Let us beware of obstinacy!

WORD 2day: Saturday, 12th week in Ordinary time

June 27, 2026: Lamentations 2: 2, 10-14, 18-19; Matthew 8: 5-17

Destruction, devastation, desecration, disease and death bed... these are the situations elaborated in the Word today... so akin to the situation we are experiencing in the world, all due to inhuman discriminations and intolerant retaliations, due to exploitation of the poor and the manipulation of the weak, due to evil minded greed of the powerful and the insensitive approach of the rest!

But that is not all. Alongside these unfortunately oppressive forces, there is an insistence on mercy, healing, forgiveness, faith and trust... be it in the first reading or in the Gospel! And that is what we need to focus on and reflect with our mind and heart - all the possible devastation notwithstanding, the Lord is with us and for us - the Lord loves us!

The words of the centurion, which we repeat every time we approach the Eucharistic table, is a splendid prayer that we can make anytime, "Just say a word Lord and the world shall be healed!" But let us just pause a while there, and see the explanation that the centurion gives for that - That he is in authority and when he says something, it is done. Just so he says, the Lord who is in authority, just says a word and things shall happen. That is the key!

Humanity has for long now taken the authority into its own hands. With the liberty and the faculty that God has given us, we have taken everything under our control and kept the Lord out of as many things as possible: from the public life, from the governance systems, from the ethical categories, from the schools... from everything we have kept the Lord out - at times even from our own families and daily life! And then we begin to wonder, if the Lord says a word, will it not happen? How hypocritical and opportunistic of us!!!

But all these notwithstanding, the Lord wants to heal us and the Lord wants to make us whole! What can separate us from the love of God, St Paul would question in his letter to the Romans (8:38,39). Absolutely nothing can separate us from the Love of God that is poured into our hearts through Jesus Christ, yes, nothing... except our own obstinacy! Let's beware!

Of course, the Lord wishes to...

WORD 2day: Friday, 12th week in Ordinary time

June 26, 2026: 2 Kings 25: 1-12; Matthew 8: 1-4

The first reading today is an anticlimax... everything seems finished, everything seems done and dusted, all that has been seems useless at a point in life. This is what we call the breaking point. Each one reaches that in life, at some moment or the other. How one deals with it, depends much on what one has done all the time till then in life - that is, how one has prepared onself for varied experiences of this kind, in life.

Talk of depression, stress and anxiety disorders are reported more in numbers these days - not only because the situation all around has gotten worse than what it has always been. It is because people have become less prepared for all that life could offer us in time. We are prepared for good times and for jubilations, but for trying moments and tribulations? Don't we not see that from the way people panic when smallest of crises hits them all of a sudden? 

When the man asks Jesus to cure him if he wishes to, Jesus says, "of course, I wish to!" That is what the Lord tells us today: of course, I wish to be with you, strengthen you and help you out at times of trials and difficulties - but what can I do, you have accustomed yourself to doing things by yourself, to taking things under your own control, deciding things on your own and working on things on merely your own terms! I don't seem to have a place in your life! What do I do?

Of course, the Lord wants to, but are we willing to go into the presence of the Lord and surrender ourselves, and say, "Lord, if you wish to... do what you wish with me!"

My choice: Exile or the Reign?

WORD 2day: Thursday, 12th week in Ordinary time

June 25, 2026: 2 Kings 24: 8-17; Matthew 7: 21-29

The Word today has the classical challenge: what do we choose? Our life of faith and our daily life meet each other on that hot seat called, Choice! Rise or ruin, happiness or doom, fullness or nothingness - the choice is mine! I cannot escape from it. We have seen in the book of Deuteronomy this basic philosophy of life that the people of God were taught: behold I place before you today, life and death! (see Deuteronomy 30:15) Today we have an illustration of the same lifestyle in the readings taken together.

The first reading says, Jehoiachin did what was not desirable in the eyes of God and his house crumbled - his mother, his servants and all, his people were destroyed, the entire salvation plan that God was taking forward in and through the so called chosen people of God, went to ruin! Chosenness is not guaranteed by anything other than reponding to that choseness by our daily personal choices.

The Gospel affirms that the one who hears the Word of the Lord, and does the will of God the Father and Mother, has already found favour in the eyes of the Lord, and his house is built on a rock; no rain, no thunder, no floods, no disease, no fear of death, no suffering or sickness can ruin it! In all these the chosen one will live strong, clear, hopeful and blessed.

Taking the readings together we can understand what the Word tells us today: the choice is yours - the exile or the Reign. If you choose your own will, your own ego, your own ways and your own logic of profit, exploitation and manipulation... you are already walking towards your exile. You may think you are rising up, your are rushing towards prosperity or proving yourself to the world; you will all of a sudden realise, you have entered into an exile!

Instead, if your receive the Word of God, respect the will of God and follow the promptings of the Spirit, it would seem you are walking through fire, drowning in suffering, slipping into misery and trapped in troubles - but you are actually and already treading into the Reign, growing into the Reign, entering into the Reign of God, the fulfillment of the entire life and of the world.

Let us pay attention today: what is our choice - the exile or the Reign?

Life - a Miracle and a Mystery

THE WORD AND THE FEAST

June 24, 2026: The Nativity of St. John the Baptist 

Isaiah 49:1-6; Acts 13:22-26; Luke 1: 57-66, 80

There are no coincidences; there are only miracles - this is one of my firm convictions! One constant and incomparable miracle in human life is birth! Just imagine, before you were born your father, mother, home, family, everything was determined and prepared for. All that you had to do was be there and insert yourself into that reality. Everybody would be wondering what would become of you, but God had definitive plans. If only you cooperated with those plans, you would achieve the purpose of your life... which is not merely a pretty long life for its own sake.

Many have gone rather early but that "early" is highly relative to the purposes achieved by those persons: for St. Francis it was 45 years, for St. Anthony it was 36, for St. Dominic Savio it was just 14 plus and for Carlo Acutis, just 15! The Miracle is how things happen in such succession and correspondence that you can hardly account for. When we are mindful of a divine hand guiding us, we would find a great peace and serenity even amidst raging troubles and persistent problems.

The readings today summarise in a perfect sense who John was - the Voice, the Servant and the Blessed of all born of women. The first reading describes his identity, the second his self-understanding and the Gospel, his blessedness in the eyes of God.

The Voice: his identity

He stands out as a prophet, a prophet who ensures the continuity between the Old Testaments prophets and Jesus, the prophet par excellence. His identity as a voice explains also his priority to make God's Word known. The Word is announced by the Voice: the call for us... to make present to the Word in the world.

The Servant of God: his self-identity

John was filled with a sense of his mission. He was sent to prepare the way of the Lord, as a precursor to run before the Lord and get the spirit of the Lord's people up and awake. He challenged people to conversion as a foretaste of the Reign of God that Jesus wanted to establish. The challenge for us, is to recognise God's will at work in our lives

Blessed from the Womb: God's chosen one

John becomes a proximate witness to us for the words that Isaiah, Jeremiah and other prophets always insist upon: the Lord chooses us before we were ever formed in the womb and the Lord has a specific plan for each of us. In God's wisdom lies our true happiness. The invitation for us, is to understand the purpose of our lives from the perspective of God.

John's birth today is painted in a manner that vividly brings out the miracle that every person is and every life is. What is important here is to be mindful of the call and be open to its ways. Learn to look at yourself with a sense of mystery. Open the eyes of your soul to see the mystery in others. Keep your faith alive to realise and experience the Mystery present always with you - the Lord who is leading you by your hand!

Pearls, pigs and our pride!

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 12th week in Ordinary time

June 23, 2026 - 2 Kings 19: 9-11,14-21,31-36; Matthew 7: 6, 12-14

A look at the scene reported in the first reading, fills us with a nostalgia: will something like that not happen today, and save us all from this maddening politics of war and hatred that surrounds us? Just on the verge of being conquered and subjugated, the people of Israel miraculously experience the liberating hand of God! What a great wonder it would have been!

But we forget to see the other elements that were there: to total submission of kind, the good will of the rest, the support of the prophet and everything else came together with the will of God. Today, aren't we testimonies to the blunders made by human pride, occasions lost by human ego, evils brought in by exploitation of the other and disasters created by human greed! How can something like that what we see in the first reading take place today?

This what Jesus is warning us of in the Gospel... throwing your pearls to the pigs! You have pearls directly from the hands of the Lord, handed over to you in love: your life, your soul, your goodness, your image and likeness to God, your peace, your serenity, your happiness, your loving relationships, your capacity for goodness... how are you treating them all? 

The sad fact is we are too prone to throw our pearls to the pigs like our greed, our passion for pleasure, our desire for power, our insensitive consideration of the other, our wish to exploit the other, our craving to dominate every thing for our own happiness and and satisfaction! This group is the crowd that enters through the wide and spacious gate! Are we in their numbers?

Or are we in the group of the saints - the ones who have given the right place to these pearls and adorned their world with it. They enter though the narrow gate...and do we wish to enter with them, with that slender minority which loves truly, walks justly and lives fully their life, mindful of their pearls?

A Self-critical Conscious Choice

WORD 2day: Monday, 12th week in Ordinary time

June 22, 2026: 2 Kings 17: 5-8, 13-15, 18; Matthew 7: 1-5

Judge not, and you shall not be judged, instructs Jesus today. Not to judge others does not mean justifying whatever he or she does. Between judging the other and justifying the other there is an attitude that Jesus deems Reign-worthy and that is, a Self-critical Conscious Choice.

The first need is to be self critical. When I find something wrong in the other, charity requires that I first become critical of myself... it is seeing the log that is in your eye before offering to remove the splinter from your neighbour's. Once I am aware that I too possess the same, or a similar, or a bigger weakness, my attitude changes completely. I am in a position to act with prudence and humility.

The second need is to set the home tidy first. "Do not do like they do" ... that was the instruction that the Lord had given the people when they come into contact with other people in their wanderings. St. Paul too has a similar warning for us, isn't it? Writing to the Romans, he tells us: do not be conformed to the world, instead be transformed in the Lord (cf. Rom 12).

The third need is to make a conscious choice. Do not let yourself be carried away by your emotions and the anger of the moment. How many times this happens, that we lose our cool in a moment of restlessness, and feel bad to have said something or done something that we can never undo! If we judge and react to our brothers and sisters merely in the whiff of the moment, it would not be a conscious choice, and later we will have no other choice than to regret it all our life.

In short, the Word invites us today to live our daily lives conscious of who we are, what we are called for and where we are bound to! Let us take our daily life seriously and live on a daily basis with sound self-critical conscious choices... the Word shall be the lamp to that path!

FROM FEAR TO FAITH

Challenging the culture of death towards a culture of faith!

June 21, 2026 - 12th Sunday in Ordinary time

Jeremiah 20: 10-13; Romans 5: 12-15; Matthew 10: 26-33

Look around and observe what is happening out there... there are these divisive forces at work who are determined to break humanity into pieces and make everyone suffer to the maximum; there are these moneyed who suddenly become experts in everything - in medical care, in artificial intelligence, in universal wellbeing, world peace, common good, and what not! And everyone finds it so compelling to nod to whatever they say; there are these who are blatantly selfish and greedy, but make everyone believe that they are the saviours of tomorrow; there are those who cause so much havoc for no reason, but are capable of threatening everyone to silence and do whatever they wish... what do they make a simple person like you and me feel? FEAR!

There is this fancy idea rather widespread, treating FEAR as an acronym, and expands it as False Evidence Appearing Real! In fact, fear exists only as long as darkness and falsity persist, isn't it? That is why Jesus says today, do not fear, what is in the dark will see daylight soon and then you will know well. Imagine your fear of a ghost, it disappears as soon as light comes on! Or think of how your fear of what you would trample on, just vanishes the moment some one switches on a torch or a search light! Fear is discarded by light, because fear is absence faith and faith is "the light that illumines our entire journey!" (cf. Lumen Fidei, n.1).

The Word this Sunday calls our attention to the fears that surround us and the unfortunate impact they can have on us, if we are inattentive about them. Look at Jeremiah, a man with so much enthusiasm and dedication to the Lord, for a moment he seems to be weak and trembles before this terror, about to give into its powers! The call is to remember that fear is a product of darkness.

Fear is the product of darkness: The prince of darkness makes his presence felt in fear; fear is the sign of the presence of evil! It is the power that the evil one claims to have over us children of God. There are any number of irrational fears that the evil one instills in our minds: the fear of failure, the fear of pain, the fear of shame, the fear of loss... But if we are truly children of God, children of Light, we shall see the foolishness that is involved in these fears. Why should I fear? What shoud I fear? What can harm me? What evil can come over me? Jesus reminds us, with a clarity of perspective: what is the worst that can happen to you - death? But why should I fear death?

In fact the most powerful of the tools that the prince of darkness uses against us is death! And those who give into the influence of this evil prince, go on to become perpetrators of this culture of death!

Fear spreads a culture of death: The culture of death is the culture of needless fear, the fear that makes one give into evil, give into sin, justify sinfulness and promote the rule of the evil. It is the entry of sin and justification of sinfulness and a submission to sinfulness to the extent of making it a norm for life - creating a culture that leads to death, an eternal damnation that leads to absolute meaninglessness here in our life and for all eternity. When Jesus differentiates between a death that ends our bodily existence and the death that strips us of our total sense of meaning, Jesus invites us to look at our real essence - our innermost being, that is the very element of God that resides within us. The culture of death denies this vehemently, laughs at it, belittles it and tries to shun it out of our lives and of this world.

The sense of God within us - that is the light of Faith. That is the identity of the children of Light, the identity of the children of God, the identity of a culture of faith.

Fear is overcome by a culture of Faith: In the apostolic letter, Lumen Fidei, Pope Francis (and Pope Benedict) presented to us faith as the light that can illumine the entire human existence and experience - our daily life, our struggles, our pains, our temptations, our failures, our faults and weaknesses, our sufferings and even our death! Jesus died, that we may live; in his death he brought endeless life, not only to himself in resurrection, but to the entire creation that unites with him, the saviour of the universe. This is the culture of faith - a culture that promotes hope, love, righteousness, service and responsibility. It is in this culture that we can shine as lights, just as Jesus our inner light shines within us.

Mother Teresa said once, "death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies within/inside us while we are alive." That is truly challenging the culture of death - not allowing death to reign over us, but overcoming death in the name of the One who has defeated death once and forever. We are people of light, people of life, people of faith and ours is a culture of faith! Faith dispels fears! And the culture of faith, is to notice, recognise and celebrate the presence of the Light within us, in order that we can share and spread it to the farthest end of the existence.

Let us heed to the call of the Word - to journey from fear to faith, to challenge the culture of death towards promoting a culture of faith.

To whom is my allegiance...

WORD 2day: Saturday, 11th week in Ordinary time

June 20, 2026 - 2 Chronicles 24: 17-25; Matthew 6: 24-34

Infidelity, compromises, transgressions, forsaking and tryst with the unholy... these were characteristic traits of the so-called 'chosen people', the people with whom the Lord made the covenant - I will be your God and you shall be my people. However unfaithful and treacherous they got, the Lord remained ever faithful and true to the covenant that was made. Coming across passages such as we find in today's first reading, we are prone to judge the people of Israel, but let us be slow to do it!

Looking at our own lives, the Lord has chosen us before the foundations of the world (Eph 1:4) and has made a covenant with us right from our baptism: you shall be my child and I shall be your God. And ever since, how many compromises and transgressions, how many moments of failures and negligences... the Lord however has always been faithful (cf. 2 Tim 2:13). So how different is our story, from that of the people of Israel?

In the light of today's readings, let us raise a fundamental question to ourselves: to whom is my allegiance in my daily concrete living? And how absolute is that allegiance? 

Integrity demands that only each of us can be our own judge. Analysing each and every little choice that we make and the priorities we act upon, will give us a fair picture of our level of fidelity to the One who has called us. 

True greatness is utter simplicity

WORD 2day: Thursday, 11th week in Ordinary time

June 18, 2026: Sirach 48: 1-14; Matthew 6: 7-15

Elijah is singled out in the book of Sirach, among the 27 great persons of God praised for their life and accomplishments. Elijah wins that place in his simplicity, in the simplicity with which he trusted in the Lord, the simplicity with which he carried out every single command or wish of the Lord, that simplicity with which he endured his hardships, knowing certainly that the Lord is in control of everything. And that utter simplicity was his true greatness.

It is said Elijah was taken up in the whirlwind of fire... he just could not die! His life was so simple that he could not have died. This is what Jesus says, when you truly believe in Christ, you would not die, you would have eternal life, the endless life that belongs to God alone! It is all in the simplicity with which you live, believe and behold God.

This is the very same simplicity that Jesus lived and taught us... the Our Father is an epitome of simplicity prescribed to us - not just as an intercession or invocation, but as a way of life, as a holistic spirituality that comes as close as ever to the mind of Christ. How simple are our prayers? How simple is our faithful trust in the Lord? How simple is our relationship with God on a daily basis... that simplicity would be our way to true greatness!

To stay clear of trivialities

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 11th week in Ordinary time

June 17, 2026: 2 Kings 2:1, 6-14; Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-18

The only condition placed before Elisha, that he may receive a double share of the Spirit possessed by Elijah, was that Elisha should see Elijah being taken away by God. The challenge here is not to miss what is central to whatever we are involved in, being distracted with the trivialities.

The Gospel places the same condition before us. The actions that we do will have their true value depending on the fact whether the centrality of the right element was ensured. Praying, fasting and almsgiving are the three actions mentioned in the Gospel today and they together epitomise the entire religious practice of a Jew. The point is: not to miss what is central to it in getting distracted with the trivialities of human recognition and immediate rewards.

In our relationship with ourselves, with others and with God, we are invited to pay attention to the most central of all concerns: to do what is most pleasing to God at a given instant. Any other concern is only a triviality, however good and practical it could be. The spiritual prudence that Jesus teaches us today is to stay clear of the trivialities and place God at the centre and at the core.

Note: Just a word about the picture chosen for this... is it not true that our life too has so many shades interplaying themselves... all that we need to do is keep that path clearly in our focus, be aware of the various things and happenings around us, understand truly which of those matter and which do not, in short, identify the trivialities and stay clear of them!