THE WORD AND THE FEAST

To stand and to wait on

Celebrating the Archangels : 29th September, 2016

Dan 7: 9-10,13-14; Jn 1: 47-51

The Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael are familiar and popular among us due to their presence in the Scripture. Today as we celebrate their part in God's design, we are called to recollect the invitation they give us: to stand before the Lord, to wait on the Lord and to be instrumental in the fulfillment of God's will. These are the three functions of the Archangels and we are called to live those very dispositions.

To Stand before the Lord is to be in God's presence all our life. It is refraining from pushing the disposition of prayer to merely a few minutes of the day. It is instead, knowing that we are constantly in the presence of the Lord and we can speak to, share with and take directions from the Lord anytime and anywhere!

To wait on the Lord is to be at God's beck and call. That is what we all are created to be but the freedom that God has given us makes us do it as our personal choice. Angels are the extensions of God's power...they carryout the orders from the Lord. The invitation here is to be ready and willing to carryout orders from the Lord, without mixing it up with my wishes and reservations.

To be instrumental in the fulfillment of God's will. To be God's representatives, to be God's consolation, to be God's aiding hand, to be God's voice for justice...these are what we are called to be - Angels of the Lord making the Lord present amidst us by our own Godly dispositions.

May Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and the hosts of God's Angels inspire us, protect us and help us to be God's people always!

WORD 2day: 28th September, 2016

Following, looking back and looking firm.

Wednesday, 26th week in Ordinary Time

Job 9: 1-13,14-16; Lk 9: 57-62

Jesus gives us a hard lesson on discipleship today. If you have made a choice for God, you have made a choice for struggles and situations that will estrange you from the rest around you. What are you going to do? Look back and moan? Or look firm and go on?

Job's determination to please God is gradually being shaken by the conventional thinking friends who attribute the human qualities of anger, dissatisfaction, expectations and disregard to God. Job declares from his heart that God is omnipotent and omniscient but struggles to live his daily suffering on par with that interior conviction.

Jesus declares that precisely the determination to surrender oneself and one's total being into the hands of God is the hallmark of a follower of his. Jesus had a mighty share of suffering, struggle and strife. But that in no way deviated him from holding on to God and looking firm in his choices.

If you and I have decided to follow Christ - what do we do? Look back and moan or look firm and go on?

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

Is death better or life - Celebrating Vincent de Paul

27th September, 2016

Job 3:1-3, 11-17, 20-23; Lk 9: 51-56

Job complains against the unfairness of life and prefers he were dead than living. How many times we contemplate such thoughts, unmindful of all the blessings that preceded such experiences and all the blessings that are yet in store. We always want to be kings of good times and queens of cosy times! There are moments that bring out the preciousness of life, by allowing such experiences which highlight the goodness that surrounds us always. 

When Jesus sets his eyes towards Jerusalem, the Samaritans detest it. They forget the goodness that Jesus had shown them thus far, respecting that woman at the well, narrating that parable that extols the samaritan and recognising that one grateful soul among the rest of the ingrates. Can we have everyone please us all the time? Is that the fairness of life that we mean?

If we were to ask Vincent de Paul today's question, 'is death better or life'... he would say - neither! It is living according to the will of the Lord, showing to everyone around that compassion that the Lord is - that is what life is all about! Vincent de Paul was not the best of persons in the beginnings of his life journey, but soon he realised the true call that he had received and today we have a saint in him, a saint of mercy and compassion, a saint of mercy in complete action.

WORD 2day: 26th September, 2016

The Naked Truth - God alone is!

Monday, 26th week in Ordinary Time

Job 1:6-22; Lk 9: 46-50

Naked I was born, naked will I die! God gave and God has taken it back. Blessed be the name of the Lord... Job is given by the Word today as the brilliant example of a child of God! His properties burned, he remained calm. His cattle were taken, he bore it all. His servants were killed he held on to the Lord. His children died altogether, he broke down but in the bosom of the Lord! That was Job, of whom the Lord was proud of.

Jesus is teaching a similar lesson too in the Gospel ...your ego, your social status, your position and power, your possession and your attachments... nothing can stand the test of time. God alone will. Whether we believe or not the Lord is. Whether we praise the Lord or not, the Lord is worthy of all the praise in the world. Whatever we do and whatever we are involved in, even without our own full knowledge of it, we are serving the purposes of the Lord. Ultimately that which is going to prevail is God's will. God alone is almighty and God's purposes alone give meaning to anything that exists. The truth finally is, who ever we are and whatever we have, everything will pass. The naked truth is, God alone is, God alone will forever be.

INDIFFERENCE - the most unChristian attitude of all

25th September, 2016 - 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Amos 6: 1.3-7; 1 Tim 6: 11-16; Lk 16: 19-31

Indifference, the worst of all vices and the most dangerous of all attitudes, is one thing that the Lord cannot bear! Woe to those who are indifferent, warns prophet Amos. And that is precisely what Jesus presents in his parable too. It is something that God just cannot stand - the Lord will 'spit you' out of his presence, if you are lukewarm! (Rev 3:16) If you have a living faith, then fight the good fight of the faith, challenges St. Paul in his letter today. 'Blessed' are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness(Mt 5:6), not those who remain in their safe havens caring nothing for anyone around. St. Paul recalls to our minds today, how Jesus bore witness to his faith and to the truth right upto his cross! "For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth," declared Jesus with a courage that disturbed Pilate.(Jn 18:37). When it came to bearing witness to truth and righteousness, or feeling compassionate for those who were helpless, or reaching out to the sinners and the outcast, or speaking out for the rights of those who were oppressed - of their right to be healed as sons and daughters of God, of their right to dignity and of their closeness to the Reign of God - Jesus never hesitated; and his true disciples would never hesitate too!

Today we are living in a world that has innumerable justifications for being indifferent towards others - one's duty and family, corrupt system and government, anti-people policies and laws,  legitimate development and technology, rapid growth and advancement - the list can go on endlessly. And it is effortlessly easy to cast the blame on someone else and hide behind the mask of myself being part of the 'affected' and the 'left behind'. In simple terms, the Word challenges me today to place myself in the shoes of the rich man and look at the world around me! Have I done whatever I could in my context, for justice, righteousness, dignity of all and true freedom of the children of God. If I say, 'what can I really do?' - beware, that could be the visible trace of Indifference within!

Indifference is the most unchristian quality one can have. The readings today outline the three levels in which INDIFFERENCE grows.

FIrst Level: Indifference as a fruit of Blindness - the inability to see the suffering around, the incapacity to sense the heavy burdens that persons around me carry, the failure to feel the unseen tears of those crying out for help... these are unchristian to the core. LOOK says the Lord, perceive the suffering in the eyes of your brother and sister... even if you cannot do much, atleast be there for them!

Second Level: Indifference as a sign of Selfishness - even after seeing the suffering and the pain, if I fail to be moved, if I refuse stand by someone because I could get into problem, or because I could lose my opportunity to go ahead in life, or because I could earn enemies in the bargain, I am unworthy of being called the disciple of the Lord who died for me! THINK of the others, and not solely of yourself, says the Lord. Can I think of anything other than Me, Myself and Mine? I am my brother's keeper!

Third Level: Indifference as a form of Malice - it is a sin! "Silence encourages the tormentor; never the tormented!" says Elie Wiesel an Holocaust survivor, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He continues,"the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference." How perfectly Jesus would agree to these words! For, this is what Jesus meant by that parable! You just cant be silent spectators, you just can't stand by the sidewalks and see things happen, not even sit in the stands and cheer! No... FIGHT the good fight of the faith!

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

Padre Pio - the saint of the times!

23rd September, 2016

Eccl 3:1-11; Lk 9: 18-22

A time for everything says the Word today. There is so much discussion about time, the times and the right time - it is nothing but sticking to God's design, God's eternal design, God's timeless plan! That will set everything right.

Being people of the times in no way exempts us from being people according to God's design, because God's plan is eternal and it applies to all time. In this regard Padre Pio was a saint of the times. He was totally dedicated to doing God's will time in and time out! 

Two things that stand out in Padre Pio, a man who died in out times (1968) and was canonised in our times (2002), are the willingness to turn sufferings salvific and the closeness to the Mercy of God. Not merely with the Stigmata, also because of the people around, the superiors who did not understand and the affluent who detested his choices, Padre Pio suffered extreme situations. But he made them all determined ways towards his sanctity. He is known to be the modern saint of the Confessional, because he believed firmly in the way to heaven through the confessional. The Sacrament of Reconciliation, the peak experience of God's Merciful embrace, became for Padre Pio the most used pulpit to proclaim God's love and invitation.

May Padre Pio inspire us today to grow through our sufferings and bring us close to the Merciful love of God.

WORD 2day: 22nd September, 2016

Seeking Christ is a vanity too!

Thursday, 25th week in Ordinary Time

Eccl 1:2-11; Lk 9:7-9

Vanity of vanities, everything is vanity...says the first reading today. There is nothing new under the sun, what are we toiling for? What are we seeking and searching and anxious for? That is the wise question that the philosopher raises in the Word today. It is important to take note of this question - routine, monotony and boredom are not reality that are external...they are attitudes and dispositions that are internal. How we look at things, how they matter to us, how they affect us and how we relate to them - that makes all the change that can be there.

Seeking Christ...today Herod seeks to see Christ. All of us have this wish to seek and experience Christ. But is that also a vanity? Yes, that will turn out to be another vanity, vanity of all vanities, if we do not seek for an internal change, for a transformation of the heart. If we seek, see, pray and claim to experience Christ, but there is no change in our inner disposition and attitude to life and to others, then that seeking and experiencing would be a vanity!

Vanity of Vanities...everything is a vanity, if we do not allow ourselves to be touched, transformed and continuously made anew in Christ.

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

Celebrating Matthew and Mercy

21st September, 2016

Eph 4:1-7, 11-13; Mt 9:9-13

We celebrate the feast of St. Matthew... the celebration this year should be a very special invitation as we are in the year of Mercy...the Mercy that overlooked the sinner that Matthew was and penetrated his child like soul that yearned for meaning in life. It is a special occasion to celebrate this feast this year, as our Holy Father reflects in his encyclical announcing the Year of Mercy: Misericordiae Vultus. The Holy Father reflects through the words of St. Bede, the mercifulness of God revealed in choosing a so-called sinner, a tax collector to become a close collaborator with the Christ, in God's salvific design.

When Matthew was called, he was a tax collector, a sinner by self identity and by the social standards. He could have been a young man who was following the trade of some of the elders and getting trained in it, sitting at the tax booth. Naturally the rest of those who were with Jesus loathed the very idea of joining him in their band. Jesus was not only being merciful himself, he was training his disciples to be merciful too. He was teaching them to see the interior beauty of a person and not to get stuck to the external judgments. That is Mercy - staying away from prejudice and allowing a person to be whatever he or she is, not forcing the person to be what the society frames him or her to be.

Matthew stands as an icon of God's forgiving mercy that embraces us in spite of all our unworthiness. God's Mercy is greater, deeper and broader than anything else that we can think of.

WORD 2day: 20th September, 2016

The best thing that can happen to me!

Tuesday, 25th week in Ordinary Time

Prov 21: 1-6, 10-13; Lk 8: 19-21

The first reading speaks to us of a variety of categories of people - the king, the virtuous, the just one, the hard working, the haughty, the wicked, the mocker... the message seems to be: whoever you are, what is important is live a life that is pleasing to the Lord; do exactly what the Lord wants you to do.

In fact, this is not a note of threat, but a wisdom par excellence. Because the best thing that can ever happen to me is what the Lord has planned for me! Once I am confident of that, then I can live my life with a serenity that nothing else can offer me. The Gospel has Jesus underlining the same fact. Mary could have been the mother of the Son of God. Not even that is the best thing that can happen to her. That biological motherhood is not as important as the Spiritual Motherhood that comes out of the fact that she listened to the call from the Lord, kept it in her heart, pondered over it and lived her life exactly according to it. That is where she stands as a great example to allowing God to have God's ways in our life.

When we allow that to happen, then God has a freehand in my life and I become the rightful child of that Father and Mother. And thus I become a brother or a sister of my Lord, Jesus Christ!

WORD 2day: 19th September, 2016

Let your light shine!

Monday, 25th week in Ordinary Time

Prov 3: 27-35; Lk 18: 16-18

Be good, be just, be righteous...the Proverbs gives us a list of qualities of a just person who is acceptable  in the eyes of the Lord. Be good, be a light, shine before the world invites the Gospel. Let your light shine, let it shine day in and day out, let it shine regardless of the people and the situations around.

We do like to be good, we do wish to shine our light before the world...but is it so in all circumstances?

Like the electric bulbs which gives only as long as they receive, we are good to others only as long as others are good to us; we are good to the world only as long as the world around is good to us.

Like the oil lamps that sustain their burning as long as what they received lasts. We decide to be good for a little longer, anyway it lasts just as long as our memory of good done to us  lasts.

Consider the candle, which is initiated into burning and shining. It keeps burning as long as it exists, without expecting anything from outside! This is our call: to shine, regardless of what others do to us. Be good inspite of the evil that may rest around you. Be Godly, however ungodly the world around you gets!