God reveals: to love is Christ

WORD 2day: Wednesday after Epiphany

January 8, 2025 - 1 John 4:11-18; Mark 6: 45-52

Let us take a close look at these two statements: "If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God"; and the other statement, "God is love and anyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him." There is a syllogistic corollary that John is creating in these lines, in his letter - to say, to believe in Christ is to live in God; to live in God is to live in love; and therefore to live in Christ is to live in love! Without living in love one cannot live in Christ. 

Christ shows to his followers another sign today, walking on the water! Every one marvelled at him for this, but do we ever see him lecturing to the disciples on how to walk on water or multiply bread or chase an evil spirit out? Never. For him these were not important feats, but loving the other was! He insisted without getting tired about how to love and how much to love; in fact, he did not stop with talking to them about loving, but he taught them to love with his own example of laying down his life for love! 

He was certain and absolutely clear - to love is to live in God, and that is why he was all the time in God and never feared having to die - for he lived in God and lived love. When we live in Christ, we shall live in love and we shall live in God, because to love is Christ. 

God reveals: God is love!

WORD 2day: Tuesday after Epiphany

January 7, 2025 - 1 John 4: 7-10; Mark 6: 34-44

We have begun from yesterday, a journey from the epiphany of the Lord to the event of the baptism of the Lord. If yesterday we were given to reflect on the Spirit as the dimension of God's revelation, today we have another essential dimension of God's nature... a dimension that the Spirit stands for: Love. Love, the communion that is found within the Trinity, is expressed in God's relationship with us! And Jesus in the Gospel, expresses that love in concrete terms, through a miracle, a miracle inspired by his compassion for the people whom he found as sheep without a shepherd. 

Jesus' miracles, as exegetes and theologians insist, are not mere means of revealing the glory and splendour that is hidden within Christ, but to express a concrete sense of compassion and love for the people who stood around, and in that, to us! Jesus himself is the love of God expressed in its fullness and Jesus come across as the love of God made flesh and sent to dwell amidst us. 

Journey from the revelation at the epiphany to the manifestation at the baptism of the Lord, we are called today to see God as love, perceive God as compassion, experience God as mercy and remain always recognizant of the place that God has reserved for each of us, within God's great and wonderful design. May we grow more and more observant of the various ways in which God expresses God's infinite love to us.

GOD MADE KNOWN

The Star, the House and the Detour

January 5, 2025: Solemnity of Epiphany of the Lord
Isaiah 60: 1-6; Ephesians 3 : 2-3, 5-6; Matthew 2 : 1-12

The Word became flesh and came to dwell among us; today the world gets to see its Messiah. The Son who was promised to the Hebrews through the prophets through the ages, then revealed to Mary and Joseph in their private life and dreams, is now revealed to the world - that is why the Magi from the East, as East was then considered the end of the world.

The feast of Epiphany has three important symbols carrying three crucial messages for us disciples of Christ.

The first symbol is the Star: 

The guiding star which led the magi to the Lord. Stars shine, position themselves to be seen by all and remain above every thing unaffected! We all wish to be stars too... shining and glittering in the world of fame. The star of Christ or a star for Christ is called to shine too, not for personal glory but for people to be attracted. The star of Christ is called to be seen by all, not for adulation but for example! The star of Christ has to be above everything, not to insist on a superiority that is anti-Christian but to give hope to people at all moments including difficult ones. Everyone who claims to be a follower of Christ has to be a star that guides people to Christ. Are my thoughts, words and decisions shining enough to lead people to Christ?

The second symbol is the House: 

The star might have been magnificent but it rested on a simple manger. The signs and events might have been grand but the Messiah was found in a stable. What we are and what we have does not matter as much as who we are! Whether simple or sophisticated, whether learned or ordinary, whether rich or poor... we are called to possess the Lord, we are called to be one home that houses the Lord. People who come to us should be able to see, feel and experience the Lord and praise the Lord through us and for us. That is true Epiphany.

The third symbolic event is the Detour: 

The magi who came were asked to leave on a different way back. They had to make a detour... because they had truly seen the Messiah. Even we, if we truly see the Messiah, we would not be able to go back the same way that we came. We would have to make a detour for sure. That detour could be our sign of repentance, our change of ways, our going out of our way for the sake of someone else... in short, it is our New life, because we have come to know the Lord. How many we have heard, who speak of their moment when they met the Lord! It does not matter how many years or generations I am a 'Christian', but what matters is that I encounter the person of Christ - the moment of truth when I realise the meaning and call of my life! Once I do that, I cannot but take a detour!

God is made known... it is upto us to become God's guiding stars, true dwelling places of God and people who are ready to arise and shine!

God reveals: the Christ within us

WORD 2day: Saturday after the Christmas Octave

January 4, 2025 -  1 John 3: 7-10; John 1: 35-42

What the Word wishes to communicate today, proceeds from where it left yesterday, in fact, in continuity with the themes of revelation we have been discussing in the past two days. First we said, the revelation is about Jesus as Christ, and yesterday we reflected on how this Christ is the spotless Lamb of God. Today the Word tells us, we are like Christ too - children of God, as Christ was the Son of God. 

When Christ, in Jesus became just like us, he revealed to us that in the core of our beings we are just like him! We are begotten children of God. Let no one deceive us to believe anything on the contrary, warns St. John today in the first reading. Yesterday, when the Word said, Christ is spotless and we are called to be so: that is sinless, we might have had an instant question, "is it possible at all?" And Christ wishes to respond to us today - Yes, it is possible.

How is it possible? Because we are Christs too - the Gospel says, Christ means anointed and each of us has been anointed, right when God chose us to be children of God by the anointment of the Chrism, at our baptism. Jesus the Christ tells us today, that it is not only true that he became one among us, but it is equally true that he has made us ones like him, sons and daughters of God, begotten of God! The challenge is that we recognise it, get convinced of it and begin to live it in our daily life, because all the ends have seen the salvation of the Lord and we are the chosen instruments to experience and announce that salvation.

When John pointed out to the Lamb, there were persons who were ready to take a readical decision to follow Christ, to go where Christ is, to stay with Christ and become like him! That is our call too - to become like Christ, that is to distinguish ourselves as children of God, living a holy life and loving our brothers and sisters. We are saved by Jesus the Christ, but we shall experience that salvation only as long as we make a choice to, go out there and live like him!

God reveals: Christ, the Spotless Lamb

WORD 2day: Friday after the Christmas Octave

January 3, 2025 - 1 John 2:29 - 3:6; John 1: 29-34

Jesus is revealed today as the Spotless Lamb that takes away our sins. In this, God is revealed as the Righteous One and Sinless One. Anyone who lives in God does not sin, and anyone who sins has never seen or known God - says John in the first reading today. This is a direct and categorical declaration on God and those who belong to God. Hence when John declares Jesus as the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, we are given with not only a revelation of who Jesus is, but that of who God wants us to be - people who are chosen to belong to God, to be God's children.

To all who received him, he gave power to become children of God - yes, that is a special ability, a particular preparation, a deliberate choice - to become children of God. That is the role that the Lamb took upon itself to accomplish: to make us children of God. Two indispensable ways to move towards that goal: renounce sin and acknowledge God. That reminds us of the baptismal promise that we reconfirmed at our Confirmation ceremony: do you renounce satan and all his works and empty promises? And we said, I do. 

Renouncing sin is renouncing the evil one - for sin comes from the evil one, those who are in God shall not go by sin. While converting oneself from sin and changing one's life, are essential elements of becoming God's own children, we cannot forget that these begin with the simple Step zero, of renouncing sin - calling it by name and judging it in face. This is the biggest of the crises of our times: the loss of sense of sin - the lost of the capacity to identify sin and call it as sin.

Acknowledging God becomes phony, if it is not preceded by a denouncement of the Satan and all the ways of the Satan... the dangerous trend that we see in the world today is allowing the two to co-exist. That is an absolute debilitation of truth, of faith and of anything that is transcendent. Jesus' person, his birth and his life choices, his death and the purpose attached to it, is a deliberate acknowledgement of God and a reminder of what such a life would be.

May the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, help us to take on with courage and hope the world of sin!

God Reveals: Jesus is Christ

WORD 2day: Thursday after Christmas Octave

January 2, 2025 - 1 John 2:22-28; John 1:19-28

We have just ended the Christmas Octave. Let us centre today's reflection on a question: what was the purpose of Incarnation, the mystery that we celebrated for over a week! The focal purpose of the incarnation was, or is, revelation! The self revelation of God to us human persons that we could understand who God is, what God's relationship with us is and how much we matter to God. In the following three days the Word shall be preparing us towards the great commemoration of the epiphany, the manifestation, the revelation in the Son of God, that we will be celebrating shortly. 

Today the revelation that is underscored for our comprehension is that Jesus is Christ. And we know that it is the grace of the Spirit that anyone can declare, "Jesus is Lord" (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:3). There could three modes of negating this fact of revelation. The first is a naivete  in our understanding. This can happen to even the good willed, because good will alone would not suffice for right knowledge. There are thousands in fact who hold Jesus to be a great, kind, wise and gifted person, a great hero in history - but that would amount to mere incomplete understanding, although in itself it isn't wrong. 

The second is a rejection, where although one knows who Christ is, prefers to give that identity to some one else, or something else. At times this could be because one has not had the possibility of knowing to the full or one is stubborn not to see what is being revealed. Whatever be the reason, there is a lack here which could make the person(s) distant from the Truth, the ultimate, liberating Truth.

The third is a more dangerous and preposterous attitude of imagining onself as the Christ, that is Messiah or the Saviour. Whoever it be, whether as persons or as communities or as even churches, if we consider ourselves as those who are the saviours of the world, we are replacing the Lord, with ourselves. This psuedo consciousness is the greatest danger that is affecting humanity today, against which we are warned. Let us ask the Lord for the grace to encounter Jesus and acknowledge him as the Christ. 

BEGINNING 2025 WITH HOPE

Mater Dei, Gaudium Spei & Pax Dei!

January 1, 2025: Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God

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

It is a beautiful day, a blessed day and a bountiful day when the Lord deign to grant us a fresh new year, and specially a year of jubilee, to be lived with the joy of hope (Gaudium spei)! May this new year 2025, be filled with hope, that comes from the unceasing presence of God with us! In the gracious Will of God, we begin this year with our Blessed Mother, who is honoured today with the title, ‘Mother of God’! Before we come to focus on that central theme of the day – Mary, Mother of God, we have a few other scintillating points of attention from the Word today! In fact, we have, in all, five points of inspiration and instruction from the Lord, at the beginning of this year.

Focus no.1: Blessing

The Lord not only blesses with a new year, but packs it up with blessings too! How do we understand God’s blessing? Certainly, today we come to the feet of the Lord, with remorse and regret for the instances of negligence and experiences of failure in the past year, with anxiety of newer plans we have for the fresh year and with a sense of need for supernatural assistance to make this year a fruitful and joyful journey. The Lord knows our mind and hence we have the Word today, presenting to us the words of blessing – the protection from God, the light of guidance from God and the merciful gift of peace from the Lord. What stands out is the last verse from that passage we read from the book of Numbers which defines what a blessing truly should be: “calling down the name of the Lord on someone or something”! That goes well with the reminder from the Gospel – that today is the eighth day from the birth of our Saviour, who was given the name Jesus – the name above every other name, the name we are invited to call down upon each other today. We shall be celebrating a feast proper of this name in a couple of days, but the reminder today is the blessing we have in this name!

Focus no.2: Fullness of time

In the second reading today, St. Paul calls our attention to the fullness of time. The question is, who decides the fullness of time? Certainly not we! We cannot see beyond what has gone by and what is… eternity belongs to God and God alone can define the fullness of time. Fullness of time is not about future, it is not about some auspicious moment to be waited for, but the sense of walking in the fullness of the present, with our hands in the hands of the Lord. It refers to every moment of here and now in our life, every moment of God’s guiding presence that can fulfill within us and through us, the eternal design of God for ourselves and for our brothers and sisters through us.  

Focus no.3: Children in the Son

St. Paul reminds us that we have been made sons in the Son of God, daughters through the Spirit of the Son sent into our hearts, children in that Son who makes us heirs of the One who created us, called us, spoke to us through the ages and has been constantly relating to us, whether or not we are aware of it. It is not because we deserve it or we have merited it, but because of the covenant that God made with us – that we shall be his people and He shall be our God. It is yet another renewal of the covenant, as we conclude today the octave of Christmas and begin a fresh and new year. What needs to fill our hearts today is that courage and hope – it is in this connection that the jubilee theme we have been given with makes a profound sense: to be pilgrims of hope! That hope which does not delude us, comes from the simple and undeniable fact that we are children of God, children in the Son of God.

Focus no.4: Abba, Father

Children of God, that is what we are made by the Spirit who cries and makes us cry out: Abba Father. This is the guarantee of fullness, the assurance of peace and the joy of hope. When we call God, our Father, we are not only declaring ourselves as children of God, but also that every other child of God is our brother and sister – what else could be a more fitting foundation for peace? That is why giving us the message for the 58^th World day of Peace, Pope Francis invites us to reflect on the theme: forgive us our trespasses, grant us your peace! It is in mutual forgiveness and care that we can ensure peace for entire humanity. It is interesting to recall the three concrete lines of action that he proposes: the forgiveness of international debts; the abolition of capital punishment; and setting up a world fund to eradicate hunger and poverty. Those are simply directives to declare that, I am my brother’s keeper, because we are children of the One Father!

Focus no.5: Mary, Mother of God

The Solemnity that we celebrate today, and underlined in the Word today, invites us to thank God for introducing to us Mary, as the Mother of God – this has quite many implications for our faith in its wholeness. Two simple but concrete messages that we can take from this dogma are: we are not merely instruments in the hands of God, or at least God does not consider it that way. We have a specific role to play, with our identity and liberty and our capacity to choose God and God’s will. That is where Mary shines as a Mother, not merely because she gave birth to Jesus, but because she collaborated in the Salvation Plan of the Father. Secondly, Mary is not only mother of Jesus, but declared mother of God because she persevered till the end – from the annunciation at her home in Nazareth and the manger of Bethlehem to the Cross on Calvary and the Cenacle of Jerusalem… she remained faithful to the call that she received, that is why she becomes the mother of God, the God made flesh and God who saved us in His death and resurrection. Clearly, the message here is how ready we are to persevere in the midst of discouragements and dreariness… a pertinent thought for the beginning of the year.

May our Blessed Mother, the Mother of God, be with us all through this new year, and fill us with hope, that we may make this year truly a pilgrimage of hope, keeping our hope alive and instilling hope in every one we encounter. May God forgive us our trespasses and grant us his peace. May God shine His light upon us and walk with us all through this new year 2025.

 

 

Thank You O Lord for 2024!

WORD 2day: The last day of the year

December 31, 2024: 1 John 2: 18-21; John 1: 1-18

There is a repeated reference to the theme of the last days, in the Word today and indeed, it is the last day of this calendar year! As we begin this day, let our hearts be filled with thanksgiving! The light, the true light, and the Word, the Eternal word, is here amidst us! We shall dedicate this day to thank the Lord for all the experiences of the year that is just passing by, with all its ups and downs, with all its highs and lows.  

We are invited to pay attention to yet another interesting detail in the readings of the day. The first reading begins with the expression that 'these are the last days', while the Gospel reading begins with the affirmation that 'in the beginning there was Word.' The last days and the beginning, spoken of together: that is the norm of life - something ends and something begins. But in Christ-ian parlance, it is a matter of hope. Specially today as we have universally in the Church initiated the great Jubilee of Hope! In spite of the myriad of things that threated to make the situation gloomy and dark - we can never despair, because the Lord is constanly making everything new for us: behold I make all things new (Rev 21:5).

We would do well today to list to ourselves, everything that we have received from the Lord during this year that we are ending. It would do good also to list the moments of anxiety and pain, possible vulnerabilties and set backs that we have experienced through the year, and contemplate on what they have had to offer or teach us, for our lives. It would be opportune that we consecrate our lives once again today to the holy Will of God, reaffirming to ourselves the marks of the people of God; and the resolve to do away with those thiking that do not fit in to that definition of our identity. 

There is one message however, that the Word wants to leave strongly in our minds, as we end this year and get ready to start a new one, and that is: "The Word has become flesh; and dwells among us!" The Lord is with us and that is an undoubted note of hope with which we embark upon our journey as pilgrims of hope! Good bye 2024...!

Learning from the Holy Family

The Christmas of Hope - December 30, 2024

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

We are still in the Christmas Octave and we celebrated the Holy Family yesterday. The Word today continues to present to us the model of the Holy Family and invites us to reflect on our Christian Vocation, founded on the family. John points to a key learning that we can have from the Holy Family - the observance of the will of God.  John explains this, speaking to us of the two attitudes that should be our chararcteristic mark within the family - one of the parents and the other of the children; one of the elders and the other of the younger generation; one of those who consider themselves already experienced and the other of those who consider themselves still beginners; one that is of the ongoing formation (or in-service training) and the other of initial formation.

Knowledge and Wisdom marks the first category, and it has to be considered the grace of the experience, out of which one needs to find the necessary light to continue the life's journey. Passion and Enthusiasm marks the other category, which could be the fueling energy that can take, not just the individual person but the entire community around, forwards towards the horizons of new meaning and fresh dynamism. Both of these, which are necessary, should be mindful of one single objective that we have: doing the will of God forever. 

The Holy Family - with Mary and Joseph in the prior category and Jesus in the latter category - reminds us of this, in their encounter with Anna the prophetess - with that knowledge and wisdom, passion and enthusiasm, all fused together in one single project - that of doing the will of God. The message is to fix our eyes on the will of God, knowing and doing what the Lord wants from us. That is how we shall measure up to the identity given to us: as people of God. 

FAMILY - THE UNIVERSAL CALL TO GODLINESS

The Presence, the Plan & the Patron

The Solemnity of the Holy Family - December 29, 2024

1 Samuel 1: 20-22, 24-28; 1 John 3: 1-2, 21-24; Luke 2: 41-52

We celebrate today the feast of the Holy Family... a reminder to every Christian family about the universal call that we have towards Godliness. Yes, we are called to be people of God, in families.

The People of God were always called as families - the people of Judah, the people of Israel... are some ways in which the people are referred to. And when people referred to God they used titles such as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob...these were not just persons, but households, families! Hence, it is not only that we are families and in families we belong to God, but we have a God who identifies with these families. Christmas is a very special celebration that reminds us of this reality and helps us relate to this facet of our calling. Looking at the Holy Family, we are inspired to think about three prominent constituents of any family... parents, children and the Almighty!

Parents are the presence of God in the family! When the Lord wills to create a family, God chooses a man and a woman to form that family... and deigns to give them a new identity and form them into parents! This has three implications to pay attention to: being parents is a call, a God-given mission; being parents is a responsibility; and being parents is a course of maturity. The call is to participate in the salvific mission of God; the responsibility is to make God present and discern God's will in the daily events of the family; and it is a journey of growth and maturity that the parents are called to!

The parents have a very crucial role in introducing the children to God – just as we see Elkanah and Hannah do in the first reading, and Joseph and Mary do in the Gospel of today. How many parents today fail in this duty, and how many in the previous generation have failed that we have a generation today that is so faith-less! Where has this element of the presence of God gone in the family?

Children are the plan of God in the family! Children are gifts and tasks; they are the dreams and the designs; they are the plans that God has for the future of a society. The children are gifts and tasks - as they are given as gifts to the family and as the family has the task of bringing them up as the fulcrums of sustenance of the family. The children are the dreams and designs - as every child born is a sign that God still loves the world and that God has a design for the salvation of the whole humankind. The children are the plans that God has for humanity, as God sends every child into this world with a purpose and a project - if the particular person does not accomplish it, it is left undone and it affects the entire humanity!

Not just the father and the mother in the particular unit of the family, but the entire society has a bounden responsibility to care for the education of the younger generation – cultivating them, protecting them and empowering them. How responsible has the society made itself for the younger generation and how many trap holes have been created to lure the future generation into ruin? It is indeed a point of great concern.!

God our Father and Mother, is the patron of every family on earth! God needs to be given the rightful place in our homes; the parents learn from the Lord and exercise the authority that God gives; the children see the Lord in the parents and love the Lord in return for all the good! God remains the patron of every family as the parents offer their children back to God and the children heed to their parents as the representatives of God! God has a loving plan for every family, from which the family shall flourish, in as much as it kneels together before the Lord in discernment and decision making. Raising a question as to who is important in the family - the husband or the wife, the father or the mother, the parents or the children - is an anomaly, as God Almighty is the most important axial point in the family. A family that prays together, stays together, grows together, and experiences God together.

While in the present conditions of the family, we find that there is no proper space given to each other – television sets, mobile phones and headsets have occupied such a large space in homes nowadays! If so, we can imagine the predicament of the space due to God! That is a pathetic situation and we find it as a real trouble that seeks our utmost attention!

Now let us turn to the Holy Family of Nazareth. Can we not observe these three qualities in the Holy Family: Mary and Joseph, the parents become the immediate presence of God for Jesus; Jesus, the child of the family, becomes the core plan of God for the salvation of humanity; and God remains undoubtedly the patron of that family, directing them, guiding them and animating them in every way! They did nothing, they took no step without a direction from God and they continued to contemplate on the ways of the Lord, as they were proceeding in their life’s journey. 

May our families take after this splendid model, and learn at the School of Nazareth, to become really the people of God in families, amidst the difficult world of today!