Will you be found under the fig tree?

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

August 24, 2021: Celebrating St. Bartholomew the Apostle 

Revelations. 21: 9-14; John 1:45-51

One of the 12 foundation stones, that is, one of the the 12 apostles rooted firm in Christ, is St. Bartholomew whom we celebrate today! Jesus gives him two compliments - one, that he was a person who had no guile in him and second, that Jesus saw him under the fig tree!

Sitting under the fig tree, had a very special significance in that context and Bartholomew is interested and curious how Jesus got to know about him and his tryst with truth. Sitting under the fig tree would mean (as we see in Micah 4:4), meditating on the Word of God, reflecting on the things that God expects from one, and making discernments on the way one relates to his or her world. A very deep meaning, isnt it?

Jesus has noted what kind of a person Bartholomew was. That was surprising for Bartholomew. Known as Nathanael in the Gospels, he was a man who looked for, yearned for truth and that is the reason, Philip brings him to Jesus. If only we truly and yearningly seek the Truth that Jesus is, Jesus is ready to surprise us! But are we ready to be surprised?

The question is, will Jesus find us under the fig tree? Will Jesus find in us, true seekers after truth, truly persons who long for the Lord, Christians who walk in the ways of the Truth! How much importance do I attach on a daily basis to remaining in sacred silence... or to the reading of the Word of God... or to meditate on the Word... or simply to remain in that disposition to connect to the Lord... that is why the question, when Jesus wishes to, will you be found under the fig tree?

Conversion - personal and constant!

WORD 2day: Monday, 21st week in Ordinary time

August 23, 2021: 1 Thessalonians 1: 1- 5, 8-10; Matthew 23: 13-22

Evangelisation is one topic that the Church can never tired itself speaking of, because it is the primary reason for its being. As soon as the Church speaks of evangelisation, the anti-church civil society would interpret it as ‘Conversion’ and in turn those factions never tire themselves of accusing the Church of conversions. 

Conversion - while it would mean mere numbers for those who accuse, the readings today present to us what a true conversion should be, or what it is for the Church! It means discovering the deepest sense of meaning within a person, a sense that would give the person a sense of living his or her life to the full; it is a call that has always been there, now being listened to and recognised with all its consequences. 

This meaning, this call, is experiences and responded to in terms of priorities, choices and value systems that are adopted by individuals and communities that share the same call or meaning. Right priorities and right values are crucial within this discourse. St. Paul underlines it in such clear terms writing to the Thessalonians, that our faith should be active; our love committed and our hope firm. 

Faith in action, love as concrete compassion and hope as unceasing optimism – these are the reasons why Pope Francis is fond of repeating – A ‘Christian’ can never be sad! Conversion, therefore, consists in understanding the call within to live one's life to the full and doing the needful to respond to that call! In this sense, is it not true that each and every one of us, has to be committed to our personal and constant conversion?

FIDELITY TO THE FAITHFULNESS

Responding to the Faithfulness of the Lord

August 22, 2021: 21st Sunday in Ordinary time
Joshua 24: 1-2,15-18; Ephesians 5: 21-32; John 6: 60-69

The God of Israel has always been identified as the God of the Covenant: I shall be your God and you shall be my people. Through ups and downs, during plenty and calamities, in peace and war, the Lord ever remained faithful to the covenant. Even when the people went away from it and abandoned it, the Lord remained faithful and committed. That is why the people of Israel did not contain themselves with saying God is faithful, but believed firmly that God is Faithfulness!

Today we have Joshua who understands and expresses exactly what is expected of the people of God: as for me and my household, we shall always serve the Lord. Being faithful to God was not his initiative, Joshua knew it well. It was only in response to the faithfulness of God, responding to God the faithfulness. 

Our relationship with God has to be a relationship of utmost fidelity, for there is no scope for deception and misrepresentation as the Lord knows everything, even the deepest of our thoughts and intentions. In God there is no duplicity, no ambiguity and no vagueness. God is faithful to the finest of details. As in the second reading today, the faithfulness of God is compared to the faithfulness that is observed in a marriage fidelity between the husband and the wife! It is a faithfulness of utmost sacrality and as much as it concerns the Lord, it is absolute! 

We could be reminded here of an anecdote said about an old man, well in his nineties, who would come everyday to a dispensary to dress a wound on his thumb. As he waits his turn, if it gets near the mark of midday, he would get anxious and restless, telling the nurses to hurry up or to let him go, as he had to go to attend to his wife at noon! His wife was in a hospital room in a state of coma for the past one year! The nurses would  ask him, 'anyway, she would not know if you came on time or not, or even whether you were there or not, why do you give it so much of an importance to be there precisely at midday?' The man would respond: 'no, it does not matter to me whether she knows it or not, I have made a promise to her, to be at her side everyday at noon without fail, and I will keep my promise come what may!' That is what the Lord's fidelity is all about - keeping the promise!

Today the Word brings home to our minds three premises to consider in relation to the perfection of our Christian Faith. The first premise is that we are called to fidelity as a community of faith, as people of the alliance, as people of God. In front of the world today, which tries to get as far away from God as possible, we are called to proclaim as Joshua did: as for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord our God! We need to choose to live our faithfulness as a community, as a family.

The second premise, our call to faithfulness as families, begins right within our own families! Our faithfulness to God is concretely realised in our faithfulness in our family, between the spouses, between the parents and children, faithfulness to our responsibility to build up our families as building blocks of the Church, the family of God. 

The third premise, we called as individuals, as sons and daughters of God to recognise the Words of eternal life that God alone has, so that our faithfulness can be manifested in our daily choices, fundamental priorities and concrete life style. In his lovely words, "to whom shall we go, Lord, for you have the words of eternal life," Peter reminds us today that our fidelity to God does no good to God but gains us the eternal life that we long for. Our fidelity to the Faithfulness is a grace unto ourselves, to our families, to our community of faith, to our society and to the humanity as a whole! 

It would be opportune during the course of this week, that each of us, spends a time of solitude, and asks oneself, how faithful am I to God's fidelity, to God the Faithfulness!

Understanding Goodness

WORD 2day: Saturday, 20th week in Ordinary Time

August 21, 2021: Ruth 2: 1-3,8-11, 4:13-17; Mt 23: 1-12

Goodness is Godliness. Last week had been marked by various acts of political tension and violence in Afghanistan, with Taliban claiming power - with those who support them from the international community and they themselve claiming to give a peaceful governance! There are also accounts of violence in certain parts of northeastern India - with so many polarisations within the local population  leading to unrest! There are those who claim to help or to bring back peace! But who is true and who is good? The Word reflected from this background raises a fundamental question - how do we understand goodness?

Is goodness the external appearance of a person sporting conventionally respected images - as a god-man, or a social worker, or a poor-lover, or a cause-believer...these externals do not suffice. And not all are deceived by it, of course some are!

Is goodness all about the deeds and functions? People who wish to create a public image that they are good, try to buy up people by their good deeds and heroism. But is that enough sign of true goodness? Hidden behind the good deeds and acts of people there are agendas and schemes that no one even guesses.

Goodness is all about the basic nature in a person, that is not even seen by the others. Then of what use is it, one could ask. It is nothing to prove to anyone, it is just being good at the core of one's being. That will never change, even if the situation around and the persons around change, for the worse or for the better.

Keeping these in mind, can I really judge who is good and who is not? Indeed, no one can. I can only say whether I am good or not. But it is so important to ask that question: Am I really Good?

How close am I to the salvific design of God?

WORD 2day: Friday, 20th week in Ordinary time

August 20, 2021: Ruth 1:1,3-6,14-16,22; Matthew 22: 34-40

"Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live; Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God." I remember once, years ago, when I quoted these verses to a group of my youngsters...one spontaneously burst out saying, "what romantic lines!" I had to explain to them with the context, and convince them that it was a daughter in law saying those words to a mother in law, and that too, after the husband-son, had died! A funny experience to recall, but the reflection remains afresh and applicable till date.

We pick and choose people to love - Ruth could have easily walked her way home back to Moab! She was not a hebrew woman, nor was she anymore indebted to her dead husband's mother! In fact, she had a precedence, as her co-sister Orpah had just left at the suggestion of the mother in law. No one would have blamed Ruth for it, she being still a young woman with her whole life in front of her. But if she had done it, we would not be reflecting about Ruth today, as she would not have got into the salvation history, as shining as she does now!

What makes her part of the salvation history - not wars won for the hebrews, not splendid deeds as great judges and prophets, but a choice made in true love! It is true love that made her enter the pages of the History of Salvation. That is exactly what Jesus seems to be telling us in the Gospel: the greatest of all commandments, the most absolute of all criteria to belong to God and to be part of salvific design of God, is the command of Love!

And a true Christian love does not pick and choose whom to love and whom not to... it is a decision to love and to love everyone with a deep sense of genuine commitment. Ruth manifested that capacity and became part of the salvation plan of God. How close are we to get into the salvific design of God?

Few who are worthy of the banquet

WORD 2day: Thursday, 20th week in Ordinary time

August 19, 2021: Judges 11: 29-39; Matthew 22: 1-14

We have today in the first reading a strange, and from the standards of today, even ridiculous event - Jephthah sacrificing his only daughter in fulfilment of his vows to the Lord. One can be reminded of another event when Abraham took his son to the mountain to sacrifice, my be also wondering why the Lord did not stop this time, with this girl at stake! Whatever be the explanation, the key to understand the  message from the liturgy of the Word today, is in the responsorial psalm.

Here I am Lord, I come to do your will. There are two elements of doing the will of God that is brought forth for our reflection - one, that it is not that easy to do the will of God, it requires the utmost sacrifices; secondly, just doing the minimum will not get you anywhere with respect to doing God's will, you have to go all the way, there are no short cuts! 

At times, when you tell the Lord, 'here Lord, I am ready to do your will', you will have to sacrifice things that you may consider very dear to you - your dreams, your career, your so-called happiness, your family at times, your legitimate pleasures, your longing for a comfortable or atleast a peaceful life - you have to sacrifice the very things that the world may propose as targets to be achieved in life! Are you ready? 

Once you say you are ready, you have to be absolutely ready! No compromises with God...it is not that you will do something and find a convenient reason to leave out something else, you will choose something and safely avoid something else that God wants of you! When you say a yes, it has to be a complete yes! If not, you will know it very well, and it will haunt you from within until you stand in the presence of that just Judge!

A bit alarming, isn't it? That is why many are called, but few are chosen. And of these few, even fewer persevere till the end, a very few go all the way, very few really grow to be worthy of the banquet of the Lord. Are we among that count?

The Lord who approaches...

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 20th week in Ordinary time

August 18, 2021: Judges 9: 6-15; Matthew 20: 1-16

There is something that is common to the two readings of today, and that is the clue to the message that is offered us by the Word today. The first reading narrates a parable of trees approaching various trees to rule over them. Jesus narrates a parable in the Gospel, about the land owner who approaches people at various moments of the day for work. The key to understand the Word is here: the Lord who approaches.

In various ways the Lord approaches us - what a marvel and what a privilege that we are approached by the Almighty. It is not that the Lord cannot do without me, but the Lord chooses not to do without me. The Lord invites me to be on the Lord's side. The Lord approaches me to be at Lord's business. 

Three dispositions that I should necessarily have to respond to the Lord who approaches me: 

Listening, to the Lord's call and heeding to the Lord's directions, not despising the message nor the means through which the Lord shares that message with me. The Lord approaches me in varied ways and I need to be truly open minded to listen to the call;

Obedience, to carry out the wishes of the Lord despite the difficulties and delusions. Obedience is not doing something whether I like it or not, but whole heartedly doing something whether it is easy or difficult, simply for the reason that it is what God wants me to do, there and then.

Selflessness, to do whatever I can for the purpose of the Reign and for the people of God, without expecting anything as a recompense, never comparing the good times of the others with mine and doing everything for the other, for the society and for the God who wills them all.

The Lord who approaches me is a very strong affirmation that I am wonderful and awesome in the eyes of the Lord - would I live up to it today?

To know how God sees!

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 20th week in Ordinary time 

August 17, 2021: Judges 6: 11-24; Matthew 19: 23-30

The Lord's choices are curious, infact, strange! There is a series of them we can cite from both Old Testament and the New. Today's first reading presents to us one such personality - Gideon, a fear-stricken young man who defines himself as the least of all in Israel - is chosen by God and called, "Mighty Warrior". The numerous others like Jacob the less-stronger, David the puniest of the sons, Solomon the son of the coveted wife and over to the New Testament the uneducated fishermen and despised sinners as disciples and apostles - the list is endless. 

In fact the whole of Salvation History is accomplished in and through the instrumentality of these so-called odd choices. It is very clear: "it is impossible for humans; but for God everything is possible." While the world and we ourselves look for something, God looks at something totally different and expects something totally different from us! 

We look at the external appearance, the capacity to get noticed, the facility with which one makes a propaganda for oneself, the popularity one can attain, the comfort one can create for oneself, the promise of ease and pleasure that one can pose for the present and for the future...these seem to be the set of criteria of judgement and choice. The more saddening part is that even internally each of us is convinced of these criteria and we judge ourselves too on these counts. 

Real liberation of the self and the path to perfection will be possible only when we realise the fact that, what God sees and expects is the most appropriate. And when that coincides with what I see and expect from myself - the miracle happens! In the Reign, the first becomes the last and the last becomes the first!

Leaders are to be nurtured!

WORD 2day: Monday, 20th week in Ordinary time

August 16, 2021: Judges 2: 11-19; Matthew 19:16-22

An interesting part of the book of Judges we have today to reflect on - it gives us a pattern of Israel's relationship with the Lord, how short of memory and how terribly ungrateful they were. But the Lord does not react as humans do. Though God's people go away from him, the Lord draws them close and raises new leaders to guide them on. At the right time, the right type of leaders arise because they arise in the eyes of the Lord. It is not leadership that is vied for, plotted towards and grabbed with influences, but intended and willed by God!

May be a point to lament about today - lack of such leaderships, in all spheres, be it the so-called secular or the supposed-to-be spiritual. Corruption, deception and malice which cropped up every now and then in the past to punctuate history with sadness and helplessness, has now become the order of the day. And ironically, we look for and rejoice in one or two who come up, once in a blue moon, to be 'true' selfless leaders and sadly, even that lasts not very long -either they are absorbed into the mainstream corruption or they just disappear out of sight, like shooting stars.

The reason: radical commitment to the truth and intimate relationships with the Divine are scoffed at. As Jesus challenged the the young man in the Gospel today, our young generation has to be challenged with not just words and concepts, but with life, experience and witness. True Godly leaders do not appear from nowhere; they are nurtured, grown and raised in our households! 

Apart from lamenting our times, is it not high time to appraise our lifestyle and start living for truth in communion with the Lord, so that an all new generation of persons of God can be awaited with hope!

Participating in the Fruits of the Risen Lord

Solemnity of the Assumption of Blessed Virgin Mary

August 15, 2021: Revelation 11: 19a, 12:1-6a, 10ab; 1Corinthians 15:20-27a; Luke 1: 39-56

"...The revered Mother of God, from all eternity joined in a hidden way with Jesus Christ in one and the same decree of predestination, immaculate in her conception, a most perfect virgin in her divine motherhood, the noble associate of the divine Redeemer who has won a complete triumph over sin and its consequences, finally obtained, as the supreme culmination of her privileges, that she should be preserved free from the corruption of the tomb and that, like her own Son, having overcome death, she might be taken up body and soul to the glory of heaven where, as Queen, she sits in splendor at the right hand of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages"

These were the words with which Pope Pius XII in the year 1950 defined the dogma of the Assumption of our Blessed Mother, in the document Munificentissimus Deus (art.40). Mary is presented to us as the first fruit of the Redemptive mission accomplished by her Son and Son of God, Jesus her Saviour. Though it is a Sunday, the Church insists on celebrating our Blessed Mother this day, because in her and in her Assumption we celebrate the Salvific grace of Christian vocation - that we are chosed, called and blessed with the gratuitous gift of God - the eternal redemption. On this beautiful occasion Holy Mother the Church invites us to celebrate a solemnity on three major counts.

First of all, we are invited to Celebrate the Faith, the Faith of Mary, the young girl who cooperated with the Divine Plan and totally abandoned herself into the hands of God with her words - Be it done unto me according to your Word. The first concern for her was the Word - the Word of God which became flesh in her womb - and she became the Temple of God, the Ark of the Lord as we read in the first reading today. God acknowledged her faith, her response of faith, her obedience of faith with wondrous gifts! If the Immaculate conception is understood as the grace that God gave in preparation for her role in the Salvation history, Assumption can very well be understood as the reward that God blessed her with for her Absolute Cooperation! We are called to celebrate this faith, which Elisabeth acclaims in the Gospel today - Blessed is she who believed in the fulfillment of what God has spoken!

Secondly, we are invited to Celebrate the Hope, the hope of Resurrection, the core of our faith. "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in sin" says the part of the epistle that just precedes the second reading of today! Christ is the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ, we hear in the reading. God anticipates that for Mary as a sign of hope for us who belong to Christ, to show us that we are destined to be fruits in the line of Christ. Everyone who thinks and laments of death and the darkness of death, is today invited to open his or her eyes in hope and look at the fact that Christ has overcome death and each of us is called to overcome death, as Mary, a human being just like you and me, has overcome that death. Nothing, not even death has any claim over us... God alone, God's only Son and our Saviour Jesus Christ alone can claim us to Himself. We are called to celebrate this hope, which St. Paul affirms that death will be the ultimate enemy to be destroyed!

Thirdly, we are invited to Celebrate the Love, the love that God Almighty had lavished on his predilected daughter, the love that Jesus showered on his sweetest mother, and the love that the Holy Spirit covered the most beautiful handmaid of God with. Pope Pius XII in Munificentissimus Deus (art.25), makes a splendid reflection saying, the primary reason for belief in the Assumption is "the filial love" of Christ for His mother. Mary herself knew how much God loved her - she proclaimed "My soul magnifies the Lord, for the Lord has looked with favour on me and done great things for me!" Just like Elisabeth who felt the blessings of the Lord by the mere presence of Mary, we too will feel that love, that favour, that blessings from the Lord, if we stay close to Mary, our sweet loving mother. We are called to celebrate the abosolute and unconditional love of God which is poured into our hearts, just for us to behold it and be transformed by it.

Today, Celebrating the faith we are called to become like Mary, persons who listen to the Word and thus become bearers of that Word, like she became the Ark of the Lord! Celebrating the hope we are called to fix our eyes on the Saviour and ever yearn to belong to Him, so that we can taste the fruits of his Resurrection, as Mary participates in the fruits of the Risen Lord. Celebrating the love of the Lord, we are called to become personification of this love in our contexts, and inspire people as Mary did, to praise the Lord in the words that our Blessed mother gives us today - My soul Magnifies the Lord!