What is your choice: the exile or the Reign?

WORD 2day: Thursday, 12th week in Ordinary time

June 25, 2020: 2 Kings 24: 8-17; Matthew 7: 21-29

The Word today has the classical challenge: what do you choose? Our life of faith and our daily life meet each other on that hot seat called, Choice! Rise or ruin, happiness or doom, fullness or nothingness - the choice is mine! I cannot escape from it. We have seen in the book of Deuteronomy this basic philosophy of life that the people of God were taught: behold I place before you today, life and death! (see Deuteronomy 30:15) Today we have an illustration of the same lifestyle in the reading taken together.

The first reading says, Jehoiachin did what was not desirable in the eyes of God and his house crumbled - his mother, his servants and all, his people were destroyed, the entire salvation plan that God was taking forward in and through the so called chosen people of God, went to ruin! Chosenness is not guaranteed by anything other than reponding to that choseness by our daily personal choices.

The Gospel affirms that the one who hears the Word of the Lord, and does the will of God the Father and Mother, has already found favour in the eyes of the Lord, and his house is built on a rock; no rain, no thunder, no floods, no disease, no fear of death, no suffering or sickness can ruin it! In all these the chosen one will live strong, clear, hopeful and blessed. 

Taking the readings together we can understand what the Word tells us today: the choice is yours - the exile or the Reign. If you choose your own will, your own ego, your own ways and your own logic of profit, exploitation and manipulation... you are already walking towards your exile. You may think you are rising up, your are rushing towards prosperity or proving yourself to the world; you will all of a sudden realise, you have entered into an exile which is a million times worse than all the quarantines that we keep speaking of these days.

Instead, if your receive the Word of God, respect the will of God and follow the promptings of the Spirit, it would seem you are walking through fire, drowning in suffering, slipping into misery and trapped in troubles - but you are actually and already treading into the Reign, growing into the Reign, entering into the Reign of God, the fulfillment of the entire life and of the world. 

Let us pay attention today: what is our choice - the exile or the Reign?

x

John: God has been Gracious

THE WORD AND THE FEAST

June 24, 2020: Birthday of St. John the Baptist 
Jeremiah 1: 4-10; 1 Peter 1: 8-12; Luke 1: 5-17

The readings today summarise in a perfect sense who John was. The first reading describes his identity, the second his self-understanding and the Gospel, his blessedness in the eyes of God.

The Voice: his identity. 

He stands out as a prophet, a prophet who ensures the continuity between the Old Testaments prophets and Jesus, the prophet par excellence. His identity as a voice explains also his priority to make God's Word known. The Word is announced by the Voice: the call for us... to make present to the Word in the world.

Our Reflection: Is my identity in relation to the Word, in relation to the Lord, in relation to my saviour?

The Servant of God: his  self-identity.

John was filled with a sense of his mission. He was sent to prepare the way of the Lord, as a precursor to run before the Lord and get the spirit of the Lord's people up and awake. He challenged people to conversion as a foretaste of the Reign of God that Jesus wanted to establish. The challenge for us, is to recognise God's will at work in our lives.

Our Reflection: Do I consider myself as an instrument at the service of the Will of God... in my family, in my work place, in my parish or wherever I am!

Blessed from the Womb: God's chosen one.

John becomes the most proximate witness to us for the words that Isaiah, Jeremiah and other prophets always insist upon: the Lord chooses us before we were ever formed in the womb and the Lord has a specific plan for each of us. Such a blessed one, was killed so brutally and it looked like he ended up a big failure! In God's wisdom lies our true happiness. The invitation for us, is to understand the real purpose of our lives from the perspective of God.

Our Reflection: The so called goals and ambitions, purposes and plans of my life - how seriously do they seek to know, understand and accept the plan and purposes of God?

In the identity he received from God, in his self identity and in his blessed life right from the womb of his mother, John stands a witness and a challenge to our life in God! In fact, as his name means, we are called to realise God has been gracious to us and respond to that grace, with our true childlike love and surrender. 

Be mindful: the pearls, pigs and our pride!

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 12th week in Ordinary time

2 Kings 19: 9-11,14-21,31-36; Matthew 7: 6, 12-14

A look at the scene reported in the first reading, fills us with a nostalgia: will something like that not happen today, and save us all and the entire humanity from this gruesome pandemic that is on an unrelenting raid? Just on the verge of being conquered and subjugated, the people of Israel miraculously experience the liberating hand of God! What a great wonder it would have been!

But we forget to see the other elements that were there: to total submission of kind, the good will of the rest, the support of the prophet and everything else came together with the will of God. Today, aren't we testimonies to the blunders made by human pride, occasions lost by human ego, evils brought in my exploitation of the other and disasters created by human greed! How can something like that really take place today?

This what Jesus is warning us of in the Gospel...throwing your pearls to the pigs! You have pearls directly from the hands of the Lord, handed over to you in love: your life, your soul, your goodness, your image and likeness to God, your happiness, your loving relationships, your capacity for goodness... how are you treating them all? We have saints - those are ones who have given the right place to these pearls and adorned their world with it.

The sad fact is we are too prone to throw our pearls to the pigs like our greed, our passion for pleasure, our desire for power, our insensitive consideration of the other, our wish to exploit the other, our craving to dominate every thing for our own happiness and and satisfaction! This group is the crowd that enters through the wide and spacious gate! Are we in their numbers?

Or do we want to enter the narrow gate, with that slender minority which loves truly, walks justly and lives fully their life, mindful of their pearls!

A self-critical conscious Choice

WORD 2day: Monday, 12th week in Ordinary time

June 22, 2020: 2 Kings 17: 5-8, 13-15, 18; Matthew 7: 1-5

Judge not, and you shall not be judged, instructs Jesus today. Not to judge others does not mean justifying whatever he or she does. Between judging the other and justifying the other there is an attitude that Jesus deems Reign-worthy and that is, a Self-critical Conscious Choice.

The first need is to be self critical. When I find something wrong in the other, charity requires that I first become critical of myself... it is seeing the log that is in your eye before offering to remove the splinter from your neighbour's. Once I am aware that I too possess the same, or a similar, or a bigger weakness, my attitude changes completely. I am in a  position to act with prudence and humility.

The second need is to set the home tidy first. "Do not do like they do" ... that was the instruction that the Lord had given the people when they come into contact with other people in their wanderings. St. Paul too has a similar warning for us, isn't it? Writing to the Romans, he tells us: do not be conformed to the world, instead be transformed in the Lord (cf. Rom 12).

The third need is to make a conscious choice. Do not let yourself be carried away by your emotions and the anger of the moment. How many times this happens, that we lose our cool in a moment of restlessness, and feel bad to have said something or done something that we can never undo! If we judge and react to our brothers and sisters merely in the whiff of the moment, it would not be a conscious choice, and later we will have no other choice than to regret it all our life.  

In short, the Word invites us today to live our daily lives conscious of who we are, what we are called for and where we are bound to! Let us take our daily life seriously and live on a daily basis with sound self-critical conscious choices... the Word shall be the lamp to that path!

Glowing for the love of God

THE WORD AND THE FEAST

June 20, 2020: Remembering the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Isaiah 61: 9-11; Luke 2: 41-51

Following the Sacred Heart, we remember the Immaculate Heart - so fitting and meaningful a tradition! The Heart of Mary, immaculate originally by the grace of God, but manifests more than that... a total dedication to God and the role God has to play in the salvation history of human kind.

The heart of Mary gives us three lessons to live by.

1. The heart was pierced by sorrows as Simeon predicted. In the book of Lamentations, we come across the picture of the lamenting daughter of Sion and Mary is prefigured in this imagery. But no matter how much the heart was was pierced and hurt and tortured, it always glowed for the love of God and the fulfillment of God's will.

2. The heart of Mary was absolutely open to the working of the Spirit and it was at the beck and call of the Word. We see this right from the moment she heard the greeting from the angel. Openness to the Spirit is a matter of the heart and Mary exemplifies it to the utmost.

3. The heart of Our Blessed Mother was filled with 'God-thoughts' and that was because she kept everything that was happening in her life in her heart and pondered over them. She recognised, acknowledged and accepted interventions of God in her life, and found herself being moved and animated by the Lord, the Lord's Word and the Lord's Spirit.

Imitating Mary, let us open our hearts to God, glow for God and allow ourselves to be guided by the Lord and we will experience strongly the presence of the Lord in our hearts. May the Immaculate heart of our Blessed Mother be a guide post on our journey towards the merciful heart of God, our Father and Mother. 

Love made Flesh

THE WORD AND THE FEAST

June 19, 2020: Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Deuteronomy 7: 6-11; 1 John 4: 7-16; Matthew 11: 25-30

Today we celebrate the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, the fount of love, the most symbolic expression possible of our relationship with God. The great devotion that we have for the Sacred Heart, has come from and passed through immense experience of God's love in a concrete manner. Sr. Margaret Mary Alacoque was chosen as the champion and apostle for this devotion and today we have a treasure in its form, to reflect upon, to learn from, and to attach ourselves to.

The Sacred Heart symbolises...

1. Covenant: God's initiative in love towards humanity, towards you and me. The heart reminds us of the covenant we have with the Lord - to belong to the Lord, to be people of the Lord! "It is you that the Lord our god has chosen to be God's own people out of all the peoples on earth," says the first reading. 

2. Compassion: God's continued relationship, filled with compassion towards us. The compassion which calls us to 'come and rest'; the wounded, scarred, pierced heart, that offers to heal, soothe and fill our hearts. "Come to me," calls the Lord and promises, "I will give you rest." 

3. Commitment: God's invitation to imitate the total, self-giving love of God. Loving one another is a commitment, not merely a sentiment or a wishful feeling. It is a concrete commitment towards the over-all well being of each other. Only when we love, are we born of God's love; if not, our very sonship or daughtership in relation to God becomes null and void. Anyone who lives in love lives in God, says John in the second reading today. 

Love made flesh, Most Merciful Sacred Heart of Jesus, fill us with the same love that your heart burns with - Amen.

Prayer of the Persons of God

WORD 2day: Thursday, 11th week in Ordinary time

June 18, 2020: Sirach 48: 1-14; Matthew 6: 7-15

Elijah and Elisha - they have been churning our minds these days! Wondrous deeds, challenging words, and above all, demanding prayers! There is a characteristic difference in the prayers that persons of God make and that is what Jesus tries to teach us today. Prayer is not about begging God for things that we badly need, it is discussing with God my Father and Mother, the concerns that fill my mind at a point of time.

The Our Father is one such prayer, a prayer of a person of God; a prayer that puts God at the centre and not my needs; a prayer that is bothered not so much about receiving the blessings as about being blessings to others; a prayer that does not seek a secure life but a sincere life; a prayer that is not all about bringing pleasure and happiness to myself, but that which educates and forms me to find my real happiness and pleasure in accepting whatever it is, from God's hands. The prayer of a person of God, is born out of one's life and renews one's life, at one and the same time.

Prophets are persons of God, par excellence. They stand for God, they speak for God and they challenge us on behalf of God. Jesus was a challenging prophet too, and that is why he calls us all to be prophets like him. And in being prophets, the first call is to be persons of God, to be persons who come from God, persons who think in terms of God, persons who strive to grow in the mind of God. And the prayer that they make will manifest this reality without any doubt. 

Let our daily life be in imitation of these prophets, these persons of God; let our daily prayer be a prayer of a person of God.

To stay clear of trivialities

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 11th week in Ordinary time

June 17, 2020: 2 Kings 2:1, 6-14; Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-18

The only condition placed before Elisha, that he may receive a double share of the Spirit possessed by Elijah, was that Elisha should see Elijah being taken away by God. What does it really mean? The challenge here is not to miss what is central  to whatever we are involved in, being distracted with the trivialities.

The Gospel places the same condition before us. The actions that we do will have their true value depending on the fact whether the centrality of the right element was ensured. What we do, will be judged only by the central motivation behind what is done and an unassailable focus that has to be in every thing that we do and we are in our life.

Praying, fasting and alms giving are the three actions mentioned in the Gospel today and they together epitomise the entire religious practice of a Jew. The point is: not to miss what is central to it in getting distracted with the trivialities of human recognition and immediate rewards. Yes, they are trivialities - human recognition and immediate rewards. But these have today taken the centre stage, leaving behind the real centralities.

In our relationship with ourselves, with others and with God, we are invited to pay attention to the most central of all concerns: to do what is most pleasing to God at a given instant. Any other concern is only a triviality, however good and  practical it could be. The spiritual prudence that Jesus teaches us today is to stay clear of the trivialities and place God at the centre and at the core.

The Father's Perfection

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 11th week in Ordinary time 

June 16, 2020: 1 Kings 21: 17-29; Matthew 5: 43-48

Coming to the end of the Beatitudes, Jesus today summarises the beatitudes into just one evocation: be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. And what does that perfection consist of? The essence of it is Love, an unconditional love, a limitless love, a non-judgmental love that respects the inner self of a person and the person's true intentions!

The first reading is an extreme type of an example for God's love and mercy. As the psalms and other books in the Old Testament describe, God always manifested Godself to be slow to anger, abounding in love, ready to forgive and longing to remain in relationship with humanity. Though Ahab's acts were so gruesome, the mere fact that he repented for those and felt sorry for his foolishness, turned the entire issue upside down. Ahab finds favour in the eyes of God, Ahab becomes lovable all over again. Definitely not a solitary case in the history of humanity!

The message is pretty clear. For anyone may it be, the merciful Lord awaits and awaits with an ever burning love, to get us all back into Lord's own embrace for eternity. But this getting back will not happen automatically. It needs more attention to basics through developing traits such as personal integrity, spiritual identity and sense of belonging to the Reign. 

Above all these, we are challenged today to possess the epitome of Christian life style: Love, the Father's Perfection!

That Extra Mile

WORD 2day: Monday, 11th week in Ordinary time

June 15, 2020: 1 Kings 21: 1-16, Matthew 5: 38-42

Jesus presents to us the most impractical of all his teachings... showing the other cheek, giving more of what you are deprived of, and walking that extra mile with the one who tries to take advantage of me. This was in fact the teaching that inspired the "satyagraha" movement of Mahatma Gandhi.

The first reading presents us with the exploitative element that is always present giving us the opportunity to practice our virtues and attain our salvation. At times the evil around us threatens to take the better of us, but the Word today reminds us of a fundamental attitude we are called to: "do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Rom 12:21).

Looking at the evil that is present, the treacherous exploitative forces around and inhuman policies that deprive the innocent and vulnerable of their ordinary life and its possibilities, there are so many who are prone to adapt the same methodology to fight back: perpetrating evil by violence and killing, justifying exploitation of another category of people by the so-called deprived or making rules and policies that seem to salvage the situation for some but put the rest of the humanity into a sense of hurt and revenge. What is the real solution: it is nothing other than true love, a love that is modelled after the mercy of God, revealed in Christ.

That we can identify ourselves as disciples of Christ, we are expected to be spiritually prepared to allow ourselves be taken for granted without letting the goodness within us go down the drain; we are called to be who we are - good and loving - regardless of what others are! It is of course difficult and demanding...but that alone can make a difference in the world - that extra mile.