Archives for January 2017

This question arises daily in our lives. Because we all want to get somewhere, to improve our lives, to enter into a better life, to meliorate the quality of our lives, to see the hard part of the world from a safer angle, to see the misery from above without participating suffering from it.

In other words, we all want to move somewhere, to have a better life and that’s why we strive all day, every day. And this is not a denial but a statement. It is not an obstacle, but it is a tool. The nature that the creator has made with the necessary elements for everyone, is full of transformations, transitions, changes, and once could say that without change there does not seem to be life.

This tool of our attraction and our will to enter somewhere, to move somewhere better, is the driving force for the issues of living faith. Every obstacle is an exercise for a new conquest, not a punishment.

This criterion was set by Christ Himself, who praised and rewarded His hard working partner, while He reserved not honor and rewards, but poverty and punishment for his clever but lazy partner.

Each day of our life produces some work, and every work is part of the days of our lives. In other words, our entire life is a productive story, a continuous workshop through which works are produced, noisy or silent, big or small and also short and autonomous or large, continuous and interleaved.

In any case, the time that we all have available today is much more than what previous generations had at their disposal, because technological equipment has sharply increased the number of hours we can be active – e.g. electricity – and this means that everyone enjoys long-lasting free time and can make use of it in any project they consider to be bigger and more substantial for themselves and their personal interests.

And it is obvious that the cultivation of faith today is easier but more expensive as well, and every one of us is called to make decisions every day about how we manage the issues of our faith and our livelihood. The result proves that we grant infinitely more time to increase our wealth and quality of life than we have to promote and meet the needs of our living faith.

Livelihood is called the effort and employment of the individual to ensure the necessary for survival and in general for their living. Each person, therefore, makes a great effort every day so that through their work they can cover all their needs.

And while we are making great efforts without limit to meet our practical needs and even surpassing our strength many times, when we come to the issues of faith as Christians, we not only do not do the same, but instead, we avoid  doing any work on these issues, thinking that these issues are not our responsibility, but someone else’s. So we, ourselves, each of us personally, cancel paths and processes that will lead us to gifts and treasures of value far beyond our everyday needs.

This practice is, at the very least, against the traditional inventiveness and the indisputable ability of our people to identify and distinguish the good and precious things from the ordinary and inexpressible ones.

This expression indicates that we are seeing the same play every now and then, or that we are all spectators in a play and we are watching what is happening without being able to intervene in the evolution of the play. In any case, the viewer does not participate in the events, but the events affect him at least emotionally and sometimes practically if one attempts to imitate the events.

This process of tracking the action of other people is a discovery of the ancient Greek, who thought that watching a show could convey the desirable message, as an example to avoid or to imitate. Approaching the Holy Bible with this visual angle, it is obvious that what is described there are examples to imitate or even to avoid. Because the Bible describes the Truth and the Truth is not always pleasant, but it is always instructive and above all liberates from prejudices that prevent us from moving towards freedom and perfection.

Instead, they keep us prisoners of the past and make us frightened in front of every new thing, which we later accept by necessity as good until it yields its fruits, and then we estimate what we lost in the years that we rejected it.

In trade, the concept of discount means the offer of a product at a lower price.

While until yesterday the commercial value and the price quoted was high, today this price is lowering in an attempt of the trader to attract buyers and achieve two things.

On the one hand, the trader wants to empty the warehouses and the store from commodity in order to have space for the new commodity – this is also the merchant’s job, bringing goods and emptying warehouses by selling products in order to bring new merchandise – and on the other hand, to put in the cash as much cash as possible, an element that is the ultimate goal of every trader.

The merchant does not gather goods but aims at selling the goods at a better price in order to buy again new goods and sell these in turn and so on, watching only the final amount collected in their fund.

Christ recommends to us this commercial point of view and practice for increasing our faith in the living God in order to become more experienced and effective in our everyday lives.