PEACE-LENT 2023 - Peace is Relationship

The WORD in LENT - Third week, Wednesday

March 15, 2023: Deuteronomy 4: 1,5-9; Matthew 5: 17-19

The Word today speaks to us of the Commandments - what were they but the expressed wish of the Lord who brought the people up to their status of God's people.  This was indeed the way that the Lord taught them to be real people of God. The Old Testament people felt assured that when they walked in the path of the commandments, they were on the right track. At times this assurance and the anxiety to hold on to this assurance made them even highly legalistic. 

On his part, Jesus, though he stood tooth and nail against legalism, respected the commands of the Lord and taught his disciples how to make it humanly possible to abide by those commandments. The expressed wish of the Father, was something sacred and holy to Jesus and he declared that they are never changing, eternal and foundational for our faith. 

Now therefore comes the central question - how to understand the law, the commandments and their significance, without falling into the trap of legalism? That is the mind of Christ, the way of Christ, the Christian approach to law! To understand the commandments, the law, as an expression of our faith, a manifestation of our rapport with the Lord, our faithfulness to the love that God has towards us, and never considering it as an oblgation or a burden or an instrument to judge the other. 

It is fundamentally the relationship that we have with God - that which determines the value and the right place of every other aspect in our life. It is this relationship that will fill us with peace - in our hearts, in our families, in our society and for the entire humanity. The right relationship that is never failing and all illumining. We are called to obey these, and teach generations to do the same! We are called to realise its value and remind and instruct each other about it. Whoever obeys and teaches these, will be in peace and will fill their world with peace! 

PEACE-LENT 2023 - Peace is mercy

The WORD in LENT - Third week, Tuesday

March 14, 2023: Daniel 3: 25, 34-43; Matthew 18: 21-35 

The Word today invites us to understand the identity of the Lord as "mercy". The Lord gives and forgives with an abundance of mercy; if not, we would die and perish. When the Lord offered us the greatest of all gifts, God's own image and likeness, God gave us the very nature that God beholds. We were made like God, hardly less than the angels!  God gives and so we are called to give. God forgives and so we are called to forgive. God is merciful, and so we are called to be merciful too!

When we are not merciful, we become alien to ourselves - for two reasons! Firstly because we deny the very nature in which we were created, the mercy of our Creator. Secondly, because we deny the limitless mercy that we have received from God. In acting without mercy, we deny the mercy that we have received. Do we really deserve then to be called children of God, created in the image of God?

In refusing to be merciful, we turn not only ungodly but even inhuman! We ruin our peace, the peace of those around us and the peace of the humanity at large! A simple and single merciless act can be certainly correlated to the lost of world peace at the international and global level. When we are absolutely dedicated to being merciful in our limited and particular context, we have done our part in bringing peace to this world. 

What matters is that we realise the image that we bear and strive to live up to that image! Let us forgive, not just a few times or just when it is convenient to us, but all the time, amidst whatever tribulations we might be in. That seems a needed message for the present times and that is the only way to peace, because peace is mercy!