Universal King

Christ who unites everything and holds everything in peace is honoured as the universal king.
The imperial image of Christ before whom every knee shall bow is a human creation. While reestablishing Christendom the kingdom of Christ cannot come.
God or the saints with golden crowns is a disfiguration of the message of Christ. It only stands for triumphalistic craze of a religion.
Gospel requires 'good soil' to have Christ born in.
Christ is not a superpower deity standing with hammer, sword, and scepter. Christ is the logos, the word, through whom everything was made. The word guides and shapes the cosmos, history and culture. Thus, he is the shepherd and the source of life.

Natural-Divine

 Do Christians really believe in 'incarnation' that God really became a human being? However Christian imaginations are generally about super-naturals, victories, and triumph. Is it not abominable to imagine Jesus or Mary having a romantic feeling? Were not thousands of generations open to natural graces that open the channels of race towards a supernatural grace of Immaculate Conception? It is easy to glorify God 'becoming' bread (which is not correct. Eucharistic presence is Christ in the form of bread), but difficult to accept God acting in natural ways/laws. In the first, there is a miraculous wonder, in the second, it is a call to relate our life to God so naturally as we are.

Good and evil

We are habituated to binarize between good and evil. There are often many things that cook up evil, but remain invisible or unnoticed. These constructive elements may be disguised within the very things we have categorized as good and holy. This chosen good reflects the cruelty of our hypocritical judgements.

Where will we place God in this good-evil creation? Which is a holy people, a leader, or a nation? Truth is unconcealed only when there is kindness and compassion. So, God cannot take sides. If we put God into our chosen good and maintain the disguised evil, surely, we will also promote evil-making structures in the name of God. It can create rituals, customs and even history. 

Truth is grey and lives pass through varied struggles of good and evil. There are chosen evils and imposed evils. The light of truth is in the honesty of heart which is rarely known.

Mark of the Covenant

The owner would make a mark on his animals as a sign that it belonged to him. Many groups of people also had certain marks of them as an identity of the particular group. 

Circumcision marked the sign of the covenant with God as one belonged to God. But the law-covenant bond followed a pattern forbidding to safeguard the purity of the covenant. 

Covenant of grace is inviting, not forbidding. Its a belonging to Christ, being in him, he being in us, and we all being in him. The imprint of Christ is the mark of the new covenant, sign of being loved and found by Christ. Reception of baptism does not guarantee this imprint in us. Covenant of grace takes us to a communion, producing its fruits.

Halloween

It is better not to demonise nor canonise Halloween. It is to be taken in the context of the anglosaxon-celtic cultural background. Like Onam in Kerala, it's a harvest festival. It's perhaps because of it, the role of the tomato, and pumpkin ... It is also a new year celebration, the beginning of a new time. As the (re)beginning of time, the dead are believed to return homes. Afraid of evil spirits the living would disguise their face to escape from them.
Gradually all these became fun and game.
Many of them who celebrate don't even think about a God to dishonour or a devil to be celebrated. Some people like to see devils everywhere and they do find them. People who are religious and God's people engaging in war, hatred, greed, power-games ... are all for God's glory. There, in fact, beliefs are worshipped than God, and evils can be easily justified.

You shall not be like that

Christ suffered, but it was not because he suffered that he became the Messiah. He is the Life-bearer/ grace-bearer for humanity and, of course, for the entire creation even before the incarnation. He poured out his life that we may have life. His suffering and self-emptying were life-giving. 

Christ poured out his life as a ransom for many when Kings and priests gathered power and wealth. There is a king in the palace, there is a high priest in the temple. Our high priest is one among us being a source of life for us all. 

Here, the question comes to the disciples: Can you drink the cup I have to drink? It is not simply about a readiness to suffer. It is about an attitude of becoming a ransom that offers life. One works, suffers, serves, and thus flowers, but we need to see what fruits are produced from these flowers. Are they life-giving fruits? 

Life is non-sided, and the authority of life spans beyond boundaries. Disciples looked for power and position even in relation with Christ, because they understood him within the frames of powerful and wealthy priests and kings, not according to the nature of life.

Gospel into liberation and chains

The kingdom of God has no boundaries of languages, cultures, and religions. If the gospel we have heard and interpreted has not liberated us to understand that God loves everyone, we have not listened to the Gospel. The rightness, trueness, and power of the gospel are in the freedom and peace that all humanity can experience. Taking religion into public spheres under the disguise of devotion, worship, and witness rarely does any act of faith. Instead, they are attempts of religious supremacy, an expression devoid of freedom.

Victory Rosary and the Glory

God's glory is where 'the righteousness and peace' is realised. This righteousness cannot be restricted to any religious rule or the super-spread of any religion. 'Peace on earth' is what is pleasing to God rather than victories of religions.

Praying the Holy Rosary is for entering the heart of God and moulding one's life after the Gospel. Selfish, egoistic victory language describing the 'powers' of the Rosary is not a Rosary that reflects the Gospel.

If we dont want 'others' in heaven?

Those who have entered heaven with a sure ticket have their heaven, salvation, and Christ smaller than the chairs they are enthroned in. They celebrate loneliness in their heaven because they have kept all ‘others’ away. Unfortunately, they found no one on the way worthy of being with them in heaven, probably because their journey had been lonely.

When Pope Francis compared different religions to different languages, it is an endorsement of the multiplicity of religious manifestations and a call to partake in dialogue and mutual understanding. It does not refute the Church’s doctrines on salvation. Instead, it emphasises the necessity for respect, openness, and cooperation among people of different faiths.

Pope Francis’s likening of different religions to different languages is very much within the framework of the Catholic Church’s doctrines on interreligious dialogue and reverence for various religious traditions. The Catholic Church acknowledges the significance and inherent value of other religions and posits that they can function as channels for human capacity for God.

The concept of ‘no salvation outside the church’ has evolved over time. While historically, it has been interpreted to signify that salvation is exclusively attainable within the Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council and subsequent teachings have underscored the potential for salvation among those who, without their own fault, lack knowledge of Christ or his Church, yet earnestly seek what God wills and strives to fulfil. If someone continues to imagine heaven as adherence to the imperial Christendom, that has little to do with the heaven that Jesus introduced.

What should the Pope have said, “You wretched people, you have no salvation unless you all become Christians?” The world might ask, “What shall we do then?” “Believe in Christ!” “What does this ‘believe in Christ’ mean?” “Which Christ should we believe, Eastern or Western, Catholic or Protestant? Your Christ is a need for the Western guilt culture. We have read from the bible a different Christ who called the world to the freedom and joy of the children of God. Being in a Christian sect does not seem to be a necessity.”

Christ, the Logos, has many languages, reveals in diverse cultures and histories. His grace is visible throughout history in the goodwill of millions of people whom we meet them in our daily lives. The Church is wherever the body of Christ extends, by its members seeking to do the will of God.

Is there anything wrong in saying, “We need to keep meeting, to weave bonds of fraternity and to allow ourselves to be guided by the divine inspiration present in every faith, in order to join in “imagining peace” among all peoples. We need such “occasions to speak with one another and to act together for the common good and the promotion of the poor”. In a world at risk of being fragmented by conflicts and wars, the efforts made by believers are invaluable for holding out visions of peace and fostering fraternity and peace among peoples everywhere.” Message of Pope Francis to participants in the international meeting for peace organised by the community of Sant’egidio Paris, 22-24 September 2024.

I understand that Pope Francis also believes that Christ is the way, the truth and the life. He has not made the statement all of a sudden from nowhere. It has been in the vision of interreligious dialogue initiatives of the Church. The interreligious dialogue was not seen as an exercise by some intellectuals. Instead, it is in the form of the Church’s being. As ‘through him, and for him, and in him’ everything is made, the Word has been visible and present in culture and history. Christ has a much wider space than Christian religious culture and language.

Pope said that religions are like many languages that speak of God, not that there are many Gods. Was Christianity itself a perfect and whole language that spoke of God in every way and every time? Unfortunately, the present controversy itself is a language that speaks of the church and its attitudes. If there is crisis in Christian identity, what is that identity which is in crisis? What is the form of Christian/catholic identity in need of revival? Can that be comprised of certain cultural values, beliefs, prestigious achievements and so on? They do have the risk of being symbols/language without meaning, looking for the beauty of style over the message.

The tomb was empty of her

Tomb was not an unfamiliar place for Mary Magdalene.

Can 'the Lord' be contained in such a tomb weighed under darkness?
Mary looked into the tomb, into her own death once she carried, the tormentations she has been suffering...
lifeless darkness, painful burden, crushing her conscious thoughts, and strangulating life-spirit.
Mary looked into the tomb,
The tomb was empty of her.

Emptiness...

The Lord had made her his own, "you are mine."
"Yes, Lord, You are mine."
Love called her out, and the Apostle to the apostles was created.

Thomas the Apostle

Thomas was not the Way, but a pilgrim on the way just as John the baptizer was not the Word but a voice crying out in the wilderness. Thomas was on the way just like any other disciple to the ultimate confession, 'my Lord and God.' In John's gospel everyone, one way or the other, go through a growth; some in their fear of shame, some in darkness, some in blindness, some in thirst, some in the cruelty of death come to him for a light of hope. Everyone needs to walk through a certain difficulty of 'unbelief' yet an irresistible need for the Messiah. 

'Do not .... ' instructions of Jesus

'Do not .... ' instructions of Jesus direct us against the hypocrisies we might fall into under the disguise of religion. Do not pray like the pharisees, Do not be like the hypocrites, ... The sermon is over after announcing the beatitudes, and teaching on the essence of the law. Now every disciple or listener must test what they produce. Knowledge of the law, performance of worship do not guarantee the joy of the kingdom. Coming down to our daily realities, the lessons are necessary even to witness the events going to happen in the plane, the healings, miracles, even the encounter with the religious leaders. 

Our Father - Life of liberation

The prayer 'Our Father' is not a prayer, it is a how about prayer-content. It is an attitude which we need to have in prayer. The basic platform for this attitude is to come together as the children of God. It is in the freedom of the children of God we must pray. To stand before God as children, and  ask him to provide, forgive, and protect, the beatitudes is the affirmation and confidence. The beatitudes opens the kingdom for all, it also bring us all hand in in hand for nourishing one another. So, Our Father is also a pattern of life, of liberation, peace and justice.

unbearable burden and the seed of the Gospel

Perhaps due to the hardness they had to undergo, the Jewish traditions (biblical) maintained a hostility in their worldview. It was justified by their theology and cherished by spirituality. Nature was hostile, people of other nations were hostile. The other people are not of God, and so, our god hates them. God allows them to overpower Israel because of sins. These 'sins' were often the projection of unbearable hostility to one's own self. Women were unclean, inimical, and evil because they were seducers, and men were lured by foreign women. This suspicious closure was well maintained by a retributive ethics and theology. Even the salvation brought by Christ underwent an interpretative frame based on this hostility, ransom, and retribution.

Jesus did not proclaim this hostility. Instead, he showed human brokenness and vulnerability as a sacramental possibility in our everyday life. Those condemned and unclean were raised to hold the joy of the kingdom. The kingdom would sprout like a seed. Touch of grace will give new streams to our inner richness. Vulnerabilities and tears were seen as matters of condemnation and signs of God's curse. Now in the light of the gospel, they are time and space of an embrace of God, the holy ground.

Lessons for Discipleship

The base for discipleship is the reality of being the children of God. Children's trust spreads from being innocent reliance to a responsible commitment to the values of the Gospel. So, the faith aspect we speak of involves these dimensions and influences our personal, social, political, and religious aspects of life. It teaches us to be joyful in struggles, and walk ahead with hope. Gradually it takes us deeper into a lifegiving nature that is of self-emptying.

The lifegiving-selfemptying connection is the 'ransom' that Christ was, and that Christ asks us to be for one another. Something may be paid and remission may be given does not contain the lesson Jesus taught about the love of the Father. God wants all to be fully alive and flourishing. Grace is given to us that we can live a life that is according to God's will. Where we are weak, the same grace makes us to take these weaknesses into an experience of salvation. Gospel is the guiding light for a life of grace and for taking our weaknesses without fear or shame to the abundance of life.

listen to the Spirit

A breath of love is generative. The breath of love that comes from God is within the very nature of God. This divine self-communication takes place in the Holy Spirit, takes us and our history also into a bond of love. history. The goodness of God is manifested in creation. The entire creation drinks from that goodness. God opens himself to us in the Holy Spirit, so that we may participate in the depth of God’s love and goodness.

Humanity is in need of the breath of love. It is yet to open itself to live in the breath of love. It is yet to desire for the goodness of God to be reflected in its life. What we need the most is an earnest desire for it. We can no longer be agents of division, hatred, war, and destruction. By God’s own help let us bring into our sight both the dry lifeless condition and the living and fruitful condition; thirsty ones, drinking from the fountain of life, turns to be a heart of overflowing streams. Being in a gentle flow of stream is refreshing. That breath of love and the stream of life is the Holy Spirit.

“Let anyone who is thirsty, come to me…”

“Let anyone who believes in me come and drink.”

“From his heart, shall flow streams of living water.”

“My spirit fails. My soul thirsts for You like a parched land” (Ps 143: 6) expresses the deep longing for life. We can see today, the complexities of life, and the struggles that we carry. Some are condemned and some are despised. No human condition is incapable or unworthy to yearn for God. In fact, already there is the cry of the Holy Spirit deep within that we may be filled by the life of God. Drinking from the wellspring of life we begin to live afresh.

Life produces its fruits, and there is a joy of the harvest. The fruit that the Holy Spirt produces in us as persons and as the church is conforming us into Christ. All other fruits and charisms are to be known within our conformity with Christ. It is a celebration of re-creation and of a harvest as the feast of Pentecost itself was the feast of the first fruits. No one receives the Holy Spirit as a personal possession, we have received the Spirit as we are one body in a family, community, a parish or the church. Perhaps, it is a time that we once again come together as small groups experiencing the vibrance of the Holy Spirit, as a body that knows the members. Something that is essential here, first of all, is the realisation of the need for the Holy Spirit and the readiness to be guided by the Spirit. Secondly, it is something of great importance is the joy of mutual building through the charisms each of has received.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit are generated in us out of sincere following of the values of the kingdom of God, and seeking its justice. Indwelling of the Holy Spirit wells up from us and from the church as fruits of the Gospel which we received, sprouted and grew. A person or a church that does not seek the kingdom of God is hypocritical in calling out for the Holy Spirit and claiming to have the whole possession of the Holy Spirit. So, we cannot take the Holy Spirit for granted. If we do not have the readiness to listen to the Holy Spirit, if we are not ready to listen to the voice of one another, no prayer to the Holy Spirit, no worship in the name of the Holy Spirit will dispose ourselves to the working of the Spirit. Dramatic performances and mesmerising events cannot bring down the Holy Spirit. Our favourite imaginations like consuming fire that burns and destroys hide the gentle Spirit who sanctifies through the spring of new life.

Often, we speak about a second Pentecost and expect the Spirit to come. The Spirit has not gone away. We need to ask ourselves how willing are we to take the Gospel as the first option in our life. It is costly because it risks our devotional easy ways, rigid moralism, ideologized beliefs. When the values of the kingdom become the first option, the Spirit will well up within us and will manifest the nature of Christ. So, the manifestation can happen only through a sincere gift of our very ‘self’ to God. Through the action of the Spirit-Paraclete, a process of true growth in humanity may be accomplished in our world, in both individual and community life.

The Spirit never manifests in isolation. Instead, the Spirit makes God visible in the Church when we are open to the Spirit. What if we take the existence of the Church for granted? The church lives as the body of Christ, mutually building, healing, and nourishing one another. When each church and denomination claim originality, distance one another, when different renewal movement hold an elite holy attitude and condemn others, when we upheld order, unity, solutions at the risk of unity itself, when we divinise power and authority and forget love and service, we take for granted that there exists a church. But that is a church that resists against the Holy Spirit.

Noone has the monopoly over the Holy Spirit; no branded evangelists, no great preacher, no gospel channel has the custody of the Holy Spirit. All of us are continuously called to give ourselves to God with our whole being. This is our deepest vocation. We can do it only by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit enlightens our minds, and helps us to do His will. Ultimately the Spirit brings us into the mystery that gathered as one body in Christ we are all the children of God. We live it consistently experiencing the breath of love and causing the streams to flow out as fruits of the goodness of God.

This is something important for us today as humans to live in the reality of the kingdom of God. It is also important for us today to live in the Holy Spirit, a life of goodness, communion and love, that millions of years later when no humans may be there to celebrate Pentecost, the creation may still share the first fruits for its children, of course, God’s own children.

A breath of love is generative. The breath of love that comes from God is within the very nature of God. This divine self-communication takes place in the Holy Spirit, takes us and our history also into a bond of love. history. The goodness of God is manifested in creation. The entire creation drinks from that goodness. God opens himself to us in the Holy Spirit, so that we may participate in the depth of God’s love and goodness.

Humanity is in need of the breath of love. It is yet to open itself to live in the breath of love. It is yet to desire for the goodness of God to be reflected in its life. What we need the most is an earnest desire for it. We can no longer be agents of division, hatred, war, and destruction. By God’s own help let us bring into our sight both the dry lifeless condition and the living and fruitful condition; thirsty ones, drinking from the fountain of life, turns to be a heart of overflowing streams. Being in a gentle flow of stream is refreshing. That breath of love and the stream of life is the Holy Spirit.

“Let anyone who is thirsty, come to me…”

“Let anyone who believes in me come and drink.”

“From his heart, shall flow streams of living water.”

“My spirit fails. My soul thirsts for You like a parched land” (Ps 143: 6) expresses the deep longing for life. We can see today, the complexities of life, and the struggles that we carry. Some are condemned and some are despised. No human condition is incapable or unworthy to yearn for God. In fact, already there is the cry of the Holy Spirit deep within that we may be filled by the life of God. Drinking from the wellspring of life we begin to live afresh.

Life produces its fruits, and there is a joy of the harvest. The fruit that the Holy Spirt produces in us as persons and as the church is conforming us into Christ. All other fruits and charisms are to be known within our conformity with Christ. It is a celebration of re-creation and of a harvest as the feast of Pentecost itself was the feast of the first fruits. No one receives the Holy Spirit as a personal possession, we have received the Spirit as we are one body in a family, community, a parish or the church. Perhaps, it is a time that we once again come together as small groups experiencing the vibrance of the Holy Spirit, as a body that knows the members. Something that is essential here, first of all, is the realisation of the need for the Holy Spirit and the readiness to be guided by the Spirit. Secondly, it is something of great importance is the joy of mutual building through the charisms each of has received.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit are generated in us out of sincere following of the values of the kingdom of God, and seeking its justice. Holy Spirit cannot be generated in a powerful 'Praise and Worship.' Indwelling of the Holy Spirit wells up from us and from the church as fruits of the Gospel which we received, sprouted and grew. A person or a church that does not seek the kingdom of God is hypocritical in calling out for the Holy Spirit and claiming to have the whole possession of the Holy Spirit. So, we cannot take the Holy Spirit for granted. If we do not have the readiness to listen to the Holy Spirit, if we are not ready to listen to the voice of one another, no prayer to the Holy Spirit, no worship in the name of the Holy Spirit will dispose ourselves to the working of the Spirit. Dramatic performances and mesmerising events cannot bring down the Holy Spirit. Our favourite imaginations like consuming fire that burns and destroys hide the gentle Spirit who sanctifies through the spring of new life. Holy Spirit cannot be generated in a powerful 'Praise and Worship.'

Often, we speak about a second Pentecost and expect the Spirit to come. The Spirit has not gone away. We need to ask ourselves how willing are we to take the Gospel as the first option in our life. It is costly because it risks our devotional easy ways, rigid moralism, ideologized beliefs. When the values of the kingdom become the first option, the Spirit will well up within us and will manifest the nature of Christ. So, the manifestation can happen only through a sincere gift of our very ‘self’ to God. Through the action of the Spirit-Paraclete, a process of true growth in humanity may be accomplished in our world, in both individual and community life.

The Spirit never manifests in isolation. Instead, the Spirit makes God visible in the Church when we are open to the Spirit. What if we take the existence of the Church for granted? The church lives as the body of Christ, mutually building, healing, and nourishing one another. When each church and denomination claim originality, distance one another, when different renewal movement hold an elite holy attitude and condemn others, when we upheld order, unity, solutions at the risk of unity itself, when we divinise power and authority and forget love and service, we take for granted that there exists a church. But that is a church that resists against the Holy Spirit.

Noone has the monopoly over the Holy Spirit; no branded evangelists, no great preacher, no gospel channel has the custody of the Holy Spirit. All of us are continuously called to give ourselves to God with our whole being. This is our deepest vocation. We can do it only by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit enlightens our minds, and helps us to do His will. Ultimately the Spirit brings us into the mystery that gathered as one body in Christ we are all the children of God. We live it consistently experiencing the breath of love and causing the streams to flow out as fruits of the goodness of God.

This is something important for us today as humans to live in the reality of the kingdom of God. It is also important for us today to live in the Holy Spirit, a life of goodness, communion and love, that millions of years later when no humans may be there to celebrate Pentecost, the creation may still share the first fruits for its children, of course, God’s own children.

Event creation - Pentecost

The preparations for Pentecost takes over the nature of event management. Our expectations are high. Such exciting doings cannot rightly open ourselves for the receiving of the Holy Spirit. First of all, Pentecost is not the only day Holy Spirit lives in us. It is an everyday reality. Secondly, the Jesus event in our life is not a crazy following, it is a loyal, responsible, mature relationship. It means  well reflected acts welling up from that relationship. 

The presence of the Holy Spirit is not  a magical outcome, but it is the fruition of the Gospel in us. There are many secret pious practices developing in the name of faith and evangelization. Seemingly they are zealous, and have greater faith than 'normal' people. But in fact, they are instrumentalizing and magicalizing devotions and even  the eucharist. We have failed to live in the Holy Spirit by finding comfort in cultic closures of our beliefs. There is no faith, there is no devotion. Genuine faith and devotions will lead us to seek justice, and live the values of the kingdom in our lives. That is the only way we can be open for the Holy Spirit. 

The Helper

Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to us, the Spirit that comes from the father. The Spirit is the true witness to the inner life of the trinity, to the whole history of creation, evolution, sciences, arts and civilizations. Helped by the Spirit, we know the free from all prejudices.

 
As Christ sends the Spirit to us, we are also sent by him, for we have been with him. We know the truth and bear witness. Unless helped by the Spirit we can end up in living for isms, even those of faith, religion, liturgy and so on. They have no root in the Father.

It's Spirit that knows the mind of God. When we have the Spirit we too know the mind of God, and act accordingly by the help of the same Spirit.

Remain in my love

We are on the 6th Sunday of Easter. Have we met the risen Christ? In opening the Scriptures and breaking of the bread, the Church has been leading us to have an intimate experience with Christ present amidst us. He is recognised as Lord and God, walking along with us amidst our doubts and fears, caring, guarding and healing as a good shepherd, holding us all together as branches in a vine. Then, He calls us to the ultimate aim of his incarnation, passion, death and resurrection; the communion with the Father. He says, “abide in me,” “remain in my love.”

That is not so exciting, isn’t it? But it is the truth that Christ opened for us that our joy may be complete, and may bear fruit. We are often excited and enthusiastic in adoring and worshiping a super-spiritual divine being. The communion with him does not excite us much. Not because it is difficult or mysterious, but the communion involves a commitment to love others also.

God of superpowers can be worshiped very safely in a cultic system, and we can go free. Bit worship that Christ seeks happens in communion, and only in communion. All that we do in the name of God and in the name of the Church devoid of this communion only affirms what St John wrote, “God’s love is not in them.”

This abiding in God is a deep mystery, a bond of love. Let us listen to Christ in love! He says, “I am in the Father,” “you abide in me. I abide in you,” thus, we remain in the love of the Father. Jesus called us to follow him, Jesus asked us to love God and love others. It is a communion with God and others. The gospel passage today teaches us what it means and how it is essential for us.

Jesus loved us from the love he received from the Father. “I have loved you as the Father has loved me.” The call to abide in him is to be made real after the example of how Christ abides in the Father, and has loved the Father. “… just as I have kept my Father’s commandments,

and remain in his love, if you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love.” The life that we have received in Christ makes known the love of the Father whereby we have the joy of Christ himself and that our joy may be complete.

If we are to live in that communion, primarily we need to be filled with a constantly reminded awareness that we are all God’s children, “and that is what we are!” This reality and the primary commandment to love is what compromise at the risk of communion with God. Keeping aside this commandment, we are strict with all commandments that we have made in the name of God. We teach and preach them as God’s commandments. We have reinterpreted the commandment and justified our boundaries and prejudices. There is no communion with the Father. When we create divisions in the name of God, traditions, liturgy, and authority, Father’s love does not remain with us, because we have chosen not to have communion. When we surrender our spirit to immoral and inhuman structures that spread lies and hatred, we don’t remain in Christ and his love. This is very much visible in our lives and in the life of the church, in the very moments we have multitude of activities, increasing devotional practices, shrines, and religious festivities.

Being in communion with God, just as Christ loved God, and being in communion with others as Christ loved us, really means a life of goodness, justice, love, authenticity, and compassion. It also means a readiness to accept all as the children of God, beyond all prejudices. Then our families, our parishes, religious communities will be truly living in Christ and in his love. We will have joy, and we will have fruits that will last.

video

Abide in Him

Christ is the sacrament of God and also of creation. 'Abide' calls for deeper communion with God, creation, and humanity. 'Abiding' cannot be exclusive to Christianity as a religion. Maintaining religion, Christianity has done away with Christ. We are eager to worship, but have no much attempt to 'abide in him.' Worship and devotion are never a romantic attachment or a 'intoxicated religious' world. Christ never ask for it. The life that he asked of the disciples is of becoming like him. 'Making home in him' cannot be possible by recitation of 'Jesus' or repetition of Word of God. It can be true only by seeking the kingdom of God and its justice. That is the only 'way' to be one in the vine, producing fruits, and glorifying the Father.