SAINTS AND SOULS

SAINTS AND SOULS

             One day, during a catechism class on All Saints’ Day, the teacher asked, “Who or what are the saints?”  One youngster stood up and happened to look at the stained glass window that had a saint portrayed, with the sunlight streaming through. The little fellow got a bright idea and answered, “The saints are those who let in the sunlight.” Splendid answer, the teacher thought. The saints let the light of Christ into our life by their prayer and example. But what happens when there is no sunlight, when the outside is dark and we are seated in a well lit church? That is when we send our light and prayer to our friends in the semi-darkness as they walk towards the pearly gates. They are grateful for our prayers and sacrifices that serve as so many points of light on their way to the perpetual light of the Heavenly Jerusalem. And as they march in they hear the words of the prophet Jeremiah, Chapter 31: “I have loved you. I will guard you as a shepherd guards his flock. They will come and sing for joy on Mt. Sion. I will turn their mourning into joy.”

During the Second World War, six million Jews, including many Catholics of Jewish descent, perished in the Nazi death camps. That number would have been greater, but happily, at least 500,000 were rescued or protected by ordinary people. They were quite ordinary people, in fact, for the most part, individualists  -  they did not usually do what society demanded, for example, to share in the almost universal hatred of the Jews. They just got into the habit of doing good, finding themselves responding first to a need and only second to the danger, and believing that the gift of goodness could be passed on.

That is the stuff of saints. “The Saints go marching in!”

GIRL CHILD, INTERNATIONAL DAY OF

GIRL CHILD, International Day of

Introduction to the Eucharist

With affectionate concern and hopefulness we today would like to focus on the GIRL CHILD. Not only would we invoke God’s blessing on his girl children but, by his grace, we commit ourselves to protect them at every stage of their life, contribute our share to their educational, cultural and physical development. The scenario today is a dismal one. In circumstances of utter poverty, girl children are pushed into the flesh trade by heartless adults, pressed into bonded labour by creditors and landowners, even forced-trained to be girl soldiers by terrorist groups. How many girl children are marked out for dowry deaths and the horror of bride burning is a heart rending tale, oft repeated in our country. And the entertainment industry manoeuvres many little girls into certain roles that leave them devastated and bereft of their childhood. This was not the way the Creator wanted it. This was not the way our Saviour Jesus Christ, whose ministry was characterised by the affirmation of life, the imparting of health, and the gift of joy and harmony. And this is also what we want to happen in our time and will make happen. So with hopefulness for the future of the world’s girl children, we ask our Heavenly Father to allow us and our concerns into the mysteries of Jesus, that we are now about to celebrate as a church community with sincere contrition for our sins and failures.

“I confess.....”

IT'S CHRISTMAS AGAIN

IT’S CHRISTMAS AGAIN   !

 Christmas Day is here, and once again we kneel near the manger crib of our Infant Saviour. No angels have we heard on high carolling his praises, no brightness has paled the starts of night to herald the birth of the Child of eternal years. Only the steady light of faith has dispelled the night of our hearts. And it’s Christmas again ! Last Christmas is long ago; and perhaps the slow-going year had brought an unexpected load of sorrow into our lives. We may have had days and weeks of anxiety that none could share with us. Perhaps it was on us the others leaned, and we had to hide the gnawing care of our own hearts. It may be the bright days have been few and the dark days many. It may be the shadow of the Cross was hard against our path, even as it falls across the crib of Bethlehem.

But all that is hidden now as we join the silent, wonder-struck adorers of the first Christmas night. Mary, our Mother is here; and good St. Joseph. And yet, because we are slow in virtue we may feel out of place with them. Mary’s untold love and Joseph’s unfailing devotion seem so far beyond the reach of our faint efforts. Somehow it is best to take our place among the lowly shepherds, content just to be there and happy just to find comfort in the presence of our King and Maker, baby as he is. We shall join the wide-eyed hillside herdsmen and say our simple prayers with them, wondering at “that which has come to pass, which the Lord has shown to us.” In childlike broken speech with them we shall tell our God that we too have come to welcome him, the days of austere anticipation now over. With them we shall offer the gifts of the poor of the earth: the weakness of our bodies, the darkness of our ignorance, the poverty of our people. Then with deep trust we shall lay the future at the manger’s edge; the future hidden with its unknown freight that only time will bring to light. And we ask the Infant to strengthen our hearts and make them more like his as the days slip by into eternity. And as the gift of prayer makes us more receptive, we can listen to him. Nothing great he puts before us to achieve except to love him, to be faithful to him, to love one another for him, to believe in his love for us, and witness to him faithfully.

For many people at Christmas there is great emphasis on what they are going to get. So it’s good to remind ourselves on that gift that was wrapped up in circumstances of deepest poverty: a hayrack for a bed, an ox and ass for nurses, the cobwebs for canopy.

There were quite a few donkeys involved in the life of Jesus: his birth, flight in to Egypt, and triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Perhaps the Gospels wish to give us an idea of the type of people Jesus Christ had to deal with! And even though each Christmas I find myself between the doctrine and the donkey, I trust I know enough to realise that life consists may be in gifts, but certainly not in gots. And the best and noblest gift is that of the self. So it’s a good idea, especially at a time when we are expecting things from people, to check on what we can do without, to detach ourselves from all created things, and help bring about that day when words like pleasure, power and possession will not mean more to us than ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven. The challenging meaning of the Christmas story reveals this.

It tells us that even though God is infinitely different, he remains the God of the Christmas night, coming close to us on his own initiative and saving us the need to rend the heavens to access him. “The Word became flesh.” God has entered human history in Jesus Christ as Mary’s Child and his own Son. He carries the history of all peoples now. And yet God remains very unobtrusively present in the world, nowhere forcing himself on people but standing at the door and politely addressing himself to man as he did at the Annunciation. He is as defenceless as a child, his steps as hesitant as a stranger’s finding his way in this world. For God is so great that he can allow himself to become a child. He is so strong that he can appear weak. He is overwhelmingly attractive that he draws everyone without force or compulsion. He is that almighty he can bind people to himself without limiting their freedom.

I was struck by Mary’s response to all the excitement she witnessed around the birth of the baby Jesus. The Angel of the Lord brought “good news of great joy for all people” to the shepherds, and they “went with haste” to find Jesus. They told everyone around them about the good news – including Mary. But she didn’t jump up and down like she’d won the lottery, she didn’t high-five everyone who crowded into the stable, she didn’t burst into song or do a victory dance. She “treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”

So let us look at the Babe again. He comes into this world, dispossessed Infinity, naked and cold that we may restore him everything: the universe for his stable, and for his manger our hearts and their warmth.

“May the little hand of Christ bless our year,

And the great heart of Jesus hold us dear.

And all blest and happy things

Which the love of Immanuel brings

Be ours until another Christmas is here.”

NIGHT OF FEAR AND GLADNESS

NIGHT OF FEAR AND GLADNESS

“You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes.”

Would there be room for you and me around that manger in the crib? Can we claim a place among the angels and shepherds? The angels marvelled at the glory of God, which they could see, and that sight called forth their special song, “Glory to God in the highest.” The shepherds were the first among us to see the Child, and on “seeing him they discovered the truth of what had been told them about this child.” But the shepherds did not see what the angels saw, nor do we share the vision which the angels relished. We do not see God as he is, for no man can see him and live. The greatness of his majesty is too much for our frailty. We could not bear or dare to see him face to face, until prepared and strengthened to do so.

In the presence of that little Child we are at peace, like the shepherds. We are not overwhelmed. Now we too look at the child and perceive the truth of what has been told about him. We see one thing: a little child. We believe another: God made man. We do not see what the angels saw, but we believe what the shepherds understood and even more than they, as our faith grows stronger and more clear. Faith, not sight, makes us sing the angels’ song: “Glory to God in the highest.” The song of blind people who have not seen but have heard the good news, and believed. And there is a gentle peace in the singing of that song. It is the peace that comes from giving glory to God, of reaching beyond where thought and word can take us into God’s world. The humble sing for they have generous hearts, hearts moved by God beyond the weakness of their minds.

“Do not be afraid. Look, I bring you news of great joy, a joy to be shared by the whole people.”

“Why should I rejoice?” My life projects no day when I shall keep from tears, pain, anxiety, and fatigue. Ask me not where I have pain but where I don’t !  If God be the goodness, which is claimed for him, if he has that love for us, which no human love can match, then why does evil seem to rule our hearts and hold sway in his creation? There is no answer beyond the gentle assurance: “Rejoice, do not be afraid.”

Terror comes when we see no escape from the darkness that surrounds us, when we see no light. Terror is the child of despair, ugly and cruel. Yet when terror holds us in its vice, hope is often born. Darkness yields to light. A Saviour has been born, the Lord Jesus Christ himself, for “God so loved the world that he sent his only Son so that those who believe in him may not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3,6).

“Do not be afraid.” We need never be alone. Every burden carried by us is also shared by him. “Give me your burden,” he says, “and I shall make it mine.” He will not always lift the load from us, but being his too, it is lighter now and sweeter. We do not understand why we are fallen and sinful, weighted and wounded. Yet he does not will our sadness or pain, but wants us to know his goodness, and to trust, to find his love and rejoice. The secret hidden in his word will be opened to us. It is the secret of his love, warm, close and true. That love is the meaning of his life, the significance of his being. It is the reason of his mission when he came to us man.

There is deep in the heart of each of us a longing  -  it is a longing to understand the meaning of our lives and the lives of others. It is also a longing for happiness, contentment, joy, call it what you will. We go on waiting and expecting, each day, that the riddles of life will at last be solved. Tomorrow we shall secure that happiness that eludes us today; hoping till the word of the enigma is delivered at our doorstep.

The years that have been were a long advent, a looking forward to that day when the dreams of what might be become a reality. It is, after all, community in God for which we ache, though often we do not know it. There is an experience of love here, a moment of bliss there, like heralds announcing what will be, when we shall know only God and find in him the fullness of contentment. The time for that is not yet. We must wait. But in the meantime we have the Child.

He comes each year into our midst, to those of us who prepare our minds for the festival of Christmas. It is the feast of his coming once in time, God becoming man, so that we, with hope and courage, may continue on our pilgrim way, which will lead one day to the vision of him in whom is our eternal happiness.

How wonderful that we are one with the people who lived in Palestine at the time of Jesus’ birth ! How beautiful that we can continue singing the angels’ song in a spirit of faith, with the eagerness of hope, and with hearts full of love !  For we know that the story of Christ can repulse the forces of destruction which rage against out earthly habitations and our inmost selves, bring security amidst dizzying changes, sift the chattering messages that confuse our minds, and still the fears that threaten to devour us. But only if we believe it is true. It is not enough to sing the carols out of habit like an endless track in a shopping centre, to go through the rituals like touching a talisman, or to pass on the story like an Aesop’s fable. Simply as a story it might not survive, for it is not in essence a nice story. But as a true story it is many times more powerful than all the awesome forces that 21^st. century man can muster. They can change the world; this story can change them. Yet whether or not that change will come depends on whether we look into the Bethlehem stable as outsiders intrigued by a curiosity, or enter it and read the world outside through the eyes of the Child who is at once true God and true man.

Only there can we know ourselves as we really are, the world as it really is, our future as it really can be. It is a raw and painful knowledge, like birth itself, painful but promising, and, like that birth, with power over all waves and winds, whether of earth or the spirit, bringing not just fleeting comfort but lasting, ever lasting confidence, security and peace. To the awesome problems of man the awesome answer is that God has pitched his tent among men, “entirely of one build and unaltered,” the same today, yesterday and forever.

CHRISTMAS SILENCE

CHRISTMAS SILENCE

The celebration of Christmas is a celebration of God’s presence. It is meant to herald the advent of inner peace and stillness. Though we celebrate this event by the singing of Silent Night and other traditional carols that speak of peace, stillness and tranquillity, our present world is defined by signs to the contrary. Christmas becomes an annual ritual, a kind of comic relief, giving us the much needed break we need. Even as we put on a happy face, we might often feel empty. We just want to put behind us, to blot out from memory the unpleasantness, the hurt, the anger; and get on with life, hoping that things will change eventually.

            In our anxiety, we tend to take refuge in silence, but it is a silence that is burdensome, enforced by circumstances, a silence born of despair, of a sense of powerlessness, of our inability to change the situation. It is also the silence of the eccentric, the naïve, and the gullible, the exploited, and those of us who live at the margins. Nevertheless, it enables us to get on with life, allowing us to keep our daily routines, while our energies are steadily depleted by underlying fear. Silence is often mistaken for resilience.

             There are some who are silent because they have long since understood that words lose their meaning when they become endless chatter. They have experienced first hand that words, whether written or spoken, are often meant to conceal more than they reveal. And when there is a genuine attempt to reveal what we experience deeply, we find words inadequate. We are often misunderstood and misquoted and our intentions twisted out of context. For the sensitive, silence is a defence mechanism, aimed at damage control. We might be misunderstood but never misquoted.

            A silence that is imposed by external conditions is unproductive, because it is rooted in the experience of ourselves as non-being. It is the very antithesis of presence. It masks the inner turmoil, the noises within us that clamour for attention, giving us a false sense of security. The other is seen as a threat to our existence. It is one ego battling for survival against another at every level of our personal and social life. It is a recipe for internal and external war and violence of varying intensity.

            The inner silence that Christmas promises is not a commodity that we can seek to possess. Possession supposes separateness. We want what we do not have. Possessiveness presupposes a dualistic world, in which we can at most have working relationships but never an enduring peace. Presence, on the other hand, is rooted in non-duality. It is the experience of the dissolution of the self into the larger Self which enfolds us. This ‘kenosis’ – emptying of the self – that makes Christmas a sacrament. It is not only a sign that God is with us, but even more an expression of the reality that we are one with God and as a result one with each other.

            Christmas is a journey to our centre where we experience with us, God within us. The daily practice of meditation is seen as re-enactment of this event with us. It dispels the anxiety of our ontic obscuration by rooting us in “Being” itself.  It disposes to receive the gift of true inner silence. We make a paradigm shift from relationship to union. This is the harbinger of a peace, rooted in non-violence because it is grounded in non-possessiveness. It is the silence that brings inner security and with it he dawn of the kingdom of peace and justice, truth and love.

-          Christopher Mendonca

“A Wonderful Silence Free of Burdens” in Times of India,

23^rd. December 2008

FAMILY FROM NO-GOOD NAZARETH

That Family from no-good Nazareth

Luke 2, 41…”The parents of Jesus went to Jerusalem for the feast, taking the Child Jesus with them. And the Child was missing.”

This incident allows us to understand that the Holy Family had to face pressures similar

to what families face today. The Holy Family of Nazareth was not a piece of poetry or a lovely painting. The first Christmas stable was crawling with dangerous vermin and choking with the reek of animal dung. No hot running water. Imagine the cold drafts cutting into the baby Jesus. Soon after his birth, the family was under sentence of death and had to flee as refugees.

It is a given fact today that family life is a most difficult project. Apart from economics and housing, one thinks immediately of divorce and broken homes, the scourge of alcohol and narcotics, the breakdown of discipline, and the rest of the unhappy lot.

Yet God comes within the chaos, within the discord, the failures, and he sits with us in all the lumpy, wrinkly, pimply, sweaty bodies that we feast and fight with.

To strive for a better world, for a better family where every child finds welcome and shelter  -  that is our gift to the world. Christian families should and can become shining beacons of real humanity, places where children are taught faith and values and receive real warmth and support. In a fast-food society dominated by the social control of TV, mobile phones and the internet (call it Facebook or Twitter), it is becoming increasingly difficult to bring parents and children together in a community of shared values and, to be practical, common meals. Through grace at table, other family prayers and prayers by the beside parents effectively pass on faith and values to their children. Little boys and girls are deeply touched when they notice how their parents have a relationship with Jesus, talk with him and do not merely go through a formal ritual. Children not only naturally believe what their parents and teachers tell them; they are born believers, and need little to grow into a life of faith if there is no gap between what they are told and what is lived. Children, until adults corrupt them, sense that men and women cannot be defined by what they have. Like everyone else, children and the young need to be and to grow as human beings.

 St. Luke makes a very insightful statement that Jesus grew to maturity and was filled with wisdom. As “true man” Jesus shares in the human process of “growing up” to maturity. He is not pre-programmed as the Son of God, nor a puppet dangling on the strings of the divine puppeteer. But like anyone of us he had to grow up into maturity and to seek wisdom. For this his mother and foster-father could not hold him back in their warm embrace, but had to give him the freedom to be himself and to become all that he was meant to be, even to break away from the family in order to be busy with his heavenly Father’s affairs.

For the family really to be a school of life, this hard lesson has to be taken aboard. It is understandable that Christian parents are afraid of the perils and temptations that surround their young. And in all honesty these perils are real enough. But holding their children back from the rough and tumble of life will reduce them to some infantile state, unable to face the competitive world. So there has to be a healthy tension of framework and flexibility. As we look to the Holy Family we have to learn from Mary and Joseph that love means so firm a trust in God and one another as to maintain the balance between discipline and freedom.

People, especially children, do not become good by being told to; they must be charmed into goodness, which, like love is not taught but caught. The environment in which we have been raised and in which we raise our children is essential to our formation and development. A family is a very human environment; in fact, the first a child is introduced to: the joy, the pain, the drama and the ordinary events of our lives are lived within its confines. God chose to mould and form his Son within the environment and culture of a family. He hasn’t broken the mould since, and thrown it away, because in his mind the family continues to be the place of holiness, love and emotional sustenance. 

The Holy Family of Nazareth tells us that in God the family is not extinct.

The obvious truth is that parents cannot but influence their children. It is preposterous and contrary to common sense to affirm that they cannot. It is from one’s parents that one learns the difference between right and wrong, why we should treat other people with respect and what life is or is not all about. I (Clifford Longley) acquired my taste for music from my father, my interest in social justice, my sense of duty, and my views on religion. It was only when I tested them in my heart and against experience, after leaving home, that I decided  “to choose for myself” and became a Catholic. I think that my father felt that he had failed, although I kept hold of the rest of the package as best I could.

But the idea that one could raise a child to be genuinely neutral on the question of religion, simply waiting to make up their own mind once they grow up, is palpably absurd. There is no such thing as value-free parenting.

Faith, as Pope Benedict has said, has to allow itself to be continuously interrogated by reason. Atheists’ minds are closed. It is as if they cannot bear the thought of their reason being interrogated by faith. As mine was, and faith broke through. Is this the possibility that really scares them?