15th Sunday in Ordinary Time: 10th July, 2016
Dt 30: 10-14; Col 1: 15-20; Lk 10: 25-37
The statutory call that all of us Christians have is to live our life Christ-like. And that call is repeated today in the Word, with a step by step guide towards making it a reality.
LISTEN TO GOD, to God's life giving Words
Moses invites us to listen to the Word of the Lord, the commandments of the Lord, the life-giving principles that the Lord holds out to us. Not that we do not know them, not that they are impossible, not that they are beyond our strength. They are well within our daily decision making; they are totally possible and practically inevitable. If we are serious about living our life Christ-like, we have to begin from there: listening to the Lord, listening to the Word of the Lord. But when we listen to the Lord and the Word of the Lord, many a thing seems so difficult to follow! But we have some one who showed us that they are not impossible: Jesus, the Son of God
LOOK AT GOD made manifest in Jesus our Lord
Jesus' life is one showcase of how the Lord wants us all to live our life. Talking to the young these days about the Christ-like love that we need to practice, there is an inescapable feeling of helplessness at the end of each session, where the youngsters look at me and ask, 'is it really possible?' Every time my reaction is the same: Look at that man on the Cross - If it were possible for him, it should be possible for us. Looking at Christ is looking at God! He is the image of the unseen God as St. Paul says. Looking at Christ is also looking at ourselves! We cannot forget both these dimensions which come so well merged in the person of Jesus. When we look at Jesus and learn from his life, we are faced with the challenge: to imitate Christ, to live our life Christ-like.
LIVE GODLY - that is the challenge
Do not be conformed to the standards of the world, but conform yourselves to Christ, to his life so godly! The parable of the Samaritan we meditate on today is a clarion call that tells us, being like Christ, living like Christ is the only way of living our life to the full.
I wish to narrate these two stories that always fill my mind when I think of this call to live like Christ, be like Christ. First, is about this blind girl who was walking out of a crowded railway station with a basket on her head filled with oranges. The train was whistling away alerting all of its imminent departure. There was a man who had to board that train and was running with his eyes fixed only on the train and in his hurry he never realised as he elbowed this girl and ran past her. The basket fell and the oranges ran helter skelter. Blind as she was, she was helplessly sitting and groping for the rolling oranges. Every one was busy with their business and she had hardly any empathisers. Suddenly she felt some one sit beside her and pick up every orange that was scattered and collect them all back in the basket. Once done, he bent down to the girl and whispered, 'take care'. The girl held his hand and with tears trickling down asked him: by the way are you Jesus Christ?
The second is about this group of people in a tribal village where an evangelist entered. He asked them, do you all know of a man who lived on earth going about doing good, he loved everyone, he cured the blind and gave sight to them, healed the sick and brought the dead back to life and gave his entire life for others? He was meaning Christ all the while but the villagers said, "yes, we know him. A few years ago he passed by our village and stayed with us for a few months." Then the evangelist understood they meant a Christian Doctor who had made a medical tour of those villages. How beautiful that the people saw Jesus in him!
That is what we are called to: to live our life Christ-like. How we wish that the world may see in us the person of Jesus, that we may be truly CHRIST-IANS.