Other Experiences of an English Language Teacher

  He was a great man, a great saint, Blessed John Paul I, the antecessor to also great Saint John Paul II.  The first one told the next anecdote when he already was Pope. Precisely on September 6, 1979. He told that when he was the bishop of Venice he used to assist some houses for the elderly. Once he encountered an old lady in one of these houses. And he asked her how she was, how she felt, how the heating worked, how the meals were … Everything’s okay, she was saying, but eventually he asked if she was content and happy. Then she nearly burst to cry. What’s the matter? He asked the old lady. Well, she said, my daughter-in-law, my son … they just don’t come to visit me, and also I’d like to see my grandchildren!  Well, you know, the family. It’s so great a thing, and how much we miss them when perhaps they’re far away, or you just don’t have a family.  The family is one of the greatest things God has created, and we cannot pass without it.  Even more, at the b...

  Everyone of us has thirst for God, and perhaps now more in our western society. But all along history man has shown that thirst for God. And it’s so simply because we have been created by him.  And we can get to know him through faith, which is a supernatural gift from him too, although faith demands you say yes to that gift, this is, that you humbly accept that faith: it’s a response by man.  Anyway, we can also reach God and about him through our reason, by our reason, for – as I said – we’ve been created by him.  And how can we reach God by using our thought? From Creation and from man himself. When I say man I also refer to woman, of course. From nature, our formidable world, the universe and heavens: I guess you’ve ever contemplated a diaphanous night, maybe in winter, where you can contemplate the sky and the stars. It’s just magnificent, and you just see it in an awe.  If you go to a beach early in the morning, when still no one seems to have trodden th...

  Man is capable of God ultimately. Ultimately and at first look.  Obviously I’m also referring to woman, of course. What I mean is that we human people have a primordial thirst for God. And even more nowadays, in our dear afflicted world.  Why so? Why this interior searching for God? Just because we have been made that way, by God himself. He has created us in that certain way.  We exteriorly may not show we do need him, but when you have a conversation with a friend for example, a profound one, you ultimately reach that fundamental thirst for God.  And we are capable to seek him, to admit in our interior that we aspire to him. And, well, we can treat him, we can talk with him. That’s prayer. And I mean with and not only to , for he responds. It is not like a voice you hear with your ears, but he talks in our interior.  Some posts ago I told you that there is – or was, I hope still is there – a chapel in our dear Gibraltar, south of Spain and belonging to...

  We can be happy. God has a wonderful plan or design for us his children, his sons and daughters.  First he has created us, say, perhaps through evolution, ok. He has called us to life. Even more, he has done so to be his children, as I said before. And he wishes we be happy, in this life, and then after that, in eternal life for ever and ever.  When you recognize and realize he loves you, this is, you are loved by him with tenderness, then you can behold life with confidence. When you also realize you are his son or his daughter, then life changes to better, and you can entertain yourself by talking to and with him.  Prayer is so important for us modern people. I have been to Gibraltar for a lot of times, a lot, and last time I was glad there was a chapel on Main Road with the Host, the Eucharist on the monstrance, for anyone who wants to stop and talk with him. Amazing.  In other words, God has wished we can participate in his supernatural life, beyond anythi...

  I think that the verb trust is transitive, I mean, you may trust someone , right?  And also I think with Jutta Burggraf that who trusts God, eventually can trust people, persons I mean. And that person gives another one like a second chance.  For example a teacher. He or she can have a transcendent view of life, and can trust God. After that he or she will be able to trust their students, although these ones can provoke some distress to that teacher quite often.  And when reprimanding a disruptive kid aside, not in public, that teacher will likely give the kid a second chance: the teacher by no means will toss or disqualify the kid. It’s so because that professional trusts God and subsequently trusts men and women.  He loves God and he loves his students. He believes in men and women. He is not nihilist at all.  I have seen this in education, and you may have some similar experience of things. The true teacher does not throw out anybody – nobody is to be...

  When someone has something good, like a great joy, more often than not that person tends to tell that joy to his or her family, perhaps their friends, colleagues, neighbors, and the like.  Well, you know, we Christians have something so great, which is the Person of Jesus Christ, true God and true man. For example Pope Leo XIV constantly talks about him.  And also I would like to transmit and pass on the experience of treating him, of talking to him, also with him, for he may respond to your queries and questions, and he really does, as he used to do when we could see and hear him two thousand years ago in old Palestine.  It’s something so great I cannot stop saying things about him and what he did for us – he redeemed us from our sins by dying on a cross, and resurrecting after three days. As well he redeemed us through all his life on earth, both some thirty years in his hidden life in Nazareth, while working as a carpenter, plus some three years of public life, ...