Highest form of Beauty.

«The Truth: highest form of Beauty.»

Not everyone was called to be an artist, but everyone has this creative capacity which is a God given gift. This capacity can visually express herself in the way you relate to the world of nature, all creation. The way you treat people is your moment of being creative or destructive. Being an artist is rather looking in a creative, supportive way at life than making something new. In my opinion being creative is like supporting the act of the creation mostly by listening, and having love for the Truth. 

First: let us take a closer look at Adam and Eve. 
Adam was created in the wilderness, and he gave a name to all God´s creation. To be able to define what you see and to know where it exactly belongs, you must first know the whole picture. As someone who has first have the picture on the puzzle cover, is then able to put all the pieces at the right place. When Adam was ready with almost the whole picture, he discovered that nothing he had seen so far was ”of his kind”. That must have lead him to the conclusion that in a way: he is incomplete. So Eve was God´s answer to that. While Adam was created in the wilderness, Eve was created in the Garden. If human being is God´s selfportrait, /selfie/, then both sexes combined together can give us His portrait. Not one sex, but both. That´s why only marriage between a man and a woman could give us a portrait of God, also for this reason that only union between man and woman has this potential to give birth, to extend God´s plan. No other mixtures can do that.

The first thing Eve had seen, and learned as her environment was the world of fruitful trees, colorful plants. We all know that woman has a special link with the matter. Woman was created to receive and carry the growing child of God in her, and introduce her man to the world of living things. Both of them will learn from each other. Eve will help Adam, as she is the one who can understand him completly and complementarly. As a consequence of original sin Adam must experience that the creation will not obey: from now on he has to fight for results, for definition, and see painfully clear, as a kind of permanent repentance, that without God´s will all goes in pieces in his life. Eve will learn how painful it is to give birth to the new life and even more: how much she will suffer that her children do not obey. 

New Adam and Eve: Jesus and His Mother.
We remember that it was Eve who inspired her man to eat the fruit, to TAKE, while Mother Mary inspired Her Son to «give them wine». TO GIVE. This is also the picture of a Mother: to GIVE. 
Both: man and woman can paint pictures which are very alike, but if you ask them how they did it, you´ll receive two different answers. A woman when asked WHY she painted something in that way will probably answer: BECAUSE. (intuition)

From my own experience at the Academy of Arts, to be trained in artistic form by a man if you are a woman, will always require highest respect for each other just because of the difference in perception and solution. Maybe friendship between opposite sex is the most enriching school for us, people. I can still remember that smile of my beloved professor of painting, every time I was closing the picture the way he prophesied, but not in the way he proposed. We were very alike in the final CONCLUSION, but not in the process of making until he could see that my way gives another dimension to his way of seeing.

Why I´ve wished us to focus for a while on that difference between man and woman. 
As we know, God created everything by SEPARATING: night from day, waters from air, male from female. God´s act of creation emerges in the powers of separation: this is to define, to describe, to express, to put things in the right place, where they belong to. And so we all, in our creative capacity have not only the privilage, but also duty to do the same. 
An old monk I know told me, that in the light of God we are all women, as we all are receiving the truth, and giving birth to the truth. And this must hurt, too. But giving birth to the truth is a source of the highest joy. Especially for the preachers of the Truth.

So – separating elements, not gluing them together, is strongly connected with the moment of creation. This is being creative, in other words: when you seperate. When You are searching for the truth and can tell what is false.
Eating a soup where all the ingredients had have been mixed together, you can still tell what the ingrendients are, if you have a clue about cooking. The same is with searching for the components of the truth, in being creative in the kitchen, meeting with people, not demanding the impossible, but finding possibilities in the material you´re working with.
 
Teresa of Avila said that it is not good for a woman to be a hermit, as we, women need to be in touch with the matter. That´s also why, she said – the best way of learning to be a mother, to give ourself completely to God is to let God shape us through community life. That way our, women nature will have no chance to escape from seeing ourselves in confrontation with others. 

An artist and a preacher have something in common: both of them are not aloud to compromise with a lie.
 
This is a way to go, to learn HOW to say the truth, how to express the truth. How to stay as innocent as pigeons but clever as snakes. 
You remember the story with saint Dominic selling his books. I believe that this particular moment in his life was as crossing a fine line between being a student, a young man, and becoming a father, a giver, a preacher. He gave away this what was probably his huge passion: studying. Studying full time. 
We, Dominicans are studying to be able to preach, but knowledge must always be a servant of Wisdom, servant of the Truth.
Another picture: Saint Dominic going by foot. Sometimes knowledge which can run very fast sideways loses the context, and /by that/ we miss the goal. As Saint Chabrel said: «it is not important how fast you go, but that you go in the right direction».
I´d like to encourage us to look at our lives, your vocations in a creative way: to find out what should be on the first plan on that picture called life.

(st.Augustin: ”If God is on the first place, everything is on the right place”)

What should be a «dominant» and give the tone to the rest of the composition of our life. What should support the main theme from the background. Maybe something should be out of the picture, and maybe you need some new elements, too. And – how many elements should there be on that picture.
What is your goal. 

If you ask me, it is better with two, three elements which combine a good composition, than with hundret in a mess. It is not important how many activities you could be involved in, but how what you do, integrate you as a person, and influence others in their search and fight for the truth.

Preaching the Beauty of the Truth of the Son of God, Jesus Christ is like giving and receiving communion: we all know that in that little bit of consecrated bread you receive the WHOLE Truth, not a part of it. What is our duty as Dominicans, is to pass it to the others untouched, not deformed by conformism and relativism. We have received the whole coin, and we are not aloud to spent it on buying a comfortable life without tensions, without standing up where we should stand up, to speak out where we should speak out. Being a Christian might allways cost you your life. Especially now. Especially those who are called to preach the Gospel as it is, as it was, and as it will be. Until Our Lord will come again, we have to keep it pure as a treasure that others will take over after us. 

I think that this is the time to learn from our father Dominic, our mother Catherina, and all brave preachers of the Truth, how to preach the Gospel in radical – which is – the only way it can be preached. We all know that the time we live in is not the time of peace. This it the time of confusion, and as Thomas Aquinas has said: «it´s easier to get to the truth from error than from confusion». Our time is a time of hudge confusion, an open war between evil forces and God. We all see that: how christianity disappears from European landscape as well as how people are going bananas: selfdestruction, where a human being is the new god, becomes now the new religion. This is not a political death. This is a spiritual death: so the medicine must be of the same kind: SPIRITUAL. This is not a work for politicians and filantrophes. This is our, believers, preachers work.
We can help people in many ways, we should, but isn´t preaching Gospel the biggest deed of mercy? I´m sure You talk with young people and hear from them how difficult it is now to be a christian, how they are continually bombarded with the lie in every possible and impossible way. I´m concered. I see that young people don´t want to be a part of something that does not give clear answers. They want to be radical, they ask, but those who should give them answers, remain silent. I think that this is perhaps the bigges challenge of our time: to help youth in their searching and formation. The situation in the world won´t get any better. We know the words from Fatima, we know the vision of Pope Leo XIII, Anna Katarina Emmerich, warnings from Quito, Akita, all the saints: Padre Pio, Faustina preparing the world for the final battle: ”Before I´ll come as a judge, I´m coming as a Merciful Father» – Jesus says. We know too much to close our eyes for and do not see that the next chapter of the Church will be a time of heroes, as Teresa a Lisieux have said. The signs of time are very clear. For us, as preachers this is a heaven! NOW it is our time! Time to be innocent, clever, creative and imaginative in proclaiming the Truth. Now we don´t need to ask anymore what we should do, but HOW. How to be radical in a good way?

Mother Mary is the best example for us, women, how to stay under the cross to the very end. Many brave preachers over the whole world are warning that in a short time we are about to experience big changes in the Catholic Church: that we are already there. If that´s so, the question is – who´ll have the courage to preach the Gospel as Jesus has taught us: no compromise with the world, but brave heart and clear picture of the Truth. 
          
                   ”We are not born to fit in, but to stand out.”

/Jim Carvaziel/

Jesus said: be the light, be the salt, be ready for persecution. Are we ready for this? It is normal to be afraid. But it cannot stop a real Christian to think, to feel, to behave, to talk as a Christian, not as secularized religious who are afraid of loosing this life, and maybe even not believing anymore. JESUS IS A PERSON, not an IDEA. An idea won´t get hurt if you betray it. Jesus, Son of God, the Truth – will. 

Dogs of God are carrying the flame of the Holy Spirit in their mouths. I love that symbol: when you are carrying a torch in your mouth, you can hardly talk. And this is because not our own words are about to convince the world about sin, but the flame of the Holy Spirit. Less is more. Even a sparkle can cause the fire. 

Please, be wise and brave as Mother Mary who always was searching for her Son, and following Him everywhere. Also on the cross. 
Give all you have to the Lord, and let Him use all of your colours to make a masterpiece.
Most of all: do not leave the Crucified Lord, don´t run with the world. Give yourself a right to be a christian the way Jesus would like to see You. 
May all the steps we take be in the truth, with the truth, through the truth.
May we never compromise with the lie.
As someone so rightly said :
No peace without war. No Christian without saying «no».

Church and antichurch are like Kain and Abel growing in the same womb. Womb of the Holy Church:
Kain, as our older brothers, angels, came to the world first.
For some reason he was jelaous of his younger brother, as the fallen angel was jelaous of the human being. And so he killed him. On his Fathers property.

Good deeds, bad deeds, good christians, bad christians, good nuns, bad nuns, good cardinals, bad cardinals. If we won´t learn how to examine spirits,
we won´t be able to recognize enemy. We won´t be able to help the others.

Do not leave the Crucified Lord. Not now.