Renewing Christian Hope: Choosing Joy

THE WORD IN LENT - Friday after Ash Wednesday

February 19, 2021: Isaiah 58: 1-9a; Matthew 9: 14-15

What is the purpose of fasting... give it a thought just now, before you proceed to reflect on the Word today. Some one could think to oneself, I wish to come down by at least 10 kilos at the end of the lent! And another could say, the next forty days will help my diabetes! What is your purpose...why do you fast?

What if you fasted the whole day and because of it you get irritated and frown on every one whom you come across? What if you prayed for a long three hours and on coming out you lose your head on the first person you meet! What if you intend to give away everything you have to the poor and the homeless, but you cannot give even a sincere smile to the one living with you at home?

Fasting should make us more controlled; it should make us more detached; more calm and serene! It should fill us with joy that comes from the fact that we have participated in the sufferings of the Lord, not proud of it or haughty about it! Fasting cannot be for feeding one's ego and a means of self-justification. Fasting is a choice, a choice for joy, the joy that comes from Christ, the joy that gave the apostles the courage to go on in spite of the threats and dangers. They were filled with such hope, that no pain would make them lose heart. They were filled with joy to suffer for Christ.

How joyful am I, when I fast? 

FAMILY: WHERE GOD ABIDES

The Solemnity of the Holy Family

27th December, 2020 - Genesis 15:1-6, 21:1-3; Hebrews 11: 8, 11-1217-19; Luke 2: 22-40

Celebrating the feast of Holy Family... we are given a challenging model, a role that we have to play as families in today's context.

The Holy family offered the Lord to the world: 

Do we offer the Lord to the world as families? 

Do we offer the Lord to wherever we live? 

Do our way of life offer the values of the Lord to our surroundings? 

Do the families and individuals around us have the Lord to take home from us, when they visit us?

The Holy family brought the Lord to Jerusalem: 

The Lord said he lives where two or three are gathered in the Lord's name! What about our families...aren't we gathered in the name of the Lord and by the holy will of God? If so, aren't our families responsible of bringing the Lord to the community, the gathering of the families? Are our Church gatherings, our communities real union of families or some mass of people congregated?

The Holy family created a space for the Lord to live with them: 

Have we created a concrete space for the Lord in our homes? It is not about the altars we have at home, neat and decorated. It is not about the pictures we hang or the calendars we stare at. It is about the living space, it is about a membership in the family!

The Holy family does more than just standing around and blessing us today! 

They challenge us to be bearers of the Lord to the world. Can we accept that challenge?

The Family of the Apostles

THE WORD AND THE SAINTS

October 28, 2020: Remembering Apostles Simon and Jude

Ephesians 2:19-22; Luke 6:12-16

You are no longer alien, no longer strangers, you are part of the family that the Apostles belonged to, the family that was initiated as the nucleus of the Reign of God. This sense of the family, this familiarity, is the greatest gift according to Paul, as he insists that we could have been no people, but God made us 'God's people' through Christ. That is what we are, God's people! And as God's people, we are one family.

The apostle Simon was called the Zealot - a lesson that he gives us: as the militant church on earth, that we should always fight the battle for the will of God to be done and the Reign of God be established here and now.

The apostle Jude, called Thaddeaus in two of the four Gospels, is considered the hope of those who are on the verge of giving up in life. His message is: there is nothing that is beyond God, and God is ever present beside us. 

Added to that Judas Thaddeus, is said to have been close to Jesus in his family ties and in his appearance. However, Jesus would not have made a big issue of it - for him those who listen to God's word and put it into practice are more his family than anyone else! But it should remind us of a tendency very common - when we have the possibility of doing a favour to someone, how do we pick and choose as to whom to extend that favour! Favouritism - on the basis of what? Partiality - to achieve what?  

Simon and Jude, as all other apostles, teach us the lesson that Jesus himself wants us to learn: it does not matter which nationality, or tribe, or clan, or caste I belong to - the only thing that matters is I belong to God, I form part of that One Family, the family of God, the family of the Apostles!

THE WORD AND THE SAINTS

Celebrating Sts. Joachim and Anne: 26th July, 2016

Jer 14:17-22; Mt 13:36-43

The discussion is still on about the darnels among the grains in the field. Jesus speaks as a matter of fact and belittles the question who had sown those darnels. It is immaterial. The fact is that they were there and the grain stalks had grown even amidst those darnels! The merit has to be given to those and Jesus assures it will be given.

Reflecting on personalities such as Sts. Joachim and Anne who stand as symbols of the elders who have kept the faith, we are challenged to emulate their lives, their commitment and their dedication to the Lord.

We are called to remain faithful inspite of and amidst the faithless crowd that looks at everything in terms of gains and benefits. Even the elders in the families are considered and valued according to their worth in terms of income and expenditure. People have no time for persons in this world that absolutises productivity. 

Can we take a moment today and look at our attitude towards elders? Are we grateful or are we calculative? It is time to be grains among the abounding darnels. 

WORD 2day : 30th December, 2015

Maturity,  Wisdom and God's Favour
6th day in the Christmas Octave
1 Jn 2: 12-17; Lk 2: 36-40

Luke alone pictures the life of the Holy Family at Nazareth and the boyhood phases of Jesus. Today he notes that the Word become flesh and grew up to be a holistic human person.

Speaking of holistic growth,  I am reminded of the categories with which we were helped and evaluated for our growth when we were in initial formation towards priesthood. Maturity,  Wisdom and God's Favour, that Luke speaks of today actually refers to the of those criteria of growth: Physical, Intellectual and Spiritual.

I wonder why parents today should not take up these as their criteria to help their children or their wards in their growth. An all round growth is what the society stands in need of.

Growing after the HOLY FAMILY

Feast of Holy Family: 27th December, 2015

1 Sam 1: 20-22,24-28; Col 3: 12-21; Lk 2: 41-52

The Feast today presents to us the model of the Holy Family... especially in the year when we have reflected so much upon the theme of family, we have a clarion call today: to grow after the Holy Family. 

The Question is, what makes your family HOLY?

It's Humble, Obedient and Loving You that makes your family H.O.L.Y.

It is You who have to make your family holy! Rarely do we take that onus on our own selves. We look for someone who is failing in his or her duties, someone with some weakness to shove all the responsibility. 

Humility versus Blame Game

Humility is the first ingredient of holiness. Humility is all about truthfulness and there can be no holiness without truthfulness. Humility is to understand the reality that is me and accept it as it is. It is neither overrating myself nor trampling myself. Joseph and Mary, stand out in this  humility, as they knows exactly what their role is in the holy family and play just that. They never overdo, nor do they shirk their responsibility.

Obedience versus Ego Trips

Most of the times the fights in a family are not about what is right and what is wrong, it is about who is right and who is wrong. Authority is what is contended here... who has the final word? Should the wife always obey the husband? Or is it fine to have an henpecked husband? The solution is not wife obeying husband or husband obeying the wife; it is not about children obeying the parents or parent complying in everything with children; it is about husband, wife and children all obeying God! Knowing exactly what God wants of me, and doing that in peace and unity. It is important to be on our Father's Business!

Love versus Self Seeking

Whether Mary or Joseph or Jesus, there is something that dominates the picture - true and genuine love. Love never seeks its own good! Love is always concerned about the other: Joseph about Mary, Mary about Jesus, Jesus about the people... it is always about the other, not about oneself! The less I concern myself with my self, the more loving I become. Jesus who is Word made flesh, Joseph who takes charge of the holy family merely because God wanted him to, Mary who said that yes without even calculating the risks involved...all the three are epitomies of the love of God. 

The Year of Mercy has a special invitation today - to grow into holy families...each of us holy unto the Lord, each of us into a humble, obedient and loving you!

FAMILY: The Vocation and Mission Today

4th October, 2015: 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Gen 2: 18-24; Heb 2: 9-11; Mk 10: 2-16

FAMILY is the basic unit of a holistic humanity, not the individual. Where this fact is gainsaid, we see the genesis of every problem the world is infested with today. The Word today invites us to dwell on this theme of Family and rightly this day has been chosen to initiate the 14th Ordinary Synod of Bishops, which would reflect on the theme: The Vocation and Mission of the Family in the Church and the Contemporary World. The Synod which begins today, in the Vatican, would last for 3 weeks and each of these weeks would highlight a sub theme, the very themes that we can find underlined in the readings today.

Listening to Challenges: The Synod would begin with listening to the Challenges of the Family in the contemporary world. In a world that is filled with individualism, materialism and consumerism, the family has become an entity that is seen to be an hindrance, a block, a burden that slows down one's personal progress towards self fulfillment. In the Gospel, Jesus underlines the problems of infidelity and unchastity around the reality of marriage. With the increasing numbers of divorce, reducing numbers of marriages, growing justification of co-habitation, newer claims to the nature of marriage, we are called to listen to the times and understand the challenges involved in building a family today.

Discerning Vocations: The First reading highlights an indelible nature of marriage and family. Being a Family or a Marriage is a vocation. It is not a phenomenon that happens by default. It has to be a conscious choice, well discerned and taken up with absolute commitment. Discerning Vocations here would mean the need for persons to make a choice and the role of the community in helping a person make that choice with ease and seriousness. It would mean also the need of the pastors and those who play that role in some manner or degree, to accompany individuals within this context. To mark this fact of family being the locus of one's calling,  during the Synod,  on 18th of October,  the parents of St. Teresa of Liseux will be canonised acknowledging their role as parents in promoting sanctity in their family. 

Exploring the Mission of the Family Today: In the second reading we see that the Word reminds us of the most fundamental function of a family: it makes us brothers and sisters in the Lord. Though every person is an individual, each with his or her interests and motives, dreams and vision, desires and ambitions, we are never islands. We are called to live in a family, to begin with and that family is required to become the basic building block of a humanity that is loving, respectful and caring towards everyone else around us.Today a Christian family specially has an enormous responsibility, a mission to accomplish - Evangelisation. It is to share the love of God to the world today. A family is a lived experience of God's love on a daily basis - to share that love with everyone around and with the world at large is simply what Evangelisation means today. Specially against the background of war and injustice, exploitation and domination, violence and crime, terrorism and fanaticism, the Christian families have to become beacons that bear out true love and compassion reminding the world of the Lord who is ever present in our midst and the Lord who is madly in love with you and me.

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

He did as the Lord commanded him

Feast of St. Joseph: 19th March, 2015

2 Sam 7: 4-5a, 12-14a, 16; Rom 4:13, 16-18, 22; Mt 1:16, 18-21, 24a.

St. Joseph  is presented in the Gospels often as a modern icon of the ancient fathers -Abraham, Jacob, David and others! The readings today bring out the same theme, as they dwell on the ancestry and the promises fulfilled. Apart from various other similarities that we can find, one striking similarity between the Fathers and St. Joseph, is that of their readiness to do what the Lord commands. 

Joseph seems to have had no objections whatsoever to carrying out the projects handed on to him by God- a perfect attitude of faith, the attitude of total surrender and absolute trust. The Holy Family was in safe hands because he did not allow his ego to dominate but allowed the Lord to be the center of his household.

May St. Joseph teach us these three things for our daily living: - Listening to God and living by it; - Letting God have His way in whatever it may; - Loving those entrusted to us by the Divine Providence, with a love that is committed and selfless.

FAMILY: WHERE GOD ABIDES

The Feast of the Holy Family

28th December, 2014

Celebrating the feast of Holy Family... we are given a challenging model, a role we have to play as families in today's context.

The Holy family offered the Lord to the world: Do we do as families? Do we offer the Lord to where we live? Do our way of life offer the values of the Lord to our surroundings? Do the families and individuals around have the Lord to take away from us, when they visit us?

The Holy family brought the Lord to Jerusalem. The Lord said he lives where two or three are gathered in the Lord's name! What about our families...aren't we gathered in the name of the Lord and by the holy will of God? If so, aren't our families responsible of bringing the Lord to the community, the gathering of the families? Are our Church gatherings, our communities real union of families or some mass of people congregated?

The Holy family created a space for the Lord to live with them. Have we created a concrete space for the Lord in our homes? It is not about the altars we have at home, neat and decorated. It is not about the pictures we hang or the calendars we stare at. It is about the living space, it is about a membership in the family!

The Holy family does more than just standing around and blessing us today! They challenge us to be bearers of the Lord to the world. Can we accept that challenge?

WORD 2day: 8th October, 2014

Of God's great big family!

Gal 2:1-2, 7-14; Lk 11:1-4

I have heard of a wonderful definition for prayer (most probably from Martin Luther), which says: prayer is not saying lies to God! It is a spot-on definition, because it gives us the crux of it all. In the letter to the Galatians today, St. Paul is narrating that incident when he had to challenge Peter on his integrity: "If you, though a Jew, are living like a gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the gentiles to live like Jews?" What does it matter what name you bear or to which denomination you belong or which saint is your patron, when your life does not reflect what you believe in?

If I believe in Jesus Christ, the only Son of God and my Saviour - then every person around me is my brother or my sister! What has to be there between us is merely love and love alone! How can I ever think of hating, fighting, judging, competing, ruining, maligning, envying, calumniating, belittling, trampling, exploiting... how can I do these if I truly believe what I believe! It is a reminder again from Jesus in the Gospel today: Accept God your Father and Mother from on High and live in love, like Children of one family, God's great big family!

WORD 2day: 19th September, 2014

The Resurrection Community

I Cor 15: 12-20; Lk 8:1-3

The Readings today point to an identity that is so fundamental to a follower of Christ. First of all the effects that Christ has on his followers is the Resurrection effect: that is a life filled with hope! If Christ were not raised from the dead, our faith would be in vain - declares St. Paul today. We are filled with a hope so great that nothing, not even death can take away the meaning of our life. Secondly, we find today Jesus amidst the first community that he himself had initiated - the Twelve, and some women! That is another Resurrection effect - the fruit of rising above all the pettiness of the world, discarding the divisions, despising the differences of gender or geography, and becoming one community, one people! 'We are all baptised into the one Spirit - Jews or Greeks, free or slaves, we are all filled with the same Spirit', St. Paul would instruct ( cf. 1 Cor 12:13). Today, let us look at our faith community: is it one body? is it united in the Risen Lord? Is it "following" the Lord? Does it have the "mind" of Christ? Are we really Resurrection Community?

WORD 2day: 19th July, 2014

Choice! the choice of God!

Mic 2: 1-5; Mt 12: 14-21

Jesus was living dangerously. But he chose to, for the sake of the Reign of God. He stuck his neck out for the poor, for the oppressed, the marginalised, the ostracised, the exploited, the forgotten in the society. He believed that the Reign of God belonged to them. His life was a hope to the least, the last and the lost. 

In this choice Jesus was making present the God of the Old Testament who sided the oppressed, who stood by the just in their struggles and who kept watch over the persons who strove to live according to God's will. The first reading points out the choice of God, the choice for the poor and the suffering. This predilection on God's part distinguished Jesus and the choices he made. His choice was, the choice of God. There apparent and real dangers, and Jesus knew it well.

Nothing could stop him from proclaiming the Reign of God for he knew he had come precisely for that, to establish the Reign of the God of Truth, the God of the suffering, the Lord of the least, the protector of the lost, the hope of the last. Our identity has to be our Choices, may they be forever in keeping with the choices of God!

Abraham: Biblical Icons for Family Living #1

Abraham

From my contribution to Salesian Bulletin -July issue

WORD 2day: 30th June, 2014

The Tough Call

Am 2: 6-10, 13-16; Mt 8: 18-22

Following the Lord is not an easy task, it is really a tough call. Amos explains today how an unjust life and a godly life cannot go together, how a maltreatment of a brother or a sister and the worship of the Lord cannot be reconciled with each other, how selfishness and true spirituality are opposed to each other. Amos will continue to challenge us this whole week. Amos is called the roaring lion, the Lord's voice that convicts us, the goodness of God that challenges us to be just, good and truly holy.

Jesus, in the Gospel, takes the presentation of Amos ahead and points to how difficult it is to be true disciples to a demanding master like the Lord! It is a fact! The Lord demands nothing less than an absolute commitment or surrender to the Lord. It is all about Integrity, a state where what I think and what I express are one and the same, what I preach and what I struggle to practice are not opposed to each other, what I do and what I am flow from the fact that I belong to God always and everywhere! It is indeed a tough call... but there is no other way to prove myself worthy of the One who has called me!

Called to be Eucharistic Families

Cover article from Salesian Bulletin, June 2014

WORD 2day: 26th May, 2014

On our way to the Reign

Acts 16: 11-15; Jn 15: 26 - 16: 4

"The Spirit of truth" that Jesus speaks of in the Gospel is witnessed to be at work in the first reading event from the Acts of the Apostles - that of the lady and her household, who accept the Lord and get baptised! While on the one hand there are people who are waiting to take the apostles to task and persecute them in all known ways, there are at the same time a multitude who are ready to protect, help and fend for them.

This discrepancy comes to the fore in our day to day experience too, when we find the Spirit at work within us. We will feel an urge to spread the Word, but will be faced with obstacles and hurdles: it is the Spirit of the Lord who leads us to discern the rightway that a believing community should take at a particular point of time. Though the persecutions may abound, the final result will be a 'revival'...and that is what we hope for.

Let our hearts, homes and our households be filled with the Spirit of truth, that we may set in motion real journey towards the Reign of God. 

WORD 2day: 30th January, 2014

Consecrated to Shine!

The tradition of consecrating oneself or consecrating one's family or consecrating the world to God, at some high moments of spiritual significance is no new practice! Right from Joshua who declared, "As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord" (Josh 24:15), we see this practice as an expressed desire to belong to the Lord despite changing times and diversified experiences. In fact, the Lord consecrated every one of us to Himself at our Baptism and this consecration has to be lived; it has to be pronounced with unction among the people; it has to shine forth reminding ourselves and inviting others to a fuller consecration to the Lord, our God. Have you consecrated yourself or your family to the Lord? If no, why not do it tomorrow... being Friday, you can consecrate yourself and your family to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and thus give the central place to the love of God in your family. There is a beautiful Catholic Tradition of Consecration of the family to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and an annual renewal of that consecration on a fixed date: could be a practical way to keep our faith alive and shining, like the lamp on the lampstand. 

WORD 2day: 30th December, 2013

One who does the will of God, lives for ever!

The feast of the Holy Family is just over, but the theme lingers on in today's liturgy - the first reading addressed to various categories of persons in the family, the psalm inviting the families to offer themselves to the Lord and the Gospel referring to the holy family at the temple, to offer the first born to the Lord! The cue to the message is prophetess Anna and the last verse of the first reading which says, "one who does the will of God, lives for ever" (1 Jn 2:17). We are all called to 'grow and become strong', and to be filled with wisdom...wisdom which tells us what is God's will for us; what is acceptable and what is not, in the eyes of the Lord! Faith is not acquired once for all; every day we must grow, grow to the full into persons that God wants us to be. We have no excuse, because God's favour is upon us all as chosen children of God; if I don't grow and become strong in faith, it is me who is to be blamed, is it not?

LESSONS FROM THE HOLY FAMILY

29th December, 2013: Solemnity of the Holy Family

Increasing number of Homes for the Aged, Orphanages, Day care centres and Night shelters for the kids on the streets, alarming rate of divorces and split families, the ridiculous family feuds and meaningless stand offs among the relatives within a family... these are no strange scenes today in a Christian Community! And much more, these are vivid testaments of a collapsing Christian faith. The Christian faith is a faith of a Community, from the earliest times known it is experienced, lived and shared in a community; and the basic unit of the community is the family. That is the reason for using the beautiful term, 'domestic church' referring to the family. It is there, that the Church grows from a seed to a seedling and then to an orchard of God's love. The Solemnity today, intends to rekindle in us our respect for families, our commitment to living our faith in our families and as families to become the nuclei of God's love that can give birth to a whole new world, a world of love, peace, joy and fellowship.

The Holy Family of Nazareth presents to us a wonderful project towards this dream:

To the Families: BE GOD CENTERED! 

The first reading invites us to reflect on the fact that a Christian Family is constituted by God. It is not merely the man and the woman who come together to make the family, but it is the Lord who brings them together. The second reading affirms the same in the words of St. Paul, who elsewhere points out that marriage should lead to mutual sanctification of the partners (1 Cor 7:14). As long as God is the centre of a family, the family will remain united, bonded in the love of God.

God was at the centre, in the Holy Family... God commanded, the family carried out. They listened to God, obeyed God and took directions from God. Do we as a family, listen to God and take directions from God?

To the Individuals: BE FAMILY CENTERED!

The individualistic and materialistic tendencies of the society at large, have begun to affect the individual families drastically. Individuals within a family, far from thinking of the well being of the other, have begun to calculate the gain they have from the rest of the family and stoop to dirty levels of hurting the other for one's own good! 

The Good of the Family was the uppermost criterion in the Holy Family... Mary did not mind the running around, be it when she was still carrying or after the delivery; Joseph did not mind taking up the burdens of transferring them every time; all that was in their mind was the Good of the Family and Jesus was no exception as Luke says in his Gospel, "he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them' (Lk 2:51). Do we as individuals, place the good of the others in the family before my own interests?

To the Churches: BE COMMUNION CENTERED!

The Local Churches, that is the parishes, are essentially God's Family of families. In the wise and eternal plan of our loving Lord, the Universal Church in the world is the communion of Churches in various nations, namely the dioceses; the Diocesan church is the communion of the local parish churches; the Parish church has to be the communion of the domestic churches, that is the Family! All of us united in the name of the Father, Son and the Spirit, who invite us to form one, big, universal family of loving hearts - that family which is called the REIGN OF GOD. 

The Holy Family did everything with just one objective in mind: that God's will be done. Mary said that to Angel Gabriel: Let it be done unto me according to your will, and ever since she did nothing but obey the Lord with thanks, praise and reflection in her heart. Joseph carried out every command that was given to him without speaking a word of doubt or objection - all for the will of God to be done. Do we as part of the parish church, do our part to grow in our communion with each other, towards forming one, big, God's family - the Reign of God?

Let us take to heart the lessons from the Holy Family today...and as families be God centered, as individuals be Family centered and as a Parish be Communion centered.

WORD 2day

26th July, 2013: Sts. Joachim and Anne, parents of Mary: Grandparents' Day!!!

The first setting in which faith enlightens humanity is the family, declares the recent encyclical Lumen Fidei (52). It further explains that passing of faith in the family happens in the process of shared expression of faith within the family, helping children to become aware of their faith and grow and mature in it. Christian faith is always communitarian and it is passed primarily in the family. Recently someone observed to me, sharing on the level of faith being lived (or practiced) in Europe vis-a-vis in India, that one major reason for the degeneration in Europe is the weakening of the institution of the family. Those who hand on faith to us are really God-given. Most important among them, our parents and grandparents who not only give us life but show us also how to live it, from their own experience. Celebrating a day to remember the parents of Mary, the Mother of God and our Mother, provides us an opportunity to remember with thanks these our fore-runners in faith, as the first reading suggests, 'let us praise famous persons, our parents in their generations. These were persons of mercy, whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten' (Sir  44:1,10). Infact, thanks to them, we are in a position better than them due to their hard work, great example and their dreams for us! Jesus acknowledges that in his words (Mt 13:16-17) and exhorts us to live up to our blessedness, our giftedness, worthy of the faith and tradition that is transmitted to us, from our predecessors. Maybe, a grateful remembrance of our grandparents if they are no more, or a bear hug to them if they are still with us, will be in place today!