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– You seem to have an audience at church every day. Why do you want to talk even more?
– In my books, I not only speak to the Christian community, which is already meeting in the church, but above all I want to speak to those for whom the church is a cosmos. And for those who understand the church as a reception. I myself am afraid of the people, and also of the bishops, priests, who only want to fence, prohibit and, as it were, restrict the most important gift of God: the freedom to be and the freedom to change. For those who say that if you do not radically change as the Ten Commandments of God command, I will not even look at you. It is important to realize that everyone must go their own way. And do it, not in our time, but in God’s time. Moving people in the most beautiful way, awakening not the church of justifying babies, but the church that waits, embraces, loves and is the heart of God. That is why I write books.
The virus not only bothered people, many lost money, businesses, opportunities and had to change their habits. But maybe it wouldn’t be so scary if we first thought of those around us and of God. If a person is open, crises help him prioritize and open his eyes.
– On the cover of your new book, you present yourself as a kind of therapist of the meaning of life. What does it mean to be him?
– This concept was born from my thought of how I can be happy. We make many promises to ourselves: from tomorrow I will no longer drink wine, I will no longer eat sugar. In fact, sometimes life doesn’t change when you give up something, you start to limit yourself. You go with your friends on Saturday, they invite you with the greatest affection, and you give up the food they have prepared for you. Because you don’t eat meat. It turns out that you are enslaved to the rules that you have created and cannot adapt to the environment. The life therapist emerged from reconciliation with himself. Since I realize that what I can do, I do it with all my strength, at full capacity, but I fully understand that every rule has an exception.
The therapist realizes the meaning of life: the most beautiful thing is the life of each one of us. It doesn’t have to be a clean, purified void of existence where everything is fun and fantastic. It is a life in which the bread of joy and pain is eaten. Every time you think that it cannot be more difficult, you must understand that one day it will end. To heal, we have the idea that every experience we are given will inevitably turn out good.
I’ve also noticed difficult people around me when I especially needed them. They disappeared when I learned a lesson. Oh, here you have to keep going back to the uneducated. Sometimes you come to bury a person, you want to hug, comfort your loved ones, say that we are all on a pilgrimage towards the closeness of God. But man is obsessed, what comes to mind? Any situation like this must quench the enthusiasm of going to a person, of awakening his goodness, but I do not stop believing that we can all talk and cooperate.
This applies to priests, doctors, politicians and everyone who works in society. How often we are afraid to lower our hats, remove our crown, and be faithful to one another.
– We are not going through the easiest times. Do you notice that right now people are looking for more spirituality?
– People look for it in general. Not long ago, I was surprised by a study done in the Netherlands a couple of years ago. It turned out that the best-selling book in Amsterdam bookstores that year was the Bible. And we shout how free and liberal this city is. People who are overwhelmed with fun get tired quickly, and when they get tired they start looking for real stuff. In the same way, each one of us, in a marginal situation, having lost the sense of living, seeks certainty. As we realize that many things are happening in God’s will, we begin to see our despair differently.
During quarantine, we suddenly saw how vulnerable we are. We create various conspiracy theories because we don’t know the situation. When we don’t know, we deny it. The virus not only bothered people, but through it many people lost money, businesses, opportunities and had to change their habits. But maybe it wouldn’t be so scary if we first thought of those around us and of God. If a person is open, crises help him set priorities and open his eyes.
It’s not like that? To God, for real things, we tend to look like a parachute, we will use it when the plane crashes. But God does not agree with the needs. If you accept his help, he will take care of you. Every beautiful day.
– You talk a lot about reconciliation, as if you were getting out of any situation. However, we are used to hearing how important it is to fight, not give up and not hang our noses. How do you reconcile these seemingly incompatible things?
– I began to relax and truly live when I realized that many things are not in my will. After all, I could not choose the shape of my nose, I accept it as big as a gift, a combination of genes. I don’t blame myself for my nature, I reconcile myself and try to see it as an advantage. Sometimes, in the wards for the seriously ill, I hear: I have to fight. And how to fight when the cancer is in the fourth stage and the pain is unbearable? Instead, when we can fight, let’s hold onto Earth and Heaven. But when situations arise that are beyond our control, let’s reconcile, spreading from the last the best and the most beautiful that we have. In a desperate fight, we lose a lot of strength.
In the child psychiatric ward, the girls tell me that it is better to die thin and beautiful than to eat. What is the beauty when a person weighs thirty-seven kilograms? Who developed such standards? Who formed such an opinion? We look at the outside image so often and rarely do we have time to get to know the person inside, under the body.
My discovery is simple: I need to be in the heart of Christ, seek outlets in my life, accept my identity and realize that if I am called, God wants to sanctify me through it. It is important not to get bogged down in questions about what I am missing and what I cannot, but to acknowledge what I can. Forget the pains, accept them, accept them. If only we had a heart that didn’t mind criticizing …
– To share these texts, do you have to learn wisdom from somewhere? Where do words come from?
– I have noticed that people mainly share the text that is born from the reflection of the gospel. We also talk about this in post-Mass discussions. Once, while on duty at the church during the quarantine, a man approached me. He says I was here, baptized in this church, I want to abolish that baptism now, I don’t want to be a Christian. I could kick him out of the church, saying that baptism is a sacrament and cannot be revoked, but I chose to talk to that man about his pain.
The thoughts came into the book of conversations, reflections, scripture reading groups, of places where people ask questions and I prepare answers for them. I consider how Christ, how God would see every situation. After all, he has no limits, he does not come only through the sacrament, or only to the just and good elite. God comes to everyone. How would you approach the shy? The one who came to church twenty years later? You want a person to come to church not as the prosecutor’s office or the police, but as a house of God. Above all, I would like God to touch the open wounds, the doubtful, the uncomfortable, sitting not in the sacraments but on the side of the roads.
– He cares for the sick, gives lectures, has duties in the church. When do you find time to write?
– After Mass, after sharing with people, I always go back to the room and dictate my thoughts to the dictaphone. If I kept them in mind, it would evaporate. The texts are born from those dictated thoughts.
I call this book three Ms: a pleasure to play, a pleasure to read, a pleasure to create. Through grace, through touch, we experience the world. The special texture of the book is reminiscent of a cozy notebook that can be carried to the heart. I highlighted three M’s because I tried to write easily in this book. I travel from house to house, easily and simply. I also invite the reader to engage in creative pleasure, to write down their reflections.
We often forget that God is not a thief of our spirit who wants to steal our happiness. This may seem to people who are unhappy, closed-minded, conservative, that they hurt if the other is good. You always have to ask yourself, am I really with God if someone else’s happiness hurts? Rest assured, man-made pleasure and grace give God no pain.
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