Love that makes us whole

WORD 2day: Saturday, 32nd week in Ordinary time

November 12, 2022: 3 John 5-8; Luke 18: 1-8

Taking care of strangers, widows and the orphans was a special commission given to the people by God. And that was an experiential learning on the part of the people who were themselves strangers, orphans and sojourners. They felt God very close to them when they were strangers and sojourners and that experience became the Spiritual watershed in interpretting all their future experiences. The experience was handed down too! And today we see in the first reading a special consideration of being good to the strangers and the Gospel which specially notes the predicament of a widow. 

The term stranger or foreigner was indicative of every one in need, people in insecure circumstances.  In one sense, it was reaching out to the needy and in another sense it was actually a inner healing, healing of hurts and healing of memories. Yes, the latter was a Spiritual experience. From the bitterness and the hardships that they underwent, they are called to empathise with the suffering and reach out to them, making their own experience a learning and a healing. 

Today we have every category you can ever think of within the definition of the people in need - the exploited, the immigrants, the refugees, the unemployed and the homeless. We have a grave responsibility towards this part of humanity, not only for their sake, but for our own sake - that we may be healed; that we may be made whole. 

Keeping the law or growing in the Lord...

WORD 2day: Friday, 32^nd week in Ordinary time

November 11, 2022: 2 John 1:4-9; Luke 17:26-37 

Commandments make it easy for us to choose the right things in life. They are infact prethought counsels for an upright or a peaceful life, be it personal or communitarian or social. Jesus in his specific genuinity, simplifies those commandments further to one powerful word, ‘LOVE.’

The readings these days portray a sense of urgency, as if running the fag end of a long race as we are nearing the end of the Liturgical year. And today, we are invited to think about our choices, the single mindedness of our Christian living and the real focus of our everyday life. 

At times, specially in these postmodern and poststructural times, we are taught to feel bad about obeying a commandment or keeping a law, as part of our spirituality, because we think it undermines our "progressive" thinking and capacity for mature commitments. But it is not whether we obey or resist commandments or laws, that determines how free and mature we are. 

Maturity, in fact, lies in Informed Convictions and Single minded Perseverance, in the right things, which are sometimes defined and delimited by laws. Progressivity, here really would mean, not resisting laws or commandments, but ensuring that they become in essence, means towards growing in the Lord. And the way to ensure it: listening to the Lord and living our daily life in God’s light. For Jesus, that meant walking in love. 

Hence today, we would do well to make this our prayer: Lord Jesus, help me walk in the path of love. Amen!