1. A life of expectations is a trap. A lot of people adjust their lives to the expectations of their environment. In most of the cases the expected benefit of fulfilling the expectations is gaining acceptance, sympathy and love. In our human world love quite often becomes the means of emotional blackmailing. The most dangerous expectations are those, which we have of ourselves. The distance between our expectations and reality is not anything else but the pain in ourselves. We should not consider our life goals as expectations but as desires. A man free of expectations remains self-identical. However, it is much more valuable even than this, if we do not link our desires to specific things but we let them out and long for the good in general. Longing for the good in general is hope.  (If you would like to read more about this, please, read my essay here.)

2. The power of hope. Nowadays it is not trendy to hope. Despite of this: hope is much more than desire. Hope doesn’t wish to reach a certain goal but to increase good. Hope creates the possibility of good’s infinity in our lives. Hope delivers us from the slavery of specific goals because it breaks the wall of our egos with what is stronger than anything else in this world: the love of God. (If you would like to read more about this, please, read my essay here.)

3. Why is faith much more than hope? Faith is the total and unequivocal certainty in the Gospel of redemption and resurrection. That’s why faith becomes a huge power. Because faith breaks down the walls between us and God. If we live in faith, God bathes us in Himself with showering joy and shows us new and new colors of His Totality and love each day. As our faith develops, it slowly shapes the Face and Figure of God’s only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ in us. This is how hope becomes reality. (If you would like to read more about this, please, read my essay here.)

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.)

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.)

1. We have only a few years left to avoid destruction. Scientists are scaring the Earth’s inhabitants with ecosystem nightmares for decades now. Other scientists have disagreed with them. In 2018 something has fundamentally changed. Science has found more and more pieces of unambiguous evidence that humanity rushes off the cliff. As one of the examples the latest IPPC report stated that we have only a few years left to limit global warming not to cause huge weather extremities, conflagrations, mass extinction of pollinating animals and the destruction of a large part of plants’ natural habitats by the end of this century. (For further details, please read my New Year's essay here.)

2. The man of our times is a Bad Shepherd of Creation. Our Father made man the master and not the servant of Creation. We have been given everything to become responsible, Good Shepherds of Creation. The man of our times has become a Bad Shepherd of Creation. It is time to realize what we are doing. It is time to suspect what happens next. (For further details, please read my New Year's essay here.)

3. What can be the way out? I have written about a lot of honorable efforts in one of my previous essays which try to reduce our sins committed so far against the Earth. However, there are highly non-honorable efforts like those which want to spread rubbish to the stratosphere hoping that it will reflect sunshine and decrease global warming though the growth diminishing effect of such sunlight-screen interventions has been proved earlier. These are not solutions. The expansion eating up the Earth’s goods can not to be domesticated but has to be stopped. THERE IS ANOTHER WAY! It is the path of inner development, which is unlimited. To start your inner growth you have to accept the touch of Totality. How to make that? "Convert!" Christ’s mission starts with this call. But most of the people did want to convert neither at that time nor these days. I have good news. God prepares a beautiful lesson for us. Time is on the side of the extension of intense faith. It is worth to prepare for all this now: Find the path of inner growth! Strengthen yourselves in your faith! Strengthen your faith-communities! These faith-communities will be the safe harbors of people – pretty soon. Let me ask You to think about that how You (or your children, grand-children) could be better prepared for the forthcoming harder decades. I wish the Reader a New Year bringing contemplating soul-search and change! (For further details, please read my New Year's essay here.)

1. A life distancing itself from Totality will not be fulfilled. Man is an animal especially sensitized for novelties. This leads to insatiability, anxiety and a need to increase our possessions. A life without knowing Totality remains unfulfilled and restless. That is why the attempts to fulfill such a life will never end. (If you would like to read more about this, please read my essay here.)

2. Having a life, which thinks that it "knows" Totality is a trap. The history of mankind is full of such attempts which wanted to possess Totality. Making an idol, creating dependence and attempts to "get to know" Totality were all ways to achieve possession. If we think that we got to know Totality, we squeeze Totality into the narrow conceptual framework that we have been able to create. This is a trap. With all this I do not want to say – by far – that the efforts to increase our knowledge on God would be harmful. However, we must see that the more complicated way we describe God, the more far away we get from the fulfilling, infinite simplicity of God’s permanence, totality and magnificent Silence. The "theology of glory" based solely on the compliance with the law is not only a trap because it places the law above Christ and God and its compliance creates pride and presumptuousness in us, but also because it puts ourselves above God, too, by the fact that it presumes that Totality is likely to be fully known. To strive for the knowledge of Totality is a trap. There is only one way to "know" Totality: if we dedicate ourselves to it – entirely. If we become open to the call of Totality: Totality will embrace us. IT IS what has been made available by Jesus’s incarnation and sacrifice of the Cross. IT IS what we celebrate at every feast, and at Christmas, too. IT IS what we are preparing for during Advent. (If you would like to read more about this, please read my essay here.)

3. On the way to the touch of Totality. To become open for the call of Totality can be a consequence of a moment. Accepting Totality is very often a long process of an entire life that will only be fulfilled by seeing the Kingdom of God "face to face". Real life starts when man can see Christ. Real life becomes fulfilled at the moment of seeing Christ. Starting from this moment, this moment becomes a part of our life forever. I wish all my Readers that this year’s Advent would give more openness for all of You to embrace Totality. (If you would like to read more about this, please read my essay here.)