WORD 2day: 22nd March, 2014

RETURN TO THE FATHER'S HEART

Faithfulness of God to God's people is expressed in God's boundless mercy. The first reading explains how it has always been so in history; and in the Gospel, Jesus presents this fact with a parable which  pictures the Father's heart with an incredible clarity: a heart that is forgiving, welcoming, compassionate, merciful, kind, unconditionally loving and absolutely faithful. When recently I shared this with a group of youngsters, one of them asked - 'but why should God forgive me and why should God be so merciful?' The answer was so simple, 'because "God is Love" (1 Jn 4:8)'. It is not merely that God loves, but the fact is, God is Love! God is madly in love with us... and that immense love is greater than any of my sin, it is greater than any force that blocks me from getting closer to God. All that I need to do is to decide like that son, "I will rise and go to my Father!"; all that I need to do today, is decide to RETURN to the Father's mercy; avail of the bountiful gift of forgiveness at the sacrament of reconciliation and be drenched in the mercy that flows from the Father's heart.

WORD 2day: 21st March, 2014

RETURN TO GOD'S WILL

A common phrase we come across in the two readings of today is, "Come let us kill him". The world today is no different - there are people who are prepared to even kill the other, for the sake of achieving their ends: be it killing them literally, or character assassination or killing the dreams of the other, killing the prospects of the other... it is a clear demonstration of obstinacy of one's personal will. However intricately we plan and however clinically we execute it, we are bound to have a restlessness in our hearts that will overtake us at some point or other in life. We will experience true peace and serenity in our hearts, when and only when, we are able to surrender our lives and all its aspects into the hands of God, and live according to God's will, bearing the fruits expected of us and bearing witness to the unconditional love of God! Return to God's will and you will rediscover the true meaning of life in God. 

WORD 2day: 20th March, 2014

RELEARN RIGHT PRIORITIES

Religious Commitment is not merely about rites, rituals, performances and practices! Christian faith is primarily about priorities. Life and all that it involves is a gift from God, and it makes meaning only as long as it is lived with that perspective clear and strong. At times the values that the times teach us, the priorities that the society promotes, makes us look at riches, comforts, social status, economic security, personal attachments as things that matter most. Taken well, these can bring us to realise, understand and cherish the giftedness involved. But taken amiss, they can confuse our priorities, as it happens with the rich man in today's parable. Jeremiah invites us to live a life as trees planted by the course of a river, to grow and flourish in grace and giftedness; and the way is to Relearn Right Priorities. Let God be the first priority in our life and we will surely be transported to the bosom of Abraham.

The Call to Serve...

Ordinations to Diaconate : 18th March, 2014

Today I had the grace of being part of the ceremony of the ordination of 9 deacons, held at Don Bosco Shrine, Ayanavaram, Chennai. It was a reminder of my call to serve, as the 9 of them were ordained deacons by Rt. Rev. Dr. Sounderraju Periyanayagan DD SDB, in a eucharistic celebration concelebrated by over 80 priests and laity of a packed church. Not to be served but to serve, said the theme that ran through the liturgy which was ably animated by the staff of Don Bosco, Kavarapettai and the hosting parish. My prayer was just this - that these words do not become just a fad or a cliche, but that I begin really to mean them. The self emptying of the Trinity, the example of the saints beginning with our Blessed Mother and the demands of the Salesian Constitution - these are the points of focus that posed a challenge to me, to renew my commitment to the Lord and the call that i have received, not to be served but to serve!

19th March, 2014 : Solemnity of St. Joseph

RETURN TO THE PROMISES

The feast of St. Joseph usually comes during the season of lent. The Church makes an exception to acknowledge the unique role played by the person of Joseph, within the salvation plan! Though an exception in the grade of celebration, as we break off from the violet and the sobriety of the lent and break into golden vestments and a solemnity in the liturgy, we can still stick to the scheme of our lenten project: St. Joseph is a reminder to RETURN to the promises!

Joseph is a personality who resembles more the patriarchs of the Old Testament...like Abraham, or Jacob, or Joseph. He stands for the promises of the Lord that are fulfilled to details, in God's own time. The first reading and the second invite us to reflect on the theme of promise and the Gospel presents to us the life of a person who was certain that the Lord is faithful to the promises he makes. Imitating St. Joseph, when troubles come our way, when we are hard up for solutions in difficult times, when we find ourselves before choices to make for the family, for the well being of those who love us and our beloveds, let us RETURN to the promises of the Lord. Standing on the promises of the Lord, we can live our daily life with serenity, inspite of the uncertainties that surround. May St. Joseph inspire us!

WORD 2day: 18th March, 2014

RELEARN INTEGRITY

"Do what they tell you but do not do what they do" - how would I feel if someone said this of me! My deeds have to speak the words of faith, and my faith has to be demonstrated by congruent and consistent deeds. Orthodoxy and Orthopraxis are two things that cannot be separated one from the other. Humility, Mercy, Forgiveness, Compassion and True Love...if these do not describe my person, I am no Christian! The more I grow in these, the more I grow to be a Christian. Often we pose a question: but what do I gain from these apart from the problems and disadvantage that I get into? Not for any gain or not for any advantage, but not to lose the integrity of my person that I need to grow in these. Sans integrity, life as a Christian will be a farce! The integrity that Jesus had, gave him the authority to stand up and speak, be it in the sanhedrin or before the Roman Governor. If my Christian life has to have meaning, I need absolutely to relearn integrity.

WORD 2day: 17th March, 2014

RELEARN THE MEANING OF BEING GOOD

Lent is not merely a moment of some rigorous self control but it is essentially a moment of enhancing our goodness, the goodness that lies deep within us because we are made in the image and likeness of God. We are not called just to return to the dust from which we supposedly came, but we are invited to become one with the eternal living God - the eternal life promised by God, through Christ the Son and Saviour. In being good or doing good, it is possible that we are guided by reasons like - expecting a good return or not to incur the wrath of justice or in return for a good received or in view of presenting a picture of good self to the others! However, the most Christian of all disposition is to be good, because it is my vocation; to do good because it is my essential nature! Being good, merciful and holy because the Lord who has made me, is good merciful and holy - that is the real meaning of being good!

LEARNING FROM TRANSFIGURATION

Lenten Project 2014: Sunday #2 - 16th March

We are invited to meditate on one of the marvelous incidents in the life of Jesus and his disciples - the Transfiguration. Peter, James and John were the three privileged ones to be there at this spectacle. But was it only a spectacle...what purpose does it serve within the whole picture of Christ's life and mission? That would be an interesting question to ask, as  it comes very close to the end of Jesus' public mission. More interesting fact is that the Church invites us to this reflection during the season of lent...a season when we are intensely thinking of the sufferings of the Lord. 

For Jesus, the suffering did not start merely at the moment of the arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane! It was there right through...there were moments when the people rejected him, wanted to throw him from the cliff, despised him saying they knew him too well, endlessly asked for signs and wonders as if he were some street charlatan, failed miserably to understand him! Jesus would have been anxious too about how his ministry was really going on! Jesus felt the special call from the One who sent him, to stand up and to voice the call of the Lord to the people! And when he set off to understand that call and realise it in life...he was faced with a myriad of problems. Might be that Jesus himself needed that wonderful assurance from God as a preparation for what lay in store for the coming days...the passion and death that awaited him. Secondly, it could have served as a trailer for the disciples who were in for a great trial within a few days. And the Church wants us to learn exactly these for our own life of faith too.

The Glory of the Lord is always present within us. All that Jesus had to do was to merely go by himself up the mount. The Glory of the Lord is ever present within us and all that we need to do is to make time to be by ourselves. Amidst the din of daily life and trying responsibilities, we may not manage to really be by ourselves. Even our prayer moments could be so filled with thoughts and preoccupations that we fill them so much with words, figures and plans which take away the space that we could share alone with God, who wants to speak to us! Being by ourselves... is an important spiritual exercise that we need to do every day... call it meditation or contemplation or merely prayer or retreat or recollection or whatever. It is when we are by ourselves that we can really turn to that glory of the Lord which resides within us.

Understanding the Glory sends us back to the daily life. Experiencing the glory of the Lord is not to get stuck there, reminds us Jesus. Peter's spontaneous response is usually what we wish in life - when we experience the Lord's presence close to us, may be at a miraculous happening, or a mysterious turn of events, or a joyful coincidence. But in fact it is merely a preparation for a moment that is trying, for a moment when difficult things happen, for a moment which cannot be explained in normal logic, for a moment when we need an extraordinary strength to remain faithful. The transfiguration of Jesus would have been running through Peter's mind all the time during the moments of darkness - the death of Jesus, the crisis of faith and the hidden life in the upper room. That is why he writes in his letter about this event (2 Pet 1: 17-18). Peter wanted to remain in that glory when he saw but Jesus reminds him to return to his daily life! Spending time with God, is not to remain there in that sanctuary, rapt in glory and praise, but it is to return to our daily life and live it more meaningfully; it is to take that experience into the daily life and make meaning out of it.

The Glory of the Lord sheds new light to our days. The experience on the mount could have strengthened Jesus to walk with assurance towards Jerusalem. The experience of the disciples would have given them a new insight into who Jesus was. In a life filled with normal commitments and extraordinary sufferings, the experience of God's glory can clarify and illumine our path, preparing us to live them with newer meaning and fresher strength. St. Paul reminds us of that in the second reading today, asking us to derive strength from the Lord to bear our share of hardships. Every Eucharist we celebrate is a transfiguration event, and it is an invitation to relearn to live our life with increased meaning and commitment. Should we remain the same after a Eucharistic Celebration, either we have not been by ourselves on that mount or we have been blind to that resplendent glory. The voice resounds at every Eucharist: This is my beloved Son,...Listen to Him." If we manage to gaze at the glory of the Lord and listen to the voice of the Lord, our life will be transformed and transfigured.

To turn to the glory that resides within us, to return strengthened to live our life with increased commitment and to relearn the real meaning of the life of faith: that is the project that today's word presents to us. Let us intensify our Lenten Journey and may the Spirit inspire us ahead.

WORD 2day: 15th March, 2014

RELEARN LAW AS LOVE

The first reading presents to us Moses the law giver and the covenant that he mediated between God and the people of Israel. In a parallel sense, the Gospel presents Jesus the New law giver and the covenant that he mediates between God and us. The figure of Jesus as the new law giver is not in despite of the old law, but an invitation to perfection, a perfection that involves an endless journey of transcendence right upto realising within us the image and likeness of our Creator. In fact it is a process of becoming conscious of our identity as children of God, an identity that makes us never satisfied of the perfection we have reached at any point of time - because the perfection of God is the goal that is presented to us by Jesus. That is a life time task, a task that invites us to keep walking, to keep learning, not just to keep the law and fulfill its requirements but to keep loving persons without measure, like God who loves us so unconditionally. It is an invitation to relearn law and spell it as LOVE.

WORD 2day: 14th March, 2014

RELEARN RIGHTEOUSNESS

Every social institution teaches one how to be good and how to act acceptable to the rest of the society, within a context. Religion is the easiest and most efficacious means of enforcement in this regard. Jesus today makes a difference between a simplistic understanding of religion and a profound sense of faith: faith as a personal response of a person to God, requires a perfection of a greater quality. It is not merely a life that is concerned about keeping the law, but it is all about going beyond it - in being sensitive to the feelings of the other, staying attentive to the needs of the other, and reaching out to the other in a self-giving love! Whole life cannot be spent on avoiding the evil, we are called to grow in goodness, personify goodness and spread goodness wherever we are. Jesus invites us to relearn what it means to be righteous; to surpass the righteousness of the world and set standards that are really worthy of the children of God.