Paul Coutinho, SJ
In the News
Articles
Do You React or Respond to Life?
I give you this example to demonstrate the power of our beliefs. Emotions are not caused by situations. Emotions are caused by our beliefs about situations, beliefs that color our perception and our understanding of events. In this example, the children are still jumping up and down and shouting, but some of us have moved from being upset to feeling sad, compassionate, and concerned.
The Enslaving Illusion of Love
Love is one of the greatest illusions that people have. This illusion of love is often the biggest obstacle to our relationship with God and to our greater and deeper experience of the Divine.
Embrace Your Easter Darkness
Jesus gives us a key to experiencing Easter in our daily lives when he says to Nicodemus: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14–15). Easter is experienced in the serpent and in the cross, in those things that could kill us or in situations that we are most afraid of.
When we confront the reality of fear or death in any form, we begin to get an insight into what life is all about and how we can live our lives most effectively as an Easter person. The loss of a relationship or a job, failure in an exam, or a terminal illness throws us into darkness where we can experience life as it really is. In darkness, we go beyond the thoughts in our minds or the feelings in our hearts. We experience an intuitive insight into the mystery of life.
In the Gospels, it is the women who, through their intuitiveness, experience without a doubt the reality of Easter. The women venture out to Jesus’ tomb when darkness hovers all over the earth. It is this same darkness in the very first verse of the Bible, the darkness where the Spirit and energy of God is alive. It is also in the night sky that the Magi discover the source of Eternal Life, and so do the shepherds.
A holy person once sat at the entrance of a cave and promised that anyone going into that cave would see the face of the Divine. But there was one condition: they had to have their eyes plucked out before they entered the cave so they could have a clear vision of Reality without the influence of their past beliefs, traditions, and prejudices. So it was with Paul. When he was struck blind at Damascus, he experienced the Divine and, when something like fish scales fell from his eyes, he lived like a new person with a new vision of himself and of life. He experienced every human as a Divine heir, and he made no distinction between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female.
Paul Coutinho, SJ
Interviews
Dr. Lara Honos-Webb, host of The Sweet Spot podcast, interviews Fr. Paul Coutinho, S.J., author of Just As You Are: Opening Your Life To the Infinite Love of God published by Loyola Press.
Paul Coutinho, SJ, talks to Frank Morock, of the Catholic Communication Campaign, about his latest book Just As You Are. This interview is from episode #912 on March 15, 2009.
Dr. Lara Honos-Webb, host of The Sweet Spot Podcast, interviews Fr. Paul Coutinho, SJ, author of How Big Is Your God?: The Freedom to Experience the Divine published by Loyola Press.