WORD 2day

5^th August, 2013

Discouragement in the life of a disciple – a moment to take stock and bounce back! Moses feels overburdened today, with the weight not just of carrying the people along, but of their obstinacy not to perceive all that is so good and blessed around! The signs and wonders notwithstanding, the people decide to be unhappy and never to be convinced of the goodness that surrounds them. As a disciple in ministry sometimes, all the good that is done and all the troubles that are taken seem to be ignored and much worse, interpreted wrongly! We see this discouragement in every person of God – apart from Moses presented today, Jeremiah (20:14-16), Paul, ... the great prophets and disciples experienced it – Jesus was no exception. Today we find Jesus, withdrawing to a secluded place after hearing the execution of John the Baptist. As if to have been reminded of his own fate to come, Jesus resorts to a time of solitude with the One who has sent him! Discouragements in our life too can be made moments of blessings if we opt to spend those moments with the right persons – first of all with God, who is always with us; then with persons of God who are given to us as reminders of God’s presence! When they are utilized well, as moments to take stock, we can bounce back into action with a renewed spirit, as it happens with Moses, who grows so strong in his rapport with Yahweh who stood by his side all the while; like Jesus who comes up with the feat of feeding the multitude, as Yahweh did in the desert! Discouragements are part of the package of our experiences – they have something to tell us, something to offer us. If we are ready to wait on the Lord, we will surely gather every bit of the blessings in store!

PILGRIMS TO PARADISE

4TH AUGUST 2013: 18TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

A wise man lived in a tent in the deserts of Arabia. Numerous people went to meet him everyday either for a blessing or a counsel or merely to see the saintly man! Once entered a man who was totally surprised that there was nothing, absolutely nothing inside the tent – not even a stool for a furniture! And he asked the wise man, “Where are your furnitures?” The wise man looked up and instead of answering that question, retorted, “and where are yours?” “But I am only a traveler, a passer-by” protested the visitor. And without losing his calm the wise man quipped, “So am I; a traveler, a passer-by!”

We are all travelers, passers-by, pilgrims towards our heavenly home, pilgrims to paradise! We do not have a permanent home here, we are looking towards it, says the letter to the Hebrews(13:14). When the Word of God repeatedly reminds us that we are merely “strangers and pilgrims” (Heb 11:13; 1 Pet 2:11), it is not a negative outlook on our life here and now, but a lasting perspective to understand it in the right manner! We are not permanent here on earth, however famous or important we are – and that is an obvious truth, so much forgotten or so much neglected by our ambitious world! We are not in an oblivion, as if to say we do not know our origins nor our future! No! The second reading today tells us, “Brothers and sisters, you are risen with Christ” – We are resurrected people, people of the Risen Lord, who awaits us in the heavenly abode, for us to be with him for eternity! We are on a journey, we are on a pilgrimage! And on this pilgrimage we need a travel kit! The Liturgy today reminds us of three essential components that should find their place in that kit – those components are Wisdom, Knowledge and Discernment!

The first of the components is Wisdom – the capacity to know the difference between the vanities and values in life!  There are those who run after wealth all their life and finally discover that they have infact lost their whole life for nothing! Attachments, Ego, Vain glory, prestige, power and pleasure can mislead our minds and spoil our spirits, leading to a life so empty and erroneous. Persons entrusted to us by God, Love that brightens every morning and illuminates every night, Relationships that give meaning and make us feel wanted- these can help us live our life for others and ultimately for God, who is the very source of that life and the only One who can throw light on its real meaning! Vanities and Values – both shine but it depends on me to differentiate the real brilliance and the fake lustre.

Knowledge is another necessary element to never lose our way on this journey! Knowledge is not merely a collection of information, it is the capacity to choose between the virtues and vices! St. Paul instructs us through his letter to the Colossians today (3:10) that to put on the new person, is to be renewed in the fullness of knowledge after the image of the One who has created us! God is the fullness of knowledge, that is, the fullness of Virtues who shows us how our lives have to be lived! “To make them know the beauty of virtue and the ugliness of vices” was the task given to Don Bosco, the educator of the young, by the Risen Lord and the Blessed Mother. The right knowledge guides us on our path and leads us through right choices.

The third and the most difficult of all is Discernment! To store up right treasure in the right place! The clarity of what is truly the treasure to be sought and the choice of the right place to store them, is the most important truth every religion and faith intends to present. The readings today direct us to this discernment! Living in a world of consumerism and globalization, days of technological advancement and communication revolution, we are today made to think deep with the situations of war, violence, killings, greed, corruption, domination, deception, exploitation and dehumanization all around us. The choice is ours, either to be carried by the current or to swim against the current! If we are carried by the current we are dead and buried in this world of vanity! If we dare to stand against it and swim countercurrent, we are people of the Risen Lord, the followers of the living Lord, real pilgrims to paradise!

WORD 2day

3rd August, 2013

A Jubilee celebration and a Birthday celebration - those are what the readings speak of today! Celebrations form an important part of any society. And the mode of celebrations exhibits amply the culture of the society of provenience. What should a Christian celebration be like, is the question we are invited to reflect on today! The First reading tells us what it should be and the Gospel, what it shouldn't be. Insensitive expenditures, egoistic self propaganda, lustful indulgence, uncontrolled inebriation, objectification of persons, a show of pomp that is inconsistent with the prevailing conditions of inhumanity, an unjustifiable splendour that is so removed from the stark reality of a great part of the society - these are clear indications of a celebration that is UNCHRISTIAN or even anti-Christian. A real Christian celebration should bring to the centre of focus the well being of those who are suffering, those who are struggling under constant poverty and inhumanity, those who face the hardship of want and helplessness of misery day in and day out, those who have got used to living in a state of misfortune, those who find their lives everyday becoming more and more difficult - the celebration should come as a consolation, a hand on the shoulders of these loving children of God! The Jubilee year proposed by the Lord to the people and the ways to observe the Jubilee highlight the elements of selfless concern for the other, a sacrifice for the sake of the less fortunate, justice and righteousness, brotherhood and sisterhood, doing no wrong to the other and the most important of all, a fuller sharing of God's love with one another! We will do well today, to examine our celebrations!

WORD 2day

2nd August, 2013

Due to their lack of faith, Jesus did not work many mighty deeds among them, says the Gospel today. I remember once talking to a group of youngsters, a young friend asked me, "If God could not do a miracle, be it for whatever reason, is it not a limitation or a weakness?" "It is not God's weakness", I said, "but the strength that God has shared with us." God created us in God's image and likeness and this likeness ensures that we are hardly different from God (Ps.8)! That makes us also persons with inviolable freedom, a freedom which not even God would take away. Though many dissent it saying it is the cause of scores of evil in the world, it is that which makes us human, and gives us the dignity as the images of the Creator. Without the 'personal freedom' we would be no more than the animals. Faith and Freedom have a great deal to do with each other. Faith is a response given in freedom, a total absolute freedom of the inner being of a person. Jesus in his freedom chooses to enter the synagogue to pray with his people and the people with their freedom choose to see only the apparent facts of Jesus, as the son of the carpenter and a son of their soil. They were not able to see the divine import of his actions, his words and the signs that he was accomplishing. Today, it can happen so if we look at Jesus as someone kept aside for sundays and some moments of others days, and a few other grand days in out life! All the festivals that the people celebrated - as we see in the first reading -were a preparation for them to receive in fullness the presence of the Lord among them! But when they are carried out for the sake of the rule that is laid out, they lose their real purpose, and no more help in SEEING the Lord present. It is an oft repeated warning from the Lord, not to make our spirituality legalistic and our piety pharisaic!

WORD 2day

1st August, 2013 - Remembering St. Alphonse of Liguori

'As the Lord commanded' - we find that phrase repeated atleast thrice in today's first reading, leave alone counting the number of times it appears in the whole life of Moses narrated in the book of Exodus. Doing what the Lord wants, was the key preoccupation for Moses and that is what he taught his people...hence he is presented as the greatest law-giver!  He even made it clear to the Lord when he said, "If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here" (Exo 33:15). Being with the Lord and never going away from the Lord's presence was everything for the people of Israel. Good fish and Bad fish...resembling the sheep and the goats (in Mat 25)... Jesus presents the reality of the choice that we have to make in life - a radical choice for or against God that would determine every single decision and even the minutest moves of our life. There can be no compromises in this - it is either being in the net or being cast out of it! 'A scribe instructed in the Kingdom of heaven' is a person who is strong as a scribe in the laws and the commandments, but with a clear perspective of the Kingdom that reinterprets, reinvigorates and rejuvenates all understanding one has of God and of spirituality. To be instructed someone has to instruct! Alphonsus Liguori, whom we remember today, was a saint of the 18th century, who felt a special call to instruct people in faith, to preach the Word to the people...that they may always remain in the presence of the Lord. Remaining in the presence of the Lord forever, is possible because the Lord accompanies us, 'as cloud by day and fire by night' the presence of the Lord goes before us. With that illumining and guiding presence, we can be sure of staying always within the net, because it will become our way of life to live and do, as the Lord commands! 

WORD 2day

31st July, 2013 - Remembering St. Ignatius of Loyola

The need to cover your face! We have an interesting account of Moses who would cover his face with a veil because, it shone after the meeting with the Lord. We see in the television newscast and other dailies where people cover their face, when taken into police custody or arrested for some malpractices! Two extreme reasons which can lead us to cover our face - in shame or in a holy embarrassment - it all depends on one fact - Where lies your treasure or Which is the pearl you are in search of? Many of the saints who found their treasure in the Lord, were found to act crazy! They gave up everything - their wealth, their prospects, their career, their comfort, their health, even their life - because they found the Lord and the Lord's will for them! Some of them were even considered lunatic and taken to asylums. As St. Paul says, they have behaved like "fools for Christ"(1 Cor 4:10). Ignatius of Loyola whom we remember today, was a man of those ranks. In the thirtieth year of his life, he came to know the Lord at a closer communion and fell so madly in love with the Lord that he was ready to do anything "FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF GOD". A holy madness that led to the great movement of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) and so many other movements related to that; a craze for the divine that has produced scores and scores of holy men and women in the last 5 centuries, and the present Holy Father our beloved Pope Francis! We will have no wrong reasons to cover of face, if our treasure and our pearl remains forever, the Reign of God!

WORD 2day

30th July, 2013

Let your light Shine - is a constant invitation from the Saviour to all those who profess their faith in him. What do we do for the light to shine - ofcourse we have to do things right, just and loving! But more fundamental than that - before we do anything, we need to BE. Like Moses, we need to be in the presence of the Lord, in the Tent of Meeting - then our light will shine, as the face of Moses shone so much that the people of Israel were afraid of gazing at it (2 Cor 3:7). The Gospel today, gives us the same invitation, in and through the explanation of the parable of the weeds explained to us by Jesus. "The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father" says the Gospel, underlining the circumstances in which we will shine to the world! Infact, many of us are in search of this Tent of Meeting(Exo 33:7)... in places of pilgrimage, in events of miraculous nature, in our practices of strenuous personal piety and so on! All these are appreciable efforts and readings today give us two possibilities of spotting this tent - One the Inner Sanctuary of personal integrity, that Jesus speaks of in the parable of the weeds. The Lord has blessed us with goodness within us, it depends on our use of personal freedom to retain that goodness or contaminate it with baser tendencies. The second is the Mobile Tents of the Others, where God encounters us at every moment of our day. Living as Moses did for the others and in total dedication to their well being, is an unfailing means to encounter the Lord. Let our hearts be tuned to the Tent of Meeting that we may encounter the Lord today!

WORD 2day

29th July, 2013 - Remembering St. Martha

Let us begin with an interesting fact that today's feast is a fruit of a mistake... a mistaken identity in history which equated Mary Magdalene with Mary, the sister of Martha. If you remember exactly a week ago (on 22nd) we celebrated the feast of Mary of Magdala, calculating a week from there, in history they wanted to celebrate the alleged sister of Mary, that is Martha!?! Though a mistake, a happy mistake and we should be happy to celebrate today the feast of this person, who was all preoccupied to express her love for Jesus Christ in every way that she possibly could. Another interesting fact is that today, the Church gives us a choice in the Gospel - either from John or from Luke. The text from Luke we reflected upon just a week ago on the 16th Sunday. So let us turn our attention to the Gospel from St. John, the scene of Jesus' arrival after three days of Lazarus' death. Thanks to John, he redeems the image of Martha as a workaholic and helps us identify in her a person who had a deep understanding of who Jesus was. The affirmations that Martha comes out with shows how practical her faith in Christ was; that she set out and ran towards Jesus indicates the eagerness she had to meet him; and the openness she had towards the Lord and the Lord's power over any circumstance shows how deep her faith was. An active love for God and a unwavering faith in the Lord - these are the two lessons that Martha teaches us. How relevant they are for the world of today, which is characterised by godless spirituality, inhuman development and unethical rationality! However, on a practical note, it is a good day to express our gratitude and felicitate the home-makers (the so-called house-wives!!!) who make our lives so pleasant!

PRAYER IS RELATIONSHIP

28th July, 2013 - 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Prayer... A Christian Prayer... An authentic Christian Prayer... A Christ-like prayer is fundamentally one's Relationship with God. Out of the numerous attributes to God that were proper to the historical experience of the people of Israel, which was his own experience - Jesus picked that of 'Father'. That was the most scandalous of all, for the Jews. When Jesus called God, Abba, Father (Mk 14:36) as we see in Gospels, he was demonstrating an intimate relationship that existed, not only between him and the One who sent him, but also between everyone who believes in him and God...as John says, to all who believed in him, he gave the right to become the children of God (Jn 1:12). Radically for Jesus, faith was a process of acknowledging a God who reveals Godself as a father, a mother, one who created us, one who cares for us! Consequently, Prayer for him was a relationship that one shares with God; a relationship that is built on a personal sharing - on DIALOGUE.

Prayer is a Dialogue... a dialogue where there is a sharing of minds and oneness of heart. Abraham, today is presented in the reading as dialoguing with God... he does not only speak his mind but listens to God and gets to know God's mind. A beautiful picture of a person in conversation with God - trying to raise his preoccupations, with the limited knowledge that he has, but with the concern he has for the life of the others. And an amazing depiction of God who knows very well that there will not be even 10 righteous people as Abraham claims, but listens patiently to his pleas, allows him to talk and permits him to share his concerns. At times when we begin to furnish a list to God and ask that to be granted on order; or when we make programmes and suggest God to follow; or when we find problems with God's designs and suggest improvements - we need to remind ourselves of this dimension of prayer - prayer as a dialogue! It consists not only in speaking but also in listening, waiting for and accepting God's will. Prayer is a dialogue, a dialogue that is initiated by the overwhelming RECOGNITION OF GOD'S GOODNESS.

The overwhelming recognition of God's goodness and majesty is what initiates the process of dialogue! The Psalm beautifully presents the human heart opening itself up to God, in praise and thanksgiving! A true Christian prayer begins there! St. Paul formulates this so well in his letter instructing, "do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God" (Phil 4:6). When we recognise the loving presence, the helping hand, the protecting wings, the sheltering solace of God on a daily basis, we cannot help singing the praise of God inspite of the endless needs and preoccupations we can possibly have in life! That recognition of God's goodness and majesty and our readiness to acknowledge and submit to it, bestows on us the greatest of all gifts, the TOTAL ACCEPTANCE BY GOD. 

Prayer is the relationship that is born out of the realisation that God accepts me totally, unconditionally, inspite of all my iniquities. The second reading today affirms that God has forgiven me, buried all my sins and nailed them to the Cross on which my saviour Jesus died for me! And with the same Jesus, God has raised me to the status of God's child, in my baptism! God loves me so much that God accepts me with all my limitations, with all my childishness, with all my idiosyncrasies. Comparing this relationship to friendship in the parable that Jesus narrates today, he subtly communicates a point that we can be sometimes foolish, simplistic and thoughtless in the things that we ask from God or in the way we ask for them. Still, we need not hesitate, we can go right on and do it, because God accepts us as we are. It is that affirmation that gives us the right to stand in the presence of the Lord and be ourselves, as Abraham dared to be! 

Let us treasure this great relationship we have with God, yearn to be in God's presence and live in God's presence as authentically as possible, as innocent and dependent as children, as grateful and obedient as sons and daughters, as rightful and loving as Jesus himself was towards God, whom he revealed to us our Our Father and Mother! 

WORD 2day

27th July, 2013

You cannot surprise the Master; you can never surprise God! With all the goodwill, as the people of Israel said a loud 'yes' to the ordinances of the covenant and made that solemn ceremony of swearing by the sacrificial blood which God instituted as the blood of the covenant, we too make promises galore. When everything seems to be going well,  we find ourselves unwittingly giving into something we would rather not. We can call it infidelity to God, breakaway from God, sin, or merely a mistake! But when we do find ourselves in such situation, lies the challenge that Jesus wants to address today! I have heard people explaining the reason for not approaching the sacrament of Eucharist or reconciliation for years, saying that they feel they are not worthy, that they feel they are too weak or that they keep falling into sin again and again, that they don't want to disrespect the sacraments. Here lies the trap of the enemy! A subtle but dangerous trap...the trap of self pity which leads to sad succumbing into one's shortfalls. Who is not unworthy? Who is not weak? And who does not have limitations! It is while we are still in sin, that God loves us, affirms St.Paul (Rom 5:8). It is while the weeds are still present the Lord permits the crop to grow, in the parable that Jesus narrates today. You cannot surprise or shock God; God knows everything, absolutely everything(Ps 139). God is patient and kind; with all our impurities, limitations and infidelities, God still loves us and waits for us to grow in our hearts, strong good crops that would outdo the weeds. Everyday is an opportunity to suppress a weed and allow a good crop to grow in our hearts and become more and more worthy of the gratuitous gift of love that we receive from God. Let every day be a sacrifice of praise that we offer to the Lord!