THE WORD IN LENT - Saturday, First week of Lent
February 27, 2021: Deuteronomy 26: 16-19; Matthew 5: 43-48
You would remember, especially if you are from India, few years ago, a comment passed by a leader of one of the religious nationalist groups in India on Mother Teresa and her motivations behind all the service she had rendered to the least of the Indian Society. He was not the first, nor the most prominent of people who have spoken so. However, my reference here is to one of the retorts that came by - I loved the cartoon some one posted; it was a cartoon depicting Mother Teresa holding that gentleman who spoke rather ill of her, as a mother would hold her little child! And the caption read in Mother's own words: if you judge others, you will not have the time to love them.
According to me that was the best response one could ever imagine, because it brings out our very nature: as people peculiarly God's own (Dt 26:18)! We have had so many examples of this peculiarity which the Word demands from us - Pope John Paul II who met the one who attempted to assassinate him, the family of Sr. Rani Maria (whose commemoration was just a couple of days ago) who accepted the murderer of their daughter as one their family members, Mrs. Gladys Stein who instantly forgave the one who burnt her husband and two sons alive, the mother of the two brothers among the 21 coptic christians killed in Egypt some five years ago, and the list is not certainly exhausted!
These people are peculiar in the eyes of the world and that is our call too: to be people peculiarly God's own. The only way to belong to God is to be God-like in our love for others, loving everyone with no conditions, no limits and no expectations! Very often a lofty love that begins well falls in the trap of expectations and there is no more time to enjoy the goodness that is involved in that love, because the expectations on each other has drained it all. God's love - a love beyond conditions, a love beyond expectations, a love beyond the urge to feel fulfilled... is it difficult? Yes! Any alternative options? Definitely No, if we want to be truly God's own!