Written by: prof. Tomislav Ivančić, PhD
Taken from the print version of the Hagio.hr-a magazine
The course of meditation:
It is important that you calm down completely. Sit down and take a deep breath, and exhale slowly to make sure you are relaxed. This will make it easier for you to notice everything around you. Put a flower in front of you and stare at it. Watch it for a long time and listen to what your intuition tells you. Go to the river and watch it. Approach a spring and observe it. Go to the beach and watch the sky, the horizon, and the sea for a long time. Stare at a child at play. Look at everything created by human hands. Could nature, even more perfect, have come into being by chance? Look at the fruit, look at your eyes. Climb the hill and watch… Watch the sunset… Do you sense Someone?
Everything around us tell us that there must be Someone who has planned everything and who oversees everything. There must be the source of ‘the river of time’, there must be a firm hand that holds all the ‘iron’ laws of nature, there must be artistic enthusiasm that has created flowers, seas. Also, there must be a planner who purposefully created grass and animals, male and female, thirst and water, hunger and food, lungs and air, eyes and light, ears an voice, the word and reason, legs and roads, wings and wind, ships and sea. Everything in space and the atomic world moves with perfect precision. That is why we can make calculations, conduct scientific research, and rely on the laws of nature.
Imagine what kind of havoc would be created if the laws of nature were disrupted – Who designed all that? Who made sure that sparrows have something to eat in the winter? That wolves and bears don’t die in the winter? That swallows and storks go to warmer places? That birds make such perfect nests, that bees make honey, that moles hide, that fish can live in water?
Evolution explains nothing. There simply hasn’t been enough time for the development of such perfect species and organisms. The Earth hasn’t existed long enough for all these animal and plant species to develop and evolve. And then, there are no transitional forms. Anthropology has discovered that the skeleton of man three million years old is more like the skeleton of today’s man than the skeleton of man three hundred thousand years old. So, clearly, this world is neither the result of an accident nor some unreasonable evolution. It is the result of reason. Which one?
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/).
