Call to Conversion

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, CMI

Call to Conversion

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Since the year of the Eucharist is coming to a close, it is worth focusing on liturgy this week. There are those who believe that the liturgy should focus only on purely spiritual matters, avoiding any contamination with issues of politics or economics or daily life. Others feel that the liturgy should always be uplifting, making them feel better about themselves and their lives than when they entered the church building. Such attitudes reduce liturgy to largely empty ritual. Liturgy aims to bring us into the presence of the living God and to confront us with the power of God’s word. It is intended to foster conversion of attitudes and behaviour. It seeks the transformation of the assembled body of Christ just as surely as it seeks the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord.
This means that authentic liturgy will regularly challenge the members of the assembly. The word of God both consoles and confronts, and the liturgy does the same. It is all too easy to tame the liturgy so that it never disturbs the assembly. Liturgy can become conventional rather than prophetic. It can easily be an exercise of saying “yes” to God but not doing God’s will, like the son in today’s Gospel parable (Mt 21:28-32).
When Jesus first shared this parable, he did so within the context of a controversy with the chief priests and elders (v. 28). These had assumed that their righteousness had earned them entrance into God’s kingdom. These had also assumed that the sinfulness of the tax collectors and prostitutes of their day had sealed their fate as kingdom-outsiders. They had, in all of their assuming overlooked the possibility of grace to turn around lives and situations that seemed hopeless.
Nevertheless, Jesus brought the chief priests and elders to the point where they had to admit that the son who first said no and then changed his mind and heart was the one who did what his father wanted. This admission left them to deal with the fact that those whom they despised as beyond the pale of salvation would be granted a share in God’s kingdom.
Today, this parable remains a source of comfort and encouragement for sinners, prompting us to grasp the grace that allows us to say yes to God. By the same token, it remains a source of challenge to us sinners, warning us against that undue self-righteousness that overlooks the need for grace in all we are, in all we do, in all we choose, in all we think, in all we say.

The Holy Otherness of God

Message From Father Jose

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The readings of this Sunday seems to invite our attention to the importance of catechesis in the church.  The U.S. Catholic bishops have designated this third Sunday of September as Catechetical Sunday.

The first reading’s insistence (Is 55:6-9) that God’s ways are not our ways provides a solid basis for the need for catechesis.  The Gospel parable (Mt 20:1-16) provides a good example of how different God’s ways are from our instinctive human reactions to a situation.  It might be good, therefore, to focus precisely on that disjuncture.

There is a tendency among us humans to bring God “down to our level” by attributing to God some of our baser human attitudes and behaviours.  For example, because many of us have a knee-jerk reaction to the wrongs done to us and tend to pay back blow for blow, evil for evil, we may think that God will act with like spitefulness.  Similarly, we who tend to hold grudges, dredge up past hurts and relish vengeance.  We presume God will not forgive because we cannot or will not; we think God will harbour anger because we do.  We think that God would never afford the grace of another chance for conversion, for repentance, for reconciliation because we find such grace “cheap” or “offensive” and thereby stifle its possibilities.  We have to be on guard against diminishing the holy otherness of God.  This otherness of God is revealed as mercy and generous forgiveness when human standards would dictate otherwise.  Here lies the crux of the challenging mission shouldered by catechists.

Do we give special respect and reverence to catechists as those who help the community to embrace values and behaviour that flow from Christ rather than from society?  Too often people assume that the function of catechesis is to produce people who will behave according to society’s accepted rules, that is to conform to the status quo.

Yet if God’s ways are  not our ways, the fruit of good catechesis will be people who challenge the status quo whenever it is at odds with the values of the Gospel.

Let us specially pray today for all the religious teachers in Catholic Schools and parish religious programmes, preschool catechists and catechumenate team members.