Inspire each other to love

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

JANUARY 31, 2019 - FEAST OF ST. JOHN BOSCO
Hebrews 10: 19-25; Mark 4: 21-25

As children of God, we are children of love! It is not enough that you wish to love every one, you need to love in fact. It is not enough that you love every one, you need to inspire everyone to love! That is truly evangelisation - filling the world with good news! The good news that God wants to give the world is: God loves us and therefore we can love each other!

The first reading today has a call that summarises our Christian vocation to the full. To love is an undeniable vocation we have;  to inspire each other to love and to goodness is the complete understanding of it. We would certainly fail, if we do not understand what we are called to: to love, to spread love and to fill this world with love, as an act of filling this world with God. Especially today when so much of hatred is spread around and forced on peoples and nations... we need to hold love out to this world in every way possible.

This is why the Lord speaks of the imagery of light: to be lighted to light up. It takes a lot of effort to truly love; to rouse others to love it takes much more effort, a lot of sacrifice and a great amount of dedication. Yes! but the key is right there and the Lord puts it neatly: the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you, and still more will be given to you!

Let us thank God for the great person whom we celebrate today: St. John Bosco. At times as soon as we say that name people think of him as a proprietor of great big institutions and educational campuses. True, may be! But that was not who he was. He was a man who loved those whom no one wanted to love; he went after those who did not initially want to love him in return! But he gave without measure...he received it all absolutely without any measure! The best identity he liked for himself was: sign and bearer of God's love to the poor young! Let that we be...signs and bearers of God's love, inspiring each other to truly love!

Yield and Grow!

January 30, 2019

Wednesday, 3rd week in Ordinary time
Hebrews 10: 11-18; Mark 4: 1-20

Not Sacrifice but obedience is what I wish, says the Lord; an obedience that is not considered a sacrifice on your part, but offered out of an immense love that comes from your heart. It cannot be something that is forced on you from elsewhere... but it has to be something that arises from your heart, from the core of your being, transforming your entire self into an acceptable living sacrifice unto God (Rom 12:1). 

A life that is acceptable in the eyes of the Lord - that is what the Word impresses upon us this day: living an acceptable life in the presence of God. It is never the case that the Lord rejects us or finds us unacceptable; the Lord said he had come to call the sinners and not the righteous! But the fact is we choose to alienate ourselves from the Lord by the very choices we make on a daily basis and at every moment of decision making.

We may easily complain...the situation around is bad or that the conditions of life are not conducive. The Lord is not a demanding officer of returns, but a loving parent who wishes to see us grow. Our conditions differ: some more cosy and comfortable, others tough and torturous, yet others inspiring and helpful, while some really evil and gruesome! 

The Lord knows everything, all that surrounds us and whatever is within us. Sometimes we think we are thrown here in this situation; remember, we are not thrown, we are sown! There is a purpose to everything that is there around us and if only we obey and yield to the Lord, the Lord is creating something new!

All that is asked of me is that I do my best without any compromise, wherever I am or in whatever condition I find myself in; the rest the One who has sown me here will take care. All that I need to do is, keep growing... keep yielding to the Lord because it is the Lord who gives us the growth!

What you call, 'formalities'...

Tuesday, 3rd week in Ordinary time

January 29, 2019

Hebrews 10: 1-10; Mark 3:31-35

I remember, quite some time back, when I got to know a new person in life... it was a strange experience. The person would apologise for even a small or simple fault. The person would endlessly go on giving explanations and justifications for some thing that happened or something that did not happen - at times to the extent of wearying me. However, I was totally aware those were 'necessary formalities' of politeness, the relationship being at initial stages. 

The readings today seem to speak of a similar experience of what you call 'formalities' with God! When our relationship with God has still not set off on its way to maturity, we would weary God with our formalities of rituals, rites and legalities. But when we build a true and personal relationship with God, we would mind nothing more than a bonding - like mother-child, like brother-brother, like brother-sister, like friends and so on! 

If we develop a deep and intimate relationship with God, who is so close to us all the time, we would at any given moment make choices and decisions in keeping with God's will for us then and there. What is needed for this is a disposition that the readings today give us: Behold, I come to do your will. Once we arrive at this level of relationship, there would be no grave need for silly formalities and the Lord would say, 'you are my loving child and today I have begotten you!' 

It is this readiness to do God's will that makes Mary the first disciple of Christ, more than merely the biological mother that she was to Jesus! The fundamental disposition is to never lose sight of that one absolute, in relation to which all our choices and decisions have to be made: God's Will, and a total surrender to it...everything else is just what we call 'formalities'.

New Covenant: the Promise and the potholes

January 28, 2019

Monday, 3rd week in Ordinary time

Hebrews 9:15, 24-28; Mark 3: 22-30

Jesus' promise of the New Covenant is a promise of eternal salvation. The Word affirms that this salvation is given to all, by that sacrifice once and for all, on Calvary. Every one is promised forgiveness and salvation, but every person has to claim that salvation for oneself. The greatest of gifts, the New Covenant of Salvation is guaranteed to all but we can be caught up in our own potholes, refusing to claim it all for ourselves. There can be three blocks that could prevent a person from personalising this salvation. 

The first is the social block - that the background and experience handed down does not allow one to experience this salvation. This can be overcome by appropriating a new experience that can change the entire life of a person. The society calls this conversion, may be from one faith experience to the other, but fundamentally a change of vision.

The second is the personal block - that the weaknesses within us, the limitations that we personally experience keep us away from God. This can be worked out of too, with the grace of God and with the help that God sends our way, like sacraments, persons and processes of varied nature. This too is called a conversion, an internal, personal conversion!  

The third and the most dangerous is a psuedo block, because of which I deliberately keep myself away from God. It is my lack of openness and bias against anything spiritual that takes me far from the promise of the New Covenant. I go around demonising whatever and whomever I do not like - there is no remedy to it because it is my choice and no one else or nothing else can save me! This is the state that Jesus warns us against in the Gospel today.

St. Thomas Aquinas, the saint we celebrate today can be easily considered the most important of all the theologians who have explained the Church's teachings. He has written an incredibly voluminous literature, expounding the truths of faith. But at the end of it all, when he had an intimate experience of God, he exclaimed that all that he had done till then were almost rubbish! He had nothing that could block not even his own tremendous contribution to faith - He experienced God and felt himself as a child of the New Covenant!

BEING GOD'S PEOPLE

Identity, Call and Mission

3rd Sunday in Ordinary time: January 27, 2019

Nehemiah 8:2-6,8-10; 1 Corinthians 12: 12-30; Luke 1:1-4, 4:14-21

Jesus came and lived here on earth amidst us to remind us about our call to be God's people and to show us how to do it! People of God - that is our identity, that is our call and that is our mission. 

But looking at history - sometimes, it has been a dangerous proposition too! We see that the people of Israel, calling themselves the chosen people of God, killed and butchered clans and clans of the so-called 'others'; Jesus himself was killed because they thought it is better that one dies instead of the entire lot of the 'chosen people' being put to risk; think of those the times when we called ourselves the 'people of God' and went with flags marked with crosses menacing nations and even killing thousands; what about those who in the name of 'superior race' or the 'chosen race' wished to blot out the rest of the world; after all these have we anything to say when a group calls the rest as 'infidels' and threatens to eliminate people, if they don't become one of them? All these have unmistakably and gravely gone wrong somewhere, somewhere right at the foundations! 

When the Word tells us today we are called to be God's People, it is not a statement of pride or superiority or elitism or some kind of messianism claiming that the entire world is at our mercies! Absolutely no. Certainly, it is a statement of an identity that God wishes to give us, but along with it comes a call and a mission that defines it all. Yes, there are three tasks outlined for us by the Word this Sunday:

1. Beginning with the Word - Our Identity

Being God's people means beginning with the Word: our identity lies there, not in the structures we have and the statistics we boast about (that we are the greatest in number and that we have survived for 2000 years and so on!) Our identity is based on the Word, the Word which has always guided humanity, the Word which had become human and the Word which calls us everyday without ceasing to a life of love and compassion. Our identity has to be created on the foundation of the Word of God. 

When Nehemiah the leader and Ezra the priest wanted to give an identity to the heart broken people, they did it with the Word, reading it aloud to them and getting them to hear it and be strengthened by it. When Jesus wanted to establish his identity among his own people, he did it with the Word, teaching in the synagogue for the first time. As individuals, as families or as communities, if we wish to identify ourselves to others, we need to found ourselves on the Word. 

2. Building up the Word - Our Call

The Word was made flesh, the flesh was given to us and we were made One Body in Christ. The Word invites us to build up our communities of faith, in communion and sharing, thus building up the Word into a formidable challenge to the ways of the world. This task is to build up our believing community, the Body of Christ, the Body of the Word. 

The Word was made flesh, in order that God's salvation plan could be brought to its culmination in Jesus Christ the Son of God. Today the same Word has to be made flesh... the Word has to become a Body, the Body of Christ, the Body of the Word... that is our Community of faith - united as one body with the head that is Christ, the Word who lives amidst us. When we build up the community, we build up the Body of the Word, we build up the Word. When we break, divide, shatter, weaken, dismember this Body, we are killing the Word! We have just finished celebrating the Unity Octave (18 to 25 January), praying for the unity of all Christians, are we really ready to forget our differences, leave aside our past and unite in the name of the Word? 

3. Becoming the Word - Our Mission 

The word you have heard is fulfilled today in your hearing, declared Jesus. He was the Word personified...and we are today called to model our lives after him, to become the Word, to grow into the Word, into the living Word, into living images of Christ for the world today, offering sight to the blind, liberty to captives and  freedom to the oppressed.

Many a times we think our mission is to memorise a few verses from the Bible and go shout it in the face of people and get them some how by hook or by crook, by fears or by tears into our fold and say, "we have saved them". What a sham! We are not sent merely to throw the Word at others; we are sent to live It amidst others! We are not expected to swallow the Word only to spit It elsewhere, but to become It. Our mission is to be nourished by the Word and Become the Word! Seeing us people should be able to look at us and say: 'what we heard is being fulfilled in you!'

Becoming God's People is an identity we need to found on the Word, a call to build our families and communities on the Word, and a mission to transform ourselves after the Word. Can our daily lives be truly fulfilments of the Word, here and now?

Apostles: to live and to inspire!

THE WORD AND THE SAINTS

January 26, 2019: Sts. Timothy and Titus

2 Timothy 1: 1-8 (or Titus 1:1-5); Luke 10: 1-9

Timothy and Titus are two models we are presented with today.  They were both finds of St. Paul on his journeys. Inspiring the listeners to make a life choice is a special gift that some are given with. St. Paul possessed this and used it well for the Reign of God. Timothy and Titus join the great band of apostles that Jesus initiated.

The Word on this feast day offers us three insights:

1. Timothy had received Faith as a gift from God and St. Paul asks him to fan its flames... So are we called to fan to flames of God's glory, the gift we have received, our Faith. In it rests the real meaning for humanity! We have it...do we realise it?

2. Titus becomes a child to Paul in faith... So do we become brothers and sisters, bonded by faith, that is the relationship we have with God. It is God who unites us - hence, are we mindful of the unity we share or are we looking for reasons to divide and discriminate among ourselves?

3. We are all sent...just as was St. Paul to live the Word and inspire persons! Inspire people whom we meet, by our words making them so founded on the Lord and the Lord's Word, that the listeners would feel like giving praise to God and give their lives to God! This is what we are called to - to be Apostles, that is, to live and to inspire, in the name of the Word. Can we?

Conversion: an Absolute choice for God!

THE WORD AND THE FEAST: Conversion of St. Paul

January 25, 2019: Acts 22:3-16; Mark 16; 15-18

The feast of Conversion of St. Paul invites us to reflect on our conversion. Unfortunately, in today's context, the word 'conversion' has more political connotation than spiritual! There are anti-Christian elements in some societies who call us Christians, a cancer! There are those within us who hardly hesitate to call names at our universal communion, citing as cause the scandals that have been unearthed. These are truly difficult times.

But on the contrary, today is a beautiful occasion for us to remind ourselves that conversion is not about numbers, or increasing the fold or sustaining the crowd without losing adherents. Conversion is a personal decision to go towards God, an about-turn (as the Greek word 'metanoia' suggests); it is an absolute choice for God! 

Choice for God... because we begin to see the role that God has played in our life and choose to actively acknowledge it; Absolute... because nothing else matters as much as God and God's will do! We are called to conversion... may not be as dramatic as that of St. Paul's, as we read in the first reading today, but however, more demanding! Yes, we are called to daily conversion. 

To be aware, each day and each moment, of those things that take us away from our progress towards God. Nothing - no demonic powers, no distracting languages, no cunning serpents, no poisoning lifestyle, no disparaging scandals - should lead us away from God... we are called to make an absolute choice every day, for God and for God's Word.  Not merely in words but by my very life, I am obliged to proclaim God's message. "Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel," reminds me St.Paul (1 Cor 9:16)

Obedience and the Power from above!

January 24, 2019

Thursday, 2nd week in Ordinary time

Hebrews 7: 25 - 8: 6; Mark 3: 7-12

The letter to the Hebrews gives a distinguished importance to the quality of obedience of Jesus! In fact it speaks of obedience as special ministry of the Son of God. St. Paul's letters too have the same dimension (eg: Phil 2). At times holiness does not consist in doing great things to a great effect, but in simple and humble submission to the Lord. 

Hence, Christian obedience is not merely doing something that is commanded, but being conscious of the overwhelming Grace that surrounds us all the time and leads us by hand every moment of our lives. It is a humble acknowledgement and submission to the Power from above! When we submit ourselves in our entirety, we begin to possess not only the consciousness of this power of God but the very power itself, as true and trusted children of God.

Jesus possessed this consciousness of the proximate presence of the power from above and that was sensed by all, specially the evil spirits that he often  encountered. It is by this power from above that he became the high priest who can save all of us - the power invested in him by the Father. 

Each of us has received our share of this power to grow and nurture ourselves into true people of God. What if we are mindful of this power and start using this power - of course the opposition from the enemy camp will be more, but will we not set up ourselves as great signs of God's presence to this world that needs it so badly? And another question that is more crucially relevant is: to what end are you willing to use this power - your own selfish ends or for the greater glory of God?

To save or to kill...to be good or appear good?

January 23, 2019

Wednesday, 2nd week in Ordinary time

Hebrews 7: 1-3,15-17; Mark 3: 1-6

The Word today speaks of two religious disciplines that mattered much to the Old Testament people of God: the practice of tithing and the observance of the Sabbath. Both of these taken in their legalistic sense, would be practices very sacred but of least significance. 

Imagine, a tenth of your possession given grudgingly, or as in the example of Ananias and Saphira (in Acts 5), trying to make it as minimally affecting as possible, but calculated to yield optimum returns... will bear no spiritual fruit. Keeping Sabbath, intended to be the day of the Lord, as a day of dead and insensitive inactivity instead of holy and active worship to God, will be of no spiritual value. 

The key to right understanding here is, not just giving of what we have, but it is giving of what we are; it is not remaining firm and insensitive to the need of the other when you are in every way, though in a position to reach out but setting aside a considerable time when you will think of God and the people of God, instead of getting stuck to thinking about yourself all the while! 

Today, there can be more than one reason for someone to do good- seeking popularity, establishing one's own name, looking for recognition from people and society, proving your point to those who see you do that good, wishing to create an image that is pleasing for the public, etc. But Jesus invites us to do good, precisely where no one knows you. No one understood who Jesus was; they did not really care to. They thought they knew from where Jesus came - but that was not true! They never knew or understood Jesus until Jesus had left them. However, Jesus did all the good that he could, he could not wait, the time was short! He invites us too - to do good precisely  where no one knows you, but might need you the most! 

Be good, do not just try to appear good! Not because you get a reward or a recognition and not because people would stand by you...but because you are convinced of doing that good, saving people, making people sense God close to them. Never grow tired of doing what is good.

Faithfulness versus faithfulness

January 22, 2019

Tuesday, 2nd week in Ordinary time

Hebrews 6: 10-20; Mark 2: 23-28

The crux of the the first reading today,  or for that matter even of the whole Gospels, is the fact that God is faithful forever. God's faithfulness is the anchor of our soul, that unfailing surety of our well-being, the goodness that never ceases and the pertinent question is,  how do I find my faithfulness vis-a-vis that of God!

In demonstration of God's faithfulness,  God gives! God gives without count, without any limit, without restraint, without conditions or calculations,  without anything expected in return. Just imagine the abundance of goodness that we enjoy: the air that we breathe, the water that was given which we have exploited to the utmost, the earth that we have contaminated and the balance of the entire cosmos that we have devastated without any qualms. 

Now the question is, what do we do to demonstrate our faithfulness to God? A weekly appointment, kept up with so much of burdensome feeling;  a few fragmented moments every day, mostly out of routine and sometimes out of fear; and some special days' activities which form so much part of our customs? All of them so legalistically followed sometimes with such insensitivity towards expressing our true love and gratitude... I know I am being too negative about it. 

When it comes to being faithful to God, we compare ourselves with others, with those who are much worse than ourselves in lifestyle, with those who have done something wrong to us and so on! Why don't we compare our faithfulness with the faithfulness of God? It would do so much good, if today we gave this dimension a serious thought: God's Faithfulness versus our faithfulness!