Jonathan Roumie: "Playing Jesus in The Chosen I have discovered his intimacy with the apostles".Raimo Goyarrola: "Finland has a special mission in the Church".Alex Jones: "We are looking for new ways to help people to pray".The EU has recommended its citizens to get a survival kit in case of a possible attack or natural disaster. Water, tin cans, a flashlight, a lighter... basic things to survive the first 72 hours; but they forget the most important thing: something to make sense of those first moments of bewilderment and, depending on the severity of the case, of the new life that would have to start afterwards. In my case, I would not fail to include in the kit a small bible and a rosary. In a catastrophic situation in which hopelessness, uncertainty and fear would take hold of us, they would seem to me to be the greatest of treasures.
I would begin, for example, with the Gospel according to St. John to read: "In the world you will have your struggles, but take courage: I have overcome the world"; I would go through Psalm 34 to hear that, "when one cries out, the Lord hears him and delivers him from his troubles" or that "though the just man suffer many evils, the Lord delivers him from them all"; to arrive at the Epistle to the Romans in which St. Paul would remind me that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present, nor future, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature can separate us from the love of God manifested in Christ Jesus". The Rosary, especially when prayed in community, is a unique gift from Mary to find, in her who is the Help of Christians and Queen of Peace, the spiritual consolation and peace that we need in moments when life strikes us.
A society as materialistic as ours, which ignores spirituality, is completely disarmed in the face of life's difficulties, even more so in the face of those that may arise according to the dystopian future that the EU presents to us. If all the meaning of our life is to have, what happens if we lose everything? We Christians have a kind of "emergency training" every Lent, when we try to live more austerely, depriving ourselves of some material things that we consider essential for the rest of the year, renouncing our tastes in favor of others... At this time, we remember, with Jesus in the desert, that "man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God".
The Gospel is that word, food and drink, that our soul needs to continue to live; it is that lantern that shines in the darkness of fear; that lighter that can light the fire of our spirit when we fall apart and that multipurpose knife with infinite utilities for day to day life such as the education of children, care for the poor and sick, care for the elderly, the relationship with money or social organization. It is also that first aid kit with which to heal our wounds and prevent diseases of the soul; that thermal blanket that gives us the warmth of a good father when everything is cold around us; that walkie-talkie that puts us in contact with the community, with those who can help us; that battery-powered radio that keeps us in communication with Him, that brings us the Good News that we need to be repeated and, among many other things, it is also that identity card essential in every good emergency kit.
It would be a different story in this Europe that is now rearming itself if we had kept our Christian identity in a waterproof bag protected from the dust of marketing and the dampness of the ideologies that have ended up corrupting it. Its founders carried it as a flag (literally if we study the origin of the EU insignia), aware that evangelical values such as truth, freedom, justice, charity, solidarity or the search for the common good guaranteed years of unity, peace and progress, but their successors considered it unprofitable for their interests and took it out of the kit. By depriving human beings and society of a sense of meaning, we are more vulnerable than ever to a possible extreme situation that may arise.
The famous psychiatrist, Viktor Frankla survivor of the concentration camps, in his work "Man in search of meaning"He said that the human being "is that being capable of inventing the gas chambers of Auschwitz, but he is also the being who has entered those same chambers with his head held high and the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Israel on his lips". Today few know the Lord's Prayer or the Shema, so human dignity is worth only as much as two cans of sardines or a bottle of water. While some are preparing their strategic weapons, men and women destined for eternity are guaranteed just that: 72 hours of life.
Journalist. Graduate in Communication Sciences and Bachelor in Religious Sciences. He works in the Diocesan Delegation of Media in Malaga. His numerous "threads" on Twitter about faith and daily life have a great popularity.
