You get only what you decide

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

September 4, 2023: 1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18; Luke 4: 16-30

Pscychology speaks so much about positive thinking and about the power of thoughts. You get what you have always wished for! At times by our negative wishing we lose the good that can happen to us and by positive wishing we experience things that can seem almost miracles. Is it merely will power and coincidence? Not at all, establishes the Word today.

We are immortal, in as much as we are in Christ. This is Christian belief, but at times we do not behold or perceive ourselves to be eternal beings... we commit sins and await punishment; we give into the worldly living and await our end, a definitive end...but we can never leave. Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ - tribulations, distress, persecutions, hunger, nakedness, death - nothing, absolutely nothing. But when one repeatedly laments for things that have happened in life, it is likely that similar experiences repeat themselves too.

The simple fact that we are reminded of is, that the Lord has great things in store for us, from ordinary blessings to eternal life - what we need to do is remain firm in faith, that is, decide to magnify the Lord for all the good that you receive, because you get only what you decide.

THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN SUFFERING

What justifies our sufferings?

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - September 3, 2023

Jeremiah 20: 7-9; Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16: 21-27

Time and again the young people get carried away with some trending challenges. A little more than a half decade, there was a craze of a challenge... it caused more than 140 deaths around the world, more than a hundred of them in parts of Russia and India. It was called the Blue Whale Challenge, a game app that involved a 50-day challenge, ranging from simple embarrassments and self-injuries to the final day challenge of committing suicide. And young teenagers were succumbing to it, without counting the cost. A game, an app could demand so much from them and get it done! Could it be after all a cause to die for? Why are the young ready to take such sufferings upon themselves? Some say they feel the thrill... isn’t that sadistic! Some say once they get in, they are not able to get out of it, they are threatened... doesn’t that sound slavish! Some say it gives them that shot of adrenaline making them feel high...a type of an addiction!

We have others too who suffer...we had Nelson Mandela who served a term of 27 years in prison...we have Bishop Oscar Romero who was killed while celebrating Mass...we have Maxmillian Kolbe who died for the sake of an unknown fellow prisoner...what did these people suffer for? Thrill? Excitement? Slavery? Addiction?

Today Jesus tells us, if anyone wants to follow me, let him pick up his daily cross and follow me... each one of us has his or her own daily crosses, crosses that we have been carrying for years now, crosses that are weighing on our shoulders...but why should we carry them? Why should we suffer? What is the meaning of this suffering? That is the question we will answer today: what is the significance, the meaning of Christian Suffering?

Christian Suffering should be out of Unquenchable Passion: As Jeremiah shares his plight today - he feels he is deceived by the Lord but still he is not able to leave the Lord because he has an unquenchable thirst for the Word, an unquenchable passion for the Will of God. That is worth any amount of suffering. He knows it well. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, to them belongs the Reign of God.

Christian Suffering is for the sake of the Ultimate Truth: The Ultimate Truth is God, God's will, the eternal design that God has in mind. Christian Suffering should be for the sake of discovering that ultimate truth, God's will - this is what Paul reminds us of in today's second reading. Even if the whole world stands against it, Truth will never cease to be. And when I decide to stand for the Truth, I belong to Christ. I have to suffer, but I stand for that Ultimate Truth.

Christian Suffering is towards Universal Good: At times people come to protest and complain only when they are affected and they have something to gain. That is a self centered suffering and falls short an important criterion to be called a Christian Suffering. To be Christian, the suffering should be towards an Universal Good. Jesus gave his body and blood, not because he had no other go, not because he felt a thrill out of it but because he fulfilled God's will for the salvation of the entire humanity, for the universal salvation of humankind. 

The sufferings we undergo in our daily life should not be merely for food and drink and for ease and comfort. It should be an expression of our unquenchable passion, for the sake of the ultimate truth that is God's will and towards universal good that every one may know God and be saved!

 

Know God that God may know you!

WORD 2day: Friday, 21st week in Ordinary time

September 1, 2023: 1 Thessalonians 4: 1-8; Matthew 25: 1-13

Pagans are those who do not know God, defines Paul and according to his definition when they do not know God, they do not know what God expects of them.When they do not know what God wants of them, they will be ill prepared in their life to meet God and respond to God's invitation. When they fall short of it and get left behind the closed doors, the Lord would declare that he knows them not too!

Struggling to measure up to the call that we have from the Lord, is perfectly human but making a farce of it by willful and unrepentant compromises is devilish. And the Lord will find himself so far away from these sort of people - that is the warning today. The Lord gives enough reminders and reprimands, that we may repent in time and turn to authentic response to God's call. 

If I say, I find it difficult to respond to the call the Lord has given me, I am being sincere! But if I say I do not know what God wants of me, I am being a liar. All of us know what the Lord wants of us at any point of time in our life - inspite of all the enormous challenges we may have. We may find it difficult to do what the Lord wants, or we may find ourselves in a pressure not to do what the Lord wants, but we know well what the Lord expects of us. It may be in details, but the ultimate call is to BE HOLY and I have no other option! We know that God wants! We know God! We need to admit that we know, that God may not say, "I do not know you!" Let us know God, that GOd may know us!

Small or Big - Progress is the Key!

WORD 2day: Saturday, 21st week in Ordinary Time

September 2, 2023 - 1 Thessalonians 4: 9-11; Matthew 25: 14-30

Spiritual Masters broadly agree on one maxim that they often repeat: in spiritual life not to progress is to regress. It is indeed true for any Christian call - complacency and lethargy are spiritual enemies that we have to fight constantly. They lead to dangers ranging from a simple spiritual stagnation to a serious self righteousness. That does not mean that we are forced to make giant leaps everyday in our spiritual journey. That would be an unreasonable burden!

Apart from the fact that Spiritual itineraries are made of tiny little steps in progression, there can be falls even frequent, slips and slides, dumps and accidents galore - but these do not matter so much to God as our willingness to rise and follow, our decision to remain firm with the original response, our determination to persevere incessantly. 

It does not matter whether we are fast or not; it does not matter we make tremendous changes or not, what matters is that we progress. Within the capacity that we are given with, within the circumstances that I find myself in, I should be able to account to myself a progress that I make from time to time. Then I am well on the right journey.

Finally, the message today is keep walking, mind your steps, whether they are small or big that is not what matters because ultimately, progress is the key!

Queenship & Being Riegn Worthy

THE WORD AND THE FEAST

August 22, 2023: Celebrating the Queenship of Mary
Judges 6: 11-24; Matthew 19: 23-30

Today's Word and the Feast are full of contrasts - the rich and the poor; the haves and the have-nots, the strong and the weak, the first and the last... it all boils down to one binary according to Christ: those who are worthy of the Reign and those that are not! 

We have some beautiful icons presented today. Gideon the weakling chosen amidst the strong ones; the young man who possessed abundance of wealth but failed to inherit the Kingdom, Mary the simple and ordinary girl who is crowned the Queen of heaven and earth, a feast we celebrate exactly a week after the Assumption. These are evidential proofs of the criteria of the Reign!

Mary's queenship is absolutely logical. Christ is the King and we have no doubt about it. If Christ were the king, the crown prince of the World, his mother Mary is logically the Queen - that is why Pius XII instituted this feast in 1954 to let us understand that we have a great mediatrix in this simple woman of Nazareth. 

Mary is the mediatrix in more than a few ways: one, by her intercession; secondly by her example; and thirdly by her challenging witness that tells us that it is possible to live as people of the Reign, the children of the Reign, worthy subjects of our one and only King, Christ our Lord. The Queenship, apart from being one of the glories of Mary that we celebrate, is a reminder to us, to remain Reign-worthy.

Better be a Pagan!

Pagan who knows God or a believer who knows not?

August 20, 2023: 20th Sunday in Ordinary time

Isaiah 56:1, 6-7; Romans 11: 13-15, 29-32; Matthew 15: 21-28

"Pagans" is a strong word! It can sound discriminatory and at times even derogatory. There was a time when religiosity consisted of making this stark distinction between the so-called believers and alleged pagans. We see that in Jesus' time and culture - in fact the Jews still consider the rest of the humanity as Gentiles, just as the believers in Islam look at the 'others' as "infidels"! So, if we condescendingly call someone a pagan, let us remember for some other group of people we are equally pagans too! 

Why this polemic here? It is just to bring out the central term of the Word today and the resultant lesson to attend to. The first reading speaks of how a person of the chosen people of Israel, cannot take his or her chosenness for granted. The Gospel presents how Jesus himself was a man of his times and was affected by the differential thinking - we and others! But Jesus seems to end up with a new understanding, which St. Paul in the second reading elaborates. 

There is a key understanding to be highlighted here: which is true - that, a pagan does not know God? or that one who doesn't know God is a pagan? These two statements are definitely different from each other. One is taking for granted the chosenness of a category of persons, while the other defines chosenness in terms of ones knowledge and rapport with God, that is, in terms of lived faith. 

Keeping this understanding in focus, we have three lessons to consider:

1. Faith makes us children of One God: When Jesus declares, "Great is your faith," he acknowledges that it is faith that makes one a child of God and the lack of it counts one out of that category. Only faith can distinguish someone as God's, nothing else...not some privileged birth or progeny!

2. What matters is knowing God - knowing or not knowing that is what makes one a believer or a pagan. First of all, it's not some brand name, franchise banner or magical formula. Secondly, the knowledge here is not knowing about God, but knowing God...knowing God personally and allowing God to encounter us.

3. We are called to grow out of all discriminatory thinking - in the name of creed, caste, colour, tribe, or anything of that sort. Especially today with so much of polarisation in the context, we have a bounden duty to uphold the Reign of God, in equality, dignity of all, and divine justice.

Isn't it better than to be a fake believer who knows not the God of the Reign, to be a so called pagan who knows and belongs to the Reign of God?

Choose to be little

WORD 2day: Saturday, 19th week in Ordinary time

August 19, 2023: Joshua 24: 13-15; Matthew 19:13-15

To choose God, to choose God as the absolute, to choose God above all - these would mean...  choosing to be little! What do we mean? 

Choosing to be little means choosing to be laughed at, choosing to be jeered at, choosing to be labelled 'conservative' or 'irrelevant'. This is becoming more and more real as days go by! The culture in general is growing increasingly cynical towards anything spiritual. 

In fact, the cultures which were once so dominated by the God-talk, are today turning, if they have not already totally turned, "Godless". However, it is not our task to be sitting in judgement on the people around. Our task here is to take into account our personal daily life, our personal choices and priorities, and the elements of our daily life that truly matter to us. There we will have a clue - do we want to be accepted by the world and found relevant to the times or do we want to choose to be little, to be that little flock that surrounds the Lord, like children who feel secure in the embrace of a mother? 

What would our choice be? If I say 'I choose to be little', I choose to stick on to the Lord in spite of the attractions of the dominant images of the world today, I choose to hold on to the values that are Reign-related and not what is trending, I choose to be called an "outdated boomer" while the rest pose themselves as a progressive and advanced generation of humanity. We cannot but be inspired by the dedication which we find in Joshua's declaration today: "it is the Lord our God we choose to serve; it is God's voice that we will obey!" 

Enjoying the fruits that we never planted

WORD 2day: Friday, 19th week in Ordinary time

August 18, 2023: Joshua 24: 1-13; Matthew 19: 3-12

When a brother of the Islamic faith speaks in public, or even in a simple familiar gathering, invariably he begins with terms like, 'Insha Allah' or 'Masha Allah'... Certainly we have seen this atleast on the media screens. These terms simply mean 'if God wills' and 'God has willed' respectively. As much as we admire them for this courageous reference to God in relationship to their daily life, we need to wonder at our own Christian brothers and sisters, our own children and ourselves! How much of this sense of God do we possess and propose to the world? 

It does so much good to realise that everything in my life comes from the Lord - in the name of the Lord, and for the will of God. "What do we have, that we have not received?" challenges St. Paul (cf. 1 Cor 4:7). If all that we are and all that we have, is received from God, why not acknowledge that at every event of our lives - not just at failures and difficulties where we readily point to God, but all at sucessess and peaceful moments when we prefer to live on our own.

Dedicating oneself for God, for God's will, for God's task is a matter of choice, not merely on our part, but on the part of the One who is at the root of everything. Every good that we are blessed to carry out is a gift from God - according to God's will and towards fulfilling God's will. At times we make choices that serve our own ego and our own personal plans. But what matters is to realise that we are eating the fruits of plants planted once upon a time and be one such - planters of the tree of blessing. 

The call is to realise that we are being blessed constantly by the Lord and to understand clearly what our own blessings lead us to. Challenging moments, let us get ready to brave them. Pleasant moments, let us be mindful of the fact that we are enjoying the fruits of the plants we never planted!

The "Dry Ground" Phenomenon

WORD 2day: Thursday, 19th week in Ordinary time

August 17, 2023: Joshua 3:7-11,13-17; Matthew 18:21 - 19:1

The presence of the Lord with the Israelites was a solid and concrete presence - the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud that we have seen, and today, we see the splitting of Jordan when the bearers of the Ark step in. The presence made a great difference in the lives of the people and at times the Lord made it concrete because they were constantly forgetting the fact. 

Today we have the Jordan splitting itself - the upper Jordan and the lower; and they saw the dry ground. It is a repetition of the experience where they crossed the Red Sea with Moses, they had walked on dry ground even then. 

In our life too, there are experiences of dry ground - we walk through life's experiences without our feet getting wet or dirty or stained or soiled, not by our own merit but by the grand mercy of God. That is what Jesus is reminding us of - when you find fault with your neighbour, when you judge your brother or your sister, when you call them names, when you have your finger pointing at your fellow persons, remember the dry ground phenomenon. 

You are standing on a dry ground, your feet unsoiled because the Lord has had mercy on you. Remember, your dry ground is not your merit, it is God's mercy. When you are mindful of it, you will surely be a member of the Reign.

Neither Moses, nor Joshua, nor We

WORD 2day - Wednesday, 19th week in Ordinary time

August 16, 2023: Deuteronomy 34: 1-12; Matthew 18: 15-20

Today we listen to an account of the demise of Moses and the taking over of Joshua. Moses was a great prophet, an unparalleled leader, a person who related to God as if to a friend - but that does not mean he would go on forever. He faced his end. Joshua took over and there was an end to him too. None of us is indispensable - neither Moses, nor Joshua, nor you and me! 

We are all here to do the will of God, each one in our own way, in our personal life. And one thing that will remain to ensure continuity is the community, the faith community, the people of God! This is what Jesus teaches his followers today. The Faith Community, that is, my brothers and sisters in the Lord together as one, have an indispensable role to play. This is where the Church draws its importance. 

At times we belittle our faith, as if it is between me and my God. Yes, it is so, but it is between me and my God in the context of my brothers and sisters in the Lord. I cannot take the other for granted. I cannot be Christlike, if I claim my faith sans my genuine love for the other. 

Know the people of God whom you live with. Love your faith community. Be responsible towards the community around you. As a follower of Christ, I am called to express and live my faith, in and among a community, given to me by God. Let love reign!