Blog Archives

"What will separate us from the love of Christ?"

8/26/2018

Dear friends,
Hope you are all doing well.
You might have heard about the flood in Kerala, South India. That is my neighboring state. Due to incessant rain for few days, the whole state sank into the water. Hundreds and thousands of people lost their homes and their properties. At least according to the press report, 360 peo-ple have died because of the flood. They need tremendous help at this time. Help from everywhere in India and even from outside India, they have been receiving a lot. I would request you to pray for them. Now that the rain has stopped, the flood is subsiding and the people are trying to recover to the normal life slowly. Let us keep them in our prayers.
Another burning issue in the country is the sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in the United States and even outside the States. The problem in our country is bigger to us because we locally feel the pain of it. I am not trying to go into the details of it, because as persons called by God, it is up to Him to condemn the Called, and as civil citizen, it is up to the legal system to deal with the person. But there is something that I can tell you, to keep praying for the people of God in the first place, and more primarily for the victims who were preyed up on by the shep-herds themselves. The pain we cannot understand but we can be sure it is beyond measure. So, it is our duty to pray for them.
One thing for sure is that the devil is an untiring hard worker. Even from the beginning of the world he has been trying all his best to ruin the creation of God. He is wise and cunning. He knows how to attack and tackle the people of God. We need to be extremely cautious about him. As St. Peter says, "Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for [someone] to devour". (1 Pet: 5:8b) He is like a roaring lion which means the lion is hungry (Psalm 104:21). The roaring lion metaphorically understood as the hungry devil, is really ferocious and anxious for the prey. The hunger of the devil is like the fire of hell which could never be quenched. That is why the devil needs to keep working with all his energy both of mind and his intellect. That is why the trouble is always creeping in the Church all the time in various ways. Better we beware!
Another thing I want to tell you is that, every Christian or Catholic is Christian not because of any human person, the fellow Christian, the priests, the Bishops, the Cardinals or even the Pope himself. Our being Christian is primarily because of our faith in the Lord Jesus and because of our relationship with Him, not because of any human person. These human persons, fellow Christians to the Pope are our companions in our Faith in the Lord. These priests, Bishops, Cardinals and Pope are people more primarily human beings called in a special way by God to help the people of God to travel in a better way towards God. So, our prime motive should be only our faith in Christ and our affiliation to His Church. Nothing should separate us from Christ and His love. As St. Paul says "What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will an-guish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written: "For your sake we are being slain all the day; we are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans: 8:35-39) So, whatever might happen should not be a reason to separate us from Christ and His Church. At the end we will rise up victoriously.

I am not at all trying to justify any act of any cleric of the Church. But all I am saying is, that should not be a reason for any one of us to go astray from God and His Church. We also need to tell this to others that they need not consider this crisis to be a reason for going astray. Because Jesus Christ is our Lord and God, not these clerics, with all due respect to their vocation to be the men of God who called them not because they are qualified but are just men from among men.

Life has meaning only when we get through all these kinds of tough moments without which life can not be complete. The crisis we face now within and out of the Church may be a time planned by God to make Her more committed to Him and to make Her stronger in Her faith and serving Him more ardently. Let us take these moments of pain, shame and disappointment as a time of ordeal as that of Christ whose suffering ended up victoriously, also ours would end up gloriously. Because as Jesus says, "I have told you this so that you might have peace in me. In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world". (Jn: 16:33). "Amen. Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanks-giving, honor, power, and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen". (Rev: 7:12)

Waiting for that eternal glory,
Yours in Christ,
Fr. A. Antony

Virtual World and Reality

8/19/2018

Dear friends,
Hope your days are going well and you enjoy the warm weather.
I would like to appreciate you all to have taken part in the Mass of the Assumption of Our Blessed Mother Mary this past Tuesday and Wednesday. This just shows that faith here is still alive. Praise the Lord!
The Pope on the fourteenth of May this year had an encounter with the Cardinals, Bishops, religious and the laity of the Diocese of Rome. This encounter was a session of questions and answers. This took place in the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. To one of the questions about the youth, the Pope said that he was worried that the young people are enmeshed in the Virtual World. This he said after having an experience with a youth group which he went to visit. The group with all eagerness welcomed him and tried to reach out to him. And the pope tried to stretch his hands to reach out to them. But to his surprise and shock all the young people were holding mobile phones in their hands trying to take pictures and selfies. Pope Francis says that he understood that their world is virtual and they have to land on reality. Their priority is not human contact, but a virtual reality.
I happened to see a small video clip on Facebook. There were three generations of people and they were asked what was their fun time or what did they do to have fun. The older generation people said all about their interesting time with their loved ones and being out in the natural world where they had contact with people and nature. The younger generation people, who were kids of 5-13 years old said that their fun time activity was to spend time with video games and social media. One boy said that he spent at least five hours a day on such stuff. He never seemed to care about relating with people and the reality to him was only the electronic gadgets.
These incidents show that what the Pope said is true. The world is becoming a world of gadgets keeping people away from each other. The Pope says that the people, especially young ones, should be taught to land on the real world without neglecting the technology which we need. According to him the best means to land is the works of mercy. These works of mercy would help a lot to make the young people land on reality and would also help them to understand the world and develop contact with the people.
It is really alarming to see young people and kids always having mobile phones and other such electronic gadgets with them and always meddling with them. They become so addicted to them that a separation from them hurts them a lot. That is a very dangerous sign for the future of society where they may not even know how to communicate with each other. Without this basic communication, the society would not be a society of people but a bunch of non-communicable people governed by electronic gadgets. In such a situation the society would be virtually dead.
We should try to govern the electronic things and not let ourselves be governed by them. We should not introduce that stuff to the kids at a young age and should teach them that those things are there to help us and not to get ourselves enslaved to them. This may be hard but if we want our kids to enjoy a live society, we need to do this. I am not an enemy of these scientific inventions of these kinds. But these innovative elements should smoothen our life, without make our lives lifeless and passive. That is my point.
Have a blessed time and God bless.
Yours sincerely in Christ Jesus,
Fr. A. Antony

Human Values and the Surprise of Honesty

8/12/2018

Dear friends,
A pleasant day to you all. Hope you are doing well and my prayers for a better time to you all. I am really happy to see the Rectory project being completed. I would like to thank Bucky Ledden and his sons for doing a great job at that. Thank you, Bucky and Co! This 15th we are celebrating the Solemn feast of the Assumption of Our Lady. My best wishes to all of you; kindly attend the Mass to fulfill your obligation of the Holyday.
I have seen a lot of instances in the media where they give news appreciating some good deeds some people did/are doing. For example, recently I happened to read an incident in the newspaper that a poor man found a bag on the road and that bag had a considerably big amount of money in it. That man did not keep the money for himself but he went and gave it to the cops who in turn returned the money to the owner. When the poor man was offered some money in appreciation towards his honest act, he seemed to have refused it. When he was insisted upon to receive an honor, he accepted to have a cup of tea. Interestingly this was in the newspaper.
I have no second opinion about recognizing an honest person, but what is the big deal that should be created about being honest, which is a common human value? Why should that have been given so much attention to the extent of publishing it in a newspaper? The reason is very simple. These values are becoming very rare to find among people so much that when you find someone with the values of this sort, it is so exciting and surprising. This excitement and surprise is to the extent of making an ordi-nary person with common human values a great hero. Yes! This is very unfortunate that normal human values have become rare phenomena.
There is a concept called post-modernism. This is a vast concept which I am not going to delve into. But the dictionary meaning of this is that it is a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspi-cion of reason. This is according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. The idea of post-modernism has led people to a great diversion from the path of the common good. The values of humanity are put into question and these values are put under mistrust. To make things worse, the contra values of the longstanding good values are proven by illog-ical reasons and theories. This is the most unfortunate state of affairs in the present-day society. If this keeps going on, there will be a total reversal of values and that will not re-sult in a good end.

People have come to a state of mind that everything can be made right by irra-tional means or just by being louder, which is not a good sign for a better society. The things that are going on around the world do not seem to have any possibility of reaching at a good future. I try to envision a society where common values of humanity should be normal. This could be possible only when there is an ambience for values to exist without excitement. We as Christians have a much direr responsibility in creating a good, even if not a better, society. Because we have a role model, the real God made man, Jesus. It is because by believing Him and following Him, we know the real values as put in His own words.
May God bless you. Sincerely yours in Christ Jesus, Fr. A. Antony

August 01st, 2018

8/1/2018

Dear friends,

Hope you are well. The week seems to have been good. Let us hope and pray, we may have a good weekend ahead.

I came across a small story, which goes like this. An anthropologist left some candies in a basket and told the kids there that whoever reaches the basket first could have all the candies. But surprisingly all the kids held their hands together and ran to the basket and took the candies and shared among themselves and all enjoyed the candies. When they were asked why they did not try to come each by himself or herself to avail the candies, they said, UBUNTU, which meant, “I am (what I am) because (of what) we are”. This is amazing. This is from the African culture.

When I wanted to look up for that word on the internet to know what it really meant, there was another aspect for that word and that is, this ‘ubuntu’ is a computer operating system, an open source Debian-based Linux distribution. Interestingly the meaning of this word is based on the concept of sharing and that system being for free. This concept of ubuntu is an interesting one as we understand meaning, which is “I am because we are”.

How true is that each one of us exist as long as others exist. Our existence is not our own or it is not determined by ourselves. Our existence is determined by others and in another sense, it is meant for others. This feature of our life makes it more meaningful and interesting. If we keep our life to ourselves, it becomes not only meaningless, but also it is also monotonous and boring. Because only when other people involve in any activity, that activity becomes very creative and innovative which in turn makes it more and more enjoyable.

Added to that only when others are able to intervene in our lives with good intention and acts, our life becomes enriched. Because we all are dependent on other people to some extent. That is why Socrates was right in saying, “Man is a social being (animal)”. For one to be social, one needs a society, which is the other human beings around us. They make our life complete and they make our life meaningful.

This concept of ubuntu also to an extent involves an aspect of sacrifice. I would like to reciprocate the meaning of it by making it, “we are what we are because of what I am”. I don’t mean to be arrogant or selfish, but I want to offer myself up for you and others to make a better “WE”. Because as an “I” is not possible without a “WE”, so also a “WE” is not possible without an “I”. This “I” sacrifices itself to make the “WE” possible and the otherwise also. In that process, this “I” factor may seem to suffer a loss, but that is not so. If properly understood, it is in giving that we receive (St. Francis of Assisi). This is what we need to understand, because this is basically the spirit of Christianity.

Let’s contribute to the others that we may become full. I am what I am because of what we are.

God bless.

Yours sincerely in Christ Jesus,

Fr. A. Antony