Live, Love and Find God

Saturday, 25th week in Ordinary time

29th September, 2018: Eccl 11:9 -12: 8; Lk 9: 43b-45 

Life is short and life is limited, but it offers ample opportunity to do things that are remarkable. It never forces anyone, leaving far behind every one who complains of a life of boredom and monotony. For a Christian, life cannot be boring because he or she has a life task to accomplish and daily directions to carry out, from the Lord. That is why St. Paul would write saying, "do not grow weary of doing right" (2 Thess 3:13). It might invite criticism, jealousy, opposition, persecution and even crucifixion! But what matters is to do the will of God, and do it willingly. 

A few years ago I happened to see a video uploaded by someone, of a boy who fell into the enclosure of a tiger and was eaten by the white tiger, in a zoo in India. Such a long time that the boy was going through the trauma of hanging between life and death, in the jaws of that tiger! What did the crowd do? What did the officials do? There was certainly a crowd there, screaming and going mad, and a few among them recording it on their cell phones. But what did they do to save that boy? It was a crucial time, a crucial issue of life and death, a crucial moment of taking decisions and making choices. In fact I myself was traumatised looking at that video; imagine the trauma that boy would have gone through!

This is what happens many a time - we stand by and pass comments, judgments, critiques and suggestions while a group of people suffer till they are no more! One thing is helplessness but another unpardonable attitude is indifference, which makes life so inhuman. 

Life is short and life is limited; let's live it to the full, let us do all the good that we can to every one around. Let us not waste our life in envying, calumniating, gossiping, judging and spreading hate! Let us live to the full, love each other and experience God close to us!

In God's own time...

Friday, 25th week in Ordinary time

28th September, 2018: Eccl 3: 1-11; Lk 9: 18-22

Two great enemies to spiritual health, as spiritual masters point out are: Anxiety and Curiosity! Anxiety is against faith because it points to a lack of trust in the Lord; And Curiosity is lack of patient acceptance of the present.To both these, and to many other spiritual ailments the corrective given is, Surrender!

In short, surrender can be described as the assurance that in God's time everything will happen. Patience, trust and the unfailing confidence in God's goodness, are the ingredients of this mentality of surrender. Especially when things aren't going the way we would want them to, we need this quality to remain sane and secure.

In the Gospel today, we find Jesus as a personification of this quality. He was neither curious nor anxious about his mission on earth. That is why he was more interested about their personal conviction than the public opinion; and he was stern that they don't go about frenetically spreading their conviction and forcing it on people, but to let them arrive at that conviction through their own experience too! That serenity on Jesus' part comes from an attitude of Surrender, an assurance that everything will be made beautiful IN GOD'S OWN TIME.

Seeking Christ can be vanity too!

Thursday, 25th week in Ordinary Time

27th September, 2018: Eccl 1:2-11; Lk 9:7-9

Vanity of vanities, everything is vanity...says the first reading today. There is nothing new under the sun, what are we toiling for? What are we seeking and searching and anxious for? That is the wise question that the philosopher raises in the Word today. It is important to take note of this question - routine, monotony and boredom are not reality that are external...they are attitudes and dispositions that are internal. How we look at things, how they matter to us, how they affect us and how we relate to them - that makes all the change that can be there.

Seeking Christ...today Herod seeks to see Christ. All of us have this wish to seek and experience Christ. But is that also a vanity? Yes, that will turn out to be another vanity, vanity of all vanities, if we do not seek for an internal change, for a transformation of the heart. If we seek, see, pray and claim to experience Christ, but there is no change in our inner disposition and attitude to life and to others, then that seeking and experiencing would be a vanity!

Vanity of Vanities...everything is a vanity, if we do not allow ourselves to be touched, transformed and continuously made anew in Christ.

In plenty and in want...

Wednesday, 25th week in Ordinary time

26th September, 2018: Pro 30:5-9; Lk 9: 1-6

I can never forget that strange thing I heard from a young man a few years ago, barely reaching his forties, who resigned his promising and colourful job. The reason: they were paying him unreasonably high! The first reading speaks of a mindset of this sort- a man who wants to live neither in want nor in plenty. Not in want, so that he would not think of shortcuts to get rich; nor in plenty, that he does not forget the One who gives. 

Jesus instructs his apostles on being messengers of God. The crux of his instruction is not merely about whether to have or not to have, whether to possess or not to possess, but it is all about depending on God or not! Poverty within the worldview of the Reign of God, in terms of Jesus' thinking, is a fundamental dependence on God. Being grateful for what God gives, and being expectant like a child to be given things in love. 

It is more than what proverbs suggests, while the passage from the proverbs carries a tinge of cynical realism, the Gospel offers a proactive sense of dependence out of true human freedom, that defines a true disciple and a dedicated apostle. This is the same as St. Paul suggests, to learn to live in want and in plenty, because we can do anything in the One who strengthens us (cf. Phil 4:12,13).

The best thing that can happen to me!

Tuesday, 25th week in Ordinary Time

25th September, 2018: Prov 21: 1-6, 10-13; Lk 8: 19-21

The first reading speaks to us of a variety of categories of people - the king, the virtuous, the just one, the hard working, the haughty, the wicked, the mocker... the message seems to be: whoever you are, what is important is live a life that is pleasing to the Lord; do exactly what the Lord wants you to do.

In fact, this is not a note of threat, but a wisdom par excellence. Because the best thing that can ever happen to me is what the Lord has planned for me! Once I am confident of that, then I can live my life with a serenity that nothing else can offer me. The Gospel has Jesus underlining the same fact. Mary could have been the mother of the Son of God. Not even that is the best thing that can happen to her. That biological motherhood is not as important as the Spiritual Motherhood that comes out of the fact that she listened to the call from the Lord, kept it in her heart, pondered over it and lived her life exactly according to it. That is where she stands as a great example to allowing God to have God's ways in our life.

When we allow that to happen, then God has a freehand in my life and I become the rightful child of that Father and Mother. And thus I become a brother or a sister of my Lord, Jesus Christ!

Let your light shine!

Monday, 25th week in Ordinary time

24th September, 2018: Prov 3: 27-35; Lk 18: 16-18

We just reflected on being good yesterday! Yes, be good, be just, be righteous...the Proverbs gives us a list of qualities of a just person who is acceptable  in the eyes of the Lord. Be good, be a light, shine before the world invites the Gospel. Let your light shine, let it shine day in and day out, let it shine regardless of the people and the situations around.

We do like to be good, we do wish to shine our light before the world...but is it so in all circumstances? What kind of light we wish to be?

Like the electric bulbs which give light only till that moment that they receive, at times we decide to be good to others only as long as others are good to us; we are good to the world only as long as the world around is good to us. If not, we begin to have second thoughts; we raise myriads of questions!

Like the oil lamps that sustain their burning as long as what they received lasts, we decide to be good for a little longer, anyway our goodness lasts just as long as the memory of good done to us  lasts. We are soon discouraged and disheartened!

Consider a candle, which is ignited to burn and shine. It keeps burning as long as it exists, without expecting anything from anywhere! This is our call: to shine, regardless of what others do to us. Be good in spite of the evil that may rest around you. Be Godly, however ungodly the world around you gets!

YOU REALLY WANNA BE GOOD?

23rd September 2018: 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Wis 2: 12,17-20; Jas 3:16 - 4:3; Mk 9: 30-37

I remember more than one conversation, where persons have remarked to me: 'why should I be good when everyone else seems to be discouraging me from that? And not just that, they take advantage of me. And I am forced to give up on being good!' How true and real it is! Everyone of us wants to be good, but on a second thought we wonder whether we really want to be good, given all the consequences of it.

The Word today brings out this theme in such a picturesque manner. 

If I want to be good, I will be mostly alone! Or atleast the majority will be against me, opposing me and trying to get me renounce my wish to be good. The first reading presents that so vividly. Even if not so directly, we will surely sense people talking behind our backs, pulling down our spirits, assassinating our character, calling names and fixing us into pigeon holes. How are we going to react to them? Are we going to go around convincing each of them that we are good and we want to be good? Are we going to be bogged down by all the pressure that they create around us? In the Indian context, for example in Tamilnadu, we have a great examples in the likes of Sagayam IAS, a civil service official who has been shunted to over 29 posts in 21 years, all because he has vowed to be honest and sincere. He seems to be fighting a lone battle. Are you ready for it? 

If I want to be good, I will have to suffer and who knows, even be killed! Think of persons like Bl. Oscar Romero, who is going to be canonised next month. Or think of the scores of whistle blowers in the world who have been erased from the face of the earth in the recent times. Being good is not all that easy. You need to resolve to be good, in spite of the eventual rejection and every such risk. Jesus was clear about what is going to happen to him; he instructed the apostles about it time and again though they did not really understand what he meant. They were busy playing the game of the majority, seeking the prime places and the limelights. Jesus today takes his time off, makes sure no one interrupts, in order that he can drive home this lesson deep into the hearts of his beloved brothers. That is what the Word wants to do to us: drive home the lesson into our hearts...we have no reward here below if we want to be good, but still we have to be good! Now comes the question...but why? Why have we to be good? Because...

If I want to be good, I am godly! If I am a child of God, as Jesus tells me to be, I have to be good. God is good, all the time: we know it so well! If God is good, I who am God's child, I have to be good too! I have to be good even though there are no rewards for it. Apostle James says, if I am of God, then I will be good, pure, peaceable, gentle, full of mercy and good fruits (cf. Jas 3:17). People may not appreciate it, but I have to be good because I am a child of God. People may take advantage of me and take me for a ride, but I still have to be good because I belong to God. I don't need a reason; or rather I don't have a reason to be good, other than the fact that it is my true nature to be good, for I am created in the image and likeness of God and it is godly to be good!

Ask this question to yourself: Do I really want to be good? If so, am I prepared for all its consequences?

Sowing, Reaping and the Seed

Saturday, 24th week in Ordinary Time 

1 Cor 15: 35-37,42-49; Lk 8: 4-15

We are so worried about the plight of the farmers as the tussle between 'corporatisation' and traditional lifestyle has reached its peak in developing agricultural societies like India. The fight  for water continues and takes newer twists and turns. Easy to understand what the Word speaks of today: sowing and reaping, burying and raising... what is crucial here is to understand the seed.

The Word keeps coming to us in various ways in our daily life- daily experiences, accidents, anti social happenings, political developments, international affairs and domestic fights and house hold events... everything keeps giving us a lesson. If only we pay the needed attention to every bit of our life, we would see ourselves learning from them and becoming more and more wise. Added to that if only we hear the Word from the Lord in and through them, we become more and more loving, forgiving, peaceful, in short Godly. That is the experience of Rising... those who are in Christ will rise! For he is the Seed.

The Call to be ONE

Celebrating the Feast of St. Matthew the Apostle 

21st September, 2018: Eph 4: 1-7,11-13; Mt 9: 9-13

One Lord, One faith, One baptism, One God...Paul stacks up the meaning of the feast today, in describing his own wish for his children. Yes, every time we celebrate the feast of an apostle we are celebrating our call to be One! The division within the Church is because the sense of this Apostolic succession is lost somewhere. That is an ecumenical point of view and important. But more important is a socio-existential point of view of the Church today. 

The Feast of Matthew and the reminder from the scene of his call, give us this message with an enviable clarity: are we ONE? How many categories we have created for ourselves to stand divided - denominations among churches, divisions within churches based on rites and languages and even caste, the worst of its kind! 

Matthew, when he was called, left everything on the table and followed him. A lot of things were at stake for him when he made that choice - he cannot turn back, he will have people on his back, he will have to answer so many people, he will be criticised by many, he will be branded by the world as 'out of his mind', he would be going behind a person about whom he can only pretend to know until the person himself reveals with clarity - how many things against that choice that he made! But still he made that choice - to leave everything and follow Christ. 

Can I today, leave everything, my desires, my identities, my attachments, my clingings, my holdings, my support system...everything! Can I leave them all, and follow Him?

THE ACT OF FAITH

16th September, 2018: 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Is 50: 5-9A; Jas 2: 14-18; Mk 8: 27-35

Faith has to be lived, it has to be manifested, be seen and shown; if it does not, it can be interpreted as dead and good for nothing. The ACT is one perspective that the Word offers today, to live and manifest a living Faith.

Faith has to be manifested through Actions of love

Faith that is devoid of love is not Christian and that love when not shown in action is not real. Love is not treating people according your whims and fancies, it is approaching every person with a respect and reverence that he or she is an image of the living God.True love translates itself into commitment, a commitment for the well being of the other.

Faith has to be witnessed to in Choices for life

The world and its culture today is prone to death. Difficulties are highlighted, despair is amplified, destruction is perpetrated and death is felt in the air. It is nauseating for a true believer, because we are persons who have chosen life, life in all its abundance. We can never choose to be gloomy and sad, pessimistic and given up! We choose God, we choose life!

Faith should be based on the Thoughts of God

Human thinking and worldly calculations will never make us persons of faith. it is only God's perspective of all that is and all that happens, that can fill us with faith. Jesus had only the thoughts of God and he rebukes Peter for being contrary to that. Sufferings, Crosses, Sacrifices are nothing new when we take up to the mind of God. Within the perspective of God everything has its place and meaning. It is that realisation, that makes our faith come alive.