Part of the book: 33 Meditations by Tomislav Ivančić
THE SOURCE OF ALL EVIL AND SUFFERING: SIN
Meditation course:
Calm yourself and observe: what bothers, disturbs and distracts you from your goal and pleasure the most in your life? Discover it! Then look at everything around you: is there anyone who can free you from these torments of yours? Is that you? Can you change the world? Then think: where is the source of the river of your life? Can God change your condition? Why hasn’t it happened yet? Do you trust God? Do you want to choose the Almighty and Love now?
Not everything in life goes the way we would like. We fail to establish world peace, eradicate diseases, have only mentally healthy and morally good people, free people from hatred and wandering.
The world and life of every single man are full of suffering. Death hangs over everyone, guilt bites every inhabitant of the Earth. Suffering, sickness, guilt, robbery, death – all have their source in sin.
Sin is the severance of communication with God. It is like when a river separates from its source and turns into a swamp. It is like a child who separates from parents to live alone.
Sin is distrust of God, running away from God, getting out of his path and wandering about one’s path. It is the cutting of the only thread that kept us in the air, at the height of life. Because of sin, it is difficult to communicate with God. It is hard to find meaning, it is hard to find the right path.
Someone needs to lead us to God. God is the only possibility of life, peace, prosperity, life in fullness. That is why closing to that force brings death and unrest. It follows: man’s only enemy is sin. Not man, not God, not nature, but only sin. Or: the greatest evil is to separate oneself from God.
Man’s heart is at stake. One needs to change the heart, re-establish a connection with God. It is the source of all problems and the solution to all the problems of humanity.
He was born in Davor in 1938. After studying philosophy and theology in Zagreb and Rome, he was ordained a priest of the Zagreb Archdiocese in 1966. After achieving a master’s degree in philosophy and a doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, he returned to Zagreb in 1971, where he became a professor at the Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Zagreb. He is the head of the Chair of Fundamental Theology, and was one of the editors of the Theological Review. Areas of his scientific work are philosophy, theology and literature. He explores the relationship between philosophy and theology, faith and science, atheism and religiosity, revelation and faith, the Church and ecclesial communities, Christianity and religion, the phenomenon of sects and issues of theological epistemology. His special field of interest is the study of man’s existential-spiritual dimension, where he discovers the way of modern evangelization and the necessity of the development of spiritual medicine, which, along with somatic and psychological, is indispensable in the complete healing of man, especially in the healing of spiritual diseases and addictions. For this purpose, he developed the method of hagiotherapy and founded in 1990 in Zagreb the Center for Spiritual Help, of which he is the head. From 1971, in addition to working at the faculty, he was a student religious teacher in Zagreb, the initiator of the prayer movement within the Church of the Croats, the founder of a religious society called the Prayer and Word Community(MiR), and the leader of numerous seminars for spiritual renewal and evangelization at home and abroad. After completing his studies and scientific doctorate in fundamental theology at … (Read more at https://hagio.hr/tomislav-ivancic/).
