Dear friends,
 Hope you are all well. By the time you read this I will be at home. Thank you very much for your prayers and kindly keep praying for me. Hope we don’t have any snow till I come back!
 I was reminded of something that happened when I was in the third grade. I was having my lunch with some of my friends. I saw a small, cute baby squirrel that was all alone running hither and thither. No wonder I was fascinated by that baby squirrel. So, I caught it and slid it in my pocket. I wanted to take it home and grow it. After catching the squirrel, my first and the last pet, I went to the class.
 As you may not know I was very mischievous when I was a little boy. Eventually, my teacher in the class for that particular hour caught me for some mischief in the class. The teacher was a nun. Now you would know what would have happened. Yes! She started to whack me with a stick she had. She was beating me on my thighs where the pocket was and the baby squirrel in. I was anxious that the squirrel should not be beaten. So, I held my hand against the pocket in order to protect the squirrel. All the beatings fell on my hand, palm and some just right on the joints. It was really painful. Despite the pain, I did not move my hand away for the fear that the squirrel would be getting the beatings and it may die.
 The teacher nun finally stopped beating me and I was relaxed. After the class I ran out to check if the squirrel was alive. Thank God! It was alive. I went home and after few days I realized that I can not rear the squirrel and so I let it go free.
 After a very long time when I was thinking about this incident I really could not help thinking about how God protects us all. For that small little squirrel, I was able to bear all the spankings to protect it. The pain and the agony were intolerable. But I could bear it all for the sake of the squirrel I found accidently. If I as a little boy can bear so much pain for that stray and estranged baby squirrel, how much more God would care for the people He himself created. His love, we can not measure. We can only understand that, if only we could be in His place.
 Even in our lives, we are ready to make any amount of sacrifice or lose anything, or bear any amount of pain or shame for something or someone we love. If that can be so, why don’t we hesitate to believe that God would love us more than we do? It is our faithlessness. We need to realize that the love and providence of God is more enormous than we could ever imagine. Let us try to understand and believe that.
 God bless.
Yours sincerely,
 
Fr. A. Antony
 

Dear friends,
 
Hope you are all doing well. The weather has been so fluctuating not only in the atmosphere, also in the world. Here had been natural calamities, political upheavals, religious tensions within and without. But in spite of all these our trust and perseverance had been walking us through all these.
 
This past Monday and Tuesday I had been to La Crosse for the Fall Clergy Conference. In that meeting, we were discussing the pastoral response to pornography. The speaker came out with a lot of alarming statistics about pornography and the evils of it. This pornography leads one into a lot of personal, social, psychological and behavioral defects. The prevalence of this porn addiction is more enormous than one can imagine.  The age group of people from 11-13 is according to the speaker more vulnerable. There is a bigger need to deal with this evil of pornography.
 
The parents need to keep an eye over the kids as to how they use their electronic gadgets which are readily accessible to them. It is the easiest entryway for porn to enter into a house/home. The parents should see how the kids delete the history in the web activity in the smart devices. Many young adults and young people clear their history so that they are not caught by their parents, teachers or other mentors. So, the parents must watch over their children’s web activity every now and then.
 
Another thing is that the parents should talk to the children about this in a reasonable way to persuade them to not engage in such bad habits whose results are too bad. They say that there are too very small number of parents, especially women who engage into such healthy talk with their children. That is another reason why children go unguided because they are unattended and unnoticed. The parents need to engage wisely themselves in monitoring and mentoring the children.
 
Another discussion in our meeting was about the scandalous situation that we face in the nation within our church. In this regard the Bishop has a letter written to all the faithful of the Diocese. That had been inserted in the Bulletin this week. KINDLY TAKE TIME TO READ IT. It is very important. That is not a very comprehensive and exhaustive letter, but you would understand the mind and feeling of the Bishop. He has expressed his sentiments of despair and hope. So, I would urge you to read that. We need to empathize with the victims of these acts and predators and also take some practical measure in this regard. We will try to execute the recommendations in the church from this week, and to pray the prayers the bishop has recommended.
 
May God keep us in His love and care amid the unusual circumstances which the church is in right now. Let us not be carried away by all these.
God Bless.
 
Yours sincerely in Christ Jesus,
 
Fr. A. Antony.
 

Dear friends,
Hope you are doing well. The mother nature has been more than good in having given  weather with some pleasant and rainy days this past week. It looked as if we were already in winter. I can imagine you are getting ready for that too in a few days which will be here before you know it.
This month of October is the month of ‘Respect for Life’. This is a month when we need to think about respecting the life of human beings. This is in a special reference to unborn children. This would also include the lives of the born and grown-ups. The very basic need for this month of Respect for Life came about because, we as a nation or community of human beings have lost the sense of the value of life, both born and unborn. The grown-up people at least have some power and little strength to fight for their right to life. The unborn ones have no power nor strength to fight for their right to life. That is why the born people have the responsibility to fight for those unborn innocents.
First of all, the act of abortion is a nasty thing. Not even animals kill their babies for any reason. They would never do it, though we consider them little lower than human beings saying that they have no reasoning capacity. We the human being who claim to have reasoning power and the sixth sense, have become a far less rational people than animals in this regard, that is in killing the unborn babies. There is no any valid reasoning for killing or taking away the life of any unborn baby. This is for two reasons: one is we are not the author of that life and so we have no right over any life. The second is as a normal norm, if you need to fight against anybody, that ‘anybody’ should be your equal. And if you fight against anybody weaker than you it is being coward. We are cowardly most of the times.
It is really exasperating at times, when we are not ready to love and respect the unborn babies, while we spend a lot money, energy and time to love and take care of the pets that we have (I am not against pets though).  Are these pets more valuable than the unborn babies, who might end up being the future architects of the society that would make the society a better one? No. Not at all. Because it is only the human being, the only creature on the earth that was created in the image and the likeness of God. So, we have all the more responsibility to take care of the lives of the unborn innocents. We do not realize the gravity of that responsibility of taking better care of the unborn.
Another thing is that if I advocate killing those babies, logically and rationally, I do not deserve a life myself. Because I do not know the value of life. And if I do not count the life of another human being, I should not expect my life be valued any better than the lives of those unborn. This is the just way to deal with it. Use the same rod for you that you use to measure others. If the life of another person is not worth celebrating, neither your life is any better. So, justly looking at the issue, if I deserve to own and live my life, I am bound to accept the fact that the other person, especially the unborn babies too have the right to own and live the life given to them. After all these, it comes to how I value my life.  If I respect and celebrate my life, it is deserving and worthy only as long as I respect and celebrate the life of others too, especially the unborn babies.
Let us keep the unborn babies in our prayers. Because our God is the God of the living and not of the dead. (Luke: 20:38)
God bless you all with healthy and longer life.
Sincerely yours in Christ Jesus, Fr. A. Antony