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!