In this Corona virus poem, the poet gives alternatives of what one can do, keeping in mind the many things that we used to do in our normal life and which we can’t do now during the Corona virus period of lockdown.

“It’s time to do things differently:
If you can’t run around, stay put.
If you can’t go out, go deep.
If you can’t meet, cherish more.
If you can’t embrace, just open your heart to welcome those you love.
If you can’t do more things, just accept the things you receive.
If you have time, use it well.
If you can’t mix with others, discover who you are.
If you feel the pinch of loneliness, pray more for others.
If you’re getting bored, start counting your blessings.
When feeling vulnerable, discover your inner strength.
When you don’t know what to do, be happy just to be.
When you’re sad for losing so much, concentrate on giving a little bit more.
Know that life is a series of life-giving deaths.
When you feel like dying, rejoice because your renewed self is being born.
God bless and may this Passion be the source of a new life for all of us in Christ.”

Read more:

– Spiritual Thirst – A Reflection On The Samaritan Woman
– Top Pope Francis’ Heart And Mind Rest Quotes

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Letter From Saint Paul To The People Of Malta:

“Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, to the Church of God which is in Malta. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I give thanks to God always for you because of the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, I always pray joyfully for you because of your part in sharing the Gospel from the very beginning.

I’m sure that He who started this work in you will see that it is accomplished to the end. I keep you close to me in the heart of Christ Jesus. For this I pray: that your life will grow constantly in wisdom, so that you may know how to choose whatever is best and thus be without stain in the day of Christ’s coming.

I appeal to you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no dissensions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me that there is quarreling among you, my brethren.  (1 Cor 1: 10-13)

But I, brethren, could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there are jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving like ordinary men? (1 Cor 3:1-4)

It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans.  And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather mourn? Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? (1 Cor 5: 1,2,6)

To the married, I give charge, not I but the Lord, that the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, let her remain single or else be reconciled to her husband) and that the husband should not divorce his wife. (1 Cor 7: 10-11)

Now it is superfluous for me to write to you about the offering for the saints, for I know your readiness to give to the poor. The point is this: he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must do as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. (2 Cor 9: 2, 6-8) And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work. (2 Cor 9: 1, 2, 6 ,8)

Examine yourselves if you still have the faith. Test yourselves. Don’t you know that Christ is within you? Hopefully, you are not too far gone to return to the right ways. I pray to God that you do no harm

I do not write this to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me. (1 Cor 4: 14-16)

Finally, brethren, farewell. Mend your ways, heed my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. (2 Cor 13:11-13)

The Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. This is my greeting in my own hand. (2 Tess 3:17)

Paul

This letter is available in Maltese. If you’d like a copy email us at hello@universeoffaith.org with St Paul Letter Maltese written in the subject or send us a private message on our Facebook page.

Read more:
– The Malta Village Festa – It’s Pros And Cons
– Pope Francis’ Quotes About Saints

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A love-thirsty life

We thirst for so many things; a better life, more peace and greater serenity. But can we find at least one person in our life who really does quench our deepest thirst? In the story of the Samaritan woman, we see Christ as somehow sharing the same thirst that we experience as humans. It is the thirst that remained torturing him right up to the cross:  “I thirst”. (Jn 19:28)

What we are presented with here is a disappointed and frustrated Samaritan woman tired of having to constantly return to the well-water which never satiated her completely. Just as in her real love-thirsty life. She tried to quench her thirst through six different men but ended up disillusioned. And now, this seventh man seems to be no better. He wants to drink without even having a bucket.

What we really thirst for is unity with others

We can really quench our thirst, only when we realise that our deepest thirst is for the intimate communion of ourselves with that of others. The only way to quench our thirst is therefore by quenching the same thirst in our brothers and sisters. There is no other way of stopping the frustrating, vicious circle of running after the elusive happiness of our false hopes.

Grass is greener on the other side

When we are children we hope that life will be better when we grow up, or when we get married, or when we fulfill our career ambitions, worldly success or comfortable retirement. Yet, like the Samaritan woman, our thirst never seems to go away and we still end up being disappointed and disillusioned.

“It is only in quenching the thirst of others that we can quench our own”

It is only in quenching the thirst of others that we can quench our own thirst. This is quenching the thirst of Jesus in others and the thirst of others for Jesus. Once we drink of the water he gives us, it becomes a source of ‘living water’ right within our very own hearts.

Published: September 2019

Read more:
– Feeling Insecure – Love As The Greatest Security
– Desperately Seeking Certainty

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“Afterlife is pure relationship without the brokenness we experience in this world..”

When I die, I will be liberated from my bodily needs because relationship itself becomes the beginning and the end of all that I am. In what we call heaven, I do not lose my identity but I will discover my identity as Paul, because I have found what you mean to me and what I mean to you.

I will discover what my mother, father etc means to me and what I mean to them in its totality; what is special for me in my relationship with my friends. We are too small yet to experience the same oneness of the afterlife now, because in this world we are limited and we cannot experience everything. To reconcile what is precious for me and what is precious for you is sometimes very hard due to our differences and limitations.

When I die, these things are conquered. We experience perfect reconciliation of all the differences. This is what St. Paul means when he says that God becomes everything for everyone.

“We will keep not loose our bodily identity, the body is transformed but not discarded”

To arrive at this stage we do not renounce and lose what we had when we were alive, with our limitations. This is so because our identity is formed from all these limitations that you are a woman, I am a man, that your eyes are brown and mine are blue. That is essential, none of this is lost. So if you had brown eyes it will remain a part of your identity, the way that your brain works is part of your story. No person can be a person without a story.

After he resurrected Jesus ate fish. In this event we notice that this new resurrected life which I have is not in spite of these limitations which I have to eat, like the apostles had to eat but it is thanks to. Had I not a need to eat etc, then I would have become a ghost, an idea. It is the body which makes an idea real. This is also mentioned in the Bible, the  “resurrection of the bodies .

So when we die, the body has been transformed but not abandoned or discarded. The experience that our spirit was born and nurtured in a body, that experience will remain, our body will carry that experience. So, Jesus, to show that he was not an idea in the air, asked for food and showed the signs of the nails. But it was a transformed body.

“In this life we already partially experience having a transformed body”

Transformed body, though we find hard to understand, we have already partially experienced it. The experiences of play that I did when I was a child or in my mother’s womb, are all memories in my body. The body has memory. There is continuity between the body that I have today and the body I had when I was a 3yr old. But the body I had as a 3yr old has disappeared completely. When I look at my nails, though somewhat the same I cannot say that they are the same nails that I had when I was 3 yrs old, I have cut so much of it and threw away. My heart today is not the same which I had back then, but it’s still the same heart. The same can be said for all the parts of my body. The link which I have between my body today and my body back then is neither the cells nor my specifications, but all these parts make me, me, Paul. There is continuity in change. This is talk about the spiritual life. Like when Jesus said see how the spirit cannot be spirit without a body?

When we die and all the body ceases, we would have arrived at a stage where the spirit can assume to have a voice without having the need to have vocal chords, tongue etc. How, I don’t know. The mistake we do is that, we either say – that the body is not important but the soul is, like in olden times when people want to almost become a spirit, today it’s the opposite , the body has taken such a central place that it is the other extreme, the body has almost become just a cover, a facade. Like Descartes the philospher did, he found identity only in thought, cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am), I find it very much superficial. So, we create a dichotomy, something which we did so much as Church. Our spirit is not an entity in a cover.

I cannot think about anything , say justice with the consciousness of the body. My body is an integral part of what is my sense of justice. What Jesus said whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers, you have done unto me. Love cannot be just a sentiment, it means that I wash you, I give you clothes etc These are all spiritual experiences which are forming our souls. Because our body is the way in which we can enter in a relationship with others. This is why the Church insists so much that every human being should be born out of a relationship because the body is destined to become relationship so it needs to come from a relationship.

Published: 2016

Read more:
– The Death Of My Younger Brother
– Does Time Heal Grief?

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The euthanasia debate is not only about mercy and love. It is also about one’s concept of life. You can look at life in a way to say I want to live a pain free life, so the euthanasia argument becomes the most logical conclusion i.e. when there is a certain amount of suffering I will stop living. What’s important is that I won’t suffer.

The Christian Vision Against Euthanasia

On the other hand, in the Christian vision what’s important is that I live. Suffering in life, is to be embraced with a free heart. It is what Jesus said “no one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. It is a conscious act of a decision that you are going to accept life as a gift. So one will not decide the specifications of this gift but accept the gift as it is.

If we live it in this way, our option will first be towards life not towards comfort. So, as a principle, euthanasia or suicide cannot be a favourable situation. We have done nothing to receive life and we should do nothing to take it away. Because if you accept that life is a gift, the gift itself decides the conditions.

This is why the euthanasia debate is so important. Because what’s important is that despite my pain I will remain near the person (e.g. my wife) who is so precious for me, so my pain becomes second. The opposite argument is that the pain becomes such a first that you are not a good reason enough for me that I remain alive. For the Christian, the main argument against euthanasia is even if I do not wish to remain alive for my own sake but there is another reason to remain alive , you , I will remain alive for the other person.

Published: September 2016

Read more:
– Top Popes’ Human Life And Bioethics Quotes
– “I’m a Doctor On A Spiritual Journey” – The Role Of Spirituality In Healthcare

The post Religious Arguments Against Euthanasia appeared first on Universe of Faith.

I’ve met a woman with two children whose husband had an affair with another woman. She forgave him. She had the capacity to say my husband’s betrayal won’t cancel my love for him. We call that forgiveness.

Both the betrayer and the betrayed suffer in an infidelity

Living with the suffering of infidelity – the betrayal, means, that this woman will be accepting that she will be loving a man who has made the mistake of infidelity. It doesn’t mean that she won’t feel the pain of the betrayal anymore. It doesn’t mean she will not forget the mistake that has been done. But love can live and cope with the betrayal if it truly loves.

The same goes for the husband. The husband has a big challenge to say the fact that there was a moment went I betrayed my wife doesn’t mean I don’t love her or I can’t love her. He has to live with that burden – the scar of the betrayal. But he is still capable of loving. He can still say I was stupid at the time but I still wish to be with her, to love her always and in everything. Now that he has made that mistake, it doesn’t mean that he has to throw away everything. If he throws away everything, he will be throwing away the trust he has in his capabilities and his genuineness.

Humans love in an insufficient way

As we all have our weaknesses and limitations, we love in a genuine and insufficient way. But it is still loving. It is still genuine. It doesn’t mean that we are hypocrites as long as we admit our mistakes. This was Jesus’ style. When Peter betrayed him, Jesus never told him “goodbye, you’re fired”. On the contrary, Jesus asked him, “Do you love me, (with your betrayal)?”

This is the only way in which we can love each other. A husband may betray because he went with another woman. A wife may betray when all she thought about was the children, the clothes she bought and forgot all about the husband as if he doesn’t exist, because she was too happy with them. She wanted to be a fully dedicated mother and forgot her husband. At the same time can the husband blame the wife? Can he say you didn’t love me because we had children? Maybe, she was unable to balance things out but it doesn’t mean she didn’t love him. It means that that’s how she could love at that moment as her priorities got mixed up.

Love can survive all failures

What I am saying is that marriage can survive infidelity because love can survive all failures. This is so as long as we do not reduce ourselves and others to our failures. It has to be a choice. If in your eyes I have become “a betrayer”, I have no chance. “Betrayer” will become my label and you will forget all the good that I’ve done, how I have helped you in different life circumstances. All that you have forgotten. What’s left is only the betrayal. This is what happens when the definition of the person becomes the betrayal.

When I do this both on others and myself, both are mistaken. Love (love = God & God = love), that love, knows how to live with these failures. It’s what Jesus said when he was asked: “How many times should we forgive? “7 for 77 times. That symbolic 7 means ‘always’. Indeed, if we love, don’t we always have to forgive? Love is not giving 3 chances and if you use them all you’re lost. But, many a time isn’t this want we all do because our love is limited?

Starting a new relationship

In another case, a woman, betrayed by her husband a few months after her marriage, is now living with another man. Can I say that the love for her present partner is not true? She will live a love that is not the love she wished for. She wished to love her husband forever. It is that intention which she had. But she couldn’t cope. And her husband couldn’t cope giving her all that love. It is two-way. She could have been stronger and said I love this man and I will remain faithful. I know people who have lived the rest of their life alone and raised their children alone to remain faithful to what they promised. Some of us are strong to say it, some of us are not. But this doesn’t mean that the less strong are not capable of loving. Love and pain can live together.

Pain is always a deficiency, a limitation, a piece of death, a weakness. If I have a whitlow in my finger it’s a little death in my finger. A sin is also a little death of love, that’s why we say ‘mortal sin’. It doesn’t mean that if I had a heart attack and some cells have died then all my heart has died. But those cells won’t heal, they have died. But with the ¾ heart that I have left, I still can do a lot. We all have, 3/4ths, ½, 5% of a heart given all the blows life has given us. But we can still love, even in marriage, after infidelity.

Read more:
– “I’m Catholic And Pregnant Before Marriage”
– Infidelity: Mending Your Marriage After An Affair

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