Faith

Prayer is not a ‘sometimes’ (Part 1) – Retreat talk to the SVD seminarians in Pune

I would like to change our view of prayer especially for those of us in the religious life. For many of us prayer is a ‘duty’ and if we don’t believe it to be so we are sometimes made to feel it, especially in houses of formation. Prayer is a PRIVILEGE and not a duty. So I would like you to try to change your perspective on the way we approach prayer. If we see prayer as a duty then it most certainly will become a drudgery for  us. The problem stems in the way we have conceptualized the understanding of prayer and perhaps the way we have presented prayer to others. 

The role of prayer is not to produce guilt. There are many who are worried if they have prayed long enough and others who wonder if they have prayed fervently enough. It is not uncommon for a priest to be told by a penitent that they were ‘distracted’ in prayer. Prayer was given to us by God not to infuse guilt but to alleviate guilt.  So in Luke 18:1-8 Jesus tells us a parable to help us to pray always and not to lose heart. (Please read Luke 18:1-8)

What we need to state clearly is that Jesus is making a contrast rather than a correspondence between God and the judge. So far from being an unjust judge who did not want to be bugged by the widow, God does not mind being ‘bugged with our petitions and prayers’. When the unjust judge does give justice, his reason for doing so is that the woman won’t come back to worry him.

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Two steps forward, one step back – Wednesday, 8th week in ordinary time – Mk 10:32-45

Nothing must have been more frustrating to Jesus than the ability of the twelve apostles to grasp his mind. Today we have no problem idolizing the apostles but a thorough re-reading of scripture from a purely non-sentimental perspective will most certainly make you ask yourself, “What was really wrong with the twelve?”

There was no method in the madness, so looking desperately for one, to salvage the tarnished image of the twelve won’t help. So here are the facts encompassing chapters eight to ten. Peter rebukes Jesus because no sooner was Peter given the keys of the kingdom than Jesus tells him of his own passion, suffering and death; In a flash, Peter saw a kingdom ‘taken’ from him. He does not want Jesus to undergo suffering not because his primary focus was on the Lord as much as he saw his position of power slipping away. Peter is rebuked for his self-serving desires.

In Chapter nine the apostles argue   about who was the greatest and so Jesus has to instruct the twelve again on topic of servant hood (9:35-37). Finally in chapter ten   James and John vie for positions of privilege on the left and right of Jesus in glory and this is no humble request for to quote them they approach Jesus and say, “ we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And so they have to be lectured long and hard on what servant leadership is all about (10:41-45). Through it all, Jesus is walking to Jerusalem, ‘ahead of them’ to his death whist teaching them that a disciple must be last of all and servant ( diakonos or one who waits at table) and slave ( doulos) of all. Ironically, there was nothing going into their head!

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My words or his voice?- Introductory talk

I have resisted the urge to bring to a pen and paper to a retreat, I just carry my Bible. I usually end up taking one thing away from a retreat; even that for me is often a challenge to live in my daily life. Sometimes that one line from the preacher is a gem that I believe was sent by God just for me.

Over the last few years, as both a seminarian and priest, I have made copious notes that the preacher has shared during a retreat. I believed that these notes would help me one day when I had to preach a homily or give a talk. That was a big mistake, because all I did was write notes which I never looked at again and when I did want to refer to them, I could not recollect where I wrote them.

The greatest disadvantage in being so absorbed in writing notes was that I focused on the preacher not on my God. Is that not how we determine which retreat or talk or spiritual seminar we go to? Yes, a good speaker is always a delight to listen to but the question we must ask ourselves is how different am I since I heard the preacher? Has my life changed since then or was that retreat just a flash in the spiritual pan?

So we pick preachers who we think are eloquent, or entertaining or vivacious; yet the ones God picked were stutterers and stammers and uneducated men, to site a few characteristic. What a retreat really needs is some direction and may I stress on the ‘some’ and that’s what a preacher does; gives it direction and not fill it with noise.

In these days to come you will hear My Words but I pray that you will hear HIS VOICE. It is God’s voice speaking to you that will make the difference in your life. If you walk away with one thought that motivates you to be a better disciple of Christ, then how blessed you are rather than having sheaves and sheaves of notes in your retreat diary.

The last time I made a retreat the preacher was eloquent beyond words and his retreat was deeply based on scripture. I can’t for the life of me, remember anything he said except one incident that he shared. This incident concerned his life and helped me put my past, present and my future in perspective.

The retreat director shared his experience about being elected vice provincial of his congregation. He said that he knew that by the next day the votes would all stack up in his favour. That night he sent an email to his spiritual director asking him if he should accept the post, should he win the election. The response of the spiritual director has made the greatest impact in my life. He said to the priest, if you have had anything to do with this election then say NO, for this is not the will of God and you would certainly fail. But if you have nothing to do with influencing this vote and you are elected, know this is what God wants from you.

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What’s in it for me? Tuesday, 8th Week in ordinary time – Mk 10:28-31

The text of today forms the third part of Jesus teaching on riches (10:17-31). The point being made by Jesus must be seen in the larger context of discipleship and wealth. For Jesus, the attachment to wealth is clearly an obstacle to discipleship. As he will say in scripture, “you can’t serve God and man”.

The text just before this speaks about the rich young man who walks away ‘shocked’ and ‘grieving’ for he was attached to his possessions and the demands of discipleship were too much. Again it is not his wealth that is condemned but his attachment to it.

Peter picks up where the rich man left. While the rich man could not sell all he had, Peter speaks up as a spokesperson for the disciples ‘juxtaposing their actions to the missed opportunity of the rich man’.( JBC)  Peter cries out that he and the other disciples have given up everything to follow Jesus; their families and their livelihood, so what was their reward? At the back of his mind Peter was asking the age old question, ‘what’s in it for me’?

Jesus uses this incident as a means to teach his disciples that the mere renunciation of wealth itself does not guarantee salvation. Poverty in itself cannot and should not be a virtue. In this light, discipleship is not merely a matter of asceticism. The call of Jesus to the young man was not merely to ‘give up everything’ just to have nothing, rather it was to give up everything so that others may have something.

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tick possible

Making the impossible, possible – Monday, 8th Week in ordinary time – Mk 10:17-27

 At the heart of this text   lies the million dollar question of the rich young man. Can I DO SOMETHING to enter into eternal life? He sought the one exclusive good work that would give him eternal life. Jesus’ answer, as we know, left him devastated for Jesus hits him where it hurts the most, “sell everything, give it to the poor and follow me”.

For the Jews, wealth was a sign of blessing from God. The mandate comes from the book of Proverbs 10:22 which says, “The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it”. Wealth was a clear sign of divine favour if one kept the commandments of the law, which the rich young man kept.

So what then is the problem? The rich young man desired salvation but he wished to ‘obtain it’. For him, salvation could be earned by doing something; that’s why he asks Jesus, “What must I do?”

For Jesus, the commandments had a vertical and horizontal dimension of love. It was not so much in the doing rather than in the being, that salvation could be obtained. Salvation is not obtained by performing a unique or special deed, nor is it a ‘claim’ made by virtue of religious appropriation. Salvation is a free gift! Here in lies the mistake of this rich young man.

The Pharisees had smugly come to believe that they would be saved by virtue that they were Jews or that they had religiously kept the law. They did things to obtain salvation; they failed to live it.  It is this foolishness that Jesus highlights by the use of an oriental exaggeration; a colourful image for an insuperable difficulty and He borrows it from a prevalent thought. The Persians also had a similar exaggeration when they spoke of an ‘elephant passing through the eye of the needle.’ The people at the time of Jesus simply picked a more familiar animal to compliment this oriental exaggeration.

The point that Jesus makes by using an exaggeration of a camel passing through the eye of the needle is simply this; it is foolish to believe that one can DO something to win salvation, for salvation is a free gift of God. The rich young man wanted to do something to gain eternal life, a proposition juxtaposed with greater possibility of a camel entering into the eye of a needle.

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