Arquivo para December, 2022
The Christmas Scandal
14
Dec
One can only think of negative scandals: corruption, immorality or wars, but there is 
no greater scandal than a God becoming mortal and coming into the world through a normal birth.
It is not just the fact that he was born, but in a simple way, at a time when a census was being taken and this is important because it was contact between mortals, with a strong persecution of Herod who had heard that the king of the Jews would be born, and thought into a human power, which means it would lose its power given by the Roman Empire.
In addition to this scandal of a God who lowers himself by coming to inhabit the land of mortals, his life will be marked by many extraordinary facts, cures, deviations from the religious power established by the Jews, even though they were the promised people, after all Jesus was born a Jew, adopted son of the descent of David by Joseph and his mother the Jewish Mary.
Many were the prophets of that time, and many proclaimed themselves the messiah, and even among those closest to Jesus, doubts continued about who he really was, Jesus himself asks his disciples who the people think he is who the disciples think he is, in fact he is not and ‘something simple to believe, it is a scandal for a God to become mortal.
Even John the Baptist who is the last prophet, and the one who announced the coming of the Savior, sends his disciples to personally ask Jesus if in fact he is what everyone expects at that time.
Jesus’ response is based on facts (Lk 7:20-23): “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise and the good news is announced to the poor “, happy is he who is not scandalized because of me!”.
In fact, today it is no longer a scandal, indifference or contempt predominates, even within cults and temples there is a certain normality and they confuse the divine Christian culture with the worldly one, the scandal is even those who say they believe invented a God so human , which is no longer the one who came into the world (an advent), but a normal period of festivities and passing joys.
Between what is said and what is said
13
Dec
In a strong time of narratives, what is said has
nothing or little to do with the actual attitudes of men, it applies to politics, culture and religion, so not everyone who wants to help the most humble of actually do, not everyone who claims to be religious is actually connected to the values and divine message, whether of any religion or Christian denomination.
There are very simple things to be identified: a good tree bears good fruit, correct words should indicate an upright life, but the philosophical or theological discourse is often confused and in this case it is necessary to be guided by attitudes that are also simple to observe and that say a lot. : there is no arrogance of temporal power of any kind, from a head of department to governments and constituted authorities, past and recent history is full of these examples.
The reason why we live in a time when truths are not welcome, is more than the construction of narratives and they do not lack human creativity, it is mainly because it is difficult to say that things are going wrong, despite everyone feeling bad. being, there is no lack of false prophets making unrealizable promises, self-help consolations and even those who prescribe happiness like a medicine leaflet.
The civilizing malaise detected by Freud (book from the 1930s) more than just psychological aspects spoke of instinctual impulses (we made some posts about this) and the inadequate outlet for them.
Of course this goes to politics, and from politics to social aspects: economy, health, education and the increasingly serious environmental problem, but the depth of this crisis requires another analysis: war.
As we said a little while ago, the arrogance of the constituted authorities and the rabid collective adhesion, I am not talking about any specific current, but almost all, stimulates hatred and violence, and the path and outlet of this current is none other than the sea of human violence: war.
The positive message in this regard is to do what is a problem, and often not even proclaim it, but to set an example of what is fair and sensible, says popular wisdom: example leads.
Ukrainian War and Pandemic´s Brazil
12
Dec
The war in Ukraine continues in increasingly
dramatic situations due to the cold and the Russian strategy of undermining the country’s energy sources, which is a war crime since it hits the entire civilian population and not just the military. , while Ukraine looks to attack military bases now on Russian soil via suicide drones.
The bases attacked were in Engels, in the province of Saratov and Diaguilevo, near Ryazan, only 240 km from Moscow, showing that it has weapons to reach targets on Russian soil.
Russia has an attack in Crimea, while it intensifies defense in the strategic region of Dombass, territory claimed by the Tusso government, the bases for negotiation practically do not exist, since this region is disputed by two countries and there is no possible agreement in this regard.
Russia reiterates that it will not be the first to use chemical weapons, and that it knows the risk of this use, a war of unstoppable humanitarian populations, but both sides have weapons for this, and the very bases that are attacked by Ukraine aim to destroy possible bases of these weapons.
In the middle of winter the martyrdom of the Ukrainian people continues and the calls for peace go unheeded.
Covid 19, although whiter, continues with worrying rates, since it shows no signs of a truce, in Brazil the number of deaths and the moving average of known cases continues to grow slowly.
In the country there seems to be a paralysis of strategy, recommendations for preventive measures and incentives for vaccination, but without responses from society as a whole, or from effective control policies.
More than prophecies and miracles
09
Dec
The time of pain and suffering is a harbinger 
of a time of grace and great changes, but they cannot come without a change of mentality, if men do not change, what changes is apparent.
This feeling is in the air and ranges from incitements to war, hatred and violence to false prophecies and miracles that have nothing religious or divine in them.
Although at the birth of the child-God, many suspected the coming of the one who was promised to the Jewish people, many were also the prophets and who announced themselves as the savior, also as today in the political field due to the oppression of the Roman empire, but the surprise it was great although the readings of the time announced exactly how it would come, even indicating the place that was Bethlehem.
So, if we expect changes and they will certainly come, it will not be as the majority of men, sages and prophets think, but as divine wisdom acts, which waits for human illusions to pass.
The disciples of John the Baptist, although he announced the coming of Jesus, and the urgent need for change, mainly in the religious mentality of the time, also had doubts, and John himself, who was in prison, sent his disciples to ask him who he belonged to. Jesus indeed, and whether he was indeed the promised one.
Jesus’ response corrects the human mentality of John’s disciples: and the first response is a question (Mt 11:9): “So what did you go to see? A Prophet? Yes, I tell you, and one who is more than a prophet. 0It is of him that it is written: ‘Behold, I send my messenger ahead of you; he will prepare your way before you. 11 Truly I say to you, of all men who have ever been born, none is greater than John the Baptist. However, the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he”, to make it understood that the announcement is beyond the evidence and merely human views of the facts.
In our time, more is needed than explanations and mundane realities, which are important but limited, they do not have the true clarity that even philosophers and deep thinkers ask for, most hover in a shallow culture and change, where it is difficult to reach really superior realities and needs of a humanity adrift and with enormous civilizational risks.
For good readers, the reading of the passage that we have indicated is clear in the previous verses, Jesus says to the disciples of John (Mt 11,4=6): “Jesus answered them: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind recover their sight, the paralyzed walk, lepers are healed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor are evangelized. Happy is he who is not offended because of me!” and of course this is more than miracles and demonstrations of ‘divine power’, this is not how the divine acts, but with the clearing and the truth, even if it scandalizes some.
To those who do not believe, it remains to say that divine action is beyond human action, it acts in the extraordinary, it does not act as a palliative for pain, but its complete elimination, but it comes after the pain and suffering of the cross.
Between the ordinary and the extraordinary
08
Dec
The immense universe and the images and
research that the James Webb telescope is revealing show us more than the greatness of science, how much nature and human knowledge are tiny compared to the organic and mysterious richness of the universe.
These are not discoveries of other planets inhabited by organic beings like ours, but rather the limits of the very laws of physics to the point of questioning what absolute time and space is the greatest revelation of modernity and rationality, which is now changing by the laws of relativity and guided by the more exact notion of what we call eternity.
Also in everyday life there are extraordinary facts, not those proclaimed by soothsayers, false prophets or oracles of a wisdom that is already known to be limited, by the correct view of science itself, uncertainty and error is its safest path, or as Bohr wrote to Einstein : the root of all evil is the human idea that someone holds all the truth.
The Christmas period is for Christians the revelation of a new and extraordinary truth, in the sense that it is beyond all reason and human science, by divine desire God became man, in a Trinitarian relationship, desire of God the Father, conception of Holy Spirit in a virgin (see previous post) and a divine-human God among us enters the story.
The fact is extraordinary because history has changed and will change even more as the space-time dimension in which human life is immersed passes, everyone dies and others are born and a divine truth is revealed through the noosphere, the sphere that mind or spirit inhabits and which no one can deny, because even philosophical and theological errors and conceptions are immersed in it.
The biblical characters, sincere men despite being followers of Jesus, also doubted his conception, his life (walking on the waves of the sea, the multiplication of the loaves, the healing of the man born blind, the resurrection of Lazarus) in all 36 acts extraordinary works, of which 22 are cures, all of this will one day be known to science, it is possible, but they were done before this time, when science was taking its initial steps.
But there are only divine acts, such as crossing the sea on dry foot, seeing Moses’ burning bush, and the greatest of all extraordinary acts, the one that only divine revelation can confirm, and perhaps one day will bring about some phenomenon. extraordinary, the virgin conceived and God came to dwell among us, he too died, but the Christian belief is that he rose and lives in eternal life.
Even the virgin who conceived, the young Mary betrothed to Joseph, who, upon hearing the news announced by an angel, doubts what is happening to herself (Lk 1:29): “Mary was troubled by these words and began to think what the meaning of salvation would be”, so the biblical characters idealized by theologians and pastors, were actually very human and not superstitious (painting of Leonardo da Vinci, around 1472).
It is true that later Mary will sing her Magnificat, knowing that God has made her great, but only after walking kilometers to Cousin Izabel’s house, who also received the grace of remaining a virgin in old age, but in her case there is nothing so extraordinary, they are known cases in the history of women of advanced age who have conceived.
Faith is believing in the extraordinary, even if you don’t have it, knowing that God’s intervention in history is possible, and what Christmas represents is the great intervention that is the very coming of the God-child.
The path and the narrow gate
07
Dec
It is common sense culture that we should
seek a region of comfort or security, but it is neither in the great paths developed by current ideologies nor by the wide door of facilities, in fact the great populists of today are sellers of facilities that are expensive security and the popular economy.
[It is always easier and more popular to propose what seems obvious, to distribute benefits or to favor big companies and big banks to make the economy grow, but they are the greatest causers of havoc in the popular economy, as we developed in the last post to idea of tolerating crimes as a way of destroying culture and favoring marginality, what is called impunity is actually the wide door path to social cultural re-education.
People who grow up and develop a safe and secure life, if they are not thieves and sellers of facilities, are those who have gone through deprivation and difficulties to build a stable and sustainable life, even in the midst of crises and periods of difficulties such as the pandemic is being. which is hard to complete, social health agencies are important, but without personal care what they do is palliative.
For Christians, the biblical passage that says (Mt 11k28): “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” is complemented in the following verse Mt 11,29: “ Take my yoke under you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart and you will find rest”, which is omitted by religious people who proclaim the wide door of miracles and favours.
In the numerous correspondences that the famous physicist Niels Bohr exchanged with Albert Einstein, one of them is quite revealing, in which Bohr writes to Einstein that the root of all evil lies in the idea of men that someone can possess all the truth, she who was not a believer writing to Einstein that he was, brings a fundamental idea to know that all wisdom is not present in human consciousness.
Likewise, those who proclaim the pride of possessing all the truth or all the answers to human designs, even if they proclaim divine ideas, do not hold the whole truth, which is why the importance of the verse we pointed out: “learn from me that I am meek and humble in heart,” there is no haughtiness in godly wisdom and no desire for war or strife.
What did they do with the culture?
06
Dec
Theodore Dalrymple, is the pseudonym of the English psychoanalyst
Anthony Daniels, who worked in English prisons with highly dangerous criminals, and saw in them not only aspects of poverty and exclusion, but also the development of a culture of tolerance for acts of arrogance, theft and immoralities.
In a book of 26 essays he describes how the cultural media spread this culture (picture inside).
He wrote in one of his works: “For the sentimentalist, there is no criminal, but only an environment that did not give him what he owed”, and so those who said aloud that they suffered a lot in trivial situations of life, that many people go through and this does not mean that they fall into delinquency, of course this does not mean that re-education is not necessary, but preventive education is better than medicine.
It is not an exclusive sector of society, or just an ideological issue as many authors point out, but a matter of cultural influence, especially radio, television and cinema, when everyone starts to justify violence, hatred and cruelty , I remember phrases from the movie Joker that were repeated in a cult tone, for example, “cold, sarcastic and heartless. That’s what I became and I thank society”, the question is which society he chooses: efficiency or solidarity.
I don’t want to give popularity or play the role of the cultural industry that I condemn, and it is the true producer of strange values and without a humanistic perspective, as the psychoanalyst points out in his books, values penetrate society through the selective publishing culture that is highly permissive in values and customs.
True solidarity does not just condemn, there are cases where condemnation is necessary to repress violence and hatred, but education, gives dignity and rebuilds people who have succumbed to a society of efficiency and arrogance, I remember here another successful book, which I read up to the tenth page: “The Subtle art of turning on the f**k” (in English the word also starts with f), yes it is true that there is in the book a cry against perfectionism and the culture of the extremely efficient in photos and texts in the “ media” of social networks, but it is important to remember that the author is American and there this is a general culture and not just in the media.
If last week we posted about the “paths” and the “paths”, we now want to emphasize the micro-culture, the day-to-day with more empathy, more respect and less hate, and if possible more polite.
There is no way to find ways of solidarity and peace in society if the vast majority chose to fight with weapons equal to those that the haters fight.
DARLRYMPLE, Theodore (2O07) Our Culture, What’s Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses,
The War in Eastern Europe and Covid
05
Dec
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke with President Putin
for the first time since September, last Friday (12/02), for more than an hour, but made little progress.
The German leader tried to find a diplomatic path to the war, suggesting a withdrawal of Russian troops from the disputed regions of Ukraine, using the words “as soon as possible”, which indicates a possible escalation in the near future.
The shipment of long-range weapons to Ukraine suggests that an attack on Russian territory is possible, which would represent a new escalation in the war.
Kremlin diplomats conceded to German pressure, and Putin’s response to Schols was: “reconsider your approaches to the context of Ukrainian events” and drew attention to the “destructive line of Western states, including Germany” and therefore rejected the diplomatic negotiation proposals.
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Kremlin, told journalists earlier that Putin was open to negotiations aimed at “securing Russian interests”, but it is clear that Moscow is not willing to accept the conditions imposed by the US: “what President Biden said in fact ? He said that negotiations are only possible after Putin leaves Ukraine”, and this hypothesis does not exist for Russia.
War continues to worry humanity and its escalation could lead to a conflict of catastrophic proportions.
Another problem that affects humanity is Covid 19, whose numbers have risen again, although less than the peak of the Pandemic, in Brazil 86 deaths have been recorded in the last week and a moving average of 26 thousand cases.
Blindness and new paths
02
Dec
The greatest of all personal blindnesses is hatred, and the greatest social blindness is war, in which men lose their reason and become fanatics.
It is common in times of crisis and few know and actually defend the path of serenity and wisdom in these moments, polarization and war were signs, resorting to authoritarianism and social misguidedness is the consequence.
The visual physical limitation made me have the exact feeling of what this means, first recognizing my own blindness and then knowing how to walk with it and accept the limits resorting to healing.
Socially it is not quite like that because the narratives make men believe in what they say and say and what they imagine they see, we have already posted here Saramago’s essay and other blindness, also their meaning around the pandemic.
The social course of a society in disequilibrium and under tension is always worrying, because common sense does not always win, remember the two wars and their humanitarian disasters and other pandemics.
The Christian liturgy at this Christmas time does not speak only of the advent of the baby Jesus, it also speaks of the Parusia, that is, of a new advent, where it also says that there will be cuts and changes (Mt 3,10): “The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire”, that is, the root of all evils and disagreements.
In religious terms, conversion is asked, a change of route, in social terms it is necessary to recognize what is not in the path of hope and love, and cut it at the root because it is the only way to change.
Not everything that shines is gold
01
Dec
Who proclaims or hears about changes, thinks of values and
immediate situations that indicate earthly benefits and not straight and new paths that lead to a superior ascesis, then this is not the time to come, this is not a new advent.
Structural changes imply a change of mentality, in religious terms they mean conversion, not for this or that particular position, but for a new moral and social asceticism.
Words are often said to convince men, but they do not mean that if in fact there is coherence in what is said, in current terms they mean building narratives to favor personal interests.
Just as not everything that is new is revolutionary, and as the popular saying goes, not everything that glitters is gold, also for those who believe, not everyone who claims to be religious is in fact changing values.
The literal reading is (Mt 7,21-24): “not everyone who says Lord, Lord enters the Kingdom of God, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Therefore, anyone who does not listen to these words of mine and put them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the Rock.”
When in fact the changes start to happen, times of crisis always indicate this, consciences will also be enlightened, they will enter a “clearing”, but for now everything is confused and uncertain, each one wants to prevail his point of view, and so if fanatically opposes what he considers opposed to his interests, but a new advent is announced.
More than prophetic or apocalyptic words, they are necessary conditions and structures for a new social, moral and spiritual time, everything is immersed in conflicts of interest groups and immediate politics.
So, while the house is being put in order, everything looks upturned and uncertain, and in fact it is.
