Heavy is the pain and sorrow they carry

Some pains bury many other pains, whether physical or emotional. They may not even be affected by further injuries. There may be deepest sorrow, depression, fear, trauma … that bury a person within hiding walls. Unable to bear the pain, unable to manage the suffocation, unable to express it in words, they may speak in languages that may be strange to understand. Heavy is the pain and sorrow they carry. Often they are left out, and they struggle to break out into freedom. They are left to live in their tombs. They need us to rise from the tombs and walk towards home. God wants us to stretch our hands in care, consolation, strength and healing that they may experience the finger of God.

What disturbed Aquinas

Sufficiently understanding ‘what is God?’ might lead us to understand the question ‘who is God?’ It is the same question that led St. Thomas Aquinas reflect deeply on the essence of God. He grew spiritually dared to examine the mystery of God. Our (Dominican) contemplative tradition is a process that involves our mind, experiences, reading, contemporary events, that can lead us to a genuinely personal experience of God.

A ‘personal’ experience of God is neither an intellectual exercise nor an emotional fantasy. It is a search for the truth that becomes a prayerful dialogue. This dialogue engages the feelings as well as the intellect in order to avoid an impersonal exercise. True dialogue of prayer reflects on our virtue, fault, truth, or mystery, temptations, sickness, brokenness etc using the questions who, where, what, when, why, how, and with what help. Thus, the very search for the truth of God also enables our gaze onto the depths of ours.

Aquinas did not conceive God as a giant super-being who created the world through his skill and power, and using creation for his purposes. His world was not simply a gradation of being and seeing a super-perfection in God. Aquinas’ vision of the world has its origin, purpose, meaning, and goal within God himself. Creation can be embraced within the essence of God as creation participates in being, finds its beauty, truth, goodness in God. Creation reflects God and glorifies God. So, he followed ‘through creation to the creator’ as a sacramental approach to find God. What shapes us, and what forms us to be what we are, is ‘the Word.’ Creation, its processes, qualities, law, morality, theology, virtue etc, all must reflect ‘the Word.’ Christ is not just way, Christ is the exemplar for the humankind to become; he is the ‘head’ of humanity, the mind that guides history. All united to God in Christ.  So, the incarnate Lord is the unifying factor, grace of Christ is the bond within the great chain of being. His hymns and commentaries are examples for the tender love which he had for God, the incarnate Lord, the crucified, and the Eucharist.

Being, the nature of God, that any human heart longs to find and to be consoled is a deep embrace of God’s unfathomable love. It cannot be just for a single person, not just for humanity, but for the whole creation. God has brought us into existence, shared his truth with us, adorned with beauty, and found it very good and loved it. Can it be the experience Thomas had about the essence of God; a truth so simple, so familiar that we overlooked.

St Aquinas seemed to have asked often before the crucifix, “Lord, am I right in what I have written?” We too need to critically and sincerely re-reflect what we think of God.  We don’t have to be adamant with Thomism as another ‘ism’ to show love for St. Aquinas. Thomism has lot of rooms for newness and difference. Thomism is not a definition, final theory, it is a way, an exemplar. In our time we need to ask ourselves - Within our life experiences, and in the life of the church what really disturbs us calling out for the touch of the spirit? What are our ultimate concerns? Does the incarnation of Christ become a reality into these concerns of our life? How is the Word, the Christ forming our visions, values, attitudes for our time? How do our longings, struggles, questions, pains, temptations, falls, and even death becomes an openness to the truth of God?

God has wedded his creation in love

God so loved the world that he covered the whole creation in a loving embrace. The Word became flesh. It is beautiful to contemplate that the beginning of creation is conceived by human mind either as a sacrifice or as a wedding. God loved the world and adorned it with beauty and goodness. It’s a great chain of mutual relation every object manifests its beauty. God rejoices over his creation as the bridegroom rejoices in his bride.

There are forces and energies that shape us. There are also damaged, weak, conditioned threads in the great chain that form the uniqueness of every existing thing. For the human, there is also a formation of consciousness, where we have the deposits of fears, inhibitions, prejudices, insecurities, worldviews, sorrows… Thus, uniqueness is both beauty and a tragedy. The issue of our inability to live our life in the fullness of grace is not whether Adam sinned or not. No one was able to flourish in the growth of grace that one can glorify God in celebration of our humanity.

In Christ, we have a new creation of ourselves. “You are to be a crown of splendour in the hand of the Lord, a princely diadem in the hand of your God; no longer are you to be named ‘Forsaken’, nor your land ‘Abandoned’, but you shall be called ‘My Delight’ and your land ‘The Wedded’; for the Lord takes delight in you and your land will have its wedding.” It is a personal experience of the embrace of God of ours in Christ. It’s the moment of transformation of water into wine. when the creator is reflected in creation, when we are transformed into the likeness of Christ, when the 'new man' is formed in us, we have the water changed into wine. Whatever we are, whatever we have is held together in the love of God.

Our healing means that we have a place in Christ. When water changes into wine, shame of our fruitlessness, lifelessness will be changed to joy. We are not becoming Bahubali, Hercules, or any superhuman. But, of course we shall become a human more fully, an anointed one, a lamb of God who bears the burden of gracelessness of others. As the sign of this joy we have great produce according to our nature. That is the taste of the wine, the celebration of being in the life of Christ. Not only humanity, the whole creation partake in it. The house at Cana, is to be the creation itself where the varieties of gifts are produced, shared, and received in gratitude.

The joy of wedding of God to the creation also asks us humans to celebrate the promises of the Gospel in the unity of Christ. We ensure the blessedness to one another through the grace that is at work in each one of us. There the gifts of various kinds are shared and the many injuries are healed, ensuring the kingdom of God to the poorly spirited, bread to the hungry, mercy to the merciful, land to the humble, satisfaction for those who are denied justice and hunger and thirst for it, acceptance and listening to the activists – the peace makers.

God’s glory will be visible, and the world will believe that Christ is alive.

Isaiah 62:1-5 1 Corinthians 12:4-11 John 2:1-11

Priesthood

Christ is the Word incarnate. The Word has gratitude, generosity, sacrifice, justice, harmony, and communion as its essential and generative quality. The priesthood that Christ lived, and the sacrifice he offered had them to the full. They were not based on any religious ritual order. Structures of rituals and priesthood that do not emerge from these cannot have anything in common with Christ. Christ’s priesthood is to bring life, beauty, and joy. It liberates people from shame and tears. Sacrifice of Christ is not about rituals, it is about the virtue of sacrifice. The first makes the priest a king, the second makes the priest a victim and offering. His living sacrifice was to stretch himself to the life of the people, his altar was their flesh and tears. In Christ there is no curtain of the sanctuary, grace pierces and lifts up the human flesh to fill gratitude, generosity, sacrifice, justice, harmony, and communion and to form true priesthood.

Let your light shine

“Let your light shine on us, O Lord” means that we want that every sphere of our being receives the light from God. More than an enlightening or awakening, it is beautiful to reflect as enlivening, that every bit of our being is filled with life.

What we are so uniquely is the signature of God in us. Our growth is not changing into something, but growing into the depth of what we really are. Our talents, skills, knowledge, views, weaknesses, hurts, sins, brokenness, anger, stubbornness and everything that makes us what we are, get refreshed and re-lives to the fullness of our being. As we receive healing, forgiveness, love, or acceptance from God we also come to know something of a new depth of ourselves. The same experience is also a revelation of something new about God more deeply. They are shaping us and create in us the special light, voice, and beauty of ours. It is, in fact, the divine touch in us, the glory of God shining in us. Our deeds and thoughts flow from it. “Let your light shine before the world.”

We might become a king, an emperor, a prophet, a sage, but if we don’t grow to the qualities of the children of God there is no light of God shining in us. It is interesting to imagine Jesus being friendly with the scribes, Pharisees, and the priests and kings. The healings and miracles would have been much more socially enjoyable and populous. But the cost of it would be to compromise to the freedom of the Son of God and the compassion of the Lamb of God. He would have to partake in the holy religious prejudices of the scribes and the holy men. Jesus clearly said, “I have not come to call the virtuous and the holy.” He was not a company for the happy meals of the righteous, but partook in the tears of the sinners and the weak. Was there light of God shining?

1 Samuel 9:1-4,17-19,10:1 Mark 2:13-17

No king in heaven

Though historical narrations of many events in the Bible were tragic they were graceful. Yet, we also can see events that show that the power filled with pride and arrogance ending up in graceless tragedies. Those that were graceless were so when truth and justice were attached to those who possessed power. Truth of the powerless was suppressed and justice was denied.

Having a king of superpower is really an excitement. Though the king rules, and I myself am ‘enjoying’ a slavish submission there is a sense that ‘I’ am ruling or some are submissive to me. There is no truth and justice, but a sense of domination. We look for a king of our liking, and we do give powers to the king that rules – it can be a political leader, a spiritual leader, an ideology, a particular custom or a tradition. We want the king to slay those differ.

Jesus had authority - authority to give life, authority to forgive. He had authority to cleanse the leper, authority to let the woman in tears come near. Such authority can be there only when we have denied ourselves, and when we have the freedom of the children of God. If we belong to the truth we can speak with authority. If we have life in us, we will have the power to serve, to shoulder the burdens, to discern beyond prejudices, and to love without keeping anyone away. True love holds the genuine authority, it sustains everything in life. Heaven has no king, for it is the embrace of God now and ever. Only children enter there.

1 Samuel 8:4-7,10-22; Mark 2:1-12

Jesus healed them with authority

Jesus not only spoke with authority, he also healed with authority. Sicknesses that he healed were not just physical ailments, they were also diminishing the human dignity. They were bound within labels that denied their status of the children of God. Healing them required, life, courage, compassion of heart, tenderness of his approach. That was the very meaning of incarnation. 

He healed them all gives us the assurance that he does heal us. He also wants us to be a community of mutual healing. Healing ministry of the church is not and cannot be a stage show. The healing ministry necessarily involves justice and truth. It involves justice, because healing not only touches wounds but also deals with what causes them. It involves truth because many does not receive healing because of ideologies based on fake information about sicknesses and healing. Expectation of magical intervention of God also becomes a hindrance to healing.

Here comes the test of faith; whether our faith is a customary rubric to be within a belief system or to place our trust and confidence in God. It does not make faith complete if it does not reflect in justice and compassion and see everyone as the children of God. In fact, true healing begins there, both divine and natural.

Mark 2:18-22

What fills our hearts?

We have a world in ourselves. Our words, thoughts, views … are arranged according to that world. Some of us have this world full of devils. Everywhere they can see devils. Perhaps it gives sufficient explanations to whatever unpleasant things happen around. But they are filled with worries and insecurity. Though they pray to God, their concerns are mostly occupied with the works of the devils. Even in their attempt to escape they unknowingly fail to trust in God. They are unable to give grace a place.

Some of us have our worlds full of quotations from Scriptures, they believe that there is some magical power in those words. Relying on those ‘magical words’ they keep the living Word away. Similarly, some of us are always in search for better formulae (of prayers) to make sure of God’s blessing. The whole focus is gone to the required number and pattern of doing those prayers.

Jesus was author of his words, life, healing …, because there was fullness of life in him. He had authority over life. Our world also needs to be filled with life. Ask Jesus to fill it with life; graces, confidence, courage, hope, and strength.

Mark 1:21-28

Following Christ

Call to discipleship is a call to share in the life of Jesus. Sharing in the life of Jesus also fills every aspect of our life with Christ-likeness; our attitudes, choices, perspectives … There are some things essential in forming a Christlikeness in us. The first and most important thing is the affirmation that we are the children of God. How are we to go ahead? It is in the attitude “your will be done.” The whole reward and purpose of discipleship is Christ himself.

Often, we are pleased to adhere to a ‘miserable sinner’ identity. It also leads to a transactional relation with God, only to seek benefits and blessings. Christlikeness is a relationship of responsible love of the children. There the will of God surmounts our moments of life. It is not ‘my will,’ or ‘my kingdom’ that is realised. Then in our efforts also we can see the ‘great things’ done by the almighty. That is the graciousness and providence we are able to experience in our day-today lives. In seeking the will of God, and acknowledging the ‘great work’ of God there is a detachment from our ‘self.’ We can ‘leave everything’ because we know that they are all from the benevolence of God. Leaving everything has its meaning of joyful reception of the given. There is gratitude and generosity, not attachment to possessions, positions, and self. Our following of Christ is not for benefits and reward, not even for ‘attaining a place in heaven.’ We follow Christ in order to belong to him, and to be in him, that itself is the house of heaven, the Father’s house.

It is not just ‘the consecrated,’ or the ‘strictly religious and pious’ who are following Jesus. All who listen to their conscience, act justly and ensure goodness follow Christ, and the Word dwells in them. Being a fan of a religious preacher, a retreat center, or a religious channel does not ensure the Christ-likeness in us. ‘To be with him’ is a living experience once we begin to experience the constant presence of Christ in our everyday situations.

1 Samuel 1:1-8 Mark 1:14-20

Sin bearer

Christ was not a superhuman. Our desire to be and to make superhumans is the disaster that we have learned to be part of ourselves. “He grew in wisdom, stature, and in favour with God and men” is what is told about the growth of Christ. Does the perfect man in Christ indicate an ideal physique and a mind without limitation? Love formed him in virtue and perspectives. The same love must have challenged him in the context of the human condition. They were dejected and harassed; they would faint on the way. Sin is gracelessness and so lifelessness. To take away lifelessness is not a magical act of making it disappear. Taking away sin can happen only by giving life and grace.

Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world must have born the lifelessness, hurts, bitterness, sorrows, heaviness the humanity bore, and he is seen the weakest of all the humans. The miseries, discrimination, unjust judgments and cruel prejudices of course created conflicts with the Loving and merciful Father of all. Faith and trust have their complete meaning and value when it is challenged to the core. The same faith and trust give life to Christ. ‘Can I be the face of God to them?’ would be a harsh challenge to face. Behold I have come is not the culmination, but it is the readiness. Placing of trust is a moment both of a crisis and victory. That is not just when he is on the way of the cross, but although his life.  Yet the weakest is affirmed to be the Son of God in whom God was well pleased. 

Luke 3:15-16,21-22

Love that liberates

Just as love ensures life, love also liberates. True love is not just pleasing, it aims at the good of the other. Our love for God of course cannot add any goodness to God, but it gives glory to God. We may be ready to do anything to prove our love for God. We may by ready to do any heavy religious practice, or some may be even ready to die. Do our love for God reflect in our liberative approaches that we have in our human lives?

Liberative love is not a rebellion, so the love that liberates holds us in truth and peacefulness. God has loved us. If we have really experienced that it has also liberated us and has led us into peace. The response to that love cannot be closed within ‘religious’ deeds. Sincerity of our love for God is seen in our efforts for love, forgiveness, peace and reconciliation. This is what, in fact, liberates us. No liturgy, devotion, and piety has the depth to spread the freedom of God’s children in the absence of these things.

Do our claims of loving God hold the following signs in place? … bring the good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, new sight to the blind, setting the downtrodden free, to proclaim the Lord’s year of favour. Can our love dare to ensure these things for ‘today.’ There, both love of God and loving God challenge us.

1 John 4:19-5:4 Luke 4:14-22

Love that encourages us

The practice of devotions is quite easy and we know what to do. We may be happy even to offer great sum of money as offering. Once they are done, we are happy that we have done what is required of us. What does God ask of us, money and pious practices or a steady growth in virtues?

True practice of virtue is centred on love and ensures life. Conquering of vices cannot be a ‘working,’ but it is the growth of virtues that we can make our efforts. Virtues in life, when they are in a healthy growth, provide the strength and encouragement along with it. When we are concerned about our ‘achievement’ mode in developing virtues we may be discouraged or even drop the whole process. We may be led by fear. We may be worn out with rowing, if love does not come to its perfection in us. When virtue is centred on love and ensures life, we also will have the assurance that it is Christ himself who is guiding us. He offers us courage, and we will know that He is with us.

1 John 4:11-18 Mark 6:45-52

Love ensures life

Love ensures life. As we experience life in us, in the kindness, mercy, and forgiveness of God we also experience that God loves and God is love and source of life.  It asks us to be open before God to receive that life, and also to show the same kindness and mercy to others that they may also receive life. The love of God is seen in reality when we are a living people. The purpose of sending Christ was the same, that we may have life through him. The injuries, pains, burdens, sorrows that we bear hinders the experience and exercise of the life and the love that is possible for us. Yes, love is possible; forgiveness and healing is possible, and so life is possible.

God who is alive in us, dwells among us, and enables us for a mutual nourishing and healing with the life that is in each of us. The grace given is not just for ourselves for an individual benefit. It embraces others, and mutually enhance the life. The bread that we are and that we have in different ways is to be taken in hand with generosity, break it against our will to preserve it as ‘ours,’ raise in thanksgiving, and hand over to others that it may be nourishing many who would not even know the source. For them the source will be a provident and generous bond that embraces all.

1 John 4:7-10 Mark 6:34-44

The Word came in Human Flesh

John’s experience of Christ opened him to the reality of God that God is love. That love in turn generated in him a deeper and larger experience of Christ. John had a testimony of his intimate experience of Christ; ‘the Word which has existed since the beginning became one of us, and we have heard, we have seen with our own eyes, we have watched, and touched with our hands. Peter also says that they ate and drank with him after Jesus rose from the dead. It was not simply a feeling of people, disciples, or apostles that God lived in their midst in human flesh. The Word became one like us. If we truly believe that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh, we must meditate on what it means for him and us. He was a man of Nazareth, from where no good was expected. He was a carpenter’s son, he was called a drunkard and friend of sinners. He enjoyed friendship both with men and women, and was part of their celebrations. He felt the pain of poverty of a neglected poor family, he suffered the trauma of someone fleeing to save life, he felt hunger, his body got the smell of the leper after embracing him, he knew the taste of sweat, blood and tears. He understood the pain and humiliation of the woman bleeding, he felt the heaviness the paralytic suffered under the condemnation of the law and the general public. He could see the heaviness of the labeled ‘curse of God’ upon the childless and the widows.

He came in the flesh means that he also bore these sufferings, pain, and injustice that humans bear. See the importance he gave for healing, touch, body, bread… in his ministry, in his words. He came in the flesh means that it was not simply knowing in his mind, but he had these human realities in his flesh. If at all we truly believe that He came in the flesh, we would have overcome our hatred towards our human flesh and its limitations. We overlook that Christ lived and lives in this same human flesh that we tend to condemn. We know that ‘the sensuality, the lustful eyes, and the pride in possessions’ lie in our choices. Yet we place the blame on our body as an unwilled and unbearable burden. We have easy and empty spiritualities that enhance this attitude. Humanity is not crushed under sin as something out there, it is from the ill spirit created for others that we crush humanity. The very same people who despise human flesh commodify it, exploit, and project their attempt as transcending human limitations. These attempts, in fact, reinforce the sensuality, the lust of eyes and the pride in possessions. If we cannot see and experience God in the dust, in frail humanity, it is not the true spirit that is guiding us. Just as a field has the grace to produce its harvest, the good will of humans has the grace to produce the harvest of peace and joy. He came in the flesh to teach us to have compassion, mercy, kindness and love in the human flesh we have, to touch, to console, and to labour. It may be less noble and spiritual than thinking of greater things as eternality, infinity and perfection. But any such great enlightenment rejecting our human flesh is only a disoriented dream bypassing Christ. There is no kingdom of God for humankind in a super metaphysical spiritual world without the touch of the earth and the sacramentality of the human flesh.

It was in the setting of the arrest of John the Baptist that Jesus began his public ministry. But it was not death that filled his life. Life was in his flesh to cure all kinds of diseases and sickness among the people. Life in our human flesh must meet the helplessness of the poor, the neglected, people hated by holy reasons, those condemned, those who bear scars for standing for justice. Then we know that we are led by the true spirit, and we live by love, and that God is Love.

1Jn3:22-4:6 Mt 4:12-17, 23-25 Ref 1 Jn 1:1 Acts 10: 41

Worth of God

The wise men worshiped him at the manger. According to the law and thousands of holy prejudices they were a cursed category; they were foreigners, priests/magicians, and astrologers. Their very persons, knowledge, and worship were despised. Yet, they found the truth of the appearance of the light they saw. No angels guided them, no one assisted them from the palace to the manger. They worshiped him. At baptism we see him as the Son of God, and lamb of God. Some followed him. At Cana we see him bringing joy and celebration in a context of shame. They believed in him.

Though Mary and Joseph were always with Jesus, it is told that Mary treasured and pondered everything in her heart. If they pondered how much more we need to treasure and ponder the epiphany that God gives us. The Word is present to us in and around us. Every moment of grace, is a revelation. There is a meaning that causes a light and direction in us. Revelation brings a transformation, guidance, offers insight and interior voice leading us to God’s embrace.

Worship does not come easily. We can truly worship God, if God is found worthy of worship. Worship cannot be limited to some rituals. From learning devotion there is a long way to reach a moment of worship. If we have found God worthy, we will open what we have treasured although. Have we seen a light for us that guides our life, or are we running behind flashing of ‘God on the screens.’ God on the screens, on the channels, on Newsletters make us worried about too many things; blessings for this, that, blessings on food and water, all from the screen at the cost of the source of blessings. They cannot reveal the worth of God. Wisdom guided the wise men to accept the divine revelation in an ordinary family. God lives in our flesh and blood, in our everyday lives, and touching our everyday realities with graces God lives in sacraments in a special way.

Epiphany is an appearance of something great. It is an appearance of light. Both what is revealed and how the revelation is received are important. It is a theophany, the revelation of God. We can see God among us, Emmanuel – God with us. Though everything was created through the Word, the Word was not known or visible to the creation. The Word was in creation guiding its courses. The Word which was visible only to the Father is visible to the whole of creation; the word became flesh. We worship him.