Musings

Be a pinch of salt to pep up life

Today, you’ll probably get your salary, literally meaning ‘salt-money’. Two millennia ago, soldiers of the Roman Empire were paid a monthly salarium—from the Latin root sal, meaning ‘salt’—a fixed amount of salt for: (a) services rendered, and, (b) staying healthy. Interestingly, the English word ‘soldier’ derives from the Latin sal–dare, literally meaning ‘to give salt’. Salt seems too trifle a thing to spend time thinking and talking about. But, have you realised how indispensable salt is; and how happy life would be if you felt you were as dear as salt?

‘As dear as salt’ is the title of an unforgettable story in our English primer at school. It told of a king who was furious when his youngest son said, “You are as dear as salt!” The young prince was banished from the kingdom. However, fortune smiled on him and he became king in another faraway land. Decades later, he invited his aged father for a banquet and ordered that many sumptuous dishes be prepared without salt. The aged king felt insulted to be served saltless, tasteless food. He then realized the wisdom of his youngest son and appointed him his successor.

I love salt. It was so dear to me that, during childhood, I’d often get pinched by mom for adding extra pinches of salt into anything and everything I ate. “Careful about salt!” she would say. I now am. But, medicos swear that salt is good for water retention and muscle contraction, and contains nutrients vital to our bodies. Commonsense suggests that one be moderate with salt intake.

Salt has many properties and reconciles many polarities. Salt is cheap, yet indispensable. It is unseen in food, yet noticed only when there is either too much or too little of it. Salt is solid, yet dissolves. It is small, yet makes a world of difference when present. Amidst that aromatic array of exotic deshi spices from Kashmiri chillies to Keralite cardamom, salt seems so insignificant. But, it is of utmost importance to teach valuable lessons in the world’s great religions.

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Musings

The Saviour not the Sinner

So here is something that struck me at Mass and  while meditating over the readings of yesterday and today. I often think that Lent is a time when we focus on ourselves as sinners; introspecting our need to turn towards the Lord and turn away from sin.

And then just like that it struck me that Lent is not so much about the sinner but about the Saviour. It is a time we focus primarily on His Love for us and not merely feel sorry for what we chose to become over the years. Lent is a time we focus on ‘the love of the father’ of the two sons in Luke 15 (prodigal son) and on ‘the landlord’ in Matthew 21 who sent ‘his son’ with the hope that the tenants would listen to Him.

Lent is not so much about the SINNER as much as it is about the SAVIOUR. This Lent, savour the Saviour; taste and see that the Lord is good ( Psalm34:8)

Fr Warner D’Souza

#MarveRoadMusings

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Art/ Heritage

PICTURING THE PASSION: ‘The Mocking of Christ’ by Fra Angelico (1441)

 The Archdiocesan Heritage Museum, Mumbai brings to you the fourth article in the series titled ‘Picturing the Passion’

‘Upon His precious head they placed a crown of thorns

They laughed and said behold the king

They struck Him and they cursed Him and mocked His holy name

And all alone He suffered everything’

The lyrics of this beautiful hymn by Loretta Lynn find a deep rooted expression through today’s painting. It is titled ‘The Mocking of Christ’ by Fra Angelico. The honorary epithet ‘Fra Angelico’ or ‘the Angelic Brother’ was attributed to the painter after his death in 1455. Baptised Guido di Piero, his love for Christ led him to enter the religious order of the Dominicans in 1420.

Vasari, the great author of the ‘Lives of Artists’ (1550), describes Angelico as a ‘simple and most holy man who painted with facility and piety.’ Vasari goes on to describe his saintly life stating, ‘Fra Angelico never set his hand to a brush without first saying a prayer. He never painted a crucifix without tears streaming down his cheeks. He befriended the poor and now is befriended by Heaven.’ Truth as these words hold, in 1982, Pope John Paul II proclaimed the beatification of this ‘Blessed’ painter, recognising him as the ‘Saint of all Artists.’

But where and when did it all begin? In 1435 Cosimo de Medici, the rich banker and Gonfalonier of Florence, donated a sumptuous amount to renovate the Dominican convent and the Church of San Marco. Fra Angelico was given the task to paint the altar piece and decorate the walls of the Church and of the Convent.

Of all the religious orders, the Dominicans attributed great consideration to visual images as mediums of prayers, meditation and study. The cell of each friar was furnished with not only a bed, desk and kneeler but also a contemplative fresco representing an episode from the Story of Christ.  These paintings often depicted the Virgin Mary and Saint Dominic as witnesses of the scene, therefore serving as intermediaries between the Dominican friars who lived in the cells and Christ Himself.

One such Gospel synthesized fresco is the ‘Mocking of Christ’ situated in the East Corridor, also known as the Corridor of the Elderly clerics. The bitter humiliation that Christ suffered before being crucified is evoked through this painting in an atmosphere of divine stillness and mystical emotion.  

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Faith

The parable of the lost sons. Yup, both of them! – 4th Sunday of Lent – Luke 15: 1-3, 11- 32

So the unanswered question of the parable is, “Did the elder brother go in to the banquet or not?” This is the question we should be asking ourselves, because the Bible says nothing on the matter. But we don’t, because the problem lies in the fact that we have got caught up with a beautiful parable, turned it into an allegory and lost the plot! The parable of what has come to be known as the ‘prodigal son’ is not about the younger son or about this amazingly forgiving father’. It’s all about this elder son, equally lost and horribly hate filled. Incidentally, the word “prodigal” is an adjective that means wasteful or spendthrift. Luke doesn’t actually call his character the “prodigal son”. It’s a modern title, that’s all.

A parable is starkly different from an allegory. In an allegory, we assign meaning to each of the characters and compare them to the spiritual categories in our head, where the ideas in the story are symbolized as people.  So you can have as many ‘ideas’ as you can have characters. For example, the father stands for God; the younger son is wayward humanity and so on.  A parable on the other hand, is designed to present a moral with a single point agenda; in this case the agenda is the Pharisees. It is to them that the parable is spoken in verse 2, for their angst against Jesus is splattered all over the gospel pages.

So what’s the background to all of this? The cause of ‘the grumbling’ of the Pharisees is plain; Jesus is ‘hanging out with the wrong crowd’ (5:29-32; 7:37-39; 19:7). But Jesus has never changed His agenda! He repeatedly insists that He has come precisely for such “sinners”, as well as other social outcasts, who are coming out in droves to listen to His teaching (15:1-2). To this moral outrage of eating with sinners, the Pharisees found themselves at the receiving end of, not one, but three parables in Luke 15. So what did they do so wrong?

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Faith

 Blood in the Vineyard – not written by Agatha Christie- Friday, 2nd Week of Lent -Matthew 21: 33-43, 45-56

How you see this parable will all depend on if you’re a Christian in the year 2021,  or a Pharisee of the first century. So let’s place this parable in perspective.  Jesus is at the gates of Jerusalem engaged in a verbal battle with the Pharisees. He has cleansed the temple and now, these leaders challenge His authority.  His reply to them is reiterated over three parables; today’s text being the second.

As I said before, it all depends on which point you stand, in order for you to understand the meaning of the text. For us today, God is the owner of the vineyard, the prophets are the servants, Jesus is the Son, the Pharisees are the wicked tenants and we are the new tenants who will inherit the vineyard. This scenario would have panned out quite differently for the Pharisees, who never got the point. Why? Because they were land owners! And so they understood the story with a first century Jewish mind-set. For them, this was a drama and they mistook themselves to be in the lead role.

Many of the Pharisees would have been in reality, what they came to be called, ‘absentee landowners’. Such landowners would lease out the vineyard to tenants and then make their way to the city. The payment to the landowner was made in kind, namely a percentage of the produce. If the landowner did not receive his due, he would simply lease the land to other tenants. The Pharisees, themselves landowners, could not identify even for a second, the role of being a tenant.

The point of the narrative is to highlight that there is nothing wrong with the harvest, but with the attitude of the Pharisees who in this case were the tenants.  In response to a seemingly naïve landlord, their arrogant and violent response make little sense. Assuming they succeeded in killing the land owner’s son, which they do, they still won’t inherit the land as the father is still alive! But Jesus, in portraying what seemed to be a naïve response of the landlord, to send his only son, was actually exposing the evil thoughts in the hearts of the Pharisees.

By the time the penny dropped for the Chief priests and Pharisees, it was too late. Their realization that Jesus was speaking of them as the wicked tenants and not the absentee landlords, was slow to come. They stood exposed and because of the crowds who regarded Jesus as a prophet, refrained from arresting Him or even worse, killing Him right there! What was worse, was that in answering His question, they had condemned themselves with their own words, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time” (verse 41). In their many attempts to trap Him, they now get trapped themselves. This constant run in between Jesus and the Pharisees is a swan song of the gospel of Matthew.

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