SPRINGBOARDS and WALKING STICKS

 Life is flat like a field on which the farmer was digging in Matthew 13: 44-46. But the idea is that if you dig deep enough you will find treasures in your life, however flat your life may be, as the farmer found treasure in his flat field. In life, revival is possible. The first question of Jesus, ‘who do people say that I am’ was just a process of information gathering. The second question, ‘who do you say that I am’ demanded an answer from the disciples (Matthew 16:13-20). An unquestioned life goes nowhere. The disciples went into a moment of silence. They had to dig deep. However flat the life of peter was, when he dug deep enough, he could see, hear the revelation of the Father, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Having heard the answer of Peter, Jesus gives Peter, the other disciples, and all of us, four blessings: on you (Peter) the rock I will build my church, never will the power of death over come the church, I will give you the keys of the heaven; whatever yo

 Living according to the Gospel also makes us pay a price (Luke 9: 57-62). Jesus was magnetic; many got attracted to him spontaneously. Nobody gives his or her life for a cause that is dead. They all wanted to follow Jesus, but could not sustain because of three reasons.  Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head. You are condemned to be in perennial disturbance. You will be homeless. You almost are not supposed to be happy, meaning enjoying the pleasures of life. Being joyful is a gospel value. There is a difference between happiness and joy ( santhosham vs anandam ). Jesus had a home; being there Jesus remained homeless. Pastoral care is our anxiety over the people. ‘Jesus found them like sheep without a shepherd.’ He had compassion for them.’  I will bury my father and come back. It is often read as ‘let me fulfill my domestic responsibilities,’ but the passage does not indicate that his father or mother is dead. Jesus

 Jesus instructs his disciples into discipleship. After speaking to them about what a disciple must not take while going for ministry (Matthew 10: 1-15), Jesus also tells them what to carry with them (Matthew 10: 16-18).  Be innocent like a dove: have personal integrity as an asset, and wear it as your shield and refuge. That is the sole capital for the distant journey. Jesus has not asked us to carry a lot of things, but only one -personal integrity; therefore we have no option to compromise on it.  Be shrewd like the serpents: Everything out there is capable of stealing your innocence, you are like a sheep amidst wolves; to maintain your innocence you must be prudent like a serpent. Serpents don’t sleep, they only slumber. Be alert like a serpent. Vivekananda began his famous Chicago address by saying, ‘Be awakened’.  Serpents do not attack people, but avoid them. As they get an alarm they withdraw. Do not run into conflicts and arguments. Even if they are attacked they try to save

  Matthew 6: 25-34 is a classic passage on the providence of God. This text gets better and better as it goes. There is poetry and mysticism in it. Once a man was traveling in a train and there was a Buddhist monk in the same cabin. This man as he was readying the gospels read out this passage loudly, the monk heard it and said, ‘It must have been written by a Buddha.’ Only an enlightened, detached man can write this. Thomas Merton prophesied that the third-millennium spirituality would be a combination of Buddha and Christ.  Life: we have life. Compared to so many inanimate things, and living things we have a life that is so evolved. “ For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes” (Luke 12:23) . In the Italian neorealism film, Bicycle Thieves, the father, stuck by abject poverty tells his son, ‘that there is a solution for everything, except death.’ In other words, keep finding solutions for life, until death. Life is precious.  Something is considered precious when it d

 Corinthians 13: 1-13 is an ancient hymn of love. Love is a verb; and it is a serious responsibility. Think of St John the Evangelist. He was one of the most hostile, intolerant men among the apostles; he wanted to bring down fire to burn down an entire village because they refused to accept Jesus. But later he became the most loved one. Things changed at a Eucharistic table: John was leaning on the bosom of the Lord. The feminine word bosom is used instead of chest to highlight the feminine qualities of the Lord. Here head surrenders to the heart, the masculine surrenders to the feminine. Rigid calculations, logic, and reason of John surrender to poetry and aesthetics of the Lord. We must lean on to the bosom of the Lord and listen. John having listened to the heart of Jesus remains with Jesus till the very end, even through the time of crucifixion. The relationship between Jesus and John became so very beautiful that it was to him Jesus entrusted his mother.  Tradition has it that up

 For St. Francis, the gospel was everything, and the only thing to follow. Young Francis was inspired and caught up with the gospel. He was drawn to it; but at the same time confused. Once after hearing the gospel in a church, he went to the sacristy and asked the old priest, ‘Is the gospel an ideal form of living or is it a mandate for living?’ The priest caught between the gap between his life and the gospel. But later with honesty and courage the priest said, the gospel is a mandate for living. If it is an ideal form of living, a lot of compromise will take place. If it is a mandate for living there is no escape. Matthew 10: 6-16 gives us a mandate as to how to go around the world preaching. These are the guidelines for discipleship. Here the lifestyle of the disciples is defined. He sent them two by two. In Jewish tradition, if something has to be established as true, another has to second what you are saying; so it was sensible to send them two by two. Further, we need brothers a

 St. Francis of Assisi wanted a gospel way of living in its simplicity and naivety. The Church has no future without St. Francis (St. Francis stands as a synonym for the Gospel). Centuries ago, St. Francis went to Rome to meet the Pope. Pope Honorius III was known for his audacity. Francis asks permission to live the gospel with its simplicity, naivety, and rawness. Pope Honorius had moments of self-reflection; he had tears in his eyes.  Centuries later, the present pope took the name, ‘Francis’. There had been almost half a dozen Franciscan popes in history, no one dared to take this name; they could not take upon themselves the obligation of being called ‘Francis’. Today one of the most loved persons across the globe is Pope Francis. This name has become relevant again. It is the right time for us Franciscans to be alive again. We must contribute to this upsurge. We have the gospels. Each gospel is how each gospel writer saw the gospel; it is according to them. We must also write a g

 The central question of the Book of Job is, ‘has anyone loved god for no reason?’ This is a conversation between god and the devil. As the devil was returning back from the earth, god casually asked the devil, did you meet my servant Job, the most righteous man? The devil replied, oh yeah, he is doing well with you, because you have given him everything. And the devil asks god, ‘Has anyone loved you for no reason?’ That is where the testing begins; God strips Job of everything. Francis of Assisi perhaps was someone who loved god for no reason; he had no strings attached to his love for God. For example, he composed the Candice of the sun, when he was in excruciating eye pain and sickness. Biographers say that for him even looking at the sun was like glass pieces being crushed in his eyes. It was not a time when he would have loved the sun that he wrote the canticle in praise of the sun.  Notes taken during my annual retreat, preached by Bobby Jose Kattikad, Capuchin.

 Jesus touched life with gratitude. Examine the bread-passages of Jesus in the Gospels. He has not picked up a loaf without gratitude. After the resurrection, when Jesus walked with the disciples they first did not recognise him, they were doubtful, but at the breaking of the bread as it was customary with Jesus he took bread and gave thanks, and the disciples unambiguously knew that it was Jesus.   We as religious have much to be grateful for. You are a fig tree planted in a vineyard. Fig trees do not need much care, but vineyards need a lot of care and attention.  The fig tree in the parable of Jesus was planted in a vineyard. We are planted in two vineyards. The first vineyard is our home. Though we have contributed the least to the home, we are given the most importance, we are spoken of first, and our availability and convenience are taken into account first. The second vineyard is fraternity; in our fraternity, we have a physical room, and spiritual and philosophical space. There

 Sin in a Hebrew sense is missing the target. The nomadic people used to move with their livestock from one waterhole to another. As they moved there were markings on the way left by the earlier travellers. Some used to miss the mark and reach the wrong places. Thus they understood sin too as missing the mark/target. Someone can give wrong markings to others coming after them; which Jesus commented on as a serious sin, ‘it is better for such a person to tie a millstone around the neck and jump into a well.’ Sin is not an individual act but an attitude toward life. Sinfulness is not counted as individual acts but as metadata. We must have a drone view, an aerial view of life and see whether we have been a constructive person. What am I using the gifts given by God for? We have many gifts, eyes to see, hands to work, mouths to talk, legs to move around, intelligence to think, our body, friends, money, technology, everything is god’s gift, do we use them for constructive purposes, or misu

 Pain Management was a concern of most enlightened people. Buddha told his disciples to detach from pain. Some others taught of having a parallel world of music and dance, thus forgetting the pain. In truth, we need to face the pain. Veda and vedana both have the same root, vid . Vedana itself is a healing process. When we celebrate the 800th year of the Stigmata of Francis we must meditate on our pain. For Jesus undergoing pain was a new baptism, a baptism by fire. Jesus told Nicodemus, ‘like Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert’ for those afflicted by snakes to look up, meditate, and get healed’, you need a cross to look up and meditate on. Lift the pain that you have, look at it, meditate on it, and slowly you cope with the pain.  Pastoral accompaniments help others to confront pain. Mary stood at the foot of the cross, as Jesus was in deep pain. When the historic Titanic was sinking, the musicians on board kept playing music, they did not run away first. In the parable of Je

 Church is the inn to which the wounded man was taken to be cared for. The parable of the Good Samaritan gives a metaphor for ministries in the Church. Good Samaritan is the most known parable of Jesus. The Kerala government has a scheme to encourage people to take accident victims to the hospital before it is too late. The government has announced that anyone who helps an accident victim to the hospital will receive a compensation of Rs. 5000, and the Marxist government in Kerala called it the Good Samaritan scheme.  The good Samaritan is Jesus himself. Jews used to travel stretching around the Samaritan territory, because of the hatred they had with them. We stretch and make our lives complicated because of hatred. Jesus used to travel freely in those regions.  Good Samaritan takes the wounded man to an inn and entrusts him to that innkeeper to take care of him. Good Samaritan gives what is needed for the time, and tells them he will pay back whatever more is spent on him when he com

 As we have a physical topography to travel on the earth; there is also a spiritual topography for our inner journey. These spiritual topographies are created by varied people in the spiritual history; and they all had at some point of their life felt being an ‘orphan’.  Moses was thrown into the water; he was the great law-giver to Israel. The parallel in India almost at the same time is Bhagavadgeeta, the great philosophical work. Krishna never had his parents, they were in jail. He was born in jail. Buddha was a motherless child; she gave birth and vanished from the palace, and her sister took care of him. Jesus was in the most difficult situation of being an orphan. He had no one to show as his father. His foster father doubted. He was often called ‘son of Mary’, it wasn’t an honour given to Mary, rather it in English translates to a bad expression. Muhammad Nabi’s father died at his birth, and his mother died when he was four or five. They all sought their father in the universe.

 Keywords that one speaks and lives define the person. Bobby Jose’s father’s keyword was, saramille, pootte, meaning let it be, and it is okay. Mother Teresa had the word ‘I Thirst’ inscribed in every chapel. As we arrive at 40 years of age etc. we must also arrive at our keywords. If this has not happened spontaneously and organically, one must set one’s keywords and gradually converge into it.  What were the keywords of Jesus that would define and portray him? Being on the cross was the most intense time of his life, there from the cross he repeated or summarised his life and teachings once again in seven famous sayings of Jesus from the cross.  You are not lost; you are forgiven.  “ Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do .” The very gist of Jesus’ teaching is, God forgives, and you are not a lost being, you can stand again. He being on the cross was the greatest tangible sign of his forgiveness. We must have tangible signs of forgiveness. We must not limit our reconcil

 Every person is a guesthouse and a host; there ought to be room for others. Monasteries are to be guesthouses that welcome everyone. The biggest guesthouse and the host is the Lord, and his outstretched arm signature -the Cross. Gospel is a prolonged invitation to come to this guesthouse with the Lord. Come and see. God became tangible in Christ; what would have been only meditated upon, has become tangible. And this personal experience with Christ is essential to follow him till the end. It was midnight, and Tony, a dog, saw a stranger passing by and began barking. Hear Tony barking and chasing, other dogs from the neighbourhood too began barking and running after Tony. Other dogs became weary and tired and gave up barking and chasing and returned to their old positions, but Tony did not give up until he cornered the stranger. Coming and tangibly experiencing the master is vital to hold fast till the very end. Come and learn . Jesus invites us to learn from him who is gentle and humb

 We have faith in Christ, we drink deeply from it to nourish our spiritual selves; we flock to him, his churches and devotions. The real challenge is to have the faith of Christ. How did a nomadic carpenter live with such completion, happiness, aesthetics, and a sense of transcendence? He is the benchmark. There is no use in having a benchmark from someone equal to you; that would make no improvement in anyone. Benchmarks must be more challenging. For example, a hotel decides to be as hygienic, and germ-free as an operation theatre. Such a decision will revolutionise hotel hygiene and cleanliness. We drink of the faith in Christ to our fill; but the faith of Christ gushes forth from our heart as compassion, inclusivity, love, and hope. Gospels are the aesthetics of the faith of Christ. Jesus told his disciples, who asked him, where shall we prepare the Passover meal, go into the street, there you will find a person carrying water (in my imagination it is a woman), he will take you to t

 We learn to love by loving ourselves. We are asked by Jesus to love others as we love ourselves. Though we say love is blind, actually love is never blind, we love others for something that we have seen in them. It could be something physical or external, or something spiritual and internal. The physical and the external fade away, unless the reason for love moves to the internal and spiritual, love too will fade away. What is the reason that we have to love ourselves? Are they external and physical, or are they internal and spiritual? What is external and physical, like our beauty, money, power, and position can all fade away; and one day we may not have a reason to love ourselves. What is internal and spiritual, like, awareness, compassion, endurance, etc. stays on, and so is our reason to love ourselves. Self-esteem + respect is equal to spirituality. When living with others, there is only one commandment -love, it may be expressed in many ways, and there is only one violence -havi