...Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it”, is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book.

This paradox is the whole principle  of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he risks it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. G.K. Chesterton (1908):Orthodoxy, The Paradoxes of Christianity

 

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act…Chesterton

I believe in the Holy Trinity.

I believe in One Jesus Christ Lord Who unchanging, out of mercy and love for us, incarnated to comfort us, to meet us for help and to give us the sense of dignity and nobility. Who for us people bravely took up the cross because He was not only kind, gentle and humble at heart, but also, above everything, courageous. Who walked towards death not only as a lamb taken for being stabbed, but also as a lion determined to face the torment. Who didn’t want to suffer solemnly and grandly, but to be insulted and abused and to endure through the most terrible and degrading agony of all. In order that He may thus assume the most characteristic of all the human condition’s elements: the suffering.

Who loves the righteous and on the sinners takes pity, but to the undaunted ones holds a never-failing and lasting affection, be they charged with heavy past burdens.

Who does not forget that He too has been a man on the Earth, where He got His stigmas and acquired a certain aversion for the squeakers, terrible office servants and for bureaucracy.

 I confess a christening to the absolution of the trespasses and to my setting free from the yoke of prejudices, pettinesses and meanness, to the embracing of the Christian responses within the rush of everyday life, of its facts and events.

I do not wait for God to solve our worldly businesses, the wise managing of which devolves upon us as beings endowed by Him with a rational mind and an ardent heart. I do not attach to these worldly businesses more importance than it is properly, neither do I despise them since they are under the divine creation. And life, libeling its vanities, I take it seriously, because in it and through it is being played our for ever fate.

I believe in the Church and in the Holy Sacraments, I expect the Church not to meddle where it doesn’t fit well to intervene (?) and to scrupulously keep the sacraments to our strengthening. At the same time and paradoxically, I do not want it blind and indifferent to Its believers’ grievances and to the complications of existence.

I give little importance to philosophy, historical reasons, moral, aesthetics and erudition, which are not one with the right, unhindered faith, the unjustified, pascalian one. I do not delude myself, I’ve read the existentialists, but I do not see everything in black, I know that the world is non-unitary and surprising, that everything –in good as well as in evil-may happen throughout it.

I ardently pray to be conquered by Christ the Lord and released from the meshes of appearances and fear, to behave well with the fellow men, to be worthy of a conduct suited for one who can at any time be called a friend of the Lord and for not only my deeds, but also my thoughts to be pure and honorable.

I believe in miracles (as Mircea Eliade’s hero in A Fourteen Year Old Photograph”) and I believe that Jesus Christ, with a hunter instinct, will take pity on me, although I let myself so heavily conquered by His endless love.

Dead frighten and full of hope, I await the Judgment Day, I know that I know nothing, I have no proof, no argument and no justification, and the only thing I do know is that the Lord is the Way, the Truth and the Life.  If present on Golgota in the time of Crucifixion I am certain that I wouldn’t have asked Jesus Christ to descend from the Cross in order to believe He is the Lord. Yet, together with Dostoievski, I believe that should the truth be something different than Christ, I will still stay, come what may, with Christ.

I thank the heavenly powers for I have succeeded in believing, for my having been given this incomparable honor and I utter, from the bottom of my heart, calling out in tears, as in Marcu 9, 24: “Oh God, I believe! Help my unbelief.”

 Nicolae Steinhardt: “Orthodox Creed” in Dăruind vei dobândi ("Through Giving You Shall Receive") – published 1992

Rigid under the need to be beautiful versus regaining the beauty, the only one that it is given from the start, that of being alive: the vast, ageless, dignified, genuine beauty of being Alive for something beyond one’s ego. 

(paraphrase from Constantin Noica)

 

Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. ~ Eric Fromm

 

Ioannes Paulus PP. II
Karol Wojtyla                               







GENERAL AUDIENCE 
Wednesday 26 January 2000 
Fragment

So, in beholding the glory of the Trinity in creation, man must contemplate, sing and rediscover wonder. In contemporary society people become indifferent "not for lack of wonders, but for lack of wonder" (G. K. Chesterton). For the believer, to contemplate creation is also to hear a message, to listen to a paradoxical and silent voice, as the "Psalm of the sun" suggests:  "The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world" (Ps 19: 1-5).

Nature thus becomes a gospel which speaks to us of God:  "from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator" (Wis 13: 5). Paul teaches us that "ever since the creation of the world his [God's] invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made" (Rom 1: 20). But this capacity for contemplation and knowledge, this discovery of a transcendent presence in created things must lead us also to rediscover our kinship with the earth, to which we have been linked since our own creation (cf. Gn 2: 7). This is precisely the goal which the Old Testament wished for the Hebrew Jubilee, when the land was at rest and man ate what the fields spontaneously gave him (cf. Lv 25: 11-12). If nature is not violated and degraded, it once again becomes man's sister.

Centesimus Annus (37-40)

Authentic Human Development

Fragment

It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed towards 'having' rather than 'being,' and which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order to spend life in enjoyment as an end in itself.  It is therefore necessary to create lifestyles in which the quest for truth, beauty, goodness and communion with others for the sake of common growth are the factors which determine consumer choices, savings and investments.... Equally worrying is the ecological question which accompanies the problem of consumerism and which is closely connected to it.  In their desire to have and to enjoy rather than to be and to grow, people consume the resources of the earth and their own lives in an excessive and disordered way.  At the root of the senseless destruction of the natural environment lies an anthropological error, which unfortunately is widespread in our day.  Humankind, which discovers its capacity to transform and in a certain sense create the world through its own work, forgets that this is always based on God's prior and original gift of the things that are.  People think that they can make arbitrary use of the earth, subjecting it without restraint to their wills, as though the earth did not have its own requisites and a prior God-given purpose, which human beings can indeed develop but must not betray.  Instead of carrying out one's role as a cooperator with God in the work of creation, a person sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature, which is more tyrannized than governed by him....  In all this, one notes first the poverty or narrowness of the human outlook, motivated as people are by a desire to possess things rather than to relate them to the truth, and lacking that disinterested, unselfish and aesthetic attitude that is born of wonder in the presence of being and of the beauty which enables one to see in visible things the message of the invisible God who created them.  In this regard, humanity today must be conscious of its duties and obligations towards future generations....

In addition to the irrational destruction of the natural environment, we must also mention the more serious destruction of the human environment, something which is by no means receiving the attention it deserves.  Although people are rightly worried--though much less than they should be--about preserving the natural habitats of the various animal species threatened with extinction, because they realize that each of these species makes its particular contribution to the balance of nature in general, too little effort is made to safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic 'human ecology.'  Not only has God given the earth to humanity, which must use it with respect for the original good purpose for which it was given, but man too is God's gift to man. A person must therefore respect the natural and moral structure with which he has been endowed.  In this context, mention should be made of the serious problems of modern urbanization, of the need for urban planning which is concerned with how people are to live, and of the attention which should be given to a 'social ecology' of work....

 Human ingenuity seems to be directed more towards limiting, suppressing or destroying the sources of life--including recourse to abortion, which unfortunately is so widespread in the world--than towards defending and opening up the possibilities of life....

 It is the task of the State to provide for the defense and preservation of common goods such as the natural and human environments, which cannot be safeguarded simply by market forces.  Just as in the time of primitive capitalism the State had the duty of defending the basic rights of workers, so now, with the new capitalism, the State and all of society have the duty of defending those collective goods which, among others, constitute the essential framework for the legitimate pursuit of personal goals on the part of each individual....

  ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS JOHN PAUL II
TO THE PEOPLE OF THE COMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY Registry Hotel (Los Angeles)
Tuesday, 15 September 1987

 Fragment

Your work can be a force for great good or great evil. You yourselves know the dangers, as well as the splendid opportunities open to you. Communication products can be works of great beauty, revealing what is noble and uplifting in humanity and promoting what is just and fair and true. On the other hand communications can appeal to and promote what is debased in people: dehumanized sex through pornography or through a casual attitude toward sex and human life; greed through materialism and consumerism or irresponsible individualism; anger and vengefulness through violence or self-righteousness. All the media of popular culture which you represent can build or destroy, uplift or cast down. You have untold possibilities for good, ominous possibilities for destruction. It is the difference between death and life – the death or life of the spirit. And it is a matter of choice. The challenge of Moses to the people of Israel is applicable to all of us today: "I set before you life and death.... Choose life" (Dt 30:19).

 HOLY FATHER'S ADDRESS
 ON HIS ARRIVAL IN BUCHAREST

Friday, 7 may 1999

Fragment

Dear brothers and sisters of Romania! In this century now drawing to a close your country has experienced the horrors of harsh totalitarian systems, sharing the sufferings that were the lot of many other European countries. The communist regime suppressed the Church of the Byzantine-Romanian rite united with Rome and persecuted Bishops and priests, men and women religious and lay people, many of whom paid with blood for their fidelity to Christ. Some survived the tortures and are still with us. My heartfelt thoughts turn to the worthy and beloved Cardinal Alexandru Todea, Archbishop emeritus of F{l-abreve}g{l-abreve}ra{l-scedilla} and Alba Iulia, who spent 16 years in prison and 27 under house arrest. As I pay homage to him, who in his illness, accepted with Christian patience from God's hands, is continuing his faithful service to the Church, I would also like to give due recognition to the members of the Romanian Orthodox Church and of other Churches and religious communities who suffered similar persecutions and grave restrictions. Death united our brothers and sisters in faith in the heroic witness of martyrdom: they have left us an unforgettable lesson of love for Christ and his Church.

Thanks be to God, after the harsh winter of communist domination came the springtime of hope. With the historic events of 1989 Romania too began a process of re-establishing a State governed by law with respect for freedom, including religious freedom. Although this process does not lack obstacles, it must be continued, while safeguarding the rule of law and consolidating democratic institutions. I hope that in this effort of social renewal, your nation will not lack the political and financial support of the European Union, to which Romania belongs by reason of its history and culture.

To heal the wounds of a recent bitter and painful past, one needs patience and wisdom, a spirit of initiative and honesty. This tiring but exalting task belongs to everyone; it is a challenge especially for you, dear young people, who are the future of this generous people. Do not be afraid to accept your responsibilities courageously and look to the future with confidence. For her part, the Catholic Church is ready to make her contribution, doing all she can to help form citizens who will be attentive to the true requirements of the common good.

Romania, bridge between East and West, crossroads between Central and Eastern Europe, Romania, traditionally called by the beautiful title: “Garden of Mary”, I come to you in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and of the Blessed Virgin. On the threshold of a new millennium, once again set your future firmly on the rock of the Gospel. With Christ's help you will play a leading role in a new season of enthusiasm and courage. You will be a prosperous nation, a fertile land of goodness, a united people and peacemakers.

May God protect you and bless you always!

For further readings : http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/

Words from a Polish

 „I was born and raised in Warsaw Poland. I was 8 years old when Karol Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II. He was all what I knew until he passed away last year. I will never forget his words: "I plead with you-never,ever give up on hope, never doubt, never tire, and never become discouraged. Be not afraid. Do not forget that true love sets no conditions; it does not calculate or complain, but simply loves".  His love to God, Poland and all people was tremendous. He taught us how to forgive and go on.” Monika

 

 

In Memoriam Nicolae Steinhardt


And the time will be as a light breeze, in spring, when the air gets clear of the rain’s moistness and is imbued with the fresh odour of the branches in which pulses, shaveling and cruel, the whitish sap of the beginnings. H.R.Patapievici

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love."  Leo Tolstoy

What is Life? Positively a deconditioning of the dark, a flight. Yet, a flight within arrow’s reach. H.R.Patapievici

Love is an excellent school of dignity.  H.R. Patapievici

Shall we compare our hearts to a garden
with beautiful blooms, straggling weeds,
swooping birds and sunshine, rain
and most importantly, seeds. Grey Livingston

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime,
Therefore, we are saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;
Therefore, we are saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.
Therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite a virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;
Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.  Reinhold Niebuhr

Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking.
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
I Corinthians

 

H.C.Wells in The Research Magnificient: two great forces, fear and aristocracy.. I understand him now. There isn't in the World but one thing, only one: courage. And the secret is to behave aristocratically.  Only kindness, composure and beautiful gestures have relish.  N. Steinhardt

A completely Christian phrase of J.P.Sartre: " It is of no importance to say: Look what they've done of me; but: Look what I have done out of what they've done of me." N.Steinhardt

La Rochefoucauld: One must have greater virtues and strength for knowing to live a happy life than for enduring misfortune.
quoted in Happiness Diary, N. Steinhardt

"Indeed I was to be released the very last day: my name begins with S, I had no wangles, I wasn’t an incurable sick man, I had been  “insincere with the inquest”, I wasn’t present on their lists of squeak informers (…) and  couldn’t have been counted amidst the re-educated individuals.

But the event of my release is coming and may happen every minute now. Alone, in my little cell from Zarca, I am kneeling and making a sum.

I went in prison blind (with vague flashes of light, not on reality, but inner ones, autogenous flashes of the dark, which split the darkness without dispelling it) and go out with eyes wide open; I got in spoilt, pampered, I go out cured of fuss, smirks, whims; I got in discontented , and go out knowing Happiness; I got in impatient, grumpy, sensitive to trifles, and go out indifferent; little told me the sun and life, now I know to taste the thin slice of bread; I go out admiring above all Courage, dignity, honor, heroism; I go out reconciled: with those to whom I was wrong, with my friends and my enemies, even with myself.

I stay thus on my bended knees and thank to Christ the Lord and promise Him to do my best to behave from now on as a gentleman, cold in the face of all adversities, obstacles, discomfitures, merely blithe, always grateful for every joy, every good word which would not be curse or oath; and I rather choose death than doing clamant sins.  "

Nicolae Steinhardt, fragment from “Happiness Diary”.

A Good Word by Monk Nicolae Steinhardt "Christ is on the cross, naked; on His head, a crown of thorns; spikes, piercing his ankles and wrists, pin Him to the wood; His body is full of blood and bruises, it secretes only sweat and the silent groan of suffering flesh. He has been slapped, spit upon, pushed around, hit, mocked, He climbed Calvary and more than once fell beneath the burden of the tool of torment. Now He is waiting for agony and shameful death, slow, atrocious, beneath the double sign of mocking and of cursing. He is surrounded, on the foul wasteland of the hill at the edge of the city, only by hostile people and a certain number of the indifferent curious, the usual fans of capital executions and of public cruelties. At His right and at His left two other crosses, each with its prey, two thieves, two murderers -- two common infractors, so that the humiliation might be even more stinging. It is the noon hour, the sun is scorching, the thirst -- the essence of this mode of destruction -- has begun to manifest itself and all is only worthlessness, defeat, hopelessness, pain, exhaustion. As though it weren’t enough, here come the scribes, the scholars, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians, elders, the whole coterie of the winners passes by; and they all wisely shake their gray heads; pityingly and ironically they taunt Him, they laugh at Him, they invite Him to come down off the cross and convince them; they, to all appearances, only ask this much: to see and to believe. Oh no, the thief on the left casts his remarks, too, he provokes Him, he ridicules Him, he insults Him. The one on the right, however, does not: the one on the right, although he too is crucified and in torment and in the horrible waiting, finds the respite and the power to reprimand the hateful one and he finds, as well, the altruism and the magnanimity and the nobility to say soothing and respectful words to his neighbor. He can’t help Him at all, He can’t unbind Him and take Him off the cross, he can’t change his terrible situation in the least, can’t ease His punishment, can’t shorten His agony, can’t intervene in the implacable unfolding of the crucifixion scene. Nothing, he can do nothing except to endure as well, himself, the agony, until the end of the night. And yet, as he unworthily and helplessly hangs on, what is he given to hear? “Today you will be with Me in Paradise”. Why this extraordinary and completely wonderful promise? Why should he -- the guilty one, the justly-condemned one, the one without the power or means of healing -- why should it be given to him to enter into Paradise together with the Master, when the righteous Noah, the Patriarch Abraham (the one who received the Promise), Moses (the one who gave the Law), the Prophet Isaiah (the one who proclaimed the coming in the flesh of the Deliverer), King David, all the prophets, and all the wise men of antiquity, and all the philosophers in whom the Holy Spirit dwelled partially, and the Forerunner and Baptizer John, are still stagnating in Hell? Why this incomparable honor, this grace upon grace, why this immediateness? Today! How to explain the totally astonishing character of the reward? Where does it come from? Today, with Me, in Paradise! There is an urgency in these words, an elan, a fullness, an excitement which cannot but arouse amazement. Some have sought to understand by referring to the Good Thief’s quality of being a colleague in suffering with the Lord. Yes, he was made worthy of the matchless honor of being subjected to the same sentence as Christ and to be found just a few feet away from the Holy Cross in the last moments of his life. Yes, it is natural that the Lord would have felt a sense of mercy, sympathy, and goodwill toward a comrade in suffering. Others invoke the dignity of the man, his resigned demeanor and his decency toward Christ, as opposed to the ragings and blasphemy of the other one. Yes, there is a dose of truth and logic here too. But these don’t seem to me to be the real explanations. Something else appears to me to be essential, a deed (or better, an attitude) seemingly destined to be easily overlooked and yet decisive: the thief could not do anything, but he could soften and sweeten that suffocating atmosphere reeking of ammonia, of evil, of hypocrisy, and venom. That is, he comforted the blameless Crucified One with a good word! Yes, that simple old syntagm, that short little phrase, specific to our ancestral peasant way of talking, constitutes the most plausible explanation for the promise made by the Lord, for its fullness, its immediacy, and its urgency. A good word -- and it was enough! Like a healing balm, like a total remedy, a miracle. Those few words of respect, of affection, of defense, of confidence, of sympathy, suddenly changed everything and transformed the sinister wasteland, the foul Golgotha, the space poisoned by injustice, cruelty, and revenge, into a corner of humanness, into an antechamber of Paradise. Today, with Me, in Paradise: because you too now, into this wilderness (this wasteland, My servant, T.S. Eliot, will someday call it) of wrath and cunning, have introduced a drop of dew. Because, overlooking your own calamity, you saw Me, you intuitively understood Me, you recognized Me and you didn’t hesitate to take My part, to worship Me, to speak to Me words that reached my soul and poured honey into My heart, making you truly a partaker in My sufferings. You didn’t remain closed up in yourself, locked up in your own pain, isolated in the all too natural egocentrism of a man without hope. You didn’t complain for yourself, You wept for Me. You eked out the respite and the goodness and the gentleness of soul to try to console and soothe another. With a pitiful good word you transformed this Golgotha and all this head wagging and all their “hoots”, all this odious nightmarish charade and this defiled place, into a garden. Like the sinful woman, you anointed me with the precious oil of mercy and of attention to your neighbor’s grief. You gave me to drink -- figuratively, and yet no less intensely -- that cup of cold water about which I said that it will not remain unrewarded. And so us, too, it behooves us, too, to follow the example of Disymas and to perceive what price a good word can have in some circumstances. Silver and gold we don’t always have to give, neither objects, neither goods, practically nothing special. Does that mean that we are destined to do nothing, to stand by numbly then, uncaring, our spirit absent, people of ice and of stone? Deaf, blind, with our thoughts elsewhere? Far off, wandering along in the regions of fortified, introverted loneliness? Anytime and anywhere, in spite of the most unfavorable and adverse circumstances, there remains something for us to do: to the unfortunate one near us we can say a good word. This free and inefficacious (from a practical point of view) act, this “surplus”, this uselessness is not an empty word, but a good one. The good word of the thief on the right perfumes the poisoned air of Golgotha and, like the gentle breeze which, on Horeb, proclaimed to Elijah the approach of the Almighty, fills the human soul of the Savior with peace and sweetness. Constantin Noica has pointed out the philosophical treasures of Romanian speech. The expression a good word can be a guide to help us understand the spiritual nature of our speech. This recourse is always at our disposition: with a good word we can bring dew to the most devastated soul a fellow human being. Let us not lose, whenever it is offered to us, the occasion to wipe the sweat off the face of the persecuted, like the merciful Veronica, or to relieve the soul of a crucified one through a word of comfort and fellowship, like the good thief." From the book Daruind Vei Dobandi (Giving You Will Receive), Editura Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 1997, translated by David Hudson.Source: http://old.orthodoxnews.com Photo: Rohia Monastery, Romania

I SAW HIM ONCE DANCING BY THE STATUE OF BALZAC SO BEAUTIFUL HIS FACE SO GRACEFUL HIS ARMS AS HE SWANG TO THE SONG IN HIS MIND HE WAS ALL OF THE THINGS I WAS ONCE… SO, I STOLE THAT MOMENT AND I LOCKED AWAY IN MY MIND TO BE THERE TO COMFORT ME IN MY ENDING DAYS. August Renoir on Modigliani Modigliani movie