The Lord’s Prayer and Monadology

――Joseph Ratzinger, formerly Pope Benedict XVI, returned to heaven on 31 December 2022. Before his death he published Jesus of Nazareth, another major work. One of the three volumes was published during his pontificate – his commentary will be used to develop the meaning of the words of prayer and Leibniz’s planned harmonies and monads.

First

If the Lord’s Prayer, which I recite daily, allows for both Obedience and Desire, when will my words become sacred? No one can decide that. Prayer has the skyline of the human heart. That is the analogue of human beings, and that is why Descartes’ cogito ergosum is not enough, and there is always me who is not aware of it. The words I chant are more complete than my awareness. That is the language of prayer. The unaware I, the ” small I”, is Leibnizian in its monadic nature. A typical Catholic language of prayer is described as.

　Prayer is not only directed to God, but also questions the depths of the self. Naturally, we find ourselves constantly questioning who it is that we are praying to, the ‘I’. Many commentaries on prayer say, “Do not pray so that you can be seen in public” (Matthew 6), but for the Japanese, who have a strong sense of syncretism, it is more important to look at the self. Even though there are many desires and selfishness, it is difficult to look at one’s own identity. What the prayer confirms is ‘we’, the community. The Japanese are awakening to what they are as part of that, and to the fact that I, as part of the community, am the only one in the world.

Prayer that is merely sympathetic to a poorly thought-out community is more common today. Leibniz’s famous ‘Monad’ was difficult to serve as an example because it was less familiar than Descartes and modern philosophy. Nevertheless, I decided to write a commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, which he wrote before Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) returned from serious illness, because it was moving and reminded me of the Monad. Leibniz lived at a time when Catholics and Protestants were in conflict, but Leibniz was a man who thought of a philosophy that would bring harmony, as if preserving an unsolvable mystery.

For a person of belief, God is absolute and self-consciousness is easily a Cartesian starting point for self-consciousness, whereas for a non-believer it begins with convictions. Faith is spiritual and does not require a basis. However, it does not mean living a meaningless life. Beliefs and the faith of others do not have a window and do not intersect. But it is flexible, like the soul.　

Leibniz found micro-organisms under the microscope that could not be found with the naked eye for everything that has life, animals and plants, and that there is also an unknown universe. Since Descartes, ‘thinking’ by one’s consciousness has been the highest discovery, while in the Leibniz philosophy ‘expression’ and ‘representation’ are the basic action. Naturally, Catholic prayer is a man-centred, conscious prayer, but the fact that the phenomenon is not an ‘appearance’ (Schein ) and the action of the spirit is not an entity but a ‘subject’ was the basis of German idealism, but the reason for the existence of prayer is not an appearance, but an expression, which contains a single point, It can be said to represent the infinity of numerous diameters that compose a single point, God, including the center. (The image is not of God and man perpendicular to heaven and earth, but of a circle with God in the centre)

ⅠOur Father, who art in heaven

――This discretion, which is of the very essence of prayer, does not exclude prayer in common. The Our Father is itself a prayer uttered in the first person plural, and it is only by becoming part of the “we” of God’s children that we can reach up to him beyond the limits of this world in the first place. And yet this “we” awakens the inmost core of the person; in the act of prayer the totally personal and the communal must always pervade each other, as we will see more closely in our exposition of the Our Father.　Benedict XVI, Pope . Jesus of Nazareth (p.129). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle 版.――

How strongly can we be aware of the word Father, we cannot basically see him with the naked eye. In theology, the Lord Father is the root of all good things and the measure of a righteous (perfect) man. ‘But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. ” (Matthew 5.44 and following)

This love that loves “to the extreme” (John 13) is fulfilled in the Lord’s prayer for his enemies on the cross, and shows the essence of the Father. The Father is this love. Jesus fulfilled this love, making him fully ‘the Son’. The original of this prayer is part of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6. (Luke: 6)

It is a comprehensive statement of the right human way of being. Nevertheless, John Paul II wrote something interesting on this question of why God is not manifested before us.

From one point of view it is right to say that God revealed too much of Himself to man, too much of that which is most divine, that which is His intimate life; He revealed Himself in His Mystery. He was not mindful of the fact that such an unveiling would in a certain way obscure Him in the eyes of man, because man is not capable of withstanding an excess of the Mystery. 　Paul II, Pope John. Crossing the Threshold of Hope (p.37). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle 版.

‟Reasons certainly do exist to believe in Him; but—as many have maintained and still maintain—there are also reasons to doubt, or even deny, His existence” So, John Paul II is also quoted here in Descartes’ ‘I think, therefore I am’.‟ It states that this sprouted from the philosophy of rationalism on a different soil from Thomas Aquinas and St Thomas.” No different from St Thomas who said “for whom it is not thought which determines existence, but existence, “esse” which determines thought”.Jesus was executed because he publicly declared that he was the Son of God.  That was fair in terms of the legislation at the time. John Paul II did not hide the fact that getting too close to the mystery brings tragedy to human beings, one aspect of which he did not hide.

There is deduction and induction, but Leibniz tried to develop from simple truths by deduction. In principle, ‘Our Father’ is absolute, so there is no hypothesis. Therefore, the basis of theology is deduction. Leibniz’s rationalism developed by deduction was opposed, among other things, to empiricism. If it were derived from experience, religious rituals would not proceed, since it is a philosophy about God, from which it was not removed. He took the further position that certain perceptions were innate and derived from evidential principles.

The novel Sophie’s World tells an interesting story. A non-religious astronaut bragged that he had seen space many times but there was no God. A Christian doctor said. I have had many brain operations but no ‘thoughts’. Sophie replies. ‘But the soul cannot even be divided into two.

Thoughts are quite different from things that can be chopped up into smaller pieces, and delusions cannot be surgically removed. Leibniz said that the difference between what is made of matter and everything that emanates from the spirit is that material things can be divided into smaller parts to any extent. The soul, however, cannot be cut into there are two sides of God’s Fatherhood. The Gospels confirm that God being Father has two aspects. God is our Creator and our Father. Since he created us, we belong to God. As existence itself, it is the essence of the biblical picture of man that God created each and every human being. But what does it mean to accept this? If we try to convince ourselves of this only through ontology and empiricism, we can only create a polarisation of believing and not believing. Naturally, many people today will not believe.

＞Thinking as a monad.

　

　Humans are made up of a heart and a brain, but simply piecing them together does not create an ‘I’. So too is God, and God is not made by combining only the languages described by the various Bibles. It is fair to say that this is where the difficulty of proselytising lies. It is that causality alone is difficult for them to understand and even to exist. The empiricist Hume did not believe in the existence of angels, so he told them to burn their theology books. Leibniz was adamant about that one point, ‘God’, which cannot be spoken of by experience alone.

Monads always exist separately, independently and without windows. No matter how often a prayer is explained, there is no fixed point where the goal is. This is because it inevitably requires experience. Explanations are merely to help with feelings, but the language of prayer always exists apart from experience. Its culmination is ‘Our Father’.　

While it is possible to consider prayer only in its literal meaning, some people try to understand the details of the word by tracing it back to its etymology. They assume that all the time spent praying is worthwhile, even though their understanding is incomplete. The language of prayer emphasises what kind of people we should be and that we should be irreverent with ‘us’ rather than a heightened ‘ego’.

There is a part of us that is me. The I is inherent in us.

（I do not subscribe to any teaching that causes the loss of the ‘I’. I dislike and strongly reject such religious people）

Monadology is predicate-dominant, with the subject containing the predicate. It is the predicate that is important to God, for example, ‘God is love’. God is not prominently illuminated only by being God. We should not follow for that reason alone. We must focus on the predicate of what God is. The words of the prayer do not relegate God the Father to a star somewhere far away, but that He comes from the One Father, who is the measure and source of the Father. That God is the Father has a greater reality than all earthly fathers have.

Ⅱ hallowed be thy name

God named his existence in Exodus 3:14, “I am the one who says, ‘I am'”. There were many gods in the time of Moses in the Ten Commandments, “Thou shalt not defile the name of God”. Therefore, Moses asked God for his name in order to demonstrate God’s special authority over those gods. In the world’s view of ‘polytheism’, God has a name. God must answer as long as he is asked. The god who spoke to Moses also had to have a name.　

God could not enter the world of the gods with a name as one of them. God’s answer, “I am the one who says, ‘I am’,” expresses both agreement and rejection of Moses’ question. It is therefore correct that the name of God as presented in JHWH should not be pronounced in Israel. God’s name must not be downgraded to polytheism. That leaves the question of what God’s judgement is the Name. Names enable us to call out, but do not indicate our true nature. Adam in Genesis gave the animals names in order to call them. God also made it possible for humans to be called, and then accepted to be hurt. This makes it clear what is meant by the words of the prayer, “HALLOWED BE THY NAME”

We can cling to God in our daily lives some days and forget others. Including such lowered routines, we pray that God will be raised up with ‘HALLOWED BE THY NAME’. God’s answer to the name deserves, in monadology, to be ‘revealed’. The hidden presence of God has been revealed. It must not be a temporary representation. The name of God is not decomposed, (Monadology, v. 4) and the one who prays is doomed to neither generation nor end by God, but to perish by extinction. (ibid., v. 6) The praying side exists with a nature. Each nature must be different. (Ibid., v. 6) Each nature must be different from the other, for what happens in the composite always comes from a single element. But the praying side cannot distinguish between souls. In the single ‘God’. (ibid., v. 8) the principle of sufficient reason, why A is A and not other than A, is sufficiently fulfilled. It also follows that no proposition is just. (ibid., v. 32) While it is done only by the principle of memory, it is the same as the beast (ibid., v. 28) Today, even if it is a day of unenlightenment, experiencing and remembering are not the only means. When we pray on this day, we are praying to “God”, “the Father, the Lord”, whose presence demands the elevation of human holiness.

Ⅲ　Thy kingdom come

This passage is often misunderstood even by clergy, but even Benedict XVI did not say here that wishing for God’s kingdom will promise a paradise. If anyone, even believers, speaks of religion making them happy, they are not studying hard enough. The life of faith is not a simple matter of abandoning something and automatically moving up in status. The Kingdom of God is the rule of God, which means that God’s will is the standard for everything.

This divine will makes justice, and divine justice should be the measure of human justice. ‘But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33) These words give order of priority to all human conduct, to our behaviour in everyday life. Then everything else will be given to you” (Matthew 6:33) These words give order of priority to all human conduct, to our behaviour in everyday life. In the Old Testament, there is this story. The Lord appeared to the young king in a dream and told him to wish for whatever he liked, because he would listen to any wish. Solomon told the people to be able to judge between good and evil. God commended Solomon because he did not choose ego, but asked for what was essential. ‘May the kingdom come’ is ruled by the Lord, but to have a listening and discerning heart, that is the essential desire. He prays for the dispersed and separated humanity to judge good and evil, so that in time it will become one.

The soul is given the function by memory to seek connections between memories. This function is similar to, but distinct from, reason. It can be compared to an animal: a dog that has been hit with a stick will run away the next time (Monadology, xxvi), but humans contain contradictions and do not choose solely on the basis of causality. Humans take even God’s treatment as a trial. Like Job and Jeremiah. Even if the scene in front of them is peaceful, there is war and misery in the land of the invisible. Or perhaps he is unhappy himself. It is important to be fulfilled like the kingdom of heaven and to vow to pass justice for it. Do not pray while you sleep that when you wake up the world will have been a heavenly kingdom. To choose righteousness every day. That is what we chant. This conformity with the only one, the hope for conformity because it cannot be fulfilled, the impulse behind the rational language, the power to seek the mystery is contained in its contradiction, but I think it is pure (cf. Ibid., pp. 49-62).

Ⅵ　The will be done on earth as it is in Heaven

Numerous holy books assume that man knows the will of God in his heart, that the knowledge of God, called conscience, is deeply rooted in the heart. In Matthew 26:36-46, Jesus came to Gethsemane with his disciples and said, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray’. He was accompanied by Peter’s and the two sons of Zebedee, who were sorrowful at that time. Jesus prayed thus, saying. ‘Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. But not according to my wish, but according to your will” In this case, the cup is the cross, and Jesus was grieved that he would be killed by this wrong judgement. Therefore, he asked God’s will, not my wish. But God did not answer as Solomon did. This ‘not according to my wish but according to His will’ is taken up by Thomas Aquinas. Jesus then turns to a story about a traitor trying to kill him, and that is how we learn the will of God with Jesus.　And it is hoped that this means that even our self-love is defeated.

Aristotle held that the perfect reality is entelecheia. Leibniz states that entelecheia always has an order. (Monadology, v. 63) In simple terms, it is a plant. The plant repeats itself according to the same laws and with the same number of petals. Leibniz’s monadology deals mainly with God’s creation in verses 62 to 66. And with regard to the subsequent verses 67 to 80, it refers to what cannot be explained by order as preestablished harmony. Although this is objectionable, a preestablished harmony is a law that can’t be unravelled. No matter how abstractly and infinitely one speaks of philosophy and theology, even if prime factors are given and finer numbers are given, as in prime factorisation, they do not exceed the original natural number. For example, if we do a prime factorisation of the natural number 60, we get 2 x 2 x 3 x 5 = 60. (Only 13 is a prime factor, so the prime factorisation is 13.) However, God can be likened to the prime number ‘1’ and the natural numbers that are bracketed as prime factors are us, but as long as God is the solution, it is a mystery until we experience the solution. Prime factors are only one expression. And even if the vague view is a scheduled harmony, it is not causal or easy to understand. What God has prepared will never exceed the size of creation, no matter how much it is dismantled and divided by man. Yet the magnitude is unimaginable. To live in this world is The only clues to the mystery left by Jesus were ‘love’ and ‘justice’. It must bring the wounded closer to the ability to notice them, to reach out to them and to help them. Otherwise the kingdom of God will not come.

Ⅴ　Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us

This passage is the most ‘human’ petition in the Lord’s Prayer. To the disciples, the Lord says, “Before I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear” (Matt. 6:25), and the mission of the people is to food The mission of the people was to pray about their worries about food. Bread is the bounty of the earth, the fruit of labour. This is opposed to the arrogance of the people, who say that they realise the fertility by their own strength alone. Give us daily bread”, the Greek word for ‘daily’ is EPIOUSIOS, which can be translated in two ways. One is ‘the bread we barely need to live’ and the other is ‘the bread of the future’.

It also signifies the bread of the eschatological end. Bread is purely edible. It is difficult to realise for rice staples, but the staple food is necessary for the survival of life, and it is important in daily life that this is available. That bread, that thing, is to be the Logos. From there it becomes religious.

‘Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4) The bread increased by miracles reminds us of the miracle and shows that the original food of man is the Logos, the eternal Word of God. The eternal Logos becomes the bread of reality for man. It corresponds to the food presented to the Israelites by Moses as a gift of God. What would happen if we were to speak of it as a philosophy?　The bread that the poor wish for is a mystery that wishes for the necessities of the day, so resolution is not require.

If we dare to speak of the lack of the rule of reason, bearing in mind that this is the first condition, we begin with an account of ‘Buridan’s donkey’ (Buridan’s ass). Buridan the donkey has found a bundle of straw, his favourite food. However, Buridan also noticed another bundle of straw that he could see looking back. The donkey was clever enough to wonder which one he was going to eat. So Buridan couldn’t decide and starved to death. This is similar to the foolish consequence of starving to death because one is wise and rational, and to the fact that one should not look for a philosophical basis, doxa, in the bread of communion. This Buridan is said to be a French philosopher, but the actual source is unknown. Leibniz, however, gives it in a parable in his theodicy.　

The donkey that starved to death is foolish, but because of its foolishness, a principle emerges. When food and sacredness coincide, it means that everything loses its meaning if it is not simply accepted as daily sustenance.

Every time we pray daily, “GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD”, both the “I” who understands the meaning and the “I” who does not try to understand are uniqueness, but the relationship with God to the spirit is not simply that of inventor and machine, but like that of father and son. (Monadology, v. 84) Communion is contradicted as superstition for those without faith and absoluteness for those with faith. Tabula rasa (blank slate) exists in contradiction to eternal truth. However, feeding the poor would be in agreement with both. It is important to pray that the sustenance for the poor and our own sustenance will continue into the future, to our children and to the poor, so that holiness and life will not cease without separation.

Ⅵ　our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us

　

　Leibniz’s ‘theodicy’ addressed the differences between Protestants and Catholics. For example, he wrote not only about the conflict between Protestants and Catholics, but also about the conflict between Protestants with regard to the above-mentioned ‘bread’. In Japan, Luther is the most famous Protestant, but Friedrich Zwingli (Zwingli), who also opposed Luther, did not accept sacramentalism. He regarded the participation of Jesus Christ in the Lord’s Supper as a mere figurative expression, and in doing so made use of the philosophical principle that the body can only exist in one place at all times. Luther, on the other hand, is more faithful to the literal sense of the Bible, making it real, including supernatural mysteries. In their opinion, they rejected the doctrine of Transsubstantiation (Total Transubstantiation – the transformation of the bread and wine of the sacrament (Seisan) into the flesh and blood of Christ) rather than that arising from the biblical expression and rejected Konsubstantiatio ( consubstantiatio – Christ coexists with the bread and wine) dogma and the bread, and held these things ignorant.

Although it did not require a union of the two, they were not merely logical, but also important in fulfilling Christ’s final wish. Through faith justification, they chose to maintain the everlasting presence of the Messiah’s body. In modern times, the conflict between Catholics and Protestants goes without saying, but even in Catholicism, the desire to hear the Lord’s petition remains the same. The fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer presupposes a world of indebtedness, i.e. sin. The theme of forgiveness runs through all the Gospels, with the story of the ‘retainer who would not forgive his fellow man’ in Matthew 18. The man, a high-ranking deputy, had begged the king to forgive him a high debt, but shortly afterwards he blackmailed his fellow strangers into forgiving him a small differential debt. His swearing came to the ears of the king, who forgave him from other retainers, and he had his remission revoked. The king is a parable of the divine father, but the story does not end there.

――In chapter 23 of Luke’s Gospel, two other sinners were to be executed besides Jesus at his crucifixion.

One of the sinners cursed Jesus right up to his death, saying, “If you are the Messiah, prove it by saving yourself”. The other sinner, on the other hand, defended Jesus. Despite being in the same situation, he humbly said to Jesus, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom”. Jesus said to such a sinner. ‘“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise’.

The sinner was loved by Jesus just before his execution. Regarding Leibniz’s principle of indistinguishable = identical, Jesus and the sinner are separate entities, even though they are at the same place of execution. Separate and uncrossing clocks of destiny exist for each, but they are bonded by ‘forgiveness’. Christians say that Jesus came down to earth, the cross, whereas crucifixion is raised high for the sinner to be exposed. We know that two people with different vectors can be bonded ‘on the spot’. Unlike the cursed sinner, it is through ‘forgiveness’ that the bond is achieved. ‘Forgiveness’ is, I believe, the beautiful point of contact between Leibnizian philosophy and Catholic theology. The sinner’s turn towards good is an invisible generative change. The prayer, ‘Forgiving Evil’, is the constant wish for a change to goodness over today’s evil intentions. It contains the ‘we’, the I.

Self-awareness does not come from collectivity. The collective enjoyed executions in a state of spectatorship. Community is not a dysfunctional situation where love and justice are in sync. The ‘justice’ awakened by the sinner just before death is love for Jesus. I hope for a world in which it is pervasive, and I use it as a prayer to inspire me.

If we want to understand the petition fully and make it our own, we must go one step further and ask: What is forgiveness, really? What happens when forgiveness takes place? Guilt is a reality,……For this reason, forgiveness must be more than a matter of ignoring, of merely trying to forget. Guilt must be worked through, healed, and thus overcome. Forgiveness exacts a price—first of all from the person who forgives. Benedict XVI, Pope . Jesus of Nazareth (p.158). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle 版.

Ⅶ　and lead us not into temptation

If we are to use the language of Leibniz’s ‘theodicy’, philosophy has ensured that the meaning of words needs to be developed so that mysteries do not become empty words. Throughout the long history of the world, as long as there are words, they are disproved by inference. Once we are tempted by the theory of probability to pray correctly and find that phenomena are connected to each other, we are driven by the assumption that they are always connected. ‘Temptation’ is a stumbling block for people, including human immorality, but who is the one who tempts and leads? Temptation is certainly the devil, but there is also an interesting passage in Jeremiah 20:7.

Jeremiah20：７　Du hast mich verführt, Herr, und ich habe mich verführen lassen; du hast mich gepackt und mir Gewalt angetan. Nun spotten sie immerzu über mich, alle lachen mich aus. Denn sooft ich in deinem Auftrag rede, muss ich Unrecht anprangern. »Verbrechen!«, muss ich rufen, »Unterdrückung!« Und das bringt mir nichts als Spott und Hohn ein, Tag für Tag.

It is easier to live when you do what the masses tell you to do. That is why he lamented what God gave him as ‘temptation’. Benedict XVI used the analogy with Job, but this time I have brought out Jeremiah. It is Christian to say that temptation is the devil, but in reality the devil is more incomprehensible than God.

There is scripture in the deeds of God. Even from a philosophical perspective, despite the contradiction between eternal truth and the psychology of chance, God has a fixed point, but existence with regard to Satan does not exist as eternal truth, only as chance. Simone Weil’s ‘Creation. Good is shattered and scattered to evil” would be exactly that. It means that God’s deeds had an original form and were shattered, but the Satan’s are not. The Bible reading allows people to recognise God as common, but as for Satan, it is a coincidence of each. Light does not solve everything. Because, as in John 1, darkness avoids light without understanding it. Jeremiah was chosen by God, but he shouted because he could no longer bear the malice of the people.

In the New Testament, 1 Corinthians chapter 10 says that God doesn’t give us trials we can’t endure. This is a well-known passage even in the non-religious world, but there is a continuation to this, but we are rarely told the rest of the story. Therefore, it is misunderstood as a ‘never-give-up spirit’.

It is a continuation of this: ‘It provides a way out in times of temptation and enables us to withstand temptation’.

Regarding this item, although Benedict XVI was an excellent commentary on the story of Benedict XVI, I judge that it does not extend to practice if I am honest, including the Catholic clergy issue. Therefore, I will end by adding Simone Weil, which I have adopted in my own way. ‘To love the truth means to hold on to the vacuum and consequently to accept death. It is not difficult to imagine such idealism, although it is unclear whether there is such a thing as immunity to temptation. How can we avoid being misguided by collectivity, like a school of fish, including the mistakes of one individual?

Temptation – from what do we protect ourselves, this is a ‘mystery’ but not a ‘mystery’ to leave behind. Loving the truth, by which the soul is likely to turn to good, but still one sins. Truth is not to be kept alive simply by explaining it. If the path leading to truth is cut off, it is tantamount to death. Philosophical rationality that does not leave mysteries unexplained, that looks to mysteries that cannot be solved, this section is not particularly altruistic, rather it is self-reliant. It is an exhortation to the mind of the self, not to the outside world. ‘Awareness’ is a prayer that must not be turned away from, as in the Leibnizian philosophy, which has made it a ‘reflection’ on oneself.

Ⅷ　but deliver us from evil.

　Many people may not even understand Leibniz’s monadology in terms of the soul having no windows. The explanation of monadology itself is straightforward but difficult to understand. It is much like the language of prayer. If you read theodicy, you will be exposed to Leibniz’s view of religion and the meaning of the monad will be more profound, but the monadology is disconnected. ‘theodicy’ and other books are only what he calls experience, accidental truths, but he wanted monadology to be an adjunct to eternal truths. I think it was to adapt it to any age, as it applies to today.

The words of the Lord’s Prayer are simple and can be taken verbatim. It contains the basis of modern morality. As for theology, it seems to be decided what evil is meant here. It seems to mean political evil, scepticism and save us from the evil that ensnares Christians. However, it makes sense to me that the words of the prayer itself do not specify the ‘forces of evil’ or the ‘evil one’. In Greek philosophy, faith was equated with doxa (speculation), which was lower than knowledge. Ancient Greek sexual life was unique, and love between men was considered to be the real thing. Women were only child bearers, and even if a woman had both knowledge and beauty, her status was not superior to that of a man. My writing in this way was, in ancient times, ‘evil’. Evil is subject to current trends.

In reality evil is not always as symbolic as the dragon of the Apocalypse. It is important to rationalise for once that Jesus Christ was not falsely executed. That was the law back then, not false accusations. Plants are determined to repeat themselves with regularity in the number of petals and leaves, but no two flowers are the same. The law also has existed since ancient times that one must not commit murder, but it is not exactly the same as it was in ancient times. The words of the prayer also return to the third time with these words: ‘THY KINGDOM COME’. But this is not a simple repetition. We cannot know the words in the Bible or the truths we have learned, even if we scrape them together. But as we learn more and more, we come to know Jeremiah and many other sufferings and absurdities. We must pray that our desire is not more superficial.

Last: Division does not keep simple love alive.

This time, during Benedict XVI’s critical condition, he bought the remaining copy of a three-volume book called Jesus of Nazareth, which contained a commentary on the Lord’s Prayer. While I was reading it, he died on 31 December 2022. My only impression was this. ‘The Bible says that God calls each of us by a name that no one else knows’ (Revelation 2:17), he was quoted as saying, and just as I was reading that passage I came across the news of his death. I started out only wanting to write down my one word impression, “Did God call him a name that a man as wise as he was did not know? :This is the monad that is impossible to know by memory.　I only knew him in books, but I liked books. Maybe that is only part of what makes him up, but I am grateful that he left us books. I loved his books. He wrote seven petitions from the Gospel of Matthew. Three are prayers that call out to ‘you’, four are wishes for ‘us’ and the remaining four are wishes about hope, desire and need.　

Having used monadology for simple romance was a consideration due to the unresolved Catholic scandals. Therefore, I could not write the mystery as simply wonderful. There is no fear of criticism from those around me now. Indeed, holiness is truth. However, experience inhibits words of truth when they are ‘hypocritical’. Words distorted by it stink. Just as Benedict XVI himself built a new theology for the harmony of the world’s divisions, so did Leibniz, who saw the corruption and strife in the clergy. What he should have simply looked at God alone, he tried to look at man. What to do with ugly human beings, what to do with precious human beings, what to do with the enigmatic ‘monad’ that neither enhances nor diminishes their value. That act and my current state of mind overlap.

Love simply cannot live in a divided world. It is as easy as possible to say that even injustice is love. Love must live in contradiction with justice. Contradictions, when tamed, are a cradle of stability. Don’t be the kind of person who can sleep peacefully, turning away from those who are suffering in front of you, Leibniz said. ‘We are left with micronised considerations, all the way down to ‘desires’ that we are not even consciously conscious about. ‘Deliver us from evil, that we may always be aware, and that someone in need may be saved.’ Rest to those who are suffering, and may the day when we are released from our burdens, the day when we are called by a name that only God knows, not be a day of sorrow. On that day, may we keep awake to the fact that it is a joyous day.

Amen.

Reference

G.W Leibniz

Monadologie Racle, -German.

Discours de métaphysique.

Versuche in der Theodicée über die Güte Gottes, die Freiheit des Menschen und den Ursprung des Übels: Philosophische Werke Band 4 (Philosophische Bibliothek 499) (German Edition) 

Was das Begreifen anlangt, so pflichte ich ihm  hierin bei, habe aber schon gezeigt, daß die Mysterien eine Entwicklung des Wortsinnes erheischen, um nicht sine mente soni, leere  Worte zu sein: und ich habe auch gezeigt, wie notwendig es ist,  auf Einwürfe antworten zu können, da andernfalls die These verworfen werden müßte.   Er zitiert theologische

. Er zitiert theologische Autoritäten, welche die Unauflöslichkeit der gegen die Mysterien gerichteten Einwände anzuerkennen scheinen. Einer der ersten ist Luther. Ich habe schon im S 12

sowenig wie die Träume. Wir täuschen uns selbst durch den Gebrauch, den wir davon machen, d. h. durch unsere Folgerungen.  Wir lassen uns eben durch Wahrscheinlichkeitsargumente verführen und dadurch werden wir zu der Annahme getrieben, so wie  wir die Phänomene oft miteinander verbunden gefunden haben,  so müßten sie immer verbunden sein. Da nun alles, was keine Ecken  zu haben scheint, für gewöhnlich auch wirklich keine hat, glauben wir leicht, es müßte sich immer so verhalten. Ein solcher Irrtum ist verzeihlich und zuweilen unvermeidlich, wenn wir rasch  handeln und das Wahrscheinlichste wählen müssen; haben wir aber  Muße und Zeit zur Sammlung, so begehen wir einen Fehler, wenn  wir das als sicher hinstellen, was dies gar nicht ist. Die sinnliche  Erscheinung befindet sich also oft mit der Wahrheit im Widerspruch, aber unser Urteilsvermögen niemals, wenn es genau den  Denkgesetzen gemäß gebraucht wird. Versteht man unter Vernunft  ganz allgemein die Fähigkeit, schlecht und recht zu räsonieren, dann  gebe ich zu, sie vermag uns zu täuschen und täuscht uns auch wirklich, und zwar sind die Erscheinungen unseres Verstandes ebenso  oft täuschend wie die der Sinne: aber es handelt sich hier um die  Verkettung der Wahrheiten und um Einwürfe in schulgerechter  Form, und in diesem Sinne kann uns die Vernunft unmöglich täuschen.

Dort spendet Gott Gnade und Erbarmen den Unwürdigen;  hier spendet er Zorn und Strenge denen, die sie nicht verdient haben;  an beiden Stellen zu heftig und unbillig mit Bezug auf die Menschen,  aber gerecht und wahrhaft mit Bezug auf sich selbst.

Denn wie das  gerecht sein soll, daß er Unwürdige krönt, ist jetzt zwar unbegreiflich, aber wir werden es erkennen, wenn wir dorthin kommen, wo  man nicht mehr glauben, sondern das Offenbarte mit eignen Augen  schauen wird. Wie es daher gerecht sein soll, daß er die verdammt,  welche es nicht verdienen, muß solange geglaubt werden, bis es der  Menschensohn uns offenbaren wird.