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In the recent few months, I’ve been searching a lot. Looking at various faces of God, I don’t have the right words for it, but I’ve been simply just trying to understand who Jesus is. Because He must be something/somebody more than just the founder of Christianity. I’m still going through John’s gospel which I find so difficult to accept, since Jesus is there pictured as somebody so harsh on those Pharisees, always in conflict with them. His words, as John puts it, sometimes don’t make sense to me, and they seem to be in contradiction at various places.

But his opening – about the Word, and the Light, that is the hint I am trying to grasp somehow. And then he adds that “I am the Way, Truth, Life, nobody can come to the Father, except through Me.” And that is the real start of my questions, since if I’m a Muslim, then where can I find this Jesus through whom I can get to the only God?

Is Jesus the reason why God created the whole world, is He the Light, the Wisdom, the “Word/Thought” – and not just “Jesus” as we Christians often proclaim, that we “own the right way”…

Anyway, I came to believe that He simply is Love, and through this Love anyone can achieve their potential, be the expression of God, as Jesuits say somewhere… And then I read and really enjoyed “A Return to Love” by Marienne Williamson, who I later on found out is proclaimed as a New Age teacher…

So did a bit of research on New Age, and in many ways it reflected my thoughts, even though I will probably not get on tarrot cards or horoscopes or anything like that. But as Marienne says, love is a decision, so now I really want to learn to love, not emotionally but to find out what God’s love really is about and try to live it.

It amazes me to feel God as “He who Is” (Jahve – I Am Who I Am) even though I don’t know who He is, He simply is Him. And He is all, the real reality, since He knows why the world and all the stars are there, and who are people, really. And maybe for the first time I realised that I don’t have a clue who God is and that I don’t want to “force” on anyone my understanding of God.

At the same time I find myself very weak and unstable and shakeable, so that I often forget about this desire for God inside me, and then I live empty days. But there is always a way back, I just really want to become more rooted in Love and actually learn how to do it, since I am nowhere close to it.

“Act in such a way that your thoughts, words, and deeds will cause others to remark: “This is a person steeped in one book, the Gospel, and inspired by one ideal, the life of Jesus Christ.””

Today I achieved my first goal re winning over my greed – I was 61 kg in the morning, which is those planned 6 days after I made the resolution. Now the second step is to get to 60 kg by next Monday, then to 59 kg the following week, and the rest of my life try to maintain that weight.

Yesterday I achieved another, and probably even more important goal – I made friends with my Mum in law.

We went to the mass together, and then ended up in a tea garden, where we stayed for several hours, having lots cups of tea, but chatting very well. I used to hate some of her characteristics – and yet now I realise that they all come from a difficult life she’s gone through, and that when watched closely and with love, she really is a wonderful person.

She is like a child in many ways – she is able to enjoy flowers, sing songs any time, pray an hour every day, smile and laugh at simple things, cook great foods and then also eat them – and jump and do sommersaults.

It used to be my inacceptance and resentment towards her, which made me angry with her and feeling uncomfortable in her presence. Now I realise this, and would like to take the next step towards having a great relationship with her, and looking forward to meeting her again.

If we are to live like Christians, we need to live like Jesus. He didn’t reject anybody – and we need to prove this also in our closest relationships.

Lord, please, help my Mum in law to get acceptance also from others around her, and help herself to be able to listen to people and to what they really are looking for, and help her provide for them, so that the love can grow steadily.

“Do not sacrifice in the manner of the Pharisees, but sacrifice in the manner of the spirit of the Gospel (Mt 6:16, 16:61, Mk 8:1).”

Every morning I wake up with a genuine desire not to fail again. Every evening I lay down with a great pity for what I’ve done and a strong resolution never to repeat that. Every day.

And when I look back, I can see that I am still on the same place. Haven’t moved an inch for the last 10 years.

When Lot’s wife looked back at Soddom, she turned into a stone. I keep looking back.

When I tell myself to give up something during the day, I keep thinking about it and longing for it. I never really give up all the pleasures which stop me from getting closer to God.

It needs to happen inside. It needs to come from real love that I manage to give up something in my heart, in my mind, in my body. If I want to fast just for the fast itself, never will I really fast.

If I fast because of love, because I want to do it as a sacrifice for somebody, then I will endure in what I’ve resolved for. But if there’s no love in me…

Lord, only You can help me to start bringing results. Only You alone can save me from standing on the same place all the time. Only You can show me the meaning of the real love and how I can grow closer to You, closer to happiness, closer to peace.

Please, transform me.

“You have to make many sacrifices when you live in the midst of people who differ from you politically, socially and ideologically. Look at the example of Jesus Who is God: He lived among sinful mankind. This was thirty three years of continuous sacrifice.”

Today I was reading a bit of the Gospel by Luke. And funnily enough, it was the part about Jesus’ 40 days in the desert. Look at the notes that were there:

In secular history, people only participate and cope with other people. Sacred history views things from another perspective: God’s plan unfolds hindered by the disturbing devices of the evil spirit, and people are called to take part in this struggle that exceeds their own plans. This is why Jesus had to face the evil one.

We speak of temptation when we feel the pressure of bad instrincts or when we feel dragged into doing evil by circumstances. Jesus did not possess our bad instincts but the Holy Spirit led him to be tested into the desert – remember that to tempt and to test have the same meaning – and there he felt the strongest persuasion from the evil one who tried to dissuade him from his mission.

Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, began his ministry by undergoing a very hard test: forty days of total solitude and fasting. In this situation, Jesus experienced his frailty as he faced a leap into the unknown: he was about to let go of life in Nazareth in surrender to the Father’s will, and begin a mission which would lead him to death within a few years.

The devil, or the accuser, spoke to him; thus is he named in Scripture because he always criticizes. He leads us to accuse God, and when he has made us fall, he then accuses us and tries to convince us that our fall will not be forgiven by God.

If you are the Son of God. Jesus knew who he was, but he had not yet tested his power. Could he not, for a moment, release divine energy when his body was weak from hunger? Could he not, someday, get down from the cross to save himself?

Jesus refuses to be self-serving. He has higher goals: and so the Devil takes him higher. Knowing people as they are, Jesus is tempted to impose himself on the people and manipulate them. He is tempted to compromise and use weapons of the devil who respects neither the truth, nor freedom of conscience. It would then be easy to reign over the nations “in the name of God,” since the devil gives them to whom he wishes.

Jesus has chosen to serve only God. The devil asks, “Why, then, do you not begin your preaching with something spectacular, like dropping from a high place into the midst of the crowd at prayer in the temple? – Do you not believe that God will perform a miracle for you?” – This time the devil uses the very words of Sripture: in reading them, one might think that with much faith, one would always be healthy and successful. Jesus warns against the error of a “faith” which tries to remove the cross. Jesus will not demand miracles from his Father to avoid suffering the humiliation and rejection that are the lot of God’s messengers: this would be to challenge God under the pretense of trusting him.

The devil left him, to return another time. In the Passion of Jesus, the devil will turn the people’s wickedness against the Liberator whom he could not lead astray.

“There are many regions in the world without priests which have maintained the faith through many decades by means of the recitation of prayers in the families.”

How important is it to pray with my husband every evening? Should we not now, when we don’t have kids yet, form the foundation of our future family – based on prayer?

How should we pray, is another question. And this has been developing since we started going out together 8 years ago. From a shy decade of Rosary as we walked along the river, to something longer that we have now – a short prayer by our own words, then a decade and reading a few lines from the Gospel.

Will we ever get to meditating together? Will we be able to ever really discuss our knowing of God? Will see. But one thing is very important – pray together, whatever form suits you.

A saint couple is much more than one saint.

“Even if you do not utter a word, God understands your heart completely. Look at the example in the Gospel of the woman who was suffering from a issue of blood. As soon as she touched the hem of Our Lord’s garment, she received her answer immediately (Mt 9:21, Mk 5:28, Lk 8:44).”

Well, Jesus, You know me completely. Much better than I do. If I promise something to You in the morning, You know whether I will stick to it till the evening. You know.

“You wish to set fire to the whole world by the love which the Gospel preaches; you wish to conquer the five continents. Your every moment should be a flash of fire, the fire of your duty, of your obedience, of your patience. Such a flame will burn brightly to illuminate the whole world.”

What love does the Gospel preach? The love of Europeans who killed American Indians a few years ago? The love of Christians setting for war to protect their ‘holy city’? The love with which we really ‘conquered’ the five continents so that they are now poor and hungry?

No, this is not the true Love of Gospel. The Love Jesus speaks about, is His Love. The unconditional, understanding and listening Love. The Love that breaks hearts from inside – you don’t need to say a word. The Love that understands all your weaknesses so that you don’t need to say sorry any more. The Love that shines inside of you and which you sometimes are not even aware of. The Love with which the Great Spirit created the world. The Love that puts us all together. The Love you can feel now.

The Love that makes you die on the cross, the Love that makes you smile when something hurts. The Love that is so deep that you cannot talk about it with anyone. The Love that is God.

“If you stand on an upper store of a tall building and look down on the road below, you will see a stream of people running around in all directions. There are all kinds of cars, and all kinds of people fighting and quarrelling with each other, frantically rushing around in circles, all for the sake of love or money, ambition or the competition of life. Only when we throw ourselves into the work of God without any fear will we have a faith that is alive and a fervent apostolic spirit.”

No fear. No rejection. When I open myself to God completely, nothing can prevent Him to work in me.

Yesterday we had an interesting discussion with my friends. It was said that a leader is not the one who asks people to follow him (like some politicians do, before the election), but a true leader is somebody who does something, without fear, and other people notice that what he does is good and great, and they start to follow him.

No pushing, no begging others to join him, just going in your own direction, that you fearlessly believe is the right one, and keep going. They might not come immediately, and many leaders got their followers after they had died, but it doesn’t diminish their value.

Now other thing is how seriously we should take what is written in the Gospels. Jesus said that we should be doing our good deeds in quietness, so that the left hand doesn’t know what the right one is doing. We should boast about what good we’ve done. These days, however, I see that it’s being advised to do good and to talk about it.

Especially in advertising, with sponsorship – if you give even a €1, you should promote it and it will shed a bit of positive light on your company. But, is this what Jesus wanted us doing? What if there is an entrepreneur who donates to a charity, but nobody knows about it? Yes, he might not be so popular. But the truth will come out one day and then he will be rewarded.

We shouldn’t be afraid to throw ourselves into the work of God – and calling ourselves Christians, let’s live like our Leader wanted us to live.

“The moment in which you experience self satisfaction in your apostolic work is the most dangerous moment for you. This is when the devil concentrates all his forces to take you by surprise.”

Wow. And I was looking for self satisfaction in my work. I was looking to “arrange” my life so that I would realise myself in some form of apostolic work.

Is it ok to work for nothing? Or what should my motivation be? It is not money, it is not praise. I shouldn’t work to earn something, I should serve. Serve. Love and serve.

And Jesus said:

No one can serve two masters; for he will either hate one and love the other, or he will be loyal to the first and look down on the second. You cannot at the same time serve God and money.

So how to arrange my life so that I work well – serving my bosses, who pay me – while serving God at the same time? Or should I give up my job and “go and preach the Gospel”?

This is why I tell you not to be worried about food and drink for yourself, or about clothers for your body. Is not life more important than food, and is not the body more important than clothes?

And yet I’ve been working many hours, damaging my body and not living my life… What for? For money, for praise, for any type of reward?

Set your heart first on the kingdom and justice of God, and all these things will also be given to you.

““Go and preach the Gospel” (Mk 16:15). Our Lord requires of those who dare to accept this lofty mission a readiness to die, that is, a fearlessness in the face of death. If we look back at two thousand years of the Church’s history, we can see that in every age and from every class of people there has never been a lack of those willing to die for the Gospel.”

What is the message of the Gospel? What does it mean to “preach the Gospel”? What should I actually preach?

That people should go to church? That we’ve been saved from our sins? “Which sins?” – people might ask.

I have never preached in a way that I would stand at a corner of a street and say – “Believe in Jesus, He is your Saviour!” or anything like that. I’ve never even started a conversation about God, unless it were people whom I knew they were religious. And when asked about my belief, I was never able to give them answer that would satisfy them, that would make them want to search for God even more.

And, which God should I preach? My personal God, my Jesus, whom I know only; and nobody else does? As I feel like each of us has their own God, as my experience with Him is certainly different from yours. And yet, it is always the same one God whom we praise. So how can I then tell somebody with little experience on their own with God, about how I perceive Him, what He means to me?

I think that there are two angles to preaching the Gospel:

1. Showing Him to people by the way I live;

2. Inviting them to search for Him themselves.

Not sure if I put it right, and if I’m on the correct path here, but I think that it’s more about making people desire for God – because they will see my life. For this, I of course, need to lead a holy life – which means, life open for God’s doing, life open for His works, not based on my own ego and aspirations. And yet it’s still very successful and joyful life.

Then, when meeting people in the “religious” or “spiritual” conversation, asking them questions which will point them to thinking about their own life from a different perspective – thinking about their role in God’s plan, thinking about how God loves them – and who God actually could be for them. Personally.