This week-end I experienced how true it is that when you share an experience you do not only receive a whole audience lending you an ear, but also a good number of listeners eager to share their own experiences and stories.

I chose to put my finger on what is a common experience. Everybody has, one day or another observed the way animals eat. They take a bite and almost at the same time try to drive away any other animal which tempts to approach its food. If an animal is surrounded by other animals, the first thing they do is to try to be the first to get hold of the food. The animal that succeeds, immediately runs away to some lonely place at enjoys its food. If an animal is that hungery, it can even fight its own offspring away. That is why, when we notice certain people sometimes, the way they eat, by themselves, without any manners, as if they are afraid that somebody might ask to share with them, we say: “Look at him! He is like an animal!”

In an aging population, we very often hear about old and lonely people, sometimes abondoned by their very relatives, whose only company would be a cat or a dog. And this leads many to express the sad and humiliating cry: “The animals are better than human beings!”

Last week, the whole of Japan was shocked at the news of the finding of a mummified body of an old man lying on his bed after being dead for thirty years! For all those years the government had been issueing his pension to be cashed by the old man’s daughter, who had abondoned him!

Recently, some sisters opened the testament of their late aunty to take the shock of their lives, because she left the cats as her sole heirs of some 60,000$! The reason she gave in the will was that they were only the cats her sole company!

I am sure that everybody has his own stories or experiences to share, illustrating how many human beings behave like animals, and maybe even worse, and how in many aspects animals behave better than human beings!

One man told me of his nephews who are vegiterians, because they are against the killing of animals; yet, they are in favour of abortion!

If we can no longer distinguish between an animal and a human being, no wonder we cannot decipher what is going on in our culture.

Does not our socializing with animals confirm the definition of human being given by the great philosopher Aristotle? The human being is a social animal. In fact, we human beings seek to socialize ourselves with animals, not them! Does not our socializing with animals illustrate our loss of hope in humanity, in the human being, even in ourselves? What led us to betray our social conscience?

Now, permit me to say a word to myself, and to whoever feels and considers himself religious like me. Are we not betrying our religious experience if we maintain devotional talk and seeking devotional and mystical piety without changing our attitude towards the human beings around us? How is it we can no longer discern visions and dreams we have? Can God, Jesus Christ, His Saints, including Our Lady, and His Angels, ever change their mind and cease listening to the cry of the poor and inspire their faithful to do the same? Because if we forget what Moses and his Torah taught us – that God created man in His own image and likeness – and what the Prophets announced continuously – that God prefers a contrite heart rather than all the sacrifices – then we eventually loose our social conscience. And ours will be a more serious lie.