LENT V : EZ 37: 12-14;: ROM 8: 8-11;Gospel: JN 11:1-45
There was a guy riding in a cab one day. He was new to the city and was looking for a good place to eat, so he leaned forward, tapped the cabby on the shoulder and said, "Hey, Buddy." The driver let out a blood curdling scream and lost control of the cab. He nearly hit a bus, jumped the curb and stopped just inches from going through a huge plate-glass window and into a crowded restaurant. For a few minutes, there was dead silence in the cab. All you could hear was two hearts beating like bass drums pounding out a quick march. The driver finally turned around and said, "Man, you scared the living daylights out of me." The passenger, who was white as a sheet and whose eyes were as big as dinner plates, said, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize tapping you on the shoulder would scare you so badly." The cabby said, "Well, it's not your fault. This is my first day driving a cab. But for the last 25 years, I drove a hearse." Someone coming back from death would take us by surprise. Raising of Lazarus not only surprised those around the tomb, but surprises even us, because that is most uncommon.
The raising of Lazarus is the sixth of seven signs in John’s gospel. It is also the last and greatest of the miracles worked by our Lord to prove that he is the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God, and that through faith in him believers will receive eternal life. In other words, Jesus wanted to make this, his last recorded miracle, a convincing proof of his claim to be what he was---the Messiah, sent by God to give new life, eternal life, to mankind. Of course the seventh miracle in John’s gospel is Jesus’ own resurrection.
Traditional Jewish belief had it that the soul of a dead person somehow remains with the body for three days. After three days the soul departs finally from the body never to return, and that is when corruption sets in. When Martha objects to the opening of the tomb and says, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days” (Jn 11:39), she is expressing the common view that this is now a hopeless situation. Is that why Jesus delayed coming to the funeral, to let the situation become “impossible” before acting on it? G.K. Chesterton once said, “Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all.” In traditional Jewish mentality bringing back to life a person who is already four days dead and decaying is as unthinkable as the prophet Ezekiel’s vision in which the grey, dry bones of the dead are miraculously restored to life.
For the early Christians the story of the raising of Lazarus was more than a pointer to the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus rose on the third day; his body never saw corruption. For them this miracle is a challenge to never give up hope even in the hopeless situations in which they found themselves as individuals, as a church or as a nation. It is never too late for God to revive and revitalize a person, a church or a nation. But first we must learn to cooperate with God.
How can we cooperate with God so as to experience God’s resurrection power in our lives and in our world? Well, everyone knows the answer already: faith. But that is not the point that John makes in this story. In fact there is no one in the story, not even Mary or Martha, who believed that Jesus could bring Lazarus back to life after four days dead. No one expected him to do it, so expectant faith is not the emphasis here. Rather the emphasis in the story on how we cooperate with a miracle-working God is placed on practical obedience and doing God’s will.
To effect the miracle, Jesus issues three commands and all of them are obeyed to the letter. That is how the miracle happens. First, Jesus said, ‘Roll away the stone.’ So they rolled away the stone”. Did the people understand why they should do this heavy work of rolling away the tombstone to expose a stinking corpse? You bet they didn’t. But it was their faith in Jesus expressing itself not through intellectual agreement with Jesus but through practical agreement with him, through obedience. Why didn’t Jesus command the stone to roll away all by itself, without bothering the people? We don’t quite know. All we know is that divine power seems always to be activated by human cooperation and stifled by non-cooperation. As C.S. Lewis said, “God seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures.” God will not do by a miracle what we can do by obedience.
The second command Jesus gives is directed to the dead man: “‘Lazarus, come out!’ and the dead man came out” . We do not know the details of what transpired in the tomb. All we know is that Jesus’ word of command is followed by immediate obedience. Lazarus gropes his way out of the dark tomb even with his hands and feet tied up in bandages, and his face all wrapped up. Even a man rotting away in the tomb can still do something to help himself.
The third command again is addressed to the people, “Unbind him, and let him go” (verse 44). Even though Lazarus could stumble himself out of the tomb, there was no way he could unbind himself. He needs the community to do that for him. By unbinding Lazarus and setting him free from the death bands, the community is accepting Lazarus back as one of them.
Many Christian individuals and communities today have fallen victim to the death of sin. Many are already in the tomb of hopelessness and decay, in the bondage of sinful habits and attitudes. Nothing short of a miracle can bring us back to life in Christ. Jesus is ready for the miracle. He himself said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10). Are we ready to cooperate with him for the miracle. Are we ready to roll away the stone that stands between us and the light of Christ’s face? Are we ready to take the first step to come out of the place of death? Are we ready to unbind (i.e. forgive) one another and let them go free? These are the various ways we cooperate with God in the miracle of bringing us back to life and reviving us as individuals, as a church, and a nation.
We often bind ourselves with chains of addiction to alcohol, drugs, gossip, envy, prejudices, hatred and uncontrollable anger and bury ourselves in the tombs of despair. Sometimes we are in the tomb of selfishness, filled with negative feelings such as worry, fear, resentment, hatred, and guilt. Jesus asks us today to seek his help and that of the community around us to loosen those chains and come out of tombs of our own creation. Let us ask Jesus during this Holy Mass to bring the light and the power of His Holy Spirit into our private life and liberate us from our tombs.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
IIIrd Sunday in Lent . Cycle A
LENT III SUNDAY: EX 17: 3-7; ROM 5: 1-2, 5-8;Gospel: JN 4: 5-42
A thirst could be physical or spiritual. Often it is both, as in the case of the unnamed woman whose meeting with Jesus by Jacob's well gave us today's gospel story. Physically she is thirsty, thirsting for water, and that brings her to the well day after day. But spiritually also she is thirsty, an inner thirst which drives her from one man to another and for which she can find no satisfaction. By the time she meets Jesus she is in her sixth marriage, and yet she is able to tell Jesus "I have no husband," indicating that she is probably already looking for the seventh.
Numbers are often significant in biblical interpretation. According to the biblical symbolism of numbers, six is a number of imperfection, of lack, of deficiency. The woman in her sixth marriage is, therefore, in a situation of lack and deficiency. Seven, on the other hand, is a number of perfection, completion and sufficiency. Jesus comes to this woman as the seventh man in her life. She opens up to him and finally experiences the satisfaction of all of her soul's desiring, the full assuaging of her spiritual thirst.
God created us with a thirst for his friendship, for divine wisdom, and for everlasting truth and love not in order to torture us, but to lead us towards the real paradise. But when we let ourselves be seduced by plastic paradises instead, his treasures go undiscovered, and our desires go unsatisfied.
As the Catechism puts it: The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself .Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for. (#27).Isn't this the kind of experience we wish for ourselves and for all in this season of Lent?
This unnamed woman was coming to the town well in the middle of the day, the Gospel tells us, the hottest time of the day, when none of the other women in the town would be coming to the well. She wanted to avoid them or it could be that she was ostracized as a social leper by the community. Human society organizes itself by erecting boundaries - national, ethnic, religious, and gender. Jesus shows in today's gospel that in order to reach out to the other and create the necessary conditions for conversion, one must be prepared to challenge these man-made boundaries and break the dividing walls of prejudice.
According to the convention of the times, Jews were not supposed to interact with Samaritans. Walls of prejudice built on the foundations of ethnicity and religion kept them apart. Jesus broke these boundaries when he asked the woman for a drink, as her reaction shows:
"How is it that you, a Jewish man, ask a drink of me, a Samaritan woman?" Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans" (John 4:9).
That was not all. It was also against the moral norms of the day for a man to engage a woman in dialogue in a public place. And yet Jesus engages this woman in the longest dialogue we have in all the four Gospels, an act which even his own disciples saw as morally questionable:
Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you want?" or, "Why are you speaking with her?" (John 4:27)
If Jesus had kept within the bounds of the expected behaviour of his day, there was no way he could have gone beyond a superficial brush with the woman, which would invariably lead to superficial results. Why does Jesus make such a tremendous impact on the woman? Because for the first time in her life she meets a man who really understands her. In her excitement she forgets her water jar and physical thirst (and so also does Jesus); and she runs back to the village inviting the villagers to come and see "a man who told me everything I have ever done" - probably the first man to know her so well without rejecting her. Before you know it the convert has become a missionary bringing others to Jesus and to the joyful experience of conversion.
When Jesus reveals himself to her, her life turns around, one-hundred-and-eighty degrees. She runs back to the village announcing the good news to anyone she can find. And we know from the Gospel that Jesus and his disciples ended up spending three days there, and the whole town came to believe in him. They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world." (4:42)
We see that there are two stages in the believing or conversion process: a. believing because of what someone told us about Jesus, and b. believing because we have come personally to know Jesus ourselves. Lent is the period when the Church invites all her children who still believe on the strength of someone else's witnessing to come to Jesus personally and believe, not because someone told us, but because we have known him and experienced his love personally in our own lives.
Evangelization is as some one said - one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread. We should lead the hungry and the thirsty to the table of life. Let’s ask ourselves: Can I do what she did? Invite friends and neighbors to Jesus and salvation?
When Jesus became personal with this woman and started asking embarrassing questions about her five husbands, she cleverly tried to change the subject and talk about religion. She didn’t want Jesus to get personal. But Jesus wanted to free her, forgive her, shape her life in a new direction, and change her. He wanted to offer this woman living water. At the end of the long heart-to-heart conversation Jesus revealed himself to her as the Messiah, which in turn led her to faith in him.
We need to allow Jesus free entry into our personal lives. Jesus wants to get personal with us, especially during this Lenten season. Jesus wants to get into our “private” lives. We have a “private” personal life which is contrary to the will of God. Christ wishes to come into that “private” life, not to embarrass us, not to judge or condemn us, not to be unkind or malicious to us. Rather, Christ comes into our “private” personal life to free us, to change us and to offer us what we really need: living water. The living water is the Holy Spirit. The living water is the Spirit of Jesus and his love. We can find this living water in the sacraments, in prayer and in the holy Bible.
In the words of that Samaritan woman let’s pray: Lord give me that living water, so that I may never be thirsty again.
A thirst could be physical or spiritual. Often it is both, as in the case of the unnamed woman whose meeting with Jesus by Jacob's well gave us today's gospel story. Physically she is thirsty, thirsting for water, and that brings her to the well day after day. But spiritually also she is thirsty, an inner thirst which drives her from one man to another and for which she can find no satisfaction. By the time she meets Jesus she is in her sixth marriage, and yet she is able to tell Jesus "I have no husband," indicating that she is probably already looking for the seventh.
Numbers are often significant in biblical interpretation. According to the biblical symbolism of numbers, six is a number of imperfection, of lack, of deficiency. The woman in her sixth marriage is, therefore, in a situation of lack and deficiency. Seven, on the other hand, is a number of perfection, completion and sufficiency. Jesus comes to this woman as the seventh man in her life. She opens up to him and finally experiences the satisfaction of all of her soul's desiring, the full assuaging of her spiritual thirst.
God created us with a thirst for his friendship, for divine wisdom, and for everlasting truth and love not in order to torture us, but to lead us towards the real paradise. But when we let ourselves be seduced by plastic paradises instead, his treasures go undiscovered, and our desires go unsatisfied.
As the Catechism puts it: The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself .Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for. (#27).Isn't this the kind of experience we wish for ourselves and for all in this season of Lent?
This unnamed woman was coming to the town well in the middle of the day, the Gospel tells us, the hottest time of the day, when none of the other women in the town would be coming to the well. She wanted to avoid them or it could be that she was ostracized as a social leper by the community. Human society organizes itself by erecting boundaries - national, ethnic, religious, and gender. Jesus shows in today's gospel that in order to reach out to the other and create the necessary conditions for conversion, one must be prepared to challenge these man-made boundaries and break the dividing walls of prejudice.
According to the convention of the times, Jews were not supposed to interact with Samaritans. Walls of prejudice built on the foundations of ethnicity and religion kept them apart. Jesus broke these boundaries when he asked the woman for a drink, as her reaction shows:
"How is it that you, a Jewish man, ask a drink of me, a Samaritan woman?" Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans" (John 4:9).
That was not all. It was also against the moral norms of the day for a man to engage a woman in dialogue in a public place. And yet Jesus engages this woman in the longest dialogue we have in all the four Gospels, an act which even his own disciples saw as morally questionable:
Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you want?" or, "Why are you speaking with her?" (John 4:27)
If Jesus had kept within the bounds of the expected behaviour of his day, there was no way he could have gone beyond a superficial brush with the woman, which would invariably lead to superficial results. Why does Jesus make such a tremendous impact on the woman? Because for the first time in her life she meets a man who really understands her. In her excitement she forgets her water jar and physical thirst (and so also does Jesus); and she runs back to the village inviting the villagers to come and see "a man who told me everything I have ever done" - probably the first man to know her so well without rejecting her. Before you know it the convert has become a missionary bringing others to Jesus and to the joyful experience of conversion.
When Jesus reveals himself to her, her life turns around, one-hundred-and-eighty degrees. She runs back to the village announcing the good news to anyone she can find. And we know from the Gospel that Jesus and his disciples ended up spending three days there, and the whole town came to believe in him. They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world." (4:42)
We see that there are two stages in the believing or conversion process: a. believing because of what someone told us about Jesus, and b. believing because we have come personally to know Jesus ourselves. Lent is the period when the Church invites all her children who still believe on the strength of someone else's witnessing to come to Jesus personally and believe, not because someone told us, but because we have known him and experienced his love personally in our own lives.
Evangelization is as some one said - one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread. We should lead the hungry and the thirsty to the table of life. Let’s ask ourselves: Can I do what she did? Invite friends and neighbors to Jesus and salvation?
When Jesus became personal with this woman and started asking embarrassing questions about her five husbands, she cleverly tried to change the subject and talk about religion. She didn’t want Jesus to get personal. But Jesus wanted to free her, forgive her, shape her life in a new direction, and change her. He wanted to offer this woman living water. At the end of the long heart-to-heart conversation Jesus revealed himself to her as the Messiah, which in turn led her to faith in him.
We need to allow Jesus free entry into our personal lives. Jesus wants to get personal with us, especially during this Lenten season. Jesus wants to get into our “private” lives. We have a “private” personal life which is contrary to the will of God. Christ wishes to come into that “private” life, not to embarrass us, not to judge or condemn us, not to be unkind or malicious to us. Rather, Christ comes into our “private” personal life to free us, to change us and to offer us what we really need: living water. The living water is the Holy Spirit. The living water is the Spirit of Jesus and his love. We can find this living water in the sacraments, in prayer and in the holy Bible.
In the words of that Samaritan woman let’s pray: Lord give me that living water, so that I may never be thirsty again.
Friday, March 11, 2011
FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT.
GEN 2: 7-9, 3: 1-7; ROM 5: 12-19;Gospel: MT 4: 1-11
William Willimon in his book “What’s Right With the Church” tells about leading a Sunday School class that was studying the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. After careful study and explanation of each of the three temptations, Dr. Willimon asked, "How are we tempted today?" A young salesman was the first to speak. "Temptation is when your boss calls you in, as mine did yesterday, and says, 'I'm going to give you a real opportunity. I'm going to give you a bigger sales territory. We believe that you are going places, young man.' ‘But I don't want a bigger sales territory,’ the young salesman told his boss. ‘I'm already away from home four nights a week. It wouldn't be fair to my wife and daughter.’ ‘Look,’ his boss replied, ‘we're asking you to do this for your wife and daughter. Don't you want to be a good father? It takes money to support a family these days. Sure, your little girl doesn't take much money now, but think of the future. Think of her future. I'm only asking you to do this for them, the boss said.” The young man told the class: “Now that’s temptation.”
Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to find out what he was made of. The first temptation was “to turn stones into loaves of bread.” Lent is a time to look at such temptations, sin and the consequences. Lent was originally established for new Christians, those who experienced a call. They were to spend forty days and forty nights preparing for their baptism. If at the end they still wanted to follow Jesus, then on Easter Eve they would be baptized as the sun was rising in the east, signaling the new day, the new era, inaugurated because of the Resurrection.
But later the Church used the forty days as a time of renewal for those who were already Christians, because at a certain point everyone in the empire became a Christian, everyone was baptized as infants. So the time of Lent was used as a time of renewal and recommitment to the Christian life, examining our lives in light of the one we are supposed to follow.
Since the Church begins the season with a reflection on the origins of sin among us, the main themes in today’s readings are temptation, sin, guilt and forgiveness. We are told of the temptations offered to our Lord, submission to which would have destroyed his mission. Today’s readings give us the notion that testing comes to us by an agency apart from and in opposition to God. But the truth is that, while testing comes from the outside, temptation comes from within ourselves. However, the good news is that, though we are tempted and often succumb, God’s grace provides the way of salvation for us. Testing is to strengthen us in faith, while temptation is to weaken our faith. Testing comes from God and temptation comes from evil source.
Like Adam and Eve in the first reading today, we are all tempted to put ourselves in God's place. Consequently we resent every limit on our freedom, and we don't want to be held responsible for the consequences of our choices. Temptation is a very real part of life: temptation to stray from the values we hold dear, temptation to take short cuts, to avoid struggle, to find the easy way through.
God helps us in our temptations so that we may not fall away from our faith. Jesus told Peter that he prayed for him and others that he may not fall away. In the garden of Gathsemene Jesus told his disciples to pray with him so that they may not fall into temptation.
A teen-age boy told his parents he was going to run away from home. "Listen," he said, "I'm leaving home. There is nothing you can do to stop me. I want excitement, adventure, beautiful women, money, and fun. I'll never find it here, so I'm leaving. Just don't try to stop me!" As he headed for the door, his father leaped up and ran toward him. "Dad," the boy said firmly, "you heard what I said. Don't try to stop me. I'm going!" "Who's trying to stop you?" answered the father, "I'm going with you!" In our weak moments of temptation Jesus is going with us, because he knows we cannot fight it ourselves.
Every one of us is tempted to seek sinful pleasures, easy wealth and a position of authority, power and glory, and to use any means, even unjust or sinful ones to gain these things. Jesus serves as a model for us in conquering temptations by strengthening himself through prayer, penance and the active use of the ‘Word of God’. Temptations make us more powerful warriors of God by strengthening our minds and hearts. By constantly struggling against temptations we become stronger. Each time one is tempted to do evil but does good, one becomes stronger. Further, we are never tempted beyond our power. In his first letter, St. John assures us: “Greater is the one who is in us, than the one who is in the world (1 John 4: 4). We may be strengthened by St. Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 10:13: "No testing has overtaken you, that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and [God] will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing [God] will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it."
We are all affected by the culture around us, just like fish are affected by the water quality of the lake where they live. And the culture around us has become drunk with science and technology - so much so that it has completely forgotten this basic truth, that man cannot live on bread alone.
With our genius for science and technology we seem to be on the road to being able to turn stones into bread . The popular culture is trying to make religion into a totally private thing - like a hobby. If society can perfect itself through scientific progress, why do we need God? We need God because society can NOT perfect itself - we do not live on bread alone. We need God because every new invention can either be used for good purposes or bad purposes, and without God's grace we will neither be able to identify the good ones, nor will we be strong enough to choose them. We need God because he is the source of truth, and our souls yearn for truth as much as our bodies yearn for bread.
Hence, during this Lent, let us confront our evil tendencies by prayer , by penance and by meditative reading of the Bible. Let’s use this season of Lent to rediscover who we are before God and say yes to God and no to Satan as Jesus did.
William Willimon in his book “What’s Right With the Church” tells about leading a Sunday School class that was studying the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. After careful study and explanation of each of the three temptations, Dr. Willimon asked, "How are we tempted today?" A young salesman was the first to speak. "Temptation is when your boss calls you in, as mine did yesterday, and says, 'I'm going to give you a real opportunity. I'm going to give you a bigger sales territory. We believe that you are going places, young man.' ‘But I don't want a bigger sales territory,’ the young salesman told his boss. ‘I'm already away from home four nights a week. It wouldn't be fair to my wife and daughter.’ ‘Look,’ his boss replied, ‘we're asking you to do this for your wife and daughter. Don't you want to be a good father? It takes money to support a family these days. Sure, your little girl doesn't take much money now, but think of the future. Think of her future. I'm only asking you to do this for them, the boss said.” The young man told the class: “Now that’s temptation.”
Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to find out what he was made of. The first temptation was “to turn stones into loaves of bread.” Lent is a time to look at such temptations, sin and the consequences. Lent was originally established for new Christians, those who experienced a call. They were to spend forty days and forty nights preparing for their baptism. If at the end they still wanted to follow Jesus, then on Easter Eve they would be baptized as the sun was rising in the east, signaling the new day, the new era, inaugurated because of the Resurrection.
But later the Church used the forty days as a time of renewal for those who were already Christians, because at a certain point everyone in the empire became a Christian, everyone was baptized as infants. So the time of Lent was used as a time of renewal and recommitment to the Christian life, examining our lives in light of the one we are supposed to follow.
Since the Church begins the season with a reflection on the origins of sin among us, the main themes in today’s readings are temptation, sin, guilt and forgiveness. We are told of the temptations offered to our Lord, submission to which would have destroyed his mission. Today’s readings give us the notion that testing comes to us by an agency apart from and in opposition to God. But the truth is that, while testing comes from the outside, temptation comes from within ourselves. However, the good news is that, though we are tempted and often succumb, God’s grace provides the way of salvation for us. Testing is to strengthen us in faith, while temptation is to weaken our faith. Testing comes from God and temptation comes from evil source.
Like Adam and Eve in the first reading today, we are all tempted to put ourselves in God's place. Consequently we resent every limit on our freedom, and we don't want to be held responsible for the consequences of our choices. Temptation is a very real part of life: temptation to stray from the values we hold dear, temptation to take short cuts, to avoid struggle, to find the easy way through.
God helps us in our temptations so that we may not fall away from our faith. Jesus told Peter that he prayed for him and others that he may not fall away. In the garden of Gathsemene Jesus told his disciples to pray with him so that they may not fall into temptation.
A teen-age boy told his parents he was going to run away from home. "Listen," he said, "I'm leaving home. There is nothing you can do to stop me. I want excitement, adventure, beautiful women, money, and fun. I'll never find it here, so I'm leaving. Just don't try to stop me!" As he headed for the door, his father leaped up and ran toward him. "Dad," the boy said firmly, "you heard what I said. Don't try to stop me. I'm going!" "Who's trying to stop you?" answered the father, "I'm going with you!" In our weak moments of temptation Jesus is going with us, because he knows we cannot fight it ourselves.
Every one of us is tempted to seek sinful pleasures, easy wealth and a position of authority, power and glory, and to use any means, even unjust or sinful ones to gain these things. Jesus serves as a model for us in conquering temptations by strengthening himself through prayer, penance and the active use of the ‘Word of God’. Temptations make us more powerful warriors of God by strengthening our minds and hearts. By constantly struggling against temptations we become stronger. Each time one is tempted to do evil but does good, one becomes stronger. Further, we are never tempted beyond our power. In his first letter, St. John assures us: “Greater is the one who is in us, than the one who is in the world (1 John 4: 4). We may be strengthened by St. Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 10:13: "No testing has overtaken you, that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and [God] will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing [God] will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it."
We are all affected by the culture around us, just like fish are affected by the water quality of the lake where they live. And the culture around us has become drunk with science and technology - so much so that it has completely forgotten this basic truth, that man cannot live on bread alone.
With our genius for science and technology we seem to be on the road to being able to turn stones into bread . The popular culture is trying to make religion into a totally private thing - like a hobby. If society can perfect itself through scientific progress, why do we need God? We need God because society can NOT perfect itself - we do not live on bread alone. We need God because every new invention can either be used for good purposes or bad purposes, and without God's grace we will neither be able to identify the good ones, nor will we be strong enough to choose them. We need God because he is the source of truth, and our souls yearn for truth as much as our bodies yearn for bread.
Hence, during this Lent, let us confront our evil tendencies by prayer , by penance and by meditative reading of the Bible. Let’s use this season of Lent to rediscover who we are before God and say yes to God and no to Satan as Jesus did.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
ASH WEDNESDAY.2011
Every car or truck carries in the glove compartment a maintenance schedule. Having your oil changed, your tires rotated and balanced, and the rest of the engine checked keeps ones vehicle in excellent shape.
Lent provides us an opportunity to open our personal maintenance schedule and take a close look at ourselves as we journey towards eternal life. It is the time to look back and make up for what we failed in our life.
A stranger rolled a flat tire into a service station for repair. The station manager dropped everything and cheerfully began. When he finished, the stranger asked, What do I owe you? The manager
said, “There is no cost! I’m just glad I could help you.” The stranger paused and said, “Do you mind telling me why you’ve done this for someone you’ll probably never see again?” The manager
said, “Well, yesterday, I woke up with a toothache and I treated a lot of good people in a shameful way. Today, I’m trying make up for the evil I did yesterday.
This season of lent reminds us to focus on overhauling of our spiritual life. Aside from what the Church law requires of us, fast and abstinence, we should come up with a personal program for spiritual growth. This is our personal maintenance program. The self-control that we exercise in giving up a legitimate pleasure strengthens our will and curbs the inclinations of our passions.
We should also do some kind of positive act that we would not normally do on a regular basis. A serious Lent will purify our soul and allow us to experience a deeper interior freedom. Fast from criticism, and feast on praise. Fast from resentment, and feast on contentment . . . Fast from fear, and feast on faith.
Today we accept the ashes on our forehead as a sign of our mortality and yet we are also reminded of the cross placed there at our Baptism. Our life here is only temporary. It calls us to strive for a deep truthful interiority for our life which is also essential to a Christian life.
As a newly-elected Pope walks to the altar to celebrate his first Mass as the head of the Catholic Church, a server—not a cardinal or a bishop, just a simple acolyte — stops him and burns a piece of cloth mounted on a reed. As the flames consume the piece of cloth, the server proclaims, "Pater sancte, sic transit gloria mundi!" (The Holy Father, thus passes the glory of the world!)
Three times, the Pope is stopped. Three times, a piece of cloth is burned before him. Three times, he is reminded about the fate of all things in this world. By the third time, the Pope's face must be covered in soot and ashes—just like our foreheads on Ash Wednesday. Maybe, as the sign of the cross, is, with ashes, traced on our foreheads, this is what we should think about: "Sic transit Gloria mundi!"
Nothing on this earth lasts. The hippest clothes will soon go out of fashion. That electronic gadget we are saving up for, will soon become obsolete. Cars break down, buildings are demolished. Stop a while. What fad have we been trying to pursue recently? Try to remember how much effort we have poured into this new fancy of ours. Then tell ourselves, "It will soon just be dust and ashes."
Today, as we are reminded of this, we should ask ourselves, "So what truly lasts? What endures? What, in the end is the only thing worth investing all our life to gain?"
Lent provides us an opportunity to open our personal maintenance schedule and take a close look at ourselves as we journey towards eternal life. It is the time to look back and make up for what we failed in our life.
A stranger rolled a flat tire into a service station for repair. The station manager dropped everything and cheerfully began. When he finished, the stranger asked, What do I owe you? The manager
said, “There is no cost! I’m just glad I could help you.” The stranger paused and said, “Do you mind telling me why you’ve done this for someone you’ll probably never see again?” The manager
said, “Well, yesterday, I woke up with a toothache and I treated a lot of good people in a shameful way. Today, I’m trying make up for the evil I did yesterday.
This season of lent reminds us to focus on overhauling of our spiritual life. Aside from what the Church law requires of us, fast and abstinence, we should come up with a personal program for spiritual growth. This is our personal maintenance program. The self-control that we exercise in giving up a legitimate pleasure strengthens our will and curbs the inclinations of our passions.
We should also do some kind of positive act that we would not normally do on a regular basis. A serious Lent will purify our soul and allow us to experience a deeper interior freedom. Fast from criticism, and feast on praise. Fast from resentment, and feast on contentment . . . Fast from fear, and feast on faith.
Today we accept the ashes on our forehead as a sign of our mortality and yet we are also reminded of the cross placed there at our Baptism. Our life here is only temporary. It calls us to strive for a deep truthful interiority for our life which is also essential to a Christian life.
As a newly-elected Pope walks to the altar to celebrate his first Mass as the head of the Catholic Church, a server—not a cardinal or a bishop, just a simple acolyte — stops him and burns a piece of cloth mounted on a reed. As the flames consume the piece of cloth, the server proclaims, "Pater sancte, sic transit gloria mundi!" (The Holy Father, thus passes the glory of the world!)
Three times, the Pope is stopped. Three times, a piece of cloth is burned before him. Three times, he is reminded about the fate of all things in this world. By the third time, the Pope's face must be covered in soot and ashes—just like our foreheads on Ash Wednesday. Maybe, as the sign of the cross, is, with ashes, traced on our foreheads, this is what we should think about: "Sic transit Gloria mundi!"
Nothing on this earth lasts. The hippest clothes will soon go out of fashion. That electronic gadget we are saving up for, will soon become obsolete. Cars break down, buildings are demolished. Stop a while. What fad have we been trying to pursue recently? Try to remember how much effort we have poured into this new fancy of ours. Then tell ourselves, "It will soon just be dust and ashes."
Today, as we are reminded of this, we should ask ourselves, "So what truly lasts? What endures? What, in the end is the only thing worth investing all our life to gain?"
Saturday, March 5, 2011
IXth - Sunday in Ordinary time
IX SUNDAY DEUT 11: 18-26;ROM 3:21-25;: MT 7:21-27
Ever heard of counterfeit $100 bills? sure, a lot. Ever heard of counterfeit toilet paper? No. Why not? Because it is not worth it. The existence of counterfeits indicates how precious a thing is: the more precious it is, the more counterfeit you get. Spirituality is a very precious commodity. The proof is in the amount of counterfeit spiritualities in circulation. Counterfeit spirituality did not begin with us.
Acts 19 reports a curious incident that happened when Paul was preaching in Ephesus. Paul was performing so many miracles in Ephesus that the other religious ministers in the city became envious of him. They were losing their members to Paul. So some of them decided to observe and copy what Paul was doing. Paul was doing mighty works and casting out demons by invoking the name of Jesus. They thought they had discovered his secret formula, and they took off to go and implement it in their own ministry. Seven sons of a Jewish high priest called Sceva, who were professional exorcists tried to use the name of Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” But the evil spirit said to them in reply, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?” Then the man with the evil spirit jumped on them, overpowered them and handled them so badly that they fled out of the house naked and bruised all over. The moral of the story: Who you are comes before what you do or say.
This is what Jesus is trying to teach his followers in today’s gospel story. He gives thumbs down to some people who say words of faith. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matt 7:21). He even gives thumbs down to some people who do works of faith. “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers’” (vv 22-23). By saying “I never knew you,” Jesus indicates that the fundamental and most important thing is him knowing us and we knowing him. In other words, the relationship between Jesus and us is more important than the performance we put up in terms of words and deeds. We have to be Christians, people who know Christ, before we can act or speak Christian. We must have a direct, personal relationship with Christ. This is what gives meaning and potency to the words of faith we speak and the works of faith we perform. Otherwise we are no better than the seven sons of Sceva.
The seven sons of Sceva represent all those who try to profess the Christian creed outwardly and perform Christian works and projects but without being Christian on the inside. The seven sons of Sceva did not surrender their lives to Christ; all they wanted was to profit from the amazing grace that is available to Paul, the servant of Christ. They did not love Jesus; they loved something that Jesus gives. It was self-interest through and through. Paul professed Christ because he wanted to know him, love him and serve him.
Professing the faith by word of mouth is good. Involvement in concrete works of faith is great. But for these to have any meaning for eternal salvation, we must, first and foremost, cultivate a direct and personal relationship with our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. We can make all sorts of grandiose plans, we can even see our plans benefiting other people as these plans are laid and carried out. But if our plans remain OUR plans, set in OUR terms, and without consulting God, at some stage, cracks in their foundation will begin to show.
Take the case of a talented architect who wanted to show off his skills in architectural design. He goes to his drawing board and drafts what he regards as his masterpiece design. He never bothers to consult other experts like a soils or a seismic engineer perhaps, to see if his design can be executed on the ground he had chosen as planned. Had he done so, he would have discovered that his design must adapt to the actual soil conditions, and not the soil conditions adapting to his design. He will have to adjust or alter his plans and submit to the limits and boundaries imposed by nature.
Something similar can be said about following God's will. Human plans
must be exercised within God's will, for it is God's will that must be its solid foundation. Otherwise, human will and freedom would just sway unsteadily when left unguided, and exposed to the many forces in the world. And so, the parable of Jesus makes real sense: the wise man, the one who follows the will of God, builds his house upon the rock; the foolish man, the one who follows his own will, builds his house upon the sand. The rains fell, the floods came, and the house upon the sand is gone. But the house upon the rock remains.
Some times we pledge to be obeying God’s will and in practice behave as if we know better than God. An elderly Scottish woman was making her way through the countryside. Each time she came to a crossroads she would toss a stick into the air. Whichever way the stick came down was the direction she went. At one intersection, however, an old man saw her toss her stick into the air not once, not twice, but three times before resuming her journey. The old man was curious. "Why are you throwing your stick like that?" he asked. She squinted and replied, "I'm letting God direct my journey by using this stick." "Then why did you throw it three times?" asked the curious old man. "Because," she said, "the first two times He was pointing me in the wrong direction." We may laugh at this. But some times we go by our human wisdom than relying on Divine wisdom.
Our faith is primarily for living in, not for looking at or talking about. It must be lived in deed and truth” (1Jn 3:18).In his encyclical Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI, recalls that “the Christian message is not only “informative” but “performative”. That means: the Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known; it is one that makes things happen and is life changing. Christianity is not an ideology, or a simple ethics program; it is, above all, a personal commitment with Somebody.
Let’s build our spiritual edifice on the living stone of Jesus by doing the will of the heavenly father in heaven.’ May the Lord be praised now and for ever.
Ever heard of counterfeit $100 bills? sure, a lot. Ever heard of counterfeit toilet paper? No. Why not? Because it is not worth it. The existence of counterfeits indicates how precious a thing is: the more precious it is, the more counterfeit you get. Spirituality is a very precious commodity. The proof is in the amount of counterfeit spiritualities in circulation. Counterfeit spirituality did not begin with us.
Acts 19 reports a curious incident that happened when Paul was preaching in Ephesus. Paul was performing so many miracles in Ephesus that the other religious ministers in the city became envious of him. They were losing their members to Paul. So some of them decided to observe and copy what Paul was doing. Paul was doing mighty works and casting out demons by invoking the name of Jesus. They thought they had discovered his secret formula, and they took off to go and implement it in their own ministry. Seven sons of a Jewish high priest called Sceva, who were professional exorcists tried to use the name of Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” But the evil spirit said to them in reply, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?” Then the man with the evil spirit jumped on them, overpowered them and handled them so badly that they fled out of the house naked and bruised all over. The moral of the story: Who you are comes before what you do or say.
This is what Jesus is trying to teach his followers in today’s gospel story. He gives thumbs down to some people who say words of faith. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matt 7:21). He even gives thumbs down to some people who do works of faith. “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers’” (vv 22-23). By saying “I never knew you,” Jesus indicates that the fundamental and most important thing is him knowing us and we knowing him. In other words, the relationship between Jesus and us is more important than the performance we put up in terms of words and deeds. We have to be Christians, people who know Christ, before we can act or speak Christian. We must have a direct, personal relationship with Christ. This is what gives meaning and potency to the words of faith we speak and the works of faith we perform. Otherwise we are no better than the seven sons of Sceva.
The seven sons of Sceva represent all those who try to profess the Christian creed outwardly and perform Christian works and projects but without being Christian on the inside. The seven sons of Sceva did not surrender their lives to Christ; all they wanted was to profit from the amazing grace that is available to Paul, the servant of Christ. They did not love Jesus; they loved something that Jesus gives. It was self-interest through and through. Paul professed Christ because he wanted to know him, love him and serve him.
Professing the faith by word of mouth is good. Involvement in concrete works of faith is great. But for these to have any meaning for eternal salvation, we must, first and foremost, cultivate a direct and personal relationship with our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. We can make all sorts of grandiose plans, we can even see our plans benefiting other people as these plans are laid and carried out. But if our plans remain OUR plans, set in OUR terms, and without consulting God, at some stage, cracks in their foundation will begin to show.
Take the case of a talented architect who wanted to show off his skills in architectural design. He goes to his drawing board and drafts what he regards as his masterpiece design. He never bothers to consult other experts like a soils or a seismic engineer perhaps, to see if his design can be executed on the ground he had chosen as planned. Had he done so, he would have discovered that his design must adapt to the actual soil conditions, and not the soil conditions adapting to his design. He will have to adjust or alter his plans and submit to the limits and boundaries imposed by nature.
Something similar can be said about following God's will. Human plans
must be exercised within God's will, for it is God's will that must be its solid foundation. Otherwise, human will and freedom would just sway unsteadily when left unguided, and exposed to the many forces in the world. And so, the parable of Jesus makes real sense: the wise man, the one who follows the will of God, builds his house upon the rock; the foolish man, the one who follows his own will, builds his house upon the sand. The rains fell, the floods came, and the house upon the sand is gone. But the house upon the rock remains.
Some times we pledge to be obeying God’s will and in practice behave as if we know better than God. An elderly Scottish woman was making her way through the countryside. Each time she came to a crossroads she would toss a stick into the air. Whichever way the stick came down was the direction she went. At one intersection, however, an old man saw her toss her stick into the air not once, not twice, but three times before resuming her journey. The old man was curious. "Why are you throwing your stick like that?" he asked. She squinted and replied, "I'm letting God direct my journey by using this stick." "Then why did you throw it three times?" asked the curious old man. "Because," she said, "the first two times He was pointing me in the wrong direction." We may laugh at this. But some times we go by our human wisdom than relying on Divine wisdom.
Our faith is primarily for living in, not for looking at or talking about. It must be lived in deed and truth” (1Jn 3:18).In his encyclical Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI, recalls that “the Christian message is not only “informative” but “performative”. That means: the Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known; it is one that makes things happen and is life changing. Christianity is not an ideology, or a simple ethics program; it is, above all, a personal commitment with Somebody.
Let’s build our spiritual edifice on the living stone of Jesus by doing the will of the heavenly father in heaven.’ May the Lord be praised now and for ever.
Friday, February 25, 2011
VIII-Sunday in Ordinary Time. Cycle -A.
VIII SUNDAY HOMILY-: ISA 49: 14-15, 1 COR 4:1-5;Gospel: MT 6: 24-34
Kais Rayes writes that he and his wife found their whole life turned upside down when their first child was born. Every night, the baby seemed to be fussy, and many nights, it seemed that their baby cried far more than he slept. Says Rayes, "My wife would wake me up, saying, 'Get up, honey! Go see why the baby is crying!'" As a result, Rayes found himself suffering from severe sleep deprivation.
While complaining to his coworkers about his problem one day, one of his colleagues suggested a book on infant massage. Rayes immediately went in search of the book and that night, he tried the technique, gently rubbing his baby's back, arms, head, and legs until the baby was completely relaxed and obviously had fallen into a deep sleep. Quietly tiptoeing from the darkened room so as not to disturb the rhythmic breathing of the baby, he made his way directly to his own bed in hopes of enjoying a well deserved full night of sleep.
No such luck. In the middle of the night, his wife awoke him in a panic. "Get up, honey!" she said as she jostled him awake. "Go see why the baby is not crying!" Some people are just worriers. Even when things go well they worry, they fret, they fume. They worry that something bad will happen. They see the dark side of any cloud, even one with a silver lining. They are worriers. They fume, they fret, they stay stressed out.
Today’s readings give us an invitation to avoid unnecessary worries by putting our trust in the love and providence of a merciful God, and then living each day’s life as it comes, doing His will and realizing His presence within us and others.
Today’s first reading, from the prophet Isaiah, begins with the Lord God’s rhetorical question “Can a mother forget her infant?” and His solemn pledge, “Even should she forget, I will never forget you!” This is one of the most touching expressions of God’s love in the Bible. Through the prophet, God assures Israel of His unfailing love when the people of Israel cry out in despair, believing that they have been forgotten by God. The Prophet Hosea also speaks about a loving God Who holds Israel to his cheek and teaches Ephraim to walk (Hosea 11: 3-4). Isaiah reminds Israel that even the best of human love is only a shadow of God’s eternal, life-giving love for his people. When we know we are loved by an all caring God we don’t have to worry at all. We can enjoy life like butterfly and sleep like a baby.
Do you bring along a sandwich in your coat pocket when you are invited to dinner at a friend's house? Of course not!
Can you imagine inviting twenty people to a party, but only buying enough food to serve ten? Never!
Would you send your child out into a snowstorm in a swimsuit? No way!
As rude and self-centered and uncaring as we all can be, we still abide by some basics of good behavior. So why do we think God won't? Trust that he is a loving Father. We worry when in our minds we try to bite off more than we can chew.
The late Bishop Ernest Fitzgerald used to tell about a man he knew years ago. This man’s life was hard yet he was the most serene and deeply contented man Bishop Fitzgerald had ever known. So he asked the old man one day if he had ever had any troubles and if he had ever spent sleepless nights. "Sure, I've had my troubles," he said, "but no sleepless nights. When I go to bed I say, 'Lord, you have to sit up all night anyway. There's no point in both of us losing sleep. You look after things tonight and when tomorrow comes, I'll do the best I can to help you.'"
Doctors today are quite candid in admitting that more than half the patients in hospitals are there as much because of the accumulated effects of mental problems as anything else. Thomas Borkovec, a professor of Psychology at Penn State University made his study and has determined that 15 percent of us are "chronic worriers". He claims that the single most frequent source of worry is other people's opinions of our lives. "If this happens, what will they think? What will people say? Will I be laughed at? Will I be excluded?"
A small boy mistakenly killed his grandparent’s favorite duck with a slingshot. Fearing their response, he tried to find the most unthinkable hiding place to bury it. He thought he had found the perfect place; however, his sneaky little sister saw his every move. She now had power over him. He was forced to do all of her chores so that she would not tell what he had done. Every time he was just about to tell her to go jump in the lake, she would look at him and say, "Remember the bird...remember the bird." Finally, one day he could no longer take such cruel and unusual punishment from his demonic little sister, and he confessed the whole story to his grandparents. It was their response that surprised him. They said that they had found the dead bird days ago and surmised what had happened. They said to him, "We love you, we forgive you, and were just waiting to see how long you would allow your little sister to control your life with the information she had on you." The power of worrying is often just like that. We allow it to enslave us when all the time there was another power that could have freed us from its crippling grip.
Jesus exhorts us to do our daily tasks serenely and not to worry uselessly about what happened yesterday or what may happen tomorrow.
"There are two days in the week upon which and about which we should never worry. One of these days is Yesterday. Yesterday has passed forever beyond our recall, with its cares and frets and pains and aches, all its faults, its mistakes and blunders. It was ours; now it is God's.
"The other day that we do not worry about is Tomorrow. Tomorrow, with all its possible adversities, its burdens, its perils, its large promise and performance, its failures and mistakes, is as far beyond our mastery as its dead sister, yesterday. Tomorrow is God's day; it will be mine.
Poor people worry that they don't have any money, and rich people worry that they don't have enough money. Sick people worry about their premature death, and healthy people worry about getting sick. Everyone it seems, worries about something all the time. The tragedy of most of our lives is that we worry so much about tomorrow that we never claim the resources God has for our living today. Hence, Jesus gives us some reasons why we should not worry. 1) Worry is a pagan or an irreligious attitude of those who don’t believe in a loving and providing God. 2) In nature, other creatures, like birds, work hard for their daily food, but they don’t worry about tomorrows. 3) Worry is useless because we cannot increase even an inch of height by days of worrying. 4) Worry is injurious to the health because it causes physical and mental problems and illnesses. 4) Worry robs us of faith and confidence in God’s help, and it saps our energy for doing good. 5) Worry takes all the joy from life and wears out our mind and body. Doctors agree that emotional stress can bring actual changes in the organs, glands, and tissues of the body. It’s not so much "what I’m eating" as "what’s eating me" that’s getting me down.
One day the German mystic Johann Tauler met a beggar. "God give you a good day, my friend," he said. The beggar answered, "I thank God I never had a bad one." Then Tauler said, "God give you a happy life, my friend." "I thank God," said the beggar, "I am never unhappy." Tauler then said in amazement, "What do you mean?" "Well," said the beggar, "when it is fine, I thank God. When it rains, I thank God. When I have plenty I thank God. When I am hungry I thank God. And since God's will is my will, and whatever pleases him pleases me, why should I say I am unhappy when I am not?" Tauler looked at the man in astonishment, "Who are you?" he asked. "I am a king," said the beggar. "Where, then, is your kingdom?" asked Tauler. The beggar replied quietly, "In my heart."
How to overcome worry: This brings us to the all-important question of how to overcome worry. We overcome worry by living in the present moment, focusing on what we need to do today, knowing that we can figure out how to cross tomorrow's bridge when we get there. Jesus, similarly, teaches us to focus on the present and not on the future, "Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil" (Matthew 6:34).
Is Jesus teaching us to live a life without plans or not to make provisions for the rainy day? No. He is rather teaching us the basic truth of faith, "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain" (Psalm 127:1). Hence our plans for our life, security and welfare in the future must start with our total submission to God. If God cares and provides for lower creatures like the grass of the field and the birds of the air, how much more will He care for us who are made in His own image and likeness, if we let him?
It is said that Pope John XXIII, everyday before going to sleep look up the crucifix in his room and tell Lord, I am going to sleep. Take care of your Church. And when visiting a group of seminarians in Rome and knowing that he was dying from cancer, said to them: "My dear students. Every day is a good day-- a good day for living and a good day for dying!"
Jesus, therefore, teaches us to replace our many mundane concerns with one over-riding concern: "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides" (Matthew 6:33). God who gave us life knows that life needs to be sustained. God who gave us bodies knows that the body needs to be clothed and fed. The best way to assure that the gifts will keep coming is to develop a good relationship with the giver. This is the only sure prescription to overcome worry in our lives.
Kais Rayes writes that he and his wife found their whole life turned upside down when their first child was born. Every night, the baby seemed to be fussy, and many nights, it seemed that their baby cried far more than he slept. Says Rayes, "My wife would wake me up, saying, 'Get up, honey! Go see why the baby is crying!'" As a result, Rayes found himself suffering from severe sleep deprivation.
While complaining to his coworkers about his problem one day, one of his colleagues suggested a book on infant massage. Rayes immediately went in search of the book and that night, he tried the technique, gently rubbing his baby's back, arms, head, and legs until the baby was completely relaxed and obviously had fallen into a deep sleep. Quietly tiptoeing from the darkened room so as not to disturb the rhythmic breathing of the baby, he made his way directly to his own bed in hopes of enjoying a well deserved full night of sleep.
No such luck. In the middle of the night, his wife awoke him in a panic. "Get up, honey!" she said as she jostled him awake. "Go see why the baby is not crying!" Some people are just worriers. Even when things go well they worry, they fret, they fume. They worry that something bad will happen. They see the dark side of any cloud, even one with a silver lining. They are worriers. They fume, they fret, they stay stressed out.
Today’s readings give us an invitation to avoid unnecessary worries by putting our trust in the love and providence of a merciful God, and then living each day’s life as it comes, doing His will and realizing His presence within us and others.
Today’s first reading, from the prophet Isaiah, begins with the Lord God’s rhetorical question “Can a mother forget her infant?” and His solemn pledge, “Even should she forget, I will never forget you!” This is one of the most touching expressions of God’s love in the Bible. Through the prophet, God assures Israel of His unfailing love when the people of Israel cry out in despair, believing that they have been forgotten by God. The Prophet Hosea also speaks about a loving God Who holds Israel to his cheek and teaches Ephraim to walk (Hosea 11: 3-4). Isaiah reminds Israel that even the best of human love is only a shadow of God’s eternal, life-giving love for his people. When we know we are loved by an all caring God we don’t have to worry at all. We can enjoy life like butterfly and sleep like a baby.
Do you bring along a sandwich in your coat pocket when you are invited to dinner at a friend's house? Of course not!
Can you imagine inviting twenty people to a party, but only buying enough food to serve ten? Never!
Would you send your child out into a snowstorm in a swimsuit? No way!
As rude and self-centered and uncaring as we all can be, we still abide by some basics of good behavior. So why do we think God won't? Trust that he is a loving Father. We worry when in our minds we try to bite off more than we can chew.
The late Bishop Ernest Fitzgerald used to tell about a man he knew years ago. This man’s life was hard yet he was the most serene and deeply contented man Bishop Fitzgerald had ever known. So he asked the old man one day if he had ever had any troubles and if he had ever spent sleepless nights. "Sure, I've had my troubles," he said, "but no sleepless nights. When I go to bed I say, 'Lord, you have to sit up all night anyway. There's no point in both of us losing sleep. You look after things tonight and when tomorrow comes, I'll do the best I can to help you.'"
Doctors today are quite candid in admitting that more than half the patients in hospitals are there as much because of the accumulated effects of mental problems as anything else. Thomas Borkovec, a professor of Psychology at Penn State University made his study and has determined that 15 percent of us are "chronic worriers". He claims that the single most frequent source of worry is other people's opinions of our lives. "If this happens, what will they think? What will people say? Will I be laughed at? Will I be excluded?"
A small boy mistakenly killed his grandparent’s favorite duck with a slingshot. Fearing their response, he tried to find the most unthinkable hiding place to bury it. He thought he had found the perfect place; however, his sneaky little sister saw his every move. She now had power over him. He was forced to do all of her chores so that she would not tell what he had done. Every time he was just about to tell her to go jump in the lake, she would look at him and say, "Remember the bird...remember the bird." Finally, one day he could no longer take such cruel and unusual punishment from his demonic little sister, and he confessed the whole story to his grandparents. It was their response that surprised him. They said that they had found the dead bird days ago and surmised what had happened. They said to him, "We love you, we forgive you, and were just waiting to see how long you would allow your little sister to control your life with the information she had on you." The power of worrying is often just like that. We allow it to enslave us when all the time there was another power that could have freed us from its crippling grip.
Jesus exhorts us to do our daily tasks serenely and not to worry uselessly about what happened yesterday or what may happen tomorrow.
"There are two days in the week upon which and about which we should never worry. One of these days is Yesterday. Yesterday has passed forever beyond our recall, with its cares and frets and pains and aches, all its faults, its mistakes and blunders. It was ours; now it is God's.
"The other day that we do not worry about is Tomorrow. Tomorrow, with all its possible adversities, its burdens, its perils, its large promise and performance, its failures and mistakes, is as far beyond our mastery as its dead sister, yesterday. Tomorrow is God's day; it will be mine.
Poor people worry that they don't have any money, and rich people worry that they don't have enough money. Sick people worry about their premature death, and healthy people worry about getting sick. Everyone it seems, worries about something all the time. The tragedy of most of our lives is that we worry so much about tomorrow that we never claim the resources God has for our living today. Hence, Jesus gives us some reasons why we should not worry. 1) Worry is a pagan or an irreligious attitude of those who don’t believe in a loving and providing God. 2) In nature, other creatures, like birds, work hard for their daily food, but they don’t worry about tomorrows. 3) Worry is useless because we cannot increase even an inch of height by days of worrying. 4) Worry is injurious to the health because it causes physical and mental problems and illnesses. 4) Worry robs us of faith and confidence in God’s help, and it saps our energy for doing good. 5) Worry takes all the joy from life and wears out our mind and body. Doctors agree that emotional stress can bring actual changes in the organs, glands, and tissues of the body. It’s not so much "what I’m eating" as "what’s eating me" that’s getting me down.
One day the German mystic Johann Tauler met a beggar. "God give you a good day, my friend," he said. The beggar answered, "I thank God I never had a bad one." Then Tauler said, "God give you a happy life, my friend." "I thank God," said the beggar, "I am never unhappy." Tauler then said in amazement, "What do you mean?" "Well," said the beggar, "when it is fine, I thank God. When it rains, I thank God. When I have plenty I thank God. When I am hungry I thank God. And since God's will is my will, and whatever pleases him pleases me, why should I say I am unhappy when I am not?" Tauler looked at the man in astonishment, "Who are you?" he asked. "I am a king," said the beggar. "Where, then, is your kingdom?" asked Tauler. The beggar replied quietly, "In my heart."
How to overcome worry: This brings us to the all-important question of how to overcome worry. We overcome worry by living in the present moment, focusing on what we need to do today, knowing that we can figure out how to cross tomorrow's bridge when we get there. Jesus, similarly, teaches us to focus on the present and not on the future, "Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil" (Matthew 6:34).
Is Jesus teaching us to live a life without plans or not to make provisions for the rainy day? No. He is rather teaching us the basic truth of faith, "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain" (Psalm 127:1). Hence our plans for our life, security and welfare in the future must start with our total submission to God. If God cares and provides for lower creatures like the grass of the field and the birds of the air, how much more will He care for us who are made in His own image and likeness, if we let him?
It is said that Pope John XXIII, everyday before going to sleep look up the crucifix in his room and tell Lord, I am going to sleep. Take care of your Church. And when visiting a group of seminarians in Rome and knowing that he was dying from cancer, said to them: "My dear students. Every day is a good day-- a good day for living and a good day for dying!"
Jesus, therefore, teaches us to replace our many mundane concerns with one over-riding concern: "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides" (Matthew 6:33). God who gave us life knows that life needs to be sustained. God who gave us bodies knows that the body needs to be clothed and fed. The best way to assure that the gifts will keep coming is to develop a good relationship with the giver. This is the only sure prescription to overcome worry in our lives.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
VIth Sunday in Ordinary Time.
VI-Sunday- Anger Management.
There was a little boy with a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, to hammer a nail in the back fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Then it gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.
Finally the day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, "You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. It won't matter how many times you say I'm sorry, the wound is still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one.
Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, given in chapters five through seven of Matthew's Gospel, could be called "Lifestyle in the Kingdom of God." Verse 22: says: "But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, 'You fool,' you will be liable to the hell of fire.
St. Paul advises us “Be angry (righteous anger) but do not sin.” (Eph 4: 26). Anger when it lasts is not the sign of righteous anger. Because anger can lead to bitterness, bitterness to grudge and grudge to revenge. So anger leads to murder. When we keep anger in our mind, we are inviting physical illnesses like hypertension and mental illnesses like depression. Learn to relax and keep silence when we are angry, wait before acting on our anger, give it time to detoxify and cool off, pray for God’s strength for self-control, and give the Holy Spirit time to help us to see the event through Jesus’ eyes instead of through anger’s eyes.
Two sisters spent the day fighting. That evening they prepared for bed, still mad at each other. As usual, they knelt by the side of their beds for their prayers. "Dear God," the 8-year-old began, "Bless Daddy and Mommy, bless our cat and dog." Then she stopped. Her mother gently prodded, "Didn’t you forget somebody?" She glared across the bed at her 6-year-old sister and added, "And, oh yes, God, bless my ex-sister." Yes, anger sever our relationships.
Author Kent Crockett tells about Sam and Jacqueline Pritchard, a British couple, who started receiving mysterious phone calls to their home in the middle of the night. The person on the other end never said anything. After a long pause, he would hang up.
The Pritchards changed their phone number to stop the harassing night calls. The stalker changed his tactic. He started sending them obscene and threatening anonymous letters in the mail. Then the problems escalated. The couple discovered their house had been daubed with paint, and their tires were slashed. The Pritchards became prisoners in their own home and spent a small fortune on a security system. They had no idea what they had done to deserve such cruel treatment.
After four months of unexplained terrorism, they finally met the perpetrator. Mr. Pritchard caught James McGhee, a 53-year-old man, while he was damaging their car. As they looked at each other, Pritchard asked McGhee, "Why are you doing this to us?"
McGhee responded, "Oh, no I've got the wrong man!"
McGhee thought he was terrorizing a different man named Pritchard, who had been spreading rumors about him. He found the Pritchards in the telephone directory and assumed that this was the person responsible for slandering him. He got the wrong Pritchard.
What an absurd turn of events; but anger has a tendency to do funny things to us. It blinds us to reality. It blinds us to consequences. It blinds us to the irrational harm that may come from our rage. For your own best interest, if you are angry with someone, let it go. Act quickly before you cause yourself and them any harm.
Jesus is not claiming here that all anger is sin. The Hebrew word for anger occurs 455 times in the Old Testament; 375 of these refer to the anger of God. The Lord does get angry. Nahum the prophet asked, "Who can stand before his indignation? What can endure the heat of his anger?" (Na. 1:03)
Jesus got angry at times. In Mark, chapter 3, we have an example. One Sabbath Day in the synagogue Jesus met a man with a withered hand. Some of the Pharisees were standing around ready to pounce on Jesus if he healed the man, because healing was considered to be work, and that was prohibited on the Sabbath. The Bible says, "Jesus looked around at them with anger." It burned Jesus to see religious people care more about their rules than the well-being of a human being. Jesus became angry when people got hurt or God's house was desecrated. Jesus' anger was never selfish. That is why Jesus tells today that he came to fulfill the law, not just observe the law. The Scribes were observing the law, but Jesus was fulfilling the law.
We ought to get angry about certain things. It ought to anger us that young women are being victimized by businesses that exploit sex in our community. It ought to anger us that our newspapers make money by advertising such businesses. It ought to anger us that over 1 million abortions are performed every year in America. It ought to anger us that in some schools it is easier to pass out condoms than it is to have a graduation prayer. We call this kind of anger righteous indignation. It is godly anger, anger that motivates us to overcome injustice and extend mercy.
That's not the kind of anger Jesus condemns in the Sermon on the Mount. He is attacking a much more common variety that lurks in all our hearts. This is selfish anger. This kind of anger, says James, "worketh not the righteousness of God." Paul was referring to this emotion when he wrote, "Put off all anger, wrath, and malice." (Colossians 3:5)...
Anger is not in itself a sin, even though it leads to many sins. St Thomas Aquinas has a simple argument for that: Our Lord was angry, and he was without sin. He says that while it is true that we can sin through anger, we can also sin through a lack of anger. Anger is always accompanied by hope'. Anger is the emotion that seeks to change things. That is why anger ends in one of two ways. Either the angry person succeeds in changing the object of their anger, or accepts that it can't be changed. Hope is the emotion which believes that it is possible for some good to come out of some evil. Without hope, we could not be angry because we could not have any expectation that our anger could do anything to change things. Jesus’ anger was for the sake of the kingdom. In short, he was angry because he loved us. Most Parents’ anger towards their children could be righteous if they wish their good and if they are able to hug them in the next few minutes.
Jesus warns us against anger, ie. unrighteous anger, and reminds us to find a better way to resolve our conflicts. It is impossible to avoid confrontations and conflict, but we should never let anger poison our relationships or lead to damage that is impossible to undo.
There was a little boy with a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, to hammer a nail in the back fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Then it gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.
Finally the day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, "You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. It won't matter how many times you say I'm sorry, the wound is still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one.
Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, given in chapters five through seven of Matthew's Gospel, could be called "Lifestyle in the Kingdom of God." Verse 22: says: "But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, 'You fool,' you will be liable to the hell of fire.
St. Paul advises us “Be angry (righteous anger) but do not sin.” (Eph 4: 26). Anger when it lasts is not the sign of righteous anger. Because anger can lead to bitterness, bitterness to grudge and grudge to revenge. So anger leads to murder. When we keep anger in our mind, we are inviting physical illnesses like hypertension and mental illnesses like depression. Learn to relax and keep silence when we are angry, wait before acting on our anger, give it time to detoxify and cool off, pray for God’s strength for self-control, and give the Holy Spirit time to help us to see the event through Jesus’ eyes instead of through anger’s eyes.
Two sisters spent the day fighting. That evening they prepared for bed, still mad at each other. As usual, they knelt by the side of their beds for their prayers. "Dear God," the 8-year-old began, "Bless Daddy and Mommy, bless our cat and dog." Then she stopped. Her mother gently prodded, "Didn’t you forget somebody?" She glared across the bed at her 6-year-old sister and added, "And, oh yes, God, bless my ex-sister." Yes, anger sever our relationships.
Author Kent Crockett tells about Sam and Jacqueline Pritchard, a British couple, who started receiving mysterious phone calls to their home in the middle of the night. The person on the other end never said anything. After a long pause, he would hang up.
The Pritchards changed their phone number to stop the harassing night calls. The stalker changed his tactic. He started sending them obscene and threatening anonymous letters in the mail. Then the problems escalated. The couple discovered their house had been daubed with paint, and their tires were slashed. The Pritchards became prisoners in their own home and spent a small fortune on a security system. They had no idea what they had done to deserve such cruel treatment.
After four months of unexplained terrorism, they finally met the perpetrator. Mr. Pritchard caught James McGhee, a 53-year-old man, while he was damaging their car. As they looked at each other, Pritchard asked McGhee, "Why are you doing this to us?"
McGhee responded, "Oh, no I've got the wrong man!"
McGhee thought he was terrorizing a different man named Pritchard, who had been spreading rumors about him. He found the Pritchards in the telephone directory and assumed that this was the person responsible for slandering him. He got the wrong Pritchard.
What an absurd turn of events; but anger has a tendency to do funny things to us. It blinds us to reality. It blinds us to consequences. It blinds us to the irrational harm that may come from our rage. For your own best interest, if you are angry with someone, let it go. Act quickly before you cause yourself and them any harm.
Jesus is not claiming here that all anger is sin. The Hebrew word for anger occurs 455 times in the Old Testament; 375 of these refer to the anger of God. The Lord does get angry. Nahum the prophet asked, "Who can stand before his indignation? What can endure the heat of his anger?" (Na. 1:03)
Jesus got angry at times. In Mark, chapter 3, we have an example. One Sabbath Day in the synagogue Jesus met a man with a withered hand. Some of the Pharisees were standing around ready to pounce on Jesus if he healed the man, because healing was considered to be work, and that was prohibited on the Sabbath. The Bible says, "Jesus looked around at them with anger." It burned Jesus to see religious people care more about their rules than the well-being of a human being. Jesus became angry when people got hurt or God's house was desecrated. Jesus' anger was never selfish. That is why Jesus tells today that he came to fulfill the law, not just observe the law. The Scribes were observing the law, but Jesus was fulfilling the law.
We ought to get angry about certain things. It ought to anger us that young women are being victimized by businesses that exploit sex in our community. It ought to anger us that our newspapers make money by advertising such businesses. It ought to anger us that over 1 million abortions are performed every year in America. It ought to anger us that in some schools it is easier to pass out condoms than it is to have a graduation prayer. We call this kind of anger righteous indignation. It is godly anger, anger that motivates us to overcome injustice and extend mercy.
That's not the kind of anger Jesus condemns in the Sermon on the Mount. He is attacking a much more common variety that lurks in all our hearts. This is selfish anger. This kind of anger, says James, "worketh not the righteousness of God." Paul was referring to this emotion when he wrote, "Put off all anger, wrath, and malice." (Colossians 3:5)...
Anger is not in itself a sin, even though it leads to many sins. St Thomas Aquinas has a simple argument for that: Our Lord was angry, and he was without sin. He says that while it is true that we can sin through anger, we can also sin through a lack of anger. Anger is always accompanied by hope'. Anger is the emotion that seeks to change things. That is why anger ends in one of two ways. Either the angry person succeeds in changing the object of their anger, or accepts that it can't be changed. Hope is the emotion which believes that it is possible for some good to come out of some evil. Without hope, we could not be angry because we could not have any expectation that our anger could do anything to change things. Jesus’ anger was for the sake of the kingdom. In short, he was angry because he loved us. Most Parents’ anger towards their children could be righteous if they wish their good and if they are able to hug them in the next few minutes.
Jesus warns us against anger, ie. unrighteous anger, and reminds us to find a better way to resolve our conflicts. It is impossible to avoid confrontations and conflict, but we should never let anger poison our relationships or lead to damage that is impossible to undo.
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