The crux of Christian living

WORD 2day: Thursday, 23rd week in Ordinary time

September 10, 2020: 1 Corinthians 8: 1b-7, 11-13; Luke 6: 27-38

The Word today has a practical summary for Christian living; it offers for our consideration and reflection, the crux of being a true Christ-ian: LOVE, love in all its concrete sense. In fact in the context of the first letter to the Corinthians, that we are reading these days, St. Paul is slowly building up and drawing the attention of the followers of Christ towards the presentation of the all important hymn of love, which he will do in a few chapters from here. 

Christian life has to be defined by love: love understood as sensitivity towards the weak and vulnerable; love understood as the compassion towards the needy and suffering; love understood as a non judgmental acceptance of the other; love understood as giving without counting; love understood as going an extra mile; love understood as forgiveness and love understood as relationship shared in the One God, the One Father and Mother of all. 

At times it might look very simplistic to propose love as the solution for all problems in life, but giving a serious thought to it, everything boils down to that. Love is the only answer to all problems in life, in the world and in the whole of existence. Just as in this week's general audience, the Wednesday Catechesis, the Holy Father reiterated love as the solution to all problems in the world today: be they political or international or even that of the pandemic... finding solution in solidarity! 

True love (let us not forget, only what is true, is love)... true love alone can set the world back to its perfect mode of happiness and meaning. Anything else can  find only pseudo remedies and temporary face-lifts. It is love and love alone that can offer true salvation to humankind - this is the message we as followers of Christ are called to live in our daily life, because truly, the crux of Christian living is nothing other than true love!

Never lose the Focus

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 23rd week in Ordinary time

September 9, 2020: 1 Corinthians 7: 25-31: Luke 6: 20-26

The early christian community in fact expected that they would see Jesus around, in his second coming already in their time... they were preparing for it intensely. The moment they began to realise it was getting delayed, they began to grow lax in their life of virtues! They thought, after all, it may take a lot of time... just as the waiting for the Messiah the first time took so long. 

It is in this context that Paul writes to them...about celibacy, purity and single minded dedication to the Lord. His call, in simple terms was: never lose focus, for everything will come to pass in no time! The 'long' time that you think of is very relative! But that does not in anyway exempt you from your personal life time, life choices and life tasks!

The second coming may be at an appointed time which the Lord alone knows and we wait for it, with patience and focus. But, if we believe that the second coming is a moment of judgement, that moment is here and now... for our choices every moment determine the judgement that is going to be! Every time I choose something or avoid something, I am bringing upon me a judgement by myself. That is what Jesus tells us in the Gospel: I make myself blessed or unfortunate! I need to be informed, alert and categorical about my choices - they determine what I will be judged to be. 

The crux is that I never lose the focus, even as I am involved in hectic activity! Never lose the Focus!

Happy Birthday Mamma!!!

THE WORD AND THE FEAST

September 8, 2020: Celebrating the Nativity of our Blessed Mother

Micah 5:1-4a; Matthew 1:1-23

The readings chosen for the day do not speak to us directly of Mary... but they have a truth which our Blessed Mother teaches us very strongly. The truth is that of the choice that God has made of us! As St.Paul would say writing to the Ephesians, God chose us in  Christ before the foundations of the world (Eph 1:4).

The Birth of Mary signals in  utter silence the beginning of the climax of God's plan of salvation, which has been unfolding right through the entire history of humanity until then, and even now! No one knew when this girl was born, that she was destined to be that woman of whom the Son of God will be born in the fullness of time. In the fullness of time God sent God's Son, born of a woman (Gal 4:4).

That is the mystery we are. We enshrine within ourselves a marvellous design which we ourselves are not aware of. Mother Mary is a splendid example for us to learn from. From eternity God has chosen us for a particular purpose and each of us has to discern that purpose. One of the most needed and most demanding dispositions with regard to discernment of this eternal purpose of our lives is openness to God leading to a childlike docility! That is what we see in Mother Mary - a Mother who teaches us how to be worthy children of God. 

Today as we sing a happy birthday to her, our Blessed Mother will sing to the glory of the Lord for the great things God has done to her. The same things God continues to do for us and wants to do more, and here our readiness to surrender and our capacity to ponder in silence are those which truly matter.

The Unleavened Lifestyle of a Christian

WORD 2day: Monday 23rd week in Ordinary time

September 7, 2020: 1 Corinthians 5: 1-8; Luke 6: 6-11

The Word today speaks to us of the ills in Christian living...which St. Paul calls the yeast of evil and wickedness. We consider, almost universally, that acts like adultery and fornication are serious faults, and rightly so. But we consider habits like gossiping, judging others and criticising as less grave and so, go on with it as if they do not matter. A bit of compromise here and a bit of adjustment there, seems alright for the daily normal living, in the common parlance. 

That can never be an authentic Christian way of thinking...Christ would say looking with lust is equally evil as adultery; speaking ill of the other is equally brutal as assaulting the other physically; character assassination is as criminal as killing a person! It is not exactly in what we do that the seriousness of the matter consists, but in what we are aiming to do through our actions or words or disposition.

St. Paul deals with a more concrete situation of impurity and sin in the first reading today...but does not stop with a do or a don't. He transcends them all and instructs the community to be careful about the yeast of evil and wickedness which enters as a stray thought, continues as a practical convention and gets ratified as something acceptable! How many things have followed this path of ratification in history of humanity! 

Jesus gives a valid and eternal alternative to this yeast of evil - the unleavened life style of a Christian - Love. Love alone can make a Christian. Love is the typical disposition of a true Christian. Love is patient and kind, but rejoices in nothing but good! Hence we are called to love and not judge, to love and not use others, to love and not to bloat in our egocentric achievements! Let us be filled with compassion for the suffering and the weak, for the oppressed and the exploited, for the marginalised and the forgotten in the society - that will make us truly Christian, with an unleavened lifestyle! 

SAVE BY SAVING

Truth, Love and Solidarity

September 6, 2020: 23rd Sunday in Ordinary time 

Ezekiel 33:7-9; Romans 13: 8-10; Matthew 18: 15-20

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” -These words of Elie Wiesel are very powerful, especially these days when everything that happens is so vividly unjust and everything just is so awfully silent. Being a Christian cannot go well with a choice of being silent or neutral. We are peacemakers but peace understood not as silent suffering of injustice but as the Divine grace of wholeness, integral wellbeing of the entire humanity, shalom - the ultimate blessedness of all. If we have to achieve this, we have to take sides and the side that we take will determine whether we are truly Christ-ian or not.

Christ came to save us, he has saved us all. But we need to claim that salvation that Christ brought for us all - but how do we do that? By surrendering ourselves to the way of life that Christ has taught us, by surrendering ourselves to the mercy God our Father and Mother, and by allowing the action of the Holy Spirit to take charge over our lives. We either do that here and now, or fail in doing it, by our daily choices. One thing as Christians we need to keep in mind is, we cannot be saved all alone or we cannot work on our salvation all alone. We are called to be a community of persons and we are going to be saved thus too. That is why today the Word today reminds us that, the way to save ourselves is by saving others.

Truth of a Servant of God: Truth lives. When moments of choice come, we need to abide by Truth. It is a sign that we serve that One Lord and God. Truth is one and we need to stand by it. At times when we have to choose between values, between issues, among a few things which seem all good, we need to look for that truth that will most reflect the Lord. That is where we become the servants of God. A famous question - 'what is Truth', is not really a denial of truth but a pointer to the million ways in which people distort truth. But whatever happens, truth always remains, because Truth is what is.

The truth of dignity of a person and the consequent order of justice, should stand aloft in our choices and we need to speak that out. The first reading from Ezekiel reminds us through the voice of the Lord - you speak or you will not be saved! Express that you stand by the Truth; the Word itself says it does not matter if the others heed to you, what matters is that you have declared your stand. 

Love of a Child of God: Love is a mutual debt, Paul declares. I cannot ask a question, why should I love, if I am truly a Christian. It has to be ingrained in me to love. Loving is not just saying it by words. Loving is standing by, feeling for, reaching out and doing everything possible for the wellbeing of the other. At times when we stand by love, we may feel that we are fighting a losing batter, but I need to stick on. Because, it is only by that love that I become a true child of God. For those who love are born of God and those who do not love, do not know God, says John in his epistle. An equally impertinent question is, whom to love! 

Love has to be our very nature, it is not merely something we do in specific occasions or in particular contexts. Loving is an unconditional acceptance of all - beyond any calculation of expectations and fulfillment, against preferences and partialities. Forgiveness becomes  love, pointing out to the person concerned and correcting the person's mistakes becomes love, caring for the community and as a community caring for individuals becomes love and over and beyond everything surrendering to the will of God, comes across as the most definite description of love. 

Solidarity of the People of God: Solidarity is the first principle of Christian living. That is in fact what makes you and me 'people of God'. The moment we are not in solidarity with each other, the moment we lack care and concern for each other, the moment we are unaffected by the sufferings of the other, the moment we are blind to the injustice that is perpetrated in the society, the moment we join the oppressors or those moments when our silence strengthens the oppressors - we are failing to be truly people of God. 

When your brother goes wrong, speak to him, take a few with you and speak to him, call the entire community and speak to him and only then we are allowed to go in peace. Not until then! That is, we should have exhausted all possibilities, only then we can remain silent. Solidarity is that form of love which works on each one's sensitivity to the other, empathy with the suffering, and readiness to set oneself aside for the sake of the common good, common good read as 'the Reign of God', in other words, the salvation of the entire human kind! Until this, that is the salvation of humanity, happens, can I consider myself 'saved'?  

Today, there is so much going on in the local societies, national scenarios and international stand offs. Be it the pandemic we are facing as a humanity, or the related socioeconomic crises that are set off, or the escalating tensions in societies - like the riots in the US, the Indo-China border stand off, or the undercurrents of hatred between countries, the fundamentalism that is being unleashed heartlessly in spite of the common crisis that is weighing down on people, or the cases of politically powerless being exploited to the core - what is my response? Do I want to save my skin or do I look for a true salvation, the holistic salvation of the entire humanity? 

If I am looking for true salvation, I can save myself only by doing something to save the others, the oppressed, the entire world! The Reign of God is all about striving to save oneself by saving others, saving the entire humanity. 

Love of Christ urges us on!

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

September 5, 2020: Celebrating Mother Teresa of Kolkata
1 Corinthians 4: 6b-15;  Luke 6: 1-5

The love of Christ urges me, is a fitting one liner for the life of Mother Teresa of Kolkata. Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, she chose the name Mary Terese in admiration of St. Teresa of Lisieux, in 1928 when she entered the convent of the Loreto Sisters in Ireland. In 1929 she travelled to India, since when it became her second home. Making her first profession in 1931 and her final profession in 1937, Calcutta (today's Kolkata) became her epicenter from where she would shake the world to regaining its consciousness. She began teaching in the famous Loreto school which stands till date proud to have given the world a giant of pastoral zeal and Christian charity. She was appointed the Head Mistress in 1944 but within hardly 2 years, she would have the life transforming "call within her call", which would change her forever from Sister Teresa to Mother Teresa! 

It was, as she notes, 10th September 1946 when she heard that piercing cry from the suffering Lord: "I Thirst"... and she began to thirst. Soon she found herself out of those walls of Loreto, from the safety of those building into an open air school, from the well formed daily schedules to endless wanderings on the street, from being a Loreto nun to being a strange ostracised nun to the foundress of a humble and simple but a miraculously challenging Order called 'Missionaries of Charity' in 1948. The rest is history! 

Let us draw lessons from this great person. She struggled to make sense of what God wanted of her, to understand what her faith is all about, to translate the love that she had for the person of Jesus Christ into action and to love everyone with the same love as that of Christ. She understood what Paul and Jesus mean in today's Word: it is better to be ignorant or deprived than to be haughty with pride! 

Our sense of ego and our urge to prove ourselves can sometimes fill us with a prejudice so strong that we can miss the obvious. Not just the pharisees and the scribes in Jesus' time, but even for us, it is a real danger. With our preconceived ideas and over glorified ego, we would be so filled with ourselves that we would not be able to see, feel with, or love our brothers and sisters around us who are suffering, and in that suffering manifest to us the suffering face of God. In such case, is it possible to really see and love God? It is possible only if, just like the great Mother Teresa, the love of Christ urges us on (2 Cor 5:14)! 

Mind your Business!

WORD 2day: Friday, 22nd week in Ordinary time

September, 4, 2020: 1 Corinthians 4: 1-5; Luke 5:33-39

At times we mind everybody else's business, forgetting the all important business that we have, our life! With the social network occupying such an ample space in the public domain, the private domain begins to shrink to a drastic minimum. People seem to evaluate everybody else, judge everyone and pass not merely comments but judgments on others. There are others who try to create public opinions which are untrue, to have their way in everything. There are still others who tend to live their lives totally based on the likes and dislikes, shares and subscriptions, making real life so virtual and flimsy.

The Word today instructs us to mind just our businesses. How hard can one try to satisfy everyone around? Is it worth the effort at all? How many lives are made so boring and barren merely out of living up to the expectations of the world around! The secret of a truly fruitful and meaningful life is: knowing your business and going about it.

Knowing who we are, as St. Paul shares in his letter today, we are called to be Stewards of the Lord. What is expected of a steward is that he or she is found worthy of the one whose stewards one is! Knowing who we are and striving to be faithful to it, is the Christian meaning to our life. Christ did just that. He knew he was the Son of God and he lived his life to the full worthy of the identity that he inherited from the Lord. 

We are called to be the Lord's stewards, and we need to live worthy of that call, notwithstanding the praises or critiques, the affirmations and the discouragements that might come our way. If we try to patch up our life with unfitting elements merely because those around us are looking for it, if we mix up unblending elements just because the world around enjoys it... we may lose the true sense of our calling. The best thing amidst all the mixed voices around is... to know and mind our business!

Realisation leads to transformation

WORD 2day: Thursday, 22nd week in Ordinary time

September 3, 2020: 1 Corinthians 3: 18-23; Luke 5: 1-11

A person who has been going for spiritual direction for quite some time, once complainingly remarked to the Spiritual director: "but, you keep saying for everything, become conscious!" The Spiritual director calmly said, "yes! that's the key! become conscious, or you can make no change. Realise and you can change, you can grow, you can transform!" 

Realisation alone leads to proper self understanding: realisation of one's limitedness leads to humility and realisation of one's givenness, to gratitude! It is this realisation that made Peter fall at the Lord's feet; it is the same realisation that made Paul remind us, life or death, everything belongs to God, we belong to God! There is nothing else to boast about, than the fact that we belong to God.

Realisation, Awareness, Consciousness, Self-knowledge, Self-realisation, and today another term used frequently, Mindfulness... various terms referring to the same reality: "Be still and know that I am God". It is not merely knowing, for we all know and we know a lot. It is more than knowing; it is, knowing that I know; it is knowing what I know and what I do not. That is what realisation is all about. 

And it is only realisation that leads to transformation; that act of casting the nets into the deep, for a true catch! All that we need to do is move ourselves into that depth, the depth of realisation and the Lord will lead us to transformation. 

Defining Spiritual Persons

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 22nd week in Ordinary time

September 2, 2020: 1 Corinthians 3: 1-9; Luke 4: 38-44

Paul feels bad about the fact that he is not able to speak to the Corinthians as to Spiritual people, because of jealousy, rivalry and division among them. He presents those predicaments as directly opposed to being spiritual people. Jesus in the Gospel shines as a role model in being a Spiritual person or a person of the Spirit. He heals, casts out demons and refuses to gain any popularity mileage out of it. He rebukes the demons even, not to announce his Christ image, as he wants himself to be experienced in the depths of their hearts, by each one hearing him or following him. 

Are jealousy, rivalry and other divisive mentalities totally absent today in faith communities?  Interdenominational differences, intra-community differences withing even the Catholic faith communities are not rare things we hear about. Leave alone the communities, what about my heart, is it totally free of it? If not, I still am an immature believer, yet to become truly a Spiritual person.

St. Paul, in a way, defines who a spiritually mature person is: one who is integral in his or her outlook, unifying in his or her relationships, loving in his or her consideration of the other and God-centered in his or her understanding of one's own identity and of the identity of the faith community. If I am still living two lives - one formal and external and the other personal and hidden, if I am divisive and discriminatory in my thinking, words and choices, if I tend to look at the other with suspicion as a threat or a burden, if I am filled with my ego and closed to the others, the Spirit has not yet taken possession of me fully.

Spiritual Persons are persons of the Spirit, and what matters to them is the action of the Spirit within themselves and within their communities. 

To have the Mind of Christ

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 22nd week in Ordinary time

September 1, 2020: 1 Corinthians 2: 10b-16 ; Luke 4: 31-37.

They believed firmly that no human being can ever deserve the love of God. All that one can do is live in fear of the wrath of God and live a righteous life in order to avoid punishment. Jesus turns those tables upside down and makes it clear that one need not deserve to be loved... God loves us not because we deserve; but because God loves! God loves us and that is all that matters. 

In his own self Jesus demonstrated how God is close to every human person and how compassionately in love God is, with God's own children. It is not about begging God for love, but it is about claiming that love with authority that comes from the very fact that we are sons and daughters of that loving God. God does not want us to beg for God's love, but to live a life that would enable us to feel that love which is always and gratuitously given in abundance. 

At times it can happen that we may take this concept for an advantage. "Claiming with the right of the children"... we have to remember obviously that it first requires that we live as true sons or daughters, knowing our duties and our obligations, our priorities and pertaining choices! We have all the time during the lockdown to sleep, socialise and do our work from home, but when it come to participating in a prayer moment, be it Eucharistic Celebration or a Rosary service or something similar, we find it difficult, inconvenient and highly impossible! Being children is not merely a right, it has an intrinsic duty attached - to give priority to God and matters pertaining to God. 

In short, it is being in touch with the Spirit of the Lord, who lives with us and within us and makes us realize that we are the sons and daughters of the Lord almighty. The Spirit instructs us that to know and enjoy our privileges as children of God, to understand the value of being God's sons and daughters: in straight terms, to have the mind of Christ!