The Way: relationship, not rules!

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 2nd week in Ordinary time

January 21, 2025 - Hebrews 6: 10-20; Mark 2: 23-28

The letter to the Hebrews explains at length today about the speciality of the alliance or the covenant that God has made with us - the letter says three important facets of that covenant. 

Firstly, it is dependent on God's relationship with us - not anyone else, not even on us, because no one is as dependable as God and depending on us would make it so weak. Secondly, the covenant is unalterable, as God is unchanging. This is the anchor of hope that we have, that at any time we have God who is faithful. 

Thirdly and most importantly, it is all about relationship. It is not difficult to observe that the key terms that dominate the explanation there are, descendants, heirs, inheriting the promises... all these refer to a relationship with God, as children, as sons and daughters, in that One Son who entered the Holy of Holies, for our sakes. 

Jesus declares the same - that relationships matter the most, more than any rule or regulation, when it comes to the promises of the Lord. The Lord goes by persons, not by precepts. When it comes to persons and their well being, the Lord has no other priorities - this is what the covenant is all about, and the Lord keeps the covenant ever in mind. When we hold on to a rule, just for the sake of the rule and have no consideration at all for the persons whose lives, whose freedom, whose wellbeing and dignity are at stake, we are far from the Reign of God. 

The Way: obedience of faith

WORD 2day: Monday, 2nd week in Ordinary time

January 20, 2025 - Hebrews 5: 1-10; Mark 2: 18-22

We are going to continue for a second week, reading from the letter to the Hebrews, and the beginnings of the Gospel of Mark to corroborate the teaching! While entire last week, the Word spoke to us about the Journey we are called to undertake with Christ, the journey of our faith, this week would speak to us about the Way that is set out for us, to make this journey. Jesus who declared, I am the Way, explained that in his way of living and in the choices he made, much more than the words he spoke. This week the Word, wishes to draw our attention to that way, set out for us. 

First and foremost, according to Jesus' mind and his life testimony, the way to our total realisation is obedience of faith. The letter to the hebrews will emphasise this in more than a few places and in many ways. It was the obedience of Jesus that makes his the True Son of God, the Begotten One who saves us, the perfect obedient Priest-Sacrifice who not only offered that sacrifice but became the sacrifice of salvation for all. 

This obedience is seen all over the Old Testament - in fact, this obedience was praised as the best of religion and the say to salvation. The interpretation of this obedience was concrete too - obey the law given by the Lord, and you shall be saved. The Law was the absolute revelation of what one needs to pledge one's allegiance to. At a moment, the absoluteness of the law, was so exaggerated that the law-giver was placed out of focus. This is what Jesus explains in the Gospel. 

The Gospel, which seems to be a continuation from the discourse of wine in yesterday's gospel, invites us to reinterpret law, to revisit the purpose of the laws that we have, and to reinvent our way to God our loving father and mother. Obedience, yes, without any doubt... but interpreted not as a blind following of a set of lifeless rules, but as a living relationship with someOne who has always loved us, who has always been with us and wants to be with us always. Obedience of faith, therefore is not a religion, it is a relationship. 

WHEN YOUR LIFE RUNS DRY...

Jars, filled and transformed!

January 19, 2025: 2nd Sunday in Ordinary time

Isaiah 62:1-5;1 Corinthians 12:4-11; John 2:1-11

The Word today, establishes the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus. After the Baptism where Jesus is seen in public this is the incident that can be interpreted as the beginning of his life and work among people, according to John's Gospel. The Word also defines what the purpose of the ministry is: to replenish the rapport between God and God's people.

The imagery that holds the common thread between the first and the Gospel reading today is that of marriage. Often the relationship between God and God's people is spoken of in terms of the faithfulness between the bride and the groom, as in the first reading from Isaiah. God wishes an intimate relationship with God's children but at times our lives run dry. It's also a pastoral concern that after all the weeks of Advent and Christmastide the ordinary season might seem too ordinary and eventless - that is the ordinariness of life. As the wine ran short, our lives too will run dry at moments.

We hear often people saying: 'that's it, that's the end of my patience', 'I cannot stand it anymore', 'why should I put up with it anymore?', 'I have reached the brink of my tolerance', 'I cannot go on further', or 'I give up'...and so on! These are the moments we are referring to when we say - when our life runs dry! What can we do? Nothing! Nothing can be done at that time and that is why the Lord invites us right at the beginning of this liturgical year, when our spirits are still fresh and alive - prepare for a dry moment, anyway the Lord shall be with you there too!

When it is so probable that the dry moment would show up, but we can do nothing then because we are dry, it only goes to say that we should do something already now. Permit me to make an allegorical interpretation of the Word today: it seems good reflection to make on our lives. There are three things beautiful that could happen when our life runs dry...

1. Have your jars ready: 

When the wine ran short and Jesus looked around, there were six stone jars according to the custom of the Jews. When our life runs dry and the Lord wants to intervene we should have something ready for the Lord to use from our lives. Like the loaves the Lord used, like the mud that the Lord used, we see the Lord using these jars today to make the Lord's presence felt. When our life runs dry too, we need to have at least empty jars ready... that is the basic disposition to the Lord, our ordinary and regular habits of prayer, our basic ongoing relationship with the Lord and not some occasional business based interactions, our hope that the Lord is with us constantly, our trust in the goodness that belongs to God... these are the basic dispositions that the Lord can work on. 

It is important that we work on these and keep these ready in our ordinariness of life, for a dry patch. The culture today seems to switch from celebration to drudgery... one moment you are happy and effervescent and once it is gone you are down in the dredges. There is no midway about it. We are called to be sober, conscious and aware of what we are going through and build attitudes, habits and support systems that would serve us at times of dryness. 

2. Get your jars filled: 

Use all the gifts that you have, to stand strong, endure the moment. It is important that we endure them, when we reach moments of trials and dryness. One who endures shall receive the crown, instructs James (1:12), isn't it? You have splendid gifts given you, by the Spirit of the Lord. Gifts that can sustain you, strengthen you and take you across a weak patch... if only you are aware of them and know how to use them. 

These are your weapons in moments of dryness, provided you know you possess them. In your youth get to know your Lord, says Ecclesiastes, to mean that when we are in good spirits to ascertain the foundations of our life that we shall be supported when times come that may assail us. Take up the arrows in your quiver, which until then were preserved for this moment. Do no be unaware of the extraordinary gifts of prudence, will and endurance that the Spirit fills you with - they are great means to sustain yourself at passing moments of darkness. Remain firm with the Lord, become aware of the presence of the Lord and call upon the Lord, waiting on the Lord! 

3. Taste the transformed wine: 

We may have the jar and we may have them filled but it is Jesus who makes it wine! We may have all it takes to make this life meaningful and fruitful but be wondering why it isn't really working out... Jesus renders it fruitful; the Spirit makes our abilities true gifts. Wait, wait with patience and trust and the Lord will transform - your tears into joy (Jn 16:20), your shame into radiance (Ps 34:5), your weariness shall be replenished (Jer 31:25)... all this when you are able to endure with the Lord, wait on the Lord and allow the Lord to work on you! 

We see a tendency today, as soon as a little problem arises, we are out running from pillar to post seeking and begging someone or something to solve the problem. We have lost the courage to sit at the feet of the Lord and seek the light. We have lost the trust that everything that happens in our lives has something important to communicate to us. We have lost the faith that the Lord is there beside us even while we shall walk in the darkest of valleys and the Lord's crook and staff shall be there to guide me to light, to fullness, to sweetness of the new wine! 

When our lives run dry... let's take our jars filled to Jesus and he will transform them into wine; let's surrender to the Spirit and the Spirit will make us capable of always growing more and more  into God's children. 

The Journey: with grace and confidence!

WORD 2day: Saturday, 1st week in Ordinary time

January 18, 2025 - Hebrews 4: 12-16; Mark 2: 13-17

The Word today is about the Word! A familiar passage that reminds us of the living Word, the dynamic and and powerful Word, which knows our innermost thoughts. This part from the letter to the Hebrews is not certainly one of its kind. Because we have a equally profound precedent in Psal 139, which tells us that the Lord knows us through and through; even before a word is on our lips, a thought is on our mind, the Lord knows them all...at times this can be frightening, isnt it?

Knowing how weak we are and how vulnerable and faint hearted we could be, naturally a proposition of this sort can be bewildering. How disastrous it could be that someone knows my thoughts, while I hide and harbour there quite some things that I cover up with my uncanny smiles and sugar coated words! For I alone know who I really am and what my interior is all about... these are obviously truthful fears. But the Word says, these do not matter, and that we could approach the mercy throne of the Lord with confidence. But how - that's would be an instant question in our mind!

Jesus answers that in the Gospel: yes, I know you are weak, your are tempted, you fall, you fail, you give in, you compromise, you lie, you have your private life... but these are no reasons for me to reject you. In fact, these are reasons, I have come in search of you! I am here for you; I am here with you and I am here to stand by you to transform you! God chooses the weak, the vulnerable, the sinners. And hence, we can approach the mercy seat, with that childlike trust in the Lord. 

On our journey of faith therefore, we are invited to keep marching, with grace and confidence! 

The Journey: miles to go...

WORD 2day: Friday, 1st week in Ordinary time 

January 17, 2025 - Hebrews 4: 1-5,11; Mark 2: 1-12

Our journey of faith is long; it is not a short trip or a sprint, it is a marathon. It is a life long pilgrimage in its essence. The most trying part of it, apart from moving itself, is the endurance and perseverance. We cannot fool ourselves or fake being on this journey. If we take this journey seriously, we are at it; if not, we have already lost... we are only deceiving ourselves. There are three tendencies to check in our daily life experiences:

Are we those who hear or do we truly listen? The letter to the Hebrews makes this difference - "hearing the message did them no good because they did not share the faith of the those who listened!" We hear a lot of things daily, and we hear also the Word of God coming on to us, from varied quarters. But the hitch is, it would not be sufficient hearing when it comes to the Word of God. We need to listen; we need to receive and we need to allow the Word to transform us from within.

Are we saying, what we are thinking? Saying prayers, praising God, and speaking about God - may be easier when compared to truly praying, placing God first and sharing God with the others. The latter is about conviction, about our tranforming inner experience. We are called to bring these two tiers, as close as possible - the inner thoughts and external behaviour. 

Are we persons in awe or persons of faith? At times we remain persons in awe, wondering at the greatness of God and even praising it at moments when we see the glory manifest. But this falls short of who a person of faith could be. A person of faith would be the one who is ready to pick up the mat and walk, the one who is ready to believe in the constant relationship with God and move on even amidst all difficulties, the one who know the journey has miles to go, and I need to move, keep moving! 

The Journey: cleansed by the Word

WORD 2day: Thursday, 1st week in Ordinary time

January 16, 2025 - Hebrews 3: 7-14; Mark 1: 40-45

The Journey of faith we begin with the Lord, and embark upon in communion, is a journey towards compassion, in a continuos sense of repentance, constantly cleansed by the Word. If we need be cleansed by the Word, there are three conditions to be noted:

The Word comes, I need to note it: From where we saw Jesus yesterday, Peter's home, he is entering another village, and we see the person with leprosy went to meet Jesus. The Word constantly comes to encounter us, but it is our responsibility to go out to receive it; if our hearts are hardened we shall not receive the Word, we shall let the Lord pass by. 

The Word can cleanse, I need to believe it: "If you choose, you can make me clean," that was a profession of faith. The Word is powerful and alive, but I need to believe that the Word can touch me and heal me, purify and cleanse me. Only if I believe, I would place myself under the merciful gaze of the Word, to look at me and cleanse me, speak to me and purify me!

The Word can liberate, I need to ask for it: We are made co-heirs with Christ, but we need to hold on to Christ; the Lord says, "I wish to cleanse you", but we need to ask for it to be cleansed, to be liberated and to be led to the house of the Lord: go, show yourself to the priest and be a child of God. The Reign of God consists in this, in recognising the power of God to make us whole, in believing that the Lord chooses to make me whole and in asking the Lord with the childlike simplicity to be made whole! 
  

The Journey: towards growing compassionate

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 1st week in Ordinary time

January 15, 2025 - Hebrew 2: 14-28; Mark 1: 29-39

The Journey of faith, our ordinary journey of faith begins with the Lord and it has to be embarked in communion, but whereto? Towards growing compassionate, says the Word today. We find the Lord teaching us this, with authority! 

The Lord teaches us compassion by his words. He went around preaching and insisted that he has to go to as many as possible, and to the furthest of the limits as possible to preach, because he was convinced he had been sent for that - to bring the love of God, the message of the Reign to as many as possible. 

The Lord teaches us by his deeds, as he went around curing and healing all who needed and liberating those who were bound in their spirits. He went to people who were in need, like the mother in law of Peter and he attended to those who came to him from far and wide... what guided him was the compassion he had for the people who were in need. 

Not merely by words, and not only by actions, but by his very being the Lord teaches us compassion. As the letter to the Hebrews explains to us, the Lord became completely like his brothers and sisters so that he could be a compassionalte and trustworthy hight priest of God's Holy will. 

The message is that on our daily journey, we become more and more attentive to our words, our actions and our very beings, and in and through our every experience we grow to be compassionate in our ways and in our attitudes towards our brothers and sisters; that is the true scope of the journey of faith.  

The Journey: embarked in communion

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 1st week in Ordinary time

January 14, 2025 - Hebrews 2: 5-12; Mark 1: 21-28

We are reflecting on our ordinary journey of faith, the journey we are called to make every day of our daily life, and this journey is embarked in communion, instructs us the Word today. There are various dimensions to this communion and those are what the Word wants us to pay attention to today. 

The first dimension is the God dimension - the vertical dimension, the height. We believe in a God who deigned to become like us; that is what we celebrated for a long time, a short while ago. This mystery of incarnation, about which the letter to the Hebrews speaks to us, is based on another fact, that was already indicated by the psalmist long before the epistles or the gospels - that God made human person little less than a God! And today we see, God made God's some less than the Angels to come amidst us. These are ways in the which mystery of incarnation had always been a means deployed by God to identity Godself with us... seeking that communion where we will feel one with God. 

The second dimension is the other dimension - the horizontal dimension, the breadth. The Gospel begins with a phrase that we will often, not just in the markan narrative, but evey in others: Jesus and his disciples. The community that Jesus was building around him was the first of all his messages of the Reign. He wished not create a community not merely to announce the message, but to be the message!

The third dimension is the interior dimension - the inner dimension, the depth. We are reminded today of the way Jesus taught - "with authority"! The authority was his integrity, which is precisely this communion with oneself, the communion within - that is the only source of authority to proclaim the message from the Lord. The communion which signifies no separation within us, in the core of our beings. 

We have embarked, or we are invited to embark, on this journey of faith, in communion with the Lord, with the other and with ourselves. Let us strive to march on, in communion!  

The Journey: begins with the Lord

WORD 2day: Monday, 1st week in Ordinary time

January 13, 2025 - Hebrew 1: 1-6; Mark 1: 14-20

In many ways today's liturgy of the Word signals a beginning - after long weeks of specific events and feasts, we enter the Ordinary season, the precious gift of the ordinary time; we have begun the jubilee year recently and with the end of the Christmas season, beginning today we could amply turn our atttention to this pilgrimage of the jubilee; and we begin to listen to the readings proper to the liturgical cycle C from this week, and of course the odd-year alternative during the weekdays! In short, we are beginning a journey anew, the journey of faith, with the Lord, with the hope that the Lord grants.

We shall be reflecting on the letter written to the Hebrews this whole week, taking us on an exploratory retreat on the journey we are called resume once again, the ordinary journey of our faith. The first message given us is this: that journey begins witih the Lord. It is the Lord who has initiated this journey speaking to us in varied ways in the past, during the stronger liturgical seasons, who shall continue to speak now, in a more ordinary and a daily manner. The call for us is not to miss the "ordinariness" of God's call. 

And the Gospel reiterates that, now it is Jesus himself who speaks to us, and calls us every day - to follow him, that he can make us fishers of persons. There is a Christian television series that has become very famous over the past couple of years, an interdenominational initiative from the United States - The Chosen, which has reached already 4 seasons and is promising more. The picture that accompanies this reflection is the logo of that series! Interestingly the very first season, right away began with Jesus choosing his followers! That is how Mark begins his Gospel too: not with the nativity narrative but the call of the apostles. 

The message is loud and clear: we are chosen for this journey, and this journey begins with the Lord, are we ready to respond and follow?

WATER, FIRE AND THE SPIRIT

An act of Resubmission to the Lord

January 12, 2025: Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord

Isaiah 40:1-5,9-11; Titus 2: 11-14, 3:4-7; Luke 3: 15-16,21-22

We have come to the close of the Christmas Season - it ends with the solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord. What does this feast communicate to us? What is the message that the celebration of Baptism offers us: a reminder towards a resubmission to the Lord.

Resubmission indicates that it has been a process, not something that is happening just once or right now. The Lord calls us and we respond to the Lord - that is the crux of our Christian life and we accept this mandate when we say, or the community says for us, 'yes' to the Lord - at our baptism.

The Baptism of Jesus was a resubmission too. The Lord had predestined and initiated God's salvific plan in Christ, but Jesus as a human person had to cooperate to that salvific plan of God... in order that in his obedience of faith, he shall be raised to be the Son of God (Rom 1:4-5); so are we, in our yes, we are raised to be sons and daughters of God.

We see in the event of baptism today, that this reclaim on the part of God over Jesus and the resubmission of Christ as the son of God. Jesus submits himself to be baptised by John, as the Gospel of John specifically outlines, where we see the resubmission of Christ, which was reflected then in the entire life of Jesus. On the part of the Almighty, there is a declaration to which John testifies: 'this is my Son, in whom I am well pleased'. In this whole event, we see three elements that mark the call to constant resubmission to the authority of God.

The first is the element of Water - waters that purify, revitalise and revive. John was baptising with water...people came to him to revive their goodwill to live righteous, to revitalise their desire to be acceptable in the eyes of the Lord, and to purify their acts and motives! Jesus arrives to purify that water that purifies, ratifying the need to long for purification, revitalisation and revival within us. The celebration today reminds us of this purpose of the baptismal promises, which demand our constant and continual purification, revitalisation and revival, in spite of our repeated failures and limitations.

The second is the element of Fire - fire that warms, burns and lights up. We are presented with the warmth of the Lord that wishes to console God's people, the burning zeal of the prophet who wishes to set things in order in the lives of the individuals and in the community of the people of God, and the light that shines from above giving us knowledge and wisdom. The Word, therefore, calls our attention to the journey we began at our baptism! We might have lagged behind, deviated, and in some way lost our way...but the warmth of the Lord invites us, the burning light that was presented to us convicts us and brings us to an enlightened return to the journey embarked upon.

The third is the element of the Spirit - the Spirit of power, the Spirit of renewal and the Spirit of adoption! The Spirit who came upon Jesus was the Spirit of power that God had filled Jesus with, that is why he proclaimed: the Spirit of the Lord is upon me and God has sent me! The Spirit that was there with the people was the Spirit who constantly called them to renewal and effected that renewal in them, that is why the psalmist proclaimed: send forth your Spirit and the face of the earth shall be renewed. The Spirit of Jesus Christ is the Spirit that makes us sons and daughters of God, co-heirs with Christ, who share the same privilege and love that Christ has with God, our Father and Mother. One fact that we can never forget if we are disciples of Christ is, that we are children of God. It is not a flowery, euphemistic, metaphoric saying... but it is a fact, an experiential fact, or rather a fact to be experienced!

May the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord, especially in this Year of Ordinary Jubilee 2025, at the beginning of this pilgrimage of hope, offer us a sense of hope, inspire us and lead us to focus on our baptism, our baptismal promises and the daily resubmission that we are called to make, as loving children, to God our loving Father and Mother.