GOD VISITS US

The capacity to receive, listen and to suffer

July 17, 2022: 16th Sunday in Ordinary time

Genesis 18: 1-10; Colossians 1: 24-28; Luke 10: 38-42

Behold! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me. Rev. 3:20 summarises the liturgy of the Word today! The Lord visits us; everyday, in various ways, in ways ordinary or wondrous, the Lord visits us. What is our response and what should it be - that is the question we are invited to reflect on.

The first reading pictures God visiting Abraham. It is interesting to read the first three verses and a great lesson awaits us there. The first two verses say, that the Lord appeared and Abraham lifted his eyes and saw three men! Not in glorious light or in flaming clouds, but in three simple men, that the Lord visited Abraham. Reading further the second and the third verse together, gives us another detail, Abraham saw three men and he addressed them, "My Lord, do not pass by." Though Abraham saw the men, he was able to behold the presence of the Lord. The Message for today is established right there! 

Our God visits us... on a daily basis.. in one way or the other, in ways ordinary or in ways wondrous, the Lord visits us. Through extraordinary signs of awe-inspiring events or heart-breaking happenings; through a person whom we come across on a dreary daily routine, an extra smile or an overshadowing grief on the person's face; through a habitual joy that brightens the day or a repeated bad news on a newsprint; the Lord visits us! 'I fear the Lord passing by', said St. Augustine, in simple words expressing the grief of not being ready to behold the visit of the Lord, due to the hustle of the day or the ordinariness of the experience.

The Word today points to us the special capacity needed for someone not to allow the Lord to pass by...

The Capacity to Receive: 

Hospitality is not in things; it is a matter of the heart! It is not the fact that some one can afford, that makes him or her hospitable to other. It is the heart, the love that is there in the heart, the warmth that fills that heart, that makes a person go out of one's way to extend hospitality to another person. In the ancient Israel, a stranger to the land was treated as a guest of honour, and a guest became a messenger from God! In the ancient Indian culture too, we have the age old saying, 'Athithi devo bhava' (meaning -the Guest is God) and the great Tamil Classic, Tirukkural dedicates a whole chapter of 10 couplets on Hospitality, that is receiving guests and treating them with love and honour. The Capacity to receive the Lord, is seen in one's capacity to observe everything in life with a sense of gratitude and wonder, one's capacity to encounter a person every time with a new perspective and without judgments and prejudices. It is the capacity to see God in everything that is around and every person who is around. Abraham was able to encounter God in the three men that he saw; St. Paul was able to encounter Jesus in the light that threw him down from the horse and listen to his voice, calling out to him!

The Capacity to Listen: 

Encountering God, is basically listening to God! Every visit brings us a message. Every encounter has something to tell us for our daily life. It is a special gift to listen to the Lord, to discern what God wants of us, to hear the Lord's voice telling us 'do this' or 'be this' or 'become someone' or 'denounce something'. The Lord speaks in every encounter, through every person, through every event... we are expected to act, to respond and carry out the task entrusted to us. But the point of departure is always the feet of the Lord! To sit at the feet of the Master and drink in every bit of wisdom and knowledge, that when it is time for me to go forth, I am prepared to be God's presence to the others, that when they encounter me, they can feel the presence of the Lord!

The Capacity to Suffer: 

Encountering God is a challenge to make a choice, a fundamental choice for the Lord or otherwise! St. Paul made that choice, a 'U' Turn for the Lord - and the ultimate choice is to choose to suffer for the Lord. The Lord prepares us - Abraham was prepared to wait endlessly for the promises to be fulfilled; Martha was prepared to run about doing things for the love she had for Jesus, Mary was prepared to sit at the feet of the Lord mindless of the criticisms hurled at her, and St. Paul was prepared to say, "I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake!" When God visits us, it is a dangerous event, a risky experience - because after that nothing can remain what it was before. There will be a drastic change and we have to be prepared for that.

The invitation is clear dear friends... to behold the Lord who visits us, to let the Lord speak to us and be prepared for an encounter with the Lord - on a daily basis. Doing this our daily life will become meaningful, challenging and TRULY CHRISTIAN.

Choice! the choice of God and for God!

WORD 2day: Saturday, 15th week in Ordinary time

July 16, 2022: Micah 2: 1-5; Matthew 12: 14-21 

Jesus was living dangerously. But he chose to, for the sake of the Reign of God. He stuck his neck out for the poor, for the oppressed, the marginalised, the ostracised, the exploited, the forgotten in the society. He believed that the Reign of God belonged to them. His life was a hope to the least, the last and the lost. 

In this choice, Jesus was making present the God of the Old Testament who sided the oppressed, who stood by the just in their struggles and who kept watch over the persons who strove to live according to God's will. The first reading points out the choice of God, the choice for the poor and the suffering. This predilection on God's part distinguished Jesus and the choices he made. His choice was, the choice of God. There apparent and real dangers, and Jesus knew it well.

If this is what choice of God is all about... choice for us, for our well being, specially when we do not deserve it even a bit, then how do we respond to it? By making a choice for God, a choice for the Reign. Jesus has left us a hard lesson for usin and through his life.

Nothing could stop him from proclaiming the Reign of God for he knew he had come precisely for that, to establish the Reign of the God of Truth, the God of the suffering, the Lord of the least, the protector of the lost, the hope of the last. Understanding the choice of God, we are impelled to make our choice... our choice for God.

Our identity has to be our Choices, may they be forever in keeping with the choices of God!

Something greater is around!

WORD 2day: Friday, 15th week in Ordinary time

July 15, 2022: Isaiah 38: 1-6, 21-22, 7-8; Matthew 12: 1-8

God deigns to do strange things for the love of the one who trusts in God! The first reading is one such episode. There are so many others, like the burning bush (Exo 3), the water from the rock (Exo 17), the sign of the fleece (Judg 6:36ff), and many more. These are merely to show that there is nothing or no one greater than the Lord and anything is possible with God!

When it comes to showing mercy to those who trusted, the Lord is lavish, prodigal and unreasonably generous, because God's love is unconditional and everlasting. That was a difficult message for Jesus to communicate to the law abiding, traditional and painfully legalistic Jews. Even today the Lord tries to impress upon us the same message, the message of how loving the Lord is, how unconditional God's love is and how far from judging the love of God is.

No rule can be too big and no custom too important, than the love that the Lord has for you and me and the longing that Lord has for our total well being. When we feel the tendency to be legalistic, when we find ourselves prone to judge, when tasks at hand draw our utmost attention, let us realise: something greater is around us, something greater envelopes us, something greater sustains us - and it is, God's love, the love which became man and gave his life for our salvation

Come to me all you who are away from me!

WORD 2day: Thursday, 15th week in Ordinary time

July 14, 2022: Isaiah 26: 7-9, 12, 16-19; Matthew 11: 28-30

The yearning of a Godless soul, the struggle of a people who have gone far away from God is intensely presented in the first reading today. The world today is treading that path indeed... trying its best to define life sans God; trying to convince everyone around that it is possible to live without having anything to do with anything called god! Worse still, the trend today advocates creating our own gods and creating gods of ourselves! 

We think we have solutions for every problem and even for those that we do not have the solutions, we create shortcuts that can keep the pain and the struggle away for the time being. Hardly do we realise that the problem persists and it keeps brewing under cover, only to explode one day beyond control. And at that point we would find no return!

The Lord invites us today to the true consolation, the real solution, the authentic peace that can give meaning to our daily life and all its strife. He does not promise an absence of yoke, nor does he lure us with a negation of burden...he promises a yoke that fits us perfectly and a burden that proves really bearable: because we live it in the Lord's company. 'Come to me' says the Lord, because all the struggle is since you have moved away from me. 

Come to me and learn of me; come to me and find meaning, come to me and  find peace, consolation and serenity! Come to me all you who are away from me!

All things belong to God...even you and me!

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 15th week in Ordinary time

July 13, 2022: Isaiah 10: 5-7, 13b-16; Matthew 11: 25-27

All things have been handed over to me by my Father, says Jesus today in the Gospel. It implies first of all that everything belongs to God - every person, every creature, every thing. The whole creation is God's own making. Not merely the creation, even history is made by God. 'God as the author of history', has been a concept so strongly evinced by the narratives of the Old Testament. 

Even the super powers like Assyria and Babylonia were considered to be commissioned by the Lord to make certain twists and turns happen in history. This is the background against which Isaiah chides Assyria saying, they cannot think they are the masters of their own destiny and the authors of their success. They fail to understand that there is someone far beyond and above them, who "sits in the heavens and laughs"(Ps 2:4) at the folly of the proud.

The Lord scatters the proud hearted and raises the lowly (cf Lk 1:51); God reveals things to mere children and sends the haughty empty! All things are God's and from God everything draws its life and its sense. If I approach life with this sense, my worries find a way out, my concerns cringe to my feet and bearing my burdens become a child's play! 

What a saving wisdom it would be to recognise that all things belong to God, yes even you and me, and all that we dream; everything belongs to God, and in God we live, move and have our being!

Right faith and Right living

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 15th week in Ordinary time

July 12, 2022: Isaiah 7: 1-9; Matthew 11: 20-24

Unless your faith is firm, you shall not be firm. What is that which differentiates a Christian in this world - it is not the name or the external signs or identities by belonging to a group or the other; instead, it is a matter of faith, an internal disposition towards the Lord who has called and commissioned him or her. 

Right faith has to create right living; right belief and right action are after all essentially dependent on each other in so many of the religious traditions, as we know. The Integrity that Jesus demands of us is basically one of right belief and right living. Sometimes circumstances and situations can force us to take decisions or make choices that are not proper to the life that we have been called to. It is not so strange to commit such a mistake. But it is not only strange, even highly unbecoming of a child of God when he or she has received all possible warnings and all possible signs of God's directions but still makes a choice that is not worthy of a child of God. Worse still, if the person justifies that choice. And worst of all, nothing can help the one who decides to remain with that choice in spite of all this.

Faith which is not translated into right living and a living that is not guided by right faith, are totally alien to a true child of God. Even if the simplest of signs is given, a child of God will acknowledge it, make sense of it, hold on to the light that the Lord provides and and shape his or her life according to God's will. Where do I stand in this regard?

LIVE LIFE CHRIST-LIKE

Listen, look and live

July 10, 2022: 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Deuteronomy 30: 10-14; Colossians 1: 15-20; Luke 10: 25-37

The statutory call that all of us Christians have is to live our life Christ-like. And that call is repeated today in the Word, with a step by step guide towards making it a reality.

LISTEN TO GOD, to God's life giving Words

Moses invites us to listen to the Word of the Lord, the commandments of the Lord, the life-giving principles that the Lord holds out to us. Not that we do not know them, not that they are impossible, not that they are beyond our strength. They are well within our daily decision making; they are totally possible and practically inevitable. If we are serious about living our life Christ-like, we have to begin from there: listening to the Lord, listening to the Word of the Lord. But when we listen to the Lord and the Word of the Lord, many a thing seems so difficult to follow! But we have some one who showed us that they are not impossible: Jesus, the Son of God. The Model here is Jesus; and the message here is, it is not impossible though it is difficult.

LOOK AT GOD made manifest in Jesus our Lord

Jesus' life is one showcase of how the Lord wants us all to live our life. Talking to the young about the Christ-like love that we need to practice, invariably everytime there is an inescapable feeling of helplessness at the end of each session, where the youngsters would look at me and ask: 'is it really possible?' Every time my reaction is the same: Look at that man on the Cross - If it were possible for him, it should be possible for us. Looking at Christ is looking at God! He is the image of the unseen God as St. Paul says. "Consider Jesus," instructs us the letter to the Hebrews(3:1). Looking at Christ is also looking at ourselves! We cannot forget both these dimensions which is presented to us so well merged in the person of Jesus. When we look at Jesus and learn from his life, we are faced with the challenge: to imitate Christ, to live our life Christ-like. 

LIVE GODLY - that is the challenge

Do not be conformed to the standards of the world, but conform yourselves to Christ, to his life so godly! The parable of the Samaritan we meditate on today is a clarion call that tells us, being like Christ, living like Christ is the only way of living our life to the full.

I wish to narrate these two stories that always fill my mind when I think of this call to live like Christ, be like Christ. First, is about this blind girl who was walking out of a crowded railway station with a basket on her head filled with oranges. The train was whistling away alerting all of its imminent departure. There was a man who had to board that train and was running with his eyes fixed only on the train and in his hurry he never realised as he elbowed this girl and ran past her. The basket fell and the oranges ran helter skelter. Blind as she was, she was helplessly sitting and groping for the rolling oranges. Every one was busy with their business and she had hardly any empathisers. Suddenly she felt some one sit beside her and pick up every orange that was scattered and collect them all back into the basket. Once done, he bent down to the girl and whispered, 'take care'. The girl held his hand and with tears trickling down asked him: by the way, are you Jesus Christ?

The second is about this group of people in a tribal village where an evangelist entered. He asked them, do you all know of a man who lived on earth going about doing good, he loved everyone, he cured the blind and gave sight to them, healed the sick and brought the dead back to life and gave his entire life for others? He was meaning Christ all the while but the villagers said, "yes, we know him. A few years ago he passed by our village and stayed with us for a few months." Then the evangelist understood they meant a Christian Doctor who had made a medical tour of those villages. How beautiful that the people saw Jesus in him!

That is what we are called to: to live our life Christ-like. How we wish that the world may see in us the person of Jesus, that we may be truly CHRIST-IANS.

It is the Master who sends!

WORD 2day: Saturday, 14th week in Ordinary time

July 9, 2022: Isaiah 6: 1-8; Matthew 10: 24-33

It is the Lord who sends; it is the Master who calls; it is the Teacher who commissions! It is not because I am worthy to be sent, or qualified to be called or skilled to be commissioned... but it is because it is the Lord who calls! As St. Paul says it in such simple terms: "those whom he called, he justified" (cf. Rom 8:29). However unworthy I am, when the Lord has appointed me for a mission, he makes sure that mission goes on through me.

On my part the challenge is to be mindful of the fact that it is the Lord who has sent me and commissioned me and to be convinced that the Lord takes care of everything around me, provided I live my life faithful to the call. A thousand may fall at my side and ten thousand at my right hand, but nothing will come near me, for I have made God my refuge, prays the Psalmist (in Ps 91:7). I may not be worthy for the call, but I need to be mindful all the time - be it of the call or of my unworthiness!

It is the Lord who has called me and it is Lord who has commissioned me: I am accountable to the Lord and only to the Lord. In this world and to those around me, I have nothing to prove! So all the craze about success and accomplishment, is a horrendous mistake, is it not? 

All that I need to do, is stand in awe at the majesty of the Lord, believe in the Lord's sovereignty and submit myself in total faith into the hands of God, saying "Here am I Lord, send me!" When the Lord does, we will see the glory of God revealed in marvelous ways! All praise to the Lord and the Lord alone!

God is with us!

WORD 2day: Friday, 14th week in Ordinary time

July 8, 2022: Hosea 14: 2-10; Matthew 10: 16-23

"For the ways of the Lord are straight," declares prophet Hosea today(Hos 14:10). Straight, and therefore tough. Straight and therefore no compromises. Straight and therefore no confusions! Everyone knows the ways of the Lord; everyone knows what is acceptable to the Lord and what is not; it is made known by the Lord to every human person in their innermost self. No one can say, at any point of time, 'I did not know this is not acceptable in the eyes of the Lord!' Our heart seems to know it, so innately!

The words of Jesus in the Gospel are quite frightening as we find Jesus trying to warn us, in circumstances that we choose to be good, when we choose the ways of the Lord and choose to be God's disciples or apostles of the Word. Jesus does not promise any prospects, instead persecutions aplenty. He does not announce any offers, instead oppressions. He says it very clearly that we will have to suffer for his sake, for the sake of the Word and for the sake of the Reign of God.

But there is one thing that he assures: the consolation of the Lord, the consoling and affirming presence of the Lord with us. Because what we have chosen is the way of the Lord, we are certain to find the Lord present with us all the way. The way might be filled with pitfalls and climbs, and hurdles, thorns and thistles... but we are sure amidst all these, that the Lord walks with us, speaks on our behalf and acts in and through us. What a mighty consolation we have: God is with us!

God's instruments of Love

WORD 2day: Thursday, 14th week in Ordinary time

July 7, 2022: Hosea 11: 1-4, 8,9; Matthew 10: 7-15

The readings today present to us yet another intimate dimension of God's love: the love of a loving parent, the love of a father or that of a mother. The very same compassion that Yahweh had towards the people of Israel, Jesus exhibits towards all. The longing of the Lord to hold us close to Godself, the yearning to be close to God's children and assist them in every bit of their difficulties, the readiness to understand their uneasiness and provide them with solutions of true and eternal joy and give them an experience of wholeness... the heart of God goes out to God's people in compassion and love.

There is an added dimension presented in the Gospel, when Jesus tells his disciples whom he wishes to send among the people ahead of him... to go to heal, to listen to, to empathise with and to be there for the people, specially those who are suffering. Jesus seems to say, God wants to endlessly show God's love to the people and we are the instruments through which God will accomplish that desire! 

It is here that the wonderful prayer of Francis of Assisi becomes so meaningful and precious: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace! To sow love, mercy, forgiveness...that is the mission of a person of God. Let us realise today that we have a specific mission wherever we are: let us not look for love, let us give it; let us not look for understanding, let us live it; let us not look for mercy, let us be merciful. 

Let us be God's instruments of love.