Faith is, to respond!

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 32nd week in Ordinary time

November 15, 2023 - Wisdom 6: 1-11; Luke 17: 11-19

The readings seem to converge on one thought today... that the Lord wishes, expects, and demands a response from us! Our God is a self revealing God... through signs and wonders and prophets and wise persons and finally through God's only Son, and continuously even today in and through God's Spirit, God continues to reveal Godself to us in various ways.

The more we are given, the more we are expected to respond! It is not that God gives, so that we would repay! No! But it is that, we are given so much, we are filled with such goodness, we receive "grace upon grace" (Jn 1:16), that we realise it is right and just to give God thanks and praise!

To know the right thing, to be done at the right time, and choosing to do it, is a gift of the Holy Spirit... we would be blessed to possess it. And the Lord says today, "set your desire on my words; long for them, and you will be instructed!" (Wis 6:11). Doing the right thing, at the right time, is a response that we give to the Lord and that response is what is expected from me! When I don't respond, I waste what was entrusted to me, as a gift, a treasure!

Our response to the self revealing God - that is our faith. Growing in faith is learning to respond more and more adequately. Failing to respond is dwindling in faith. Let us grow in faith everyday - let us be attentive to respond to the Lord in every way!

Remaining true to our Salvific core

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 32nd week in Ordinary time

November 14, 2023 - Wisdom 2:23 - 3:9; Luke 17: 7-10

The first reading today states a tremendous truth - we are made for eternity, incorruptible by nature, because we carry the image of God within us! That is the fundamental truth of salvation. We are all saved in the core of our being, none of us is destined to destruction, none of us is rushing towards perdition! But we have a responsibility to keep that truth alive, because it all depends on the choices we make. 

By nature we are God's own children, but if we by our daily decisions and life choices, resolve to break away from God and from the gifts that God has placed within us, we are ruining our own salvific core. We are called every day, every moment to go on living in faith founded on hope and guided by love, to live a life of love and mercy; and at the end of it say, 'we are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty!' 

God who loves us will never desert us, unless we decide to break away from God. It is so important for us to repeat to ourselves - God is with us, that is what God has so clearly promised. The real question is, are we with God? By our choices and priorities, are we really with God? We are all saved in the core of our being, because our core is God. Our responsibility is to remain true to that salvific core!

Holiness: Faith lived at the core

WORD 2day: Monday, 32nd week in Ordinary time

November 13, 2023 - Wisdom 1:1-7; Luke 17: 1-6

Holiness is a matter of our innermost beings. It does not consist merely of the external signs and shows. Words not said, thoughts not expressed, acts merely contemplated, reactions withheld... these determine my holiness more than what the world around perceives me to be. That is why the strange link between faith and forgiveness in the Gospel today. 

While Jesus teaches the disciples to forgive brothers and sisters, they respond saying - 'increase our faith!' Can sound strange, but only apparently so! One cannot consider oneself to be a person of faith, holy and spiritual, if one's relationships with others is not right. If faith is relationship with God, forgiveness is relationship with my fellow beings! If the latter fails, the former is meaningless. If we want really to be spiritual, we have to forgive, accept, and love our brothers and sisters, as God does with us! 

Lets ask the Lord to "Increase our faith" (Lk 17:5); increase in faith means what the first reading tells us: honesty, simplicity of heart, shunning deceit, being truthful, in short: being godly at the core of our being, not merely in the external show! Yes, holiness is faith lived at the core of our beings. Faith is our daily life lived in the presence of the Lord. The more we grow conscious of the continuous presence of the Lord the more holy we shall grow!

Authentic Faith and Right Relationships

WORD 2day: Saturday, 31st week in Ordinary time

November 11, 2023 - Romans 16: 3-9,16,22-27; Luke 16: 9-15

Note the following words used in the first reading today - friend, fellow workers, fellow prisoners, compatriots, brothers and sisters - it is all full of relationships! Faith without relationships is empty. In fact, faith in itself is a relationship, a relationship with God that defines every other relationship in life. Yes, it is all about relationships, but the right ones. 

Faith and Right Relationships are connected to each other. Faith creates right relationships and right relationships mark authentic faith. How do we understand right relationships - they are relationships that are centered on God. They are not relationships that turn out to be possessive, selfish, self centered, self seeking, materialistic and mundane. They are relationships that center on God, that promote true selfless love, that respect the mutual dignity and freedom and that edify each other towards the spiritual maturity. These are Right Relationships, nurtured by Authentic Faith. 

When Jesus speaks of choosing one master and letting go of the other, this is what he means. By "money" he means all that is mundane, all that is materialistic and all that is merely utilitarian. By "God" he meant, all that is spiritual, faith centered and truly Divine. Relationships, if they are right, will surely lead us to this Spiritual Edification!

How long yet that they taste the Lord!

WORD 2day: Friday, 31st week in Ordinary time

November 10, 2023 - Romans 15: 14-21; Luke 16: 1-8

"Faith is a lie", "the church is finished", "it will no longer stand", "the church is living in the name of god"... these are some of the insults hurled at the Church today. Not just insults and curses but it is wish that many have today - that the Church be a bygone reality! We could only look with pity on these hapless persons and groups, and their bitterness that is so vividly portrayed in their expressions! 

How long yet that the bitter people of the world turn around and taste the love of God, especially through the community of faith that the Lord wished on earth? Just like the pagans that Paul speaks of and the steward in the Gospel who suddenly discovered his insecurity, the proud and the arrogant, the resentful and godless of today need to come back to the Lord. 

The role that you and I are called to play here is, to be reminders, signs, pointers, of that love and meaning that God alone can offer. For that we need to first take in that love as much as we can and hold it out to the world. As a community of faith, we are called to be reservoirs of this love of God, taste it and be filled with it, sharing it with others for them to taste it and be filled with it themselves. For as St Paul affirms, 'those who have never been told about him will see him, and those who have never heard about him will understand.'

The Temple that we are!

THE WORD AND THE FEAST

November 9, 2023: Dedication of the Lateran Basilica

Ezekiel 47:1-2,8-9,12; John 2:13-22

Today we commemorate the dedication of the Basilica of St. John at the Lateran. This basilica is special because it is one of the four major basilicas of the Church in Rome. It becomes more special because it is the Cathedral of the Bishop of Rome, which is the Holy Father himself.

Moving around in Rome, one can see churches, one mightier than the other, in every other lane of the city. An unofficial statistics says that the city of Rome alone has more than 2500 churches. Though at an apparent observation it might look to be an exaggeration of a period in time, still there is an insight that it can offer. Why did the people go on building churches after churches?

Churches meant for them, not just a place of gathering for worship; if it were merely that, they would surely not have needed so many. Churches, were temples, buildings from where the glory of God shone forth! That is why they built more and more of them, that the glory can shine forth more and more!

The Word today, and any feast of dedication of a Church, reminds us of this important vocation that we have. From the temple of the Lord, goes forth the glory of the Lord, "and that temple you are!" (says 1 Cor 3:17). From the temple of the Lord flows the water which gives life, which brings healing, we read from Ezekiel today! From our lives, from our words, from our acts, from our very being, should flow the grace of God towards others!

Jesus sets us the example, by being so conscious of being the Temple of the Lord. If we are his brothers and sisters, if we are to be known as his disciples, we need to be conscious too, that we are God's temple and God's Spirit dwells in us (1 Cor 3:16)!

Love is a battle... ready for it?

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 31st week in Ordinary time

November 8, 2023 - Romans 13: 8-10; Luke 14: 25-33

Love... it's a term that is by far the most spoken of, not merely from a Christian perspective but that of the whole reality today. But that is no statement that guarantees the right usage of the term, because more often than not it is misused and abused. A great percentage use it to mean a kind of feeling, a sentiment, an emotion that warms up one's heart.

But, is love all that? Yes, but not just that, isn't it? Love is very much, a decision, a choice, a commitment that would demand so much from me that, I would find myself in a battle. Yes, responding to the call to love, is like undertaking a whole expedition, against evil and hatred, for goodness and genuine fellowship. In a world torn my hatred and violence today, we are called to take sides? Whose side are we going to take? As followers of Christ, as child of the Loving God, the choice is categorical - we take the side of love! Love and love alone!

To accept to genuinely love, means being ready for any cost I would have to pay. After having launched myself into this battle, if I turn back and find myself wanting, I will be considered unfit for the Reign. On a daily basis let us hearken to this call to love...which insists that we take a commitment every day which could be dangerously demanding. Are we truly ready for it?

Belonging to each other

WORD 2day : Tuesday, 31st week in Ordinary time

7 November, 2023 - Romans 12: 5-12; Luke 14: 15-24

The Church is a reality in continuous evolution, it needs to grow into the Reign of God. What do we mean by "the Church evolving"... where is the Church or who is the Church? The key is there - Church evolving is we growing up into truly what God wants us to be. And in this evolution every one of the members who make up the Church, are expected to grow and evolve.

The desired and expected growth or evolution is from the state of being children to being the children of God; from being individuals who are worried only about oneself to persons who strive for communion with others; towards being persons who readily wish to identify themselves with the Reign, that Reign that that Lord invites them to be, to become and to evolve into.

We may have oxens to tend to, land to till or the new found family to cater to... they are not wrong! But the Reign has to come before them all. My private concerns cannot overrule the concerns of the Reign. My life, my choices, my priorities have to be those of the Reign... this will happen only when I manage to grow up to set myself aside and give the needy other a prominent place in my list of concerns because within the Reign, we belong to each other (Rom 12: 5).

What God wants of me!

WORD 2day: Monday, 31st week in Ordinary time

November 6, 2023 - Romans 11: 29-36; Luke 14: 12-14

Calculations of gain and loss, returns and rewards make an action limited to these considerations. This is the order of the day. Jesus, not only teaches us a consideration different from these, but lived it himself and challenges us to live by it, today. 

The consideration that he proposes is -'what God wants of me here and now'! 

Adopting that as my decisive criterion in life, requires of me two important attitudes: the first reading speaks of the first of the two attitudes - it is, an immeasurable awe and absolute entrustment to the Wisdom of God - acknowledging that that there can be no one more informed than the Wisdom of God and God who is Wisdom itself; secondly - placing others, especially the weak, the poor, the needy, the least and the last, as the center of my perspective on life, not looking at my own selfish and egoistic ends. 

When these two become my decisive attitudes, I can worthily say as St. Paul says in the reading today: 'From God and through God and for God are all things. To God be glory for ever. Amen.'

Being forsaken and Moving ahead!

WORD 2day: Saturday, 30th week in Ordinary rime

November 4, 2023: Romans 11: 1-2,11-12, 25-29; Luke 14: 1,7-11

At times we dare ask that question: has God forsaken me? All the expression of an endless love on God's part notwithstanding, I ask that question and wait for an answer - how cheeky! 

Forsaking, is not within the precincts of God. Being Forsaken -is an absolutely human parlance! God never forsakes, not even if it is the worst of beings that God is faced with. Because when God creates someone, God does so out of love! That love never changes, as does God's righteousness never change. 

God's righteous love, accepts me whatever state I might be in. But what truly happens is that I reject God, I keep myself away from God, I remain indifferent towards God and finally blame it all on God! I look for other things - human respect, worldly success, material affluence, social status and mundane glory more that what God matters to me! God is sidelined and forsaken. 

Jesus challenges us today: move ahead my friend! Grow up and realise that it is not God who forsakes you; you forsake God! Realise it... and then you will be truly able to move ahead and get on with God.