Time for Healing

In the "Preciousness of Faith" column of the Peace Weekly, the priest helps us understand the challenges of health and the importance of healing. 

We spend time without much thought, but time is very important in our lives. If we take proper measures, a wound will heal over time. We want it to heal quickly, but a wounded body needs time to recover its health.

The same goes for our hearts. Our delicate hearts are prone to getting hurt, and they need time to heal and regain their health. We are weak and vulnerable and need time and care to heal our wounds. 

Time also plays a very important role in faith. Jesus began to preach the gospel when the time was ripe. “The time is ripe, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news.” (Mark 1:15) Even during his public life, Jesus waited for his time. “Before the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father.” (John 13:1) Only when the time is ripe can something be seen. Especially the will of God.

When a priest in France said that he had only begun to understand the gospel at the age of 80, the columnist did not understand what he was saying. As time passes, life becomes deeper, faith matures, and the depth of Jesus’ words and actions approaches us in a different way than before. Our eyes have been opened to see the truth.

The truth of faith is also often understood after a long time. Jesus’ words to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us seem like unrealistic commandments that are difficult to follow. However, as time passes, our emotions often eventually recover and begin to make sense. And that depends on time. With the Lord’s care that embraces and heals our wounds.

Jesus was well aware of our weaknesses and limitations. However, Jesus never takes back His commandment to love our enemies. He just waits. Because there is no other way to health and growth. True happiness cannot be experienced without forgiveness and reconciliation. However, as time passes, clues will emerge and a way to live will become apparent. That is why we can continue to move forward while waiting for time to ripen.

It will be the moment when we reach the threshold of wisdom. That time is the time needed for our love to ripen, and that distance is the reminder that there is a path we must walk, and that we must continue to move forward with courage, despite our weaknesses and limitations.

Time is the medicine. Little by little, we gain the wisdom and courage to let go. The generosity and magnanimity that allows us to wait, understand, and embrace will liberate our souls.

This is how time teaches us. How to accumulate wisdom, how to wait, and how to receive generously. That's how we mature. If you're feeling unsettled and shaken right now, tell yourself that time will solve everything. And that time belongs to God.

Overcoming Despair

In the Philosophical Counseling column of the Catholic Peace Weekly, a Jesuit professor shares his thoughts on overcoming despair— the need to restore distorted relationships with oneself.

Life is a series of numerous adversities and trials. People often despair when they lose sight of a better life and hope for the future. The number of deaths due to alcohol, drug overdoses, and suicide, desiring to forget one's desperate reality, increases every year.

Economist Angus Deaton (1945~) calls them 'deaths of despair'. Despair, which is emerging as a new social problem, refers to a kind of ‘social death’ in which the poor, exhausted from life amidst the widening gap between the rich and the poor, end their lives by suicide, drug addiction, or alcoholism due to accumulated psychological pain.

It goes without saying that securing an economic and social safety net, as well as devising countermeasures, are urgently needed to prevent such deaths. However, the key point to consider here is whether we can truly escape despair simply because external problems are resolved. People try to resolve despair by connecting it to external obstacles. However, despair is a more fundamental existential phenomenon of humans, and it cannot be wholly overcome just by removing external obstacles.

The philosopher who examined despair as a fundamental phenomenon of human existence is Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). He diagnosed the modern era as an ‘age of despair’, and in “The Sickness Unto Death”, he considers despair as a significant opportunity for ‘becoming oneself’ to acquire one’s original self. 

Despair is a synthesis of the ‘relationship with oneself’, the imbalance that comes from relating the soul and the body, the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal, freedom and necessity in one’s life. It means ‘self-destruction’ that exhausts oneself to the point where one cannot do anything, and a ‘sinful situation’ that comes from the severance of one’s relationship with God. 

Kierkegaard defines the despair from this ‘disorder as a ‘disease of self-relationship'. However, the important fact is that despair is so painful and dangerous that one can die, and no one can avoid it, but no one dies because of it. Despair is a ‘disease that leads to death’, but unlike a disease of the body, it is a disease of the soul, an ‘existential disease’ that leads to a state where one dies but cannot die, that is, one cannot even hope for death. Nevertheless, Kierkegaard argues that 'despair never erodes one’s eternity under any circumstances'.

Despair is not a disease that only a select few people experience, but a phenomenon that all existing human beings experience. Humans are fundamentally in despair, but they often fail to recognize this despair and usually avoid it or rebel against it. 

It is a failure in not relating to oneself properly. An unconscious self-sabotaging behavior because of some unresolved trauma from the past. And the need to actively confront this improper relationship with oneself.

The restoration of a misaligned self-relation lies in standing alone before God with 'existential conscience' without hypocrisy. Existential conscience is based on 'authenticity' and 'self-responsibility' that sees oneself transparently without self-deception or pretense.

For those who genuinely pursue their true selves, life is not a calm sea but a fierce storm, and the truth is suffering. Therefore, philosophical counseling plays the role of helping those who bear the heavy burdens of life, especially when they are in despair due to pain, to cultivate the capacity to make their own decisions about their lives through self-reflection and to embrace their unique existence.

Life In Old Age

A professor in the welfare department of a university, in the Catholic Peace Weekly's Diagnosis of the Times column, gives the readers some thoughts on 'Life in Beautiful Old Age'.

As we age, we become increasingly familiar with more and more things. This is because our brain's memory creates a ‘cognitive schema’, a kind of interpretation framework based on the common characteristics of repetitive experiences. 

Of course, cognitive schemas can be modified at any time. However, most people do not readily change cognitive schemas once they are created. This is because modifying and forming new cognitive schemas requires time and effort. Cognitive schemas help us quickly understand situations and respond to them, but they also have a negative aspect, making us stubbornly act and become obsessed with stereotypes.

As familiar and repetitive things increase, new and novel things in life decrease. Familiarity provides comfort, but it also takes away the joy of life. Today is like yesterday, tomorrow is like today, and ordinary daily life speeds up. 

However, as the late Pope Francis said, “old age thirsting for wisdom, peaceful, devout, fruitful, and joyful old age" requires boldly cutting off this familiarity, which is a natural result of aging. Familiarity can bring us comfort and stability, but it can also hinder growth and wisdom.

In his book “The New Organon,” Francis Bacon presented three types of humans by comparing them to insects. First, ‘ant-type’ people who look at the ground, 'people' who are diligent and stick together well. Second, ‘spider-type’ people are ‘selfish people’ who do not work but build spider webs and wait for their prey to get caught and suck their blood. Lastly, ‘bee-type’ people are creative and make honey by transferring pollen. They are ‘altruistic people’ who share the honey they make with others and are essential to society. They seek out new flowers and collect honey; that is, people who reject familiarity and constantly grow and create.

Breaking away from familiarity means living a life of learning without rest. It is a life of using experience as material, but rather than simply repeating the same thing, creating and growing anew with the insights gained from the experience. And isn’t a life of sharing the results obtained through that challenge and growth with others, and giving back to society, a creative, altruistic, and beautiful old age like the life of a bee?

Do you want to live your old age as a time of decline and endless waiting, immersed in familiarity? Or do you want to live a life of creation and wisdom, where you break away from familiarity and use the wisdom you have gained as ingredients to create sweet honey, and share that honey with the next generation and society?

If in your youth you had to inevitably become accustomed to familiarity for social success, your family’s livelihood, and your children’s education, shouldn’t you break away from familiarity in your old age, free from all of that, and return to a beautiful and wise form that most resembles yourself, the original self that God created? Isn’t this the beautiful old age that God wants for us?

Openess to Savoring of Life!

In the View from the Ark column of the Catholic Times, a university professor provides some background to a change that came to him in middle age.

When he turned forty, he realized that music, art, and physical education were true friends and companions. In his 40s, he experienced several physical and mental problems, and realized he was not taking care of himself, and changed his attitude towards life. He worked less and spent more time caring for himself. 

Looking back, he realized he had lived 'savoring' life from childhood. On Sunday mornings, he woke up to his father's songs or movie scores, which helped him develop a close relationship with music. He learned to play the guitar in middle school and now plays guitar and sings with his son. He loved drawing and was in the art club in middle school, thanks to living in a neighborhood with comic bookstores. He joined his elementary school's baseball team and played soccer, table tennis, and tennis. The trumpet he picked up by accident was a great help in passing the years with delight. He lived 'savoring' without knowing the meaning.

Savoring is the capacity to attend to, appreciate, and enhance the positive experiences in one's life. It is the appreciation of the positive things in our lives and the decision to conscientiously enjoy them for as long as possible. Savoring is a great way to develop a long-lasting stream of positive thoughts and emotions. It has been linked to increased life satisfaction, including among individuals living with health issues.

He hopes that savoring life becomes a daily routine in schools, workplaces, churches, villages, cities, regions, and the entire country. Let’s create a 'cultural powerhouse, South Korea, not to compete and win but to learn and enrich together through the experience of savoring. Life is an experience! The nation is an experience! The path to happiness is savoring!

He recommends 'savoring' to his students and juniors who are working. He advises them to immerse themselves in the 'savoring' to 'delight, relish in what they do' for about an hour before work and then start their day.

You can’t live just working. You must rest and appreciate the good things in life that are given to delight us. The many aspects of our culture, arts, and 'physical activities’ in the 'savoring' make our lives happy.

Although the new government has much to do, he hopes it will also consider ‘the daily life of savoring' and the daily life of culture and the arts as critical national tasks. Savoring will make the Republic of Korea an advanced country with happier and healthier citizens.

One of the things he dreamed of as the Dean of Academic Affairs was to change the liberal arts education for freshmen to humanities and 'Savoring'. Suppose freshmen who have gone through the hell of entrance exams for a long time and come to college put down all other studies for just one year and spend their days learning humanities, music, art, and sports. In that case, they will be reborn as young people who are refreshed and invigorated as if they have taken a shower in culture and arts. If they learn an instrument and participate in a concert and choir, draw a picture and make something with their own hands, move their bodies and dance, run, and fly, there is no better liberal arts education than that.

There is a country that loves singing and dancing as much as our country does. It is the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. With a strong will to become independent from the former Soviet Union, 2 million people from the three countries formed a 620-kilometer human chain in August 1989. They sang: “Rise, Balts” in unison, and achieved independence two years later. The ‘Song and Dance Festival’ is also held every 4 to 5 years, with participation from the entire nation. The military dance and chorus, featuring tens of thousands of people, were designated as a World Heritage site in 2008, making them shine even more.

Historical Significance of Blood Types

In the Catholic Peace Weekly's Science and Faith column, a science teacher discusses blood types and their significance in our history.

In 1901, Austrian Karl Landsteiner classified human blood into three types: A, B, and C (now O) through the agglutination reaction when blood from different patients was mixed. Then, in 1902, AB type was added, completing the current ABO blood type classification system. 

The method of determining blood types uses the agglutination reaction in which red blood cells clump together due to the agglutinogen on the surface of red blood cells and the agglutinin in the liquid component of blood (plasma). In the past, doctors in the 17th century attempted to transfuse animal blood into humans, with fatal results. This was because there was no medical knowledge that human blood is not one type and that animal and human blood are different. The discovery of the ABO blood type classification system made it possible to transfuse blood between people of the same blood type, which saved the lives of many soldiers, especially during World War I, and Landsteiner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1930 for this contribution. 

Currently, there are 31 methods of determining blood types, including the ABO blood type, Rh blood type, and MN blood type. Blood types vary by country and race. In the case of Koreans, type A (34%) is the most common, followed by type O (28%), type B (27%), and type AB (11%).

In China, 48% of the entire population is type O, in the US, 45% of whites and 49% of blacks are type O, and in France and Russia, type A is the most common. What is unique is that the blood type of the indigenous people of Peru, the Indians, is almost 100% type O. The percentage of type O among the Mayans is also 98%. This is due to genetic factors and the heartbreaking historical background they experienced.

According to a study by scientists at University College London, 60 million people, or 10% of the world's population at the time, lived in America around the 15th century. However, due to the cruel colonial rule of European conquerors, the population of Native Americans decreased to 5-6 million. In the case of Peru and the Maya, the biggest reason is the infectious diseases spread by the Spanish conquerors. Natives who had no immunity to European diseases such as smallpox and measles were helplessly infected and suffered death.

The analysis suggests that type O has a somewhat superior immune system compared to other blood types, which would have led to a higher survival rate from these diseases. This part explains why the Peruvian and Mayan natives only have type O blood. As a result of the long colonial rule, the Peruvian natives still have not been able to escape poverty and underdevelopment.

Pope Leo XIV, born in the United States and a Peruvian citizen, served the poor in the slums for 20 years. It is said that the locals loved the Pope, who had a deep interest in social justice and environmental issues while working with them. Poverty refers to a lack of access to basic necessities, including food, clothing, and shelter. Helping those in such situations is the attitude of a true believer who practices the teachings of Christ. Poverty also means not being obsessed with unnecessary things. Emptying your heart of material desires and adopting a frugal lifestyle is the attitude that believers should strive for.

Thinking back to Pope Leo XIV, who worked as an apostle to the poor, let's look back at the meaning of the Sermon on the Mount, where Christ said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:3).

Dealing With Hatred

In the "Preciousness of Faith" column of the Catholic Peace Weekly, the seminary professor offers some thoughts on feelings of hatred that may arise in our lives.

Like the song title, "Is it hatred or longing?", the feelings of hatred that arise in our hearts are very complex and difficult to express clearly. What is clear is that hatred torments and suffocates our hearts, having a profoundly negative impact on our relationships with others.

What should we do when hatred grows into resentment and remains as a knot inside? Above all, it is necessary to share the story in our hearts with someone and receive empathy for our tormented and suffocating feelings. That someone could be a family member, friend, or acquaintance who listens to our story without judgment and empathizes with us. Still, it could also be the Lord we meet in prayer. We could share our tormented hearts with the Lord through conversation during Mass or prayer and ask for comfort. 

It is also necessary to view hatred from a distance. Calm your mind, remain quietly before the Lord, and look at yourself in distress. Then, try to understand that this naturally arises because we are human. We are not robots but fragile beings with flesh and hearts that can be wounded. That is why hatred, envy, and jealousy arise, and often cannot be controlled at will.

We genuinely desire reconciliation and forgiveness, peace and unity, as well as generosity and magnanimity. Still, we feel hatred, resentment, disappointment, envy, and jealousy. It is important not to judge this too quickly but to acknowledge that we can be weak human beings.

On the other hand, it would be beneficial to acknowledge another signal embedded in the emotion of hatred. We feel greater hatred toward those particularly close and dear to us because our trust, expectations, and love for them are great. In that sense, hatred is another aspect of unfulfilled love. Hatred is an expression that reveals our own inability to love completely.

Our suffering from hatred means we want to overcome it; we long for unity with the other person in greater love. We cannot remain in suffering forever; we were born to overcome it. We strive to form personal relationships with others and achieve genuine reconciliation and unity, transcending negative relationships and emotions. In fact, the greatest joy and happiness are experienced when we reconcile with family members or neighbors with whom we have been estranged due to hatred and resentment, ask each other for forgiveness, wash away past misunderstandings, and resolve to start anew. At that moment, we experience all our emotions unraveling, our hearts melting like snow, and we truly taste the joy of healing.  

The fact that humans are created in the image of God means that connecting with different people, forming relationships, and achieving fellowship and unity is a calling deeply ingrained in our existence. Growing and becoming one within relationships signifies our inherent sacredness. Jesus came to overcome all divisions. When feelings of hatred, resentment, jealousy, and disgust arise within us, instead of being swept away by those emotions and reacting impulsively or remaining in suffering, it would be good to distance ourselves from those feelings while staying with the Lord, viewing them as a call from God towards the fulfillment of love, and towards greater reconciliation and unity. Let us pray to the Lord to instill such a desire within us.

The Silent Cry of the Heavens

 In the Catholic Times, a religious sister in the View from the Ark column, reflects on her recent trip to Ireland.

Ireland was once called the ‘Land of Rain’. A place where it rains half the year, and misty skies are the norm. She became accustomed to the hot sunshine in Ireland and the UK. The blue skies were both welcome and uncomfortable. Even the locals shook their heads, calling it ‘Unusual Weather’. Unusual weather is not a new phenomenon. The news was filled with reports of algae in some of Ireland's rivers and lakes. It's a strange phenomenon in a place that's been a symbol of pristine beauty.

It's not just the hot weather. Rising air and water temperatures, agricultural runoff, and industrial pollution combine to create a situation in which water stagnates, turning the water of life into the water of death.

For us Christians, clean water is not just a resource; it is a symbol of baptism, a grace of inner purification, and a sign of God's love. The silence deepens when we learn that the water is diseased. In the silence of the clear water, we hear a warning.

Around the same time, there was a massive blackout across Spain and Portugal in late April. For hours, the entire country came to a standstill. Trains stopped, airports were paralyzed, and ATMs and communications were down. Supermarkets were packed with people trying to buy essentials, and roads were filled with stalled vehicles. One of the causes was blamed on climate-induced atmospheric vibrations. “Extreme temperature fluctuations in Spain caused a rare atmospheric phenomenon that led to a blackout,” the Portuguese power authority said nature's balance was upset.

Spain is a leading country in renewable energy, relying on wind and solar power for over 60% of its total electricity. However, this situation has exposed not just the vulnerabilities of power supply but the fragility of civilization as a whole. The systems we enjoy are not separate from nature. The fluctuations in climate shake institutions, civilizations, daily life, and beliefs.

Pope Francis, in his encyclical 'Laudato Si', stated, 'No matter how much we deny, hide, disguise, or relativize, the signs of climate change are becoming increasingly clear.' This statement calls for spiritual awakening rather than mere statistics or analysis. 'God saw everything he had made, and it was very good.' (Genesis 1:31) Therefore, the responsibility of human beings, endowed with reason, is to respect the delicate balance that exists between the laws of nature and the creatures of this world. We cannot simply rejoice because the sky is clear. The most vulnerable beings are the first to suffer when the order of nature is disrupted.

The life of a monk is inherently about harmony with nature. A life where prayer and labor are united is deeply rooted in the rhythm of nature. Yet, prayer and labor become painful when nature is in pain. At this point, what is urgently needed is not merely an energy transition, but a heart transformation. We must let go of the greed for more and cultivate a life of contentment. A compassionate perspective that sees water, soil, air, and sunlight not as 'resources' but as 'co-created beings' alongside humans is essential.

A sincere practice born from the gaze of Saint Francis, who called the sun and the moon brothers and sisters, is desperately needed. In response to the strange signs the Earth is sending, and in the face of this prolonged new situation, there are those who respond with silence and action. The deep sighs and cries of those responding in silence become hope. This response to silence manifests as a simple and humble life lived within small communities, a practice of solidarity connected with the silently suffering creatures. It leaves traces of deeper responsibility rather than mere signs of greater consumption. And upon this lies hope.