Salvation or Happiness?

This unusual reflection suddenly came upon me when I read Prof. Ratzinger's (before he became Pope Benedict XVI) lesson on happiness.


He said something which shook me to my foundations. 


The word “happiness” has gradually replaced the classic term “salvation”, in the common sentiment and speech, outside the theological context.


But how is salvation different from happiness? 


The professor says the term “salvation” meant the salvation of the world, within which the salvation of the individual person is brought about while happiness reduces salvation to an individual level, a well-being relating to the “quality” of life a person enjoys while excluding the world as a whole.


It then suddenly hit me that my entire relationship with Christ was centered around the hope that I could or would be happy being with or knowing Christ. In Catholic circles, happiness is often corrected to joy...my feeling is that, in our minds it means more or less the same thing- individualistic aspirations.


To change my mindset from the pursuit of happyness to the salvation of all mankind, makes my tiny purpose in life so much more bigger, so much more profound and yes, so much more dying to myself. It is difficult to take my eyes off 'what's in it for me?' and do it for a greater purpose.

Take the example of Mary. Did she have a happy life? Maybe; there might have been moments of happiness. Did she suffer? Dearly. The sword was prophesied from the very beginning. Why did she embrace her calling? 

Love.


Only love can bring a person to undertake such great suffering. Suffering, not for herself or for her own but for the sake of the world. Today, for her silent participation in the salvation mystery, she is hailed as Co-Redemptrix. 

What great love Our Lady must have had to embrace the very perpetrators of her sons' death as her own children? Her immense suffering expanded her heart to love a broken people like us. Hence, the Queen of Heaven also bears the title of Mother of Sorrows. 


Mary gave her all. For in love, you don't count the costs.


Coming to me. Would that I be able to give up all my hope for a happy life to full life of suffering, hope, pain and peace that many may live through me?


Discerning marriage as my vocation, I always looked to the Lord to send me the 'right' one. But what if the right one is someone who is a difficult person ? God may choose to bring about his salvation through my patient bearing and love. What if my children choose to desert the faith of their fathers and walk away? God might still ask me to bear witness to his truth, to love them, correct them, pray for them and offer my pain for their redemption...


But am I willing?

Militant who??

There is militant patriotism, militant secularism, militant atheism and even militant fundamentalism...


But here is someone new, equally menacing as he can be merciless, cold-blooded and single-minded, dead to all but his cause and dark as the night to those who oppose him, father to those who concur.


This new animal is Militant Tolerance...He, of many faces, hues and stripes. He won't stand a moral stance. It is just not done in polite society. Ever heard of him? You MUST have! At your workplace, social dos and even in your own family.


He will crush your spirit with cynicism and bite off your head with bile if you should so as much as speak about Truth and Faith. He is Pontius of the famous parody- What is Truth?

But he is Nice...Oh soo very nice. He will spout of accommodating everybody and give a patient hearing to every minority dissenting view (as long as it does not intuit moral absolutes). After all, isn't it intolerant not to hear the small man speak. He believes in transcendence. All things becoming acceptable over time. 


The one thing he will not because he cannot believe, is in moral benchmarks. "Ouch! That's not very nice." "How can you impose your beliefs and moral judgement on others? " Everybody has right to create his own 'Rights' and make his own 'Truths'. That's what the modern enlightened society is built on. 


To be nice and acceptable means to remove all semblance of Truth because Truth is absolute and so very inconvenient.  But when there is no standard to define good from evil; Nothing is good Or evil. Everything becomes a perspective. To be a militant tolerant is to believe that there is no moral authority, no ethics, no accountability and definitely no responsibility attached, in that order. 

I am not responsible for this...

But whether we believe in divine judgement or not, we must surely attest to consequences. When Truth becomes negotiable, Goodwill becomes God. Justice will fail to discern between the victim and the perpetrator, just as it failed the unborn in Wade Vs Roe and with it will go Peace and Hope...And we wonder why we have so many more wars in the 21st century than in the previous millenniums? Why school kids spray bullets on their own classmates? Why mothers take the lives of their unborn? Why people glorify self-destructiveness and condone moderation (read Lady Gaga, Amy Winehouse etc etc etc)? 
Why we Christians don't stand up and live lives worthy to be called Christ-abiders?


It's all in the name of Liberal, Tolerant Niceness.


Ever met a Militant Tolerant? Take a step back and look inside yourself...

Does God put us to the test?

This was one question a close Catholic friend of mine sent across to our group. It got me thinking...


Why would God want to put us to the test? God is omniscient. He already knows! For...


Jesus knew what was in their hearts (Matt 12:25).
Jesus knew Peter was to deny him (Matt 26:34).
Jesus knew who was to betray him (Jn 13:11).


And yet, the testing... 


It is to show to ourselves how much we truly love him. What measure of faith one has?


Even the angels had their period of testing. That's when Lucifer, the angel of light and one-third of those divine beings, chose to worship the creature and not the creator. They lost the Beatific Vision and won what they wanted. But with all things self-oriented- it corrupted from within. They got none of what they were seeking and won malice and jealousy as tribute. Not just to God but even to his beloved men


Testing is good and true! That's why God put Abraham and Job to the test. Jesus's trials in the desert was a test. Yet, how afraid I am of it? To see myself as I really am; the untrue, selfish, faithless wretch...Would that I be broken and made anew. Yet, I am so afraid of the truth, even though it is good...


O help me, Lord to trust you more each day.

Once upon a time...

In a galaxy far, far away...


I wish I could use this iconic starting line to describe the perfectly harrowing experience of another me watching a perfectly inane movie in an alternative universe


...but No. It was me and I suffered. 


The weapon of mass delusion in question is none other than the recently released 'This Means War' 

The plot is pretty simple. Boy meet girl, girl meet another boy, girl can't chose. There! That wasn't it so bad...a funny and slick production.

Except for a few things. Like the girl (a very sexy Reese Witherspoon) purposefully dangles herself before her suitors because she can't decide who to date (awww...). I mean, if a girl's spoilt for choice then why can't she make the most of it. 

But it really isn't her fault, cause the boys are actually CIA-Men-in-(Savile-Row)-Black-suits. That means they can access her secret files, order a full surveillance, just so they tailor their OTT* attempts to woo her to her minutest preference. Invasion of privacy anyone?

So, how DOES a girl choose in such a circumstance? The sex tie-breaker, of course.

Isn't it simple? A few seconds of ecstasy is absolutely enough for anyone to decide who to spend the rest of their lives with.

Then, there is her best girlfriend who...erm...let's not talk about her, shall we?

And guess what? She settles for the playboy. Woo-hoo!

Maybe I'm being too hard here. Maybe my expectations from a chick-flick were too high. But maybe, my disappointment might not have been so acute had the movie not been so utterly devoid of reality.

"So", you may say, "this lady thinks gratuitous sex does not exist? And friends-with-benefits is just a byline somewhere?" 

No! But love and true love, at that, does not work like this. Even if it is a movie, there is SOME element of truth somewhere...Take "The Proposal" for instance. There was a lot of faff, but there were moments of truth especially where Sandra Bullocks character chooses the moral high road and calls of the wedding. It brings out the humanity of the person...

Maybe, I might have still enjoyed "This Means War". If, it had, along with an (A) certificate also a statutory warning "To enjoy this movie, leave your brains behind"

* OTT= Over The Top

Who was the Woman at the well?

Her name is St. Photina (the luminous one or light) or St. Svetlana (in Russian), the Samaritan woman who encountered Jesus at the well, Holy Martyr...First Evangelist.


Yes, it was a woman again. She who encountered the Lord, left her water jug and ran back in the blazing Sun to round up her countrymen. She, of five husbands, the latest of whom was not even her spouse. She, who was the most depised of women-folk, even among her own people. She was the chosen one!


I often wonder about this lady, who lived such a slatternly lifestyle that she was too ashamed to join the other women at the well in the mornings and didn't have the hope nor the strength to make that change. She needed a saviour. Not just a pious holy man but a redeemer.


The Lord knew she was coming. So he waited...and from that beautiful encounter came forth the Living Waters.


Her feast day is commemorated on March 20.


St. Photina, Ora Pro Nobis.

Tomorrow is....

St. Patrick's Day 

Or as the Irish would put it Lá Fhéile Pádraig...

I'm feeling rather Irish myself too. So here's an Irish blessing from me to all of you

May the Irish hills caress you
May her rivers and lakes bless you
May the luck of the Irish enfold you
May the blessings of Saint Patrick behold you

May your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow

and may trouble avoid you wherever you go

Catholic Book Review: Never Let Me Go...(Part II)

If the book came across to you as depressing and positively horrifying, let me show you why I felt necessary to review this book in particular.


The whole essence of the book centers around a single theme, 'what makes us human?'


Is it our progeny? Is it our consciousness? or maybe our intellect?


No, it is our souls...it is the divine within us which gives us the inviolable dignity and sanctity being a human being. Acknowledging God as our Father and creator gives us a sense of peace of knowing where you come from and to whom you are going to. You are safe in the knowledge that your purpose remains above the manipulative influence of man because it was ordained by a higher power.

The book explores the desperate attempts of the teachers to prove that 'clones' have souls. They chose art as an expression of it and that is not such a bad start. Art is supposed to manifest beauty and Beauty is Truth as Truth is Beauty...


But they miss the bigger picture or maybe not so. For man has his Creator but in this case, man is the creator. 


Our creative skills and wondrous achievements are only possible if we were to view them through the glasses of God's express command to subdue the earth as stewards. Else, like the clones were treated, we dominate, abuse and ruin the beauty and goodness in pursuit of our selfish needs.


In this case, the very humanity of those three characters were questioned. 'Do they have a soul?' Science ahead of Ethics, Need before Good. 


Sounds familiar? Remember the aborted unborn, the euthanized sick and the aged, prenatal testing for Downs syndrome children, patients in vegetative state whose organs are harvested for another, human embryos who are created only to be killed for their stem cells...all for a 'greater good' I'm sure; but who are still human beings and have their humanity stripped of them.


I leave you with a beautiful line from Father John Flynn, LC article.


"No matter how lofty the motivations, once the principle of the sanctity of life is lost then eventually everything becomes negotiable."

Catholic Book Review: Never Let Me Go...(Part I)

This is a strange dystopian novel set in England in the 1990's. It is written by Kazuo Ishiguro, a Japanese-born, Briton and a Booker Prize laureate.

The plot of Never Let Me Go seems simple enough. There is remote English boarding school called Hailsham where the teachers are called 'guardians'. The main protagonist, a girl named Kathy flashes through her childhood, adolescence and early adulthood with her closest friends- Ruth and Tommy...They are normal kids with the usual growing up problems; friendship, love, heartbreak, betrayal; on the whole they live an idealistic life.


But as you plough through the book you realise that there are strange things afloat at Hailsham. There is no clue about the student's parents or how they ended up in that boarding school. There is an undue emphasis on how 'special' they are though you don't know why, and how important their creativity is. Then there is the specter of 'Madame', a woman who comes every now and then to Hailsham and selects their best pieces of art, crafts and poetry for her 'gallery'.


The story unwinds slowly like you are looking through a microscope at a solitary ant in a grass and as you widen your vision you gradually realise you are in the middle of an ant-hill invasion. Things start to hit you bit by bit as you realise the children are 'clones' and are reared for the sole purpose of becoming 'organ donor' much like our poultry mills. The children are told without explicitly telling and they know without quite 'knowing' that they are expected to give donations till they 'complete'. A nice way of saying killed. 


Every instance of their individuality is crushed and stamped out. They are bred to be infertile. Their dreams of getting jobs is futile because they realise that their only aspiration is to become a 'carer'. Another nice term for someone who looks after a 'donor' in between donations.


They are viewed as sub-human, soul-less, freaks of science by the rest of the populace...and by this time, you feel trapped and hollowed out. You are already attached to the characters as they grow up as normal kids but suddenly when you are faced with their progeny and cattle-like status, you find yourself unable to take their sudden dehumanization. 


When the end comes, it is poignant yet not surprising. Ruth, Kathy and Tommy hear a rumour that Hailsham students who are truly in 'love' and can prove it, can get a 'deferment' on their donations which means 2-3 years of life before they are called in to begin their donation. Before Ruth...um...completes, she convinces Kathy and Tommy to get together and try for a deferment. The meeting is decisive. 'Madame' and their old headmistress explain to them that there never was or ever will be a 'deferment'.  Hailsham was an experiment to prove to the world that clones have a soul and deserved a dignity of life as any other human being. How? Through their art. Their art was to reveal their innermost selves and give a glimpse into their souls. 


They failed in their endeavour. Because though it was disturbing, people found it hard to give up their easy access to miracle cures. It was easier to ignore or assure oneself that human clones were less than human and therefore fit only to have their organs harvested and plugged out.

God of Small Things

Have you ever notice the more you introspect about anything in the natural world, the more complex it turns out to be...


He who built the firmament also drew the piercing detail of each snowflake,


and coordinated the prefect synchronization of a flock of birds...


or maybe when God wants to intervene he does so in the most innocuous manner touching upon the smallest things in our lives, things we probably haven't noticed existed in us for years...


and then your whole world changes.



I found it strange that God wanted me to fast off worry, worrying, passive anxiety and all their toxic cousins this Lent. I couldn't believe it. Such a small thing...I was willing to give up better stuff like no TV or movies or better still, no YouTube or facebook. Ask big, Lord!


I agreed not realizing how much of myself I would learn. It wasn't such a small deal at all. God had just touched my an alpha-problem (that is, before he tackles my next alpha-problem). 


I am a natural worrier! It's just that the thought never occurred to me or I was too busy worrying  to really notice that I was a worrier. I am a ball of knotted-fear, from which radiates worry and anxiety and spills over as a looming cloud of negativity. What I used to term as 'Devil's Advocate' stance was actually my mask to hide my insecurities and fear. 


What if....? Maybe, but....? How can we be sure? I think we need to look at the other side? Should we wait a bit...


Sounds familiar? You are hedging risks...Not that it is a bad thing in financial planning but you can't hedge risks with God. His plans are so outrageous and his proposals so extravagant that it is impossible to consider the full implications of failure. Think Abraham...how could he cut short his loss of not having an heir after having sacrificed Issac or Esther, die standing up for her people or die being one of them?


But there is a solution. Trust! 'Trust in God, Trust also in me', said Jesus (John 14:1). And that changes everything.


God was suggesting a solution- Let Go and Let God Take Over! Change of management. Not very pleasant. It means a reorganization. Change the way we have been living and responding to situations all these years. 


But do not despair. Our God is also called the Lord of the Breakthrough (1 Chron 14:11). Trust his grace to abound as you take this leap of faith. It is the only thing which sustains me as I walk into this brave new world. 


So pray for me, folks. Pray for yourselves as well and all those who need tiny interventions. Our God of Small things leaves no pebble unturned...

God laughs...

Yup, he does...

Sniggering

Giggling

Howling

ROFLMAO (not sure about the 'ass bit')

Side-splitting, ground-breaking, glass-shattering, tears-rolling....laughter. Yup, he does all that. 

How do I know it? Well, it's reverse analogy. Considering that kids generally take after their parents and Jesus's constant reminder that 'HE IS your FATHER! Say Daddy'  bit and we kinda, sorta resemble him by looks (check Genesis), it all builds up to Abba, Daddy, Papa..

So when we laugh, who did we learn it from?

God!

Maybe, even irony is also not lost on God. He who sacrificed so much  for us and still loses so many souls all because we don't care enough to hold on to his extended hand. Don't care, don't know...I can't say which. The book of Wisdom says that it is possible for man to know God by looking at creation, by pondering upon the awesomeness of nature. It is possible through natural reason for man to know God. 

But with the spate of deforestation and the concrete jungles we live in, no wonder most of us don't see God. Then again, there is another thing disappearing with the shrinking green cover...CLOTHES! 

Don't believe it. Take walk in the park (literally). It's summer here in Bangalore...the rest better remain unsaid. Yet, there is hope. For God so loved us that he literally wrote his gospel on our bodies. We mirror in our earthly bodies a beautiful but not in an unnatural way the mystery of the Trinity. He made us to know him so the clues are all around and within...just waiting to be discovered. He liked to call us home- or Temple, whatever

So this Lent, I decided that it might be good to write a funny caption to remind me of my unworthiness and push me towards holiness:

"Remember the Prodigal Son, I happen to be his sister"

"I used to be snow white, but I drifted" (courtesy Linen on the Hedgerow)

"Change me O Lord, but not just yet; then give a greater grace to ask for this change" (a revision from the original from St Augustine of Hippo)

Aha!....I think He just smiled :-)

If you have some of your own 'Happy Lenting' quotes. Send it right in. We could all do with a smile.