival, the summit and peak, and the goal of Lent, is absolute newness of life, the abundant life which God offers us, and to which he invites us in this time and always.

Advent: The Hoping for Hope

With the Advent Season begins another year in the liturgical life of Catholics. Adviento is a latin word which means “to wait for what is coming, expectation of something that is waited for, something expected which will come and shape the present.”

What would human life be without hope? We would sink in a sea of uncertainty, of suffering, of pain and of evil without something to encourage us to continue trusting, trying, working, projecting, loving, believing and hoping . . . 

We, Christians, are essentially and fundamentally men and women of hope. In other words, men and women who live in a permanent advent: waiting that the birth of God comes at Christmas; waiting for the daily encounter with God through his creation, through our brothers and sisters (especially the poorest in society), through liturgy, through the sacraments; through the many signs and circumstances by which God comes near to us and meets us each day. Christians live waiting for God’s promises to be fulfilled; that God’s Kingdom overcomes the kingdoms of the world; that God’s mercy overcomes the lack of love; and that God’s power triumphs over the mean power of man.

But the fulfillment of this hope –as the Advent Psalm says--  for  “justice to flourish and peace to be abundant” it requires that we Christians construct, with our acts and our words, with our announcements and denunciations, and with our behaviors, attitudes, and works, a time and space in which Christian hope is possible; in other words a time and space in which God’s Kingdom becomes evident through us.

In this way, the hope we are waiting for takes us out of a passive attitude of resignation, and brings us to construct the hoping attitude we are wishing for  --the new heaven and the new earth we wish for! Even more so, Christians know that the daily wish for happiness becomes true only in the real hope: which is Christ and his life in us.  Christian hope is not a hope that can be reduced to ephemeral and temporary satisfactions; but one that pushes all our present lives towards a full and total future in God.

Advent, this liturgical time, just before the anticipation of Christmas is  –more than just a liturgical time--  a life attitude and a personal and communitarian commitment of the believers and those from the Church who believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Also the belief in a world in which the divine starts, shows, and stays in the most humane and every day aspects of our present history.

Liturgy, in this time of Advent, speaks to us of a hope which does not die in the day to day; a hope that lightens up each moment of our lives; a hope that is infinite and without conditions; a hope which has no limits and is eternal; a hope that opens up for us the beyond of our limited intra-history; and a hope which overcomes all forms of evil, pain and death.

Circumstances today, more than ever, urge us to live in the spirit of Advent. All around us there are manifestations of crisis: crisis of the human spirit; crisis of goals which humanity dreamed of; crisis of trust and confidence in men and institutions; crisis of trust in governments, regimes, political and economic models; lack of trust between peoples and nations; lack of trust and belief in spiritual leaders.  There is disillusion and mistrust because there is a hunger and a thousand forms of inequity, injustice, violence and death.  There is a collective feeling that our present has no future.  There is uncertainty, a loss of the sense of life and much anguish. We live in difficult times for all spheres of life. Nevertheless, Catholic liturgy, in this time of Advent, once more invites us to the wait for Hope, the commitment and construction of better times . . . 

The hope that the election of Pope Francis gives us, is a renewed enthusiasm for a better future for our Christian communities, the Church and for society. The Bishop of Rome with his words, gestures and act of faith, encourage us, move us and motivate us to work with renewed enthusiasm for the building of the Kingdom.

I wish for all of us that this Advent 2013 fills us with hope; fills us with an always renewed strength to make possible our hope: which is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ be among us. That the Gospel be lived and announced by us for the construction of a better world;  a world which is more just, more humane and more according to God’s wish.

A Year for Faith

In the context of the Synod of the Catholic Church concerning the New Evangelization for transmitting the Christian faith, “The Year of Faith” is inaugurated.

Our very life is an occurrence of faith. The existence of every human being occurs as a combined sum of daily and permanent acts of faith. Faith in life, in ourselves, in all that happens and all that surrounds us. We could not live without faith, without trust (in the food we consume, in the chair that sustains us, in the shower we take and the traffic in which we move, we live trusting in the validity of the present and in our expectant hope for tomorrow…). To live is to trust. Thus the experience of religious faith implies, first of all, profound anthropological roots in the experience of every man and woman in their daily tasks.

Religion is, of itself, an experience of faith, or in faith. On the basis of their religious experience human beings trust and build their life (their yesterday, today, tomorrow and their final and definitive destiny) based on the power of the Transcendent One. As Christians we have placed all our confidence in the God revealed in Jesus Christ: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

A “Year of Faith” is a fitting occasion to plumb more deeply the meaning of our human and religious experience: our vital experience of trusting —through Christ, with him and in him— in the Father, by the Son, in the Holy Spirit. A “Year of Faith” is a providential opportunity to reflect upon our faith in Christ and the implications which the experience of trusting in God have in each of our lives, that of our families, our work and the various contexts (labor, academic, political and economic) in which we live.

The Christian religious experience is that, above all: an experience, a vital practice that coincides with our human existence and involves all our life and activity. The faith of every human being, just as that of Jesus of Nazareth, is a human experience, lived out and tested in the occurrences of every day and in every new and changing circumstance, in all of which we are able to place all our confidence and hope in the God of Jesus Christ.

Therefore, faith is not in the first sense a doctrinal matter (even though this is assumed) nor a concept, nor the celebration of a rite. Christian faith is an experience of human life: a human life that trusts in God, the same as:

The faith of Abraham: Gn 22,1-19

The faith of Job: “God gave; God took away” (Job 2,10)

The faith of Jesus: “Father, in your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 23,45).

The faith of Mary: “Let it be to me according to your word”(Lk 1,26-38)

The faith of the leper: “If you want to, you can heal me” (Mt 8,1-3)

That of the centurion: “One word of yours is all that is required to heal me”(Mt 8,5-8).

That of Paul: “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Phil 4,13).

And that of so many men and women who in the Gospel and in human history have placed all their confidence in God, have placed their life in the powerful and merciful hands of God, our Father, through Christ, in the Spirit.

Understood in this way, Christian faith is not a conceptual or theoretical act, nor a conceptual or rational recognition. Neither is Christian faith a singular practice, separate, divorced, distant or marginalized from daily life. To the contrary, Christian faith grants to Christian men and women a special way of looking at the daily circumstances in which all human life unfolds.

The distinction and divorce that we have assumed between the religious experience of faith and our daily life produces frequent contradictions such as the following: societies that are largely Christian possess, on the world scene, the highest levels of iniquity, injustice, violence and death… That is to say, societies in which Christian faith is not involved in the daily life of man-in-society, in which religious faith does not illumine the temporal and worldly realities and in which, to the contrary, faith seems to disturb the daily aspirations and conquests of the people.

In order that Christian religious faith might be more reasoned, better celebrated, more frequently shared, more eloquently preached, but above all, more fully lived: Let’s extend a welcome to “the Year of Christian Faith”!

“That they might have abundant life”

With the solemn reality of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, as Christians we commemorate the principal confession of our faith. We celebrate the fact that although “you killed him by letting sinful men crucify him... God raised him from death, setting him free from its power” (Acts 2,23-24). For if Christ did not rise from the dead our faith is vain, our preaching is vain and our hope is also vain (Cf. 1 Cor 15,17).

This confession of faith is that which connects us and identifies us with the apostles, with the early disciples, with the first century believers and with Christian of all ages and all parts of the earth. This confession of faith is what determined the character and the identity of Christians in the world as men and women of hope. For in the resurrection of Christ life triumphed over death and –for that reason– we know that the final and definitive destiny of man in the Father’s plan is not death, chaos, nothingness, absurdity, or failure, but life… and not just any life, but abundant life (Jn 10,10).

But this confession of faith, in order to be authentic (and not just from our lips) must be born today out of the same vital experience that was born in yesteryear among the first Christians: a transforming experience in their life through which they bore witness as new men and women (Cf. Eph 4,24; Matt 9,17), renewed in their mind (Eph 4,23); that is, with new criteria, with life based on the logic of the gospel and the wisdom of the cross, and not on the world’s logic (Cf. 1 Cor 1,21; Jn 8,23; Jn 15,18-21)… a transforming experience that caused them to proclaim throughout the world that He who was dead is now alive, he rose again and lives today among us.

Such a vital and transforming experience was evident among the early Christians and must be experienced, proven, manifested and preached today in the life of those who –like Christ himself– address God as their Father, (Gal 4,6; Rom 8,14), see themselves as his children and the brothers of all, by fulfilling the Father’s will, his mandate to love.

Today, the same as two thousand years ago, Christians are asked: What have we done with the One who rose from the grave? (Cf. Jn 20,2ff). Where can the world find Jesus Christ, the One who lives forever? This is the reason the confession of faith in the resurrection requires and commits us to present the living Christ in the world through the testimony of our transformed lives, according to the gospel of Jesus Christ. In this way, the presence of the One who rose again becomes a reality in the world today through Christians that bear witness to the life of Christ within them and who cry out with Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2,20).

Society around us today seeks for possibilities and spaces of life in the midst of a “culture of death”. Such a search challenges us as Christians, all men and women who believe in the God of life that is eternal, full and abundant (Cf. Jn 10,10), believers in God who triumphed over injustice and death and offers us endless possibilities of new life.

Resurrection is the meaning of Easter. Paschal is a Hebrew word that means “passage”, transformation, change, conversion.

· Passage from death to life when we love each other (1 Jn 3,14).
· Passage from hate to love.
· Passage from sadness to joy: “A joy that nothing and no one can take from us” (Jn 16,22).
· Passage from selfishness to service and solidarity.
· Passage from egotism to a generous surrender of our life for the gospel (Lk 9,22-25).
· Passage from anger to forgiveness.
· Passage from iniquity to justice.
· Passage from competition to friendship.
· Passage from darkness to light.
· Passage from slavery to the freedom that belongs to the children of God.
· Passage from sin to grace.
· Passage from the old to the new.
· Passage from the condition of a slave to the life of a son.

Finally, if resurrection is abundant life (Cf. Jn 10,10, eternal life (Jn 3,16) and salvation, and if that full life and salvation is synonymous with happiness that every man and woman desires and hopes for, then Christ, his gospel and the entire saving, paschal and Christian reality is integrated in our life and responds to the fundamental question of humanity: the incessant search for happiness.

Christ saves us because he brings us happiness, teaching us to live his very life: the life that belongs to the children of God and the brothers of all, that enables us –in love- to enjoy a more friendly and just society, with justice and solidarity, equity and peace. There is no divorce between faith and life, between Easter and our daily experience, because the resurrection of Christ –and that for which all of us hope in Him- is the happiness that we seek and find in the everyliving One. Happy Easter!

SIN AND LENT

Lent is a privileged liturgical season for reflecting upon our human nature: the fragile and vulnerable nature of human existence and, especially, upon the experience of evil (and good) in which we live and develop throughout our historical existence, both personally and in community. We refer to the experience of evil that is lived, evidenced and manifested in conflicts (whether personal, family, social, national, international, natural disasters, etc.) and which, in our Christian theology and worldview, we know as “sin,” as contrasted with other worldviews and theological systems in which evil is called fault, guilt, stain and taboo.

As the Gospel informs us (Cf. Mt 4. 1-11; Mk 1.12-15; Lk 4.1-13, passages appointed for the First Sunday in Lent in the Liturgical Cycles A, B and C) Jesus experienced the temptations of evil and sin illustrated through the three significant appetites of every human being: power, pleasure and possessions. The reality of sin comes to all humankind in the form of temptations, which none can escape: “He that is without sin…”(Jn 8.1-11). However, in the Gospel account of the temptations, Jesus overcomes, and with his victory he shows us the possibility and the pathway of triumph over evil, over sin, in this world.

Therefore, Jesus is, for Christians. “the Way, the Truth and the Life” (Jn 14.6), the new well from which springs eternal life (Jn 4.5-42), the light of the world (Jn 9.1-41), the Savior (Jn 3.14-21), life that confronts the reality of death (Jn 11.1-45) and, finally in the unique sinless person, the One: “being made in human likeness” (but without sin) (Phil 2.7).

Yet the subjects of “sin” and its counterpart, “forgiveness,” are dealt with differently in the Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament sins are mentioned (in the plural) as faults and transgressions. The law of forgiveness includes punishments (and in later Judaism: rites) for the purpose of healing, vindicating, harmonizing, balancing the life and repairing the damage done, in order to reintegrate the person in the life of the community. The New Testament speaks of sin in the singular (using the Greek word hamartía) as a deliberate human act (conscious and free) against all that is divine in the sinner, as a denial of the divine aspect in man. Sin is understood as an interior detour, as a “fundamental option” of humankind to deny their Creator and Father. It is a denial of our primary vocation -- that of becoming like our Father, that is, perfect, compassionate and merciful. In the New Testament sin is a diabolical posture (not divine), sinful (an irrational act, like that of an animal), inhuman (not divine) through which human beings disseminate evil fruit, sins (now in plural).

In order to correct, straighten out, erase, heal and save humankind, Christ, with the Good News of his life and proclamation, with his surrender to death on the Cross and his resurrection, conquers evil, liberates, redeems, justifies the human being from within (Mt 15.19), like the good tree with good fruit (Mt 7.17). Therefore, the forgiving and saving work of Christ is not one of cleansing sins but of healing sin, healing humankind from within, structurally and integrally so that sin is no more (1 Jn 3.6).

If the objective of the disciple, of the son, is to become like the Son (Eph 5.1) and, through Christ, be with Him and in Him, in his understanding and following, to be made in “the image and likeness of the Father”, then Lent reminds us also of the need to live in a permanent state of conversion, of a change of life, of transforming our life to be like Christ’s life, as well as our principles, criteria and attitudes like the criteria of the Gospel. The logic of the world must become God’s logic, or the wisdom of the cross, until we can exclaim with Paul “where sin abounded, grace abounded even more” (Rm 5.20), “I no long live, but Christ lives in me”. (Gal 2.20). Conversion, especially during the Lenten season, is equated in the liturgy with the Transfiguration (Mt 17.1-9), since to be converted is to be worthy to hear —as Jesus did— the voice of the Father that tells us: “this is my Son, the beloved, listen to him.”

Lent, therefore, reminds us of our sin, our need for conversion, but above all, it reminds us of our need to return to the Father’s house where there awaits for us the compassionate and merciful embrace of the Father who does not deal with us as daily workers or as servants, but as his children (Lk 15). Thus, Lent is also a season for joyful confidence, for gratitude, for humble hope in God’s compassionate love. Conversion and joy, are clearly are part of the entire life of the disciple, involving the Christian’s entire objective.

What Makes Us Happy?: Balancing Success and Salvation

Published in the January 2011 issue of Liguorian magazine.

The financial crisis that began in the United States in 2008 reveals, above all, the deception experienced by men and women today when it comes to their sense of happiness. Happiness, they think, is defined by worldly success. Beyond its leading to the collapse of business and finance, this deception brings to light the collapse of moral values relating to happiness and worldly success.

For decades we experienced great and rapid growth in the economy, in science, and in technology, but this success came without concern for human beings and their communities. While we have made great strides in technology and science, we have not grown morally or spiritually. We built what seemed a more successful society, but we did so without regard to making both society and ourselves truly better. And when what we built led to financial disaster, it highlighted the underlying human disaster in seeking success instead of true happiness.

Society in transition

In 2011, we find our society in transition. We are moving from the modern age, which was inspired by the ideal of unlimited progress, to the postmodern age as we recognize the failure of progress to deliver what it promised. For centuries, successful societies grew, spurred on by the earthly hope that they could end human suffering and create a perfectly just world. But as we’ve discovered, this ideal of progress was unable to remedy the great evils of humanity such as hunger, inequity, and injustice. Instead, it generated new evils such as war, the arms race, and dire poverty.

Seeing this failure, something changed in the human spirit. Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, a vision of the world as a cemetery of the earlier hopes of progress was born. If there is no future for people of our times, it has been said, then there is little point in working for progress—particularly for progress that has only ever failed. And this is where we find ourselves today. Contemporary thinking proposes replacing the older quest for worldly progress with the search for worldly success—and all but disregards the quest for true happiness.

Misconceptions of today’s world

Some say the only thing that counts as success or happiness is pleasure gained from whatever is quick and easy and appeals to our senses. Among other tendencies of our time, this leads us to a vision of happiness in which there is no place for anything other than pleasure. Pain, suffering, old age, and loneliness—human experiences that can lead to growth—as well as the difficult yet joyful experiences of solidarity, commitment, and serving others have no place in today’s world. In our search for happiness, we have failed to integrate the very human experience of suffering and hardship into our understanding of daily life. The experience of anything difficult or unpleasant has been set against the view of success and happiness as originating from pleasure. To achieve immediate pleasure—which is understood as happiness—any measure is valid.

A denial of that less enjoyable yet meaningful side of life leaves us depressed and anxious when we face hardship. In the midst of so many ways of life from which to choose, we have no sense of direction and no way of understanding how we could be happy even in the midst of suffering.

So in recent times we have been concerned ultimately with success that we believe will make us happy. We have occupied ourselves with building all that is powerful and globalized and with accumulating material goods for our pleasure, but we have forgotten about human beings in the process.

This is reflected in today’s disparate ideas of success. For a minority of privileged persons in the world, success means greater comfort, luxury, and extravagance. For millions of the poor, success means having only the most elementary conditions for subsistence: water, food, shelter, and clothing. This is our failure. And as we have failed to resolve the great problems of humanity, we have also failed to fill people’s emptiness and their longing for meaning and purpose amidst the struggle to succeed. We have failed to build a more just world, and we have failed to develop people who are truly and profoundly human, who live with a sense of community, and who seek true happiness.

Even the media remind us daily that success is not necessarily synonymous with happiness. Achievements do not always coincide with happiness, and those who are quite wealthy and successful by social standards often wind up being the least satisfied with life. In our world we find successful people who are quite unhappy; we also find many who are unsuccessful but very happy.

So what is true success? How are we to judge if we are really happy?

Christian view of happiness

Human beings have been defined by people of philosophy and people of faith as seekers of happiness. Our search for happiness is an unending task that often causes constant dissatisfaction. We long for happiness and are not satisfied until we find it. Saint Augustine taught that the desire for happiness in the human heart is really a desire for God. As Christians, we can trust that our longing for happiness will be satisfied by the saving person of Christ and by the saving gospel he proclaims.

We confess Jesus of Nazareth as our savior. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the Light of the world. These are more than just statements of belief; for us, his disciples, they should reveal the happiness for which we long. Jesus is our true source of happiness, and our success in this life is measured only by our life in him.

Jesus’ proposal for our lives consists of recognizing God as our compassionate and merciful Creator and Father. In living as God’s children—and in doing the Father’s will—we are to love one another as brothers and sisters and build God’s kingdom in the world. As Christians, we are to prove daily, in each of our lives, that this life of Christ in us calls us to build a new and better world. We are called to reveal to others that the life of a child of God—filled with humble obedience, hope, and joyful confidence in the goodness of our Father in heaven—brings us happiness. We are called to demonstrate that a life of love, of service, of forgiveness, and of solidarity with our neighbors saves us and makes us happy. We are called to live each day with life in Christ as the true measure of our earthly success and of our eternal happiness.

It is not always easy to follow this call, not always easy to see our true source of happiness in Christ. As people living in the world, we still see a distinction between the happiness that comes from salvation and the happiness the world offers. We see that all people desire happiness, long for true happiness in Christ, but do not know how to obtain it. Christians, too, often see our quest for the happiness of salvation as separate from our quest for earthly success and happiness. This indicates that the Church, in its work of evangelism, has not yet fully revealed the union between the happiness every human desires and the happiness that comes from the salvation offered to all in Christ.

Life in Christ

It is the responsibility of the Church and of each Christian disciple to demonstrate—through what we believe and through what we practice—that Christ saves us. Or to say it in another way, Christ makes us happy, he gives us abundant life, new life, full life, eternal life, for which we long. Christ leads us to measure our success as persons only against the true happiness we have obtained through faith in him.

If the way in which we live our daily lives does not make this message clear, then the Church’s proclamation of salvation becomes one that no one understands or finds convincing. Moreover, if such a proclamation is clothed in the customs and language of past ages, the message of true happiness becomes one that is easily ignored. We must vigorously proclaim this “good news” in each and every place we live and work.

As Christians, we believe that Christ saves us, he makes us happy. We believe that the question of the rich young man who asks Jesus what he should do to obtain eternal life (happiness) is our eternal question as well. We also believe that Jesus’ answer to the rich young man responds to our human questions today. To find happiness, we must love and serve others, especially the most needy. (See Mt 19:16–21.)

Therefore life in Christ—as God’s children and as brothers and sisters—is necessary for every person who seeks happiness. In the resurrection of Christ we confess the triumph of good, of justice, of mercy, and of life beyond death. Through Christ, we know that God wants us to have life—and not just any kind of life, but life that is abundantly happy and truly successful, life that springs from the new commandment of love and calls us to serve one another just as God himself has loved and served us. (See Jn 10:10; 13:34.)

All are called

The time has come to find the pathway that was lost on our search for happiness. The time has come to find ourselves again, to rediscover our true purpose in bringing to life the best of human and community values. Those of us who follow the Judeo-Christian tradition can return to the Word of God, which reveals to us God’s criteria of success—criteria that do not always coincide with our own. This same Word reminds us that happy are those who place their confidence in God and who administer everything they have to help the weakest and most needy.

Finally, whether one is a believer or not, all of us have in our nature, in our creaturely being, profoundly human tendencies—which are also profoundly divine—that lead us to desire friendship with all of humanity. All experience the call to more noble, more excellent, more sublime human values that bring happiness to our daily lives and help build a better world in which true success and authentic happiness are available and accessible to all.

Mario Paredes is presidential liaison for Catholic ministry at American Bible Society. As founder and director of the Northeast Hispanic Catholic Center, he published the Lectionary for Spanish speakers in the United States.

The Bible - God Speaks and a People Listen and Answer (Part 1 of 3)

We Christians have as a fountain and source of our faith God’s revelation found in the Holy Scriptures. For Christians, then, the Bible is the fundamental and most important collection of sacred texts, because we believe that they contain the Word of God. In other words, they contain what God has revealed and communicated through history; and in it also we find the answers of some men, (especially the prophets), the answer of a people (Israel), the answer of Jesus of Nazareth, and of the first Christian communities to the saving design of God.

“Bible” is a Greek word which means “collection of books”. It contains 73 different books. Some of these books are very old and were written by different authors whom we call “sacred authors” or “hagiographers”; and in a socio-cultural context very different from ours. Therefore, for the “intelligent” reading, study and living of the Sacred Scripture, it is necessary:

• To know the structure of the Bible.
• To know certain fundamental biblical elements of hermeneutics (interpretation).
• To know the context of the text: that is, to know the people of the Old Testament as well as the space/time when the historical revelation occurred and, therefore, God’s progressive revelation until the time of Jesus of Nazareth, where Christianity emerges.

For all of this, theology, and more specifically biblical theology, has the help of science and methods such as exegesis, hermeneutics, archeology, paleontology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, semiology, etc.

The Languages of the Bible: Originally, the biblical books were written in three languages: Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.

The Bible’s Literary Styles: We call “literary styles” to the diverse forms and ways of oral and written expressions utilized by the authors in a specific place and time. In the Bible we find, especially, eight great and different literary styles: historiography, the law, the prophets, lyrics, wisdom writings, apocalyptic writings, Gospels and letters.

The Old Testament: contains 46 books which refer to the history of the people of Israel; starting with Abraham (around the year 1,850 B.C.) until Jesus of Nazareth and the birth of the first Christian communities. They are divided in four groups, according to the predominant literary style of each:

The Pentateuch:

		Abbr.	Number of Chapters
1	Genesis	Gn	50
2	Exodus	Ex	40
3	Leviticus	Lv	27
4	Numbers	Nu	36
5	Deuteronomy	Dt	34

The Historical or Narrative Books:

6	Joshua	Js	24
7	Judges	Jg	21
8	1 Samuel	1 S	31
9	2 Samuel	2 S	24
10	1 Kings	1 K	22
11	2 Kings	2 K	25
12	1 Chronicles	1 Ch	29
13	2 Chronicles	2 Ch	36
14	Ezra	Ezra	10
15	Nehemiah	Ne	13
16	Ruth	Ru	4
17	Tobit	Tb	14
18	Judith	Jdt	16
19	Esther	Es	10
20	1 Maccabees	1 Mac	16
21	2 Maccabees	2 Mac	15

The Prophetic Books:

22	Isaiah	Is	66
23	Jeremiah	Jr	52
24	Lamentations	Lm	5
25	Baruch	Ba	6
26	Ezekiel	Ez	48
27	Daniel	Dn	14
28	Hosea	Ho	14
29	Joel	Jl	4
30	Amos	Am	9
31	Obadiah	Ob	1
32	Jonah	Jon	4
33	Micah	Mic	7
34	Nahum	Nh	3
35	Habakkuk	Hb	3
36	Zephaniah	Zep	3
37	Haggai	Hg	2
38	Zechariah	Zec	14
39	Malachi	Ml	3

The Wisdom Books:

40	Job	Job	42
41	Psalms	Ps	150
42	Proverbs	Pr	31
43	Ecclesiastes	Ec	12
44	Song of Songs	Sgs	8
45	Wisdom of Solomon	Ws	19
46	Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)	Si	51

The New Testament: contains 27 books which refer to the life, ministry, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus; and to the life of the first Christian communities (until approximately the year 110 A.D.), and can be divided, also, in four literary styles.

The Synoptic Gospels:

1	Matthew	Mt	28
2	Mark	Mk	16
3	Luke	Lk	24

The Writings of Paul:

4	Romans	Ro	16
5	1 Corinthians	1 Co	16
6	2 Corinthians	2 Co	13
7	Galatians	Ga	6
8	Ephesians	Eph	6
9	Philippians	Phil	4
10	Colossians	Col	4
11	1 Thessalonians	1 Th	5
12	2 Thessalonians	2 Th	3
13	1 Timothy	1 Ti	6
14	2 Timothy	2 Ti	4
15	Titus	Titus	3
16	Philemon	Phm	1

The Writings of John:

17	Fourth Gospel (John)	Jn	21
18	I John	1 Jn	5
19	II John	2 Jn	1
20	III John	3 Jn	1
21	Revelation	Ap	22

The Catholic Letters:

22	The Acts of the Apostles	Ac	28
23	Hebrews	He	13
24	James	Jas	5
25	1 Peter	1 P	5
26	2 Peter	2 P	3
27	Jude	Jd	1