WORD 2day: 27th September, 2014

Live; love and experience God

Eccl 11:9 -12: 8; Lk 9: 43b-45: Remembering St. Vincent de Paul 

Life is short and life is limited, but it offers ample opportunity to do things that are remarkable. It never forces anyone, leaving far behind every one who complains of a life of boredom and monotony. For a Christian, life cannot be boring because he or she has a life task to accomplish and daily directions to carry out, from the Lord. That is why St. Paul would write saying, "do not grow weary of doing right" (2 Thess 3:13). It might invite criticism, jealousy, opposition, persecution and even crucifixion! But what matters is to do the will of God, and do it willingly. On a day remembering St. Vincent de Paul, who dedicated himself to serving the poor with a compassionate heart and a self sacrificing spirit, this lesson to do will of God at whatever cost becomes more demanding. 

The other day, I happened to see the video uploaded by someone, of the boy who was eaten by the white tiger, in a zoo. Such a long time that the boy was going through the trauma of hanging between life and death. What did the crowd do? What did the officials do? There was a crowd there, screaming and going mad, and a few among them recording it on their cell phones. But what did they do to save that boy? It was a crucial time, a crucial issue of life and death, a crucial moment of taking decisions and making choices. In fact I myself was traumatised looking at that video; imagine the trauma that boy would have gone through!

Life is short and life is limited; let's live it to the full, let us do all the good that we can to every one around. Let us not waste our life in envying, calumniating, gossiping, judging and spreading hate! Let us live to the full, love each other and experience God close to us!

WORD 2day: 26th September, 2014

IN GOD'S OWN TIME

Eccl 3: 1-11; Lk 9: 18-22

Two great enemies to spiritual health, as spiritual masters point out are: Anxiety and Curiosity! Anxiety is against faith because it points to a lack of trust in the Lord; And Curiosity is lack of patient acceptance of the present.To both these, and to many other spiritual ailments the corrective given is Surrender!

In short, surrender can be described as the assurance that in God's time everything will happen. Patience, trust and the unfailing confidence in God's goodness, are the ingredients of this mentality of surrender. Especially when things aren't going the way we would want them to, we need this quality to remain sane and secure.

In the Gospel today, we find Jesus as a personification of this quality. He was neither curious nor anxious about his mission on earth. That is why he was more interested about their personal conviction than the public opinion; and he was stern that they don't go about frenetically spreading their conviction and forcing it  on people, but to let them arrive at that conviction through their own experience too! That serenity on Jesus' part comes from the attitude of Surrender, an assurance that everything will be made beautiful IN GOD'S OWN TIME.