Christ, the Word, the source of peace

Christ, the Word, is the welcoming Truth,
not an intolerant truth.
Christ, the Word, is the source of peace,
because the Word is the source of life.
The Word causes reconciliation and forgiveness,
because the Word is the harmony and communion of all things.

Condemnation and grace

"For God sent his Son into the world
not to condemn the world,
but so that through him the world might be saved."
But what a joy for us to preach condemnation than salvation.
Did God ask us to do that?
What is the standard behind our understanding on holiness, salvation or escaping condemnation?
How much portions of our retreats and seminars take about salvation and grace, or are they more about right and wrong, often judging the 'sinful they'?

Jesus did condemned sins, but they were not destructive to any one. Instead, they ensured love and life. If the risen Christ is the first fruit of the new creation, the similar fruition must be present in us also. But do our life, especially our judgments say that we are here as a sign of God's love, saving and liberating, and not as agents of condemnation.

false safety at the risk of the gospel

 Whether gospel is safe in our hands is more important question than whether Christians feel safe. In the name of false securities do we sacrifice the gospel itself? The difference between defining Christians to be a number of people believing in certain customs and traditions, and those following certain values based on the Gospel of Jesus is very significant and decisive. Identifying paths for new safety and security seems to be escaping from what the gospel is asking us. I have been noticing some arguments which represented a strange social fabric of the ecclesial vision. Accordingly, Indian Christians are only those who were baptized by St Thomas and their descendants. They must preserve and continue their traditions and customs, but not adding anyone to their group. Those joined the Christian fold during the time of the missionaries must return to their original beliefs, because their motivation was not right. Thus go the arguments. These were not the opinions of any Hindu ideology, but of many powerful social media groups of traditional St Thomas Christians. Here, ‘who are Christians?’ itself develop new definitions. But I also observed some strange views with regard to preserving family by girls marrying early, increasing number of children, even neglecting the need for education of girls. I am not sure whether our women must agree to it or whether this is what the Christian dignity would envision for girls. It is certainly possible that we may be able to manipulate the scripture and customs and make a tradition for them. But minimum education and remaining family-women contradicts the cry of the same community against social domination of other communities. Ultimately it is all about reducing the Christian community into an isolated and polarized number in society which the so called leaders can use for their bargain.

Evangelization happens by sharing one’s experience of the living presence of Jesus, and by the experience of others seeing something significantly sustaining one’s life. The initial mission has not been of intolerant domination. Faith became a definition to be believed when the emperor’s religion had to be the religion of the empire. Colonisers had it in their cultural-political interests. though some functioned as their agents, it is always notable that the missionaries stood against any form of injustice by the colonisers themselves. Those who understood the gospel of Jesus learned the good things in the lived values of people whom they met, and objected to what was against justice, truth and humanity. An arrogant proselytization would never be the mode of Jesus’ preaching of the Gospel also.

Pope Francis often spoke against proselytization, and he repeatedly says that true evangelization is by example or witness. There may be cases of imprudent cases where people are manipulated in the name of healing, economic benefit etc. But that accusation just for the sake of tarnishing Christian community is not right. Imprudent approaches may be provoking other communities, on the other side an intolerant approach is also on the growth among the fringe groups. Catholic Social approach is not being in isolation, a separate group. Some specific ideologies may be promoting such tendencies. But generally that is not the case. Genuine Christian approach cannot be pro-Hindu, pro-Jain, pro-Muslim etc. Nor it can be anti-Hindu, anti-Jain, anti-Muslim etc also. Similarly it cannot be pro-BJP, pro-Congress, Pro-AAP etc nor anti-BJP, anti-Congress, anti-AAP etc also. Basic dictum for our sociopolitical stand is to be valuing of the equal human dignity, because we are all the children of God. Any inhuman treatment irrespective of culture, religion, tribe, or cast, must pain a true Christian conscience. That is as s response from the beatitudes that Jesus offered.

I thirst

Jesus entered his last moments facing the pain of hell. they were the moments when God was absolutely absent for him. That emptiness is an indescribable brokenness and crisis. Yet, 'why have you abandoned me' still holds a hope in such a a presence. we find the voice of hope of life even in the emptiness in the words, "into your hands, Lord, I commend my Spirit." It may have been the most painful and conflicting moments than any temptations. It is the thirst for the communion in love that cannot be broken, but now absent, that extends his heart towards the Father. The cry in "I thirst" is a continuation of "why have you abandoned me?"

 
The same communion of love is the true motivation for our relationship with Christ. The sentimentality formed in response to the cruelty and humiliations suffered by Christ can only bring a change that cannot take roots in Christ. (The exaggerated media representations of the sufferings of Christ produce a kind of anti-nonchristian inimical tendencies on one side and a victim mentality within Christians on another side). Christ continued to be on the cross despite the scornful challenges to come down form the cross to prove that he was truly the Son of God. That was the assurance of his love for us. If he had come down from the cross with all his divine power, it would have emptied the interior grace and truth of the stand he took for justice, mercy and love. Because they were to be lived by his followers in love for one another.


Social and cosmic extend of Christ needs to be reflected deeply if Christianity has to find its significance in the future. "Why have you crucified me? "why are you persecuting me" surely come in the line with "you did not give me food to eat and water to drink." We have not meditated sufficiently on our making of the body of christ mutually building through love, service, and communion, and through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Christ was made an adorable great something, and the living Christ among us was kept aside. Persons, religions, nations, cultures, all kinds of others seek today mercy from the other.

Mammon rules

Mammon rules the world,
mammon rules over God and worship.
Mammon condemns the world for blasphemy.

Idealised faith

 Ideologies in the name of God, whether it be conservative or progressive, do not intend to praise God. They only arrogantly worship themselves. Idealised faith is not a faith at all. It is secure worship of definitions. Some call it certainty of faith. Theology did evolve over time though 'Jesus Christ is same yesterday, today, and for ever.'

The crucified

Moses raised bronze serpent in the desert.
Was it a sign of punishment or sign that God gives life.
Son of man was lifted up on the cross.
Do we see punishment, or the love of God.

The way we view the crucified defines our way of Christian life.

Old wine skin of Sin and Punishments

Salvation is based on God’s love and goodness. We have tied it with sin and punishment. We still seek the security of old wineskins. We have not let grace free us into new wine. Sin, sin, and only sin and their punishments are the reality we can see inside the old wineskin.

At the very moment the prodigal son asked for his share of the property, the father kept a book writing down all the offences he got from the son. While the time he came back the book was full, marking the punishments due for all the offences. Who bore the punishments of the prodigal son?

Luke 15 father is quite different. He did feel the pain of all the offences, rebelliousness, separation, squandering, pathetic end and everything. But he received him not less than his own son. Divine justice is of a heart full of love.

Why do we want to push the equations of penalty and punishment to God's heart? To suit the theology we want, should we disfigure the face of God?

Holy face of the tempter

The tempter has a holy face,
he appears to be God.

God gave manna in the desert, can  he not change stones to bread? Can you not become a bread provider and glorify god's name?

Those who limit God to religious frames will mistake the tempter for God. They get everything in godly flavours, power, pleasures, fame ... They can't be even aware that they are serving the tempter. If not guided by God, religion can lead us to sin.

Suffering of Christ and Divine Justice

Our stubborn morality that demands a punishing justice from God is an absurdity in the nature of God. Justice brought by punishing offences is a process in  'gentile' courts. Divine justice wants everyone to live to the full. This nature of divine justice bring a great commitment according to the gospel values. We the righteous are often not ready for it. 

Jesus was committed to that justice. So, his love was a scandal for the holy. He bore the painful heavy burden of gracelessness. Sin-bearing is an emptying, and going lifeless, because sin is something lacking in grace. Jesus, while assuming gracelessness/ lifelessness poured out grace and life. Grace heals even the burdens and wounds that generate resistance to the path of grace or  the inability to be open to grace. 

Punishment is a must for those who bring God to their ideal legal frames. So, penalty theology is necessary to put Jesus's sufferings as a penalty for the deserved punishment over humanity. God was not adding on punishment after punishment over humanity, God was instead raising and healing many in grace. We find that God in human flesh in Jesus. Jesus lived the compassion and mercy of God. That cannot remain in healing  and doing  good. He also knew how they struggled without grace. 

Jesus had to suffer, because this justice is costly for the privileged righteous, because, taken seriously they have to welcome the unprivileged sinners to the same God's kingdom that they were guaranteed. Even while he suffered an unjust death, he lived a life-giving and self-emptying sacrifice, just as he was when he was healing the sick and forgiving sins. 

beating heart' of the Church

"God's love is the 'beating heart' of the Church," said Pope Francis. 

Charity causes confusion mainly because we like to live within  the securities of boundaries. Charity, at the root is about accepting, and being open, and being transparent. Charity cannot be there without justice, compassion, truth and goodwill. 

For the church to have heart of charity, what we need is Jesus. He was not confused about love. It is to that vision we have the process of the synod. "A synod is an ecclesial gathering with the goal of discerning what the Holy Spirit is asking of the church at the time." Speaking voices may be diverse, but they are not challenges and confusions. Every human cry has also a voice that Spirit speaks to us. We cannot condemn that.

Does our holiness condemn the Holy?

The scribes knew the scriptures and the law. Their knowledge gave them power over the people to dictate how to live, behave, and worship. According to their interpretation, Jesus was mad, and possessed by the devil.

God made a covenant with humanity, ensuring God’s constant presence that we may live with him. The powerful who got access to interpret the law and the scriptures made the covenant a binding demand. According to them God demanded innumerous sacrifices to free humanity from their sins.

The scribes condemned them under curses and clutches of the devil. The good news Jesus opened before us through his attitudes, words, and actions was of justice, freedom, and peace that all the children of God deserve.

The scribes rejected this covenant, the covenant of God’s unconditional love, because it was against their manipulative ways. Jesus, though in the form of God, emptied himself and entered the curse, condemnation, and death of humanity. God dwells there. The man-made sanctuaries are only a representation of God’s dwelling place. God dwells, not in heavens above, but amidst God’s people. When Jesus destroyed the separation between the holy of holies and the condemned world, the sinless and the sinners he too was condemned to be possessed by the devil, an easy way of treating an unacceptable truth. In the very name of God, according to the laws and customs, they condemned love, compassion, kindness, and reconciliation.

Jesus invites us today to have the light of the Holy Spirit that we may not condemn love and justice. May the Holy Spirit guide us to see the dwelling of God among us, especially among the poor and the weak, among those condemned to be sinners.

Constant Conversions

It is not necessary that gospel may be there in preaching and articles. Only through an openness to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit, we can hear the gospel. Since gospel is life, and creative, we need to have constant conversions.

 
Powerful preachings and mesmerizing miracles may not necessarily contain the gospel. Gospel ensures justice, which is the true fruit of conversion. Only those preaching and healings that bring forth justice carry the gospel.

Uncertainties

Only if the Christian spirituality or theology rediscover Christ the Word of God, not Christ the High Priest and King, it can contribute to the world with uncertainties (intellectual, social, political). The Word is ever creative, source of life. Readiness to trust in that, will let us be quiet amidst uncertainties. The comfort of certainties may not carry the light of truth. Such comfort may be intellectually satisfying but far from reality.

Sabbath: Celebration of Life

These days the readings invite us to have a close experience of Jesus to see him, hear him and touch him. All these are made possible because he is compassionate, merciful, and tender. He is able to sympathise with us in our weaknesses because he became one like any of us. That humanness comforts us, consoles us and heals us. We are taken one step deeper into the heart of Jesus.

Being part of Jesus is a joyous experience, a celebration. Just as the Spirit guided Jesus, the same Spirit guides us also in our lives. It is an experience of freedom and liberation. Sabbath, for Jesus, was this reality of liberation. He did not confine to the customary observance of Sabbath as a day of rest. Jesus would say, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working." So Sabbath was to live the freedom of the children of God. It is in his humanity people found freedom, consolation and healing.

Salvation is an integral experience. It touches different dimensions of our lives, spiritual, physical, and social dimensions. It is also for us to ensure for one another this experience of liberation and freedom. Some key words we can pick up from the readings are righteousness and peace as an interpretation of the name 'Melchizedek.' People who have experienced salvation, or who have the freedom of Sabbath will surely be ministers of righteousness and peace.

Freedom was not a favourable option for many. So they twisted the meaning of Sabbath. Jesus places his question to our preferences between freedom of the Holy Spirit and the binding customs, ‘Is it against the law on the sabbath day to do good, or to do evil; to save life, or to kill?’If we choose for the freedom of the Holy Spirit, to do good, to save life, we can surely be ministers of life too, saying to the weary and withered, "stretch out your hands."

anointed with truth

John the Baptist was very much appealing to the people as a prophet or as the Messiah. He was not a hermit who lived in silence and solitude. John said of himself as the voice crying out in the wilderness. A voice is prophetic when it is anointed with truth. He did not hesitate to point out to Christ as the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. John proclaimed that Jesus was the one who is to baptise them with fire.

We are anointed with truth that sets us free. Even before becoming visible, this truth, the wisdom of God existed. He was in the world that had its being through him, and the world did not know him. While speaking to the people who were waiting to be baptised John says, the one here stands among you – but unknown to you. Again, “He came to his own domain and his own people did not accept him.” This presence, sure, yet unknown to us, is a call to realise, recognise, welcome, be convinced and to believe in the constant guidance of the Word lives in and among us. The anointing of the truth enliven our hearts to see the Word in the creation, experiencing as the baptism of fire, and transforming ourselves into an instrument of redemptive acts of Christ.

So, for us who follow him, St John writes, “live in Christ, my children.” It is to walk the path that Jesus walked. He is truly the anointed one, so the path is also a path of anointing. What this anointing does actively in our lives can be seen in what Jesus told the disciples of John the Baptist when they came with the question whether he was the Messiah. The blind see, the deaf hear, and the good news is preached to the poor. If they do not happen our proclamation seem to be a lie. If they do happen, we have known him, and have made him known. It is the power, and sign of the presence of the truth of the Gospel in us.

Live in Christ cannot be true simply by grouping as believers. It is becoming like him. Christ took upon himself our humanity, that we have a deeper touch with him. He has not abandoned his humanity, but continues to be united with his humanity. It is not that he has taken it to a transcendental super-spiritual world. He continues to be united with us in whom humanness is real and true, making it his body. So, live in Christ is to be united as one body of Christ.

The Word in the flesh

 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.

graced one of God

The time of waiting is over,
if we have seen a Christ-birth in us,

it is already a time to rejoice.
It is a moment of fulfilment.

the 'voice' in the wilderness,
is still a 'graced one of God' (John as the name means).
His naming opened dumbness, gave a praising voice.
The fruitfulness of the Gospel, the encounter with Christ,
the birthing of the Word,
first struck by the promise, led through a silence,
a voice in the wilderness, to songs of praises.

Gospel takes us to a period of silence, dumbness of a mystic,
what speaks is the Word, not a prophet.
nothing necessitates the presence of a prophet
except in cases when the Word is not received by sincere hearts.
The function of the prophet is "He shall turn the hearts of fathers towards their children and the hearts of children towards their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a curse."

​In the arms of the shepherd

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.

Communion, the way of God's governance

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.