Cut off

It may be better to reflect how to be a good example than thinking how to avoid scandal. It is more meaningful to make our faculties fruitful than removing them. Cutting off the hands and tearing out the eyes may be understood in terms of what Jesus said about the pruning of the branches of the vine. Pruning is done to produce more fruits.

We may be poisoned or illusioned when there is no right direction, no life in depth, no light of vision. The remedy is to strengthen the withered hands, walk in the right path, make the eyes see clearly, and ears hear well, that the sight and hearing may be sure doors for grace.

It is not the faculties that to be cut off, but it is by the proper functioning of our faculties will surely cut off whatever is not proper to our life. Our vision and hearing are distorted by many sources. There is abundant number of alternatives for physical, emotional and religious fitness. All are convincing, attractive, and wonderful. Which is in fact good for health?

There are many alternative religious movements that have great influence among the practicing religious people. They distort faith for their own commercial or political motives in the very name of God and religion. Such populist trends are spread mostly by our own preachers who are not watchful or alert. The hearers are left with withered hands and impaired vision and hearing.

The standard to judge is again in the image of the vine and the branches. If anyone abides not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered. Abiding is not a religious affinity, but a personal belonging to Jesus having his mind in ourselves. Abiding ensures life, not withering. Do the commercialised faith and devotions take us to the life that Jesus offered to us? Does the politicised Christianity create an atmosphere to live the values of the kingdom or do they create a nationalism in the name of Jesus and Christianity, even through visions from Mary and Jesus?

The very moment we feel that we are losing sight of Jesus, we must cut off the sight that is mesmerising us.

At the heart of Jesus

At the heart of Jesus (in sinu Jesu) we learn to imitate him in life death and resurrection. There we learn to participate in his ministry of preaching, healing, and bringing all into communion with God and one another. Jesus’ very calling of his disciples was to fill them with his love just as the Father has loved him. He called them, he sent them out, he gathered them, he accompanied them in His love.

Having the love of Jesus personally and within the community his followers are to be a living sign of the same love, peace and reconciliation. Thus, the community becomes a sacrament of love and salvation. Jesus lives in us, and we, united in his love, together make his body. We celebrate and participate the reality of Christ in word and in sacrament, in worship and in our life. He has gifted to us his real, true and substantial presence of his body and blood, that we may participate and live that in reality of our life. Without Christ, there is no significance of the sacrament. Without the attitude of sacrifice, love and generosity, without communion with God and one another the worship and honour of the Eucharist is a hypocrisy. If we are not mindful of Christ and his attitudes, and the eucharistic devotion turns out to be an honour of a wonderful and magical bread, we are missing something, really, truly and substantially. That will end up in a cultic devotion without the person of Christ being honoured in reality though the worship is done in his name. Eucharist is not just a miraculous bread. From being bread centered, Eucharistic spirituality must rediscover itself to be Christ-centered.

The very key for reconciliation, communion and sacrifice is the aspect of self -emptying of Christ. Through that the Word came in human form and continues to come to the world. The world is not enemy of God, the world enjoys the embrace of divine love. Some arrogant expressions of ‘run away from the world’ is to approach the manifestation of God very negatively. However destructive and evil are the affairs that go on with the human societies, God continues to love the world and manifests divine actions within the processes. God wants us to participate in the divine actions for which we have been called and sent.

Jesus does not want to be a devotional object. He wants our commitment in his continuing mission in the world. A romantic imagination of being with him all the time ‘escaping’ from the faces of others is not what the purpose of self-emptying he had. We need the Eucharist, we participate in the celebration, and we adore him in the sacrament. But the Eucharist is not just there in the monstrance or in the bread. ‘That person’ in the Eucharist wants to extend the communion and sacrifice we celebrated to wherever we are. It is thus the Eucharist makes us the living signs of the kingdom of God. In a ‘complete detachment’ where ‘God is my everything,’ or ‘God is my sole love’ Jesus would ask us a total commitment to serve everyone without reserve. A totally private and isolated relation expected in Eucharistic devotion is a cultic one. It is not at the heart of Jesus, in sinu Jesu.

The sacrifice of Jesus cannot be limited to any customs and rituals. The adamant attitudes that hold that only the traditional old Latin mass is the true mass cannot be from the heart of Jesus. Those opinions preserve certain ideologies that promote conservative structures. Attempts to create divisions in adamant traditionalism is not at the love of Jesus. Even the liturgy that they hold on was not there from the origin of Christianity. The liturgical reform of Vatican II is within the renewal that the council envisions. We the people of God, mutually nourished by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, build up and grow as the body of Christ. Recognising the universal call to holiness the church desires to shine as the universal sacrament of salvation. Our liturgy must reflect this common vision. God is not enthroned, but God dwells among and within the people of God. That indeed was at the heart of Jesus, in sinu Jesu.

The vision of the Council extends through sixteen official documents dealing with various topics from Divine Revelation, Church in the Modern world, to relations with non-Christians. The American and other media were unable or unwilling to approach the documents on their own terms. It led to the dominant bias that the Council’s far-reaching changes as breaks with Church tradition. American catholic evangelism is seen to be only true catholic faith, and others are worldly adaptations and corruption in the church. This was given a rapid spread by the pseudo-charismatic movements (respecting the genuine charismatic renewal), through preaching, different programmes, and books of ‘visions.’ Along with seeing the glorification of the old and the tendency to ignore the new, we also need to try to understand who are unwilling to accept the Vatican II reform and why. Having that in mind we may be able to understand ‘In Sinu Jesu.’

Can the Gospel be practical?

The more we are familiar with Jesus, the more we can be in likeness with him. This familiarity cannot be from mere claim of knowing Jesus, or proclaiming the great titles ascribed to him. Understanding the attitudes of Jesus, and making them our own is the only way to be like Jesus. It is all about the practicality of the Gospel. 

If Christ is found only as a text to be read, quoted, interpreted and explained, it is only an ideal to boast about and to be intolerant with other's beliefs. When the words are used, repeated, or written down as though they have some magical power, the words are nothing more than words worshiped. We need to get familiar with the person of Jesus in order to understand the  practicality of the Good News. 

Christ lived everything that he had spoken as the blessedness of the Good News. He opened 'heaven' for all who are of good will, the very kingdom which was denied to the poor. They were unable to afford to enter into the kingdom. We can learn from him how he made the kingdom available to them, and showed the practicality of the  Gospel. We may not be able to be so perfect as Christ is. Yet, we can desire for it with all sincerity. That desire prompts us to trust in God wholeheartedly. Our attempt at every moment to live and reflect he Gospel finds its success and failures, yet a steady growth. We are walking with Jesus. Imitation or participation in Christ is not simply inflicting pain and suffering. The participation is in making his attitudes our own. If we are able to share with him every moment our inabilities, difficulties, and success, also how we have grown, we know that we have learned the gospel to be practical. only if they are there at our heart, out rituals, customs, and devotions have any value. If the Gospel is found impractical, heaven is also not real.

Gospel has a wisdom of its own; that is the mind of Christ through which we know the will of God. There are people who have their opinion that we need to have margins to be prudent at 'this time of challenges;' a prudence beyond the wisdom of the Gospel. Gospel. in a close observation we can know that the 'prudence' there simply invites to form attitudes of suspicion, distancing, and othering. It has no wisdom that lead us to a creative preparedness. 

To love, do good, forgive, pray for those who insult, not to hate, avoid anger and jealousy ...  are seen as some moral obligations placed upon us by faith. The Gospel can be experienced as practical when these can be understood as the very nature of faith. 

Follow the Master

The will and dream of the master is the path of a true disciple. Knowing that the mind of the master is to serve and to offer his life as a sacrifice calls a disciple also to be a servant and a sacrifice. The readiness to accept this path is not simply a practice of value. The path is taken by the disciple through the closeness to the master.

Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit. This anointing had the nature of self surrendering before God in faithfulness and trust. The anointing in Christ also included a life that took the pain and death of people into his own life. If we let Christ to be so, it challenges us to do the same. If we want to preserve Christ without dying, we will lose him.

The practicality of faith comes in a living companionship with Jesus. That companionship is an every- moment- conversation about whatever we go through. Then we are consoled, comforted, strengthened, and transfigured. Even the faith seeking understanding looks for this companionship to be found in the living realities of ours.

If we repeat Peter's attitude today, we will successfully create a Christ-less Christianity, and a Christ without anointing, and ourselves without the dream and will of Christ our Master.

Great Sign

Many religious magazine’s and channels introduce to us very beautiful and wonderful image about God, but most of them are fruitless. Those gods produce great signs from heaven and earth, but can not make us fruitful in acting with the values of the kingdom of God. Sometime these wonderful gods despise the values of the kingdom. Those gods who promise prosperity and well being cannot offer anything for the poor, they cannot encourage acts of justice, they cannot enliven grace for being sincere and stand for peace processes.

Often, we expect great signs. Why? We doubt about the presence of God, or not sure whether God is happy with us, or suspect evil everywhere and don’t know which way to go. One who wavers cannot expect that the Lord will give him anything. It is because we do not know God we have doubts. God cannot go away from us, God cannot be angry with us, in God we have the sure way. Though we say that we must give first place for God, even our preachings suggest that we place ourselves, our sins, and our fears in the first place. We are frightened, broken, sinful, yet God gives life to us. By a forceful intellectual labour we cannot bring God in the first place. First thing to understand is that the super wonderful God is not a God at all. The true and living God stays within our emptiness and pain. God is there in our struggles and temptations. Secondly, God has given us the grace in us to comfort strengthen and raise up one another. So the sign to be seen is from the signs of grace within us. The surety that we find in God is the living faith that is fruitful. Rather than looking for definitions and explanations of God, or utility in believing in God, can we grow in the sense of belonging to him? Can we make all sincere effort to place our trust in Him? That trust will make in us a new creation, open the channels of grace in us that will reflect in our day-to-day activities and attitudes. That is the sign from God.

James 1:1-11 Mark 8:11-13

Blessed are you!

Those who trust in the Lord have signs of life, and those who rely on themselves have signs of death. A human life worthy of living finding its fulfillment is a life we are able to live in peace and harmony. It is truly a blessing from God if we can be composed both in times of abundance and in times of scarcity. A sense of knowing the hunger and pain of the other is to have the heart of God. Blessings of God understood only in terms of success, prosperity, and creation of wealth is a distortion of the image of God itself. Consequently, that view of blessing will also distort the image of ours. There will be some elite blessed and some poor denied of blessing. Jesus’ offering of the blessedness to the ‘poor and cursed’ was a revolution in the holy kingdom of God.

Blessedness is an invitation to a banquet table Christ has prepared. Many are called together. All have their own special gifts and pains. At the banquet table there is feeding, embracing, healing, and raising one another. Together we begin to experience that we are the living body of Christ.

There were times when human society thought that we have the capacity to rise up beyond our limitations, eradicate pain, sickness, struggle and war. Such humanistic thinking relied so much on human capacity that instead of gathering all it scattered. Jesus vision of the beatitude is to trust in the Father who cares for us. He has filled in us the bread for the hungry, the sense of justice, mercy, peaceful resistance to ensure hearing of deepest cries. The kingdom of God is present and alive in us making the presence of Christ in the world. God does not have to appear in a miraculous way to transmit graces. God has given us the grace within our own flesh and blood. So the super-natural graces works in us very natural way.

Jeremiah 17:5-8 Luke 6:17,20-26

People who knew all about the righteousness of God

 In Mark 9:30-37 we have the second one of Passion-Resurrection predictions. It may be good to keep in mind the post resurrection explanation for the absence of Jesus when we reflect on this prediction. He has risen! Remember how he told you, “The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.” Then they remembered his words (Lk 24: 6-8). Again, on the road to Emmaus, He said to them, “… how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself (Lk 24: 25-27). So, the continuing presence is placed at first, and we are reminded that the suffering and humiliation were all along the path of glory.

The three passion predictions have a significant relationship to the journey section ‘on the Way’ from Caesarea Philippi in 8:27 to the arrival at Jerusalem in 11:1. Confession of Peter is a roadmap for this journey with ups and downs, yet Jesus being the guide. Three times within Mark 8–10 Jesus predicts his death, each of which follows a failure on the part of the disciples to understand the announcement of Jesus’ passion and Resurrection, and Jesus’ instruction on discipleship.

After the confession of Peter that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, Peter rebukes Jesus (8:32–33) when he says that he will suffer, be rejected, killed, and will rise after three days (8:31). Jesus instructs them to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him (8:33–9:1). After the transfiguration, on the way down Jesus again predicts that he will be delivered, killed, and will rise after three days (9:30–31). The disciples were not able to understand the saying and were afraid to ask him about it (9:32). On the other hand, at the foot of the mountain there are failed attempts going on to heal a demoniac. On the way ahead disciples are engaged in an argument about who among them is the greatest (9: 34). Jesus teaches that the first must be last and that those who receive children in his name receive him (9:33–50. Before the entry into Jerusalem Jesus predicts more clearly that he will be delivered, condemned, mocked, flogged, killed, and will rise after three days (10:33–34).  James and John ask for their position next to Jesus in his glory (10:35–37). Jesus teaches that he came to serve by giving his life as a ransom for many. The disciples must not be people exercising authority ‘loading it over the people.’  To be great, they must become servants; to be first, they must become slaves (10:38–45).

Raising of the bronze serpent is a significant story of healing from the book of Numbers (21:9). “… just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (Jn 3:14-15) is the Johannine vision of the self-emptying of Jesus. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (Jn 13:2), so the being lifted up was a ‘must’ which is also expressed in the synoptic gospels. The Johannine presentation of Jesus ‘lifted up’ (3:14; 8:28: 12:32) reminds us of the Suffering Servant ‘Behold my servant shall prosper: he shall be lifted up and glorified exceedingly (Isaiah 53 13). Being lifted up as self-emptying, and as being glorified can be seen in Jesus emptying himself as a servant, and God raising him by giving him the name which is above every name (Phil 2:8).

If the wheat has to produce harvest it has to fall down and die. Christ the seed of the kingdom had to undergo the dying in incarnating into the children of the kingdom. His instruction to the disciples to take up daily cross, and to deny self are a must in welcoming the children of God. Children are the people of the beatitudes, and an incarnation into their lives must be shaped by the self-emptying love. Imagine his life, welcoming the little ones, the poor, those who are hungry, those who mourn, those who establish peace, those hunger and thirst for justice. ‘If you welcome ‘them’ you will be great,’ that is what he said.

Jesus came to give life in its abundance, and to offer the freedom of the children of God. His healing and teaching also indicated justice, peace and liberation. It challenged many customs and beliefs which were convenient for maintaining exploitative structures. This choice of perspective, and the conflicts are significant in his predictions and instructions on discipleship. We can see arguments on marriage, on riches, on fasting, on resurrection.  Jesus observed Sabbath not as a day of ‘rest from labor’ as in the priestly tradition of Genesis 2:2, but as a day of liberation following the Deuteronomic tradition. (Deut. 5:15). He proclaimed liberty to captives and the year of God’s favour (Lk 4: 19). But the liberation was an unbearable burden for the system of powers. He had to suffer.

When he predicts his passion he also bears the pain of being considered as an enemy because of being the grain of wheat that has to bear fruit for the life of those little ones. The same pain is there even when he says to love enemies and to pray for them. Ps 68(69) speaks of a stage that “I have become an alien to my own mother’s sons.”

Jesus asks us whether we are ready to drink the chalice that he had to drink; whether we are ready to die. The key question which must be answered is whether we are ready to share the kingdom for the little ones, the children of the beatitudes. It is a costly discipleship because it might ask for denying ourselves, but it is fruitful. Jesus’ call for us is to follow him in bearing fruits of the kingdom by emptying ourselves, taking up the daily crosses. Jesus’ call is to fall down and die in order to produce a rich harvest. Just like the master, a disciple is called to live to the abundance of life and healing, unity and fraternity.

Ending it with a paradox: The People engaged in conspiracy and plotting in the first reading (Wisdom 2:12,17-20) seem to be knowing the righteousness of God, and his providence. But they fail to see a just man. Because perhaps he is not coming in their line. They have full confidence that God will look after if the ‘enemy’ is righteous. The stranger, whom they well make an enemy by othering will never deserve to be one of the least to be welcomed. Even God who stands by them will be condemned and killed. So, the very frame of righteousness turns for them a means of plotting and conspiring, ultimately to preserve and kill.

Participating in Christ's compassion

King Jeroboam set up a worship place in Bethel, and said, “Here are your gods, Israel.” He did it because he thought, “If this people continue to go up to the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem to offer sacrifices, the people’s hearts will turn back again to their lord, Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will put me to death.”

Jeroboam is bringing alternatives for God to ensure his own power. He uses god, worship, and festivity as political symbols. An alternative god that represents the power of the king will create its system and crush the people in the name of its worship. Fighting for God only creates a void in human lives. Power struggles in the name of God will bring a godless society. Even in the case of David making Jerusalem as the centre, it was not only a holy city, but also a political centre. From being a shepherd and king, David and Solomon grew to be an emperor. Solomon received many wives and their gods to keep his kingdom unchallenged. It was no more a promised land in reality, it was a conquered land. In an empire, only the emperor lives, not people, not even God. Even though there may be a super god itis a language to ensure imperial power. People are to serve the interests of the emperor. This type of governance is not part of the promises of the covenant God had made. Which is the boundary of the promised land? When God made the promise of giving them a land flowing with milk and honey, did that mean to chase everyone away from where they would reach? Would the 'chosen' people live among differences of the strangely chosen. Would God really wish all other tribes and nations be wiped away? God’s will had a promise as their inheritance that would last forever. The expansion of this promise was what God would like to have done by the chosen people. Only the depths of our hearts extend our boundaries and widen our horizons.

Jesus’s concern was that the people may faint on the way, not whether they will follow him and support him. He gave them bread to eat, not alternatives for god that ensured his power. This second multiplication of bread may also have included gentile crowd. Bible scholars say that this text has a gentile touch even in its language. It was in the last chapter we saw Jesus being in Syrophoenicia, a territory of gentiles, and extended healing seeing the faith of a woman. Coming back to Galilee he offers them not just scraps falling from the master's table, but bread itself. When Jesus calls his disciples, it is also an invitation to participate in his compassion. What does it mean to us today in a politically and religiously biased world, to know, to love, and live together with Jesus? We do have an abundance of alternatives of power-centres, rituals, religiosity, and reshaped gods and Christs of our liking. Gods and religiosity that build boundaries are not god and religion at all. Which king who stood for ensuring one’s own power was devoted to God and the good of people? Only a community formed in communion with one another and with God shows that God is in their midst.

Participation in the life of Jesus, being a disciple, means a true sense of gratitude to God, for everything comes from, and depends upon, God. A true life with God offers the language of sharing, extending our hearts beyond favoured boundaries, and communion with God and with others. Participating in the gratitude, praise, communion that Jesus lived and extended to others we re-create our true image. We are able to give life to a new sense of human life and how we relate to the world around us. We are not kings, creators of gods, we are the children of God.

Temple of God

Temple is not a container for God. There is no temple, no religious symbol that exhaustively hold God within itself. God’s presence within the interiority of ourselves and everything that exists so much transcending our understanding that we cannot really accept the immanence of God within ourselves. The more we extend ourselves we might widen our sight to see the presence of God in others and in creation which calls for love and service. A direct experience of God and the compelling presence of God to live a life of compassion and mercy are also moments of finding the flames of God within our short life.

If our offerings are to be pure offering, they have to be real symbols of what we live in our daily lives. If life does not become an offering in our lived life, offerings are rotten objects placed at the altar. Real offerings we cannot carry to the temple, nor to the highest heaven. Real offerings are to be offered in love, care, mercy and compassion. Then the heaven is here, the kingdom is here and the temple is here where we live. There is the glory of God, and our sincere prayer.

Offering devoid of sincere offering makes the temple a house of trade. There in the temple glory of God never dwells, no prayer rises. Temple can become a place that promotes such rotten offering and the rituals related to it. Thus, it adds the function of conspiracy and plotting crime. It is that system that led the scribes and Pharisees from the 'Holy City' of Jerusalem to Nazareth, a place of no good, to find find faults with and kill the one they seemed to have worshiped.

There are already signs that the praised rising from sincere hearts though the temples seem abandoned. Many begin to recognise the glory of God in the kindness shown to the rotten and broken lives of humanity and nature. Temples discuss about the modality of worshiping God and add hatred to the worshippers, there are silent peacemakers struggling for justice in solidarity with those are denied justice.

There, if humanity and creation can gather in your life in worship and for the glory of God, you are the temple where the Spirit of God dwells.

Consecration

It was according to the Law of Moses, the parents of Jesus took Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, and for them to be purified. Even the priest at the altar did not recognise for whom he was performing those purifying rituals. On the other side we see Simeon and Anna taking the child in their hands and praising God. Simeon’s words show the contentment of what he longed to see. He saw in the child, the light to guide those who are far and the glory for those who have known the path of peace.

Simeon had seen innumerous offerings and sacrifices offered at the temple. But, taking the child in his hands, Simeon said, ‘My eyes have seen the salvation,’, ready to depart in peace. Simeon waited patiently to see the prompting of the Spirit to be fulfilled. He learned that the sacrifice ensuring salvation was seeking and doing the will of God. That would surely include a piercing of heart for anyone who sincerely follows the will of God.

Jesus came to do the will of God. He knew what would please God. He offered life to the world, freedom to the oppressed, and good news to the poor. He had to become the lamb of God, the life giving sacrifice. He was indeed the temple in whom all gather to worship. He is the home to which all return. Only by being in him together as one body, we as a community can offer worship to God. He is the temple. We are the temple in whom the Spirit dwells and the light of God must shine.

Our consecration to the Lord is a sincere dedication to do the will of God. We can know the will of God only if we have the mind of Christ in approaching God and others. Our consecration does not make us different categories of people. We have different ways of life of consecration deepening our baptismal consecration fructified in diverse forms. If our life revolves around cultic, customary, religious performances, we are failing in our consecration to the Lord. They are attempts to purify God. God is not glorified in the rituals performed, God is glorified and we are sanctified in a righteous way of living. Every moment is consecrated to the Lord by deepest sincerity and love in our life, even in the simplest things we do. Consecration begins in our attitude ‘Behold, Lord, I have come to do your will.’ The end of our consecration, the purpose can be either in the words, 'the almighty has done great things for me,’ or ‘Now, Master, you can let your servant go in peace, just as you promised; because my eyes have seen the salvation,’ or ‘Into your hands Lord, I commend my spirit.’