THE WORD IN LENT -14

LET YOUR CHOICES BE YOURS

Second week in Lent: Tuesday, 3rd Mar, 2015

Is 1: 10, 16-20; Mt 23: 1-12

Let no one be responsible for your judgments, your behaviours, your decisions and your choices! That is what Jesus meant when he said, let no one be your father or master here on earth. For a Hebrew, father would mean that person who decides everything for you! You have nothing else to say, because the father's decision is final. The master is some one who holds a total authority over you; what he decides to be right has to be right for you; what he decides to be desirable has to be desirable for you! The point that Jesus is making here is that, a person will be responsible for one's own choices. It is no more the case that a person does something or decides on something and passes the blame on to some one else: his or her father, or generations before, or persons in authority. Let each one take responsibility for one's own choices, challenges the Word today. Your choices determine your destiny, apart from the all pervading love that is God. It is this love that has invested us with such a great personal will and freedom, using which we are challenged to choose God and all that pertains to God. 

THE WORD IN LENT -13

The Criterion from Christ

Second week in Lent: Monday, 2nd Mar, 2015.

Dan 9: 4b-10; Lk 6: 36-38

Yesterday as I stepped out of the Sacristy, after the Sunday Eucharist, a person approached me and said: "Fr., thanks for the homily today! It was really beautiful, but I am afraid too difficult to practice!" And I smiled at her reassuringly and said, "If I were to think of living my life anyway, with compromises, it would be much easier! But living a true and convinced Christian life is anyday, difficult." She smiled, and bowed for a blessing!

"To live by the law you gave us", prays prophet Daniel today in the first reading! And Jesus gives us a criterion, to follow the law. Let what you expect from others for yourself be the criterion for your dealings with others! But the difficult part follows: Jesus says, let what you expect be the criterion but not what you actually get! You may or may not get what you expect, but you have an obligation to give the others what you expect from them! What do you get in return? Does that actually matter?

An apt day to pray with St. Francis of Assisi, 'Lord, grant that I may seek to understand, than to be understood; to love than to be loved; to forgive than to be forgiven'.

BEHOLD GOD'S LOVE

2nd Sunday of Lent: 1st March 2015

Gen 22: 1-2, 9a,10-13, 15-18; Rom 8: 31b-34; Mk 9: 2-10

God's love is demonstration today and we are invited to behold that true, genuine, authentic and matchless love in the name of Jesus our Lord and Saviour!

What does the call to "behold" mean? It means to observe, understand and accept it in all its fullness. We would do well to do it today, with the help of the readings.

Observe that God's love is a love that gives: Are we ready to give? Yes...a bit of our changes in the pocket, a few of our currencies in the wallet, some of us a little more...may be our enjoyment of a movie or two during the season of lent, or our stylish make overs or things of that sort! But Observe, calls the second reading today: observe the love that God has for us. Because that love, God gave, God gave Godself; God's own son, the only Son, the Word who was One with God. 

Understand that God's love is a love that gives all: God's love is not merely a love that gives but a love that gives everything, gives all that God is...The Gospel reminds us of that: Jesus shows us and his disciples, what he has given up for the sake of the love he had for us! The first moment we find it, we feel like holding on to it. The apostles wanted to remain there...Jesus reminds us: "No... you call is to give, to give up, to give all, to give of yourself; that is my love!"

Accept God's love into your heart: To behold God's love would finally mean accept God's love into our hearts, fill our hearts with God's love! Abraham was ready even to give up his son, because he was filled with God's love; by then he had experienced what God's love means and what change it can bring about in his life. That is why he did not consider anything on par with God's love. In our life to, if we believe and behold God's love, that has to be seen. It has to be seen in our lives, our day to day relationships, our choices and our responses to events. To behold God's love is to be held by God's love and hold out that love to all whom we come across! 

May our lives be transformed, by God's love into God's love!

THE WORD IN LENT -11

People peculiarly God's own!

First Week of Lent: Saturday, 28th Feb, 2015

Dt 26: 16-19; Mt 5: 43-48

Recently there was a row on a comment passed by a leader of one of the religious nationalist groups in India on Mother Teresa and her motivations behind all the service she had rendered to the least of the Indian Society.Of all the retorts that came by, I loved the cartoon some one posted; it was a cartoon depicting Mother Teresa holding that gentleman who spoke rather ill of her, as a mother would hold her little child! And the caption read in Mother's own words: if you judge others, you will not have the time to love them. For me this was the best response, because it brings out our nature: people peculiarly God's own(Dt 26:18)! We have had so many examples of this peculiarity which the Word demands from us - Pope John Paul II who met the one who attempted to assassinate him, the family of Sr. Rani Maria who accepted the murderer of their daughter as one their family members, Mrs. Gladys Stein who instantly forgave the one who burnt her husband and two sons alive and recently the mother of the two brothers among the 21 coptic christians killed in Egypt! 

These people are peculiar in the eyes of the world and that is our call too: to be people peculiarly God's own. The only way to belong to God is to be God like in our love for others, loving everyone with no conditions, no limits and no expectations! Difficult? Yes! Any alternative options? Definitely No, if we want to be truly God's own!

THE WORD IN LENT -10

The Right Righteousness

First Week of Lent: Friday, 27th Feb, 2015

Ezek 18: 21-28; Mt 5: 20-26

The "Scribes and the Pharisees"...we find this phrase very often in Jesus' words. What did he have against them? Was he then a sectarian too... dividing and categorising people by the group they belong to? No! Never! Jesus himself was a Pharisee and he had disciples among pharisees, tax collectors and zealots. Then where is the justification for the usage of this phrase, 'the scribes and the pharisees'? 

The phrase actually refers to, that category of people, need not be necessarily only the scribes and the pharisees, who consider the external signs and legalistic fulfilments more important or significant than the interior disposition. What we do is important, but why we do what we do, matters much more! The internal disposition with which something is carried out, truly determines the value of the act or the attitude. Righteousness often can remain a matter of image building or opinion creation. Jesus, explains today his version of righteousness - the right righteousness. It consists of meekness and humility, openness (lack of judgments) and acceptance, endurance and perseverance, and endless hopefulness. Against these measures on the scale, where does my righteousness stand?

THE WORD IN LENT -9

The Lord who is at hand

First Week of Lent: Thursday, 26th Feb, 2015

Est 12: 14-16; 23-25; Lk 7:7-12

The Lord is at hand, always, in all circumstances, specially in difficulties and troubles. This is the promise of the cross. Because as the letter to the Hebrews would affirm, we do not have a master who does not understand us. We have someone who understands us and knows us, for he himself has gone through all that we are put through in life. A very Christ-ian attitude in the face of difficulties and struggles would be to approach any situation with an endless hope, a limitless certainty that God is with me, whether I can feel it or not at a concrete moment, in a concrete manner. 

There have been moments in the lives of the saints when they have been through darkness and obscurity. It is in the manner that they handled such experiences that they have deserved their identity of sanctity. Today, we are growing weaker and weaker in our faith-life, that we are discouraged, desperate in the first moment of our failure or trial. The increasing number of suicides and increasing multitudes of God-forsakers are only symptoms of such a deficiency. 

Our Christian faith would be meaningless without this conviction, for which Esther today stands witness and Jesus shines as an advocate - the conviction that the Lord is at hand, always, in all circumstances, especially when I am through struggles and difficulties!

THE WORD IN LENT -8

Conversion - an internal choice

First week of Lent: Wednesday, 25th Feb, 2015

Jon 3: 1-10; Lk 11: 29-32

Waking up a sleeping person is not as difficult as waking up someone who pretends to sleep. Lent is all about conversion; and conversion is something absolutely personal. External signs of it are appreciable, but they are not all. At times we can have splendid extremal signs of religiosity and concern for others while they may merely be hypocrisy and hidden agendas. But the good or bad news is that,  God knows our innermost thoughts and yearnings. We create and maintain whatever image we would like with those around us, but with God it is always the truth and nothing but truth. 

Jesus gives the Jews,  the so called chosen people the challenge of the simple people of Nineveh. Today too the highly sophisticated, the so called devoted, and the self proclaimed Spiritual people are given the challenge of a simple and unsophisticated person who converts in his or her heart of heart towards God. He or she would be much greater and much closer to the Reign of God! Conversion is a matter of the heart... an internal and absolute choice for God. 

Oscar Romero, a prophet of our times!

A Miracle of Sorts...23rd Feb!

For a while now I have been thinking of writing a piece on Oscar Romero whose annual remembrance fall this day, next month. And finally yesterday, I forced myself to sit down and pen it. And what a day to start - a coincidence? I prefer to call it a miracle!

23rd February, 1977 - Oscar Romero took up the Archbishopric of San Salvador and that was the beginning of the martyrdom of this great prophet of our times. When he was killed on March 24, 1980 he had already made the Church in El Salvador true to its original image: the image of the prophet Christ!

THE WORD IN LENT -7

Rethink Prayer 

First Week of Lent: Tuesday, 24th Feb, 2015

Is 55:10-11; Mt 6:7-15

Prayer is a fundamental act of a believer. However, the way we understand it can differ quite drastically. Apart from the clarity that prayer cannot be mere favour list made to God and apart from the comprehensive understanding that prayer should essentially include an act of contrition, that of thanksgiving and of praise along with the petitions made, prayer should be understood basically as a relationship with God. I love to share my personal definition of prayer as "living our life with God", every moment of it - joys and sorrows, failures and successes, temptations and threats, difficulties and dreams! All this, with the confidence that the Lord is with me and that God's ways are best that can happen to me at anytime. 

Asking for and clamouring for something is very much like a child's relation to his or her father or mother! But remaining solely at that level would leave us childish. We need to move to the next level of submitting into the hands of the Lord; abandoning ourselves to the eternal Will and the powerful Word of the Lord. This we will be able to do only when we trust the Lord as our Father, as someone who protects us always and rescues us when we are in distress. 

Let us rethink our outlook on prayer - it is not begging God; neither is it making a wishlist to God nor counselling God as to what is best to be done! Prayer is a loving entrustment of ourselves into the hands of God, our loving Father and Mother.

THE WORD IN LENT -4

Choosing God

Saturday after Ash Wednesday: 21st February, 2015

Is 58: 9b-14; Lk 5: 27-32

"Follow Me" - is the loud and clear invitation from the Lord. The choice is ours! The crux of lenten practices is disciplining oneself to choose God.

When we choose the Lord, we follow the Lord. When we choose the Lord, we choose the ways of the Lord. When we choose God, we would choose justice and love. When we choose God, we would choose to love our brothers and sisters with sincerity and commitment. When we choose God, we would choose to stand against all oppression and malice. Killings in the name of God and persecutions in the name of one's spiritual affiliations, are the heights of insincerity and hyprocrisy. When we choose to hurt another, we choose to be opposed to God. When we choose to slander the other, we choose to be contrary to God.

The call today is to choose God...on a daily basis. In our relationships, in our priorities, in all our interactions, we are called to choose God and to make that choice clear and loud for every one to see, be inspired and emulate.