HAPPY FEAST OF THE MOST SACRED HEART

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

Remembering St. Barnabas: June 11, 2015

Acts 11:21b-26, 13:1-3; Mt 10: 7-13

Barnabas, is a great personality we find in the beginnings of the Apostolic Communities. Two things that strike us from this person are:

His total dedication to the Lord: He is one of the first ones mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles as having had sold his properties and brought them to the feet of the Apostles (Acts 4:37). We find him as fearless as Paul in the ministry that they would for a long time do together as companions on the move. And a tradition holds that he was dragged out of the synagogue as he was disputing on the Word with the  Jews and stoned to death! He spared not even his life for the sake of the Word.

His undisputed priority for God:  Barnabas gave an undisputed first place to God and God's Word. Nothing else came before that... the greatest enemy that vies for the place of God in our life is our SELF, our Ego and Barnabas kept it far away from prominence. As we see in the first reading today, though he himself was a famous man, a man loved by all, when he brought Paul to the limelight, he took a secondary place and never vied for name or fame! He was actually Joseph but was called 'the son of encouragement' that is, Barnabas, by the apostles! He encouraged the apostles and the people in their radical living of their vocation as God's people. Leaving our ego aside, is such an important task within the mission of following the Lord. If only this happens in our families, in our faith communities, in religious communities and every type of relationship, how concrete and challenging our witness would become!

WORD 2day: 10th June 2015

A sure ground to stand on

Wednesday,  10th week in Ordinary Time, 2015
2 Cor 3: 4-11; Mt 5: 17-19

One commercial I so vividly remember from my childhood is about the 2 minute noodle! Its alarming to see  all that is going on in its regards today. What was good one day, is not good any more. What seems true today is soon proved a lie. A court finds one gravely guilty,  a higher court acquits the same person as totally innocent! Can we base our life on facts as flimsy as these?

The readings today offer us the only sure foundation we have: the foundation that Jesus referred to as the foundation of rock, the foundation of the Word and the Holy Will of God.  At times people place so much of confidence in persons who are around that when they feel let down they feel as if the whole earth under their feet is giving way. We have nothing to assail us because we have a great wall of defence,  a sure foundation in the Lord. Let us realise,  we are standing on the promises of God!

WORD 2day: 9th June, 2015

Salt, Light and an Yes!

Tuesday,  10th week in Ordinary Time

2 Cor 1: 18-22; Mt 5: 13-16

There is a close relationship between being salt, being light and saying an Yes to the Lord! To say Yes to the Lord means to be like the salt... totally dissolving oneself in the yes that is said, choosing to remain insignificant and hidden but making a difference in the entire reality! To say Yes to the Lord means to be like the light... remaining in your respect bright and burning, not counting the cost in melting yourself down or burning yourself up for the sake of the yes that you have given the Lord. The first reading places it plain and clear in front of us.

Jesus was never an yes and a no! He was always yes! And that is what he wants us to be - to entrust ourselves totally in the hands of God and be an yes always! That requires an enormous faith and relentless hope, filling us with a matchless love for God and God's ways.

WORD 2day: 8th June, 2015

Encouragement: A Spirituality of memories and promises!
Monday,  10th week in Ordinary Time

2 Cor 1: 1-7; Mt 5: 1-12

Fear not, Take heart,  Be firm... these are some exhortations that we find in abundance in the Word of God. St. Paul explains to us today why it is so.

As people of God and in union with God we are constantly encouraged,  that is filled with courage for times that can be trying, filled with an inner joy even in the face of troubles, filled with hope even at the so called times of despair. This is so because of a past that is so filled with care and concern on the part of God and a future the seems so heavenly.

The Word today draws on the past and the future to instruct us that a life that is filed with God, the memories of God and the promises of God,  will be a life of Courage and Commitment.

HE COMES TO STAY

Solemnity of Corpus Christi: 7th June, 2015

Exo 24:3-8; Heb 9: 11-15; Mk 14: 12-16, 22-26

The Feast of Corpus Christi reminds us of a drastic decision that God made in our favour! God loved us, God came amidst us and God came to stay with us! The solemnity that we celebrate today explicates this decision inspiring in us a similar attitude as we live our daily life.

That decision to stay with us is a Covenantal Presence... As St. Paul writes to Timothy, even if we are unfaithful, God is faithful forever. God has made a covenant with us through the very body and blood of God's Son, and that covenant is, to be with us forever!

The decision to stay with us is a desire for Corporal Union... Our Lord and Saviour becomes one with us, unites in our bodily existence too, enabling us to say, It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. It is a decision to be in us forever!

The decision to stay with us is  Concrete Commitment that the Lord take on our behalf; that we may be saved, sanctified and brought back to God. It is a call that Christ gives us to offer ourselves entirely to God, in every thing we are and everything we do. This is my body; this is my blood which shall be shed for you, says the Lord. It is a concrete commitment the Lord makes to be forever for us! 

WORD 2day: 6th June, 2015

GOD SEES YOU

Saturday, 9th week in  Ordinary time

Tob 12: 1, 5-15, 20; Mk 12: 38-44

St. John Bosco, a great apostle of the young in devising his method of working with the young, used what his mother Margaret taught him always at home when he was a boy: God Sees You, she used to often repeat.Don Bosco, later in the Oratory while living with those street kids and rest of the ruffian friends of his, wrote this truth in prominent places and instilled that feeling in his boys.

The readings today seem to hint at this truth and call our attention to living our life conscientiously. The widow never realised that Jesus was looking at her, and praising her act in front of his disciples. But Jesus saw her, saw what she did, and more that that saw what she was - the mind and the heart behind the 2 pences that were dropped in the box. Tobit, or even Tobiah, did not realise that the one who accompanied on the way was the Angel of God, the hand of God, the extension of God's presence. But God was there looking at everything that they were going through and the way they were living their life.

It is not pleasing the eyes of those around us, establishing a name among our fellow beings, publicising our goodness and generosity and things of that sort that will give us true and lasting happiness. it is only the watchful and undeceived eyes of God that see us, that will grant us meaning in life. It is a beautiful childlike spirituality to live mindful of the fact that GOD SEES YOU. 

WORD 2day: 5 th June, 2015

Identifying the True Lord

Friday,  9th week in Ordinary Time

Tob 11;5-17;Mk 12: 35-47

A few days back a friend of mine was having a good sport reading out the predictions based on zodiac signs and at times we were surprised at the pricision that emerged in those predictions. There was a kind of temptation to even believe, that it may after all be true that these constellations have a kind of influence on our personality and our eventualities.

True faith in God consists in seeing through all these creaturely order and logical wisdom, and acknowledging the true Lordship - the absolute and sovereign Lord our God! Tobit sings a hymn of glory and praise to the Lord for the great things that happened in his life, for his son and for his daughter in law.

Jesus challenges us to see beyond the apparent and identify the True Lord. That is a gift of faith that the Spirit alone can give us. Let us thirst for that grace all our life!

WORD 2day: 4th June, 2015

Love... do we understand it at all? 

Thursday,  9th week in Ordinary Time

Tb 6:10-11; 7:1bcde, 9-17; 8:4-9a; Mk 12: 28-34

Two unfortunate sharings I heard recently: one about a husband who decided to disown his wife an year after their wedding,  because she was diagnosed with a serious illness; the second a religious who said she had not spoken for the past four years with another sister living with her in the same convent. These two and many such experiences raise a fundamental doubt: are we truly Christian? Have we really immersed ourselves into the mystery that God is? God is love and if we are born of God we should love.

While the Gospel reiterates this call that each of us has received,  in the first reading today we have a typical example in the person of Tobiah. Once he decides that he loves Sarah,  nothing deters him from growing in that perfection. He is told how fatal it can be if he loves Sarah,  but he does not hesitate. The reason is, he believed that Sarah was brought into his life by God.

Love is not merely a feeling;  it is an act of faith. To look at every person around me and see and believe that God has given me that person,  that brother or that sister, to love- that is the secret. That is true Christian love: does the world today, does every Christian today, do I today,  really understand it at all?

WORD 2day : 2nd June, 2015

To see or not to see

Tuesday,9th week in Ordinary Time

Tob 2: 9-14; Mk 12: 13-17

Tobit loses his sight and lives so for four years or so. Even that did not disturb his wife much but the question she asks him, 'where is all your charity?', brings out the crux of the message today. It is truly charity that helps us see persons as they are. In charity we decide whether to see or not, persons as they are instead of fixing them into the peg holes we have made for each of them. Judgements are the first enemies of charity and that is why Blessed Mother Teresa made that statement: if you judge, you have no time to love!

The Pharisees and the Scribes hated Jesus to the core because he was exposing their hypocrisy,  their stubbornness of heart,  their decision not to see,  because they wanted to prove their judgement that Jesus was a fake messiah! Even after reports and experiences of the goodness of the Lord,  they refused to see,  or decided not to see!

How far do you really see?  Does the sight giving charity reside in your hearts?