Daily strive after integrity and happyness

Life we usually meet in the form of an organism that is an organic structure constantly working to maintain its living (Jonas, Hans. 1992. “The Burden and Blessing of Mortality” In The Hastings Center Report 22 (1): 34 - 40. 34http://www.jstor.org/stable3562722). An organism constantly must operate functions to maintain its integrity. From one of the earliest forms of life, that is bacteria, to human life forms, cell metabolism constitutes the basic operation that ensures life as long as the organism is living (ibid.). The ceasing of life-maintaining functions leads to the death of the organism. The environment constitutes a possibility condition for the functioning of life maintaining metabolism (ibid.). Jonas holds that a stone in principle would remain that same over time, he would consist of the same atoms over a range of time (ibid. 35). Jonas makes the point that an organism constantly exchanges molecules, and a stone does not. This may be true to some degree, but I would like to have a more vivid outlook on atoms, protons, electrons, mesons, and the many thousands of particles more that demonstrate the laws of nature that the physicists of the atom and its nucleus try to get to know. How about radioactivity and an unstable nucleus in a stone? There will be nuclear decay and the stone will disintegrate. The process will take thousands of years. Jonas may be right that there is no exchange of molecules of the stone with the surrounding atoms, but I am not sure. Since the discovery of radium by Marie Curie, these questions go to the scientists anyway.

Hans Jonas (1903-1993) is a philosopher, he is not a scientist, but he acquires a certain amount of knowledge on nature to think about life. His end is not science but coping with life and reflecting on his experiences of life.  A German Jew, he fought the Nazi regime, from 1947 to 1949 he fought in the war of Israel’s independence and of the Palestinians’ expulsion. In 1949 he immigrated to Canada and a few years later settled in the United States. At the end of his life, he writes about suffering and Go’d Yahweh and about Auschwitz, where his mother was murdered (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Jonas). Individual women, men and queer are responsible for the Shoah. A million Jews from all over Europe, tens of thousands of Poles, Sinti and Roma, Russian prisoners of war, homosexuals, political opponents of the Nazis, and other groups were murdered in Auschwitz (https://Auschwitz.org). Nobody can bear the sufferings from the Shoah.

An organism constantly changes and exchanges atoms, molecules, and cells. Breathing, that is constant gas exchange, is a life sustaining activity of our body. The constant inhalation of oxygen and the oxygen rich blood flow from the lung to the tissues and cells, as the constant exhalation of carbon dioxide characterizes one of the life sustaining operations of our organism. The renewal of the cells of a tissue or organ of the human body is a constant process of life. The different cell types of the body have renewal rates from days to months or years and only very few cell types (for example cells from the central nervous system, oocytes, and lens cells) stay in our body for the whole lifetime (Ron, Milo and Bob Phillips. 2015. “How quickly do different Cells in the body replace themselves?” Cell biology by the numbers. http://book.bionumbers.org/how-quickly-do-different-cells-in-the-body-replace-themselves/).

The body needs metabolism and interaction with the environment. A stone has no metabolism, yet here are significant interactions with the environment. One of these interactions is with gravity, a natural force that is studied by physicists and keeps the stone in time and place as long it is not interacting with other forces. This interaction is a matter of investigation for physics. As a philosopher and theologian, I do not speak of a stone or atom as being self-sufficient or as being autarkic or inertly persistent, as does Jonas (ibid.). This kind of speaking about atoms and similar structures and elements of life in my view draws a picture of nature that is too static, simple, and solipsistic. By which method do scientists affirm the existence of an atom, an electron, or a stone? They would try to describe the necessary laws of physics that keep a stone in place and not let it fly away and crash into a star. I do not speak of a given state of persistence when looking at a stone and I do not speak of the concern of a bacteria for its metabolism. The expressions “stone”, “atom”, “concern”, “need”, “intrinsic existence” and so on, are all part of language and appear in language games. Philosophical investigations concerning stones and “stuff”, investigate the use of these expressions in language. Investigating the use of these expressions by physicists leads to the language games of natural science. Investigating Jonas’s sentence that the living body is different from “its stuff and not the sum of it”, otherwise it would be a corpse but not a living body (Jonas 1992, 35), leads to a clarification of concepts. Scientifically it does not make sense to speak of “the stuff of a living body” because the scientist does not yet dispose over a method to investigate all the stuff of a living body. Our knowledge about body cells and the constant metabolism within the cells and within an organism is still rather limited. If we do not know the names and numbers of elements and their relations with each other within an organism, it does not make sense to speak of a “sum of it”. A sum of something that I do not know is an empty variable. We can suggest that the value for this empty variable is bigger than zero, but that is all we can do.  To say that a living body is more than zero is trivial, it is not senseless, it is nonsense. In my eyes the merit of the philosopher Jonas consists in making accountable women, men and queer for the suffering in this world and calling women, men and queer to take responsibility for one another and for life on earth.

I am conscious of my unstable, precarious, and finite condition as an organic human being, and I am speaking about this human condition. Yes, my life is finite. Does this reality of life frighten me? Sometimes I am frightened thinking that my life may end immediately, but after a few minutes of self-awareness of the fullness of my life and my thankfulness for what I am allowed to experience, I am calm again. The fact that death “perpetually lies in wait”, or that “the sting of death” eventually lets my life leap “into nothingness” (ibid.: 36) does not bother me or disturb me really. I do not fear losing my life, I accept that my life is finite. Yes, I am regularly reminded of a life-threatening experience by my disconnecting angst surging from the subconscious to consciousness. It took me some decades of consciousness work to make me aware of my own trauma and to treat it telling me that there are no present dangers for my life. Nevertheless, thoughts and surroundings will soon trigger again the angst from the trauma and self-treatment starts again. When my father and mother, who was pregnant with me in the fifth month, suffered the trauma of the death of their first-born son in a car accident, I felt the depressing and agonizing effects of this trauma during the rest of the pregnancy of my mother. The trauma of my mother caused a life threatening prenate trauma for me. It is not long ago that science assessed that “prenated experiences can be remembered, and have lifelong impact” (Emerson, William R. 2015. “The Vulnerable Prenate.” 1. Sfhelp.org. http://sfhelp.org/gwc/news/prenate.htm.Emerson). That is right, and my strive after integrity tries to deal with this lifelong impact.

It is also true that organisms took millions and millions of years in the process of evolution to develop the capacity to “feel”, that is to be conscious, to be aware of one’s feelings and to express these feelings or at least to react to them assuring one’s integrity. “The datum for a feeling” is expressed “as the feeling of this datum” (ibid.) but “feeling” alone is not “the prime condition for anything to be possibly worthwhile” as Jonas claims (ibid.). The expression “to be possibly worthwhile” is not a feeling but a sentence. The prime condition for expressing anything to be possibly worthwhile is language and speech-acts. The prime condition for feeling is self-awareness of the feeling and this self-awareness is expressed by language. Feeling is not “the mother-value of all values”; feeling as the capacity of “subjective inwardness” (ibid.) is a decisive step of life’s evolution. It is a question that must be answered by science if and how and when and why “in the earliest self-sustaining cells” a kind of diffused subjectivity was emerging “long before it concentrated in brains” (ibid.). The expression “subject” does not make part of the world of natural science.

Wittgenstein says in Tractatus 5.641 (Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1922. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung. Side-by-side-by-side edition, version 0.42 (January 5, 2015), containing the original German, alongside both the Ogden/Ramsey, and Pears/McGuinness. London: Kegan Paul. http://writing.upenn.edu.library/Wittgenstein-Tractatus.pdf. Pears/McGuinness English translation):

“Thus there really is a sense in which philosophy can talk about the self in a non-psychological way.

What brings the self into philosophy is the fact that ‘the world is my world’.

The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world—not a part of it.”

The world is my world means, my world is not the world of women, men and queer surrounding me. My wife’s world is not my world. There are facts in my world that are common to other worlds, to millions of worlds, like for instance language. I had been taught the use of words by women, men and queer who have learned to use words to describe their world. Learning a language capacitates me to speak of my world, and in a sense to build my world. I try to assure my integrity with the help of my world, and my world is connected to my physical, psychic, social, economic, cultural, spiritual integrity.

The limit of my world is another person. My world is limited to me, the recognition of the billion worlds of other persons one can call dignity. The other person may be called “metaphysical subject” because I can reach only to the limit of the world of the other person. And the other person does not make part of my world. There are some possibilities to reach out to the other person. I can try to read the face expression, body language, or listen to the other person telling me about her world. Women, men and queer developed a lot of structures and institutions that help organizing the commonwealth of women, men and queer on this earth. Societies are made up of individual persons, of the worlds of the women, men and queer inhabiting a social space.

I can tell another person of my world. If I am lucky, the other person is willed to listen to me, understands my language and the way I use the words, that is the language game that I am playing. If we do not understand one another, we speak of misunderstanding. To assure my integrity, the exchange with other persons is necessary. The world is my world, and to sustain my world I need the listening, the speaking, the sharing, the giving, the taking, the help, the communication, the exchange with other worlds under the condition that the persons of the other worlds recognize and respect the limit that my world constitutes for them and for me. Scientists work on the question if there are other worlds out in space that are inhabited by intelligent life. I am fully absorbed studying the world that is my world and to try to exchange information with other persons at the limit of their worlds.

A very important aspect of recognizing the integrity of another person, of respecting the dignity of the other person, consists in feeling what the other person is experiencing. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. Empathy is the ability to see and perceive things from the perspective of the other person. At the limits of the world of the other person I am capable of reading and interpreting what is going on within that world. I do not know for sure what is going on, I try to put me in the place of the other to feel myself what the other person is experiencing. Empathy literally means suffering with the other person. Although suffering takes an important part of our experiences, there are many other situations that allow and invite empathy. There is joy, happiness as sadness and grief, success as failure, recognition as ignoration, solidarity as abandonment. Feeling empathy, imagining me in the position of another person, is possible at the condition that I am conscientious that I am dealing from the limits of world with the limits of another world. Empathy needs two worlds and strives to assess, restore, sustain, and recognize the integrity of at least two persons. If I lose my integrity and my dignity, there is no empathy possible. If I lose empathy with the other persons, I lose my integrity and dignity too.

I am writing these sentences on empathy on the last day of the year 2023. During that year 2023 my eyes were confronted with too many pictures of suffering women, men and queer, with the pictures of too many babies and children suffering from terrible injuries, traumas, violence, war, and death. During the year 2023 I saw pictures from too many suffering women, men and queer, life-threatening sufferings, tortures, killings, and uncountable atrocities. During the year 2023 I heard to many recordings of screaming women, men and queer, mourning in despair the death of their loved ones, mourning the death of their neighbors, innocent deaths, innocent suffering. I regret and I am sad that the pictures pass so fast, that the velocity of pictures of new atrocities and more suffering does not permit me to pause for a moment for trying to feel empathy, pity and weep with the women, men and queer that I perceive in the pictures from the media. Because of the small geographical distance of a few hundred kilometers from the bellicose aggressions I feel threatened myself. I need to pause to assess my integrity and to feel the suffering of the miserable children, women, men and queer mutilated and tortured by the atrocities of war. I am saddened by the two refugee girls whose father is fighting for freedom and risking his life defending his country, and who life in my town with their mother as a sad family, as they tell me. I never wanted to experience chronically sad children who are depressed by the unbearable realities of the worlds they must live with.

Seven years earlier I had written the following sentences. Awareness of the self “in the ascent of evolution, at the latest with the twin rise of perception and motility in animals” thanks to the development of language can be described as “ever more conscious, subjective life: inwardness externalizing itself in behavior and shared in communication” (Jonas 1992, 37). I am not criticizing Jonas for not doing language philosophy. On the contrary, I enjoy listening to the melody with which he describes the trait of life that is called feeling. “Feeling lies open to pain as well as to pleasure, its keenness cutting both ways; lust has its match in anguish, desire in fear; purpose is either attained or thwarted, and the capacity for enjoying the one is the same as that for suffering from the other” (ibid.). The science of psychology instructs me about basic feelings and their importance for maintaining the integrity of my body. External and internal variables that arrive at every instant at the brain must be coordinated and processed producing the bio-psycho-social equilibrium that constitutes one’s personal integrity. Keeping up and constantly maintaining one’s psycho-social integrity is the result of conscious and unconscious efforts. If the human senses gather some eleven million bits per second from the environment, we must acknowledge that our conscious activity amounts to about fifty bits per second, corresponding to a reading rate of about five words per second (Encyclopedia Britannica 2018).  Self-awareness is a very precious capability of humans and compared to all metabolic capabilities of the human body, consciousness is a very rare product.

Emotions and feelings do not only tell us how we experience ourselves and the world around us. Emotions and the body are one inseparable unit and emotions help establish personal relationships and maintain social interactions (Aichhorn, Wolfgang, and Helmut Kronberger. 2012. “The Nature of Emotions. A Psychological Perspective.” In Yearbook 2011. Emotions from Ben Sira to Paul, edited by Renate Egger-Wenzel and Jeremy Corley, 515–25. 515. Berlin: De Gruyter). Within the mother-child dyad, emotions are essential for the development of the child’s personality, identity, and psycho-social integrity; fear, anger, happiness, disgust, contempt, sadness and surprise, envy, grief, feelings of shame and guilt are basic emotions (ibid.). I am learning from the psychologists that the subconscious and conscious mirroring of emotions “provides the basis for empathy, i.e., emotionally understanding another person” (ibid.: 516). Empathy is an important function of evolution and consciously contributes to ensuring the survival of groups, communities and societies by peace and justice.

Jonas is right to count “the evolution of consciousness” as an important function in the struggle for survival (Jonas 1992, 37). Jonas trusts “the self-testimony of our subjective inwardness” that is self-consciousness, as being capable of consciously operating “natural selection as means of survival” as an end in itself “and at the same time as a means of survival” for the whole species (ibid.). Qualities of life like emotions, feelings or a peaceful environment are aspects of the end of life in itself and at the same time may serve as an instrument for survival. “The self-rewarding experience of the means in action make the preservation they promote more worthwhile” (ibid.). Jonas dares to claim that “the worth of awareness” for the individual person is not limited by the sad individual and collective fact “that the sum of misery is so much greater than that of happiness” (ibid.). “The very record of suffering mankind teaches us that the partisanship of inwardness for itself invincibly withstands the balancing of pains and pleasures and rebuffs our judging it by this standard” (ibid.: 38). I do not know if Jonas is right on this point, but he is right insisting on the importance of “the yes to sentient selfhood” (ibid.).

At the end of his considerations on life and death, Jonas ponders the blessing of death “as the inbuilt numbering of our days” for humanity (ibid.). He asks if “the engine of evolution” that is fueled by “natural selection” uses “death for the promotion of novelty, for the favoring of diversity, and for the singling out of higher forms of life with the blossoming forth of subjectivity?” (ibid.). In his answering effort, Jonas rightly remembers the bitter words of Hobbes that in the state of nature, “human life is nasty, brutish, and short” and that only civil society was able to protect man from violent and premature death (ibid.). Civilization understood as “artifact of human intelligence” enhanced humankind’s powers for survival but also for its destruction (ibid.). It is true; humankind developed and practices techniques of destruction like wars. Humankind could destroy itself with nuclear weapons.  At the same time, we can develop strategies for peacefully living together and interacting on this planet for the benefit of all. “The common good of mankind is tied to civilization” and over history “the ever-repeated turnover of generations” was accompanied by emerging techniques of “generational handing-on and accumulation of learning” (ibid. 39). Jonas might be right that the “the ever-renewed beginning, which can only be had at the price of ever-repeated ending, is mankind’s safeguard against lapsing into boredom and routine” (ibid.), but it is not my concern. My ending and the millions of renewed beginnings of life rather help my awareness that I am not responsible for the world. I am a tiny part of this world and keeping my world in peace and integrity, is as much as one is asking me to realize. The essential counterpart of death is not birth. Jonas is wrong on this point together with his friend Hannah Arendt (ibid.) The counterpart of death for humans is sexual reproduction, is generating. My life was possible because one of my father’s sperms together with an oocyte of my mother formed a new cell with a new genetic makeup. Generating generates uniquely new and uniquely different “newcomers” to this world; it is not “natality” as claims Jonas (ibid.). A newly fertilized egg that is accepted by the favorable environment of a mother’s body and is capable of development eventually is birthed in hard and painful labor.

When we speak of the Passion narrative of Jesus, we know what we are saying. We then speak about the narrative of the suffering of Jesus in his last days in Jerusalem, of his death and resurrection according to the four Gospels. It is true, passion means suffering. There is a second use of the expressions passion or passionate. Passionate is a synonymous of enthusiastic and we speak of having a passion for art, literature, science, etc. We might want to achieve a certain goal, for example the realization of a project, and there will be obstacles in our way. Jesus met many obstacles of different kinds to his way of preaching the Gospel and living his teachings. He constantly had to overcome the doubts, misunderstandings, and incredulities of his disciples, he had to overcome the resistance of his native people of Nazareth and finally the hostility of some scribes, Pharisees, priests and high priests and some other leaders of the Jewish people in Jerusalem. When faced with obstacles, Jesus did not give up his way and teachings; he found solutions and alternatives to be able to go on with his mission. Finally, the path of his mission leads him into a deadly conflict with some Jewish and Roman authorities. Did Jesus accept what he could not change? Did he overcome all obstacles on his path? Did he keep motivation high over time, did he correct mistakes and continue his mission with passion? Evidently, he did, and his life ended in failure and catastrophe.

Meditating and contemplating the Passion narrative of Luke, I am not only seeking inner peace. Yes, I often prepare for meditation by exercising the sun salutation and during the time of sitting on my heels, I speak with my body: My body please give me my integrity. Feeling ok is important for starting a meditation on believes and faith. Meditating on my faith in Jesus Christ, that is in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, is the aim in the following meditation of the Passion narrative. I want to describe my faith in Jesus Christ, I want to show what I mean. I am claiming Go’d as the agent, agency, and force of resurrection. In this context it is important again to assess what already Moses had had to learn - that Go’d is invisible. The way you use the word God does not show whom you mean – but rather, what you mean (Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1980. Culture and Value. 51. Edited by G. H. von Wright, translated by Peter Winch. Oxford: Blackwell).

We learn from Luke 11, 29 that Go’d has given women, men and queer on this earth Jesus Christ as the sign of Jonah: Jesus says, the only sign his contemporary generation will be given, “is the sign of Jonah”. At this point in my reading of Luke, I want to point at the important fact that Pope John XXIII was not speaking of men, women and queer, he was not aware of genders. Fifty years later, Pope Francis in his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia still qualifies speaking of queer as an “ideology of gender” (Francis. 2016. “Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia.” Number 56. The Holy See. http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20160319_amoris-laetitia.html.Francis). Luke regularly uses gender balanced expressions “resulting in male-female pairs” (Tannehill, Robert C. 1991. The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts. A Literary Interpretation. Volume one: The Gospel according to Luke.132. Philadelphia: Fortress Press). We see this for example in Luke 11, 30–32, where “the sign of Jonah is followed by balanced sayings (Luke 11, 31–32) which refer both to a woman and to men” (ibid.: 133).

Luke 11, 30 – 33:

“For just as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of man be a sign to this generation. On Judgement Day the Queen of the South will stand up against the people of this generation and be their condemnation because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and look, there is something greater than Solomon here. On Judgement Day the men of Nineveh will appear against this generation and be its condemnation, because when Jonah preached, they repented; and, look, there is something greater than Jonah here.”

The Book of Jonah tells in four short chapters the story of the prophet Jonah that Yahweh sent to preach conversion to the people of Nineveh. Jonah was frightened of having to preach conversion in Nineveh, the proud capital of the mighty and cultured Assyrians. Jonah was sure that they would not believe and laugh at him, ridicule him and kick him out of town. Jonah was sure that in Nineveh he would meet the biggest obstacle a prophet could meet, namely resistance and incredulity to his message. He immediately experienced angst and fear and danger and headed into the opposite direction boarding a ship towards Tarshis to escape Yahweh. In the terrible hurricane, Jonah offered his life for the life of the sailors on board of the ship. Finally, they threw him into the sea and were saved. Jonah got swallowed by a fish, he prays to Yahweh and after three days the fish “vomited Jonah onto the dry land” (Jonah 2, 11). John XXIII is right in using the sign of Jonah as a sign of the times for the Second Vatican Council and the future of the Catholic Church. Just like Luke proclaims the words and deeds of Jesus Christ, we are called to do so. Before proclaiming, we must assess our faith, we must convert and do what we teach and teach what we are doing. Jonah makes it clear that Go’d guides his prophets, She guided Peter to his faith and She will guide us to proclaim the Gospel. Luke makes Jesus use the expression “sign of Jonah” for the people around Jesus to start discovering his mission and start believing in Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of men. Jonah remains in the belly of the fish for three days before he is saved by Yahweh, just as Jesus will be resuscitated by Go’d three days after his death.

Jonah experiences a big success in Nineveh. The whole city, the people of Nineveh started believing in Go’d, even the king “sat down in ashes” and proclaimed that “everyone renounce his evil ways and violent behavior” (Jonah 3, 8) after Jonah’s open and fearless speech. Luke makes Jesus speak of the Day of the Last Judgement, when “the men of Nineveh” and “the Queen of the South” will speak against the generation that did not believe in Jesus Christ. If Luke is pessimistic on the possible repentance of this generation at the Day of Judgement we might tell him, what Yahweh told the angry Jonah after the conversion of the people of Nineveh: “So why should I not be concerned for Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, to say nothing of all the animals?” (Jonah 4, 11).

The Book of Jonah is an exemplary story for the infinite mercy and justice of Go’d and is read in the liturgy of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the Day of Reconciliation, the first High Jewish Holiday (Erbele-Küster, Dorothea. 2007. “Das Buch Jona.” In Bibel in gerechter Sprache, edited by Ulrike Bail, Frank Crüsemann, Marlene Crüsemann, Erhard Domay, Jürgen Ebach, Claudia Janssen, Helga Kuhlmann, Martin Leutzsch and Luise Schottroff, 987. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus). The sounding of the Shofar at Rosh Hashana, the second High Jewish Holiday, performs the hope that the universal claim of Go’d’s relation with his creation still is valid and empowered to contradict the facts of daily life. Yom Kippur also celebrates the reconciliation at the end of times, the Jubilee. Yahweh himself will sound the Shofar and reveal Himself as owner of the whole creation (Plietzsch, Susanne. 2005. Kontexte der Freiheit. Konzepte der Befreiung bei Paulus und im rabbinischen Judentum. 84. Verlag W. Kohlhammer: Stuttgart). From this picture, the Jubilee takes possibility condition and legitimation (ibid.). The above authors write about the liturgies of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the Day of Reconciliation, the first High Jewish Holiday and about the hope that Yahweh himself will sound the Shofar at the end of times.

Those Jews who celebrated Yom Kippur in 2023 did not think or worry about the sufferings, that the inhumane atrocities of Hamas terrorists caused two weeks later in Israel. At Yom Kippur they celebrated the infinite empathy of Go’d, they celebrated that Go’d’s justice is mercy, and two weeks later the political leaders of Israel proclaimed the justice of revenge and brought death to thousands of innocent babies, children, women, men and queer in Gaza. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and of Reconciliation, is forgotten and months of death and suffering for Israel’s and Palestine’s babies, children, women, men and queer are dominating the presence. The celebration of the hope for the reconciliation at the end of times becomes absurd under these conditions of violence and annihilate the celebration of the liberation and rescue of Israel from Egypt, the celebration of the Passover. Celebrating Passover includes the self-obligation to fight for one’s integrity, freedom, and dignity. For years the political leaders neglected their duty to care for the security of Israel’s population, engaged in crippling the democratic control institutions of checks and balances and turned from fighting for one’s freedom and dignity to the suppression of the freedom of Palestinians and the protection of illegal settlements in the West Jordan land and settlers who hate and fight Palestinians.

The Christians celebrate their Passover as Eucharist, the remembering of the Passion and resurrection of their Lord Jesus Christ. I experienced the celebration of the daily Eucharist as assessment of my integrity, as sharing and taking part in the testimonies from the participants in the Eucharist who all celebrated to assess their integrity and dignity. These celebrations of empathy and dignity spanned a couple of years. Decades of liturgical celebrations of the Eucharist followed in Roman Catholic Churches, where the hierarchical monopole to run the service of the male celibate priest, the rigid ritual and exclusion of the participation of the faithful from celebrating with equal dignity, freedom, and rights, scared me off any such unworthy assemblies.

To recognize the sign of Jonah, the Passion and resurrection of Jesus Christ in our days, needs empathy. In kindergarten I was the only child feeling pity with the suffering Jesus, and the old Sister of the Congregation of the Holy Cross despaired over the dullness of the awful children. The children were not awful, they just had no chance hearing stories about the Passion and testimonies about suffering. In seventh grade I was the only in class to recognize that the story is about the suffering of Jesus, when our German teacher read to us from a medieval Passion game. I was a child, when hearing testimonies of suffering and the story of Jesus. For Christians, Jesus Christ is the sign of Jonah, and what we did to one of the least of the sisters or brothers of Jesus, we did to him. Jesus Christ says at the Last Judgement “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you made me welcome, lacking clothes and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to see me” (Matthew 25, 35-36. The New Jerusalem Bible).

If Jesus uses the picture of the sign of Jonah, he makes us remember the final Jubilee, the Last Judgment as the reconciliation of all people with Go’d and with themselves. If John XXIII insists that the Catholic Church recognizes the sign of the times, that is the sign of Jonah, the Good Pope, as the people called John XXIII, speaks of world peace and justice and the vocation of the Catholics to proclaim, and realize justice and peace as the works of Go’d.

Historians cannot inform much about the queen of Sheba who visited Salomon’s court at the head of a camel caravan bearing gold, jewels, and spices. We do not know the location of Sheba. Was it Saba, the home of the Sabeans, who occupied the southwestern part of the Arabian Peninsula and the territory of eastern Ethiopia? I am very skeptical about the claims that many women had ruled in Egypt and Assyria, but in Sheba, women played an important role in society and were equal to men in nearly all spheres, with civil, religious, and military rights and duties much like a man’s (Fletcher, Elizabeth. 2006. “Solomon meets his Match.” Bible Women Study Guide. http://www.womeninthebible.net/women-bible-old-new-testaments/queen-of-sheba). Fletcher is not a biblical scholar or a historian of ancient Israel, she is a Christian woman who gave college courses on Christian religion and works to make the women in the Bible visible and known (ibid.). The historians must reconstruct the fight to end discrimination against women, and historic research often contradicts wishful thinking. What is true is the fact that we find the queen of Sheba in the Hebrew Bible and in the Gospel of Luke. No biblical scholar or ancient historian would deny that king Salomon had lived. But what was the cause of his enormous riches and fame? Was he able to cooperate with his enemies on a peaceful basis? Did he do business with his mighty rivals from Edomite and trade the copper from their mines for olives, oil, cereal and fish? Did his wisdom consist precisely in his strategy of peace, as his name suggests? We do not know. We do not get access to the real history of David and Salomon through the Hebrew Bible (Barstad, Hans M. 2008. History and the Hebrew Bible. Studies in Ancient Israelite and Ancient Near Eastern Historiography. 19. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck). The narratives of the Hebrew Bible contain both fact and fiction at the same time and to tell what fact is and what is fiction or theology, we need the collaboration of many historians (ibid. 21). Barstad does not list the facts, the fiction, and the theology. He presents some hints and suggestions like “a God who rewards and punishes his people was not created by the ancient Israelites”, or the Hebrew Bible is full of the common theology of the ancient Near East concerning concepts like law, treaty, war, territory, king, and God (ibid. 63). Further, the tellers of stories in the Hebrew Bible write with the reuse of ancient traditions to make a point for contemporary society (ibid. 37). The research and study of the history of ancient Israel is interesting, but I must limit myself trying to get the point the authors of the Bible wanted to communicate.

According to the Hebrew Bible, the queen of Sheba visits Solomon because she did not believe the reports she heard about the wisdom of Solomon (1 Kings 10, 7). She came to Jerusalem and discussed with Salomon “everything that she had in mind” (1 Kings 10, 2). She got answers to all her questions, she acknowledged the wisdom of Salomon’s handling the affairs of government and the exchange of precious presents and goods impressively proves Salomon’s mastery of diplomacy at the benefit of Israel and the queen of Sheba who proclaims. “Blessed be Yahweh your God who has shown you his favor by setting you on the throne of Israel! Because of Yahweh’s everlasting love for Israel, he has made you king to administer law and justice” (1 Kings 10, 9).

Luke wants to make his readers believe in Jesus Christ, the Messiah of Go’d for women, men and queer on this earth, as the queen of Sheba believed in the wisdom of Solomon and praised Yahweh for Her love, giving Israel a king who administers law and justice. For Luke Jesus Christ again is a king who administers law and justice and again there is the connection with the Day of Judgement and Go’d’s love and mercy.

Just as the queen of Sheba has no difficulty relating to Solomon, and as Jonah finally relates to the people of Nineveh, the Samaritan relates to the wounded and robbed man, and Luke shows that Jesus had also succeeded in relating to the lawyer (Luke 10, 29 – 37). The lawyer had been asking Jesus for eternal life, “Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10, 25). Luke evidently knew about the connection of the Law and eternal life in the last times that the Rabbis discussed. Luke makes Jesus join the justice function of the Law with life just as the Rabbis claim that Go’d does not forget his creation and converts his justice into mercy (Plietzsch 2005, 79). The Rabbis taught that Yahweh had written down the Torah to give life and Yahweh will do mercy in the final judgement and liberate Israel again and for all times.

Jesus assesses the great commandment (Luke 10, 25–28), the answer of the lawyer. The lawyer answers with Deuteronomy 6, 5 and Leviticus 19, 18: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself”. Jesus assesses the answer of the lawyer: “You have answered right, do this and life is yours”.

I will meditate on the Passion narrative to convert myself to the way Jesus Christ who realizes the great commandment. I need this daily meditation to turn to the way of Jesus Christ, to follow my path of the daily routine. The next day I will have to turn again to the way of Jesus Christ. Feeling ok, assessing one’s integrity, and experiencing inner peace from Go’d has to be completed by the meditation of the way of Jesus Christ fulfilling the great commandment. At the last day of 2023, I am not any more speaking of meditation and prayer as empowerment for realizing my relating to women, men and queer in a way of peace and justice. The last day of the year 2023 I am meditating, and I am thankful assessing my integrity once again in meditating the Passion. Concerning peaceful relationships with the women, men and queer surrounding me, I rather hope for reconciliation, for forgiveness, and for a new beginning, than feeling empowered to realize many social choices of faith and love.