predication.net

Who was Saint Anne and Saint Joachim? We know very little about them. If so little is said about the Virgin Mary in the Holy Scriptures because God wanted to leave her hidden and humiliated, then about St. Anne and Joachim, her parents, are not spoken to at all. We know their names from ancient traditions. We know that Anne was barren. So what to say about her? How can we be encouraged by their example if we don’t know anything about them altogether? I think it is enough that they were the parents of the Virgin Mary. I will help myself with the words of St. John of Damascene, this author from the turn of the 7th and 8th centuries, to express what the Virgin Mary’s parents mean to us: “O blessed couple, Joachim and Anne!

The whole creation is in debt to you because, through you, it brought to the Creator a gift surpassing all gifts, a noble mother, the only one worthy of him who created her.” What would the parents like if the daughter were the Mother of God? St. John explains: “Blessed couple, Joachim and Anne, truly whole and without blemish! They recognized you from the fruit of your womb, as the Lord said somewhere: «By their fruits you will know them.» You lived godly and worthy of the one you gave birth to. You led a pure and pious life and brought forth the beauty of virginity.” Yes, a tree can be recognized by its fruit. If the daughter is full of grace and unblemished, then her parents are saints.

St. Joachim and Anne are our best education teachers. They raised the Mother of God. How did they proceed? What did they try to give their child? Did they want her to dress nicely, to have everything that was asked of her? Did they want Maria to be pretty and well-traveled, to have schools, and to be respected in society? Were they trying to keep her busy and, god forbid, not get tired? Not! First of all, they led her to God, to holiness and righteousness before God. “Joachim and Anna,” continues St. John of Damascus, “sowed for righteousness” and reaped “fruit of life”. They lit up the “light of knowledge”, diligently sought the Lord, and the fruit of righteousness came to them.” These holy parents planted love for God and neighbor in Mary’s heart daily, protected her purity, and carefully cultivated good habits. They did not care as much for her clothes as her spiritual beauty. Then, they could enjoy her: “Rejoice, most blessed Anna, because you have given birth to a girl!” … You will bring this girl before God, the King of all, “clothed”, as it were, with “golden fabrics”, the beauty of the virtues and adorned with the grace of the Spirit, whose “glory is within.”

Let’s learn from St. Anne and St. Joachim! The luster and glory of this world are passing away. Not if you give your children what you see in their eyes will make them happy. But if you prepare them for life, teach them to love God and lead them to a pure and moral life and virtues. The Virgin Mary is the most incredible woman in history. Her parents certainly did not regret that they led her strictly but with a love of holiness. Humanity is still grateful to them for what they brought up. God, the Church, the nation, and society need such parents today. God chose her child for great things. They cooperated with reverence to promote the growth in the grace of their little Mary. Thanks to their discipleship to the Holy Spirit, they cooperated in the sanctification of Mary. Who knows what God is calling your children to do? He certainly has big plans for them in his economy of salvation. Let’s pray that all parents like St. Anne and St. Joachim will be teachable.

“Let everyone consider us in this way as Christ’s servants and stewards of God’s mysteries.”

(1 Cor 4:1)

In the catacombs, various pictures were found painted on the walls, primarily representing Christ the Lord in all forms. They also painted Him in the form of Orpheus. We know from history that Orpheus was a famous poet in ancient times who is said to have tamed even wild animals with his music and singing, just as Jesus drew the worst criminal to himself and turned him to God. Another rumor has been preserved about this Orpheus. She says that Orpheus’ wife was bitten by a snake, resulting in her death. Orpheus could not recover from this loss – he wandered the mountains-valleys out of grief and sang mournful songs. Until he finally decides that he will go down to the underworld to Hades, i.e., to the land of the God of the dead; there, he will look for his wife, and no matter what it costs him, he will bring her back to the surface among humans. After untold hardships full of terrible dangers, he reached the underworld region. Here, he found his wife among the dead, and with the strange magic of his singing, he so moved Hades, the ruler of the underworld, that he released his wife Eurydice, with whom he returned to the surface of the earth among men with great joy.

Therefore, they depict Christ the Lord in the form of Orpheus because even the most blessed creation of the mighty Lord God, namely man, was bitten by a snake in which the devil hid. This poisonous bite extinguished the life of his soul and deprived him of eternal life. Jesus took pity on the man and decided to free his soul from the underground Hell. He descended from Heaven: by untold labors and terrible torments, He redeemed the soul of man from Hell. When He finished His great work, He returned to Heaven, but in His stead, He placed His apostles, priests, here on earth to continue His divine work, the salvation of men. Jesus Christ continues to live and work in his priesthood:

Christ teaches through the mouth of the priest; Christ offers the sacrifice through the hands of the priest, and Christ distributes the blessing through the priest’s actions. What Christ did when he walked the earth is what the Catholic priest also does. That is why St. Apostle Paul: “So we are Christ’s ambassadors and as if God exhorts through us” (2 Cor 5:20). “Let everyone consider us to be Christ’s servants and stewards of God’s mysteries” (1 Cor 4:1). The relationship between the priest and the faithful is so close and inseparable that if this relationship were to break up, the Catholic faith and the Church of Christ would also break up and cease. This will be discussed. Listen up!

Once, a stout deer was resting in the grass, dozing, when suddenly a shot from a machine gun rang out. The deer jumped up, looked around, and, seeing no one, lay down in the grass again. Before long, the rifle fired again. Startled, the deer jumped to its feet and turned its eyes curiously in all directions, but even now, it did not see a person, so it lay down in the grass again. No sooner had he laid down than the rifle rattled a third time, and the deer was gone. – This example moved one of the young men so profoundly that he decided not to go to the party. That’s what the sermon sounded like to me, he told his comrade, because last year, right around this time, I fell off my horse and almost broke my neck. Now, in the winter, I have barely recovered from pneumonia. That was the second shot. I’m afraid the third shot will catch me at this party. I’m not going there; I’d instead go to St. Confession. His fellow began to mock him for being a superstitious coward when frightened by the priest’s silly fable. The young man was ashamed and went with the other species for fun. Wine, music, and singing quickly diverted his mind from the sermon. They chatted merrily and sipped delicious wine. When he raised the glass to his mouth, he was caught by a violent cough, and in the effort, a vein burst in his lungs, and he exclaimed: I said that the third shot would see me here, and that was it.

Whoever has ears to hear, listen! He never went unpunished and rejected the words of the priest preacher. Christ the Lord said a long time ago: “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever despises you despises me.” (Luke 10:16)

2. Now, he fixes his gaze on the altar from the pulpit. The priest St. mass. How is the Most Holy Sacrament altar formed? So the priest, before the lifting, recites the words that Christ the Lord said at the Last Supper: “This is my body. This is my blood.” The transfiguration would not have happened even if an angel had spoken these words. However, I, the smallest of Christ’s disciples, will take bread in my hands and say Christ’s words over it, and the transformation will happen. In this strange power lies the dignity of the ordained priest. I prove that the priest renews Christ’s sacrifice of the cross with the Holy Mass and makes the faithful partakers of the graces of the sacrifice of the cross. That is why the priest is called the vicar of Christ.

Terrible blindness and unforgivable indifference have gripped people living now:

• They do not notice Christ, the Lord’s sacrifice on the cross.

• They do not want to participate in the graces of redemption because they despise St. Mass.

• They do not participate in it.

Poor blind people! How much happiness, blessings, and graces you will get rid of! Be careful not to take this grace of God in vain; God may take it away from you. In France, they are already in such a state that five or six villages have one old priest because young priests were called up for military service, many priests died in the war, and now they suffer from such a terrible shortage of priests that they have to take the dying believers to the sixth village. to find a priest who would provide him with the sacraments for the journey to eternity, and it most often happens that the sick person dies without the sacraments on the way.

Such abandoned believers will gather in the Church on Sunday, where instead of St., they pray the mass themselves; instead of the sermon, they read the instruction from some book, and while they perform the Sunday service like this without a priest, they go to bathe themselves in tears, they mourn the previous St. masses, sermons. Previously, they did not respect St. Mass; now, they must be without them for punishment. People living in our times treat a priest like a sick person treats health: they mourn him when they no longer have him. Even the faithful will recognize what a priest is worth when he is no longer among them. So that you, too, do not behave like that, appreciate the priest’s work, listen eagerly to the word of God, and devoutly participate in St. masses. Pray for the spiritual shepherds so that they work more successfully to save souls.

Especially in country days, ask the supreme shepherd, Jesus Christ, to pour into the hearts of as many young people as possible the vocation to the priesthood because, unfortunately, the current family upbringing fills young people with horror towards the priesthood when they experience that everyone scorns, rejects and hates the priest. Well, nothing for that! Nevertheless, even to the death bed of that slanderer, that enemy, the rejected priest approaches, presents to his sinking eyes the five wounds of the suffering God, shows him the stream of mercy that washes his soul white, and hears the priest’s words: “Brother, accept, holy food for the journey to eternity, may he protect you from the evil enemy and lead you to eternal life.”

Christ lives in priests; we are His soldiers, and our banner is the cross of Christ. I take up this banner and follow my divine master. I am going to the holy battlefield to win souls to Christ. God’s word is my sword, the helper of St. mass, food is prayer, and watchword is love. If you ask to be saved as I want to save you, none of you will be damned. When the eternal Judge comes to judgment, then together, in one place, the shepherd and his flock will be. We will confidently come before the Lord Jesus to receive the imperishable crown of eternal life from Him. 

You’ve probably already met people on the street who offered some street deals to mobile operators or other companies. These people often encounter misunderstandings, but they are not deterred and urge action from more and more people because they believe that it makes sense and will bring some success in the end. 

 Even today, Jesus offers us his Word in a parable. He does not care who receives it and how, but he sows. He wants to hit everyone, but not everyone wants to be hit by him. Cultivating the soil was not easy, especially in the ancient Orient. The soil was first sprinkled with grain and then plowed. Therefore, it could fall in different places. And several stalks could grow from one grain to multiply the harvest. Three-quarters of the story is about failure, and only one-quarter is about success. By this, Jesus wants to say that we should proclaim the Word of life, even if it seems to be in vain. Because His Word brings life exactly where needed and impresses at the right time. The other day, I read an interesting article about T. Edison, a great inventor and holder of over 1500 patents and inventions. Although not everything in his life was moral and worth following, I was still drawn to his determination and willingness not to give up. His most famous invention, the light bulb, “cost” him over a thousand trials before it was functional and usable, and in today’s money, it cost him about 2 million dollars. Edison believed in his concept of the light bulb, and even though it cost him a lot, it ultimately brought him success. Let us ask God that we, too, know how to live with the Lord similarly, to announce Him in good times and bad times, and not to be discouraged by failures on our faith journey…

This saying of Jesus is very popular, but what exactly does the word abide mean? Dictionaries offer us more than fifty different synonyms, from “not to leave” and “to stay” to “to rest“. However, in today’s Gospel, the word should have two meanings. The first is to continue to be in the state you are in right now. The second meaning is more dynamic: to decide at every moment not to leave but to stay. Abide in me. At baptism, we were already grafted onto the life of Jesus (see Rom 11:17), so it is enough if we remain in him. We should abide in his love because he has already placed us in it.

We all know how easy it is to forget this truth. And this is where the second meaning of the word stay comes into play. Because we tend to forget that we are connected with Jesus, we must make a new decision for this connection with him daily. Our life is also like a branch that needs the vine’s nourishment (Jn 15:4-5): in the grace of Jesus, we can find the strength required to stay with him. Thanks to Grace, we can trust him even amid trials and see the strength to fight temptation or ask him for guidance and help before making difficult decisions. Staying with Jesus like this may seem complicated, but he promised to help us. But as? As I abide in you.

We can abide in Jesus because he chose to abide in us. He is connected to us by love. He is connected to us even when we do not feel this connection. Whenever we stay close to him, he is ready to encourage us. Thanks to this constant mutual exchange of life and love, our heart finds peace and rest – Jesus remains in us, and we in him. We can experience it, for example, when it fills us with peace during prayer. Or when we decide to repent or make peace with someone we hurt. We also see it in love, which gives us the strength to serve others. That is the fruit of abiding in Jesus.

Like Mary Magdalene, we, too, can accept Jesus’ liberating action. We are to give not what we have but what we are. The image of Mary Magdalene, created based on legendary and apocryphal data, with which people still identify to a large extent today, differs in some elements from the image compiled from the reports of all four evangelists. We tried to supplement the facts that we do not know about Mary Magdala from reports about some women in the Gospels so that this abbreviation may have led to a distorted image of her character.

What the evangelists write?

The evangelists mention her fourteen times in their writings. Each describes Mary Magdalene, whose feast day we celebrate this month (July 22), with their sensibility. Lukáš brings her close to Jesus from the beginning of his public appearances; she accompanied him during his suffering and burial, and Jesus was the first to appear to her. Matthew mentions her among the women who watched Jesus’ suffering from afar and how she comes to the tomb with another Mary at the dawn of the first day. At the end of his Gospel, Mark states that Jesus appeared to her as the first and only woman. In the Gospel of John, she has a unique position: she stood by the cross of Jesus, came early in the morning to the tomb where Jesus appeared to her first, and brought Jesus’ disciples a precious testimony and Jesus’ message about their mission.

What the evangelists do not write?

The evangelists do not say that Mary of Magdala was a prostitute or a sinner. She cannot even be identified as the woman who washed and anointed Jesus’ feet because she is not named in the Gospels (cf. Lk 7, 37-40). Not even with the sinner in John’s Gospel who was about to be stoned. Lukáš states that seven evil spirits came out of her. Illness, either mental or physical, was also considered to be the influence of an evil spirit. Jesus healed her; it is unknown under what influence of an evil spirit, and she, aware of the gift she received from him, could return to the fullness of life and give herself in selfless service. Jesus’ healing touch freed the imprisoned powers of love in her, which could now express gratitude to their Liberator.

Freed for God’s ways.

Inner healing will be verified by life itself. Only a person who is internally healed, free, and united in his thinking, feeling, and action are capable of giving himself in selfless love. She can detach herself from her plans to fully open herself to God’s ways, like Mary of Magdala, who followed the Lord as a disciple, the first among other women. Love did not allow her to distance herself from the Lord even in the hour of his suffering on the cross. And she did not leave him even after death: she testifies that love is stronger than death. A woman who, like Jesus’ Mother Mary, pursued only one goal in life from the moment of her liberation, to be with Jesus and for him, did not change it even after Jesus’ death.

We find her at the grave, as she too is waging a battle with death, which at first she thinks she has won. She did not know that the match was unequal. And with her, we don’t remember when we often looked for the living among the dead, the fullness of life in fragments of fleeting earthly happiness, and the love we wanted to pay for as in a store. But we get the most beautiful facts in life for free—both love, the fullness of life, and true happiness. There is no way to subscribe. However, like Mary Magdalene, we can accept Jesus’ liberating action and not pay but donate. Not what we have, but what we are.

Witness of the Resurrection.

Only love can fight death. The love of Jesus won this battle as the purest, most selfless love, which does not seek its own benefit but the highest good of the other. Only the one who loves us and gives everything for us can speak our name so that we recognize his love, himself. After his only address in front of the empty tomb, Mária knows that he is alive and near. He sent it to the apostles, to those who would also be sent to testify about the empty tomb and Jesus’ resurrection. And Mária expresses her entire experience in a few words: I saw the Lord. As Eve saw the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden, Mary saw the fruit of the tree of life in the garden before the tomb: the living Lord.

Questions for reflection.

Do I recognize with gratitude what the Lord has already healed inside me? Are there still wounded places I should allow him to enter with my love? Do I perceive that the Lord knows my name and pronounces it with love, thanks to which I can recognize his call and my mission?

The film “Calling” (2020) by director Paweł Woldan portrays Karol Wojtyła’s spiritual journey, later known as Pope John Paul II, during World War II. It highlights his formative years in Krakow, where he studied Polish philology at the Jagiellonian University. The close bond with his father, who instilled in him values and moral strength, became the cornerstone of his future spiritual life.

During the war, Karol meets Jan Tyranowski, who becomes his spiritual mentor and introduces him to the world of mysticism. This relationship helps him grow spiritually, and Karol eventually decides to leave the theater festival and enter the seminary, where he is later ordained as a priest by Cardinal Adam Sapieha.

 Jesus knew this, so he left there. Many followed him, and he healed them all, only he threatened them not to betray him. So what the prophet Isaiah said came true: “… He will not grieve, he will not cry out, no one will hear his voice in the street. He will not break the bruised reed or quench the burning wick…” ” Mt 12:14-20.

If one cannot refute an inconvenient truth, he usually reaches for the truth by force, believing that if he destroys the bearer of the truth, he will destroy the truth itself! The Pharisees are advised on how to kill Jesus. Jesus responds to the conspiracy against his life by withdrawing until his hour comes and forbids the proclamation of his name and wonders. Putting yourself in danger is not the only way to stay faithful to the truth. It is advisable and necessary “when the hour comes.” The Lord also sometimes withdraws Himself, retires to another place, and forbids Himself to be spoken of. He refuses to advertise.

Please, Lord, teach me to discern what serves my salvation and vanity well. Teach me the art of true meekness and humility: to know how to find my proper place for the moment, to understand how to withdraw, to avoid until “your hour” comes, and to understand how to keep silent, lest I unwisely contribute to the destruction of the bearer of truth and in so doing contribute nothing to the truth. And yet to be ready to accept “your hour” and not abandon my place. “He shall not grin nor make a noise, neither shall any man hear his voice in the street…” Raising the voice is not to increase the effectiveness of the arguments or the testimony. Truth needs devotion, not intolerance.

Lord, how impatient, dissatisfied, and wicked we, your apostles, are! How prone we are to “grumble, to cry out.” It is not our love for your truth that grins and makes a cry, but our pride and impatience. We are always more afraid of our reputation than of your honor. Forgive us for what we have done to harm your truth. Meek and lowly in heart, you make our hearts after your own heart despite our opposition.

I keep the broken reed and the smoking wick before my eyes – like an object. How many are around us? And thou wilt not renounce them. I don’t want broken reeds and smoking wicks left behind me, for thou thyself hast admitted that in thy Church, besides the cedars of Lebanon, there are also brittle reeds. I know I cannot be a broken reed when I want to prop someone up. Nor a smoking wick when I want to shine a light on someone. But the strength of the branch is in the strength of the vine. I will not forsake thee; I will not depart from thee. I pray this day for all who are far from being broken and quenched. This is my intention for today. I trust that, leaning on you, I will help some reed, some wick.

Man’s mental life differs from the spontaneous life of animals mainly in that man is capable of free creation. Culture consists of the creative acts of genius in science, art, and religion. However, the sources of creativity are still a great mystery to psychologists and anthropologists.

The Romans already asked why outstanding personalities do not appear one by one and randomly scattered on the timeline, but in creative waves. Star personalities are made up of constellations. Let’s mention, for example, the constellation of great music composers around 1800, great astronomers around 1600, and painters around 1500.

Such tides of creativity return periodically and often occur simultaneously in several places on Earth. For example, the flourishing of medicine took place periodically and synchronously in both the West and the Far East (Fig. 1). Similarly, the flourishing of history (Fig. 2). Great doctors or historians created at the same time in distant civilizations, even if they did not know about each other and their works are original.

Why does creativity flourish at some time, in some place, in some creative field – and not elsewhere, at another time or in another direction? Cultural anthropology does not have a hypothesis that would systematically clarify this. Waves of creativity cannot be explained by heredity, because the human genome does not undergo substantial changes in a short time horizon. But they cannot be fully explained by any local social conditions that would favor the development of talents. Synchronous and periodic creativity must be conditioned by some global and long-lasting factor.

What nature could this factor be? Cultural epochs seem to arise from the emphasis of different mental faculties/traits in the collective consciousness. For example, the baroque emphasized perception; its imagery was reminiscent of a child’s psyche and had an approach to a hysterical structure. Absolutism sought certainty, stability and order; it resembled an old man’s psyche and an obsessive-compulsive type. Romances, which return regularly in history, reflect all the characteristics typical of puberty: from falling in love to resistance to authority.

What could be causing such a periodic re-configuration of the collective consciousness? Mathematical genius and self-taught Srinivasa Ramanujan surprised the scientific world at the beginning of the 20th century. He discovered a large number of highly original mathematical identities. When asked where he gets his discoveries from, he replied that the goddess Námagiri reveals them to him in a dream. Princeton psychologist Julian Jaynes believes that the human brain was wired differently in the days before Homer. And such revelatory experiences were part of ordinary consciousness. One part of the brain worked out a solution, an answer to a new situation – and in another part of the brain, a person realized it as a living hallucination, a vision or the voice of God.

The Middle Ages basically attributed all creative innovations to the inspiration of higher beings. The doctrine of angels primarily described seven classical deities or archangels who alternate cyclically as spirits of time. Each of them rules for a certain number of years and inspires its own type of sciences, arts and moral virtues. Michael, Archangel of the Sun inspires philosophers. Raphael, Archangel Mercury is the patron saint of doctors. Anael, the archangel of Venus, is the muse of poets and musical composers. Etc. Angelology can be understood as a pre-scientific personality typology. And demonology as a typology of personality disorders.

Although we stopped believing in seven heavenly intelligences. But we found out that the brain is built in a modular way and a person has multiple intelligences. According to Howard Gardner, there are seven or eight of them: 1. logical, mathematical (abstract) intelligence; 2. verbal (linguistic); 3. spatial (visual); 4. kinesthetic (body, movement); 5. interpersonal (social, emotional); 6. intrapersonal (introspective); 7. natural (perceptive, observational); 8. musical (musical). These intelligences work together but are relatively independent: they can individually break down or develop at different rates. Their content corresponds very well to the classical seven deities of antiquity.

Indeed, the curves of creativity in the history of culture match what the old doctrine of angels predicted. Here, for example, there is philosophical creativity in the history of the West – it correlates with the traditional periods of the archangel Michael (Fig. 3). It means that angelology was not just a speculative theory. She captured the empirical regularities of the transformations of the collective psyche. These were intersubjective experiences – people reported similar apparitions independently of each other in different places on Earth and in a regular rhythm.

What could harmonize the creative activity of minds around the world into one rhythm? It requires some kind of external synchronizer. Together with our distinguished chronobiologist, Professor Miroslav Mikulecký, we tried to find some periodic cosmophysical factor that could be responsible for this. We did not find it in the solar wind, geomagnetism fluctuations or climate cycles.

In some cases, however, we have determined in more detail the range of organs that participate in those rhythms. Periodic romances are a picture of the psyche, which is typical for an increased level of sex hormones. Sex hormones stop bone growth and would show in shorter height. Indeed, a German study of ten thousand skeletons from the past two thousand years confirmed that humans were at their smallest exactly when I predicted it, roughly every 500 years (Fig. 4).

Other rhythms could be associated with the alternating activity of the brain hemispheres. In an individual, the cerebral hemispheres are alternately active in a 90-minute cycle. Human culture as a whole goes through a similar cycle every 500 years. This is the history of mathematics (Fig. 5). A preference for geometry regularly alternated with a preference for arithmetic and algebra. Geometric, spatial tasks are solved in the right hemisphere of the brain. On the contrary, Broca’s speech center is located in the left hemisphere and near it the center that processes algebraic expressions.

Roger Sperry received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the functional lateralization of the cerebral hemispheres. But already two thousand years before him, priests and sages described the function of both hemispheres and their rhythmic alternation, only expressing it in figurative language: they spoke of deities and heavenly fluids, of the Sun and the Moon, of mental gold and silver. They also predicted the most important conclusion of Sperry’s research: that the most successful people are those who can connect and balance both hemispheres. Historical research has led us from another side to the same knowledge: that creativity culminates in the transition from one type of culture to another, when opposing mental principles are valued as equal and balance each other. One-sidedly marked epochs tend towards stagnation.

An important stimulus for pedagogy follows from this: The key to creativity is versatility. Harmonious development of all abilities nurtures a free personality with independent judgment. Our children will be more human if they do not specialize prematurely.