Being people of peace - a sign of hope!

WORD 2day: Thursday, 26th week in Ordinary time

October 3, 2024 - Job 19:21-27; Luke 10: 1-12

I am sure I shall see the Lord's goodness in the land of the living, we say in the responsorial today! This is the hope that marks the people of God. This is what Job feels when he says, this I know: my Avenger or my Redeemer lives... in all his pain and sorrow, he never loses sight of his Redeemer and hopes that he shall take his side, in the right time!

This sense of hope, is a sign of being the people of God. Jesus teaches us that it is from this hope that true peace shall be born, a peace that is to be seen not merely in times of wellbeing but primarily in times of adversities. When sufferings and hardships strike us, what is our attitude? Where do our eyes rest? On the Redeemer who lives or on the enemy who strikes? Being people of peace, means those who are convinced of their call to be people of God, people belonging to the Lord.

Jesus teaches this to the apostles: On the persons of peace, peace shall rest! It is not the other way around - that peace rests on us and we become persons of peace, no. Only if we are persons of peace, peace shall rest upon us. This is the sign of hope that comes from the faith in the presence of my Redeemer with me. When I can say amidst all the struggle that I am through, "I shall see the Lord's goodness in the land of the living," then I am a person of peace; I seek peace, I wish peace, and I behold the peace that my Saviour gives. Then it is that peace shall dawn on me. 

There are those who think, speak and act against peace! Can peace stay upon them or around them? We are challenged to grow in this identity: to be persons of peace, that is the sign of hope we can offer the world of today. 

Presence, Protection and Providence

THE WORD AND THE FEAST 

October 2, 2024 - The feast of the Guardian Angels

Exodus 23: 20-23; Matthew 18: 1-5, 10

The feast of the Guardian Angels has three spontaneous references, to which our mind invariably turns to - be it because of the core of this feast or guided by the Word presented today. 

The first reference is the Presence of God. The words in the first reading reaminds us of that... when we listen to the words, my angels will go before you, we are reminded of another promise that the Lord gives in the same book: "My Presence shall go before you" (Exo 33:14). This is exactly what the Lord meant about the angels, as God's presence itself that accompanies us. 

The second reference is to Protection that is assured us, on the way that is chalked out by the Lord. Guarding, protecting, guiding, leading, keeping us safe... these are the terminologies that abound in the Word today, and in the very concept of the feast today. Angels are presented as protectors and Guardian Angels are obviously the proper representations of this. The Lord protects, but there is a prerequisite attached to it, as we hear from the first reading - that we listen to the voice and heed to it and not defy it. Needless to say, many a life gone astray, is a result of this defiance at varied levels gone wrong.  

The third reference is to Providence that God is. Our God is a God who provides, foresees, has a definitive plan, thinks about us and wishes us nothing but well. Angels, specially guardian angels are signs of this foreseeing care of the Lord who looks at us as children, nurtures us and guides us along provided we are ready to walk in the way shown us. Guarding Angels show us the way; they are that voice that we can here exactly when we need a direction to take, or we have a decision to make. 

May we grow to be truly children, allowing ourselves to be enlightened and guided, directed and governed by the Guardian Angel to whom we are entrusted, that we may experience the loving presence, guiding protection and the caring providence of God. 

Is death better, or life?

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

October 1, 2024 - Remembering St. Theresa of Child Jesus

Job 3:1-3, 11-17, 20-23; Luke 9: 51-56

Job complains against the unfairness of life and prefers he were dead than living. How many times we contemplate such thoughts, most of the times unmindful of the bountiful blessings that have preceded such experiences and all the blessings that are yet in store. We always want to be kings of good times and queens of cosy times! There are moments that bring out the preciousness of life, by allowing such experiences which highlight the goodness that surrounds us always.

The saint whom we remember today, the saint of the Little Way, teaches us the secret. It is not about great accomplishments and life time achievements that sanctity is all about, instead, the little things, the simple demands of each day, the apparently insignificant choices we make, the daily routines we follow, the members of our family we live with and their characters and idiosyncrasies we have to put up with - these shall determine our way to holiness! 

At times we know there is a problem around, there is a person who does not like me, there is a situation that I am being criticised for any simple thing, or I am not understood at all , even in the smallest of things in consideration - that does not matter; we go on, with simple steps, with the child like steps.

When Jesus sets his eyes towards Jerusalem, the Samaritans detest it -they want him all for themselvesè  may be. They forget the goodness that Jesus had shown them thus far, respecting that woman at the well, narrating that parable that extols the samaritan and recognising that one grateful soul among the rest of the ingrates. Can we have everyone to keep pleasing us all the time? In this context -  isn't it right to ask that question today: is it better to be dead or to live with meaning? 

The Naked Truth - God alone is!

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

September 30, 2024 - Remembering St. Jerome
Job 1:6-22; Luke 9: 46-50

Naked I was born, naked will I die! God gave and God has taken it back. Blessed be the name of the Lord... Job is given by the Word today as the brilliant example of a child of God! His properties burned, he remained calm. His cattle were gone, he bore it all. His servants were killed he held on to the Lord. His children died altogether, he broke down but in the bosom of the Lord! That was Job, of whom the Lord was proud of.

Jesus teaches us the same lesson in the Gospel ...your ego, your social status, your position and power, your possession and your attachments... nothing can stand the test of time. God alone will. Whether we believe or not the Lord is. Whether we praise the Lord or not, the Lord is worthy of all the praise in the world. Whatever we do and whatever we are involved in, even without our own full knowledge of it, we are serving the purposes of the Lord. 

St. Jerome whom we celebrate today is an excellent example of this - all through his intellectual search, he was being prepared to be an exceptional instrument in spreading the Word of God to the world far and wide. When he understood it, he surrendered himself totally to the plan of God. Bcause he knew, ultimately that which is going to prevail is God's will. 

God alone is almighty and God's purposes alone give meaning to anything that exists. The truth finally is, whoever we are and whatever we have, everything will pass. The naked truth is, God alone is, God alone will forever be!

THE REIGN PEOPLE

Solidarity in the Lord

September 29, 2024 - 26th Sunday in Ordinary time
Numbers 11: 25-29; James 5: 1-6; Mark 9: 38-43,45,47-48

We are living, not just in the time of plurality, but in a time of post-truth plurality! Are you wondering what this term 'post truth plurality' is all about? We shall first reflect on it, clarify it first and then enter into the Word of God for this Sunday, because the Word has a challenging call to give us! We know what plurality is - specially if one is from a context like India - we experience plurality on a daily basis. Plurality of religions, languages, proveniences, socio-political ideologies and so on, are our normal life situation and it is a universal condition. But what is this post-truth plurality? 

Avoiding a whole lot of philosophical excursus on what 'post-truth' means, we can simply understand it in these terms: it can be a precarious stand that persons (or societies at large) take when it comes to truth, accepting what vibes with their convictions as truth and insisting that they should have the freedom to hold it so, but at the same time not allowing the other/s to have their opinion or their judgement on things. It is a kind of relativism that is self-centred or autoreferential. Now taking off from that description, post-truth plurality is - affirming and appreciating a plurality that is convenient to oneself and failing to see the goodness or the possible positivity in another similar experience of plurality! Don't we have realities today which boasts of 'unity in diversity', but looks at difference as a problem, diversity as a threat, plurality as a dangerous multiplicity and not a richness! 

Why all these discussions? Simply to hightlight the fact that we, the so-called people of God, that is 'Reign people,' cannot have such a mentality of pseudo-openness of convenience, or hypocritical and empty dicourses of being one people of God but in fact, feeling divided and egoistic. The Word this Sunday brings out this message with such power, in three exhortations! 

Intracommunitarian Solidarity: 

The first exhortation from the Word, to be Reign people is, to practice Intracommunitarian Solidarity, that is, solidarity with those who are with me, my fellow believers in the Lord. In the first reading, when the enthusiasts with Moses get upset with those two of their fellowmen - Eldad and Medad - because they were getting popular by themselves, Moses grabs the opportunity to give them the lesson: we need to live in solidarity in the Lord. It is not about who does what, but about for whom we do what we do! Within a believing community, it has to be for the Lord, only then we are truly Reign people. 

How many times within our parish communities, religious communities or even within the family, there arise problems because some one is doing good! Our ego and our sense of jealousy makes us uncharitable to our own brothers and sisters, making every one's life sad and miserable! How can we be called Reign people? 

Intercommunitarian Solidarity: 

The second exhortation towards being Reign people is to promote intercommunitarian solidarity. This has to be lived in varied levels - taking a family as the fundamental unit of a people of God, it takes the form of a sense of solidarity among families; solidarity among one believing community and others (as St. Paul used to insist with the early Christian communities); interdiocesan communities or among religious congregations... at whatever level, without love and unity, we fail terribly in our vocation. 

The worst scandal we can give the world is our disunity. Just imagine the interdenominational or interconfessional problems we create and nurture, without understanding all these differences will turn obsolete in the presence of the Lord, in the Reign of the Lord. Jesus teaches this in the Gospel - you should not stop them from performing miracles, anyway they did it in my name, isn't it, he asks the disciples who looked so apprehensive about someone else taking away their coveted place. Jesus' point is , to be Reign people, we need to transcend all these demarcations and convince ourselves, that we all belong to that One, Powerful, loving God!

Extracommunitarian Solidarity: 

The third exhortation towards being Reign people, is to be, as Pope Francis repeats so often, 'being a Church that reaches out!' We cannot be closed in within ourselves, if we need to be truly people of God, authentically persons of the Reign. Looking out and reaching out, in particular to the poor, the exploited, the oppressed, the down trodden and families in crises. James begins with a conceptual painting of partiality in a community, dual standards in treating people and so on... and ends with this teaching on woe to those who are insensitive to the other. This is in fact one of the essential criteria for a Reign person - to have the capacity to see the sufferings of the other. Jesus taught it in clear and lucid terms, and the apostles learnt from it. 

To reach out to the needy, to help and empower the poor, a kind word to the worried, a simple smile to one who is sad and lonely, these are some simple gestures endorsed by the Spirit of the Lord who works through anyone, absoluetely any one.We cannot let the black clouds of hierarchical thinking, chosen-people syndrome, and fear of the Truth, obscure the light we have within us as children of God.

To be Reign people, in short, is to grow in communion with the Lord, with the rest of our brothers and sisters, and with the entire universe. That communion is really the Reign of God that we are called to proclaim and make present. Learning to do that, we shall gradually grow to be Reign people! 

Live, love and experience of God

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

September 28, 2024 - Ecclesiastes 11:9 -12: 8; Luke 9: 43b-45

Life is short and life is limited, but it offers ample opportunity to do things that are remarkable. It never forces anyone, leaving far behind every one who complains of a life of boredom and monotony. For a Christian, life cannot be boring because he or she has a life task to accomplish and daily directions to carry out, from the Lord. That is why St. Paul would say, "do not grow weary of doing right" (2 Thess 3:13). Doing right, might invite criticism, jealousy, opposition, persecution and even crucifixion! But what matters is to do the will of God, and do it willingly. 

It happens many a time that we stand by and pass comments, judgments, critiques and suggestions while a group of people suffer... as long as we are not involved in the suffering, it becomes so easy for us to do that. It does not affect us till they are no more... even when they are no more, we begin reasoning in terms of mere numbers. Where many die, we feel more! One thing is helplessness but another unpardonable attitude is indifference, which makes life so inhuman.

While we are in the best of our times, it is important that we realise that life is short and life is limited; let's live it to the full, let us do all the good that we can to every one around. Let us not waste our life in envying, calumniating, gossiping, judging and spreading hate! 

Let us live to the full, love each other and experience God close to us!

In God's own time...

THE WORD AND THE SAINT 

September 27, 2024 - Remembering St. Vincent de Paul

Ecclesiastes 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; and Curiosity is lack of patient acceptance of the present.To both these, and to many other spiritual ailments the corrective given is Surrender!

In short, 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.

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!

The saint whom we celebrate today, Vincent de Paul possesd this mentality of surrender deep in his heart. That was indeed the starting point from where he could do all that he did, found congegrations and initiate associations which would generously serve the needy part of the universe, thus righting what could be going wrong everywhere in the world. 

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

From Vanity to Sanity... towards Sanctity

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

September 26, 2024 - Ecclesiastes 1:2-11; Luke 9: 7-9

TINNUTS... I remember this acronym from our younger times, when we were used to repeat it often with a sigh: the expansion of it is, There Is Nothing New Under The Sun.The first reading speaks of vanities in life. Labour, dreams, experiences, senses...everything is a vanity if they are not taken in the right perspective. Is that not true? Add to this list, our self glory and egocentrism, and the list would become more perfect.

The Gospel today 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 them, he even put an end to them. That would certainly affect him all his life. That is why the Gospel says, "he kept saying, I beheaded John." 

We are more than aware of the vanities which surround us today. Be it personally, or socially, or globally, there are any number of vanities. But there are also ample opportunities offered for each of us to realise these vanities of life and to do away with them. There is a strange tradition in our Christian Spirituality that many ancient saints are depicted with a skul in the vicinity... the reason was simply this - to remind us about an essential journey that we need to make, all of us. 

The call is a journey of realisation - from vanity to sanity... while that is the ordinary journey that each of us is expected to make, there is an extraordinary journey we are challenged to embark as disciples of Christ: not just from vanity to sanity, but further towards sanctity!

In plenty and in want...

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

September 25, 2024 - Proverbs 30:5-9; Luke 9: 1-6

Have you heard of anyone who decides to resign his (or her) job for the single reason that they are paying him unreasonably high? Yes, there are cases. Of course these are few and far between, and are drowned by the delirious majority which clamours for more without limits. However, the first reading speaks of a mindset of the former 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 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! 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. 

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. This is the same as St. Paul suggests: 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 24, 2024 - Proverbs 21: 1-6, 10-13; Luke 8: 19-21

Doing the right thing, is better than doing great things says the first reading today! At times we are ready to do great and demanding things, but we fail to see the ordinary things that we are called to do, the right things to do! And the right thing is actually imprinted in our hearts. 

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. 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. 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.

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). It is a grace from the Spirit to do the right thing... let us beseech the Lord to grant us this wisdom and grace.