Turning Points and Transitions

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, CMI

Lord Jesus, touch me and transform my fear to trust in the turning points of life.

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

praying assembly today there is a turning point that creates a change of heart or a new mindset. As Within each of the three scripture selections set before the scholars have described it, there is a definite and discernible movement from wretchedness to joy. In today’s first reading (Jer 20:10-13) the plight of Jeremiah openly bemoans the fact that he was called to be a prophet at a turbulent time in his people’s history. Suffering from their rejection of his message and threats against his person, Jeremiah pours out his complaint. Yet, right in the middle of his griping, there is a change, and the jeremiad of the prophet yields to joy. Why? Even amid his difficulties, the prophet was aware of the presence of God with him, “like a mighty champion”. That powerful presence effected a turning point in the prophet’s attitude. Fear turned to trust and desperation to dependence on God.

A similar shift, though more subtly expressed, is evidenced in today’s second reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans (Rom 5:12-15). Before Jesus sin reigned in the world, and with sin, death. But with Jesus, God’s gracious and saving gifts were poured forth on a sinful world. Jesus effected in his person and through his mission the turning point of the story of our salvation. Because of Jesus, sin is healed by God’s merciful forgiveness, death yields to life and wretchedness to joy. Walter Brueggemann (The Message of Psalms, 1984) has called this shift or turning point that is reflected in the life and spirituality of the believer a transition from disorientation to new-orientation.

In today’s Gospel (Mt 10:26-33), it is Jesus who makes his disciples aware of the possibility of transitions or turning points in their lives. The disciples should expect to face the same doubt and rejection and to be embroiled in controversy and conflicts as Jesus was. But rather than meet these difficulties with fear or allow those who oppose them and their work to intimidate them, the disciples of Jesus are encouraged by him with the promise of God’s parental and fastidious attentiveness. So carefully does God attend disciples that every hair on their heads is known and protected. With this knowledge of God’s care, disciples can make the transition or turning point from fear to fearless service and from disorientation to a new orientation towards life.

“My Love For You”

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, CMI

Lord Jesus, help us to love you as you loved, to live as you lived, to serve as you served.

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways… I love thee to the level of every day’s most quiet need, by sun and candle light. I love thee freely…I love thee purely…I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life and…I shall but love thee better after death.” With these words, poet Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861) gave eloquent expression to her love for her future husband, Robert Browning (1812-1889). Many through the years have made these words their own when searching to find a way to communicate their feelings to their beloved.

“How do I love thee?” God asks, and through the imagination of the Exodus author, God tells us of a fierce and protective love like that of a mother eagle encouraging its young to grow and develop (Ex 19:1-6). God’s love is also a spousal and desirous of an unending covenantal relationship. God’s love speaks of a belonging that makes special and holy the beloved. You are mine; I am yours, promises the God of Exodus.

“How do I love thee?” When Paul broaches that question and answers for God, his is an amazing declaration of the underserved and unrequited love of God for humankind (Rom 5:6-11). We were powerless, godless; we were enemies and sinners and in complete disregard of our unworthiness, and with a generosity that defies human logic, God loved us to such an extreme that God sent divinity into time and space to become one of us and to die for us in order to achieve our justification. Justification, or being set in right relationship to God, is the measureless measure of God’s love.

“How do I love thee?” I love you, pledges Jesus in Matthew’s gospel (Mt 9:36-10:8), as a shepherd loves the sheep, even when, and especially when, the sheep wander, tired and aimless, with no worthy leader to tend to them. I love you like the farmer loves the harvest and risks all to see it safely and completely gathered in. I love you as deeply as to call you, when the world may regard as unlikely candidates for leadership – I call you, tax collector, the sinner, the betrayer, the political extremist… I call you all to be my hands, my feet, my mind and heart for a needy world. “How do I love thee?” I love you fully and freely, and as God, I choose to love you in life and beyond death for everlasting life.

Dead Or Alive?

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, CMI

Lord Jesus, help me translate my piety into a sincere and compassionate caring for one another.

Scottish biblical scholar, William Barclay (1907-1978) included the following anecdote in one of his sermons: A minister was called to assume the pastorate of a church in the Americas. Although he had been warned that the congregation was, for all practical purposes, “dead”, he regarded the call as a challenge and decided to accept it. Soon after his arrival, he discovered that his congregation was indeed “dead”. No planning, no exhortation could kindle a spark of life or waken a hint of a response.

One Sunday, the new pastor announced from pulpit that since the congregation was dead, he was going to carry out the funeral of the church. On the appointed day, a coffin was brought into the church and placed in the centre aisle; the church was decked with mourning wreaths.

When the time for the “burial service” arrived, the church was crowded as it had not been in years. Solemnly, the pastor proceeded with the service, at the conclusion of which, he invited all present to file past the coffin. As they did so they received a shock. The coffin was open and empty. But the bottom of the coffin was not wood; it was a mirror. As each person peered into the coffin of the dead church, each saw his/her own face.

In a certain sense, the prophet Hosea (6:3-6) and the evangelist Matthew (9:9-13) are delivering a similar message to the praying assembly gathered for today’s liturgy, viz., a congregation is dead, that is, its members are dead if the ritual they celebrate is empty… if there is sacrifice but no mercy… if there is private profession of piety but no public expression of that piety in mutual love and service; if, when gathered round the altar, they dare to call upon God as Abba – Daddy and then they go forth from the altar and fail to recognize and care for others as brothers and sisters.

The first reading and the gospel frame our liturgy today with the challenge to remember that ours is a God-centred and people oriented piety. Without both, i.e., without a focus in God that is translated in a sincere and compassionate caring for one another, piety is “like a morning cloud, like the dew that passes early away” (Hosea) and the one who practices such piety is, indeed, dead.

The Body and Blood of the Lord

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, CMI

Lord Jesus, make me your presence in the world through the Holy Communion I receive.

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

This annual feast offers an ideal time to reaffirm the church’s belief that the bread and wine are truly changed into the body and blood of the Lord. There should be no question that this is the faith of the church. The challenge is putting that doctrine in the proper context. There is always a danger that in emphasizing one tenet of the faith, other important beliefs are overshadowed. The result can be a distortion of the faith tradition rather than a strengthening of it.

With regard to belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the form of His body and blood, there are two major contexts that need to be maintained. The first is that He offers us His body and blood precisely as food and drink. His presence is not for its own sake so that we might adore the host or view Him as a prisoner in the tabernacle. He is present in the body and blood to feed and nourish us and to transform us more fully into His body in the world.

The second essential context is the various ways that Christ is present in the Eucharist. He is present not only in the bread and wine but also in the assembly, in the presider, and in the word proclaimed. These other forms of His presence are not in competition with His presence in the Eucharistic species, but work with that presence to enable us to encounter the Lord throughout the celebration of the liturgy and to be transformed more fully into His likeness.

Today let us concentrate on the richness of our Eucharistic tradition. Let us take pains to see the connections between the various modes of Christ’s presence and recognize the true purpose of the Eucharist as our own transformation. Once this is fulfilled, the goal of liturgical formation is achieved. Let us ask ourselves the following questions: (1) What is my experience when I say “I adore you Lord!” (2) Does that adoring attitude take its origin from the transformation I underwent and the satisfaction I got feeding on the body and blood of the Lord?

Trinity and Community

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, CMI

Lord Jesus, help us to foster the interpersonal relationships in our community contemplating the mystery of the Trinity.

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today, Trinity Sunday, we pause to consider mystery in our lives. The difference between mystery and problem is vast. A problem is something we can solve.

Managing to pay all our bills each month is a problem. Mystery, though, is not something that can be solved or managed. We all live with mystery, although we may not be aware of it. One of the most fundamental mysteries of all is life itself. We recognize it, we cherish it, we fear losing it, but we do not understand it anymore than we grasp its end – death. Do we understand love? Try to explain why you love someone, you will always fall far short of the truth.

Nicodemus was faced with mystery, and he resorted to problem solving, He was a leader in the community, a Pharisee of high repute. But he was also drawn irresistibly to the person of Jesus. Prudently, he went to Jesus under cover of darkness, seeking to resolve his dilemma. But Jesus spoke of belief, not solutions. Belief has to do with entering into mystery. Jesus startled Nicodemus by telling him he must be born again, of water and the spirit. Reduced to a problem, this makes no sense. As mystery, we believe.

It was faith that prompted Paul to conclude his second letter to the Corinthians with this blessing: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you”. Reason did not bring Paul to this declaration of Trinity, only faith, the acceptance of mystery.

The Trinity is not unreasonable, it is beyond reason. Augustine admitted, “I can experience far more than I can understand about the Trinity”. Theologians such as Leonardo Boff and Elizabeth John describe the interrelatedness of the Three Persons as community. God is not a dominant ONE, cut off from any relationship with others. Nor is God just two figures, Father, Son, absorbed in each other. But, as Boff suggests, God is the eternal spilling over into a third person, the Spirit, who “forces the other two to turn their gaze from themselves in another direction.”

Theologian Belden Lane continues, “God then, is a community of differentness bound together in unity. The Trinity continually seeks new webs of interconnectedness, while at the same time remaining separate and wholly itself”.

God's Kiss

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, CMI

Lord Jesus, give me the “kiss” of the Spirit and liberate me from my bondages.

 

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today we have gathered together to celebrate the liberation that is Pentecost. Luke, in today’s first reading (Acts 2:1-11) speaks of the Spirit in terms of “tongues, as of fire”, and of “a noise, like a strong driving wind”. He describes a boldness in the disciples, where once there had been only fear; he speaks in terms of understanding among people of different cultures and backgrounds where once there had been a divisive confusion. He tells of an openness and a universal outreach where once there had been a parochial exclusivity.

In today’s 2nd reading (1 Cor. 12:3-7,12-13) Paul describes the Spirit as one who enables and expresses our prayer, as one who equips us and encourages us with charisms and as the one in whom all of our diversities find their unity and complementarity. John, in today’s gospel, reminds us that the Spirit is indeed breathed upon and into each of us with the ability to share these gifts of peace and forgiveness with one another and the world.

David Watson has suggested that we think of the Holy Spirit as the early Christian mystics did – as God’s kiss – and that we understand that, in coming together for worship today, we have, in effect, come to kiss and be kissed by God. Remarkably, the word most commonly translated as “worship” in Christian Scriptures means to bow or to prostrate oneself and it is derived from a root meaning “to kiss”. As John R. McRay has explained, this special word references the practice of bowing to kiss the hand or foot of the one to whom homage is paid. The idea of emotional and spiritual emptiness in the presence of the Holy, lies at the heart of the experience of worship. Keeping in mind this special derivation of the scriptural term for worship, we might say that we have come together on this feast of Pentecost emotionally and spiritually empty and eager to be filled with the presence and power of the Spirit. We have come to bow down in homage, i.e., to kiss the hand of the One who guides us, protects us, feeds us and fuels us for service.

The Gift Of An Agenda

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, CMI

Lord Jesus, strengthen us to come down from the mountaintop to be your witnesses throughout the world.

 

Do you remember Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I’ve been to the Mountaintop” speech delivered at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tenn., on April 3, 1968, the day before he was assassinated? King’s speech resonated with a hope and conviction that a new day was about to dawn, and with it new assurances of civil rights for African Americans. Five years earlier in another of his memorable and moving speeches, King had described what he had envisioned on the mountain top. “I have a dream”, shared King, “that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character…” (August 28, 1963).

King’s dream and his mountaintop vision would have remained just that except for the fact that he came down from the mountain and marched the streets of Selma, Atlanta, Washington, etc. in order that his visions and dreams be realized. Today’s feast of Jesus’ ascension challenges believers to do likewise. Although the disciples of Jesus may have been tempted to remain in the relative safety of the mountain in order to preserve the experience of the nearness of Jesus, that was not to be. As Jesus instructed, they were to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria and even to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:1-11, 1st reading). With Jesus’ own authority, they were to make disciples of all the nations, baptizing and teaching them, all the while assured of the presence of Jesus (Mt 28:16-20, Gospel)… all the while compelled by the hope and inspired by God’s wisdom and insight (Ephesians, 1:17-23, 2nd reading).

Nowhere did Jesus say that his disciples should stand off at a safe distance and critique the world. On the contrary, following his lead, Jesus’ followers were directed to immerse themselves in the world, making its burdens their own, its suffering theirs to alleviate. Today, Jesus’ disciples are to do likewise.

Mountaintop experiences are necessary, of course. Mountaintops are places where visions are born and fed. Mountaintops, both real and virtual, are places where discussions take place, where committees are formed, where agendas are made. But the best-laid plans are of no avail unless believers are willing to go down from the mountain and realize their visions and dreams by translating words into works, decisions into deeds, and proposed goals into achievements.