What did you go out to Bethlehem to see?

With lot of joy, we go near the crib to re-experience the Bethlehem event. What do we see there?

Here God reveals, not in the expected glory and power but in smallness of human limitations. God is present there in need of caring presence of others. He happily allows that dependency, not just at the manger, perhaps always and everywhere. That is why God is known as Emmanuel - God with us. 

God is with us, taking our human nature, and living in our human conditions, in all our ordinariness. At the manger we find no great wonder and miracle;  nor a great hero, it is just simple human life. 

It is a great surprise too, because we  do not expect God to reveal himself in smallness. We assume definite ways of God's revelation, especially in incomprehensible realities, inexhaustible light and magnificent glory, and we do not find him. We also cannot find God in any of our claims too. Our religious performance, righteousness claims, none of those can make God reveal in the way we want. We open our heart and our eyes and we will see God and God is present to us in our daily lives. Perhaps within our struggle and pain, temptation and sin, there is a feeble cry of  God that a Messiah may be born in us. At our meeting we can offer whatever we have. Often it may be emptiness and pain. Yet in us a Messiah may be being born when we trust on to Him. 

Take courage, there is a consolation from God for us. He says: Do not doubt, but have faith, do not be afraid but have courage, do not be saddened but rejoice. If we can count on this promise from God, we can see God as a companion to our life journey. God may not be a miracle worker all the time, but God is truly limping with the lame and groping with the blind. This little baby in the manger is the meaning for us to live.

Can you cage your God?

God reveals his plans in ways unknown to us. As life has its own newness and freshness all the time, God the giver of life too has freshness of love and action. Pharisees and Scribes in the New Testament of the Bible were so sure of how God was to work, that they even could control what God would say and do. Too well they knew God that they would not allow even God to take another way than what they thought. 

Others simply realised their need for God in their life. They acknowledged that they were weak, and when they received life, there was always freshness in them. There is also a responsible belonging; an experience of 'being received'. 

They have no sure claim; fasting, vigils, and a manifested holy life. Their hope is only in God. God could do great things in their life, nothing so special but live the ordinariness of life with God cheerfully. We  wait for God in unusual miracles. Why can we not see that God who is always with us in our everyday lives?

Those claimed to be righteous could not do this because they could never see God. True, they never searched for God. They wanted what they thought of God to be real for ever. Unknowingly they made their idols. Idols are not made by wood and metals but by our narrow definitions of God. 

We often want to define God as we want, we frame it, chain it and cage it may be to guard our religions. We want our words to be parroted by 'our gods' and 'I' become the faithful messenger for 'my god'. 

The early we can recognise our closed heart to God, the deeper we can come to know the real heart of God; and then our our own heart where we can welcome God in God's own ways. 

Surprise!

Being Found: Great Consolation and Joy

The wastelands will see the glory of God, and the deserts will begin to sprout and flower. They are signs of hope. Hoping is a strength received from trusting in freedom.
Human lives also may be left desolate, an unattended garden though we desire to live our lives in its fullness.

Strengthen all weary hands,

steady all trembling knees

and say to all faint hearts,

‘Courage! Do not be afraid (Is 35/3,4)

Perhaps we are not opened to such a possibility of transformation, but rather stagnated in the customary practices, especially of religion. Often we are not able to grow from the religious practices to living of faith. So the voice crying out in the wilderness remains a mere sound, not understood as a word. It is a deep pain.

When the Lord says, “Comfort my people,” the consolation primarily we require is that of being freed from such stagnation and suffocation. ‘Being found’ is a tremendous experience of consolation. We shall never be called ‘forsaken,’ but there is a new experience of belonging. As we await the saviour, the waiting, being ready to be consoled, is itself joyous. This is the way the voice asking us to prepare for him.

The ultimate consolation is the coming of the Saviour, revealed and realised in us (individually and as one body of the faithful). How consoling experience it is! That will surely happen, we being found and consoled by God with affirming words, “You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”
Lumen Gentium 48 tells of it as, "already the final age of the world has come upon us (Cf 1 Cor. 10. 11.) and the renovation of the world is irrevocably decreed and is already anticipated in some kind of a real way." It is the work of Christ himself; leading all people to himself, filling them with His Spirit, and through the church joining all more closely to himself. When we know it, realise it, that will be the powerful experience of the coming of the Messiah.

To Bethlehem through Samaria

In a cold winter the warmth of the sun is a very consoling experience. The Scripture says that the Sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. 

We look for healing and strength. Healing includes cleansing, medication, bandaging, and resting.

We too need a process of healing, and Jesus assures: "I will come myself and cure him."

He came to us to console, strengthen and give us rest. 

Re-visioning and re-forming a Bethlehem in our societies, is to experience the life that he enabled us to live. So if he came as someone external to us, now he longs to grow as someone among us who make up and completes his body.

Christ would be proud of his body that acknowledges if there are injuries. But that which rejects a need for healing adds pain for Christ. At times it could be a defective member, but the worst damage is done when the body says: "This is how it has to be." It would be like one who suffers toothache, hides it and says that it is perfect; or like one who is reluctant to change his cloths according to the changing climate as one travels. True that the body suffers.

Just like the feeble child in Bethlehem is cared by many in Bethlehem, we also may need many for our own healing. Let us not forget that an Israelite was brought to healing by a Samaritan. 

Today's Samaritans, - atheists, scientists, other religions... -  do take us to the inn of healing. We regain our strength and begin to feel the wholeness. There if we can see our faces, we could see the glory of reliving.

The glory of the Lord

will be a canopy and a tent

to give shade by day from the heat,

refuge and shelter from the storm and the rain.

Let us Go to God's House

We are at the beginning of advent, ready to welcome the Saviour. When the Messiah comes, he will teach everything. The Messiah will teach us the ways of God, how to enter the temple and worship God in truth and spirit.

Sign of a divine presence or  a promise was a place for sacrifice and worship. Society organised itself, and preserved itself by defining how the worship should be. The idea of a temple was taking many changes in the views of believers, and it was shaping them too. Temple too was constructed and well adorned. In the temple we found our pride.

Destroy the temple, but continue the worship! How? 

When society was scattered they waited for a powerful king to come and redeem them. A mere king would not be sufficient because for our true life the saviour should be able to relate with God. Since he needs to be tender at heart with his people he also need to be a shepherd to the people. 

Only this shepherd can tell of the true temple and sacrifice. Then he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths. When temple fell to the ground people said that they had no temple, no priest, no sacrifice. A humble contrite heart that would be an acceptable sacrifice; that would be the temple.

we see all these - kings, priests and shepherds - at the manger of Bethlehem, giving a call to worship there at the manger.

Come let us go to God's house, our own hearts!

Speaking of the heart may sound feeble,tender and simple. Yet it adds a struggle since it asks for responsibility for oneself and others. Social constructs to stabilise the meaningful life of  people form laws, religions, customs and traditions. They provide a collective identity. Following such functions may be very solemn and rewarding. But they leave us torn because they act on building fear,solidifying guilt,and for the worse by narrowing the abundance of heart to its limited picture of god

. Can these renew itself to take this struggle to be responsible; to find the liberative and uniting function of theirs, rather than binding and dividing. Otherwise these constructs - religions, customs and traditions - will remain a wolf to the humble manger at Bethlehem.

Grant us with the saints, a place in eternal glory!

With friendship and communion alone, we can experience the complete holiness of the whole church. The church itself is a communion of those in glory, and those in purgation and growth. We together complete the church, and being together participate in the holiness of the body of Christ. It does not matter whether we are living or deceased, it is the matter of grace flowing all over this One Body. "To each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift" (Eph 4/7) "Each of us is to exercise them accordingly" (Rom 12/7). Once we realise this unity in grace, we sustain one another in the same life of God. Saints help us even without asking them. We too do the same here having the heaven inside, though we are being benefited from the needed purgation in daily growth in grace.

A Messiah without Wounds? A Fake Messiah

He waits for us where we search for waters

            

A Messiah without Wounds? A Fake Messiah











Greetings are important. These days we show our ID cards when we greet. Friends may have wished us through Facebook and Whatsapp already. Christ greets us showing his wounds. “Put your finger here and see my hands” (Jn 20/20, 27). They are his identifying marks. The confession of St. Thomas, “My Lord and my God,” within the narratives of the resurrection can be well understood in the whole context of the Gospel.

We see Nathanael and his friends sincerely waiting for the Messiah; they are restless until they find him. There is a rejoicing at Cana, yet something was missing. The learned man of Israel, Nicodemus, searches in darkness for the light of the kingdom of grace. The Samaritan woman longs for a true relationship of belonging. The Paralytic at the pool of Bethzatha cries out of his helplessness. The woman judged to death has no hope out of her tears and shame. All are in need of such help that would give the true meaning and completion for their desire and longing. In Jesus they see a new face of God different from the images the religion, custom or the law had pictured.

This helplessness and death is the wound of the world that God loved so much that he sent his only Son. Jesus waits to meet us where we have found remedies for ourselves; he meets us where we search for waters. We might be struggling to find a meaningful belongingness. It could be within conjugal relation, it could be within social commitments and responsibilities, it could also be our religious aspirations and divine aspects within human quest. The Messiah will surely meet us at the same well asking from us that water and lead us to the well of true worship. We find ourselves helpless, tied up and paralysed in weaknesses when there is no angel to carry us to pools of comfort and wholeness. We struggle in the darkest nights for a little light to be found, yet wearing radiant masks of religiosity and learnedness. We move through the moments facing each to be judged by ourselves and others. There still presses the heaviness of death (lifelessness) where we long to find a ray of grace. We may have lost life completely and begun to be rotten, bringing foul presence to my own existence and to the society, often hiding myself within in our own sorrow and irrational judgements. The Messiah comes near where we are, and we have life if we trust him.

John the Baptist, in the Spirit, recognised that Jesus was the Chosen One of God, and he pointed to him as the Lamb of God – the Lamb of God who takes our pain upon himself, who takes away our lifelessness. There can be false messiahs promising happiness and prosperity, teaching newer and creative ways of living. It cannot be the Messiah, if he has no wound that he himself has suffered for me. When Christ is found really I am found. The more I know him we know our own friendship with God. He is waiting and he will surely find us in our craving, darkness and in death because he has already known our pain. Now coming to him we know those wounds. Probably in dying with him we may know something more of him very intimately. Slowly and gradually the vision of Christ becomes the passion of our life. Every moment we find him it will be an occasion to confess from our heart: “My Lord and my God,” Yes Lord, I love you.


The Messiah has only one thing to say: “Follow me,” let us walk this path together.

Punishment or a Heart that Loves?

Our Loving Saviour

It is the love of God, that was made visible on the cross, not condemnation and punishment. He would not ask of us a sentimental attachment because we see that he has taken our wounds and pain upon him. The Crucified asks of us a committed relationship to him. Father himself loved the world and gave his Only Son. The love that we rejected, the heart that we never understood, he shows again on the Cross. In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself. Father gave him a chalice to drink he drank it faithfully.

The chalice was death itself, the death that we incurred when we rejected life. In our darkness we preferred death than life and healing. On the cross he also showed the horror of death that we may not cling to it rather we may desire for grace and life.

Jesus was faithful to his relationship to the Father, even when he experienced abandonment, disgrace and utter failure. His words, “Do this in remembrance of me,” also must mean this fidelity. It is a growth to that moment when we approach him just to love him. Being at the foot of the cross is the best place to learn it. There we do not find a mighty hero but a God probably incapable of solving my problems.  But he is able to know my pain. At the foot of the cross, we cannot ‘do many things for God’ as we usually attempt to do. We can just be in silence just loving. In that love we believe in him, and that bond will be touching the heart of God. Because we have here trusted a God and loved, not even for a peace of mind, but in a useless God just for loving him.

Love deeply is a much more responsible choice. It does not base on benefits, but enables one another to love even deeper. In a normal life, we do good to be a good person and it does make a commitment and promise of benefit or reward. How much more is it a responsibility when it is based on love.  Here sin can be better understood as loosing of such a commitment and makes wounds in that relationship of love. If it is true the pain of the wound itself will ask for re-commitment for a reciprocal belonging in love even in a moment we are unable to love ourselves. Being under the foot of the cross we must experience, we are really being accepted and loved in the silence and weaknesses of the Cross.

Sin and Punishment is an easy spirituality which keeps us childishness working on reward and punishment. It may have its own ways of enabling adherence to God. But growing into a responsible relationship to the Crucified is deeper, mature and lasting. It demands more, our heart.

The Anointing, a Burial

The Anointed One

For the Anointed Servant, the anointing in the redeeming function really meant a burial. For the Anointed One of God, anointing did not mean exaltation. In relation to humanity the anointing is the uniqueness of Jesus. He was anointed by God, and for us.

The Messiah had to take on himself the pain and suffering made by the destructive powers. All the darkness and death he nailed to the cross and buried them in his flesh. Without the Anointed, the Anointing, and burial there can be no priesthood, no Eucharist, nor a communion.

In one way or the other a Priest is a bearer of death, lifelessness or grace-lessness experienced by people. He takes on to himself their bruises. It makes Messiah tear his own flesh and shed his blood. He and his will had to be buried within the salvific plan of the Father.

To transform a bread into his immolated body, to extend the sacrifice to anyone who would believe in him, He anticipated the pain of the cross although his life. So intense was his desire to take upon himself the dryness and lifelessness that at the cross he cries out in reality, “I Thirst” to the extent in him there was no more life left. So intense was the way he felt the estrangement of humankind from God that he cried out, “Father, why have you abandoned me.” He buries beneath the bread all that he suffered along with the anointing with which he took it up. Any one who partakes of it, participates in the immolated sacrificial body of the anointed in which is buried various kinds of our deaths. We can touch those mysteries within the bread because we find our sorrows immolated therein.

In him, in his body, in the bread we find the possibility of our sorrows, wounds, loneliness, rejection and insecurities being anointed; not just ‘mine’ alone but we find the struggle of all of us. If I receive the anointing, I too can extend my wounds and pain in communion with them making up one body of Him who is the anointed one.

It demands the most sincere intention and strong will, to be anointed; not for being exalted but to be buried, to take upon us the sorrows and groaning of the lifeless, and to pour out lifeblood over those woundedness. Lifeblood of the anointed becomes the ointment for healing.

My Today, My Ways of the Cross

Hosanna to my Saviour

Hosanna is the word for praise today. Hosanna means ‘God who saves’, ‘God who cares’, ‘God who loves’.  We have entered into the week of the Passion of Christ. It is a time to closely watch and experience God who saves, God who cares, God who loves in the different events that we will be participating in this week. In one way we are trying to find the depth of meaning of these events God has done for us in Jesus. So Jesus invites us to watch attentively the journey of the passion. We listen to every word that is spoken by Jesus, we repeat every sincere word that is spoken of him and to him. Every step of that journey is redemptive and our watchfulness helps us to appropriate the power of redemption into those areas of our life where we need God in being saved, being loved and being cared.

Jesus also invites us to imitate these events in our life. As the images of the Passion scenes are there in our mind, it is not merely a resembling of those events but really living them in our life as we go through our own daily ways of the Cross. Prophet Isaiah speaks in the image of the Suffering Servant of Yahweh, “Each morning he wakes me to hear, to listen like a disciple. The Lord has opened my ear” (Is 50/4). God awakes his servant in suffering and gives a listening ear to see his pains touched by the grace of God.

The week of the passion is a time also to see our own pains in a graceful manner. To open our own wounds before others and acknowledge them as our identifying mark before them though they caused us harm, humiliated us or destroyed us. Jesus said: “See my wounds”. He was not ashamed because he was undergoing fatigue or because he was wounded. There was a flow of grace in his failures and woundedness. We are also unjustly condemned, betrayed and rejected. Perhaps we are ashamed of those who belong to us. Here in this week, it is a time we allow God’s grace flow into our pains. Then at the resurrection we can look at our own wounds and cry out, “My Lord, and my God”. Jesus endured suffering and entered into glory not because he was a hero. He did everything in living the faithfulness to the Father. There was a proud belonging to the Father. It is in this fidelity our pains are being transformed into the image of the passion of Jesus.

Glory is Our Inheritance

God will sanctify us and glorify us, 
Now Listen to Him whom he has glorified.

In our daily life, we are moving through a process of choices. Every choice takes us towards life or away from life. Strength to make these worthy choices is the constant awareness of the covenant. The covenant of the Old Testament was, "I will be your God and you will be my people." One who was faithful to the covenant was righteous and worthy of being 'God's people'. 

New Covenant was written not by human hands but by the Holy Spirit; was written not on stone tablets but on human hearts. the covenant was established not by human sacrifice, but by the sacrifice of the Son of God. One who believes in this covenant and lives it through the help of the Holy Spirit is worthy of being ' God's children'. Path of the Holy Spirit will teach us the great value of simple choices in fulfilling this covenant. each one is a step in the journey from decay and corruptibility to glory. It is not an incomprehensible mystery but is concerning our transformation into the image of Jesus. In Jesus we see the heart of God but the glory was hidden. The glory of His divinity was natural but he emptied himself of it and lived as one like us. His relationship with the Father was what he radiated in every value he lived. Being true to the covenant that trains us in the freedom of the Children of God, also means to be true to the values of Jesus. At heart it is a freedom to offer one's life as Jesus did. He humbled himself.... learned obedience through suffering. In every choice he lived it because he was, in his relationship to the father, fulfilling the will of the Father. We can understand it and begin to live it only if we watch and integrate the passion of Jesus into our life. What he has won, he will win for us too.

Beginning from the reality of our today, through the realisation of our true image - God's beloved children - we grow. The path is the Words of Christ. The voice from the cloud said: "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased", This is my beloved Son, Listen to Him". In an ordinary household background his mother too gave a word' "Listen to him."

God will sanctify us and glorify us, Now Listen to Him whom he has glorified.

God saw their efforts

(First week of Lent Wednesday Jonah 3/1-10; Lk 11/29-32)
Today's readings opens for us People speaking God's Word and people listening in honest heart. We hear that God saw all the efforts they made to turn away from their evil ways and he relented. Wonderfully, the King and the people alike repented and saught for the way of the Lord. Same announcement of the Word of God was spoken in Israel also, through the prophets and later through Jesus. Not all opened themselves to the Promise of Salvation. One important reason that raised obstacles for an honest listening and faithful response was that they were misguided by false prophets who spoke of prosperity and authenticity in the name of Yahwey.

How much is the effort we make to turn away from evil ways?
Do we identify the false prophets who give us logical reasons to question the messages of God.

Seeds of the Gospel

(First week of Lent Tuesday Is 55/10-11; Mt 6/7-15)

“Let there be”: God said and things came to be. The same creating word is active throughout the time till this moment. It does not return to Him empty without accomplishing its purpose. As the rains water the ground and provides seed to the sower and fruit to the hungry so does the word of God to our lives making it meaningful and fruitful. In our human living we seek for meaning to our lives. There is a meaning to each moment we live, each act we do and each person we relate to. If not, there will not be a hope for the future nor do we find any worth of the past we lived. How can we find a fruitful meaning? May every moment of our lives be object of our meditation, reflection and recollection. Because they are blessed by God, gifted to us by God as grace-filled moments. That is what we meditate: “How the grace of God has accompanied our lives”. When in celebration or when we wept alone, dressed up our children or sat with our aged parents, comforted someone with a lovely kiss or took them to heart by a deep embrace, when we received spittle on our face and were crucified, grace accompanied us. It does give meaning, and the past we lived was worth living. In parallel to our own life events we find grace-filled lives in the scriptures; lives of people who lived a relationship with God. How God’s blessing accompanied them in their longings, efforts and failures. They are not just their stories but they are our stories too; stories of how God builds, consoles and raises us up. Thus we find meaning of our lives in ever creative power in the word of God. We are given a special personal message and a story to live as part of the sacred scriptures. Then always our reference point is Jesus who is Word made flesh. He shows the truth and meaning of our lives and enables us to become like him; to live and love like him and like him sacrifice our lives as ransom for many. Christ is the nearest possibility that we can become if we want to live a life meaningful and fruitful. We are not just to become the field for a good harvest. We have to be fruitful. But the potentiality that we have is to be a seed worth to sprout and build up a new generation. The word is spoken to us and the grace is given to us that we become the seeds of the gospel. Thus we live within the scriptures carrying a message for the new generation.

Give us, Father, the daily rain; the grace for daily sustenance.

Sacramental Possibility of Human Life

(First Week of Lent Monday Lev 19: 1-2, 11-18; Mt 25/31-46)

God’s holiness is manifested in His glory, power, love, compassion, kindness, forgiveness …

His beauty, strength, wisdom and swiftness are desirable. We are taught to do it by the Law that the Lord has given us. Thus we are partaking in the holiness of God.

If we desire the beauty of God in us, we desire to have noble thoughts, noble words and dignified actions in us. It is necessary to keep watch whether the inputs that we receive everyday give us a deeper growth in the beauty of God. It would include the content and nature of what we read, see, the music we listen etc.

We need to be strong too. Just as we take care of our physical health we need to be taking care of our emotional and spiritual health. If we find ourselves ‘sick’ we must seek healing. Real introspection is to be done having courage to see our own inner realities. Just knowing itself will heal much of the illness bring us to well being. What we really require is sincerity of life to open up our life before the Lord and to see clearly when the Lord opens for us the true story of our life. We will know the reasons for our prejudices and dissensions. If we find ourselves healthy we need to keep ourselves away from sickening conditions.

We also participate in the holiness of God by sharing in his wisdom which is a process of growth granted to us in sincere devotion. Here there is an obligation of intellectual reflection which can form a conscience for the world as Christ would desire. Trend of the new time is lawlessness. Wisdom is to be inculcated in disciplinary practice.

God’s swiftness, omnipresence may be shared to us if we are open to have multiple perspectives in seeing reality; that of ourselves and of what concerns us. Of course it is also a mode of wisdom.

Lent is a training time which helps us in entering into these divine qualities, at least to desire for it. There we will see God’s power, kindness, wisdom etc extending through our daily actions, though difficult. At the end, if we are sincere with ourselves we will see it is God who is there at the giving end and at the receiving end; one who feeds the hungry and the one who is fed, as a good Samaritan and as the wounded traveller; one who clothes and adorns and on who is clothed. Yes, God’s holiness, glory and power are revealed in the sacramental possibility of human life especially in human body.

Produce First fruits in the Season of Lent

(First Sunday of Lent – Deut 26/ 4–10; Rom 10/8-13; Lk 4/1-13)

Jesus does undergo a test in the desert. There, in the wilderness the word of God is tested of its accuracy and power. But as Jesus said, wisdom is proved by her actions. In him there is a wise reading and prudent use of the Word of God. He knows that the Word comes through His mouth are really from His heart and only one who knows the heart can know what the meaning of the Word is. Acting foolishly, guided by the misinterpretation of the word cannot bring power of the Word. Word has no magical power, that mere utterance can bring liberation to the human life. The Word and the author of the Word has to enter into our hearts. The prophet calls for it: “Rend your hearts, and not your garments, and turn to the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, patient and rich in mercy, and ready to repent of the evil.” (Joel 2/13).

To find such a God we need to go into the core of the Word of God. As the Aramaean wanderer we may be refugee in the strangeness of the Word. In the ignorance of the Word we may find misery. But to those hearts that longs to listen to his word He provides “a flaming pillar of fire as a guide for people’s unknown journey, and a harmless sun for their glorious wandering.” (Wisdom 18/3)

We are led to the Promised Land where milk and honey flow, where there is green pastures. Unless we rent our own hearts we dig out aimlessly on the peripheral. As we go to the heart we are filled with gratitude and begins to bring fruits of the soil. We bow down before him rejoicing in the first fruits, with hearts filled with gratitude. There the Word of the Lord is not used for selfish needs, heroic glory or assimilation of power. God’s Word is all powerful. Trying to manipulate and take a monopoly of the Word of God will not reveal God at all. It only brings promises from devil.

Ready to be Healed?

The Sick Needs a Physician, not the Healthy

Yesterday the question was “why is it that your disciples do not fast?”

Today’s question is, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners”?

Mere fasting was expected to make them virtuous but left them non-growing, because the very act served to judge others sinful and irreligious. The so called sinners were justified not because of their sinfulness but because they approached the possibility of being well again. There may be painful treatment and bitter medicines but the sick willing to be healed are ready to take it. Those who claim to be all right, being afraid to be healed, always deny their own limitations and condemn even the presence of God among the weak.

Fasting of the Disciples of Christ

'Dine' at the 'table of the poor'.

The bread we eat helps only for our survival. The fasting from such food should help us to seek nourishment that will make us find our own faces and recognize the face of the Other. From preservation of life to extension of life.

Human beings live not on bread alone 
but on every word that comes from the mouth of God Mt 4/4

They live by the word which focuses on to love your God, love your neighbour and love your Self. From one side fasting is not to eat the bread that perishes, on the other side fasting is to eat more and more of the word that fills them with life.

Do not work for the food that perishes, 
but for the food that endures to eternal life Jn 6/27

Food provides energy and dynamism; one who eats of word of life will have that power to break barriers and dine at 'the table of the poor'.

Listen from the prophet Isaiah 58/ 6 – 11

Is not this the sort of fast that pleases me:

 to break unjust fetters, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break all yokes?

Is it not sharing your food with the hungry, and sheltering the homeless poor; if you see someone lacking clothes, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own kin?

Then your light will blaze out like the dawn and your wound be quickly healed over. Saving justice will go ahead of you and Yahweh's glory come behind you.

Then you will cry for help and Yahweh will answer; you will call and he will say, 'I am here.' If you do away with the yoke, the clenched fist and malicious words,

if you deprive yourself for the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, your light will rise in the darkness, and your darkest hour will be like noon.

Yahweh will always guide you, will satisfy your needs in the scorched land; he will give strength to your bones and you will be like a watered garden, like a flowing spring whose waters never run dry.

You shall Live

Happy is the one who has placed one's trust in the Lord

Death may have entered our life just because of our own choices.

Lent is a time we train our life to be in the mode of living.

More than mortifications, it is a time for attaching ourself to the source of life.

"You have prepared a body for me; I have come to do your will."

Human life is a possibility to do God's will;

a process which may invite for so many profound deaths.

Deaths profound, not leaving life

but breaking bindings and opening graves of preference.

Denial of self is to be oriented to doing God's will

Bear the crosses that await;

Follow, listen, obey are most difficult but includes the above.

Way of the shepherd,

seemingly unknown path,

crook and the staff.

Do that!

You shall live prosperously where you live.

He leads me to the green pastures.

My way,

Preferred path,

Freedom,

Heart begins to stray,

Pulled apart,

Broken.....

Death.

No, not death, I can live.

I choose to live!

You are Dust; But from Dust to?