The History of the People of God - 3. Listening and Obeying Faith

WORD 2day: Wednesday, First week in Ordinary time

January 10, 2024 - 1 Samuel 3:1-10,19-20; Mark 1: 29-39

In the history of the people of God, one characteristic that sets the people apart as belonging to God is their capacity to listen to the Lord and obey the Lord's commands. That is what generates them, or regenerates them, raising them up to the status of the people of God, from a state that is common to all human persons. 

Today we come across in the Word, the popular episode which has given rise to the most typical phraseology in spiritual growth - "speak Lord, Thy servant is listening!" As we already pointed out, that attitude is outlined as the basic disposition of the people of God. Eli instructs the little boy Samuel in this act of self disposition to the promptings of the Lord - it comes across to us as a symbolic event that presents to us a people, who were learning to be, and growing up to own the identity of, the people of God. 

Jesus in the Gospel, brings to our attention an important and indispensable implication of this basic disposition that we reflected upon. Just listening is not enough; people of God obey! People of God are those who obey what the Lord wants of them. For Jesus this is was an absolute in life - he would indeed repeat often that only those who listen to the words of the Lord and put them into practice can be called the children of God and only they are eligible to enter the portals of the Reign. He did not only preach this, he lived it for the community to see. He prayed all night and in the morning set about living what he heard or listened from the Lord - "because that is why I came," he affirmed. 

Listening to the Lord and Obeying the voice of the Lord - is a fundamental experience and characteristic trait that makes us people of God. Are we on our way?

The History of the People of God - 2. From God's Hands

WORD 2day: Tuesday, First week in Ordinary time

January 9, 2024 - 1 Samuel 1:9-20; Mark 1: 21-28

In the "ordinary" history of the people of God, there is one remarkable experience that cannot be missed - the experience of the providence of God - a God who provides, not just some things that we need, but every element that will make our life meaningful. Today we see in the first reading Hannah praying for the grace of a child and she receives it. The lesson that is given for us, follows that moment: when Hannah recognises that moment of grace, she acknowledges that she received that child from God's hands -"Samuel, for I asked God for him!"

In the Gospel we find a group of people who were wondering at what Jesus was saying and doing, the meaningful and powerful words, and the unbelievable things he was doing. They were astonished at the authority that Jesus was manifesting - certainly they knew what Jesus knew, that the authority came from above. They were not ready to acknowledge that - those were from God's hands.

Jesus lived his life and call to the full and there were manifestations of the authority that God had invested in him... he imparts us a simple and clear teaching: when we live our lives to the full and go all out to do what God wants us to do, what we need, we shall receive at the right time, from God's hands. That was the experience of the people of Israel, and that shall always be the experience of the people of God. But we need to grow in that identity and experience, ready to recognise and acknowledge all that we receive, from God's hands. 

The History of the People of God - 1.Time of Need

WORD 2day: Monday, First week in Ordinary time

January 8, 2024 - 1 Samuel 1: 1-8; Mark 1: 14-20

After a long while, we return to Ordinary time of the year! And Ordinary time of the liturgical year can be of great value - as it has its own share of faith formation to offer us. It is important not to lose that programme of formation that the daily Word holds out to us. This week we begin to read from the first book of Samuel and the week would take us through the ordinary history of the people of God. We call it ordinary history because it happens ordinarily to every one; we call it history of the people of God, because this kind of an understanding is in the light of faith, in the light that God sheds on our life and its events. 

The history of the people of God begins with their time of need - the people feel they are in need, they are anguished, that they are helpless. The excellent example given to us is Hannah, the to-be mother of Samuel the great prophet. But here, she is an old mother and called sterile and taunted by her rivals. This is not merely the story of Hannah, but of the people of God who believe in God but live in slavery, while so many other nations around them lived in their power. It could be any of us, who is in need, who is in trouble, who is helpless as to where to turn to for solutions to one's problems. 

Where does the solution lie: in the promises of the Lord. The Lord comes with the eternal promises and that could be the only hope for the people of God. The time is at hand, the Reign of God is near - Jesus announces today! The Reign of God is the fullness of God's will. Our confusions and troubles, our needs and anxieties, can be turned to joy and fulfillment when the Lord steps in. When we admit that and allow that to happen, we become people of God and we begin the grand history as People of God. 

Water, Blood and Spirit

WORD 2day: Saturday before Epiphany 

January 6, 2024 - 1 John 5: 5-13; Mark 1: 6-11

The Liturgy today prepares us towards two beautiful events we are moving towards...the epiphany and specially, the Baptism of the Lord. The reflection begins with the sanctifying elements of Baptism. First, the waters of baptism that cleanse, as Jesus cleanses the person with leprosy in the Gospel. Secondly, the Blood of Jesus shed on the Cross once and for all, which saves us from eternal damnation and promises us eternal life. Thirdly, the Spirit of the Lord that is given to us, poured into our hearts as a seal of God's love for us, that which makes us children of God! 

We have these three veins of faith that connect us to the Father through Jesus - the waters of baptism that gives us new life in Christ, the Blood of Christ that bring eternal life in Christ and the Spirit who makes it possible for us to receive these gifts from the Lord - these are the guarantees of our relationship with Christ. 

Water stands for purity, blood stands for vitality and the Spirit stands for our relatedness in the Father through the Son. Water makes us children of God, Blood makes us witnesses of Christ and the Spirit makes us heirs to the Father.

The manifestation of Jesus at Epiphany, gets completed in the event of baptism we shall be celebrating the following day, reminding us of the baptism that we share in! We have the Son, always for us and with us, and so we have the eternal life that God promises in and through the Son. The Lord has made us His own, at baptism, in the cleansing water, in the saving blood and in the sanctifying Spirit and we joyfully belong to the Lord! Let us prepare ourselves joyfully towards these great celebrations of our faith. 

The Interior Castle

WORD 2day: Friday before Epiphany

January 5, 2024 - 1 John 3: 11-21; John 1: 43-51

Reflecting on the Word today, we can readily be reminded of the famous title written by St. Teresa of Avila: the Interior Castle. That reminds us of the fact, that our life of faith actually is a life lived at the interior castle of our beings! That is why we are required to invite people to 'come and see', as does Philip today. This is in continuation with the reflection we had yesterday, where Jesus invited the disciples to 'come and see' and challenged them to invite others! Andrew yesterday and Philip today, took up that challenge and invited others! 

We cannot share our spiritual experience with others, merely with words and proofs! Words, or even deeds, speak much less than what our personal interior lives can speak. What we are called to dare is, to invite others to come and see our life, our innermost life. When our interior life is orderly, when our conscience is at peace, when our inner sanctuary is maintained with holiness and purity, our entire life can become a testimony to others: we can without fear say, "Come and See" my interior castle! 

The interior castle is where my Lord lives. Yes, the secret about the interior castle is practically, integrity; the presence of the Lord, enshrining the Lord firmly in my innermost sactuary of life, so firmly that from that centre my life is guided, directed and oriented - nothing happens without that centre of my being, the Being at the centre of everything.

The call is that we dare to build this interior castle, little by little, furnish it with care to the extent that we can dare to invite the world around and let them see the Lord dwelling there: come and see!

They went, they saw, they stayed...

WORD 2day: Thursday before Ephiphany

January 4, 2024 - 1 John 3: 7-10; John 1: 35-42

Jesus invites us today to come and see... just as one of the favourite psalms of all times invites: 'taste and see, that the Lord is good' (Ps 34:8). Added to the element of personal experience of the Lord, that we spoke about yesterday, this invitation to come and see, refers at one and the same time, to a call and to a choice! Jesus calls us: COME; it is our choice: TO SEE. 

Jesus' call to come, is an everstanding call that is there from God, through the ages, in and through persons and events, and finally in the person of Jesus himself. The call to come is an offer of God's loving hands that we may hold on to it and keep walking our way in life. And it is here that our part becomes crucial.

To see, is a choice. To see the Lord leading us everyday, to see the Lord directing us on our way; to see the Lord acting on our behalf and to cooperate with the Lord's will in every way... that is the choice we have to make! It is a radical choice - a choice of black or white, light or night... there can be no compromise with the Lord - it's righteousness or sin; ultimately, an yes or a no to God! 

If we choose God, we choose righteousness; if we do not choose God we choose sinfulness. Of course there are moments of temptations and weaknesses, but the choice is fundamental. It defines my daily life, every word I say, every decision I take and every move I make. 

There is something special about the two disciples whom we see in the Gospel today - Andrew and his companion. Jesus invited them to come and see, they did not stop with seeing; they came, saw and they stayed; not just that, they went back and announced to the others what they have seen! 

We have come to the Lord; we have seen the marvels of the Lord; now the question is, how ready are we to STAY forever with the Lord, making of our life an announcement of the goodness of the Lord!

The Name - our identity and call

THE WORD AND THE FEAST 

January 3, 2024: The Most Holy Name of Jesus
1 John 2:29 - 3:6; John 1: 29-34

"There is no other name under heaven...by which we must be saved," says Acts of the Apostles (4:12). Names, in the Biblical tradition, are not merely nominative, they are descriptive and definitive! Abraham, Moses, were names that redefined the history of the person; Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, are names that define the very role of the angels who bear them; John was given the name even before he was conceived, just like JESUS the Saviour, Emmanuel the God-with-us! Although this feast of the Holy Name of Jesus is a long standing tradition, it has not sustained its fervour down the centuries. We need to rediscover the importance and significance of this feast in our faith expression.

The true purpose of Incarnation was not to demonstrate the grandeur and the omnipotence of God, but the closeness of God with those whom God loved. Emmanuel, is the title that explains best the love that God has for us...For God so loved the world, that God gave up everything even God's own Son; and the Son of God gave up even his Godhead and came to be one among us! The Word became flesh and dwells among us. 

The Word today, brings to us another indispensable dimension of this name - the name that is imposed on us, through the greatest name of all - the name and identity as "Christ-ians". We see that the Holy Spirit, in the form of the dove testified on behalf of Jesus that he was the Son of God. We are made the children of God and the same Spirit waits to testify for us. We would be identified as children of God if and only if we resemble God, says John in the first reading today. 

Resembling God, would mean being loving, beyond all petty differences and being generous, beyond all calculations. Resembling God would mean remaining with the Lord - in every thought, word and deed. Resembling God would mean knowing the name imposed on us and its significance, and realising our call and daring to embark on that journey, of growing every day in our resemblance to our maker. 

Encountering Christ

WORD 2day: Tuesday, before Epiphany

January 2, 2024 - 1 John 2: 22-28; John 1:19-28

The identity of Jesus, as both God  and Human, was a major issue of controversies in the early Church. The first reading we have today is an indication to such feuds that they existed. What matters finally, as John so rightly points out there, is not the philosophical and theological justification of who Jesus is; but the personal experience of the person of Christ - live in Christ, .

John the Baptist foretold the coming of Christ and pointed out when Christ really came. His prophetic gift gave him the privilege of understanding Jesus and identifying Jesus when he came. Today we would do well to pray for this grace... to identify Jesus when he comes so that the encounter may enrich our life and bring meaning to it. 

In varied ways, and specially in our neighbours, our brothers and sisters, and more specifically in those who are in dire need and helplessness, we are challenged to encounter Christ who is God, but who had deigned to assume or nature and live in the poor and the oppressed! Certainly if we cannot find in Jesus a person, a man who lived human and experienced all that he did, we cannot see the Lord in the persons who are around us. We would be missing a major half of what Christ really wanted to reveal to us. 

This week running up towards the great celebration of the revelation of God in Christ, we are invited to understand and appreciate the depth of God's revelation on a daily basis - let us remain open to the Spirit and strive to understand the real meaning of incarnation and its lessons for our daily life. Today, let us prepare ourselves to encounter Christ wherever we are.

A PROMISING 2024

God's promise: blessing, grace and peace!

January 1, 2024: New Year, Mary Mother of God, and World day of Peace

Numbers 6: 22-27; Galatians 4: 4-7; Luke 2: 16-21

We are in the midst of a triple festivity today: the birth of a brand new year 2024, the person of Mary - Mother of God and the 57th World day of Peace in the Universal Church! On this auspicious day, we have a loving promise from the Lord - again a triple promise: Blessing, Grace and Peace, as the formula in the first reading from the book of Numbers teaches us. 

BLESSING: 

The Lord promises first of all, Blessings. How do we understand blessing? The antonym is a curse, that is wishing the destruction of someone. Blessing therefore is wishing that something good happens to the other. 

The Lord's Holy Will is that we receive, and experience all that is good. Sometimes we may think that the Lord fails to send anything good our way. Blessings abound when the waiting is long. Permit me to share with you a funny forward that I enjoyed some time ago circulating on a social network: it was about a dog and an elephant which got pregnant together. In 60 days the dog delivered some ten puppies! It got pregnant again and delivered another 10 in after 60 days... then again... in fact, after half a dozen such cycles, the dog happened to meet the elephant. The elephant was still go around with the first baby in gestation (we know the elephants' gestation period is close to 600 days). The dog laughed at the elephant and asked, "did you check if you are really pregnant? I have already given birth to some sixty kids. Look at you!" The elephant with a solemn smile said, "but just imagine, when I deliver my kid, he would draw everyone's attention. When he crosses the road, everyone will stop in awe. When he stops and turns around humans would run for their life." 

The longer the wait, the greater the blessing! The Lord has great things in store for us. Let us never get impatient and frustrated. Even amidst the toughest darkness, we need to keep our eyes fixed on the Lord and wait on the Lord with faith! The Lord promises blessing and they will surely come our way! 

GRACE: 

The second promise is Grace. What greater witness than the Mother of God, Mary who was called 'full of grace'. Understanding grace is another task we have today. What is grace? -Is grace a thing? an intention answered? a healing?... At times, we give into the misunderstanding of speaking about more graces and less graces, as if we count or weigh graces on scales. 

Let us remind ourselves today, Grace is fundamentally the presence of God with us, the relationship that God establishes with us, the way that God enters our ordinary lives! That is why Mary was full of Grace: she bore the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, the Word made flesh, God made human in her womb. Mother of God, is what God made her! Theotokos - the bearer of God. In the fullness of time, God sent God's only son, born of a woman, declares St. Paul in the second reading. Why should God send God's Son? It is the way that God fulfilled God's own desire of being with the people of God, the children of God. I will be with you. I will never leave you; I will never forsake you, nor forget you, my people! Isn't that the promise that the Lord has given always?

The presence of God surrounds us, as much as we wish to have it. That presence never forces itself on us, nor does it choose to abandon us - the choice is ours. We choose it when we wish to remain with God, with the values that God proposes, with the ways that the Spirit of the Lord teaches us. That is grace, the state of grace, the grace-filled life. The Blessed Mother of God, teaches us as the bearer of God, the secret of remaining in grace, that is to bear Christ within us, to bear God all the time in our hearts and spirits. 

PEACE: 

The third promise is Peace. Celebrating as a Church the 57th World Day of Peace, Pope Francis invites us to reflect a bit on the theme - Artificial Intelligence and Peace. We are well aware that the Artificial Intelligence today is synonymous of the current progress in the scientific world, but is everyone equally sensitive about all its impact on the world today? 

The year that has just past, has been treacherous in many ways, adding to the case of world war being fought in piecemeal, all over the world, with over 50 nations involved in some form of war or weaponed activity! Along with this the reckless rapidity with which the advancement of artifical intelligence is taken forward, is alarming to humanity and to the entire universe or the cosmic home. Apart from the varied concerns it causes, namely the threat to democracies, to the autonomy and dignity of human persons, and to the ethical balance of the world, there is a need that "the rapid development of forms of artifical intelligence will not increase cases of inequality and injustice all too present in today's world, but will help put an end to wars and conflicts, and alleviate many forms of suffering that afflect our human family."

The Prince of Peace is with us - the Son of God who has come into the world, pleading us to love, embrace and grow together towards fullness of life - only peace can make that happen. And it is the Lord alone, who can give us that peace!

Blessing, Grace and Peace - that is what the Lord is promising us in 2024. Let us claim that promise for ourselves, for our families, for our communities and for the entire world.

The Lord BLESS you and keep you;
The Lord make his face shine upon you and be GRACIOUS to you;
The Lord lift his countenance upon you and give you PEACE!
Amen.

The Choice of a Christian Community

WORD 2day: Christmas Octave - December 30, 2023

1 John 2: 12-17; Luke 2: 36-40

World or things of the world as opposed to the love of the Father: by now, this kind of a contrast could be considered outdated way of thinking. Indeed, the dichotomy that is involved and implied is a bit old fashioned - there is no doubt we need to distance ourselves from such dualistic modes of thinking - spiritual and material, body and spirit, and so on! But, hold on... though the dualistic thinking seems a bit irking, the difference between the types of choices with these contrasting perspectives is real and concrete, don't you think?

Even our prayer, for example, could have within itself an impact of the two contrasting perspectives - it is all about the sense of priority or importance that we give to those around us and to the experiences of here and now, at the cost of the a filial and trust-filled love for God, our Father and Mother. It has become a spirituality, justified by its practicality to just look at the imminent and forget the horizon of eternity! 

I remember once a group of youth with whom we were preparing for a major event, when they heard of a last minute forecast for a likely thunder showers, they immediately got down on their knees to pray and say, 'Lord, please stop the rain'! Praying... it was a wonderful and exemplary gesture on their part, but a subtle point to be noted here is: how prepared are we to accept the will of God in things that we have planned; instead of asking the Lord to adjust everything to our designs?

Whoever does the will of God remains for ever, reminds St. John in his epistle today (v.17). Prophetess Anna, or even Prophet Simeon whom we encountered yesterday in the Gospel for that matter, waited for years together, in relentless patience towards the will of God. They knew what it was to abandon themselves to the will of God: a surrender so beautifully symbolised by the Divine Kid in the manger whom we celebrate these days. An absolute choice for God and for God's will without any compromises, is one of the unfailing marks of a true person of faith or a real community of faith.