THE CHALLENGE OF BEING BORN AGAIN

THE CHALLENGE OF BEING BORN AGAIN

In boldface an article of Friar Beto published on O Globo of the previous day of Christmas 98.

The scenery of the stable is an archetype. Our rationalism resists admitting that Mary, Virgin, conceived for Holy Spirit action. And that Joseph perplexed with its bride's unusual pregnancy, he wanted to abandon her secretly. (Mathew 1,19) He preferred the omission to denounce her.

Surprises followed by surprises. What priest is that who speaks in such a way? He begins saying that the scenery of the stable is an archetype. It is surprising to hear a priest to speak that a man and a woman that contemplate its newly born son are an archetype scenery. The normal would be to say that a couple was prostrated in adoration to God that had been incarnated. To say it is an archetype scenery it is direct product of our rationalistic mind, a couple in adoration it is product of faith or of belief.

At any rate, reason can take us to varied interpretations that can be modified with time. Faith is an alone one, it is believed or it is not believed. So much who believes as whom doesn't believe they are impelled by faith.

The pure reasoning in that scene drives to the disbelief. It is impossible a virgin to give a son to light. Only an act of faith can make to believe in a conception by the Holy Spirit.

I think there to be a third way to approach this fact that is not product of faith or of reasoning. It can be intuition product. It is to see, as it seems to see Friar Beto, the representation of an archetype. A man and a woman virgins whom see to be born of themselves a third being, a newly born child.

The biblical people are emblematic. Before them it is wise to leave rationalism sideways and to examine in what measure they translate our deeper experiences. Of a virgin a son can be born? The refusal to accept that antinomy it resides on the fact that it signals roads and challenges we should face.

I don't see all biblical people as emblematic, just some of them. I also think that of a virgin a son cannot be born, but of a virgin couple, yes. They seem absurd the two affirmative, but if we believe that those antinomies truly signals roads and challenges that need to be faced, we can discover beneficial facts for ourselves and for Humanity. Because, actually, they translate our very deep and unsuspected experiences.

As Jesus said to Nicodemus. A man, although old, should dare to be born again (John 3,3) For the blindness of Nicodemus, how is it possible to come back to mother's womb? For Jesus' clairvoyance, it is possible to born again as well as Mary's son it was generated for the Spirit.

There it is contained the challenge that our rationalistic mind refuses to accept. The idea by the archetype revealed is not to accept the birth of a child, Jesus, which is born of a virgin, Mary and that it will become a divine person. The scenery indicates us a possibility, which it cannot be accepted by Nicodemus, of being born again.

I said somewhere that most of the priests are predictable and moulded by unalterable patterns. Friar Beto is a pleasant exception. He is revealed capable to get rid of the secular rancidity of the Catholic Church and to discover new things. I congratulate him for having seen a relationship between the episode of Nicodemus and Jesus' birth. The to born again idea for the Spirit it is old, but to relate the two episodes I think it is something new, at least in the way as it is exposed.

The Charismatic Renewal exalts this aspect of the spiritual renewal, they call it Baptism in the Spirit. It is quite sought by the devote ones that receive it at times of deep prayers through hands imposition or any other means. People baptized in the Spirit truly suffer quite healthy interiors transformations and they become more docile Christians. The appearance of Holy Spirit called talents can happen as talent of curing, talent of science and others. I think that a certain communication with the contents of the unconscious it is established but rather limited in its effects.

I just disagree of Friar Beto when he speaks of being born of a virgin. For me the great meaning is to be born of a virgin couple, symbolised by Mary and Joseph.

It is this surrounding, or better, this Christmas on board of the paradox that so much frightens us. We fear to be born again for fear of losing what we already have and we are. Although the intuition notices us that, on the other side of the river, there is a source of wealth, we refuse to do the crossing.

It is quite pleasant to find somebody who speaks our language. We fear to be born again for fear of losing what we already have and we are. If who are reading it is somebody who had courage and patience to read what I have been writing will know how many times I referred to this fear of losing what we have or we are. The only difference is that I think we believe to be what we have, besides being just men or women. This characteristic we will never lose if we are born again, we will continue men or women.

I liked greatly when he says that it is a surrounding; it is like to have a Christmas on board the paradox. It is of this that we are afraid.

We are afraid of losing what we have, we are afraid of losing what stupidly believe we are. All what we possess and believe we are, our identity with great difficulty built, we don't want to release. We have an immense fear of, from a moment to another, to see us as a newly born one, which we believe to be nothing else than anything.

If we refuse to cross the river when our own intuition tells us that on the other side there is a source of wealth, imagine the difficulty when it is somebody that our prejudices reject who speaks to us about those wealth!

We contemplate the beauty of the rainbow without giving a step in search of the treasure it hides to the feet of its arch. Our Christmas is made of chestnuts and hazelnuts, wines and gifts, but not of that impulse it tunes in the inner of ourselves: to be born again! To dare to be what it is!

To be born again! To be what it is! How much it hides behind those little words!

I don't know Friar Beto and it is the first time I read something written by him, but I see somebody it was freed, genuinely a mystic free. Pity that word mystic contains scornful or not well-interpreted connotations. As he uses the title of Friar and believing that still exercises priest functions I think he is carrier of a wonderful delicacy that allows to live its priest's role and even so to take love to whom approach of him. It is impossible for me to think that a person exists capable to say what he says and to continue bundle to the rules of the Church. Unless he possesses that delicacy of exercising its priesthood without scandalising the common people that seek priests.

I cannot know how it is its inwards but for the enthusiasm that comes off of those words "to be what it is" and "to be born again" I am sure he discovered what he is: just a God's illuminated man. Not a Friar, not a priest, not a Catholic, not a writer, not nothing, just a man, a man in a crowd, a simple man conscious of God's presence in its interior.

Why so much fear of to born again? For fear of losing affections. We don't want to do cuts in the image of ourselves that we molded to our eyes and that we judge, mistakenly, to project in the others eyes.

We are prisoners of our own illusions. Marionettes of superficial affections they incense our ego, but they don't fill our existence.

We sold Kingdom of the Skies for some little superficial affection. Repeating what already said several times, actually a simple identity problem. I am somebody it receives affections, what will it be of me if I leave of being somebody it receives affections?

We prefer to continue prisoners of our own illusions to dive in a new world of unique liberation.

Needs courage? Yes it is precise courage. That is the reason Friar Beto called a challenge to be born again. The modern man likes challenges that ennoble its ego or that value its identity, but for that small challenge it demands courage of looking at inside of himself it lacks the necessary courage. Pity that this courage cannot be bought in a drugstore or in a supermarket. Actually it is not necessary a lot of courage, only a little bit it is enough. It is enough to leave of looking at himself as a God or as an insignificant worm and also to leave of looking at the other ones as gods or insignificant worms.

Mary dared to choose between the angel's mystery and Joseph's honor. She surrendered to the voice of Spirit. She took the risk to leave the fiancé humiliated to public's eyes. The risk ran of being denounced by him as adulteress and, therefore, convict to die stoned.

Joseph, for its time, dove in the "dark" night. He didn't give free rein to fancy. He hugged the sidewalks of the faith. And he also saw what Mary had seen: The Spirit generates full life and it makes it above and besides the reach of our eyes and of our mind.

The Spirit creates the paradox Jesus. In him God man is born. The Almighty comes to light in a pasture, son of home-less couple.

Incarnate verb, it is hunted as dangerous menace to king Herode's power.

To Christians hears this reading it speaks for itself. And for the non-Christians, today immense majority? The proposal of the Church is to do them Christians. Today almost an impossibility.

I never stopped to meditate in those episodes of the Gospel, but today, thanks to Friar Beto, I believe to contribute with some considerations that perhaps can have some value for a non Christian or even for some Christian that is not got to free of the weight of rationalism.

As I said before, I see Mary and Joseph as a virgin couple that generates a son. Not a virgin couple in the historical sense, but a representative symbol of the millennial conflict between manliness and femininity. The eternal war of the sexes that it is processed inside each one, be it man or woman.

Mary represents the feminine aspect. That aspect of our psyche it worries about life, about gestation, about creativity at every cost. The person in us capable to say "yes" to generate a divine child, even taking the risk of dying stoned, in spite of noticing that its dear Joseph would be humiliated.

Joseph represents the masculine side. That aspect of our psyche it worries about what the others will think, with the importance of our ego that may be humiliated, which refuses to see the wealth on the other side of the river.

Mary is intuition and feeling, Joseph is reason and thought.

Mary and Joseph represent the virgin couple that lives on our interior in eternal conflict. Only the coalition of the two can generate the boy-God, Jesus, God-in-us.

I would like that it was very clear that when I use the words "boy-God", "Jesus" or "God in us", I am not referring to historical Jesus, to Jesus of the religions or the God of the religions, but the divine flash that inhabits inside each one of us.

It is interesting to observe two quite significant facts. Mary leaves in search of a woman, her cousin Isabel, also in gestation, to share the common happiness. Joseph, illuminated by God's Spirit through the angel that shows in dream, he is who takes the initiative of making the reconciliation, accepting to marry Mary.

I believe there to be contained the heart of the challenge of being born again. Joseph is an authentic representative of a thinking ruler, produced by patriarchal society. How to attribute to him the initiative of the reconciliation?

As a common human being, Joseph is also possessor of a repressed inner feminine aspect. The woman inside of him she welcomed the divine proposal of love and conciliation.

Other aspects in the birth of the boy-God can be appreciated.

The angels' song and the shepherds praising represent to born again happiness.

Wizard's gifts represent the treasures on the other side of the river.

The escape to Egypt represents the escape to the rejection that patriarchal society does to a God who wants to share life with us. It prefers a false almighty God to which it can illusory to dominate and to manipulate. As it would really come to happen with the erection of a patriarchal Church that intends to form consciences until today. In the scenery of the stable the patriarchal society is symbolised by Herode that intended to eliminate the boy-God.

Boy who grew in grace, which surprised the doctors for its wisdom and that later came to be definitively rejected when they crucified him. And later on they identified him with the same All Powerful God.

The saints and the mystics decipher the enigma of the paradox. Because they live in the reverse of themselves and, beside there, they meet themselves again. They become free from all alienation between essence and existence. They don't beg recognition, nor they worry about the image that the others do of them. They are free. They overlap the law with love, the discipline with justice, the order with freedom. They are true Christmas beings. Christmas is the feast of the renaissance. It is the moment when Christian liturgy invites us to allow being pregnant for the Spirit. To hug Mary's option and to travel the mysterious paths of Joseph's faith. To be excluded "of the city" and lowly to take the direction of the crib, believing on the new life it is engendered in the underground of History.

In highest, happy Christmas it is to allow the boy to make himself God in us.

Almost perfect, I make some restrictions.

It is not necessary to be saint or mystic to decipher the paradox enigma. Anyone who really wants can make it. Also of anything it serves to decipher, it needs to live, to live the paradox.

The historical woman Mary truly said "yes" to the birth of the boy-God, but in a certain way the visit to cousin Isabel represents an escape, a refusal to the interior marriage with its inward Joseph. She took refuge in a symbolic way on the feminine equalitarian society. I think the decisive and more courageous step (not to forget he was an authentic specimen of millenary macho Jewish society) it was given by Joseph who accepted the marriage, not for an act of faith, but giving its "yes" to the divine presence, which is who really motivates the marriage.

So much the "yes" of Mary as the "yes" of Joseph they are fundamental so it takes place Mary and Joseph's fusion, the couple that live together inside all us, without this the birth of the boy-God cannot happen. Emanuel, God in us doesn't take place! Merry Christmas!