THE KING, THE CLOUD AND ALL...

The Solemnity of Christ the King

November 21, 2021: Last Sunday of the Ordinary time

Daniel 7: 13-14; Revelation 1: 5-8; John 18:33-37

We come to the end of the Ordinary time of the year and the very end of the Liturgical Year! On this last Sunday of the liturgical year, as a culmination of our liturgical itinerary, it is apt to mark it with a celebration of the One Supreme Lord, the Lord of lords and the King of kings...Christ our Lord, to whom all glory and honour be! 

Power, authority, domination of the other, ruling the world, and manipulating every thing and every one around - are some of the highest good sought after by humanity today. All tussles of every nature - be they economic, ecological, socio-cultural, political or familial - seem to have one of these at their roots. That was one of the mindsets and systemic thinking that Jesus wanted to deconstruct - he wanted to prove to the world that you can govern without dominating, that you can be the sovereign without lording it over, that you can lead without a sense of superiority, that you can exude authority without arrogance and that you can be the King without exploiting! What a powerful message for the times we live in, and that is what we have in the Word this Sunday. 

Presenting to us in wholeness the solemnity of Christ the King, the Word of God this Sunday taken together presents us with three key words to behold the central message of the celebration today. These three key words are... three terms or concepts that are present in all the three readings of the day! You will certainly read the Word again see the concordance of these terms and their concepts. What are the three key words?

The first term is the King! The first reading speaks of the King, the sovereign, and the eternal kingship and glory! The second reading presents to us the Ruler of the kings! The responsorial psalm invites us to declare, 'the Lord is King!' And in the Gospel, Jesus declares, "Yes, I am King!". 

The Lord is King - that is the Lord rules over us! That is what Jesus says too - I am King, but with a difference! I am not the king which you imagine: the one who is the most powerful and has everyone at his beck and call. Though it is true that the Lord is the most powerful and has the whole universe at the Lord's beck and call, that is not the salient feature of the Lord's kingship. Because the Lord rules, but rules with love, rules by taking care, rules by providing and not exploiting or hoarding or grabbing everything for oneself! The Lord is King, the most powerful, but also the most caring and the most close to me in my own need and trouble. The Lord is King who does not order me around, but who resides within me, guides me and serves me in governing me. The Lord is King who gives me a model to follow in living with authority, the authority which comes from the Lord and an authority that is exercised in serving the other.

The second term is the Cloud! The first reading speaks of the clouds of heaven which contains the glory of the King. The second reading speaks of the Lord coming on the cloud. And in the Gospel Jesus explains that his Reign is not of this world, but of beyond! Jesus in fact offers us the clue to understand the element of the clouds.

The Lord comes in the clouds - that is, the Lord transcends all boundaries! The coordinates of up and down, east and west, north and south, above and below...they do not make sense at all when it comes to the majesty and authority of the Lord. The Lord has authority over all - in time and space; that is why the Lord is the Lord of eternity; the Lord of time and timelessness, of space and spacelessness! The Lord is the Lord of past, present and future - that is why it is so meaningless to ask certain fundamental questions we have from our limited human mind - questions like, why, why me, why now and so on! We would never have an answer and we would not comprehend it even if we had it. The easiest is to surrender to the Lord and say, 'you know it well! you are the Lord above all!' It may take time to arrive at that capacity to surrender; but the only thing that can give me peace is that surrender - to acknowledge the Lord who comes in the clouds; the Lord above everything else!

The third term is, All! The first reading speaks of all peoples, nations and languages. The second reading refers to all the races of the earth. And the Gospel specifies, who is that 'all': all who are on the side of truth. The all that we speak of here may not be 'all' after all; it could be a little fragment of all, but what is important is, only that is all that will matter. 

The Lord is King of all - king of all, whether one accepts it or not! If I accept it in truth, I will be in that privileged group to remain with the eternal Reign; if I do not accept it, I will go with the rest who rush into the broad open gate to perdition, on my own choice! The Lord is the king of all who abide by truth; the truth that will set us free, the truth that is to be proclaimed and witnessed to, that truth that exists whether the world sees it or not, the truth that alone can save depending on how faithful I am to it. It is not a truth to be known, a secret to be shared or a mantra to be understood - it is a life to be lived. That is why Jesus, when he was asked by the high priests 'what is your point', said: why do you ask me! I spoke in broad day light. Everyone heard me. Ask them. The truth is in the broad day light. The truth is every where! The truth is ALL. You see the truth, accept the truth, respond to the truth, serve the truth and witness to the truth, and you shall be with your King forever! I came to witness to it; and all those who are with the truth are with Me, the King!

Here therefore is the message of the feast we celebrate today: The Lord is King, King above all, the King who is served only by truth and our witness to truth! We have no escape or excuse. Let our loyalty be to the Lord and Lord alone; to truth and Truth alone!

Let us belong to the Lord while we live!

WORD 2day: Saturday, 33rd week in Ordinary time

November 20, 2021: 1 Maccabees 6:1-13; Luke 20: 27-40

I will rejoice in your saving help O Lord, we repeat in the responsorial psalm today! Take that in contrast to the lament we hear from the dying king in the first reading. After having done all the damage that he could, at his death bed does he realise his folly. Too late for anything to be done! We wonder how many of the dominant personalities today have to go through this...let us hope they do not wait for their death bed to realise their wickedness! One wonders whether today's evil heads would realise even on their death bed the damage they have caused to humanity! 

Just a moment! Let us not be lost in judging that king in the first reading, or the evil bigheads of our times! The challenge is to each of us: are we able to say as the psalmist says, 'I will rejoice in your saving help O Lord'? That would require that we understand what that help is. The help actually is the grace of the Spirit, that helps us understand our foolishness, our worthless ego, our pointless anger, our heartless unforgiving attitude and similar marks of folly. We need to realise these in our daily life and in our ordinary relationships, beginning with the closest of our brothers and sisters!

In our empty pride and selfish scheming, we loitter into areas of evil that are totally ungodly! At times we go to the extent of forgetting our real call to be children of God. The Lord gives us chances, ample opportunities to realise our folly and return to our original dignity. There is no use waiting till our death bed and them praying for the mercies of the Lord. Our Lord is the God of the living, not of the dead! Let us belong to the Lord, while we live, not merely when we die!

Taking Possession of His Temple

WORD 2day: Friday, 33rd week in Ordinary Time

November 19, 2021: 1 Maccabees 4:36-37,52-59; Luke 19: 45-48

In our living rooms or in the offices, we could have a normal experience of piling up unwanted things little by little and at a point of time we would decide to do away with all of them and get the room or office cleansed. And surprisingly at that time, all that we were hoarding up as probable usables would become worthy only of the trash bags! The Word today speaks of such an experience, reminding us of the need to belong to God.

In our own bodies and minds, that is in our daily living, we begin to accumulate things we consider important: our immediate pleasures, our addictive dependencies, our bloating ego, our unforgiving rancours, our tendencies to prove ourselves to the world, and so on. The Lord reminds us, the beginning of every new day is an opportunity for us to turn the tables over, to throw the trashes into cans, and renew ourselves into what we are - the dwelling places of God!

God wishes to take possession of God's temple cleansed and put in order. Let's open up our lives and allow God to enter God's abode. Let's resolve to rededicate ourselves to the glory of God. Let the Lord take possession of the Lord's temple! 

Am I among the few?

WORD 2day: Thursday, 33rd week in Ordinary time

November 18, 2021: 1 Maccabees 2:15-29; Luke 19: 41-44

The very fact a few are mentioned among the Israelites who stood firm in their faith is an indication that a great number of them strayed away from it. It continued in Jesus' time too. Only a handful were ready and open enough to behold the unfolding of the promises of the Lord in and through the life of Jesus. And Jesus cries over the rest of the city. Not just the city at large, but his own close companions: 'are you going away from me too'... did he not ask that question?

The situation is no different today! There aren't too many who are totally convinced of what they believe and it is becoming more and more difficult to remain absolutely faithful to the truth not giving into any compromises. It is one thing to be unjust, arrogant and evil and do what I feel like, considering or respecting no one. But it is completely another thing to deceive people with my apparent goodness! I give an appearance to be the best of everyone put together; but only I know within me, how evil and how conniving I am! How many compromises and how many facades? 

That is why, the only one apart from God, who can say who I really am, is only myself! It is easy to find a fault on me and point a finger at me; it is also possible that no one finds anything wrong with me - both of these are not sufficient. The crucial question would be that, when I ask myself: The question is, do I belong to the majority who seem to be namesake followers or am I among the few?

Take yourself seriously!

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 33rd week in Ordinary Time

Novembre 17, 2021:  2 Maccabbees 7: 1, 20-31; Lk 19: 11-28

The end time disaster narration continues in the first reading today, while the recommendation given for this day is: take yourself seriously! Look at your life, look at what you are, look at what you have, look at what you are given, look at the tasks entrusted to you and take them seriously! The urge to be faithful to God is never a question of maintaining the status quo.

Regardless of our successes and titles we will be judged on the basis of our faithfulness to God or its lack. It does not matter whether we have worked on a little or an accomplished great thing, but it does matter what our level of faithfulness was, as we worked on  it! This faithfulness becomes more and more subtler as the things involved get more and more important - like our spiritual life, our faith life, our commitment to our relationship with God. 

What was the mother in the first reading we have today: a prophetess? a leader? a queen? No one...just a simple woman, an insignificant mother thus far and shoots all of a sudden to fame - simply because of the faithfulness of her sons. Behind that faithfulness, remains the whole life lived by the mother, and  with the mother - the values imparted and the convictions rooted. She deserves the limelight, as she nurtured them amisdt the obscurity of  the ordinariness of life. 

The Lord has entrusted us with the great gift of life - and we are to bring it back to the Lord, with all that we can add to it. Meaning, significance, merits, kindness, forgiveness, empathy, integrity and so on. It is not the noise and the fanfare that surrounds that will decide our final destiny, but that one moment of intense silence before the Lord where the Lord sees what I have made of my life finally. That moment will be happy, if today I take myself, my life and my call, seriously!

The Witness of Choice

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 33rd week in Ordinary time

November 16, 2021: 2 Maccabees 6: 18-31; Luke 19: 1-10

We are called to witness to the Lord, the Lord's Gospel and the Lord's Reign. The most powerful of witnesses is the witness of choice, the witness of making a choice for God over many others that claim a reckoning! 

Our choices determine, the person that we are! Our choices manifest the sort of community we form! Be it our personal choices, or our collective choices as a community, or society or as whole humanity, we constantly keep making statements as to who we are, through our choices. 

Eleazar makes a choice for God by not scandalising the little ones of God against a life for God. No one would have objected to it, if he had saved himself of extreme troubles; in fact they were merciful towards him. But what did not allow him was his interior, personal choices for God! And that became the greatest of witness to his fellow believers!

Zachaeus makes a choice to hold on to Christ and let everything else go, a witness of inspiration that he gives as an elder! Those who knew the old Zachaeus certainly would have been blown away in surprise. His choices were absolutely unbelievable! 

The long and short of the message today is: even if don't give a great witness per se, I need to atleast refrain from causing scandals for the little ones. However, both these are equally demanding and not exclusive of each other. We know the amount of damage that scandals are causing to the believing community these days. The crux of our Christian life is making a choice for God, for a life worthy of God and a life that is uplifting for the people of God!

Let me see again!

WORD 2day: Monday, 33rd week in Ordinary time

November 15, 2021: 1 Maccabees 1:10-15,41-43,54-57,62-63; Lk 18: 35-43

Born in a society of multireligious nature, and today living in a society that idolises this state of multi-religiosity in theory, personally I feel gifted with experiences and circumstances that can illumine the way one perceives things. At times at the first look, they do not come across to our observation and understanding. That is why the call today, to see again (as that person without sight asked Jesus!)

While in the multireligious, climate there are tendencies to not see the possibilities of co-existence and shared experience, absolutising identities and dividing humanity on varied bases; in a climate where this multi-religiosity is idolised without really understanding the nuances, there is a tendency to level everything, compromise on convictions and mix and match things to suit one's convenience! 

What is important here is, that we see, and that we see again, that is see closely and understand everything with a close attention and then initiate a process of dialogue, that does not raze down uniquenesses but accentuates the differences that contribute to each other, that humanise the society more, and that makes meaning and dignity of living as human persons, truly felt by all. This is infact is what evangelisation and re-evangelisation is all about - to throw new light; to make persons see again! 

THE POOR WITH US

5th World day of the Poor: November 14, 2021

33rd Sunday in Ordinary time - Daniel 12: 1-3; Hebrew 10: 11-14,18; Mark 13: 24-32

The Poor - Let us become aware of the varied forms of poverty that exists all around us, without losing sight of the poverty that rests even within us!

The Poor with us - Let us recognise the sufferings of people all around us...suffering due to want, disease, oppression, injustice, discrimination, insensitivity of the world, greed and malice.

The Poor we have - Let us not merely feel sorry for the poor, the suffering and the needy! Let us own them up! Let us consider them our own brothers and sisters.

Let our lives show, instruct and teach us to live with a sensitive heart: that the poor we have always with us!

Will there be faith?

WORD 2day: Saturday, 32nd week in Ordinary time

November 13, 2021: Wisdom 18: 14-16, 19:6-9; Luke 18: 1-8

There is a real anxiety in Jesus' question... will there be faith on earth, when the Son of man comes again! He asks that question looking at the type of people he saw and the mind set they had towards things of spiritual nature. Just as then, even today the question remains pertinent as people are more calculative than committed, more religious minded than faith oriented, more interested in external legalities than integral spirituality!

When Jesus asks that question, it is not about remaining afloat as a group, with still members and adherents, with a stucture of governance and system - that was not what Jesus was worried about, although many of us today would like to interpret that question on those lines. What Jesus meant was, whether the human person would have any relationship left with his or her Divine Origin; or will they be lost in the mundane, the tangibles of existence, the appearances and the so-called concrete experiences, belittling the mystery and the Spiritual dimension of human life.

Will there be faith and will faith be real... the way things seem to be developing, this anxiety has to fill our minds too. The Holy Father makes this issue come alive calling us to be today, a Church more and more authentic, true and faithful to the Gospel and its original values. Resisting all temptation towards division and sectarianism, fighting all forces that dehumanise the society and establishing a Reign counter to that of injustice and exploitation, we are called to keep the true faith alive, until the Son of Man comes back in glory. Are we game for that challenge?

Gather the signs!

WORD 2day : Friday, 32nd week in Ordinary time

November 12, 2021: Wisdom 13:1-9; Luke 17: 26-37

Every now and then in the story of humanity, a story makes its rounds that the end of the world is bound to begin shortly... in a week or in a fixed time foresaid.. with three days of darkness and other demonic signs. Though there is a curiosity that these horror stories evoke, they are merely manifestations of a spirituality that seeks some excitement all the time. Isn't that a very weak form of spirituality? 

Jesus invites us to grow in our capacity to gather the signs from the experiences of ordinary day to day life...the lessons arising from the clashes caused by evil tendencies, cravings incited by selfishness, inhumanities provoked by senseless egoism, insensitivities and indifferences that make this world a worthless place to live in! People who make of everything and every person, a commodity, a means to their own gain and a possibility of profit!

Look at the entire scenario of the pandemic experience - how many elements are human made and so miserably evil! Every time there is a disaster, human made or natural, there are those who shamelessly draw profit from it...what kind of a human person would do that? Leave alone, a follower of Christ falling into that mode of living. It is a clear sign that they do now gather any signs of what God wants from them!

The call is to gather signs and understand the invitation from God. It is not about when the end of the world would come...but what does God want of me here and now, right here and right now! It would be unwise to remain deaf or blind to the messages that the Lord sends... let's remain awake and read those signs and channel our courses towards one united goal: the Reign of God here on earth.