The Word became flesh that we may find him in the flesh.
As we approach the baby Jesus, his presence asks us to stretch our selves to touch his flesh in our ordinary life situations. Simeon was led by a promise, and found its completion in a simple family from Nazareth.
Just as the star guided the magi to the manger, the divine light in our hearts guide us to meet him in the other.
We are preparing for the coming of Jesus. Actually, it is an attempt to experience Jesus a bit more closely. We want to see the baby Jesus lying in the manger, and love him. In loving him, we also experience his love for us. The incarnation is the gift to us where we find the meeting point of divine love for us and the human love for God.
One beautiful image we have in the Bible to express this experience is of a shepherd. A shepherd in the Bible is not a leader in the sense of administration. Instead, the shepherd images evoke the sense of care, embrace, love, security, and sacrifice. So, preparing for the coming of Jesus, today, invites us to experience the care, embrace, and the lifegiving nature of God as though in the arms of a shepherd.
The Gospel today spoke of the sheep that was found once again by the shepherd. There is consolation, comfort or healing of injuries happening, being in the shepherd’s care. We tend to fall down, but the Word, constant listening to the shepherd sustains our choice to live. Being close to the heart of the shepherd, we find being led to the source of life once again. There we find the baby lying in the womb of God.
Christ was born from mother Mary. Christ, as a baby, is not going to be born in us, but Christ will be born from us through the working of the Holy Spirit. The warmth of the shepherd’s bosom is not to put us in a sleepy stage, but to be awake and alive. There will be great rejoicing at our growth into the fullness of Christ little by little.
He is like a shepherd feeding his flock,
gathering lambs in his arms,
holding them against his breast
and leading to their rest the mother ewes.
Governance and authority of God is not in a Theocratic system, it is in communion. God holds all things in being. In him all things live, move, and have their being. Concerning the authority of Christ, we must reflect deeply on the verses:
"in him were created
all things in heaven and on earth:
everything visible and everything invisible,
Thrones, Dominations, Sovereignties, Powers –
all things were created through him and for him.
Before anything was created, he existed,
and he holds all things in unity."
An 'emperor/kingly Christ' is too less to explain it.
As communion is the way of God's governance, the body of Christ must have the life style of communion as the self-authority working within the body. Whole creation is part of the body, the church where Christ is the fullness. The models of authority shaped towards communion may help us to experience a new pathway to experience the reality of 'in him we (together) live, move, and have our being.
Our desire/ prayer that 'your will be done' may be the best way to acknowledge the authority over our life. If that is sincere, we will be seeking the mind of Christ in our words and deeds. It will lead us to stand for peace and reconciliation. Peace is not simply relaxation, free of tension, and calm and cool. Peace is the fruit of manifold ways of desiring and working for life to be filled in everyone and everywhere. That is the will of the Father.
Pope Emeritus Benedict xvi spoke to the Franciscan University in Steubenville that the Second Vatican Council was not only meaningful, but it was necessary.
We all have a normal human growth. Similarly we also need to have a growth in spirituality and life of prayer. Perhaps a time of wonder, curiosity are initially necessary. Perhaps we may be guided or corrected by the fear of a punishment. We cannot remain there. We need to grow to an adolescent infatuation, to a mature romance and a conjugal bond.
God's choice is not that he picks up some and leaves others. Choice is a subjective experience of having been able to respond to the revelation of God, a message to a time. Since it's open for all its not a preferential privilege to some.
Race, ethnicity, nationality, and religion have been used to claim purity and elitism. It automatically condemned 'others' and separated them, promoted hatred and suspicion. It grows dangerous as God is fixed within this corrupt purity. It can never produce holiness and establish justice and peace that God wills.
St Paul maintained a distinction between children according to the body and the children according to the promise. Children according to the body is bound to the purity according to their race, language, religion... Children of the promise share joyfully the gifts of God, and make the presence of God a living reality. Jonah had closed God within his own laws, morality, and people, but he had to learn that God cares for all. The universality of God's love is the sign of Jonah. The strange thing there is that it was the 'others' the lawless people who were open to the message of God as soon as they heard it. Even Jonah resisted against the message that God's salvation extends to all nations.
Children of the promise, according to St Paul, was those coming to follow Christ, who share in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The children of the promise deepen its meaning and breaks forth itself in the initial announcement of the angels, "Peace to people of Good will." In them the Spirit is alive and active, and Christ is made visible. It was when meeting the 'good' people in pagan land the church began reflecting whether it is not improper to consider these good people may be deprived of heaven. Today, we may see 'even among godless' people there are good people, very good people. Do they not share the joys of the kingdom of God? There is a usual saying that it is not just enough to do good, but one must know Christ. Who has known Christ? One who clams to have known Christ and keep many people away in condemnation or a 'godless' one who exercised some Christ-like attitudes?
Then should we not preach? Should we not evangelize? yes, teaching to walk like Christ loving every one, seeing the care and mercy of God for everyone, and seeing that happily. Kingdom of God is not in our devotions, prayers, and laws. It is in "righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit" which is made available for all. "The only sign it will be given is the sign of Jonah." God can not be in custody of some religion, culture, or tradition.
Modernity gathered people from all around to cities, and became a profit producing power. It mixed many peoples and suggested secularism concerning religion, and globalism concerning economics, politics and culture. Modernity's perfect human and society never came even amidst all its 'progress.' While economy maintains its monopoly in a global sense, in politics and culture nationalism with 'its own religion' takes the new political current. Nationalism, traditionalism, populism are a super mix glue which is changing today's political equations. The populist affirmation and intensification in culture regarding traditions is just politics, nothing about religion. Unfortunately for us today, that sense of religion is the true and original religion.
Christianity may understand its own faith deeper, and its significance for the future if it can free itself from anthropocentric cosmology and soteriology. Can our 'faith seek understanding' of our faith other than 'human salvation.' Human salvation is central to Christian faith, but God's nature itself cannot be conditioned to our salvation alone. God's gratuitous and providential dwelling among us (the community of whole creation) is to be contemplated. We may begin to live in a world which is not a condemned world.
Creation is much larger than the human world. The what, and the how of it is just begun to unravel before us. Is God absent in what and how? Is God found only in the 'why'? It is the utter failure of an 'external divine' presence, as though someone planning and running a machine. Physics - (why) alone is not a proof for God. Why Christianity has to trust so much in the God of the gaps and distance God away more and more as what's how's and why's get answered? Where is the contemplation of the Logos before and after the thirty-three years of Christ?
With an anthropocentric orientation we may not grasp neither why nor what nor how of anything, even the human lives. Then what about Divine mysteries through narrow anthropocentric thrust?
Jerusalem was of course a private pride which was denied to foreigners, 'sinners,' women and children. Jesus was not going to place himself in the holy of holies. Jesus moves towards Jerusalem where the most shameful and cursed death was awaiting him. Neither the Samaritans, nor even his own disciples were prepared to understand the self emptying Jesus was undergoing in order to bring life and heal many hostilities that threaten our lives. Even the disciples have only the language of fire and destruction.
Job cursed the day of his birth. Once Job had everything and now he is left with nothing; nobody is near to stand with him. His questions are directed to God, only God he finds to talk to. Job finds God worthy of praise even when all his skin will have rotten. When ones own existence becomes one's greatest threat, it is a fall into a big churn of chaos. Will something come inside there to weave threads that bring order?The Pharisees were not happy hearing the parable of the insincere steward. Because, the text itself says, they loved money. The parable of the rich man and the Lazarus was also addressed to the Pharisees. The purple and linen clothes of the rich man resembles the status dresses of the Pharisees praying in market places. Both the rich man and the Pharisees neglected the poor. The rich man enjoyed his meals being blind to the hunger of others, and the Pharisees celebrated their righteous condemning the 'sinners.'
For the Gospel preached by Jesus, these were foolish. They never found peace in themselves nor with God. The Rich Fool collected everything and stored them in locked rooms. The steward mishandled money cannot get through into the the peace of the kingdom through his shrewdness. The Pharisee did not go home justified even after listing all his 'holy' acts. The rich man is more significant today than any other. The richness possessed by the rich is legally owned and they have no obligation to be mindful of the poor. The question is why the poor cannot grow and why they are oppressed under the powerful. Storing, spending, consuming, and judging here in these cases can be seen totally against the will of God and function as oppressive and unjust mode of living. In a time we speak of largest economies what are we to boast about when people are threatened by their own future and daily realities.
Dogs licking the sores of Lazarus shows the kindness the dogs showed in contrast to the neglect from the rich man, or the pathetic and helpless condition of Lazarus? However, the rich man had his own comfort world just like the Priest and the Levite in the Good Samaritan. They knew the Law and the Prophets, but somehow the law seemed saying to them that it is the punishment from God that people like Lazarus had to suffer. The good things he enjoyed is rightfully given by God for his righteousness. What is the use if the Gospel of the risen one is proclaimed to such closed people? They will not listen.
Generosity cannot be there if our hearts are not filled with gratitude. Only if we can break ourselves out of our chains we can approach the freedom and nourishment of life. Greed in storing, social acceptability created by crooked and unfaithful ways, being blind to the needy, judging with holiness code, all are due to lack of life within. Once life enters, it will shine as mercy and kindness.
Charismatic renewal was to renew the Church in the movement of the Holy Spirit. Instead, it took a shift to revivalist emphasis on devotions, hierarchy, and liturgy. What was to revive contained a great measure of white Christian nationalism. All these reflected in the 'visions' received by many gifted people. Economic success of Pentecostal worship also attracted many Catholics to imitate same pattern. When a few depended on the Holy Spirit most charismatic heroes who emerged were revivalists and profit oriented though everyone claims to have the Holy spirit.
Science is of course not the final word on reality. But true science is a great door today for us. Psychology, being the science of the 'soul' today we can have more clarity in the matters of virtues and vices. We still find shelter in the psychology of Plato and Aristotle and we are comfortable with their science of the soul. We may receive better depths of our souls in relation with the strengths and frailties we possess.
However, virtues have all the possibilities to lose if we do not practice them. Even we experience healing when we heal and comfort. We find mercy when we show mercy. Psychology may help us in understanding 'demons' in us and how they are attached to us. It may also help us in understanding the real difficulties in exercising virtues. The growth can be there only when we exercise virtues and make efforts. If we know the hurdles, it is easier to handle them.
As we grow, more will be given. which does not grow will gradually disappear.
All are invited to the table of the Lord, and all are there except for those who knowingly reject it. Jesus never avoided anyone. Those who missed the table were those who could not tolerate the 'unholy' along with themselves who were 'holy.'
Why do we need others also at the Lord's table? We can understand the fullness of Christ only if we are fed with the charism present in others. No one can expect to enjoy the Lord's table all alone.
Christianity has boasted over centuries that it is the whole and only body of Christ. Christianity as a religion is only one of the many members of the body of Christ. In order to understand the whole of Christ, we need to approach him not only as the family of humanity, but as the community of the whole of creation. The prophetic voices in this community are more evident and available to us in our time, thus widening our horizons to know Christ the Logos more fully.
Eucharist is the celebration of life, both the life of Jesus and the life of ours. Anytime when the Eucharist is limited to a church altar and the species of bread and wine it does not communicate what it really contains. God is life and giver of life. Jesus offered his life in a life that was self emptying and life giving. Even in the unjust death he suffered he poured out love and life. That life and love unite all of us into his own body, and through him take us into the communion with the Father.
Atonement figuration in connection with the Old Testament does not sufficiently hold what Jesus has done for us. Reparation, ransom, redemption, retribution and so on somehow condition God and constrains the understanding of the life that Jesus gives us. Divine life in us needs to be understood in terms of dynamics of life itself. Truth of Christ is as the life giver, though our emphasis goes to him as sin bearer. He himself is the reason for our life and in the whole of creation and the grace at work in us, even before he became man. This life, communion, and that reality lived in our life as forgiveness, reconciliation, sacrifice, love and communion together make the Eucharist.In a 1999 television miniseries named Jesus, the character of Mary Magdalene, in a conversation with Jesus, tells him, “if I was a man, I would be your most loyal disciple.”
Among the disciples of Jesus, dear friends, there were also many women disciples like Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna, accompanying Jesus and participating in his ministry (Luke 8:1-3). At the foot of the cross there were ‘many women’ witnessing his last moments (Matthew 27: 55-56). They name only a few - Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, Salome the mother of the sons of Zebedee, Jesus’ mother Mary and her sister, and Mary the wife of Clophas. Jesus, also learned from them that his ministry was not limited to particular groups and persons, but belongs to all who come to the master’s table (Mark 7:24-30; Matthew 15:21-28). Every event, intervention or conversation of Jesus with women expresses a very significant dimension of God’s attitude to the whole of humanity.
These women were accepted to the folk of Jesus’ disciples in a time when the customary morning blessings of the Jews thanked God for not making him a gentile, a woman, or a slave. Women were expected to be good wives and mothers and stay at home. In the synagogues and in the temple, they had a secluded section just for the women, separate from men. They had to walk seven feet behind their husbands when they were in public. A Rabbi would not talk to a woman, and some strict ones even avoided their sight.
We are all the children of God, there is no longer male and female; for all of us are one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28). Women in the company of Jesus ‘provided’ for their needs. It was not simply to perform some domestic tasks. Some of them funded his mission, and some were leaders and guardians of communities at the very beginning of the church. However, their identity was not defined by their wealth or status, but it was the fact that they had been “with him” that described them.
Some of the ancient writings show the life and vision nurtured by the women in the early church. It resembles the heart with which they loved and knew Jesus. Jesus was not a ruler and judge, but the teacher and mediator of wisdom. This relationship to Jesus generated an ethics of freedom and spiritual development than an ethics of order and control. Those who were more spiritually advanced shared what they had freely without claim to any fixed, hierarchical ordering of power, position or honour.
There was an emphasis on a loving relationship with the risen Christ through the Holy Spirit. This gentle touch of the Holy Spirit is experienced in the unity, power, and growth in the Spirit here and now, not in some future time. They were eager and committed to the realisation of the kingdom of God amidst them. So, overcoming social injustice and human suffering were seen to be integral to spiritual life. It was well reflected in works of charity, prophetic voices, and songs and music.
The women disciples of Jesus loved him, followed him, and shared in his ministry and stood by him even when he died. Jesus was not a relic in the tomb, he was alive, and a woman disciple witnessed it first because of her deep love.
Among us there are loyal women disciples of Jesus, who wait to anoint him even before dawn, who followed him closely, ministered to him, and proclaimed his Word. May the body of Christ, we the church, find new life under their care.
Losing something adds lot of pain to us. That pain may begin to reshape our life. It may be something very precious to our life. It may be a separation of a person, or a distance created in a relationship. Out of many experiences of love, one that we really experience deeply is the aspect of being found again, being accepted, and embraced. Other side of it is that we find something that has been lost.
Three parables in Luke 15 tell us the joy God has in finding us. A key to understand the good news Jesus shares with us is the very human relationships we have in our lives. Though not perfect in life, our own love, pain, betrayal, longing, thirst and so on are the doors to understand the way that God loves us. Having sufficient trust in order to believe in that love gradually leads us to experience the constant accompaniment of God. However sinful, broken, or destroyed we are, God walks with us is a reality. It is not that God comes to save us when we are in a crisis. God has been walking with us all through. Why, then, he did not intervene when the wrong happened? Actually there is no answer. Perhaps, God suffered vulnerability with us. But God is the source of life, and life assures new beginning. We can have sure confidence in the grace that is shining deep within ourselves as a dim light.
It is in letting ourselves to be found we can experience being found by God. This letting ourselves is on openness towards life, letting ourselves to be found as a brother/sister, father/mother, son/daughter, as the beloved, as a friend. We too extend ourselves to find 'them' once again into our life. Then there is an experience of joy in life, and an experience of God finding us, and finding God once again as source of our lives.
Celebration is not in spending, celebration is the sharing of joy. That is the challenge these parables place before us. The challenge is that whether we are able to share in the joy of God, to share in the joy of someone who has found what was lost, to share in the joy that someone has of being found by God or one's beloved ones. The righteousness of the Pharisees and Scribes in the Gospels had corrupted them in such a way that they were reluctant to celebrate.
It is the experience of the providence of God that enables us to trust in God deeply. It is the source of freedom that we find in God. This freedom alone can fill us with peace and joy. When we speak of Christian service, these are the elements that need to qualify it. That is a commitment in freedom.
The following of Christ necessarily generates this freedom. Because it is an encounter with truth and life, and develops a responsibility emerging from it. This freedom is inherently guided by prudence and wisdom. In that way freedom frees a person to seek the will of God whole heartedly.
Freedom is restricted when wisdom is attached to some schools and ideology. Mostly wisdom or knowledge is categorised into modes of transcendence. Real wisdom that guides the freedom of the children of God makes us descend to our daily reality and seek the will of God in every human condition. Gradually it also helps us for an indescence, to go deeper into our depths seeking the light of God.
The Word guides times and history,
so the true standard of judgment is the Word.Our past has shaped us into someone unique with special beauty and ugliness within. We may have to bear the burden and pain of the past. Future calls us to move with its own concerns. Even an afterlife fills us with great concern about its details.
"I am very regular to this programme in this channel," "I follow that writer/preacher/bishop," "I just wait for that spiritual magazine" so on may be familiar statements for us. We may be very faithful to the specifics of these visions and act accordingly. They are fine, unless and until they constrain our life within their frames. It is not easy to realise how our close affinities to these gradually turning into a bondage.
What, then, is to be found to walk without stumbling? One need to look deep into one's own mysteries, longing, sighs and pains. 'Put out' into the depth, what we find is the emerging image of Christ from our own depths. What heaviness presses it down? What closes the doors of our core?
Empty labour, failed attempts, harsh emptiness do suffocate us. There may be many more who are even more severely bearing similar helplessness. To our helplessness Christ would say, 'do not be afraid.' Having no fear in casting the net into the depths, having no fear in seeing the Christ image in our core, having no fear also in strengthening others in doing the same. That could be the meaning of 'catching men' in solidarity, kindness, care, action of justice and so on.
We belong to Christ. Belonging to Christ is not a political lineage. It means to be comforted in the providence of God. It is being rooted in Christ in relation to God as the children of God. Whether we are alive or dead we belong to God. Our beloved channels, programmes, preachers, Bible, the world, life and death, the present and the future, the afterlife concepts, are all our servants; but we belong to Christ.
Christ himself becoming a localized hero would disrupt the will of God. A Christ-cult is not what Christ asked his disciples. When he calls them to follow him it is to imitate him. We may have many fan associations of Christ. There God is not glorified, nor are we growing in his image.
'Growing into full maturity in Christ' is the purpose of a renewed humanity. It is a process from a state in denial of grace to a life lived with the working of grace, growth from a 'man of flesh' to 'man of the Spirit.' Many of our structures of institutions, theorization, customs and traditions stand in resistance to life, healing, and grace. Adherence to an idealized faith, a hero image, 'spiritual centre' when the growth in Christ is kept aside, is the emptiness that swallow even a 'spiritual man.'Healing, peace, nourishment and so on are disturbances to many. They do need some troubles in order to be at ease so that attacking on them they find their existence. if there is no trouble at all they may imagine, suspect or accuse some problems. Peace and reconciliation, what have you to do with us? they might ask. Life disturbs them.
The will of God is that all have life. It has to be the mind of anyone who says, 'your will be done.' To know the mind of God and to realise it in our life, we have received the Holy Spirit. The sign of the Spirit's presence is that we have the same mind of Christ.
Often Spirit is imagined to be power based, and rarely life based. Power is a craze and life is a ever comforting thirst. Life is an embrace. If we want to experience God, forget about all power images, earthquake, lightning, explosion, command, rule, conquer and so on. Instead, ask for the grace to imitate life patterns around.
To speak truth, to be service minded, we need courage and humility at the same time. Both concerns the truth of lives and a capacity to be compassionate. That capacity is the sincere desire to be like Jesus, assisted by grace.
What qualifies the simple faith? Is it believing anything blindly or doing anything without any further thought just because something is said to be in relation with God or religion? Does every religious or even very pious practice necessarily lead us to God?
Simple faith is about the surety or the confidence one finds because of one's deeper trust in God. Being pious or learning strict observance of devotional practices without that trust is not simple faith. If it was fine, any superstition can be called as simple faith. Younger generation today are in a danger of falling prey to it. They are led to a world of gods and piety, and made to believe that they are in a holy and godly space. They are led to a hallowed realm not at all in touch with the daily realities where God actually speaks. They are deceived.Throughout centuries, especially in recent years people have migrated to an alternative mental stage and call it as the kingdom of God. They find everything supernatural, godly, pure, holy, and perfect there. The unfortunate level of it is that these mental stages are projected to large crowds if some are able to convince others flocking in religious circle. Our temptation to imagine Godly abode as a perfect world, as a transcendent experience rejects God-with-us experience.
The nature of the kingdom of God that Jesus introduced to was not a superperfect, transcendent world. We did not have to wait for death to enter there. It was all about our trust in God, confidence in being in the hands of God. This sense of care received also places us in responsibility of mutual care of one another. So the experience of the kingdom of God is in the sense of providence, care, protection from God as we are children, and in the sense of gratitude for what we receive, and in the generosity, compassion, solidarity and justice they evoke. It does not become a matter of concern what will happen after death, whether we live for ever or we continue to be what we are and how etc. That is a matter in the providence and love of God. Even in the moments of pain there is hope in God. But we cannot be blind to the unjust pain inflicted to our brothers and sisters by some unjust system. It is part of the seeking of the righteousness of the kingdom to stand by the victims and hunger and thirst for justice along with the suffering people. The experience of the kingdom, in short, is living as the children of God.
We have rejected the kingdom of God that Jesus introduced by picturing it in metaphysical categories. Today the concept of the kingdom of God itself is in need of redemption bringing it into really humane or natural frame. It is necessary towards the way for the future.
Hope is not a pleasant feeling about the future. It is active and alive. It is not a mental compromise to adjust with present struggle and crisis. Hope generates a dynamism sprouting from the grace within. It gives us the way to walk. In times of miseries, hope enables us to be bonded in solidarity and empathy in order to walk together.
Climate, war, intolerance ... are on the rise. Disasters should not be a time of horrible destruction in an inhuman mode. In the time of disasters, only hope can help us to be humans of heart, compassion, sharing, solidarity, and cooperation.
The whole creation is striving for/ waiting for its fruition in union with God.
Mary, one among the creation, one among us,
