To Work our way to heaven

THE WORD AND THE FEAST

May 1, 2025: Celebrating St. Joseph the Worker
Genesis 1:26-2:3; Matthew 13:54-58

We are disciples of the Carpenter's Son; that is how the people to refer to Jesus today. We celebrate not just the dignity but the divinity of work today. Karl Marx insisted that Work should be the extension of one's being, not a commodity to be sold or paid for. That is what the Christian perspective holds on too. The first reading from Genesis today presents to us work as participation in the creative power of God. We become co-creators with God when we make our work the expression and extension of our being. It is the way we fulfill the purpose for which we have been created. Infact, that is the way for us to trace the path that God has designed for each of us to reach heaven.

Three tendencies that are directly against it are:

1. Laziness and inactivity: deliberately choosing not to do anything and scheming to be parasitic on the labour of others;

2. Compulsion and burden: looking at work as a compulsion and carrying it out grudgingly, blaming everyone and the situation for the lack of inner joy;

3. Commodification and exploitation: looking at a person as a means through whom things can be produced and sold and commodified and stripping the true dignity of labour from the person.

These are totally anti-Christian attitudes to work. Work shoud become a joyful, conscious and deliberate choice to give of one's best towards building a better place for the entire humanity. In the highly commercialised, globalised, world today, may St. Joseph, the Worker inspire us to work our way to heaven.

People of Relationships - the Other and the others

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 2nd week in Easter time

April 30, 2025 - Acts: 17-26; John 3: 16-21

The call to get going, from the part of the Risen Lord, is to become people of the Spirit; the people of the Spirit are those who are characterised by humility, by courage and relationships that determine their identity. The Word today elaborates the last element of the affirmation... that is, the relationships that determine our identity. 

The apostles in prison, never felt isolated... they were accompanied by the Lord and not just that, they were accopmanied by the faithful who were constantly praying for them and sending them the spiritual sustenance. This is one of the characteristic traits of the people of the Spirit, who are people of relationships.

The relationship begins with the Other - faith, which is essentially a relationship with the Father who has created, saved and continues to love the children. The Other becomes the foundation of the life, of spiritual meaning, and of the sense of life. A faithful can never feel alone, can never feel abandoned, because the Father has not spared anything, not even the only Son, that we may have life, life to the full. 

The relationship gets its completeness, in the other! The brothers and sisters in faith, give the completeness of life and vocation that we have as faithful, the life as children of God and the vocation as disciples of the Risen Lord. In joys and in sufferings, in trials and in triumphs, we remain united in the other, inspired by the assurance of the Other. 

We are people of relationships, let us never feel isolated, always in communion of love, with the Loving Other and the beloved others. 

To be people of the Spirit - humility, courage and relationship

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 2nd week in Easter time

April 29, 2025 - Acts 4: 32-37; John 3: 7-15

The call to get going, as we reflected yesterday, consists in becoming the people of the Spirit. Today the Word instructs us on what it means to become the people of the Spirit: it means becoming persons of humility, of courage and of relationships!

The Gospel presents to us the humble person of Nicodemus, who even though being a teacher himself, humbly dedicates himself to learning from Jesus, as Jesus reveals to him what it means to be born of the Spirit. Nicodemus proves to be a man of the Spirit, as he opens his heart to the revelation of God through Jesus, about the Spirit. 

The first reading presents to us the courage of the people of God in proclaiming their identity as belonging to the Risen Lord. When those who were released by the Sanhedrin come to the community and recount the threats and the ultimatum given by the chief priests and pharisees, the people, instead of being bogged down by the threat and the punishment, praise God and rededicate themselves to a more convinced proclamation: the courage that they received from the Spirit. 

The first reading continues to point to us another essential point about being people of the Spirit - the importance and centrality of relationships in Christian way of life. The Word will deepen the reflection on this tomorrow... but here we are already introduced into that theme, a central theme for our calling!

Being people of the Spirit requires that we are persons of humility ready to learn from the Spirit, persons of courage ready to risk anything to belong to the Lord and persons of relationship who are moved by nothing but the value of love - love of God and love of one's neighbours. 

The Call to Get Going - People of the Spirit

WORD 2day: Monday, 2nd week in Easter time

April 28, 2025 - Acts 4: 23-31; John 3: 1-8

We have just concluded the Easter Octave and are entering into a new week. The Word this week is going to point us towards one overarching message: Get Going! The apostles and the disciples were so stuck with the disappointments from the past or the surprise of the present, that they could not concentrate on, "what next". Jesus had to call them to get going, and to be born again, to resume in the Spirit, to start anew in the Lord. 

What did Jesus mean by his call to the apostles and disciples to get going... it is to receive the Holy Spirit, to be renewed in the Spirit, to be created anew in the Paraclete, that they may take the message of Christ, the message that Christ was, to the entire world. That is what happens there. 

To be filled with Holy Spirit and to proclaim the Word with courage and prophecy, is the next step to which the Lord bid the apostles to get going, and the Word of God leaves us with the same challenge to - to be renewed in the Spirit, to take what the Spirit inspires with seriousness, and take the message of Christ, and the message that Christ is, to the world around us. 

The next phase of the Eastertide shall tend to prepare us towards becoming people who get going towards an ongoing maturity in our call of faith. Let us keep our hearts and minds open these days to the Word which shall urge us towards this next phase of our Christian call, to get going towards our personal and collective maturity in faith. 

HOLY WEEK & EASTER

Wishing you a Wonderful Holy Week and a Hope filled Easter

Will be taking a break for two weeks with the reflections

catch up after the 2 weeks...

let us remain united in prayers!

A Return to hope... to Universal Solidarity

THE WORD IN LENT - Saturday, Fifth week in Lent

April 12, 2025 - Ezekiel 37: 21-28; John 11: 45-56

We have readched the end of the lenten journey. Today is the last day, as tomorrow we begin the Holy Week already. We have been on a journey, a journey of return to hope and today the Word summarises the entire journey in terms of its ultimate purpose - the same purpose as for which Jesus came among us, lived among us and gave his life for us! 

The entire purpose of this journey is - move towards the universal solidarity. The experience of salvation that Jesus brought us was this, at gradual levels we move towards this solidarity. At the personal level we move towards becoming children of the One Father, sheep of the one Shepherd. At interpersonal level, that we recognise each other as brothers and sisters who have the same, One Father, and belong to the same flock of that One Shepherd. As communities, that we begin to realise our unity as a flock, not to divide ourselves from the others, but to extend that sense of relatedness across differences, towards that universal solidarity. 

Today with all the situations of war and violence, threats and competitions, mutual demands of tariffs and attempts of exploitation, what can resolve tensions is the sense of solidarity. In Fratelly tutti, Pope Francis underlining the way to hope in today's context makes a simple but a challenging statement: "no one is saved alone" (n. 54), bringing out the intrinsic rapport between hope and solidarity. Jesus is presented as one who, with his death, once again brought to real the Oneness that God wishes from God's children - to gather us into one. 

If we really are convinced of being on our pilgrimage of hope, we shall become day after day, apostles of solidarity, bringing God's people more and more together - in mind, spirit and action. 

A Return to hope... Assuring Presence

THE WORD IN LENT - Fifth Friday in Lent

April 11, 2025 - Jeremiah 20: 10-13; John 10:31-42

Terror, revenge, vengeance, fear... these are the sentiments that dominate the Word today. With Jesus being taken to task, almost stoned. These types of negativities and fears are no strange experiences to us, may be at different levels. But each of  us go through these, and specially in the world scenario today, these abound. 

Negativities at the level of persons, at the level of families, in the societies, at the international level; Vengeance and enmities, threats and deceptions, they create an anguish in persons and in the collective consciousness of people. What is the way out of these experiences of anguish? We see that suggested in the Responsorial psalm - I call to the Lord and the Lord shall hear my voice!

Hence the message - to call, to cry out to God. But the question is: what will God do then? With he make all these experiences disappear? Will he just turn everything upside down in the snap of a finger? Will he do magic that makes everything totally different and happy? Jesus and his situation in the Gospel clarifies this to us - in our anguish we call out to the Lord and the Lord hears.., and does what? He comes to be with us, to be on our side, to walk through whatever we are walking through, to assure us of his presence, his assuring presence - that is the foundation of hope! 

A return to hope is receiving that assurance of God's presence. When things go wrong, when situations around me are terrorising and frightening, I call out to the Lord and I shall experience the assuring presence of the Lord, the source of hope that will help us just walk amidst the situations, towards that presence that is within me, that presence that calls me to blessed peace! 

A Return to hope... to a divine outlook!

THE WORD IN LENT - Thursday, Fifth week in Lent 

April 10, 2025 - Genesis 17: 3-9; John 8: 51-59

Abraham was considered the father of the generations by the people of Israel and Judah! Even within our Catholic faith tradition, he does occupy a very important role, as a father of our faith. Naturally for the Jews, to hear Jesus speak of Abraham as one who wanted to see his days, it was a scandal, and they could not bear it. Would it not happen even with us, if we heard someone speak in a manner less respectful about one of our favourite saints?

But the real problem was  little deeper - they could not see eye to eye with Jesus, not just in this, but in anything, because they did not share the outlook of Christ. They and Christ, were in two different outlooks, two different minds! 

While they had a material outlook in everything, Jesus proposes a determinedly Spiritual outlook. They looked for miracles, the multiplied bread and the miraculous wine; while Jesus spoke to them about the Word on which they need to live and they could not understand that.

While they had a temporal outlook of the world, Jesus challenged them to an eternal outlook. Naturally they could not understand it when Jesus said he was, before Abraham was! It was blasphemous for them as they could not understand eternity, where there does not exist a past or future but just timelessness in the eyes of God. God knows what plans God has for us, because everything is before God's eyes.

While they had the outlook of singular events, Jesus had the vision of Salvation which the people could not understand. Finally the solution therefore is that we put on the mind of Christ (Phil 2:5). That alone can help us understand what the Lord really wants from us - that requires docility and humility, to listen to the Lord and learn from the Lord. The Lord alone can give us that divine outlook. 

A Return to hope... beholding Truth

THE WORD IN LENT - Wednesday, Fifth week in Lent

April 9, 2025 - Daniel 3: 14-20,24-25,28; John 8: 31-42

After the image of Susanna and the bronze serpent lifted up in the desert, today we have yet another great symbol - the symbol of the three young men in the furnace! They were there tried to the extreme levels imaginable. They were destined to die... they infact went into death and came out unscathed. That was Jesus' death and resurrection prefigured. As we say in the Creed: he went down to the dead and he rose again. That is what Jesus is introducing us to - when you have the Truth with you, you go down to death and you will rise to Eternal life. 

The Truth will set you free, the Truth with liberate you, the Truth shall give you Eternal life - says Jesus today! So the secret to Eternal life is beholding the Truth! How do we do it: holding on to the Lord, as he himself declares - I am the Truth! The Lord challenges us to clarify our sense of belonging - to whom do we belong? Or to put it more directly: Do I belong to God or not? If I belong to God, my life should manifest that. There could be downfalls, breakages and discontinuities, but ultimately, do I belong to God, that is what matters. 

Sometimes, as Jesus is warning, we may think or we may claim we belong to God, through intermediate ways... Jesus chides the people who were arguing with him, that they thought they were Abraham's children (and through that they wanted to be God's children), but they were actually children of the Satan, the evil one who wants to kill and destroy... just as Nebuchadnezzar and his squad who wanted to eliminate those young men! But those who belong to God, they love, they listen to the Truth and they behold Truth!

We long to live in joy and hope...that is possible only by beholding Truth... in our innermost beings, beholding Truth.

A Return to hope... looking up to Him!

THE WORD IN LENT - Tuesday, Fifth week in Lent

April 8, 2025 - Numbers 21: 4-9; John 8: 21-30

These days the Word presents to us some symbols from the Old Testament that prefigures the culmination of the Salvation plan in the person of Jesus the Christ. Yesterday we came across Susanna, the innocent condemned by the wicked to death; today we come across the bronze serpent raised in the desert as the sign of restoration of life! 

Just as the bronze serpent in raised in the desert that gave life to those people, the Word tells us today - Jesus raised on the Cross is ready to give us life. The allusions of the image of the serpent to the evil one who deceived the first parents, and the tree from on which the serpert deceived them to the staff of the bronze serpent and later to the Tree of the Cross - it all amounts to one message: the Lord is out there to give you new life. But what have we to do?

We need to look up to Him - all who look up to him shall be radiant (Ps 34: 5), because we shall have new life. Looking up... and looking up to him, is the key here. To whom or to what do we look up to: our own capacity, to power, to possession, to happiness, to ease, to vain glory? At times we say we look up to Jesus, but which Jesus? The one who preaches eloquently, the one who has great things to say, the one who did miracles after miracles, the great hero? Or the Son of God, who gave up everything, gave up himself totally for the sake of the Will of his Father, and died for us there on that tree, lifted up and crucified? When we look up to him, we look up to problems, struggles, sacrifices but at the end of it all, life eternal. Are we prepared to look up to Him?

A Return to hope... Walk in the Light

THE WORD IN LENT - Monday, Fifth week in Lent

April 7, 2025 - Daniel 13:1-9,15-17,19-30,33-62; John 8: 12-20

The Word today raises to our attention some crucial theological issues - the suffering of the innocent, the unjust judgement of the powerful, the effect of the sin of some on the other, the final judgement to which everyone of us will be subjected to and so on! Now these issues may have very many ways of being treated - the Word today gives us two pivotal perspectives to consider: integrity of the inner self and the centrality of God's perspective.

Integrity of the inner self refers to our consciousness of ourselves. Reflecting on the Gospel yesterday, when Jesus said - let the one among you who has not sinned throw the first stone, the scribes and the pharisess left one by one, beginning with the eldest. There is ony point to be noted here, that they recognised that they were sinners, at least when they were reminded. The problem with the present times, there would have been persons to throw that stone today, because there are those who think they have no sin, that they are righteous and that all that they do is totally justifiable. This is why the late Pope Benedict XVI warned, that the worst of the problems of our times, is the loss of sense of sin! What matters most is becoming aware of the sin that resides within us and to accept it with humility and entrust ourselves to the mercy of God. 

The second perspective is looking at ourselves from the point of view of God. The story of Susanna today comes as an unssailable assurance that God knows you, if you find yourself helpless and sinned against! The centrality of God's perspective, in our self understanding and in the understanding of our mission, is what we are called to observe in the words of Jesus: You judge by human standards, but God's perspectives are God's own.

This might fill us with an anxiety, but the Lord assures us: do not worry, I am the Light; and following me, you shall always walk in the light.  

A RETURN TO HOPE - TOWARDS PARADISE

Persevere, Prioritise & Progress 

Fifth Sunday in Lent: April 6, 2025 

Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:8-14; John 8:1-11

A Return to hope... Celebrating Mercy

THE WORD IN LENT - Saturday, Fourth week in Lent

April 5, 2025 - Jeremiah 11: 18-20; John 7: 40-52

The Mercy of God is immense and immeasurable, and we cannot celebrate it enough ever. The Lent and the following events of the Pasch, are the peak of that celebration. We celebrate the love of God, the gratuitous love of God. We celebrate the mercy of the Lord, the prodigal mercy of God which is lavished upon us without any reason or justification, because the Lord has promised us to be our God - that is the covenant after all. 

But there is the other part of the covenant - that we will be God's people; are we? How many ways in which we have been unfaithful to that promise we have made in response to God's unfailing love? God never tires, however to continue to love us. For God loves us so much as to give God's Son as the sacrifice of our salvation. God's mercy never ceases, God continues to shower it upon us - as St. Paul words it: God "pours" that love into our hearts. But the story does not end there...

In our obstinacy, we insist to reject that love, that gratuitous love, that mercy, that mercy which we do not deserve in any way. How do we reject it? When we refuse to be merciful, when we refrain from forgiving, when we choose not to love some one, when we hate or ignore a brother or sister - leave alone harming them. The worse scenario is that we have no reason to do that sometimes - I can't even look at someone, I cannot work with him or her, I cannot even listen to his or her voice... "I don't know why!" This is what is happening in the Gospel today - they reject Christ, just for one reason - that he was from Galilee! What an absurd thinking we sometimes sport and we pride it around!

If we really want to be children of God, we need to celebrate the mercy of God - that means, we need to acknowledge our unworthiness witn humility, we need to promise to love everyone without partiality, we need to forgive and embrace each other with sincerity! Are we really prepared to celebrate mercy?

A Return to hope... to the right celebration!

THE WORD IN LENT - Friday, Fourth week in Lent

April 4, 2025 - Wisdom 2:1, 12-22; John 7: 1-2, 10, 25-30

There is no dearth for celebrations within our Christian tradition, enough to consider this whole year, called the Jubilee Year. But the question is, are our celebrations truly Christian Celebrations? This is a crucial point to reflect on, be it as families, or as entire community of faith. In what does a true Christian celebration consist in? The true celebration is when there is new life for the broken hearted, says the Word today. 

Most of the times a celebrations belong to the mighty, the powerful, the victorious, the successful, the greats of all times... they are unfortunately a show of pride and arrogance, regardless of whether they of religious or otherwise! We celebrate on the fall of the other, the destruction of someone, the defeat of another, the inability of someone - how can it get more cruel? The Word presents to us these cruel mentalities what awaited and even complotted the death of righteous, because they thought they were weak and despicable! How much the world today sports this attitude, we know it well.

The Word today teaches us that the Christian sense of Celebration consists in the revival of the dead, the renewal of the spirits, the enlivening of the broken hearted. We began the week with the Word reminding us of that beautiful parable - that of the prodigal. The son comes back with such a broken heart that a real celebration awaited him. There was the other son with such an arrogant and self righteous heart, that he totally missed that celebration. 

Christian celebrations belong to the broken, the fatigued, the low-spirited - the Lord is by their side to lift them up! Let us grow in our spirit of humility and we shall see what true celebration in the eyes of the Lord is. 

A Return to hope... to the Right Assurances

THE WORD IN LENT - Thursday, Fourth week in Lent

April 3, 2025 - Exodus 32: 7-14; John 5: 31-47

"You place your hopes on Moses, and Moses will be your accuser," warns the Lord today in the Gospel. Jesus comes to us as the ultimate mediator between us and our God, the God of Jesus (Eph 1:17), and our God, the Father of Jesus (Rom 15:6; Eph 1:17 etc.) and our Father! At times in our pride and presumption, we tend to think that we can get away with some of our terrible choices in life, because we do something, or we have some one who will cover for us. Just a simple second thought on such a proposition, will tell us how wrong we are. And that is what Jesus is telling us today.

Our penitential measures during the Lent, or our pilgrimages and charities on occasions, or our devotions and litanies to the Saints, should not become sources of assurance of our salvific hope. Intellectual study of scriptures, legal fulfilment of religious routines, diligent adherence to rules and regulations cannot claim the place of being the right assurances of belonging to God. Seeking each other's approval, looking for human respect, creating fake images of oneself to be presenting to the rest of the world, can never be assurances of our justification in the eyes of the Lord, for the Lord knows us through and through. 

The Voice of the Lord, the Will of God and the Works of our Saviour calling us to act and to surrender ourselves to the Lord - that is our only and absolute assurance! The world tends to lose itself to the false hopes built by appearances and baseless constatations, while the Word and the Lent challenges us to return to the right assurances, that we find only in the Lord. 

A Return to hope... towards Eternal Life

THE WORD IN LENT - Wednesday, Fourth week in Lent

April 2, 2025 - Isaiah 49: 8-15; John 5: 17-30

On our pilgrimage of hope, we are reflecting these days about the reasons that make us celebrate, even amidst this lent; the causes that makes us rejoice even amidst the hardships of life. First we said the Lord gives us new life, yesterday we said the Lord takes us towards wholeness and today we have the culmination of it... eternal life, the experience of salvation which is eternal life. From new life, to wholeness, being born to eternal life: all those who believe in me will have life eternal - that's the promise of the Lord and that is a cause of rejoicing, certainly. 

The Gospel today presents to us the tussle between the Jews and Jesus - Jesus who claims that he has the power to raise people from death, just as his Father does. That raising people from the dead, is what we call the perspective of eternal life, that which destroys death and defeats hell. Life eternal is not just a state of not dying, it is a perspective. It is the whole way of living that is spoken of here, not merely about dying. 

We can draw from today's Word, at least three indications of eternal life. The first indication is that we come from the Lord and the Lord never abandons us; we belong to the Lord: the first reading outlines this. We have nothing to fear, not even death, because the Lord never forgets us, not even if our own mothers do forget us.

Secondly, God has given us God's only Son, that we have eternal life. What else can come against us , or who? Apart from the very fact that we share the image and likeness of God, we have been "saved" by God - that experience of salvation is the promise of God's eternal existence, an offer that God makes us. However, it depends on us to take it or not, after all it is an offer, and never a compulsion. 

Thirdly, the way to behold the offer of eternal life, Jesus teaches us - is to listen to the Word, believe in the one who has sent the Word to us, and do the will of the One who has sent us! All the lenten practices are pointed to this ultimate growth expected of us. Jesus identified himself with the Father and that was why he never feared anyone who stood against him - for us too, that is the indication: that we identify ourselves with our source, that is God! That is the true perspective of eternal life!