BLESSED ARE THE HUMBLE

Mark of the People of the Reign

September 1, 2019: 22nd Sunday in Ordinary time
Ecclesiastes 3:19-21,30-31; Hebrew 12: 18-19, 22-24; Luke 14: 1,7-14

Humility is one lesson we learn so hard. Blessed are those who are humble by nature. The best of our qualities and talents would amount to nothing when we lack this one single virtue: Humility! The Word today invites us not only to be humble, but also to be with the humble and to be all for those who are humble, that we may be people of the Reign of God. 

The Guru of the ashram was old and dying and he announced to his band of disciples: 'I wish to appoint the humblest of you all as the next Guru.' The bickering began among the disciples, each one trying to prove he is more humble than the other. There was one among them who stood still and away from all debating. The Guru seemed impressed. He thought to himself, 'that should be the right one to succeed me, perhaps!' and he called him over to himself and asked him: 'what about you? are you not interested in the contest?' The disciple replied, 'Oh you don't get it, how much ever they fight among themselves, they will never find anyone more humble than me!' The Guru was heart broken and he dismantled the whole ashram before he died! Spiritual Masters say, the moment you think you are humble, you cease to be so! How true it is!

Be Humble - that is the first message today. Being Humble is not putting up an appearance. It is not doing something to prove to others that I am humble. It is going about my duty with such sincerity and integrity that I may not be even noticed for the good that I do - but that does not disturb me at all.  

At times there are people who make a big show of the so-called good that they do, and sometimes even of their own simplicity! Do you remember the posters of our politicians posing with a broom in their hands claiming to be simple and committed to cleanliness of the nation. Or similar ones where they pose with some poor people in their huts and gullies. They would have spent a fortune on those hoardings and advertisements! Let us remember - we have nothing to prove to anyone, not even to our own selves. All that I need to do is, be truthful, be real, be authentic. Humility is acceptance of truth. 

Be with the Humble - identify people who are truly humble. Jesus had the special eye for the humble ones. Be it Mathew, or Zacchaeus, or Nathaniel, or the Centurion, or the Pharisee who asked him about the commandment of love... Jesus recognised the humble and sided with them. In another episode like today's, when Jesus was at dinner at Simon the Pharisee's, he was able to see through the sinfulness of the woman and identify her humble repentance. She was gifted with his empathy. Jesus sided always with the humble, not with the haughty. 

If we are truly people of God, besides being humble ourselves, we would look out for the humble and stand by them. Just become aware of your tendency... among a group of new people whom you meet, who is it that you feel drawn to: the most brandishing among them or the quiet insecure of the band? Or when you deal with persons who depend on you, whom do you promote: the so-called talented and gifted or the rare ones who never get to reach the limelight? There is a statement about myself, in whom I choose to be with. 

Be all for the Humble - being the voice of the voiceless, the stronghold for the weak. When we stand by the humble we stand with the Lord, because the Lord always stands by the humble. This is the third message that the Word offers us today. Be for the humble of heart, stand by them, empathise with them, support them and spread the spirit so that the Reign of God may be felt amidst us, here and now. 

Today, we see reports of so many humble persons being taken for granted, exploited and drained of even the little that they have. We have truthful and integral individuals taken to task, punished and crushed by the demonic culture of corruption and greed. Those who fight for justice and truth are labelled rebels by the authority and derided as jobless by the public. What is our response as people of the Reign?

The Word today invites us to understand that the humble are blessed in the sight of the Lord. Those who are humble, those who are with the humble and those who are all for the humble, find favour in the light of the Reign of God - they are truly the people of the Reign.

Sanctity: Doing my part!

WORD 2day: Saturday, 21st week in Ordinary time

August 31, 2019: 1 Thessalonians 4: 9-11; Matthew 25: 14-30

‘To aspire to live quietly, to mind your affairs and to work with your own hands’, is the practical tip for peaceful living that St. Paul gives his spiritual children at Thessalonica. It seems that gossip and judgments about others has been a problem for centuries on.

Uncharitable curiosity about others’ lives, passing judgments and spreading prejudices about others, looking out for an opportunity to blame my negligences and failures on someone else, villainising someone merely because I do not agree with him or her – these are fast becoming “normal” in a society that is influenced by a maddening media craze!

Yesterday, the Word invited us to reflect on personal sanctification. However, holiness does not consist of my private life alone, it involves my social relations, my willingness towards contributing my mite to the social order and my commitment towards making this world a better place to live! 

A mentality like, I care nothing until it concretely hurts me, coupled with the inhuman tendency to seek self-centered goals at any cost, is doing all the damage possible to the world today. It looks like we are acrimoniously endangering humanity and accelerating its end at a demonic speed.

It is no reason or moment to lose heart. However little, let us do our part, so that the Lord may rejoice in us, and address us, “Good and faithful servants!”

Personal sanctification - not to run out of Spirit

WORD 2day: Friday, 21st week in Ordinary time

August 30, 2019: 1 Thessalonians 4: 1-8; Matthew 25: 1-13

This is God’s will: your sanctification! St. Paul has the gift of saying the greatest of the things in simplest of terms. Today, he puts across in straightforward terms the life task that we have – our personal sanctification. 

Our personal sanctification comes as a result of our self understanding. ‘Don’t you know that you are the temple of God?’ (1 Cor 3:16), St. Paul would ask elsewhere. That self-understanding as the dwelling of the Spirit of God, is the starting point for a whole journey of personal sanctification. 

At times we tend to understand sanctification in terms of the other, deciding for ourselves who that other will be, depending on our convenience. We wish to do better than someone and derive satisfaction that we are good. We propose to ourselves some one as a point of comparison - either adulate him or her making ourselves little or judge and criticise them in order to feel so pathetically self righteous. Both of these do not fit into the mind of Christ.

My personal sanctification: it is not a victory gained once for all but it is a constant vigilance and continuous labour, explains the parable that Jesus narrates in the Gospel. The lamp of our life needs to keep burning; the oil is given by God – ‘God who gives the Holy Spirit’. The Spirit is the oil that we need to keep our lamps burning, burning always with the desire to remain sanctified dwellings of the Spirit! Not to run out of Spirit, is what I have to ensure towards my personal sanctification.

THE WORD AND THE FEAST

The call to be prophets – Remembering the Martyrdom of John the Baptist

August 29, 2019: Jeremiah 1: 17-19; Mark 6: 17-29

The call to be prophets, like Jeremiah and John presented to us in the Word today - is not an elitist call, that is reserved for a club of specially chosen specimen. No, it is a call that is addressed to every baptized child of God. But what is the world in general moving towards?

The world seems to be at home with a culture of sin today! Be it social or economic or political or cultural arena – there is a cloud of sinfulness that pervades and waits to consume everyone present. Religious and Spiritual realms, unfortunately, are no exceptions to this in any sense.

More treacherous than this situation, is the lack of sense of sin, that justifies sinfulness, sometimes without even the conscious assent of the persons involved. We have become so mindless of sin that certain of them do not even appear to be so... judging the other, discriminating the other in our minds, giving into our prejudices and not really giving a chance to the other and so on.

The question posed to us by the feast today is, which part we would rather play? The seducing forces that draw people to sin; or the wicked plotters who play the protagonists in spreading sinfulness; or the passive infected who continue to perpetrate sinfulness by their mere inaction; or the silent spectators who aid the spread more than do anything to stop it – all these groups are represented in the Gospel today. There is also John the Baptist, who dares to stand for truth and righteousness, even at the cost of his own life! 

What would be my choice?

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

A life of Integrity – Remembering St. Augustine

August 28, 2019: 1 Thessalonians 2: 9-13; Matthew: 23: 27-32

Yesterday was the mother, and today the son! St. Augustine is known for his passionate search for truth! And in the process he came across the Truth beyond all truth, the One Truth that accounts for all other truths and he declared, “Late have I known thee!” 

The Word of God both encourages and challenges us, explains St.Paul in the first reading and it depends on each of us, what we make of these encouragements and demands! And Jesus lashes it out at us; he minces no words: the demands are so categorical and so inescapable. We can of course pretend and wield facades that create an aura that is all hoax... but how long and to what extent? What would we achieve at the end of it all? 

Augustine tried it - he created a make-believe world around him and wanted to live in that preposterous state all his life. Thanks to the mercy of God, through the tears of his mother he saw the horizon of truth. He learnt to understand the call from God, as St. Paul says today, "as God's message and not some human thinking". That made all the difference.

Being worthy of God is the project that the Word and the saint of today propose to us and it is a matter of the inner self. No amount of exterior adornment or  rationalisations or self-justifications can give the internal peace, which comes only from a life of communion with oneself, with others and with God. This in one word could be called, “Integrity” – and that is what Jesus calls us to: a life of integrity.

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

Pleasing God alone: Remembering St. Monica 

August 27, 2019: 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22: 23-26 

Not to please humans but God, invites St. Paul today in the first reading. Our spirituality can reach its dreary bottom if we are constantly conditioned by our intention to please those around and live up to their praises and affirmation, and strive to evade their critiques and denunciations. 

An externally illustrious life, with a painful emptiness within, cannot endure in its glitter for long. On the contrary, a life that might look apparently uninteresting could inspire and change people and history for ever, if it is built on deep spiritual convictions. 

St. Monica, a simple mother with her perseverance in prayer and firmness in her hope, believed that her son will one day turn to the inner richness that God alone could give and she saw her belief come true! 

Our spirituality cannot consist of straining out gnats, that everyone around may praise us for our diligence and in the obscurity of our privacy swallow camels without any qualms. How impoverished we shall be if we are so attentive about our external image, others' opinions, social status and success banners but mindless of the dirt, the negativity, the selfishness and the connivance we harbour within! 

St. Monica understood this truth in her heart and saw through the misery of her son's spirit. And she knew exactly what was lacking there within him. She prayed hard and won for him, his salvation through God's mercy! 

May the saint of today inspire us to thank God for our mothers who are our first catechists!

Conversion - turning to God!

WORD 2day: Monday, 21st week in Ordinary time

August 26, 2019: 1 Thessalonians 1: 5, 8-10; Matthew 23: 13-22 

Evangelisation is one topic that the Church can never tire itself speaking of, because it is the primary reason for its being. As soon as the Church speaks of evangelisation, the anti-church civil society would interpret it as ‘Conversion’ and in turn those factions never tire themselves of accusing the Church of conversions. 

Conversion - while it would mean mere numbers for the referred-to civil society, the readings today present to us what true conversion should be for us, the people of God. It is not so much numbers, as a way of life that counts. It is a choice made for truth, justice, love and peace - in short, for God! 

Right priorities and right values are crucial within this discourse. St. Paul underlines it in such clear terms writing to the Thessalonians, that our faith should be active; our love committed and our hope firm. Active faith is love of God, committed love is self giving towards the others and firm hope is the confidence in our self identity that we are chosen by God and made for eternal happiness.

Faith in action, love as concrete compassion and hope as unceasing optimism – these are the reasons why Pope Francis is so fond of repeating – a ‘Christian’ can never be sad! 

ENTERING THE NARROW DOOR

It is a demanding task!

August 25, 2019: 21st Sunday in Ordinary time

Isaiah 66: 18-21; Hebrews 12: 5-7,11-13; Luke 13: 22-30

The experience of standing in a queue, the tedium of entering the metal detector at places with extra vigilance or waiting for the token number at the bank… these are no rarities in our ordinary life. Jesus draws a simple example, one similar to these, our experiences.

The door to the Reign of God is narrow, not many take that door, though everyone is invited to enter the Reign. There are many other doors, which seem more comfortable, more spacious and more adorned and people prefer them, knowing least that they do not lead to the Reign of God, the greatest treasure in store for us!

Entering the narrow door is a task quite demanding – the readings today point to three traits that are needed to be able to enter the Reign through the narrow door. As Jesus tells us in the Gospel, many try to enter but they cannot.

To able to enter the door, one should be strong! Strive – says the Lord – Strive to enter – To strive means to struggle, to make all the efforts possible, to try real hard. One needs to be strong in mind, heart and soul to strive to enter the narrow door into the Reign. It is Spiritual strength we are dealing with here. Be Strong, but avoid Spiritual Obesity, warns the Lord. If you are obese, you cannot enter the narrow door – it’s obvious! 

Spiritual Obesity – Pride and Elitist mentality – which gives into self righteousness and judgmental attitude can never get us into the Reign of God. I am baptized, I am a born-again, I am a consecrated religious, I am a Sacred minister – nothing can get you in! From the east and the west, the north and the south everyone will enter and sit at the table in the Reign says the Lord. Mind you, there are no reservations here in. A bit of disciplining, as the second reading suggests, can get us in shape.

To be able to enter the door, one should be in communion! The way is long, we reflected on that last week. Communion with each other and Communion with those who have managed to enter the door before us, can really make the task easy and enjoyable. Our forerunners are our example, our model and can even be our helpers – but finally, the one who has to enter is me! It is you! That is why we are warned today – Be in Communion but avoid Spiritual Infantilism. At times we make our faith so infantile that we think everything depends on the candles we light, the formulae we repeat, the food we give up and the coins we drop. These are means to strengthen our relationship with God – but they are not everything. 

What matters most is our personal life of commitment and integrity. You cannot enter the narrow door in groups… one by one you have to do it. That means you cannot ride on the goodness of the other, either the living or those gone before you!

To be able to enter the door, one should be patient! The wait is long, for the door is narrow! Waiting on the Lord is a spiritual talent. To wait patiently, amidst failures and pressures, amidst temptations and struggles, amidst dark nights and heavy burdens, it is the only way one can be prepared and prompt when one’s time comes! There is a warning here too: Be Patient but avoid Spiritual Lethargy. In the name of patience I cannot procrastinate my commitment and postpone my conversion to a later moment. ‘Repent and Believe, for the Reign of God is near’ says the Lord. 

Being patient is not being busy with something else till my turn comes… but persevering, enduring and constantly working on myself that when my turn comes, I am in shape, prepared enough and fit to enter the narrow door that leads me to the behold the eternal glory of the Lord Almighty!

I am the door, if anyone enters through me, he or she will be saved (Jn 10:9) declared the Lord elsewhere! Jesus is the door, the narrow door, the demanding door – He is compassionate, yes; but at the same time uncompromising. The choice is ours to choose the narrow door, make ourselves strong, united and patient, to endure our everyday life and make straight the path for our feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed (heb 12:13). The door is narrow but there is enough space to enter, if we are in ready and willing.

All, but not all…

One by one is the call…

Let us enter the Narrow Door, one and all.

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

August 24, 2019: Remembering St. Bartholomew, the Apostle.

Revelations 21: 9-14; John 1: 45-51

Known in the Gospel of St.John with the name Nathanael, Bartholomew received from the Lord a great compliment. A man in whom there is no guile, says the Lord. Though he did not believe what Phillip said and originally did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, Jesus recognises the goodness in him. 

The readings today have three lessons to teach: 

One, the readiness of Jesus to appreciate the goodness in a person even when the person did not believe in him. How many times friends turn the worst enemies when they begin to disagree with each other! 

Second lesson is from Bartholomew, who accepts the call to 'come and see' and goes, sees, believes and remains with the Lord. 

The third lesson is from the feast itself - a remembrance of the Apostles is a special invitation to each of us to recognise the call we have received to to go into the world and proclaim God's Reign. 

Bartholomew took the Gospel right upto Armenia and Arabia. There exists a legend that Bartholomew reached even India's western borders! Each of us is reminded today of our call to bear the goodnews to the ends of the world, to establish the Reign of God - beginning with the closest of our contexts - that is, right wherever we are!

How do I become God's child?

WORD 2day: Friday, 20th week in Ordinary time

August 23, 2019: Ruth 1: 1-3, 6-14, 16-22; Matthew 22:34-40

Approaching today's readings with the question, 'how does one become a son or daughter of God' - there is an example and a theory! The example is that of Ruth and the theory is presented to us by Jesus himself in the Gospel. 

Ruth, a moabite, who lost her hebrew husband, still becomes a part of God's salvation plan and becomes one of the few women referred to in the long history of the Israelites. How does it happen? The answer is, true and selfless LOVE. And that is the connecting link between the readings today.

Love is the only way one can become a child of God, as John puts it so simply in his letter - 'Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God' (1 Jn 4:7). John learnt it from his master and beloved friend, Jesus who dared to synthesise the whole of the law and the prophets (that is, the whole of Hebrew Scripture) into two directives, which actually amounted to just one command: LOVE. 

Now we are back with the question we began with: how do I become a child of God. Neither some ritual, nor some practices of piety, not even some grand acts of heroism can achieve that status. There is only one way, taught by the Only Son of God and that is the way of love. Let us love one another and become God's children.