Other Experiences of an English Language Teacher

  Life actually  may be hard and present dire-straits. But more often than not, what occurs to western man today usually is minor stuff.  Yep, life is hard, but that does not necessarily block out you may also be positive, and optimistic.  I do know that they Christians have God in their lives, and that accounts for a great deal. You may be optimistic if you have a firm base to stand on.  There was a general, one with French Louis XIV, and he was about to die, very old. The king wished to offer him the marshall’s mace as a tribute to his generous and brave life. The old man took hold of the mace, and it is said he said, “It’s bright and beautiful, and quite an honor to me, but what I need now is something else,” and he took hold of a crucifix and covered it with kisses.  One can try and see the better side of things in life. I knew one guy that way. He seemed he was not annoyed by nothing in life, not at all. He responded nice to life, and to other people. ...

  Prayer? Talking to and with God, like a child with his dad, with a wonderful love of dad and mom? It is wonderful, prayer is so. Because I can tell him my stuff, my things, and my dear ones’ as well, and he responds, of course he does! In some way or other. At our interior, in my heart.  Prayer? Basically it’s a gift from and by God, it’s to try to reach him too, and he does not conceal from you – the little we seek him, he is easy to find. Well, you will probably not see him, anyway he is more present than me myself.  André Frossard, the famous French journalist, used to say – and I’ve heard say the same to other people – that Saint John Paul II was like a block of prayer. And I guess many of us can recall when he was on this world, well, he was such a block of prayer, absolutely embodied in prayer, but not indifferent to other people and their needs; even more, that prayer made him accessible to any person, and he perfectly realized about others’ needs, and had some p...

  We have already said that man can reach to know God with his own reason and mind, okay. But God has wished to reveal to man, his divine inside but also some things man can reach to know through his reason and mind. God is so good.  For example, God has revealed he is three Persons but anyway only one God. Is it clear? Three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, yet only one God. Well, that’s something you cannot understand nor comprehend totally, for it’s a mystery.  And Jesus Christ, the Son incarnated, revealed there are those three Persons in God. As I said before, God is so father and loving and good that he has revealed some things – moral and doctrinal – man can achieve to learn through his only mind – also because man is so fallible at getting to know such things.  And we get to learn all those things by the Bible, Tradition and our mother the Church teaching over the centuries.  I live in Granada, Spain, you know, the Alhambra palace and all that – ama...

  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...