The Proof for being God's people

WORD 2day: Monday, 11th week in Ordinary time

June 16, 2025 - 2 Corinthians 6: 1-10; Matthew 5: 38-42

pc: universalis.com

The Word today seems to answer the question: how do we prove that we are "God's people"? We claim that identity, and don't we have the onus of living up to it? At times we can gather ourselves us up to say, "yes we do have the responsibility," but only until we hear the teaching of the type we listen to today! Or at least that is what the world at large does... because, the teaching we hear in today's Word, is so unreal and quixotic to say the least, in the eyes of the world.

Being flogged, sent to prison, mobbed, going sleepless, starving... when such situations are affronted with fortitude we prove to be God's people! Our purity, our knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness, truth and righteousness even in the face of disgrace, blame, persecution and suffering, go to prove that we are truly God's people. This is what Paul explains, much in elaboration of what Jesus taught when he said: offer no resistance, show the other cheek, go an extra mile, give even to those who want to take away what is yours!  

Yes, being God's people is being so unrealistc, so impractical... so Christ-like, so God-like. We know what it means - God loved us and continues to love us when we least deserve even the tiniest fraction of the limitless love that God offers us; Christ was willing to die for us, even when we were sinners! We people of this God; we are disciples of this Christ - and what else could be expected of us? 

THE ABC OF HOLY TRINITY

We Are, we Believe and we Cling!

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity: June 15, 2025

Proverbs 8: 22-31; Romans 5:1-5; John 16: 12-15

We celebrate the feast of the Holy Trinity today! The Solemnity reminds us of, not only who our God is, but also who we are!

We ARE a communion!

Just as our God is a communion of three persons - Father, Son and the Spirit, we who are created in that image and likeness, are a communion too. We are neither body living in the spirit, nor a spirit residing in the body... we are a being created in such a communion of our natures that we are one, just as the three persons of the trinity are one. It is high time we undid the contrasts between the body and the soul and the mind! We are communion, we ARE Trinity.

We need to continuously grow out of a dichotomous or a segmented life where there is the public life and the private life, the so-called spiritual life and the ordinary life, the life from the Christian point of view and a parallel life of the standards of the world... this is totally contrary to integrity that is truly 'christian'...this integrity can otherwise be known as Communion within a person, an undivided state of life.

We BELIEVE in communion, not in contestation.

The three persons of the Trinity live in communion with each other and there is an eternal self giving that takes place among them, by which they stay as ONE. We believe in communion, dialogue, sharing, sacrifice and selfless service. Only that would make us One people of God.

Today the television channels have fallen into a craze - taking a current issue and calling up people from different camps of thought and making them debate, fight and contest with each other. Worse still, they name the show 'fight' or 'debate' or 'argument', parading the truth that they are more interested in contesting than arriving at a common ground that could promote happiness and fulfillment. The dangerous phenomenon is that the same kind of a mindset enters a family and issues are debated over, contested over but very rarely prayed over and discerned towards communion!

We CLING to the Trinity

In the Trinitarian God we have everything we stand in need of. The Father gives us love and mercy in abundance. The Son gives us the light and truth to live by. The Spirit gives us companionship and good counsel. All that we need to live our life to the full is given by the Trinitarian God. The Father, Son and the Holy Spirit are in eternal procession, teaches the Church's theology which means that every one of the three, upholds the other and empties oneself into the others for a unified, generative action.

It may sound a bit too theoretical, but in fact, it is just a life style that would create a paradise on earth wherever we are - if we trust one another and prove trust worthy to each other. That is the message, that we cling to the Trinity not just in asking for favours and fulfilling our needs but in our life style, in our way of relating to the other and making ourselves available to the other, to the community to the entire humanity and even the universe! What a challenging call it is!

As we celebrate this wonderful solemnity, let us take to heart the call and the challenge given to us by the Holy Trinity... to be, to believe and to cling on to the Most Holy Trinity.

Reconciliation: Oneness and Integrity

WORD 2day: Saturday, 10th week in Ordinary time

June 14, 2025 - 2 Corinthians 5: 14-21; Matthew 5: 33-37

The Word today has some oft cited quotes from St. Paul - the love of Christ overwhems us, those who are in Christ are a new creation, for our sake God made the sinless one into sin... all these amounting to that one key experience: reconciliation; that God has reconciled us to Godself in Christ. What does this Reconciliation mean.

The first level of its significance is apparent - very clearly and obviously explained by Paul in his letter: that God has reconciled us to Godself, non holding our faults against us! This is the oneness that God has effected, wanting is to be One with God - Reconciliation is that oneness with God, that belonging to God, that unity with God, which is a crucial meaning of salvation. 

There is yet another level of significance that this reconciliation can have - the reconciliation that is from within. When Paul declares, those who are in Christ are new creation, he insists upon this reconciliation, that we are reconciled within us, that we have no duplicity within us, that we have nothing within us that sports conflict. As Jesus explains in the Gospel - when we wish to mean yes, we say yes; and when we say no, we mean no! That is reconciliation, a simplicity that can be called Integrity. 

Integrity is a key element of new creations in Christ, the creations, the beings, the persons who have nothing that is in conflict within, or with anything else! There is this perfect harmony that can be a great spiritual experience, the unparalleled experience of salvation, a Reconciliation from within. When God reconciles us with Godself, we are called to grow into reconciled beings from within, persons of integrity - that shall indeed be a sign of the Ambassadors for Christ. 

An Absolute Choice for God - countering adultery anyday!

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

June 13, 2025 - Celebrating St. Anthony of Padua

2 Corinthians 4: 7-15; Matthew 5: 27-32

To a curious mind it would be important to insist that the etymology of "adult" and "adultery" are certainly not the same... because the tendency today is to justify adultery as an ambit of adults, a way of life for the adults to decide - that is a risky moral decadence! 

The Word today invites us to reflect on our call to refrain from adultery. Hence it becomes pertinent to answer the question, what is adultery? Is it merely an act of biological, physiological, sexual aberration in persons? Yes, and no. Yes, because it is so literally. No, because it is not merely that, as Jesus tells us in the Gospel today. That takes us to the etymology that we were speaking of earlier. 

Adultery as we know comes from the two terms - "ad" and "alterare" which mean respectively towards and altering... it is doing something towards altering the original nature of something - adulterating. 

We are created in the image and likeness of God and whatever leads us towards altering that nature of ours, is an adultery - be it seeing, hearing, doing, going or whatever. And Jesus tells us - find out what is that which makes you alter your course in life, making you move away from being children of God, remove it at its root and you shall grow to be a true son or daughter of God! 

But is it really possible for us to do? We are weak, fragile, and conditioned...precisely in this earthenware has the Lord placed the precious divine image and likeness! How carefully we need to care for it! That is our Christian vocation. It requires an unquestioning recognition and uncompromising appreciation of the treasure that we have inside and the call to preserve it. That is called an Absolute Choice for God. St. Antony whom we celebrate today, lived a life that was an incomparable witness to this Choice for God - in everything, in every way. That is the only way to counter adultery any day!

Pride, Prejudice and Presumption

WORD 2day: Thursday, 10th week in Ordinary time

June 12, 2025 - 2 Corinthians 3:15 - 4:1, 3-6; Matthew 5: 20-26

The Word today warns us of the veils, the veils that can obstruct us from beholding the Lord, listening to the voice of the Lord and seeing the Lord in action right amidst us. 

We are  presented with the two dominant veils that hinders humanity from observing something so obvious, the presence of God in this world - the veil of pride and prejudice! Pride that fills me so much with me, myself and mine, that I do not see the other, the world, the humanity or anything other than me. Prejudice is that opinion I have about the other which makes me blind to other, absent to the other, apathetic to the other and some times even a threat to the other, that I fail to see the other, the real other. All that I see is my opinion of the other. 

As a consequence of these veils, the pride within me and the prejudice about the other, I am lost in presumption and I think, I am all that I need to have a meaningful life on this earth! What a folly, a folly that is slowly and steadily taking over the entire humanity, in the name of scientificity, autonomy, self sufficiency and technocracy! 

The only remedy that we can foresee, is our docility to the Spirit, to the Spirit who penetrates our hearts as the light of the Lord, the voice of the Lord, the finger of the Lord that touches and brings us to life, to light and to the truth - that we may see beyond the veils of pride and prejudice and see our brothers and sisters, their dignity and the gift that they are, with the love with which the Lord has loved us: and we shall behold the Lord, here and now!

Being Sources of Encouragement

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

June 11, 2025: Celebrating St. Barnabas, the Apostle of Encouragement
Acts 11: 2b-126, 13: 1-3; Matthew 10: 7-13

The spirit of the Reign is a spirit of encouragement and empowerment, it cannot be merely cynicism and critique. Barnabas stood for this spirit of the Reign, and that was the reason the apostles named him so - the term meaning 'son of encouragement' (cf. Acts 4:36).

Some characteristics that stand out in Barnabas are his relentless passion for proclamation, his courage to brave all odds, his capacity for being sincere even to the extent of having confrontations with his close friend, Paul (Acts 15). What mattered to them, be it Paul or Barnabas, was the Message of God be announced and the Reign of God be made present; neither their personal likes or dislikes nor their ego demands affect their mission in anyway!

Reflecting on the great apostle we celebrate today, we have some lessons that he offers us:

1. Build up persons, that is the way to build up the Reign of God. Look at the way he brough Paul to the other apostles and stood by him and other messengers of the Lord.

2. Be faithful to the Lord, with a firm heart, that is the way to belong to the Reign. The life of Barnabas shows the way he renounced everything for the sake of the call that he had received - a firm heart that remained ever faithful to God.

3. Rejoice in the matters of the Lord, that is the way to invite people to the Reign. We can observe the amount of satifaction that Barnabas has when people converted themselves and were prepared to accept the salvific message of Christ.

Be encouraged, and be an encouragement to the others... that is the crux of the message today. May the apostle of encouragement we celebrate today, St. Barnabas intercede for us that we may be filled with the Spirit of encouragement and empowerment, thus being ourselves sources of encouragement wherever we are.

The Spirit and Truth - the task of the Reign

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 10th week in Ordinary time

June 10, 2025 - 2 Corinthians 1: 18-22; Matthew 5: 13-16

There is salt and there is the salt that has lost its taste - they look the same, but they are absolutely not the same. The difference is like the light and darkness, the difference is stark. That is how it is with an yes and anything other than that, says the Word today. 

We are living in a post-truth era, the social philosophers say. There is no more absolute truth in the eyes of the world - everything seems relative. There are only the logics and proofs to establish and truth is seconded to all these documented narratives. No one can be certain of which is the right narrative or the wrong one; in fact, there is only the loudest or the strongest narrative by now for the consumption. There are other narratives that are made voiceless and drowned in the lie. 

The danger is that this phenomenon gets replicated within each of us... that is, we allow the falsities within us take over our real selves so much that at a point of time, we ourselves do not know which is our real self and which is fake! That is the tasteless salt, at times poisonous salt - spreading not light but darkness! 

It is only the Spirit of the Lord who can keep us from this danger, protect us from this darkness, because the Spirit is Light, and those who are in the Spirit are in the light! We are called to be light and salt in this world, bearing witness to the truth - that is the task of the Reign. 

The Eve of Salvation

THE WORD AND THE FEAST

June 9, 2025 - Feast of Mary, Mother of the Church
Genesis 3: 9-15,20; John 19: 25-34

The Mother of the New born Church - that is whom we celebrate today. Mary was given as the Mother of, the Church to be born after the Son of God accomplished his earthly mission and the Spirit of the Lord came down to continue the mission in and through the Church. The two readings that we have today in the liturgy of the Word, explains to us how this mystery unfolds - we can reflect that with the following three instances.

1. The First Eve - the woman who was given

Eve was the mother of all those who lived... that is how Adam named her! She was given to him and that is why he says, 'the woman you gave me...' However, Eve was used by the evil one, she became an instruments at the hands of the tempter, bringing the opportunity of sin and perdition into the world, according to the Biblical account. She signalled the weakness that we possess as human persons in looking to do things on our own, despite the loving ways the Lord cares for us.

2. The Second Eve - the woman who gave herself

In contrast we are presented with another woman... one who gave herself to God - behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to your will. The tendency to do things on our own, the tendency to have our will, is countered by the readiness with which she surrenders herself to God and God's salvific plan. Just as God gave Adam a woman, do does God give this woman to the humankind and for the salvation of the humankind, as God prepares to send the Saviour through her.

3. The Eve of Salvation - the mother who was given

Just as God gave Eve to Adam and Mary to humanity as the new Eve, Jesus the Lord gives his mother as the Mother of all who would believe in him: behold your mother! Mary is given as the mother of the Church, the redeemed people of God, the chosen disciples of Christ, the people constituted into a Church by the infilling of the Holy Spirit. And Mary was there - just as she was there when the Creator was born into a fragile little child, also when the fragile little flock was made into a mighty people of God by the coming of the Spirit.

We gratefully remember today, late Pope Francis who added this beautiful element to our Faith tradition... celebrating the Mother of us all, as celebrated always by the Church and in the Church - the Eve of Salvation, the hope of the people of God. May our Blesssed Mother continue to walk with the pilgrim Church, pray with the Church and protect the Church on this pilgrimage towards Reign of God.

BEING PEOPLE OF THE SPIRIT

Growing Up... to be courageous, compassionate and Christ-like

June 8, 2025: The Solemnity of the Pentecost

Acts 2: 1-11; Romans 8: 8-17; John 14: 15-16, 23-26

The event of the Pentecost was a definitve turning point... and that is why we call that experience the birth of the Church, the Community of people who receive a new identity, and above all, begin to realise that identity and grow up in that identity! 

Being people of the Spirit is growing up to be Courageous (Models: Apostles):

The apostles were gathered in the room in fright and frustration but they were made fearlessly courageous by the Spirit of the Lord. They faced crowds, authorities and the whole world with a heart that would not give way to any anxiety or doubt. Their fearlessness came from the fact that they had the assurance of the Spirit - they did not have a clarity of what they are going to do, they did not have an economic security of someone sponsoring them for rest of their life, they did not have any written accord that they will have a free passage wherever they went. Instead, on the contrary, they had all sorts of confusion, utmost opposition and limitless insecurities. All that they had was the assurance of the presence of the Spirit with them, and that was enough for them!

Dares are attractions for some and taking risk is considered an exhilarating life-renewer with the dose of adrenalin that it pumps into the system. But that is not the courage we speak of here. The courage here comes from God; from the One who has ordained a path, a mission, a task for us and the presence of the Spirit is an assurance that we would be led step by step into that journey. We do not know what awaits, we do not know who will be there with us or who will not be, we do not know whether we will reach the very end of the journey - but we dare to embark on that journey because the Spirit is with us, who assures us that wherever we are, we are with God; and God is with us!

Being people of the Spirit is growing up to be Compassionate (Models: Early Christians):

The Early Christians were one in mind and heart, they were sensitive to each other, they were filled with compassion, they were united in love! There were Jews of all "cadres", there were some samaritans too probably, there were Romans too as the centurion and the household who were converted, there were Greeks and the Egyptians (like the Court official who was converted), there were rich and there were the daily labourers, there were the learned and there were those who were simple peasants... but they were all one community - the community of those who believed in the Lord, their new found Saviour, Jesus the Christ. They were all made into One people of the Spirit.

They were people of the Spirit, united in the Lord into one body, one body in the Lord! Despite all their differences they were one because of the action of the Spirit - the Spirit who made them understand each other, who made them love each other and care for each other. The Oneness of the people of the Spirit, that they were one in heart and mind, was concretely expressed in the fact that they were one in feeling for each other too: they had no one among them who was in need. They felt for, they felt with and they felt one with each other - that was the action of the Spirit.

Being people of the Spirit is growing up to be Christ-like (Models: Disciples)

The disciples together were called to grow to be like Christ. To grow to be like Christ is to grow in the image of the Lord given by the Spirit. To be disciples of Christ is to grow in the likeness of Christ, to think like Christ, to speak like Christ, to act like Christ and to decide like Christ in every thing. We are not talking about the apostles who had a special and particular role to perform within the community, we are talking of everyone born in waters of the Risen Christ and in the fire of the Holy Spirit... the disciples, the people of God.

Those who are in the Christ are a new creation! Just as the Spirit was at the centre of the process when the Word took flesh and became one among us, the Spirit once again is at the centre filling us and making us one with the image of Christ... that we are recreated into 'alter christus'! We are created anew into children of the God, whom Jesus introduced to us as "my Father and your Father"! Those who are in the Spirit are true children of God, empowered to call God, Abba Father!

With courage, in communion with each other, we are empowered by the Spirit to grow into the People of God, children of God who are called to make God present in concrete, wherever we are

Peter and Paul... You and me!

WORD 2day: Saturday after the Ascension Sunday

June 7, 2025: Acts 28: 16-20, 30-31; John 21: 10-25

These days we continuously hear of Paul and Peter, the two great leaders who led the band of apostles in their proclamation of the Gospel and the initial formation of the Church. They announced the Gospel in season and out of season, in the prison or out of it, in political custody or in the public squares, in health and in sickness, among the faithful or among skeptics, among simple peasants or to learned philosophers. Nothing held them back from preaching the Word.

Looking for ideal situations to evangelise, bemoaning the political atmosphere or the social apprehensions, finding excuses for remaining unnoticed Christians and justifying our lack of initiatives towards evangelisation: these are very common these days. Tomorrow we will be celebrating the feast of the descent of the Holy Spirit causing the birth of the Church.

Let us pray for the Spirit, the Spirit of power, love and self-discipline, the Spirit of courage and wisdom, the Spirit who strengthens apostles and empowers martyrs, that we may be persons filled with the Spirit and witnessing to the Gospel without ceasing. Peter and Paul are no more, if we do not become Peters, Pauls, Aquillas and Priscillas!