Spoken in the name of the Lord

Among the guests of Herod, perhaps there was so much laughter and celebration, noise and cheer. On other side, the last groaning still may have had the voice crying out in the wilderness.

Jesus began his public ministry when he heard that John was arrested. After the death of John, Jesus began to point to his own cross. John was put to death, Jesus withdrew to a lonely place, he is moved with compassion to the people who followed him, and he feeds them. John’s martyrdom wasn’t just a tragic event; it was the prophetic preview of the Calvary path. The first reading takes up the radical call “he has spoken in the name of the Lord.”

Jeremiah states: “As for me, I am in your hands; do with me what you think is good and right.” it is total self-surrender rooted in absolute trust. By placing his life into the hands of a hostile court, Jeremiah strips his persecutors of their ultimate power over him. When a prophet surrenders completely to God, human threats lose their power. The primary implication for us is clear: to stand for the Lord, one must first die to self-preservation. Truth cannot be spoken faithfully if we are still negotiating for our own comfort, safety, or approval. In the case of John, it would have been far safer for him to remain silent on political morality. The correctness seems to belong to the powerful, but speaking ‘right’ means proclaiming truth even when it threatens comfort or survival.

To ensure we do right, we need to form our conscience rooted in God, truly on God. To speak or act in the name of the Lord is not simply invoking a pious formula or claiming God's endorsement for our own opinions. It is not a radical activism. Jeremiah doesn't claim personal authority. He listened to God, he was sure that: “The Lord sent me to prophesy against this house and this city all the words you have heard.”False prophets may be powerful and popular, they may work miracles, but many may satisfy the religious, ideological, political crave of people. Only when the content and the spirit of the message align with divine justice, mercy, and truth, we actually speak in God’s name. True prophets speak what God commands, fully aware that the message might bring rejection, persecution, or death.

What about our prophetic living? We might mistake extreme asceticism, fanaticism, or separatist isolation for a true prophetic dimension, but these tendencies often center on the self rather than on God. When holiness is reduced to severe physical discipline or angry ideological zeal, religious pride quickly overshadows love, mercy, and God’s patient truth. True prophecy is never about retreating from the world to keep our lives pure. Rather than hiding behind walls of moral superiority, a prophet is called to step into the brokenness of humanity as an instrument of divine healing, light, and justice. If we dare to speak in the name of the Lord, we must know that truth has a cost. Speaking and doing right in the name of God will inevitably clash with systems built on self-interest, compromise, or pride.

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catholicity

 Catholicity may be better experienced when Christians are able to see the church beyond its 'visible boundaries.'

MAGA cult

A cult usually create a convenient deity for the group. It serves the intentions of the group, emotionally, (closed) culturally, and politically. Apparently everything is right and appealing. MAGA cult may be a matter of study and evaluation for all Christians, because in one way or the other, it has influenced their way of thinking about leadership, morality, perceptions on humanity and even the Christ and his kingdom. Perhaps we have conveniently forgotten the gospel for celebrating this cult.

Cult may have pleasing events and celebrations. 500 people reading the Bible together will be a great event. What if we do a great Bibiolatry event and donot follow the gospel? Is God glorified, or is a nation glorified? Worship is due for God, not for Bible, not for any glory of religion or nation, nor any concept of God.

Evil of war

The current debates among christians on war appear to tell that the politicised Christianity has no place for Christ or the values of the kingdom of God. Power and domination and business are its interest.

The entire world is not a Christian system. Yet the 'we only' christian expect the whole world to follow christian values while they themself downplay them. Evils do exist, they can be overcome only by good. Following a christ's path in dealing with evil is what is expected of Christian. Instead the path of violence and power, a dehumanising evil direction to deal with evil has no gospel logic. So war is a crime, a mortal sin, it cannot be justified.

salvation ~ Atomic power

Some Christians seem to believe that cross has failed to offer salvation; salvation and peace come from the nuclear deterrence. Strangely, this salvation is realized only when 'we' have  ammunitions and others are powerless, and when we have the dominating power. This peace and salvation is strange to the Gospel.

Just as there are evils, the structures that breed them are also to be 'sanctified.' Better, the Christians nurture a right conscience to introspect historically the structures of evil in the world, before canonizing the missile trade, invasions and dominations.

War is a MORTAL SIN

War is a MORTAL SIN.

For the Catholics, it may be a crucial time time to check on to their Christian conscience. We could go ahead with convenient moral interpretations on war. We cannot do it anymore. It is not about 'I am with Pope Leo,' or 'I am with Trump,' it is about how we perceive building of structures of greed, power, arrogance, supremacy, and willful hatred. Perhaps, we ourselves have been breeding it in different ways, but no more.

some weeks before, it was essential that Hormuz be open, because the vulnerable are affected across the globe. Now the Hormuz is going to be blocked for all nations putting pressure on all the globe. where is the concern for the vulnerable now?

In the kingdom of God there is no specially chosen people; all are the children of God. There is no elite holy people who can demonise others and justify their violence.

Of course, "God hears the cry of those who fight evil," not of those having evil intentions and killing whom they identify to be 'evil' and cover up their own Killing as holy acts. Ultimately God desires good of all, not behaving like a mad goon.

Your GOD is too small, if you have to take God's name to cover up your madness, pride and greed.

The christ's being handed over to the hands of the wicked men calls us to identify the innocent humanity being handed over to war and violence (even by ideology ) by their very leaders. Whether it be 'Iran,' 'Israel,' 'Lebanon,' 'Iraq', 'Syria,' we have them in relation to the choices of their leaders. Leaders do not carry the human heart of their own people. Even the biblical prophets criticised Jerusalem for its exclusive elite belief of their arrogance and cruelty connected to the 'chosen' aspect. whether it be in the church or in Israel it intrinsically deny god's being with us. If the christian prayers do no have the heart of christ, and carry the inclusive nature of the church, christianity is just an "obscure collection of weird cultists." How can one pray for the strength to kill and rage war if one has a spirit of christ. how can one offer tithe for the expenses of killing people? Their Christ is only an idol they themselves have conveniently created.

'Israel' no more seems to represent a covenant with God. The leaders and the estranging ideologies some of them carry do not have the refelction of Yahwey-elohim who is compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love. Any one who uses 'Israel' in prayer may immediately connect to the present images of it because that is just in front of us. It is a liturgical trauma to many to have the name when that contradicts what the prayer means.

Expansion of territories, invading, has only spirit of greed and arrogance, and pride is a necessary function in that system.

Do We Trap God in Our Laws

The Scribes and Pharisees in the gospel passages were not villains in their society; they were the guardians of ​the identity of their religion and society. They emerged into the​ir strictest form when they saw there was an apparent crisis of their faith and traditions.

Let’s imagine we have got a Dr’s prescription. It may have suggestions on what to do and what not to do, and which medicine to take and how. That is wonderful. This is wonderful—so wonderful, in fact, that we decide to laminate it, frame it, and place it in a golden box. We carry it around, garland it, and offer it incense. This is precisely what the Pharisees were doing.

To prevent breaking any of the Commandments, the Scribes created many fences, many subsidiary regulations, that would protect them. Though well-intended, these often overshadowed the original intention. While the goal was the life and holiness of the people, the result was merely the preservation of the holiness and honor of the Law itself. The written code of law was seen to be the Law of God that would possess ​the entire heart of God.

Jesus criticised the self-centred, hypocritical, and politically motivated interpretation of the law. It deprived many of their dignity as the children of god. In a shame-honor culture, public adherence to the minute forms of laws had become a source of social capital. They were prove​n righteous and honored in society. Such perfect following was demanded of all if they were to be worthy of God’s reward. Under the retributive ethics and theology​, these well-defined the merit of the privileged and the misery of the vulnerable. The holy ones exercised power over the sinners. They used the Law to create hierarchy rather than holiness. Jesus’ strong critique​, “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites…” was not a punishment or curse but a disaster they themselves have caused upon them​selves by the very adaptation of the law.

The privilege of having the law also offered a guaranteed possession of ‘the way, truth and life.’ So, the New Testament approach ​to finding the incapacity of the law to offer life points to Christ as the way truth and​ the life. There was a serious mistake in identifying the Law as the Logos itself. We must move from Torah-centrism to Logos-centrism. Jesus’ saying, “I have come to fulfil the law” does not mean that he was the one who did everything in its perfect way. “I know the father, I have come to do the will of the father, the father has sent me…” are to be seen as the key for understanding his mode of fulfilling the law.

Jesus repeatedly says, “You have heard it said... but I say to you.” He is not the lawgiver like Moses, he is not an interpreter like the scribes, but he is the law in whom we can see the will of God. He is the path we need to walk, he is the truth of the scriptures, moral values and our very lives, he is the life that we ultimately desire. His drawing on the law was not on ethical perspectives on honour for parents, adultery, lies, and murder, he reorients the very first commandment ‘I am the Lord your God’ as a law-bound legislator to a Father. Ways of honouring God in the temple or in the public sphere, the sabbath etc receives the content of life from the relationship to the Father. There the reward cannot be self-centred, hypocrisy cannot work, and there cannot be any power game. Because all are the children of one Father. His choice of healing on the sabbath was to break the fences the law had created.

When Jesus says your righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees, he calls us to be away from self-honouring legalism and grow into the freedom of the children of God. The law had been a guardian or a tutor (Galatians 3:24), but they had made it God. Understanding Christ as the law is the ‘Law of the Spirit of Life’ (Romans 8:2).

Anytime we believe that strict following of the law is like a ladder to go up to God there is a failure. We expect to climb the ladder to bridge the gap to the Divine through our own effort, turning salvation into a wage earned rather than a gift received. It again centres to ourselves, making God a debtor to our goodness and our faithful fulfilling of the law. The call is not just to mimic Jesus but to participate in his life. The ‘Law of Christ’ is not being a good individual, it is being in Him, it is living the beatitudes of the kingdom. We desire and make effort to do it, and grace completes what we are not able to do by our own.

The nature of Christ in us is essentially openness to life and freedom. When someone acts for the good of the other, by working for social justice, by voicing for the marginalized, offering silent forgiveness to an enemy, comforting those in shame, or practicing hospitality to the vulnerable. Its not because one sees them as commanded by God as a condition that God will give a blessing in return. They are expressing the life of Christ that naturally lives for the life of the other. If we can ask, “What does the Love of Christ require in this specific moment?” our attention changes from rigid compliance to active discernment. It is true that we seek intellectual and emotional and even spiritual comforts in definitions. While being lawful is often reduced to adhering to definitions of faith and morals, Christ liberates us into a process of discernment led by grace. Ultimately the practical living of Christ the law is done by self-emptying love. Yet we live in a tension. We are perfected in Christ, yet still struggling through our own gracelessness. So, our life is a constant returning to the union with Christ.

Blessedness of emptiness

 We live in a time of empty realities. Many of us feel like a modern-day remnant, just left out. The Babylonians once took the useful, the scholars, the priests, the craftsmen and the smiths the best who can contribute to the economic powers are chosen and the unskilled and the ordinary just live to survive, Many feel discarded by technology or shifting economies. We are told our value lies in our utility, our skills, or our bank accounts.

If we listen to Christ today, are we among who hear his voice as ‘Blessed are you!’ the very first Gospel moment begins with the greeting of the angel to Mary ‘Blessed are you,’ Jesus in his first sermon at Nazareth announced the time of God’s blessedness. Jesus looks at the very people the world ignores - the hungry, the weeping, the merciful and says, ‘Blessed are you.’  

Using passage from Isaiah 61 he opened the kingdom first to the poor. “The Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor...” (Is 61:1) “Blessed are the poor theirs is the kingdom of God.” The anointing to preach good news is “...to comfort all who mourn ... to give them a garland instead of ashes.” (Is 61:2-3) “Blessed are those who mourn, they will be comforted.” Isiah cried out calling all to the richness of God’s grace “…, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters... why spend money for that which is not bread?” (Is 55:1-2) “Blessed are those who hunger.. they shall be satisfied.” In the ancient world, inheriting the land was for the strong and the military conquerors. Prophetic promise is that the land (and the world) ultimately belongs to the non-violent, not the conquerors.  Zephaniah focuses on the remnant who were meek and useless. “But I will leave within you the meek and humble, who trust in the name of the Lord... They will eat and lie down and no one will make them afraid.” (Zephaniah 3:12-13) Psalm 37:11 is the foundation for the Beatitude “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

To ‘see God’ was the ultimate goal of the pilgrims. They would sing on the way: “Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? ... The one who has clean hands and a pure heart... They will receive blessing from the Lord.” (Psalm 24:3-5) “Blessed are the pure hearted for they shall see God.” From many passages we know that the prophets were obsessed with the idea that God prefers mercy over sacrifice. “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.” (Hosea 6:6) To be merciful is to reflect the very character of God’s steadfast love. Peace in the prophetic sense isn’t just the absence of war; it is the presence of integrity. “The righteous who walks in his integrity - blessed are his children after him!” Proverbs 20:7 (Micah 4:3 / Isaiah 2:4). Peace descends not only on them, but also upon their children. In the Roman world, the Emperor was the ‘Son of God’ because he brought peace through war conquest. By calling peacemakers ‘sons of God,’ Jesus gives them a divine title. Jesus claims that those who bring peace through reconciliation are the true children of God.

The Beatitudes are real when we desire and actualize God’s will in our lives. This blessedness isn’t a promise of future riches; it’s an invitation to realize that God’s favor is currently resting on the very people society ignores. For generations, many considered prophetic hope as a pie in the sky comfort, something that may happen in the afterlife. But in the person of Jesus, ‘it has come already.’ The healing of the broken-hearted is a current event. We no longer look past our tears toward a far distant shore; instead, we look into the face of the One who stands among us.

Jesus does not just comfort and heal those who walk in the valley of death; He identifies the Kingdom with them. Blessedness of the kingdom is with them and within them. The experience of the kingdom is also personified in Jesus. He is the living fulfillment of the promises He preached, being in our midst to offer Himself as the answer to our deepest needs, “I am the bread, I will give you rest, why are you afraid, do not weep, and finally abide with me….”

Each promise (comfort, mercy, the land) is coupled with a clear emptiness (mourning, hunger, or poverty). This is a call for the mutual building of the Kingdom, a participation in God’s work. We extend our hands to the poor, share our bread to the hungry, comfort those who mourn, stand with those hunger for justice, make efforts for peace-making, … Just as Isaiah says the comforted mourners will in turn become ‘Oaks of Righteousness’ who rebuild the ruins, the experience of the Beatitudes call a people to move from being the recipients of the promise to the agents of it.

However, in our world today, many face a new deportation, forced to move away from their homelands. Even the ‘skilled’ who survived the early wave of change now ‘hunger and thirst for justice’ as job security vanishes. We are a world of people living in a ‘nowhere land’ of digital gig work and agricultural decline. There is a powerful system that values them only for their immediate utility. Here the useless and the humble and meek never own the land. They are moved to the margins with beautiful policies of minimum wages. We are met with empty realities, and we carry it home without being satisfied.

If the agricultural sector fails and technology leaves us empty, gathering together as the people of God, our communities and simple social structures need to reflect the reality of the beatitudes where ‘righteousness and peace kiss each other’ (Psalm 85:10). Our current empty realities may then be transformed into a poverty of spirit required for the Kingdom to break through.

Therefore, let us not be disappointed of your emptiness. In our age however rich or poor we are or however holy or sinful we are, in the eyes of the Master; we can be recognised as the poor of Yahwey – the very ones upon whom the Kingdom is built. Because we all carry an empty reality. Let us not carry our 'nowhere land' in despair. Instead, let us come to Him, let us go out as Oaks of Righteousness to comfort those who are still in despair. May our integrity be our peace, and may the blessing that rested on Mary and the prophets rest upon us and our children.

Christ Our King

Usually when we hear ‘King,’ we might imagine a throne, a crown, a sword, perhaps an emperor waiting for everyone to shout, "Hail, O King!" It happens even now. But if that's what we imagine about Christ, we have missed the entire point of this Feast.

When this Feast was established in 1925 by Pope Pius XI, the world was in a terrible crisis. The world was consumed by aggressive nationalism, militarism in different parts of Europe, godless secularism, and rising dictatorships like Nazism and Communism. These movements placed the nation or the state on a throne, demanding absolute loyalty. This was a crisis that crushed individual conscience and setting the stage for the devastation of World War II.

The Church was challenged on every front: secularists tried to keep God out of education and public life, and dictators persecuted anyone who gave their ultimate loyalty to the Pope instead of the State.

Initially​, to protect itself and its members, the Church also adopted the authoritarian mindset of the age. It ​c​entralised power, focusing heavily on strict obedience and hierarchical command. It developed a ‘siege mentality,’ where it saw the world outside as an enemy to be defended against, sometimes leading it to act rigidly and even condemn progress, as seen in the Syllabus of Errors Pope Pius IX in 1864. Thus, In fighting a political dictatorship, the Church sometimes began to look a little too much like a militant, authoritarian structure itself. There were revivalist groups and movements ​t​hat adopted military-like dresses and lifestyle​s and continued a language of defeating and conquering.

Christ’s Kingship is fundamentally unlike any power structure on earth. As the Firstborn of all creation, His authority is cosmic and sustaining. It is lifegiving which is of greatest importance. He is the one ​w​ho holds all things together. He does not rule through force; He rules in Truth, Love, and Life. It was not a nostalgic celebration, reclaiming the lost glory of the church or the return of Christendom.

He doesn’t want ‘Hail, O King’ praises, nor greeting with victory symbols and banners. He wants to be greeted by the simple, embodied acts of tenderness, care, and service. Look at the famous passage from Matthew 25: "I was hungry and you gave me food... naked and you clothed me, I was condemned​, you came near to me.” This Kingship is defined by vulnerable service, seen in the self-emptying love of the Cross. This is the authority of life and sustenance, unlike the dictatorial power that only controls and exploits. The ultimate celebration of Christ’s rule is not a political or religious ceremony. It is the radical act of recognizing and serving the King recognised within the most marginalized person. When we live out and offer the promises of the beatitudes, we are actually saying, ‘Hail, O King,’ to Christ Himself in human form. When we clothe the naked or visit the sick, we are not performing mere charity; we are literally recognizing and serving the King dwelling within the marginalized people. This is the ultimate celebration of Christ’s rule: making His presence visible by identifying Him in each of us. When the good Samaritan cared for the wounded man, his oil and wine and the care was really welcoming to the Son of Man. This style of kingship is the authority of care and nurturing, life and sustenance, unlike dictatorial power, which controls and exploits.  

The relevance of the feast today is the call for every Christian to make Christ's Kingly nature visible in their daily deeds. Christ's Kingship for our Age of Humanity is founded on human action and social structures rather than seeing him as a mythic hero or author of commands. His Kingship applied to our own Self counters our individualism, greed, and indifference. Accusation, condemnation, and cursing are ruling styles, but not of Christ. So, it is an invitation for us to give up attitudes of judgment, condemnation, or separation. In our age of misinformation, where ruling happens through curated narratives or propaganda, Christ’s rule in truth challenges us to guard against siding with these elements.

But, if we truly desire this to be a reality in our lives and in the Church, we must abandon the image of an emperor’s rule and reimagine Christ’s kingship as the author of life and existence.

The Last Day

 We hear so much nowadays about the Last Days. Are we really living in the end times? Many people anxiously look for answers in headlines about disasters, wars, political chaos, or economic collapse. They worry about the next earthquake, the next tsunami, or the appearance of some asteroids. Let us be clear: The true signs of Christ’s coming are not in the tremors of the earth, but in our readiness to be transformed into the likeness of Christ.

How far have we allowed ourselves to be transformed into His likeness? Of course, we are not fully grown into Christ.  But every day, every moment brings an extraordinary opportunity once again. It is the chance to listen to the greeting of grace and receive Christ – His nature, His love, and His truth – into our own flesh and blood. Christ’s coming is a great revelation of Him in us, in others, and in the entire creation.  Being one in him, we know him in everything and in everyone.

Presentation of Mary and of ours

The Kingdom of God is like a great treasure hidden in a field. God placed a great treasure in Mary. She was ‘full of grace.’ But her greatness was not just in receiving the treasure; it was in preserving that grace responsibly and offering a complete cooperation with God’s will. Mary offered herself in total surrender for her entire life, even when that purpose led to the uncertainty of the Cross. Amidst our daily struggles, our exhaustion, and the brokenness of relationships, how do we emulate this divine cooperation? Mary was offered in the temple as a custom, but, we resent ourselves to God in our daily life. Our temple is often filled with anxiety, stress, and noise. Our cooperation is not about superhuman effort; it is about a sincere Surrender to the chaos and pain of the present moment.

Let us stop measuring our daily obedience against a grand, future plan. Instead, practice the surrender in different moments of our day. When the traffic jam ignites our anger, when the colleague exploits our patience, when failure crushes our spirit, let us say, "Lord, I offer these to your purpose." This surrender creates a space for the grace to work. The ultimate question then becomes: Have we given birth to Christ? To "give birth to Christ" means that our cooperation has become so complete that Christ’s nature - His love, patience, mercy, and truth—is made visible in our own actions. If we have truly consented, surrendered, and actively cooperated with grace, then our lives should manifest His Presence.

Stop being used

It is deeply painful when we come to realise that we are being used or victimized, whether that is happening at home, at work, or within our community. We act with good intentions, but someone is taking advantage of our goodwill. We often feel crushed, but at the same time we are paralyzed, hesitating to say ‘no’ because we fear the rejection from these people whom we helped or served. First of all, let us bring into our own awareness what violation we are really undergoing; don’t just suffer. Define it clearly: ‘They use my time, my commitment, my work in fact for their own benefit.’ They speak high ideals - good for humanity, service to God and so on, but it looks like our commitment does not yield the promised good. Perhaps through the abuse of power or manipulation of beliefs, they have violated a healthy boundary set to protect our time, energy, feelings, and resources. A healthy boundary protects our inherent worth, and identifying the violation of this boundary is an act of love for oneself and necessary self-justice.

Taking courage means reclaiming our space and setting clear limits on our time and availability. True kindness and generosity can never be built on compulsion or force, nor should it lead to our exhaustion. Take courage and guard the boundary, its not being selfish, but stopping allowing someone using our goodwill and service. We decide to stop doing that for our own good. Continuing to do it is never a sacrifice. There may be occasions where we are highly vulnerable – under the clutch of a powerful exploiter or unable to escape. In such systems, direct confrontation is impossible and unsafe. Here, the necessity of seeking guidance is important: a trusted counselor, therapist, or a spiritual guide is essential for processing trauma and ensuring protection.

All these processes are sustained by Divine Grace. Grace may not become a sudden solution, but as an ever-present strength. Grace never demands that we passively suffer every harm; instead, it offers the internal capacity to hold onto our inherent value even when we are trapped and externally powerless. For the truly helpless, Grace offers the constancy of a presence. This presence offers the recognition that we are loved and valued, even in this condition. The inherent worth that Grace constantly reminds us of is the sustenance until the day we can fully walk free.

From Silent Suffering to Self-Compassion

Often the pain of neglect or rejection breaks our hearts. The care we receive may not be meeting our need and desire for an intimate bond. It may be familial, professional or social. Should we just suffer the pain of avoidance, and rejection or face it? To treat this pain, perhaps we cant expect others to change and care for us, or to ensure affection and warmth. We must first affirm our own inherent value and move from silent suffering into self-care and self-compassion. Let us begin with naming what we really go through instead of bearing an unnamed burden. Maybe we need to converse with them whether our feelings are reasonable and worthy of acknowledgment.

To root our worth deeply, let us give the care we long for. Welcome, accept, and find the worth. Let us be compassionate to ourselves, and take courage to speak out without placing blame on those who hurt. Tell “I feel hurt when ... rather than pointing to other person's failure like “You never care ...” Don’t expect that they will begin to care for us. We have found a new strength. Ultimately, let us immerse our efforts of self-nurturing in Divine Care, where we are perfectly and unconditionally cared for. In our body, in our burdens, failings the divine life finds a dwelling place. Divine care is uniquely offered through our own self-nurturing before it comes through any human relationship. Grace grants us the capacity to believe we are the Beloved, even when human relations often disappoint. We transform the wound of neglect and rejection into the holy meeting place of self-compassion and limitless divine love, receiving a permanent source of consolation and comfort.

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🎬 दुःखों में, हर क्षण, सहारा तेरा।

Rest: The Tender Touch of Life

‘Rest in peace’ is not a farewell, but an invitation. Being within the harshness of daily burdens or facing the cold responses from friendships or relationships, tenderness, gentleness, compassion, and personal care may be often absent. How deeply are we exhausted, burdened or stressed? Rest that Jesus offers is a tender touch that acknowledges and values our weariness and fears. Grace is the divine capacity to lift what we cannot carry. The burden remains a part of the human experience, but grace lightens the crushing aspect of the stress. It can settle our restlessness and grant peace. It does not mean that we can simply watch things happening, the touch of grace makes our efforts sustainable, not the excuse for committed labour. So, rest truly comes in peace, after fruitful labour, a fruitful life. At the end of the day, listen ‘rest in peace,’ and at the end of life, listen ‘rest in peace.’

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Living Church

Is the Church just an institution? No. Its true nature is Motherhood, defined by tenderness and healing. As the Body of Christ, the Church holds both the divine life of the Holy Spirit and our human burdens – our sweat, our pain, our tears. We don't receive grace just for ourselves. We rely on radical interdependence, nourishing one another to build the community. The Church must be a home and a womb where everyone can be reborn in Christ. Not just by her title, but by her nature and inherent attitude, the Church must be welcoming, caring, and healing. Only through this tenderness can the Church truly be called a Mother.

Just like Christ, the Church, as the Body of Christ, possesses both human and divine dimensions. The Holy Spirit fills the Church with divine life, meaning we live by grace. Yet, we live bearing our burdens, pains, and emptiness; we sweat and weep. We, together, make up the Church, and the holiness of this Body shines brightly in our honest living and radical interdependence. Crucially, the graces we receive are not meant for ourselves alone; they run throughout the Body, nourishing and completing one another, thereby building up the community. Whether as a teacher, a scientist, a watchman, a preacher or a priest, we participate equally in the holiness of God, sustained by mutual grace.

Taking Mother Mary as the type of the Church, the entire Body, including all its members, cooperates with the will of God through this active interdependence. In doing so, we continue the life of Christ, being his own Body. That Body is the temple where God dwells; there we worship and adore God. It is Christ who is the sole truth of the Church. Consequently, the Church’s vital life and unity are threatened by any single person, devotion, or ideology that claims to be the only way. Such exclusive tendencies, by fragmenting the Body, deprive the Church of its fundamental capacity to be a Mother. The Church exists as a home and a womb where everyone can find a place and everyone can be reborn in Christ. If the Church is to embody this maternal nature, each member must strive to personalize and live out these welcoming and self-giving attitudes in their own lives.

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Grief: A holy sorrow opening to grace

Grief is not a failure or a sign of weakness; it is the most natural and necessary response to loss. When we experience the death of a loved one or endure the breaking of an intimate relationship, our pain is truly an echo of our love. Far from being mere gloom or sadness, this sorrow becomes a holy sorrow when strengthened by Christian hope. This hope is far more than simple optimism or wishful thinking; it is an openness to grace – a divine power to move us from the emptiness of loss toward the fullness of the life we are still called to live.

If unchecked, however, grief can become destructive, leading to an attachment to the pain that chains us to the past. Even if the loss stems from a painful opportunity missed, a personal mistake, or a wrong choice, the ultimate focus must remain the life expected, not what was lost. Let us take courage to acknowledge the loss and, with what is gone, undergo a graceful death in the spirit, so that we may be truly free to enter into a greater measure of life.

Readiness to die: Receive a newer life

Life goes through beautiful moments of surrender, moments of offering. In fact, they are moments that we find that our life had flowered and borne fruits. There had to be a sacrificial death we had to undergo for this. Willingness to die brings the newer form of life which we may not have even imagined. Death is not just the last moment of our life, it is the ultimate moment of surrender, placing our life, past, present, and future, entirely into God’s mercy. Jesus died. One who has died once cannot die again. Readiness to die is a power we gain. In serving, helping, forgiving, in letting go of things, in accepting a painful moment, there is a graceful death, a beautiful surrender, a self-offering that gives us a newer life.

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Enter heaven now

Hell is “the ultimate consequence of sin itself … rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy,” stated Pope John Paul II in his General Audience on July 28, 1999. Is it a state that we enter into only after death? At every life choice we have a choice for or against grace, for or against Christ. If we have begun our life of grace there is already heaven that we have entered into - the life, the presence of God. Perhaps there is state of hell too in us (that separated state) since we have not been completely filled by grace. Since two possibilities are there to keep away from grace, deliberately and due to inability, it necessitates a community dimension of the reception of grace. Others facilitate one to be open for grace. One who denies grace cuts oneself off from the total reality, and that is only emptiness. Because, together we have the fullness of life. We speak of eternal death and eternal darkness, similarly we can imagine of the possibility of nothingness and emptiness. By denial of grace we chose for this emptiness. If hell as a place is not there, is it leading to a lawlessness? Not at all! It further adds extra responsibility to build a filial relationship with God irrespective of the fear of punishment. That will check how important and valuable God/Christ is in our lives.

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Return to the earth: Not a curse, a call

Return to the earth is not about perishability, but as transformation and a new possibility—simply a re-entry into the cycle of life’s renewal. This natural process shows also a soul-forming process in us here; it fundamentally rejects the view that the world is full of evil. The Earthly life, with its struggles, choices, and relationships, is the necessary environment for our growth into the image of Christ. Our moral choices, love, pain, and mercy are the crucible and the clay that actively shape our eternal character. Every bit of the world, its history, structures, and choices have shaped our souls. Some are created, some are brutally destroyed. Those whom we intend to desroy are essential for the completion of our own souls. The earth has yielded its fruit; in us, we are born of the earth and we return to it. Therefore, we must see in us the flowering of the earth which God has beautifully arranged. It is not a place Satan fills with lures and temptations. The earth and our own body are the sacrament of God’s love. To reject or devalue the Earthly life as a halt in a strange world is to devalue the very environment God chose for our formation. The overemphasis on the perishability of earthly life is something that tragically undervalues God’s creation and the profound work accomplished here. Therefore, let us approach our temporal lives not with hatred, but with reverence, recognizing in every struggle and joy the ongoing, sacred work of the creator.

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In exile? Live the freedom

In many ways, our faith has carried a sense of sadness; the feeling that this world is a spiritual prison, a "valley of tears," and that we are merely "exiles" counting the days until we finally escape to our true home. Christ has given a new vision to see the world, not as a broken place we must flee, but as the very place where we find the Father's home. The peace, the provision, the welcome, and the safety of Heaven are not purely future promises; they are the present spiritual reality available to us here and now. This means practicing the awareness that God is not up there in a distant, unreachable heaven, but here, in the quiet of our kitchen, the chaos of our workday, and the silence of our prayer. If we spend our entire lives feeling exiled and miserable, longing for death to simply rescue us from a painful existence, then we misunderstand the gift of Christ. Death cannot be seen as a liberation from earthly life, because our life is already meant to be lived in the freedom of the Father's home. Death does not free us into a perfect world. We must learn to live the freedom of the father’s home which may grow and sprout even after death.

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🎬यह जग कारागार नहीं!