predication.net

Accurate concentration in prayer is in which we are with prayer and ourselves. Prayer is completely inwardly identified, prayer expresses our state and attitude, and the act of praying expresses and mirrors our life.
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A personal relationship with Jesus? Well, that’s not it when we say what he has given us, how he healed us, what he did for us, and how he saved us. That’s… Familiarity. An acquaintance like the people of the crowds had with Jesus. But still needs to be a discipleship relationship. The relationship is what Paul writes about, “If we are children, we are heirs also: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ; indeed, if we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified.” (Rom 8:17)
This is also the answer to the disturbing question behind Jesus’ statement, “When the householder gets up and closes the door, and you stay outside, you begin to knock at the door and call out: “Lord, open to us!” And he will say to you: “I don’t know where you’re from!” Then you start talking: “We have eaten and drunk with you, as You taught in our streets.” But he will tell you: “I do not know where you are from; go away from me, all you who practice iniquity” (Lk 13:25-27).
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The community of the Church is born out of that overwhelming ease that man experiences when, through faith, he has been freed and redeemed from this world because he has received a new citizenship, a new residence, a new home in heaven, in the Family of God. At that moment, all those worldly (and earthly) things which until then were so deadly vital that we had fought and quarreled and torn unity and brought strife for their sake and division mean nothing anymore. Suddenly they are entirely incidental, episodic. With a light and cheerful “So what?” we throw them on our backs, and suddenly, love
and sharing is natural, and the barriers between us are suddenly gone.
This feeling, this realization, this experience of this lightness and liberation, is critical. It is an analogy of its substitute, the sense of agony and breaking in Peck’s model of the creation of community. As a response to evangelization, as a fruit of believing and conversion, it must be truly and genuinely experienced by everyone. Then comes hope, a view of life in this world as training where we do not struggle with things, people, and situations, but we accept them and vice versa
we use them in faith in God’s providence, intelligently, creatively, and with a specific dose of positive excitement – it’s exciting.
Finally, love comes when we begin to appreciate what God is – holiness, perfection, sheer goodness, beauty, truthfulness, love, unity,… – and so we love God for God’s sake. We also love and enjoy ourselves constantly greater and greater resemblance to God, and we long to have more and more of it. Faith relaxes apathy, carelessness, and freedom from lust and fear. Hope grows openness to the new and unexpected, freedom from prejudice, expectation, patent reason and truth, and the desire to have things under control, but to unite and consummate all things in Christ and according to Christ. Love ultimately produces the will to grow in oneself to perfection and to divide in others to share and share what I am and live with others.
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At the beginning of the journey, fasting is a sacrifice and a denial for us when we are still in the world and not in the Kingdom. It is both an instrument of our purification and an expression of love for Christ. Later, when the world no longer speaks to us, the Kingdom is our home, and poverty and fasting are a gift and a relief to us; God must bring in another form of fasting and sacrifice so that our love may grow upon it to the perfection of selflessness – and that is that night of the soul, of the crisis, when God seems to hide from us. We must fast from the Lord Himself and His Light to learn to love even in the darkness, free, as God does.
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Christianity is simply love. Love of God. Marriage to God. That is the
Circumvent table, the fundamental thing at the very heart of it. Everything else is or starting point (our freedom, reason, and will) or the fruit of that love (apartheid, carelessness, relaxation,…) – but the essence and the very center is love, “an act of the will, a decision to give one’s whole life to the life of another” (cf. E. Fromm) – in this case, God. It means (as psychologist Robin Skynner would say) that the other we do not need. We can and can live without it. Even without God? Sure.
Look around at how many people live without God! Although from our point of view miserable and pretty much useless, they live. They can. Notable. God made us so that we can practically live without Him. We are truly free! God doesn’t need us, and we can live without Him. That is the basis for love!
Love means that God, though He doesn’t need us, freely shares with us what He is, what He has, and what He lives. He doesn’t have to. But He does – because He wants to. And he can do so precisely because all He is truly belongs to Him. Therefore, it can be in love to give it. He could not provide what did not belong to Him. In the same way, we can love God – by giving in equal measure, we choose to give to God, to share with Him our life, which is ours, it is ours, we can do with it as we wish – and that is why we can truly love it, to honestly give it to God in the form of service, sacrifice, communion with God. The result is a unity based on love that does not destroy freedom or enslave us but binds us to each other as free and independent persons – us and God. This is Heaven. And when we decide like this to give ourselves to God, Christianity, the life of the Bride and the Bridegroom, begins.
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Years ago, a foreign company started building a hotel in our country. It promised high earnings. Many people changed jobs and came to work on the construction site to earn a lot of money. At the first paycheck, there was disillusionment. True, many made their disapproval known, and not just in words. They went to complain. They gathered all the dissatisfied people in one room. The name-calling and discontent ceased when they were shown a film the company’s agents had shot as they worked. Getting to work, brunch, lunch, standing around… In the end, it ended up like today’s Gospel.

The farmer tells the grumblers: “Friend, I don’t blame you. Didn’t you make a deal with me for a penny? Take what is yours and go” (Mt 20:13-14). The fourth truth of our six cardinal facts states: “God is a righteous Judge who rewards the good and punishes the wicked.” The attributes of God include not only justice but also love and mercy. At times God breaks the plane of purely arithmetical justice and admonishes. The Lord Jesus says: “Except your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20). It is not against the righteousness of God when we hear in the parable the command of the householder to his steward: “Pay them their wages, beginning from the last to the first” (v.8). The parable shows how God’s goodness turns against the claim of rewarding those who were first. Jesus rejects reward in the sense of legal entitlement. He wants to emphasize that the “first” have no priority over the “last.” Jesus emphasizes the goodness of God. All earthly thinking is unable to comprehend the words of the Lord Jesus. And yet Jesus wants to help us, to get out of righteousness as the world and God understand it. In doing so, the principle that God will not leave any man’s service unrewarded is an unshakably firm principle for Him.

Perhaps you, too, have heard it, uttered it, or at least thought it: “Happily there is one righteousness – a God who knows no connections, no favoritism, who will one day give everyone what he has earned.” Therefore, we can more easily understand the words about the householder and the hired laborers. Only God will give a just reward. The reward that God gives is grace. When something is required of him, a person may ask, “What will I get out of it.” And God’s typical answer is, “All is grace.” We know that God alone gives life; man alone cooperates with God. When God invites, God gives life to man, and man can say “no” to God!

The steward in the parable is God. The workers He invites to work in the vineyard are the people. God allows man to dialogue with his God. God respects man’s reason and the freedom he has endowed them with. And we shouldn’t forget that he died for all of us. Those speculators on the construction site, thinking they could make money without honest work, went silent after a film was shown of their activity. Indeed they learned from the movie if they wanted to make money. And sure enough, when they changed their attitude and worked, they earned as promised.

Beloved brothers and sisters, dear worshipers, and children of the Virgin Mary! Today we celebrate the feast of the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth. This Marian holiday was introduced in 1954 when the Holy Father Pius XII—crowned in the Roman Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore a live image of the Virgin Mary, called Salus populi Romani – Salvation of the Roman People. It was on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the declaration of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. Before the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council, this feast was celebrated on May 31; now it is celebrated a week after the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary – who took you, Virgin, into heaven and who, Virgin, crowned you in heaven.

My dears, people used to elect different “beauty queens” every year, or as it is more modernly called, “miss.” So we have “Miss Universe,” “Miss World,” “Miss Europa,” “Miss Republic,” and other “misses.” It is undoubtedly ludicrous, ridiculous – and I am not afraid to say the shameful behavior of this world. It would be much more necessary for us to choose the Most Holy Virgin of Nazareth as the only model of true and pure beauty for our spiritual life. This model of beauty stood two thousand years ago and always is and will be relevant.

Brothers and sisters, the example and model of the Virgin Mary can be followed equally by man and woman, young and old. The Virgin Mary is a model and an example for the poor and the rich, educated and simple, healthy and sick. The Blessed Virgin is truly a unique Queen, not only for that one year, but since her Ascension, she is the Queen of all times and ages, of all nations, and all human hearts.

My dear ones, the Loretta litanies multiply this royal title of Our Lady. The Blessed Virgin is the Queen of all the Old Testament patriarchs, as she is and will be the Queen of the last apostle. She is the Queen of all martyrs, from the righteous Abel to the last martyr on earth. She is the Queen of all those fighting and struggling, including those who, in an intimate consecration, want to belong as faithfully as possible to Christ in virginal integrity. She is the Queen of Peace – after all, warriors such as Camille de Lellis, John of God, or Ignatius of Loyola laid their swords on her altar, only to fight with the weapon of love and mercy for lasting and certain peace in the Kingdom of her Son.

Brothers and sisters, this heavenly Queen won the hearts of simple children and scientists, artists, and all the greats of this world and will prevail until the end of the ages, young and old. Her image or medal is known to the Iroquois and the Eskimo, the Indian and the Chinese, and the African black and the European of the Aryan race. Artists of all fields and at all times try to create the most beautiful works in her honor.

My dear ones, from the first beat of the Divine Heart of Jesus in her mother’s womb, the kingdom of Satan was shaken because Mary struck the head of the infernal serpent. It started so simply that it surprised heaven, earth, and the underworld. The girl from Nazareth opened her “royal career” in a way no one expected. Against the age-old enemy of humanity and the prince of this world, she pulled out one weapon – humility! My FIAT – LET IT BE TO ME ACCORDING TO YOUR WORD! To rule one day, she began to serve. To one day live in the royal palace, where the King sits on the starry throne, she began living with the royal Son in an ordinary Bethlehem stable. To be the mother of all, she first experienced exile in Egypt. To be the “Seat of Wisdom,” she began to work in secret as a Nazarene woman. To be a “comforter of the sorrowful,” she first had to experience Calvary.

Brothers and sisters, for the Virgin Mary to be the Mother of the Church, of all peoples and all ages, she first had to place the most precious sacrifice of her Immaculate Heart on the paten – she had to sacrifice her Son – the God-man – on the cross. She gave this divine Host as a propitiation to the heavenly Father to forgive Adam and his descendants, to adopt the whole world into the family of God’s children.

My dears, the feast of Our Lady the Queen should remind us of the sacrifice of her Immaculate Heart, by which she earned the tiara of Queen of Heaven and Earth. We congratulate her on the glory she paid so dearly for her love of us. Now it is clear why the Virgin Mother can royally win innocent hearts the way she once could to convert the stormy spirits of Ambrose, Augustine, Bernard, or Alphonsus. Now it is clear why there are so many Marian pilgrimage sites worldwide. Now it is clear why so many people fervently pray the Holy Rosary. Now we understand why famous surgeons call on the Queen of Heaven and Earth for help before surgery.

Friends of God, the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth, conquered the whole world with the beauty of her purity and the power of her humility. By humility – as St. Bernard – she attracted God, conceived him with righteousness, and embraced him forever with love. And she still welcomes him with this love as our Lady, Intercessor, and Intercessor. Whoever begins at her feet with trust and childlike devotion will sooner or later be convinced that Mary is truly a Queen with a Mother’s heart! Therefore, it was never heard of her abandoning someone who took refuge under her protection. O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who flee to you! 

It is common knowledge that today’s era needs more personalities. Yes, we have those who pretend to be the nation’s leaders and spread a lot of talk around them, but the government does not accept them. A person’s loyalty to ideas, character, principledness, and detachment from pride makes a person a personality. We can achieve all this at the appropriate level. And it is also necessary to think about this fact when reading the words from today’s Gospel.

Peter says to Christ: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16).

After the announcement of the angels on the fields of Bethlehem, where the world learns about the arrival of the Messiah on earth, Jesus lives in the silence of Nazareth for thirty years. Only once, when he is twelve years old, he reminds Mary and Joseph: “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I am supposed to be where my Father is concerned?” (Lk 2:49). For thirty years, God has been quietly preparing to address the world. John the Baptist testifies about him: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world ” (John 1:29). And at the baptism in the Jordan River, God the Father himself says: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3:17).
Jesus gains people’s respect through his behavior, miracles, and signs. Nicodemus, who comes to Jesus at night because he is a Pharisee, but a man faithful to God, says to Jesus: “Rabbi, we know that you have come from God as a teacher, for no one can do such signs as you do unless he is with him God” (Jn 3:2). Gradually, even Peter recognizes the awaited Messiah in Christ. However, when Jesus asks: “Who do they think I am,” Peter answers, and the Holy Spirit speaks through his mouth. Jesus himself confirms this when he says to Peter in response: “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 16:17). God the Father takes care of acceptance of his Son among men as God. However, the Son fulfills the will of his Father. He says it himself: “I can do nothing of myself. I judge as I hear. And my judgment is just because I do not seek my own will,

Anyone who wants to make a difference today must avoid the self-deception of pride. Pride is the beginning of every fall. Pride will never allow the one who succumbs to it to mean anything. If so, only for a while, and then the fall will be all the more painful, the higher the goal a person has reached. Let us remember the fall of the proud angels. Christ’s wish is that we confess his divinity here on earth, recognize him as our God and Lord with our lives, and he will take care of our growth and our position where he wants us. God wants each of us to have a personality. He wishes that parents not only demand from their children that they respect and love them but also that they faithfully prove all this that Jesus preaches with their lives. Likewise, with our life in all positions, we behave in such a way that we are believers of God the Creator, Redeemer, and Savior. Who does not point to his person,

We can learn this from Guiseppe Melchiorre Sarto, native of Riese, chaplain of Tombolo, priest of Salano, bishop of Mantua, cardinal of Venice, and pope of Rome. as a pope; we know him under the name Pius X. He did not excel in learning, although he was bright and educated. He did not excel in wealth because he still had debts but for others. He was not born, he was the son of a postman, and he became the Pope. He did not stand out for temporary values but for his love for people, humble and straightforward behavior, consideration, benevolence, and all this to show those around him not about his person but so that the world would know and love Christ even more. The Church gave him the title of saint. As Pope, he had the title of saint, but only as a title of ecclesiastical authority. However, he was always what God wanted him to be in his time. He was a priest, passed through all church ranks, and was always a representative.

The Church before him gave the title to the last pope after his death and elevated to the altar the pope of the same name, Pius V. However, he died in 1572. For almost 350 years, the Church did not give any pope the title of saint after death. In 1,100 years, the Church has given this title to only five popes. Why? Were not others of the holy life? We believe that they can all be in heaven, in a state of eternal bliss. However, with his life, Pius X was able to be a personality, to be what he should have been, the way he should have been, not only at the lowest position of the church hierarchy but also at its head.
One, let’s say, little thing from his life testifies to his personality.

When the secretary informed him as the bishop that two people were waiting to be received, the nobleman Cavariani and a confident woman, the bishop said to the secretary: – Let the woman come first. She certainly has children and needs to hurry to them. – When a parish priest complained to him about his parishioners, he said: – Dear brother, don’t you know that you are now blaming yourself? Go back among them and be a good pastor. – Then he took out his well-known snuffbox and offered his brother the words: – Just courage. God will help you. You must remember that only love can achieve love. – The Pope chose as his motto: Renew everything in Christ. He fulfilled his password. It happened that there were more miracles at the audiences. The healing of the blind and lame is mentioned, and many people cry: – Holy, holy! – after that, the Pope corrected them with a smile that they had got his name wrong. – My name is not Il Santo, but Sarto. – And yet he is a saint. It does not matter,

And who do we think Jesus is? Let not only our mouth speak, but what does our life say? We all know each other. And right here today is the time of grace when we want to cooperate with the Holy Spirit, change our lives, and direct our actions, words, and thoughts so that Jesus can give a similar testimony about us as Peter. We must become a person in the eyes of Christ. To be what we are meant to be. When we want to strengthen further the idea of ​​who means something in today’s world, we see many personalities, but they all have one thing in common. They have a tremendous human profile, adhere to proven human principles of coexistence with people, and are imbued with virtues.
Thus we see that spirituality has its place even where it is claimed that faith is not necessary for happiness on earth. Moral qualities and fulfillment of God’s commands make a person a personality both in the eyes of people and God. Today there are many of them in our surroundings. Unknown, they don’t stand out on the outside, and yet people value them, admire them, and give them respect. This is because they enrich their surroundings with their lives. They do not live only for themselves, and they do not live only for this world. And this is an invitation to each of us. Today we should all say to ourselves: I want to prove it, too, with the help of the Holy Spirit.

Our time – that’s all of us, including us here. Every person must enrich their surroundings and time. Every believer has the responsibility not only to bring himself to God but also to help others on the path to holiness.

What all can be expressed behind this word? However, we do not doubt and subscribe to values ​​that have their origin and goal in God. In the Gospel, Jesus says to the disciples: “Let the children and do not prevent them from coming to me…” (M19,14). Let’s say that the gifts and talents of children cannot be explained in any other way. It is simply a gift and is not determined only by hereditary assumptions. As parents and teachers, you give children everything they need for the all-round development of their abilities and their personality. Fearing that we do not spoil something about children at home, school, or ministry, we subconsciously ask ourselves: What do our children need education?

Nowadays, we have a vast range of advisors at our disposal. Books, magazines, professional articles, and debates in the media increase even more the space in which we can choose from different models of education. But this also increases the parents’ insecurity, because there is a lack of generally approved models of how fathers and mothers should raise their children. Much of what was brought up during previous generations is highly criticized today. One of the main trends in raising children in our society is the tendency towards individualism. It’s called self-responsibility education. Nothing would be wrong with that, but we must admit that being educated for its own sake is not enough to be responsible for freedom. Therefore, Years of education require decades to live in a community with others. To raise someone means to pull – to pull him towards some goal. Letting them run arbitrarily without any reprimand is a weakness of today’s generation of parents. Parents sometimes prefer to hide this weakness of theirs and say: My child has to make his own decisions, and we do not prescribe anything to our child. But, in recent years, we all observe that children need rules, guidelines, and help to make decisions. Parents’ excuses that children always have to make their own decisions express parents’ fear of their task of raising.

So, what education do our children need? Jesus Christ did not allow himself to be thrown off balance just like that for nothing. Children were brought to Jesus. Jesus did not follow them, but their parents brought them to him. Here you can see how important it is for parents to support the authority of others when raising their children consciously, mainly about teachers. The further, the more parents block children’s respect for teachers. The teacher profession is thus met with a double dose of ingratitude today.

Finally, express gratitude and appreciation for your initiative. I especially ask for God’s blessing for your work and for your further efforts to educate, improve and protect actual values.

Jesus’ condemnation of divorce appears for the second time in Matthew’s Gospel. The Pharisees ask a sophisticated question, not about whether divorce is possible (this is entirely self-evident for them, by the Law), but about the reasons and their definition. Jesus rejects their question with a radical reference to God’s will: divorce is inherently a wrong solution, even if it is legally possible. Not everything the law allows is right. In this way, Jesus primarily protects a woman who has found herself in a difficult situation through divorce within a patriarchal society. The Pharisees wanted to make all kinds of zigzags, to lead a debate about where the boundaries are, what is still allowed and what is no longer – it was not about the woman and her life, but about some legal possibility on the part of the man to release her, to put it bluntly, to get rid of her – and perhaps marry different, prettier, wealthier… That’s how it went in Roman society.

The disciples are shocked by this. When they see Jesus’s demands on marriage, they find it easier to avoid it. Jesus rejects this. Not entering into marriage (apart from reasons of physical incapacity – wedding necessarily included handing over life) is meaningfully possible only when doing so really serves the Kingdom of God, i.e., others. In this way, Jesus does not place celibacy above marriage, which was one of the self-evident moral obligations of man (one can say an obligation), but shows this path as fully equal to marriage when it becomes a service to others, to the growth of God’s kingdom. Jesus and then Paul do not recognize celibacy as something morally and spiritually higher than marriage but as a way of service that is equally valuable and important. In their view, celibacy is not an ascetic exercise or an escape from responsibility but a service for the benefit of the whole.

To be redeemed is like being unchained, let out of a cage. Being
saved is like soaring to heaven, free, intense, and glorious.
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Prayer is not about somehow experiencing it emotionally and focusing on it, but to be identified with it and to mean it.
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Protestant-Catholic? What is that? Well, that’s a person who believes he’s weak, powerless and has no choice but to sin and rely on endless
God’s mercy and forgiveness. God’s Word does teach: “Whoever sins
is of the devil because the devil sins from the beginning. And the Son of God was manifested to destroy the devil’s works. Whoever is born of God does not sin, for  his seed remains in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God.” (1 Jn 3:8- 9) – but they go on, Scripture, not Scripture, making their noise… If anyone believes that “Christianity is nothing but a constant exercise in feeling that you have no sin, though you sin, that your sins are nevertheless transferred to Christ.” he has not understood the Gospel or the power of God. And if anyone teaches: “God does not save people who are not true sinners. And so you sin! You sin greatly! But believe in Christ …even more strongly… While we are in this world, we must sin,” is the devil and Satan, who has no sense of the things of God and denies Christ and the Gospel.
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He needs nothing who rides on the Wave of Being, who flows with being itself.
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A Christian is a man who often continues to live what he has lived – but in an entirely new, heavenly way. And so we can see in the garden of the Church holy gardeners, holy soldiers, or even holy bikers. “Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all die, but we shall all be transformed…” (1 Cor 15:51). Nothing requires to be abandoned or left behind (with perhaps a few exceptions). Everything can be transformed and transfigured into heavenly form – and be changed too! “Let everyone abide in that condition in which he has been called… only let each one live as the Lord has ordained, each as God has called him.” (1 Cor. 7:20, 17). We do not have to leave behind what
we have been living and choose some particular or unique way of life. What we are waiting for, however, is to transform what we have lived up to now from sinful and earthly into a heavenly and holy form, to become a sinful biker, a biker, and a saint.
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Indeed, the Christian relates neither to himself nor others but to Christ and Christ alone; in this respect, his life occurs only between him and Christ, “with eyes fixed on Jesus, the author, and finisher of faith.” (Heb. 12:2) And because the Lord is a Spirit hovering over the waters, which is strange about floating with Him, like Luis Lane with Superman?
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The stability of the Benedictines carries within it an extremely positive attitude and consciousness – what instead a gift, flowing from following God’s calling and in the definiteness of its form: I am where I am meant to be. It is as it ought to be.
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Truth and love. One for a reason, one for will. Without truth, love is blind and mostly does more harm than good. Without love, the choice is complex and often breaks rather than brings to life. Both are necessary; one without the other does not exist. Therefore, God is Truth. Therefore, God is Love. Because of this, it is Life; He is also the Way to it.
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Listening to our sermons… well. The church is a place of evangelism, not teaching. But still. Where is the fundamental teaching in the Church, then? As if
we’ve fallen from the Catholic depths into some Protestant chattiness…
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Indeed, there is only one cure for pride, selfishness, comparison, rivalry, vanity, inferiority, and everything – and that is to look at every moment only and only on Christ, to relate in every moment and only to Christ. Indeed, our life as Christians takes place exclusively between us and Christ. Everything else and everyone else is only through Christ, with Christ, and in Christ. Christ is thus not only the mediator between God and people, but he also becomes the mediator between us and other people, between us and the rest of the world, when we approach them exclusively through Christ.
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Moods are like water, like the mud in which we are stuck. But still, they are only feelings. One can emerge from them into light, air, and the brightness of reason and will. There we must learn to live, that is, to watch: not to drown in moods, but to live sensibly and soberly in reality, a life built on reason and will.
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As Scott Peck puts it, laying down arms in the community means forgiveness (a film, letting go) regarding others and vulnerability regarding oneself.
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It is comparing oneself to fame and judging to feel right. Competition for the sake of feeling important, status with power. This is the pattern of life in the world.
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Liturgy. Holy Communion. If we are looking for feelings, we close our eyes, don’t even sing, but concentrate on our inner, bodily chest somewhere. But if we receive Christ with our whole being, we can keep our eyes open, sing, and don’t need to look for anything. Communion with the Lord we experience much more deeply because “on the surface,” with our entire being, by what we are and what we are. Everything is completely natural, full of Christ, permeated in Christ.
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According to Scott Peck, conversion replaces the stages of chaos and emptiness in Christianity. Or conversely, confusion and emptiness are worldly and non-functional substitutes for Christian conversion.
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To be a pastor in a parish today often means not being a teacher in the first place but the evangelizer of his parish. In practice, this means, in a sense, to separate oneself from the parish – as it were, “in the world but not of the world.” Not to adapt, not to be swept away by it. To live and enjoy the Life of God fully in the midst of it, bearing witness to it by living, being, behaving, rather than in words, in great joy – and not to let any parish spoil that.

Anger. It is not a sign of Christianity but forgiveness.

Forgiveness. Who among us would not encounter the content of this word? Not only in prayer but in personal life. Forgive! Sorry! Forget! The Pope forgave his assassin Ali Akcha after the assassination on 13.5. 1981. To Peter: “How many times must I forgive my brother when he sins against me?” Perhaps seven times?” Jesus answers him: “I tell you: Not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Mt 18:21). In one sentence, we should always forgive without any conditions.

In the parable, Jesus wants to raise a serious challenge, a souvenir. Who among us can be so hard on his little debtor brother that he would not forgive him when God forgives us so much? God forgave the debtor ten thousand talents, and the debtor did not forgive his debtor a hundred denarius. God is inherently good, infinitely good; always, while we live, forgive us. This means that we will behave adequately toward his forgiveness. As we find forgiveness from God, we must also forgive our brothers. We must not be “heartless” people. The parable’s conclusion should not escape any of us: “So will my heavenly Father do to you, if you do not forgive each of his brothers from the heart” (Mt 18:35).

Jesus puts in the Lord’s Prayer: “And forgive us our trespasses, as we also forgive our trespassers” (Mt 6:12). The parable is God’s current motivation for all people until the end of the world. In the Old Testament, in the Book of the Son of Sirach (27, 33-28,9), it is clearly stated that insults, anger, revenge, or hatred do not belong in our hearts. Our forgiveness is a blessing to us. The wound heals after the ulcer, but what anger causes is…

In Small Stories, Mikuláš Chaytor writes in the story Two Necrologies: Two men died in neighboring houses on one day. In one, a retired officer, and in the other, a landlord already retired. They were relatives; they lived side by side for years, but for twenty-four years, they were angry, living in sin, judging each other – and what was the cause? Six square meters of land. Commissions, hearings, and courts sometimes found one person right, sometimes the other. When the last court found the officer in the right, the owner became so angry that he lost his appetite, fell ill, and died three days later. The news of the death of a relative and neighbor so controlled the soldier that instead of going and at least asking others for the forgiveness of the dead body, in the sinful joy that God is on his side and has punished his enemy with death, he falls to the ground and dies in sin. Both passed with evil in their hearts. Allegedly, shortly before, they begged theirs to continue and bring the dispute to an end in their favor. Chaytor ends the story with a note: Someone told me yesterday, I want to believe that it is a hoax, that the sons of the two deceased have decided to continue in their father’s footsteps. It means a new battle for six square meters, new insults, and new sacrifices on the altar of sin. It is no wonder that great people know how to forgive.