Reasons to Be Good

WORD 2day: Thursday, 29th week in Ordinary time

October 20, 2022: Ephesians 3: 14-21; Luke 12: 49-53

People are afraid to be good these days! Fear of manipulation, exploitation and of being taken for granted, are so alive and real that persons hesitate to be good and to hold on to what is good. The Word today gives us three reasons why we cannot afford to be afraid of being good:

1. Because we take on our heredity from none less than the Almighty Lord: The Lord is our banner; the Lord is our identity, it is from the Lord we take our name, as a family of God. God is good, and all that time! Goodness is the very nature of God. And how can we be other than good?

2. Because the Love of God is poured into our hearts: A love whose measure, we can never comprehend to the full - the length and breadth and depth and height of it, are so immense that we cannot but be concerned about being worthy of that love; which entails that we grow always to be good in our very being!

3. Because we have a Vocation to be a Community of Counter Culture: Jesus commissions us to be the People of the Reign, which is to be a people of counter culture, proposing a culture that is opposed to the culture of social sin, against the culture of injustice and exploitation, challenging the culture of imbalanced growth and inhuman development, resisting the culture of total human insensitivity. When we intend to be such a community of counter culture, the rest of the world may turn against us. 

Jesus makes it clear today: if you choose me, choose me absolutely... and Be Good come what may!

Recognising the wells of Salvation

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 29th week in Ordinary time

October 19, 2022: Ephesians 3: 2-12; Luke 12: 39-48

Jesus continues his instruction on how we need to be prepared for that hour of reckoning at any point of time in our life. In fact, Jesus is ridiculing all the funny discussions and calculations about when that hour will come - some self proclaimed eschatological quacks make much ado of the end and its timings and miss the entire point that Jesus is driving home here. Picking the cue from them, there are those who speak as if they know everything under the sun, or even above it!

Recently, I tumbled upon a video circulated, that of a saffron clad pantomath who shouts at the top of his voice: "they have been claiming for the past 2000 years that Christ will come today and tomorrow, but he has not come! Neither Christ or Mohammad or Jehovah will ever come!" I just had to smile at the simpleton who just did not realise, Christ is here, right here living amidst us and he need not come from elsewhere! 

Christ is a mystery and no one can understand that mystery; one can only experience or live that mystery! So too, one does not look at the Second Coming as a day or as a moment when everything will come to a stand still and there will be an UFO coming down from the sky... just give up on that crap! And thinking of the time and the hour and predicting it with such precisions... let us grow up, please!

No matter when and where, you know what to do and why to do it. Take care how you do it - not seeking human attention but going by merely God's approval. The wells of Salvation are within you! The Lord has placed God's word and God's law within you. You know it when it is right and you see it when it is wrong. You don't need an external apparatus for this recognition. The internal system of convictions and criteria that makes me draw inspiration and direction from within me... doing nothing but good, speaking nothing but good, thinking nothing but good, no matter how unlikely the returns are, or what the consequences would be. 

These are the wells of salvation - we better begin to recognise them within us and live our life in grace!

But for Luke...

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

October 18, 2022: Remembering the Evangelist St. Luke
2 Timothy 4: 10-17b; Luke 10: 1-9

Today we celebrate St. Luke, an evangelist par excellence who has made an irreplaceable contribution to the Christian Scriptures. If it were not for Luke, we would have no Magnificat -the song of praise sung by our Blessed Mother, no Benedictus -the song of praise by Zecharaiah, no song of Anna, no account of John's birth or no account of the Ascension!

But for St. Luke we would not have met Zachaeus in Jericho, the ten leprosy patients on the way, or the Women disciples who followed Jesus, or the good thief on the Cross or Jesus on the way to Emmaus. But for St. Luke we would have missed the greatest of stories ever told -the Prodigal Son and other inspiring stories of the Good Samaritan, the Rich man and Lazarus and Jesus' walk to Emmaus after resurrection.

There is yet another speciality of Luke, which is his way of making sense of the Reign of God. Though even the other Gospels, be it the synoptics or that of John, they speak of the Reign of God, Luke in his turn speaks of the Reign of God as being amidst us. "Reign of God is amidst you", says Lk 17:21. The same is recorded in Lk 10:9, which we hear today: "the Reign of God has come near to you". This specific message of Luke invites us to recognise in action our call to be agents of the Reign of God. It is a call to live our life as the people of the Reign thus ushering in the Reign of God here on earth and right now amidst us. 

May St. Luke inspire us to get in touch with the Word of God more and more and help us towards making the Reign of God be felt, be present and flourish wherever we are.

Living the tomorrows at the cost of todays

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

October 17, 2022: Remebering Ignatius of Antioch
Ephesians 2:1-10; Luke 12: 13-21

The message from the Word today follows from that of yesterday. We belong to God, who has made us God's people in spite of our human tendencies and wordly inclinations. We are raised up to the status of sharing the new life that the Risen Lord offers, sheerly because of the boundless mercy of God. The life that we have is a gift, a gratuitous gift that the Lord gives us to live! Yes, life is to be lived, lived to the full knowing well that it has been given free, absolutely free.

The tendency today is to fend so much for the tomorrow that today is totally sacrificed. People are so busy photographing the present moment for memory, that they fail to live the present in its entirety. There is so much of worries about the future that we infact are all the time living our tomorrows at the cost of today. Life is given to us to live, and not to worry. If only we are convinced that we belong to God, our worries about tomorrow will be mellowed down, allowing us to live our present to the full. If today we are called to render an account of our life, would we be able to say we have lived it fully? 

Ignatius of Antioch whom we remember today belongs to the earliest of the Christian communities, right during the Apostolic times. He is said to have been a student of St. John the Apostle. This Bishop of Antioch is a representative icon of the first Christians who were persecuted and killed... people who did not did not look living long and having to fend for their tomorrow! They lived every moment as people of God, and lived it so fully, that they were ready even to give up their life, in order to fill that live with meaning and significance. 

HANDS RAISED

With HANDS RAISED unto the Lord!

October 16, 2022: 29th Sunday in Ordinary time
Exodus 17: 8-13; 2 Timothy 3:14 - 4:2; Luke 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 placed 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 to 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 fulfilment 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 to 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 Head, the Body and the Uniter

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

October 15, 2022: Celebrating St. Teresa of Avila

Ephesians 1: 15-23; Luke 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 of everyday operations!

The Uniter: The Head-body rapport is not automatic, it is an act of the Spirit, the Uniter, the one who unites the two! 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 disturbed and they still disturb many, challenge them and invite us to a style of life that is intimately connected to our relationship with the Lord. 

May we be ever open to the Spirit who conjoins us to the Head, that we may feel alive. 

God's mark of ownership: the Spirit

WORD 2day: Friday, 28th week in Ordinary time

October 14, 2022: Ephesians 1: 11-14; Luke 12: 1-7

At times it remains a valid question to ask, whether people really wish to be happy or not? A person is one moment happy and the very next moment he or she is down in spirits, with concerns that they alone know. It seems like, people choose to be unhappy and choose to make others unhappy! While there are a thousand reasons to thank God for, we choose those few things that can make us feel miserable. While there are myriads of ways to create joy around us, we choose to make life so despicable for ourselves and all others around! If I need to grow into a real child of God, I need to beware of this tendency within me and of people around me with such a tendency!

A child of God does not allow worries to overpower him or her, a child of God is not anxious, a child of God is fearless. Do not fear, do not be afraid... Jesus repeatedly assures us not to be guided by fear. When we are filled with true convictions and not convenient compromises, when we are taken up with absolute commitment to the life task entrusted to us, we will be truthful to God who has created us, who has chosen us in Christ, and sealed us in the Spirit. That truth will indeed set us free (cf. Jn 8:32), and we shall be fearless.

When we live by truth, we will not fear anyone or anything. Whereas when we have teachings of our own making or forces that operate us from the dark, then we will be struggling and striving to prove ourselves and dominate others: it may look like we possess some extraordinary power and capability, but it is actually slavery that seeks the promotion of the self and not the glory of God!

We can arrive at this clarity and conviction only by the power of the Spirit, the Spirit of Ownership that God has poured into our hearts, that which we need to hold on to as the mark of our belonging to God. I need to desire and wish that God owns me completely, directs me, controls me, uses me and leads me! For that I need to become aware of the Spirit in me, the mark of God's ownership!

Before God and God alone...

WORD 2day: Thursday, 28th week in Ordinary time

October 13, 2022: Ephesians 1:1-10; Luke 11:47-54

It is not an impossible task to make people think that I am good, virtuous and honourable. That actually is the predominant concern for many and that has proved the root cause for many wrong decisions made and later regretted. The problem is, it matters not so much to be good and virtuous, as to be seen and ajudged so. We are not called to create images around us and bask in the opinions we construct among others. We are called to be, to be good and to be Godly.

The crux of the problem is that we have the responsibility to account for every special blessing that the Lord has showered on us. It is God who has created us and it is God who has called us, filling us with all that we need to respond to that call. The only person that we need to respond to, give account to, and answer to, is God and God alone. 

As St.Paul points it out today, it is between God and me, and public opinions and image creation will not suffice. "To be holy and blameless before God in love"... that is the task given to us and can there be make-believes when it comes to the fact that God Himself is the judge. We are called to be holy, to be blameless, to be good, to be virtuous, all before God and God alone!

Deep inside of me

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 28th week in Ordinary time

October 12, 2022: Galatians 5: 18-25; Luke 11: 42-46

Can one be justified by faith apart from the works of law - this was, is and will ever be a point of contention. In the Old Testament times it was a contention between the 'conservative' and the 'progressive' rabbinic schools; in Jesus' times between him and the Jewish religious heads; in the times of the early Christians it was a contention between those who followed the Pauline theology and those who believed the theology of James; today it continues between the Catholics and the non Catholics!

Needless to say our point of reference is always Jesus. 'Don't put your trust in your capacity to achieve things and to gain control or dominance,' warns Jesus. 'Become like children!' That is primacy of faith! He also declared, 'when you did this to one of these little ones, you did it to me!' That is the necessity of works! Faith without works is fruitless; while works without faith can easily turn into an ego trip.

What Jesus taught against was, empty ritualism, legalistic spirituality and hypocritical religiosity! Unless we are aided by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we would never learn the meaning of what Jesus teaches us today - to have works of faith without ego and to live faith in works without losing the primacy of the relationship with God. These - the works of faith and faith in works - cannot be merely an external act or a mere religious sentiment. They have to be signs, fruits, indications and the fragrance of what is deep inside of me! 

Faith, Love and Christ

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

October 11, 2022: Celebrating Pope St. John XXIII
Galatians 5: 1-6; Luke 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 celebrate a great experience of the Church in the recent times. 

- 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. And today we celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Commencement of the great Council.

- 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 upheld Christ. And that is what Pope Francis is insisting upon in this era, that the Church should become the mercy incarnate in the world.

- John XXIII was someone who showed in his life what Church is called to do...he stood by the poor, the marginalised and the working class, as a Bishop and later as a Pope and called the Church to go to the periphery and to the margins of the human society.

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 today we could pray for the present Pope as we thank God for the historical Saint-Pope.