WORD 2day: 8th June, 2015

Encouragement: A Spirituality of memories and promises!
Monday,  10th week in Ordinary Time

2 Cor 1: 1-7; Mt 5: 1-12

Fear not, Take heart,  Be firm... these are some exhortations that we find in abundance in the Word of God. St. Paul explains to us today why it is so.

As people of God and in union with God we are constantly encouraged,  that is filled with courage for times that can be trying, filled with an inner joy even in the face of troubles, filled with hope even at the so called times of despair. This is so because of a past that is so filled with care and concern on the part of God and a future the seems so heavenly.

The Word today draws on the past and the future to instruct us that a life that is filed with God, the memories of God and the promises of God,  will be a life of Courage and Commitment.

HE COMES TO STAY

Solemnity of Corpus Christi: 7th June, 2015

Exo 24:3-8; Heb 9: 11-15; Mk 14: 12-16, 22-26

The Feast of Corpus Christi reminds us of a drastic decision that God made in our favour! God loved us, God came amidst us and God came to stay with us! The solemnity that we celebrate today explicates this decision inspiring in us a similar attitude as we live our daily life.

That decision to stay with us is a Covenantal Presence... As St. Paul writes to Timothy, even if we are unfaithful, God is faithful forever. God has made a covenant with us through the very body and blood of God's Son, and that covenant is, to be with us forever!

The decision to stay with us is a desire for Corporal Union... Our Lord and Saviour becomes one with us, unites in our bodily existence too, enabling us to say, It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. It is a decision to be in us forever!

The decision to stay with us is  Concrete Commitment that the Lord take on our behalf; that we may be saved, sanctified and brought back to God. It is a call that Christ gives us to offer ourselves entirely to God, in every thing we are and everything we do. This is my body; this is my blood which shall be shed for you, says the Lord. It is a concrete commitment the Lord makes to be forever for us! 

WORD 2day: 6th June, 2015

GOD SEES YOU

Saturday, 9th week in  Ordinary time

Tob 12: 1, 5-15, 20; Mk 12: 38-44

St. John Bosco, a great apostle of the young in devising his method of working with the young, used what his mother Margaret taught him always at home when he was a boy: God Sees You, she used to often repeat.Don Bosco, later in the Oratory while living with those street kids and rest of the ruffian friends of his, wrote this truth in prominent places and instilled that feeling in his boys.

The readings today seem to hint at this truth and call our attention to living our life conscientiously. The widow never realised that Jesus was looking at her, and praising her act in front of his disciples. But Jesus saw her, saw what she did, and more that that saw what she was - the mind and the heart behind the 2 pences that were dropped in the box. Tobit, or even Tobiah, did not realise that the one who accompanied on the way was the Angel of God, the hand of God, the extension of God's presence. But God was there looking at everything that they were going through and the way they were living their life.

It is not pleasing the eyes of those around us, establishing a name among our fellow beings, publicising our goodness and generosity and things of that sort that will give us true and lasting happiness. it is only the watchful and undeceived eyes of God that see us, that will grant us meaning in life. It is a beautiful childlike spirituality to live mindful of the fact that GOD SEES YOU. 

WORD 2day: 5 th June, 2015

Identifying the True Lord

Friday,  9th week in Ordinary Time

Tob 11;5-17;Mk 12: 35-47

A few days back a friend of mine was having a good sport reading out the predictions based on zodiac signs and at times we were surprised at the pricision that emerged in those predictions. There was a kind of temptation to even believe, that it may after all be true that these constellations have a kind of influence on our personality and our eventualities.

True faith in God consists in seeing through all these creaturely order and logical wisdom, and acknowledging the true Lordship - the absolute and sovereign Lord our God! Tobit sings a hymn of glory and praise to the Lord for the great things that happened in his life, for his son and for his daughter in law.

Jesus challenges us to see beyond the apparent and identify the True Lord. That is a gift of faith that the Spirit alone can give us. Let us thirst for that grace all our life!

WORD 2day: 4th June, 2015

Love... do we understand it at all? 

Thursday,  9th week in Ordinary Time

Tb 6:10-11; 7:1bcde, 9-17; 8:4-9a; Mk 12: 28-34

Two unfortunate sharings I heard recently: one about a husband who decided to disown his wife an year after their wedding,  because she was diagnosed with a serious illness; the second a religious who said she had not spoken for the past four years with another sister living with her in the same convent. These two and many such experiences raise a fundamental doubt: are we truly Christian? Have we really immersed ourselves into the mystery that God is? God is love and if we are born of God we should love.

While the Gospel reiterates this call that each of us has received,  in the first reading today we have a typical example in the person of Tobiah. Once he decides that he loves Sarah,  nothing deters him from growing in that perfection. He is told how fatal it can be if he loves Sarah,  but he does not hesitate. The reason is, he believed that Sarah was brought into his life by God.

Love is not merely a feeling;  it is an act of faith. To look at every person around me and see and believe that God has given me that person,  that brother or that sister, to love- that is the secret. That is true Christian love: does the world today, does every Christian today, do I today,  really understand it at all?

WORD 2day : 2nd June, 2015

To see or not to see

Tuesday,9th week in Ordinary Time

Tob 2: 9-14; Mk 12: 13-17

Tobit loses his sight and lives so for four years or so. Even that did not disturb his wife much but the question she asks him, 'where is all your charity?', brings out the crux of the message today. It is truly charity that helps us see persons as they are. In charity we decide whether to see or not, persons as they are instead of fixing them into the peg holes we have made for each of them. Judgements are the first enemies of charity and that is why Blessed Mother Teresa made that statement: if you judge, you have no time to love!

The Pharisees and the Scribes hated Jesus to the core because he was exposing their hypocrisy,  their stubbornness of heart,  their decision not to see,  because they wanted to prove their judgement that Jesus was a fake messiah! Even after reports and experiences of the goodness of the Lord,  they refused to see,  or decided not to see!

How far do you really see?  Does the sight giving charity reside in your hearts?

WORD 2day : 1st June, 2015

The Unjust world order

Monday,  9th week in Ordinary Time

Tob 1:3, 2:1a-8; Mk 12: 1-12

An unjust world order is something we see prevalent everywhere. The moneyed seem to be the first class citizens and the rest mere spectators or worse still, victims! There are two characters presented today who neither identified themselves with the rich nor did they get lost in the crowd of insignificance.

One does the maximum on his part to alleviate the misery that is meted out by this unjust order and the other challenges this very order and faces the extreme conditions.

The options remain open to us if we are sincere enough to accept the fact of the injustice that is involved,  dare to face it and stand up to challenge it,  in our own way. Would we be ready to defy the present world order and usher in the Reign as part of our Christian Existential responsibility?

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In their name!

The Solemnity of the Holy Trinity

31st May, 2015

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit...This is the most famous phrase we have grown with. The making of the Cross with the names of the persons of the Trinity has a number of significance: accepting the rule of the Cross over us,  invoking the continuous presence of the Lord in our lives and above all the blessings of the Trinitarian God on ourselves. The solemnity we celebrate today is one of the defining truths of a Christian.

It is very clear to understand that our faith in the Holy  Trinity, has its origins from the earliest of the historical times. The Scriptures already possess this clarity which signify that this way of understanding and believing has been there from the Early Christian times.

Apart from this historical roots,  we see in the concept and belief of the Holy Trinity,  an important foundation for Christian life. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Spirit. .. 

In their name. ..

...We have our being: Right at the creation we find God the Creator at work through God's Word, while the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.  God made the humans in God's image and blew God's spirit to give life and the Word took that same image to save that humanity at a later stage. Our very being is in the Trinity. 

..We have our identity: Believing in the Trinity affects our identity as human persons and as Christians. As human beings we are challenged by the image we possess and as Christians we are challenged by the nature of that image. The nature of God is a community. Our very identity is communitarian,  and our journey has to be constantly towards this perfection. 

...We have our mission: The mission that is entrusted to us is not something that is done by us as individual persons but it is a mission to establish the Reign of God,  that is the Reign of Communion,  the Reign of Love,  the Reign of Equality,  the Reign of Order, the Reign of Justice. This Reign exists and is exemplified in the Trinity. 

Today let us grow in our consciousness about the intimate sense of connectedness we have with the Trinitarian God. May that consciousness make us immensely grateful,  truly loving and passionately communitarian.

WORD 2day: 30th May, 2015

Jesus: The Word and Wisdom!

Saturday, 8th week in Ordinary Time

Sir 51:12-20; Mk 11: 27-33

The Second person of the Trinity is the Word; it is the Wisdom which personified God's guiding presence for the people of the Old Testament. The readings taken together give us a twin perspective of Jesus and Jesus' relation to the figure of Wisdom! 

1. Jesus has Wisdom: the Gospel presents to us the way Jesus tackled the trap that was laid for him by the shrewd pharisees and scribes. Jesus proves that he had the Wisdom, a great gift from the Lord. It is fundamentally knowing what to say and what not to say at a particular point of time and saying what is to be said in the best way possible with the choice of the right verbal or non verbal language! Now that was Jesus' forte. Be it in the event we read in the Gospel today,or the incident of the woman caught in adultery, or the case of the samaritan woman, or the discussion with the disciples asking for power and position... everywhere Jesus knew the right thing to be said and he chose the right sense of doing it.

2. Jesus as Wisdom: the way the first reading presents Wisdom, we come to clearly understand what the Old Testament speaks of as Wisdom is not merely a quality or a faculty, but a person, a personal presence of the Almighty! When Jesus lived and moved around, people readily and without much difficulty saw the Wisdom that he was. Jesus was, and is, the Wisdom that fills us with light and shows us the way. If only we accept the Wisdom of Christ in contrast to rest of the truth claims of the world, we would find that joy that is complete, that Christ alone can give. 

WORD 2day: 29th May, 2015

Being Godly...

Friday,  8th week in Ordinary Time
Sir 44: 1, 9-13; Mk 11: 11-26

The readings today speak to us of an essential dimension of human life: being Godly. If we can showcase some difference for being human beings vis-a-vis the 'lower' beings, it has to be by being Godly. However these days the social network seems to present us with cases of many of these animals,  the so called 'lower' beings,  with qualities and actions much more edifying than those of the humans.

Today the Word outlines 2 signs of being Godly...

Being rooted in God - finding one's solace and fulfillment in nothing less than God,  finding the hand of God in every bit of one's well being, being grateful for and conscious of the good that God continues to do, standing by to find out God's will and accompaniment in daily journeys of life. ..these are signs of being rooted in God.

Bearing forth God's fruits - one who bears forth God's fruits will bear it forth for others and not make a living out of it as it was happening in the Temple;  he or she will bear it forth in season and out of season, in abundance and always mindful that the fruits belong to God.