predication.net

Prudence, or discernment, prudence, which is the first prerequisite for spiritual and moral growth, is the quality of understanding the nature of things, situations, events, and plans as a whole, and about its parts or aspects, and to act accordingly. Specifically, it consists of a trained, refined, and alert rational control of human activity on all levels of life – spiritual, moral, political, economic, scientific, etc. The sphere of action of this virtue is thus concrete life and its ever-new problems.
As such, it was already recognized by the ancient Greek philosophers, who called it ‘knowledge of knowledge’ (Plato), the fundamental principle of morality, the “yardstick” or measure of human action (Socrates), and the indispensable prerequisite of all virtues. Plato, in his Politeia, regarded prudence as the professional virtue of philosophical kings, and or rulers of the state, who must, like every politician or public official, be philosophers.
Aristotle understands sagacity as the summit of the dianoetic, intellectual virtues (Nicomachean Ethics, 6, 5), and the Stoics speak of it as a mediator between the divine world order and the human sphere. They regarded her as the presupposition and guardian of all virtues. Especially thanks to Aristotle, who can be considered a theorist of prudence and all virtues in general, the ancients and after them Christian philosophers that the danger of corruption of moral action, and step by step also of the moral life, threatens a man if, for lack of foresight, he moves away from the center in which virtue is always found. As we have already indicated, if a virtuous act is driven to one side or the other from the center, virtue is transformed into vice.
In the recent past, many people around us, both educated and less educated, have confused tolerance, forbearance, caution, or the virtue of prudence and prudence with cowardice. Others have deliberately lied and called it permissible and justified self-defense. And nearly all stole where they could, and flattered their consciences that it was just compensation. But let’s leave the past behind and look back around us to see what we can learn from the examples of everyday life to see as accurately as possible what this virtue is all about, for here we decide the whole moral life.
Providence
Everyone knows how many children, pupils, and subordinates suffer when parents, teachers, or superiors think that their strictness, intransigence, and perseverance are the fruit of the virtue of fortitude – even though it is often rather a manifestation of unyielding hardness, stubbornness, intransigence, obstinacy, even fanaticism. To the sternness of a boss or father or teacher who demands order, justice, punctuality, responsibility, and consistency, people get used to it over time and only the foolish and lazy continue to reject them. To a hard, harsh, rude person, ruthless, however, no one has a good word, not even when it comes to his just demands. The same can be said of people who confuse the virtue of orderliness with pedantry, querulousness, arbitrariness, etc.
Among the most antipathetic social phenomena are undoubtedly ambition, egoism, egocentrism, arrogance, laziness, recklessness, falsity, envy, contempt for others, etc. In conversation with people who are preoccupied with these vices, it comes out that an arrogant person smugly considers himself a gentleman, who supposedly has pride and a sense of honor and is therefore perfectly “o.k.”. The lazy excuse is that everything must be done with calm and in moderation and that everything has its time – and it doesn’t even cross their minds, that others are paying the price for their carelessness, convenience, and forgetfulness. Reckless people will never admit fault but will declare that they are among those who go firmly to their goal and realize the values that the “dullards who can’t see further than their noses” envy.
False people will find an acceptable explanation for their attitude to their surroundings. They are said to have a right to privacy, to their lifestyle, and their personal affairs; and yet they don’t mind at all that
it’s misleading people. And who doesn’t know those zealots for all that is “holy and good” – people are envious! How inventive this vice is, and how often it cloaks itself under the cloak of virtue! The envious man is incapable of calm reflection, enjoyment, or even sleep. He is everywhere haunted by visions of people who he thinks are more fortunate or more successful than he. Day and night he forges plans to “tear off their masks” and show the whole world what they are …what monsters they are. His speeches are at times full of sanctimony, at others of prophetic pathos and zeal for justice. The only thing he is incapable of recognizing is that his apparent zeal is not the fruit of virtue but of vice – envy.

Which court will deal with the case of financial machinations next? Where would Cardinal Becciu go to sit if the verdict is confirmed?

“I want to shout to the world that I am innocent through the legal authorities and by all means,” Cardinal Angelo Becciu declared in mid-December after the first instance court in the Vatican sent him to prison for five and a half years.

In the Cinque Minuti show on Rai 1 television, the 75-year-old cardinal was asked by the moderator whether the Pope believes in his innocence: “I believe and I hope so. And in any case, I will work to do it,” added Becciu.

He appealed the verdict, and according to assumptions, the other eight co-defendants, who were found guilty by the Vatican City State Tribunal in a historic trial, mostly of economic crimes.

The court process is also groundbreaking in that for the first time the cardinal was convicted by lay judges. However, after the December judgment, several questions arose, which are also related to the specific system of the Vatican.

American Vaticanist John Allen Jr. after the verdict, summarized what the next procedure should look like.

The parties involved had only three days, including Sunday (which is a bit bizarre considering the Vatican) to file an appeal.

The appeal of Cardinal Becciu and the others will likely be heard by the Court of Appeal for the Vatican City State, which is made up of six judges – three clerics and three laymen. The chairman is the Spanish Archbishop Alejandro Arellano Cedillo, while the promoter of justice, i.e., the prosecutor, is the Italian lay lawyer Raffaele Coppola.

If the appeals court comes to different conclusions than the first-instance verdict, it is possible that the “supreme court” of the Vatican, known as the Court of Cassation of the Vatican City State, will also be asked for a decision.

It is currently headed by the American Cardinal Kevin Farrell and its members include Italian Cardinals Matteo Zuppi from Bologna, Paolo Lojudice from Siena, and Mauro Gambetti, Vicar General of the Vatican City State, along with two lay law

The Italian Vaticanist Andrea Gagliarducci points out that the second-degree proceedings in the Vatican are mainly of a documentary nature, the discussion itself is very small. “Since these are financial crimes, the last instance could be the European Court of Auditors in Luxembourg,” thinks the journalist ACI Stampa.

How does the Vatican want to enforce financial penalties? A rather interesting area concerns the intention of the Vatican Court, which as part of the judgment also ordered the confiscation of the assets of the defendants for about 180 million dollars and the payment of compensation for about 220 million dollars.

“If the Vatican wants to get its hands on some of this money, it will probably have to request that its verdicts be recognized by other states where these funds are deposited, such as Switzerland and the United Kingdom,” writes John Allen.

When it comes to applications to other courts, the Vatican tribunal’s record is varied.

In January 2022, a Swiss court rejected financier and defendant Raffaele Mincione’s appeal to unfreeze approximately $70 million worth of assets that had been frozen in 2021 at the request of the Vatican. At the same time, the court rejected Mincione’s claim that he did not receive a fair trial in the Vatican.

However, the Vatican was negative in the courts in Britain, reminds Allen.#In March 2021, a judge at Southwark Crown Court lifted the seizure of the assets of Italian financier and co-defendant Gianluigi Torzi, criticizing the Vatican’s submissions. In addition, proceedings are still ongoing in London on a claim for damage to reputation, filed by the aforementioned Raffaele Mincione against the Vatican Secretariat of State. In this case, a delicate issue arose – the British court granted Mincione’s request for access to confidential messages and e-mails between Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Venezuelan Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, the two highest officials of the Secretariat of State.

By the way, the problem may not be only with the enforcement of the financial part of the punishment. As the AP noted, some of the defendants in the Vatican trial are located abroad, including one of the main characters of the trial, the financier Torzi. It is questionable how and whether other countries will extradite defendants to serve their possible sentences.

Will the cardinal sit behind bars? Even in the case of a valid conviction, Cardinal Becciu (and others) do not have to go to prison. From the recent past, we know of cases where the convicted did not finally start serving their sentence – thanks to the granted pardon.

In 2012, the former chamberlain of Benedict XVI was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Paolo Gabriele was the central figure in the Vatileaks I case. It was related to the publication of confidential documents that Gabriele brought out of the papal office. Benedict XVI, however, decided to pardon him.

The sentence of the same amount was also given to the Spanish priest Lucio Ángel Vallejo Baldo, who was convicted in 2016 in the Vatileaks II case. In this case, too, it was a question of bringing out confidential documents, which were subsequently published in their books by journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi. Pope Francis, however, is just like Benedict XVI. decided to grant a pardon.

Two bestsellers show why Pope Francis’ financial reforms were so necessary.

Does the Vatican have its prison?

There is no classical prison in the Vatican. Based on the Lateran Agreements, which were concluded between Italy and the Holy See in 1929, persons convicted in the Vatican can be sent to serve their sentences in one of the Italian prisons.

However, the barracks of the Vatican gendarmerie have several rooms used as pre-trial detention cells – with reinforced steel bars and doors, according to Reuters.

In addition to the butler Gabriele, the former archbishop and apostolic nuncio in the Dominican Republic, Józef Wesołowski, who was accused of using child prostitution and possessing child pornography, also spent several months there. He died before the trial began in 2015.

Much more often than prominent guests, petty pickpockets or vandals detained on the territory of the Vatican find themselves in these cells. They are then handed over to the Italian police or directly expelled from the country.

Who are the Vatican judges and how much do they earn? Let’s stop at the judges, which is also specific in the case of the Vatican. On December 4, 2023, just before the conclusion of the historic process, Pope Francis issued a motu proprio concerning the labor law matters of judges and prosecutors in the Vatican City State.

The ACI stamp approximates that Vatican judges and promoters of justice (prosecutors) work at the tribunal only part-time, despite the Council of Europe’s requirement that at least one of the members of the tribunal and promoters work full-time, i.e. fully devote themselves to the Vatican system. However, there is a kind of hybrid situation in the Vatican tribunal, where promoters of justice also work as lawyers in Italy, with former prosecutors turned judges in the Vatican.

The new motu proprio also deals with salaries and pensions.

The president of the tribunal and the promoter of justice have a monthly salary of 3,649.50 euros. The deputy president of the tribunal is entitled to 3,138.57 euros per month, while ordinary judges and members of the office of the promoter of justice are entitled to 2,919.60 euros per month.

“In practice, it does not matter that judges may have other jobs, the Vatican always considers them full-time judges, and therefore they are always guaranteed severance pay and a pension,” states Vaticanist Gagliarducci, adding that judges’ pensions are calculated at 80 percent of their last salary and is paid if the person has worked for at least 15 years.

 Saint. A prophet. Vessel of the Spirit, the mouth of God, the hand of Christ. And every single day that you contradict that brings harm, pain, suffering,… death. To others. To you. And no, it’s not conceit! For this is God’s plan for every single person, this is what is normal! Don’t waste your time wondering what people somewhere far away should be doing. Do what you have to do yourself, here and now – and leave the rest to the Lord! Thou shalt be holy, here and now – and it is up to God to be glorified through you in the way He wills and fits into His Great Plan, in which you are but one particle, one moment of it. Here and now. Here is the place. Now is the time – to be holy. Here and now is where the struggle for holiness is waged, just here. Here is God, here is Home, here is that place. Be here, be perfect now, be holy right here and in this. Here, the whole and all of the world is present. Here is Reality, the Universe itself, Heaven, everything. Discover it, see it! Learn not to run away. Learn to live here – and you will find a wide, spacious house, a world! It is a world in a nutshell, all in a Cinderella nut! Evil cannot be overcome by evil, only by sound. Sin cannot be removed by sin, only by holiness. Being holy, here and now, is the most critical thing in the world. The only thing that matters. And God Himself is there, present and acting. Just be holy, rely on Him alone, and expect everything from Him alone! To act with all our heart, but to predict the result to be small or none, as it would be if it were only a matter of our slight deed, but great and glorious.

It is useless today to even refute the claim circulated. At the last century’s end, of a “joyful antiquity” and a sad Christianity. The early success of Christianity, the religion of the poor and uneducated, in the cultural world of the Roman Empire, can also be explained by the fact that it promised victory over everything against which man felt powerless: fate, death, pain.
The proclamation of the doctrine of Christ was given the name eu-Evangelion – the good, glad tidings. Christianity is a religion of grace. The Greek word chara means joy. We translate the angel’s greeting to Mary as “Hail Mary.” The Greek chair is literally “Rejoice!” (Old English liturgical texts have the expression “Rejoice!”)
Scripture encourages prayer with a sense of joy (cf. Ps 31:11; 9:5; 99:1; 104:3, etc.). We are often reminded of the words of St. Paul: “Not out of grief nor out of compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor 9:7). The culmination and goal of Christian perfection is love. Whoever loves, gives gladly, even with sacrifice, speaks gladly to the one he loves. He who prays and joyfully denies proves that he does his duty out of love. The work which we do joyfully goes, as it were of itself a hand. Aristotle writes: “Joy perfects the work, sorrow destroys it”. St. John Chrysostom explains in this sense the verse of the Psalm (118,32): ‘I will run in the way of thy commandments. Joy gives strength, and strength gives freshness. Everything goes much easier and faster. He who has a joyful attitude towards life, the little, and overcomes great ones with courage.

We are not worried about his future. On the contrary, if we see someone permanently sad, we rightly fear that he will not last on the path he has started, especially if there are major difficulties. The joyful performance of religious duties is an effective way of apostolate. It does not attract the company of sad people and discontented; on the contrary, all would like to go where they see, that there is happiness and joy. St. Leo exhorts the religious to their “modesty to be holy and not sad”. St. Francis wished to see a joyful countenance on his brothers, a desire to do more than they have been doing, and not weariness and weariness. That is how they are to go out into the streets. Christian morality teaches that a virtuous life is a life according to God and according to a happy and innocent nature,  as it came from the hands of the Creator. Whoever strives for virtue and is in doing so joyless, denies the truth he wants to believe. At least, the impression he gives to others.
Hence Hermas (2d cent.) ranks sorrow among the evil desires which are to be banished from the heart. The only praiseworthy sorrow, as the Ascetics uniformly teach, is regret for sin. This, however, soon becomes the source of true joy. As his biography tells us, St. Francis of Assisi warned against sorrow. The sorrow of man is the joy of the devil. A sad man is easily led to despair or to seek illicit pleasures in the world. This is in agreement with what St. Gregory the Great wrote:
“The soul cannot be without pleasure, so it seeks pleasure in low things if it has none in things noble.”

Through Baptism, we received participation in the life of God. But how does God live? What does his life consist of? Jesus Christ told us something about this when he revealed that God is one but triune. Jesus made visible the goodness and love of the heavenly Father. He lived to the extreme for the fulfillment of the will of his Father, even to the cross. He also spoke about the Spirit who comes from the Father, who receives everything from Christ and proclaims it to us. God’s Spirit guided Jesus in fulfilling his mission, and Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit.

From these few indications, we can guess that the life of God is the life of individual persons, one for the other. Their relationship is so strong and deep that he is also a living person, the Holy Spirit. From this brief indication of what creates the life of God, we can guess that we, too, as baptized people, are called to cooperate in the growth and development of God’s life in us. This practically means that we develop our relationship with the triune God and our relationships with people and human persons.

We heard about these relationships with people and convenient situations in today’s reading from the Old Testament. These are challenging requests. They require overcoming our egoism, an effort to respect others and do good to them. God challenges us as a motive for such an effort: “Be holy, as I, your God, am holy!” Holiness is God’s perfection. Practically, it means a challenge to grow in likeness with God. We are to express this similarity in our relationships with people.

In the Gospel, Jesus gives us yet another motive for such an effort: The other person, a person in need and suffering in various ways, a person who requires our service and overcoming our egoism, is a person with whom Jesus Christ himself identifies: “What have you done – or they didn’t – to one of these least of mine, you did it to me – or you didn’t.” There can be no stronger motive for doing good to one’s neighbors, for showing love to people. And in his caring love for us, Jesus reveals that these deeds will judge us. Jesus will reward us for manifestations of serving love in our neighbors by accepting us to direct and full participation in the life of the triune God – or, God forbid, exclude us from this participation if we were oblivious to the misery and suffering with people and closed ourselves in our egoism. When we think a little about these words of the Gospel about the last judgment, we realize how little we cooperate with the development of God’s life in us and how, in our daily circumstances, we must increase our efforts for concrete and practical love towards our neighbors – following the example of Christ himself, who loved us to the extreme, to complete self-sacrifice. But this complete self-giving for our salvation out of love for the Father led Jesus, even as a man, to full participation in God’s life at the moment of his resurrection.

Practical instruction: Manifestations of serving, attentive love towards neighbors, motivated by the belief that I am serving Christ himself in them.

Prayer: Merciful God and our Savior, turn our hearts to you and teach our minds with the heavenly doctrine so that we may improve in the Christian life through fasting and repentance. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who is God, lives and reigns with you in unity with the Holy Spirit forever and ever.

Voluntarism. The human will is a tremendous force. It can do a lot. Without it, we would not save ourselves. “He who created you without you…,” writes St. Augustine, “will not save you without you.”But even this power must not be overestimated as if it alone is sufficient for everything (so-called Pelagianism) or if Christian perfection should be judged only by performance, especially external performance. At the end of the last century, some said that the time had come to replace passive virtues with active ones. We should worry less about humility, contemplation, adoration, and denial but instead put all our strength into doing something properly for the Church, social justice, and the law. These counsels were often well-intentioned, and there was a piece of truth. However, their one-sidedness quickly leads to consequences contrary to Christ’s life and the teaching of the Gospel. Related to voluntarism is so-called moralism. He who loves God keeps the commandments (Jn 14:21). People with a valid will are better able to keep the laws of morality and the rules of the Church and are faithful in their duties. Can it be said that they are genuinely holier, better than others? We are sure that keeping God’s laws sanctifies a man. The life struggle of Christ against the Pharisees shows how easily
it is to go astray here, too, and how outward integrity can become a mask that covers the fundamental deficiencies of many actual values.
Sentimentalism. The presence of the Holy Spirit purifies all our faculties, hence our affections. The ear of the trained musician becomes sensitive to the harmony of tones and the flow of melody. Religious life awakens sense and feeling for what is, as St. Paul says above (Col 3:1), for the world of God, for holiness. There is an inner joy, a consolation, a peace that the world cannot give. In the words of the Apostle, such is the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22).
Spiritual writers have always wondered whether such inner states are inevitable, whether they are infallible signs of grace and the presence of the Spirit. What if someone completely lacks and feels comfortless, full of contradictions, temptations, and disgust? The “consciousness of grace” question is being addressed again in theology today, even though it is aware of the difficulties. Certainly, the long-convicted need to avoid errors, e.g., Messalianism (4th century), which claimed that we have grace only when we feel it. Temptation and restlessness are said to be symptoms of sin. Even in the early modern period, there are some profound statements from the Church. Feeling and believing in our justification to be saved is not enough. Again, it was emphasized (against Baius) that “the evil lust, though it has its origin in sin, leads to it, but is not itself a sin.” Spiritual writers to this day say of consolations and consolations that often alternate.
Thus, one cannot infallibly measure life by good and bad feelings in God’s grace. Nevertheless, the presence of the Holy Spirit usually gives a person peace and tranquility, an inner contentment. They have, therefore, also right those who testify that they have found happiness and joy, such as the world cannot give in the spiritual life. This, however, every Christian gratefully receives. But he will never substitute for it the search for sentimental “sweet.” devotions, artificially induced enthusiasm, or exaltation.
Exaggerated spiritualism. We believe that Jesus Christ is the true God. But He is a God who became incarnate, was born, lived as a man died, and sanctified human activity and values. Spiritual life is in the Holy Spirit. He, however, “spiritualizes” the whole human person. He is thus given a true sense of what exaggerated spiritualism despises: daily life, its concerns, interests, feelings, and relationships. In contrast, however, compared to God, the world is nothing, not even worthy of attention. The world in God and with God, however, is the beginning of the heavenly Jerusalem, towards which the development of history is directed. Exaggerated spiritualism manifests itself in many ways. Some overestimate miracles, expect extraordinary interventions of God’s power and do not make sufficient use of the means at hand to accomplish good. It is good to think of eternal bliss, but it must be remembered that it is the reward of love. Nothing is more holy to a Christian than prayer, but to it also belongs work, as symbolically the two sisters in the Gospel, Mary and Martha (Luke 10,
38 ). Save the soul, for the rest does not matter! Nevertheless, we cannot throw up our hands in condescension over the misery and needs of our neighbor, over social injustice, over oppression. So-called Quietism (from the Latin word quies – peace) longs for God’s grace to permeate man’s heart. It forgets, however, that God is action, so God’s life promotes activity. Spiritual experiences are not for that, to be drunk with them, as it were, and to fall into passivity, inactivity.
 One-sided Christian sociologist. Love for God, however, is realized through the love of neighbor. The latter, then, is to meet the needs of modern life and be organized. Christians as a whole cannot be alienated from public life, neither from politics nor from culture. And yet, even in the heat of enthusiasm for a good cause, they must remember Christ’s words: My kingdom is not of this world (Jn 18,36). The Gospel is not just a social program.

Andrew joyfully announces to his brother. In the Gospel, we hear how Andrew and John were interested in Jesus and how they came to know him. We who gather around the altar also want to know Jesus, for through him, we know the mysteries of life. Without Christ, we do not understand what life and death are. We are still determining who we are and what our destiny is. Someone has said that knowledge of God gives birth to pride, and knowledge of man gives birth to despair. The prideful are those who claim to know the ways of God and supposedly know what to expect from God. And those who know man’s misery and what he can do fall into despair. Jesus Christ came into the world to reveal God’s love and show us man’s greatness. For man’s salvation, God consented to the death of His Son. Happy are the first disciples who came to know Christ, but we see that the knowledge of Christ is not the goal but the starting point for them. They bring to Christ, other disciples, and then whole nations. Thus, our task is also to bring religiously indifferent people to Christ and open their eyes to heaven. It is a sad fact that the Messiah has already been born and is in our midst, and many have not yet come to know Him.