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?