Reflection on October 15, 1980

https://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/jp2tb43.htm

SJPII talks a lot about Manichaeism in the next two sections actually. What I have as an understanding is basically that they believe Spirit is good and material/body/world is evil and there is a constant struggle between the two. Here is a brief piece and link from the Catholic Encyclopedia. “Manichæism is a religion founded by the Persian Mani in the latter half of the third century. It purported to be the true synthesis of all the religious systems then known, and actually consisted of Zoroastrian Dualism, Babylonian folklore, Buddhist ethics, and some small and superficial, additions of Christian elements. As the theory of two eternal principles, good and evil, is predominant in this fusion of ideas and gives color to the whole, Manichæism is classified as a form of religious Dualism. It spread with extraordinary rapidity in both East and West and maintained a sporadic and intermittent existence in the West (Africa, Spain, France, North Italy, the Balkans) for a thousand years, but it flourished mainly in the land of its birth, (Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Turkestan) and even further East in Northern India, Western China, and Tibet, where, c. A.D. 1000, the bulk of the population professed its tenets and where it died out at an uncertain date.” http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09591a.htm

When I was reading this talk, all I could think about was affirmation of the other in your relationship. It is something I really struggle to do and really have not excuse for struggling. I have no idea when I missed that lesson in my life, but I don’t seemed to be wired to affirm or to think that when I do it feels awkward and forced or insincere, even if it is not. But reading this section motivates me to be better at it because of its importance.

Your spouse sees themselves as through their experiences. That includes the good and the bad. The bad ones have distorted their own understanding of who they are as a human. We are called to lift them out of that, help them view themselves as God sees them. They need to do that through experience. What they need is affirmations, genuine affirmations, to allow them to experience that communion in a way that they see and understand how God sees us and how we were meant to be.

Think about the person that never experience love in a real way. Our experience will always trump what we read or hear about the world and will always trump in influencing how we understand ourselves. Add into that, our experiences will trump other ways in which we will come to understand our relationship with God. God made us to come to know Him through communion with others and through our spouse in particular. How can a person who never experiences love in life come to understand God’s love for them? How can a spouse come to understand the love of God if they do not experience that in the relationship they open themselves up to the most? How can they come to trust God if they experience no trust in their spouse? God put a special emphasis on the spousal relationship because it is a unique and special way to come to understand God through experience, the way we learn and understand most clearly.

And when you think of the lack of love in the world and how people experience that and how that MUST affect people and their choices, we see why we are not in a position to judge others. We simply do not and cannot read their hearts or know THEIR experience and what that has done to them. When we judge another, we are basically grading their exam when they might have never taken the course or ever been given the knowledge. I really and truly believe this but find it so difficult to persuade people of this. You cannot talk to people without them thinking you are judging them. They automatically put up the walls and will not listen because they feel judged, when that is not what I want to do but just talk, just communicate, just tell them what I have learned.

Words I looked up.

Praxis - practice, as distinguished from theory; application or use, as of knowledge or skills.