MERCILENT 2016 - 11th February

BE PRO-LIFE: Choose Life even if it means Death

Thursday after Ash Wednesday
Dt 30: 15-20; Lk 9: 22-25

One of the pronounced acts of mercy is being pro-life! The readings today give us a precious insight into being pro-life.

Being Pro-life is not merely not killing someone or something. It is promoting life in all its forms, and specially in its fullness. While the first reading says the Lord has set both life and death in front of us, for us to choose, Jesus says he chooses to die! In choosing to die, he infact was choosing to live to the full and give life to all of us, life in all its fullness. 

The message that Jesus offers us is very clear: choose life, even if it means death. Even if you have to die, or sacrifice, or suffer, or be antagonised, be hated, be branded negatively...choose to stand by life, be a pro-lifer! Anything that stops you from living your life to the full, be it your so called situation,or your personal attitude, it needs to challenged. For yourself, for others and for every one around you, wish life in its fullness and work towards ensuring it. 

The Mercilent Attitude for today: Be Pro-life!

MERCILENT 2016

I desire Mercy, not sacrifice!

Ash Wednesday : 10th February, 2016

Wish you a Merciful Lent - Mercilent 2016!

May the season we start today, be a season of mercy! We are invited to receive the Mercy of God, experience it so intimately that we share with it authentically. 

God our Father and Mother declares, 'I desire Mercy and not sacrifice' and our Lord and Saviour invites us to go and learn its true meaning! (cf. Mt 9: 13)

Lent is not all about myself and all what I do for my own sake! It is about others, it is about the Other. It is about growing towards the Father, it is growing to be like the Father.

PRAYER: Prayer is to grow towards the Father: more open and more docile. It is growing out of myself, growing out of my petty plans and enslaving self image!

PENANCE: Penance is to grow to be like the Father... thinking more about the others and the Other. Convinced that I should decrease and He should increase, we grow to be more and more like the Father: merciful, loving, kind and forgiving!

PHILANTHROPY: Love of persons around, is an easy way to grow out of oneself! It is in being sensitive to the needs and struggles of the other, that we learn to perspectivise those that are our own! Every good deed that we do should take us to higher plane of living our Christian life: forgetting our own wants and reaching out to the more needy.