WORD 2day: 27th May, 2014

The Advocate to come...

Acts 16:22-34; Jn 16: 5-11

Beaten, bruised and bound, they sang the praises of the Lord! Will not the glory of the Lord be revealed there? The act of Paul and Silas in the prison was such a powerful witness that the prison guards expected anything anytime. They were capable of it, because of the Spirit that filled them, fueled them and fired them.

It is the Advocate that Jesus promised to his disciples who makes the entire difference and the difference is enormous. We see this in the very first moment when the apostles come out to speak in public. The frightened band of messengers had been turned into fiercely blazing firebrands. 

Added to this, Jesus says, when He comes He will convict the world. Every heart is given the possibility to know what is true, good and just; every human heart has a longing for someone beyond oneself; every person called by the waters of baptism realises at the core of one's being, the need to be a righteous witness. Sin, righteousness and judgement - they decide the quality of one's witnessing life. Are we prepared to receive the Advocate who is to come?

WORD 2day: 26th May, 2014

On our way to the Reign

Acts 16: 11-15; Jn 15: 26 - 16: 4

"The Spirit of truth" that Jesus speaks of in the Gospel is witnessed to be at work in the first reading event from the Acts of the Apostles - that of the lady and her household, who accept the Lord and get baptised! While on the one hand there are people who are waiting to take the apostles to task and persecute them in all known ways, there are at the same time a multitude who are ready to protect, help and fend for them.

This discrepancy comes to the fore in our day to day experience too, when we find the Spirit at work within us. We will feel an urge to spread the Word, but will be faced with obstacles and hurdles: it is the Spirit of the Lord who leads us to discern the rightway that a believing community should take at a particular point of time. Though the persecutions may abound, the final result will be a 'revival'...and that is what we hope for.

Let our hearts, homes and our households be filled with the Spirit of truth, that we may set in motion real journey towards the Reign of God. 

WORD 2day: 23rd May, 2014

Friends of Christ

Acts 15: 22-31; Jn 15: 12-17

While the readings on the one hand insist on making the burden easy for the new converts to faith, on the other hand we find lofty demands such as even giving one's life for one's neighbours! The point is clear... Our faith is not a matter of do's and don'ts; it is a matter of relationship. Our faith redefines our relationship with God: from mere creatures we are given the identity of God's beloved; friends of Christ! 

Being friends of Christ, it is natural that the demands are high. After all, did not Jesus insist that, "from the one to whom much is given, much will be demanded" (Lk 12:48)? But the demands are not merely to do something and to avoid something else, but the demand is about an entire lifestyle. It is to model our life after that of Christ. 

The relationship with Christ, or the friendship with Jesus affects all other relationships of our's. The friends of our friend, should be our friends too! The love we have for the Lord compels us to be loving persons with every person around us: not just our friends, but even with strangers, people whom we just casually bump into, or even with those who might have offended us. Even if we do not lay down our life, are we not expected to lay down at least our ego when it comes to our relationships?

WORD 2day: 22nd May, 2014

Get your basics right!

Acts 15: 7-21; Jn 15: 9-11

The apostles, in the first reading, so clearly mirror the mind of Jesus who said, "my yoke is easy, my burden is light" (Mt 11:30). They decide that anything more than what is really necessary is an unwanted burden. Jesus dared to summarise the whole of the law into just one dense, profound and challenging word: LOVE. 

The commandments served but one purpose: Remaining in the love of the Lord.  That was the only concern that Jesus had. Jews or Gentiles, circumscised or uncircumsised, it did not matter to Jesus and the apostles learnt it clearly. St. Paul would say categorically in 1 Cor 7:19 - "circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing; Keeping God's command is what counts." 

This is the mindset with which Jesus says: "the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments" (Mat 22:40) - the Love of God and the love of the neighbour. What other summary can we give for a Christian life, other than this? Let us beware of complicating issues: our faith is simple, easy and light, if we get our basics right: L O V E.

WORD 2day: 21st May, 2014

The First Ecumenical Council of the Church

Acts 15: 1-6; Jn 15: 1-8

Just last year we celebrated the 50th year of the opening of the Vatican Council II, an ecumenical council that has revolutionised the Church of late. Today we have the account of the first ever ecumenical council held: the Council of Jerusalem! It stands as a wonderful Christian model of handling crisis and confusion: getting together in brotherly dialogue and faithful communion. 

The Community of faith gives us a splendid possibility of remaining united as branches to the one Vine, Jesus. Today, when crisis and confusion arise, how many human methodologies we follow to handle them: writing anonymous letters, spreading calumny about others, raising unchristian slogans and following uncharitable actions. Is it truly a 'Christ'ian way of approaching  problem? What are we aiming at? Establishing our ego? Gaining our political mileage? Division among us is the worst scandal we can give to the World. 

Let us be united with the one Vine, nourish ourselves from that vine, be filled with the sap from that vine and give fruits worthy of that vine. Or else, we will have to be pruned and charred!

WORD 2day: 20th May, 2014

Troubles?...but let not our hearts be troubled!

Acts 14: 19-28; Jn 14: 27-31a

"It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God," say Sts. Paul and Barnaba (Acts 14:22). Elsewhere in the Acts (see 5:41) we read, "they rejoiced that they were considered worthy to suffer dishonour for the sake of the name" of Jesus, after having received severe flogging. 

In the Gospel today, after giving his peace, the Lord instructs: 'do not let your hearts be troubled!', for the peace that he gives us is not the peace that the world gives: a peace of compromises and conveniences, a peace of inaction and suspicious silence! But the Peace that Christ gives us is the peace of the Reign, the peace that comes from Justice and Equality, peace that comes from true love and compassion. It is no contract of just war or war against terrorism; but a total cessation of war or corruption or injustice or any inhumanity! Jesus has given it to us as he promised! It is enshrined in the Word. True love for entire humanity and compassion for the least and the last.

Our call is to spread it, take it to every heart that longs, to every corner of the earth. In doing it, we will face troubles, floggings, stonings, criticisms, threats and presecutions. The times are coming for that and let not our hearts be troubled!

WORD 2day: 19th May, 2014

To be signs of God's power!

Acts 14: 5-18; Jn 14: 21-26

Jesus seems to be winding up his earthly phase with his disciples and he bids them farewell as if to say they have to take his place there after. This whole week we will listen to this series of sayings from Jesus. He had assured them, that their faith in God and their faith in him, will stand them in good stead...they will do all that he did and even more! (cf. Jn 14:12) Today he promises an added facilitator: the Holy Spirit. All these promises were not mere words... they worked.

The People saw in the apostles great prowess... they healed the paralytics and gave life to the dead. The people found it so overwhelming that they thought that the gods had descended on them. If we really believed in the Lord and beheld his risen presence with us truly, people would see great things in and through us. The world needs people of God today; the world longs to see the real majesty of God revealed in ordinary things and we ought to be the instruments in the hands of God.

Can we dispose ourselves into the hands of God? Can we allow the Spirit of the Lord to take hold of us and reveal through us the merciful, loving and powerful presence of the Lord today? 

குருத்துவத் திருக்கூட்டமாய்...

பாஸ்கா காலத்து 5ம் ஞாயிறு
18.05.2014

Chosen to be A PRIESTLY PEOPLE

V Sunday of the Easter Season: 18th May, 2014

Acts 6: 1-7; 1 Pet 2: 4-9; Jn 14: 1-12

God “chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before God in love” (Eph 1:4). That is our identity; we are a chosen race, royal priesthood, holy nation, God’s own people in order that we may proclaim the mighty acts of God, the God who has called us from darkness into his marvelous light (1 Pet 2:9). What is out identity of ourselves?

Are we merely people who are looking upto God for some favours? People who wait on God to come and solve our everyday problems? People complaining to God about those around us who are not living upto our expectations, disappointing us, troubling us, not understanding us or causing us grief? Can we take a breath and imagine what identity God has invested in us and to what level we have diluted in our daily living of our faith.

We are Chosen…

It is not by chance that I am a Christian, I am chosen. Recently, Anandhi (name changed) a girl of another faith, came to me asking to be prepared for baptism. She was in love with Alfred (name changed), a Catholic and wanted to marry him in the Church. After all the preparation, finally I asked, “Who brought you to this intention of receiving Baptism?” Without hesitation, Anandhi said, “Alfred.” I smiled at her and took the opportunity to tell her, ‘It is truly Christ who has brought you to Baptism’. It is the Lord who has chosen us dear friends and it is not the other way around: “You did not choose me, but I chose you”, says the Lord (Jn 15:16). It is the Lord who has chosen you and me, and all that we need to do is happily walk holding his hand.

We are Chosen to belong…

Last week we celebrated the Good Shepherd Sunday and we prayed for Vocations to Priesthood and Religious Life. That is a special call, a call for a ministry, just like Stephen and the 6 others are chosen today in the first reading for a special task – that is what we call Ministerial Priesthood. But there is another call that is universal… that is the call to Royal Priesthood… each and every one who is chosen in Christ, who is washed in the waters of baptism, is called to this priesthood. Yes! We are all priests unto the Lord! We are Chosen Race, Royal Priesthood… We have a special call to belong to the Lord. That is the crux of this priesthood. The ordained priests are ordained for a special ministry, while all of us share in the priesthood of Christ. The Priesthood of Christ consists in belonging to the Father. “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” says the Lord (Jn 14:11). The priesthood that we share with Christ is to be in God, the Father and Mother; to belong to God, to be grafted on to God, to remain in God as the branches remain in the wine and give fruit.

We are Chosen to belong forever…

In belonging to the Lord, in remaining with Christ, in sharing the priesthood of Christ we inherit the greatest of all patrimonies: a dwelling place in the courts of the Lord. That is what is prepared for us, that if we belong in our life to God, we would belong to God forever even in death. Christ has gone before us to prepare this place for us, and when he comes we should still belong to God, we should still be his Priestly People, that we may receive that dwelling place prepared for us!

Every day is an opportunity, through our ordinary tasks and daily duties, by our conscious choices and deliberate decisions, to deepen our belonging to the Lord, to realize we are chosen, that we are chosen to belong to God, as a chosen race, as a Priestly People!

WORD 2day: 17th May, 2014

The Word, joy and the Holy Spirit

Acts 13: 44-52; Jn 14: 7-14

Jealousy, opposition, contradiction, calumny, derision, persecution... all these abounded against the believers as they embraced their new found faith in the Lord. But amidst all these, the first reading says, the disciples were filled with joy and Holy Spirit. That was the reason the Word spread all through the region. The Word spreads with true inner joy. Jesus already spoke of this connection between the Word and joy: I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete (Jn 15:11).

We would be missing the whole point if we do not get more and more in touch with God everyday of our life. Jesus would ask us too the same question: 'Have I been so long with you and you still have not got really in touch with me, my father, my life style, my passions, my values and so on?' Once we get in touch with Jesus, and thus with God our Father and Mother, with the Spirit who enlightens us each day, we will emanate a joy that is irresistible. Let us remain united to Christ, who is united to the Father and thus give the world the joy that it longs for.