On 1 December, as the season called Advent (Coming) covering the four weeks leading up to Christmas was about to commence in the Christian liturgical calendar, Leonardo Boff’s weekly column was entitled “Are we approaching the end of the human species?” Basically, it reproduces a text published in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. For years […]
It could be that perhaps we do not like too much this Christmas with its illuminated streets, consumerist propaganda, over-played carols, unenthusiastic reunions, obligatory gifts…, or that we even dislike it. Yet, if we could free it from commercial exploitation, our deceitful ambitions, even from our boring liturgies, empty words and outdated dogmas, if we […]
At the end of the Christmas festivities, I return to the narrative in Luke’s gospel about the shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem, shepherds that look for, find, and build peace. We see ourselves in them. And to better see ourselves in them, let’s say it again in case it is still necessary: all the […]
Today, Christmas Day, will see the launching into space of a giant telescope that could see the birth of light in our universe. The birth of light! James Webb is its name and in a month’s time it will reach its operational position behind the moon, one and a half million kilometres from Earth, four […]
The Beguine movement emerged in the 11th century and spread in Europe, specifically in The Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany. They were Christian women who desired to radically live the life Jesus led with the nearest followers. But they refused to be cloistered nuns, as the strictest canonical norm dictated in medieval times for those […]
Still and quiet on the bare branch, a blackbird is watching the snow-covered landscape of Aizarna. Everything radiates quietness and harmony. Everything breathes in peace. But when I look at the first news item, the front page, or the first thought, the current and enormous uncertainties of the planet, the threats of this pandemia and […]
Christmas! Mark and John did not want to imagine Jesus’ birth, but Matthew and Luke felt the need to evoke the tenderness of a birth. As the song says, “we can live without wealth, but not without tenderness…. We can live without glory, but not without tenderness…” Let’s begin with the shepherds in Luke: there […]
About 2,700 years ago, the first Isaiah, an outstanding poet, wrote: For a child is born to us, a son is given to us; upon his shoulder dominion rests. They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace (Is 9, 5). Seven centuries later, around 80 AD, a physician evangelist called Luke, another poet, described: […]
“Mary, from whom Jesus was born, also called Christ” (Mathew 1, 16)
Humanity devoid of ancestral resentments;
any politics making true speeches;
