Behold the God who lives...

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

November 25, 2023 -1 Maccabees 6: 1-13; Luke 20: 27-40

It is easy to glory in a God of the past, recount miracles and remember feats. It is also not difficult to think of a God of the future, dream dreams of prosperity and share stories of great tidings. The real challenge is to believe in the God of the present, the God of the moment, the Lord of my life, the God of the living.

The strength of my spiritual self is seen in my ability to relate to God on a daily basis, on a momentary basis. When Jesus today reminds us of the God of the living, and not a God of the dead, he is inviting us to experience God and live with God every day, every moment!

We are fond of living on a spiritual nostalgia of an experience 'once-upon-a-time' or we are fond of looking at a bright light some time, some day. Like the people we see in the Gospel who thought of their ancestors or thought of a future splendour, but missed the great and moving presence of the Lord amidst them, in their daily events and difficult moments.

Let us not end up making up stories and throwing questions at the Lord. Let us be still and experience the presence of the living God, the God of the living, living right next to us!

Purifying and rededicating ourselves - faith growth!

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

November 24, 2023 - 1 Maccabees 4: 36-37,52-57; Luke 19: 45-48

Zeal for his house will consume him - Ps 69:9 - that is what John refers to when he recounts the event that we hear in the Gospel today from Luke! Judas Mattathias in the first reading and Jesus in the Gospel are presented as burning with zeal for God, for God's house. Both of them want to purify and rededicate the Temple to the Lord.

When we accept God as our king (the theme of this entire week) we should be burning with zeal for God, for things that belong to God, for values that stand for God, for persons and their dignity that directly springs from God, for life and love that signify God... we should burn with zeal to preserve, promote and uphold these!

Today there are forces that are bracing threats against the Church, persons who want to see the downfall of the Church, people who call names and insult the Church and all those who stand for the Church - now the question is, what is your response? Fear and withdrawal? Compromise and justification? Or stand up for what you believe and purify yourself and rededicate yourself unto the truth?

If we think of our faith in terms of king-subject relationship, it is our allegiance to our King. Let us be filled with zeal for our king, that is if we accept our Lord as our King! The call is to purify ourselves and rededicate ourselves to the King.

Who is your king?

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

November 23, 2023 - 1 Maccabees 2: 15-29; Luke 19: 41-44

Who is your king? – that is the crucial question that is being repeatedly asked these days of the week running up to the Solemnity of Christ the King. 

The parable we heard yesterday of the return of the king who demands an account, the siege of Jerusalem that Jesus speaks of today in the Gospel and the call of Mattathias to gather in his leadership against the persecuting forces… all these present a crisis situation; a situation demanding a definitive choice. Choice - that is the crucial theme!

Sometimes external pressures like the work ambient and the political milieu, or the personal addictions or overpowering temptations, can present a crisis situation to us… a situation to make a radical choice for God or against God! Even a simple affair like the choice of words we use, or an ordinary decision we make on a daily basis, can determine the radical belonging to or rejection of God in our lives!

How many times we stand convicted by our choices which contradict the principles we claim to stand for! How many times we eat our own words to justify ourselves and save our face before others! How many times we compromise on true values and make convenience a criterion for our decisions! 

Our choices would demonstrate succintly to the the world who our king is! If my king is my Lord -my daily choices would reflect that. May our everyday choices be such that the Lord would never need to weep over us, as he did over Jerusalem!

My choice for God

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

November 22, 2023 - Remembering St. Cecilia

2 Maccabees 7: 1,20-31; Luke 19: 11-28

The urge to be faithful to God is never a question of maintaining the status quo. As spiritual masters always warn us, not to progress in spiritual life is to regress! Faithfulness to God is not lived or manifested in remaining where we are or merely in moments of legal fulfillment of rules and routine practices of piety. It takes fundamental radical choices at crucial moments to tell, not the Lord who knows our innermost thoughts but the world, that I belong to the Lord, to the One who has created me, the One who has called me and commissioned me.

Like the young lad, following his brothers and his mother, in the first reading chooses God over everything that the king promises and over even his very life; like Saint Cecilia whom we remember today who chose to give of her whole self - her body, soul, spirit and her very life for God, our choices need to speak for themselves.

Not just the choices of life and death, but the choices of what we want to do with the talents, the gifts that the Lord has given us, the choices of what we want to do with every moment of life that God has gifted us with. We can choose to enrich them and enhance them, or to just bury them and be inactive!

My choice for God has to be seen in my daily little choices - Cecilia is often celebrated as patroness of musicians (by the way, let us pray for all the singers and musicians and wish them well), and at times her heroic sacrifice and choice for God has been eclipsed. She decided to giver her whole self to God and she kept that choice till her death.

Just like the mother in the first reading today, Cecilia saw her husband and her brother in law die, but remained unmoved in her choice for God. In my daily events and ordinary tasks, I have to manifest this choice for God, if only I wish to inspire the world today. The choice today, is mine!

Primacy of God and the Quality of Faith

THE WORD AND THE FEAST

November 21, 2023: Remembering the Presentation of Mary in the Temple

2 Maccabees 6:18-31; Luke 19: 1-10

Zacchaeus' episode in the Gospel is an evergreen example of an encounter that transforms a person. As St. Paul would say, 'if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation' (2Cor 5:17). When we allow the Lord to really encounter us, the Lord transforms the whole person. Nothing remains the same. Everything is new because we begin to see everything from the perspective of the Lord. 

As Pope Francis said in his first encyclical Lumen Fidei, faith is not just to see Jesus, it is to see with the eyes of Jesus (LF 18). When our faith is authentic, the whole perspective changes. What seems to be important, what seems to be necessary for someone may seem totally secondary to me, because I see as the Lord does, because I think as the Lord does, I love as the Lord does. 

Eleazar in the first reading demonstrates the same to us - 'such pretense is not worthy of our time of life' (2 Mac 6:24), he says, caring the least to preserve his life, because he did not want to lead the others astray from God. His priorities were different from that of the rulers who were persecuting them, the officials who were executing orders or the society that stood around them, because he was a man of faith!

Today we remember the event of Mary being presented in the Temple - why does the Church remember this event though it is not part of the Biblical account. There is a very important reason - highly spiritual and simply logical. Mary, as far as we see in the Gospels, seems to be totally resigned to God's will and absolutely obedient to God's voice. Where does this begin from - the answer is the memory we celebrate today. The parents offered her to the Lord, thus inculcating within her mind and heart, that she belonged to God and God alone. That was reflected all her life. 

Even for us the message is same today: the primacy of God in our life, defines the quality of our faith. How absolute is God's place in our daily lives?

To see the Reign

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

November 20, 2023: 1 Maccabees 1:10-15,41-43,54-57,62-64; Lk 18: 35-43

While it is important to stand for Interreligious dialogue and inculturation of faith, it is equally important to realise what is an integral process of dialogue and inculturation. If only 'all becoming one' is the objective, then today we should be comfortable with what is happening around... all, in every field, everyone is becoming one in their selfishness and self seeking tendencies! It is our call to become one, but which one? Not anyway one... but One in just one way! 

Becoming one as a humanity, bound by true and wholesome values, standing for real freedom, dignity and solidarity, that is our task. That is what the Reign is all about. At times it will look impossible and totally a dream, an utopia, a fable and a fairy tale. But in faith, it is not! We are going to hear of the end times beginning from now for the next two weeks - not about the end of the world or end of the times but it is the end of hopelessness and end of misery. Because we are convinced the Reign is at hand. 

That conviction requires an eye of faith; let us cry out for it and the Lord will grant us! Jesus Lord, have mercy on us, that we may see, that we may see the Reign!

GIVE; YOU ARE GIVEN

Seventh World Day of the Poor 

November 19, 2023: 33rd Sunday in Ordinary time 

Proverbs 31:10-13,19-20,30-31; 1 Thessalonians 5: 1-6; Matthew 25: 14-30 

pc: St. Columbans Mission Society

Do not turn your face away from anyone who is poor (Tobit 4:7). This is the message that the Holy Father gives us on this seventh World day of the Poor. The  World day of the Poor, as we know, was instituted by the present Pope in 2017 as a follow up of the Year of Mercy, that we celebrated as a Church. Mercy is at the centre of what we remember today: not so much the mercy that we are called to have towards others, but the mercy that God has given us in abundance! We are given with that mercy in such measures, that we are bound to give, so much so, when we do not give we fail, we fall short of our call, we sin!

The Need to Give

Why do we need to give? Not only because there are needy; not only because the other deserves what I wish to give, but simply because I am given! Hence, the first requirement is that I recognise my "givenness", that is I recognise how much I am given with. Look at the parable today that Jesus narrates - the first two realised how much they are given with and in their recognisance they found a way to make it double; the third one did not feel he was given, he never owned what was given to him, he never realised it was his! What hinders us from not realising what we are given: first, ingratitude which makes us complain all the time; secondly, fixations that we have which looks for particulars that we lack inspite of so much that we are blessed with; thirdly, cravings which make us blind to the goodness and blessedness that already surrounds us. 

What to Give

We know there are various levels of giving - giving from our abundance; giving from what we have; giving inspite of the lack and so on... but what matters here is the attitude of giving. True giving is giving of oneself - from the very thoughts and inclinations, intending to give of oneself. One can be giving great treasures away, but when he or she has an attachment to what would the gain, the return of out of it - a profit, a name, a publicity and so on, there is not giving there! The attitude of giving is not there! Giving has to come from within, the inherent quality of reaching out... which is mindful of the fact that we have received. The best of all that we have received from the Lord is God's love and mercy, and that is what we are called to give. Love and Mercy... from that everything else will follow. 

How to Give

We shall take three lessons here from the Word today, not to turn away our face from the poor! The first reading presents to us the symbol of Wisdom - the woman who administers the household the way it should be. Wisdom should regulate our life and make us realise how much we are given and that the more we realise we are given, the the more we are required to give! The Holy Father's message from the book of Tobit (chapter 4) is in fact an advice that Tobit gives his son, Tobias where he says this with simplicity - when you have more you give more, when you have less you give what you have. That is it, what matters is the heart with which you give and the attitude of giving more than what you give.  

The second lesson is from St. Paul who tells us, not to operate on the logic of fear and justification, just as did the third person in the parable of the Gospel. I feared you, he said! That did not help him to give of his best, it made him dig and hide! Instead the right thinking, a wise realisation of the meaning of our life will make us give, give of ourselves, and give to the full. It is not that we fear the end times and therefore we wish to make good, but because we have the wisdom to know how best to live our here and now.  

The third lesson is the model of God and the Son of God - the way they give! God who gives everything in abundance and Son of God who gives himself totally to us and for our salvation. That is the model given to us. With the help of the Spirit we could learn too, to realise how much we are given with, how much we are called to give and how to give! 

The giving we are concerned here is not merely material giving, which us just a streak of the real outcome, but the giving that is an attitude of gratitude, realisation and a call. That attitude alone can inspire us not to turn our face from anyone who is poor. 

Praying, Trusting, and Living life with God

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

November 18, 2023 - Wisdom 18: 14-16, 19:6-9; Luke 18: 1-8

Our help is in the name of the Lord, proclaims Psalm 124. The Lord alone is our refuge and our strength. The Lord knows when we sit and when we stand, even before a word is on our mouth, the Lord knows it all. This trust is called the attitude of prayer - a total abandonment into the hands of the Lord! 

At times when we pray, we sound like knocking at the door of the Lord as the last resort... 'I have tried everything Lord; and now I have nothing more to try and so I come to you!' Instead, it has to be from the first moment: "You are everything Lord and I surrender myself to you; guide me along and accompany me, that I may never stray from Your will and guard me from all those which plot to take me away from You and Your holy will." 

How many wonders we have seen, all worked by the Lord! If the Lord is so powerful, can he not look at the suffering we are going through. If in spite of that I am in the midst of an agony, can I not trust in the Lord and think of those splendid days I had experienced in the presence of the Lord! Will not the same presence guide me on! Why do I moan and why do I complain - is it not because I have given up trust? 

Let us live our life with the Lord - every bit of it - our duties, our desires, our trials, our preoccupations, our sufferings, our agonies, our temptations and even our failures; let us live them all with the Lord and be prepared always to say: Not mine, but Your will be done, O Lord! (Lk 22:42)

Faith - what does it mean to me!

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

November 17, 2023 - Wisdom 13: 1-9; Luke 17: 26-37

'Fools say in their heart, 'there is no God',' goes Psalm 14:1. Though it is not the spirit of the times to get into an argument with people with variant religious convictions, sometimes it is important to challenge the insincere ones regarding some opinions that are held and promoted with hidden motives and contrived plots. 

The readings today are quite strong against those who probably have religious choice of convenience, than conviction. Many manipulate their or other's religious sentiments to their own convenience and comfort, to achieve their ends and to exploit others. These are the worst kind of human beings one can imagine of - not true even to themselves! 

But leaving alone the tendency to point a finger at someone, it is important for me to evaluate my faith! Faith is not merely saying 'yes' to a set of truths, but it is a personal relationship with the person of Jesus Christ, with that Merciful God that he revealed to us, with the Spirit who lives on with us and within us.

Is it not an ample opportunity for me today to raise this question in my heart: What does my faith mean to me? What are the SIGNS of real faith in my day to day life? Do I really relate to God in the core of my being?

At the core of the Reign is... Me!

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

November 16, 2023 - Wisdom 7:22 - 8:1; Luke 17: 20-25

The Reign of God is within you! (Lk 17:21) - this was a statement, they say, that provoked, sustained and gave meaning to Liberation theology in the 70s. Not only that. This was also the teaching that took Jesus to the cross.

What is so provocative about it? To answer that question from the Gospel, we need to listen to the first reading and the psalm. They speak of the Wisdom of the Lord, the Word of God, that abides with us and within us, the Lord who has come to live amidst us, the greatest grace of incarnation. Look at those attributes given to that indwelling Lord: in the form of Wisdom, the Word, the Spirit who is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, active, incisive, unsullied, lucid, invulnerable, benevolent, sharp, irresistible, beneficent, loving, steadfast, dependable, unperturbed, almighty, all-knowing, penetrating, all-intelligent, pure and most subtle! The Indwelling Spirit, the Lord who dwells within me, making me the core of God's Reign.

Jesus' proclamation of the arrival of the Reign, or "the year of the Lord" or the fulfillment of the Word (Lk 4:19,21) was looked at as an offence, a scandal, because Jesus underlined the proximity, the closeness of God to human beings. Jesus declared every common person the beholder of the Reign; you and me as the core of the Reign!

Even today, if I choose to, I can see God as some one far, distant, removed and isolated. But if I am sincerely observant, I can feel the presence of the Word, the Wisdom, the Incarnate Son walking beside me and I can feel God close and intimate to me because, "God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom" (Wis 7:28). We need to look at the Reign of God residing within us, at the core of our being. We are indeed the core of the Reign, we need to evolve into it, by our daily choices and lofty ideals.