THIRTY FIRST ORDINARY SUNDAY OF THE YEAR B!

Once, there was an elderly monk who prayed many years for a vision to strengthen his faith, but it never came. He had almost given up the hope when, one day, a vision of Jesus appeared. The monk was thrilled and was enjoying the vision. But then, right in the middle of the apparition, the monastery bell rang, which meant it was time to feed the poor who gathered daily at the monastery gate. It was the elderly monk’s turn to feed them. He was torn between staying and leaving the heavenly vision. With a heavy heart, he turned his back on the vision and went off to feed the poor.

After an hour, he returned to his room, and to his surprise, the apparition of the Lord was still there, waiting for him. As the monk dropped to his knees, the vision said to him, “My son, if you would not have gone to feed the poor, I would not have stayed for you.”

The story conveys the message of today's Gospel, which combines the love of God and the love for neighbour. “You shall love the Lord your God. You shall love your neighbour as yourself”. Jesus adds, “There is no other commandment greater than these.”

At the very heart of Christianity is love. Love is the Christian identity. It is the mark Christ gave to Christians to wear before the world. Only with this mark may the world know that Christians are indeed Christians and that Jesus was sent by the Father. Love of God and love of neighbour is the most important principle of Christian living. Without the love of neighbour, there can be no real love of God. Every Christian has to be his brother’s keeper. Our entry into the kingdom of God will depend on our ability to put the principle of Christian living into practice.

The plant needs the light of the sun and the sap of the tree to grow. The day needs the night to run its full course. The child needs the smile of the mother to grow. We need each other to grow into maturity. We are supported, appreciated, and strengthened by our neighbours. Life becomes impossible and meaningless when we live in isolation. We can live without our friends, but not without our neighbours.

It is a vain attempt to search for God in the temple, in the mosque, in Gurudwara and in the church premises when He is readily found among our neighbours. God is there where our neighbours are struggling to make both ends meet. He is there where our neighbours try to lead a just and honest life in the face of adversities. There, we must worship God first and then proceed to the temple to offer our sacrifices. Then only our worship will be true, and our offerings will be acceptable to God.

In Gitanjali, Chapter XI, Rabindra Nath Tagore writes,"Leave this chanting, singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee. He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in the sun and in the shower, and His garment is covered with dust."

We see today the tension between Jesus and the Pharisees, the tension between the Old Testament and the New Testament, and the tension between the Laws and the heavenly values. God gave commandments to make people understand love. The people of Israel were given laws and commandments not just to practice them but rather to learn to love God and men. The inner purpose of commandments and laws is to experience love. The real purpose of the laws in the Old Testament was to take people closer to God by their virtues and pious activities. But what has happened? Laws remain, but no virtues and pious activities in the heart of the people. At the time of Jesus, He experienced by seeing the hearts of the people that the very laws and commandments which are supposed to take the people closer to God, taking the people away from God.

Jesus wants both laws and virtues to be effective in the heart of the people. People are like machines rather than humans. Jesus is searching for the virtues in the hearts of the people and not simply laws. People are happy by following the laws, but their hearts are full of evil. Look at the sentence, "For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”

Remember, love with all heart includes our right actions, right thoughts, right emotions, and affections. Love with all mind demands our positive thoughts. If we create negative thoughts in our mind, then we can not love God and men. One cannot love God with half-heart, half mind and half in everything. A person, therefore, should take a whole effort only to love God and men. Soul is the place where God wants to communicate with us. When our hearts, minds, and strengths become positive, then the whole self or person becomes positive in loving God and man.

We talk a lot about our love of God, or more so about our love of neighbour, but the truth of the matter is that many, if not most, of us really love ourselves! Love of self, the least and the last of the commandments of Jesus, in reality, our top priority—naturally. Only by God’s grace can we really and truly transcend our selfishness and pride.

It would be good for us today to check if we are keeping these commandments in our lives according to Jesus’ gradation. In so far as we do so, we are “not far from the Kingdom of God.” In so far as we fail to do so, we are just focused on the ways of this worldly kingdom.

To end this, I would like to share with you our food for reflection of these words:

I searched for my soul;

and my soul I found not.

I searched for my God,

and God eluded me.

I searched for my neighbour;

and there I found all three,

My Soul, My God, and My neighbour. Amen.

Like

Comment

Send

Share

 THE 30TH ORDINARY SUNDAY OF THE YEAR B!

A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a bowl by his feet. He held up a sign which read, “I am blind, please help. "Once in a long while someone will stop and drop a coin into his bowl, and he will say “thank you". A man was walking by, and he took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the bowl. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words.

Then he put the sign back in the boy’s hand so that everyone who walked by would see the new words. Soon the bowl began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. The boy almost got tired of saying: “thank you". Towards evening that man who changed the sign came back and the blind man recognized his footstep and asked him what he wrote that made a lot of people to be generous.

The man said, “I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.” I wrote, “Today is a beautiful day, but I cannot see it.” Both signs spoke the truth. But the first sign simply said the boy was blind, while the second sign conveyed to everyone walking by how grateful they should be to see.

 Remember, when our lives seems full of troubles and we find it difficult to maintain, an attitude of gratitude, is the only solution to restore it. The attitude of Bartimaeus in today’s gospel is a perfect example to learn  to show our gratitude to our Divine Master for His gratituous gift of new life. The healing of physical blindness of Bartimaeus made him a follower of Divine Master who received his spiritual sight besides physical.

In contrast, when everything just seems to be going smoothly. We often take these precious moments for granted, caught up in the bliss, comfort, and familiarity of it all, we simply forget to be thankful and this spiritual blindness for not being thankful for the gift of life makes us ungrateful and selfish which us us aloof from experiencing any healing and miracles in our lives.

 In the gospel of today we encounter our Lord Jesus Christ again on the move. He seemed to be running a mobile ministry unlike our contemporary location-based ministries with imposing Manson houses. Jesus used any available space for preaching, consultation, prayer and counseling. Today on his way from Jericho to Jerusalem to attend the great Passover a lot of people followed him as well as his disciples. The presence of Jesus brought a lot of people out as he was teaching while taking the 15 miles trek to Jerusalem. No doubt the sick, beggars and other people also came out with their personal reasons which could have included but not restricted to asking for alms. Among the lot was a man called Bartimeus son of Timaeus who a blind beggar was and when he heard that Jesus was passing by, he came out and began calling out to him: “Jesus son of David have pity on me?”

The name or title he gave to Jesus was very significant. The title “Son of David” describes the Messiah which means Saviour. In essence Bartimaeus was actually saying “Saviour there is someone here who needs to be saved!” As he shouted for help something happened! The people around him tried to stop him. For them the son of defilement is not qualified to talk to the Son of God. For them Bartimaeus was so low to have anything to do with Jesus Christ. But he ignored the crowd and shouted all the more. Sometimes in life we face oppositions on our way to our positions. They may come as discouraging voices like the ones that hushed Bartimaeus; but he was not discouraged. There is a YES somewhere in our lives, but for us to get to it we may experience a lot of NOS do not be discouraged.

In conclusion, I want to draw four points out of today’s gospel account. 

The first important point is that Bartimaeus knew he was blind. Do we? Do we know that we really don’t see reality as Jesus sees it, that we miss seeing the works and the hand of God in our lives, that we are bedazzled and blinded by the glitz and glitter of this world, and that our souls are surrounded by a spiritual darkness, and that we often do not let the light of Christ illumine our way through that darkness? Do we realize we are blind when it comes to seeing ourselves as Jesus sees us?

The second observation I have is that those around Bartimaeus tried to hush him up and keep him from Jesus. It is significant because that is the situation in which we find ourselves today. There are a whole lot of voices and forces attempting to keep us from contacting and personally encountering Jesus Christ. If you don’t think so, then you really are spiritually blind.

Bartimaeus took the courageous risk of going against the crowd. He didn’t let his hope be deterred by the local people and the voices of those who tried to keep him down and in his place. Any faith response worthy of the name requires the same sort of risk. Bartimaeus is a true hero because he went against the crowd and, in his darkness, took the risk.

Thirdly, Jesus stopped everything to pay personal attention to him. St. Mark records this as the last miracle Jesus worked before entering into Jerusalem. As He entered Jerusalem to suffer and die, Jesus brought His whole redemptive journey to a halt in order to respond to this blind man’s request that is how important he was to Jesus. I have no doubt whatsoever that we are just as important to Jesus as was Bartimaeus and that, if we call out to Jesus, He will drop everything to give us the same level of attention, love and compassionate care as He gave to Bartimaeus.

Finally I want to note that after Bartimaeus received his sight he followed in Jesus’ footsteps, which is a shorthand way of saying that Bartimaeus followed in the way, the truth, and the life of Jesus. He wanted to see and experience life as Jesus did.

What in this world of ours do we see? What do we deliberately not see? What do we fail to see due to apathy, indifference, selfishness, pride, and arrogance? Do we see the hurting, the hungry, the miserably poor, the outcast, and the little people? The media presents us with the glittering beautiful people, those at the pinnacle of political and corporate power, the superstars in the sports and entertainment industries. Mother Teresa and Pope Francis invite us to see other people, not just ourselves but those around us. Do we see them and really look at them, or do we ignore them?

And what about the little people, the no-names hit by tragedy that never interest television and newspaper reporters? Pope Francis bids us to pay attention to those who are marginalized, those whom this world holds in little regard, whom this world would have us overlook, whom this world condemns to be of little value. This blindness needs to be cured. More tragically, the world would have us not look at an ultrasound picture of a living. The world would have us rid ourselves of the dying. The world would capture our attention by images of the glamorous and the glittering, blinding us to the ones who are really hurting.

All of this leads us to the great question of the day. How does Christ see us? What is Christ’s vision for us? The answer is, of course, not simple. But what is at issue is the question of what it means to be a human person. And what it means to be a human person is the overriding question of our day. Why can’t we see that?

Let us now join in asking our Father in heaven for vision:

Heavenly Father, help us to see ourselves as you see us. Help us to see others in the world around us as Jesus, your Son, sees them.

Pour out your Holy Spirit upon us all, that we may see what you want us to see. And do what you want us to do.

You have filled your world with beauty. Each and every one of us is precious in your sight. Heal our blindness and bring us to walk in the Light of your Son. For we ask you this through Christ, who is our Lord. Amen.

 THE 30TH ORDINARY SUNDAY OF THE YEAR B!

There is a poem that was written by Myra Brooks Welch in 1921 titled “The Touch of the Master’s Hand." It tells about an old, battered violin that is about to be sold as the last item at an auction for almost nothing. But just as it’s going, going, gone, an old man, a professional musician, and a violinist step out of the audience, picking up the instrument and its bow.  The musician dusts it off, tightens up the strings, and begins to play a melody pure and sweet, demonstrating its beauty and true value.  Prior to the violinist’s playing, the auction price was three dollars, but following the playing, the instrument sells for $3,000. The poem’s conclusion presents an analogy of this instrument, touched by the hand of a master musician, to the worth of a life that is led by the hand of God. The value wasn’t in the violin as much as in what the master could do with it.  

We see in today’s Gospel how the gentle touch of our master restored the battered and broken life of Bartimaeus. We are made ‘priceless’ by His touch in spite of the dust we may have gathered. His gentle hold, changes everything. Our Master transforms us, and the worth of a soul is eternally changed by His touch.

Almost every day, we pass people whose lives are “out of tune” as the violin was in the poem, and yes, their lives are battered and scarred with suffering, pain, sorrows and physical deformities. We should allow the touch of our Divine masterJesus to use us to bring this wonderful truth to those who need hope before there was none. The touch of the Divine Master can make on a life, no matter how battered, how scarred, how worthless that life might seem.

Jesus shows the mercy and compassion of His Heavenly Father by healing the blind Bartimaeus. Just as the blind and the lame were God’s concern, Jesus is concerned with the blind beggar, Bartimaeus of Jericho. On hearing that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by, Bartimaeus loudly expressed his trusting Faith in the healing power of Jesus by shouting his request, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” When Jesus invited him to come near, Bartimaeus threw aside his cloak and ran to Jesus. His meeting with Jesus gave Bartimaeus the gift of spiritual as well as physical sight .

The healing of blind Bartimaeus is, on the surface, a miracle story but it is also, and more profoundly, a demonstration of faith evidenced by the sheer persistence of Bartimaeus and by his immediate response to the call of Jesus. Bartimaeus may have been a beggar by the wayside, but he was a person of gratitude.  Having received his sight, he followed Jesus. He did not selfishly go on his way when his need was met.  He began with need, went on to gratitude, and finished with loyalty, a good summary of the stages of discipleship.

Though we are not physically blind but we are spiritually blind and the greatest calamity that can befall people is not to be born blind but to have eyes yet fail to see. Instead of remaining in spiritual blindness, let us pray for spiritual sight.  Each one of us suffers from spiritual blindness. Hence, we need the light of the Holy Spirit to enlighten us.  Anger, hatred, prejudice, jealousy, evil habits, addictions, sloth, etc., make us spiritually blind and prevent us from seeing the goodness in our Neighbours and God’s presence in them. 

We are also blinded by greed when we are never satisfied with what we have and incur debts to buy luxury items.  Hence, let us pray to have a clear vision of Christian values and priorities in our lives and to acknowledge the presence of God dwelling in ourselves and in our Neighbours. A clear spiritual vision enables us to see the goodness in others, to express our appreciation for all that they have been doing for us, and to refrain from criticizing their performance.

We need to “cry out” to Jesus, as Bartimaeus did.  Like Bartimaeus, we must seek Jesus with trust in His goodness and mercy.  Sometimes our fears, anger, and habitual sins prevent us from approaching God in prayer.  At times, we even become angry with God when He seems slow in answering our prayers.  In these desperate moments, let us approach Jesus in prayer with trusting Faith as Bartimaeus did and listen carefully to the voice of Jesus asking us: “What do you want me to do for you?”  Let us tell Him all our heart’s intentions and needs.   Let us imitate Bartimaeus, the   man of Faith and vision, a man unafraid to recognize his need for healing and to cry out, “I want to see!” Jesus always responds to a prayer offered in Faith 

Lord Jesus, we praise and thank you for the many gifts you give us, including the gift of sight. Open our eyes to all the areas of our lives where we are blind. Give us the Holy Spirit to take the risk of letting go of all that prevents us from following you more closely and having the fullness of life.  Amen

 THE TWENTY NINTH ORDINARY SUNDAY OF THE YEAR B!

During the American Revolution, a man in civilian clothes rode past a group of soldiers who were busy pulling out a horse carriage stuck in deep mud. Their officer was shouting instructions to them while making no attempt to help. The stranger who witnessed the scene asked the officer why he wasn't helping. With great dignity, the officer replied, "Sir, I am a Corporal!" The stranger dismounted from his horse and proceeded to help the exhausted soldiers himself.

When the job was completed, he turned to the corporal and said, "Mr. Corporal, next time you have a job like this and you don’t have enough men to do it, inform your commander-in-chief, and I will come and help you again." Too late, the proud Corporal recognized General Washington. Washington understood that those who aspire to greatness or rank first among others must serve the needs of all . Where did Washington learn such leadership skills? I have no doubt he learned them here, in these words of Jesus: “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.” The young corporal had these words modeled for him by the man at the top. Jesus' disciples, likewise, receive from their leader a picture of servanthood.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday all of us heard of the reminder that pride and ego, self-confidence and ambition have no place amongst us Christians and those things will only lead to our downfall and doom, if we allow those to control our lives and our actions. We have been shown and taught what it truly means to be Christians, in our daily living and actions, and if we take heed of what the Lord had reminded us, through the Scripture passages today, we should do our best to do His will, and to be humble and be focused on Him, and not to give in to the temptations of our human pride and desire, which had become the bane and the obstacle for so many of our fellow brothers and sisters, past and present.

Many people think of religion as a way of avoiding or getting around reality and of the Bible as a kind of holy religious book. Both assumptions are very far from the truth and reality. One of the reasons why the story of Jesus is so powerful is that it is so human and so simple. It is a story of human dishonesty and ambition, of trial and error, weakness and strength. It is a story that most of us can identify.

Today's Gospel portrays the human weakness of the disciples. The lesson was this: if there was such human weakness amongst the disciples of Jesus, should we be surprised to find the same weakness in our present leadership and within ourselves? Then, if this weakness is ever present, we need to learn to lean more on Jesus than on our own weak selves.

Today's Gospel tells the story of the ambition of James and John, the two most favoured people doing their own dirty work. They themselves come and ask Jesus to give them power and to allow them to rule with him. The reaction of the other disciples is one of great indignation. Being themselves most ambitious, they very much resented the two who tried to get an inside track on them in the political race. This is a very human story that is still being acted out where human beings work together. It is to be found in the army, the government, business, in the schools and colleges,in the Church, in our religious congregations, and at home. The higher up one goes in all of these institutions, the more subtle and the more ruthless supporters tend to get.

Jesus responds to the two brothers by telling them that they do not know what they are asking for. They are asking for a shortcut, but there are no shortcuts to God's favour. Earlier He had spoken about how He would be handed over to the authorities who would condemn him to death. The two disciples conveniently bypass this stage and want to enter and share Jesus' power when He enters into glory when the suffering has been done.

Jesus brings them back to the realization that kingship or authority is not about wearing a crown but about carrying a cross. Jesus really got to the point that leadership is not about self-glorification but about the service of and the upliftment and empowerment of others. It is not for lording it over others but for standing under others. For Jesus, that is not a theoretical teaching; He himself lived it. "For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many."

Let us pray thst may God, in this eucharist, cure us of our need to dominate and abuse power and infuse in us a spirit of service.

Like

Comment

Send

Share

 लोग तो है न !

तुम अपनी खूबियों को ढूंढों,

कमियां निकालने के लिए *लोग तो है न*

अगर रखना ही है कदम तो आगे रखो,

पीछे खींचने के लिए *लोग तो है न*

सपने देखने ही है तो ऊंचे देखो,

निचा दिखाने के लिए *लोग तो है न*

अपने अंदर जुनून की चिंगारी भड़काओं,

तुम्हें जलाने के लिए *लोग तो है न*

अगर बनानी है तो बहुत सारी यादें बना,

बातें बनाने के लिए *लोग तो है न*

प्यार करना है तो खुद से भी कर,

दुश्मनी करने के लिए *लोग तो है न*

रहना है तो थोड़ा बच्चा भी बनकर रह,

समझदार बनाने के लिए *लोग तो है न*

भरोसा रखना है तो खुद पर रखो,

शक करने के लिए *लोग तो है न*

तू बस सवार ले खुद अपने को,

आईना दिखाने के लिए *लोग तो है न*

तुम अपने खुद की एक अलग पहचान बना,

भीड़ में चलने के लिए तुम्हारे साथ *लोग तो है न*

तू कुछ करके दिखा इस दुनिया को,

तालियां बजाने के लिए *लोग तो है न*