WORD 2day: 22nd July, 2014

Remembering Mary Magdalene: Passionate in love with the Lord!

Mic 7: 14-15, 18-20; Jn 20: 1-2, 11-18

Mary Magdalene is one character in the life of Jesus, that many are very curious about. The conspiracy theorists and apocryphal experts find in themselves a great interest to study this person more and more and find details that are there and even those that are not there! However they all begin with one question, which the Gospel today answers.

They ask, why is it that the Lord appeared to her first and not to the apostles? The Gospel answers it so simply: because she was there! As we read in the Gospel today, she was there at the tomb early morning. Then, she ran to the apostles and brought them; the apostles saw, they believe and they left, but she was there, she stayed at the tomb and kept weeping (cf v.11). She was there and she got to see her Master. She was like that widow about whom Jesus spoke of once (Lk 18), persistent and insistent! She wanted by all means to know what happened to her Master! She stayed on because she just could not go! She was so passionately in love with her Master.

The key is here: if we are passionately in love with the Lord, we will see the glory of the Lord right in front of our eyes. 

WORD 2day: 21st July, 2014

Want to see signs? Here is a project of life

Mic 6: 1-4, 6-8; Mt 12: 38-42

"Only to do the right and to love goodness and to walk humbly with your God" - Micah presents a project of life in these precise words (Mic 6:8). It is a project that he gives to the people to walk in the Lord's ways and not to weary the Lord with their unfaithfulness and stubbornness. How different are we from the people whom Micah addresses today in the first reading? Aren't we just like the pharisees and the others who were incessantly asking for signs from the Lord? 

Crying statues, bleeding icons, moving crosses... aren't they a craze these days! Should they be? Ofcourse, for us miracles are a daily feature, because our God is an awesome God. But looking for some strange phenomenon and glamorous happenings, is not the "Christ"ian outlook of a miracle. For Christ the miracle is in the hope that we can give each other; miracle is in the love that we share for every one around us; miracle is the everyday faith in the Lord and the resultant serenity amidst all the din. 

Let's resolve to do the right, love goodness and walk humbly with the Lord and we will see miracles all around us, on a daily basis!

Lord God, the Just Judge

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time: 20th July, 2014

Wis 12: 13, 16-19; Rom 8: 26-27; Mt 13: 24-43

One thing that is sure about anything is that it will end. Our life too will end! However not necessarily at the end of our life, but at every moment of our life, as we make decisions, as we go through actions, as we choose our words to speak and our opinions to make, we are liable for judgement. The one who judges us is not anyone who is placed above us or those who are around us; but Lord God, the Just Judge!

The Lord alone can judge, for it is the Lord alone who knows our innermost thoughts and fundamental attitudes. When the Lord judges, the Lord judges not the action but the attitude, not the decision but the disposition, not the choice but the underlying intention and priority. Nothing can escape from the all knowing, ever present God who knows us through and through. That is both a challenge and a grace: a challenge because we cannot deceive God; a grace because the Lord never judges us rashly - the Lord is a Just Judge.

The Just Judge is Mighty but Merciful. The book of wisdom, in the first reading, so beautifully brings out the fact that the Lord is mighty but merciful as a judge. The Lord knows everything and sees through everything, but treats us with mercy and kindness. As St. Paul expresses in the second reading, the Spirit of the Lord knows us and inspires us from within. At times we fail repeatedly in our daily life, with tendencies that overpower us and with temptations that make us fumble. The Lord knows it all, but the Lord's mercies never cease! The Lord has perfect control over us and can decide to pull out the weeds at anytime, but that is not who God is! God is merciful and loving, slow to anger and abounding in love!

The Just Judge is Particular but Patient. The Lord is not satisfied with any mediocre life. The Lord is particular about the way we are to live our life. The Lord has set an ideal as acceptable way of life and wants us to live up to that. Nothing short of perfection is acceptable in the eyes of the Lord; but the Lord is patient. The Lord endures the wait. The Lord walks with us, step by step as we proceed towards this perfection. When we lack in perfection we actually are not testing the patience of the Lord, for the Lord's patience is endless, but we are running the risk of not being "gathered into the Lord's barn" (Mt 13:43). There is no end to the Lord's patience, but our possibilities are limited and it is we who have to feel the urgency!

The Just Judge is Firm but Forgiving. The Lord is demanding but absolutely understanding. The Lord's firmness never lessens the readiness to forgive. The justice of the Lord is guided by love, the absolute love that characterises the Lord alone! Firmness of God is in the very nature that we have inherited as sons and daughters of God. We are called to be plants, giving fruit, blossoming flowers and putting forth the yield, because we are children of God. We would belong to the Reign when we give fruit, however small or negligible it be: just a small mustard seed can give rise to a tree that houses hundreds of birds, a bit of yeast can leaven a bunch of dough. The Lord gives us chances but never relents from the demand to bear fruit. Forgiveness is never a compromise, it is always another chance to start anew, firm in conviction to reach the perfection.

The Lord is a just judge, loving and merciful, patient and kind, understanding and forgiving! Yet it is our duty to realise our call and bear fruit, grow into plants and not into weeds!

WORD 2day: 19th July, 2014

Choice! the choice of God!

Mic 2: 1-5; Mt 12: 14-21

Jesus was living dangerously. But he chose to, for the sake of the Reign of God. He stuck his neck out for the poor, for the oppressed, the marginalised, the ostracised, the exploited, the forgotten in the society. He believed that the Reign of God belonged to them. His life was a hope to the least, the last and the lost. 

In this choice Jesus was making present the God of the Old Testament who sided the oppressed, who stood by the just in their struggles and who kept watch over the persons who strove to live according to God's will. The first reading points out the choice of God, the choice for the poor and the suffering. This predilection on God's part distinguished Jesus and the choices he made. His choice was, the choice of God. There apparent and real dangers, and Jesus knew it well.

Nothing could stop him from proclaiming the Reign of God for he knew he had come precisely for that, to establish the Reign of the God of Truth, the God of the suffering, the Lord of the least, the protector of the lost, the hope of the last. Our identity has to be our Choices, may they be forever in keeping with the choices of God!

Abraham: Biblical Icons for Family Living #1

Abraham

From my contribution to Salesian Bulletin -July issue

WORD 2day: 18th July, 2014

Something greater is around!

Is 38: 1-6, 21-22, 7-8; Mt 12: 1-8

God deigns to do strange things for the love of the one who trusts in God! The first reading is one such episode. There are so many others, like the burning bush (Exo 3), the water from the rock (Exo 17), the sign of the fleece (Judg 6:36ff), and many more. These are merely to show that there is nothing or no one greater than the Lord and anything is possible with God!

When it comes to showing mercy to those who trusted, the Lord is lavish, prodigal and unreasonably generous, because God's love is unconditional and everlasting. That was a difficult message for Jesus to communicate to the law abiding, traditional and painfully legalistic Jews. Even today the Lord tries to impress upon us the same message, the message of how loving the Lord is, how unconditional God's love is and how far from judging the love of God is. 

No rule can be too big and no custom too important, than the love that the Lord has for you and me and the longing that Lord has for our total well being. When we feel the tendency to be legalistic, when we find ourselves prone to judge, when tasks at hand draw our utmost attention, let us realise: something greater is around us, something greater envelopes us, something greater sustains us - and it is, God's love, the love which became man and gave his life for our salvation. 

WORD 2day: 17th July, 2014

Come to me, all who are far away from me!

Is 26: 7-9, 12, 16-19; Mt 11: 28-30

The yearning of a Godless soul, the struggle of a people who have gone far away from God is intensely presented in the first reading today. The world today is treading that path indeed... trying its best to define life sans God; trying to convince everyone around that it is possible to live without having anything to do with anything called god! Worse still, the trend today advocates creating our own gods and creating gods of ourselves! We think we have solutions for every problem and even for those that we do not have the solutions, we create shortcuts that can keep the pain and the struggle away for the time being. Hardly do we realise that the problem persists and it keeps brewing under cover, only to explode one day beyond control. And at that point we would find no return!

The Lord invites us today to the true consolation, the real solution, the authentic peace that can give meaning to our daily life and all its strife. He does not promise an absence of yoke, nor does he lure us with a negation of burden...he promises a yoke that fits us perfectly and a burden that proves really bearable: because we live it in the Lord's company. 'Come to me' says the Lord, because all the struggle is since you have moved away from me. Come to me...and learn of me...and you will find meaning, peace, consolation and serenity! 

WORD 2day: 16th July, 2014

All things belong to God... even you and me!

Is 10: 5-7, 13b-16; Mt 11: 25-27

All things have been handed over to me by my Father, says Jesus today in the Gospel. 'God as the author of history', has been a concept so strongly evinced by the narratives of the Old Testament. Even the super powers like Assyria and Babylonia were considered to be commissioned by the Lord to make certain twists and turns happen in history. This is the background against which Isaiah chides Assyria saying, they think they are the masters of their own destiny and the authors of their success. They fail to understand that there is someone far beyond and above them, who "sits in the heavens and laughs"(Ps 2:4) at the folly of the proud.

The Lord scatters the proud hearted and raises the lowly (cf Lk 1:51); God reveals things to mere children and sends the haughty empty! All things are God's and from God everything draws its life and its sense. If I approach life with this sense, my worries find a way out, my concerns cringe to my feet and bearing my burdens become a child's play! What a saving wisdom it would be to recognise that all things belong to God, yes even you and me, and all that we dream; everything belongs to God, and in God we live, move and have our being!

WORD 2day: 15th July, 2014

Right Faith and Right Living
Is 7: 1-9; Mt 11: 20-24

Unless your faith is firm, you shall not be firm. What is that which differentiates a Christian in this world - it is not the name or the external signs or identities by belonging to a group or the other; instead, it is a matter of faith, an internal disposition towards the Lord who has called you and commissioned you. 

Right faith has to create right living; right belief and right action are after all essentially dependent in so many of the religious traditions, as we know of. The Integrity that Jesus demands of us is basically one of right belief and right living. Sometimes circumstances and situations can force us to take decisions or make choices that are not proper to the life that we have been called to. It is not so strange to commit such a mistake. But it is not only strange, even highly unbecoming of a child of God when he or she has received all possible warnings and all possible signs of God's directions but still makes a choice that is not worthy of a child of God. Worse still, if the person justifies that choice. And worst of all, nothing can help the one who decides to remain with that choice in spite of all this.

Faith which is not translated into right living and a living that is not guided by right faith, are totally alien to a true child of God. Even if the simplest of signs is given, a child of God will acknowledge it, make sense of it, hold on to the light that the Lord provides and and shape his or her life according to God's will. Where do I stand in this regard?

WORD 2day: 14th July, 2014

The challenge of Orthopraxis

Is 1: 10-17; Mt 10: 34 - 11:1

What Hosea spoke last week, Isaiah speaks this week...they both underline the importance of Orthopraxis! True Christian life does not consist only of worship and of adoration, it consists of justice and charity as a concrete translation of worship and adoration into action. The action that goes well with a balanced love for God and for one's brothers and sisters is called the Orthopraxis, in simple terms. 

It may sound simple but it is tough in two senses:

I may feel out of place when I begin to take this 'orthopraxis' seriously, because the rest of the crowd seems to be busy doing what they believe to be 'normal' or 'ordinary'...and I alone seem 'out of the ordinary' or in plain terms, 'a stranger'. Even those who are with me, those who surround me at close quarters may not approve of what I live by.

Secondly, it is certain to be tough because orthopraxis demands that I mean what I pray... that whatever I do on a daily basis does not go against anything that I say in my so called 'prayer'; that what I do by way of 'prayer' may find its continuation in the rest of the things that do during the day.

Let our prayer transform our daily life and may our daily life inspire our prayer!