humility

What is the essence of following Jesus and being a disciple of Him?

A comparison of three books on discipleship written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rowan Williams and Pope Francis

 

1. A description of being a disciple by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. 1) Following Jesus provides and demands a changed life that undertakes the despised suffering in Christ for Christ. There is no cheap mercy. "Only the believer is obedient – only the obedient believes." 2) A half-Jesus cannot be accepted. Following Jesus is not following or interpreting rules but it is a total reliance with absolute confidence on that Christ, our Lord depicts Himself in us. We can find the Father in praying through Jesus. The Holy Trinity itself has harbored in Christians. At this point we do not interpret and live our lives from our viewpoints any more but in Christ for Christ. Discipleship (nevertheless) is the totality of freedom and joy. 3) Although it is the decision of each individual to follow Jesus but it cannot be kept away from the community of the disciples and the church. 4) Following Jesus separates us from the world ("There is not an own road leading from man to man. ... Christ stands between us as an obstacle. The only road to neighbors leads through Him"), but at the same time it links us to all people in the universality of love. 5) Following Jesus is not that broad way in which the crowd go. That is why, with the spreading strength of our whole lives spent in Jesus, we have to witness about our Lord at all times until He comes again. The intensity of the lines of "The Cost of Discipleship" makes it obvious that the writer does not present an intellectual or literary feat but his own, innermost self transformed in Christ – together with all its consequences. (If you would like to know more about this, please read my essay here.)

 

2. A description of being disciples by Rowan Williams. What were the most important statements of the book "Being disciples" to me? 1.) Discipleship is such a state of being in which you are silent and listening all the time; you just let Jesus’ act (and indirectly the Father’s act) happen by you. For we can hear God, silence is needed. It is in God’s hands who I am. We are the objects of eternal enjoyment. 2) The essence of discipleship is a fusion with the Holy Trinity’s life. Believing is faith that the truth is able to possess me and it keeps me even if I myself cannot hold on any longer. Discipleship is growth and joy. 3) The disciple is together with those (the poor and the excluded of the world), whom Jesus would like to accompany. We have to be such places where people are given time and space to meet the eternal love. Saints create joy around themselves and show the world in a new light. Others recognize in their presence that God is working in the world. You can see God in them instead of themselves.(If you would like to know more about this, please read my essay here.)

 

3. A description of being disciples by Pope Francis. What were the most significant statements of Pope Francis' apostolic exhortation "Rejoice and Be Glad" to me? 1) Holiness means that we are dying and resurrecting together with Christ continuously; its measure is determined by how large Christ’s counterpart is in us. Let the Holy Spirit transform you allowing this to happen. It is not life that has a mission, but life is the mission itself. In holiness you arrive to the point where you become the one whom the Father meant you to be when He created you. Dependence on Him is liberation from slavery. Being Christian is a joy in the Holy Spirit. 2) A trustful prayer is the answer of the heart opening to God calling Him „thou”, in which all words end allowing the Lord’s sweet voice to become audible in the silence. In this silence, in the Spirit’s light you can recognize the paths of holiness that are shown by the Lord. Otherwise our decisions are just "decorations" that, instead of implementing the Gospel in our lives, hide and strangle it. 3) Holiness does not mean that our eyes sparkle in an anticipated ecstasy. If we really start with observing Christ, we have to recognize Him on those people’s (the poor’s and the sufferers’) faces whom He wanted to identify with. Mercy is the vault that supports the church’s life. Humility can take roots in the heart only through experiencing indignity. 4) Nobody is redeemed alone, isolated, one by one. Keeping an eye on the net of human relationships, God attracts us to Himself. The community of believers is for creating the divine space in which the resurrected Lord’s mysterious presence can be experienced. (If you would like to know more about this, please read my essay here.)

 

4. A comparison of the three descriptions of discipleship. The three descriptions of discipleship contain a numerous significant similarities. There is a twofold reason for the high level of matches. On the one hand the three books contain the description of discipleship’s realization and do not deal with the dogmatically founded reasons of discipleship. On the other hand all three authors are theologists of the cross and not the glory regarding their personalities and attitudes. Jesus depicted in us (though He is depicted differently in everyone) is the same Jesus according to the essence of these three witnesses’ wordings. Though we are all blind and touch the very different parts of the elephant, still the very same elephant has to appear from the fragmented pictures as our life experiences are put together. Beside my own inner certainty of this, it has been a pleasure to experience a "common certainty" during reading and comparing these three excellent books. (If you would like to know more about this, please read my essay here.)

 

Key topics: 

Key words: 

What makes a dialogue life determining?

Thoughts related to the fourth commandment

 

1. In how many ways do NOT we honor our parents? The rebellious phase often takes place between the 3rd and the 5th years of the formation of a young person. It is when he realizes for the first time that he himself exists on his own. At the tween age of 11-14 comes the second phase of emancipation when the detachment from parental behavioral patterns starts. At the end of adolescence we start to determine those parental behavioral patterns that we consider false and we do not want to follow. At the time of mid-life crisis the situation starts to turn over: the former parent becomes the child and the former child becomes the parent. Jesus emphasized love towards God and our neighbors (Matthew 22:37-39) instead of respect, as the big commandment.  Love, that is not a fake self-love, creates respect because it loves the other one for what he is and not for our expectations we would like him to be. Let’s love our parents (and we always have a new opportunity for that even if they are not with us any more!) and we will live long on Earth. (For further details, please read my essay here.)

 

2. Fruits of respect arising from love: how does a determining dialogue develop in our lives? Unconditional love makes us continuously open for the next moment when we can meet a new form of creation. This loving openness is actually not else, but respect. We all can remember one or more such dialogues that have been determining in our lives. Determining dialogues can be absurdly varied. Why is that so? Because in a determining dialogue there are not two but three parties present. The third one is the Holy Spirit, the all-seeing and all-arranging, huge love of our Lord Jesus and the Father. The Father lets us know our lives’ most important messages in the most incredible ways – because He knows well that a significant life-message has to be "presented" to a certain man in a certain moment just in that incredible way in order that he becomes able to receive it. (For further details, please read my essay here.)

 

3. How can we fulfill the fourth commandment? In a determining dialogue it is determining that we have not determined anything at all during the dialogue but God determines everything. That is if we would like to have determining dialogues in our lives, first we have to learn humility. If we are able to accept the purifying mercy of Jesus we may get closer to represent the Face of Jesus in the world less distorted. If all this has started to take shape in us, we begin to feel that we do not desire to have unnecessary words any more. We long only for the Word of God and for passing it to others. That is how ALL dialogues slowly become determining dialogues in us and around us. The dialogues that we have as parents and also the ones we have as children – with anyone. Because these two, parents and children are in their depth the very same: Jesus. In Jesus we got united with our own parents – and with our children, too. By the grace of our Lord that is how we can fulfil and complete God’s fourth commandment: Honor your father and your mother! (For further details, please read my essay here.)

 

Key topics: 

Key words: 

Lenten thoughts about the FORCE-field of Jesus

The power of the Eucharist

 

1. Lives accompanied by Jesus without noticing His presence. Many of us have Jesus sitting in the middle of our lives while He remains invisible and incomprehensible for us for years or even for decades. Why is it a problem if we do not recognize that Jesus living in ourselves is Jesus? Since our hearts may harden to openness, attention and accepting the love coming from Jesus. From that moment on we only "use" Jesus and do not pass on what He has given us. In such case we close ourselves into our own egos that isolate us from Jesus’ FORCE-field. (If you would like to read more about this, please, read my essay here.)

 

2. What is the FORCE-field of Jesus? Jesus’s FORCE-field is a compass: it shows us the Path, moreover: the right Path leading to the Truth. Jesus’s FORCE-field is an inexhaustible source of love filling us with such a "flow" feeling that can be shared with everyone without limitation. This "Jesus-flow" is nothing else but Life itself. Jesus’s FORCE-field is an inextricably strong love community making us capable of doing everything that fulfils the Father’s will and serves His Glory. (If you would like to read more about this, please, read my essay here.)

 

3. How can we feel the FORCE-field of Jesus? We may become sensitive to feeling (and accepting) Jesus’ FORCE-field through thanksgiving: in our joy; through crying out appealing: in our great trouble; through purification: right now, in the Lenten period; through a prayer, practicing love, mercy and humility: anytime. There are a thousand ways to get opened for the FORCE field of Jesus’ love. Even a faith community of only "two or three members" has a huge power to call the Holy Spirit who can make us capable to find the Path to the heart of Jesus. Finally and as a fulfilment: when we take the Body and the Blood of Christ in the Holy Communion or Lord’s Supper we get into such a physical and spiritual unity with Jesus, with the Trinity and with all the believers who have ever lived since the foundation of the Christianity, live now and will live in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, that eliminates the darkness in us and puts us into the love community of Jesus’s FORCE-field. (If you would like to read more about this, please, read my essay here.)

 

Key topics: 

Key words: 

The difference between hope and expectations

Lenten thoughts about the power of faith

 

 

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.)

 

 

Key topics: 

Key words: 

What are the best qualities of a good leader?

Thoughts about a life spent to serve others in love

1. The trap of a self-centered life. It is a great experience of development when a child realizes that he is able to live his life alone. From one will comes the next, and from the next will comes another. In the big rush to grow this willpower bigger and bigger this giant will never thinks about what is the broader aim of what it actually wants. The time will come when man gets tired. He still wants something but he is not able to fulfill all his wills any more. Midlife-crisis sets in. Our poor fellow realizes that he has become alone in the big rush. He has reached his limits: he has burnt himself out. A lot of people finish their lives here. Old age comes but it is only a prolonged agony of a man falling apart. (If you would like to read more about this, please read my essay here.)

 

2. What are the best qualities of a good leader? The strength of service. It is possible to break out from the circles of the "self-made man" that closes himself inside himself, and after reaching our full potential we can discover the world’s "deep dimension" again. The key to the discovery of the world is: the strength of service. God wants to use us all for awaken the good in others. The good can spread only by the power of example. The only example that really reaches and affects the other person is the one that we serve this other person unselfishly with. A good leader listens and serves. A good leader deliberates, and tries to shepherd the community assigned to him towards the golden mean always supporting what the majority of the community do NOT want, moreover, what is not even needed just then. A good leader is decisive, responsible, peaceful, humble and knows when to resign. (If you would like to read more about this, please read my essay here.)

 

3. How can we change the life of our environment to happiness? Fulfillment in a life spent to serve others in love. What is service? Service is passing the love to others, which was given to us by God. If we became open to accept the love of God, it is impossible to keep it in ourselves. This is how to serve others in love becomes a way of living. This is how we become love-sources in the life of all people around us. Thus, a good leader is the love-source of his environment. This is THE best quality of a good leader. (If you would like to read more about this, please read my essay here.)

 

Key topics: 

Key words: 

Why and how has forgiveness enormous strength?

Forgiveness as the crucial step of our salvation and rebirth

1. Forgiveness rebuilds our damaged love-relations. Judgments, unforgiveness and revenge destroy love-relations around us and isolate us. Forgiveness releases us from the captivity of our egos and makes us able to find and create relationships with more and more new values and contents. Forgiveness restores the love-relation between the injurer, the aggrieved and the Father. With this forgiveness gives salvation and rebirth. (If you want to know, how forgiveness to ourselves relates to this, please read the post here.)

 

2. Forgiveness has enormous strength. Forgiveness is like a ticking bomb that we have placed in the center of the person’s conscience who had hurt us. It is only a question of time when it will blow up and repair him. A lot of people think that forgiveness disarms us and makes us defenseless. On the contrary: forgiveness surrounds us with the flow and armor of love and makes us invulnerable. (If you want to know how, please read the post here.)

 

3. Forgiveness as both the prerequisite and consequence of Christ's three virtues, humility, purity and poorness. All these virtues can be developed after we have forgiven to others. However, these virtues make any further forgiveness unnecessary, since they protect us from harm. (If you want to know how, please read the post here.)

 

 

Key topics: 

Key words: 

Poorness as the highest stage of richness

Good Friday/Easter thoughts about Totality

 

1. Poorness as Christ’s virtue consummating humility and purity. In the current, customer-centric centuries poorness is a highly non-popular virtue. It is very difficult to accept that each and every of our properties is an additional bond to Earth that does not enrich but restrains us. Poorness is not a lack of possessions but a gain of unlimited freedom. The three Christian virtues: humility, purity and poorness are the three stages of the spirit’s path leading to Totality (God). How are the virtue-trinity of humility, purity and poorness related to the cardinal virtues of justice-temperance-fortitude-prudence and to the theological virtues of faith-hope-love? How are the virtue-trinity of humility, purity, and poorness related to the essence of God? (If you want to know more about this, please read the post here.)

 

2. Totality of Christ’s Way. The totality of the virtues of humility, purity and poorness is revealed in Christ’s mission, too. During His life and mission Christ overwrote everything that was human in Him. By this Christ became a bridge, a stretched ladder of love connecting the believers, the church and the Father. (If you want to know more about this, please read the post here – preferably on Good Friday or Great Saturday.)

 

3. Poorness as the highest stage of richness. With humility we have been opened for Mercy. In purity we have become transparent. In poorness we have left behind everything that in the form of bonds, possession-gummy-glues or unsettled insistences would have prevented us to unite with Totality. All this is not an exceptional status for a few people. The love of the Father dwells in all of our spirits. Christ is a "stumblingstone" (Romans 9:32). We do not come up against Christ Only, if we are within Him and so: go along with Him on His Way. But this also connects us into the omnipotent stream of love in which we become united with the Father, Christ, their Holy Spirit, as well as everyone and everything who has understood and experienced this. This is the mystery of Easter and Eternal Life. Christ has risen! Hallelujah! Amen. (If you want to know more about this, please read the post here – preferably on Easter Sunday.)

 

 

Key topics: 

Key words: 

Our daily bread

A personal confession about the Totality of life

 

The previous blog posts’ style was very 'general'. I wrote free of personal experiences, in a general way about the light of Christmas, happiness, the miracle of quality time, the wisdom of patience and the strength of humility. In the aims of the blog I have explained that the reason for generalizing is not that „I think that my thoughts are generally true. The reason of generalized statements is that I feel that our contemporary thinking became rather disintegrated, which drives a large demand of valid generalizations.This post is a personal confession. I realized that it is impossible to write about the joy of Totality in a generalized fashion but only in a very personal way. Many thanks for reading my story here. It is my great pleasure that three friends of mine, Aniko Szecsi, Barnabas Póth and Csilla Fuszek joined me and shared their most important moments in life.

(The photo was made by my father about me in 1965.)

 

Key topics: 

Key words: 

Joy, personal growth and love: the character of humility as a state of life

How does humility differ from honor, obedience and humiliation?

 

1. How does humility differ from humiliation? Humility is not a behavior or "commitment" but a state of life, which is not affecting the value or rank of the ego. Recognizing humility as a state of life is the Copernican Revolution of the Spirit. At this point the Spirit realizes that not the ego is in the center of the world but Totality. With this the Spirit escapes from the prison of the ego and, observing Totality, it starts admiring its wealth and its possibilities surpassing countless times what the ego can perceive. Thus humility does not make us poorer, but richer. (If you are interested to know how, please read the post here.)

 

 

2. How does humility differ from honor and obedience? Humility is the state of openness to honor and obedience. Humility may create honor and obedience, but in a much wider and more creative way as honor and obedience would do themselves. Humility does not develop servility but gives strength and freedom.  (If you are interested to know how, please read the post here.)

 

 

3. Joy, personal growth and love: the character of humility as a state of life. In the state of humility the Spirit lives in a flow of joy. Talent is not restricted by humility. On the contrary, humility enables a faster development of talent. Humility creates the highest level of love: agape. (If you are interested to know how, read the post here.)

 

Key topics: 

Key words: 

Waiting and persistence – as modern virtues

How can we discover the wisdom and creativity of patience?

 

 

1. Waiting and persistence are virtues here and now. Behavior of „let’s get and enjoy today’s pleasures fast” is such a form of „runaway selection” that destroys the chance of sustainable development with increased consumption of goods. "In those who are really able to wait, a profound patience is born that is not at all less regarding its beauty and meaning than all what they are awaiting for.(János Pilinszky) Our desires which are not fulfilled for a long time may improve us much more than those which become accomplished quickly.

 

 

2. The liberating and creative strength of patience. Virtues of waiting and persistence liberate us. If we do not obey our first reflexes but we think our situation over thoroughly, more creative and optimal solutions may emerge in our minds. (If you wish to know how, please read the post.)

 

 

 

3. Why patience has become one of the key elements of wisdom specifically today? The wise avoids the extremes. But the wise does more than that. If circumstances drive towards one of the extremes the wise moves just to the other. That is why we should deliberately slow down when life accelerates around us. (If you wish to know how patience becomes a way to save the harmony of the world, please read the post.)

 

Key topics: 

Key words: 

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - humility