Thursday, May 23, 2013

LA MUJER ADÚLTERA

La mujer adúltera
Juan 8, 1-11. Cuaresma. ¡Qué distintos son los pensamientos de Dios y los de nosotros, los hombres!
 
La mujer adúltera
La mujer adúltera
Del santo Evangelio según san Juan 8, 1-11 

Mas Jesús se fue al monte de los Olivos. Pero de madrugada se presentó otra vez en el Templo, y todo el pueblo acudía a él. Entonces se sentó y se puso a enseñarles. Los escribas y fariseos le llevan una mujer sorprendida en adulterio, la ponen en medio y le dicen: «Maestro, esta mujer ha sido sorprendida en flagrante adulterio. Moisés nos mandó en la Ley apedrear a estas mujeres. ¿Tú qué dices?» Esto lo decían para tentarle, para tener de qué acusarle. Pero Jesús, inclinándose, se puso a escribir con el dedo en la tierra. Pero, como ellos insistían en preguntarle, se incorporó y les dijo: «Aquel de vosotros que esté sin pecado, que le arroje la primera piedra». E inclinándose de nuevo, escribía en la tierra. Ellos, al oír estas palabras, se iban retirando uno tras otro, comenzando por los más viejos; y se quedó solo Jesús con la mujer, que seguía en medio. Incorporándose Jesús le dijo: «Mujer, ¿dónde están? ¿Nadie te ha condenado?» Ella respondió: «Nadie, Señor». Jesús le dijo: «Tampoco yo te condeno. Vete, y en adelante no peques más».

Oración introductoria

Confío mi pasado a tu misericordia, el presente a tu amor y el futuro a tu providencia. Jesús, en este día vengo a pedirte la paz, la prudencia, la fuerza, la sabiduría y la humildad para ser un mejor cristiano. Revísteme de tu gracia, Señor, y haz que en este día yo te glorifique con mis buenas obras.

Petición

Señor, concédeme la gracia de valorar tu amor misericordioso. Concédeme, Dios mío, la fuerza para no caer en las tentaciones y la humildad para pedir perdón por mis pecados.

Meditación del Papa

El evangelista san Juan pone de relieve un detalle: mientras los acusadores lo interrogan con insistencia, Jesús se inclina y se pone a escribir con el dedo en el suelo. San Agustín observa que el gesto muestra a Cristo como el legislador divino: en efecto, Dios escribió la ley con su dedo en las tablas de piedra (cf. Comentario al Evangelio de Juan, 33, 5). Jesús, por tanto, es el Legislador, es la Justicia en persona. Y ¿cuál es su sentencia? "Aquel de vosotros que esté sin pecado, que le arroje la primera piedra". Estas palabras están llenas de la fuerza de la verdad, que desarma, que derriba el muro de la hipocresía y abre las conciencias a una justicia mayor, la del amor, en la que consiste el cumplimiento pleno de todo precepto (cf. Rm 13, 8-10). Es la justicia que salvó también a Saulo de Tarso, transformándolo en san Pablo (cf. Flp 3, 8-14).
Cuando los acusadores "se fueron retirando uno tras otro, comenzando por los más viejos", Jesús, absolviendo a la mujer de su pecado, la introduce en una nueva vida, orientada al bien: "Tampoco yo te condeno; vete y en adelante no peques más". Es la misma gracia que hará decir al Apóstol: "Una cosa hago: olvido lo que dejé detrás y me lanzo a lo que está por delante, corriendo hacia la meta, para alcanzar el premio al que Dios me llama desde lo alto en Cristo Jesús" (Flp 3, 13-14). Dios sólo desea para nosotros el bien y la vida; se ocupa de la salud de nuestra alma por medio de sus ministros, liberándonos del mal con el sacramento de la Reconciliación, a fin de que nadie se pierda, sino que todos puedan convertirse (Benedicto XVI, Ángelus, 21 de marzo de 2010).

Reflexión


"Te pido, Señor, que no me midas con la vara de tu justicia sino que sea medido con la de tu misericordia infinita".

¡Qué distintos son los pensamientos de Dios y los de nosotros, los hombres! El pasaje evangélico que nos presenta a Jesús, a la mujer adúltera y a los fariseos nos ayuda a contemplar el rostro amoroso y misericordioso de Cristo. A los escribas y fariseos, que eran considerados los grandes sabios, maestros y doctores de la ley, no les gusta ver que la gente siga y escuche a otro Maestro. Jesús va cumpliendo su obra de predicación y la gente lo escucha, porque saben que enseña con autoridad y, sobre todo, con su ejemplo. Los escribas y fariseos, con el corazón lleno de hipocresía, presentan a Jesús la mujer adúltera. Se acercan al Maestro, no porque busquen realmente saber cómo piensa o cuál es su doctrina sino para tentarlo.

¿Aplicará la ley? ¿Será justo? ¿Será compasivo? Para cualquier respuesta, humanamente esperada, tenían motivos para acusarle. Pero olvidaban que la Persona que estaba enfrente de ellos no sólo era verdadero Hombre sino verdadero Dios.

Todos nosotros somos conscientes de nuestra debilidad y de la facilidad con la que caemos en le pecado sin la gracia de Dios. Cristo nos hace ver que sólo Él puede juzgar los corazones de los hombres. Por ello, los que querían apedrear a la adúltera se van retirando, uno a uno, con la certeza de que todos mereceríamos el mismo castigo si Dios fuera únicamente justicia. La respuesta que da a los fariseos nos enseña que Dios aborrece el pecado pero ama hasta el extremo al pecador. Así es como Dios se revela infinitamente justo y misericordioso.

Al final del evangelio vemos que Cristo perdona los pecados de esta mujer y a la vez le exhorta a una conversión de vida. Para esto ha venido el Hijo de Dios al mundo, para redimirnos de nuestros pecados con su pasión y muerte.

El periodo de cuaresma nos ofrece constantes oportunidades para aplicar las enseñanzas de Cristo. Los padres, en algunas ocasiones, deberán corregir a sus hijos. En esos momentos sepamos corregir lo que está mal y al mismo tiempo dejar la puerta abierta al amor, al perdón, a la reconciliación. Cuando tenemos que hacer ver un error a alguien, podemos buscar cómo hacerlo de la mejor forma para que no se mezclan mis buenas intenciones con algunas pasiones desordenadas.

Recordemos el ejemplo vivo de tantos sacerdotes que, cuando nos acercamos al sacramento de la reconciliación, saben ver la desgracia del pecado, pero al mismo tiempo acogen con amor al pecador así como Cristo lo hizo con la mujer adúltera.

Propósito

Aprender a perdonar las molestias que me puedan causar los defectos de los demás.

Diálogo con Cristo

Jesucristo, gracias por el infinito amor que me tienes y por todas las veces que me has perdonado. Somos débiles y con facilidad nos alejamos de Ti. Ayúdame, Señor, a caminar por el sendero de tu amor y extiende tu mano para levantarme de la caídas. Te ofrezco mi esfuerzo y la lucha de cada día por ser un mejor cristiano.


“Sólo quien ha experimentado primero la grandeza puede ser convincente anunciador y administrador de la misericordia de Dios”. (Benedicto XVI, 11 de marzo de 2010)

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

How religions change their mind


How religions change their mind

The reflection of a Mormon Temple on a shiny floor
Once upon a time, animal sacrifice was an important part of Hindu life, Catholic priests weren't celibate and visual depictions of the Prophet Muhammad were part of Islamic art. And soon some churches in the UK may be marrying gay couples. How do religions manage to change their mind?
In 1889, Wilford Woodruff became the fourth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints - more commonly known as the Mormon Church.
As president, he was seen as a living prophet, someone who could receive wisdom and advice from Jesus Christ. And he was certainly in need of advice - his church was in crisis.
For 40 years, Mormons had been at loggerheads with the US Congress over the issue of polygamy, which was encouraged among male believers. The government said it was illegal, and held that religious conviction was no defence.


Woodruff and others lived a precarious life, moving around in an attempt to dodge marshals with arrest warrants for bigamy. In 1890, the government brought things to a head by moving to confiscate all of the church's assets.
It was then, Woodruff said, that Jesus Christ appeared to him in a vision and showed him the future of the Mormon Church if the practice wasn't stopped - and it wasn't pretty. Although he did not renounce plural marriage, he issued a manifesto banning it.
If that sounds like a problem easily solved, it wasn't - according to Kathleen Flake, a professor in American religious history at Vanderbilt University, and a Mormon herself.
"It was a very difficult thing socially, personally and theologically," she says. The change destabilised the entire church, and led to deep reflection about what Mormonism's core principles were.
History shows that any religion that refuses to change dies out, Flake adds. But what about those religions that don't have living prophets - how do they change?
For Muslims, the last prophet, the Prophet Muhammad, died almost 1,400 years ago. So it's the ulama, a class of legal scholars, who rule on contentious points of Islamic or sharia law based upon a careful scrutiny of fundamental sacred texts, including the Koran and the Sunnah, a collection of stories relating the beliefs and practices of Muhammad.

Selected U-turns

A Muslim woman using a megaphone
  • An obvious challenge here is how specific laws governing life in 7th Century Arabia can be applied across the world in the 21st Century. Perhaps it's no surprise that the ulama in different countries make different judgements, and sometimes change their mind.
A century ago, using a radio or loudspeaker washaraam - forbidden. Today, many observant Muslims have their own radio, TV and even YouTube channels.
Similarly, at the time of the Iranian revolution in 1979, the ulama there said that birth control was haraam, but now the use of condoms is encouraged, with state-supported condom factories and pre-marital family planning lessons.
"The assumption was that anything from the West was going to undermine Islam," says Muqtedar Khan of the University of Delaware.
And quite often, he says, there is a tension between aspects of Western daily life and Muslim teachings. One challenge for Muslim men, for example, is the urinal.
"One of the traditions for Muslim men is to sit and pee," Khan says, explaining that this was thought to be the best way of preventing spillage that would defile devotees' clothes before prayers. This is not always possible in the urinal-loving West.
Another challenge is the architecture of Western homes.
"These houses that are designed in the West have no gender segregation. If you're having a Muslim-only party and then you have women who want segregation, then it is very complicated," he says, adding that he missed three or four of his son's birthday parties as a result.

Rational 'bias'

Karen Armstrong (1996)
Medieval thinkers such as St Thomas Aquinas or Maimonides would be astonished at the way we read, preach and pray today, says author Karen Armstrong.
"We've tended to lose older, sometimes more intuitive patterns of thought," she says.
"They would see some of the ways we talk about God as remarkably simplistic.
"We are reading our scriptures with a literalness which is without parallel in the history of religion, largely because of this rational bias of ours."
Sometimes Muslims in multicultural societies long for scriptures to be reinterpreted, Khan says.
Clerics faced with these decisions have a choice between a literal interpretation of the Koran, or attempting to look beneath the surface for a deeper message.
The key, according to Tariq Ramadan of Oxford University is to distinguish "principles" that are immutable and "models" that are a product of the time and place the stories were told. From this perspective, changing our inferences from the Koran is not just an option but an obligation.
"There is no faithfulness to the message of Islam without evolution in our understanding," he says.
So, while there is a verse of the Koran which appears to permit beating a woman, "the best example was the Messenger himself never beating a woman," Ramadan says.
Arvind Sharma, a professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University, relates an incident which seems to show how it's possible to update models at the same time as underscoring the principles that form a religion's continuity. His anecdote centres on the moment Mahatma Gandhi discussed the principle of karma - the Hindu doctrine that you will pay for your actions, or be rewarded for them, perhaps in a future life.
"Karma was used to justify untouchability in classical Hinduism," says Sharma. "A person is born an untouchable because in a previous life he performed certain foul deeds, so he should accept the status quo as it is."
Sharma says Gandhi pointed out that all castes of Hindus had been treated as untouchable by the British in India, who would post signs outside their clubs saying "Dogs and Indians not allowed".
"Gandhi's argument was: 'You see how karma works? You treated people as untouchable on the basis of their birth, and you have also been treated as untouchables on the basis of your birth.'" In criticising Indians' traditional interpretation of karma - and showing how they were paying for their poor treatment of untouchables - Gandhi was at the same time invoking and restating the principle of karma.
A famous story from the Talmud, one of the Jewish holy books, seems to foresee that future generations will interpret holy law in their own way.
Engraving - Moses Receives The Ten Commandments, by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794 - 1872)A mid-19th C engraving of Moses receiving the 10 commandments on Mt Sinai
In the story, Moses goes to Mt Sinai to receive the Torah - another Jewish holy book - from God. Moses spots God embellishing the letters with little crowns.

Start Quote

The whole area of genetics, molecular biology and evolution in general are quite a challenge to the church”
George CoyneFormer Vatican astronomer
"Moses, who was a humble man, says 'Well, really you know, I'll take it plain,'" relates Rabbi Burt Visotzky from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.
"And God says: 'No - many generations from now there will be a rabbi by the name of Akiva, and he will actually derive Jewish law from the very crownlets on the letters.'"
When God shows Moses a vision of Rabbi Akiva teaching, Moses is dismayed because he can't understand anything.
"Built within the Talmud itself - that repository of great law and wisdom of the rabbis - is a notion that things change but it's still all part of revelation," says Visotzky.
One of the forces exerting pressure on religion to change is science. The Copernican Revolution - when scholars grasped that the earth revolves around the sun, rather than vice-versa - is an obvious example.
This clashed with the church's own teaching on the subject. The Inquisition found Copernicus's successor Galileo "vehemently suspect of heresy" and he spent the last decade of his life under house arrest.
As well as his works on physics and astronomy Galileo wrote two tracts on the interpretation of scripture.

Find out more

Imam Khalid Latif
Absolving the Past is a two-part documentary from the BBC World Service, presented by Imam Khalid Latif (above).
"He essentially said the scriptures were written to tell us how to go to heaven and not how the heavens go," says George Coyne, a Jesuit priest who ran the Vatican's own observatory for 28 years.
The Catholic church now admits that Galileo was right and in 1992 Pope John Paul II formally exonerated him. But science continues to raise difficult questions for the church.
"The whole area of genetics, molecular biology and evolution in general are quite a challenge to the church," says Coyne. "Does the ghost of Galileo come back to speak? Yes it does. My loving church! What you did in the Galileo period was not listen to science."
For Coyne, it is the role of scientifically trained believers to throw themselves into the muddy, difficult process of squaring the church's teachings with the discoveries of science and the opportunities they offer for humanity.
The question of what to believe - or who to believe - falls, in the end, to believers rather than teachers.
"We ultimately have to make that creative effort to think for ourselves and puzzle things out for ourselves," says Karen Armstrong, the author of a History of God, and more than 20 other works in religious studies.
While the answer to the question of how to live might be found using scripture, it won't be in scripture, she says, just as the ability to drive is not found in a car manual.
But she admits that this is hard for those people who, in a world of rapid change, look to their religion for something steady and fixed - an easy-to-access pot of answers.
"People often think religion is easy," says Armstrong. "In fact it requires a great deal of intellectual, spiritual and imaginative effort. It's a struggle that never ceases."

Saturday, May 18, 2013

CURSOS DE VERANO DE VERBO DIVINO, EN DUEÑAS (PALENCIA)


1-CURSO ÁGORA: «DESAFÍOS DE LA LECTURA DE LA BIBLIA EN EL SIGLO XXI: A 50 AÑOS DEL VATICANO II»

-Fecha: Del 15 al 20 de julio
-Profesores: Rafael Aguirre, Carmen Bernabé y Carlos Gil
-Coste del curso: 425€. El precio incluye pensión completa, matrícula, materiales para el curso, cena en una bodega típica, una excursión cultural y otras actividades lúdicas.

2-CURSO PALABRA-VIDA: «LA PEDAGOGÍA DE JESÚS EN EL EVANGELIO DE MATEO»

-Fecha: Del 26 al 31 de agosto
-Profesor: Fidel Oñoro Consuegra
-Coste del curso: 375€. El precio incluye pensión completa, matrícula, materiales para el curso y cena en una bodega típica.

Contacto: Editorial Verbo Divino
-María Jesús Pagola (Tf. 948 55 65 10 de 8’00 a 14’00)
-Rocío García (Tf. 619 99 46 66 de 8’00 a 13’00 - formacion@verbodivino.es)

Comenzando

Hasta hoy casi siempre había escrito para mí....Pero ha llegado el momento de decidirme a compartir con los demás todo lo que estudio sobre la Biblia, mis dudas y opiniones sobre el Libro Sagrado  para los judíos (el Antiguo Testamento) y  para los cristianos.
Y al mismo tiempo, es mi deseo saber todo lo que me lleve a la Verdad , a través de las distintas religiones que han existido y existen en este mundo.

Quiero empezar este Blog con las palabras de San Pablo en su 1ª Carta a los Corintios 13, 1-2:

"Aunque hable las lenguas de los hombres y de los ángeles, si no tengo amor, no soy más que una campana que toca o unos platillos que resuenan. Aunque tenga el don de profecía y conozca todos los misterios y toda la ciencia, y aunque tenga tanta fe que traslade las montañas, si no tengo amor, no soy nada".