Opinion

Simple Truth- Are options opportunities for anxiety?

The truth is that we are spoilt for choices; people who don’t have choices treasures what they have and in reality end up being happy. Don’t confuse basic necessities for choices.  We all need bread to eat and that is a necessity; but when we begin to ask ourselves if we need a brown bread or whole wheat, plain bread or a baguette, brioche or a croissant, then we are spoilt for choice.

I grew up confusing brand names as generic terms and I think you might have done the same. Did you know that zipper and escalator were brand names? Growing up, a Cadbury for me was any sweet treat. So when I wanted something sweet I asked for a Cadbury and received nothing more than a boiled sweet or what is also called a hard candy. With this I was satisfied and my world could not have been better. Today I stand at the duty free store at the airport and can’t figure out where to begin.

While choices and options present us with a world of variety, we must become aware that options also become opportunities for anxiety. It is this unstated reality that really bothers me, for choices and options are paraded as positive values when in reality they are pseudo values.

Let me take this to a whole new dimension of relationships. While I don’t believe that marriage should be taken glibly and without due thought and consideration, I find it a bit off, to say the least, that so many young people continue to be dissatisfied with what they see in others, especially when it comes to marriage.

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Opinion

Simple Truth – Sunday Mass; a rhyme or a reason?

The simple truth is that the attendance at Sunday mass in the city of Mumbai is greatly diminishing and I dare say that thirty per cent and more do not attend Sunday mass. Look around you during a Sunday mass and you will notice that a large majority of the youth and young adults are simply not in Church.  Sixty five per cent of India is below the age of 35 and most of them are missing in our Church.

But I write not merely to state what has now become the unaccepted obvious but to throw a spanner in the works of those who do attend Sunday mass. I question (with love) the motivation of the ‘attending faithful’. Do they, I ask myself, attend mass for a rhyme or for a reason?

If our motivation for attending mass is a particular homilist, a particular Church setting or a wonderful choir or cantor then it’s a rhyme that draws us to Church on Sunday. The consequences of such a ‘rhyme’ is manifested in the criticism we hear so often; bad homily, terrible singing, dusty Church. Unfortunately this has become the swan song of the growing number of lapsed Catholics and of the Sunday faithful.

Make no mistake, I have never defended an unprepared homilist but to expect every priest to be JFK or a Winston Churchill is asking a bit too much. It is the content that needs to touch our hearts and not the diction or delivery.  You can’t get a lesson unless you are ready to listen and my guess is that most congregants tune off as soon as they see the celebrant.

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Faith

Feast of the Presentation of the Lord; A second Annunciation Lk 2:22-40

The feast of the Presentation stresses the Holy Family’s obedience to Torah. The Bible tells us that Joseph and Mary presented Jesus for circumcision and naming eight days after the Nativity. According to the Old Testament, after a woman gave birth she was ritually unclean (cf. Lev. 12:1-5). In order to be purified, a sacrifice was required (Lev. 12:6-8).  Hence Mary and Joseph now fulfil their next religious obligation, namely the ceremonial presentation of first born son (Exodus 13:11-16) at the Temple in Jerusalem.

By telling us that they went up to Jerusalem, Luke is actually depicting Mary and Joseph as Torah observant Jews. The Holy Family, therefore, is presented as the model of obedience to God’s Law. This also makes us wonder if Mary needed to be purified since she was the sinless one. Ritual impurity did not necessarily involve “sin”, though sin was a kind of impurity  

A woman was not a “sinner” because she had given birth. In fact, the first divine command in the Torah is “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28). Without giving a long explanation, we can simply say here that the purity laws were essentially “symbolic”. While Mary is Immaculate and remains miraculously a virgin even after the birth of Christ, she nevertheless presents herself for purification to fulfil the Law and avoid scandal.

So what does the presentation mean?

The word translated, “to present”, is paristēmi. As Pope Benedict observes in volume 3 of his work, Jesus of Nazareth, the term is specifically used for “presenting” a “sacrifice”. See, for example, Romans 12:1: “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present [paristēmi] your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” It seems that for Luke Jesus is in the temple as the sacrifice.

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Opinion

 

Simple Truths -Familiar bondage, unfamiliar freedom

The scourge of pornography is real and it spares few, especially since it is now available at the click of a button on your ‘personal device’. And since one has access to it on a ‘personal device’ there seems to be both a sense of ‘availability on demand’ and a feeling of security from supervisory eyes.

This is your device and no one can figure out what you’re viewing because you have the password and the possession of the device. In a flash you become a voyeur into the world of people acting out what ought to be so intimate between two people. You can now throw open the window of a bedroom and watch a sexual act as if you were sent an invitation to view; and there is no dearth of windows to choose from.

Unfortunately, what seems like a time of pleasure is really a bondage which has now become too familiar. Now that you have walked into the parlour of the spider you find yourself entangled; getting out seems difficult. This familiar bondage is bitter sweet, for there are some who seeks it as recourse from their stresses only to find that the world it invites you into stresses you out more, if not messes up your mind. This is not reality but sadly even many married people have come to believe it to be true. Ironically they are left unfulfilled in what should have been the most fulfilling intimate act between two people.  

Pornography is a mask the devil wears to offer us comfort. God on the other hand confronts us. Ironically we have grown comfortable with the comforting voice of Satan and are unsettled by the confronting voice of God.

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Faith

Getting into new skin – Monday, 2nd week in ordinary time – Mk 2:18-22

Chapter one of Mark’s Gospel had every one go la la about Jesus. From 2:1-3:6 it’s a constant shift of gears with the foot on the hate accelerator. Everyone seems to turn against Jesus. It begins with the scribes, then the scribes of the Pharisees, then the people which may also include John the Baptists’ disciples, then the Pharisees and finally the Pharisees and the Herodians

There are five ‘controversy stories’ in this section (2:1-3:6) and we are at the third one. If you look carefully at how St Mark has structured all five you will notice that the first and the last deal with the healing of a person, the second and fourth have to do with the issue of food and eating and the story in the centre (today’s Gospel) has to do with fasting but most importantly with a concept familiar to the Jews, namely the bridegroom.

The only fast stipulated in the Old Testament was the Day of Atonement. However the Pharisees fasted on several other days which began to be practiced by others in imitation of these ‘pious ones’. Hence there was nothing in the law that required Jesus or his disciples to fast. These were nothing more than man made traditions which did not add value to faith as the hearts of Jesus accusers were far from God.

The Pharisees had searched the scriptures but not their hearts. It is for this reason that when Jesus the law maker and Messiah walked among them they were neither able to recognize him nor understand what the scriptures said about the Messiah to come.

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