TENSION AND HOPE

 The Ongoing Tension of Christian Life

Hope is the Air we Breathe, an Anchor on the Other Shore

OCTOBER 29, 2019 14:57ZENIT STAFFPOPE'S MORNING HOMILY

Hope is like throwing an anchor to the other shore. Pope Francis uses this image at morning Mass at the Casa Santa Marta to exhort people to live “in tension” towards an encounter with the Lord, otherwise they will end up corrupted and Christian life will risk becoming a “philosophical doctrine”. His reflection — reported by Vatican News — begins with the First Reading of today’s Liturgy, taken from St Paul’s letter to the Romans (Rom 8:18-25) in which the Apostle “sings a hymn to hope”. Certainly “some of the Romans” have come to complain and Paul exhorts us to look ahead. “I believe that the sufferings of the present time are not comparable to the future glory that will be revealed in us,” he says, speaking also of Creation as “waiting with eager longer” for revelation. “This is hope: to live prostrated towards the revelation of the Lord, towards an encounter with the Lord”, stresses the Pope. There may be suffering and problems but “this is tomorrow”, while today “you have the security” of the promise that it is the Holy Spirit who “awaits” us and “works” already from this moment. Hope is in fact “like throwing an anchor to the other shore” and clinging to the rope. But “not only we”, but of all Creation “in hope will be freed”, will enter into the glory of the children of God. And we too, who possess the “first fruits of the Spirit”, the security deposit, “groan inwardly waiting for adoption”.

“Hope is this living in tension, always; knowing that we cannot make a nest here: the life of the Christian is ‘in ongoing tension’,” the Holy Father said. “If a Christian loses this perspective, his life becomes static and things that do not move are motionless. Let’s think of water: when the water is still, it doesn’t run, it doesn’t move, it stagnates. A Christian who is not capable of being out stretched, of being in tension, is missing something: he will end up stagnant. For him, the Christian life will be a philosophical doctrine, he will live it like that, he will say that it is faith but without hope, it is not.”

Pope Francis then noted how “it is difficult to understand hope”. If we speak of faith, we refer to “faith in God who created us, in Jesus who redeemed us; and to reciting the Creed and to knowing concrete things about faith”. If we speak of charity, it concerns “doing good to one’s neighbour, to others, many works of charity that are done to others”. But hope is difficult to understand: it is “the most humble of virtues” that “only the poor can have”.

“If we want to be men and women of hope, we must be poor, poor, not attached to anything,” the Pope said. “Poor. And open. Hope is humble, and it is a virtue that we work at – so to speak – every day: every day we have to take it back, every day we have to take the rope and see that the anchor is fixed there and I hold it in my hand; every day we have to remember that we have the security, that it is the Spirit who works in us with small things.”

In order to make it clear how to live in hope, the Pope then refers to the teaching of Jesus in the passage from today’s Gospel (Lk 13:18-21) when He compares the Kingdom of God to the mustard seed thrown into the field. “Let’s wait for it to grow”. We don’t go every day to see how it goes, because otherwise “it will never grow”, the Pope points out, referring to “patience” because, as Paul says, “hope needs patience”. It is “the patience of knowing that we sow, but it is God who gives growth”. “Hope is artisanal, small,” he continues, “it is sowing a grain and letting the land give growth.”

To talk about hope, Jesus, in today’s Gospel, also uses the image of the “yeast” that a woman took and mixed in three portions of flour. Yeast not kept in the fridge but “kneaded in life”, just as the grain is buried underground.

“For this reason, hope is a virtue that cannot be seen: it works from below; it makes us go and look from below,” Francis said. “It is not easy to live in hope, but I would say that it should be the air that a Christian breathes, the air of hope; on the other hand, he cannot walk, he cannot go on because he does not know where to go. Hope – yes, it’s true – gives us security: hope does not disappoint. Never. If you hope, you will not be disappointed. We must open ourselves up to that promise of the Lord, leaning towards that promise, but knowing that there is the Spirit that works in us. May the Lord give us, to all of us, this grace of living in tension, in tension but not through nerves, problems, no: in tension through the Holy Spirit who throws us to the other shore and keeps us in hope.”

THIRTIETH SUNDAY Year "C

The Pompous and the Humble

There is something comical about pride. It makes a man look ridiculous. Of course, it is primarily an offense against almighty God and a theological absurdity: the claim that the gifts of God are your own accomplishment. But in the Christian view, the absurdity of pride plays out as foolishness. The ancient pagan stories present pride as tragic. But Christians know that pride has been conquered. We can laugh at it and create stories to mock it. Thus such literary figures as Shakespeare’s Falstaff, Dickens’s Mr. Bumble, and Andersen’s nude emperor.

But before any of those authors appeared on the scene, our Lord Himself painted an amusing portrait of the pompous fool in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican. (Lk 18:9-14) He tells us that the Pharisee, convinced of his own righteousness, took up his position to pray. Now, we can easily imagine the position this kind of man would take: chest puffed out, nose in the air, eyebrows raised. In short, the posture of the aloof, haughty man who doesn’t know how absurd he looks.

More foolish still, the Pharisee then prays, if you pay close attention, to himself. This is inevitable for the proud man, because he regards no one as above himself. In effect, he has no one else to pray to. For him God is not someone to speak with but just an occasion to talk to himself about his favourite topic: himself. He may make a pretence of speaking to God, but his prayer is ultimately self-referential.

This self-centred prayer reveals an inevitable effect of pride: it isolates us. It renders us so turned inward that we become incapable of real dialogue or genuine relationships. We become so focused on ourselves – out of vanity or insecurity – that we cannot see others. The truly proud man might speak at people, but he never speaks with them.

Now, if pride were simply a matter of the pompous fool, then it would be amusing and little more. But pride also tends to become cruel. To preserve his petty kingdom of self, the proud man must beat back any perceived pretenders to the throne. As our Lord makes clear, the proud are not only convinced of their own righteousness, they also despise everyone else. Thus the Pharisee’s silly prayer is also spiteful: O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity – greedy, dishonest, adulterous – or even like this tax collector.

For all its haughtiness, this prayer actually reveals the all-encompassing slavery of pride. Notice that the Pharisee’s good standing before God depends on his being better than others. He gives thanks not for God’s goodness but for his own superiority to others. He knows nothing of God’s simple love for him – not for him as he compares to others, but for him as he is, made in God’s own image and likeness.

So it always works. Pride traps us in an endless loop of comparison to and competition with others in order to establish our worth before God. This assessment inevitably produces either haughtiness, if we find ourselves superior, or insecurity, if we find others superior. Either way, the soul knows no peace.

The tax collector (or publican), on the other hand, reveals the simple blessings of humility. Our culture, of course, would consider him not just unusual but psychologically unhealthy. He seems too hard on himself: standing off at a distance, keeping his eyes lowered, and beating his breast. Clearly a case of “low self-esteem.”

But in fact he has esteemed himself correctly: O God, be merciful to me a sinner. Who is able to say otherwise before God? This humility frees him for dialogue with God. He speaks directly to the Lord, and not just to himself. Such humble words bring him out of the isolation of pride and sin and into a genuine conversation with God. His simple prayer opens him to a relationship with God and, by extension, with other people.

Our Lord summarizes the different consequences of pride and humility: whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted. Now, we need not think that God is the one doing the humbling and exalting. Rather, the results follow inexorably from the orientation of our souls. Pride – the exalting of oneself — leads inevitably to being humbled precisely because it imprisons us in the endless cycle of judgment and isolates us from God and His grace.

Humility, on the other hand, leads to our exaltation – not because of a capricious decision of God but because it opens us to the glorifying work of God. May the Lord grant us an increase in this virtue, to free us from the bondage of self and increase His life within us.

MYSTERIES OF THE ROSARY

The Mysteries of the Rosary

The Joyful Mysteries

1.       The Annunciation               Foreseeing the fall of man, God had decided to save him and welcome him home. So when in his estimation the time was ripe, he began a dialogue with a virgin maiden who lived in Nazareth. She was just a child of 12 when her parents presented her to God in the great Jerusalem temple to do with her as he pleased. That was when the dialogue was initiated that lasted three years. The virgin maid’s name was Mary, a name signifying noble lady, gracious woman – a truly grace-filled girl, sweet and gentle, yet penetrating and transcendent. I can only imagine what was going on in the mind, soul and spirit of this gracious maid. God was ever so gentle too, his inspiration the breath of the Holy Spirit that never forces but breathes like the evening breeze over a placid lake. The maid was ever so sweetly drawn by the very breath of God whispering with the utmost delicacy and deference the final question, “Will you consent to be the mother of my Son?” Never was such a request made in the evolution of the universe and in the history of man. Gentle maiden, sweetest virgin, lead me to your offspring!

2.      The Visitation                      The Virgin Mary is now carrying the Son of God in her body physically. Could there be anything more intimate than this? What joy, what exultation! She is to be the Mother of God. We therefore celebrate the Divine Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Maid of Nazareth. Does she just sit down in complacent triumph over other women? Does she dance the nuptial twirl, the light fantastic? No! She puts a few things together for a long journey, a trip to Ain Karim where dwells her cousin Elizabeth now in her sixth month of pregnancy with John the Baptist. Mary, the utterly altruistic woman, has no time to waste in her own good providence as the chosen one. She puts all her energy into the arduous journey to Ain Karim to put herself at the loving service of her beloved cousin        , Elizabeth, for the final three months of her pregnancy.   She arrives, exchanges greetings with Elizabeth and chants her “Magnficat” that will be proclaimed by her children till the end of time and forever. “My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour”, her Creator and Saviour whom she will carry for the following nine months and remain forever his Mother.

3.      The Nativity of the Lord    Let us go and behold the true Bread that has come down from heaven. The Bread in Bethlehem, the home of bread. The Bread of angels wrapped in swaddling clothes. The interventions of God come to us in the most familiar ways: the conception of a child in the womb of a maiden, the visiting of one family to another, the word of greeting and leaping with joy, the help a woman needs at childbirth, the intimate rejoicing at the birth of a child. These are instances of God’s intimate intervention and, in fact, his very presence. So why cannot we have confidence in him?

4.      The Presentation of the Infant Jesus in the Temple                The word “infant” is from “infans” – incapable of speaking. The Baby Jesus could not utter an intelligible word but makes the sounds a baby makes. But the baby sounds of Jesus were of praise and delight: delight in the Father and in his creation of which the humanity of the Baby Jesus was a part. God and creation coming together in a little Child. Could anything be more intimate than that? We must admire God for the lengths he goes to in order to come close to us. The parents of Jesus, Mary, his Mother, and his foster father, Joseph, surely sensed this and so made their contribution to the great project of divine-human intimacy. And Simeon and Anna rejoiced to see it. The condescension of God, the song (Mary’s Magnificat”) and dance (John the Baptist leap) of man. You can imagine the dance and prattling of the baby Jesus in the arms of Simeon, summarizing the dance of the universe. May we be permitted to join the dance, drink the new wine and eat the one and only Bread?

5.      The Finding in the Temple                        The Child Jesus lost in the Temple. What do you mean by “lost”? In God’s Temple no one and nothing is lost. In fact, we want to be lost in him completely, totally and absolutely, so lost in him as to be indistinguishable from the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity, sharing in the life of the Trinity in the order of existence. Ultimately there is only one existence, that of the Holy Trinity. God is pure existence:             “I AM”.  What my uniqueness will be like is none of my business. I only want God. All my anxieties vanish when I pray for greater and greater confidence in Jesus Christ, my transcendent Lord.

The Sorrowful Mysteries

1.      Agony of Our Lord in Gethsemane         Jesus Christ, Son of God, Son of Mary has come to us with unspeakable closeness. In his agony of soul, mind and body he in a real (not abstract) manner shares our sadness and distress like any human being who feels the pain of loss, loneliness, abandonment and terror at the prospect of certain death. Once Christ has assumed the human condition he will accept the consequences with no desire or ploy to escape.  The pain of being human is now played out on the stage of divine drama: God meeting man in terms of excruciating pain. Now his divine love pours out into the crucible of human torture. This is humanity at its excruciating depths and heroic heights. Why? Because if God has to know his rational creation he has to become rational himself. It is precisely in suffering together that we become most intimate, and the memory of shared suffering makes us more loving. “We went through it together. We know each other better than ever.”

2.      Jesus is scourged:                As if mental pain were not enough our dearest Lord has to undergo physical suffering. Now he is close to us not only rationally but also physically. “I am with you” was not a flight of idyllic poetry but turns out to be the nuts and bolts of our relationship. A true friend is one who tells us, “I know your pain. I went through it myself exactly as you are doing now. Yet, courage, you will soon overcome it as I did.” Jesus is in my very pain.

3.      Jesus is crowned with thorns:                  The Lord of the universe is acknowledged King with a crown of thorns. He who so ardently desired to come to his subjects is rewarded for his efforts with a decorative crown made up of thorns. This was not entirely unexpected since they were about to make him king after the feeding of the multitudes that evening when he fed them with bread in the wilderness. But Jesus knowing what was in man refused the offer of a perishable title.

4.      Jesus carries the Cross:                  and thereby carries our sin. Could he become more intimate with us? Already at his baptism he plunged into the Jordan and stood in solidarity with sinners.”He who knew no sin was made into sin for us,” writes St. Paul in his 2^nd. Letter to the Corinthians. No word could ever express such closeness and intimacy such as this line from St. Paul. Having assumed human nature, a nature marked (though not marred) by sin, carrying the Cross through the city streets and rough paths to Golgotha, Jesus was manifesting in concrete his taking upon himself the sins of all men and women till the end of history. He has assumed the hubris and self-centredness of historical man so intimately and completely that when he dies all the hubris and sin of mankind are destroyed and our nature rises to new life in his Resurrection.

5.      Jesus is crucified and dies on the Cross:            We are there nailed to the Cross with him. Let our sinful selves die with him, and for that to happen let each one of us adhere to the Lord in the most intimate manner.

The Glorious Mysteries

1.      The Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ:                 There never was and never will be a Resurrection like that of Jesus Christ. It is the greatest triumph the world will ever know. Conquering death, the last enemy of man, symbolizing the victory of good over evil, the victory over sin and death. How does it affect me? Definitely. I was a sinner on my way to death that I had earned by my sins. But then Jesus met me on that dire road, turned me a sharp angle and put me on the road to life, eternal life. Now I am his more intimately than ever. Intimacy with Jesus is what matters: total, complete, irrevocable intimacy. Prayer: How splendid you look, my Risen Lord in your well earned glory before the Father and the Holy Spirit, your Blessed Mother Mary and before all men. You have done us proud, dearest Lord, Conqueror of death and Lord of life. We cannot contain ourselves. I dance with joy and happiness. O Divine Lord of the universe, who never had a place to lay your sweet head on earth, you now have the universe with its trillions of galaxies as your footstool and my heart as your throne. Conquer me, for you have smitten me by your invincible Resurrection. Rule me, for you have led captivity captive, and in the process you have liberated my heart to love you with a love that is utterly free and lightsome. Give me an everlasting voice to sing your triumph and a body to dance in unison with the Holy Trinity and the angels.                                                                     Brothers and sisters let us do the light fantastic of eternity to the heavenly orchestra of adoration, praise and thanksgiving to the Eternal Risen Lord Jesus Christ unceasingly and forever. Amen

2.      The Ascension of Our Lord:                      “It is accomplished”, said the Saviour already on the Cross, punctuating the last moments of his terrible suffering. It was a declaration to the world and to his Father: “The work you sent me to do I have finished.” The “hour” he mentioned to his Mother Mary at Cana, that hour he is now closing as he raises his hands for a final blessing to his disciples and the world. His self-offering on behalf of men to his Father is now accepted,  having been sanctified and ratified by suffering and death – death that sweet and swift elder brother of us all. To make that acceptance visible and assured, the heavens open their arms, symbolised by the manifold clouds of God’s manifestation, to receive him into heaven.  All is ready for the descent of the Holy Spirit, promised by the Messiah.

3.      The Coming of the Holy Spirit upon Our Blessed Mother Mary and the Apostles:                       At his Resurrection Jesus had told his disciples not to feel sad at his departure back to the abode of the Trinity as he would send them the Holy Spirit. The mutual love of Father and Son is now poured out upon the world, first upon Mother Mary and the Apostles – the first members of the new community – and through them upon the rest of humanity and its succeeding generations till the entire saved world will have assembled in heaven. “For unless I go I shall not send the Holy Spirit”, said Jesus. Now, what did he mean by this? So they must wait till Jesus has reached his rightful place of power and authority in heaven. Expiation now complete, now Father and Son will send their mutual love in the Person of the Holy Spirit. An act of mutual partnership, made the more efficacious by the Paschal Mystery of Christ, which is completed by the descent of the Holy Spirit and now operative in its fullness. Christ’s Paschal Mystery is now fully accomplished.

4.      The Assumption of Our Blessed Mother Mary to Heaven:                 What our hearts through the centuries of Christian history always desired and craved, and God seemed to agree, has happened. On falling asleep in death, Our Blessed Mother was assumed, soul and body incorrupt, by the power of God and to the great rejoicing of the angels and saints, taken up to heaven to be with her divine Son Jesus Christ forever in transcendent glory and bliss. Our fondest wish, our deepest desire, has been fulfilled, otherwise we would have lived and died in utter misery, sadness and pessimism. Our own desire has reverberated with God’s own right through the centuries of Christian history. We are filled with gladness and jubilation! This is exactly what we wanted for our dearest Mother. “Maria assumpta in coelis,” is what we sing and dance with joy as we can hardly contain our happiness at this great and glorious mystery of your Assumption. “O dearest, ever dearest Mother, how happy you must be. How happy the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit with an infinite and unending joy. How blissful the saints. How jubilant your children on earth you love so much and who love you. All that we desired for you has happened. My mind is full of thoughts of you and my heart with love. Gracious maiden of Nazareth. Gracious Virgin. Gracious Queen. Gracious Mother. Mother of God and my Mother. Lead me to Christ your Son.

5.      “Maria Mater Virgo in coelis coronate”: Our Blessed Virgin Mother is crowned Queen of heaven and earth. O glorious ending to a life of obedience and devotion, and much suffering in union with her glorious Son Jesus Christ. Nothing higher could we desire for our dearest and sweetest Mother Mary. “Hail Queen of heaven and earth, more beautiful than the rarest of flowers, more brilliant than the brightest star in the universe. No creature on earth or in heaven can rival thee, daughter of God the Father, spouse of the Holy Spirit, and mother of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ! More loving than a million mothers, sweetly compassionate towards your children on earth whom you have not abandoned and for whom you prepare places in heaven by your side and at your feet. There’s where I belong – at the feet of Our Blessed Mother. Dearest Mother Mary, you are the most deservedly crowned Queen of heaven and earth. You remain forever the loving Mother and gracious Queen of heaven and earth. We love, trust and honour you.”

                                          The Mysteries of Light      

The Luminous Mysteries proclaim the progressive revelation of Jesus Christ the Lord. The Transfiguration is the 4^th. Mystery of Light. How well it fits in! After revealing his solidarity with us sinners at his Baptism in the Jordan (1^st. Mystery), Jesus shows how he shares our human happiness, in fact, enhances it by his miracle of the water into wine – the 2^nd. Mystery, which also marks the transition of the Old Testament to the New, the elevation of human happiness to divine joy. The old wine has run out. The new wine is inexhaustible. He proclaims it by his powerful preaching and by works of forgiveness and healing – the 3^rd. Mystery. The 4^th. Mystery is continuous with the three already in that his joy is that of divinity: God among men, revealing the truth that the Christian vocation is one of light and joy. This God of ours is determined to remain with us. So he institutes the Holy Eucharist. The 5^th. Mystery of Light is the institution of the Holy Eucharist, the sacrament whereby God assures us that the personal presence of Jesus Christ is a covenantal one by which he is not only among us sinners, taking personal interest in our human undertakings and happiness, supplying our need for the light of wisdom, our need for healing; but he is personally our sustenance in our journey through life with all its struggles and failures. Thus Jesus Christ not only is present among us but really ad truly feeds us with his Body and Blood. The Holy Eucharist is the inexhaustible source and transcendent summit of the covenantal love of the Father in the Son through the Holy Spirit.   In fine, the revelation of God’s self-giving in the circumstances of our sinfulness (Baptism) and the celebration of our humanity (Cana) sustained by divinity (Transfiguration) in the very flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. And the greatest wonder is that God does not stop at creating and leaving us to our human happiness, but he must immerse us into the very self, life and bliss of the Trinity.                                       Wonder! Wonder! Wonder!                                                                   How grateful I am to my dearest Lord and Master Jesus Christ for revealing to me these truths past all telling. Where shall we find another source of light and truth?  It is only Jesus Christ who is the Truth. Thank you, dear Lord for these elevating insights, pure gift of your affection for me. I love you and bless you now and forever.

MISSION SUNDAY

                              MISSION SUNDAY 

                                          Mt 28, 16-20

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”

Jesus sends his disciples on a mission that is exactly continuous with his own. A missionary is one who has been sent, sent ultimately by God, like an ambassador or an envoy, who represents his president or king from whom he brings a message, usually of good will. The sender is more important and original than the one sent. The missionaries had great qualities, not some superficial etiquette or surface cordiality. They were giants of the faith, with profound dedication to service and sacrifice. These virtues plunged the missionaries into all kinds of activities and undertakings on behalf of the people with whom they had cast their lot. A missionary is nothing if he or she does not personify Christ. Only a missionary who copies Christ faithfully can reproduce his image in others. An apostle’s life is a tale of friendship with the Lord.

The Church’s mission without frontiers has always had and continues to have the characteristic seal of martyrdom. This is the brave witness to Christ’s paschal mystery. To quote Pope John Paul II, “The celebration of the Jubilee Year 2000 cannot ignore the fact that in our own century the martyrs have returned, many of them nameless, ‘unknown soldiers’ of God’s cause” (TMA 37). “Throughout Christian history, martyrs, that is, ‘witnesses’, have always been numerous and indispensable to the spread of the Gospel” (RM, 45). Martyrdom is solemn proclamation and missionary commitment (VS 93). “It has become the common heritage of all Christians.” Those were the words of the Holy Father, and how true for our own country, where witnessing to the faith is fraught with the risk of physical assault and even death.

Over the years, the missionary tradition of the Church has written wonderful pages of history. Today there are also many missionaries, priests and lay persons, who can consecrate their life to the cause of the Gospel and human development, giving themselves to the poorest, in often difficult and dangerous situations, who are sometimes called to give the supreme witness of martyrdom. The Holy Father salutes all heralds of the Gospel, “especially those who suffer persecution for the name of Christ” (AG 42).

The missionary attitude of not putting any conditions on the proclamation of the Gospel is truly a martyr’s attitude. A missionary’s zeal cannot be dampened by difficulties nor motivated by personal interests and preferences. Mission often demands heroic virtue, courage, perseverance, and unlimited patience when the immediate results cannot be seen, or the work simply collapses.  The unexpected happenings of missionary life cause suffering, but they are fruitful. The missionary has no hero complexes. St. Therese of Lisieux said in her last conversations, “If I were to die at 80 years of age and had been in China and everywhere, I am sure that I would die as small as I am.” To live and die in God’s surprise is the most simple, joyful, and fruitful martyrdom.

My dear friends, you need not have great suffering, only the small thorns of daily life, the unexpected setbacks and irritants. St. Therese said, “Do not lose any of the thorns you find each day. With one of them you can save a soul “ (Letter 72 to Marie Guerin). “Let us not reject the smallest sacrifice. Picking up a pin for love can convert a soul. What a mystery!” (Letter 142 to Leonia).

Let me ask you a riddle. What is 750,000 miles long, reaches round the earth 30 times, and grows 20 miles longer each day? Answer: the line of people without Christ. The answer to the riddle is shot with urgency. We baptised Christians form one Catholic Church. The specific nature of this Church is missionary, otherwise it is an empty grouping of individuals or an afternoon tea party.

The modern world accepts certain values, at least in theory: the equality of all men and women, the dignity of the person; while technology makes it possible to roll back the frontiers of pain and disease. This is an integral part of the mission of the covenant people that we are. A broken family cannot restore individual dignity; a covenantal family can. It is with a mission that we are in the world. You and I must personify Jesus Christ. As a certain missionary has said, “If Coca Cola can put a can of Coke on every table, we can put Jesus in every heart.”

God sends missionaries. But who sends God? (“Don’t act chirpy”, I hear you say). All right, then I’ll answer that myself. God sends himself. Perhaps I put it light-heartedly. Then can I put it in a learned way? How would you like it if I say: God writes his mystery into our history. God pours himself into the daily life of his children.  Without loss of his divinity he immerses himself into the human humdrum. As the great St. Teresa of Avila declared: “God walks amidst the pots and pans of the kitchen.” God is personally involved and personally forms his people in terms of his values, writing his mystery into his people’s history. What could be more personal and intimate than the Incarnation? “God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the Law.”

If missionary means one who is sent, then Jesus Christ is the missionary “par excellence”. Jesus Christ is no gaunt shadowy figure flitting across our path. The Incarnation is no idyllic pie in the sky, but down to earth, meaning what it has always meant: hard as nails, jostling and shoving humanity, dirty, smelly, bloody and painful. That’s where you’ll find the Son of God, very determinedly writing God’s mystery into our history. In the Word made flesh, not only Spirit speaks to spirit, but Flesh speaks to flesh. Our flesh has ceased to be an obstacle; it has become a means and a mediation. The flesh has ceased being a veil to become a perception.

“As the Father has sent me, and I love the Father, so do I send you,” says Jesus to everyone here. Love is the key to mission. We cannot see God, so we love our neighbour, and share with them our most precious possession: the Christian Faith.

PRAYER (Bishop C. K. McKenzie of the United Society of the Propagation of the Gospel)       I am weary of the dark voices crying doom;

I am weary of the fearful voices crying only for their nation;

I am weary of the disinherited voices crying in hopelessness;

let my voice sing the laughter of God;

let my voice sing good news to the poor;

let my voice sing restitution of the oppressed;

let my voice sing healing of the violated;

let my voice sing the return of the displaced;

let my voice be the laughter of God. Amen.

POPE FRANCIS: MISSION SUNDAY 2019

MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS FRANCIS

FOR WORLD MISSION DAY 2019

Baptized and Sent: The Church of Christ on Mission in the World

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Our filial relationship with God is not something simply private, but always in relation to the Church. Through our communion with God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we, together with so many of our other brothers and sisters, are born to new life. This divine life is not a product for sale but a treasure to be given, communicated and proclaimed: that is the meaning of mission. We received this gift freely and we share it freely (cf. Mt 10:8), without excluding anyone. God wills that all people be saved by coming to know the truth and experiencing his mercy through the ministry of the Church, the universal sacrament of salvation (cf. 1 Tim 2:4; Lumen Gentium, 48).

The Church is on mission in the world. Faith in Jesus Christ enables us to see all things in their proper perspective, as we view the world with God’s own eyes and heart. Hope opens us up to the eternal horizons of the divine life that we share. Charity, of which we have a foretaste in the sacraments and in fraternal love, impels us to go forth to the ends of the earth (cf. Mic 5:4; Mt 28:19; Acts 1:8; Rom 10:18). A Church that presses forward to the farthest frontiers requires a constant and ongoing missionary conversion. How many saints, how many men and women of faith, witness to the fact that this unlimited openness, this going forth in mercy, is indeed possible and realistic, for it is driven by love and its deepest meaning as gift, sacrifice and gratuitousness (cf. 2 Cor 5:14-21)! The man who preaches God must be a man of God (cf. Maximum Illud).

This missionary mandate touches us personally: I am a mission, always; you are a mission, always; every baptized man and woman is a mission. As far as God’s love is concerned, no one is useless or insignificant. Each of us is a mission to the world, for each of us is the fruit of God’s love. Even if parents can betray their love by lies, hatred and infidelity, God never takes back his gift of life. From eternity he has destined each of his children to share in his divine and eternal life (cf. Eph 1:3-6).

This life is bestowed on us in baptism, which grants us the gift of faith in Jesus Christ, the conqueror of sin and death. Baptism gives us rebirth in God’s own image and likeness, and makes us members of the Body of Christ, which is the Church. In this sense, baptism is truly necessary for salvation for it ensures that we are always and everywhere sons and daughters in the house of the Father, and never orphans, strangers or slaves. What in the Christian is a sacramental reality – whose fulfillment is found in the Eucharist – remains the vocation and destiny of every man and woman in search of conversion and salvation. For baptism fulfils the promise of the gift of God that makes everyone a son or daughter in the Son. We are children of our natural parents, but in baptism we receive the origin of all fatherhood and true motherhood: no one can have God for a Father who does not have the Church for a mother (cf. Saint Cyprian, De Cath. Eccl., 6).

Our mission, then, is rooted in the fatherhood of God and the motherhood of the Church. The mandate given by the Risen Jesus at Easter is inherent in Baptism: as the Father has sent me, so I send you, filled with the Holy Spirit, for the reconciliation of the world (cf. Jn 20:19-23; Mt 28:16-20). This mission is part of our identity as Christians; it makes us responsible for enabling all men and women to realize their vocation to be adoptive children of the Father, to recognize their personal dignity and to appreciate the intrinsic worth of every human life, from conception until natural death. Today’s rampant secularism, when it becomes an aggressive cultural rejection of God’s active fatherhood in our history, is an obstacle to authentic human fraternity, which finds expression in reciprocal respect for the life of each person. Without the God of Jesus Christ, every difference is reduced to a baneful threat, making impossible any real fraternal acceptance and fruitful unity within the human race.

The universality of the salvation offered by God in Jesus Christ led Benedict XV to call for an end to all forms of nationalism and ethnocentrism, or the merging of the preaching of the Gospel with the economic and military interests of the colonial powers. In his Apostolic Letter Maximum Illud, the Pope noted that the Church’s universal mission requires setting aside exclusivist ideas of membership in one’s own country and ethnic group. The opening of the culture and the community to the salvific newness of Jesus Christ requires leaving behind every kind of undue ethnic and ecclesial introversion. Today too, the Church needs men and women who, by virtue of their baptism, respond generously to the call to leave behind home, family, country, language and local Church, and to be sent forth to the nations, to a world not yet transformed by the sacraments of Jesus Christ and his holy Church. By proclaiming God’s word, bearing witness to the Gospel and celebrating the life of the Spirit, they summon to conversion, baptize and offer Christian salvation, with respect for the freedom of each person and in dialogue with the cultures and religions of the peoples to whom they are sent. The missio ad gentes, which is always necessary for the Church, thus contributes in a fundamental way to the process of ongoing conversion in all Christians. Faith in the Easter event of Jesus; the ecclesial mission received in baptism; the geographic and cultural detachment from oneself and one’s own home; the need for salvation from sin and liberation from personal and social evil: all these demand the mission that reaches to the very ends of the earth.

 A renewed Pentecost opens wide the doors of the Church, in order that no culture remain closed in on itself and no people cut off from the universal communion of the faith. No one ought to remain closed in self-absorption, in the self-referentiality of his or her own ethnic and religious affiliation. The Easter event of Jesus breaks through the narrow limits of worlds, religions and cultures, calling them to grow in respect for the dignity of men and women, and towards a deeper conversion to the truth of the Risen Lord who gives authentic life to all.

We entrust the Church’s mission to Mary our Mother. In union with her Son, from the moment of the Incarnation the Blessed Virgin set out on her pilgrim way. She was fully involved in the mission of Jesus, a mission that became her own at the foot of the Cross: the mission of cooperating, as Mother of the Church, in bringing new sons and daughters of God to birth in the Spirit and in faith.

To men and women missionaries, and to all those who, by virtue of their baptism, share in any way in the mission of the Church, I send my heartfelt blessing.

DEEPAVALI

                                                         

                                         DEEPAVALI

                                    “I have come as Light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness.” (Gospel of St. John, 12, 46)

           

            “Deepavali” is a Sanskrit word meaning “rows of light”. Whatever the mythological origins of the festival in terms of Ram or Mahavir or Maharishi Dayanand, for us Christians in India the festival takes us to the origin of all brightness, the Lord of the universe, the conqueror of darkness and evil, Jesus Christ, the Light ! With our Hindu brothers and sisters we celebrate the festival of lights, and pray for them and one another that we may be a light to all nations. May Christ, the world’s true light that no darkness can quench, illumine the way to the Kingdom of love, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. May the light of Christ make our bodies into beacons of hope.

            The discovery of fire by prehistoric man must have marked an onward and upward stage in human existence.  Imagine the high excitement as one of the ancestors ran screaming through the village settlement holding aloft a burning torch while the others stood dumbfounded fascinated. That was a celebration, indeed, and there was nothing artificial about it. Over the millennia, light has become the symbol of education, enlightenment and festivity. All nations celebrate light in one way or another. In Denmark, for instance, the girls wear a special crown fitted with candles to usher in Yuletide. We Indians keep up Deepavali. However, as Christians we do not worship the symbol as such. We rather think the symbol as an occasion to worship the reality. We meditate the light in order to contemplate God, that is, in order to enter into his life and be involved in his work.

            Our Lord Jesus has often pointed to himself in very piercing ways: “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” “I am the Good shepherd.” “I am the Bread of Life.” “I am before Abraham ever was.” “I am the Light of the world.” This last title he has shared with us: “You are the light of the world. So let your light shine.” This was his way of telling us how much he wants us to identify with him so that we may illumine the world with his light.

            We must first then humanise all Indian festivals. For instance, we must see that they are not occasions for extortion, threats of barbarism, group violence, and excessive and untimely noise. They should rather be events of happiness and sharing with the needy. Then we must work towards that day when every festival will lead to its fulfilment in Jesus Christ. For instance, the festival of water must flow into the water springing up into everlasting life. The festival of sound must give ear to the sound of the Gospel. The harvest festival will be gathered up to the hundredfold of the Messianic promise. And the festival of lights must be enkindled by the new flame of the Paschal Vigil.

            More than light, Jesus is fire and conflagration. “I have come to cast fire upon this earth, and what will I but that it should be burning.” The most powerful manmade nuclear flash is but a puny candle before the fire of the Divine Lover. Then we shall walk with him and feel this fire within. We shall walk the way of duty and the Cross. We shall walk like the two disciples making for Emmaus, and our hearts shall burn with a unique fire when he opens and explains his word to us; for his word is our true light.