Lord's Year of Favour

(By Desmond Knowles. Source: Entering the Lectionary.)

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C (27 January 2019)

Nehemiah 8:2–4, 5–6, 8–10. Psalm 19:8–10, 15. 1 Corinthians 12: 12–30. Luke 1:1–4; 4:14–21.

This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen.

A great moment in Jewish religious history is recalled in today’s gospel. Jesus was the center of attention when he declared the Lord’s year of favour as he preached in the synagogue of his home town of Nazareth, where he had been brought up. He opened the scroll and read that passage from the prophet Isaiah, who many years before declared that the long-awaited Messiah would bring Good News to the poor, proclaim liberty to captives, give sight to the blind and set the down-trodden free. When he had the full attention of the congregation, he calmly and deliberately announced, ‘This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen.’ It was a declaration that the moment of salvation had arrived and that he was the long-awaited Messiah, the fulfillment of Israel’s hopes and dreams. The effect was stunning as the locals tried to come to terms with the fact that the holy one of God had turned out to be one of their own. The hope of ages had been born in their midst. There was an air of expectancy at the realization that God, far from abandoning them, was near at hand, concerned and interested in their well-being.

The message of the gospel, first preached in Galilee, is to be spread today through us. The word of God which first came to birth in our souls at baptism is anxiously waiting to burst forth and take root in the lives of others. Every year is a year of favour from the Lord. There are so many ways we can make these words of Christ, about bringing glad tidings to the poor, liberty to captives and sight to the blind, our very own and have them fulfilled in our hearing. When we help those whose hearts have grown cold and are heavily weighed down, the love of God shines through us and we make them realize that Jesus Christ is not a memory but is living among us today.

We can touch people’s lives and be healers in times of estrangement, sympathetic listeners in moments of sorrow and towers of strength and loving care on the occasion of tragedy. To be successful channels of his message we have first to put our own house in order, by accepting the good news of Jesus, inviting him into our lives, so that he can show us the way. If we are privileged to receive the gospel, then the challenge arises as to what extent do we pass on this portrait of God’s favour to others by what we are. A question for all of us to ponder – what is the Good News proclaimed by my life to others today? There is nowhere we can walk in life without leaving the imprint of who we are, good or bad, upon the ground we tread.

Jesus-Encounter

2nd Week in Ordinary Time - Friday; Conversion of St Paul (25 January 2019)

Acts 22:3-16, or 9:1-22. Psalm 117:1-2. Mark 16:15-18.

I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

Saul’s experience on the road to Damascus was not just a turning point in Saul's life, who became Paul, but also perhaps the turning point of Christianity as we know it know. Paul's entire life can be explained in terms of one experience—his meeting with Jesus on the road to Damascus. In an instant, he saw that all the zeal of his dynamic personality was being wasted, or rather all his zeal transformed into something larger than him or his religion.

Many people don’t realize that Paul never met the historical Jesus, who was only a few years older. He hardly ever quotes Jesus directly. In almost all of Paul’s preaching and writing, he refers to the Eternal Christ Mystery or the Risen Christ rather than Jesus of Nazareth before his death and resurrection. The Risen Christ is the only Jesus that Paul ever knew! This makes Paul a fitting mediator for the rest of us, since the Omnipresent Risen Christ is the only Jesus we will ever know as well (see 2 Corinthians 5:16-17). And, be certain, we won’t be the same after encountering the Risen Christ. 

Paul had acquired a zealot’s hatred of all Jesus stood for, as he began to harass the Church: “entering house after house and dragging out men and women, he handed them over for imprisonment” (Acts 8:3). Now he himself was “entered,” possessed, all his energy harnessed to one goal—being a slave of Christ in the ministry of reconciliation, an instrument to help others experience the one Saviour.

One sentence determined (or at least gave shape to) Paul's theology: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5). Jesus was mysteriously identified with people—the loving group of people Saul had been persecuting and treating them like criminals. Jesus, he saw, was the mysterious fulfillment of all he had been blindly pursuing.

From then on, his only work was to “present everyone perfect in Christ. For this I labour and struggle, in accord with the exercise of his power working within me” (Colossians 1:28-29). “For our gospel did not come to you in word alone, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction” (1 Thessalonians 1:5).

Paul’s life became a tireless proclaiming and living out of the message of the cross: Christians die baptismally to sin and are buried with Christ; they are dead to all that is sinful and unredeemed in the world. They are made into a new creation, already sharing Christ’s victory to rise from the dead like him. Through this risen Christ the Father pours out the Spirit on them, making them completely new.

So Paul’s great message to the world was: You are saved entirely by God, not by anything you can do. You are loved totally by God. In whatever condition you are now. You can't merit God's love and salvation by your good works. Saving faith is the gift of total, free, personal and loving commitment to Christ. The good news is that it is already given to you: it's all yours for the taking!

Paul is undoubtedly hard to understand. Try his Letter to the Romans, for instance! His style often reflects the rabbinical style of argument of his day, and often his thought goes way above our heads. But perhaps our problems are accentuated by the fact that so many beautiful jewels have become part of the everyday coin in our Christian language.

At any rate, Paul's conversion teaches us one great truth. To follow any religion (even Christianity) blindly, without the spirit of love and sacrifice, could make us even mass-murderers, as Paul's fundamentalism portrays. Laws do not give life, only love gives life. Laws can only give us information, and even helpful information, but they cannot give us transformation. Until people have had some level of inner religious experience (a meeting with the Risen Christ), there is no point in asking them to follow the ethical ideals of Jesus. Indeed they will not be able to understand them.

Loving Kindness

The measure of love is to love without measure.

When St John Bosco was ordained priest he made this resolution, “The love and gentleness of St Francis de Sales will guide me in everything.” Logically then, he felt compelled to say that anyone who wanted to share in his work for young people had to have “the spirit of Francis de Sales.” They were to live the Gospel of Jesus as Francis did.

For Francis, God was above all the God of our heart. He was father and mother to all. God nurtures us and draws us gently into a covenant with Jesus, whose most tender love was shown when he died for us on the Cross.

Daily life is the ordinary place to find God. For Francis the “present moment” was like an eighth sacrament, a sacred meeting-place with God. Nothing was more sure than his presence to us. “As sure as the sunrise, so surely will he be there with me as He is today.”

Francis gave spiritual direction to lay people who were living real lives in the real world. He had proven with his own life that people could grow in holiness while involved in a very active occupation. He also recognized that Christian marriage and family life is itself a call to holiness.

His most famous book, Introduction to the Devout Life, was written for ordinary lay people in 1608, not just the clergy and religious. Written originally as letters, it became an instant success all over Europe—though some clergy rejected the notion that lay men and women could achieve holiness in the experience of their daily life. Some tore it up because Francis encouraged dancing and jokes!

For Francis, the love of God was like romantic love. He said, “The thoughts of those moved by natural human love are almost completely fastened on the beloved, their hearts are filled with passion for it, and their mouths full of its praises. When it is gone, they express their feelings in letters, and can't pass by a tree without carving the name of their beloved in its bark. Thus, to those who love God can never stop thinking about Him, longing for Him, aspiring to Him, and speaking about Him. If they could, they would engrave the name of Jesus on the hearts of all humankind.”

“If I have some heavy cross to bear,” wrote Francis, “God will either take it from me or give me the strength to carry it.” There is no need for any fear.

Our life, in all its humanness, is unique and beautiful—it is God’s great gift to us. It’s ours to live with joy and optimism. We really are in God’s hands. We can find the inner strength to face whatever life throws at us. But we must be real about today and not dream idly of tomorrow. Softness and indulgence bring only sadness. There is joy, freedom and peace of heart to be found where love is genuine and without compromise. It’s a journey to God that’s possible for anyone.

Francis believed passionately in the radical goodness to be found in each one of us: a potential for good that’s greater than any tendency to evil. This “humanism” of Francis encourages us to believe in a full blossoming of our lives, both natural and supernatural. He had no time for a “gloom and doom” attitude to life. “Nourish yourself with joy,” he would say. Preachers who taught otherwise were “traitors of humanity.”

Francis, like Jeremiah, had a prophet’s heart that couldn’t say “No” to God. This strong, apostolic zeal coupled with gentle, pastoral love were the perfect model for Don Bosco’s “Salesians” who were to win the hearts of the young. Strength that is gentle; gentleness that is strong. Francis said, “Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.” Only kindness can win hearts: kindness that pays the price of unlimited availability, patience and self-denial.

Jesus came to reveal “the loving-kindness of the heart of our God.” Francis and Don Bosco knew that all starts from Him and all leads back to Him. Love is the beginning, love is the end, love is the way.

So when he founded his new congregation, Don Bosco adopted the name “the Society of St Francis de Sales.”

St. Francis de Sales

Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.

Francis was born in a noble family at Chateau de Sales in the Kingdom of Savoy near Geneva, Switzerland on 21 August 1567. From a very early age, he desired to serve God. He knew for years he had a vocation to the priesthood, but kept it from his family. His father wanted him to enter a career in law and politics.

In 1580, Francis attended the University of Paris, and at 24-years-old, he received his doctorate in law at the University of Padua. All the time, he never lost his passion for God. He studied theology and practised mental prayers, but kept quiet about his devotion. To please his father, he also studied fencing and riding.

In due time, Francis revealed his intentions to become a priest. After much discussion and disagreement from his father, Francis was ordained to the priesthood and elected provost of the Diocese of Geneva, in 1593, by the Bishop of Geneva.

During the time of the Protestant reformation, Francis dialogued with the Calvinists. For three years, he trudged through the countryside, had doors slammed in his face and rocks thrown at him. In the bitter winters, his feet froze so badly they bled as he tramped through the snow.

Francis' unusual patience kept him working. No one would listen to him, no one would even open their door. So, Francis found a way to get under the door. He wrote out little pamphlets to explain true Catholic doctrine and slipped them under the doors. This is one of the first records we have of religious tracts being used to communicate the Catholic faith.

The parents wouldn't come to him, so Francis went to the children. When the parents saw how kind he was as he played with the children, they began to talk to him.

In 1602, Francis was consecrated Bishop of Geneva, although he continued to reside in Annecy. In 1604, Francis took one of the most important steps in his life—the step towards extraordinary holiness and mystical union with God.

In Dijon, Francis saw a widow listening closely to his sermon—a woman he had already seen in a dream. Jane de Chantal was a dedicated Catholic Christian on her own, as Francis was, but it was only when they became friends they began to become saints.

Jane was on a path to mystical union with God and, in directing her, Francis was compelled to follow her and become a mystic himself. Years after working with Jane, he made up his mind to form a new religious community. In 1610, he founded the Order of Visitation.

He gave spiritual direction to most people through letters, which attested to his remarkable patience. "I have more than fifty letters to answer. If I tried to hurry over it all, I would be lost. So, I intend neither to hurry or to worry. This evening, I shall answer as many as I can. Tomorrow I shall do the same and so I shall go on until I have finished."

During this time, it was wrongly thought that achieving real holiness of life was a task reserved for only for the clergy and those in religious life, and not for lay men and women. Francis insisted that every Christian was called to holiness and sanctity, thus laying the groundwork for the teaching of the Second Vatican Council's universal call to holiness.

The key to love of God was prayer. "By turning your eyes on God in meditation, your whole soul will be filled with God. Begin all your prayers in the presence of God." For busy people living in the world, he advised, "Retire at various times into the solitude of your own heart, even while outwardly engaged in discussions or transactions with others and talk to God."

The test of prayer was a person's actions. "To be an angel in prayer and a beast in one's relations with people is to go lame on both legs."

He believed the worst sin was to judge someone or to gossip about them. Even if we say we do it out of love we're still doing it to look better ourselves. We should be as gentle and forgiving with ourselves as we should be with others.

Francis died on 28 December 1622, after giving a nun his last word of advice: "Humility." He was beatified on 8 January 1661 and canonized on 19 April 1665.

Fearlessness

2nd Week in Ordinary Time - Wednesday (23 January 2019)

Hebrews 7:1-3, 15-17. Psalm 110:1-4. Mark 3:1-6.

Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?

In Jesus Before Christianity, Fr Albert Nolan makes another remark. He notes that there are “no traces of fear in Jesus.” The gospel story of today makes that point. Jesus wasn’t afraid of authority, he wasn’t afraid of scandal. He challenged the authorities of his time. He wasn’t afraid to consort with prostitutes and the unclean. John the Baptizer fasted, living on insects and walking around in a camel skin. Jesus feasted and complained that the leaders didn’t dance while he was playing the flute for them (Matthew 11:17). The character Nolan portrays derives his knowledge of the world and people not from set dogmas and laws, but from an intuitive feeling for others, from compassion, from “feeling with” and “being with.”

It was Jesus' fearlessness that made him so dangerous to the authorities around him. If they allowed him to be like that, others might begin to act in the same way. Their power and control would be lost. They couldn’t allow him to let his light shine. That possibility might become contagious. Jesus asks the authorities and us, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?”

As a continuation from yesterday's gospel, Jesus proves that he is the master of the sabbath. Rules are for the sake of doing good, and we may have to break rules at times in order to do good as today's gospel witnesses. Jesus reminds us that we have a new responsibility. For it is not so much what we do or don't do on the sabbath that matters. What matters is our response to the call to see holiness each and every day, be ready to do good any or every day. There can be no rest from doing good, and being good each day. Every day is an opportunity to be good, and do good. Whether the rules allow it or not!

Nelson Mandela once said, “As we let our light shine we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Son of Man

2nd Week in Ordinary Time - Tuesday (22 January 2019)

Hebrews 6:10-20. Psalm 111:1-2, 4-5, 9-10. Mark 2:23-28.

The Son of Man is master even of the Sabbath.

The gospel story of today demonstrates that the law was established for the sake of people. Rather than a system of oppressive regulations established arbitrarily by an autocrat, the law is like the expression of a loving and wise mother who sets down rules for her children to assure their safety, health, and well-being. So we need to understand that the law was meant to serve the people, not the other way around. “The Sabbath was made for humans, not humans for the Sabbath.”

Jesus calls himself “Son of Man” eighty-one times in the gospels. No one else addresses him in that way. They give him other names and titles. The South African Dominican Fr Albert Nolan wrote in his book Jesus Before Christianity that “there is no evidence that Jesus ever laid claim to any of the exalted titles which the church later attributed to him.” According to Nolan this even includes the title Christ, meaning the “Anointed One.” Nolan asserts that the one title Jesus did use, “the Son of Man,” was an Aramaic figure of speech meaning much the same as “human being.”

Dorothy Day, whose canonization process has started in the Vatican City, is considered a contemporary American saint by many who knew her. She started the Catholic Worker movement, and opened homes for the homeless, and community farms for the downtrodden and the least privileged. She definitely was a special person. She did extraordinary things. Yet, every time she overheard anyone saying something like that of her, she was indignant. “You say that I am special because you do not want to do what you see me do. You can easily do what I do, but by convincing yourself that I am someone special, you allow yourself to escape from your own responsibility. You can do what I do.”

When Jesus uses the title “Son of Man” he changes our relation to him. He changes our expectations. He doesn’t change what we can expect from him, but what we should expect from ourselves. Jesus says it in as many words: “In all truth I tell you whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself and will perform even greater works” (John 14:12).

**

“The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us. When we begin to take the lowest places, to wash the feet of others, to love our sisters and brothers with that burning love, that passion which led to the cross, then we can truly say, ‘Now I have begun.’” - Dorothy Day.

Learning through Suffering

2nd Week in Ordinary Time - Monday; Memorial of St Agnes (21 January 2019)

Hebrews 5:1-10. Psalm 110:1-4. Mark 2:18-22.

Although Jesus was Son [of God], he learned to obey through suffering.

The first reading from the letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus learned through suffering.

Suffering of some sort seems to be the only thing strong enough to destabilize our arrogance and our ignorance. It is the only force strong enough to destabilize the imperial ego. Suffering can be simply defined as "whenever we are not in control."

If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.

If we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become negative or bitter.

Original shame = original sin.

Your hardest times often lead to the greatest moments of your life.

Pain may come from the inside or the outside, but suffering does not come from outside, always only from the inside. It comes from our human condition.

Change

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C (20 January 2019)

Isaiah 62:1–5. Psalm 96:1–3, 7–10. 1 Corinthians 12:4–11. John 2:1–12.

You have kept the best wine till now.

After a little coaxing and gentle persuasion from his mother to save a wedding feast from catastrophe, Jesus performs the first of his miracles at Cana in Galilee. However, there is more to his action of changing barrels of water into vats of wine than appears at first sight. He is not merely saving a couple of newlyweds from public embarrassment because their wine is running short. What he is really doing is talking to each one of us personally about the shortages in our own lives. Could it be true that after a few years of marriage, gone are our dreams? Our love has dried up, we’ve lost our ideals and no longer have the sparkle for living. Bored and weary we have settled for humdrum routine. John is telling us that we need to be refreshed, to let Christ touch the water of our lives, and bring greater understanding.

Christ came on earth to change people and to make all things new. He came to change us just as he changed water into wine. His presence among us is an invitation to change our ways and a call to a new manner of life. Christ is the spirit of new life who is continually bursting into a world that is weary of meaningless living. His words are spirit and life and have a message for every age. Just 20 days ago we welcomed a New Year which speaks of new beginnings and a fresh start. With it comes our old familiar resolutions to be better people and transform our living. If we really want to change our lives we have got to turn to Christ and call on his help. Wherever Jesus is found, life is always changed for the better. He enriches the very ordinary, makes it precious and gives an eternal value to the commonplace. Given the opportunity, Jesus will be at work in the most unexpected of ways, transforming us, making us like himself.

The joy and happiness he brought into the lives of the newlyweds at Cana by his presence is ours for the asking provided we follow the simple instruction given by Mary, “Do whatever he tells you.” We could carry this message on our fingertips today, one for each finger: 1. Do, 2. whatever, 3. Jesus, 4. tells, 5. you.

As our interceding mother, Mary, is always anxious to show her concern by bringing our human needs into the mission of her Son. Our big mistake in life is that when we run short we forget to turn to Jesus for fresh supplies of what we need. It is only when we go to him with open hearts and empty hands that he can touch us and make certain that the wine of love and joy will always be part of our lives.

We can be our best only with God's grace... that is true change. The work of transformation is Christ's, Spirit's, not ours. We need only to make space for Jesus. He will take charge of the situation.

Compassion

1st Week in Ordinary Time - Saturday (19 January 2019)

Hebrews 4:12-16. Psalm 19:8-10, 15. Mark 2:13-17.

In Jesus, the Son of God, we have a supreme high priest, who was capable of feeling our weaknesses with us, and has been tempted in every way that we are.

Jesus Christ is 100% God, and 100% human. That is a contradiction. Our minds can't possibly understand what this means. Just to intellectually assent to the two natures of Christ has no meaning to us. A forceful belief in this doctrine or any other doctrine or dogma using our mind has no dynamic possibility in our soul that opens up our heart and mind in order to give peace.

With our binary mode of thinking, some of us have translated the above doctrine into saying that Jesus is 100% God and we are 100% human. Therefore, practically there is no connection between him and us! We missed the major point—which was to put the two together in him—and then dare to discover the same in ourselves! We made our inclusive Saviour into a Redeemer that we were told to worship as a quite exclusionary God. Instead of seeing Jesus as one whom we could imitate and participate with, we made him into an object of devotion keeping him at a "safe" (or perhaps "unsafe") distance. We have even forgotten that we are invited be sharers and "partners in his great triumphal procession" (2 Corinthians 2:14), and participate in the already-begun process of theosis or divinization as the Eastern Church called it.

Today's first reading tries to put the two natures of Christ, especially without neglecting his human nature. It says that Jesus had a share of all weaknesses and temptations that you and I have a share. And his weaknesses and human nature have become the source of compassion. Thus we have a supreme leader who is able to feel with us, and suffer with us. Isn't this beautiful? He is not far away from all the human troubles and mess that life is very many times.

The good news is that our struggles and weaknesses can become a source of compassion. Compassion and patience are the absolutely unique characteristics of true spiritual authority (which starts from an inner authenticity and leads to an outer authority). A spiritual leader who lacks basic human compassion has almost no power to change other people, because people intuitively know he or she does not represent the Divine or Big Truth.

Moreover, this has to lead us to accept that we humans are a bundle of contraries and opposites. If we wish to be whole we must accept we are a mix of contradictions. If it is wholeness, then it is always paradoxical, and holds both the dark and light sides of things. So, interestingly, the failures and weaknesses of our lives are not to be left out, eliminated, rejected or dumped, but they all need to be embraced and owned and integrated. Wholeness is not the absence of the negative and the dark. But it is the situation where both light and darkness, positive and negative are integrated. They are con-joined to give us true maturity and wholeness. Our negative energies are not to be hated or rejected, but instead they can be made use of: they are to be accepted, owned, embraced and integrated into compassion.

The very failures and radical insufficiency of our lives are what lead us into larger life and love. They are the source of our true compassion.

Place of Rest

1st Week in Ordinary Time - Friday (18 January 2019)

Hebrews 4:1-5, 11. Psalm 78:3-4, 6-8. Mark 2:1-12.

None of you has come too late for God's promised place of rest.

In today's first reading, the author of the Hebrews affirms his (or her) readers that God's promise holds good for all, and no one is late for it. Everyone has an opportunity to receive what God promised: a place of rest.

What is this place? It is not a physical place, but a state. It is a symbol or metaphor for a state of consciousness. This is not a place where you go to, but a place where you come from.  It is a dimension of experience available here and now, and accessible to you right in this moment. You don’t die into it; you awaken into it.

What about rest? Most of us can identify ourselves with some restlessness in our beings day in and day out. We search out for entertainment after entertainment in order to give ourselves some rest, but eventually we become even more restless and empty. Entertainments turn out to be empty and superficial.

We can find these new drugs of entertainment right at our homes: television soap operas and serials, reality shows, sports telecasts, WhatsApp videos and forward messages. All these are good. Drugs are good, but only in small, tiny quantities when you really need them. Drugs in themselves have no problem, but the user or the abuser determines it all. Addiction is the problem. As Richard Rohr says, addiction is wanting more and more of what doesn't work. Our addictions could be to almost anything: our own self-image, family, job, security, social status, good name, achievements, awards, approval, food, drink.

Even our work (good work and God's work) many times can be characterized by lack of peace or restless pacing and movement from one event to another, from one programme to another: from pillar to post. If it is a chronic or unbridled restlessness, an absence of peace, then we need to take the admonition of today's first reading seriously. Such a negative restlessness can lead us into negative energy that gives death not life. The only way to give peace and life to others is to absorb the rest that the Lord promises us today.

Facing our shadow self and our addictions is almost the heart of modern psychiatry and therapy. We have so many means to deal with our restlessness and addictions. Prayer, silence and meditation are God's answers to our addictions to our habits. Even to stop the repetitive and never-ending commentary in our obsessive mind is itself a much needed rest. To empty our mind and fill our hearts with peace is to enter God's promised land of rest.

So when we pray for someone "Eternal rest grant unto her," it does not refer to a future place, but a present state of rest to which all of us are invited and given access to. Prayer or resting in God is for the purpose of moving from negative energy to positive energy, from death to love and life; otherwise you have not prayed at all. Thought and energy have consequences.

Remember, you can be doing very good things but, if you are doing them with negative energy, the results will not be life-giving for yourself or for others. The opposite is also true: You can do faulty things but, if you're doing them with positive life-energy, they will still bear fruit for the world. (Isn't this really good news?) As Yahweh said of imperfect David, "I see the heart instead of appearances" (see 1 Samuel 16:7).

Experience

1st Week in Ordinary Time - Thursday; Memorial of Saint Anthony, Abbot (17 January 2019)

Hebrews 3:7-14. Psalm 95:6-11. Mark 1:40-45.

See that you tell no one anything.

Every time Jesus works a miracle, as he does in today's gospel, he doesn't want people or demons to talk about it. In other words, Jesus asks the people to cherish and relish and digest the mystery-experience behind that miracle, and not go blah-blah about it. Silence seems to be the best response to mystery. Any deep experience of God has to be met not with words, but with our whole being, and in great respect and silence. And this is why Jesus says, “Do not talk about it.”

Because when we talk about our God-experience too early or pre-maturely we will freeze that experience into those few, inadequate words. Then we tend to forget the whole experience, and remember only those words. We could get stuck in those words or images, and not allow the experience to transform us deeply.

When you find a treasure in the field, you are asked to bury it back into the field. Only when you are able to buy the field (by selling whatever you already possess) can you appropriate the hidden treasure. Mind you, you can't buy the treasure but only the field. Only when you have allowed your whole self to be encompassed by the mystery and the experience can you use words though inadequate. Otherwise, an over-exposure can kill the experience itself. An over-exposure can short-circuit the whole experience and lead to its sudden, pre-mature death.

An overemphasis on words, concepts, rituals and liturgy can trivialize our incomprehensible experience of the Sacred. A similar overconcentration on social and communal prayer, with a tantamount neglect of silence, can make our prayer experience empty.

Until you've gone through the mystery of transformation from the false self to the True Self, don't talk about these things, because you will almost always misuse or misinterpret the experience. As Gregory of Nyssa beautifully summarizes, “Concepts create idols, only wonder really knows.”

Go beneath your words and thoughts, beneath your ideas and concepts. Discover the wonder that you are, the passion that you are. That is the only way you can go beyond the admiration of Jesus' miracles and wait in silence for the real meaning of the miracle and the experience itself, which is always inner transformation. Hans-Georg Gadamer himself observes, “I believe what is most worth telling is always what cannot be told.”

So when you pray, try to stay beneath your thoughts or emotions neither fighting them nor thinking them. Everything that comes also goes, so don't take any of it seriously. You are much larger than the good or bad stories you tell about yourself. These stories are never the whole you, not the Great You.

You are God's Wonder!

Lonely Place

1st Week in Ordinary Time - Wednesday; St Joseph Vaz (16 January 2019)

Hebrews 2:14-18. Psalm 105:1-4, 6-9. Mark 1:29-39.

In the morning, long before dawn, Jesus got up and left the house, and went off to a lonely place and prayed there.

Gospels were written that we may identify ourselves with Jesus Christ and his attitudes. Today's gospel reading presents a beautiful attitude of his that gives meaning to his ministry. Jesus finds “a lonely place” for prayer “long before dawn.” This speaks volumes, and perhaps we don't need too much of commentary and explanation. As a follower of Jesus, we need to find our proper and “lonely” time and space for communion with God. It is not always easy to do this, but that is the only way we can find our true freedom of being the children of God.

Jesus exhibits this true freedom in his ministry as seen in today's gospel again. When the disciples find him and say, “Everybody is looking for you,” Jesus unhesitatingly says, “Let us go elsewhere so that I can preach there too, because that is why I came.” We too can attain this freedom if we imitate Jesus, if we find ourselves time and place to relate to God who is our Father and Mother, who is the Source and Origin of everything.

In other words, we serve the world by being spiritually well, by being connected to our Source. The first questions therefore are not: “How much do we do?” or “How many people do we help out?” but “Are we interiorly at peace?” The distinction between contemplation and action can be misleading. Jesus’ actions flowed from his interior communion with God. His presence itself was healing, and it changed the world. In a sense he didn’t do anything! “Everyone who touched him was healed” (Mark 6:56).

Our presence itself can be healing if we are connected to the Source. That is the only way we are asked to serve the world. If we are not connected to the Source we will only transmit our compulsions, restlessness and impatience.

The way for us to be in this world is to focus on the spiritual life – our own as well as the spiritual life of each one of the people that we meet. All the rest pales before these “spiritual events,” which will become part of our enduring search for the truth of life and the love of God.

The primal freedom is the freedom to be our own self, the freedom to live in the truth despite all circumstances. This is what we need to aim at always. Freedom to be ourselves, freedom to be God’s Beloved always.

We have no real access to who we really are except in God. Only when we rest in God can we find the safety, the spaciousness, and the freedom to be who we are.

In prayer, you can find your true freedom. Freedom is not about having to do what you want to do. True freedom instead is wanting to do what you have to do.

Prayer is that lonely place where we have to wait and observe. We wait in silence. In silence all our usual compulsions and patterns assault us. Our patterns of control, addiction, negativity, tension, anger, and fear assert themselves. That’s why most people give up prayer rather quickly. We need a lot of time and space to discover our true freedom.

We may say that we are free, but are we really free interiorly? Are there aspects in our lives that show inner slaveries—compulsions, patterns of control and resistance and addiction, abuse of money, power and sex, workaholism and activism?

We all need to find that lonely place.....

Belovedness

Christmastide after Epiphany (Saturday, 12 January 2019)

1 John 5:14-21. Psalm 149:1-6, 9. John 3:22-30. (Please click the following link for the above readings http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/011219.cfm.) 

“We know that we belong to God.”

We already belong to God. This is a profound statement of St John in today's first reading. And yet it is not easy to know or acknowledge that we belong to God.

It is easier to belong to a church than to truly belong to God. It is easier to belong to a culture or a tribe or a human group or organization than to deeply know that we belong to God. It is even easier to attend church services than quite simply to accept God who is everywhere, or to reverence the Real. Committing ourselves to accept God and Reality is not an easy task. Making this commitment would seem to consist in vigilance (being awake), and the desire and willingness to begin again and again. (The words BEGIN and BEING are spelt with the same letters.)

To discover that we belong to God is to discover that we are God's Beloved. That we are deeply loved and cared by God. To discover this our Belovedness is to realise that this world and this reality contains whatever I need at this moment. God provides for me more than I can provide for myself. He cares for me more than I can care for myself. He is more intimate to my being than I am to myself. This is to say that the world is okay, that I don't have to live in fear and anxiety. That God is the Master of this universe, He is in charge of my history.

Therefore, the world is good. God is good. God is for you. The world is for you, not against you. The world is not gloom and doom as our television channels and newspapers and “bad news” media project minute after minute. I’m not denying there is evil, injustice, war and violence, but that is not the whole picture. The true picture is that God loves the world, He rules the world with His love. The world is God’s, not of the terrorists or extremists or fundamentalists. Our God is the God of history. He is in control.

God is an expert in even using peoples’ sin for good, but those who refuse to see their dark side He cannot use! As we see in the gospels, Jesus himself is never upset at sinners. He’s only upset with people who don’t think they’re sinners. We need to discover God, and in Him our Belovedness.

In discovering God, then, we discover our true self. In discovering our Belovedness, we discover that we don't just belong to the world but also transcend it. Though we belong to the world, we truly belong to God—who is now here. This little “I am” doesn't just belong to this visible universe, but truly belongs to the invisible eternity of the great “I AM”—present here and now. This is my truest and deepest identity. This little moment of incarnation is all I am asked for, all I am asked to be. Just This!

Let our prayer moments be moments of intimacy with God and Reality to listen to God's own words, “You are my Beloved.” We are precious to Him. We are already His Beloved Children; we belong to God. This is why Christ, God's Son, became human at Christmas. To make us grasp that we are God's, that we are God's Sons and Daughters along with him.

When things are difficult and life is hard, remember who you are: you are a special person. You are precious. You are deeply loved by God and by all those who are with you.

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! We are children of God” (1 John 3:1-2).

For reflections on the gospel passage, please see "He must increase," https://anthuvanmaria.blogspot.com/2018/12/he-must-increase.html, and
also "Highways for God," http://anthuvanmaria.blogspot.com/2018/06/highways-for-god.html.

Healing

Christmastide after Epiphany (Friday, 11 January 2019)

1 John 5:5-13. Psalm 147:12-15, 19-20. Luke 5:12-16. (Please click the following link for the above readings http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/011119.cfm.)

“If you want to, you can cure me.”

As we see in today's gospel reading, the only condition for healing is our willingness and openness to be healed. But no healing is automatic or magical. Healing takes time as nature itself would testify. And it is a process, even a painful process.

“Is healing without pain, knowledge without study, and love without sacrifice possible?” asks Fulton Sheen. Very often we want healing without pain. We want an automatic or magical result. We want to take the short-cuts, we are impatient and want only the end result. We want to avoid the painful process of arriving at the healing as much as possible.

Or worse still, we want miracles and magical cures more than healing. Most often, we want to meet Jesus the miracle worker rather than Jesus the healer. We want God to give answers and solutions instantly. We prefer God the magician to the One who is involved silently in our pains and struggles.

Our pain, deep as it is, is connected with specific circumstances. We do not suffer in the abstract. We suffer because someone hurts us at a specific time and in a specific place. Our feelings of rejection, abandonment, and uselessness are rooted in the most concrete events.

Still, as long as we keep pointing to the specifics, we will miss the full meaning of our pain. We will deceive ourselves into believing that if the people, circumstances, and events had been different, our pain would not exist. “My suffering would have been less, if there were a different husband, a different superior, a different neighbour, a different partner, and so on.” This might be partly true, but the deeper truth is that the situation which brought about our pain was simply the form in which we came in touch with the human condition of suffering. Our pain is the concrete way in which we participate in the pain of humanity. 

Paradoxically, therefore, healing means moving from our pain to embracing a larger pain. When we keep focusing on the specific circumstances of our pain, we easily become angry, resentful, and even vindictive – even seek revenge. We can learn from Mary, our Mother: healing means moving from our pain to the pain. She stands at the foot of the cross, she stands in communion with Jesus’ suffering. But she is not alone, she stands along with Mary Magdalene, other women, also the beloved disciple of Jesus. She stands in communion with other humans too. She takes her suffering out of isolation, and places it in the context of the cross, Jesus’ cross. She takes her pain out of isolation, and shares it with her fellow-sufferers, fellow-believers.

The pains and demands attached to our day to day living can only be dealt with by taking them out of their isolation, and place it in the larger context of love, healing, growth and maturity. Everything has it place, including pain.

As we read in the gospels, any of Jesus' miracle is not about the medical cure, but about healing, about wholeness. Today do we truly desire wholeness? Are we willing to embrace pain in this process of arriving at healing and wholeness?

First Love

Christmastide after Epiphany (Thursday, 10 January 2019)

1 John 4:19—5:4. Psalm 72:1-2, 14, 15bc, 17. Luke 4:14-22. (Please click the following link for the above readings http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/011019.cfm.)

“Beloved, we love God because he first loved us.”

We may often ask: “Why so much of hatred, violence and war in the world?” But perhaps we too have a part in it—though tiny. We are part of the evil that we see in the world. We are part of the evil that we are fighting against. Etty Hillesum beautifully puts it: “Each of us must destroy in oneself all that we think we ought to destroy in others. Every atom of hate that we add to this world makes it still more inhospitable.”

So any work of transformation of and compassion for the world starts with us, inside ourselves. All the conflicts and contradictions that we see in the world need to be resolved within us first. Why? It is because hurt people hurt people. Those who have violence and hatred are the ones that cause violence and hatred in the world. That is why we as Christians need to deal with our own unforgiveness, self-righteousness, resentments, hatred, racism, discrimination and grudges before we are able to offer healing to the world.

Thus we can say healed people heal people. Transformed people transform people. Forgiven people forgive people. Loved people love people. The more love we are able to receive, the more love we can give others. And the good news, as St John affirms in today's first reading, is that God loved us first. We can love God in return or we can love others because God first loved us. His love is from all eternity and for ever. He is the source of our love; He is true and pure love. When we are able to understand His love, we too are able to return this love to Him in the world. When we are able to see God in us, we will be able to see God in others and the world. But if we see only demons within us, we will see demons everywhere. Therefore, we can allow God and His love to be incarnate in us. That would be the way to love the world and our brothers and sisters in the world. Therefore, to truly love God in the world, we need to let go of our anger and violence however small it may be. We love by letting go.

When I see love in myself, I will be able to see love in the world. The love in me is able to recognise the love in the world. God-and-love in me are able to deal with and heal all the evil in this world. On my own accord, I am weak and I am incapable. But the moment I allow God-and-love to reside in me and take flesh in me, that is the moment the power of God-and-love within me can take charge of the world around me. The source of true love and healing is thus God. Not me, not my mostly-selfish actions.

Monsignor Kevin Nichols' melodious offertory hymn, that we often sing in Mass, can help us re-affirm and re-group our loves and lives:

Take all that daily toil, plants in our heart’s poor soil,

Take all we start and spoil, each hopeful dream.

The chances we have missed, the graces we resist,

Lord, in thy Eucharist, take and redeem.

Therefore, our job is simply to allow love now. God will take it from there. Let love happen. Love is not so much an action that we do but a reality that we already are. We allow ourselves to be loved, and thus we can allow love to happen around us.

One and All

Christmastide after Epiphany (Wednesday, 9 January 2019)

1 John 4:11-18. Psalm 72:1-2, 10, 12-13. Mark 6:45-52. (Please click the following link for the above readings http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/010919.cfm.)

“God is love, and those who remain in love remain in God, and God in them.”

How we relate to God is how we relate to others. How we relate to God is how we relate to everything else. And vice versa. The only true way to relate to God is with our hearts. God can only be loved, enjoyed, cherished and experienced. Loving God and loving anything else is one and the same movement of our hearts. We can't separate God's love from loving this stone or that tree or this squirrel or that human person. Everything flows into one if it is love.

A pure act of love is its own reward, and needs nothing in return. Love is shown precisely in an eagerness to love. Love is the gift that keeps giving.

Loving God does not make us good. God's love for us makes us good. Love transforms us deeply and completely. So it is a fallacy to think that I need to be good in order to start loving God. His love has been poured into our hearts through the gift of the Holy Spirit given “within” us (see Romans 5:5). So I am asked to discover this love inside of me, which is already loving God. I am asked to love God as I am—with all I am: good and bad.

Perhaps this is the discovery that John talks of as remaining or abiding in love, and thus we abide in God Himself. When we abide in love, we abide in God, and we allow God to love us and love others through us.

Therefore we need to speak about God as both personal and transpersonal. God is a Person, but God is beyond our idea of Person. God is intensely personal, intimate and immanent, but God is also totally transcendent and mysterious. God is both intimate and ultimate: intimately ultimate and ultimately intimate.

If we need to mature as believers we need to eventually move towards a transpersonal notion of God: as presence itself, consciousness itself, pure Being, the very Ground of Being, the force field of the Holy Spirit, God with us, and God in all things. At the same time, we frequently find it helpful, if not necessary, to still relate to God as a Person through the intimate sharing of one trusting self to another. As we experience, it takes two to love—a giver and a receiver. We normally do not give ourselves, fall in love with, or surrender to a concept, an energy, a force, or even to enlightenment. Persons love persons, and the brilliance of Judeo-Christianity is that it keeps the whole spiritual life intensely personal in this very rich sense.

But staying at the personal notion of God can make me think that my relationship with God is individualistic. On the contrary, my relationship with God opens up the whole of reality in front of me. My faith is not merely saying, “I must have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as my own Lord and Saviour.” There is too much “I” and “my” there, although this may be the best way to start off. But we can't remain there. We need to move on to loving God who is a Community, we need to move on to communion with God and everything. My relating and connecting to God, leads me to connect to everything else. No exceptions. If my love for God is true, it makes me love one and all, even my enemies.

So we repeat: How we relate to God is how we relate to everything else!

I really love God as much as I love the person I love the least. (Dorothy Day)

At-one-ment

Christmastide after Epiphany (Tuesday, 8 January 2019)

1 John 4:7-10. Psalm 72:1-2, 3-4, 7-8. Mark 6:34-44. (Please click the following link for the above readings http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/010819.cfm.)

“Love consists in this—not limiting God by our human equations of love, but allowing God's infinite love to utterly re-define our own.”

God's salvation or inclusion of humans into the God-head was not an afterthought from God's side. It was Plan A and not Plan B. Therefore we need to talk of At-One-Ment (“oneing”) not atonement or expiation. God loves us always and everywhere; He saves us always and everywhere. That's why we are “one” in Him always and everywhere, even if we are not aware of it. He didn't need a transaction at Calvary.

The common reading of the Bible is that Jesus “died for our sins”—either to pay a debt to the devil (common in the first millennium) or to pay a debt to God (proposed by St Anselm of Canterbury). If we understand God as love then such a transaction is baseless.

In the last 800 years of Christianity, there have been many “substitutionary atonement theories” that basically suggest that God demanded Jesus to be a blood sacrifice to “atone” for our sin-drenched humanity. The terrible and uncritiqued premise is that God could need payment, and even a very violent transaction, to be able to love and accept God’s own children! These theories are based on retributive justice rather than the restorative justice that the prophets and Jesus taught. These theories seem to suggest that God's love is only conditional! (Totally unacceptable to us.)

If we even glance through the cosmic hymns in the first chapters of Colossians and Ephesians and the Prologue to John’s Gospel (1:1-18) it might help us to understand that God intended salvation for all, and from all eternity. God's love is eternal.

The incarnation of God and the redemption of the world is not a mere mop-up exercise in response to human sinfulness, but had to be the proactive work of God from the very beginning. We were “chosen in Christ before the world was made” (Ephesians 1:4). Our sin could not possibly be the motive for the incarnation. Only perfect love and divine self-revelation could inspire God to come in human form. God never merely reacts, but supremely and freely acts—out of love.

Salvation is much more about at-one-ment from God’s side than any needed atonement from our side. Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity (it did not need changing)! Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God!

Nothing "changed" on Calvary, but everything was revealed in Calvary so we could change! God has always loved us from the beginning, and God has always saved us from the beginning.

God in Jesus moved people beyond the counting, weighing, and punishing model—which the ego prefers—to a world in which God’s mercy makes any economy of merit, sacrifice, reparation, or atonement both unhelpful and unnecessary. Jesus undid “once and for all” (Hebrews 7:27; 9:12; 10:10) notions of human and animal sacrifice (common in most ancient religions) and replaced them with an economy of grace and love.

Jesus was meant to be a game-changer for the human psyche and for religion itself. Our religion is not about sin or problem-solving: that is only a tiny part of our religion. If God is about love, Christianity is all about love and that too unconditional love. Rather than focusing on sin, Jesus—”the crucified One”—points us towards a loving God who suffers with us. Let us change the starting point. That starting point is love, and it defines the entire way itself. Love is the beginning, the way itself, and the final goal.

Therefore, the last verse in today's first reading should not be understood as expiation or atonement in the transactional sense, but as one-ing, unifying, and at-one-ment. Love unites everything and everyone. It defines God, and re-defines everything else. Including our loves. “Love consists in this—not limiting God by our human equations of love, but allowing God's infinite love to utterly re-define our own.” (Thanks to Fr Richard Rohr OFM.)

God does not love us because we are good; God loves us because God is good. Nothing we can do will either decrease or increase God’s eternal and infinite eagerness to love! His love is always 100%.

Manifestation

Feast of the Epiphany (Sunday, 6 January 2019)

Isaiah 60:1-6. Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13. Ephesians 3:2-3, 5-6. Matthew 2:1-12. (Please click the following link for the above readings http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/010619.cfm.)

“For we observed the star of the king of the Jews at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.”

The feast of the Epiphany, with its colourful story of the magi, captures our imagination with its rich mixture of mystery and intrigue. It is the completion of the fairy tale called Christmas. Into the Holy Family’s humble home come some wise men (magi) from the East dressed in majestic robes and bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. They travel from unknown lands following a star and experience the deviousness of King Herod before they are filled with delight in finding the new-born Child. After paying homage they leave for home by a different route.

But at the centre of this story, is none but Baby Jesus himself. A helpless, poor Infant. All our awe, wonder, adoration is due to this central figure who manifests himself to the wise men from the Eas and to all the world, not just the church.

Christ is not just for Christians, he is for all. Christ is all. He is in all. As Christians, it becomes our duty to participate in this continuous theophany, manifestation of God. We need to witness to this God who is beyond all religions, beyond all human constructs. That's why Christianity can’t just be based on beliefs. It only becomes authentic and transformative through experience and practice, when head, heart, and body are all open and receptive.

The wise men represent us. The star stands for a purpose, and for light. It tells us that God will shed light into our darkness, make us new. Like the magi we are called to search, discover Christ's presence, though he is always and everywhere present. Christ can be encountered in all the usual, and all the unusual places.

After she founded the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was filled with an interior darkness for 50 years up until her death. She could not meet God in the chapel or in the convent, but only in the poor, beggars, leprosy patients, the dying, and the abandoned people. She saw Christ in the poorest of the poor. Make no mistake. Mother Teresa's wasn't a social concern, but Christ was at the centre. Christ was the one who gave her her specific vocation, “Come Be My Light.” He led her to unusual places: slums, holes, market-places, drains, dumping grounds. Mother Teresa became a light to millions of people whom she met, or inspired otherwise. She wants to continue her mission of light and darkness, presence and absence: “If I ever become a saint—I will surely be one of darkness. I will continually be absent from heaven—to light the light of those in darkness on earth.”

Today's feast of Epiphany of the Lord teaches us that He manifests Himself in unknown and unusual ways. We can encounter Him in any and every place. He even surprises us by showing up in all the "wrong" places. We can find Him eating and communing with prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners. We can encounter Him among the lepers, beggars, and the sick. We can discover Him in the shameful places outside the city-gates crucified with the criminals. We can see Him amidst the outcasts, least, lost and the last. We can recognise Him on the faces of our enemies and the least valuable people.

At His manifestation, the whole world becomes a temple. There is no "natural" world where God is not present. It is all supernatural. All the bushes burn if you have seen one burn. Only one tree has to fill up with light and angels, and then all the trees follow suit; then you will never see trees the same way again. Everything is holy for those who have learned to see.

Christ is all, and in all (Colossians 3:11).

Living Love

Christmastide (Saturday, 5 January 2019)

1 John 3:11-21. Psalm 100. John 1:43-51. (Please click the following link for the above readings http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/010519.cfm.)

“Our love is to be something real and active.”

For today's first reading, we have a very rich passage on the centrality of love in our Christian life. All our Christian living can be summarised in that one opening sentence: “We should love one another.” It is all we need; all the rest is icing on the cake. My companion commented to me more than once, “Your daily reflections seem to be centering on the theme of love almost always. Why don't you write on something else?” But is there anything else that needs to be said or written about? Isn't the first and the only commandment: to love?

Love is all we need. To talk about love, that's easier perhaps. But to live love, that may be the only thing needed. It is a life task. To master love we need a lifetime and more, because, as St Francis de Sales says, “The measure of love is to love without measure.” That makes it a divine quality: our human loves and efforts to love are only a faint reflection of God's love. Love becomes an imitation of God. Yet it is very clear to us that the more you embrace love in your life, the more you are open to compassion and forgiveness. Love seems to achieve what is impossible in our lives. Love is not an idea, but reality. We know for sure when love is real or when it is false.

So how to love at all? How to live love after all? The dynamic of receiving love and giving love is one and the same movement within us. That is, the more I allow myself to be loved, the more I can love you. The more I can love myself, the more I can love you and God. That's a beautiful paradox to be lived!

Now, the best description of God is in terms of love itself. God is a Relationship of Three Persons. And the truest relationship is love. Whatever is going on within God is a dynamism of love, a radical relatedness of love, a perfect communion of love between Three. And God is not just the Lover; God is love itself.

If we are made in God's image, then we too are relationships like God Himself. Therefore, love is not something you do; love is someone you are. It is your True Self. Love is where you came from and love is where you're going. It's not something you can buy, merit or attain. It is the presence of God within you, called the Holy Spirit, who is uncreated grace.

Incidentally and interestingly, using Richard Rohr's words, you can't manufacture this by any right conduct. You can't make God love you one gram more than He already loves you right now. You can't. You can go to church every day for the rest of your life. God isn't going to love you any more than He loves you right now. You cannot make God love you any less, either—not a gram less. Do the most terrible thing—steal and pillage, cheat and lie—and He wouldn't love you less. You cannot change the Divine mind about you! The flow of God's love is constant, total, and 100 percent towards your life. God is for you. 

You can't diminish God's love for you. What you can do, however, is learn how to believe it, receive it, trust it, allow it, and celebrate it, accepting Trinity's whirling invitation to join in the cosmic dance. That's why all spirituality comes down to how you're doing life right now.

How you do anything is how you do everything.

How you love anything is how you love everything.

(For a reflection on the gospel passage, please see https://anthuvanmaria.blogspot.com/2018/09/heaven-laid-open.html.)

Experience

Christmastide (Friday, 4 January 2019)

1 John 3:7-10. Psalm 98:1, 7-9. John 1:35-42. (Please click the following link for the above readings http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/010419.cfm.)

“We have found the Messiah.”

We all have beautiful ideas about God. We do a lot of "God talk" too. But do we have a genuine experience of God? I think that is the most important life-question that we need to answer ourselves, if not others.

Because that's the great moment in all divine revelation, when beautiful ideas drop in from head to heart, when we move from the level of dogma to experience, when it's not something that we merely believe, but in a real sense something that we know. If we don't encounter God we remain in the superficial level of religion, which leads us to the danger of idolatry and fanaticism.

Without an experience of God, people don't enjoy church services. Many of them stop attending church. Others those who do attend church and have no God experience are faithful to the externals of religion. People the most obedient to commandment and church formulas can very often be the hardest to convert. They've take the symbol for the substance. They've taken the ritual for the reality. They've take the means for the end and become inoculated from the experience of the real thing. That's called idolatry, when we worship and protect the means. It actually keeps us from the journey to the end. Religions should be understood as only the fingers that point to the moon, not the moon itself.

Until people have had some level of inner spiritual experience, there is no point in asking them to follow the ethical ideals of Jesus. Indeed they will not be able to understand them. They will not be able understand religious beliefs beyond the level of formulas and dogmas. Unless we experience healing we can't give healing. Unless we experience forgiveness and love, we can't forgive or love others. Unless we experience and enjoy God, we won't be able to give God to others.

God is available to all of us. Not just to nuns and monks. God is there for us in each and every moment. As Eckhart Tolle tells us in _The Power of Now_, we don't have to be in a perfect place to experience the fullness of God, or we don't even have to be a perfect person to experience God. He is with us, and for us, and even within us at this moment. Perhaps, He's so easily available that we can easily miss Him.

In other words, God is always given, incarnate in every moment and present to those who know how to be present themselves. Strangely enough, it is often imperfect people and people in quite secular settings who encounter "The Presence" (Parousia, "fullness"). That pattern is rather clear in the whole Bible.

Whenever we embrace reality we embrace God, whenever we embrace life as it is then we embrace God. He hides behind our own lives, but perfectly reveals Himself in and within our lives—whether broken or full, whether good or bad.

So we need to find time for God (and for ourselves), and that's the only way we can find our Messiah. To let the moment teach us, we must allow ourselves to be at least slightly _stunned_ by it until it draws us inward and upward, towards a subtle experience of wonder, an experience of awe. And then comes the surrender to this Mystery whom we call God. The spiritual journey, as all religious traditions witness, is a constant interplay between moments of awe followed by a general process of surrender to that moment.

We need such an attitude (variously called as prayer or spirituality or contemplation) that measures life in the light of religious experience. Let us today allow within us a moment or two where we experience awe followed by surrender.

Vulnerability

Christmastide (Thursday, 3 January 2019)

1 John 2:29-36. Psalm 98:1, 3-6. John 1:29-34. (Please click the following link for the above readings http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/010319.cfm.)

“Look, there is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.”

It's amazing to know that Christianity is the only religion that dares to call God a lamb. And nevertheless we've spent two thousand years avoiding vulnerability. Paul says straight out, “When I am weak, I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). But we're afraid of discovering this sort of strength. We haven't ever been there, and so we doubt it is really strength. And yet it's the only kind of power that the Gospel offers us.

As we commemorate in Christmas, Jesus shows up in this world as a naked, vulnerable one—as a defenseless baby. God becomes weak and vulnerable for us. The Christian God's power comes through his powerlessness and humility. Our God is much more properly called all-vulnerable than almighty, which we should have understood by the constant metaphor of Lamb of God found throughout the New Testament. But if we listen to our liturgical prayers we seem to be happy with calling God all-powerful and almighty, and remember him as a lamb only rarely especially when we want Him to carry the burden of our sins and sinfulness. We use the above-quoted words of St John the Baptist for this purpose, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

Vulnerability means I'm going to let you influence me; I'm going to allow you to change me. As long as I am present to you authentically, you are able to influence and change me. I even take the risk of you injuring or wounding me. It is a risky position to live undefended, in a kind of constant openness to the other—because it would mean others could sometimes actually wound you. The very word vulnerability is from the Latin "vulnus" meaning "wound."

Only if we choose to take the risk of being weak and vulnerable do we also allow the exact opposite possibility of wounding us: that is, the other might also gift you, free you, and even love you. In fact, any true relationship demands vulnerability. When we don't give other people any power in our life, when we block them, then we are spiritually dead. And not far from evil. To be present to something or someone is to allow the moment, the person, the idea, or the situation to influence us and even change us. This is vulnerability.

But did we ever imagine that what we call "vulnerability" might just be the key to ongoing growth? Healthily vulnerable people use every occasion to expand, change, and grow. Growth is a risky business. It involves allowing pain at times. Those whose hearts are opened to human pain will see Jesus everywhere, and he will seduce them from that vulnerable place. This is God's hiding place, so only the humble will find them! Only the vulnerable will be able to experience Him, taste Him!

Witness

Christmastide (Wednesday, 2 January 2019)

1 John 2:22-28. Psalm 98:1, 2-3ab, 3cd-4. John 1:19-28. (Please click the following link for the above readings http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/010219.cfm.)

“I am not the Christ.”

For the next few days, we will be reading from the beginning of John’s gospel (chapter 1) after the Prologue. Here John the Baptist fulfills his role as witness in keeping with the Prologue. He does this by denying any messianic claims about himself and then by pointing to Jesus as the Lamb of God, and finally by sending his own disciples to Jesus.

It is clear that John the Baptist was causing something of a stir with his preaching. So, in today's gospel passage we see that officials were sent out from the Temple in Jerusalem to make some inquiries. Because he said he was not the long-awaited Messiah, they wanted to know who he was. He said he was not Elijah come again nor was he a Prophet like Moses. His questioners persisted. They had to bring back some information to the authorities in Jerusalem. John says he is the voice in the desert, using a modified version of words from Isaiah (40:3): “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’”

This still does not satisfy and now some Pharisees – distinct from the priests who were all Sadducees – want to know why John is baptising when he is neither the Messiah, nor Elijah nor the Prophet.

John says that he is just baptising with water. “But there is one among you whom you do not recognise, the one who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.” By these words he implies that someone who is really a Prophet is on the way bringing with him a much greater baptism. John is simply preparing the way by a baptism whose emphasis is on purification and repentance. The new baptism will bring the power of God’s Spirit.

Obviously, there is much in John the Baptist’s role with which we can identify. John preceded Jesus in time and prepared people for his coming. We rather are called to precede Jesus in other ways by making it possible for people to come to know him and to follow him. We are not Christs, but called to be witnesses to the Christ, and be other Christs. We are not the Light but we are called to give constant witness to the Light. Jesus said that he was the Light of the World (John 8:12) but he also said to his disciples, “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14).

As Christians we participate in the messianic work of salvation. There is only one Christ, one Messiah, one Mediator. We are not the Saviours but, in God's mysterious plan, are called to participate in Christ's work as co-mediators, co-saviours. St Oscar Romero puts it beautifully: “Every now and then it helps us to take a step back and to see things from a distance. The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is also beyond our visions. In our lives, we manage to achieve only a small part of the marvellous plan that is God’s work. Nothing that we do is complete, which is to say that the Kingdom is greater than ourselves. No statement says everything that can be said. No prayer completely expresses the faith. No Creed brings perfection. No pastoral visit solves every problem. No programme fully accomplishes the mission of the Church. No goal or purpose ever reaches completion. This is what it is about: We plant seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that others will watch over them. We lay the foundations of something that will develop. We add the yeast which will multiply our possibilities. We cannot do everything, yet it is liberating to begin. This gives us the strength to do something and to do it well. It may remain incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way. It is an opportunity for the grace of God to enter and to do the rest. It may be that we will never see its completion, but that is the difference between the master and the labourer. We are labourers, not master builders, servants, not the Messiah. We are prophets of a future that does not belong to us.”

New Beginning

New Year's Day. Solemnity of Mary Mother of God (Tuesday, 1 January 2019)

Numbers 6:22-27. Psalm 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8. Galatians 4:4-7. Luke 2:16-21. (Please click the following link for the above readings http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/010119.cfm.)

“As for Mary, she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

A new beginning. Another new beginning. We need to live the new year 2019 as another new beginning. We need to hit the re-start button. We need to begin again.

But perhaps there are many cunning foxes jumping on our shoulders and whispering: “This is just another year. There is nothing new under the sun.” The newspapers and media too keep bombarding the negative things. “The world is the same. The world is not okay, the world is not good. God is not concerned about the world.”

That’s a lie. Those are lies. God is concerned about you and me, more than we ourselves are concerned about us. God is radically involved in the world. He says, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5). We need to live every moment, every day, every year as new.

How to live every moment as if it's new? In today's gospel, in the person of Mother Mary we have an indication. Like Mary, we are called to have a contemplative heart in the busy-ness of our lives. Even when it's a “busy-mess!” Luke doesn't miss to record this beautiful attitude of Mary, which is not a marginal one but essential: “Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

For this we need to live one moment at a time. We could fill it with as much love and awareness as possible. That's the total goal of our lives. Our task is to be present here and now to this moment in a most complete manner; to put our heart and soul in whatever we are doing right now right here. The smallest of events can teach us everything, if we learn “Who” is doing them with us, through us and for us. Have no doubt: That is the total goal. God reveals Himself fully here and now.

It's enough to live this one moment as fully as possible. One moment at a time. One day at a time. By living this moment fully, by putting as much of positive energy into this present moment, I can achieve many things: one is conversion or transformation.

Conversion is not a moral achievement accomplished by good behaviour or New Year's resolutions. It is not achieved, it happens to us. It happens to those people who need it intensely. It happens to those people who realise that only holding on to one side of life's experiences is of no use. It happens to them who try holding both the sides of their life: the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the virtuous and the sinful, the useful and the useless.

Transformation is gifted to us when we stop dividing life, and are able to embrace everything, to welcome everything and everyone and every moment as they are, to include all our dreams and nightmares into our loving consciousness. (If you wish you could try the life-changing Mary Mrozowski's "The Welcoming Prayer," also popularized by Fr Thomas Keating.)

Remember, you can be doing very good things but, if you are doing them with negative energy, the results will not be life-giving for yourself, for others, or for the world. Thought and energy have consequences. The opposite is also true: You can do faulty things but, if you're doing them with positive life-energy, they will still bear fruit for the world. (Wow! That deserves a big WOW!) As Yahweh said of imperfect David, “I see the heart instead of appearances” (1 Samuel 16:7).

Let us put more heart into this moment—into this new beginning—into this new year!

Wish you a HEARTY New Year 2019!