The Unleavened Lifestyle of a Christian

WORD 2day: Monday 23rd week in Ordinary time

September 7, 2020: 1 Corinthians 5: 1-8; Luke 6: 6-11

The Word today speaks to us of the ills in Christian living...which St. Paul calls the yeast of evil and wickedness. We consider, almost universally, that acts like adultery and fornication are serious faults, and rightly so. But we consider habits like gossiping, judging others and criticising as less grave and so, go on with it as if they do not matter. A bit of compromise here and a bit of adjustment there, seems alright for the daily normal living, in the common parlance. 

That can never be an authentic Christian way of thinking...Christ would say looking with lust is equally evil as adultery; speaking ill of the other is equally brutal as assaulting the other physically; character assassination is as criminal as killing a person! It is not exactly in what we do that the seriousness of the matter consists, but in what we are aiming to do through our actions or words or disposition.

St. Paul deals with a more concrete situation of impurity and sin in the first reading today...but does not stop with a do or a don't. He transcends them all and instructs the community to be careful about the yeast of evil and wickedness which enters as a stray thought, continues as a practical convention and gets ratified as something acceptable! How many things have followed this path of ratification in history of humanity! 

Jesus gives a valid and eternal alternative to this yeast of evil - the unleavened life style of a Christian - Love. Love alone can make a Christian. Love is the typical disposition of a true Christian. Love is patient and kind, but rejoices in nothing but good! Hence we are called to love and not judge, to love and not use others, to love and not to bloat in our egocentric achievements! Let us be filled with compassion for the suffering and the weak, for the oppressed and the exploited, for the marginalised and the forgotten in the society - that will make us truly Christian, with an unleavened lifestyle! 

SAVE BY SAVING

Truth, Love and Solidarity

September 6, 2020: 23rd Sunday in Ordinary time 

Ezekiel 33:7-9; Romans 13: 8-10; Matthew 18: 15-20

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” -These words of Elie Wiesel are very powerful, especially these days when everything that happens is so vividly unjust and everything just is so awfully silent. Being a Christian cannot go well with a choice of being silent or neutral. We are peacemakers but peace understood not as silent suffering of injustice but as the Divine grace of wholeness, integral wellbeing of the entire humanity, shalom - the ultimate blessedness of all. If we have to achieve this, we have to take sides and the side that we take will determine whether we are truly Christ-ian or not.

Christ came to save us, he has saved us all. But we need to claim that salvation that Christ brought for us all - but how do we do that? By surrendering ourselves to the way of life that Christ has taught us, by surrendering ourselves to the mercy God our Father and Mother, and by allowing the action of the Holy Spirit to take charge over our lives. We either do that here and now, or fail in doing it, by our daily choices. One thing as Christians we need to keep in mind is, we cannot be saved all alone or we cannot work on our salvation all alone. We are called to be a community of persons and we are going to be saved thus too. That is why today the Word today reminds us that, the way to save ourselves is by saving others.

Truth of a Servant of God: Truth lives. When moments of choice come, we need to abide by Truth. It is a sign that we serve that One Lord and God. Truth is one and we need to stand by it. At times when we have to choose between values, between issues, among a few things which seem all good, we need to look for that truth that will most reflect the Lord. That is where we become the servants of God. A famous question - 'what is Truth', is not really a denial of truth but a pointer to the million ways in which people distort truth. But whatever happens, truth always remains, because Truth is what is.

The truth of dignity of a person and the consequent order of justice, should stand aloft in our choices and we need to speak that out. The first reading from Ezekiel reminds us through the voice of the Lord - you speak or you will not be saved! Express that you stand by the Truth; the Word itself says it does not matter if the others heed to you, what matters is that you have declared your stand. 

Love of a Child of God: Love is a mutual debt, Paul declares. I cannot ask a question, why should I love, if I am truly a Christian. It has to be ingrained in me to love. Loving is not just saying it by words. Loving is standing by, feeling for, reaching out and doing everything possible for the wellbeing of the other. At times when we stand by love, we may feel that we are fighting a losing batter, but I need to stick on. Because, it is only by that love that I become a true child of God. For those who love are born of God and those who do not love, do not know God, says John in his epistle. An equally impertinent question is, whom to love! 

Love has to be our very nature, it is not merely something we do in specific occasions or in particular contexts. Loving is an unconditional acceptance of all - beyond any calculation of expectations and fulfillment, against preferences and partialities. Forgiveness becomes  love, pointing out to the person concerned and correcting the person's mistakes becomes love, caring for the community and as a community caring for individuals becomes love and over and beyond everything surrendering to the will of God, comes across as the most definite description of love. 

Solidarity of the People of God: Solidarity is the first principle of Christian living. That is in fact what makes you and me 'people of God'. The moment we are not in solidarity with each other, the moment we lack care and concern for each other, the moment we are unaffected by the sufferings of the other, the moment we are blind to the injustice that is perpetrated in the society, the moment we join the oppressors or those moments when our silence strengthens the oppressors - we are failing to be truly people of God. 

When your brother goes wrong, speak to him, take a few with you and speak to him, call the entire community and speak to him and only then we are allowed to go in peace. Not until then! That is, we should have exhausted all possibilities, only then we can remain silent. Solidarity is that form of love which works on each one's sensitivity to the other, empathy with the suffering, and readiness to set oneself aside for the sake of the common good, common good read as 'the Reign of God', in other words, the salvation of the entire human kind! Until this, that is the salvation of humanity, happens, can I consider myself 'saved'?  

Today, there is so much going on in the local societies, national scenarios and international stand offs. Be it the pandemic we are facing as a humanity, or the related socioeconomic crises that are set off, or the escalating tensions in societies - like the riots in the US, the Indo-China border stand off, or the undercurrents of hatred between countries, the fundamentalism that is being unleashed heartlessly in spite of the common crisis that is weighing down on people, or the cases of politically powerless being exploited to the core - what is my response? Do I want to save my skin or do I look for a true salvation, the holistic salvation of the entire humanity? 

If I am looking for true salvation, I can save myself only by doing something to save the others, the oppressed, the entire world! The Reign of God is all about striving to save oneself by saving others, saving the entire humanity. 

Love of Christ urges us on!

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

September 5, 2020: Celebrating Mother Teresa of Kolkata
1 Corinthians 4: 6b-15;  Luke 6: 1-5

The love of Christ urges me, is a fitting one liner for the life of Mother Teresa of Kolkata. Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, she chose the name Mary Terese in admiration of St. Teresa of Lisieux, in 1928 when she entered the convent of the Loreto Sisters in Ireland. In 1929 she travelled to India, since when it became her second home. Making her first profession in 1931 and her final profession in 1937, Calcutta (today's Kolkata) became her epicenter from where she would shake the world to regaining its consciousness. She began teaching in the famous Loreto school which stands till date proud to have given the world a giant of pastoral zeal and Christian charity. She was appointed the Head Mistress in 1944 but within hardly 2 years, she would have the life transforming "call within her call", which would change her forever from Sister Teresa to Mother Teresa! 

It was, as she notes, 10th September 1946 when she heard that piercing cry from the suffering Lord: "I Thirst"... and she began to thirst. Soon she found herself out of those walls of Loreto, from the safety of those building into an open air school, from the well formed daily schedules to endless wanderings on the street, from being a Loreto nun to being a strange ostracised nun to the foundress of a humble and simple but a miraculously challenging Order called 'Missionaries of Charity' in 1948. The rest is history! 

Let us draw lessons from this great person. She struggled to make sense of what God wanted of her, to understand what her faith is all about, to translate the love that she had for the person of Jesus Christ into action and to love everyone with the same love as that of Christ. She understood what Paul and Jesus mean in today's Word: it is better to be ignorant or deprived than to be haughty with pride! 

Our sense of ego and our urge to prove ourselves can sometimes fill us with a prejudice so strong that we can miss the obvious. Not just the pharisees and the scribes in Jesus' time, but even for us, it is a real danger. With our preconceived ideas and over glorified ego, we would be so filled with ourselves that we would not be able to see, feel with, or love our brothers and sisters around us who are suffering, and in that suffering manifest to us the suffering face of God. In such case, is it possible to really see and love God? It is possible only if, just like the great Mother Teresa, the love of Christ urges us on (2 Cor 5:14)! 

Mind your Business!

WORD 2day: Friday, 22nd week in Ordinary time

September, 4, 2020: 1 Corinthians 4: 1-5; Luke 5:33-39

At times we mind everybody else's business, forgetting the all important business that we have, our life! With the social network occupying such an ample space in the public domain, the private domain begins to shrink to a drastic minimum. People seem to evaluate everybody else, judge everyone and pass not merely comments but judgments on others. There are others who try to create public opinions which are untrue, to have their way in everything. There are still others who tend to live their lives totally based on the likes and dislikes, shares and subscriptions, making real life so virtual and flimsy.

The Word today instructs us to mind just our businesses. How hard can one try to satisfy everyone around? Is it worth the effort at all? How many lives are made so boring and barren merely out of living up to the expectations of the world around! The secret of a truly fruitful and meaningful life is: knowing your business and going about it.

Knowing who we are, as St. Paul shares in his letter today, we are called to be Stewards of the Lord. What is expected of a steward is that he or she is found worthy of the one whose stewards one is! Knowing who we are and striving to be faithful to it, is the Christian meaning to our life. Christ did just that. He knew he was the Son of God and he lived his life to the full worthy of the identity that he inherited from the Lord. 

We are called to be the Lord's stewards, and we need to live worthy of that call, notwithstanding the praises or critiques, the affirmations and the discouragements that might come our way. If we try to patch up our life with unfitting elements merely because those around us are looking for it, if we mix up unblending elements just because the world around enjoys it... we may lose the true sense of our calling. The best thing amidst all the mixed voices around is... to know and mind our business!

Realisation leads to transformation

WORD 2day: Thursday, 22nd week in Ordinary time

September 3, 2020: 1 Corinthians 3: 18-23; Luke 5: 1-11

A person who has been going for spiritual direction for quite some time, once complainingly remarked to the Spiritual director: "but, you keep saying for everything, become conscious!" The Spiritual director calmly said, "yes! that's the key! become conscious, or you can make no change. Realise and you can change, you can grow, you can transform!" 

Realisation alone leads to proper self understanding: realisation of one's limitedness leads to humility and realisation of one's givenness, to gratitude! It is this realisation that made Peter fall at the Lord's feet; it is the same realisation that made Paul remind us, life or death, everything belongs to God, we belong to God! There is nothing else to boast about, than the fact that we belong to God.

Realisation, Awareness, Consciousness, Self-knowledge, Self-realisation, and today another term used frequently, Mindfulness... various terms referring to the same reality: "Be still and know that I am God". It is not merely knowing, for we all know and we know a lot. It is more than knowing; it is, knowing that I know; it is knowing what I know and what I do not. That is what realisation is all about. 

And it is only realisation that leads to transformation; that act of casting the nets into the deep, for a true catch! All that we need to do is move ourselves into that depth, the depth of realisation and the Lord will lead us to transformation. 

Defining Spiritual Persons

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 22nd week in Ordinary time

September 2, 2020: 1 Corinthians 3: 1-9; Luke 4: 38-44

Paul feels bad about the fact that he is not able to speak to the Corinthians as to Spiritual people, because of jealousy, rivalry and division among them. He presents those predicaments as directly opposed to being spiritual people. Jesus in the Gospel shines as a role model in being a Spiritual person or a person of the Spirit. He heals, casts out demons and refuses to gain any popularity mileage out of it. He rebukes the demons even, not to announce his Christ image, as he wants himself to be experienced in the depths of their hearts, by each one hearing him or following him. 

Are jealousy, rivalry and other divisive mentalities totally absent today in faith communities?  Interdenominational differences, intra-community differences withing even the Catholic faith communities are not rare things we hear about. Leave alone the communities, what about my heart, is it totally free of it? If not, I still am an immature believer, yet to become truly a Spiritual person.

St. Paul, in a way, defines who a spiritually mature person is: one who is integral in his or her outlook, unifying in his or her relationships, loving in his or her consideration of the other and God-centered in his or her understanding of one's own identity and of the identity of the faith community. If I am still living two lives - one formal and external and the other personal and hidden, if I am divisive and discriminatory in my thinking, words and choices, if I tend to look at the other with suspicion as a threat or a burden, if I am filled with my ego and closed to the others, the Spirit has not yet taken possession of me fully.

Spiritual Persons are persons of the Spirit, and what matters to them is the action of the Spirit within themselves and within their communities. 

To have the Mind of Christ

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 22nd week in Ordinary time

September 1, 2020: 1 Corinthians 2: 10b-16 ; Luke 4: 31-37.

They believed firmly that no human being can ever deserve the love of God. All that one can do is live in fear of the wrath of God and live a righteous life in order to avoid punishment. Jesus turns those tables upside down and makes it clear that one need not deserve to be loved... God loves us not because we deserve; but because God loves! God loves us and that is all that matters. 

In his own self Jesus demonstrated how God is close to every human person and how compassionately in love God is, with God's own children. It is not about begging God for love, but it is about claiming that love with authority that comes from the very fact that we are sons and daughters of that loving God. God does not want us to beg for God's love, but to live a life that would enable us to feel that love which is always and gratuitously given in abundance. 

At times it can happen that we may take this concept for an advantage. "Claiming with the right of the children"... we have to remember obviously that it first requires that we live as true sons or daughters, knowing our duties and our obligations, our priorities and pertaining choices! We have all the time during the lockdown to sleep, socialise and do our work from home, but when it come to participating in a prayer moment, be it Eucharistic Celebration or a Rosary service or something similar, we find it difficult, inconvenient and highly impossible! Being children is not merely a right, it has an intrinsic duty attached - to give priority to God and matters pertaining to God. 

In short, it is being in touch with the Spirit of the Lord, who lives with us and within us and makes us realize that we are the sons and daughters of the Lord almighty. The Spirit instructs us that to know and enjoy our privileges as children of God, to understand the value of being God's sons and daughters: in straight terms, to have the mind of Christ!

Good teachings and Right teachings

WORD 2day: Monday, 22nd week in Ordinary time

August 31, 2020: 1 Corinthians  2: 1-5; Luke 4: 16-30

The world today runs after so many preachers, sages, gurus, leaders, speakers, trainers, etc. There are many who practice it as a trade! Some have fans and followers across the globe. And today in a scenario of lockdown, where people are locked down to their homes and digital screens, when people cannot get out into the public squares of businesses and professions, these speakers and gurus have chosen to reach out to the homes, through FB lives, webinars, Youtube lives, Google Meets and so many other platforms. Of course, they are all good... talented... interesting... exciting... thought provoking. But the question is, how right are the teachings? The Word today counsels us: it is important to differentiate good teachings from right teachings.

Teachings that are worded beautifully, formulated creatively and expressed attractively but do not lead to true harmony, self transcendence, compassionate love and mutual concern based on the fact that there is some One who unites us all, invites all to form one beautiful community of brothers and sisters... how "right" can those teaching be... though they may sound good and attractive?

The readings today give us a clarity: so-called good teachings are based on human prowess of mind while the right teachings are founded on the power of the Wisdom from God. The Gospel presents us the sad fact that the world prefers the former to the latter. That is why today we need to question what according to us is "good"... If what is good is what is acceptable in the eyes of the Lord, only the right teachings can be good too!

A GOD WHO RELATES

Encountering, enchanting, empowering...

August 30, 2020: 22nd Sunday in Ordinary time
Jeremiah 20: 7-9; Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16: 21-27

Where is God amidst all the confusion we are in? Disease, death, depression and desolation - where is God in all these?

Who is God? Can we not have everything turned to normal in a minute, by God? Is not God capable of it?

Why should there be a God, when things are so out of control? There is disease on one side, violence on another, conspiracies on yet another, selfish schemings and inhuman manipulations all over. Why should I believe in a God, then?

These are some of the questions raised these days universally. The Word today, does not answer them...but they point to us how faulty these questions are! How these are to be made sense of...all within a relationship, because our God is not a power that protects, nor a principle which governs. Yes, our trust and our belief is not in a power or in a principle which is called God, but in a Person... in three persons...who reveal themselves to us. In acknowledging that revelation and accepting it, we grow in a relationship called faith. The Word today presents to us, a God relates to us.

An Encountering God

We have an encountering God, a God who meets us on our everyday journey, intercepts our daily routine, and comes up with questions and proposals that demand our utmost attention. Not just questions that take an answer, but questions that lead to life choices, radical commitments and fundamental stands.

God created everything and found it good; God created human persons and found them very good! God gave them the gift of freedom, capacity to love, strength to forgive and the virtue of being good...in short, God created them in God's own image! But soon the human persons started using these, rather misusing these, towards selfishness, vengeance, hatred and thus gave into slavery! Consequences followed: unhappiness, wretchedness, wickedness and all such curses. Human persons found ways and means of making their own life and existence more and more miserable... God encountered the human persons; they refused to listen to God. God still continues to encounter humanity; humanity refuses to heed. They have set a norm for themselves and would love to conform to it, ruining themselves and everyone around! Is it not time to conform to the call of the Lord and seek "what is good, what God wants and what is the perfect thing to do!" (Rom 12:2).

An Enchanting God

If only we pay heed to the Lord who seeks us, in that encounter and in the ways that God reveals Godself to us, God is ever enchanting. Sometimes when God encounters we are so mesmerised, enticed and gripped by the experience that, we make decisions, we make choices which otherwise we would not have made at all. God overpowers us, complains Jeremiah today. Yes, God overpowers us with love, with God's love.

Amidst all the crisis that we are living in today, if only we truly allow the Lord to encounter us, God would enchant us. God would give us the light to see things from a different perspective - a perspective of beholding the gift that we are to each other, a perspective of looking at the entire humanity as our common identity, a perspective to treat this universe as our common home, a perspective to understand life in all its completeness without absolutising its material dimension...in short it would leave us mesmerised, in a state of enlightenment that makes sense of everything in terms of relationship, true, authentic and genuine relationships. 

An Empowering God

It is when we come out of that mesmerised state, we realise what we have done...that we have fallen for God, fallen in love with that wonderful person and given our word for so many things that are so difficult in our world today: a world with such warped, strange, queer and sometimes nauseating principles, policies and priorities. A prolonged commitment seems an impossibility, a tough enroute to happiness seems an impracticality, selfless love and sensitive hearts seem an unavailable commodity. 

But God empowers... God empowers us with encouragements and at the same time corrections, as we see in Jesus' conversation with Peter. We shall meet with tough situations and we would have to respond to trying demands, but the Lord would be with us to guide us through. We would face situations that we cannot understand or explain, but we would feel the strength to live through them, until we reach that state in life where we would be able to look back and observe the whole picture, and see the Lord standing by all the time and walking along all the way. It may look like the Lord is chiding - as Jesus calls Peter Satan today; but it is just the relationship that we have with God - who cares for us and empowers us in every way.

It is only through God's empowering love that we can know, choose and hold on to what is Good, what is acceptable and what is perfect... only through that love, the love of a God who relates!

The Christ Logic

THE WORD AND THE FEAST

August 29, 2020: Remembering the Beheading of John, the Baptist
Jeremiah 1: 17-19; Mark 6: 17-29

St.Paul boasts often saying, there is a different kind of a logic that is at work in us... and the first person who lived by that logic even before Christ the Lord, was John! In fact Christ called him the greatest of those born of a woman. The sufferings of this world are nothing compared to the glory that awaits us in the Lord, St. Paul would remind us.

This special, if not strange, logic can be called Christ Logic... a logic that gets its stamp of divine approval from the words, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is all about being the last and finding yourself the first; serving everyone and finding yourself the master of the moment; going about in silent righteousness and finding the entire world after you - after you either following you or trying to do away with you!

Be a servant to be the Leader, be the least to be considered the best, be ready for the Cross in order to taste the true love of God... identifying ourselves with Christ is a serious affair. We would either be judged "strange"or "challenging". Many went through this ordeal due to this Christ logic... Jesus himself was affected by that, wasn't he?...they called him 'possessed'...they called him 'out of his mind'...and finally villainised him and killed him, just as they did with John the Baptist.

The Baptist was an extreme illustration of Christ Logic, just like Jeremiah was in his time. And both of them were eliminated as early as possible by the world around them. The same happened to Jesus and in this, Jeremiah and John the Baptist had proved themselves to be prefigurements to Christ, the prototypes of those who live by Christ logic. 

Applying today that Christ logic... what do we expect of the world? Persecutions and pressures...what would be our response to them? The prosperous evil ones against whom we need to be shouting from the dark, apparently in vain... what would we make of it? In today's culture of hatred and violence, what would our style be? Do we dare to make our own, the Christ logic?