Crecer espiritualmente

Es necesario que crezcamos espiritualmente, sino viene la inmoralidad. La oración no consiste sólo en pedir cosas, sino en encontrarnos con Cristo para saber qué quiere de mí. Dios no es un genio a mis órdenes. Podemos decirle: “Señor, dame las condiciones necesarias para cumplir tu querer”. Hay quien se enoja porque Dios no les concede lo que quiere. Dios respeta la libertad mal usada, y esa conducta puede traer consecuencias funestas.

Para sanar la tristeza individualista, necesitamos el alimento de la Palabra y de la Eucaristía. ¿Cuántas veces a la semana abres la Biblia? Una religión buscada a la medida de cada uno, no ayuda. Es cómoda, pero en el momento de la crisis, nos abandona a nuestra suerte.

Se alza una ola de sensualidad que invade las costumbres, las leyes, las modas, los medios de comunicación social, las expresiones artísticas. Para frenar este ataque, además de orar y reparar, hemos de movernos, cada uno en su medio. “Primero purificarse y luego purificar; primero dejarse instruir por la sabiduría y luego instruir; primero convertirse en luz y luego alumbrar; primero acercarse a Dios y luego llevar a otro a Él; primero ser santos y luego santificar” (S. Gregorio Nacianceno, Oración 11,71 PG 35, 479).

La pelea por la limpieza de conducta se muestra siempre atractiva, siempre posible. Sólo en la oración aprendemos a hacer felices a los demás. El hombre decide sobre sí mismo. Está llamado a la verdad, al bien, a la belleza. Decimos que amamos la verdad, pero ¡qué fácil errar! Para garantizar la verdadera doctrina es necesaria la práctica religiosa.

Hoy hay confusión en materia de ética sexual, y es importante porque si no se dan la castidad, la continencia y el pudor no se da el amor. Y lo único que puede hacernos felices es el amor.

Todo lo que penetra a nuestros sentidos —sobre todo por los ojos, el tacto y el oído—, penetra en nuestra conciencia. Hay que saber qué está bien y que está mal, pero para reconocer el bien hay que llevar una vida honesta, hay que ser virtuoso. En su último libro Juan Pablo II dice que sin Jesucristo no hay bien. “La estatura moral de las personas crece o disminuye según las palabras que pronuncian y los mensajes que eligen oír” (San Juan Pablo II, a comunicadores 2004).

“Esta es la voluntad de Dios: vuestra santificación” (1 Tes 4,3). Dios “nos ha elegido antes de la constitución del mundo para que seamos santos e inmaculados en su presencia” (Efesios 1,4). Los primeros cristianos, fieles corrientes –casados y célibes-, de toda edad y condición, se sabían llamados a la santidad (cfr. Romanos 1,7), “elegidos, por Dios, santos y amados” (Col 3,12). Buscaban la santidad en todas las actividades de la tierra: unos en el campo intelectual, otros en el trabajo manual; otros, en ambos.

El hombre debe ser santo para hacer realidad su identidad más profunda: la de ser “imagen y semejanza de Dios”. El hombre no es sólo naturaleza, sino vocación.

El plan de vida ayuda a no perder de vista lo esencial: la amistad con el Señor. Algunas Normas de piedad que sugerimos son: El Ofrecimiento de obras a Dios al comenzar el día, 5 minutos de oración mental, rezo de un misterio del Rosario, leer un pasaje de la Biblia, tres Avemarías antes de dormir y examen de conciencia.

Una anécdota de la vida real

Un joven universitario se sentó en el tren frente a un señor de edad, que devotamente pasaba las cuentas del rosario. El muchacho, con la arrogancia de los pocos años y la pedantería de la ignorancia, le dice: “Parece mentira que todavía cree usted en esas antiguallas…”. “Así es. ¿Tú no?”, le respondió el anciano. “¡Yo! –dice el estudiante lanzando una estrepitosa carcajada–. Créame: tire ese rosario por la ventanilla y aprenda lo que dice la ciencia”. “¿La ciencia? –pregunta el anciano con sorpresa–. No lo entiendo así. ¿Tal vez tú podrías explicármelo?”.

“Déme su dirección –replica el muchacho, haciéndose el importante y en tono protector–, que le puedo mandar algunos libros que le podrán ilustrar”. El anciano saca de su cartera una tarjeta de visita y se la alarga al estudiante, que lee asombrado: “Louis Pasteur. Instituto de Investigaciones Científicas de París”. El pobre estudiante se sonrojó y no sabía dónde meterse. Se había ofrecido a instruir en la ciencia al que, descubriendo la vacuna antirrábica, había prestado, precisamente con su ciencia, uno de los mayores servicios a la humanidad. Pasteur, el gran sabio que tanto bien hizo a los hombres, no ocultó nunca su fe ni su devoción a la Virgen. Y es que tenía, como sabio, una gran personalidad y se consideraba consciente y responsable de sus convicciones religiosas. (Interrogantes.net).

Mientras tanto, ninguna adversidad debe apartarnos de este fin. “Nada te turbe, / Nada te espante, / Todo se pasa, / Dios no se muda, / La paciencia / Todo lo alcanza; / Quien a Dios tiene / Nada le falta: / Sólo Dios basta” (Santa Teresa de Jesús, Poes. 30).

Dos son las necesidades del hombre: el amor y el sufrimiento. El amor le impide hacer el mal. El sufrimiento repara el mal hecho (María Valtorta).

Nelson Mandela y perdón

Nelson Mandela relata:

Después de convertirme en presidente le pedí a algunos miembros de mi guardia personal que me acompañaran para almorzar en un restaurante.

Nos sentamos en uno de los restaurantes del centro y pedimos comida.

Después de un tiempo me di cuenta de que había un hombre sentado frente a mi mesa esperando que le sirvieran su comida.

Cuando le llevaron su comida le dije a uno de los integrantes de mi guardia: ve a pedirle a ese hombre que venga y coma con nosotros.

El guardia fue y expresó mi solicitud al hombre. Él, levantó su comida y se sentó a mi lado. Mientras comíamos sus manos temblaban constantemente. Cuando terminamos el hombre se despidió y salió del lugar.

El guardia comentó:

– Ese hombre aparentemente estaba muy enfermo. Sus manos no dejaron de temblar mientras comía.

– No, en absoluto, respondí.

– Ese hombre era guardián en la cárcel donde yo estaba encarcelado. A menudo, después de la tortura a la que me sometían, yo gritaba y suplicaba que me dieran un poco de agua. Ese mismo hombre venía hacia mí y orinaba en mi cabeza, en lugar de darme agua. Por lo tanto, estaba muy asustado y temblando, esperando que yo ordenara hacerle algún daño por su comportamiento, ahora que soy el presidente de la República de Sudáfrica. Pero, ése no es mi carácter ni parte de mi ética personal.

La mentalidad de la represalia destruye a las sociedades, mientras que la mentalidad del perdón construye naciones.

Pandemic advice put millions of Americans through hell

‘Tremendous infringements on our liberty occurred for one reason and one reason only:  Our white-coated scientific savior, Dr. Anthony Fauci, had solemnly informed us that they were absolutely necessary.’ 

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June 11, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – For weeks the diminutive doctor dominated the airwaves.  Dr. Anthony Fauci was a fixture at President Trump’s China Virus press conferences, warning us in his raspy voice that we were facing a disease so infectious that a single droplet in the air could infect and kill us.  

Stopping the spread of this disease would not be easy, he said, but nothing else mattered.  This was the kind of pandemic that comes along once a century or so, caused by an unknown virus for which there was no cure.  If we don’t follow his instructions to the letter, he warned us, millions of Americans could die.

And what was his advice?

The entire country was going to have to go into lockdown, he told us in March. Become laid off from your job, close your business, pick up your kids from the school, and then go home and shut yourself in.  At first, he advised us that we may have to “hunker down” in this way for “several months.” But by early April, he was saying that the lockdown would have to continue until there are no “new cases” of coronavirus.  That is, indefinitely.

For many Americans, it was nothing short of an open-ended sentence of house arrest.   Yet Fauci was absolutely insistent in interview after interview that if we didn’t make this collective sacrifice, that there wouldn’t be enough coffins to hold those who would die of the China Virus.  Over and over again he demanded that the shutdowns continue, warning that “suffering and death” awaits America if it opens too soon. SUBSCRIBEto LifeSite’s daily headlinesSUBSCRIBEU.S. Canada World Catholic

Fauci was all over the media with this message, all the time.

The entire country panicked, especially the Democrat governors in Blue states.  Following Fauci, they abused their authority to impose on Americans unheard of restrictions on their liberty.  They put job-killing lockdowns in place, along with a whole host of other new rules. Only one member of each family was allowed out, and then only to buy “essentials” like food, hand sanitizer, and toilet paper, and this only at your local big box store.  (That was the only place you could shop anyway, since the local mom-and-pop store was padlocked.). Everything not deemed “essential” was off-limits.  You could not visit your elderly mother in the senior’s home, your sick friend in the hospital, or even spend time with God in His churches, which were also closed.

Even as all this was going on, few dared question Fauci’s dictates.  He seemed to be the very embodiment of scientific rationality, a pure scientist who had put all of his personal opinions aside in order to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about the China Virus.  He must have reams of scientific evidence to back up each and every claim that he made—about the lethality of the coronavirus, about the ease of its spread, about masks, social distancing, and testing—or so we assumed.

Most of us felt that we had no choice but to go along.  Fauci, America’s leading infectious disease expert, had assured us that it was either his way or the graveyard. To avoid breathing our last in a hospital room locked away from our families, dying a slow painful death from the 21^st century equivalent of the Bubonic plague, we all dutifully kept our homes shuttered against the killer virus lurking outside.  As weeks went by with no end in sight, Fauci continued to demand that the shutdown continue, warning of the danger that awaited Americans if they ventured outside too soon. 

Those who violated the quarantine had the full weight of the law dropped upon them. An elderly barber was arrested for the crime of cutting hair in Michigan.  A salon operator in Texas was humiliated by a judge for having dared to defy a local lockdown order. A Maine restaurant owner had his business license revoked by his governor for daring to serve food outdoors.

The governors of Red states like Georgia, who wanted to allow their people to go back to work, were accused by the hate-filled media of conducting an “experiment in human sacrifice.”  If they insisted upon allowing their people to break quarantine, they were told, they would jeopardize the public health of the entire nation. Fauci himself endorsed this view, saying on April 3^rd that the entire country “really should be” under a stay-at-home order and that “he doesn’t understand” why it isn’t.

But the real vitriol was reserved for those who actually dared to come out and protest the Fauci-inspired lockdowns in New York, California, Virginia, and Michigan.  These crowds of normal Americans, who simply wanted to get on with their lives, were attacked as “racists” and “fascists.”  Their protests had nothing whatsoever to do with race or fascism, of course, and everything to do with the way they were being deprived of their liberty.  This distinction was ignored by the Left and its media attack dogs, who instantly revert to name-calling when any suspected “deplorables” show up on the scene.

In fact, the person who demonstrated truly fascist behavior was Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who actually extended her lockdown in order to punish those discontented by her bizarre lockdown orders.  

These tremendous infringements on our liberty occurred for one reason and one reason only:  Our white-coated scientific savior, Dr. Anthony Fauci, had solemnly informed us that they were absolutely necessary.  He could save us from this pestilence, he intimated, but only if we heard and obeyed his Delphic voice.

Then, unexpectedly, demonstrations and protests erupted across America. 

Urged on by the Leftist media and Democrat politicians, and fueled by Anarchists, Antifa, and Black Lives Matter activists, people who had been confined to their homes for weeks surged out into the streets.  City after city saw huge crowds of protesters flowing down city streets practically touching one another, or should I say “infecting” one another.  Not only that, they were chanting at the top of their lungs, potentially releasing clouds of China Virus packets into the surrounding air that others would breath in.  It was Fauci’s worst nightmare.  Everything that he had achieved with his dire warnings was swept away in an instant in an orgy of anger.

In the starkest display of hypocrisy I have seen—and we live in an age of hypocrisy—the same politicians who yesterday ordered everyone to stay home now took to the streets in solidarity with the demonstrators.  Even Governor Whitmer blew off her own stay-at-home order to march with the protesters.  One day she’s arresting a barber for violating social distancing by cutting one person’s hair, and the next she’s mixing and mingling with thousands of people.  And she was not the only one.

If you are like me, you expected Fauci to instantly take to the airwaves to sternly denounce this reckless behavior, and call upon the nation’s governors to reimpose order.  The demonstrators would be ordered back into their homes and told to once again shelter in place lest they unleash a “second wave” of the China Virus upon the land.  The governors would be told to ensure that those few who are allowed to go out must continue to wear masks, practice social distancing and, above all, not congregate in large groups.

But the man who had been constantly hectoring us up to this point — our Delphic Oracle of all things plague related — suddenly went silent.  Instead of haranguing this second wave of demonstrators — the way he had, for example, harangued the first — about the danger that their activities posed to themselves and others, he simply disappeared from the radar.  And for ten long days, as tens of thousands of demonstrators continued to march through the streets of American cities, he remained hidden from public view.

There can only be one explanation for the difference.  Obviously, in Fauci’s eyes, some protesters are more equal than others.  When small business owners and country folk break quarantine, he hyperventilates over their lack of social responsibility and predicts epidemiological disaster.  But when the elite media and the Democrats not only sanction protests, but actually participate in them, he looks the other way.

Fauci may claim to be an objective, unbiased scientist, but at best he is playing politics with people’s health. At worst, as Betsy McCaughey writes, he is a “left-wing ideologue” cloaking his opinions in “the mantle of science.”

And it turns out that he’s not a very good “scientist” either.

In the beginning, he relied upon a model from the Imperial College in London that predicted 2.2 million deaths in the U.S.  It turns out that the model, authored by the recently disgraced Professor Neil Ferguson, was garbage, a fact that our America’s most famous virologist only discovered at the same time the rest of us did.  In other words, the man we trusted to make critical decisions about the entire country didn’t even bother to do his homework.

Add to this the fact that our white-coated savior knew almost nothing about the China Virus itself.  He didn’t know how lethal it was (very, not very).  He didn’t know how contagious it was (not very, extremely).  He didn’t know whether it could be spread asymptomatically (yes, no, maybe), or whether wearing masks could help contain it (yes, no, maybe), or whether it was possible to be re-infected (yes, no, maybe).  He’s been all over the map as well on whether we will have a second wave (yes, no, maybe).

And yet this didn’t stop him from recommending, on the basis of a sham model, that the economy of the entire country be shut down indefinitely, that 40 million people be put out of work, the millions of children be denied an education, and that small, “non-essential” businesses simply be shuttered, many never to reopen.

One by one, all of his predictions have come to naught.  Not only did millions of Americans not die, but also, as the numbers started coming in, the mortality rate of the China Virus has kept dropping until it is now regarded as just about as threatening as the seasonal flu. 

And how long did it take for him to figure out what was apparent to many of the rest of us early on, namely, that the China Virus wasn’t the only thing killing Americans, and that maybe destroying the economy wasn’t the best approach.

The “scientific evidence” that the Fauci lockdown was based upon has vanished in the warm summer sun, just as the China Virus itself appears to be doing.  As for the man himself, he has put tens of millions of Americans through hell on the basis of a flawed model and a complete misreading of the one thing he is supposed to be an expert on: viruses.

I say Dr. Anthony Fauci is a fraud.

Steven W. Mosher is the President of the Population Research Institute and the author of Bully of Asia: Why China’s Dream is the New Threat to World Order.