Wedding Mass (Kevin & Heather Corkran)

“The best way to remember your wife's birthday is to forget it once.” A little boy asked his father, "Daddy, how much does it cost to get married?" And the father replied, "I don't know, son, I'm still paying for it." Confused he went to his mom and asked the same question. To his surprise she said the same thing. He went to his granny as to why she didn’t help his parents. She said “Your grandpa and I are still paying ours still.”

We are here to thank God for joining Kevin and Heather and continue to pray for their efforts to be permanently and exclusively united to each other in bonds of love. This is only a ceremony but marriage is not a word! It is a sentence; a paragraph or a book. Sacrament of Matrimony and Sacrament of Ordination are the only 2 sacraments that emphasize intimacy and demand our vows in public to be permanent and exclusive in our relationship. Both the vows are so human and no human promise is perfect.

There is an old saying, “If you want to make God laugh, tell God your plans for the future!” How do we make such huge promises when we don’t know who we will become in the future? People always change, so how can a couple know that they will hold on to their promises? There is no guarantee that life will turn out as we plan. We don’t live with car battery to have guarantee. This is an adventure into the unknown. That surety is the result of your love and commitment. Strong, lasting relationships require as ‘raw material’ two strong individuals. Only a person who knows how to love himself or herself responsibly would know and love another person.

The word ‘Respect’ literally means ‘to look again’. Respect in marriage is the readiness and the ability to notice and appreciate the qualities of one’s spouse what others don’t or can’t notice. Only in the permanent relationship can a person experience ‘Trust’ and dependability and reliability follow. Many people misunderstand when we speak of marriage as exclusive: it doesn’t mean forsaking all others or giving up of others rather it implies that one’s primary energy, one’s basic focus, will remain exclusively on one’s wife or husband.

As Marriage covenant is a serious commitment we should never forget the counsel of professionals. Many marriage experts note that good marriages are usually seasoned with a sense of humor that allows couples to laugh at themselves. There used to be sign offices WORK MORE TALK LESS! That doesn’t work for marriage. Talk more and spend time together: TV and Internet are not the only recreations!

The quality or the worth of a good citizen doesn’t necessarily be that he or she has to serve the military rather one’s ability to live and raise a good family since families make societies and good families make good societies. That is the reason the vows are made public that the public play a big part in the success of marriages. Every marriage in the society increases the quality level and responsibility level of the people who witness the marriage. Kevin and Heather look up to you for guidance and direction as you are married and committed to your marriage vows. Make sure your lesson to this new couple is one of support and encouragement.

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The Class of 2010: Graduation Mass

It was graduation day and Mom was trying to take a picture of their son in a cap and gown, posed with his father. "Let's try to make this look natural” she said, “Junior, put your arm around your dad's shoulder." The father answered, "If you want it to look natural, why not have him put his hand in my pocket?"

This is a moment to think back what your parents and significant others have been so far in your life; that includes your school and religious formation too. Your parents helped you enormously but in turn their married life got matured and grown by you and your achievements. You make them proud by your commitment and motivation to study and achieve.

“I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure”. This is how almost all the teenagers feel, confused and pulled in all kinds of direction. What you are taking with you is a collection of all goodness from Holy Family: a little bit of the priests, teachers and well-wishers who have shown you values that they live by. I very well remember quoting George Santayana earlier said, “A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.” You can get all the A’s and still flunk life.

Being the salt and light incorporates a vast entity. Salt is little in quantity, light from the candle is small in stature but it’s influence in length, width, breadth and depth is significant. Our God-given potentials are to be appreciated and utilized for the glory of God. Socrates once said, “I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.” Thus choose friends wisely since your recreation world depends on them. Learn as much as possible from your parents since trial and error starts at home. Choose happiness above success since God wants us to be happy and most of the human successes need fixing.

Jason Laguna was suspended from last Friday from school (1 day), Rockland, NY because he wore Rosary in school. Learn to know God since there is no greater friend to share your pain like the way you suffer when you suffer; there is no greater friend who rejoices like the way you rejoice when you rejoice – Your faithful practice of religion teach that thus be faithful to your religious duties. Skipping your religious duties is one thing but discouraging your friend’s religious sentiments is sinful. Stay away from being a hurdle to another’s faith. Hope you all remember what we talked about the other day regarding your time at the computer!

Like the moon that depends on the light from the Sun, we all need the light from God to be the same light for others. Church needs you; our country needs you and your family needs you. Continue to make us proud in all that you do! Don’t let pride rule you, your good looks deceive you, your tiny brains fool you, rather let God put you on top. It is God who wants you to be the light and salt. May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be loved everywhere. Amen.

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Worship without sacrifice is an absurdity!

The Story of a Jewish boy Mortakai is very touching. He refused to go to school. The parents did all that they could, but he wouldn’t listen to them. He would run back home and refused to go back. They took him to their Rabbi and told him about their problem. Rabbi didn’t say a word; he picked him up and held him to his heart for a long time. Then he put him down. That boy not only went to school, he became a great bible scholar. A great way to understand what Eucharist is all about: the embrace of God.

It is very interesting to note the traditional concept as given in the Rev 3:20 of Jesus knocking at the door. We use that image often especially when kids receive the First Holy Communion. We tell them of opening the door for Jesus as he stands outside, willing to come in. What we have not seen or not paid attention to is Rev 4:1 in heaven the door is open. JP II asserted that every mass is an experience of heaven on earth. It symbolically explains the open door as Jesus comes in and takes possession of us. He doesn’t need to wait or knock as all our senses are at use: in liturgy we hear, see, smell, touch and taste the divine. Many of us prefer to keep those senses untouched thus ignore or avoid the intrusion of the divine power for various reasons!

These claims have meaning only if we understand what lies deep in these mysteries. Gandhi said, “Worship without sacrifice is an absurdity of the modern age.” What are we doing here? We are sacrificing here. In the past people sacrificed to recognize God’s power over creation; to offer thanks to God; to seal the agreement or covenant with God or as atonement for our sins. We Christians offer this sacrifice for all those reasons also. Moreover, we offer our sacrifice since it is a Sacrament and that brings us grace.

The practice of calling Jesus the LAMB of God is so revolutionary as this title does not bring out anything of power or majesty such as the Messiah or the Lion of Judah! This title is a great reminder of God’s love and compassion from Abraham to the present. He gave Abraham a ram to be sacrificed! As Melchizedek king of Salem offered the sacrifice as King and priest and blessed the covenantal people, Jesus, the King and High Priest and Prophet sacrifices and blesses the new covenantal people of God and Salem is renamed as Jerusalem by that time! Scholars agree that the land of Moriah where Isaac was to be sacrificed on hill is about the same place as Calvary. And the Passover when the lamb was sacrificed and the blood on the doorposts spared the 1^st born of Israel.

As Eucharist contains the Church’s entire spiritual wealth, and the experience of God’s love for people is shown in breaking and sharing the bread, it calls us for a greater responsibility in our vocation as Christians. The celebration of Eucharist is not ended rather extended throughout the day and throughout the year. We have God, temple, altar and the Lamb; we need priests and people! We need to pray for people to return to the scripture and Eucharist so much as we pray for priests to administer the sacraments. Every time a Christian fails to be with the people of God, we miss the Glory of God. Thomas missed; Martha and Mary missed the company of Jesus. God continues give us opportunities. Eucharist is the source and summit of all our Christian life.

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Nafas Al Rahman

Every Religion attributes some affinity towards the wind, breath, air or Spirit to God. In Yoga, there is an independent discipline on breathing called Pranayama. Ibn Arabi a famous Sufi scholar spoke of God as: ‘The source of the universe is the breath of the Merciful, the NAFAS AL RAHMAN”, To Allah is attributed breath which is very much like our Holy Spirit. Abortion is prohibited in Islam because; the Muslims believe the fetus is blessed by the spirit of Allah. Those who approach Hindu sages for blessing, he breathes the Vibuti, the sacred ash which takes away the evil spirit in you.

This spirit of God gave the apostles the power to speak languages. Speaking different languages is an art and a great skill. (Salesian – Indonesian). There are quite a few languages spoken at home and outside and if we are ignorant we miss the meaning. Most of the failures in relationships are due to the inability to understand languages: husband speaking Hebrew and wives speaking Greek! Most of the religious practices are still done in Latin and young people don’t understand Latin. Kids teach us lessons in Aramaic and we don’t know Aramaic. Priests always speak in Sanskrit and once a year English and that one day we couldn’t attend service because we were in Hawaii. All the TV shows and rumors are always in English. If we are confused we are convinced and all our convictions are so confusing!

The extreme situation on speaking languages that I know of was when our seminary cook married a man who never spoke her language. I asked her how she could manage and she said that she will get used to it soon. How do we actually speak another person’s language? Gospel is clear: It is the Spirit of God that works through us. The Nicene Creed acclaims the Holy Spirit as GIVER OF LIFE. From the time Adam was fashioned to the present God never stopped breathing on us. We time and again stop breathing and die!

Wisdom is our dialogue with God: we speak the same language of God. Understanding is the language we use when people are irrational, unjust, punishing and unforgiving. Counsel or right judgment is the language of responsibility with which we lead our family and children. Fortitude or Courage is the language we speak when faced with temptation, fear and guilt. Knowledge is the language we speak when we want to know someone intimately, his or her likes and dislikes, interests and motivations. Piety or Reverence is the language we speak when speak to God and elders. Fear of the Lord or Sense of Wonder is the language we speak when we thank God for all the great things we received in life.

The signs of our inability to discern the movements of Spirit in us lead us to folly, wrong judgment, cowardice, ignorance, irreligious attitudes and the denial of God. This should not be understood as the absence of the Spirit, since the promise of Jesus is clear that Spirit is given to us. The gifts of the Spirit seem far because of our ability to let the Spirit take possession of us and our inability to speak no language at all. We have learnt to speak the language of animals and demons! God gave us the language to love and be united. We leant the language by first speaking with our Mother – God Himself.

Like the dirt coming to life and the dead bones coming to life, a gentle breeze to cool our hearts and minds, Holy Spirit is breathed into us by Jesus to speak the language of love. I believe we speak the same language here! At least once!

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The Ascending Christian!

Our human civilization has a tendency to celebrate anything and everything. We celebrate birth, all sacraments, wedding days, 40^th anniversary of our meeting, president’s day and the like. The Church recently made it a habit of declaring a year to a particular devotion: Jubilee year, year of the Priest etc. There are quite a many international days such as world day of peace, world day of friendship, mother’s day etc. Every celebration should make sense and our partaking is very essential for any celebration. We don’t celebrate Afghanistan’s Independence Day here! Nor do we celebrate Manmohan Singh’s Birthday! We celebrate the feasts that make sense and make us part of the events.

Christmas is celebrated in all the Christian churches not just an individual has come into this world rather our salvation and redemption need the birth of Jesus. We celebrate Christmas because the event and the person of Jesus are so intimately related to our life and happiness. Easter is celebrated in all Christian churches not just an individual rose from the dead rather our own resurrection and life with God in eternity need the resurrection of Jesus. We celebrate Easter because our eternal life is intimately related to Easter.

Our celebration of Ascension has a purpose. Jesus’ earthly life got accomplished on the cross and he rightly claimed. His resurrection brought hope to humanity and our faith is founded on the resurrection of Jesus as St. Paul rightly teaches us. Our earthly life needs accomplishing. Our own resurrections need assurance. The feast of Ascension is a reminder that we have miles to go and promises to keep. Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension make us sharers of something so extraordinary and special: I am the way, truth and life. He shows us the way of the Cross, brings us back to life through Resurrection and teaches us the simple lesson of ascending to the Father in all we do and say.

Ascension of Jesus makes us ascending people: people who are on the way up. Our movement is toward heaven and never toward hell. This pilgrim church has one way to tread on, the path that Jesus walked, talked, lived and suffered and rose. God’s goal is not to make Jesus a super-man by doing extraordinary things in him, rather God wants to make us extraordinary people who would take Jesus’ message seriously and live by it.

The ascending Christian is a sure sign of hope in the descending sinful modern world created by corrupted and selfish people. An ascending Christian would certainly live for the values of the kingdom because by baptism every Christian is given the vocation to seek higher values and higher forms of living. By ascension Jesus gives us the glimpse of our own assumption to the new heaven and new earth.

This is a very crucial moment for Jesus as he reunites with the Father in its original design, so too we continue to experience our unity with the Trinity. This unity is our goal and path of our assumption is the path of love and service. The same Jesus who taught us to love God and others now teaches us the importance of being united with God through ascension. Ascension is a great lesson of union with God. That’s why Jesus’ farewell is never a farewell.

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First Holy Communion (5-8-10)

Dear children! This day is special in your life as you first-handedly experience how the body of Christ tastes. You have accompanied your parents and friends in the past and learnt how Jesus looked like but now you have a different experience. I remember when I was giving communion once; a mother with a child in hand grabbed the Host from my hand. I in turn grabbed it from her hand and gave a gentle slap on her cheeks. She looked at me with a shock and the shock of being pulled something out from her! I am sure you wanted to taste this Holy Host in the past at some stage!

We got to remember that this is a Sacrament that’s been initiated by Christ himself. It was Christ who presided over the table and broke the bread and shared the cup. First and foremost it is the banquet of love and joy. God wills that we share in this meal to take part in the life and love of God.

By participating in this sacrament, we become close friends of Jesus. So far in our Christian life, from the moment of baptism, we have been preparing ourselves for this moment: to be intimately united with Jesus. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses becomes our God.

The teachers, pastors, the church depend on the spirituality and guidance of the parents. No teacher, no pastor and no church can vitally influence these children in the same way as you do. The Church can only celebrate this Sacrament with you; but you have to live this sacrament and guide your children to do the same. God-parents cover a lot of ground in these respects.

Children remember! This Sacrament gives you enormous grace to avoid sin and do good. As you are ready to promise God to go to him as much as he comes to you, you are promising to choose good in all situations. Many Children are addicted to TV, videogames, Xbox, Nintendo, Cellphones and other electronic devices. Many are addicted to food and chocolates. Remember that you are given a special grace to choose things in moderation. Instead of sending a 1000 SMS, try sending 999! Avoid extremes!

This Sacrament is given to you to practice: not to be deposited in the bank. If someone buys you a laptop, you don’t just clean and keep it safe in your cupboard; instead you use it and learn to use it wisely.

Look for signs from your parents! Learn how they pray. Look at your grandparents. Learn how they pray and learn from them. You are becoming part of a history. This is the best gift your parents can ever give you! And the best gift you can give to your parents is the same! They showed you God and gave you God. All your life you try to show them God and give them God. The ‘How’ part starts today!

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Our Spiritual Journey!

Some of our journeys in life have no sense of direction or destination. This pastor began to preach the homily when suddenly two men came with machine guns one in front and one at the back of the church. The man in the front spoke up, “Those who want to take a bullet for Jesus remain in your seats.” Within seconds the people ran for their lives including the assistant priests. Only 20 or more people were left in the church. The man spoke again, “Ok Father! The hypocrites have all gone, please begin your homily.” If our spiritual journey is not planned we would not have any goals to achieve in life.

One of the parables for the religious educators narrated by Fr. Anthony De Mello is that of a sheep found a hole in the fence and crept through it and wandered far off and lost his way back. Then he realized that he was being followed by a wolf. He ran and ran, but the wolf kept chasing him, until the shepherd came and rescued him and brought him back to the fold. In spite of everyone’s urgings to the contrary, the shepherd refused to nail up the hole in the fence. God respects us and gives us freedom to choose. Life is full of choices. God’s love is the freedom we enjoy in choosing.

Magi Caspar from Tarsus, Melchior from Arabia and Balthazar from Sheba were to come together as a unit, a community. This unity from different backgrounds sometimes opposing backgrounds were not work of people. The 12 disciples of Jesus and their differences so unique but in the presence of Jesus could work together. Husbands and wives coming from different family backgrounds, mindsets, and other numerous differences were joined in marriage by God. Begins the journey of life: to search for meaning, to search for happiness, to search for inner peace and love.

We all need a Star to guide us on our way. It could be the power of the Bible, Marian devotion, Daily Eucharist, Power of the sacraments or just a simple personal prayer, but we all need some form of spirituality for our day-to-day sustenance. Most of our wandering and losing ways could be avoided through this.

We all will experience a TIME WITH HEROD. Most lives confusion starts there. All the violation of the commandments, all the power and glory of the nature of God’s love will be blurry or even diminished and forgotten. Temptations rule us. Power of sin takes possession of us. We decide whatever we see and hear are facts and truth. We don’t ask God to guide us to the truth. Our hasty decisions were about to bury us alive! But God still guides us through all those confusions.

After numerous attempts, struggles, trials and temptations, we find God. We realize the importance of giving in the presence of God. Myrrh is a symbol of human vulnerability. It is symbolic of the humanity of Jesus. Like us, he experienced joy, sorrow, fear, frustration, loneliness. The gift of incense is symbolic of the divinity of Jesus. Gold is an ideal gift for a King. The ideal king led by love. Epiphany is after all realizing that we should have something to give to God. It is not just the epiphany of God, rather our own epiphanies.

The more we bring the best in us to the benefit of the other and God, the more we are blessed with the wisdom and love of God. Wise men were guided by the Wisdom of God. Wise men would have spoilt the whole salvation history. They would have killed Jesus. After all the wisdom of man is never enough when it comes to loving other and loving God.

Where am I going? What am I searching for in life? What are my Herod-times? Do I feel the need to model my own Epiphany with that of Jesus? How wise am I? Do I value God’s wisdom as an anchor in my spirituality and way of life?

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New Year Resolutions!

I have been checking on the most common New Year resolutions around us: It’s always been Lose Weight, Manage Debt, Save Money, and Get fit, Quit Smoke or Drink. "People are so worried about what they eat between Christmas and the New Year, but they really should be worried about what they eat between the New Year and Christmas."

In a way, New Year is everyone’s birthday. New Year is a special time to reflect on God’s generosity. It is a time to be happy that God gave us enough and more opportunities to share His love and care with different people. Rarely do we admit that ‘Time’ belongs to God and our bodies are timed. God is beyond time, but He loves us in time. Every opportunity that we get on earth to show our love, faith, care, responsibility is special and important to us. Wasting, ignoring or being indifferent to those opportunities is equal to saying no to time, thus God’s generosity.

We read in the 1st reading one of the finest blessings in the OT. We need God’s grace & blessings every day to keep our time holy and God-filled. It makes us to act fast on love: the shepherds went in haste. We cannot afford to idle away in experiencing the grace and blessings of God. It compels us to reach out; to seek the face of God in others. It should make us restless. St. Augustine experienced that: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.” God’s gift of time is an invitation to seek His Face, His Kingdom. Mary as mother of God experienced the restlessness in her heart. The agony and ecstasy she had to go through in her continued efforts to fulfill God’s will never missed to affect her Son in the womb. Jesus was not only sharing her blood as nourishment, but also her spirituality, her restlessness and her rejoicing in the Lord in time. It took her and Joseph eight days to call the baby ‘Jesus’. Those eight days were great days of preparation - a desert experience – longing to call the baby ‘Jesus’ a name meaning Savior.

God creates us in time, gives us necessary grace and blessings to make our time holy by the way we live. Today as we reflect on the response of Mary to the call of God, on how she made all efforts to make her time holy, let us reflect on our own response to the call of God: our call to be a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, a grandparent, a friend and a child of God and a child of Mary. This will lead us to pray for our country, our world and its peace. We need peace to purify our time. Today is a special day traditionally we pray for World Peace. Pope JP II said, “To pray for peace is to open the human heart to the inroads of God’s power to renew all things. To pray for peace is to pray for Justice, for a right-ordering or relations within and among nations and peoples. It is to pray for freedom of every individual. It is to seek God’s forgiveness, and to implore the courage to forgive those who have trespassed against us.”

Mary is the model of the Church and a great source of inspiration to all of us. By remembering her faithfulness to God, we live out her values and inspiration all the days of this year and the years to come. Let us make all our God-given time holy following the example of Mary, the Mother of God. Amen.

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Christmas Tree

Christmas for Christians is a day of gratitude. Gratitude leads us to prayer, where our hearts are filled with wonder and praise. Christmas leads us to the sense of wonder. God presents himself as tiny, fragile, vulnerable, and dependent compared to the strong, muscular, powerful, parenting and patronizing people we are in front of God. We often see parents and friends finding similarities between the child and parents. This child Jesus not just resembles certain features, rather is the ultimate replica of God the Father. This child is not a super child in any way: it cries, smiles, holds our fingers, and kicks legs to show excitement. Christmas makes us wonder in a new way. God so weak and vulnerable is asleep with his creation which is strong and powerful.

If there is no Christmas, we would not have experienced this sense of wonder at all: we would have missed touching his soft little cheeks, fingers and toes; missed to see him sleep peacefully, see him cry, see him reach out to him mom, his confused looks and his innocence. This brings in a great lesson of all time: to reach at the cave of one’s heart, one must become childlike. A child has a great power to make us focus our attention completely whoever we are, whatever degrees we hold. God not only became childlike, God became a child. This proves that God will go all the way, take any risk, sacrifice any level, and give up anything to reach the cave of our hearts.

Concentrate on the Christmas trees: Let us divide the tree into three parts: The base, the middle and the top. The base is well set. Everyone is given the opportunity to witness God’s revelation. God initiated this love. God continuously sends us signals and reveals his heart to us in million ways. The base is so big and large like the heart of God. Our spiritual journey begins when we fully accept and appreciate that we are chosen and loved by God. Gradually we try to understand and feel the importance of God in our lives: thus we begin to respond. Through words (prayer) and deeds (Works of charity). We respond to God’s call by our faith, hope and love. There will be dry leaves and dry branches of our inability to grasp the message of God and also our lack of commitment to live in the presence of God. Continual efforts on our response to God’s love make us grow spiritually and holistically. As we climb higher we become aware that we are so tiny and powerless, so fragile, confused and weak. But that is the moment God comes near to us. We experience the nearness of the Star: The star that shows the beauty of the tree, the star that illumines every nook and corner of the tree, like God fills our body and soul through the Eucharist. That is the message of Christmas: People experience the physical and spiritual nearness of God.

Do I have a Christmas tree? How does it look like? Through my selfishness and irreligious attitudes, I have cut the branches of the base off; I never listened to the revelation of God in my life. I have cut down all the branches in the middle that I vowed never to have faith, hope and love in my life. By cutting down the new growth, I have said good-bye to the Star! Dear friends! God gives us another chance! Look! A new shoot is coming up! And you can’t stop them! Merry Christmas!

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Father, Son and Spirit are relational terms!

Hinduism claims many deities, ranging from 1,000 to 33 million gods... but all of them are just manifestations or symbols of the only God Brahman. Brahma is like the Father, the creator, the cosmic mind. Brahma has only one temple dedicated to him in India. Vishnu is like the Son, Jesus Christ, the preserver, the cosmic lord... with 9 reincarnations (Kalki is yet to come), Shiva is like the Holy Spirit, destroyer of the bad things to renew the universe, the transcendent Godhead. Together they are called Sat-Chit-Ananda: In them are found the fullness of truth, wisdom and happiness.

Explaining the Trinity is often forwarded by ‘It is a mystery’ and followed by the story of the boy at the seaside with his bucket. Many even advised children not to pray to the Trinity, since Trinity is an idea of a concept.

The word ‘Trinity’ is not found in the Creed which we profess week by week. But it is altogether Trinitarian in structure. Christian faith is Trinitarian faith. Christian life is Trinitarian life. And Christian spirituality is Trinitarian spirituality (Michael Downey).

We use a language to express ourselves. If that is insufficient we express ourselves otherwise through body language, gesture, our clothing and the rings we wear. We speak through the glance of an eye that comforts or condemns, through dance, ritual, celebration, touch, and kiss and sometimes we speak in action too. Throughout our lives, we are expressing. God expresses most directly in Jesus the Christ
The Father speaks a Word, and his name is Jesus Christ, the Son since God by nature is expressive with his love and life. Jesus is the communication of God. But speaking is not possible without a breath. Indeed, speaking and breathing are inherently related. In Word and Spirit, God is speaking and breathing the divine life in the world. This is the way God loves us and gives us everything thus drawing us closer to the circle of love.

God is not turned in; nor is God the Supreme Being in self-imposed, self-selecting, blissful isolation. God’s very life is expressive, ecstatic, and fecund. ‘Father’, ‘Son’ and ‘Spirit’ are names that designate relationships rather than who God is in God’s fullness. All the three names emerge in relation to one another and to us. Calling God ‘Father’ is a way of naming our relationship to God, a way of responding to the gift of Love expressed in the Word who is the Son of the Father, breathing life and love in the Spirit.

Trinity teaches us the lesson loving relationship in unity and peace. It calls for action on issues of social justice since the equality is the mainstream of the relationship.

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Receive the Holy Spirit

Our Pope preached on Pentecost,“This is the mystery of Pentecost: the Holy Spirit illuminates the human spirit and, by revealing Christ Crucified and Risen, indicates the way to become more like him, that is, to be "the image and instrument of the love which flows from Christ" (Deus Caritas Est n. 33).

So many of us think the whole concept of Holy Spirit is so Christian in nature. On the contrary, it is universal. Judaism though does not speak of Holy Spirit as a separate person; the RUAH HAKODESH of God is a strong entity in their faith. This figure of speech gave the Christians certain grounds to understand the third person of the Trinity. Islam on the other hand considers Holy Spirit to be another name for Archangel Gabriel (Jibril). In Sura 2.97, the Quran states that Gabriel delivered the word of Allah to the prophet Mohammad, referring the term ‘Holy Spirit’ to Jibril. Hinduism compares Holy Spirit to Kundalini – the energy manifested in the divine person of Shakti – the wife of Lord Shiva. Kundalini is referred to as the divine intelligence behind spiritual awakening and maturation in yoga (union with God).

We profess in the Creed, ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit’. 1 Cor 12:3 states that no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit (divine revelation on Jesus) and Gal 4:6 states that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying ‘Abba Father’ (our attempts to be united to Father). The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us “to be in touch with Christ, we must have been touched by the Holy Spirit.” (683). we remember from Genesis that God as his final touch in creating a man breathed on his nostrils to be alive. Jesus breathes on his Apostles and tells them ‘receive the Holy Spirit’: One corresponding and complementing each other.

Jesus was clear in stating that “Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come." (Mt 12:31-32). The unpardonable sin of Christianity is more than just a concept. Speaking against the Holy Spirit refers to our whole life against Holy Spirit. It is theologically right to say that every sin that we commit is against the Holy Spirit. Wisdom, understanding, counsel, courage, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord all help us not just to prevent sin, but to do good. Jesus’ breathing is not for safety, but for fullness; not for prevention but for a civilization of love.

Many Christians don’t understand the difference between gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit. We have just seen the gifts of the Holy Spirit (7 of them). There are nine fruits of the Holy Spirit. It is interesting to note that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness; gentleness and self-control are called fruits because fruits take a long time to be ready. Fruit comes gradually from inside and gifts come all at once from outside (God). So, Love is not a spiritual gift but a fruit to be growing constantly.

The traditional prayer to the Holy Spirit is all about filling the hearts of the faithful by kindling the fire of love in them. Let us pray that we live as people commissioned by Jesus breathing on us the Holy Spirit. He breathes, and receiving is our response: Jesus said “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

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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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Check on God, Other and Self!

Many people tend to call the season of Lent as ‘Service Check or Maintenance Check’. Though this imagery is very fitting, it is not the total picture of Lent. Lent is not a temporary adjustment that we make for a period of 40 days; nor it is a hibernation period for ‘hypocrites and tax-collectors’. The season of Lent is called the ‘Season of Grace’ since the season of Lent brings in a sense of urgency and utmost importance to be near God. Lent is most often thought of as the preparation to the suffering and death of Jesus; Lent is also the preparation of Jesus’ and our own resurrection. The commitment that we show in taking part in the suffering and death of Our Lord reflects in God rewarding us with the Spirit of Resurrection.

The common benchmarks of all Christians who wear the Cross made of ash on their foreheads Lent consist of prayer, alms giving and fasting in a stricter sense. Every one of them is very essential in Christian living. These three comprises the essence of our life: Prayer – our relationship with God, Almsgiving – our relationship with our neighbour and Fasting – our relationship with self. All these three disciplines in Lent have a sense of generosity in them. We fast with a generous heart; give alms generously and pray with a generous heart.

Lent gets life through prayer, almsgiving and fasting. This is not a season to fast our prayers; not a season to fast our generous giving rather fasting on the desires of the self to make it the temple of the Holy Spirit. When we fast we need to look happy. Joy is the gift of the Holy Spirit. The happy faces are the symbols of freshness and enduring faith in God.

Almsgiving is a wonderful form of giving. Our relationships needs (alms) giving. What can I give the other to make him or her reflect God’s goodness, love and generosity? Modeling on the total self-giving of Jesus, every giving during this season is a great sign of following Jesus literally. Lastly, the importance of Prayer: Lent is a time where not only the quality of prayer, but also the quantity of prayer is stressed. Let us pray that this Lent takes us close to the Heart of God. We all need a share in His suffering and death to share His resurrection. Amen.

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Marian Spirituality all the days of the year

In a way, New Year is everyone’s birthday. New Year is a special time to reflect on God’s generosity. It is a time to be happy that God gave us enough and more opportunities to share His love and care with different people. Rarely do we admit that ‘Time’ belongs to God and our bodies are timed. God is beyond time, but He loves us in time. Every opportunity that we get on earth to show our love, faith, care, responsibility is special and important to us. Wasting, ignoring or being indifferent to those opportunities is equal to saying no to time, thus God’s generosity.

We read in the 1st reading one of the finest blessings in the OT. We need God’s grace & blessings everyday to keep our time holy and God-filled. It makes us to act fast on love: the shepherds went in haste. We cannot afford to idle away in experiencing the grace and blessings of God. It compels us to reach out; to seek the face of God in others. It should make us restless. St. Augustine experienced that: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.” God’s gift of time is an invitation to seek His Face, His Kingdom. Mary as mother of God experienced the restlessness in her heart. The agony and ecstasy she had to go through in her continued efforts to fulfill God’s will never missed to affect her Son in the womb. Jesus was not only sharing her blood as nourishment, but also her spirituality, her restlessness and her rejoicing in the Lord in time. It took her and Joseph eight days to call the baby ‘Jesus’. Those eight days were great days of preparation - a desert experience – longing to call the baby ‘Jesus’ a name meaning Saviour.

God creates us in time, gives us necessary grace and blessings to make our time holy by the way we live. Today as we reflect on the response of Mary to the call of God, on how she made all efforts to make her time holy, let us reflect on our own response to the call of God: our call to be a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, a grandparent, a friend and a child of God and a child of Mary. This will lead us to pray for our country, our world and its peace. We need peace to purify our time. Today is a special day traditionally we pray for World Peace. Pope JP II said, “To pray for peace is to open the human heart to the inroads of God’s power to renew all things. To pray for peace is to pray for Justice, for a right-ordering or relations within and among nations and peoples. It is to pray for freedom of every individual. It is to seek God’s forgiveness, and to implore the courage to forgive those who have trespassed against us.”

Mary is the model of the Church and a great source of inspiration to all of us. By remembering her faithfulness to God, we live out her values and inspiration all the days of this year and the years to come. Let us make all our God-given time holy following the example of Mary, the Mother of God. Amen.

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Christmas: A Day of Gratitude

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love. For business persons, it is a great concept and a money-making source. For children, it is a season for recreation and play. For people without God, it is a holiday season with Santa Claus and Christmas trees. For people of other faiths, it is a great time to revive relationships. For some, it is the only time to think of people who are important to them: their father, their mother, their close friends etc. and send them expensive cards with readymade words. For some Christians, it is the only day of obligation in a calendar year: not that they are angry with God or the priest and the Church, but it is often old fashion versus new fashion. Taking part in Mass is old, standing out is new. Responding is old keeping silence is new. Singing is old, sealed lips are new.

Christmas for Christians is a day of gratitude. Gratitude leads us to prayer, where our hearts are filled with wonder and praise. Christmas leads us to the sense of wonder. God presents himself as tiny, fragile, vulnerable, and dependent compared to the strong, muscular, powerful, parenting and patronizing people we are in front of God. We often see parents and friends finding similarities between the child and parents. This child Jesus not just resembles certain features, rather is the ultimate replica of God the Father. This child is not a super child in any way: it cries, disturbs the parents middle of the night, and also smiles beautifully, holds our finger tight, kicks with both the legs to show excitement. He is confused, anxious, and fearful, always in need of the warmth of the mother. Christmas makes us wonder in a new way. God so weak and vulnerable is asleep with his creation which is strong and powerful.

If there is no Christmas, we would not have experienced this sense of wonder at all: we would have missed touching his soft little cheeks, fingers and toes; missed to see him sleep peacefully, see him cry, see him reach out to him mom, his confused looks and his innocence. This brings in a great lesson of all time: to reach at the cave of one’s heart, one must become childlike. A child has a great power to make us focus our attention completely whoever we are, whatever degrees we hold. God not only became childlike, God became a child. This proves that God will go all the way, take any risk, sacrifice any level, and give up anything to reach the cave of our hearts.

How do we stand near the crib? What goes on in our minds and hearts as we see this child in the manger? I too want others to know that I can be liked, loved and I want others to know that I can love affectionately too. Do I see others as loveable and wanting to be loved? Am I ready to present myself loveable; childlike? Christmas is indeed tenderness for the past, courage for the present and hope for the future. I wish you all Merry Christmas!

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Mary: Our Lady of Guadalupe

Some say that the test of any man’s character is how he takes praise. There are people who falsely praise us for the things that we did not do. There are people who praise to win our support or to gain something. There are people who praise others to cover up their ugly sides. There are worthy praises given to worthy people but it happens very seldom. Praising can be good or bad depending on how the person praises and how the praised person takes it.

On the 8th we have celebrated the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. Today, we have another big event: we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. We praise and honour her for accepting the role of being the Mother of God; for accepting all the problems and challenges that it includes. She took in confusions and lack of understanding as part of Divine plan. She did not know how she would become the mother; she did not know why the Child had to be busy with His Own Father’s business; she did not know why he had to travel to preach the Good News; she did not know why he had to suffer and die; she did not know how he cured people and multiplied bread. Yet she pondered and prayed so that God might reveal His love and light to her heart and mind.

The Blessedness is the theme of today’s readings. Mary was called ‘Most Blessed’. Mary herself proclaimed that she will be called blessed by all generation. Blessedness is the key teaching of Jesus and occupied the prime position in the Sermon on the Mount. Blessedness is the challenge of the Church today that the Christians are called to share the blessedness of the Mother who in turn the greatest model who followed the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount.

The more we praise and celebrate our life, the more there is in life to celebrate (Oprah Winfrey). We have a lot to celebrate and praise God since we have received innumerable gifts through Mary our Mother: Our Lady of Guadalupe and all those who come into this Church. May they receive the peace and joy of Our Lord and be blessed by the intercession of Mary. Happy Feast to all! Amen.
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Mary full of grace; Mary the handmaid of the Lord.

Every leadership includes the wisdom to know the proper people for a definite job or responsibility. Barak Obama knows in his wisdom as to who is going to be good at this and good at that in running the country. A Bishop knows in his wisdom as to who fits well as the VG or the chancellor. A CEO knows in his wisdom as to who would serve the purpose in bringing profit to business. If man possesses a little wisdom and could do this much, we should have realized God is wisdom in its fullness and has chosen Mary by giving her the most important responsibility.

The Immaculate Conception is a doctrine of the Romans Catholic Church in regards to Mary. The doctrine says, “…the blessed Virgin Mary to have been, from the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, in view of the merits of Christ Jesus the Savior of Mankind, preserved free from all stain of original sin.” We believe that Mary was protected from original sin. Mary in the Catholic Church is indelibly special and will remain so for all ages: She proclaims, “All generation will call me blessed.”

Holiness in living certainly brings in the full grace of God. Mary, a simple woman of history could portray such high level of holiness that the Universal Church stands in awe and praises God for the person of Mary. II Vatican does not talk on the air, when it proclaimed that, “all are called to holiness.” We are not left hopeless as to how to be holy as human beings; we are given the Mother of God as the proof and model to live in holiness and experience the grace of God.

This life in grace calls for the nearness of God. It also brings in the wisdom of God to accept the responsibility that he has given us. Mary knows her responsibility: I am the handmaid of the Lord. If God or Angel Gabriel has to address me, would they use the same address: “you, full of grace! The Lord is with you.”? Mary is not an idol to be worshipped but a lesson to be followed, thus we become people of grace. Amen.

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Mother of Sorrows: A Meditation

Yesterday we have reflected on the pain and suffering and sacrifice of our Lord Jesus in the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. Now, today we remember Our Lady of Sorrows, the pain and suffering and sacrifice of our Mother, Mary beneath the Cross. It is undoubtedly felt by the church that Mary is the first one to share the pain and the triumph of the Cross.
St. Ambrose in particular sees Mary as a sorrowful yet powerful figure at the cross. Mary stood fearlessly at the cross while others fled. Mary looked on her Son's wounds with pity, but saw in them the salvation of the world. As Jesus hung on the cross, Mary did not fear to be killed but offered herself to her persecutors.
The beloved disciple is identified as the church collectively by theologians and professionals of the church. Jesus offers Mary to be the mother of the beloved disciple in the moment of pain, during his suffering and death. Thus, Mary was given to the church during a crucial time of the Redeemer, that even at the point of death; Our Lord makes sure that the Church which is weak and vulnerable would have a Mother who is strong and powerful.
This also implies that Mary’s part in the redemption of Mankind is not over with the death and resurrection of Jesus; rather it is the renewal of the Servant Motherhood of Mary. Our Pope in Lourdes yesterday said that Mary shows man the way to come to God. "She teaches us to approach him in truth and simplicity," he said. "Thanks to her, we discover that the Christian faith is not a burden: It is like a wing which enables us to fly higher, so as to take refuge in God's embrace. The grace of the Immaculate Conception is not given to Mary as a merely "personal grace," but is rather "a grace for all, a grace given to the entire people of God.
The Church has a mother today and this gift of the Mother invites us to take part in the suffering of Jesus since Jesus accepted suffering and death to conquer sin and bring salvation to all. If we aspire to be saved by Christ, we must go through the road less travelled along with Mary in taking up our crosses and follow Him. He will lead us to the resurrection.
Lord Jesus, we now implore, both for the present and for the hour of our death, the intercession of the most Blessed Virgin Mary, Thy Mother, whose holy soul was pierced at the time of Thy passion by a sword of grief. Grant us this favor, O Saviour of the world, Who liveth and reigneth with the Father and the Holy Ghost, forever and ever. Amen. (Prayer of the Servites)

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