Prayer - the Word and our words!

THE WORD IN LENT - 1st week, Tuesday

March 03, 2020: Isaiah 55:10-11; Matthew 6: 7-15
Point for Dialogue #5: the Word and our words

Prayer is not about well-worded phrases and ultra decorated utterances; it is about turning one's heart to God. It is not about saying things, nor about making things clear to God - for the Lord knows it all, even before we say. It is all about laying bare ourselves before the Lord, right from the core of our hearts.

The Word today teaches us how our prayer should be, drawing inspiration from the very Word of God and its nature. The prayer that we make should rise from the heart, it should be a self-communication that brings us close to God! When it happens so, every word we use will have its effect; the words will not be empty phrases but concrete commitments to the Lord and our relationship with God.  Each word we use will be modelled after the Word.

We are invited to look at true Christ-ian prayer as a challenging dialogue between the Word of God and our words. Our words are the expressions of our heart and the Word of God is the self-communication of God - when these two meet and the Word influences every word of ours, there is the most beautiful of all prayers. 

Jesus presents us with a model for this dialogue in the 'Our Father' - glorifying God's name, desiring God's Reign, submitting to God's will: aren't they concrete commitments? true acknowledge of the Word made flesh in my daily life situations? 

Let not our prayer be empty phrases, legalistic performances and rigorous rituals, but a total self-surrender and a concrete commitment as children of God and disciples of the Lord. In simple terms, prayer is a constant and daily effort to turn away from things that distract us and getting in touch with the living Word, thus making every word and action of ours worth of our Lord! 

The Law of Love

THE WORD IN LENT - 1st week, Monday

March 2, 2020: Leviticus 19:1-211-18; Matthew 25: 31-46

Point for Dialogue #4: Law or Love

Law and Holiness had a very intimate connection for the Jews. For them, a strict observance of the law meant a sure way to holiness. As time went by, they began to identify the law and holiness, forgetting what lay in between... the relationships that the laws were meant to ensure! This is what Jesus point out to their indignance.  

Laws were given to enhance the relationship between the people and their God and among people with each other as a community. And that is exactly what Jesus stresses on, in the Gospel: the relationships! As St. John questions, how can anyone who does not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, love God whom they have not seen? (cf. 1Jn 4:20). 

Jesus aroused in the Jews of his times, and in all those who heard him, a deep dialogue between law and love! He questioned their sense of security which was ensured by law and made them feel for their brothers and sisters, making them vulnerable in front of their daily situation - torn between the ideals of the so-called world and the ideals of the real Spirit. They had to make that choice for what was 'good' in Christ-ian terms.

Jesus places the same as an absolute condition to us - in and through the dialogue between law and love, the concrete correlation between faith and love; when they combine there is hope; if not, the very fundamentals are under question. 

Let us relearn our basics this lent - let us begin within our family; let us love each other genuinely and that will be the best starting point to grow in holiness, to be people of the Word of God is not to merely know it and speak it, but to live it, in love: that is the law of love!

GROWING THROUGH TEMPTATIONS - THE DIALOGUE OF SALVATION

THE WORD IN LENT: 1st Sunday

Temptations: Crisis, Choice and Clarity

March 1, 2020: Genesis 2:7-9,3:1-7; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11

Temptation is a daily experience, sometimes consciously lived through and some other times unconsciously. However much we try to, we cannot live a life without temptations - that would even make life uneventful and our commitment less challenging. Big, small, mighty, risky, simple, profound, drastic... temptations can vary in their dimensions and gravity but the fact is, they are there! The Word today invites us to look at these moments of temptation as Spiritual moments, moments out of which we can grow, moments through which we can deepen our faith experience and re-found our footing in our journey towards spiritual perfection. This happens when we are ready to enter into a profound dialogue with God, our Father, our Mother, our Master, our Maker, our Model, the one who challenges us to perfection: Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect!

Temptation ...is a moment of CRISIS. Crisis, is probably the word that is heard the most today. World economic crisis, the political crisis in parts of Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle east, the ethical crisis, the faith crisis and so on. Crisis is simply the experience of a drastic reduction of something that has to be. Lack of money, lack of political stability, lack of ethical certainty, lack of adherence to faith... at the ground of it all there is a fundamental lack - the lack of meaning, the lack of sense of worth, the lack of real fulfillment in life. 

The Gospel today gives us a beautiful insight into this situation of crisis, the moment of temptation. 'At that time Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil'...and the insight is this: The Spirit of the Lord is present with us, as ever, even at the moment when we feel tempted! That is a tremendous insight. When we go through a moment of crisis, a moment of difficulty, a moment of tendency to sin, a moment of pressure to give up, we think we are all alone. No! We are not alone. The Spirit of the Lord is with us, ever present beside us. All that we need to do, is to turn to the Spirit - in a profound dialogue. Listen to the whispering of the Spirit and speak our heart out at those crucial moments, as did Jesus in the Gospel today. And the Spirit will give us the strength to fight and overcome those temptations unscathed. 

Temptation ...is a moment of CHOICE. Every crisis requires a categorical choice to be made. When Eve was faced with that situation standing in front of the tree, she had to make a choice - to be God's or to be like gods! And Adam, when he was faced with a situation, in front of Eve, he had to make a choice to conform or to challenge, to compromise or to stand firm! Jesus makes that choice... not to make himself a king or 'like god', but to belong to God always and remain the loving son of God; not to conform to the power seeking, pleasure-mad world order but to challenge it and to stand firm in his identity as the son of God. 

All that we need to do, turn to our innermost self in dialogue, look at our origins and see who we really are. As the first reading of today says, we have the breath of God within us; we are sons and daughters of a God who has loved us into existence. I remember the counsel the Director of Novices, when we were novices, used to give us: when you are faced with moments of crisis in your religious life, think of the first moments when you felt called by God. That is a wise counsel, and the Word today gives us the same. When you are faced with a difficulty, a lack of meaning, return to your origins... the moments when you felt loved by God, called by god, chosen by God and commissioned to live this life... and the life will become meaningful with all its ingredients - sadness and joy, love and suffering, loneliness and celebration. Turn to your inner self in dialogue, you would see there the real you! Restart your journey from there.

Temptation ...is a moment of CLARITY. If we go through the moments of crisis and difficulty in dialogue with the Spirit, in dialogue with the Word made flesh, and in dialogue with the counsel of the persons of God, we shall come out of those trying situations with a clarity that has never been there before. It is not merely the calm that comes after the storm, but a step further in one's maturity, a state deeper in one's self understanding, as the person relearns the basics through the experience. 

St. Paul affirms this, in the second reading as he reminds us of the 'abundance of grace' and the 'gift of justification' that comes from Jesus Christ! In and through the moments of temptation, if lived in dialogue with the Spirit, we shall learn to love God above anything else, as Jesus exemplifies. More than the needs of food and drink, more than proving himself powerful to the world and more than having the dominion of the world, Jesus chose God, chose to remain faithful to God, chose to love, serve and worship God and God alone! The lesson is clear to us: Give God the central place in our lives, the prime place in our lives, come what may. 

Let us live our lives, every moment of it, in dialogue with the Spirit, specially moments of difficulty and crisis! Inspired by the Spirit, strengthened by the Word of God and nourished by the Sacraments, our daily dialogue shall become salvific. During our moments of temptation, let us turn to the Spirit, and the Spirit will remind us to return to our Origins and we will learn to the love God above all. 

Let our prayer today be - A clean heart create for me O God, and a steadfast spirit renew within me! Amen.

Return to your Original Glory

THE WORD IN LENT: Saturday after Ash Wednesday

February 29, 2020: Isaiah 58: 9-14; Luke 5: 27-32

Point for Dialogue #3: the Real or the Present

Note the terms that appear today in the readings: Remove, Renew, Repair, Restore, and finally Repent! It is a clarion call to Return to our original glory, the glory of the children of God. And that return is not an easy task - it involves a great effort of discernment and deliberation.

The Lord invites us to return to the wholeness, with which the Lord created us. The image and likeness of God, the fullness of life and happiness that the Lord is, the glory and the brilliance that reside in God, the love and forgiveness that mark the nature of God - this is what we are called to return to. 

In fact, the Lord wants to initiate a dialogue between what we truly are and what we have made ourselves into. It becomes a tough call, not merely because the dialogue is difficult, but because we are so convinced that we are what we have made ourselves into: our weaknesses, our failures, our selfishness and so on. There is of course a stand off here between the real and the present - the really real and what we are at present!

Look at the world around. Cold wars and coups, cross border terrorism and international crisis, fanaticism under various garbs and the resultant polarisation of societies, the luxurious spoils of the first world and the empty crying stomachs of the unfortunate sections of the globe... the disparities and the disdain - they arise from the fact that we have lost our original innocence and glory, and think that this is what human nature is all about. 

The prophetic invitation today is to realise our original glory, and return to that glory of oneness, of unity, of brotherhood and sisterhood, of love, of mutual concern and of true peace. Let us return to our original glory, the glory of the Children of God. 

What you do or Who you are - which matters?

THE WORD IN LENT: Friday after Ash Wednesday

February 28, 2020" Isaiah 58: 1-9; Matthew 9: 14-15
Point for Dialogue #2: A Show or the Spirit

What you do matters, of course. But why you do it and how you do it matters more. The reason for choosing to do something, and the way that something is done, depends so much on the person that you are! Yes, what you do receives its true value from who you are as a person and it is not, or at least it should not be, the other way about! 

The prayers said, the rites performed, the sacrifices undertaken, the vows made and fulfilled, the practices kept up - all these will have their value, depending on the quality of daily life, types of ordinary choices and the respectful interpersonal relationships that one has in life. 

What a scandal it is to have a wide gaping space between one's beliefs and one's practices, between one's religious practice and one's personal relationships, between one's religious convictions and moral values. And that is precisely why there should be a profound dialogue between what I do and what I am, between a mere show and the real spirit! 

The readings today invite us to turn to integrity - to speak what we believe and to live what we speak; to stand up for what we believe and to live personally what we stand up for. Integrity gives one the authority that comes from Truth, in a way, it comes from God! 

Let us remember today, that real godly persons are those who live a life of integrity. A life of integrity is where my actions come from what I believe and my belief is conspicuously beheld in my daily life, in my words and in every one of my actions. 

Life or Death - what do you choose?

THE WORD IN LENT: Thursday after Ash Wednesday

February 27, 2020: Deuteronomy 30: 15-20; Luke 9: 22-25
Point for Dialogue #1: Life or Death

Life and Death: both are present right in front of us! The choice is ours. The choice is a bit tricky. And as all truth, it is dialogic. There needs to be a profound understanding before we choose one of these, or anything for that matter in life. 

Let us beware, choosing to live may not always be a choice for Life; neither does choosing to die for a cause, mean a choice for death! There needs to be a dialogue between our innermost selves and the choices we make on a dialy basis.

In the name of a happy life, a comfortable life or a prosperous life the world today runs after false guarantees: Money, Pleasure, Power, Domination, Ego and Social Status... and the result - promiscuity, exploitation, loss of self and human dignity, lack of respect for life... in short, a CULTURE OF DEATH. That is what the world is battling against today. 

Instead if we choose love, sacrifice, mutual respect, empowerment of the other, wishing the good of the other, universal brotherhood and sisterhood in the One God who has created us all - it would cost a lot personally - but it would be definitely a TURN TO LIFE. We see Jesus getting ready to lay down his life in the Gospel - was it a choice for death? No a concrete and absolute choice for life, for eternal life, for you and me. 

Hence, today, let us not tread the beaten path towards the culture of death, but resolve to turn to life, in every way, every day. Let a live dialogue be on, within ourselves that we will always have the Truth in front our eyes. 

LENT 2020 - READY TO DIALOGUE?

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5: 20)

A reflection on the Holy Father's Message for Lent 2020 

Ash Wednesday, February 26

As it is customary, the Holy Father has a concrete message for the season of lent that we are about to begin. Apart from the traditional picture of  prayer, penance and philanthropy that is always so helpfully right in front of our eyes at this time of the liturgical year, Pope Francis offers us an impressive image to behold all this season - the imagery, the icon, the framework of DIALOGUE, within which everything needs to be viewed in this holy season. 

God invites us to a loving Dialogue! Conversion is a dialogue, dialogue with a love so real, so deep, so unlimited and unconditional. It is truly a dialogue, not a threatening indoctrination that God wants us to experience. It is a friendly dialogue, with our eyes fixed on the outstretched arms of the crucified Son of God. It is an appeal that God makes that we let ourselves be saved in the Spirit who sustains that daily dialogue, the dialogue of conversion, the dialogue of salvation. 

The Dialogue of Conversion is an urgent need - in prayer, in the sacraments and in the Word, a dialogue with the Master. It is urgent because conversion is not the end of a journey, but every bit of the journey where we make concrete choices, for God and against anything that would separate us from God's love.

The Dialogue of Salvation is not an empty chatter - it is a deep and profound inward journey where we are able to encounter ourselves, confront ourselves and challenge ourselves towards real sense of life and true experience of love.

The Dialogue that draws our attention to our richness - in compassion and sharing we dialogue with the others, with the world, with the society, with those who are exploited, those who are marginalised, those who are suffering, in order that we are able to build a better world, a world of justice and peace founded on the love of God. 

Lent 2020 comes with a direct challenge to each of us: are you ready to Dialogue?

Dialogue with yourself – understand the core-call that you have received from the Lord, your commitment at baptism and your heartfelt response to the unconditional love of God.

Dialogue with the Other – respect, love and share your life with the other, your neighbour, your fellow brothers and sisters, without any discriminations and divisions, as true children of God.

Dialogue with God – recognising the love that the Lord has always shown you, recognising that love on the Cross, in the suffering Son of God who came as a living proof of God’s everlasting love.

Are you ready to dialogue? 
Let us make this a season of dialogue, dialogue of conversion, dialogue of salvation. 

To lift yourself or be lifted up!

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 7th week in Ordinary time

February 25, 2020: James 4: 1-10; Mark 9: 30-37

Humble yourself before the Lord and the Lord will lift you up! Humility - the message continues today from yesterday. Humility is knowing the truth, realising its real sense and accepting it without regrets. The Lord has created you and knows you through and through; there is nothing that can escape the Lord and there is absolutely no need to hide it from the Lord! The Lord loves us anyway.

If only we know and understand this truth, and be convinced of it, that in spite of our weaknesses the Lord loves us - it would do so much good to ourselves and to the entire humanity. Because it would lead to two crucial dispositions in life that is so blatantly missing in the world today. 

The first disposition is that, what we are is willed by God and hence we need not compare ourselves with anybody else. All that we have is given by God and hence all that we need to do is be grateful and live our life to the full. When we are not at home with what we are and not satisfied with what we have, the world is pushed into the malice of greed, exploitation and criminality. 

The second disposition is that, we are loved and all that we need to do is remain in that love, grow in that love and share that love with everyone around. Like a child who feels secure in the arms of its father or mother, and is able to smile at everyone around without any fear or ill will, so should we be in the hands of the Lord who loves us without measure. 

When these dispositions find their place within our hearts, we would never be anxious about lifting ourselves up, but we shall be lifted up; the Lord shall lift us up.

The real ascendancy!

WORD 2day: Monday, 7th week in Ordinary time

February 24, 2020: James 3: 13-18; Mark 9: 14-29

Trying to prove one's ascendancy comes very natural and instinctive to everyone. It is ingrained in our very beings - of course we have heard the theories such as the survival of the fittest and the natural selection, where one proves better than the other to exist, or becomes extinct. As human persons can we go on with this as our mentality - unfortunately, that is what is happening in the world at all levels, be it  interpersonal, familial, social, national, international or global level. Every one is trying to prove their ascendancy over the other! It is in this context, we can read the Word today and it makes an absolute sense.

Where does our true ascendancy lie? In proving physically powerful, intellectually superior, economically influential, politically potential and socially dominant? The Word says - it lies in being humble and wise! A humble and wise person will be a person of faith and a person of true and profound Christian faith will be humble and wise! 

Humility makes one know, recognise, realise and accept the real truth about oneself. That one is not all-powerful but related, interrelated and interdependent - on God, on fellow beings and on the entire reality. When this humility takes over there is a natural ascendancy that is seen in a person. That is faith!

Wisdom is knowing the truth and being able to put it into practice in the concrete situations of life. It is not knowing something, believing something else and living something totally different - so dissipated a life-style. Wisdom is that lovely coming together of knowledge, daily life practice and mode of responding to situations. That is Christian faith!

Without these our life is so full of tendency to prove, to justify oneself, to establish oneself superior than the others - a demon that is devouring humanity and the universe right now. These demons can be driven away only by prayer!

HOLINESS - THE IDENTITY OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD

Be you holy, as I am holy

February 23, 2020: 7th Sunday in Ordinary time

Leviticus 19:1-2,17-18; 1 Corinthians 3:16-23; Matthew 5:38-48

What makes one a Christian? Take a pause and answer this question within your hearts!

Is it Baptism? 
Yes, of course, but only if it were received with a personal choice and every promise given at the proper moment is lived to the full everyday of one's life. The mere rite does not make you a Christian automatically.

Is it being enrolled in a parish? 
Yes, but only if the belonging to the parish makes one feel one with the Universal Body of Christ, the Church. The mere fact that you belong to a geographical jurisdiction of a Catholic parish does not make you deserve that name Christian.

That which makes our Baptism efficacious, our belonging to a parish meaningful, and makes us truly Christians is our realisation of our identity, as people of God - a realisation that has to be manifested in our personal holiness and in our holiness as a community of believers.

In the Apostolic exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate, Pope Francis reminds us that it is not merely a wish of the Lord, but an expressed invitation to holiness - the Lord has been calling humanity right from the time of Abraham, to "walk with God and be blameless". The Word this Sunday, invites us to understand and accept this call to holiness, an universal call that the Lord gives to each and every one of God's children. 

Holiness is not a super-human quality. It is definitely not alien to being human. Because it can be seen at our very origin. God made us in God's own image and likeness says Genesis (1:27). So, holiness is our original nature, not sinfulness; Holiness is the core of our being, not sinfulness. Sin and sinfulness have come to mar and obstruct our original nature. This is why to the chosen people, God says through Moses, "Be holy, because I the Lord your God am Holy." Because I am holy you can be holy too. Yes, dear brothers and sisters, we ought to be holy because we are FROM GOD.

The call to holiness is as old as humanity, as right at our origin, we were created with the potential to be holy, to grow holy and to remain holy. Yes, coming from God, holiness becomes our very nature. All that it takes is to be still and know God, be still and understand what God has made us as, be still and realise the real image within us and live it to the full. Be still and know that you are from God.

Holiness is a choice, a choice made not once for all, but at every moment, at every circumstance, at every crisis. It is a choice made for God, because we realise and gratefully acknowledge the choice that God has made for us. You did not choose me, I chose you, says the Lord (Jn 15:16). It is the Lord who has chosen us. It is not that we loved God but it is God who loved us first, reminds us St. John (1 Jn 4:9,19). God has chosen us and God has loved us abundantly! And our response is Holiness, because we belong to God, we are OF GOD.

The call to holiness has a path well laid out too, in our life. The situations we find ourselves in, the difficulties and temptations, the particular commitments and fatigue that we are entrusted with each day and the demanding circumstances that we have before us to deal with - these are the ways to holiness for each of us. It is right there we have to make our choice and say to ourselves, to the world around and to our Lord, that we belong to God, we are children of God. 

Holiness is not an act, it is an attitude; it is not a set of actions but a habit; it is not merely an appearance but an internal becoming! holiness is a daily effort to become more and more like God. it is returning to the image and likeness of with which we were formed in the love of God. We need to grow in every way to be like our God, for it is God who has breathed God's Spirit into us. That requires that in our words, thoughts, attitudes, acts and choices of daily life we are called to become LIKE GOD.

The call to holiness is not something that we have to do, it is something that we have to become, we have to grow into. As in the exhortation already mentioned, Gaudete et exsultate, Pope Francis would explain, it is not in the amount of things that you accomplish, nor in the number of sacrifices you offer to the Lord that you are saved, but in the measure you are able to unite yourself in heart, mind and soul to the Creator and translate the Creator's will into your daily life - that is holiness. 

Our Blessed Mother and the Saints are our models and Jesus is our Way. St. John traces that course for us when he says, 'we will be like him because we will see him as he is" (1Jn 3:2). We are called not to be merely good people but God's people. Every word and act of our's has to reflect God's presence to those around us. 

We are People of God and our very identity is Holiness. If we miss out on holiness we lose everything. We are from God, we are of God and we are called to become like God because we are people of God. Because we are the temple where God chooses to dwell, we are the presence of God that the world so badly needs today!