Difference between a duty and serving others

Lenten thoughts about the benefits of self-sacrifice

Submitted by Csermely Péter on

 

1. Why isn’t it enough if we carry out our duties well? Man is a social being. One of the primary benefits of a community is the division of labor. Sharing work results in duties. Why isn’t it enough though if we carry out all duties well? A task-oriented life is operated by an “external control”. A task-centered man never reaches the wonderful level of self-motivation that invents new solutions again and again Task-centered man is always anxious. He cannot decide whether he completed the task well enough or not. A task-centered life is a trap. It is a trap because it closes us into our own egos and it is a trap because it closes us into the often limited community defined by ourselves. (If you would like to read more about this, please, read my essay here.)

 

2. The power of serving others. In what way does serving others differ from a duty? Serving others is not controlled externally but it is arisen from Christ living in us and it returns there, too. The essence of serving others is to open our most important inner self, the love of Christ living in us, to others. Serving others is unselfish, gives vision and makes us unbelievably creative. Serving others is a huge power because it empowers our lives by the largest power of the Universe, the love of God, and passes this immense love to everyone and everything around us. (If you would like to read more about this, please, read my essay here.)

 

3. Self-sacrifice as the Door of Totality. What do we need to be able to serve others? Our own power is not enough for that. It is enough only for carrying out our duties. For the service we have to find Jesus living in us. It is not an easy task. We have to break the hardened shell of our own egos to see what is behind it. It is worth doing that. To break our egos is the most important event of our lives because behind it the Door opens which is not anything else but Jesus Himself who leads us to the love of God (John 10:9). (If you would like to read more about this, please, read my essay here.)

 

Key topics: 

Key words: 

Thoughts about the Incarnation

Why Jesus cannot be sidestepped?

Submitted by Csermely Péter on

 

   

1. About the mistakes of our relationship with God: in how many ways do we want to avoid Jesus, the stumbling stone? The human mind is able to invent an incredible number of ideas not to confront either with the omnipotence of God or with (especially!) the eyes of Jesus offering Himself and asking for His acceptance. God is our Heavenly Father, so why shouldn’t He look like a benignant, wise grandfather? Let Him be a king! Let enthrone Him! However, God is not a distant, well-defined object of worship but He is Everything that fulfills us. Consider then God as Silence, Simplicity, Perfection, Consistency, Immobility, and Eternity! We are not fine with these either. In the same way how God cannot be personated, He can not be depersonalized either: because the essence of God is love. If we cast away God among to concepts, we make it impossible to have a direct love-relationship with Him and with this we lose the essence of God. (For further details, please read my essay here.)

 

2. How purity and the touch of God are related to each other? The miracle of Incarnation. Jesus has come down to Earth from the Trinity emptying himself slavishly (Philippians 2:6-8) because the Trinity wanted to involve us, human beings in the beauty and Totality of the love-relationship in which They live. Let’s think about what Totality of Purity was needed for that God’s only begotten Son could be conceived in Holy Mary! Let’s think about also what humility and obedience are reflected in the accepting words of Holy Mary! Let’s feel how the Holy Spirit expands exaltedly again, in a way mankind have never seen it after the Creation, and due to the Father’s Grace, Christ’s agreeing sacrifice and Mary’s pure humility the Earth and the Sky became connected. (For further details, please read my essay here.)

 

3. What does the infant Jesus give us? Let me ask the Reader to read the last part of the 2018 Christmas blog post. Pray until you reach that wonderfully pure and peaceful state what Jesus’ birth was. Feel how Jesus grows in You! Feel how Jesus accepts You into Himself. Feel the Totality of Joy – in Jesus, "out there at the other side of the Door"! Then return to this world. Feel the freedom how You go in and come out through Jesus as the Door (John 10:9b). Also feel that each and every "going in" and "coming out" makes you purer. Feel that as You become more and more pure in your relationship with Jesus, you can get closer and closer to God. Feel the wonderful expansion of approaching God. What does the infant Jesus give us? How does the birth of Jesus answer the question asked in the first part of my essay? (For answers to these questions, please read my essay here.)

 

Key topics: 

Key words: 

How can the real freedom be attained?

Thoughts about the benefits of good ties

Submitted by Csermely Péter on

1. Freedom as a goal of life. Consumer society casts an amazing wasteful millions of free choices on us every day. The ideologies of the past few decades have extended the right and possibility of free choice on almost all questions of life and death. Man’s freedom has got to be the largest ever for the 21st century. How much this freedom can be still grown? Is it beneficial for us that our freedom has become ’total’? Is the extreme freedom we enjoy today real or does it just look like it? (For further details, please read my essay here.)

 

 

2. Limits of free will. Why is freedom given to us without life experience harmful? What are the decisions of mankind, where it has no free will? What are the consequences that a significant part of our freedom is a freedom realized at the cost of limiting others' freedom? Man’s free will is a tameless creature out of control. Its first manifestation was the devouring of the forbidden fruit which was followed by the expulsion from Paradise. The punishment of God is exactly the same as the modern Daddy. When God punishes us, all He does is let the man’s own "free" will work. We cannot receive any bigger punishment ever than this... (For further details, please read my essay here.)

 

3. How can the real freedom be attained? Man cannot live freely because he turns his freedom against himself, his fellow human beings and the nature nurturing him. What is the solution? The solution is the third wish in the Lord's Prayer: "let Your will be done". God is the only one from whom we receive not slavery but such freedom in return of our freedom that cannot be imagined by the human mind, cannot be comprehended, either experienced. Having God’s freedom also means two more little bonuses. The first and most important bonus is God’s endless love that smooths all the wrinkles that our own wasted lives have drawn onto us. The second bonus is that we do Good following God’s Path. We increase the light, love and life around the world – instead of decreasing them. We increase the purity of the world – instead of polluting it. At last: we increase the unity and order of the world – instead of tearing apart and scatter what was born as a Whole. We have our choice. THIS single and most important choice of our lives is our real freedom. (For further details, please read my essay here.)

 

Key topics: 

Key words: 

What is a good decision?

Thoughts about the power of conscience

Submitted by Csermely Péter on

1. In how many ways can we make a wrong decision? One of the worst decisions is non-decision. One type of non-decision is to follow the crowd, when the majority (without considering the situation) copies the behavior of the „neighbor”, the „influencer X” – uncritically. A hasty decision almost always focuses on the short term objectives. Following the long term objectives is much more important than that. (For further details, please read my essay here.)

 

2. What can help us make a good decision? For making a good decision it is important to estimate whether I am in an appropriate state of mind. A very useful example is that of the rabbit. The rabbit EITHER listens OR runs. It does NOT do both at the same time. A good decision needs time. I have good news: time is subjective. If we can create silence in ourselves, our inner time expands and a moment becomes "a thousand years". For making a good decision it is important to control our emotions, since only "indifference" which is free of unsettled inclinations may lead us to good decisions. The most important compass of a good decision is our conscience, which is the reflection of Totality living in ourselves. (For further details, please read my essay here.)

 

3. Good decisions made at the right time and at the right place. We rarely recognize that we are in a life-changing situation. So it is worth paying attention to the surprising situations VERY carefully. In these cases we have to stop and think. For the most important decisions of our lives we have to leave our own viewpoints and have to rise high (Saint Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises, 184 to 187). If we have accepted Totality with a humble heart, we will see ourselves as God sees us. If we succeed to leave all the earthly affections behind that we ourselves have been in our everyday lives, then we can feel God’s intentions and will with us. In such cases those miraculously new paths that cannot be imagined by a human mind are to be revealed in our lives that link us together with Totality, bring us our real freedom and lead us to good decisions made at the right time and at the right place. (For further details, please read my essay here.)

 

Key topics: 

Key words: 

Can the Devil be domesticated?

How can we overcome our faults?

Submitted by Csermely Péter on

 

   

 

1. Our attempts to domesticate the Devil. We like the little, comfortable compromises in our lives: I have had a little virtue then I will have now a little (oops, sorry, sometimes I go too far, and then: a big...) sin. That is not working. The Devil cannot be domesticated! Mercy can only be complete if I have opposed the sin, if I have realized its depth, if I have named the Devil, if I have refused it, and if I want to live a different life after all these. From this point of view there is no a tiny little sin and a bigger one. What is important is the approach to sin (Devil) and God. I stand either on one side or the other. It is impossible to dance around between the two. (For further details, please, read my essay here.)

 

   

 

2. The fight against sin. If we have realized that it is impossible to make a compromise with the Devil then for the everyday thinking only one thing remains: the fight against the Devil – till death. But our own fight against the Devil is a hopeless and useless one. A sin-centric life is a dead end. There is no self-mercy. It is not our own fight that defeats the sin in us. Our own efforts are too small for this, are zero, nothing. It is only Christ born within us who is able to overcome the sin in us. There is no other way. Thus the fear of God is not a servile fear of God’s punishment, which presumes our separation from God, but an admiration of God’s true greatness revealed for us and a determined protection of the love-communion connecting us with God. All this does not mean that I would think: we do not need any kind of fight against our sins and faults because "God will take care of them". No! Mercy is not for free. Just to get close to God makes us feel Christ’s and the Father’s immense pain when they see our sins, makes us hate these sins and helps avoid them. (For further details, please, read my essay here.)

 

   

 

3. How can we overcome our faults? Neither with "making good on them". Nor only with fighting against them. We can overcome our faults only with accepting Jesus and with protecting the love-communion we have with the Father by all means, relying on Their power. Thus the source of repelling sin is the attraction to Jesus and the Father. That is how we ourselves become able to be peace- and love-sources in our environments. (For further details, please, read my essay here.)

 

 

Key topics: 

Key words: 

Pages

Subscribe to