WORD 2day: 22nd September, 2014

Think good; Do good; Be good!

Pro 3:27-34; Lk 8:16-18

The first reading today has a wonderful set of practical tips for a happy living. Those tips can altogether be summarised in the phrase: think well of all; speak well of all; do good to all. This is the runway to happiness, but rarely taken by many! We prefer to complicate our lives, make it distrustful, enigmatic and suspicious. Neither are we happy nor do we allow others to be happy. 

Recently, I asked a person who came to me with a problem at home, "What is you choice: to be happy or not to be?" And the person said, "ofcourse, to be happy!" and immediately added, "but I am afraid I wont be able to do the things that you told me to. They would take me for granted and make me more and more a fool!" Then I concluded, "so, you choose to be unhappy!"

At times, that is the fact! We choose to be unhappy and we are experts at making ourselves unhappy over anything at all. Jesus today seems to tell us, "you want to be happy? choose it! manifest it! Let it be seen in your lives, in your choices!" Lighting the lamp and putting it on the stand, is the metaphor to living a life that is God-worthy and making it known to others that they may be challenged. The simple formula to begin with is what is said in the first reading; in other words: think good! do good! be good!

It is your face Lord, that I seek!

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time: 21st September, 2014

Is 55: 6-9; Phil 1: 20c-24, 27a; Mt 20: 1-16a

It is your face O Lord that I seek, prays the Psalmist (cf 27:8). Seeking the face of the Lord is the sweet task given to a lover of the Lord. The Lord declares, I have not told you to seek me in vain, as if I were absent from you! The Lord is always with us and the Lord's countenance sheds its light upon us and that is the joy of our Christian living.

But we on our part are invited to Seek the Lord, say the readings today. We are called to seek the Lord, seek the Lord above all else! Lord awaits to shine forth on us, it is ours to seek. St. Paul tells us in the second reading today, it becomes even a longing to end this existence on earth and get to the Lord, that we may behold the face of the Lord! But it is not ours to decide, we are expected to live our earthly sojourn as long as the Lord wills it for us; but even within this sojourn the Lord will enable us to behold the Lord's face, if we seek it.

Seek the Lord, today! says the first reading and the Gospel parable too. The urgency of seeking the Lord is expressed so well and so plainly in the first reading, where Isaiah urges that we seek the Lord while there is still time! Instead of just standing around and staring at things that will do no good and focusing on elements that would lead us no where, it is important that we seek the Lord and seek the Lord today, here and now! It is a call to make a choice, to make up our minds, to discern our ways and set on a determined seeking!

Seek the Lord with Hope, says the parable that Jesus presents. Don't worry if you wasted your time till now, make up your mind right now and seek the Lord with hope; do not think if the Lord will accept you or not. First of all, the Lord has not rejected you from the eyes of the Lord in order that you wonder whether the Lord will accept you. The Lord's love is unconditional, and the Lord does not love us to the extent that we deserve it. If only the Lord were to calculate how deserving we are, how many of us can really stand before the Lord and claim the love of God for ourselves? "But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us"(Rom 5:8). That is the love with which the landowner gives the same wages to the first and the last. This is the hope that Jesus gives us: at no point of time does God reject you! Seek the Lord with Hope and you will definitely find the Lord, assure the readings today.

The Lord is with me, the Lord lives with me, moves with me and sustains me! But it is upto me to seek that presence of the Lord, seek that grace of the Lord and seek that face of the Lord so that the light of God's countenance may illumine my daily life!