The devastation notwithstanding

WORD 2day: Saturday, 12th week in Ordinary time

June 27, 2020: Lamentations 2: 2, 10-14, 18-19; Matthew 8: 5-17

Destruction, devastation, desecration, disease and death bed...these are the situations elaborated in the Word today... so akin to the situation we are experiencing in the world - not only due to the virus and the health crisis, but due to inhuman discrimination and intolerant retaliation, due to exploitation of the poor and the manipulation of the weak, due to evil minded greed of the powerful and the insensitive approach of the rest! 

But that is not all. Alongside these unfortunately oppressive forces, there is an insistence on mercy, healing, forgiveness, faith and trust... be it in the first reading or in the Gospel! And that is what we need to focus on and reflect with our mind and heart - all the possible devastation notwithstanding, the Lord is with us, for us and the Lord loves us. 

The words of the centurion, which we repeat every time we approach the Eucharistic table, is a splendid prayer that we can make - much more in an emergency situation like these days: "Just say a word Lord and the world shall be healed!" But just pause a while there and see the explanation that the centurion gives for that. That he is in authority and when he says something, it is done. Just so he says, the Lord who is in authority, just says a word and things shall happen. That is the key!

Humanity has for long now taken the authority into its own hands. With the liberty and the faculty that God has given us, we have taken everything under our control and kept the Lord out of as many things as possible: from the public life, from the governance systems, from the ethical categories, from the schools...from everything we have kept the Lord out - at times even from our own families and daily life! And then we begin to wonder, if the Lord says a word, will it not happen? How hypocritical and opportunistic of us!!!

But all these notwithstanding, the Lord wants to heal us and the Lord wants to make us whole! What can separate us from the love of God, St Paul would question in his letter to the Romans (8:38,39). Absolutely nothing can separate us from the Love of God that is poured into us through Jesus Christ, yes, nothing... except our own obstinacy! Let's beware!