THE WORD AND THE SAINT

Living by truth and in love

Celebrating John Paul II - 22nd October, 2016

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

The downfall of others is not a justification of our selves. The difficulties that we face are not curses we experience. Everything that happens in life has to be seen from the perspective of God, and the holistic plan of God and the obedience or breach of God's will and its consequences. When people struggle and live life in unbearable conditions we are tempted to say that God has taken them to task - is this truly a Christian attitude? 

John Paul II who was a long reigning Pontiff of the Church and a person whom we have seen in our own times, was a great witness against such kind of thinking. Those who have seen the last years of Pope John Paul II, would vouch for the strength of will that this great person possessed. With his Parkinson ailment and his age, he was losing that strong traveller image that he had built up in his tenure for two decades and more. But he did not mind it, he put his trust in the Lord who was leading him and went on with endurance till the end. He never gave up - not just this but even his stand as the conscience of the world - he was firm on living by truth and in love! No one or nothing could stop him from that. That is the challenge to us today: to live by truth and in love in order that we grow into Christ... Are we ready?

WORD 2day: 21st October, 2016

The sign of being ONE

Friday, 29th week in Ordinary Time
Eph 4:1-6; Lk 12: 54-59

Looking at the situation around filled so much with hatred and violence, vengeance and treachery, gruesome competition and heartless development...should we not easily decipher what our call is as people of God? If we add to the number of those who perpetrate such a situation or even if we remain silent without questioning their logic, we are 'hypocrites' as Jesus calls today! We are challenged to stand up to the situation and give the world a sign that we can be ONE, One people, One heart, One mind, One society, One humanity, One family...united by the ONE LORD. In our own simple ways we are called to bear witness to this fact, beginning from our interior mentality and the inner circle of the family.

WORD 2day: 20th October, 2016

The Spirit, the fire and the division

Thursday, 29th week in Ordinary Time
Eph 3:14-21; Lk 12:49-53

We are children of one Father... the Father from whom we all receive our identity.  The father places a mark and a condition.  The mark is  the Spirit and the condition is the fire... that we live for the Lord in union with each other not in competition with each other.  The division that the gospel speaks of today is standing away from any kind of consideration that militates against the Spirit. It should be marked with the fire within us,  for the Reign of God.

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

18th October,  2016
Celebrating St Luke the evangelist

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

Luke is an evangelist with a difference.  Luke's speciality consists,  they say in very many things,  but certainly in the following three elements.

The Gospel of the Mother:  Luke has some special portions for our blessed mother in his narrative.  The anunciation, the visitation,  the Magnificat and the blessed mother with the apostles.

The Gospel of Mercy:  Luke 15 is the compendium of the mercy of God as proclaimed by Jesus.  Apart from this chapter Luke has some very special and prophetic pieces of the teaching of Jesus about the mercy of God, the least to say Lk 6:36.

The Gospel of the Meek: Luke's would be considered the gospel with an absolute choice for the poor,  the meek, the lowly,  the gentiles and the sinners! Luke manages to capture the compassionate heart of the father to the best.

The call is... let us be human, compassionate,  merciful and loving;  that's a true Christian living.

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

It's all God's doing

Monday, 29th week in ordinary time
Eph 2: 1-10; Lk 12: 13-21

The good work we do and the great achievements we hoard up,  the wealth we gather and the treasure we store up, the so-called good name we insist and the status we rave upon... nothing is truly ours  and it has never been so. Yesterday as I preached at a funeral of a person just three years elder to me and just as healthy as me, this thought precipitated more in my heart and today the WORD holds it out for our reflection.

Can we become more loving?  Can we become more caring? Can we become more merciful?   Can we become more faith filled?  Can we become more human?  Can we become more godly?

Ignatius of Antioch gives us a beautiful example of a life lived for Christ. One of the early fathers of the Church, he  invites us to rely on Christ and Christ alone.

WITH HANDS RAISED

16th October, 2016: 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Exo 17: 8-13; 2 Tim 3: 14-4:2; Lk 18:1-8

Work as if everything depended on you; Pray as if nothing depended on you, goes the popular saying. Today we have a wonderful image to place before us, as we go about our daily life. Moses on the hill overlooking the battle, with hands raised unto the Lord! The Battle belongs to the Lord... all that we need to do is keep still, the Lord will fight for us says the book of Exodus (14:14). 

We are called to live our life with our hands raised unto the Lord! 

Living with hands raised unto the Lord is a gesture that means to abandon everything into the hands of God. It is a total personal abandonment to the Lord, that the Lord may guide us and that the Lord may fight the battle for us! Many grow weary of struggles and temptations in life... when Moses' hands were raised, Israel won! The book of Proverbs tells us, 'the horse is made ready for the battle; but the victory belongs to the Lord!'(Prov. 21:31). When we learn to abandon ourselves in the hands of God, we will see the wonders that can happen.

Living with hands raised unto the Lord is to reach out to the Lord with all our heart. It is like the antenna that stretches to connect, to receive and to communicate. That is in short, 'prayer' - to connect, to receive and to communicate. Let us pay attention to the term that seems common in today's readings: pray without ceasing tells Jesus presenting to us the image of the widow; proclaim in season and out of season instructs St. Paul; and the first reading presents to us Moses unwilling to grow weary of having his hands raised unto the Lord. A two fold call here: first, not to grow weary... like the widow to go on in trust, with our hands raised unto the Lord; second, when a brother or sister seems to grow weary, to rush to their side like Aaron and Hur and to be with them and to raise our hands in unison unto the Lord. A praying person builds a praying community of brothers and sisters, genuinely concerned about each other!

Living with the hands raised unto the Lord is to be filled with hope in the Lord. Like it happened to the widow, it may look like you might never get justice. Like it happened to the Israelites, it might look like you are losing the battle. Things may continuously go wrong, people might endlessly misunderstand you, nothing might seem to be going the way you wished it would..."But as for you, continue, in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it"...from Jesus himself who hoped in the One who sent him, from our Blessed mother who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken by the Lord! "Let us not allow ourselves to be robbed of our hope" reminds Pope Francis.

Every day of our life, every moment of our day, let us resolve to live with our hands raised unto the Lord in a holy abandonment, in a loving union and in an unfailing hope... so that when Our Lord and Saviour comes he will still find faith here amidst us! 

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

The Head, the Body and the Uniter

Celebrating St. Teresa of Avila - 15th October, 2016
Eph 1: 15-23; Lk 12: 8-12

We have a head, none less than the Son of God; We are a body nothing less than the very body of Christ; what a reminder from Paul! Let us not be lost in petty problems and needless anxieties - ofcourse someone will respond saying, 'only when you go through it you will know which is petty and which is needless'! But in Paul's parlance and in Christ's thinking every problem is petty and every anxiety is needless. Because we have an existence, a body, a being so deeply significant! Teresa of Avila whom we celebrate today, witnesses to an experience as such!

The Head: Let us be worthy of the Head we possess. As the head directs so the body goes, atleast such is the understanding in the mechanical world. But for us as people who have Christ as our head, we have the freedom with which we can decide to act out of our personal choice - let those choices be worthy of our Head.

The Body: Let us be one body in Christ.The Church being a body of Christ is not in the hands of the Head...it is in the way the Church and its every member identify themselves to the One body, instead of claiming differences of origin, status and everyday operations!

The Uniter: The Head-body rapport is not automatic, it is an act of the Spirit, the Uniter, the one who unites them both. It is the Spirit who relates us to the Lord and it is the Spirit who sustains us in that relationship. St. Teresa was someone who felt this Spirit so strong. close and active! We see in her life that she had a relationship with the Lord that was so intimate, meaningful and a matter of day-to-day experience. Her mystical writings came from a source so divine, that they disturb many, challenge them and invite us to an understanding of our life that is intimately connected to our relationship with the Lord.

WORD 2day: 13th October, 2016

Identifying Christ today!

Thursday, 28th week in ordinary time
Eph 1: 1-10; Lk 11: 47-54

What would you do if some one comes around today and starts claiming himself to be the son of God and warns you of  dire consequences if you don't believe in him?  Yes there are characters of such sort today. If you have some time to kill and hard up for some serious entertainment check out on the YouTube for a person called Sadhu Sundar Selvaraj... a self proclaimed visionary and evangelist today.  You would be astounded by his claims - something like visiting heaven for regular council meetings and getting reviews from God  the Father for his TV shows etc.

At times we would also react as the Pharisees and the Scribes did with Jesus-  as angry as wishing to get rid of him. The question, is how do  we identify the right message and the right messenger.  The criterion is given by Paul in the Word today: our call to be holy and blameless in love before God in Christ! Holy and blameless, not merely in what we put up as our appearance before others, but before God.
Identifying Christ and Christ's message today is not that difficult...  in this regard, holiness as integrity and expressed in love,  is the touchstone.

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

Faith,  Love and Christ 

Celebrating John XXIII - 11th October, 2016 

Gal 5: 1-6; Lk 11: 37-41

When the Pharisee invited Jesus to come home, Jesus did not mind at all going over and dining with him. In spite of feeling honoured by his invitation having been accepted, the Pharisee was more worried about Jesus washing or not washing his hands, rituals followed or not, circumcision or no circumcision, laws and fulfillment of laws...Jesus gets upset over it. The happiness of having a guest is lost in the judgements that the host was passing on the guest. The joy of togetherness is lost in the the insistence of legality. The true sense of love is lost when one picks and chooses whom to show his or her love. Paul redifines faith in Jesus' terms - it is to acknowledge that Christ has set us free! We are not under any yoke anymore. Nothing can bind us except the love of the Father made manifest in the Son and poured into our hearts through the Spirit. Why do we want to give into that yoke again by equating our faith to 'doing' something, 'performing rituals' instead of relating to God with a free heart. That freedom is born only out of love.

Pope St. John XXIII brought this very strongly into the Church. In celebrating him we are celebrating a great icon of the year of mercy, for the following reasons.

- He was the one who convoked the Vatican Council II to ensure that the Church lives upto what Jesus said: what I want is mercy and not sacrifice.

- He was a loving person, known as a loved bishop and a smiling Pope! He was mercy personified and in his personality he upheld faith and love, and thus Christ.

- He was someone who showed what mercy in concrete term would mean...he stood by the poor, the marginalised and the working class, as a Bishop and later as a Pope.

Pope St. John XXIII has for long been an inspiration to Pope Francis, right from the time he was a seminarian Mario Bergoglio. And ofcourse we see the signs of this in Pope Francis' life. His simplicity, radicality and down-to-earth spirituality is a great replication of John XXIII. 

WORD 2day: 10th October, 2016

Generation of freedom or slavery?

Monday,  28th week in ordinary time
Gal 4: 22-24,26,27,31 -5:1; Lk 11: 29-32

There is so much of craving for freedom in today's world but freedom understood in terms of doing what one likes. One is so attached to one's own wish and desire that it amounts actually to a slavery rather than freedom. The over dependence on the need of being affirmed and being recognised,  on the need to be respected and praised,  the need for the personal desires to be fulfilled make the generation today not only weak but also enslaved.

Jesus calls us to a superior mode of living,  trusting in the beyond,  respecting the space for the other and being able to take a distance from one's own needs and opinions. That is a liberated way of living,  a corrective so necessary for the world today.