All of us have experienced God’s call. How loud the call was depended on how deep we allowed it to echo in our heart. Typically the call took the form of involvement in some church ministry. Often without giving it a second thought we brush it away. We say “it just isn’t me” because we never think ourselves qualified, deserving or worthy.

Today’s three readings all echoed God’s call. Reflecting deeper into them they tell us that God wants to heal and restore each of us. Isaiah did not feel qualified, “for I am a man of unclean lips”. St Paul having persecuted the Church of God felt underserving, “I am the least of the apostles”. Yet. Simon Peter expressed this common unworthiness, “Leave me Lord; I am a sinful man”. No one will ever be worthy. So he persistently call each of us. Are we not familiar with these replies?

God’s call is mistakenly interpreted as a call to give up our comfortable life to go into some form of sacrificial suffering. In our salvation history, the Red Sea was parted once to take us out of slavery. The journey has continued from that to lead us on the long road to freedom. God’s call is more of a beckoning to come his way through the maze of life’s many paths including the path of suffering, sign posting the journey that will eventually lead to our heavenly freedom. It is a beckoning call to guide us to stay on the right path.

He beckons us in the ordinariness of everyday life, present at every corner of our weariness. Often we are blindsided by our challenges, unable to see him when we look around us. Tired, exasperated we say, “We worked hard all night long and caught nothing, but if you say so, I will pay out the nets”. His daily call is “to put out into deep water and pay out your nets for a catch”.

Indeed we must first go deep within ourselves. We must not be afraid to confront past mistakes and hurts. He is there present beneath the rubble of all our destroyed hopes and brokenness. Where there is a stone of bitterness, he will help roll it away. Where there is a door of forgiveness, he will help us through it. All these is restorative to qualify us, to make us deserving and worthy. He calls us not into more suffering but to lead us into peace and joy.

When we cast into the deep where he want us to cast, he is showing us where to find the true treasures of our earthly life. When we heed his beckoning call and cast deep we find our true vocation that brings lasting fulfilment. Many of us wander through life and wonder about the meaning of it all. Here is a call to become a fisher of men not to make a tough life tougher but to fulfil it with meaning and direction.

“And when they had done this they netted such a huge number of fish that their nets began to tear”.

Listening to the echoes from within, we have all gone fishing.

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Today our pastor shared an interesting homily about being prophet and going on mission. The outward signs of mission is about going out into the countryside and provinces to do acts of charity. Through these we are prophet in manifesting the kingdom of God. What was thought provoking was when he invited us to reflect on a different perspective: prophet and mission is about us going out of our ‘self’.

‘I’ need to step out of my ‘self’. I need to go out, leaving ‘self’ behind. We are somewhat attached to our worldly expectations and needs. These have put on us an identity who we are truly not and shifted our purpose of life. ‘I’ have a worldly identity at odds with my spiritual person. So who have ‘I’ become?

To prevent our worldly self from detaching from our spiritual person we must live in Love; not only to know and understand but to live it. Today’s second reading is all about Love. True love, as it is. It also tells us when ‘love’ is not true love, suggesting how it can be contaminated by worldly needs and expectations leading to a sub-conscious pre-occupation of ‘self’. It is this ‘self’ we must depart from to be prophet on mission.

Not all of us have this desire to be a prophet on mission. Few have. Because who we have become have buried who we truly are. The root of this is true Love, or more poignantly the absence of it.

We have become better skilled at maneuvering life. Which life? We are trained to become more eloquent, a sharp witted talker able to impress. We have acquired knowledge and education sometimes simply to be better than the other person. We window dress our image by donating sums of money to charity. We do it partially to climb the ladder of success. All these are not wrong except that at the top of this ladder we won’t find what we expect to find: true and lasting happiness in life.

“In short, there are three things that last: faith, hope and love; and the greatest of this is love.” (Today’s second reading)

Only love leads to lasting happiness. But love need to be true. True love is giving without expecting returns in any form. In the higher realms, to love and give “so that God will bless me” is stained purity. Love is giving without accounting. When a person use lifelong savings to help a brother in debt instead of going to the bankruptcy court, the person want to give faith, hope and life back to the brother. Love is such, it is life-giving.

All of us are created with this capacity of true love, simply because we were created from the Love of God. It is there beneath the identity and purpose the worldly world have given us. Our spiritual persons are meant to be prophets to bring the Kingdom of God to others. This is our true purpose in life, our mission to give life through Love.

When we give, we live. Not as a reward but a natural consequence of Love. All you need is Love.

4th Ordinary Sunday

Life can now be an unending stream of selfies. We can document each moment and share it through social media. All is good as we invite others into our lives. After all, we are all parts of one body.

“Just as a human body, though it is made up of many parts, is a single unit because all these parts, though many, make one body, so it is with Christ.” (Today’s second reading)

We are the world. We are different parts of one body, we are differently gifted to live in this world. Each has a role to contribute, together we must do so to make the world a better place. This passage is not only about Christians. It is about how all our lives are interlinked, with people we know as well as with strangers, prefer it or not.

“In the one Spirit we were all baptised, Jews as well as Greeks, slaves as well as citizens, and one Spirit was given to us all to drink.”

The truth here is that what one part does affect all other parts. It will make the whole body sick if one part does something that is not correct. We are consequences of other people’s actions. Consequently, what we do affect others too.

“and that there may not be disagreements inside the body, but that each part may be equally concerned for all the others. If one part is hurt, all parts are hurt with it.”

In daily life we either enjoy or suffer the decisions of people around us. Sometimes they have life changing consequences for example like the loss of a job or a broken relationship. Often it is too complex to address the source of such decisions for often it has come about through a series of consequences. Is it your fault or is it mine?

Technology has gifted us this world of selfies. Spiritually we may be too slow to keep apace with these changes that are affecting all of us. We do not yet know the full consequences of how selfies and social media will impact the whole body, us as people. But there is one basic in this complex equation that has the greatest influence: our ‘self’.

There is a virus in social media. It thrives on self-promotion which leads to self-importance and self-gratification. If we are not careful, it goes into a maze of everything-for-self. With technology’s speed and slowness of spiritual awareness we may find ourselves held captive by the preoccupation of ‘self’.

There comes a time when we heed a certain call for the world to come together as one. Today’s Gospel urge us to live as one body and attend to its weaker parts.

“He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and to the blind new sight, to set the downtrodden free”.

We cannot start doing so unless we start to free and liberate ourselves from this captivation of ‘self’.

Our mobile phone has now become part of our one body. We must be aware what it can do to our ‘self’

3rd Ordinary Sunday

We enjoy many choices in life with full freedom to choose. Many things happen to us in ordinary life, some crafted some not, some good some bad. We have choice of vision, choice of thought. We can choose to see God in everything or to dismiss our thoughts into disbelief.

Today we recall the wedding at Cana where Jesus performed his first miracle of turning water into wine. It is so hard to believe that we jest about it. It is hard because our mind tells us so. But our minds were created to guide us only in our humanity. Belief in God is beyond mind. It comes from our being.

When we each look at our life, we can find that many things have come together in unexplained ways. For the many good things, we are fortunate and lucky. For the many bad things, our minds try to disprove the existence of God. We may not actually blame God (we can’t if we don’t believe in the first place) but our minds push the thought of God further down into our being.

Our created being will always search for its Creator, with or without the mind. We were each made like choice wine. Why not if he chooses to dwell in each of us? Our Creator made a one way covenant with each of us to love us unconditionally and promise to forgive us every time we make a poor choice. He is faithful, never abandoning us and is present in every moment of our personal life.

Our being need wisdom. Wisdom is to find, see and experience God in ordinary life. Wisdom is to know and feel that it is God who put the coincidence together. Wisdom is found in the things that happen to us in our ordinary life. Coincidences do not happen on their own. Wisdom is also to experience peace amidst troubling times. Not easy but possible simply because wisdom is lovingly real.

We start to look for wisdom by looking for the first miracle in our life. We need to go deep into our being to release ourselves from the boundaries of impossibility that our mind has drawn around our being.

To connect wisdom to the reality defined by our mind we must start looking not for the biggest miracle but for the smallest blessings in our life. Ordinary life is full of blessings simply because God is with us in everyday life. But it is our choice to want to see them as blessings. It is then, through blessings, where we experience God.

In our world today we are used to demanding instant results, yes or no. Wisdom is coupled with patience. Like choice wines, God uses time to develop our vintage. As beings we must choose to search for this wisdom in ordinary life, otherwise we the wine will just become water.

2nd Ordinary Sunday

There is much debate about the Catholic practice of baptizing infants. One of the main deliberation point is that the child must be allowed to grow up to decide. Today the Catholic Church celebrates The Baptism of our Lord. I am no scholar of the Church, ill-equipped to present our case on an intellectual platform. I will struggle to explain sacramental grace but perhaps it is this grace that allows me to share my belief in the ordinariness of life.

My parents baptized me when I was only 6 days old. I am now on the downslope of my life passed the mid-point of mortality and hoping to head gracefully into retirement. On this side of the hill, I have started to minimize my belongings and begin to stare at the question of eternal life. I reminisce the path of life I travelled and am thankful to my parents for the gift of baptism.

My Catholic faith with all its accompanying commandments has turned out to be the silent unseen background operating system that had been driving my life. Every instance I am confronted with a juicy temptation, a pop-up thought would immediately be activated, “I am a Catholic. I cannot do this”.

As a young boy growing up I only knew “can or cannot, good or bad, right or wrong”. The lines were clear. Being baptized as an infant and growing up in a practicing Catholic family set my moral compass. It also became an anchor when “can or cannot” became “do you want to? It is your personal right to choose”.

I have failed many times when I was running up the hill of life. Young, energetic, adventurous and in good health, my focus was to accumulate belongings and enjoy experiences. Each time I failed, a warning flashed in my being. Infant baptism also open the doors to two other sacraments: Reconciliation and Confirmation. All three conferred before we become adults to equip us to navigate through our ordinary life.

I am thankful to be given my faith through my baptism as a 6-day old infant. As a child I had no maturity to choose and decide, and no ability to provide for myself. Like I am thankful for my parents when they chose my food, my clothes and my school. They chose and did all this simply out of love. What is good for my child? What makes faith different from the necessities of ordinary life? If we truly totally believe then faith is not a luxury. It cannot afford choice.

If I were growing up today I would be confronted by even more choices. Technology has infinitely swollen the field of information. If I do not have a moral compass and an anchor, this field becomes a chancy mine field to decide in. I am thankful that we have similarly given our two children the gift of infant baptism.

Infant baptism did not guarantee for me that I did not stray in life. I did so many times and for prolonged periods I abandoned God. But perhaps it is this difficult-to-explain sacramental grace that keeps pulling me back. Now picking up speed on the downslope of life, this grace tells me “that I your God will not abandon you despite your many trials when you abandoned me in life”.

“But when the kindness and love of God our saviour for mankind were revealed, it was not because he was concerned with any righteous actions we might have done ourselves; it was for no reason except his own compassion that he saved us, by means of the cleansing water of rebirth and by renewing us with the Holy Spirit which he has so generously poured over us through Jesus Christ our saviour. He did this so that we should be justified by his grace, to become heirs looking forward to inheriting eternal life.” (Today’s second reading)

The Baptism of our Lord

Christmas is an occasion celebrated by many people including non-Christians. It is the religious event that is most celebrated, and celebrated by the most number of non-believers. It is a fact that many merrily celebrate the day without observing the true reason.

“That the Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body, and copartners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” (Today’s second reading)

Today is the Ephiphany of our Lord. Three wise men journeyed from the East to pay homage to the Christ Child. It signified that Christ is born not only for the chosen people but for the Gentiles as well. It signifies that Christ is good not only for believers but non-believers too.

Christ was born to dwell amongst all Man. He is very much in the lives of non-believers too. When we want to look for him we journey like the three wise men except that we journey internally into our being where he already dwells.

We journey along our life paths, taking a closer look at things that had happened to us. Some were painful, some were joyful. We look again at the people we have met, and who are part of our lives. Together they have shaped us and led us like a journey to where we are in life today. But where is the God who dwells in us?

The journey of life is full of ups and down. The bumps cause us to hurt. We do not remain always happy. Retribution or revenge are the wrong balms. To bounce back into happiness we must look deeper into forgiveness and reconciliation and apply them. It is in them where we find God.

Every time we forgive and reconcile we take a step in life’s journey to find healing and peace. As we close this Christmas season, let us journey into our past and unlock those hidden hurts and start on the journey of forgiveness. It is the promised path to true happiness. Cross it and see the Christ Child.

Love is sourced from God. Love is humble, freely and unconditionally given. She does not demand homage, even when we celebrate Christmas without wanting to recognise the Christ Child. He generously dwells in us all the same.

He indulges everyone, non-believers too, in the merriment of the season and patiently wait for us to have our personal epiphany. Yes love, she is patient too.

Epiphany of the Lord

At a recent faith sharing session we discussed how we have grown to want our personal space and to protect our privacy. We reminisce growing up in the 60’s and 70’s when our home doors were opened from sunrise to sunset. Children from neighboring homes would be running in and out throughout the day, making themselves welcomed. There was not a thought about privacy.

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family. I ponder how family units have become as we grew over the past 50 years. Home doors began closing to one another quite a while back. We became more aware of our personal self as an individual with rights and began drawing boundaries to keep within what is perceivably ‘mine’. It has been a gradual erosion but we can argue that we cannot stand still in time.

Yet we must not allow ourselves be carried by the tides of change without being conscious of what it is doing to us. Through development and progress, we have become more affluent and comfortable. Shelter, clothing and hunger are no longer our main issues. We have time to quarrel over other things. We have enough to barricade ourselves behind the boundaries of privacy.

We close the door to our family home. We hardly know the names of people who live around us, maybe not even our next door neighbor. We mind our own business, tending to the business of taking care of our family. Perhaps it is the way homes are built these days but designs do tailor our lifestyles. Behind the closed door we are tending to family matters.

On this feast day of the Holy Family it is good to look inwardly and ponder about our own family units. The family unit is most important. The Pope reiterated this, something the Church had been evangelizing throughout history. It is a unit of love.

We must be concern if the flow of love is contained only within our unit. We must be careful that the boundary of privacy does not become an excuse for us not to truly love our neighbor. We must come to realize that loving our own family only may merely be an extension of our individual ‘self’. Behind that closed family door, are we protecting or hoarding what is ‘mine’? Have the tides of time push our boundaries of selfishness out further to include our immediate family members?

“If you love those who love you, what credit can you expect? Even sinners love those who love them. Instead, love your enemies and do good to them.” (Luke 6: 32)

The world is changing at an accelerated pace. In the middle of this whirlwind something has been a constant throughout time. This is the Love of God and what true love truly means. Our family is holy when we profess this core value in our lifestyle. And we cannot be a holy family when the ways of the Son of God is missing in our family unit.

Our boundary of self must be pushed out even further not only to include family but also neighbors.

Feast of the Holy Family

Honestly it is difficult to write a spiritual reflection on the eve of Christmas. It is always a time for me to get away from my routines, to let go and not be bothered about the past or care about the future. Christmas for me is very much about the now and the wow. The “now” in the sense that I wish that the present will stand still so that I could enjoy the “wow” for a longer period.

Because Christmas brings on revelry and put aside rivalry. Everyone is more chill and nicer during this period. Around mass timings, I admit my schedule is dotted with party timings. For me, Christmas can be a more difficult day than Good Friday to focus and reflect on faith. Ironically because Christmas is joyful. But can it quite be that our humble and generous Savior is joyful for this to be so even if we sometimes forget him as the reason for the season?

It has been easier for us to focus on the Savior on Good Friday. But the real danger here is that we get stuck at the foot of the cross. Religion, Christianity, faith run the risk of being equated only to suffering. So come Christmas some people are reluctant to allow the Savior to enter their hearts and lives because accepting him and embracing faith mean a life of suffering devoid of joy. From the life testimonies of many who accepted this gift of Christmas, there is nothing further from the truth.

As I stood at this spot taking today’s photo, I thought of this parallel that course through our life, this intertwining journey of joy and suffering. Detailed scrutiny of this photo shows a little bridge linking both sides, and there were more bridges further up. I was then struck by a deeper meaning of the parallel paths.

The Savior does not impose himself on us. He does not demand obedience or belief through authority or law. He allows us the freedom to walk our path in life. Unseen and unknown to us, he walks step by step alongside us on the path close, and parallel to the path we choose. He patiently wait for the opportunity for us to allow him to come across the bridge to enter our life. And he will patiently wait and journey each step till we reach the end of our earthly path. Such is his faithfulness to us.

“He will stand and feed his flock with the power of the Lord” (First Reading)

Sometime in life we will come to encounter this powerful presence of the Savior in our life. It is likely to come in an event in our personal life that brings about some suffering and grief. The Holy Spirit will be like a little bridge linking suffering to joy. When that happens my soul in me will leap for joy.

‘Of all women you are the most blessed, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Why should I be honoured with a visit from the mother of my Lord? For the moment your greeting reached my ears, the child in my womb leapt for joy. Yes, blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.’ (Today’s Gospel)

Our Savior want to visit us in our life events. As we walk on the path of life, know that at every “now”, at every moment, the Savior is present for us to embrace. Christmas can be with us for our entire life journey when we become fully aware of the parallel path he is walking on to guard and feed us, to turn suffering into joy. Let us revel in His presence.

Merry Christmas!

4th Sunday of Advent

Give us your change. Spare a thought for the needy. If everyone were to drop in their loose change, collectively it will go a very long way for the needy. Indeed. This Christmas when, and if, we give, let us spare a thought for our ‘self’. Are we only giving our spares? Are we too busy to pause and ponder about the needy? There is a gift that awaits every ‘self’; it lies in our giving.

“‘What must we do?’ he answered, ‘If anyone has two tunics he must share with the man who has none, and the one with something to eat must do the same.’” (Today’s Gospel)

“What must we do?” is a question of the spiritually needy. It is a question that comes from deep within our ‘self’. It is a searching question. It is seeking answers that will bring happiness and peace into our life. It is a question out of tiredness and hunger. Many of us have more than spares to give away. We are materially comfortable, yet we are un-quenchable. We are thirsty for the meaning of life.

We drop our change without sparing a second thought. We are engulfed with issues about ‘self’; our own happiness, our work and our family. Or we are indulging in our self-achieved success, our material comfort laming us of a need for God. Either way we are headed into a dead end, a cul-de-sac, where we find our ‘self’ lost, and wondering about the meaning of this life.

The meaning of life is found in giving and sharing. When we truly give beyond our spares, we can impact the life of others. We attain a fulfilment not experienced in the material world, and certainly not through accumulating everything for ‘self’. We gradually begin to feel that our ‘self’ is satisfied, our inner thirst quenched. We arrive at our epiphany when we realize that the meaning of life is found in the ‘other person’. Giving opens the door into this realm.

Effective giving goes beyond material. It must go beyond spares. It must be thought provoking, soul searching for ‘self’. For many of us our more precious possession is not found in our vault. It is time. Our busy schedules tell us we have no time. Or is it our hidden selfishness that we say we have no time to give? The time we have to live is our life. When we give time, we give our life. In today’s more affluent world, apart from the materially needy, there are many who are in need of our time. Give time is give ‘self’.

Beyond the spare tunic, what every ‘other person’ need is true love. When we give beyond spares, we open the tap of love. Many people, poor and rich, need love. Only when we give our ‘self’ to the ‘other person’ can we truly love.

Love is the truest reason for Christmas. “For God so loved the world that He gave us his only Son so that whosoever believe in Him shall have eternal life”. He gave his only Son whose life was not spared out of love. But with it he brought us gifts of happiness and peace.

“I want you to be happy, always happy in the Lord; I repeat, what I want is your happiness. The Lord is very near, and that peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand, will guard your hearts and your thoughts, in Christ Jesus” (Second reading)

The next time you drop your loose change, spare a though for your ‘self’. Giving is effectively fulfilling. When we share love, we receive the gifts of happiness and peace. In that realm we find the true meaning of our life.

3rd Sunday in Advent

Change your gift, give the gift of change. This Advent, spare a thought for the spiritually homeless. These are people who find themselves distanced from Christ. Once active Christians, they went away for many a reason. Some merely drifted, lulled by distractions. Others, dissatisfied, vented anger and left. Willfully or unintentionally, they now find themselves marooned, unable to come home this Christmas on their own.

We all travel the roads of life. Along the way we encounter many people and pick up many experiences. These change us and influence our choice of roads we travel on. Some of us will set off in a new direction when we lose our belief in Christ. We can go on merrily for years without Christ as long as we are energetic, healthy and wealthy. Then there are some of us who set off with a backpack of bitterness feeling that Christ has let us down. One reason or other, this is the season to make straight the road for these to come home.

We are all bearers of the Good News, entrusted to spread the Gospel. This Advent season we are called to become “John the Baptist” in our daily life to the people we are blessed to meet.

“Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight, and all mankind shall see the salvation of God”. (Today’s Gospel)

Many people who are now disconnected from God may want the opportunity to return. They are tired and wearied by their life journey. Many are wounded and hurt. They have a backpack full of confusing emotions and they can no longer recognize Christ on their own. They are unsure, hesitant and fragile. They may be filled with uncalled for guilt and unworthiness. They are all full of doubts and in need of healing. This Advent may be the opportune time for us to lend a helping hand.

Let us change our gift for this Christmas and give the gift of change to the spiritually needy. People who want to come home need a personal encounter with Christ. Their emotions and needs need to be addressed first. In their fragility, they must first encounter Love in the form of a real experience.

“Every valley will be filled in, every mountain and hill will be laid low, winding roads will be straightened and rough roads made smooth”.

Christmas. Christ want to enter the lives of the spiritually needy. He wants to reach the marooned. To turn it into a real experience, he needs us to be his instruments. He wants to use us to enter the lives of others. He desires to touch them, and can through us. He is calling us to go meet them where they are emotionally and offer them comfort and love. Only when they experience Christ to be real will they begin their journey home for Christmas.

We can be these gifts. We are like mini-John the Baptists going into the wilderness of people’s lives to accompany them home like a bridge over a broken road. This Christmas, change your gift, give this gift of change.

2nd Sunday of Advent