Mercy received: A new confidence, new love

The image of the Divine Mercy is an image of the Risen Christ. Jn 20 19-28 can be a wonderful text to understand the message of the Divine mercy for someone who cannot read the full diary of St Faustina.

It is into a closedness and fear Christ comes close, and speaks to them in the consoling words, “Peace be with you.”

He calls Thomas from his search, and shows his wounds. “It is me, Thomas, put your finger on the marks of the nails, and keep your hand on my pierced side, and believe.”

God desires that we go close to him with sincere heart. God is open to welcome, accept build us once again. This open and welcoming heart of God is the mercy we reflect on. We may be afraid, closed, broken, bitter, and lost. God’s mercy is available for us. We can join our pains and woundedness to the wounds of Christ. He will offer us confidence, strength, hope and new love.

He breathed on them and said, “receive the Spirit, if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Forgiveness for us is not an act of kindness, but an action of power and work of the holy Spirit. To offer such kind of forgiveness we need to be confident of being forgiven ourselves. To forgive and be forgiven is the way of peace.

The message of hope here is that God’s kindness can overcome all sins, and bring peace to the world. Though in the midst of troubles and fears, only our confidence in the divine benevolence can heal us of our divisive attitudes, hate, and fights for domination.

It was very much message of hope and consolation especially in the context of the World war I. Though the worse one was yet to come people were already in fear and hopelessness. They could not see any sign of the presence of God.

To this context the Divine mercy is a concrete proposal which require concrete application.

Asking for God’s mercy includes humble acceptance of our own arrogance and hardness of heart, sincere effort to remove every form of suspicion, daring to come out of closedness and narrow securities. He will enter into our rooms and show mercy to us.

More than we plead for mercy, mercy is an invitation that we confidently trust in the heart of love,  and go to him.

It is very important for us that we learn to trust as it is an act of sincerity and faith. As we place our trust in Jesus, Jesus also asks us to learn to trust in our spouse, family members, neighbours, nations, communities ...As war begins from heart the building of peace also begins at heart and our attitudes. As the saviour shows his mercy and heals us, he asks us to turn this mercy into action, “Be merciful.” It goes beyond a mere 3 O’ clock devotion or a prayer in the name of divine mercy.

All these graces and mercy are directed towards the communion with God. St. Faustina says that all these graces and wonders are like ornaments. What really forms our human nature and bring to completion is our relation with God. This sanctity is the grace and mercy lived in our life. Perhaps it was such a realisation that happened in Thomas when he said, “My Lord, an my God.”

Dangerous Paths of ‘faith’

Violence, war, and terror are of course horrible, but fear, hatred, and insecurity are at their roots.

Intense tragedy of the much exalted ‘new world’ is the crisis of self and identity. In a personal way we are challenged on the very worth and meaning of human existence; sense of belonging and purposefulness of life is threatened. It also scattered the structures of traditional religions and cultures. 

Self preservation is a powerful motive to fight the challenges, but when it becomes the purpose itself it can turn hostile and arrogant. Discovering an identity and gaining a sense of meaning in life is the search of many youth today. Unfortunately our systems do not facilitate persons in their quest for identity within the worth of one’s human self. So they tend to bind themselves with religious, political or national ideologies.

The ‘New World’ also challenged the traditions and structures of religion. So from their side the new culture, especially of the industrial world was an apparent threat to many traditional cultures. Every tradition has struggled to survive or face the perceived decline of faith. Instead of understanding the human condition amidst this new situation, religions took a different turn in becoming identity providers at the cost of their essence that was needed to be cultivated. There were also formation of many movements for this preservation mode to be intensified. Morality is to safeguard the conduct of persons and community. When the moral law, which has a culture at its origin, becomes an ideology, its strict following marks the identity of being faithful to religion. 

Movements for esteemed individual right and freedom also became new faiths. Secularism and atheism had their own ideologies to stand for. Often, they remained more in hostility to the systems they opposed than cultivating the values they stood for. So their values were always in opposition to something rather than aiming at the integral development of human person and community.

In both these phases the danger begins when they love to cultivate a sense of insecurity and victimhood. It is well reinforced with the personal and professional crisis of today. It is this crisis that make many to give up their profession, and chose commitment to religion (of course there are people who are really motivated in an in-depth experience). Often the religion becomes their new profession and brand identity. The emphasis they make on others is highly demanding and it often hurts others. For them, they are the only true, authentic and faithful believers. They meticulously practice religion, and show arrogance to the ‘failure’ of others in practicing faith.

Cultivation of sense of victimhood and fear alarms anyone to safeguard against any potential danger. It can also make people suspicious even when we are in a peaceful situation. We are taught to generalise these threats spatially (everywhere), and temporally (throughout the ages) though they may have occurred in different contexts. Those look for advantage will also fill hostility and revenge along with the sense of being a victim. 

There is also wrong identification of the ‘enemy’ when we continue the generalisation. “The church is against the secular world,” “the secular society and atheists always want to damage the church,” “they all have a terrorist attitude” etc are baseless, and we are making separating walls for ourselves.

Who is the trickster? It may be difficult to recognise. If we once again look at the matter of self preservation, the struggle to survive is always a struggle to win. Here it may me a craze to rule. It is ‘me’ that is involved though I may have no power to rule at all. When the ideology dominates over, it is my own victory, and we look forward to that day. The slavish mentality to an empire continues to be in an un-reflected submission to an ideology, even religion. The emperor, my hero rules and there I too rule. One emperor, one nation, one culture, one faith ... all have this craze to dominate. 

The emperor’s conquest, the colonial domination has not gone away. They have come back in corporate economic powers. They well use the religious, political struggles for their benefit becoming supporters and defenders often controlling governments. Who invest control the governments that ‘fight’ for establishing peace? Who aims at domination of a region that is accused of terror? 

Politics, being the system of governance, moulds on power. Often their soft target is intimate ‘faith’ of people. They do manipulate the crisis and turn it on their advantage. In US and the middle east it may be religious beliefs, in Europe it may be a cry for freedom and rights, in Asia it may be ethnicity, language, nation, and culture. The above mentioned process of cultivating fear of destruction, hostility and revenge would be well designed to achieve their purpose. Today the possession of power is to run business, extract resources and evacuate people by using made up reasons. They do create unrest so that they can still convince the people of the nearing threats.

Check at the roots of radical groups or movements asking the true faith and fidelity, there is a businessman, a trader. The innocents trust their commitments, make sacrifices, live for the faith in their innocence, and die if asked. Their innocent sacrifices, believed to be in the name of God or principles, go for the whims and fancies of these traders at the head. Tragedy of it is either the governments benefit from such religious businessmen or the religious structures. So they rarely look into what happens to the innocents and their personal life fulfilment after having gone behind such movements. In the name of preserving our traditions and fighting for our rights they follow piety, gather on streets as they are told, vote as they are directed. The innocent sacrifices come to nothing after the desired purposes are met. There the innocents become the real victims.
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Personal (identity) crisis or life satisfaction added with professional crisis seeking for an identity in religion results religious fanaticism.

Abandoning their profession and responsibilities receives magnified interpretations to be 'great sacrifice.' They begin to defend their adaptation of religion, and the rigidity is forced upon the community where one tries to be a hero. There one receives social recognition, become an honored hero, not bossed over by anyone.
Religion becomes an identity supplier at the cost of many who suffer under the rigidity of such 'ideal' heroes. Those innocents do everything in the name of faith, and the heroes do their business.________________________
See also Humanity ... Spiritualities, that we may not all perish 

The Breaking of the Bread

"They recognised Him in the 'breaking of the bread'"

'Breaking of the bread necessarily involves three realities: Christ Himself who is present, the community that is formed in Christ, the bread, the sign, in which Christ is present sacramentally. 

The braking and sharing, and the presence happens in all these three.

If the 'breaking of the bread,' and the worship of the presence of Christ is only 'bread focused' it limits itself from its full meaning and possibility of becoming the life-source.

Rise

May the power of the resurrection enable us to offer a new life to many deaths that we have brought to ourselves.

We may have learned to sing and dance by seeing and hearing the birds and animals our companions. High mountains, gentle rains, the river flows, scorching summer, and the seasons of scarcity... were also offering some spiritual sense of life, power, beauty, care, plenitude...

Mountains are levelled today, and the heaps of waste become new mountains. if at all any greenery or river remain they are likely to become locations for resorts, tourism; a commodity to be enjoyed, not a home to live in. There is no soul in a spirituality if it has no place for the natural world and our place in it. Our spiritual vision is often constrained and framed within a number of definitions like body-lust-sin, satan-idol-commandments, atonement-ransom-redemption, traditions-piety-customs. They neither help us to open our vision beyond our limitations, nor do they enable us to relate beyond boundaries as Christ envisioned. No moral teaching can guide us to form a culture of life without knowing the tender dynamics that nature shows.

It is through the same Word that became flesh that the whole world was created and is cared and brought to the purposes of each one. It is a response to the Word itself that the human consciousness makes responsible interactions with nature. The life of the resurrection has to give new life to the structure of human consciousness. Nature was not just at the background but they were actively involved at the birth, baptism, whole of his public ministry, death and resurrection.

The wisdom of the Word that is revealed in us grows and comes to its completion with the interactions we make with the community of creatures shaped by the same wisdom of the Word. They are mutually enhancing and rising relations, they are the grace bonds to be lived in our own living environment. The wonder at seeing a blooming flower, the fragrance of woods and flowers, the melody of birds and small creatures, the shining stars ... are the early lessons of spirituality. To pat on a little flower, or an ailing wound without letting it feel pain is the inner power of the resurrection.

May our sincere sobbing that longs to grow to a new life make a growing tension to break out and rise up as we prepare to meet the risen Lord at the dawn. This inner struggle of life springing forth has to come in our vision of reality, values and our inner culture.

Do our meditations on the newness of life make us to put our efforts to give a new life to the springs that have dried up?
Are we able to learn that there is some value in this natural world that is so alive?
Can we avoid eating for enjoyment and limit it for our sustenance?

The power of the resurrection has to grow into a living internal culture. It has to function as our convictions, visions, and commitments. Gradually it might grow into a shared responsibility and a common dream, and then we will begin to see the abundance of life; the joy of the resurrection. May flowers, birds, animals, humans, rivers and forests all rise in a new life as a community of the living.

#returntothedust

The First Station: The Grateful Heart of Christ

'Jesus is condemned to death' is not the first station. The grateful heart of Christ is the beginning of the Way of the Cross. We cannot make any sacrifice or become a sacrifice without growing in gratitude. He does not want us to remind ourselves of the torments we gave him and put a blame on us once again. But a since re effort to walk on the path that Jesus walked - that is the way of the cross.

The first station - Two things we need to meditate on his grateful heart. 

One: Gratitude towards his own life and about the pain that he was to endure. He was thankful because he believed that his sacrifices were accepted, and because he lovingly accepted the will of the Father though it was bitter.

Two: Who understands this thanksgiving sacrifice and lives it? They are ordinary people, the babes. They find their God in their little joys and small complaints, and they know that God accepts both. They also know that pain and struggles are part of their life and God is there.
This wisdom is hidden from the Know-all, and the super-pious categories of people. They cannot pass the first station. How will they live the way of the Cross?

Crosses: Fake and Real

Let us sincerely show our crosses to Christ, with all their heaviness, pain, shame and complaints. Our struggles in loving, forgiving, understanding, sufferings and enduring, loneliness, pain, weaknesses and temptations, yet our sincere efforts trusting in the grace of God - that is our real cross, the life-giving one. Christ will be ready to die on those crosses with lot of love pouring out his life into them, and a new life to us.

Christ will not come to die on the fake crosses we make, crosses that we make by thinking 'I am doing or sacrificing this and that for Christ.' We must recognise the salesmen of such fake-crosses who say that we must do this and that for the love of Christ. They neither help us to recognise our real crosses, nor do they enable us to take our crosses to Christ. They want to promote the crosses they want to promote.

They are the modern-day money-changers of the temple.

Christ that cannot rise

Christ is to be loved and lived,
First we nailed him,
then we idolised him;
it is then he became dead to humanity.
Idols do not have resurrection;
after idolising him,
one cannot expect the power of his resurrection.

To the living one, our relationships are to be of the living.
we don't have to be true before idols,
we just need to perform 'some things' that they say pleasing to god.
we do really well, we chose to fake

We are acting well, for someone and something,
and they say that they are all pleasing to God.

God is mourning,
over God's own death.

Virtual Prayers

Can digital/virtual reality bring about a sacramental presence?
No? Then, what is effective in the online 'praise and worship,' ministries, and adorations?
If 'yes,' why not communion and confessions?
and if it is the faith that matters, then what is the significance of the sacraments in the natural signs, by prescribed ministers and places?

Added to that, 'adorations' and 'praise and worship' in 'our channel' is what is bringing the divine presence! If we are not careful, our fascination for those promoted 'our channel/ministries' gradually turn out to be digital addiction. Whether the content is 'spiritual' or not, the effect that the digital reality makes is the same.

We can raise our lives to God, but it is not fitting when some as if the same sacramental participation is made possible especially in adorations. We cannot pray or worship from a virtual self of ourselves and of God.

Faith does matter, and the divine presence can avail graces and blessings for the people in prayer. But this takes the form of a digital marketing when 'our channel' monopolise the blessings of God where 'our channel' is the focus, not God who is benevolent.

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Sacraments are those natural signs which makes a God-human encounter possible in our lives. They do share something of our own human realities. It must also be said that sacraments are only sacraments, signs that brings alive the reality, and it is not reality itself in its completeness.