22-Nov-2011 Dear Friend, Whether we like it or not, whether we are prepared or not, we spend a major part of our lives waiting for things to happen to us or to the people around us. Waiting can be boring when we are not interested in the people we are waiting for, but it can also be exciting if the person we are waiting for is a loved one. Waiting can be very important for us, especially when we wait for God! Waiting for God is prayer! Waiting for God enhances life! Have an exciting weekend anticipating for His coming! -Fr. Jude Sunday Reflections: First Sunday of Advent-"Being ready and prepared for His coming!" 27-Nov-2011 Isaiah 63: 16-17, 64: 1, 3-8 1 Corinthians 1: 3-9 Mark 13: 33-37 The first reading, is a poem written by a returned exile, entreating God to come and save his people. He recalls God's goodness and mercy towards His people, he pleads with him to save them from their present sinfulness and misery. The prophet humbly acknowledges the sinful ways of his people. We are never worthy of meeting God and God seems to have turned his face from his people but he is a merciful God and will come again to save his people. All we have to do is wait eagerly for his coming. Waiting for the Lord Once I went to see my parents after a long absence. My mother lovingly scolded me saying, "Do you know how long we have been waiting for you?" I said, "I understand, mother, but do you know how long I was waiting to be born?" All of us wait to be born, to be nourished and to be loved. Travelers wait for buses and planes; students wait for the exam results. Waiting is part of life. Life is not like instant coffee, there is always more to life than we can fully grasp at any one time. If it is so with the life of a human being, what of the life of God, whose glory shines not in one world but in ten hundred thousands of infinite globes? -If alert, we can find the Lord popping up in the ordinary activities and possibilities of life. If I am watchful, he may be tapping me on my shoulder when I meet my neighbour. If only we have "those eyes that see, those ears that hear" (Is 64:4), we can meet him in his supreme visit which he makes in a thousand ways. If we look wide-eyed at all creation, which reflects God, when the flowers of the earth are springing, the birds of the sky singing and a world of blended beauties smiling, we can sense through the sacred feelings they arouse in us the rustling of his garments and the coming of his feet. Even when the wintry winds are howling and the heavens darkly scowling, we can feel the awesome majesty of his giant steps. Yes, to meet the Lord, we must be prepared for life, not just for death. Vima Dasan in 'His Word Lives' In Mark's gospel Jesus warns the people three times to be watchful and awake. "Be watchful! Stay awake!" This call to stay awake is a very appropriate call for us now at the beginning of the new liturgical year. The gospel today has a short parable about the householder who has servants to whom he assigns particular tasks before he sets of on a journey. He singles out the doorkeeper with a special warning. "Be on your guard then, because you do not know when the master of the house is coming." If we were to focus our gaze on the door keeper alone we would realize that perhaps the greatest danger facing him is not so much that he may fall asleep on the job as that he may grow so accustomed to it, that it will become just a job and nothing more. We know that gate keeping can become boring and routine can set in and take over in the best of circumstances. We can get used to anything, we can get used to the Sacred as well, we can get used to God, and then smugness, skepticism creeps into our lives. We can become Christians by habit and routine and we can keep up the external ritual and routine but we don't encounter God anymore but only our own emptiness. Each of us is the doorkeeper, whom God has put in charge of our own lives as well the lives of our brothers and sisters, our community, our church, our society. Advent calls us to stand ready and prepared for his coming. We stay alert by living the values of the Redeemer in our own time and place. We can only welcome Jesus into our life if we are alert and attentive to Him. Are we ready? Advent is God's rallying cry to his people before Christmas. Isaiah highlights how limited we are without the power of God and he compares us to clay in the hands of a potter. He pleads with God to rescue us from our inadvertence to him. The gospel cry of Jesus to be on our guard and to stay awake alerts us to the reality that self-interest always hinders our response to God. On the other hand, Paul is loud in his praise and thanks the converts at Corinth who have responded so fully to God's gifts to them. Together there is a pressing invitation to be attentive during these weeks to the wonder of God among us. Let us make space and time for him in prayer during this Advent season. It will be well rewarded. Tom Clancy in 'Living the Word' Creative waiting In his book Man's Search for Meaning, Jewish psychiatrist Viktor Frankl tells the story of how he survived the atrocities of the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Frankl says that one of the worst sufferings at Auschwitz was waiting: waiting for the war to end; waiting for an uncertain date of release; and waiting for death to end the agony. This waiting caused some prisoners to lose sight of future goals, to let go of their grip on present realities and to give up the struggle to survive. This same waiting made other prisoners like Frankl accept it as a challenge, as a test of their inner strength and as a chance to discover deeper dimensions of human freedom. Waiting is one of the large realities of life. Parents wait for their teenagers to come home. Travelers wait for buses and planes. Actors and athletes wait for their chance to perform. Students wait for the results of their examinations. Are we waiting for God? Albert Cylwicki in 'His Word Resounds' Missing the call! There was a chat-show programme on Irish television that had just completed its thirty-seventh year. From time to time, on the show there was a quiz for a very valuable prize. A question was asked, and people were invited to write in with their answers, and all the correct answers were put in a drum, from which one card was drawn the following week. Each entrant was asked to supply a phone number, and it was vital that the person be available to take a call at that number if that name was drawn. When the name was drawn, the host of the show would phone that person, either to ask another question, or to simply tell the person that he or she had won the prize. The snag was that, when the phone rang in the house, the actual person whose name was on the card had to take the phone-call. If that person was out on that night, another card was drawn, and a second phone-call made. Imagine how the people felt when they learned that a prize worth several thousand pounds had eluded them, just because they were not at the place where they were expected to be on the night. The groan from the audience was nothing to what must have happened when the person whose name was drawn learned what had happened. Jack McArdle in 'And that's the Gospel truth!' Just waiting A woman stands at the end of a pier, her eyes scanning the horizon as she waits for her husband's ship to come home. A father climbs a hill to the lookout, exercising his hope that his younger son will come home soon. Young parents wait with growing expectation for the birth of their child. An old man sits in a nursing home, still waiting for the day when his family will visit him. All of them wait, and that waiting tests the quality of their hope. They are powerless to bring about what they hope for; all they can do is wait. There is no life without waiting. All of us waited to be born, waited to be nourished, waited to be loved. There is always more to life and to people than we can ever manage to absorb at any one time. Advent is the time when we are reminded that we have to wait for God. We cannot grasp God. We cannot possess God, we cannot see God; we can only wait for God to let himself be known. And when we wait for God we confess our own incompleteness, we acknowledge that there is always more to God than what we know, we proclaim our hope in a God we can never have. When we wait for God, our waiting is a prayer: we testify to our own poverty and to his greatness. Denis McBride in 'Seasons of the Word' Prepared to meet the Master One of the wisest, noblest and gentlest men who ever lived was Socrates. He lived in Athens in the fifth century B.C. He was unjustly put to death by the Athenian judges. When Socrates was in the prison waiting for his death, his friend Crito came to visit him. Crito tried to persuade Socrates to escape from the prison. He said, "Socrates, I have enough silver to bribe the prison guards to help you to escape from here." But Socrates declined it. Then Crito asked him to delay the drinking of the poison. He said, "Socrates the sun is still in the mountains and hasn't yet set. I know other people drink it late. They dine and get drunk and keep company with those they happen to desire. So don't hurry." Even this suggestion Socrates declined. He said to Crito, "You know Crito; I wouldn't do what others have done. I don't gain anything by clinging on to life a little longer." Socrates called the jail attendant who came with the cup filled with hemlock poison. Then Socrates asked him, "Sir, you have knowledge of this. What is necessary to do?" The attendant said, "Nothing except drink it and walk around until your legs become heavy, and then lie down and thus it will do it for itself." Socrates took the cup, raised it and said a prayer and emptied its contents. For some time he walked around; when his legs became heavy, he lay down and pulled a blanket over his head. A few second later, Socrates uncovered his head and said to Crito, "We owe a cock to Mr. Asclepius; please pay it and don't neglect it." Then he covered himself with the blanket and closed his eyes in death. As in life, so in death Socrates was a virtuous man. He wanted to be always at- right with justice and with God. He was a man who was perpetually watchful about his righteousness; he was a man who was perpetually prepared to meet his God. John Rose in 'John's Sunday Homilies' The Coming of Jesus The seventeenth-century Italian painter Salvator Rosa painted "L'Umana fragilita". It depicts a mother, an infant, and Death, who is represented by a winged skeleton. As the mother looks on passively, Death is forcing the baby to scrawl the following words on a piece of paper: "Conception is sinful, life is suffering, death in inevitable." At an exhibit of that painting in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. modern cynical non-believers stood transfixed before this barren summary of their lives. But Christians have what Isaiah promised - a new hope, a new light. And our waiting for Jesus is not a despair-filled tension. So we live by faith, walk in hope, and are renewed in love so that, when the last scene of the drama of our life unfolds and Jesus comes to be our judge, we shall not merely know him, but come to him as a friend. Harold Buetow in 'God Still Speaks: Listen!' May we be people of His kingdom who love and care for others!
Fr. Jude Botelho [email protected] 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. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Protect Goa's natural beauty Support Goa's first Tiger Reserve Sign the petition at: http://www.goanet.org/petition/petition.php ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
