The great attitude of GRATITUDE

13th October, 2013: 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Spiritual life is made of a set of attitudes that make up who we are! The touchstone of an authentically spiritual person lies in the virtue that the Word of God speaks to us of today: the great attitude of Gratitude... gratitude for every goodness that one experiences, gratitude to the Source of all that one has and one is - God! "What do you have that you did not receive?" asks St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 4:7).

Gratitude is born of a Humble Recognition of God! Namaan was asked to dip in river Jordan and he felt offended because his pride ruled his will. But when he listens to that word from the Man of God, humbling himself for that moment, he recognised the presence of the Mighty God. It is only when I am humble, I recognise God and that recognition of God makes me more humble! 

Gratitude is expressed in Grateful Submission to God! An authentic outcome of immense gratitude is total submission to God for the marvels that God has done to us. We see the man in the Gospel, just one out of the ten of them - "he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks" (v.16). What happened to the rest? Either they did not realise they were healed or they did not realise that the healing was a gift! This Samaritan heart realised the gratuitous miracle and recognised the hand of God - and the result was, a grateful submission at the feet of Jesus.

Gratitude leads to a Faithful Perseverance in God's ways! "Rise and go your way, your faith has made you well" (v.19) says Jesus, commissioning him to be an apostle to the World. That is the commission we receive every time we experience the grace of God in our personal lives - to go into the world and share the word of God, 'that the word of God may not be fettered' (cf. 2 Tim 2:9). It is the gratitude for the goodness that we have experienced in the Lord that makes us persevere, amidst all troubles and trials we might face. Our perseverance is not so much because we are faithful to the Lord, as because the Lord is faithful to us, reminds St. Paul in the second reading (2 Tim 2:13). 

A grateful heart is a humble heart and a humble person will ever be a faithful person and faithfulness gives one the courage and strength to persevere. Learning to look at our daily life and recognise the miracles that happen in abundance; putting up with daily crosses with the image of the Crucified Saviour in our hearts; placing ourselves each day at the feet of Jesus to be sent into the world as messengers of his loving Word - that is growing into Spiritual Persons. Let us heed the call of the Word today, to increase our sense of gratitude and grow into authentic spiritual persons! 

WORD 2day

12th October, 2013

"To hear the word of God and keep it" , invites the Liturgy. Today, as the Holy Father calls the whole Church across the globe to join in praying through our Blessed Mother, with the miraculous statue of Our Lady of Fatima reaching Rome and the Holy Father getting ready to consecrate the whole world to her maternal care (on Sunday, 13th), it can be looked at by some as undue and exaggerated. 'Henceforth all generations will call me blessed', sang Mary when she heard the Word of God and said 'yes' to it. And Jesus reiterated it, that Mary was 'Blessed' not merely for having borne him physically and nursed him, but more for having heard the Word of God and unconditionally submitted herself to it. Thus Jesus opened the invitation to all - it is possible for anyone, just like Mary, to become 'Blessed'. All that you need to do is: hear the word of God and keep it.

WORD 2day

11th October, 2013

The Day of the Lord - in the history of the people of God - has had quite a few interpretations. The most common of those during the Old Testament times, was what we find in the first reading today - a day of doom, a day of destruction, a day of final judgement! Jesus, spoke of not just the day of the Lord, but the days of the Lord, the coming of the Reign of God! The sense of judgement persisted, but the fear of destruction or doom gave way to the need to take a stand, the urgency to make a choice - for God or against God! The day or the moment that we make a choice for God becomes for us the day of the Lord! When that choice for God becomes persistent and absolute, that is the Reign of God. Am I ready to choose God, and choose God alone? Am I prepared to stand up for God? If yes, I become a son or a daughter of the Reign.

WORD 2day

10th October, 2013

'Why do the just suffer and why do the evildoers prosper?' - this has always been an unresolved question in history. There is yet another fundamental question that is subtler and more crucial and that is - what is good and what is evil; what it means to be righteous and what it means to be wicked. Both these grand queries are reflected upon in today's readings which give us the criteria to be acceptable in the eyes of God: To give the first place to God and things that pertain to God and to trust in God with no doubts whatsoever! When these criteria are lived in our daily life, there will be no necessity for the questions we mentioned a while ago! The first will take care of the greed and manipulation that governs the world today; and the second will make us humble to receive everything from the hands of God, so that we look at ourselves and at each other as brothers and sisters of the One Father and Mother!

WORD 2day

9th October, 2013

The readings today call our attention to how bewilderingly gracious God is! Even in the Old Testament times when people thought of God in terms of one who punishes the wrongdoers, the theology that we see in the first reading today was quite strong: 'thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love' (Jonah 4:2). To our human minds, as was the case with Jonah, it can appear sometimes to be undeserving, confusing and sometimes even absurd! A personification of that absurdity is Jesus himself - God's only son whom God did not spare, because "God so loved the world" (Jn 3:16)! And "while we were still sinners Christ died for us" (Rom 5:8). Jesus' words, teachings, prayer, everything was aimed at just one thing: to reveal the goodness, the graciousness and the bewildering and 'absurd' love of God for God's children!

WORD 2day

8th October, 2013

To be receptive, is the call today! The people of Nineveh received the message from the Lord and Martha received the Lord himself into her house. Going further, the readings have a warning too. Just receiving the message or receiving the Lord is not all. To receive would mean nothing if we do not take to heart the message of the Lord. Receiving, showing honour and adoration to the Lord, should culminate in an attentive drinking-in of the Word from the Lord and putting it into practice. Elsewhere the Lord clarifies, not all who call 'Lord! Lord!' will be saved, but those who listen to the Word and live it in their daily life (Mt 7:21; Lk 6:46). All our practices of piety are indeed acts of giving glory to the Lord, but the Lord looks out for our daily living, our concrete relationships, our ordinary interactions, our day to day commitments and our priorities! 

WORD 2day

7th October, 2013: Remembering Our Blessed Mother of the Holy Rosary

Today is a historical day. The feast of Our Blesssed Mother of the Holy Rosary, was initially known as the feast of Our Lady of Victory, in thanksgiving for the victory in a battle at Muret (in England) in the year 1213. That marks the 800th year! After a winding history of changes and developments, it was in the year 1913 that Pope Pius X fixed the feast on October 7th! And that marks the 100th commemoration! Every time we pray the Rosary, we repeat the words from the Word of God...the Gospel today reminds us this fact! "Full of Grace", the Angel addressed Mary, and that is what she was! And that is what she is, to each of us today - a channel of grace! As the apostles found in her a source of strength and direction to remain united, until the Spirit anointed them, let us seek her company and guidance to walk the way traced by her Son and our Lord, Jesus Christ.

GROWING IN FAITH

6th October, 2013 : 27th Sunday in the Ordinary Time

It is a familiar story said of the old lady who heard the gospel passage of today and challenged the young parish priest of its practicality! And they agreed she would pray for the tree outside her window to move a bit away after a novena. Nine prayerful days passed and on the 9th day asked the parish priest, 'so what about the tree?' The lady said with a wry smile, 'I knew from day one, nothing would happen! The tree stands right there.'

The Word of God this Sunday, invites us to grow in faith! "Increase our faith", pray the disciples. We would do good to make it our prayer too, asking the Lord to increase our faith. But what is faith? "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" explains the epistle to the Hebrews(Heb 11:1). Where does this assurance and this conviction come from? From a relationship, a rapport on which our whole life is based and thus even things not seen and things hoped for, do not ever seem an impossibility. That is why our tradition defines faith as our personal response to a self-revealing God. Lumen Fidei the latest of the encyclicals states, faith is our response to the Word which engages us personally (n.8). 

Faith, being a relationship, is matter of daily experience and not just of extraordinary moments. It is easier for us, to look within ourselves and identify when this faith runs short, than to see it when it is there! Today's readings give us three indications of the lack of faith... in order to educate us towards growing in faith.

One of the familiar indications of lack of faith is Pessimism. The world today is flooded with pessimism - words like crisis, conflict, melt-down, inflation, decadence are most commonly heard terms on a daily basis. The first reading too presents a situation similar to today's -Violence, destruction, troubles, strife, contention -but it ends with that assurance: 'the righteous shall live by faith!' (Hab 2:4). Growing in faith is to fight against any pessimism creeping into our thoughts, our spirit and our outlook.

The second indication that the readings point to, is Panic. 'God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline' (2 Tim 1:7). Where there is faith there will be power, if faith is a love relationship with God, there can be no fear, 'for there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear' (1 Jn 4:18). When I begin to fear a situation or a person or a consequence, it is an indication that my faith needs nurturing.

The third indication is the reason for both the preceding ones. It is Pride. The perfect contrast to faith is human pride! If faith is surrender, pride inspires resistance. If faith is to relate, pride creates rebellion. If faith aids perseverance, pride instigates me to quit. Both pessimism and panic are in a way fruits of pride within. Humility is a fruit of faith; it is a realisation of who oneself is - a humble servant of God, with all the capabilities and limitations, working one's way towards building up the Reign of God here and now. It is Lumen Fidei again which beautifully states, 'Faith is God's gift, which calls for humility and courage to trust and to entrust' (n.14). 

Pessimism, Panic and Pride - are contrary to faith! Pessimism creates despair, panic destroys peace and pride makes me inhuman. May my prayer, 'Increase my faith' be accompanied by my personal efforts to trust, love and surrender myself unconditionally to the One who loves me so unconditionally! 

WORD 2day

5th October, 2013

'For just as you proposed to go astray from God, return with tenfold zeal to seek him' (Bar 4:28), instructs the first reading today. The key to understand the so-called discrepancy between the Old Testament thinking and the New Testament theology lies here. While we can be surprised at a 'punishing' and a 'revengeful' God that the people of the Old Testament thought of, we understand from the verses like the above that we are responsible for all the calamities that we bring on ourselves, by our priorities and choices, not only individually but also collectively - it is unfortunate that some who are innocent too face the brunt due to the rest! It is high time that we realise that 'blessed are those eyes that see what we see, and the ears that hear what we hear'... if only we can take the cue from things that happen around us, we will readily return to the Lord, with tenfold zeal! The requirement is that we see, and that we hear - and true faith alone makes it possible!

WORD 2day

4th October, 2013: Remembering St. Francis of Assisi

St. Francis has been identified as the person who imitated Christ the closest! His greatness lay in his simplicity, his humility and his love for poverty! That is why when the present Holy Father chooses to follow his model, the whole world cannot resist taking notice of him. But where does this simplicity and humility come from? Is it a mere showmanship? If so... it just cannot last long! For St. Francis, it came from his realisation of the fact that he is sent; that he is called, called with a specific mission, at a specific time and in his specific context! As we thank God for this great Saint from Assisi and pray specially for the Holy Father today, let us pay heed to the same message presented to us by the readings of the day! if we realise the fact that we are specially called and sent by the Lord, we will naturally realise how humble and underserving we are! From that humility and meekness, will surge a sanctity, that can make us become living Christ today - that is, Christ-ians!