Dear friends,
Hope you all are well. It is great that we have survived the winter storm this past week. I really enjoyed it looking from inside and I did not go out anywhere for anything, a wise decision I believe. As I was sitting inside the rectory, I saw only few vehicles passing on the road mostly the snow blowers. I felt as if I was in the middle of the sea because the snow was so high around me. Hope we don’t get anymore snow.
I was watching the news one day. There was a social media information on the news. It was about a cellphone case. That particular case was designed in such a way that there were a spoon and a fork attached to the case on the back side of the case. So, when people are looking at the social media on the phone or they are on a video call, they can do it simultaneously as they are eating or having a bowl of soup. That was somewhat interesting and the idea was innovating. But as I was watching that piece of information, I thought why don’t these people spare sometime to eat keeping the cellphone away for some time?
What are these people are giving priority for? Which is important? Is it eating or is it looking at the social media? It is of course eating. Eating is not just the act of filling the tummy and satiating the hunger. But it is an act of nourishing the body and making it healthy. It is a process of making a sound body for a sound mind. If looking at the social media takes priority over it, that is the beginning of malnutrition. And this malnutrition leads to a lot of physical ailments. I am not going to lecture about the importance of eating, but express my concerns about the order of priority the people have.
In past days the human person was the topmost priority. Everything came after the wellbeing of the human person. Now that is not so. Comfort comes before sacrifice for the love of others, pleasure comes before discipline, business comes before human life, animals and pets come before children (born and unborn), whatever is of value, whatever is objectively good, whatever benefits humanity is given a low or second to all priority. Selfishness and self-comfort and pleasure has become the norm of life, which is not good. Because of this norm of life, everything has become topsy-turvy.
We, the human persons are born to live. In this process of living, we are dependent on each other. This dependency needs a lot of mutual support and eventually that supporting others needs a considerable amount of sacrifice. This sacrificing is a mutual one, that is we need to sacrifice for others and others will sacrifice for others. But because of the change in the priorities of life, we want others to make sacrifices for us but we are not prepared to sacrifice for others. And much worse, we make others sacrifice for us, which is not sacrifice but it is our violence. This violence goes to the extent of even killing others sometimes. We really need to fear that one day killing others would become an ‘okay thing’. That is a sincere fear.
Christians as we are, who have been saved by the Sacrifice, are morally bound to make sacrifice for others. This could only happen when our priority is the human person. Let us consider that. God bless.
Yours sincerely in Christ Jesus,
Fr. Antony Arokiyam.
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