The Reign Mentality

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 27th week in Ordinary time

October 9, 2024 - Galatians 2: 1-2, 7-14; Luke 11:1-4

We continue to hear from Paul the beginnings of his ministry in the Church. Both his account and Jesus' teaching in the Gospel speak to us of a set of qualities that can be called a Reign mentality. Let's highlight just a three of them:

Personal integrity that gives Paul an extraordinary power when he presents his case to the people or to the apostles. Unless I am an integral person, I cannot speak of the Reign, leave alone speak with authority.

Fearlessness that comes from the absolute dedication that a person has. Nothing matters more than the Reign and hence there is nothing that can stop me from holding on to it, not even a threat to my life.

Forgiving Confrontations which help one to avoid self righteousness and compromise at the same time. At times our very idea of standing for truth and siding with the right, though an absolute reign-requirement, can drive people far from us. I need mercy not sacrifice, says the Lord. 

In short, the Reign Mentality is a just and healthy realisation of the other - be it the Ultimate Other or the immediate others... coming out of myself and letting in the other. May we grow every day, in our identity that arises from a true reign mentality. 

Disposition to Listen

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 27th week in Ordinary time

October 8, 2024 - Galatians 1: 13-24; Luke 10: 38-42 

The Word today insists on our need to listen to God. The credit that has to be given to Saul, in his turning into Paul is fundamentally his readiness to listen to God. In fact, what strikes us in Paul's narration of his Christ experience is his readiness to perceive Christ, inspite of his totally opposed prior experience. That was possible because of his capacity to Listen. If he were as stubborn as he always was, he would not have heard the Lord's voice from his horse! Paul himself reiterates his capacity to listen to God, by narrating his initial journey in the Lord, preparing himself to be an apostle: that was to the major part, an attentive listening to the Lord and to all that the Lord wanted to reveal.

Mary at Bethany, is yet another icon of listening to God. She knew where the life giving source was: "to whom shall we go Lord, while you have the words of eternal life" were the words of Peter to the Word made flesh. Today we are called to discover the life giving Spirit in the Word that comes across to us on a daily basis. Mary was considered wiser than her sister Martha in her choice because she chose to listen to the Lord inspite of all the excitement involved.

How do I rate my capacity to listen to the Lord? Let us begin from listening to each other... I can listen to the other only when I begin to reduce my talking, my thinking about myself. And that will gradually help me to open myself to the Lord too...for the Lord is all the time calling us, speaking to us, communicating to us - it depends on me to listen! It is a quality to grow in: the attitude of listening; a disposition to listen.

True Gospel of Christ - Loving outreach

THE WORD AND THE FEAST

October 7, 2024: Remembering Mary, Queen of the Holy Rosary 

Galatians 1: 6-12; Luke 10: 25-37

The true Gospel of Christ is love: that God loves us and that we belong to God when we love each other. Anything other than this is a deviation... division, hatred, selfishness, exploitation, cheating, manipulation, party politics, false propaganda, character assassinations, judgments, prejudices, categorising persons, branding people... anything that is against love, is against the Gospel of Christ.

At times suffering, cross and sacrifice are presented as typical traits of Christ's gospel. They could be, provided they are taken within the framework of love. It is not suffering in itself: it would become sadistic! It is not cross in isolation: it would still remain a symbol of shame! It is not sacrifice for its own sake: it would lead to unnecessary ego trips! Suffering out of love one has for the other, Cross as an expression of God's love, Sacrifice as a language of genuine love - those are CHRISTian and those are gospels (good news!).

Our Blessed Mother is one who understood this more than anyone else in the faith history, because she more the highest manifestation of God's love in her womb, and continued to walk in the footsteps of the Son of God. Celebrating today the Queen of the Holy Rosary, we are celebrate the Gospel in beads... the simplest but deepest of prayers that we have learnt from our childhood... the Rosary. As we contemplate the mysteries on every decade of those beads, we are resounded with this message of love from the Gospel - to realise God's love, to experience it and to reach out to the other in expression of that love. 

Anyone who needs me, becomes my neighbour. Irrespective of whether I need him (or her) or not, I am expected to play the neighbour. Am I really ready to reach out to the other without considerations of whether or not I know him, or whether or not I like her, or whether or not the other has done anything good to me in the past? Let us behold this Gospel of Christ, that our Blessed Mother holds out to us this day.

FAMILY OF THE CHILDREN OF GOD

The challenge, call and the Mission today

October 06, 2024: 27th Sunday in Ordinary time

Genesis 2: 18-24; Hebrew 2: 9-11; Mark 10: 2-16

FAMILY is the basic unit of a holistic humanity, not the individual. Where this fact is gainsaid, we see the genesis of every problem the world is infested with today. The Word today invites us to dwell on this theme of Family. More and more today as a Church and as a world, we are becoming aware of the problems created by side-lining of families, both as an institution and as a communion of hearts.

Listening to Challenges: In a world that is filled with individualism, materialism and consumerism, the family has become an entity that is seen as a hindrance, a block, a burden that slows down one's personal progress towards self-fulfillment. In the Gospel, Jesus underlines the problems of infidelity and unchastity around the reality of marriage. With the increasing numbers of divorce, reducing numbers of marriages, growing justification of co-habitation, newer claims to the nature of marriage, we are called to listen to the times and understand the challenges involved in building a family today.

As a true disciple of Christ, what do you think of Marriage? How do you look at your Family? Listen to yourself... listen to yourself against the background of the Word of God, not just going with the trends of the world. It is important to listen to yourself, because from your thoughts are born your choices!

Discerning Vocations: The First reading highlights an indelible nature of marriage and family. Being a Family or being in a Marriage is a vocation. It is not a phenomenon that happens by default. It has to be a conscious choice, well discerned and taken up with absolute commitment. Discerning Vocations here would underscore the need for persons to make a choice, and the role of the community in helping a person make that choice with ease and seriousness. It would mean also the need of the pastors and those who play that role in some manner or degree, to accompany individuals within this context.

Right now the Synod is on – the synod on synodality. Is it not true that synodality is in simple terms the a spirit of familiarity, the spirit of being one family, with our roles and contributions, rights and privileges clearly understood!

Exploring the Mission of the Family Today: In the second reading we see that the Word reminds us of the most fundamental function of a family: it makes us brothers and sisters in the Lord. Though every person is an individual, each with his or her interests and motives, dreams and vision, desires and ambitions, we are never islands. We are called to live in a family, to begin with and that family is required to become the basic building block of a humanity that is loving, respectful and caring towards everyone else around us. Today a Christian family specially has an enormous responsibility, a mission to accomplish - Evangelisation. To evangelise is to share the love of God to the world today. A family is a lived experience of God's love on a daily basis - to share that love with everyone around and with the world at large is simply what Evangelisation means today.

Specially against the background of war and injustice, exploitation and domination, violence and crime, terrorism and fanaticism, the Christian families have to become beacons that bear out true love and compassion reminding the world of the Lord who is ever present in our midst and the Lord who is madly in love with you and me.

We are created as families, to live in families and to call this entire humanity to become one great, big, loving family of the children of God. We need to begin it at home and we need badly to begin it today!

Lord, that I may see...

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

October 5, 2024 - Job 42:1-3,5-6,12-17; Luke 10:17-24

Job lived on to see his children and the children of his children, upto the fourth generation, says the first reading. Happy the eyes that see what you see, exclaims Jesus in the Gospel to the disciples, indicating to them how blessed they were! The message of the Word today is: what we see is not merely what we see, but what we are given to see! 

As Job observes so clearly what he came to see (now that I have seen you with my own eyes), we are given to see certain things in life which we would never see otherwise. It is a gift we need to ask from the Lord to see - to see what we need to see, to see what would give us the true repentance of heart, to see that which will offer us the fullness of the sense of our life, to see that which will clarify to us the true vocation we have from God. 

Jesus explains it further in the Gospel. Not every one can see, but those who are destined to see, those to whom God reveals it - the children, the humble, the obedient, the gentle, the true children of God - only they would be able to see what they have to see. Not that it is not there, but the aggressive, the haughty and the self-centered will never get to see it. They would be too busy looking down on others, manipulating others for their good, take persons and their goodness for granted, all too taken up with themselves. 

The call for us is, that we be attentive to what God wants us to see, to see what God reveals to us and to be able to see what would give us the right sense of our life, here and now - so that we may live worthy of our eternal rewards. Let our prayer today be, 'Lord, that I may see!'

Peace, the gift of Christ

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

October 4, 2024: Celebrating the Apostle of Peace, St. Francis of Assisi

Galatians 6: 14-18; Matthew 11: 28-30 

Francis of Assisi is considered a man who managed the maximum resemblance to Christ in his life, not so much due to the marks of the stigmata that he received from the Lord, as due to the gift that Christ offers to his followers, which Francis wanted to spread all his life - Peace. Peace and mercy to all who follow Chrsit, who form the people of God, says St. Paul in the first reading.

Especially today, with the rising craze of violence around the world, we are called to be truly instruments of peace, the peace that comes from the self emptying Christ. We are not referring only to the warring nations or the fanatic terrorists who are threatening the peace of the world, but more to the hypocrites in the garb of Christians, people who are hate, divide, fight, harbour rancour, plot against and destroy persons from the hiding. People are thrown into confusion and frustration more by these than by those from outside! There are those who wish to live in integrity and sanctity but they are a bare minimum. The majority of us are caught between these two factions... highly tempted and mostly tired. The Lord says, come to me! It is only in going to the Lord that we can grow in our integrity.

Francis came at a time when the Church was wounded due to various spiritual calamities within the Church in the 10th and the 11th century and he treated those wounds with the compassion of the Lord, the humility of the Son of God and the peace of the Prince of Peace. He showed us that the marks of Christ that all of us can bear in our life, are exactly these: to be instruments of peace, through love, pardon, faith, hope, light, joy, consolation and new life. Today, as Pope Francis says, the Church or our faith is somewhat in a similar situation beaten and bruised from within and from without. The call is clear and loud: come to the Lord. 

May St. Francis assist us to understand the difference between true holiness and self righteousness, the distance between love and legalism and the need to move from being Christians to becoming Christ ourselves! Let us be true instruments of Peace, the true gift of Christ to the world today.

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!