Liturgy of our Lives

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, CMI

My Dear Brothers and Sisters:
We are standing together on the threshold of a liturgical year now ending and another soon to begin. When endings mesh with beginnings, it seems only natural to look over our shoulders at what has transpired in our lives. As we take truthful inventory and determine the measure of who we are, it also seems appropriate that we gather up all that we are and offer it to God as the liturgy of our lives. But just what constitutes that liturgy? How do our lives come together to celebrate the One whose kingship we acknowledge today? What sacrifice have we to offer to the Lord of all life, whose own sacrifice has opened the way to life everlasting for us (1Cor15:20-26,28 2nd reading)?

Centuries ago, the prophets posed similar questions to God on behalf of their contemporaries. How could they make of their lives a liturgy worthy of the character of the God who called them into being? What had they to offer in prayerful thanksgiving and worshipful praise to the God who promised to be their shepherd, rescuing them when they were scattered, bringing them home when they strayed, binding and healing their wounds and giving them a protected rest (Ezek 34:11-12, 15-17, 1st reading)? God’s answer to the prophets’ questioning was challenging as it was simple: “Do justice; love tenderly; walk in truth with God.” In this challenge lies the whole of the law and the prophets; in this challenge lie the seeds of a life-liturgy worthy of God.
In today’s Gospel (Mt 25:34-46), Jesus teaches us the words and the gestures, the symbols and the rituals to the life-liturgy that best acknowledges, thanks, loves and praises God: “I was hungry; you gave me food. I was thirsty; you gave me drink. I was a stranger; you welcomed me. I was in prison; you came to visit me.” These are the prayers of the true-life liturgy without which no other liturgy in church has meaning. If the hungry are not fed, the naked are not clothed, etc., then we have failed to recognize and tend the God who lives among us in these least ones. If the thirsty are not offered drink and the ill and the imprisoned are not visited and cared for, then even when two or three gather, the promised presence of Christ will be lost to us.

If and when we do take the Gospel challenge seriously, let us not think of what we are doing as charity. Let us realize that we are merely beginning to meet the demands of justice, a justice by which we accept to live when we agree to love tenderly and walk in truth with God.