We live in a time and a world not only of building the world and man, but also of their destruction. We experience it as if we are ”swimming” in dangers, sufferings, diseases, mistrust, wars and threats. We are not safe anywhere. We do not find security in people, loved ones, banks, money, doctors, the army. There is no protected space from suffering, pain, loss. The experience of fundamental vulnerability has become our universal human experience.
Man is fundamentally endangered. We lack answers to countless questions and secrets that science is too slow to unravel. We lack the strength to fight evil and disease. We lack the wisdom to realize that the most important thing on earth is to love man. We all feel some primal guilt, we are far from the owner of nature and man, we lack a real encounter with the Creator and communion with Him. Modern man turns to himself in his centre and wants to become the measure of everything. Self-reliance instead of self-confidence, egoism and individualism instead of gift of self, power instead of true ideals, opinions instead of truth become ”new” paradigms. Person and life should be at the centre of our life, but is it really so?
In an office, I read an inscription that is presented ”as a smart and instructive saying”: ”A wolf does not give up his goal because of the opinion of one sheep!” Is there hope for change and transformation of interpersonal and national relations? If man is so good, why is so bad in society? Wars and hatred show man’s severe anthropological damage, disease and suffering.
Pain of a spiritual nature
Man is homo patiens, a sufferer. The pain of the spiritual soul is fundamental, it is a cry from the depths, a pain we are destined to undergo, existential and therefore the most difficult. Pain is a sign of alarm, it engages nerves, psychic and spiritual forces. Pain is a symptom of some trauma. Trauma is an injury from which suffering arises, and from suffering diseases that need to be thoroughly healed (cf. T. Ivančić, 7th International study). In addition to pain, man experiences spiritual traumas as well as helplessness and division in himself and others (cf. T. Ivančić, Hagiotherapy in Encounter With Man). Man becomes depressed, powerless or aggressive.
It is painful to be man, and pain is what we humans feel first. If we cannot change something, we feel pain because of our powerlessness. If someone hurts us, it hurts. When we cannot believe that good is stronger than evil, it hurts us. When we know about Jesus of Nazareth, but we are not able to reach Him, it hurts us. We are also hurt by any addiction to drugs, cigarettes, gambling, people and many other idols. It is painful when someone is forced out of their homes and houses. It is painful when we experience injustice, when our character is distracted, when we cannot recollect because our consciousness is destroyed, when we are arrogant because we are not realistic, when we do not have the strength for life’s struggles.
How to help man?
”There is no doubt that the issue of man’s anthropological-spiritual dimension and the Holy Spirit is decisive for the future of humanity.” (cf. T. Ivančić, ”With the Spirit for the Better World’, p.5). Man has rejected the real world of Spirit and spirituality and lives only for the flesh, or has turned to the spiritual single-mindedness of the New Age, in which there is no place for matter. Materialism and holism are two extremes without a centre. That is why the world is traumatized, depressed, aggressive and sick. It is true that man is a physical-spiritual being. He is made of matter and of the spirit that the Creator breathed into him.
That is why the solution to human problems is not only in human hands, but in the Creator’s help. Man is a creature and therefore only in cooperation with the Creator does he become a creature in his entirety. The Creator did everything ”on his part”, it is up to man to respond.
Only man can continue the construction of a better world, which was made possible by Jesus Christ through his incarnation, death and resurrection. Man is thus able to receive all the necessary capabilities and powers from the Absolute, from the Creator. The research of man’s anthropological-spiritual dimension and its connection with God’s Spirit represents today the first, supreme effort of science and the last revolution of humanity. We desperately need the truth about man in his complete reality. We need a well-argued truth about the action and fruits of the Spirit’s action in man, as well as the destructive action of evil and sin in man. Both realities have a direct and concrete effect on man’s actions, thinking, realization and life. All these are spiritual realities connected with the physical and mental laws of man. We can state that the moral dimension connects us with the absolute Spirit, with the Creator. But are we aware of it?
The fundamental path – man and the Creator – macrotherapy of society
The fundamental path is the beginning and inevitability of anthropological communication, that is, the therapy of the individual and society. It is a firm existential foundation on which all other anthropological communication of anthropological health can be built and mediated.
Since the greatest longing of every man is to be respected, valued and needed, the first and most important therapy of the spiritual soul is to perceive our value, capability and preciousness.
Practice: How can I understand myself and another man? How can I help myself and others? Man does not belong to man. He belongs to the one who created him. And you do not belong to yourself, you do not control yourself. Become aware that Someone put you into life. You live and that is why you are precious! That is how you immediately enter (we enter) the truth, goodness and love of the Creator. Realization and awareness of our identity as a person that we received from the Creator and not from our parents, a spiritual soul and its capabilities, opens up the truth about ourselves. When we become aware of it, it is a reflection in which awareness as light imprints the true truth about ourselves into our genome. Becoming a new man is achieved by our spiritual dimension, because it is free and ”before” us.
Practice: Who is your real Father? This thought alone will not lead you (us) into new realms of life, but if you manage to recognize the Creator of the world as the author of you, who answers for you and to whom you answer for yourself, only if he becomes your ”you”. Your ”you” becomes the moment you become aware of His presence in everything that surrounds you and in yourself and when you consciously say to Him, You, my Creator, my Father! Because, while you only think and talk about Him, He is too far away, He is not your ”you”. You are a person and He is the person who gave you His spirit and that is why you can communicate with Him.
The unconditional love of the Creator who wanted, wished and valued us even before we were created points us to the truth that Someone’s caring love is watching over us and the world.
Practice: We often hear about accepting the inevitable, and today’s psychology is trying to teach us that. But mere acceptance often borders on surrendering to fate, because the struggle can seem pointless to us. This is how we enter resignation, which means a state without hope. Resignation is very dangerous because it convinces us that chance or fate rules our lives, or worsel, that our fate is inevitable. From the anthropological-spiritual aspect, fate does not exist, but faith and trust in Providence, according to which everything contributes to the good of those who believe in it, because the Creator creates and sustains us and the world, not man. Through the true experience of meeting and befriending Jesus of Nazareth, who is the revelation of the Creator himself, and by getting to know Him in depth, we discover a hidden source within ourselves that makes us brave and courageous to believe in Him, and thus we begin to live in the conviction that even what seems to us is meaningless and difficult to understand, is actually embraced by Jesus’ care and attention. We begin to live a new life: a life in dedication.
Only in the cooperation of man and God, man and Jesus of Nazareth can a new world begin.
Silva Vrdoljak, theologian, mentor in hagiotherapy who has been working as a hagioassistant for 20 years.
