Return! To the Voice of the Lord!

THE WORD IN ADVENT - First Saturday

December 7, 2019: Remembering St. Ambrose
Isaiah 30: 19-21,23-26; Matthew 9:35 - 10:1,5,6-8

God is Gracious, God is Compassionate - that is the key to behold the message of the Word today. Jesus chooses his apostles and sends them out - because he had compassion on the people. Jesus sends the apostles out because there was 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). And that's the voice we are called to be - how can we be, unless we first listen to it ourselves! Hence the call: to return to the voice of the Lord!

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! There are people, multitudes who are longing for those words of consolation from the Lord, who are looking for the strength from the Saviour, who are searching for a voice that would lead them on. The Lord depends on you and me... if we are lost to return to that voice; if we are safe, to be that voice to those who are still seeking. 

As God chose Ambrose from the crowd, with just a voice of a child crying out his name, to be raised into a great pastor in the Church, to win over later,  a great saint 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 and compassion to our brothers and sisters! To hear that Voice and to spread that Voice... for that, first we need to Return, to the Voice of the Lord!

Return! To your senses!

THE WORD IN ADVENT - First Friday

December 6, 2019: Isaiah 29: 17-24; Matthew 9: 27-31

'To see' is a spiritual quality; 'to hear' is a blessed disposition. The Word is full of these imageries today. The first reading speaks of the deaf who will hear, 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. 

In fact, '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 deaf hear and the dead are raised' (Lk 7:20,22)! Happy are those who are able to  see these and behold the presence of the Lord. Even amidst us, the glory of the Lord and the concerns of the Lord are ceaselessly being revealed - happy would we be, if only we take notice.

In the Reign of God, all shall possess the spiritual capacity to see and capacity to hear:  we shall all see, because we will have the light of the Lord; we shall hear because we will have the help of our God, as the responsorial psalm teaches us! It is not that the light and the help are not present at times, but that we are not present to them! Hence the call of the Advent today: to return to the Lord, to return to our senses, and see the presence of the Lord.

Yes, we will surely see the Lord face to face in the Reign, but today, in our daily life, we are challenged to see, to look, to hear, to perceive and to find the joy of the Lord in the midst of our routine... Can we, really? If we believe, we will. 

Let us grow everyday in our faith, to really sense the Lord, our light and our salvation. Let us pay heed to the invitation to Return, to our true senses!

Return! Come touch the base!

THE WORD IN ADVENT - First Thursday

December 5, 2019: Isaiah 26:1-6; Matthew 7: 21,24-27

Are you familiar with baseball rules... what is it called when you finish one full round after you leave your initial base? A Home Run! In the military parlance, a person who goes on an air raid for example is said to 'touch the base' when he or she returns after the mission or a part of it is accomplished, for now! Keeping these imageries at the back of our mind, look at the images given in the Word today.

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. After all the battering and the hard work, after all the running and the risks, one looks forward to enter that secure gates of home, to get that home run, to touch base!

In contrast we have the house built on sand which is quick to ruin itself, assailed by the least of the batterings; a city that is unguarded which has all the possibility of attack from within, from outside and from all unprecedented quarters. Just imagine, if this is all that awaits us! The Lord has something secure, strong, firm prepared for us. But it depends if we choose that or not!

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 whether we choose the strength and the security that the Lord can provide! When these choices, priorities, criteria and principles are all founded on the Lord and the Lord's Word, we enter a city well guarded and a house firmly built on rock. 

That is where the Lord invites us: It's time to check our choices and priorities, get them right and Return! and make a home run, touch the base! 

Return! To the Table of the Lord!

THE WORD IN ADVENT - First Wednesday

December 4, 2019: Isaiah 25:6-10; Matthew 15:29-37

The first reading in various words explains just one fact - that the Lord removes anything between us and God, that separates... the veil or the shroud, the sheet or the web, the tears, and yes, even death! What is the sign of it - that we go sit at the table of the Lord, the banquet that we are reminded of in the first reading and the responsorial psalm.

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!

And then we shall join the banquet of the Lord. Seven loaves were nothing in front of that crowd, but they were transformed into a satisfying banquet. The Lord has the table set - and the Lord invites us, "Return!" Let us return to the table of the Lord!

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!

Return! The Lord is coming Home!

THE WORD IN ADVENT - First Monday

December 2, 2019: Isaiah 4: 2-6; Matthew 8: 5-11

One of the concrete expressions of faith is, total confidence that the Lord has the power to act on my behalf! And not just that, but that the Lord enters my life, my home, to fill me with the grace of salvation! Am I there to receive the Lord?

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... the call to go up to the house of the Lord is to become aware of the presence of the Lord, the presence that comes to encounter us in our daily life! 

In the first reading Isaiah builds up the people's 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. With just that, the centurion received the power of Christ in his 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. We need to be there, when the power of the Lord comes home to us, to work in us!

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!" Let us return, for the Lord is coming home!

RETURN TO THE REIGN

THE WORD IN ADVENT

December 1, 2019: First Sunday of Advent 
Isaiah 2: 1-5; Romans 13:11-14a; Matthew 24:37-44

Let us begin with wishing each other a HAPPY NEW YEAR! A blessed New liturgical year begins today! 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.

Advent 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, and invitation to go up, in fact to grow up. 

We are invited to go up, grow up, up above our tendencies of conflict and our feelings of rivalry and jealousy, above our petty considerations of ourselves and self centered striving 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 ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks; where all manipulation and exploitation will give into genuine love and sincere goodwill for the other.

Advent 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 alert and aware, 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!

Advent 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 invitation is to RETURN... yes, we are not going in search of the Reign somewhere in a far distant land; the Reign is not lost nor hidden, we are! We are lost, loitering around. We have forgotten out real destiny - the HOME. The Reign is our home and we need to return to it. We need to realise its presence right amidst 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 new 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 parishes, 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. 

The Feet that bring the Good News

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

November 30, 2019: St. Andrew, the Apostle of Social Network
Romans 10: 9-18; Matthew 4: 18-22

"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.

St. Andrew played a special role during the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Andrew as a disciple of Christ always had the role of bringing good news to persons... 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); along with Philip, he brought the Greeks to meet Jesus (Jn 12:22); and he brought that boy who gave the five loaves to feed the five thousand (Jn 6:9). Amidst all the opposition and threat, the apostles bore witness to his name: they were the beautiful feet which brought the good news to the world. 

The feast today reminds us yet again our call to be proclaimers of the goodnews to the world... each of us, without any exception, of course each in our own way. Andrew is proposed as the patron of social network...because he used every opportunity to make Christ known to people and to bring people to Christ. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI described social network as the modern day pulpit and invited us to proclaim Christ not merely from the housetops but also from the laptops...and here we have a great role model for it. 

May we dedicate in our own way every effort of ours to proclaim the Reign of God through the social network. May we dedicate the social network which offers us such a great promise, that it may forever be an instrument in the hands of God, to bring God's will to fulfillment. 

The final word is the Lord's

WORD 2day: Friday, last week in the Ordinary time

November 29, 2019: Daniel 7:2-14; Luke 21:29-33

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. Not just the first Christians or the three centuries of persecution that followed, all through the centuries we have people persecuted for belonging to God. Sadly, we as Christians have persecuted others too...sometimes in arrogance, sometimes in the over zealous stands that we have taken, and sometimes with an insensitive silence in history.

The first reading speaks of all these types of calamities and persecutions, but finishing however with a note of hope on the eternal dominion of the Son of Man. That is the typical outlook of a person of God - to see all that is so evil but all the time to see through them all, the benign face of God.

The Gospel reaffirms the hope presented in the first reading, from the mouth of the very object of that hope: the Word made flesh. In spite of these frightening scenes all around you, be firm that the Lord is still in control, because the final word with always be the Lord's!

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! Whatever be our situation, if we are truly persons of God, if we believe that we are children of God in the true sense that we have surrendered ourselves in the hands of the Lord, then let us take a deep breath and say, the final word will always be the Lord's!

Lion's mouth and heads held high

WORD 2day: Thursday, last week in Ordinary time

November 28, 2019: Daniel 6: 12-28; Luke 21: 20-28

From the lions' mouth the Lord delivers Daniel. Another phrase, but it happens literally in Daniel's life. The Gospel presents to us a scene of vengeance, violence and fearsome events... the ultimate message is just one and simple: hold your heads high, the Lord is near!

In the Joy of the Gospel, the exhortation that Pope Francis gave in 2013, he explains, a Christian has to be joyful but that joy will not be experienced in the same way all the time. That is what the readings today wish to impress on our minds. 

At times there will be troubles that threaten to overpower us, temptations that tend to drown us, sinful tendencies that vouch to ruin us, concerns that refuse to leave us... but even at the worst of these moments a true Christian will not lose heart, will never give up! Because at the core of his or her heart, there is joy, the joy that Christ gives, a joy that no one or nothing can take away(Jn 16:22)!  

That is infact what Jesus tells us today in the Gospel - even if you find yourself at the mouth of a lion, or at the threshold of destruction, or at the brink of death - all that you need to do is - believe in the Lord, trust in the mercy of God and "stand up and hold your heads high, for your liberation is at hand!"