WORD 2day: 9th October, 2014

Supplying the Spirit

Gal 3: 1-5; Lk 11: 5-13

One who supplies the Spirit to you: that is an identity that the Word reveals of God, in both the readings today (Gal 3:5; Lk 11:13). 'To supply the Spirit'...what would that mean? It would mean that we are given the assurance of the continued presence of the Lord perennially. 'The Spirit is the mark of God's ownership on us' (cf Eph 1:13), St. Paul would declare elsewhere. It is God's definition of our identity, our call and the meaning of our life. We are called to be sons and daughters of the Spirit and the Spirit does not leave us even a moment. We are accompanied all through. 

But when doubts assail us, when we fall into temptations, when we lax into lower standards of human living, give into the vile pressures of the evil one and the vices of the distraught world, we are shunning the Spirit of the Lord. Asking, knocking, seeking are acts of faith, they are not acts of some desperate effort to get something by all means. They are acts of faith by which we live our convictions that, even before asking the Lord knows my needs; to knock is to surrender oneself totally, come what may; and to seek is not a call to seek in vain or in all-emptiness but to seek the person who lives within us, who dwell within us, who makes us the dwelling places of God (cf 1 Cor 3:16; 6:19).Once we possess the Spirit, we would need nothing: Seek ye first the Reign of God, and everything will be given unto you.

WORD 2day: 8th October, 2014

Of God's great big family!

Gal 2:1-2, 7-14; Lk 11:1-4

I have heard of a wonderful definition for prayer (most probably from Martin Luther), which says: prayer is not saying lies to God! It is a spot-on definition, because it gives us the crux of it all. In the letter to the Galatians today, St. Paul is narrating that incident when he had to challenge Peter on his integrity: "If you, though a Jew, are living like a gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the gentiles to live like Jews?" What does it matter what name you bear or to which denomination you belong or which saint is your patron, when your life does not reflect what you believe in?

If I believe in Jesus Christ, the only Son of God and my Saviour - then every person around me is my brother or my sister! What has to be there between us is merely love and love alone! How can I ever think of hating, fighting, judging, competing, ruining, maligning, envying, calumniating, belittling, trampling, exploiting... how can I do these if I truly believe what I believe! It is a reminder again from Jesus in the Gospel today: Accept God your Father and Mother from on High and live in love, like Children of one family, God's great big family!