The Call to Get Going - People of the Spirit

WORD 2day: Monday, 2nd week in Easter time

April 28, 2025 - Acts 4: 23-31; John 3: 1-8

We have just concluded the Easter Octave and are entering into a new week. The Word this week is going to point us towards one overarching message: Get Going! The apostles and the disciples were so stuck with the disappointments from the past or the surprise of the present, that they could not concentrate on, "what next". Jesus had to call them to get going, and to be born again, to resume in the Spirit, to start anew in the Lord. 

What did Jesus mean by his call to the apostles and disciples to get going... it is to receive the Holy Spirit, to be renewed in the Spirit, to be created anew in the Paraclete, that they may take the message of Christ, the message that Christ was, to the entire world. That is what happens there. 

To be filled with Holy Spirit and to proclaim the Word with courage and prophecy, is the next step to which the Lord bid the apostles to get going, and the Word of God leaves us with the same challenge to - to be renewed in the Spirit, to take what the Spirit inspires with seriousness, and take the message of Christ, and the message that Christ is, to the world around us. 

The next phase of the Eastertide shall tend to prepare us towards becoming people who get going towards an ongoing maturity in our call of faith. Let us keep our hearts and minds open these days to the Word which shall urge us towards this next phase of our Christian call, to get going towards our personal and collective maturity in faith. 

HOLY WEEK & EASTER

Wishing you a Wonderful Holy Week and a Hope filled Easter

Will be taking a break for two weeks with the reflections

catch up after the 2 weeks...

let us remain united in prayers!

A Return to hope... to Universal Solidarity

THE WORD IN LENT - Saturday, Fifth week in Lent

April 12, 2025 - Ezekiel 37: 21-28; John 11: 45-56

We have readched the end of the lenten journey. Today is the last day, as tomorrow we begin the Holy Week already. We have been on a journey, a journey of return to hope and today the Word summarises the entire journey in terms of its ultimate purpose - the same purpose as for which Jesus came among us, lived among us and gave his life for us! 

The entire purpose of this journey is - move towards the universal solidarity. The experience of salvation that Jesus brought us was this, at gradual levels we move towards this solidarity. At the personal level we move towards becoming children of the One Father, sheep of the one Shepherd. At interpersonal level, that we recognise each other as brothers and sisters who have the same, One Father, and belong to the same flock of that One Shepherd. As communities, that we begin to realise our unity as a flock, not to divide ourselves from the others, but to extend that sense of relatedness across differences, towards that universal solidarity. 

Today with all the situations of war and violence, threats and competitions, mutual demands of tariffs and attempts of exploitation, what can resolve tensions is the sense of solidarity. In Fratelly tutti, Pope Francis underlining the way to hope in today's context makes a simple but a challenging statement: "no one is saved alone" (n. 54), bringing out the intrinsic rapport between hope and solidarity. Jesus is presented as one who, with his death, once again brought to real the Oneness that God wishes from God's children - to gather us into one. 

If we really are convinced of being on our pilgrimage of hope, we shall become day after day, apostles of solidarity, bringing God's people more and more together - in mind, spirit and action. 

A Return to hope... Assuring Presence

THE WORD IN LENT - Fifth Friday in Lent

April 11, 2025 - Jeremiah 20: 10-13; John 10:31-42

Terror, revenge, vengeance, fear... these are the sentiments that dominate the Word today. With Jesus being taken to task, almost stoned. These types of negativities and fears are no strange experiences to us, may be at different levels. But each of  us go through these, and specially in the world scenario today, these abound. 

Negativities at the level of persons, at the level of families, in the societies, at the international level; Vengeance and enmities, threats and deceptions, they create an anguish in persons and in the collective consciousness of people. What is the way out of these experiences of anguish? We see that suggested in the Responsorial psalm - I call to the Lord and the Lord shall hear my voice!

Hence the message - to call, to cry out to God. But the question is: what will God do then? With he make all these experiences disappear? Will he just turn everything upside down in the snap of a finger? Will he do magic that makes everything totally different and happy? Jesus and his situation in the Gospel clarifies this to us - in our anguish we call out to the Lord and the Lord hears.., and does what? He comes to be with us, to be on our side, to walk through whatever we are walking through, to assure us of his presence, his assuring presence - that is the foundation of hope! 

A return to hope is receiving that assurance of God's presence. When things go wrong, when situations around me are terrorising and frightening, I call out to the Lord and I shall experience the assuring presence of the Lord, the source of hope that will help us just walk amidst the situations, towards that presence that is within me, that presence that calls me to blessed peace! 

A Return to hope... to a divine outlook!

THE WORD IN LENT - Thursday, Fifth week in Lent 

April 10, 2025 - Genesis 17: 3-9; John 8: 51-59

Abraham was considered the father of the generations by the people of Israel and Judah! Even within our Catholic faith tradition, he does occupy a very important role, as a father of our faith. Naturally for the Jews, to hear Jesus speak of Abraham as one who wanted to see his days, it was a scandal, and they could not bear it. Would it not happen even with us, if we heard someone speak in a manner less respectful about one of our favourite saints?

But the real problem was  little deeper - they could not see eye to eye with Jesus, not just in this, but in anything, because they did not share the outlook of Christ. They and Christ, were in two different outlooks, two different minds! 

While they had a material outlook in everything, Jesus proposes a determinedly Spiritual outlook. They looked for miracles, the multiplied bread and the miraculous wine; while Jesus spoke to them about the Word on which they need to live and they could not understand that.

While they had a temporal outlook of the world, Jesus challenged them to an eternal outlook. Naturally they could not understand it when Jesus said he was, before Abraham was! It was blasphemous for them as they could not understand eternity, where there does not exist a past or future but just timelessness in the eyes of God. God knows what plans God has for us, because everything is before God's eyes.

While they had the outlook of singular events, Jesus had the vision of Salvation which the people could not understand. Finally the solution therefore is that we put on the mind of Christ (Phil 2:5). That alone can help us understand what the Lord really wants from us - that requires docility and humility, to listen to the Lord and learn from the Lord. The Lord alone can give us that divine outlook. 

A Return to hope... beholding Truth

THE WORD IN LENT - Wednesday, Fifth week in Lent

April 9, 2025 - Daniel 3: 14-20,24-25,28; John 8: 31-42

After the image of Susanna and the bronze serpent lifted up in the desert, today we have yet another great symbol - the symbol of the three young men in the furnace! They were there tried to the extreme levels imaginable. They were destined to die... they infact went into death and came out unscathed. That was Jesus' death and resurrection prefigured. As we say in the Creed: he went down to the dead and he rose again. That is what Jesus is introducing us to - when you have the Truth with you, you go down to death and you will rise to Eternal life. 

The Truth will set you free, the Truth with liberate you, the Truth shall give you Eternal life - says Jesus today! So the secret to Eternal life is beholding the Truth! How do we do it: holding on to the Lord, as he himself declares - I am the Truth! The Lord challenges us to clarify our sense of belonging - to whom do we belong? Or to put it more directly: Do I belong to God or not? If I belong to God, my life should manifest that. There could be downfalls, breakages and discontinuities, but ultimately, do I belong to God, that is what matters. 

Sometimes, as Jesus is warning, we may think or we may claim we belong to God, through intermediate ways... Jesus chides the people who were arguing with him, that they thought they were Abraham's children (and through that they wanted to be God's children), but they were actually children of the Satan, the evil one who wants to kill and destroy... just as Nebuchadnezzar and his squad who wanted to eliminate those young men! But those who belong to God, they love, they listen to the Truth and they behold Truth!

We long to live in joy and hope...that is possible only by beholding Truth... in our innermost beings, beholding Truth.

A Return to hope... looking up to Him!

THE WORD IN LENT - Tuesday, Fifth week in Lent

April 8, 2025 - Numbers 21: 4-9; John 8: 21-30

These days the Word presents to us some symbols from the Old Testament that prefigures the culmination of the Salvation plan in the person of Jesus the Christ. Yesterday we came across Susanna, the innocent condemned by the wicked to death; today we come across the bronze serpent raised in the desert as the sign of restoration of life! 

Just as the bronze serpent in raised in the desert that gave life to those people, the Word tells us today - Jesus raised on the Cross is ready to give us life. The allusions of the image of the serpent to the evil one who deceived the first parents, and the tree from on which the serpert deceived them to the staff of the bronze serpent and later to the Tree of the Cross - it all amounts to one message: the Lord is out there to give you new life. But what have we to do?

We need to look up to Him - all who look up to him shall be radiant (Ps 34: 5), because we shall have new life. Looking up... and looking up to him, is the key here. To whom or to what do we look up to: our own capacity, to power, to possession, to happiness, to ease, to vain glory? At times we say we look up to Jesus, but which Jesus? The one who preaches eloquently, the one who has great things to say, the one who did miracles after miracles, the great hero? Or the Son of God, who gave up everything, gave up himself totally for the sake of the Will of his Father, and died for us there on that tree, lifted up and crucified? When we look up to him, we look up to problems, struggles, sacrifices but at the end of it all, life eternal. Are we prepared to look up to Him?

A Return to hope... Walk in the Light

THE WORD IN LENT - Monday, Fifth week in Lent

April 7, 2025 - Daniel 13:1-9,15-17,19-30,33-62; John 8: 12-20

The Word today raises to our attention some crucial theological issues - the suffering of the innocent, the unjust judgement of the powerful, the effect of the sin of some on the other, the final judgement to which everyone of us will be subjected to and so on! Now these issues may have very many ways of being treated - the Word today gives us two pivotal perspectives to consider: integrity of the inner self and the centrality of God's perspective.

Integrity of the inner self refers to our consciousness of ourselves. Reflecting on the Gospel yesterday, when Jesus said - let the one among you who has not sinned throw the first stone, the scribes and the pharisess left one by one, beginning with the eldest. There is ony point to be noted here, that they recognised that they were sinners, at least when they were reminded. The problem with the present times, there would have been persons to throw that stone today, because there are those who think they have no sin, that they are righteous and that all that they do is totally justifiable. This is why the late Pope Benedict XVI warned, that the worst of the problems of our times, is the loss of sense of sin! What matters most is becoming aware of the sin that resides within us and to accept it with humility and entrust ourselves to the mercy of God. 

The second perspective is looking at ourselves from the point of view of God. The story of Susanna today comes as an unssailable assurance that God knows you, if you find yourself helpless and sinned against! The centrality of God's perspective, in our self understanding and in the understanding of our mission, is what we are called to observe in the words of Jesus: You judge by human standards, but God's perspectives are God's own.

This might fill us with an anxiety, but the Lord assures us: do not worry, I am the Light; and following me, you shall always walk in the light.  

A RETURN TO HOPE - TOWARDS PARADISE

Persevere, Prioritise & Progress 

Fifth Sunday in Lent: April 6, 2025 

Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:8-14; John 8:1-11

A Return to hope... Celebrating Mercy

THE WORD IN LENT - Saturday, Fourth week in Lent

April 5, 2025 - Jeremiah 11: 18-20; John 7: 40-52

The Mercy of God is immense and immeasurable, and we cannot celebrate it enough ever. The Lent and the following events of the Pasch, are the peak of that celebration. We celebrate the love of God, the gratuitous love of God. We celebrate the mercy of the Lord, the prodigal mercy of God which is lavished upon us without any reason or justification, because the Lord has promised us to be our God - that is the covenant after all. 

But there is the other part of the covenant - that we will be God's people; are we? How many ways in which we have been unfaithful to that promise we have made in response to God's unfailing love? God never tires, however to continue to love us. For God loves us so much as to give God's Son as the sacrifice of our salvation. God's mercy never ceases, God continues to shower it upon us - as St. Paul words it: God "pours" that love into our hearts. But the story does not end there...

In our obstinacy, we insist to reject that love, that gratuitous love, that mercy, that mercy which we do not deserve in any way. How do we reject it? When we refuse to be merciful, when we refrain from forgiving, when we choose not to love some one, when we hate or ignore a brother or sister - leave alone harming them. The worse scenario is that we have no reason to do that sometimes - I can't even look at someone, I cannot work with him or her, I cannot even listen to his or her voice... "I don't know why!" This is what is happening in the Gospel today - they reject Christ, just for one reason - that he was from Galilee! What an absurd thinking we sometimes sport and we pride it around!

If we really want to be children of God, we need to celebrate the mercy of God - that means, we need to acknowledge our unworthiness witn humility, we need to promise to love everyone without partiality, we need to forgive and embrace each other with sincerity! Are we really prepared to celebrate mercy?