WORD 2day

19th August, 2013

While we were in the period of initial formation as aspirants to priesthood, there used to be periodic assessment of behaviour and it used to be communicated to us in person by a one in charge of our formation. I remember a phrase that was often used - 'you have a lot of good will; but good will alone is not good enough!' It seems funny to look back and take note of that remark, but looking at our life and the way we live, very often that statement applies well to most of us. Like the young man in the Gospel today, who had so much of good will to inherit the Reign of God, found out from Jesus that, that alone was not going to be good enough! The Lord has great hopes on us, but we fail repeatedly to live up to that. The first reading presents to us a pattern of failures of Israel, not just an act of sin but a habit of sin, a regular falling short of their call. But the Lord never gave up on them, God offers them opportunities after opportunities to return to their glorious calling - to be God's chosen people! God never gives up on us, God has great hopes on us and invites us to "Go... give up all that tends to replace God... and return and follow the Lord!" 

RACE: An analogy for Christian Living!

18th August, 2013: 20th Sunday in the Ordinary Time

"Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us"(Heb 12:1), invites the Liturgy today! Race - is a common analogy that is used to refer to something that requires relentless effort and enormous endurance. Today, the Liturgy of the Word invites us to look at our Christian living in the light of this analogy. Christian life is a Race; Living the Christian faith is like running a race...which has its starting point and the finish line in the person of Jesus Christ - "the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith"(Heb 12:2) Given the situation of the Greek Culture that was just spreading its wings, as Christianity was emerging out of Judaism, it was easy for the people to understand the analogy of Race applied to the life of faith. The analogy seems quite prevalent that we see apart from the letter to the Hebrews that we read today, also St. Paul uses it with facility, in his letters to the Philippians (Phil 3:14) and to Timothy(2 Tim 4:7,8). Extending a little more, the analogy, we shall try to understand our Christian life today. 

Christian Life is a Race, a race of Hurdles! Obstructions all along the way, does not in anyway hinder the progress of the athlete, the athlete has to jump over those and run towards the goal that is set before one's eyes. If at every hurdle the person contemplates a back off, the race is lost and ruined. Jesus today warns us of such hurdles and Jeremiah is presented to us in the midst of such overpowering obstructions. But Christian life has to go on! Jeremiah, when he was finally lifted up from the dungeon, he went back to proclaim the Word of the Lord! Up and across each hurdle, our life of faith, moves on!

Christian Life is a Race, a Relay Race! We are not running alone, we are in a team. Some one has run the race before us and they have passed the baton to us. It is our responsibility today to run and we will not be running it forever. We will have to finish our course and pass the baton to the next! Faith has to be lived, and passed on. In the encyclical, Lumen Fidei, chapter three we reflect that those who believe are never alone, faith is always shared and it tends to be spread; it has to be handed on! The second reading presents this beautifully recalling to our attention that we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses(Heb 12:1).

Christian Life is a Race, a Marathon! It is not just a sprint, that I strive for a short time and I clinch a victory; it is a marathon, it is long and it is taxing. Speed is not enough, it demands also stamina! Endurance and Perseverance are inevitable subjects of attention when it comes to our Christian life. In Jesus' footsteps, St. Paul too instructs us, in his letter to the Thessalonians - never to be tired of doing what is right(2 Thes 3:13) and in the letter to Timothy - to endure every suffering and carry on our life (2 Tim 4:5). At times it can be boring, tedious or exasperating, but our character rests in staying on the track!

Be it what it may, the analogy of the Race requires of us three important mindsets!

The first is a sense of URGENCY. The Gospel presents this with the image of FIRE. Just as an athlete needs the fire within to run, a Christian needs the fire within to glow in his or her life. The fire that Jesus came to set, and badly wants ablaze. Jeremiah had it ablaze within his heart (Jer 20:9), the apostles, the martyrs, the first Christian community - all of them had it so ablaze within them, that it consumed them and spread wild to the world. Do we have it in us?

The second is the strength of PERSEVERANCE. The Second reading presents it with the image of the BLOOD. In every race, there are those who are ready to beat us, to over power us - in our Christian life too there are elements that are on the prowl to beat us, to over power us - the element of sin, the element of godlessness, the element of materiality! A Christian needs to fight these elements constantly, struggle against them relentlessly, right up even to the point of bloodshed. 

The third is the sense of FOCUS. The first reading presents it with the image of the MIRE. With those around want us to fail, with the tiredness that catches on, with the target that lies quite away in a distance... there are chances for the athlete to lose heart. The training is to focus on the finish line! The darkness of the dungeon or the Mire that was all around, did not in anyway take away the focus of Jeremiah! He had his eyes focused from where came his help! The second reading has those phrases - "looking to Jesus"(12:2) and "Consider Him(Jesus)"(12:3), underlining the need for us to Focus on Him, who is our beginning and our end, our alpha and the omega, our pioneer and perfecter. 

With a sense of Urgency in our will to live our faith to the full, with the strength to persevere all trials and with our focus always on Christ - let us run this race set before us. We are not alone, we have the example and the help of those who have gone before us - the saints and martyrs. We have our brothers and sisters around us, united in the One Lord, to support us and sustain us. With the example and the help of the Crucified Lord who sits at the right of the throne of God, as the Risen Lord, let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.

WORD 2day

17^th August, 2013

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, declares Joshua before the people. He leads them by example! Just like Jesus who made it clear to the people that following him was not always a pleasure trip – ‘the foxes have their holes and the birds have their nest, but the son of man has no place to lay down’ – Joshua too makes it clear that choosing to serve God and giving a word on that, is a challenging task! But for children to depend on someone, without too much of thought to their own ego or pride, is a natural capacity. That is what prompted Jesus to say, ‘Unless you become like children you will not enter the Reign.’ And today in the gospel too, Jesus presents the children as the paradigm of the Reign of God. Innocence of the children is from the absence of pride and their docility is from the absence of ego. If we have to remain with the Lord and forever be God’s, the prime enemies we have to do away from within us are – our pride and ego!

DB turns 198

WORD 2day

16^th August, 2013

The gratuitous love of God and the conditional love of humans – that is the contrast the Word brings to the fore today. Taking the reins from Moses, the young Joshua consolidates his people reminding them of the great history of faith and wonders that they have behind them, the great things that God had accomplished for them though they deserved none of them! The love that God lavishes on us, and the measure in which God does it, we do not deserve it at all. It is a gratuitous gift from God and God has never counted the cost, even to the extent of sending the only Son of God as a ransom on our behalf (cf. John 3:16). That love is the model set before us, by Jesus. When Jesus changed the commandment of Leviticus (19:18) from ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ to ‘love one another as I have loved you’ (Jn 13:34), Jesus made a deliberate choice to propose God’s love as the model. Accepting one another, forgiving one another, being good to one another, wishing the good of the other with all one's heart – in all these we are called to measure up to none less than God, who is Love itself!

Participating in the Fruits of the Risen Lord

15th August, 2013: 

Solemnity of the Assumption of Blessed Virgin Mary

"...The revered Mother of God, from all eternity joined in a hidden way with Jesus Christ in one and the same decree of predestination, immaculate in her conception, a most perfect virgin in her divine motherhood, the noble associate of the divine Redeemer who has won a complete triumph over sin and its consequences, finally obtained, as the supreme culmination of her privileges, that she should be preserved free from the corruption of the tomb and that, like her own Son, having overcome death, she might be taken up body and soul to the glory of heaven where, as Queen, she sits in splendor at the right hand of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages" 

These were the words with which Pope Pius XII in the year 1950 defined the dogma of the Assumption of our Blessed Mother, in the document Munificentissimus Deus (art.40). Today's is a beautiful occasion when Holy Mother the Church invites us to celebrate as a solemnity on three major counts.

First of all, we are invited to Celebrate the Faith, the Faith of Mary, the young girl who cooperated with the Divine Plan and totally abandoned herself into the hands of God with her words - Be it done unto me according to your Word. The first concern for her was the Word - the Word of God which became flesh in her womb - and she became the Temple of God, the Ark of the Lord as we read in the first reading today. God acknowledged her faith, her response of faith, her obedience of faith with wondrous gifts! If the Immaculate conception is understood as the grace that God gave in preparation for her role in the Salvation history, Assumption can very well be understood as the reward that God blessed her with for her Absolute Cooperation! We are called to celebrate this faith, which Elisabeth acclaims in the Gospel today - Blessed is she who believed in the fulfillment of what God has spoken!

Secondly, we are invited to Celebrate the Hope, the hope of Resurrection, the core of our faith. "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in sin" says the part of the epistle that just precedes the second reading of today! Christ is the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ, we hear in the reading. God anticipates that for Mary as a sign of hope for us who belong to Christ, to show us that we are destined to be fruits in the line of Christ. Everyone who thinks and laments of death and the darkness of death, is today invited to open his or her eyes in hope and look at the fact that Christ has overcome death and each of us is called to overcome death, as Mary, a human being just like you and me, has overcome that death. Nothing, not even death has any claim over us... God alone, God's only Son and our Saviour Jesus Christ alone can claim us to Himself. We are called to celebrate this hope, which St. Paul affirms that death will be the ultimate enemy to be destroyed!

Thirdly, we are invited to Celebrate the Love, the love that God Almighty had lavished on his predilected daughter, the love that Jesus showered on his sweetest mother, and the love that the Holy Spirit covered the most beautiful handmaid of God with.  Pope Pius XII in Munificentissimus Deus (art.25), makes a splendid reflection saying, the primary reason for belief in the Assumption is "the filial love" of Christ for His mother. Mary herself knew how much God loved her - she proclaimed "My soul magnifies the Lord, for the Lord has looked with favour on me and done great things for me!" Just like Elisabeth who felt the blessings of the Lord by the mere presence of Mary, we too will feel that love, that favour, that blessings from the Lord, if we stay close to Mary, our sweet loving mother. 

Today, Celebrating the faith we are called to become like Mary, persons who listen to the Word and thus become bearers of that Word, like she became the Ark of the Lord! Celebrating the hope we are called to fix our eyes on the Saviour and ever yearn to belong to Him, so that we can taste the fruits of his Resurrection, as Mary participates in the fruits of the Risen Lord. Celebrating the love of the Lord, we are called to become personification of this love in our contexts, and inspire people as Mary did, to praise the Lord in the words that our Blessed mother gives us today - My soul Magnifies the Lord!

                               

WORD 2day

14th August, 2013: Remembering Maxmilian Kolbe

Maxmilian Kolbe, a saint of our times whom I look up to with awe! He lived the words that we hear in the Liturgy today. He took seriously 1 John 3:16 - "... we ought to lay down our lives for our brethren." That is the sign given to us to testify for true love - as Jesus himself states in the Gospel, Jn 15:13 - "there can be no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends." It is a choice that Kolbe made, knowing well what is going to be the fallout of that choice. Right enough, Pope John Paul II declared him as 'the Patron Saint of our Difficult Century'. A saint from the greatest of all tragedies of the just gone century in the concentration camp of Auschwitz, where Kolbe chose to die in place of another(Franciszek Gajowniczek, who was present at the canonisation of the saint). Let our love be genuine (Rom 12:9); but if it were really so, sure we will have to be prepared for hard times and painful experiences!

WORD 2day

13th August, 2013

God goes before you, says the first reading! God comes after you, says the Gospel! A great piece of assurance today, as the readings together affirm the tremendous presence of God that accompanies us every moment of our life. God goes before us in our difficulties and comes after us in our failures! In short, the Lord is someone who lives with us everyday of our life and every moment of our days. Living in the presence of God, was the principal concern for Moses. It was the prime example that Jesus wanted to leave us too. Faith, Prayer, Communion, Service to others, Celebration of the faith, everything will be totally redefined if only we undauntedly believed in the concrete presence of God with us every moment of our daily life.

WORD 2day

12th August, 2013

I run every risk of being misunderstood if I write, Christians have to be people with a dual citizenship! With the pseudo-religio-political claims that prevail in our land, that 'all Christians are westerners', the risk is real and concrete. But let me stay clear of it, by immediately explaining myself further that we are undeniably legitimate citizens of the country we belong to, but at the same time, we look forward to the one that God has prepared for us (Heb 11:12 & 16). The first reading today underlines the primacy of God and God's place in our lives! In the Gospel, Jesus shows us an example of looking at everything in life, absolutely everything in life, from the perspective of God. Even a question of paying tax leads Jesus to reflect on the fact that we are sons and daughters of God, that we are free by virtue of our participation in the Divine Nature of God! The capacity of Jesus to move from the ordinary things of the daily life to a reflection on our relationship with God, is something amazing and something that we need to practice ourselves too. Let us at the end of this day, look back and see how many God-talks we were inspired to, all along this day.

COME HOME TO THE REIGN

11th August, 2013: 19th Sunday in the Ordinary Time

The theme of the last Sunday continues today, with a little further deepening. Reading and reflecting on the readings of today and their theme, I was reminded of the story of the Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum. I am sure most of us know the story or atleast have seen the film that was produced in 1939. Little Dorothy Gale finds herself blown away to a land far from home and yearns to return home. She gets to hear of the one who can help her get home…the great Wizard of Oz and she follows the yellow brick road that leads to the Wizard, in the hope of meeting the Wizard to find her way home! On the way, she enters into the lives of the Scarecrow who lacks brain, the Cowardly Lion who lacks courage and the Tin Man who lacks a heart…and changes their lives for the better as she finds her way home! How close this fable is to our lives, as presented by the readings today!

The people of Israel are on a journey, yearning to enter the Promised Land walking with hope in the path shown by the Lord, says the first reading. This Promised Land is not merely the land that is flowing with milk and honey – explains to us the letter to the Hebrews – we are bound to the city built by God, the city that the Lord has prepared for us. The final chapter of the recent encyclical Lumen Fidei, is inspired by this part of the epistle – “as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. God…has prepared for them a city” (11:16). This God’s city, it is much greater than a worldly city we can think of or the perfect society one can dream of – it is the Reign of God.

In the Gospel Jesus invites us with his wide open arms, “Come Home to the Reign!” And Jesus shows us the way, the way we need to walk towards this Reign. All the way to heaven, is heaven they say! Hence the way to reaching the Reign is creating it all along the way we walk through in life. How do we do it, we ask! And Jesus has a simple set of directions in the Gospel today!

The First of them, REALISATION of the true treasure. Following from the previous week’s reflection, Jesus calls us to a clarity on what is the real treasure! Selling everything and giving to the poor, providing oneself with the purses that do not grow old, earning treasures that are not eaten by moth – all these mean a right understanding of what a true treasure is, so that our hearts may be sufficiently prepared and firmly set towards it. Abraham knew it and that is why he was prepared to give up even his only, beloved son! Abraham realized that God’s promises were much more dependable than all that one can possess!

The second is READINESS to receive the Reign from the Lord’s hands! Prompt to pick up the signs and challenges of the Reign of God, we are challenged to respond to the demands of the Reign at any time. It could be at home in the family, on the streets in the neighbourhood, at work in the workplace, amidst those who do not know Christ, in contact with those who do not believe in God, in the face of an injustice, in the wake of a conflict, in the presence of someone who is going through a crisis – wherever we may find ourselves, we are called to be people of the Reign. Reign of God is not merely a destination we are bound to, it is a situation we are called to create together as a family of brothers and sisters called by one God, our father and mother!

The third is RESPONSIBILITY towards brothers and sisters, to serve those around as the least of all, without counting the cost or expecting a return. Forgiveness, Compassion, Love and Service are concrete expressions of this responsibility. Being of service to the needy, being sources of consolation to the suffering, being the voice of the voiceless, embracing in charity everyone even those who hate us – these are the signs of the Reign and the ways of making present the Reign even as we journey towards the fullness of its presence! We cannot think of a moment opportune or inopportune for these… as disciples of Christ we are called to this responsibility 24/7 and every one of the 365 days! It is tiring and demanding – Yes! From the one who has been given much, much will be expected! There is no alternative! Let’s not be lost on our way to the Reign!

If we have to get home to the Reign…we have to realize what a treasure the Reign of God is, be ready to accept it at any point of time and carryout our responsibility on a daily basis – our responsibilities of love, testimony and service to our  brothers and sisters. Let’s walk dear brothers and sisters, in the way of Christ – let’s walk our way to heaven, let’s get home to the Reign!