Dear friends,
Hope your week went well and pray that the coming week be a good one.
Relaxation and a time for our own selves is something important. I am not advocating for my annual vacation. But look at the present situation and present generation.
It seems once a man was watching television when he got a phone call. He grabbed the phone and answered the phone. But he could not hear anything from the other end. Assuming that the mobile did not get sufficient signal, he went upstairs little by little, trying to obtain proper signal for the mobile. But it was of no use. While he was wondering why the mobile did not get enough signal unusually, his son from down in the living room yelled, “Dad bring the remote here. Your mobile is here”.
A man who was living in the 50th floor in a mansion got a phone call, “Bill, your son died in an accident. Please come to the Hospital”. The man in an anxiety and sorrow jumped down from the 50th floor. As he was falling down, he realized when he was reaching the 40th floor and thought, Oh! I don’t have a son”. As he approached the 30th floor he realized and said to himself, ‘I am not yet even married”. As he reached the 20th floor, “Oh Goodness, my name is not Bill at all”. Before he could realize this all and come to his senses, he fell on the ground and died.
These two incidents may seem funny. But they have a lot to tell us. These stories tell us in what kind of state we live. We live in a world of tension most of which we create ourselves and suffer from them. We think we are living in a world of race. And we want to win the race. Life is not a race. It is an experience which we need to enjoy. Because we engage ourselves in that imaginary race, we don’t take time to enjoy the life as it should be enjoyed. When I say enjoy the life I do not necessarily mean the mere worldly enjoyment of pleasure but also, the spiritual aspect and psychological aspect of it.
All we try to do is to earn money and spend them all for a short-lived pleasure and save some money for the so called ‘future’. I am not against all these, but are we enjoying the happiness that would long for more span of time. For example, the help we render to someone will be a happier thing than having a sumptuous meal at a star level restaurant. Or, a prayer that we make for other person’s need would give us more satisfaction than the prayer that we say for ourselves. Or, the withdrawal from an argument for the sake of not hurting others would bring more self-esteem than to proceed with the argument and prove someone wrong and at the end lose or break the relationship with that person.
If we consider this world a race track, we will not have time to enjoy these little, little moments of joy of life. Though these are little as we peripherally look at them, they are the joy of the soul, not the matter. The joy of soul is the joy that remains longer than the joy of matter (physique). We are not a constitution of matter alone but our personality has a deeper and stronger constituent which is called Soul. This soul has to be nurtured with all the virtues, not with mundane matters. To enrich our soul, we need time, a time of solitude, a time of internal silence, a time of serenity, a time of relaxation, a time of prayer, a time of self-introspection, a time of reflection, a time with the family, a time for our own self. Only if we spare such a time we can realize the worth and the meaning of life and we can enjoy it to the full.
Do we see why Jesus went most of the nights in loneliness? (Lk:5:16, Mk:1:35, Mt:14:23,) May be this is the reason.
God bless.
Fr. A. Antony
Hope your week went well and pray that the coming week be a good one.
Relaxation and a time for our own selves is something important. I am not advocating for my annual vacation. But look at the present situation and present generation.
It seems once a man was watching television when he got a phone call. He grabbed the phone and answered the phone. But he could not hear anything from the other end. Assuming that the mobile did not get sufficient signal, he went upstairs little by little, trying to obtain proper signal for the mobile. But it was of no use. While he was wondering why the mobile did not get enough signal unusually, his son from down in the living room yelled, “Dad bring the remote here. Your mobile is here”.
A man who was living in the 50th floor in a mansion got a phone call, “Bill, your son died in an accident. Please come to the Hospital”. The man in an anxiety and sorrow jumped down from the 50th floor. As he was falling down, he realized when he was reaching the 40th floor and thought, Oh! I don’t have a son”. As he approached the 30th floor he realized and said to himself, ‘I am not yet even married”. As he reached the 20th floor, “Oh Goodness, my name is not Bill at all”. Before he could realize this all and come to his senses, he fell on the ground and died.
These two incidents may seem funny. But they have a lot to tell us. These stories tell us in what kind of state we live. We live in a world of tension most of which we create ourselves and suffer from them. We think we are living in a world of race. And we want to win the race. Life is not a race. It is an experience which we need to enjoy. Because we engage ourselves in that imaginary race, we don’t take time to enjoy the life as it should be enjoyed. When I say enjoy the life I do not necessarily mean the mere worldly enjoyment of pleasure but also, the spiritual aspect and psychological aspect of it.
All we try to do is to earn money and spend them all for a short-lived pleasure and save some money for the so called ‘future’. I am not against all these, but are we enjoying the happiness that would long for more span of time. For example, the help we render to someone will be a happier thing than having a sumptuous meal at a star level restaurant. Or, a prayer that we make for other person’s need would give us more satisfaction than the prayer that we say for ourselves. Or, the withdrawal from an argument for the sake of not hurting others would bring more self-esteem than to proceed with the argument and prove someone wrong and at the end lose or break the relationship with that person.
If we consider this world a race track, we will not have time to enjoy these little, little moments of joy of life. Though these are little as we peripherally look at them, they are the joy of the soul, not the matter. The joy of soul is the joy that remains longer than the joy of matter (physique). We are not a constitution of matter alone but our personality has a deeper and stronger constituent which is called Soul. This soul has to be nurtured with all the virtues, not with mundane matters. To enrich our soul, we need time, a time of solitude, a time of internal silence, a time of serenity, a time of relaxation, a time of prayer, a time of self-introspection, a time of reflection, a time with the family, a time for our own self. Only if we spare such a time we can realize the worth and the meaning of life and we can enjoy it to the full.
Do we see why Jesus went most of the nights in loneliness? (Lk:5:16, Mk:1:35, Mt:14:23,) May be this is the reason.
God bless.
Fr. A. Antony
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