WITH HANDS RAISED

16th October, 2016: 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Exo 17: 8-13; 2 Tim 3: 14-4:2; Lk 18:1-8

Work as if everything depended on you; Pray as if nothing depended on you, goes the popular saying. Today we have a wonderful image to place before us, as we go about our daily life. Moses on the hill overlooking the battle, with hands raised unto the Lord! The Battle belongs to the Lord... all that we need to do is keep still, the Lord will fight for us says the book of Exodus (14:14). 

We are called to live our life with our hands raised unto the Lord! 

Living with hands raised unto the Lord is a gesture that means to abandon everything into the hands of God. It is a total personal abandonment to the Lord, that the Lord may guide us and that the Lord may fight the battle for us! Many grow weary of struggles and temptations in life... when Moses' hands were raised, Israel won! The book of Proverbs tells us, 'the horse is made ready for the battle; but the victory belongs to the Lord!'(Prov. 21:31). When we learn to abandon ourselves in the hands of God, we will see the wonders that can happen.

Living with hands raised unto the Lord is to reach out to the Lord with all our heart. It is like the antenna that stretches to connect, to receive and to communicate. That is in short, 'prayer' - to connect, to receive and to communicate. Let us pay attention to the term that seems common in today's readings: pray without ceasing tells Jesus presenting to us the image of the widow; proclaim in season and out of season instructs St. Paul; and the first reading presents to us Moses unwilling to grow weary of having his hands raised unto the Lord. A two fold call here: first, not to grow weary... like the widow to go on in trust, with our hands raised unto the Lord; second, when a brother or sister seems to grow weary, to rush to their side like Aaron and Hur and to be with them and to raise our hands in unison unto the Lord. A praying person builds a praying community of brothers and sisters, genuinely concerned about each other!

Living with the hands raised unto the Lord is to be filled with hope in the Lord. Like it happened to the widow, it may look like you might never get justice. Like it happened to the Israelites, it might look like you are losing the battle. Things may continuously go wrong, people might endlessly misunderstand you, nothing might seem to be going the way you wished it would..."But as for you, continue, in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it"...from Jesus himself who hoped in the One who sent him, from our Blessed mother who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken by the Lord! "Let us not allow ourselves to be robbed of our hope" reminds Pope Francis.

Every day of our life, every moment of our day, let us resolve to live with our hands raised unto the Lord in a holy abandonment, in a loving union and in an unfailing hope... so that when Our Lord and Saviour comes he will still find faith here amidst us! 

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

The Head, the Body and the Uniter

Celebrating St. Teresa of Avila - 15th October, 2016
Eph 1: 15-23; Lk 12: 8-12

We have a head, none less than the Son of God; We are a body nothing less than the very body of Christ; what a reminder from Paul! Let us not be lost in petty problems and needless anxieties - ofcourse someone will respond saying, 'only when you go through it you will know which is petty and which is needless'! But in Paul's parlance and in Christ's thinking every problem is petty and every anxiety is needless. Because we have an existence, a body, a being so deeply significant! Teresa of Avila whom we celebrate today, witnesses to an experience as such!

The Head: Let us be worthy of the Head we possess. As the head directs so the body goes, atleast such is the understanding in the mechanical world. But for us as people who have Christ as our head, we have the freedom with which we can decide to act out of our personal choice - let those choices be worthy of our Head.

The Body: Let us be one body in Christ.The Church being a body of Christ is not in the hands of the Head...it is in the way the Church and its every member identify themselves to the One body, instead of claiming differences of origin, status and everyday operations!

The Uniter: The Head-body rapport is not automatic, it is an act of the Spirit, the Uniter, the one who unites them both. It is the Spirit who relates us to the Lord and it is the Spirit who sustains us in that relationship. St. Teresa was someone who felt this Spirit so strong. close and active! We see in her life that she had a relationship with the Lord that was so intimate, meaningful and a matter of day-to-day experience. Her mystical writings came from a source so divine, that they disturb many, challenge them and invite us to an understanding of our life that is intimately connected to our relationship with the Lord.