Transformative Grace

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, C.M.I.

Lord Jesus, free me from the despair that kills hope and lead me to a renewed reliance on God.

During this month, transformation seems to be the order of the day. In preparation for Christmas, most of us will transform our homes and businesses with decorations that celebrate this happy season.

While this transformation is only a cosmetic and a temporary one, the liturgy for today puts us in touch with a transformation of another sort, viz., the profoundly transformative power of the coming of our God. Isaiah (35:1-6,10) describes this transformation in terms of a desert blooming and of the fearful and feeble becoming brave and strong. His vision of the blind gaining their sight, the deaf beginning to hear, the mute being able to speak and the lame leaping bears eloquent witness to the conviction that nothing is impossible for God. As evidence of the power and possibilities of God at work in him, Jesus, in today’s Gospel (Mt 11:2-11), will allude to these very healings and add to them the even greater transformation of lepers being made whole, the dead being raised and the poor hearing the good news of salvation preached to them. Like Isaiah before him, Jesus understood that nothing is impossible for God.

The Bible is relentless in its conviction that nothing that is distorted or deathly need remain as it is. God’s power and God’s passion converge to make total newness possible. God’s promises of messianic possibility work against our exhaustion, our despair and our sense of hopelessness.

Newness is indeed possible, and this God has affirmed in Jesus. In embracing this hope, Christians distinguish themselves from those who despair, and from the self-sufficient who believe that they themselves can produce the newness. To avoid both the despair that kills hope and the pride that ignores grace, believers are called home each Advent to a renewed reliance on God.

For too long we stood on this earth in a false security. In our spiritual insanity we dared to think that we could, by our own power, avert the dangers and banish the night. We believed that we could harness everything and order the universe to our liking. But, over and against our daring and desires stands the message of Advent; it is the Lord, the Coming One who came and who will come again, who will bring about the transformation of our human hearts by Gospel grace. If we want to transform life again, if Advent is truly to come again, the Advent of home and of hearts, the Advent of the people and the nations – then we must allow ourselves to be shaken and sifted and if need be, to be shattered by grace.

An Agenda for Advent

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, C.M.I.

Lord Jesus, may your peace dawn on me when I struggle for justice. Amen.

“Justice for Peace” may be the right caption for this agenda. There are literally millions who suffer from injustice from the point of view of earthly blessings. One answer to this inequity is offered to us today through the person and ministry of John the Baptist.

John is portrayed in today’s Gospel (Mt. 3:1-12) as turning away from the blessings and securities he could have enjoyed, e.g., sufficient food, decent living conditions, comfortable clothing and the companionship of family and friends, in order to embrace a life of penance and fasting and a ministry that would not gain him any measure of popularity. He was to be the voice that truthfully pointed out sins and persevered in calling the guilty to repentance. John’s was not a pleasant job or a pleasing message, because preparations for welcoming the One who would bring peace, justice, harmony and the gifts of the Spirit can only be described as drastic and radical. John is held out to us each Advent not simply as Jesus’ herald but also as the one after whom the church is to model itself. Just as John’s was the voice that prepared for the first appearance of Jesus, so the church must be the voice that readies first itself and then all of mankind for Jesus’ second and ultimate coming. To put it in another way, John’s agenda dictates and continues to drive the church’s agenda: to work for peace and to struggle for justice and for an enduring harmony among the desperate peoples of this world.

In today’s first reading (Is 11:1-10), the prophet Isaiah gives beautiful lofty and poetic expression to our most fervent hopes for justice and peace. He speaks of wolves being the guests of lambs and babies playing by the dens of cobras. But in order for lofty poetry to become living policy, the church must continue to struggle to make the message of John the Baptist its own agenda, this Advent and all through the year. For more than a century, the church has openly declared its social agenda as one that has necessarily evolved from offering charity to the promotion of justice. As Thomas Massaro (Living Justice, Sheed and Ward 2000), has pointed out, where charity tends to involve individuals or small group of people acting to meet the immediate needs of others, work for justice involves a more communal and even global awareness of problems and their potential long term solutions. Where the notion of charity calls to mind voluntary giving out of one’s surplus, the demands of justice point to an absolute obligation to share the benefits of God’s creation more generously.

Another Opportunity!

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, C.M.I.

Lord Jesus, deliver us from greed and hatred that lead to war and bring us to your peace, justice, healing and blessing. Amen

God has gifted us with yet another new year and blessed us sinners with yet another opportunity for realizing God’s purposes in our lives, in our world. With Advent, everything begins again and the air is filled with eager anticipation of what may lie ahead. With Advent comes a wealth of new possibilities and new chances to make right what was wrong in the now passing year.

We live now in a culture so profoundly secular that Advent is fast becoming a vanishing season. Advent now often seems like a little more than a few-weeks-long shopping prelude to Christmas commercialism. To reinvent the weeks of grace, hope and eager anticipation for God, the church, through the liturgy, calls for a return to the true purpose of Advent: repentance - a repentance that is realized and expressed in transformation.

To guide us in repentance that is both a turning away from sin and a turning toward God, we look today to our mentors in the faith, the prophet Isaiah, the apostle Paul and the evangelist Matthew. Paul (Rom 13:11-14) will call Advent believers to repent of that “Sleepiness” that puts off readiness for Jesus’ coming, thinking that it surely cannot occur in my lifetime or yours. Repent, exhorts Paul, of anything you would not like to be found doing when Jesus finally appears. His words remind us that procrastination can never be an adequate preparation for welcoming the Lord. Similarly, Jesus in today’s Gospel (Mt 24:37-44) invites disciples to be prepared, warning that Jesus’ coming will be sudden, unexpected and decisive.

With words that have yet to be fully appreciated Isaiah (2:1-5) calls for believers to be prepared for the Lord by repenting of war. This repentance must be so deliberate and absolute that even the instruments of war are to be transformed into implements that can help to provide for the hungry poor of this world.

Some may find war a distant and impersonal reality, a mere matter for the evening news or the history books; however, Isaiah’s challenge begs to be applied totally of war’s heinous offspring that surface in our daily lives – violence, aggression, anger, greed, the lust for power and the desire for revenge. Only when we repent of these sins will we be able to follow the heart and mind of the God who has come among us in Jesus. To that end, let us truly repent and redirect ourselves toward the coming Christ.

Christ Jesus, Victor!

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, CMI

Celebrating Jesus as king and marking a special day to venerate him as such has been a rather late development within the church. In 1925, Pope Pius X1 promulgated the encyclical Quas Primas and formally set forth the doctrine of the kingship of Christ. According to that document, Christ is recognized as king by virtue of his (1) birthright as the Son of God; (2) right as the world’s Redeemer, and (3) the power that is his as legislator, judge and executor (Acts 10:42). First commemorated on the last Sunday in October, the feast of Christ the King is now celebrated on the last Sunday of the Liturgical year.

The praying assembly today marks the passing of one year and prepares to welcome another, and is reminded in our liturgy that our King has chosen to exercise his reign as a shepherd like David. In telling of David’s anointing as king, the author of 2 Samuel represents the Israelites as claiming David as one like themselves: “Here we are, your bone and your flesh”. Jesus, our shepherd king, became like us – bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh – so as to know fully and to be known fully by us. That privilege is ours to remember and to celebrate today.

Giving expression to our celebration is the Christological hymn quoted by the author of today’s second reading to the Colossians, (Col. 1:12-20). This hymn establishes Jesus’ primacy over all while reminding his followers of the power of his death to reconcile everything in heaven and on earth, and to make peace through the blood of his cross.

Today’s Gospel (Lk 23:35-43) presents Jesus as the king whose true identity and whose power and sovereignty are proclaimed with great irony through the mocking words of the people, their leaders and the soldiers. Henri Nouwen (Sabbatical Journey, NY 1998) was correct in affirming that the greatest humiliation and the greatest victory are both shown to us in today’s liturgy. It is important, wrote Nouwen, to look at this humiliated and victorious Christ very carefully before we start the new liturgical year with the celebration of Advent. All through the year, we are to stay close to the humiliation as well as to the victory of Christ because we are called to live both in our daily lives. We are small and big, specks in the universe and the glory of God, little fearful people and sons and daughters of the Lord of all creation. Christ Jesus, Victor! Christ Jesus, Ruler! Christ Jesus, Lord and Redeemer!

The Day of the Lord

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, CMI

My dear brothers and sisters,

Human life is constituted of a series of days, some significant and memorable, others more routine, mundane and unremarkable. There are birthdays that annually mark the gift that is our time in this world. There are baptismal and name days that celebrate our initiation into the life of God and the believing community. There are burial days that remind us that immortality comes only after mortality is fully experienced. There are other sacramental days that signal our passages along the spiritual way: Eucharist, Reconciliation, Confirmation etc.

Against the backdrop of all these days with their varying levels of meaning and importance for our lives, the liturgy for today invites us to consider the day before which all others pale into relative insignificance – the day of the Lord. Prophesied by Malachi (1st reading Mal 4:1-2) referenced by Paul (2nd reading, 2 Thes 3:7-12) and described by Jesus (Lk 21:5-19), the origins of the Day of the Lord are difficult to trace with certainty. First mentioned by Amos (5:18), it seems to have a popular belief that the prophet referenced and reinterpreted. Prior to Amos, the Day of the Lord was associated with the manifestation of God’s power on behalf of Israel; that day its enemies would be thwarted, and Israel would be securely established as supreme over them. Amos and his prophetic colleagues threw a wrench into the popular notion of the Day of the Lord, promising instead that it would be a day of reckoning for all of mankind, especially Israel. It would be an “evil day” (Amos 6:3) on which the sun would set at noon and the earth grow dark (Amos 8:9). All that were proud and high, all that was lofty and tall would be brought down (Isaiah 2:11 ff).

New Testament authors borrowed the imagery of the Day of the Lord, with its apocalyptic symbols and its ambience of reckoning, judgment and retribution, and associated these with the day of the Son of Man or the time of the second coming of Jesus. But rather than meet that day with dread or prepare for that day with trepidation, believers are encouraged to look beneath their apocalyptic fears and allow these to lead up to new hope and trust in the lessons Jesus left with his disciples. Regarding that day, Jesus advised them not to be misled by the prophets of doom. Rather hold fast to the faith. Be secure in the knowledge that I am with you, providing you with words and a wisdom that will help you to discern the truth and to continue witnessing to me in word and work.

Power of Hope

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, CMI

As we near the end of the liturgical year, the scripture readings focus on the end of times, especially on how the resurrection of Jesus is the linchpin of Christian faith, the source of our hope and the cause of our joy. As is reflected in today’s first reading (2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-4), faith and hope in the resurrection can strengthen believers against all manner of evil. Because of their faith and hope that they would live again after death, the martyred brothers and their mother were able to endure the tortures forced on them by a cruel and tyrannical king. Most of us will probably not be subjected to torture; nevertheless, it will be our faith and hope in the risen Jesus that will see us through whatever struggles may be ours to endure.

Faith and hope were the factors that enabled the Thessalonians to continue to live the Gospel that Paul had preached among them. In today’s second reading (2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5), the great apostle reminds his readers through the centuries that God is faithful. Human beings may falter in faith or even succumb to doubt and speculation (as did Sadducees, who are featured in today’s Gospel - Luke 20:27-38), but God never fails.

Confident in God’s fidelity and promise of life after death, believers are able to view life, death and all the events in between from a perspective of hope. This perspective does not immunize the believer from sorrow or suffering; rather it enables the hopeful to accept their present reality while focussing on future joys and eternal fulfillment. Testifying to the power of hope, Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Victor Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning, NY 1959) argued that the loss of hope can have a deadly effect on human being. As a result of experiences in a Nazi Concentration Camp, Frankl contended that when a person no longer hopes, he no longer possesses a motive for living. With no future to look toward, he curls up in a corner and dies.

As believers, this quality of hope is afforded to each of us by virtue of Jesus’ resurrection. This hope empowers us to endure a seemingly hopeless situation and look to a better tomorrow. It helps us to suffer the loss of another through death, disease or divorce and survive to love again or bear with loneliness, sorrow and pain without losing heart. In short, it helps us find reasons for rejoicing and the courage to continue living, loving, and serving and giving until our complete sharing in Jesus’ resurrection becomes a reality.

The Guest Who Transforms

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, CMI

Today’s Gospel (Lk. 19:1-10) with its story of Zacchaeus, offers the praying assembly an opportunity to be with a guest who transforms. Jesus is the guest who comes to dinner and Zacchaeus is the one in whom tremendous changes will take place. As Paul Scherer has pointed out in his article “the Gospel according to Luke”, the whole impact of the Gospel was in that meeting. It redeemed the past, transformed the present and redirected the future. Jesus’ acceptance of Zacchaeus, despite his sinfulness, prompted him to change his mind, his ways, his life. He resolved to make amends, he would make restitution for wrong doing – he would give generously to the poor. So great was the conversion of Zacchaeus that Jesus declared him a son of Abraham. He had been lost, but in welcoming Jesus into his home and into his life, he was found. “Today”, Jesus declared, “Salvation has come to this house!”.

Each day of our lives, the experience afforded to Zacchaeus is also afforded to us. Each day, in so many ways, through so many people and circumstances, Jesus says to us, “I mean to stay at your house today”.

Each day, Jesus affirms God’s love for us and for all that God has created. Love, not loathing, is God’s manner of dealing with us, the Wisdom author (1st reading, Wisdom 11:22-12:2) reminds us. Mercy and forgiveness are the ways of God, who overlooks sin and allows time for repentance and returning to the truth. Each day, in countless ways, Jesus reminds us that he is the guest who wishes to “come to dinner". In his coming, he will create the graced atmosphere in which we can, like Zacchaeus , change our lives for the better. Jesus is a self-invited guest who will also become the host - when we welcome him into the home of our hearts and lives, he will feed and nourish our needs and desires.

The food he gives us is the Bread of his Word. It teaches, comforts, challenges and when needed, chastises us. He also gives us as food the Bread of his very self, blessed by God, broken in suffering on the cross and given freely and fully in the redemption of sinners.