In God's own time...

 WORD 2day: Friday, 25th week in Ordinary time

September 25, 2020: Ecclesiasticus 3: 1-11; Luke 9: 18-22

Two great enemies to spiritual health, as spiritual masters point out are: Anxiety and Curiosity! 

Anxiety is against faith because it points to a lack of trust in the Lord. You are worried about the future, it is justified to the extent that it helps you to prepare, plan and project some of your actions, habits and decisions towards making positive changes in what is to come, within your powers. But after that limit, it becomes a unwarranted worry and a burden taken upon oneself, as if every depends on you and you alone!

Curiosity is lack of patient acceptance of the present. You have a task at hand and you are involved in it...but your mind is all the time preoccupied on finishing it and seeing its outcome, than on really applying yourself whole heartedly to it. You are involved in preparing for an examination, you are more interested to know what questions will be asked of you. You are working on a project, but you are more interested in knowing whether it will end up to be a success or not. Curiosity is again a denial of the fact that every moment of your life, you are receiving it from the Lord, in faith.

To both these - anxiety and curiosity, and to many other spiritual ailments the corrective given is Surrender! In simple terms, surrender can be described as the assurance that in God's time everything will happen. Patience, trust and the unfailing confidence in God's goodness, are the ingredients of this mentality of surrender. Especially when things aren't going the way we would want them to, we need this quality to remain sane and secure. Doesn't that speak to the kind of experience we are having these days?

In the Gospel today, we find Jesus as a personification of this quality. He was neither curious nor anxious about his mission on earth. That is why he was more interested about their personal conviction than the public opinion; and he was stern that they don't go about frenetically spreading their conviction and forcing it on people, but to let them arrive at that conviction through their own experience too! 

That serenity on Jesus' part comes from the attitude of Surrender, an assurance that everything will be made beautiful IN GOD'S OWN TIME.

From vanity to sanctity through sanity

 WORD 2day: Thursday, 25th week in Ordinary time

September 24, 2020: Ecclesiasticus 1:2-11; Luke 9: 7-9

TINNUTS... have you heard that sigh from anyone? And what does it actually mean? Too simple to be intrigued, the expansion of it goes this way: There Is Nothing New Under The Sun - TINNUTS. The first reading today speaks of vanities in life. Labour, dreams, experiences, senses...everything is a vanity if they are not in the right perspective... because there is nothing new under the sun and you are going to do nothing new after all your striving and struggling! 

Continuing in the same line, the Gospel presents to us a personification of vanities, Herod! Herod had every opportunity to realise the vanity with which he was living, but he made no use of those. He even put an end to them. That would surely affect him all his life. That is why the Gospel says, "he kept saying, I beheaded John." How many such personifications we find in today's context - you turn your television sets on...there is a parade of these personifications of vanity, from all around the globe! The present COVID crisis has done its best in putting in a pin through our bloated balloons of vanity...but no lessons seem to have been learnt by humanity at large.

Now, stop! Before judging them all in such terms, let us have a good look at ourselves and our immediate surrounding! In our families where relationship should govern but selfishness takes over... between spouses, between parents and children, between siblings! In work places where formalities reign supreme and vanities and self glories are idolised! How genuine are we...and how sane and simple we strive to be?

Are there vanities which surround us today? Aren't there opportunities offered to realise them and to do away with them? From Vanity to Sanity...that is the primary journey we are challenged to make, so that we shall feel ready and prepared to embark upon the extraordinary journey towards sanctity! That is our itinerary: from vanity to sanctity, through sanity!

In plenty and in want...

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 25th week in Ordinary time

September 23, 2020: Proverbs 30:5-9; Luke 9: 1-6

What would be your reaction if you hear a young person, in a prosperous turn of his career telling you, "I am resigning my so-called promising and colourful job." And you ask him the reason and he says: " they are paying me unreasonably high!" Strange! Would it be not? It was possible half a decade ago, in a booming kind of a situation. Though today, this may not be possible at all, with all the crisis and economic strain around, the first reading speaks of a mindset of this sort- a man who wants to live neither in want nor in plenty. Not in want, because he will not think of shortcuts to get rich; nor in plenty, that he does not forget the one who gives. 

Jesus knew that mindset! He instructs his apostles on being a messenger of God... the crux of his instruction is not merely about whether to have or not to have, whether to possess or not to possess, but it is all about depending on God or not, and how dependent do you feel on God and how dependent on other forces of push and pull around you! 

Poverty within the worldview of the Reign of God, in terms of Jesus' thinking, is a fundamental dependence on God. Being grateful for what God gives, and being expectant like a child to be given things in love. With that mindset, everything is appreciated as a blessing and not to have is not a cause for lament.You know you will be given at the right time, and you know the One who gives is all the time watchful over you. 

It is more than what proverbs suggests, while the passage from the proverbs carries a tinge of cynical realism, the Gospel offers a proactive sense of dependence out of true human freedom, that defines a true disciple and a dedicated apostle. Clearly St. Paul makes a choice for the Gospel mentality, the mind of Christ: to learn to live in want and in plenty, because we can do anything through the one who strengthens us (cf. Phil 4:12,13).

The Right thing to do...

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 25th week in Ordinary time

September 22, 2020: Proverbs 21: 1-6, 10-13; Luke 8: 19-21

Doing the right thing is better than sacrifice says the first reading today. And the right thing is imprinted in our hearts. That is a simple but profound question each of us has to constantly ask ourselves- what does my heart say? what does my inner being say? Because, there is someone so great who resides there in profundity. 

The Word of God, comes to us through various ways: direct proclamation is just one among them. There are situations and persons whom we come across who bring us a challenge to face and respond to. The Word of God comes along, instructing us what is right and what is to be avoided. And before anything else, there is the inner voice within us, that "sound of sheer silence" (1 Kgs 19:12), which tells us at the right moment the right thing to do. 

All that we need to do is first of all, be attentive: attentive to the Word that comes across to us. Have you had experiences of what they call 'the inkling' or 'a feeling' as they put it in simple words...as you are about to do something or take a simple decision, you get a feeling within...or you are about to close your room and get out and you feel a kind of reminder of something...but you just carry on with what you are doing...only later regret that you did not pay attention to what was flashing across in your mind? That is what it means... that we need to pay attention to that soft, gentle inner voice!

Secondly, be sincere: sincere to admit that we have received the word and to recognise the demands that it places. At times because of the demands that the Word places on us, we pretend not to have heard, or not to have understood the real meaning of the Word. It would serve no purpose and we in fact deceive ourselves by doing it. 

Thirdly, our task is to be diligent, in carrying out amidst all struggles, what the Word tells us. We are in no way equating that inner voice to God..all that we wish to see is how the Lord can use such a subtle thing to communicate to us. And should we not be grateful for it and be diligent in doing what we ought to?

The Gospel today assures us that when we do all the three we would be considered not merely disciples, but mother, brother, sister, in short, coheirs with Christ to the Reign of God. But when we stop short of them, we would be deceiving ourselves warns the letter of James (1:22). So, the right thing to do... we have always known it, within us!

The call to be One

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

September 21, 2020: Celebrating St. Matthew the Apostle

Ephesians 4: 1-7,11-13; Matthew 9: 9-13

One Lord, One faith, One baptism, One Spirit... Paul stacks up the meaning of the feast today, in describing his own wish for his children. Yes, every time we celebrate the feast of an apostle we are celebrating our call to be One! The division within the Church is because the sense of this Apostolic succession is lost somewhere, the link broken somewhere for those who deserted the lineage! 

That was an ecumenical point of view and important, of course. But more important is a socio-existential point of view of the Church today. The Feast of Matthew and the reminder from the scene of his call, give us this message with an enviable clarity: We are called to be One - are we?

How many categories we have created for ourselves to stand divided - denominations among churches, divisions within churches based on rites and languages and even caste - the worst of its kind! Churches sealed and communities shattered due to caste clashes and rites controversies - is that the Church that the Master wished for? Is that a Church at all? 

Matthew, when he was called, left everything on the table and followed Christ. A lot of things were at stake for him when he made that choice - he cannot turn back, he will have people on his back, he will have to answer so many people, he will be criticised by many, he will be branded by the world as 'out of his mind', he would be going behind a person about whom he can only pretend to know until the person himself reveals with clarity - how many things against that choice that he made! But still he made that choice - to leave everything and follow Christ. Leave everything, follow Christ and still hold on to the difference that some were fishermen and others household Jews over whom he had authority, the Roman authority given him, the authority to extort taxes... sounds so imbecile, doesn't it?

That is how it sounds when some one claims he or she is a follower of Christ and still holds on to divisions, stratifications and classifications, superiority over another, tolerating imposition of inferiority...how infantile and illogical of us! 

The question is, can I today, leave everything, everything - my desires, my identities, my attachments, my clingings, my holdings, my support system...everything! Can I leave them all, and follow Him, to become one with him and one with my brothers and sisters in him?

O LORD! I SEEK!

Seeking today and seeking with hope!

September 20, 2020: 25th Sunday in Ordinary time

Isaiah 55: 6-9; Philippians 1: 20c-24, 27a; Matthew 20: 1-16a

It is your face O Lord that I seek, prays the Psalmist (cf 27:8). Seeking the face of the Lord is the sweet task given to a lover of the Lord. But the Lord declares, I have not told you to seek me in vain, as if I were absent from you! The Lord is always with us and the Lord's countenance sheds its light upon us and that is the joy of our Christian living. But on our part we need to seek, not because the Lord hides, but we hide from the Lord. Adam and Eve, hid themselves and the Lord had to seek; Abel was eliminated and the Lord had to seek; that is the kind of God we have - the one who seeks! On our part are we open to the Lord? With this opening question, let us listen to what the Word has to tell us this Sunday. 

Seek the Lord, says the Word today. We are called to seek the Lord, seek the Lord above all else! Lord awaits to shine forth on us, however it is the need of ours to seek. St. Paul tells us in the second reading today, it becomes even a longing to end this existence on earth so that one could get to the Lord, that we may behold the face of the Lord! But it is not ours to decide, we are expected to live our earthly sojourn as long as the Lord wills it for us; but even within this sojourn the Lord will enable us to behold the Lord's face, if we seek it.

This seeking is not about merely searching, it is longing, it is yearning, it is getting in love it the face of the Lord, never leaving the presence of the Lord, wishing to have the Lord with us all the while in our daily life, never leaving the side of the Lord come what may... it is there that the problems crop up. We get too busy to seek the Lord, too occupied with other things to think of the Lord, too attached to so many things, persons and ideas to give the Lord the highest of priorities in life, too flimsy in our seeking of the Lord that any simple distraction on the way can take us away, like the insects picked by a flying bird! Are we seeking the Lord's face?

Seek the Lord, today! says the first reading and the Gospel parable too. The urgency of seeking the Lord is expressed so well and so plainly by Isaiah, when he urges that we seek the Lord while there is still time! Instead of just standing around and staring at things that will do no good, and focusing on elements that would lead us no where, it is important that we seek the Lord and seek the Lord today, here and now! It is a call to make a choice, to make up our minds, to discern our ways and set on a determined seeking!

The today we just heard is the most demanding part of the exercise! Yes we are ready to seek the Lord's face, but at a later phase in life, definitely not today! There could be three reasons in our minds to justify this: first, that there are more important things to do and it is a waste of time seeking the face of the Lord when there are things that I have to get going with; second, that it looks so outdated to do that, to speak of things that pertain to God and spiritual life and stuffs like that (as the youth lingo goes); third, that it is anyway a futile exercise because finally it is we who have to live our daily life here and now! Look at these reasons! Where is God in my priority list? What matters to me - pleasing the world around or really listening to the inner voice within me? Do I even imagine that I can do all things by myself? It is high time, TODAY, to just stop and ask myself: how long am I going to just stand and loiter around in my life...is it not time to get to work at the Lord's vineyard?

Seek the Lord with Hope, says the parable that Jesus presents. Don't worry even if you have wasted your time till now, make up your mind right now and seek the Lord with hope; do not think if the Lord will accept you or not. First of all, the Lord has not rejected you from the presence of the Lord in order that you need to wonder whether the Lord will accept you back. If at all you found a gap between the Lord and you, it was you who withdrew from the Lord and not the other way. Because the Lord's love is unconditional, and the Lord does not love us to the extent that we deserve it. If only the Lord were to calculate how deserving we are, how many of us can really stand before the Lord and claim the love of God for ourselves? "But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us"(Rom 5:8). 

That love with which the landowner gives the same wages to the first and the last, to those who slogged and those who just stepped in...that is very intriguing and apparently unjust in our logic. But that is what the Love's logic is all about - it does not calculate, it does not weigh the deserving and the non-deserving, it does not wait for an opportune moment to do good. This Love is the hope that Jesus gives us: at no point of time does God reject you! Let us repeat that as often as possible: at no point of time would God reject me! Anytime is good time to return to the Lord and enter his vineyard! Seek the Lord with Hope and you will definitely find the Lord seeking you out in the crowd, in the din and dark that you have created around yourself! 

The Lord is with me, the Lord lives with me, moves with me and sustains me! But it is up to me to seek that presence of the Lord, seek that grace of the Lord and seek that face of the Lord so that the light of God's countenance may illumine my daily life! Seek, Seek today, Seek with hope, and the Lord will find you!

Sowing, growing and what is in between...

 WORD 2day: Saturday, 24th week in Ordinary time

September 19, 2020: 1 Corinthians 15: 35-37, 42-49; Luke 8: 4-15

The Word today speaks of sowing and growing, and what goes on in between these - dying and being reborn! Dying and being reborn, is not merely an other-worldly experience as we immediately tend to think. It is a daily experience - think of the breathing process... every time we breathe out it is an experience of death (that is why it is called 'expiration' - breathing out) and every time we breathe in again, it is a new lease of life that we take in. Every night we go to rest, the entire system of our body comes to rest, it can either get to a halt or replenish itself - that is a daily miracle. Scientists say about 300 million cells die every minute in our bodies and equal numbers replace them! But with regard to our spiritual regeneration, how prepared are we to die and to be reborn?

The aspects of dying to ourselves and being reborn in Christ is a criterion for Christian living (cf. Rom 6). Many of us who claim to be followers, disciples and apostles of Christ, still refuse to die to certain tendencies, elements within our selves, which militate against the Spirit of the Lord who wants to dwell within us, for we are called to be the dwelling place of God, the temples of the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Cor 3:16, 6:19).

Of course, there are situations that are against our becoming totally the dwelling place of God: like the parched land or the scorching heat or the choking thorns. It could be a dry patch in life, or a difficult phase, or an intense suffering, or a repeated pounding of physical or spiritual pain. That is everyone's experience (of course, the intensity varies) and hence, cannot be ever a valid reason for our personal lack of commitment to belong to the Lord and for our lagging in efforts to grow closer to God. 

God has sown. God has called us and chosen us and appointed us, each in our own life and in our own context. What matters now is our personal commitment, perseverance, and loving decision to belong and to grow into the image and likeness of the One who has caused us and called us. What is in between sowing and growing is our effort, our commitment, our willingness to die and to be reborn!

The Resurrection Effect

WORD 2day: Friday, 24th week in Ordinary time

September 18, 2020: 1 Corinthians 15: 12-20; Luke 8: 1-3

The Word today points to an identity that is so fundamental to a follower of Christ - the Resurrection Effect! 

The first of all effects that Christ has on his followers is the Resurrection effect. It is a life filled with hope! If Christ were not raised from the dead, our faith would be in vain - declares St. Paul today. We are filled with a hope so great that nothing, not even death can take away the meaning of our life. Especially today when we are faced with a life threatening situation and a crisis that eats into our peace of mind and serenity, it is essential to reinforce this source of meaning in life. The pandemic experience can result in two extremes - one, looking at everything as meaningless and flimsy...that would be hopelessness; or, looking at everything with a sense of fear and trepidation... that would be overcrowding our minds with anxiety and nervousness. Both of these are, as said already, extremes. The point of serenity lies in hope - that is a resurrection effect. 

Secondly, we find today Jesus amidst the first community that he himself had initiated, the proto community, the seed that he planted - the Twelve, and some women! That is another resurrection effect - the fruit of rising above all the pettiness of the world, discarding the divisions, despising differences of gender or geography, and becoming one people! We are all baptised into the one Spirit - Jews or Greeks, free or slaves, we are all filled with the same Spirit, St. Paul would instruct (1 Cor 12:13). The resurrection effect is uniting, synthesising, harmonising and creating communion, and never division and discrimination. The capacity for communion and solidarity - that is another resurrection effect.

Today, let us look at our faith communities - it could be our family, our religious communities, or parish communities: is it one body? Is it united in the Risen Lord? Is it truly 'following' the Lord? Does it have the 'mind' of Christ? Are we really Resurrection Community, Resurrection people, with the Resurrection effect?

Humility and Gratitude - signs of a spiritual person

WORD 2day: Thursday, 24th week in Ordinary time

September 17, 2020: I Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 7: 36-50

By the grace of God I am what I am, declares St. Paul in today's first reading. That statement brings out two salient features of a truly Spiritual person. The first is Humility; the other quality which flows from it, Gratitude.

Humility is a sign that one knows oneself, understands oneself, places oneself in the right perspective and accepts what the Lord has called one towards. It is not abasing or belittling oneself - that would be a misunderstanding of the virtue. Humility is knowing who one really is, accepting it wholeheartedly and striving to grow into what one is called to be! Where does this clarity come from: from the very source of our being. Yes. humility is looking at oneself from the perspective of God, from the eyes of the One who made, who loved us into existence!

Gratitude is an inevitable quality if one really wishes to identify oneself as "spiritual". Because a grateful heart is a holy heart, and only a grateful heart can really be holy! At times we come across persons who call themselves 'spiritual' by their self-proclaimed status or by the role that they play in the common life of the society or by the others proclaiming them so - but as soon as they begin to speak, or as soon as they begin to act, there is so much of paradox! They boast of themselves, they come across arrogant and they despise everyone who is not in keeping with their views and opinions! Can these be really the 'spiritual' people that they claim to be? This arrogance and boasting actually comes from lack of gratitude, not acknowledging the fact that they have been raised to that position despite their unworthiness by God who is the Lord of history.

Looking at the woman who was forgiven in the Gospel today, we see that she was offered a totally new life and that made her so exuberantly grateful that she did not hesitate to express it through all means she thought would help. She was really a spiritual person, not those who sat around judging her! 

The episode of this woman, the example of St. Paul and the Word altogether today remind us of a crucial truth: a humble person is spiritual and a grateful person is holy.

Love is all what matters!

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 24th week in Ordinary time 

September 16, 2020: 1 Corinthians 12:33 - 13:13; Luke 7: 31-35 

Reflecting on the famous passage from the first reading today, one can be reminded of the saying from Buddha: in the end, only three things matter, how much you loved, how gently you lived and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you! Jesus had further simplified all this and said: Love one another as I have loved you; that alone matters! St. Paul understood his Master so well, and he centred his teaching on the hymn of love that he presents us with today. St. Augustine, who was a faithful follower of Pauline perspective of Christ, surely was not exaggerating when he said: love and do what you wish! Oh! what a lineage!

In fact, the only condition that Jesus places in sharing his identity with us was LOVE. We find that in Jn 13:35, when Jesus gives us an identity card - by this they will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. We know this very well, and we do not fail to understand it too. But we hardly live it, because we stop with knowing and understanding. When it comes to interpreting and practising, we have an altogether different logic of thinking - a logic that is opposed to that of Christ!

That is what Jesus is calling 'dancing to the tunes and crying to the dirges' of the world! Yes, at times we can be deceived by interpretations and cultural fads around us. Look at how today, love is considered a relative, emotional feeling. Is it truly a 'Christian' understanding of love? Christianly speaking love is not a deceptive concept...it is an absolute criterion; love is not a mere feeling, it is a commitment; love is not about pleasing and pleasure, it is all about giving and suffering for the other! That is why St.Paul so beautifully lists the characters of true 'Christian' love. 

Those traits the Word offers us today are fool proof ways of being a Christian. Pleasing others, dancing to tunes, earning name and fame... these actually should not matter. After all, for a true Christ-ian, love is all what matters!