To destroy and to build; to stop and to proceed!

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 34th week in Ordinary time

November 28, 2023 - Daniel 2: 31-45; Luke 21: 5-11

This week's readings have a bi-dimensional orientation - a preparation towards advent (a new beginning) and at the same time a reflection on the end times. This is the real Christian disposition: a bi-dimensional approach to life. 

A reflection on the end times has to be radically open to the new beginnings, lest it becomes a vain  curiosity or a damning fatalism. A focus on the new beginnings, the new earth and new heaven, on the definitive coming of the Reign should have a mature openness towards the end time perspective, lest it remains a simplistic dream of an all-bright future, without any personal commitment that amounts to it. 

There is no use raving about the last days, the end of the world, the Armageddon, the judgement and so on and so forth, as if talking about a football match or a cricket tournament. Dreams, visions and extra natural phenomenon have no value in themselves, unless they help a better living here and now, and a preparation for a more holistic future. 

The first reading and the Gospel today remind us of this need - the need to question ourselves on our life style, our criteria and choices in daily life - whether they are really worthy of the Reign, that which we are called to announce to the world as disciples of Christ! The call that today we are given is, to be daring enough to accept a break down in your life and an eventual restart; to effect a rupture from the old habits and to begin anew; to destroy the old and to build anew; to stop and to proceed. Are we ready?

Choosing God in little things

WORD 2day: Monday, 34th week in Ordinary time

November 27, 2023 - Daniel 1: 1-6,8-20; Luke 21:1-4

The world has stereotypical criteria of what is good and what is better; social standards of what makes one good and what makes the other better! The temptation to conform to that social stereotypes is very high and dangerously subtle. Many a times we fall into the trap, though the Word very often warns us, "Do not be conformed to this world" (Rom 12:2), because, "the Lord does not see as the mortals see" (1 Sam 16:7).

That is why, the two tiny coins that the widow drops quietly into the treasury seems more valuable to Jesus than the bags and bags of wealth that the others dump there with such clatter. To be his disciples, "let the same mind be in you, as it was in Christ Jesus" (Phil 2:5) instructs St. Paul. 

We begin to read from today from the book of Daniel, every day increasingly reminding us of the imminent choice we have to make for the Lord and not for the convention of the world. Daniel was special because of the reason that God's mind was in him, the wisdom of the Lord was in him, that made him shine to the rest of the world. He knew what to choose and what to let go. He knew what really mattered and what did not. He knew what it meant to be faithful to his Master, the Lord, the Almighty.

Maybe, we need to ask the Lord today, to give us that wisdom to see things as the Lord does, with the same mind that was in Christ Jesus and choose the right things and let go of those that are immaterial. 

Choosing the little that truly matter, will win me all that I need - the all that is God!

THE KING - IN HIM WE HAVE THE VICTORY

Through him, with him and in him

November 26, 2023: Solemnity of Christ the King

Ezekiel 34:11-12,15-17; 1 Corinthians 15: 20-26,28; Matthew 25: 31-46

To proclaim Christ as King today, is not an easy task - while nations wrestle with each other for supremacy and individuals do anything to keep the crown to themselves! It is a challenge to a true Christian flock today to identify its shepherd as the King, and not just that, King of all kings! The Solemnity of Christ the King reminds of the fact that it is in this King we have the victory.  

The King, in Him we have the victory! That is the song on our lips today, but can that be truly meant? This could very well be our reflection today: can we truly and fully mean it, when we say, In Him we have the Victory? If we truly have to, then we need to understand fully what we say by that proclamation.

The King = The Thorns + The Crown.

When we call him the King, we know that he is a king of a different kind; but are we conscious of it? Are we conscious of whom we are proclaiming as king and the consequences of it. He is not a merely a king with a crown and a throne, but a king with a crown of thorns! Yes, it is only through his thorns did he finally win over the kingdom. 

If we call him our king, we need to look at the priorities of our life - success, dominance, honour and power: can they be my priorities? They are,... for most of us. Shouldn't we become a little more conscious of it? Let us not think of some distant political leader or a disdained pastoral minister. Think of you and me - our little successes, our dominance in our own small relationships, our seeking of honour and recognition, our secret lust for power... these are all priorities against our type of the King! This king will ask us to look at not success but justice, not dominance but service, not honour but humility, not power but sacrifice as our priority! Can we? If we accept that we are of his flock, we have to! 

In Him = Through Him + With Him.

In Him we have the Victory, we say. But what does it mean - In Him. In Cristo, is a very specific term that we need to understand. We see its depth of meaning in the Paul's assertion: "There is no condemnation for those in Christ" (Rom 8:1). No condemnation is what we mean by victory! The term can be understood in the other two terms: through Him and with Him. 

First of all, we need to understand that we are, through Him. Everything is, through Him. When we declare Christ the King of the Universe, we are affirming the fact that Paul teaches: through him everything was created and for him they exist (see Col 1:15-17). When we feel we are doing everything by ourselves, when we begin to attribute all the good to ourselves and all the ills to God, we forget that fact that we are what we are, through Him. The world is full of that tendency today - anything they achieve they take the credit. A problem crops up, they start questioning God and everything that is related!

Secondly to say we are in Christ, we have to be basically with Him. With Christ, is to make the choices that Christ would make, to speak those words that Christ would speak, to do those actions that Christ would do, in short to have the mind of Christ in us. To be with Christ means to step into his shoes, to follow his footsteps, to step on to his feet and be carried in sync with it. 

When we are aware of the fact that we live through him and with that consciousness decide to be with him, we are in him and the victory is certainly ours!

Victory = Righteousness + Salvation

In Him we have the Victory, we say. But what is this Victory? Is it comfort and prosperity? Is it shining lives and glamorous future? Victory we speak of here is righteousness on our part and the gift of salvation that the Lord confers. Righteousness is our life of truth and love, without counting the cost. Yes, at times we think of being righteous as a means to winning something from the Lord - no, it is not! 

Being Righteous is our call and it is our very being, because we are created in the image and likeness of the Lord. Salvation comes as we get closer and closer to God and in that intimate oneness with the Lord, salvation happens. Salvation is not to be procured - as some keep asking that dumb question: 'are you saved'? Everybody is! But I need to make that salvation my lifestyle, my daily experience, my oneness with the Lord! That is the Victory that Christ makes so natural and easy for us, when we are IN HIM. 

Yes... we have a wonderful, majestic and compassionate King, in Him we have the Victory!

Behold the God who lives...

WORD 2day: Saturday, 33rd week in Ordinary time

November 25, 2023 -1 Maccabees 6: 1-13; Luke 20: 27-40

It is easy to glory in a God of the past, recount miracles and remember feats. It is also not difficult to think of a God of the future, dream dreams of prosperity and share stories of great tidings. The real challenge is to believe in the God of the present, the God of the moment, the Lord of my life, the God of the living.

The strength of my spiritual self is seen in my ability to relate to God on a daily basis, on a momentary basis. When Jesus today reminds us of the God of the living, and not a God of the dead, he is inviting us to experience God and live with God every day, every moment!

We are fond of living on a spiritual nostalgia of an experience 'once-upon-a-time' or we are fond of looking at a bright light some time, some day. Like the people we see in the Gospel who thought of their ancestors or thought of a future splendour, but missed the great and moving presence of the Lord amidst them, in their daily events and difficult moments.

Let us not end up making up stories and throwing questions at the Lord. Let us be still and experience the presence of the living God, the God of the living, living right next to us!

Purifying and rededicating ourselves - faith growth!

WORD 2day: Friday, 33rd week in Ordinary time

November 24, 2023 - 1 Maccabees 4: 36-37,52-57; Luke 19: 45-48

Zeal for his house will consume him - Ps 69:9 - that is what John refers to when he recounts the event that we hear in the Gospel today from Luke! Judas Mattathias in the first reading and Jesus in the Gospel are presented as burning with zeal for God, for God's house. Both of them want to purify and rededicate the Temple to the Lord.

When we accept God as our king (the theme of this entire week) we should be burning with zeal for God, for things that belong to God, for values that stand for God, for persons and their dignity that directly springs from God, for life and love that signify God... we should burn with zeal to preserve, promote and uphold these!

Today there are forces that are bracing threats against the Church, persons who want to see the downfall of the Church, people who call names and insult the Church and all those who stand for the Church - now the question is, what is your response? Fear and withdrawal? Compromise and justification? Or stand up for what you believe and purify yourself and rededicate yourself unto the truth?

If we think of our faith in terms of king-subject relationship, it is our allegiance to our King. Let us be filled with zeal for our king, that is if we accept our Lord as our King! The call is to purify ourselves and rededicate ourselves to the King.

Who is your king?

WORD 2day: Thursday, 33rd week in Ordinary time

November 23, 2023 - 1 Maccabees 2: 15-29; Luke 19: 41-44

Who is your king? – that is the crucial question that is being repeatedly asked these days of the week running up to the Solemnity of Christ the King. 

The parable we heard yesterday of the return of the king who demands an account, the siege of Jerusalem that Jesus speaks of today in the Gospel and the call of Mattathias to gather in his leadership against the persecuting forces… all these present a crisis situation; a situation demanding a definitive choice. Choice - that is the crucial theme!

Sometimes external pressures like the work ambient and the political milieu, or the personal addictions or overpowering temptations, can present a crisis situation to us… a situation to make a radical choice for God or against God! Even a simple affair like the choice of words we use, or an ordinary decision we make on a daily basis, can determine the radical belonging to or rejection of God in our lives!

How many times we stand convicted by our choices which contradict the principles we claim to stand for! How many times we eat our own words to justify ourselves and save our face before others! How many times we compromise on true values and make convenience a criterion for our decisions! 

Our choices would demonstrate succintly to the the world who our king is! If my king is my Lord -my daily choices would reflect that. May our everyday choices be such that the Lord would never need to weep over us, as he did over Jerusalem!

My choice for God

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

November 22, 2023 - Remembering St. Cecilia

2 Maccabees 7: 1,20-31; Luke 19: 11-28

The urge to be faithful to God is never a question of maintaining the status quo. As spiritual masters always warn us, not to progress in spiritual life is to regress! Faithfulness to God is not lived or manifested in remaining where we are or merely in moments of legal fulfillment of rules and routine practices of piety. It takes fundamental radical choices at crucial moments to tell, not the Lord who knows our innermost thoughts but the world, that I belong to the Lord, to the One who has created me, the One who has called me and commissioned me.

Like the young lad, following his brothers and his mother, in the first reading chooses God over everything that the king promises and over even his very life; like Saint Cecilia whom we remember today who chose to give of her whole self - her body, soul, spirit and her very life for God, our choices need to speak for themselves.

Not just the choices of life and death, but the choices of what we want to do with the talents, the gifts that the Lord has given us, the choices of what we want to do with every moment of life that God has gifted us with. We can choose to enrich them and enhance them, or to just bury them and be inactive!

My choice for God has to be seen in my daily little choices - Cecilia is often celebrated as patroness of musicians (by the way, let us pray for all the singers and musicians and wish them well), and at times her heroic sacrifice and choice for God has been eclipsed. She decided to giver her whole self to God and she kept that choice till her death.

Just like the mother in the first reading today, Cecilia saw her husband and her brother in law die, but remained unmoved in her choice for God. In my daily events and ordinary tasks, I have to manifest this choice for God, if only I wish to inspire the world today. The choice today, is mine!

Primacy of God and the Quality of Faith

THE WORD AND THE FEAST

November 21, 2023: Remembering the Presentation of Mary in the Temple

2 Maccabees 6:18-31; Luke 19: 1-10

Zacchaeus' episode in the Gospel is an evergreen example of an encounter that transforms a person. As St. Paul would say, 'if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation' (2Cor 5:17). When we allow the Lord to really encounter us, the Lord transforms the whole person. Nothing remains the same. Everything is new because we begin to see everything from the perspective of the Lord. 

As Pope Francis said in his first encyclical Lumen Fidei, faith is not just to see Jesus, it is to see with the eyes of Jesus (LF 18). When our faith is authentic, the whole perspective changes. What seems to be important, what seems to be necessary for someone may seem totally secondary to me, because I see as the Lord does, because I think as the Lord does, I love as the Lord does. 

Eleazar in the first reading demonstrates the same to us - 'such pretense is not worthy of our time of life' (2 Mac 6:24), he says, caring the least to preserve his life, because he did not want to lead the others astray from God. His priorities were different from that of the rulers who were persecuting them, the officials who were executing orders or the society that stood around them, because he was a man of faith!

Today we remember the event of Mary being presented in the Temple - why does the Church remember this event though it is not part of the Biblical account. There is a very important reason - highly spiritual and simply logical. Mary, as far as we see in the Gospels, seems to be totally resigned to God's will and absolutely obedient to God's voice. Where does this begin from - the answer is the memory we celebrate today. The parents offered her to the Lord, thus inculcating within her mind and heart, that she belonged to God and God alone. That was reflected all her life. 

Even for us the message is same today: the primacy of God in our life, defines the quality of our faith. How absolute is God's place in our daily lives?

To see the Reign

WORD 2day: Monday,  33rd week in Ordinary Time 

November 20, 2023: 1 Maccabees 1:10-15,41-43,54-57,62-64; Lk 18: 35-43

While it is important to stand for Interreligious dialogue and inculturation of faith, it is equally important to realise what is an integral process of dialogue and inculturation. If only 'all becoming one' is the objective, then today we should be comfortable with what is happening around... all, in every field, everyone is becoming one in their selfishness and self seeking tendencies! It is our call to become one, but which one? Not anyway one... but One in just one way! 

Becoming one as a humanity, bound by true and wholesome values, standing for real freedom, dignity and solidarity, that is our task. That is what the Reign is all about. At times it will look impossible and totally a dream, an utopia, a fable and a fairy tale. But in faith, it is not! We are going to hear of the end times beginning from now for the next two weeks - not about the end of the world or end of the times but it is the end of hopelessness and end of misery. Because we are convinced the Reign is at hand. 

That conviction requires an eye of faith; let us cry out for it and the Lord will grant us! Jesus Lord, have mercy on us, that we may see, that we may see the Reign!

GIVE; YOU ARE GIVEN

Seventh World Day of the Poor 

November 19, 2023: 33rd Sunday in Ordinary time 

Proverbs 31:10-13,19-20,30-31; 1 Thessalonians 5: 1-6; Matthew 25: 14-30 

pc: St. Columbans Mission Society

Do not turn your face away from anyone who is poor (Tobit 4:7). This is the message that the Holy Father gives us on this seventh World day of the Poor. The  World day of the Poor, as we know, was instituted by the present Pope in 2017 as a follow up of the Year of Mercy, that we celebrated as a Church. Mercy is at the centre of what we remember today: not so much the mercy that we are called to have towards others, but the mercy that God has given us in abundance! We are given with that mercy in such measures, that we are bound to give, so much so, when we do not give we fail, we fall short of our call, we sin!

The Need to Give

Why do we need to give? Not only because there are needy; not only because the other deserves what I wish to give, but simply because I am given! Hence, the first requirement is that I recognise my "givenness", that is I recognise how much I am given with. Look at the parable today that Jesus narrates - the first two realised how much they are given with and in their recognisance they found a way to make it double; the third one did not feel he was given, he never owned what was given to him, he never realised it was his! What hinders us from not realising what we are given: first, ingratitude which makes us complain all the time; secondly, fixations that we have which looks for particulars that we lack inspite of so much that we are blessed with; thirdly, cravings which make us blind to the goodness and blessedness that already surrounds us. 

What to Give

We know there are various levels of giving - giving from our abundance; giving from what we have; giving inspite of the lack and so on... but what matters here is the attitude of giving. True giving is giving of oneself - from the very thoughts and inclinations, intending to give of oneself. One can be giving great treasures away, but when he or she has an attachment to what would the gain, the return of out of it - a profit, a name, a publicity and so on, there is not giving there! The attitude of giving is not there! Giving has to come from within, the inherent quality of reaching out... which is mindful of the fact that we have received. The best of all that we have received from the Lord is God's love and mercy, and that is what we are called to give. Love and Mercy... from that everything else will follow. 

How to Give

We shall take three lessons here from the Word today, not to turn away our face from the poor! The first reading presents to us the symbol of Wisdom - the woman who administers the household the way it should be. Wisdom should regulate our life and make us realise how much we are given and that the more we realise we are given, the the more we are required to give! The Holy Father's message from the book of Tobit (chapter 4) is in fact an advice that Tobit gives his son, Tobias where he says this with simplicity - when you have more you give more, when you have less you give what you have. That is it, what matters is the heart with which you give and the attitude of giving more than what you give.  

The second lesson is from St. Paul who tells us, not to operate on the logic of fear and justification, just as did the third person in the parable of the Gospel. I feared you, he said! That did not help him to give of his best, it made him dig and hide! Instead the right thinking, a wise realisation of the meaning of our life will make us give, give of ourselves, and give to the full. It is not that we fear the end times and therefore we wish to make good, but because we have the wisdom to know how best to live our here and now.  

The third lesson is the model of God and the Son of God - the way they give! God who gives everything in abundance and Son of God who gives himself totally to us and for our salvation. That is the model given to us. With the help of the Spirit we could learn too, to realise how much we are given with, how much we are called to give and how to give! 

The giving we are concerned here is not merely material giving, which us just a streak of the real outcome, but the giving that is an attitude of gratitude, realisation and a call. That attitude alone can inspire us not to turn our face from anyone who is poor.