Dear friends,
Hope you are doing well. We had had a better week. After the start of the spring, we have been having a really better weather and much of the snow is melting away rapidly. It is really pepping up.
The month of April is the ‘National Child Abuse Prevention Month’. The church asks all the members of the church to pray for the victims of the abuse nationwide. There had been rough times in the Church with regard to the unjust and inhuman abuses of children for a long time. While the church might have been handicap in handling such instances, we need to be praying for two intentions. One is for the victims of such abuses primarily and secondly for the church for wisdom and fortitude to handle the situation justly and also to ensure in all possible ways to safeguard the children and their rights.
 Apart from praying we need also to be prudent to keep our children safe in the toughest time of life. We need to take some precautionary measures to ensure their safety. Teach our kids to be cautious, tell them what are kinds of safety, physical like taking care not to be hurt, psychological safety, like being bullied, road safety like to remember the traffic rules. Teaching things like this would enable them to be prudent and, in the course, we also need to be careful, not to let those kids become doubtful and negative about the society. That would make them feel insecure. Let us not leave our children unattended by at least a trustworthy adult. This would to some extent avoid the presumed abuses of the children.
Locally in our church, kindly keep an eye on the different places like church, school, religious education classes and wherever the children need to go on their own. While the church in the United states has some procedures and policy with regard to the safety of the children, like Safe Environment training for the employees of the church, schools and any other entities where there may be contacts of adults with the children/minors, background check of the same employees, we need to be prudent at all times. We do not know what happens when.
In this context, I would like to entreat the volunteers in the church, like readers, Extraordinary ministers, and such helpers to come to church in time. Especially the readers should be in the Sacristy fifteen minutes before of the start of the mass. This would ensure the safety of the children and also the priest. This had been in practice here, but the practice has been waning in our churches, may be because they did not know the indirect reason for them to come early to the church and remain in the sacristy. Or maybe they thought that things are going well.
When some thieves break into some churches, we think of how we can protect our church. These precautionary measures are taken not that there are thieves necessarily here, but it is an act of prudence. Better be safe than sorry. It makes only little sense to put up an outcry after something has happened. Kindly pray, once again for the safety of the children all over the world especially those who are prone to such abuses and also pray for the church to handle any such instances justly and promptly, and also for the Ministers of the church in any capacity.
May all the children have a safe world.
God bless.
Yours sincerely in Christ Jesus,
Fr. A. Antony.

Dear friends,
Hope you made the week. The week was a test for all of us about our strength of will and mind. The long hard cold days are now gone and we have better weather now. Thank God that we have made it to the weekend. Hopefully, this stays long. This was a really very hard time.
Before writing this, I was inside the house and I was looking outside. The scenery was so gorgeous. The sight outside was very pleasant and it looked very sunny and bright. Because it looked so sunny and bright, I even felt very pleasant. I even thought it would be warmer too. I wanted to go outside to enjoy the sun and its brightness and also the warmth of the sun. But at the very moment I opened my door I was hit by a very very cold wind. I was taken aback and shut the door fast and ran inside and sat in the chair. The sight outside walls so deceptive that it made me think it was warm too outside. But it was as cold as we even could not imagine.
This is how things happen in our lives too. Most of the times the bad things look prettier and more pleasant than anything else in the world. Naturally, the good things seem not so pretty and pleasant. We always look for what is prettier and more pleasant even if it is not a good one. This is how more often we fall to the deception.
For example, the commercials on the media today show us something beautiful and seemingly pleasant. Though the products may not have the same quality as they are advertised, they want to make their products look good and pleasant. Because they look good and pleasant people tend to buy them. Only after they buy them, people understand that it was a deception and that they were deceived.
Even in the Old Testament, the same thing happened with Eve. She saw that “the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom” (Gen:3:6). And so, the woman, Eve took some of its fruit and ate it and she gave some to her husband too and he also ate it. We know what happened after they ate the fruits of the forbidden tree. It is interesting to note that the whole tree looked beautiful to the eyes of Eve, who was already enticed by the flowery words of Satan.
This is what is the reality. Most of the time all evil things are portrayed as super good and very supremely useful. These are all deceptions, if we are less cautious. That is why Jesus warns us to “be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves” (Mt: 10:16). We need a lot of prudence in this world of consumerism and we need to be shrewd as Jesus warns us. We will see too many things as beautiful and pleasant that we cannot resist. Even in spiritual life, we need to be cautious, because the temptations seem good and pleasant. Let us ask Him to give us the Holy Spirit, the source of Wisdom and prudence.
Sincerely yours in Christ Jesus,
Fr. A. Antony
 

Dear friends,
 
Hope you are well. Keep yourself all warm and cozy, we are heading towards a winter-winter. Weather is going to be below zero in the coming week. Keep warm and safe.
 
This Tuesday, the 22nd, we had a day of prayer for legal protection of the unborn babies, here in the United States and the world over. That was a very good act of charity that our parishes did and it is also our responsibility to do that. We had people attending mass both at the beginning of the service and the end of the service. We also had more people doing the adoration all the twenty-four hours. We hope and believe that something good would happen for the legal protection of the unborn babies.
 
When I was talking to one of my friends in India, he was telling me about some boys in his school. There was a dog that gave birth to four puppies and died afterwards. The boys who saw that felt pity for those puppies, took care of those puppies. They built a shelter, they kept them warm with a blanket, they bought milk from the store to feed them, they were watching over those puppies in turns. The puppies are now well taken care of. While I was listening to this incident my thought turned towards the situation here in the United States where abortion had been legalized.
 
The life of the human person begins at the time of conception. This fact is proved by people scientifically. So, by any means and at any time, just after the conception, abortion is as bad and evil as a murder. So, abortion being legal would amount to murder being legal. It is as simple as that. This shows how uncharitable and cruelly violent our human society has grown up to be. If we opt for abortion at any time, we are opting to literally killing somebody.
 
Another thing is that God created the human beings to multiply, not to mutilate. So, if we try to opt for abortion, we will be mutilating the growth of humanity. Because as someone said, abortion is the suicide of humanity. Not only that, when we do that we are actually acting against the will of God and also, we are going against the whole purpose of our own creation.
 
We also need to note that when we opt for abortion, fairly speaking we lose our right to life. Because we received this life from God and we have it now because of the self-sacrificing love of our parents. This life is not ours, but a benevolent gift of God and our parents. We need to honor that benevolence, we need to be benevolent to the future children of the society. If we can not be benevolent to them, as I said, we lose our right to any benevolence from God and our parents.
 
Let us keep praying for the legal protection of the unborn and also that people may start valuing others’ life as their own.
 
Sincerely in Christ Jesus,
Fr. A. Antony.
 

Dear friends,
Hope you are all doing well. This past week the weather had been, and is still now, very bad for us with freezing and black ice. But still, we are surviving it. Keep watch when you move about anywhere.
 
These past few days there had been much on the media about the escape of the kidnapped girl Jayme Closs. She had been in captivity for almost three months. After so many days, she managed to escape when the kidnapper was not at home. Everyone who knows about this event is very happy and media throws more light on this incident. While we are happy about this escape and as we admire her resilience and courage, there is something we need to learn and reflect upon.
 
I just wanted to see how many would have been lost in our state alone. This number is up to seventy-six which traces back to a long period of time (https://www.missingpersons.doj.wi.gov/wisconsin-missing-persons). There may be different cases of missing with variety of reasons. Some might have run away, some might have been missed in some bad weather or some natural disaster, some might have disappeared due to their poor mental condition, or some might have committed suicide without the knowledge of any house hold members, or some might have escaped the worse situations at home. Whatever the reason, the people are missing and there are people who still believe that they can trace them and find them at some point of time in the future.
 
I want to reflect about people who were kidnapped. Why does this happen? Why does someone ever think of kidnapping someone? I, among many reasons, would like to point out two things. One is the all-pervasive media and the other thing is the formation of conscience.
 
The media, as I mentioned above is all pervasive. It enters everywhere, even where air can not enter. It carries with it an illusionary world. It entices the mind of the people with a world of illusion where everything is fine and funny. So, the mind comes to a point when it thinks that whatever pleases me to do is fine and it is in no way wrong. So, they act as their mind pleases and they most often end up doing something wrong and uncharitable. Now that the world has shrunk to the size of the palm of a hand, it is easy to get enticed very easily. In this situation, we need to be more and more cautious and prudent, failing which we will be misled even while we are thinking that we are okay. This caution and prudence will help us in differentiating between what is right and what is not.
 
The other thing I would like to focus on is the formation of conscience. At this modern age and with social condition that is in existence today, the true formation of the conscience is really hard. But we can not just let things go as they would, just because it is hard. First of all, we should try to create a mind that cares for others and senses the feeling of other people. Only when we could instill this care and concern for others, we would be forming a better conscience. Otherwise we will only be growing a bunch of flesh which can not even be called a human being, though outwardly it has the form of one. And much more, as we are Christians, we have the added responsibility in the formation of a good conscience of this present generation. Our religion, with the teachings of Christ and the Magisterium and Christian tradition has given us a lot of insights and wisdom as to how to form a good conscience. We need to take them to the heart and follow the along with teaching them to our children who are the future generation.
 
Yours sincerely in Christ Jesus,
Fr. A. Antony
 

Dear friends,
Hope you are doing well. With the solemn feast of the Baptism of the Lord Jesus, we conclude the Christmastide and we start the ordinary time of the Liturgical year. This time of the year is not a time for being lax about our spiritual life, because we have had a rigorous time of spiritual celebration with confession and Eucharistic celebration at the Christmas. During the ordinary time also, we need to take care of our spiritual needs more importantly.
When I was in the school in my lower grades (can’t remember which grade), once I had engaged into a fight with one of my classmates who stole the only pencil I had to write with. The fight got so bad that we both rolled over the floor holding each other. We had bruises all over our body too. But before the teacher came to the class the fight was over and we pretended as if nothing happened. But one student in the class reported to the teacher about what had happened to both of us.
The teacher called both of us and reprimanded us. She told me, “How could you fight like this? You are coming to church regularly and you are doing such a thing now! Are you not ashamed of what you did? Is this what you learned from coming to church so often?”. I felt a little ashamed of what I did and I really reconciled with my opponent when the teacher told us to shake hands as a sign of reconciliation.
In the Bible, after Adam and Eve committed the sin, God asked Adam where he was and Adam said that he was in hiding because he was naked. This hiding took place because of the shamefulness of Adam and Eve. That shamefulness occurred because they betrayed God and were disloyal to Him and His love. We all need that sense of shame.
When I say sense of shame, it is a feeling that keeps us from doing something wrong or something not right or necessary. It is that feeling of shame that keeps us from doing what is wrong, bad, or degrading in any way. It is that sense of shame that makes us realize that we have done something we ourselves can not accept as good or upright. It is that sense of shame that would keep us from going astray the righteous path. Lack of this sense of shame would lead us astray and make us do all sorts of unrighteous things.
What we see in our present-day society is the lack of this sense of shame. People are not ashamed of doing anything. Because they do everything in the name of modernism or individual freedom or any other thing like this. This may be due to many reasons. The consumeristic culture of the society is so compelling that one can do anything to get something. Or, the formation of the conscience has become so irrelevant or the conscience is wrongly formed. Or, the understanding of some vital concepts like freedom is utterly mistaken or misunderstood. What ever might be the reason, we have no reason to blame others and keep our eyes closed. We should inculcate the sense of shame in us and in our children so as to make them feel bad about any wrong thing that we or they may do. For that we need deeper and righteous formation of the conscience of us and others too.
Yours sincerely in Christ Jesus,
Fr. A. Antony
 

Dear friends,
Hope the Spirit of Christmas celebration is coming to an end for this year. Also, I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas and a very happy new year. As I already have mentioned, once again I would like to thank all of you for what you have been for and in the church. I was glad to see more people on the first of January, the mass of the Holy Day of obligation. It is really encouraging and good for you all.
Personally, I would like to thank all of you who show much care and concern. Many of you had sent cards which exposed your affection towards me. I cordially appreciate that. Kindly keep me in your thoughts when you pray.
I was watching a commercial on a cleaning product. A little girl slips and falls down on a muddy surface. She gets dirty with the mud all over her dress and starts crying. A little boy, presumably her classmate, sees that the girl is crying and becomes mad at the muddy surface. Then he takes revenge on the muddy surface by kicking it and because he kicked the muddy ground, he also gets dirty. Then the parent of the boy says, “The dirt is good” and the commercial ends. The dirt is good, because they are able to sell the product.
When I was watching this, I was reminded of the lines of the Paschal Exultet, that goes like this:
O truly necessary sin of Adam,
destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
O happy fault
that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!
These lines indicate that the sin of Adam was necessary to bring Jesus to the earth, and the sin was a happy one (blessed one) because it required a glorious Redeemer. It is interesting to note this. The sin has become necessary and happy(blessed).
To remove the dirt, the sin of Adam, there needed to be someone to become one with the dirt. Without touching the dirt, you can not properly clean the dirt/dust. That is why Jesus had to become one with the dirt, the human race. That is the Christmas at which Jesus became man to redeem man from his sin. This is what we need to celebrate, the mingling of the Divinity with the humanity. This mingling was not just mingling but it is mutual intertwining where our humanity is shared by Christ and His divinity is shared by us. That is the great reason for the celebration of the Christmas.
Have a blessed Christmastide.
Sincerely yours in the Child Jesus,
 
Fr. A. Antony