St. Cecilia... the third-century martyr

The statue of the martyrdom St. Cecilia in the Church...
a replica of the same statue is found in the Catacombs of St. Calistus

The Church of St. Cecilia in Rome

Santa Cecilia in Trastevere

Happy feast to all Singers and Musicians

WORD 2day

22nd November, 2013: Remembering St. Cecelia

Zeal for his house will consume him - Ps 69:9 - that is what John refers to when he recounts the event that we hear in the Gospel today from Luke! Judas Mattathias in the first reading and Jesus in the Gospel are presented as burning with zeal for God, for God's house. When we accept God as our king (the theme of this entire week) we should be burning with zeal for God, for things that belong to God, for values that stand for God, for persons and their dignity that directly springs from God, for life and love that signify God...we should burn with zeal to preserve, promote and uphold these! The saint we celebrate today, St. Cecelia is a third century martyr, who suffered for the absolute love that she had for her king, Our Lord Jesus Christ. If we think of it in terms of king-subject relationship, it is our allegiance to our King...let us be filled with zeal for our king, that is if we accept our Lord as our King!

WORD 2day

21st November, 2013

Who is your king? – that is the crucial question that will be asked these days of the week running up to the Solemnity of Christ the King. The parable we heard yesterday of the return of the king who demands an account, the siege of Jerusalem that Jesus speaks of today in the Gospel and the call of Mattathias to gather in his leadership against the persecuting forces… all these present a crisis situation; a situation demanding a definitive choice. Sometimes external pressures like the work ambient, the political milieu, the personal addictions or the overpowering temptations can present a crisis situation to us… a situation to make a radical choice for God or against God! Even a simple affair like the choice of words we use, or an ordinary decision we make on a daily basis, can determine the radical belonging to or rejection of God in our lives! May our everyday choices be such that the Lord never need to weep over us, as he did over Jerusalem!

WORD 2day

20th November, 2013

The urge to be faithful to God is never a question of maintaining the status quo. As spiritual masters always warn us, not to progress in spiritual life is to regress! Faithfulness to God is not lived or manifested in remaining where we are or merely in moments of legal fulfillment of rules and routine practices of piety. It takes fundamental radical choices at crucial moments to tell not just the Lord but the world too, that I belong to the Lord, to the One who has created me, the One who has called me and commissioned me. Like the young lad, as his mother and 6 brothers, in the first reading chooses God over everything that the king promises and over his very life, our choices need to speak for themselves; not just the choices of life and death, but the choices of what we want to do with the talents, the gifts that the Lord has given us, the choices of what we want to do with every moment of life that God has gifted us with. We can choose to enrich them and enhance them, or to just bury them and be inactive! The choice today, is mine!

WORD 2day

19th November, 2013

Zacchaeus' episode in the Gospel is an evergreen example of an encounter that transforms a person. As St. Paul would say, 'if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation'(2Cor 5:17). When we allow the Lord to really encounter us, the Lord transforms the whole person. Nothing remains the same, everything is new because we begin to see everything from the perspective of the Lord. As Pope Francis says in his recent encyclical Lumen Fidei, Faith is not just to see Jesus, it is to see with the eyes of Jesus (LF 18)! When our faith is authentic, the whole perspective changes. What seems to be important, what seems to be necessary for someone may seem totally secondary to me, because I see as the Lord does, because I think as the Lord does, because I love as the Lord does. Eleazar in the first reading demonstrates the same to us - 'such pretense is not worthy of our time of life' (2 Mac 6:24), he says, caring the least to preserve his life, because he did not want to lead the others astray from God. The primacy of God in our life defines the quality of our faith.

WORD 2day

18th November, 2013: Dedication of the Basilicas of St. Peter and St.Paul

St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican

Basilica of St. Paul outside the Walls

 Peter did not mind the turbulent sea, the raging waves, the frightening darkness... all that he heard was the call of his Lord, beckoning him, "Come." He steps on to the sea and begins to walk. The limitedness of his faith notwithstanding, he was a man who trusted the Lord blindly! The first reading presents to us Paul, arriving in Rome! Not a pilgrimage or a tour, he reaches as a prisoner..and remains in house arrest. He doesn't seem to bother at all about that, because his only concern was to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ - and that he was able to do, peacefully! For him that was all which mattered. In prison or free, under prohibition or not, he could not but preach the Gospel. "Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel," he said (1 Cor 9:16). Today we remember the Basilicas dedicated to these two Pillars of the Church - to Peter at Vatican (the famous Vatican St.Peter's Church) and to St. Paul outside the walls of Olden Rome. Just last week we celebrated the memory of the dedication of the Basilica of St. John at the Lateran! Here are two more(of the 4 major basilicas). As we thank the Lord for the gift of these great apostles Peter and Paul, let us pray for the gift of the blind trust they had in the Lord and total dedication they demonstrated for the WORD.

The Pharmacist Pope : MISERICORDINA

This is what we call catechesis!
The holy Father today, as a gift for the Year of Faith... 
presented to the faithful, what he called a medicine:
very creatively christened "Misericordina"...
it is a simple way of inviting the people 
to remain united with the Lord in prayer..
in praying the rosary, 
in praying the rosary of Divine Mercy..
or just contemplating on the mercy and love 
that God fills us with, everyday!

With just one week to the end of the Year of Faith...the Holy Father is already feeling nostalgic about this wonderful opportunity we had to thank the Lord for the gift of our faith...and what better way than to unite ourselves with the Lord, in prayer!

Here is the video of that moment when he released that new medicine, commenting - "some might say, now the Pope is playing the pharmacist." Ofcourse, dear father, you are a God given pharmacist, for the well being of our spiritual selves. God bless you.

click the link for the VIDEO

The END times...

17th November, 2013: 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today is the last Sunday in the Ordinary Time, and next week we celebrate the solemnity of Christ the King. And the Word this week reminds us of the second coming of the King, that is the END times! Some get a strange a kick out of talking about the end times and spiritually terrorise those who listen to them. There have been cases of people who had bought trenches to secure themselves when the recent mystery stories did their rounds in 2012! Let us remember dear friends that we have been living in the end times for the past 2000 years!!! Even St. Paul had to warn the Thessalonians not to make too much of these!

For a true Christian what should the 'end time' mean? Should it be terrorising? Should it make one go into a delirious tantrum or a plaguing paranoia? Those are in no way Christian responses to the thought on end times. Because for the one who believes in Christ, the Lord who has overcome the world (Jn 16:33), the Lord who has gained victory over death(Rom 6:9), the end time is not dreadful, it cannot be a threatening darkness! The first reading says so plainly, "but for you who fear my name, there will arise the sun of justice with its healing rays!" (Mal 3:20). 

The readings today instruct us, on how we should confront the end times. What if the end of times were tomorrow, or today or now! We have begun our life journey, a journey of perfection towards union in Christ and this journey has to necessarily end, and that end is nothing but union with Christ - how my soul should long for that: Like the deer that yearns for running streams, so my soul longs for you, my God! (Ps 42:1) 

The first reading tells me, all that I need to do to prepare myself for the end times, is to LEND my ears to the Lord. When I hear the word of the Lord and live it with all my heart (Jas 1:22), not beset by occasional set backs but ever trusting in the mercy and goodness of the Lord, I need to fear no one; I need to fear nothing, not even the gates of hell! But the secret is eagerness to lend my ears to the Word of the Lord.

The second reading challenges me to AMEND my ways in the Lord, go on living my every day life with serenity and peace. There is nothing to worry or fret as the Thessalonians did, for my soul finds rest in the Lord, and my salvation comes from God (Ps 62:1). All that I need to do is remain mindful of my ways! A sincere humility and daily conversion leads me to a genuine Christian life. When I begin everyday in the presence of the Lord planning my life and end it in God's presence evaluating it on the basis of God's teachings, I come to know of the things that I can be happy about and the things I need to grow in. A saint is not someone who has never failed, but is someone who has never remained the same after a failure! The secret is my willingness to amend my ways to walk in the light of the Lord.

The Gospel invites me to TRANSCEND all fears and trust in the Lord. Humanly speaking, I cannot end all my fears, but I can transcend every one of them. When my heart trusts in the Lord, when my eyes are fixed on my Saviour, when my hand rest in the hands of the One who leads me, I can transcend all my fears - like Peter who dared to step on to the turbulent sea and walk, like Paul and Barnabas who stood before the angry Sanhedrin and spoke, like the apostles who defied every authority and spread the message of Christ... they were all once filled with fear... they were the same weak men but with the Spirit they could transcend all fears! Nothing - no threat, no punishment, not even death - could frighten them. The secret is my capacity to transcend all fears with the Spirit of power, love and self-discipline (2 Tim 1:7). 

The End of times is near... infact we are living in the end times... it is not a matter to be spoken of in alarm or in whispers... the message of end times is, a call to lend my ears to the Word of the Lord, a challenge to amend my ways in the way of the Lord and to transcend all fears with the Spirit of the Lord! Let us live every day of our life, as if it were the last day of our life, every moment as if it were the last. Let us live our lives to the full, ever acceptable in the eyes of the Lord!

WORD 2day

16th November, 2013

Our help is in the name of the Lord, proclaims Psalm 124. The Lord alone is our refuge and our strength. The Lord knows when we sit and when we stand, even before a word is on our mouth, the Lord knows it all. This trust is called the attitude of prayer - a total abandonment into the hands of the Lord! At times when we pray, we sound like knocking at the door of the Lord as the last resort...'I have tried everything Lord; and now I have nothing more to try and so I come to you!' Instead, it has to be from the first moment: "You are everything Lord and I surrender myself to you; guide me along and accompany me, that I may never stray from Your will and guard me from all those which plot to take me away from You and Your holy will." Let us live our life with the Lord - every bit of it - our duties, our desires, our trials, our preoccupations; let us live them all with the Lord and be prepared always to say: Not mine, but Your will be done, O Lord! (Lk 22:42)

WORD 2day

15th November, 2013

'Fools say in their heart, 'there is no God',' goes Psalm 14:1. Though it is not the spirit of the times to get into an argument with people with variant religious convictions, sometimes it is important to challenge the insincere ones which are held with hidden motives and contrived plots. The readings today are quite strong against those who probably have religious choice of convenience, than conviction. But leaving alone the tendency to point a finger at someone, it is important for me to evaluate my faith! Faith is not merely saying 'yes' to a set of truths, but it is a personal relationship with the person of Jesus Christ, with the God that he revealed to us, with the Spirit who lives on with us. Is it not an ample opportunity for me today to raise this question in my heart: What does my faith mean to me? What are the SIGNS of real faith in my day to day life?