Desiderius Erasmus, master of Europe but not of the European Union direction. Some of his perennial views and teachings.

                                    

 In these times of so great batle for the manipulation and control of Mankind by some groups and ideologies, it is worth to reflect or ponder on some aspect of  the path of life and teachings of Erasmus. Anthropologically, Erasmus sees the human being as triune: animal body, human soul, divine spirit, and it is in their fruitful balance that results either our advance or not towards the fulfilment of our mission in life and towards the highest good in general, called joy, or love, connection or union with God, salvation, liberation....

The human being in general seeks happiness, but the body wants it in its own instinctual ways, the soul goes through its affections and passions, the mind thinks and questions rationally, but it is the discernment coming from the spark of the spirit, obtained either through intelligence or intuition gained in prayer and meditation, that he can  coordinate and orientate better the different levels of being through the exertion of the will and stabilization of psyche. 

This is why we need constantly to apply the will over the circunstances (fiat voluntas Tua) and study and work on our self-examination and intelligence so that we are not mislead by our own limitations neither manipulated and deceived by so many unethical and corrupt people, in order that Wisdom can grow in our individuation, allowing us to discern and implement the most correct and fruitful responses to life's interrelationships and challenges, and so connect more with the spirit, and the unified field of the divine anima mundi.
Human beings are not born men or women, but are made, grow and develop, particularly in terms of sensitivity, abilities, virtues, inner light, self-awareness and individuality. Underlying life is there an art of overcoming and harmonising obstacles and resistances, tendencies and weaknesses, extracting the beauty, truth and values from all the trials and difficulties, either in the instinticve, afective or intelectual levels.
 Saint Ignatius of Loyola told his disciples, the first Jesuits, not to read Erasmus because it chilled the faith. In our days the European Union forbids many channel of information from Russia to be read or seen. But the fact is that we can not hide all the time the truth, and Desiderius Erasmus was such a cultured person, and knew so much about the message of Jesus or, as he called it, the philosophia christi, as well as the heresies and differences of ideas that occurred throughout the centuries of Christianity, that anyone who read him would certainly increase the reason or Logos in themselves, because when confronted with so many versions he would naturally have to exercise the discernment and generate a personal gnosis, all the more so because Erasmus' erudite rational lucidity and search for the truth was so great that something of it was passed on to those who read  and study him with love or more perseverance. 

When I read or meditate on him, I subtly feel something of communion with the lucid and demystifying forces of the author of the Praise of Folly, the Adagia and the Colloquies. The problem is that within institutions and particulary in the Catholic Church and its narratives, doctrines and history, we are confronted with some imaginations or even nonsense that we can begin to question what even Erasmus seemed to admit, but which with our more informed rationalism as citizens of the 21st century, no longer constrained by the long unanimous tradition of the Church, perhaps still venerated in certain cases too much by Erasmus, we more naturally doubt or question. However, I won't go into these aspects now and that will be for another text.
At the time, the Church's theology and dogma controlled education, science, reason and politics in Europe. It was the Renaissance and the Reformation that dealt the first major blows to the monopoly of education and worldview, which had in its base the old Judeo-Christian one, in some aspectos so patriarchal and violent, and which was still burdened with the fanaticism of inquisitors and censors who dared to kill geniuses like Giordano Bruno, Michael Servetus, Friar Valentine of the Light, or to imprison Pico della Mirandola and Damião de Goes, or to censor thousands of others.
Erasmus in his path was attacked a lot, especially after he dared to publish a new translation of the New Testament in 1515, by some of the more reactionary Dominicans, such as the Castilian Zúñiga, and Cardinal Girolamo Aleandro, but since his wisdom and lucidity were immense and he knew how to defend himself well, they had to keep quiet, even on papal orders, since it was to Erasmus that Popes Leo X, Adrian VI and Clement VIII turned with the request that he confront Luther and unmask him. Erasmus waited, because there were aspects of the Reformation that were valid and necessary, and it was only when Luther and the reformers went into more violence and radical oppression of Christian forms of worship, that in 1524 he challenged him. Of course Luther didn't like it at all and replied, and the polemic stirred up Christendom, although Erasmus wrote above all in philosophically and ethically levels and in the field of free will, which Luther, in an exaggerated reliance on faith in the God of the Scriptures as salvific, considered non-existent in human beings, since their salvation was already predestined or not by divine grace alone, with human individuality and freedom counting for little or nothing.
For Erasmus, it was different: every human being has to make himself, has to save himself by his actions, thoughts and feelings and this salvation is the construction of the divine temple or a grail that is receptive in each person's heart and where the divine spirit must descend and fill us with light, love and wisdom, which are then shared in community, in prayers, in efforts and creations, and above all in common sense and love for our neighbour, family, humanity and the common good.
Let us in our days of so many and superficial information know how to commune with  Erasmus and the others who raised and filled the cup of the Holy Grail of the currents of Divine Love and Wisdom and  pour or emanate them for a harmonious, free and multipolar Humanity, which today as in the past is always threatened by those who want to control it, manipulate it and infrahumanise it.  Lux Dei.