------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRI Continental Film Festival - Dona Paula, Goa, Sep 28 - Oct 2, 2007
http://www.moviesgoa.org/tricontinental/tricon.htm For public viewing. Registration at The International Centre Goa. (Ph: +91-832-2452805 to 10) Online Media Partner: http://www.GOANET.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 30-Sep-2007 Dear Friend, We would all admit that we cannot live without faith, because every day we are called to believe. But the question we need to ask is: In whom or in what do we believe? Do we believe only in ourselves and in our capabilities? Do we believe in others? Do we believe in God? If we believe, can we put our lives totally in the hands of God? Have a great weekend celebrating the gift of faith! Fr. Jude Sunday Reflections:Twenty-seventh Sunday Faith does the impossible! 7-Oct-07 Readings: Habakkuk 1:2-3;2:2-4; 2Timothy 1:6-8,13-14; Luke 17:5-10; The Prophet Habakkuk, a contemporary of Jeremiah wants to know why God the all-pure, the all holy allows Israel to suffer at the hands of the unholy pagans. Why is it that sinners prosper while the just are made to suffer? A question that is relevant today as well! Gods answer that no power can overcome the faithful person is valid today as well. Habakkuk had the great event of the Exodus to remind him and the Israelites that God is the rock he saves his people. All we have to do is trust and be faithful to him even when he appears to be silent. Mountain moving faith An old woman regularly read the Bible before retiring at night. One day she came across the passage that said: If you have faith as little as a mustard seed and ask the mountain to go away, it will go. She decided to test the efficacy of the passage There was a hillock behind her house. She commanded the hillock to go away from there and went to bed. In the morning she got up as usual and remembered her command to the hillock. She wore her spectacles and peered through the window. The hillock was there. Then she muttered to herself, Ah! Thats what I thought. - What she thought was that the mountain would not move. While her outer mind gave the command, her inner mind was convinced that she was giving a futile order. She did not have even an atom of faith at her command. G. Francis Xavier in The worlds best inspiring stories In the second reading from Paul to Timothy we are reminded that faith is a gift of God, it is never definitively possessed, it must be continually stirred up. The circumstances of life, particularly trials, have the function of recalling to believers their reasons for being faithful. Fear and timidity disappears where the love and the power of the spirit reign in our hearts. In todays Gospel faith is connected with miracles, it is only in connection with miracles that Jesus mentions it, and it is generated and fostered by witnessing miracles, though the beneficiary has some faith already. Perhaps the clearest example of what is meant by faith is the miracle of the calming of the storm, when Jesus reproaches the disciples for their lack of faith. The attitude of the disciple must be a total commitment to God with certainty in his power to save. It is this unquestioning certainty which is being expressed in this somewhat absurd and exaggerated example of the mulberry tree. Immediately after this saying Luke adds the little parable of the servant who expects a reward for what he was expected to do, for what was his duty. Perhaps there is a warning that we should not expect light-hearted and irrelevant requests to be granted by God. Confidence in Gods power to save and even work miracles is one thing, but expectation of answers to prayers for trivial matter is flippant and unworthy. God is not our servant and after all that we do have to consider ourselves unworthy servants waiting on his bounty and not deserving anything by right. For the man of faith, everything is gift and never a matter of self acquisition. We earn nothing from God. Be careful in whom you place your trust! Before modern radio and television became so sophisticated, a telephone operator used to get a call every afternoon asking for the correct time. She was always able to give this information with great confidence. The reason for this was that she always checked her watch, and adjusted it when needed, when the whistle blew for the closing time in the local factory. One day her watch stopped. The telephone rang inquiring for the correct time. She explained her predicament. Her watch had stopped, and she had no way of ascertaining the correct time until the factory whistle sounded some time later. The caller then explained his predicament. He was calling today, as he had done every other day, from the same local factory, and he had always adjusted his clock, when necessary, to agree with whatever time it was in the telephone exchange. Be careful in whom you place your trust! Jack McArdle in And thats the Gospel truth Jesus resorts to a rather paradoxical image to express the surprising vitality of the faith. Much as a leaver which can raise more than its own weight, a little faith is capable of realizing the impossible, the extraordinary: as the uprooting of a large tree and planting it in the sea! To convince ourselves of this and really grasp the revolutionary force which faith deploys, we have only to see what becomes of the most ordinary human existence at the school of an authentic believer like St. Paul: Life to me, of course is Christ! For Paul, faith is the wholly gratuitous sharing in the very existence of the risen Lord. Faith is the renewing word, the growing truth, the attempt to make the gospel flower afresh in each generation. Then, because the believer knows how to recognize the Lords action in the extraordinary fruits of his work, he learns not to take advantage in anyway of his faithfulness. For it is Christ who rouses, guides and, if he wishes, finally crowns ones faith. -Glenstal Bible Missal Pavarotti: My Own Story Not since the legendary Caruso has another opera personality had such charisma as tenor Luciano Pavarotti. In his autobiography, Pavarotti: My Own Story, he describes how he was trained by a great master, Arrigo Pola. Everything Pola asked me to do, I did, day after day, blindly. For six months we did nothing but vocalize and work on vowels. Pavarotti worked hard under Pola for two and a half years and then worked just as hard under Maestro Ettore Campogalliani for another five years. Finally after putting so much faith and trust in his mentors, Pavarotti made a breakthrough at a concert in Salsomaggiore where he thrilled the audience and was catapulted into fame. This story about faith and trust leads us in to todays readings which focus on the same themes. As Luciano Pavarotti put his trust in his master teacher, we too must put our trust in our mentor Jesus Christ. Albert Cylwicki in His Word Resounds May our prayer be, Lord I believe! Increase my faith! Fr. Jude Botelho www.netforlife.net PS. The stories, incidents and anecdotes used in the reflections have been collected over the years from books as well as from sources over the net and from e-mails received. Every effort is made to acknowledge authors whenever possible. If you send in stories or illustrations I would be grateful if you could quote the source as well so that they can be acknowledged if used in these reflections. These reflections are also available on my web site www.netforlife.net Thank you. --------------------------------- Forgot the famous last words? Access your message archive online. Click here.
