14th Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2nd July, 2016
Is 66: 10-14; Gal 6: 14-18; Lk 10: 1-12, 17-20
Happy Feast of St. Thomas. We would not dwell on that
wonderful theme of faith that St.. Thomas stands for. But the Word speaks to us
of another theme that is very closely connected to St. Thomas, or for that
matter to all the apostles. The theme is Good News... the Good News that Jesus
sent his apostles to proclaim.
What could be Good News today to the world? These are
days of unrest. Unrest at all levels - Global, National, Local - at all levels
there is a sense of acute unrest, a feeling of insecurity and anxiety.
At the global level news like the Brexit - the United
Kingdom opting to get out of the European Union -one of the most promising
gestures of solidarity in the last millennium - is a sign of unrest, a sign of dissatisfaction, a sign of loss of hope in
humanistic solidarity!
At the National level, the various uprisings, the
suicide of Rohit, the arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar, are just the tip of the iceberg of
unrests that are aggressively active underground.
At the local level, the recent killing of a helpless
girl in the broad day light in a place as public as a railway station, the
suicide of the girl whose morphed images went viral on facebook, these are
another set of events laying bare the unrest that rules the minds of persons in
today's society.
Just to add to these instances one opinion that is
being considered as newly practical these days: there are people who seem to
say, 'it is alright to be selfish'! What a stage we have reached where people
not only justify selfishness but propagate it as if it is a virtue, a virtue of
the pragmatic school!
What would be the good news for a time that is marked
by such unrests: the good news is PEACE. "Peace" is the term that is
common to all the parts of the liturgy of the Word today. The Lord promises a
peace of comfort to God's people; the psalmist hopes for the peace of the Lord;
St. Paul wishes and blesses the people of God with peace; and finally Jesus
highlights good news as a sharing of peace!
What kind of a peace is the Word speaking about?
A peace that promises... Comfort but not Compromise
Though
the Lord time and again promised the people of God peace in their borders and
the justice in their homes, the Lord does not compromise on anything. The
comfort that the Lord promises does not consist of any compromise. What matters
to the Lord, matters truly and matters always. When we are clear of what the
Lord expects of us, and when we make a conscious choice for it, we are filled
with a peace that comforts us, even amidst difficulties and pressures.
A peace that is born out of... Convictions and not
Convenience
The
Lord as he sends his messengers ahead of him puts them through a rigorous
drill, to learn to put up with inconveniences for the sake of the convictions
they would live by. The conviction of a provident God, the conviction of the
ever loving God, the conviction of the ever present God... leads to a peace of
mind that defeats all consumer crazy claims of the day. Like St. Paul, we would
be able to say, I have learnt to live in want and in plenty (cf. Phil 4:12)
A peace that is experienced through... Commitment and
never Compulsion
Peace is the good news that the Lord offers, but the
bad news is that it is upto me to accept it or not. It is not all that too easy
to accept that offer because it involves quite a bit of discipline and
sacrifice! But the choice is always mine. Behold I place before you life and
death: remember those words that the Lord said in Deuteronomy? It is the Son of
that God who speaks to us today and he will never be less demanding.
In summary, the good news that the Lord wants to offer
us today is peace...a peace that flows from personal integrity and
interpersonal solidarity.