Michel Cuypers, a Belgian, is a Brother of Jesus, the religious community founded in the twentieth century by Charles de Foucauld. Cuypers resided in Iran for twelve years, first at a leper colony in Tabriz, and later studying Persian language and literature in Teheran. He obtained a doctorate in Persian literature from the University of Teheran in 1983. He studied Arabic in Syria and Egypt, and in 1989 he moved to Cairo, where he presently resides. Cuypers is a researcher and professor at the ...
People are our greatest assets; persons are our best-loved gifts. We treasure people and particular persons for the varied ways in which they enrich our lives and bring out the best in us. Persons Are Our Best Gifts is a treasury of "people-gifts"—a collection of over one hundred inspiring and motivational “stories-with-a-difference” centered on personality and relationships.
Words for reflection and reconciliation
The provoking proposal of Jesu
Part I: Compassion as a principle of action
The research on Jesus reaches a fairly widespread conclusion. Jesus of Nazareth was a man, perhaps the only one, who lived and communicated a sane experience of God, without distorting it with the fears, ambition and fantasies which different religions ordinarily project on to the divinity.
Jesus never speaks of God as indifferent or distant, uninvolved with the life of human beings or interested only in his honor, his glory and his rights. At the heart of his experience we do not find the image of a lawgiver God who wants to govern the world through laws, while threatening his creatures with terrible punishments or winning them over with wonderful rewards. Neither does he experience God as a righteous being annoyed and angry at the sight of our sins.
