LOVE-LENT 2017 - THE WORD IN LENT #18

Law - a gift of Love

Wednesday, Third week in Lent - 22nd March, 2017
Deut 4:1,5-9; Mt 5: 17-19

Rules and Regulations are many times detested by people. At times we look for loopholes and bypass rules; we look out for ways and means to evade laws. But the Word today instructs us, the so-called laws or precepts or commandments from the Lord are not imposed on us in anyway! We are free to choose to subscribe to these on our own, while the world wishes to break free of any rule whatsoever and instigates people to think that freedom is to do anything one wishes! The truth is being free is to the capacity to choose the right thing to say or to do at the right moment. How do we know what is right? The Lord in true and profound love has thought out for us a way in anticipation and the precepts we have from the Lord is the way set out for us. 

In the name of freedom today, people tend to justify aberrations, promote promiscuity and sanctify selfishness. Jesus challenges us to pay heed to the commands from the Lord and choose to live by it, despite the hardships they cause. If the motive is to stay close to the Lord, the Lord will empower us to stay clear of any falls!  Love of the Lord is close to us and the laws are just an expression of it.

LOVE-LENT 2017 - THE WORD IN LENT #17

Love: Recalling goodness at the heart of the fire

Tuesday, Third week in Lent - 21st March, 2017
Dan 3:25, 34-43; Mt 18:212-35

Being good and recognising the goodness in others is a faculty related to true love. The three levels of this faculty is spoken of in the Word today. 

First level is being good ourselves: as God is good. God is good all the time, and we are called to imitate that eternal goodness. 

The second level is to readily recognise the goodness in others: just as we appeal to the mercy of the Lord knowing well how rarely we deserved it.  Our love for God and God's love for us should inspire us to look at each other with that goodness as a framework.

The third level is to recognise the goodness of the other even at most trying moments of life: just as we see Azarias today praising God from the heart of the fire. It is not enough, the Lord challenges, that we recognise the goodness in others when we are experiencing moments of joy and tranquility. We should be able recognise that goodness even when we are at the heart of the fire, even when we are going through the rough patches in life. Recognising the goodness of the others should become our second nature and it will happen only when we grow deeper and deeper in our personal goodness.

TO LOVE IS TO THIRST

LOVE-LENT 2017 - THE SUNDAY SCHOOL

Sunday 3: 19th March, 2017

Exo 17:3-7; Rom 5:1-2,5-8; Jn 4:5-42

Life is beautiful, no doubt; but it never lacks its share of problems, difficulties, confusions, traps and temptations. The beauty lies precisely in the manner in which a person lives these moments more than the happier ones. Anyone claiming to be a person of faith, has to manifest a level of maturity that shows him or her capable of living with a constant thirst. The liturgy today invites us to reflect on this aspect of one's faith life - learning to live with thirst. 

Life has its own patches of dryness and no one's life is an exception to it. The dryness is more severe in some, when compared to the others. What matters is not actually how much more or how much less, but how a person handles with one's own share of dryness. Handling aridity in life is a faith-skill. We see the people of Israel in their driest patch of their history - the sojourn in the desert. They are brought forth from slavery across the Red Sea, with great and mighty signs and wonders. But once in the desert, they complain for every little thing lacking patience to the core. They long for the onions and garlic of Egypt, they long for the flesh and meat they once had in plenty, they fret that they are without a drop of water! It is easy to laugh at them or judge their impatience, but we will do well before that to think of ourselves and our lives. Issues in the family, the employment issues, the financial crisis, the relationship issues, sickness, misunderstanding... as soon as a problem begins in our lives don't we begin to complain too? The Lord teaches us - to TURN TO THE ROCK, when struggling to handle aridity in life. Dying without water, the people get water from the least expected source... in the dry parched desert and worse still, a dry boulder of a rock in that desert. If we turn to the Lord, our Rock... we will see solutions to our problems, clarity to our confusions, help in our difficulties, from the least expected quarters. Let us turn to the Rock.

The second reading instructs us how to comport ourselves while feeling the thirst. When in the thick of a problem or in the eye of the storm, where do we fix our gaze? On the problem: that will only magnify the problem. On ourselves: that will only make us more and more depressed in self pity. Instead the reading invites us to fix our gaze on Christ, on the Lord who, even while we were undeserving sinners, was ready to lay down his life for us. Such is the love of God for us and should we fret when we are in a crisis? We are invited to RETURN TO THE SPRING, to the saving grace that loves without measure, the love that has been "poured" into our hearts from that Spring. 

In the Gospel, Jesus speaks of a thirst with which we should all live! It is not the thirst for a material good, a thirst for a interim peace, a thirst for a breath of relief but a Thirst for eternal life, a Thirst for perennial peace, a Thirst for fullness of life - a life-giving Thirst. He offers to give us the living water, the spring "gushing up to eternal life" (Jn 4:14). "All who are thirsty, come to me and drink" he declared elsewhere (Jn 7:37). We are called to live with that thirst, constantly longing for God. Like that deer that yearns for running streams, like the parched land that longs for rain, our soul should thirst for God, teaches the psalm (42). Let us thirst for God, let us thirst for a deeper and deeper relationship with God. let us thirst for the Spirit, let us thirst for the fruits of the Spirit, let us thirst for a life that is united with God, let us thirst for a life that is filled with God. Let nothing disturb us...let nothing separate us from God...hardships or distress or persecution or famine or perils or sword, not even death; let nothing separate us from God. Let these days of lent help us RELEARN TO LIVE IN GOD. 

LOVE-LENT 2017 - THE WORD IN LENT #16

Love: To dare to belong

Saturday, Second week in Lent - 18th March, 2017
Mic 7:14-15,18-20; Lk 15: 1-3,11-32

To say the Lord loves me is to trust in the goodness of the Lord. To say I love the Lord is to dare to belong to the Lord. The former is many times easier than the latter. 

In the first reading today, Micah speaks to God with a right of a child who belonged to the Lord, though he acknowledges his own shortcomings. In the parable that Jesus narrates we have the younger son who fell short of perfection but soon realised that he belonged to his father. They both dare to declare to the Lord that they loved the Lord. 

That was very daring of them, which the elder son dared not do. He did not feel that sense of belonging to the father, though he lived all the time with the father. What a lesson to learn, that it  is not to be taken for granted that I dare to belong to the Lord, just because I am most of the time around him. Even if were to stray a bit away from the Lord occasionally, it is important to feel that strong sense of belonging to the Lord, only that will bring me back to him. To love the Lord is to dare to belong to the Lord.  

LOVE-LENT 2017 - THE WORD IN LENT #15

Be Calm, you are Loved!

Friday, Second week in Lent - 17th March, 2017
Gen 37:3-4,12-13,17-28; Mt 21:33-43,45-46

Come let us kill him - this is the common phrase for both the readings today. There are always persons and situations which are against us, no matter where or when. And life itself is full of such varied episodes - there are ups and there are downs, there are moments of exuberance and there are moments of dullness, there are moments of strength and there are moments of trials, there are moments of grace and there are moments of crisis... how we face them depends on the perspective we choose. 

If we choose to believe that we are loved - as did Joseph and as did Jesus - whether we are in situations of want or in situations of plenty, we would live with just one disposition: the disposition that the Word presents to us - Be calm; you are Loved! 

When we know and we are convinced that the Lord loves us all, then we can be calm. And the vice versa is true too - when we learn to be calm and surrender, we would see that the Lord loves us with an immense love and that we are called to recompense that love, pay back in fruits.

When we are not mindful of that fact - we get anxious and make irreparable mistakes. What matters is to be calm and see not only the fact that we are loved but also the fruit we need to bear, that is - our call to love.  

LOVE-LENT 2017 - THE WORD IN LENT #14

Love: a Lord centered life

Thursday, Second week in Lent - 16th March, 2017

Jer 17: 5-10; Lk 16: 19-31

Blessed is the one who puts one's trust in the Lord! The Word today invites us to understand an important fact regarding a life of love. Let us reflect on it in three steps.

One. Achieving a loving way of life cannot be done by a self centered way of life. Me, myself and mine can never allow me to think of the others and of their good. What matters to me would be the absolute for me: my career, my personal wishes and desires, my personal dreams etc.! The one who lives his life just at my doorstep would matter nothing to me for it is never within my perspective.

Two. Not even the other centered life would lead me to true love, because it would make me belittle myself or make myself a slave to the other. My values would be warped and influenced greatly by the goodness or the wiles of the other. I would relativise everything because of the other and I would have no absolute reference point to guide myself. Would that make my life truly loving, guess it won't.

Three. The right way to grow in a truly loving way of life, is to live a Lord-centered life. When I let the Lord have the central place in my life, I would see that everything else falls in place. The Lord is love and a Lord centered life would be love centered life. The Lord shall be the absolute reference point and nothing would be relativised. 

It is a Lord centered life that would help me grow in a loving way of life and curiously the other way around is not so certain. Let us check if we are engaged in a Lord centered life; love would find its place without much difficulty.

LOVE-LENT 2017 - THE WORD IN LENT #13

To love is to suffer; as the Lord suffers

Wednesday, Second week in Lent - 15th March, 2017

Jer 18: 18-20; Mt 20: 17-28

Jeremiah has a very serious cause to present before the Lord - the Lord called him to make him the light of the nations, the prophet to God's people. But Jeremiah finds that he has become not only a laughing stock but even a person who is looked at with apathy. They were plotting against him. Is this becoming the light of the nations and prophet to the people? 

The Lord says, yes it is. To be truly God's servant and to live for God's people is to suffer! Jesus experiences the same. I am reminded of what the mother of St. John Bosco told him, when he finally became a priest after all hardships - she said, 'to begin to celebrate mass is to begin to suffer' -why so? We have the answer in the readings today and in the lives of all God's servants. God is love and God's love is always put to test with the hard heartedness of the people. When God suffers, will not servants of God suffer?

To truly love is to suffer - because it entails looking for nothing in return, having no demands on the one whom we love and continuing to love with the good of the other in mind. This is what Jesus did, while we constantly look for our remunerations, affirmations, recognition and recompense. The challenge is to grow up and love, 'love until it hurts' as Mother Teresa says.

LOVE-LENT 2017 - THE WORD IN LENT #12

To love is to serve; as the Lord serves

Tuesday, Second week in Lent - 14th March, 2017

Is 1:10,16-20; Mt 23:1-12

The anawim of Yahweh is a concept very close to the hearts of the prophets - Isaiah refers to this category of people who draw the special attention of the Lord readily. All over the Old Testament, this fact is seen that God sides with the oppressed, the needy and the suffering. God chose to serve the needs of the poor and the helpless. 

Jesus when he lived among us, was himself as epitome of this choice of God... He moved with the outcast, the lonely, the poor, the oppressed and the so called sinners. He not only served the least and taught us to serve but made serving the little ones the key criterion to inherit the Kingdom of God.

We are challenged today to serve, to serve like God does.... those who are helpless in dire need. In serving them shall we become true sons  and daughters of God! 

LOVE-LENT 2017 - THE WORD IN LENT #11

To love is to give; as the Lord gives

Monday, Second week in Lent - 13th March, 2017

Dan 9:4-11; Lk 6: 36-38

God gives and forgives without reserve or measure, we know! Though the Lord does not expect anything in return, the Lord expects that we receive and give; that we be forgiven and forgive. 

The measure we receive and the measure we give, be it forgiveness or love or compassion or understanding... it should be balanced. Our readiness to bear everything and share love, should be more than the ordinary people, who do not identify themselves with God and god's own people.

Love has to be shown in concrete reality: the Lord shows God's love through forgiveness and through God's motherly providence. Likewise does Love invite every one who is loved by God, to love everyone around, to forgive and build up communion, that we will build up the Church and ultimately build up the Reign of love, the Reign of God.

TO LOVE IS TO CHANGE

LOVE-LENT 2017 - THE SUNDAY SCHOOL

Sunday 2: 12th March, 2017
Gen 12:1-4; 2 Tim 1:8-10; Mt 17:1-9

God's love is on demonstration today and we are invited to behold that true, genuine, authentic and matchless love in the name of Jesus our Lord and Saviour! The Love of God invites us to change, for to love is to change!

Change is a task: observe that God's love gives us a task...a task to give! Are we ready to give? Yes...a bit of our changes in the pocket, a few of our currencies in the wallet, some of us a little more...may be our enjoyment of a movie or two during the season of lent, or our stylish make overs or things of that sort! But Observe, calls the second reading today: observe the love that God has for us. Because of that love, God gave, God gave Godself, God's own son, the only Son, the Word who was One with God. 

Change is a growth: understand that God's love makes us grow...from death to life to immortality. We understand from our daily experience that growth is fundamentally a change, a change from simpler form of existence to a more complex form of existence. The reminder today is that every change has to be a growth. Just a couple of days back Ezekiel spoke to us of a change that is not acceptable in the eyes of the Lord - a change where a righteous person falters from his righteousness. That's definitely not the change that is expected of us.

Change is a challenge:  God's love that challenges us to change is not merely a love that gives but a love that gives everything, gives all that God is...The Gospel reminds us of that: Jesus shows us and his disciples, what he has given up for the sake of the love he had for us! The first moment we find it, we feel like holding on to it. The apostles wanted to remain there...Jesus reminds us: "No... your call is to give, to grow, to give all, to give of yourself; that is my love!" The fundamental challenge here is accept God's love into our heart: to fill our hearts with God's love! Abraham was ready to leave everything and walk because he was ready to accept that challenge. Gradually he was filled with God's love and in a little while he was ready to give up his only son for God's sake. By then he had experienced what God's love means and what change it can bring about in his life. That is why he did not consider anything on par with God's love. In our life to, if we believe in God's love, that has to be seen. It has to be seen in our lives, our day to day relationships, our choices and our responses to events. To behold God's love is to be held by God's love and hold out that love to all whom we come across! 

May our lives be transformed, changed forever, by God's love into God's love!