Loving and forgiving

Today's reading and theme (Matthew 5:43-48) is a continuation of yesterday's. Jesus asks his disciples to love his enemies, and pray for those who persecute them.

Loving and forgiving: they are practically the same. To love others is to forgive others. Forgiveness is the name of love that is practised among imperfect people like us.

Jesus does not merely preach on forgiveness and loving our enemies, but he demonstrates it even when it is most difficult, even while dying. Jesus forgives his murderers on the cross. When it is most difficult. He forgives even the unrepentant thief, not just the so-called "good thief." (Otherwise Jesus won’t be our model.) He forgives the Jews and the Romans, but more importantly he forgives his own disciples, his own friends. After resurrection too, Jesus shows his forgiveness: “Peace be with you.” No stories, no hurts, only peace, only forgiveness. For Jesus too it would have been (comparatively) easier to forgive others - Romans, then Jews. But then to forgive his own disciples, that was not easy; yet he did it.

Forgive everything, everyone, every time. That’s a tall order! Not seven times, but seventy times seven. An incredibly (almost) impossible tall order!

If we want to be perfect like our Heavenly Father, we need to start forgiving people.

Sin and God's Love

Day 4: Talk 2: SIN AND GOD’S LOVE: OUR CONVERSION. Retreat to the FMAs, Bellefonte Outreach, Shillong.

A retreat is incomplete if we don’t talk of the destructive power of sin and the healing power of God’s love. [Cf. Archbishop Angelo Comastri, VG of His Holiness for Vatican City, “Jesus Filled Death With Love!” Text of the Way of the Cross at the Colosseum, 2006.] We need to meditate on what is the fundamental contradiction of our lives: the “opposition” between sin and God’s love – the opposition between God’s desire to integrate us firmly into his Church and the sinfulness the destroys our relationship to the Lord and to the Church.

Destructive Power of Sin

The Bible never tires of repeating that evil is evil because it hurts us. Sin is self-punishment, self-destruction. There is nothing nice about sin. Nobody actually enjoys being in sin. Sin hurts us; it makes us suffer. Sin destroys us. “They went after worthlessness, and became worthless themselves” (Jer 2:5). Sin is missing the mark (hamartia). It is ultimately nothingness.

Recognition of our weaknesses, failures, sins... that itself is a great start. Awareness is control, awareness is strength (Nouwen, Inner Voice of Love).

Henri Nouwen: Praying means giving up your false security, no longer looking for arguments which will protect you if you get pushed into a corner, and no longer setting your hope on a couple of lighter moments which your life might still offer. To pray means to stop expecting from God the same small-mindedness which you discover in yourself. To pray is to walk in the full light of God and to say simply, without holding back, “I am human and you are God.” At that moment, conversion occurs, the restoration of the true relationship. A human being is not some who once in a while makes a mistake, and God is not some one who now and then forgives. No! Human beings are sinners and God is love. This conversion brings with it the relaxation which lets you breathe again and puts you at rest in the embrace of a forgiving God. - Nouwen, With Open Hands. (See also Nouwen, The Only Necessary Thing, 130.)

We are a mix of right and wrong, holiness and horror. Tragic beauty.

Recognition of our sinfulness is very essential for growth, conversion. At the same time we need to understand/recognise that God is mercy, God is love. It is not that God is only now and then merciful. It is not that we are iniquitous only now and then, but we are sinners always. And God is merciful always, He forgives us always. Breaking this narrow-mindedness is conversion. Understanding this, becoming more and more aware of this is itself conversion.

Metanoia. Beyond the mind. Into the heart. This is conversion. Falling into the heart.

One of the definitions for evil is militant ignorance, or militant unconsciousness. (Similar to Carl Jung’s definition: refusal to meet the shadow. Evil is not the shadow itself but the refusal to meet this shadow.) [Scott Peck, Further Along the Road Less Travelled, 25-26.]

Healing Power of God’s Love

If the Bible is certain about the destructive power of sin, it is equally certain about the healing power of God’s love. In Jesus we can see these two certainties. Jesus, the incarnation of God’s love, entered into this history ravaged by sin, and took upon himself the burden and brutality of our sins. When we look upon Jesus, we clearly see the destructive power of sin and the sickness of our human family. Our own sickness! Yours and mine!

Yet Jesus countered our pride with humility; he countered our violence with gentleness; he countered our hatred with the Love that forgives. The Cross is the event which enables God’s love to enter into our history, to draw close to each of us, to become a source of healing and salvation.

For our sake he was crucified. From the beginning of his ministry, Jesus spoke of “his hour.” He welcomed it joyfully at the beginning of his Passion; he cried out: “The hour has come!” (John 17:1).

God is not whimsical: He is not a being that loftily decides to love good people and punish bad people; instead, Absolute Love stands revealed as the very name and shape of Being itself. [Rohr, The Divine Dance, 79.] God causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45). Nothing human can stop the flow of divine love; we cannot undo the eternal pattern even by our worst sin. [Rohr, The Divine Dance, 43.]

We need to root out the evil of sin from our lives. How? Through the healing power of God’s love. Can we root out? We who are miserable cannot do this. We are powerless. Only He can. We need His help. He can heal us. He, only He, can root out the evil of sin from our lives. But our efforts are needed… as a response and as an openness, yes.

Conversion

Whatever happens in your life, it has got a meaning. God has a message through everything that is happening. Why should I preach this retreat, not Fr Thelekkatt? Nothing happens by chance. Everything is planned by God, we can only second this motion of God.

Luke 13:1-5. Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

We need to interpret reality like Jesus; we need to interpret Scriptures like Jesus.

Conversion, transformation and repentance, is a process. We need to be converted again and again. We need to be born again and again and again. Don’t ever say: “I’ll remove sin, then I’ll start to pray, to love, to live a religious life, to believe, to do good.” Repentance goes hand in hand with life. If you want others to smile back at you, then you smile at them first. You want others to do good, then, first of all, be kind to them. You want change, but don’t you want to change? (Be the change that you want to see.)

According to an old Indian story, there was a mouse which was in constant fear of the cat. A magician took pity on it and turned it into a cat. But then, it became afraid of the dog. So the magician turned it into a dog. Then it began to fear the tiger. The magician took pity again, and changed it into a tiger. But even then, it was afraid of the hunter. At this point the magician got tired and gave up. He turned it into a mouse again. He said, “Nothing I do will help you because you have the heart of a mouse.”

Conversion is a process of changing, transforming the heart. It is a heart transplant, a painful process of heart transplant. To remove the heart of stone, and replace it with the heart of flesh.

“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.

Conversion is not mere change, but radical change. Metanoia, an about-turn, about-face. Metanoia means beyond the mind. Beyond the mind, into the heart. Falling into the heart.

Sin takes aim directly at our heart, our hope. Our heart is that which gives us cohesion. And sin targets our heart, our hope. Sin leads us to hopelessness. In other words, what disintegrates our heart is hopelessness. [Pope Francis, Open Mind, Faithful Heart, esp. ch. 11 “The Hopelessness of Sin” 78-86 at 80.] As sin lead us into hopelessness, hopelessness leads us into impatience (restlessness).

Our impatient heart, then, gradually yields to human ways and grows weary of asking for pardon. God never tires of forgiving us; but it is we who don’t approach Him. Even before the God who never tires of forgiving, our impatient heart becomes tired of asking for pardon. [79] So, the classic Jesus prayer is useful – helps us to approach God and avoid desperation and restlessness: “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”

Sign of Jonah is Jesus’ primary metaphor for transformation in the gospels. [Rohr, Everything Belongs, 43-47.] It is the paschal mystery.

We try to change events in order to avoid changing ourselves. We must learn to stay with the pain of life, without answers, without conclusions, and some days without meaning. That is the path, the perilous dark path of true prayer. [Rohr, Everything Belongs, 46.]

Hopelessness and impatience causes disintegration. Our families can get disintegrated. Our confidence disintegrates. Our solidarity disintegrates. The constancy of apostolic leadership destabilizes. This is the disintegrating force of hopelessness. [82-85]

Growth is a long process, time-bound, needs favourable conditions... You can’t fast forward this process. You need a lot of patience, a lot of waiting, a lot of hoping. But in attempting to skip over the stages of growth, the impatient heart ceases to be a creature; it becomes instead a creator of shallow projects of protest that are inherently self-seeking. You want everything all at once. Impatience and hopelessness can deform the project of a people; they can distort the image of the Father who calls us to be a people; they can undermine our maturity, our ability to struggle, our apostolic stamina; they can turn us into gossiping busybodies. They tempt us to trust in the illusion of magic as a way of controlling God. On the cross, Christ assumes all these spurious challenges born of impatience and hopelessness. In him we learn that God is great above all, that sin is ephemeral, and that patience and constancy are born of hope. [81-82]

Conversion is a grace we should ask for; we should spend much time in such prayer of petition. Our heart becomes enclosed in its sin; it becomes hardened. So we need to pray and beg for the conversion of our hearts. We must ask God for the grace of growing, for the grace of intense sorrow and tears for our sins. (Ignatius of Loyola) [79-80]

We need to ask the Lord for the grace of conversion (not just for personal conversion, but also for the conversion of our structures, our communities, our working committees, our tribes, our linguistic groups, our cultures, our societies,...), for his goodness reveals to us that even “the best structures and the most idealized systems soon become inhuman if the inhuman inclinations of our hearts are not made wholesome, if we who live in these structures or who rule them do not undergo a conversion of heart and of outlook” (EN 36). Do we think of a conversion of the provincial council, of the general council, of the management, of the general body of the school/college...? Our structures too need conversion.

Having said all this, conversion is God’s action primarily, His initiative, He has a tremendous, first role in converting our hearts. Though we have already mentioned about the “grace” of conversion, we need to reiterate that it is God who is “doing” the conversion, and the human person “accepting” the gift. It is God who removes the heart of stone and puts in a heart of flesh to love. (Ezek) It is He who performs the painful heart surgery, almost violently to pull out the heart of stone. Conversion is both operative grace and cooperative grace. “The God who created you without you, will not save you without you.” (St Augustine)

In fact, religious experience = religious conversion. St Paul’s conversion. Dramatic. Ours may be slower, gradual, not as dramatic as St Paul’s.

Discouragement is one of the worst sins. Encourage (cor) – to give ‘heart’; opposite of this is discourage, to take away ‘heart’. Heartless, hopeless.

Intellectual conversion, moral conversion, psychic conversion, and religious conversion. (Not about converting others, but about undergoing conversion oneself. In whatever stage or wherever you are: process of conversion/transformation is for everyone.)

Transformed people transform people. “All the conflicts and contradictions of life must find a resolution in us before we can resolve anything outside ourselves. Only the forgiven can forgive, only the healed can heal, only those who stand daily in need of mercy can offer mercy to others. The cosmos is mirrored in the microcosm. If we let the mystery happen in one small and true place, it moves from there! It is contagious, it is shareable, it reshapes the world” (Richard Rohr). I shape my own inner world. That’s the only way I can impact the world outside. All is well in my world.

Transformed persons transform others and transform the world effortlessly—without having to trying to convert and heal and fix others. She or he is concerned about converting oneself always and everywhere, not about converting others with her or his ego.

Conversion is related to “cleansing the lens.” Though it’s God’s works, I need to keep myself open to the Spirit. “When the student is ready, the teacher will arrive.” Only sin that can’t be forgiven is the sin or blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Without my being open, the Spirit can’t do anything. If I am hard-hearted, I can’t be converted. If the person wants only the “heart of stone,” the “heart of flesh” will not be given.

Repentance, conversion, metanoia, transformation is a process. We are all wounded healers, involved in the process. The story of the wounded healer (Henri Nouwen). As still wounded people, we become healers at the same time. Bandaging our wounds one by one, so that I am ready and prompt to help others who need bandaging.

Forgiveness

Day 4: Homily: FORGIVENESS. Retreat to the FMAs, Bellefonte Outreach, Shillong.

God doesn’t look at our faults, but at the places in us that are trying to say “yes.” You do the same with your children. You see beyond the “no” to the abiding “yes.” God sees the divine image in you as you see your image in your children.

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“Offer the wicked person no resistance” (Matthew 5:39). Did Jesus really mean this? Is this teaching practical?

This is one of the pearls from the Sermon on the Mount. Here is where we can really see the crux of Jesus’ teachings. He asks us not to offer the wicked person any resistance or opposition. Jesus’ teaching is never practical, only radical. It cuts at the root (radical is from the Latin word radix = root). Jesus is not asking any cosmetic changes to the world order, in fact he is exhorting us to end this kind of world order, this kind of world itself. Jesus was not proclaiming the reform the world; he was proclaiming the end of the world. Jesus is not presenting a new program for human society. He refuses to accept society on its own terms; he refuses to offer it allegiance as it is.

Wicked persons like Queen Jezebel (see the First Reading of 18 June, 2018, 1 Kings 21:1-16) or Hitler or Stalin (or anyone whom you think wicked) were all created in God’s image. They too are God’s children, God’s Beloved. Jesus continues his radical statements (almost impractical!): “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons and daughters of your Father in heaven. He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?” (Matthew 5:44-46).

Jesus is asking me not only not to hate, but to love these wicked persons. To love all those who trouble and persecute you: all the fundamentalist and fringe elements in the country, terrorists, murderers, rapists, abusers, criminals, scoundrels, and all others. This is where one takes her call to be a Christian or no. (I’m talking of reality, not namesake Christianity here.) A true follower is asked to do the impossible!

Jesus forgives his murderers on the cross. When it is most difficult. He forgives even the unrepentant thief. (Otherwise Jesus won’t be our model.) He forgives the Jews and the Romans, but more importantly he forgives his own disciples, his own friends. After resurrection too: “Peace be with you.” No stories, no hurts, only peace = only forgiveness. For Jesus too it would have been (comparatively) easier to forgive others - Romans, then Jews. But then to forgive his own disciples, that was not easy; yet he did it.

Maybe easy (comparatively) to forgive the military regime/fundamentalist government.... we may expect them to be cruel, so easier to forgive. Easy to forgive “our” Jews and Romans. But to forgive my own dear ones in the family or forgive my own sisters in the community, that is not easy. We may even think: I have done so much for this sister, but she has done this or that to me, she has done this or that harm to me. Time and again this or that sister is disobedient, rebellious, even unfaithful to her vows. To forgive her is certainly difficult, almost impossible. Yet this is exactly what we are called to do: Forgive her from the heart. Forgive her again and again. Forgive everything, everyone, every time. That’s a tall order! Not seven times, but seventy times seven. An incredibly (almost) impossible tall order! Very difficult to forgive.

The list is endless: My abusive or alcoholic parents, my greedy siblings and relatives, my dominating superiors, my nagging friends and companions, my imperfect community members, my insensitive and complaining (grumbling) sisters, my impious parishioners, my fault-finding neighbours, the rebellious faithful, the disobedient youth and children under my care, my parochial and racist thinking country men and women, my own narrow-minded tribal community, my own fanatic cultural group, the violent terrorists and groups around in the state, the greedy and manipulating politicians and bureaucrats, and the list is unending. I am called to forgive all of them from my heart. Indeed, a very difficult task!

Do we know what is even harder to forgive? It is often the petty things, the accumulating resentments. The little things we know about another person; how they sort of did us wrong yesterday. Though they may not be serious issues but the ego loves to grab onto those; they build up on the psyche like a repetitive stress injury. I think that in many ways, it is much harder to let go of these micro-offenses, precisely because they are so tiny. And so we unconsciously hoard them, and they clog us up.

Perhaps by starting to forgive, I can battle my own hypocritical behaviours. I can start practising what I preach every day. When I start doing this, I realise that I am not loving very well. I am meeting only my needs, which is nothing but “co-dependency.” This kind of love is impure and self-seeking. Perhaps a lot of what we call love today is not love at all.

Loving and forgiving: they are practically the same. To love others is to forgive others. Jesus does not merely preach on forgiveness and loving our enemies, but he demonstrates it even when it is most difficult, even while dying. We need to die to our false selves, to our egos, if we wish to love others, if we wish to forgive others.

Forgiveness is the name of love that is practised among imperfect people like us. Jesus tells of the woman who was a sinner, who washed his feet with tears: “She loved much.... she is forgiven much.” Love and forgiveness go hand in hand.

To live and experience the forgiveness of God. This is important. Unless I experience the mercy and forgiveness of the Lord I will not be able to transfer or do the same to my fellow beings. This is clear in the parable, where that wicked servant though he was forgiven, he is not ready to do the same. He has not experienced the forgiveness. The parable is very logical. But still that servant does not do it. Same with us.

Forgiveness is central to the Lord’s prayer. It seems to be a condition... A conditional clause. Receiving forgiveness (subjectively… God always forgives) and offering forgiveness are one and the same thing. Repentance is about giving your forgiveness to others like you; and at that moment of giving you also receive.

Two-thirds of Jesus’ teaching is directly or indirectly about forgiveness!

To forgive, you have to be able to see the other person—at least momentarily—as a whole person, as an image of the Divine, containing holiness and horror at the same time. In other words, you can’t eliminate the negative. You know they’ve hurt you. You know they did something wrong. You have to learn to live well with paradox, or you can’t forgive. Forgiveness accepts the dark past with an attitude of gratefulness. It can accept contradictions and darkness that we have encountered in our lives.

But you can forgive only when you yourself have experienced mercy, when you yourself have experienced forgiveness from the Lord (when you are continuously experiencing his touch of forgiveness).

God loves you precisely in your obstinate sinfulness, when you’re still a mixture of good and bad, holiness and horror, when you’re gloriously in flux. You’re not a perfectly loving person, and God still totally loves you. When I can stand under the waterfall of infinite mercy and know that I am loved precisely in my unworthiness and sinfulness, then I can pass along mercy to you.

God cannot stop loving you. That’s why no amount of effort will make God love you any more than He loves you right now. And despite your best efforts to be terrible, you can’t make God love you any less than He loves you right now.

God cannot not see his Son Jesus in you. You are the body of Christ. You are bone of God’s bone.

We love by letting go. We forgive by letting go.

Forgiveness depends on how you see. To see like Jesus sees. Everything is holy, for those who have learned how to see. Everything is a miracle if only we train our eyes to see.

Dying to our own selfish agendas, and then rising to new life. This is the meaning of forgiveness: Nothing is lost, it is only transformed. God will turn all our human crucifixions into resurrection. We need to die many times before we finally, physically die.

God will even use our various deaths in our favour, if we will allow it. God’s mercy is so infinite and resourceful that God uses even our sins and failures and unfaithfulness for our own redemption. The failures, emptiness, negativity, acts of resistance, sinfulness, weaknesses and fragility that we encounter in our daily lives end up being the very force and motivation that drives us ahead.

Death is not a loss. We pray from the Preface of the Mass for the Dead: Life is not ended, but merely changed. Nothing is ever lost, everything is transformed. Nothing that we love is ever lost, everything is transformed. No person whom we loved is lost, they are resurrected. That’s why we need to die to our egos, our false selves, our selfishness. Let us let go of our ego, of our envy, greed, violence, anger, self-satisifaction. The cross is not the price that Jesus had to pay in order to convince God into loving us. No. It is rather simply where love will lead us. To love is to die. To love or to forgive is to let go, to forego of our own wills and wishes. If we love, if we give ourselves to feel the pain of the world, it will crucify us. Some kind of suffering is always the price and proof of love.

Let go, let God.

Let love happen. Love is just like prayer; it is not so much an action that we do but a reality that we already are. We do not decide to “be loving,” but allow our true nature of love to flow from within us.

The love within us—which is the Holy Spirit in us—always somehow says yes. 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 are going. It is not something you can buy. It is not something you can attain. It is the presence of God within you, called the Holy Spirit, who is uncreated grace.

Love consists in this—not limiting God by our human equations of love, but allowing God’s infinite love to utterly redefine our own.

Lucy’s words, “I will teach my child only one thing: love. This child, born of violence, will be a witness along with me that the only greatness that gives honour to a human being is forgiveness.” Teach your children/youth only one thing: love, which is also called forgiveness.

Embracing Disorder

Day 4: Talk 1: ACCEPTING REALITY / EMBRACING DISORDER

(EVERYTHING BELONGS). Retreat to the FMAs, Bellefonte Outreach, Shillong.

There are stories that change your life… Here is a story that changed mine.

Letter of a pregnant nun

Here is an extraordinary letter written by a young nun, Sister Lucy Vertrusc, to her mother superior. Sister Vertrusc became pregnant after she was raped in 1995 during the war in the former Yugoslavia. The letter appeared in an Italian newspaper at the behest of her Mother Superior.

I am Lucy, one of the young nuns raped by the Serbian soldiers. I am writing to you, Mother, after what happened to my sisters Tatiana, Sandria, and me.

Allow me not to go into the details of the act. There are some experiences in life so atrocious that you cannot tell them to anyone but God, in whose service I had consecrated my life nearly a year ago.

My drama is not so much the humiliation that I suffered as a woman, not the incurable offense committed against my vocation as a religious, but the difficulty of having to incorporate into my faith an event that certainly forms part of the mysterious will of Him whom I have always considered my Divine Spouse.

Only a few days before, I had read “Dialogues of Carmelites” and spontaneously I asked our Lord to grant me the grace of joining the ranks of those who died a martyr of Him. God took me at my word, but in such a horrid way! Now I find myself lost in the anguish of internal darkness. He has destroyed the plans of my life, which I considered definitive and uplifting for me, and He has set me all of a sudden in this design of His that I feel incapable of grasping.

When I was a teenager, I wrote in my Diary: Nothing is mine, I belong to no one, and no one belongs to me. Someone, instead grabbed me one night, a night I wish never to remember, tore me off from myself, and tried to make me his own . . .

It was already daytime when I awoke and my first thought was the agony of Christ in the Garden. Inside of me a terrible battle unleashed. I asked myself why God had permitted me to be rent, destroyed precisely in what had been the meaning of my life, but also I asked to what new vocation He was calling me.

I strained to get up, and helped by Sister Josefina, I managed to straighten myself out. Then the sound of the bell of the Augustinian convent, which was right next to ours, reached my ears. It was time for nine o’clock matins.

I made the sign of the cross and began reciting in my head the liturgical hymn. At this hour upon Golgotha’s heights,/ Christ, the true Paschal Lamb,/ paid the price of our salvation.

What is my suffering, Mother, and the offense I received compared to the suffering and the offense of the One for whom I had a thousand times sworn to give my life. I spoke these words slowly, very slowly: May your will be done, above all now that I have nowhere to go and that I can only be sure of one thing: You are with me.

Mother, I am writing not in search of consolation, but so that you can help me give thanks to God for having associated me with the thousands of my fellow compatriots whose honour has been violated, and who are compelled to accept a maternity not wanted. My humiliation is added to theirs, and since I have nothing else to offer in expiation for the sin committed by those unnamed violators and for the reconciliation of the two embittered peoples, I accept this dishonour that I suffered and I entrust it to the mercy of God.

Do not be surprised, Mother, when I ask you to share with me my “thank you” that can seem absurd.

In these last months I have been crying a sea of tears for my two brothers who were assassinated by the same aggressors who go around terrorizing our towns, and I was thinking that it was not possible for me to suffer anything worse, so far from my imagination had been what was about to take place.

Every day hundreds of hungering creatures used to knock at the doors of our convent, shivering from the cold, with despair in their eyes. Some weeks ago, a young boy about eighteen years old said to me: How lucky you are to have chosen a refuge where no evil can reach you. The boy carried in his hands a rosary of praises for the Prophet. Then he added: You will never know what it means to be dishonoured.

I pondered his words at length and convinced myself that there had been a hidden element to the sufferings of my people that had escaped me as I was almost ashamed to be so excluded. Now I am one of them, one of the many unknown women of my people, whose bodies have been devastated and hearts seared. The Lord had admitted me into his mystery of shame. What is more, for me, a religious, He has accorded me the privilege of being acquainted with evil in the depths of its diabolical force.

I know that from now on the words of encouragement and consolation that I can offer from my poor heart will be all the more credible, because my story is their story, and my resignation, sustained in faith, at least a reference, if not example for their moral and emotional responses.

All it takes is a sign, a little voice, a fraternal gesture to set in motion the hopes of so many undiscovered creatures.

God has chosen me—may He forgive my presumption—to guide the most humble of my people towards the dawn of redemption and freedom. They can no longer doubt the sincerity of my words, because I come, as they do, from the outskirts of revilement and profanation.

I remember the time when I used to attend the university at Rome in order to get my masters in Literature, an ancient Slavic woman, the professor of Literature, used to recite to me these verses from the poet Alexej Mislovic: You must not die/ because you have been chosen/ to be a part of the day.

That night, in which I was terrorized by the Serbs for hours and hours, I repeated to myself these verses, which I felt as balm for my soul, nearly mad with despair.

And now, with everything having passed and looking back, I get the impression of having been made to swallow a terrible pill.

Everything has passed, Mother, but everything begins. In your telephone call, after your words of encouragement, for which I am grateful with all my life, you posed me a very direct question: What will you do with the life that has been forced into your womb? I heard your voice tremble as you asked me the question, a question I felt needed no immediate response; not because I had not yet considered the road I would have to follow, but so as not to disturb the plans you would eventually have to unveil before me. I had already decided. I will be a mother. The child will be mine and no one else’s. I know that I could entrust him to other people, but he—though I neither asked for him nor expected him—he has a right to my love as his mother. A plant should never be torn from its roots. The grain of wheat fallen in the furrow has to grow there, where the mysterious, though iniquitous sower threw it.

I will fulfill my religious vocation in another way. I will ask nothing of my congregation, which has already given me everything. I am very grateful for the fraternal solidarity of the Sisters, who in these times have treated me with the utmost delicacy and kindness, especially for never having asked any uncareful questions.

I will go with my child. I do not know where, but God, who broke all of a sudden my greatest joy, will indicate the path I must tread in order to do His will.

I will be poor again, I will return to the old aprons and the wooden shoes that the women in the country use for working, and I will accompany my mother into the forest to collect the resin from the slits in the trees.

Someone has to begin to break the chain of hatred that has always destroyed our countries. And so, I will teach my child only one thing: love. This child, born of violence, will be a witness along with me that the only greatness that gives honour to a human being is forgiveness.

Through the Kingdom of Christ for the Glory of God.

* * * * * * *

Embracing Disorder

How to approach problems? Reality is full of inconsistencies, problems. What should I do? The question I should answer is: Am I interiorly at peace? The first questions are not: to How to help? How to serve? How to solve the problem? But am I spiritually okay to deal with this situation? Do I see God in this situation?

Do you know what faith is? Faith is simply to trust the real, and to trust that God is found within it—even before we change it.

The strongest tool for helping others is a “compassionate presence.” Our presence itself must have a message.

Do not be afraid. 365 times.

Know that the world is okay as it is. Know that things are okay as they are. This moment is as perfect as it can be. The saints called this the “sacrament of the present moment.”

It’s enough to know you really are okay and the world is okay, too.

From your point of view, there is confusion. But from God’s point of view? Contemplative discipline is to allow this view in your life.

Quantum theology. Spirituality is about true seeing; it is about perception. An experience that imprints in your memory, or changes you at any depth, is not so much based in what you experienced (its content) as it is how—at what level of significance did you take it in? Three people can be exposed to the same stimuli and come away with three different “experiences.”

Quantum physics and biology now insist that the observer necessarily changes the content and results of an experiment. Contemplation is training you to see the overlooked wholeness in things.

Jesus states the same principle in reverse in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus: They will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead. People who do not believe in miracles never experience miracles. If you are not open to the Beyond of things, you will not allow yourself to experience a miraculous event happening right in front of you.

It’s only God in us that understands the things of God. We must take this very seriously and know how it operates in us, with us, for us, and as us. You need to see as God. This is not blasphemous: you need to allow God to use your eyes. The God in you meets the God in the world.

“The Lord looks on his servants with pity and not with blame. In God’s sight we do not fall: in our sight, we do not stand. Both of these are true; but the deeper insight belongs to God.” - Lady Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, chapter 82. [Everything Belongs, 66.] The other name for God is mercy (Pope Francis).

“First there is the fall, and then we recover from the fall. Both are the mercy of God!” (Julian of Norwich).

“Sin shall not be a shame to humans, but a glory. The mark of sin shall be turned to honour” (Julian of Norwich). If that’s not the “good news,” what else could it be? What else could be good except that kind of freedom, that kind of spaciousness, that kind of embrace from God that says your life matters? Your journey matters, and God’s covenanted love towards you is always unconditional and usually unilateral. If you accept this good news, the universe suddenly seems to be a very safe place.

It is about accepting reality = forgiving reality for what it is. What is is.

God comes to you disguised as your life. Life is characterized much more by exception and disorder than by total or perfect order.

We must stumble and fall. Falling, losing, failing, transgression, and sin are the pattern. Yet they all lead towards home.

Failure, sin, humiliation, and shadow work are very good teachers if we allow them to be. “Sin is behovely” Julian of Norwich. We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right. Ironically, we flourish more by learning from our mistakes and changing than by a straight course that teaches us nothing. Till you learn something good from your sin, don’t give it up.

God will even use these deaths in your favour, if you will allow it, leading to “negative capability.” Like a slingshot or drawn bowstring that actually creates forward momentum, negative capability describes those failures, that emptiness, those acts of resistance that end up being the very force and motivation that catapults us ahead.

God’s mercy is so infinite and resourceful that God uses even our sin for our own redemption. He recycles it. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is lost; it is only transformed. Everything belongs.

The Prodigal Father

Day 4: Meditation Talk: THE PRODIGAL FATHER / SONS. Retreat to the FMAs, Bellefonte Outreach, Shillong.

Context is the controversy between Jesus and the scribes/Pharisees; the younger son/brother vs the elder son/brother: as Jacob vs Esau, and Joseph vs his brothers; but here the younger brother is a parody of that, not triumphant but ends as a Gentile, and the elder brother is invited to join the feast; 1% à 10% à 50% à 100% : loss in the parables of Luke 15.

The younger son (Publican): considers his father dead when he demands his share of the property; The younger son to the pigs = to the dogs; A Jewish person with the pigs = has become a Gentile; Turning point is hunger, not repentance, not love for his father, returns to the Father not for the right reasons, but (let’s say) for the wrong reasons, or insufficient reasons. The Father still accepts him. (God’s forgiveness comes to you even if you have selfish motives… even if your repentance is incomplete.) The father accepts a Gentile. “Mending the relationship is something that the boy cannot do for all his scheming; it depends on the father’s grace.” (Fallon 257.) The rehearsal and the real confession, incomplete. Necessity to seek someone who can receive you, and not judge you. But forgiveness comes from God, not from oneself. As the younger son accepts the ring, robe, feast, the penitent can only accept the gift of repentance, in humility.

Benedict XVI: “Holiness does not consist in not making mistakes or never sinning. Holiness grows with capacity for conversion, repentance, willingness to begin again, and above all with the capacity for reconciliation and forgiveness.” [BEGIN and BEING are anagrams.]

The elder son (Pharisee): Adds info from rumours, imagines things – falsity; The challenge of the parable is enhanced by an open ending (postmodern ending = breaking of the grand narratives); Doesn’t enter the house, doesn’t feel at home – I have worked so hard. All is yours, but you feel that you are a slave. If there was humility in the younger son, here we see pride, resentment, anger. Meet the prodigal outside the house, being begged by his father.

Father: gives freedom, waits, runs, hugs, kisses, gives the best... celebrates. Our focus should be on the father – a prodigal, merciful father; breaks the boundaries just for love, who accepts a Gentile back; Ring – wedding ceremony

Here is a beautiful summary of the prodigals, applied to our own life situation, where we find ourselves as both the younger and the elder brothers:

Going home is a lifelong journey. There are always parts of ourselves that wander off in dissipation or get stuck in resentment. Before we know it we are lost in lustful fantasies or angry ruminations. Our night dreams and daydreams often remind us of our lostness. Spiritual disciplines such as praying, fasting, and caring are ways to help us return home. As we walk home we often realize how long the way is. But let us not be discouraged. Jesus walks with us and speaks to us on the road. When we listen carefully we discover that we are already home while on the way. (Nouwen)

Wicked persons

"Offer the wicked person no resistance" (Matthew 5:39).

Did Jesus really mean this? Is this teaching practical?

This is one of the pearls from the Sermon on the Mount. Here is where we can really see the crux of Jesus' teachings. He asks us not to offer the wicked person any resistance or opposition. Jesus' teaching is never practical, only radical. It cuts at the root (radical is from the Latin word radix = root). Jesus is not asking any cosmetic changes to the world order, in fact he is exhorting us to end this kind of world order, this kind of world itself. He is not presenting a new programme for human society. He refuses to accept society on its own terms; he refuses to offer it allegiance as it is.

Wicked persons like Queen Jezebel (see the First Reading of today, 1 Kings 21:1-16) or Hitler or Stalin (or anyone whom you think wicked) were all created in God's image. They too are God's children, God's Beloved. Jesus continues his radical statements (almost impractical!): "But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons and daughters of your Father in heaven. He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?" (Matthew 5:44-46).

Jesus is asking me not only not to hate, but to love these wicked persons. To love all those who trouble and persecute you: all the fundamentalist and fringe elements in the country, terrorists, murderers, rapists, abusers, criminals, scoundrels, and all others. This is where one takes her call to be a Christian or no. (I'm talking of reality, not namesake Christianity here.) A true follower is asked to do the impossible! Are you a true disciple of Christ or just namesake?

Holy Spirit

Day 3: Talk 2: THE HOLY SPIRIT (LOVE RELATIONSHIP). Retreat to the FMAs, Bellefonte Outreach, Shillong.

Love is the nature of God’s Being. God refuses to be known but can only be loved. God can only be loved and enjoyed, which ironically ends up being its own new kind of knowing. This is absolutely central and pivotal. 

God is Being, not being among many beings. God is love. God is relationship itself. God is absolute relatedness. God is Spirit. God is beyond gender. 

God is non-stop flow of love. He loves you 100%. You cannot diminish God’s love for you. No matter what, we are God’s Beloved. 

Changing your idea of God has the capacity to change your life itself. In our joy or our pain, true life is a dance, a flow, a relationship. We are like God, we too are relationships. 

Various Names for God as Trinity/Love: One-Two-Three of God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Infinity, Imminence, and Intimacy. Unconditional Love, Unconditional Forgiveness, and Unconditional Presence. God-for-us, God-with-us, God-within-us. 

God doesn’t look at our faults, but at the places in us that are trying to say “yes.” You do the same with your children. You see beyond the “no” to the abiding “yes.” God sees the divine image in you as you see your image in your children. 

The love in you—which is the Spirit in you—always somehow says yes. 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. It’s not something you can attain. It is the presence of God within you, called the Holy Spirit, who is uncreated grace. 

Gen 1:2. The verb “hovered.” Like a mother hen. Encircles, protects. Motherly, sisterly presence of the Spirit. Ruah is feminine in Hebrew. The Spirit guides us and guards us like a mother hen protecting her brood of chicks. 

Sudden fire. Joy. Divine Energy. Spirit = Energy. Where is the energy? Protons, neutrons, electrons. Mom and Dad are sitting/lying down. The kid runs into in-between them. The energy is in the interaction between them. In the spaces between them. 

Boundaries to the universe? The universe is not inert, but is “inspirited matter.” 

And that’s where the essential power is—the space between the persons more than the persons individually. 

Holy Spirit is the Space between Everything. 

Turn on the Holy Spirit. 

Spirit is Holy. Why? Absoultely in relationship with everything. Holy person vs psychopath. 

The all-important thing is to get the energy and quality of the relationship between these Three—that's the essential mystery that transforms us. 

Where is the Spirit? From where is she coming? Where is she going to? She blows where she wills. 

Wrong ideas: Only we have the Spirit. We have pocketed the Spirit.

How to find out if Spirit is active? Galatians 5:22. Fruits of the Spirit. 

If the Holy Spirit is alive within you, you will always keep smiling, despite every setback. When the Spirit is alive in people, they wake up from their mechanical thinking and enter the realm of co-creative power. 

What has happened between 5 and 50? Where is the joy that I once had? Spiritual has nothing to do with things going right. It has everything to do with things going. Joy is almost entirely an inside job. 

Without joy our spiritual life cannot bear fruit. Joy is essential to spiritual life.

Negativity and hatred stick like Velcro to the nerves, while positivity, gratitude, joy, happiness and appreciation slide away like Teflon from those same nerves—until we savour them, and choose them, for a minimum of a conscious fifteen seconds! 

Only hour by hour gratitude is strong enough to break all resentment and resistances. Hour by hour living out of communion. 

How are you doing life at this moment? How you do anything is how you do everything! Here and now.

Kingdom of God

Day 3: Homily: KINGDOM OF GOD. Retreat to the FMAs, Bellefonte Outreach, Shillong.

What is the Kingdom of God? Justice, peace, righteousness, holiness, joy.
Romans 14:17. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Where is the Kingdom of God? Within us. Amidst us.
Luke 17:21. When asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God will not come with observable signs. Nor will people say, ‘Look, here it is,’ or ‘There it is.’ For you see, the kingdom of God is in your midst.”

When is the Kingdom of God? Here and Now. Incarnation.

As above, so below.
On earth as in heaven.
As within, so without.
“Thy Kingdom come.”

The finite manifests the infinite, and the physical is the doorway to the the spiritual. In other words, all you need is right here and right now--in this world. This is the way to that! Heaven includes earth.

Kingdom of God = Heaven = Union with God. Heaven is not a place, but a state of life.

We are Kingdom workers. But not our efforts. Only God can give growth. Blessed Oscar Romero states: “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.”

Jesus’ teachings are not mere "prescriptions" for getting to heaven. Instead, they are a set of "descriptions" of a free life to live and proclaim the Kingdom here on earth. Our religion is not a mere bunch of do's and don'ts. It is not even a way of achieving an impossible perfection. If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own. Real people are not perfect, and perfect people are not real. A "perfect" person ends up being one who can consciously forgive and include imperfection rather than presuming that he or she is above all imperfection. Perfection is a mathematical or divine concept, goodness is a beautiful human concept that includes us all.

Jesus is the Way—he’s not standing in the way!  

Your job is simply to exemplify heaven now. God will take it from there. Here is the remedy when you find it hard to exemplify heaven now: Let love happen. Remember, you cannot “get there”; you can only be here. Love is just like prayer; it is not so much an action that we do but a reality that we already are. We don't decide to “be loving.”

Why should I be uncomfortable with sin? Whether in me or in the other.

The shape of evil is much more superficiality and blindness than the usually listed "hot sins." God hides, and is found, precisely in the depths of everything, even and maybe especially in the deep fathoming of our fallings and failures. Sin is to stay on the surface of even holy things, like Bible, sacrament, or church. God is everywhere and always and scandalously found even in the failure of sin.

Nothing can stop God from loving us. God’s love does not depend on the faithfulness or the worthiness or the holiness of the object. He loves. That’s all. He is love itself. God does not love you because you are good. God loves you because God is good.

God loves you precisely in your obstinate unworthiness… God totally loves you.

God cannot not see his Son Jesus in you. You are the body of Christ. You are bone of His bone, and that’s why God cannot stop loving you. That’s why no amount of effort will make Him love you any more than He loves you right now. And despite your best efforts to be terrible, you cannot make Him love you any less than He loves you right now.

What we can do is to surrender ourselves and enter into this dance of unhindered dialogue, this circle of praise, this web of communion whom we call God, who is love in perfect totality. Let us celebrate this beauty of love, God’s love which is unconditional and unfailing, the love that totally transforms us from within.

God as Love

Day 3: Talk 1: GOD AS LOVE (GOD AS TRINITY). Retreat to the FMAs, Bellefonte Outreach, Shillong.

Most of us are afraid of God. We have been taught to be afraid of God.

Negative images of God. Unhelpful images of God: He is there upstairs; He is white; He is male.

Imagination is as important as knowledge. Or even more.

God is dynamism itself. Some of us think that God is a static concept. That He is an idea. God is a He is dynamic person/being, He is dynamism itself. Being itself. Infact, a Trinity of Three Persons.

Our God is a Family, a Community. God is Relationship itself. God is Inter-relatedness, Intrinsic Inter-connectedness.

Every prayer starts and ends with the invocation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to remind us that God is for us, not against us (Father), God is with us, Emmanuel (Christ), and God is within us, Antaryamin (Spirit).

Other names for God who is Trinity: One, Two, Three of God. Infinity, Imminence, Intimacy. 

When we say God is Trinity, we mean, “God is love.” Totally and absolutely love. Only love. There is no evil in God, no revengeful attitudes or anger, no pettiness of mind but only a large-heartedness that we call unconditional love, unfailing love.

God does not love you because you are good; but God loves you because God is good, God is love itself.

Meister Eckhart, the fourteenth-century German Dominican mystic puts it wonderfully:

Do you want to know

what goes on in the core of the Trinity?

I will tell you.

In the core of the Trinity

the Father laughs

and gives birth to the Son.

The Son laughs back at the Father

and gives birth to the Spirit.

The whole Trinity laughs

and gives birth to us.

You cannot come closer to God. You are already in union with God. Separation, or being far away, is an illusion. Awareness of it may be lacking. Waking up to this reality is prayer, it is contemplation. Therefore, the only difference is between those who are consciously drawing upon this union and those who are not. (The difference is not between those who are united and those who aren’t.) As the Psalmist himself says, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.” (Ps 139:7-8) We’re all united to God, but only some of us know it. Most of us deny it and doubt it. It’s just—frankly—too good to be true. That’s why they call it good news. But it can’t be this good, can it? Yeah, that’s where it gets its name and reputation as good news.

Nothing human can stop the flow of divine love; we cannot undo the eternal pattern even by our worst sin.

God loves you precisely in your obstinate unworthiness, when you’re still a mixture of good and bad, when you’re gloriously in flux. You’re not a perfectly loving person, and God still totally loves you.

You can’t manufacture the union by any right conduct. (You are already in communion objectively.) You can’t make God love you one ounce more than God 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 God loves you right now. You cannot make God love you any less, either—not an ounce less. Do the most terrible thing—steal and pillage, cheat and lie—and God wouldn’t love you less. You cannot change the Divine mind about you! The flow is constant, total, and 100 percent toward your life. God is for you. We can’t diminish God’s love for us. What we 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’re doing right now is a microcosm of the whole of your life. How you do anything is how you do everything.

Growth

Trees bring vitality to a neighbourhood. The presence or absence of trees spells out its beauty or its lack. We have so many stories connected to trees. And it is surprising how much of the story of our salvation is linked to trees. It was in a tree-filled garden that God placed our first parents, with permission to eat the fruit of all except of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Perversely, they did and were expelled from there in fig-leafed disgrace. Noah and his extended family were saved by God from the waters of the flood in an ark specifically constructed from a gopher tree, and it was with a leaf of an olive tree in its beak that the dove reported the eventual subsidence of the waters. Out of a burning bush, God called Moses to set his people free and lead them to the Promised Land. The prophet Ezekiel proclaims, today as long ago, that God will make “low trees grow” and the Psalmist assures us that “the just will flourish like the palm-tree and grow like the cedar of Lebanon.”

But it is above all in the Christ-story of the New Testament that the theme of trees is most frequently invoked. Jesus is called “the tree of life” and compares himself to the true vine of which we are the branches. Like trees, we are exhorted “to go forth and bear fruit”. Today, the kingdom of heaven is likened to a mustard tree, whose seed is so tiny, yet matures into a giant. In the end, it was on the tree of the cross that our salvation was won.

Throughout, trees symbolize, as in today’s gospel, growth and shelter. In the Middle East where Christianity has its roots, trees represent fertility in that near desert climate. A cluster of trees there forms an oasis with life-giving water. In its shade, nomadic man and beast find shelter from a relentless sun. Trees provide shelter too, from rain and wind, and sun and heat. A poet wrote:

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

The Kingdom of God though like a seed will grow into a mighty tree to shelter anyone and everyone. God loves being related to us whoever we are—young or old, black or white, native or foreigner, saint or sinner, prostitute or drunkard, Pharisee or publican, Jew or Samaritan, Greek or Roman, disciple or onlooker, heterosexual or LGBTQIA, theist or atheist, believer or fundamentalist, differently abled or not, widow or orphan. God, and His Kingdom, does not abide by our human limits; He is able to exist in contradictions and can shatter the limits of our perceptions. Only God can give this growth. Even to His Kingdom. Do we perceive?

Politically Correct?

"All you need say is "Yes" if you mean yes, "No" if you mean no; anything more than this comes from the evil one" (Matthew 5:37). Jesus tells his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount to purposeful in their words. He impresses on them it is not about being politically correct, but about being deeply authentic.

We have failed Our Lord in this respect many times, I'd think. We have not been true to our word, or we have not meant many of our statements. See, for instance, our various social network (WhatsApp, FaceBook, etc.) conversations. Very often they are empty. Very often they are not healing. We even have mindlessly and senselessly forwarded many items. I heard that the recent violent incidents in some parts of India have been trigerred by biased or unbased spreading of false news. We also receive many fake news or videos. We don't even care for truth before we forward. We can easily spread falsity and evil if we are not careful. We don't mean harm, but the results become harmful when we are not fully conscious of our actions.

So then, how to be authentic in our words? At various levels, we can be authentic: intellectual, moral, spiritual, ecological, economic, etc. As far as possible we check the facts if they are true. Perhaps we could apply the Triple Filter Test of Socrates. "Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to say is true? Is what you want to say something good or kind? Is this information useful or necessary to me?"

Therefore, before you answer a question or voice your opinion (or forward a message in WhatsApp), ask yourself: Is it true? Is it good? Is it kind? Is it useful? Is it necessary? This is a tall order. But we need to start somewhere, we need to start being authentic today.

Contemplation and Action

Day 1: Talk 2: CONTEMPLATION AND ACTION. Retreat to the FMAs, Bellefonte Outreach, Shillong.

Our spirituality is one of prayer in action, contemplation in action. Contemplation and Action should go hand in hand: the most important word here is not “action” nor even “contemplation,” but “and.”

But please don’t be disturbed if I speak more about contemplation, than about action. (You will see why.) The wrong stress on action is some kind of leftism or socialism which thinks about revolution, and not transformation. The future of Christianity, as Rahner says, belongs to one who contemplates, to one who is a mystic. Otherwise, no future for Christians. Meister Eckhart: A busy person can be a mystic.

Prayer, reflection, contemplation are the most important aspects of our religious life. Work and activities should not stifle our contemplative spirit. (Active contemplation.)

Contemplation is a long, loving, lingering look at something. To see God in everything, in everyone. It is allowing the God in me to meet the God in the world. Allowing the divine in me to meet the divine the world. I allow my depth, the divinity in me to deal with the world. It is surrender. Not an action. It is a passion. Heraclitus says, “The lightning guides everything.”

Prayer or contemplation is surrendering; not about saying or doing something. It is tuning into God’s presence, His active presence. It is allowing oneself to be moved by the Spirit.

The more you believe in God, the more you will believe in yourself.

How should I be in the world?

What should I focus on?

What should I do?

How do I serve the world?

Henri Nouwen gives us a clue: “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.”

We serve the world by being spiritually well. The first questions 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 was healing, and it changed the world. In a sense he didn’t do anything! “Everyone who touched him was healed” (Mark 6:56).

Personal Encounter with the Lord: “Life becomes an unbearable burden whenever we lose touch with the presence of a loving Saviour and see only hunger to be alleviated, injustice to be addressed, violence to be overcome, wars to be stopped, [problems to be solved, order to be achieved] and loneliness to be removed. All these are critical issues, and Christians must try to solve them; however, when our concern no longer flows from our personal encounter with the living Christ, we feel oppressive weight.” (Nouwen)

Mission without contemplation is not possible. It is the other side of contemplation.

Transformed people transform people.

If you have encountered the Lord, if you allow God in your life, He will bring transformation in people’s lives—as He has brought in your own life.

Everything belongs. (Rohr)

All is well. (Three Idiots.)

Everything is in order. Though everything is in a mess, everything is in order. (Tony D’Mello)

Prayer is not an achievement, it is surrender.

Let go, and let God.

It is what is done to you, not done by you.

Moving to the centre. (Nouwen)

The center of a wheel is at rest, the centre of movement is at rest.

Be still and still moving. (T.S. Eliot.)

Thomas Merton: In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream. [...] This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. [...] I have the immense joy of being [hu]man, a member of a race in which God ... became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now [that] I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. [...] Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed.

[…] At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. […] It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.

God is radically involved with the world. Contemplation is an acknowledgement of the same. God is already active in you and me and in the world. Perhaps only the awareness is missing. “Union with God” is not an achievement, it is a realization, a consciousness, an awareness. We are already in union with God. We are the Beloved; we belong to God. (Illusion of separatedness.)

Contemplation trains you to let go of what you think is success, so you can find the ultimate success of simple happiness. Contemplation is largely teaching you how to let go—how to let go of your attachment to your self-image, your expectations, your very ideas. Every such “set up” is a resentment waiting to happen. So maybe we are just redefining success as foundational happiness and contentment.

Contemplation: non-dualism and non-separation. There is no separation between the sacred and the profane. Unfortunate discovery to enter into spirituality. Blessings, sacraments, sacramentals are reminders that God is present and active everywhere. Japanese chief: only 7 sacraments? I thought there will 7000 or 70,000 occasions to meet God!

Pondering is contemplating: embracing disorders and contradictions, befriending lust and anger, holding conflicts and tensions and contradictions in one’s heart, forgiveness of oneself and others. Getting deep down into the unified field, unified field of love. (See my article, “A Spirituality of Contradictions,” Mission Today.)

Practice:

Be still and know that I am God.

Be still and know that I am.

Be still and know.

Be still.

Be.

Presence

Day 1: Homily: PRESENCE. Retreat to the FMAs, Bellefonte Outreach, Shillong.

Elijah at the cave

The Lord was not in the wind, or the earthquake, or the fire. “And after the fire there came the sound of a gentle breeze. And when Elijah heard this, he covered his face with his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then a voice came to him, which said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ He replied, ‘I am filled with jealous zeal for the Lord of Hosts.’” (1 Kings 19:9-16.)

God revealed himself to Prophet Elijah in the murmur of a gentle breeze. Very often, God’s inspirations are subtle and gentle. Only when we are able to attune our ears and hearts to His presence and voice, can we hear his soft-spoken voice. Very often we may have to slow down from the maddening pace of our daily lives in order to meet this God of ours. His voice is gentle, He will never force Himself on us. That is love. Love is not love if it is not free. His presence is almost an absence. His presence is filled with absence, and his absence is full of presence.

God’s presence is an Invisible Presence. This is the secret shape of our God. We can easily miss Him, if we are not conscious. If we are not careful, we might miss his message too. God very often does not blast his presence into me, it is so gradual that I need to keep saying “yes” to Him. This is the jealous love (jealous zeal or zealous love) like Prophet Elijah that I need to have when dealing with this Mystery called God. Unless I am present to the here and now, and consciously make efforts I will not be able to understand God’s marvellous designs in my life. “Where can I go from your spirit? If I am climb the heavens, you are there. If I lie in the grave, you are there. Even darkness is dark for you” (Psalm 139:7-12). Lord, you are the Hound of Heaven.

Martha and Mary

We carry our obstacles in our pockets now, vibrating and notifying and emoji-ing us about everything and nothing. And let’s be honest: most of our digital and personal conversation is about nothing. Nothing that matters, nothing that lasts, nothing that’s real. We think and talk about the same things again and again, like a broken record. We do everything possible to avoid being in the present, and even “kill” the presence by means of more and more entertainment, more and more highly excitable and sensational stuff. We need always something that entertains us, that excites us more and more because being in the present is boring.

Even the videos that we share and the picture-quotes that we share have to excite us on the sense level. We are not worried about the truth. Remember how we shared the news about Fr Tom’s crucifixion, the sudden death of Jackie Chan or other celebrities… we don’t know what is true, what is false. Our television channels keep bombarding the news that are negative (sometimes only negative), sensational, and their business seems to concentrate on all the “bad” news in the world, and also gossips about movie stars and sportspersons.

It’s amazing that we have enough and more time for WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and all social networking. At our dining tables, we give more attention to the messages received than to enjoying the food at hand or in our mouth.

We even have stopped eating broilers… we keep changing our diets according to the whims and fancies of our WhatsApp groups. Someone said he even stopped reading books, there is enough and more stuff on WhatsApp. Wow. We have become restless. We don’t know when and how to end a digital conversation. Superstitions galore. Please pass this message to at least 20 more idiots, otherwise something bad will befall you. The black cat era has not passed yet.

If some of us can be blamed for gossip, I think almost all of us can be blamed for “detraction.” If gossip is about falsity and evil, detraction is about spreading evil though it’s true.

We feel in ourselves the compulsion to answer each and every damn thing. Otherwise what will they feel? When were we so needy for love and attention?

Haven’t we become more ego-centric? Hasn’t the already fragmentated consciousness breaking up even more? We are easily distracted. We boast ourselves with our capacities for multi-tasking. What does it mean? We are not able to do one thing properly, are we? Even our meetings (especially the boring ones) warrant our cell phones out… “I’d better reply some messages now, and thus use my time!” And this is no laughing stock!

Aren’t we like Martha “distracted” with all our serving? We are serving the Lord, but we are distracted. Martha is doing the reasonable, hospitable thing—rushing around, fixing, preparing, and as the text brilliantly says, “distracted with all the serving” (Lk 10:40).

Martha was everything good and right, but one thing she was not. She was not present—most likely, she was not present to herself, she was not present to her own feelings of resentment, perhaps her own martyr complex, her need to be needed. This is the kind of goodness that does no good! If she was not present to herself, Martha could not be present to her guests in any healing way, and spiritually speaking, she could not even be present to God. Presence is of one piece. How you are present to anything is how you are present to everything. How you are present to anything is how you are present to God, loved ones, strangers, those who are suffering.

Unless you are present to yourself, you can’t be present to others, or to God.

Jesus, in the same passage of Martha and Mary, doesn’t lose the occasion to affirm Mary, “who sat at his feet listening to him speak” (Luke 10: 39). Mary knows how to be present to him and, presumably, to herself. She understands the one thing that makes all other things happen at a deeper and healing level. Prayer is not one of the ten thousand things, but it is the one thing necessary to see all those ten thousand things. It is the presence that is needed to live those ten thousand things in a healing way.