We are witnesses!

Every age has seen its own witnessing spirit. The word ‘Martyr’ in Greek means one who bears witness (to Christ). That was the standard in which the witnessing spirit was lived out in the early Church. We come across the stylytes and other people reduced the death sentence to life sentence which is even more excruciating in the early Church after the persecution. Witnessing to Christ’s love is not so much in death, rather in life: thus the Church in the Middle Ages saw the ascent of the spiritual journey, the dark night of the soul, radical Religious life in poverty, chastity and obedience. ‘What is the nature of today’s witnessing’ seems to be a scary question to ask. Living our life as Christians seem more of a burdensome work or a service done to the Mother Church.

We are witnesses to what?

1. To Christ and His Resurrection:
We are strengthened by the spirit of the Resurrection of Christ not just in Easter season but throughout our Christian life. Our foundation as a Church is built on Christ’s Resurrection. Jesus is risen so also our status as fallen people. God joined us in the person of Jesus in sin, now it is our turn to join God in purity and open heart. It’s the New Life that Jesus won for us: we can’t afford to live in old life is sin and death. Resurrection of Jesus is the resurrection of the Church. We witness that every time we break the word and bread.

2. To repentance and forgiveness of sins:
Our Creed proclaims what we believe. We don’t lie that too in front of the whole church. All our repentance many think involve only our efforts and matanoia: that is not the whole truth. All the greatest sinners have taught us that it is God who initiates the process of conversion. Sinners feel ashamed of the mercy and compassion of God – the reflection of the Prodigal Son among the pigs, would compel us to be part of God, the rest haven’t felt the famine or still spending the wealth of the Prodigal Father.

3. To Gospel and Mission of the Church:
The people witnessed the preaching ministry of Jesus which brought a lot of healing to hearts and bodies. In Jesus preaching had a firm connection with life. What are Christians known for today? What are we so proud of in Christianity? What is so special about this person named Jesus? Every moment we live as people of principles and values we proclaim the gospel. All these questions have clear answers. Gospel doesn’t start with others or with a book rather it starts from our personal life. We witness our own lives when we stand as representatives of the Church and its Mission.

We are witnesses!

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We are Easter people belong to the Easter God

1. Easter fills us with self-confidence

By believing in the Easter joy, we show a lot of confidence in ourselves. All our sufferings in life at least have meaning now that Jesus is raised. If he is not raised, our faith is a waste; he is raised so our faith is strengthened and raised to a higher level. This also includes that our joy should never be the fruit of corruption rather a hard-earned treasure. All our life’s joy is preceded by a life of discipline and commitment. Jesus is raised because he was busy with the business of the father by accepting death and even the death on the cross. Unless it is earned in hard way, our joys are short-lived and temporary: our world is filled with these joys that come from our inability to go through the hard way and enter through the narrow gate.

2. Easter fills us with hope:

Jesus’ life was a life of hope: He came without anything but was given the greatest man as father and a greatest woman as mother. He went out to preach alone but was given 12 men to share the mission. He carried the cross alone but Veronica and Simone were there to ease the pain a little along with Mary. He died alone but God raised him up to raise the level of us all from slavery to heirs of the Kingdom. Every struggle in life has a way of God. We fail to see, perceive and look at the possibilities of God but only look at our possibilities. Every celebration, every sharing and every event in life has a way of God. Easter proves that we are people of hope trying to find the way of God in our human journey.

3. Easter fills us with Love:

Jesus was raised not just to kill Satan or death; Jesus was raised not just to prove that God is powerful; Jesus was raised not to show that he can work miracles in any person let alone his own Son. Jesus was raised to fill us with Love. Easter increases whatever is lacking in us: It brings new life in our dead self. Like Jesus we are raised in our love and service, we are raised in our virtues and values of Christian life, we are raised as good citizens and neighbours filled with the passion for not just our country but for whole humanity. Jesus was raised to be given back to us again and again at all Sacraments and especially at the breaking of Bread to increase our love for God and others.

4. Easter fills us with Life and Mission:

In Baptism we are given the Easter spirit of Christ. We are given new life. When we say we are Christians, we are actually people who are born in Christ. Resurrection brings us a life of clarity and commitment that we permanently live at the heart of God. We begin to share God’s very own life at Baptism: Easter reminds us of our baptismal promise that we are people of God’s life. That moves us to partake in the mission of the Church to bring Good News of salvation to all. We are Easter people belong to the Easter God. Let us pray that we be united to bring meaning and Easter joy to the people around us. Amen.

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The journey of the Cross! The thrown-away spirituality!

1. Great beginning:
God created everything and found it very good. Our beginnings are great as childhood is the most cherished moment of our earthly existence. We learn things from the scratch. When Israel was a child I taught him how to walk. Like a sapling we sprouted out leaves, got tall, got wide and filling ourselves with information. A healthy sight to watch him or her growing up.

2. The growth of the trunk:
All are given an opportunity to grow in spirit. Without our knowledge this trunk starts growing in us. Our spirituality gets matured as we grow. When I was a child I acted, spoke like a child says St Paul. All our life’s energies get their balance from this trunk – our spirituality. We stand tall in the eyes of God in our spirituality.

3. The Vocation of the Cross:
Every tree wants to share the eternity in best possible places. Some go to Royal palaces, so go to institutions and offices, some go to middle class families and others go to poor houses to serve different purposes. No one wants take this trunk which was made into a cross for thieves and sinners. Anything difficult and not rewarding, I don’t want to do. That trunk does not mean anything to me anymore. I don’t need spirituality: I need money and comforts. I abuse my children easily, I divorce easily, I cheat others easily, I look for escape routes and blame it on others easily. No one wants to carry that cross.

4. Thrown-away spirituality and an orphaned spirituality:
Whenever I throw away my spirituality, we dump it on God. Our world is busy finding new and contemporary ways of burying God. New ideologies shape the character of our children. This thrown away spirituality is carried by Jesus willingly as a treasure. We meet all kinds of people when we throw away the treasure in us. Whenever we throw away our spirit, Jesus falls, pierced, bleeds and sweats and suffers. Only a few came to get their share: Mary, Veronica, the weeping women, Simon of Cyrene and a few disciples of Jesus.

5. Forgiveness of God includes a share in God’s divinity:
This tree at last found a place. God forgives us by thrust opening our hearts and cleansing our hearts with his own blood. This symbol of shame has been recreated as the symbol of love and sacrifice. This rejected, abused and thrown away tree found a treasure in life. We hold Jesus and show him to others when we live our spirituality. Let this blood and sweat of Jesus and also the nearness of the suffering soul of God help us have a deep spirituality. Let our life be a projection of all that God is that we may always reflect God in our thought and deed. Amen.

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We are people of the New Jerusalem!

JRS can easily be compared to life in general.

1. God created humanity in holiness:
Even before the bodily birth of the Son of God, humanity was primarily willed by God as sinless and pure. JRS was a holy city from the beginning. JRS means “City of Wholeness.” (Yeru Shalem); others read it as a “City of Peace” (Yeru Shalom). It is a city in which one may find spiritual “wholeness.” Finally, Jerusalem is in essence a “City of Peace.” This is the original nature of humanity and the only ground to glorify God.

2. We always portrayed and argued that we are masters of life:
The gift of life is not our right to have; we are not the masters of life. We can never possess life. As the earliest records portray (Talmud) JRS was kept as a common land and never been divided among the 12 tribes. No one owned land in JRS as it was kept pure by religious influences. All our lives we tend to rent our lives to all kinds of vices and selfish indulgences to make our Holy Land – our hearts as slaves to evil and forces of death.

3. Human life is not an easy homework:
JRS the Holy City is the spiritual center of the Jewish life and culture for more than 3000 years. For Christians, JRS is the place where Jesus walked, breathed, and preached. Islam has its own share of the City. So many different people fought over JRS: Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Ptolemies, Seleucids, Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Arabs, Seljuks, Crusaders, Mongols, Mamelukes, Turks, British, Jordanians, Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese, and Iraqis. There are various forces that try to rule us at different times of life: convictions, ideologies, philosophies or even a complete loss of meaning.

4. Human life is sinful and needs God’s assistance all the time:
“This is a city that has been besieged about forty different times and destroyed (at least partially) on thirty-two different occasions. The rulership of Jerusalem has changed hands some twenty-six times. "The City of Peace" has known wars and destruction since it existence was first known to us from the Biblical record. (Ref: http://belovedjerusalem.com/). We hardly keep up our common name and values. Our selfishness is so great that we can sell our God and religion for meager pleasure and rewards.

5. We all need Jesus coming to our life (JRS) and die for us:
Being a Jew, Jesus would have visited JRS often. Luke’s Gospel is the theological reflection of Jesus on his way to JRS (11 to 21 chapters). This time it is going to be different: He enters our hearts as the King. The donkey symbolizing the beatitude: Blessed are the poor in spirit. When we become poor on earthly possessions Jesus elevates us to be rich in love. He suffers for us and his blood is all over us to purify us and make us clean (St. Paul).

6. This journey of Jesus brings meaning to the New JRS:
The Palm branch is a symbol of triumph and victory representing heaven in our midst. We have accepted Jesus as our King by promising Jesus to walk the way of victory over sin. We are not onlookers or travellers, we are the New JRS consecrated by Jesus thus our responsibility in the Church is great. Our victory does not depend on how happy we are in waving our palm leaves and decorate it in houses, rather how receptive we are in proving Jesus is king of our lives by the way we think, feel and act and witness God’s love. As these palms die and still be beautiful and meaningful so also our lives. Our Life is saved and we are the people of the New JRS. Amen.

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Penitential service (04.01.2009)

The penitential practices aim at “dispelling all evil, washing guilt away, restoring lost innocence, bringing mourners joy, casting out hatred, bringing us peace and humbling our earthly pride” (Paschal Praeconuium). The very first words of Jesus are, ‘Repent and believe in the Gospel’. The two verbs ‘repent’ and ‘believe’ characterizes the essence of conversion. Repentance stands in the middle and makes two different journeys. The first journey is the backward movement of looking back at our sinfulness and the compassionate forgiveness of the Father. I have repented from these things that made a slave out of me. The second journey is the forward movement of looking forward at believing in the gospel. When Jesus said, ‘Repent and believe in the gospel’, he did not mean the NT, rather believe in the total message of conversion and salvation. It means the radical following of Jesus. The first act of Jesus after this message was to call first disciples together.

Fulton Sheen used to make fun of nuns: “Hearing nuns’ confession is like being stoned to death with popcorn. Many Christians still think Sunday as a sponge to wipe out their sins. Sacrament of reconciliation often thought of as a freebee; buy one get one free. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is not an additional prayer or a form of popular piety like the way of the cross or a rosary: it is a Sacrament instituted by Christ to impart grace to the soul.

There are three levels of understanding reconciliation: Alteration, conversion and transformation. By Alteration we mean the relatively limited form of change that develops from one’s personal behavior. This includes a temporary apologies or word level sorrys and thought patters. Sorry I scolded you, made fun of you, were made at you etc. Even though these limited forms of change carry the materials of true feelings of compassion, they don’t necessarily form a person in holiness. It could be thought of as the first or early stage of conversion.

Conversion is a radical change in which past affiliations is rejected for some new commitment and identity. We should be doubly careful here that conversion is only the second stage. The prodigal son came to his senses and returned. Zacchaeus invited Jesus and repented and the woman caught in adultery was given forgiveness. Conversion of the heart is indeed a human commitment based on human promises which are often weak and vulnerable. It needs the constant guidance by the Holy Spirit and constant renewal from our part.

Third level is the transformation which is also a radical change, but “one in which an altered perception reinterprets both past and present” (Beverly Roberts Gaventa). Transformation compulsively moves us towards holiness in the way we live out the spirit of forgiveness. The prodigal son was reinstated as the son. Zacchaeus went ahead and shared and the sinful woman became a radical follower of Jesus.

The Church needs conversions and transformations for its survival and mission. All those who are called to be leaders in any form need to kneel in spirit to raise the shattered hopes, wavering faith and fickle love of simple people. We are all leaders and sharers of the priesthood of Christ, thus our hopes are realized and faith strengthened and love deepened by this sacrament. Go then to experience Christ’s forgiveness for he says, “Return to me with your whole heart.” (Joel 2:12)

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