My best wishes for peace & happiness to you all.

From my monthly Newsletter on Justice & Peace you had known that my first months of 2014 were taken up with the experience of the workshops about Land-grabbing, prepared & directed in Peru during March (see http://www.jpicjp.org/pt/pl_pub/pl_pub.php?na=136&idm=en).

A wonderful experience that left its mark on me also in ways one cannot mention in an article: during a stroll on the summits of Arequipa someone with knife in hand stole my camera; the joy at seeing once more two former Congolese philosophy students and now missionaries in Peru; and at the end of the month, “thanks” to all the changes from a torrid heat to glacial cold, from the climbs and descents of the desert plain to the high plateaux over 4000m I’ve almost fallen ill. That was a message telling me that it’s time to pray with the wise one: Lord, teach me to grow old.

Between the lines of this article you can tell that I am really devoted to this work that the African bishops inspired in me during the special Synod for Africa: the absurd European agricultural policies will lead 300million Africans to Europe, not 300,000.

Getting documents together, reorganising the blog, preparing seminars with 23 modules on the big social subject of land, which involves world food supply (9 are already prepared in Spanish, but the aim is to have them all also in French and English) all of that is a true missionary service to our present society and our Church mission; the priestly minister helps me daily with this task, not as an alternative to, but an integral part in a unique missionary service to which I have been called.

The experience of missionary work in Burundi and the Congo as well as in Ecuador and Columbia has convinced me that only those directly involved in whatever conflict have the necessary imagination and determination to face it and to find a remedy. For that I have often thought about the past and I am now of the firm conviction that to be missionaries and religious within international organisations, whether they be the European Parliament or the UN, only makes sense under certain conditions. To be precise: where one works to build links with grass roots through a two-way flow of information and knowledge; where one tries to lend a helping hand to resolve or at least clarify the problems that bring so much trouble to our world; where one attempts to raise the awareness of the rights and needs of those at the bottom of the social ladder as well as those at the top. In a word, if the hopes and the suffering of the poor are viewed through the eyes of the Father, together with the heart of Christ, and lived within the wisdom of the Spirit.

In Peru I saw that all of that is possible. In Chincha, not far from Lima, during the closing Eucharist of the workshop, a peasant asked for forgiveness: “for 40 years”, he said, “I have fought to defend our rights that have been scorned by the state and the powerful landowners; however, here I have been negligent in terms of respect of the land, wastage of water and energy, in ways that otherwise a sober lifestyle and love to others should thank God for all his gifts; the riches of the planet are not an end in themselves nor are they infinite.” In San Ramon, on the edge of the Amazonian forest, I received the following commentary: We hear the urgent cry of the Earth: Save me, so that I may exist for future life and future generations! The Earth is a gift from God and it’s His will the Earth continues to be a home for us all!

All that led me to rethink about two writings which despite their faults in form and content, have been in my thoughts these last few months.

The 1^st: The prayers of the Cosmos, Meditation on the Aramaic words of Jesus, by Douglas Klotz; this is a re-reading of the Our Father and The Beatitudes in the quest for hidden meanings in the original text so as to savour the sounds and vibrations of the mantras proclaimed by Jesus: it’s about dusting off the contemplative spirit that lies within us just as did the words of Jesus 2000 years ago.

To re-live the Good News of the Kingdom with heart and body in the world opens up for us the typically oriental cosmic dimension which doubtless permeated the religious experience of the Jewish Jesus:  it is to savour the universal dance, the Hymn of the Universe of Teilhard de Chardin which in the Gospel of Jesus live and breathe as proclamation and prayer. Which is in effect prayer if not “inbreathing and exhaling of the breath of the universe” (Hildegard de Bingen).  Father, You who in light generate us and everything that moves, you are the breath and harmony that invades us,the Name of all names. Thy Name is holy when we say holy all the names of the universe.

The 2^nd is a tale which takes place among the splendid mountains, on the fascinating summits of the dense and deep Peruvian forest, in these valleys that fill the heart, that I have just been contemplating:  it’s called The Celestin’ prophecy. It’s defined as an ancient manuscript in which parables and adventures offer the keys to interpret life: to trust in the flow of coincidences of daily life, which, when interpreted, lead each of us to our true destiny, is the wisdom which permits to understand the jolt of awareness that opens the gates of the third millennium with a new outlook on life:  a new way which then allows us to cherish our earth, its living things and its beauty. The story, in first person, tells the experience of a revival and a spiritual quest that land to the shores of the universal unity consciousness of which is the deep energy to draw from light and strength in today's world.

The work that I do together with these reflections lead me to re-visit the concept of original sin which to me seems increasingly to be not the fault of the origins but the origin of our nowadays errors; and creation, which is not a past event but a force that from the future attracts continuously the universe, until God is all, in everyone and in everything, as St Paul said.

The words spoken by Caiphas that one finds in the liturgy in these days –“it is in your interests that one man dies for people, so that the whole nation is saved”- bring to the same meaning that John spoke about: “He does not speak that of himself; but being the high priest then, he prophesied that Jesus had to die, not only for the Jews, but also so as to re-unite in one body the scattered children of God”.

All of us living on this earth are sons and daughters of God. In His resurrection, Jesus is the first-born, Who opens the birth canal (vagina) according to the biblical term, because, rolling back the stone of the tomb, from the depths of the earth, He opens up a way of uniting to the whole humanity: a unity of heart and goals, but also a physical and psychological relationships, that make us ONE with the multiple unity of the unique God.

May the peace and reconciliation of Easter fill your hearts!