Easter People - Grow amidst struggles

Easter Octave - Monday

April 22, 2019: Acts 2: 14, 22-33; Matthew 28: 8-15

There has been no dearth of conspiracies and controversies right from the beginning of the Christian Faith. The Word today brings out the very first controversy, a controversy about Christ's resurrection itself. But the same passages point also towards the fact that there was a constant increase in the number of people who wanted to be part of this new found faith! That is the message, both of today and of the season of Easter!

We will grow amidst struggles, if we are convinced that we are growing out of the will of the Father. We would be stifled by even the smallest hurdle if we are growing out of our own necessity, and for the sake of proving our own selves!

At times in our personal lives, or in our life of ministry, or in our professional lives, we feel like pushing our way through with plans and projects. Sure, they will see the light of day, but only to soon find its way out - may be due to failure or lack of true significance. If we want something to be established, we are taught today: we need to allow things into God's hands! Amidst all controversies and calumnies, judgments and prejudices, we are challenged to be founded on Risen Christ, grow in our faith and deepen ourselves in hope!

Let us remember, Easter People grow amidst struggles!

Holy Week 2019: The Silent Saturday

THE TASK: REMAIN

April 20: No Eucharist Celebration this day!

The Lord rests in the tomb this day...everything is silent! There will be a dawn very soon...but until then we are invited to Remain Silent, Remain Patient and Remain Waiting.

Discussing, a youngster once asked, what happened after Jesus died and before he rose? What was he going through? What did he do: He was silent! He was waiting! He just remained! This is the call of this unique day of the year in the Church: this is the only day in the whole of the Church when no Eucharist is Celebrated...the altar remains stripped, the tabernacle remains empty and the Church remains silent: waiting in patience to see what is going to happen next.

It is not so easy to remain silent in a moment of crisis. Multitudes of questions, thousands of thoughts will pass by our mind breaking our silence. Only the one who has an unwavering faith in the Lord can remain silent at these moments.

We have grown slaves to instant results. We seem to have have lost the natural patience of our forefathers, in the name of development and technology. Only the one who hopes in Someone greater than oneself, can remain patient and see things happen.

Compare waiting for a public utility, may be a transport or one's turn in a crowded office, with waiting for one's beloved! While former seems irritating, the latter looks exciting. The difference is the love that is involved: Only the one who loves the Lord immensely, remains waiting, for the Lord to act on his or her behalf.

Today is the day to remain...to remain silent, to remain patient, to remain waiting, because the Lord is getting something beautiful ready for us!

Holy Week 2019: The Good Friday

THE TASK: SURRENDER

April 19: Isaiah 52:13 - 53:12; Hebrew 4: 14-16, 5: 7-9; John 18:1 - 19:42

Into your hands Lord I commend my Spirit... that was not merely words said by Jesus at the end of his life, it was an attitude with which he lived his entire life. That is precisely why even his death proved to be a triumph. The first and the second readings bring out the hand of God the Father of Jesus Christ and our Father and Mother, in the salvific plan that was unfolding in the life, suffering and death of God's only Son! Yes, death was not an end, it was a passing stage within the plan; not a foiling of Christ's project on earth but an unfurling of the Eternal plan of God to which Christ had totally surrendered himself, while he lived.

Surrender, is the task presented to us today, by Jesus from the Cross!

Surrender is not an inaction or a passive submission, it is an active assumption of a role or mindset that makes me look at purposes higher to my personal ones. Today we have so many personal plans, future dreams, expectations and aims that what God wants from us, what is God's plan for us, the purposes that God wants to achieve in and through us, mean almost nothing to us. Jesus throws a challenge at us today, lifted high on the Cross - if we look up to the One who is lifted up we shall live. The challenge is: Surrender, Surrender wholeheartedly to God our Father and Mother.

Jesus is the High Priest, the Sacrificial Lamb and the Sacrificial Altar at one and the same time. The Sufferings of Christ become the salvation of our beings. The Cross becomes the sign through which we are saved.

Sufferings in our lives have to be faced with a sense of surrender, that they may serve to be instruments that reveal the very significance of our life to us. The call is three fold: At times of struggles, to Surrender to the Lord and learn the ways of the Lord; at times of others' struggle to Surrender ourselves in the service of the Lord, by empathising with, remaining with and sustaining our brothers and sisters so that they begin to learn the goodness of the Lord; and at all other times to Surrender to the Lord's ways that we may be convinced that what matters most in life is God's will, even if it means to face hardships.

God, my Father and Mother, I surrender into your hands my spirit, my mind, my entire self, that I may live always giving glory to your Most Holy Name and making you known to all around me. 

Holy Week 2019: The Maundy Thursday

THE TASK: SERVE

April 18: Isaiah 61:1-3,6,8-9; Revelations 1: 5-8; Luke 4: 16-21

Maundy Thursday - the very name reminds us of the mandate we have from the Lord and Master, a mandate that is so compelling because it was not given merely in words, but in and through a life that was lived! All the three events we remember today have the same message in different forms!

THE LORD'S SUPPER:

The First event is the Lord's Supper...not so much what and how they did it, but what transpired in the mean time becomes the first mandate to us. It is the same with our families and communities too... not so much what we have at table and the variety of the spread that really matters, but what transpires around it. How many of us enjoy our table-time, in contrast to merely respecting time-table! The former concerns persons and the latter, programme. 

Jesus uses the encounter at the table, not merely here, but with Zacchaeus, with Simon the Pharisee, with the disciples of Emmaus and so on, for a spiritual encounter, an encounter that would transform the life of the other. How many of our table encounters have ended up as spiritual enrichments? Here again he uses this table-time to bring a strong lesson to the disciples: LOVE IS SERVICE!

THE EUCHARIST:

The second event is Jesus giving us his body and blood... an anticipation of what is about to happen on Calvary. Jesus anticipates the blessing of the sanctifying act, the salvific self-giving in inviting his disciples to eat his body and drink his blood. What gruesome agony he underwent on those following days - all for the love that the Father has for us; all for the love that Christ wanted to manifest to us. Jesus infact exemplifies the mandate that he gave just a while back. The lesson is so clear: LOVE IS SELF-GIVING!

THE PRIESTHOOD:

The third event is the institution of the Priesthood... as the ministry of making present this mandate given and exemplified. Priesthood is a gift to the Church, a gift that makes present the mercy of God to God's people. It is a ministry that perpetuates the self emptying of God. The Son of man who came to serve and to be served, continues to minister to his beloved flock. Priesthood becomes thus a standing reminder to serve and offers a splendid lesson: LOVE IS LIVING FOR THE OTHER. 

The task that is given to us is loud and clear: to serve! Being a Christ-ian is to serve and not to be served!

Holy Week 2019: The Spy Wednesday

THE TASK: TRUST

April 17: Isaiah 50: 4-9; Matthew 26: 14-25

Today can be called the Spy Wednesday within the Passion week... because it would have been this day that Judas approached the Jewish authorities and offered to hand Jesus over to them. The plot is darkening here!

Let us have a look at the key player today: Judas. He can easily be presented as the epitome of the ills that the present society is infected with. There are three tendencies in Judas that we are called to beware of:

- What will you give me? Looking for a gain, a personal gain, a sordid gain, a material gain, from whatever the situation be! The society today is growing in this tendency, that not only persons see each other as potential gain or loss, but they manipulate the other towards one's own gain!

- Is it I Lord? Not really getting the grips of oneself. The society today is quick to blame the others for all evils, unable to point to oneself and get in touch with the personal limitations that add to the social scourge! Issues that affect our society like corruption, caste, creed and other discrimination... aren't they arising from individual insensitivities?

- It was dark outside... because he did not have God in his heart, he had only the money bag in his mind. As John symbolically adds at the end of his account of this episode, it was dark outside. When Judas left, it was not only dark outside, but much more dark within him! He was going through a tough time: whether to trust God or to take things into his own hands and push it forward - a likely temptation that many of us undergo: to trust God or push our way forward! 

At times we think we are more practical than God, we are more precise in responding to a situation than God and so we make hasty decisions and then lament when we face the repercussions! This is a common tendency we see in the world. The lesson is clear; the Lord knows best and the Lord has a plan for everyone and everything! Why don't we allow the Master of the creation to take control of things and situations?

Let us learn to Trust God and wait on the Lord's will.

Holy Week 2019: The Preaching Tuesday

THE TASK: LISTEN

April 16: Isaiah 49: 1-6; John 13: 21-33,36-38

After Jesus cleansed the Temple and drove the money changers and vendors out of it, he did not hide himself somewhere safe, but he intensified his preaching among the people. He was seen talking to people, instructing his disciples and challenging the folks. This day he went around preaching amidst the people and probably this was the last day that he was seen preaching, because tomorrow, that is Wednesday things would already begin to develop towards the end!

As the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah spoke of the people, in spite of all his passionate preaching, the people did not really understand what they heard, though they were hanging on to the lips of the Lord. He spoke to the disciples about the imminent things to come, but they were equally unprepared when things began to happen. Jesus did not want them to be caught by surprises, but they were not keen enough to grasp all what Jesus said.

The invitation is also to us today: to Listen. 

To listen and not merely hear. We hear the Word so much but nothing in us changes. We hear and speak and discuss but fail to grasp the essential meaning of the Word or fail to see the transformation that it can create within us and to yield to it.

To Judas, to Peter, to the disciples, to the people, Jesus speaks his heart out but they are all so occupied, or rather so preoccupied, with their own thoughts and plans that nothing of what Jesus says really makes sense to them. They only come up with insensitive doubts and unrelated questions. They were hearing all that Jesus said, but were finding it so difficult to listen to.    

To listen and to be truly transformed, to listen and to understand the Word in its essence, to listen and to put it into practice in our daily life - that is the task entrusted to us today!

Holy Week 2019: The Cleansing Monday

THE TASK: CLEANSE

April 15: Isaiah 42: 1-7; John 12: 1-11

This is the day that the conflict between the Jews and Jesus erupted to its peak. Jesus enters the Temple and begins to cleanse it! The zeal for his Father's House set him afire, and his disciples were obviously enthused about it. Against the background of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem the previous day, the disciples thought it was the beginning of some kind of a revival of Israel. They never imagined that would be the beginning of the end of Jesus' life! Jesus himself would soon become a victim of the evil social order, that Jesus picks the whip against today. 

The task entrusted to us today is to Cleanse... as Jesus cleanses the temple!

We are called to cleanse our lives, cleanse our social lives of the unjust order, cleanse our family life of unholy priorities, cleanse our personal lives of sordid impurities. Cleansing is saying 'yes' to the Lord, allowing the Lord to have control over us, choosing to be transformed and built once more into the Holy Dwelling Place of God!

The readings point to us the thickening plot, where the Jews intensely turn against Jesus and everything that is connected to Jesus. They find Jesus as challenging their very existence and they cannot wait to get rid of him. But the Beloved Son of God is upto his duty, come what may! 

The judging looks of the rest of the guests, the personality branding of the society, the hypocritical priorities of the so-called righteous, the unspiritual values of the self proclaimed spiritual leaders...these are what Jesus speaks against in the Gospel and appreciates the humble disposition, profound love, sensitive demeanour and childlike submission of the woman, whom everyone else considered and condemned as a sinner and an untouchable.

Cleanse, the Lord calls us today... cleanse yourself of all your judging attitudes, prejudiced outlooks and prefabricated reactions to events in life: be sincere, loving and non judgemental, you will be declared by the Lord as, the Lord's beloved!

Holy Week 2019: The Palm Sunday

The Task: ENTER

April 14: Luke 19:28-40; Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Luke 22:14 - 23:56

Today we begin the Holy Week and as Jesus makes a solemn entry into Jerusalem, the task given to us by the Lord is to ENTER... just as he enters the city of Jerusalem! 

Jesus entered the city knowing well that it is going to lead him to trouble. When we decide to take it upon ourselves to be like the Lord, there will be problems from all sides. There will be those who wait to kill us; there will be those who long to see our downfall; there will be those who criticise us; there will be those who stand by and watch us suffer; there will be those who take pleasure in remaining unconcerned about the cause we stand for! But I am called to enter into that life that the Lord calls me to live, for God and for God's mission.

Jesus entered the city, with joy and enthusiasm of the people. A sad Christian is a sorry Christian. The task that we take upon ourselves to build the Reign of God may be demanding but that cannot take away the joy and enthusiasm from within us. I have to be the cause of joy and enthusiasm for the people, I cannot be an hindrance to their joy and happiness; much more, I cannot be the cause of the grief of the people! I am called to take up the tough task of standing up for the Lord, but with a joyful heart and a glad spirit. 

Jesus entered the city, to complete that task that was entrusted to him. He had his task clear cut, and he was aware of it. He had shared that with his disciples time and again: that he would go to Jerusalem and suffer and be handed over to those who will kill him. Though he prayed that the bitter chalice should pass away, finally he submits himself to God and that is how he becomes our way to the Father. In his obedience Jesus paves a way to our salvation. How far am I prepared to go all the way in obedience to the One who has called me!

The challenge is to enter the life that the Lord wants us to. It may cost our comfort zone, our close acquaintances and even our life. But that is not going to be for too long. I have to go a long way...but the Lord God is with me, and his Word shall protect me. Neither the glories of the present nor the sorrows of the times can in anyway be compared to the glory we have, prepared for us from eternity! The mentality we need to have today is to dare to enter the life with all its demands from the Lord - Hosanna in the Highest!

Be Gathered

Journey to Holiness: Let go of your pride and your selfishness

April 13, 2019: Saturday, Fifth week in Lent

Ezekiel 37: 21-28; John 11: 45-56

'It is better for one man to die for the people, than for the whole nation to be destroyed': this is a classical self centered mode of thought that we see in the world, whether of today or of any day! 'It is better for that person to suffer', 'it is alright for that group of people to be exploited', 'it is normal for a category of people to be denied their rights', 'it is no big issue to consume nature beyond a limit'... and how many other versions of this inhuman selfishness expressed in words, works, policies and practices in our society today. 

Added to the fact that this is inhuman, this is totally and drastically unacceptable in the eyes of the Divine. The Lord had created everything and everyone with a purpose and when that purpose is not sufficiently understood or upheld, there arises a crisis that is unsolvable! Almost all of the crises that the whole universe is faced with these days are due to exactly this callous attitude of the humankind - exclusively, humankind! It is they to whom the Lord entrusted everything in this world and precisely they went berserk in their values and priorities.

The only solution to the issues that are ravaging the universe is to realise that we are God's people, God's flock and be gathered into that flock once again, rediscovering the purpose of our creation and going by what the Lord wants us to. Instead of looking for scapegoats to blame it on or shirk our suffering on to, we have to own up our responsibilities and look for means to be gathered. The Lord invites us to gather under the Lord's wings: what better place than our very origins! I shall be your God and you shall be my people!

Holiness tip for Today: Let go of your pride and selfishness; recognise God as one Lord; submit in all your deeds!

Be Dependent

Journey to Holiness: Remember, it's no loss of your self image!

April 12, 2019: Friday,  Fifth week in Lent

Jeremiah 20: 10-13; John 6: 63-68

The days are such that people clamour for recognition and go a long way to hold on to their self image and their "due" credits. It is not anymore rare to hear of conflicts for credits - that someone usurped it from someone else and so on. It goes even to an extent where one even claims credit for what has been gifted so gratuitously by God!

The good that we accomplish is not totally our own for us to claim absolute credit for it. First of all it is the Lord who gives us the opportunity to do that good. Secondly it is the Lord who empowers us to do that good. Thirdly it is the Lord who clears the hoards of hurdles that could possibly arise in accomplishing the said good.

That is why Jesus gives the people the work that he accomplishes as testifying to his origin from the Father. And Jeremiah is not stifled by the enormous attack on him... because he is totally convinced that what he does is God's work and not his own.

The key is to acknowledge dependence on God and to be convinced that it is no loss of one's self image or autonomy or self esteem. As St. Paul would challenge,  'what do we have that we have not received? ' (1 Cor 4:7)

Holiness tip for today: Let us express our dependence on God repeatedly and with real conviction.