The Challenge of Orthopraxis

Monday, 15th week in Ordinary time

July 16, 2018: Celebrating Our Blessed Mother of Mount Carmel
Is 1: 10-17; Mt 10: 34 - 11:1

What Hosea spoke last week, Isaiah speaks this week...they both underline the importance of Orthopraxis! True Christian life does not consist only of worship and of adoration, it consists of justice and charity as a concrete translation of worship and adoration into action. The action that goes well with a balanced love for God and for one's brothers and sisters is called the Orthopraxis, in simple terms. 

It may sound simple but it is tough in two senses:

I may feel out of place when I begin to take this 'orthopraxis' seriously, because the rest of the crowd seems to be busy doing what they believe to be 'normal' or 'ordinary'...and I alone seem 'out of the ordinary' or in plain terms, 'a stranger'. Even those who are with me, those who surround me at close quarters may not approve of what I live by.

Secondly, it is certain to be tough because orthopraxis demands that I mean what I pray... that whatever I do on a daily basis does not go against anything that I say in my so called 'prayer'; that what I do by way of 'prayer' may find its continuation in the rest of the things that do during the day.

As we celebrate the memory of our Blessed Mother of Mount Carmel, it is opportune for us to look upto her as a model of Orthopraxis - there can be none better than her to have lived this orthopraxis absolutely after the heart of her Creator!

Let our prayer transform our daily life and may our daily life inspire our prayer! Thus will be born orthopraxis in our lives and let the world be inspired by it!