It's Love allover again!!!

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time: 26th October, 2014

Exo 22:20-26; 1 Thes 1: 5c-10; 22: 34-40

"What is the central theme of the readings this Sunday?" asked a friend of mine. And when I replied, "it is about loving God and loving your neighbour", instinctively he sighed: 'oh the same love allover again!' Some times we might sound totally redundant speaking of love. In fact the fact is, in Jesus' message, Love is the sole dominant theme, and everything else is only a footnote to it.

Love spoken of in today's Word, as ever, is not a mere sentiment or a feeling! It is a choice, a concrete choice for good. It is a serious matter of the HEAD. It is a decision made, a rationale adopted, a perspective that affects all other decisions and choices in life. The ultimate good is God, hence love is basically a choice for God! Loving God with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength, is the basis of this choice for good. I choose good, because I choose God. How foolishly contradicting it would be to say I choose to love God and therefore I kill or harm my brothers and sisters! Is the choice really coherent? Is the choice really rational? Is the choice really good or Godly? Choosing God, is choosing the absolute good; it is choosing life not death; it is choosing the other not the self, that leads us to the second dimension.

Love is a choice for the other, a matter of the HEART. It is only through the heart can we place the other before us, because it is only through the heart can we hear the unsaid sorrows of the other; it is only through the heart we can see the unseen pains of the souls; it is only through the heart we can touch the unexplored depths of a person! Love has to be a concrete choice for the other, specially the afflicted, suffering 'Other', who cries out from the agony of the everyday life. Can we open the eyes of our heart; can we sharpen the ears of our heart; can we extend the hands of our heart... yes...

Love is a matter of the HANDS... it is a choice to act, to act on behalf of the needy. Love cannot remain a mere sentiment, it has to be translated into concrete decisions and transforming acts, on behalf of the needy. The first reading lists the widows, the orphan, the children, the poor, the needy... that is a broad indication of a whole lot of persons who are close to the heart of God: the exploited, the enslaved, the maltreated, the manipulated, the oppressed... It has to be active, affecting the life of the person who claims to love and transforming the life of the one who is  loved!

Love is the crux and the essence of Christ's message and it will never be redundant. Specially seeing the world that is growing increasingly selfish and menacingly might-oriented, love will ever be wanting and if you and I do not offer it abundantly wherever we are, it would be a serious deficiency of God in the world today!

WORD 2day: 25th October, 2014

Let us Grow Up!

Eph 4: 7-16; Lk 13: 1-9

The first reading today will lend itself so well for an interdenominational war and a catholics-protestants feud, one calling the other a human trickery and deceptive scheming. Let us grow up dear friends! St. Paul challenges us to grow into the full stature of Christ and that is nothing but love. Let us grow in love, love for God, love for each other, a patient acceptance of each other and loving fellowship of brothers and sisters. 

How long would we go on calling each other names and breaking the Body of Christ into non negotiable bits and pieces? If we go on like this, Jesus says that twice in the Gospel today: 'you will all perish!' It's high time we realise our call to grow up and bear fruit. God has given us enough and more chances. Let us equip ourselves, not with offences and defences, but with arms of love and feet of generosity. Let us prune our ego and till our arid hearts. Let us sow seeds of love and reap the fruit of brotherhood and sisterhood. Love is our identity and nothing else is: by this they will know that you are my disciples, by the love that you have for one another (Jn 13:35). There can be no worse scandal than a divided Church and of course, there can be no better proclamation of the Gospel than a loving and united community of faithful, who live together as brothers and sisters, one in the Lord and in the Spirit!

WORD 2day: 24th October, 2014

Oneness of Vision: Integrity

Eph 4: 1-6; Lk 12: 54-59

Recently discussing their problem with a couple, we could see no way out of the problem no matter how much we tried making sense of what was happening. Finally I had to tell them, 'we can arouse a person who is sleeping, but not the one who pretends to sleep!' It is true: for most of the problems today, it is not that we do not have a solution, but we do not want to arrive at it. 

Jesus give his piece of mind to the pharisees and scribes, because he finds in them the hypocrisy of not choosing things that were so obviously towards the right. Its like a group of people, here in our context, in spite of knowing that their leader was at fault, were making a hue and cry about the leader's conviction. The problems in the world are due to the lack of oneness of vision that afflicts us...each one with a selfish agenda, or groups with unfounded prejudices, classes with insensitive urge for advancement, persons with inhuman tendencies of manipulation and exploitation...these are persons who could not care less about the golden rule. They have a set of rules for themselves and a completely different one for others. These are people filled with discrepancies and disparities, and will be the least likely to enter the Reign of God. Are we in any chance among those in that list?

WORD 2day: 23rd October, 2014

Reasons to BE GOOD

Eph 3: 14-21; Lk 12: 49-53

Speaking to a group of families yesterday, on our call to be light to the world, I remarked, "People are afraid to be good these days!" Fear of manipulation, exploitation and being taken for granted are so live and real that we hesitate to be good and hold on to what is good. The Word today gives us three reasons why we cannot afford to be afraid of being good:

1. Because we take on our heredity from none less than the Almighty Lord: The Lord is our banner; the Lord is our identity, it is from the Lord we take our name, as a family of God. How can we be other than good?

2. Because the Love of God is poured into our hearts: A love whose measure, we can never comprehend to the full  - the length and breadth and depth and height of it so immense that we cannot but be concerned about being worthy of that love; which entails that we are good in our very being!

3. Because we have a Vocation to be a Community of Counter Culture: Jesus commissions us to be the People of the Reign, which is to be a people of counter culture, proposing a culture that is opposed to the culture of social sin, the culture of injustice and exploitation, the culture of imbalanced growth and inhuman development, a culture of total human insensitivity. When we intend to be such a community of counter culture, the rest of the world may turn against us. Jesus makes it clear today: if you choose me, choose be absolutely!

WORD 2day: 22nd October, 2014

Lite it up! Live it up!

Eph 3: 2-12; Lk 12:39-48

God has given us a special identity, observes St. Paul... the identity of the people of God, that of the people of light! We are brought to light! It does not stop with that but we are called to take that light to all. We are made stewards of that light and it is both a privilege and a pressing duty that we carry this light far and wide. Carrying this light, or bringing people to the light would take shades of various kinds: the best of those is to let my light shine!

Letting my light shine, is an obligation I have, because no one lights the lamp and puts it under the bushel. A light is rather kept on the lampstand that it may give light to all who enter the home.  Being the light, shining as light or bringing the light to the world would mean, to become aware of the great privilege of being known as ambassadors of the Gospel and of our duty to announce the Gospel. In short, the call we have is to live it up! On a daily basis to understand the dignity of being called God's people and to live up to that dignity.

The message goes well and coincides with the festival of lights celebrated all over India today: to lite it up! to live it up!

Lord, let my little light shine!

WORD 2day: 21st October, 2014

The Fear of Examinations?!?

Eph 2:12-22; Lk 12: 35-38

All of us have had, or have still, a fear of examinations! And the usual remedy proposed by teachers is, learn your subjects on a daily basis, revise your classes everyday and when the exams come you will be better prepared. The point is, examinations are not something for which we need to prepare, they are just an end of a process of learning. At times when we do not have the right study attitudes, the exams become a separate entity and a great hurdle to be crossed and not merely a formality to be undergone. Now, that was not for a Study-skill session...but to bring out the crux of today's message.

The Word reminds us how the Lord has chosen us and given us an identity that is entirely a grace: the identity of being the people of God, of being the offsprings of God, of being God's beloved children. When we are conscious of that identity, on a daily basis and conduct our affairs accordingly, we would not need to prepare, or be afraid of, or fret about what is called the judgment moment! Every choice that we make is a judgement we bring on ourselves... whether it is monitored or not; when I know that I am a child of God, that I am a son or daughter of God and I live, believe and behave worthy of that identity, why should I fear? It is like the Master who was asked as he was having his cup of tea, 'what would you do, if the world ends this moment?' The Master said: "I would continue having my tea."

WORD 2day: 20th October, 2014

Living the tomorrows at the cost of today

Eph 2:1-10; Lk 12: 13-21

The message from the Word today follows from that of yesterday. We belong to God, who has made us God's people in spite of our human tendencies and wordly inclinations. We are raised up to the status of sharing the new life that the Risen Lord offers, sheerly because of the boundless mercy of God. The life that we have is a gift, a gratuitous gift that the Lord gives us to live! Yes, life is to be lived, lived to the full knowing well that it has been given free, absolutely free.

The tendency today is to fend so much for the tomorrow that today is totally sacrificed. People are so busy photographing the present moment for memory, that they fail to live the present in its entirety. There is so much of worries about the future that we infact are all the time living our tomorrows at the cost of today. Life is given to us to live, and not to worry. If only we are convinced that we belong to God, our worries about tomorrow will be mellowed down, to allow us live our present to the full. If today we are called to render an account of our life, would we be able to say we have lived it fully?

ME, GOD AND WHAT BELONGS...

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time: 19th October, 2014

Is 45: 1,4-6; 1Thes 1: 1-5; Mt 22: 15-21

The readings today have a theme that is very difficult for the world today to accept. It brings out the absolute sovreignity that God has over reality. The post-modern mind and the new age spirituality clamours for an autonomy that sometimes borders on an absolute independence of the human person and a meaning made in total isolation. The episode of the tower of Babel is a specimen event already in the beginnings of Biblical prehistory. Today we are called to pay attention to three facts:

1. Everything belongs to God

The first reading recalls the role of Persia and the Persian king Cyrus, in the emancipation of Israel. It was possible because Persia was first able to grow into a super power. And the reading from Isaiah points out that even though Persia seemingly has nothing much to do with Yahweh, it was infact the Lord who was preparing Persia in view of emancipating Israel.

The Lord is seen as the Lord of history, and not merely the Lord of Israel. Everything belongs to God and God is in control of everything. At times when things may not be going the way we would want them to, all that we need to do is remain calm believing that God is working out a history. A surrender into the hands of God and a patient wait on the Lord would bring us to an experience that would be absoutely awesome.

2. God belongs to everyone

That Cyrus was raised to power by God comes as a special learning for the people of Israel. They were being challenged on their claim to monopolise Yahweh as their own. God slowly opens them up to the reality that God belongs to everyone. What matters was to have what it takes to be called God's own. The Gospel brings it out subtly in the reflection that Jesus makes on the coin, saying it belongs to Ceasar as it bears Ceasar's image. Hence the condition to belong to God is to have God's image imprinted on our selves.

No one, absolutely no one, can monopolise God and it is not Christian to think of it that way. God cannot belong to a particular group of people. It can be true the other way about, that we belong to God. But to claim that God belongs to a group would be human folly without doubt. Hence, we need to respect every person with genuine search and yearning for God or with an experience of God.

3. Render and don't hold back what belongs to God

All that we have belongs to God. What is that you have, which you have not received? (1 Cor 4:7) asks St.Paul. We are called to render to God all that belongs to God : our talents, our skills, our learning, our abilities... everything we are called to render unto the Lord... that is, unto the cause of the Lord; unto establishing the Reign of God. All that we say, think or do, has to be unto the Reign of God. Thus we will totally belong to God and have the mark of belonging to God: the Holy Spirit.

But for St.Luke...

Remembering the Evangelist St. Luke: 18th October, 2014

2 Tim 4: 10-17b; Lk 10: 1-9

Today we celebrate St. Luke, an evangelist par excellence who has an irreplaceable contribution made to the Scriptures. If it were not for Luke, we would have no Magnificat -the song of praise sung by our Blessed Mother, no Benedictus -the song of praise by Zecharaiah, no song of Anna,no account of John's birth or no account of the Ascension! 

But for St. Luke we would not have met Zachaeus in Jericho, the ten leprosy patients on the way, or the Women disciples who followed Jesus, or the good thief on the Cross or Jesus on the way to Emmaus. But for St. Luke we would have missed the greatest of stories ever told -the Prodigal Son and other inspiring stories of the Good Samaritan, the Rich man and Lazarus and Jesus' walk to Emmaus after resurrection.

There is yet another speciality of Luke, which is his way of making sense of the Reign of God. Though even the other Gospels, be it the synoptics or that of John, they speak of the Reign of God. Luke, in his turn speaks of the Reign of God as being amidst us. "Reign of God is amidst you", says Lk 17:21. The same is recorded in Lk 10:9, which we hear today: "the Reign of God has come near to you". This specific message of Luke invites us to recognise in action our call to be the agents of the Reign of God. It is a call to live our life as the people of the reign thus ushering in the reign of God here on earth. May St. Luke inspire us to get in touch with the Word of God more and more and help us towards making the reign of God felt, present and flourish wherever we are. 

WORD 2day: 17th October, 2014

The Spirit of Courage: Remembering St. Ignatius of Antioch

Eph 1: 11-14; Lk 12: 1-7.

Ignatius of Antioch whom we remember today belongs to the earliest of the Christian communities, right during the Apostolic times. He is said to have been a student of St. John the Apostle. He was the Bishop of Antioch and is a representative icon of the first Christians who were persecuted and killed. The readings of the day bring out the very theme that the memoria too stands for - the Spirit of power and love and self-disciple (cf. 2 Tim 1:7), with which we are sealed. Where does this Spirit of Courage and fearlessness come from? From a life that is lived founded well on true convictions and absolute commitment. Jesus brings it out in radical terms in the Gospel today.

Do not fear, do not be afraid... Jesus repeatedly assures us not to be guided by fear. When we filled with true convictions and not convenient compromises, when we are taken up with absolute commitment to the life task entrusted to us, we will be truthful to God who has created us, chosen us in Christ and commissioned us to be the people of God. That truth will indeed set us free (cf. Jn 8:32). When we live by truth, we will not fear anyone or anything. The martyrs are shining witnesses in this regard and we are called to emulate that fearlessness in our witness too. We will be enabled to do it by the Spirit of Courage, that is poured into our hearts, that which we hold on to as the mark of our belonging to God.