THE SPIRIT OF THE REIGN

8th December, 2013 - 2nd Sunday of Advent

Repent, for the Reign of God is near! A clarion call from the prophets today, to prepare ourselves in a worthy manner to receive the King. This king someone different, some one unique, and has a style and outlook totally different from all other rulers that we know of! He does not force himself on us; when he passes by if we are worthy to receive him, he will enter, remain with us and rule in our hearts, our homes and our land! If not, he passes by, and we are the losers...for the axe is kept at the roots and the worthless shrubs will stand no ground. The readings today instruct us through the great prophets Isaiah and John the Baptist and Apostle Paul, as to our disposition to receive the Reign; they invite us to possess the Spirit of the Reign!

The Spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, piety and reverence of the Lord - that is the Spirit we should possess to be people of the Reign. The Reign will come, the Ruler will appear, but the question is, you and me: will we be prepared to receive it today! The Reign is not merely plenty and prosperity, it is not merely a state of pleasurable feeling with nothing to worry, at times we imagine so. As St. Paul would define to the Romans, the Reign is Righteousness, Peace and Joy in the Holy Spirit (Rom 14:17); it is this Reign that the prophets announced; it is this Reign that Jesus inaugurated through his life and mission; it is this Reign that we are commissioned to make present in the world today - it is Righteousness, Peace and Joy in the Holy Spirit!

"Bear fruits worthy of Repentace" cries the voice in the desert. Our King is a righteous king, righteousness shall be his girdle says Isaiah. Unless we turn to righteousness, make our paths straight, leave the acts of darkness and live as people of light, going about our daily duties with diligence and dedication. The Spirit of Righteousness, will show us the right way, the right sense and the right direction to take in life.

"Live in harmony with each other" reminds the Apostle. In his days righteousness shall flourish and peace abound, because our King is the Prince of Peace. We are challenged to be peacemakers in our daily life - when so much of competition and corruptions abounds, while people deceive and denounce each other, amidst the political forces that want social unrest and antisocial elements that brood over hurt and harm, we are called to hold together the frail humanity, in peace and serenity, by our thoughts, words and choices all governed by love, the love of God. The Spirit of Peace, will hover over our days, healing the hurts and binding us in forgiveness, to build up the Reign of peace and serenity.

We shall give praise to the Lord among the peoples and Sing to the Lord's name, for the Lord comes to Reign, and we are called to be part of the Reign. Righteousness and Peace fills us with joy, the joy of the Lord, the joy of the Spirit, the joy that comes from an endless hope that the Lord fills us with. It is not merely a situation of having no problems, but a sense of inner strength to face everything with the help of the God of endurance and encouragement. That is the Spirit of the Reign. That is why the Holy Father Pope Francis repeats so often - a Christian can never be sad, a Christian has to be joyful, because inspite of all the problems of our life, we have the Lord with us! The Spirit fills us with joy, a joy that wells from within us, from that core of our being where God dwells.

Righteousness, Peace and Joy in the Holy Spirit - that is the Reign of God... that is the Spirit of the Reign. The Ruler comes...let us make the paths straight, let us imbibe within us the Spirit of the Reign...and we shall welcome the King, we shall inherit the Reign!

Note: This year 8th of December, the Solemnity of Immaculate Conception is celebrated on the 9th as the Sunday of Advent normally takes precedence...

WORD 2day

7th December, 2013: Remembering St. Ambrose

God is Gracious, God is Compassionate - that is the key to behold the message of the readings today. Jesus chooses his apostles and sends them out - because he had compassion on the people. Jesus sends the apostles out because there is so much to be done, so much tears to be wiped, so much guilt to be washed, so much suffering to be allayed, so much love to be shared, so much hope to be spread, in order that the Reign of God may truly come. The Lord sends you and me today - to go out and share love, spread hope, and build the Reign of God. Do we have doubts as to what we can really do? Never mind, for we will hear the voice of the Master behind us, 'This is the way, walk in it!" (Is 30:21) The Lord depends on you and me... to take God's compassion to the the needy and the suffering...yes the harvest is plentiful, there is so much to be done! As God chose Ambrose from the crowd to be raised into a great pastor in the Church, to win over saints like Augustine for the Lord, so does God choose you and me today! Yes, it is you and I who have to do it... take the Reign of Love to our brothers and sisters!

WORD 2day

6th December, 2013

'To see' is a spiritual quality. The readings are full of this imagery today. The first reading speaks of the blind who will begin to see, the lowly who begin to find joy in the Lord and the Gospel recounts one of those encounters where Christ gives sight to a blind person. Infact, 'to see' was the sign of the coming of the Lord... when the Baptist asked if Jesus was the Christ to come, Jesus responds saying, 'the blind see, the lame walk, the dear hear and the dead are raised' (Lk 7:20,22)! In the Reign of God, all shall possess the spiritual capacity to see; we shall all see, because we will have the light of the Lord, as the responsorial psalm tells us! Yes, we will surely see the Lord face to face, but today, in our daily life, we are challenged to see, to look, to perceive and to find the joy of the Lord in the midst of our routine... Can we really see? If we believe, we will. Let us grow everyday in our faith, to really see the Lord, our light and our salvation.

WORD 2day

5th December, 2013

A strong city, a house built on a rock - these are the images we are given to contemplate today. A city with its walls, bulwarks and ramparts signify the strength that each one possesses. The house built on rock signifies the security and the assurance of safety that everyone looks for. In contrast we have the house built on sand which is quick to ruin itself, assailed by the least of the battering; a city that is unguarded which has all the possibility of attack from within, from outside and from all unprecedented quarters. The person that we are, the choices that we make, the priorities we have, the criteria we act on, the principles we stand by... these determine the strength and the security that we possess. When these choices, priorities, criteria and principles are all founded on the Lord and the Lord's Word, we are a city well guarded and a house firmly built on rock. It's time to check our foundations!

WORD 2day

4th December, 2013

The first reading in various words explains just one fact - that the Lord removes anything between us and God, that separates us... the veil or the shroud, the sheet or the web, the tears, yes, even death! The Gospel speaks to us of the very many things that can hinder us from experiencing God: sickness, disease, hunger, poverty, crisis, concerns of daily life, our personal handicaps - all these can hinder us from feeling the presence of God with us, block our vision from looking at God's goodness, blind our hearts from living in the presence of the lord, darken our minds from giving glory to God's name! The season of advent invites us to come to the Lord, as the crowds came, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the dumb...so are we invited to go to the Lord with our problems, limitations, joys and sorrows...and the word says, "they laid them at his feet and he cured them!" (Mt 15:30) - so shall we do; let us lay them all, every thing that hinders us from living our life to the full, everything that prevents us from receiving the abundance of God's love, let us place them at the Lord's feet and the Lord will certainly heal us!

Return! To the Fullness of the Father!

THE WORD IN ADVENT - First Tuesday

December 3, 2019: Remembering St. Francis Xavier

Isaiah 11: 1-10; Luke 10: 21-24

A day to thank God for the great missionary St. Francis Xavier, who is so much connected to the growth of Christian faith in India and Japan; an evangeliser and catechist par excellence. 

Talking of faith and growing in faith, in a context like India, I have wondered often, and I am sure you have too, that at school, in the neighbourhood, as children we have always grown up with so many different people, different in their faith, different in their customs etc. but always grown up as friends and neighbours, sharing lives, sharing festivities and sharing our brotherhood and sisterhood as one humanity. From where then does hatred come, if this unity and fellowship is so natural? 

On the Lord's mountain, there is no hurt or harm, no killing or violence, no manipulation or deception. That is the fullness with which the Father made the whole world. The New heaven and New earth, has to be modelled on this - on the fullness of the Father. Hence it is not inventing something new, but going to the roots, a returning to the Father. 

This is of course found  naturally with children and those persons with a simple child-like heart. Jesus awes at these...the children and those who are children at heart: "for theirs is the Reign of God!" (Mt 19:14). Woe to those who cause these little ones to stumble, make them learn hatred and grow inhuman...(cf.Mt 18:6). To bring Good news, as Francis Xavier did, is not to brandish a brute superiority or instill a sense of inferiority and fear but sharing a sense of fullness, the fullness of the Father. It is growing to be peacemakers, children of God, persons of love... to Return to the fullness of the Father as true people of the Reign!

WORD 2day

2nd December, 2013

One of the concrete expressions of faith is, total confidence that the Lord has the power to act on my behalf! The readings today explain this reality to us in a splendid manner. Isaiah infuses hope into the people in exile that the Lord will bring back their glory to them, that the Lord will forgive all their iniquities, cleanse them and heal them! He is building up their shattered faith, the faith that Jesus notices in the centurion, a non-Israelite, a 'pagan' according to the Jews... Jesus sees the confidence that the centurion had in Jesus' power to heal that servant at home. Work-stress, family problems, personal crises, misunderstandings, relationship issues, daily concerns, discouragements, health issues... when we are faced with these - we need to have an unassailable confidence that Our Lord has the power to act on our behalf. Let us pray for the strength of faith, to say as the centurion does today: "Lord, only say a word, and your servant will be healed!"

RETURN TO THE REIGN

1st December, 2013: New Liturgical Year - 1st Sunday of Advent

Let us begin with wishing each other a blessed New liturgical year! And right at the outset the Lord invites us today, to RETURN to the REIGN of God. The Church is the sign and the sacrament of the Reign of God. We are the Church, the people of God! Therefore we are expected to be the signs, the bearers, the heralds of the Reign of God today to the world. And how can this happen if we are not people of the Reign, if we are not mindful of ushering in the Reign of God here on earth, or making the Reign felt concretely, if we do not really believe in what Christ said: 'The Reign of God is amidst you!' (Lk 17:21) Hence, the invitation today, to return to the Reign is basically a wake up call, to wake up to the reality, to wake up to our real identity, to wake up to our dignity as the People of the Reign and to live up to that identity on a daily basis.

It is an invitation to CLIMB the mountain of the Lord... yes, to walk in the way of the Lord, to walk in the light of the Lord...as the first reading repeats in different words. It is fundamentally an invitiation to climb, to go up, infact to grow up. We are invited to go up, grow up, above our tendencies of conflict and our feelings of rivalry and jealousy, above our petty considerations of ourselves and self centered strivings for pleasure. It is a call to transcend what is popularly considered to be 'desirable' and reach the thinking worthy of the Reign - where swords can turn into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks; where all manipulation and exploitation will give into genuine love and sincere goodwill for the other.

It is an invitation to CONDUCT ourselves worthy of the Reign. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, invites us St. Paul. And in doing it, let's not wait for an opportune moment... for "now is the acceptable time, now is the time of salvation!" (2 Cor 6:2). Waiting for another moment will be a mistake, a blunder, a foolishness on our part. Let us make the choice, a choice for God, a choice for the light, a choice for the good, a choice to be awake, a choice to be the people of the Reign. Let us not blame the world, the society, the times... the choice is ours, and let us make it now - To accept the invitation of the Lord and "walk in the light of the Lord"(Is 2:5). We will find the joy that the Lord can give, the joy that the Light can shed, the joy that cannot be taken away from us, and in that joy we will find the Reign of God amidst us!

It is an invitation to CELEBRATE the Reign of God amidst us, not waiting to reach the end but celebrating it all the way. Advent is not a preparation towards a celebration, it is a celebration in itself, a celebration of the peace, the prosperity, the security and the salvation that the Lord brings us. The Reign of God becomes a reality when we celebrate our love and joy together as brothers and sisters in the Lord. This is the meaning of the phrase, All the way to heaven is heaven! As we pray in the responsorial psalm, we are walking, walking towards the Reign, but all through the way we are called to celebrate the Reign of God..celebrate the love we share, celebrate the equality we have, celebrate the justice we stand for, celebrate the brotherhood and sisterhood that we work to establish forever - that celebration is returning to the Reign!

As we begin the year, and the wonderful season of Advent, let us pay heed to the invitation from the Lord - to Climb the mountain of the Lord, to Conduct ourselves worthy of the Reign and in that joy, to Celebrate the Reign of God, every day in our relationships in our family, in our communities, in our parish, in our localities and wherever we are. May the joy of the Gospel, the joy of the Reign, fill our hearts all through this new year. 

WORD 2day

30th November, 2013: Remembering St. Andrew, the Apostle.

"How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" St.Paul quotes this word from the scripture (from Is 52:7), to insist upon the blessedness of being an apostle of the Lord, being sent to bear forth the word to the others. We celebrate St. Andrew, the apostle today - a person who just left everything and followed the Lord "immediately" when he was called; and according to the Gospel of St. John, he was the first one to announce to someone else, "we have found the Messiah" and he was the one who brought Peter to the Lord (Jn 1:40,41). This commemoration reminds us yet again our call to be proclaimers of the goodnews to the world... each of us, without any exception, ofcourse each in our own way. We will do well here to remember the words of St.Francis of Assisi, 'Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words.'

WORD 2day

29th November, 2013

The final word will always be the Lord's! Calamities, Persecutions, Demoralisation these are what we see in the case of all those who had to pay with their blood, the price for their faith in Christ. The first reading foretells the same, finishing however with a note of hope on the eternal dominion of the Son of Man. The Gospel reaffirms the hope, from the mouth of the very object of that hope: the Word made flesh. Perseverance is a virtue in imitation of the faithfulness of God. 'Let us never grow tired of doing what is right' (2 Thes 3:13), as the Lord himself who never gets tired of loving us!