A Jesuit Adventure

  It was not easy to be a Roman Catholic in the early 16 th century in England after the Anglican Church broke away from the Roman Catholic Church. Catholics were persecuted by law and priests were imprisoned, tortured, and frequently executed. There were official ‘priest hunters’ whose job was to hunt down and capture Roman Catholic priests. To protect them the Catholics began hiding the priests in their houses and helping them escape. And therefore very soon a law was passed which made helping priests punishable by death. Yet, the laity continued to be faithful to their priests even at the risk of their own lives. One such person was St. Margaret Clitherow. Clitherow allowed secret masses to be celebrated in her home, where she also hid Roman Catholic missionary priests. She was imprisoned and executed. She was canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. I present her life before you as it is closely linked ...

  One of the primary responsibilities of a priest or a deacon is to break the Word of God, and therefore when we prepare for a homily there is always a sense of anxiety about what the Gospel is going to be. You see it is relatively easy to preach about the love of God, forgiveness and the kingdom of God but when you get a passage about persecution it’s not that easy. And that’s because we all are afraid of dying and more so dying due to violence. Sometimes we believe that if we follow the will of God our life is going to be a bed of roses and there would be no difficulty. On the contrary, as we see in the readings, if we follow God’s will, we will have to face troubles, difficulties and persecution. In the 1 st reading taken from the prophet Jeremiah, we witness his struggle in trying to make sense of his mission. Jeremiah’s prophetic ministry is set at a short time before Judah was taken into exile by Babylon. Jeremiah warned Judah about this danger but the people criticised him. ...

My dear friends on this 11 th Sunday in Ordinary Time the readings highlight the link between being chosen by God and being sent as missionaries. The first reading taken from the book of Exodus presents before us a very beautiful imagery – an eagle carrying its young on its wings. After they escaped from Egypt the Israelites gradually made it to the wilderness of the mount of Sinai. Now this wilderness was a desert and there was little in the desert to sustain life. The Israelites were now completely dependent on Yahweh, who led the nation of Israel just as an eagle cares for its young one. We have at this juncture perhaps one of the most important events in the entire salvation history – the election of Israel and the forming of the conditional covenant. Yahweh through Moses tells the Israelites that they will be his segullah. Segullah was a kind of possession that was valuable and cherished. So when Yahweh called people His segullah He was saying that they were His richly adored, val...

  My dear friends today we celebrate the solemnity of The Body and Blood of Christ also known as Corpus Christi. This feast has its origin in the visions of Saint Juliana of Liège way back in the 11th century. Today’s feast of Corpus Christi is intended to make us value and appreciate the presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.  Recently when I was interacting with a group of youth, I asked them what they felt about the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Much to my surprise, though they believed in the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist it was a Symbolic Presence that they believed in and not the Real Presence. And this precisely is the teaching and belief of the Catholic Church – We believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.   So how does one understand the bread and wine which are completely natural things being transformed into the body and blood of Christ? To do this we need to know about two important concepts used in philosophy – Substan...

  Dear Friends, today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity and the readings fittingly give us an insight into the nature of God. But before we get to the readings a little note on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Right at the outset we need to acknowledge that the Trinity is absolute mystery, it transcends our human capacity for understanding. However, from the Scriptures and the tradition of the Church, we believe that God is Triune. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are coequal and coeternal and distinct from each other. There are three persons in One God. One of the most important aspects of the Holy Trinity is the relationality between the three persons. In the Trinitarian communion, there is complete equality. No higher, no lower; no before, no after; no superior, no inferior. As all of us are created in the image and likeness of God, God who is the Trinity, God who is communion, by nature we all are communitarian. We cannot live in isolation. We are made to ...

My dear friends today we celebrate the Solemnity of Pentecost. The narrative in the Acts of the Apostles is a vivid description replete with violent wind, tongues of fire and being filled with the Holy Spirit. However, to appreciate the significance of this event we need to look back at the meaning of this festival in the Old Testament. Pentecost also known as the feast of Weeks or First Fruits or Shavuot occurs 50 days after Passover. The word Pentecost comes from the Greek pentēkostēs meaning ‘fiftieth’ (day). This feast was important for two reasons. First, it was a celebration at the beginning of the grain harvest. At this feast, the Hebrews offered their first fruits of the harvest to the Lord and second, this feast also commemorated the first giving of the law on Mount Sinai (Ex. 19-20). Pentecost was one of the three major Jewish feasts, along with the Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles. For us Christians, Jesus is the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets and therefore ...

  My dear friends, on this Seventh Sunday of Easter we are celebrating the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord and the readings therefore focus on the ascension and the mission command given by Jesus. The Ascension though a Solemnity is generally overlooked in comparison to other feasts, hence, we need to look at the significance of the Ascension. First, Jesus’ ascension is the reason that he can send the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:33). Also, it is because of his ascension that Jesus can give the gifts of repentance and forgiveness of sins. “God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Saviour, that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.” (Acts 5:31) lastly, the ascended and enthroned Christ cares for his suffering people as they bear witness to him. We see this when Stephen becomes the first martyr of the Christian church.  In the first reading taken from the Acts of the Apostles, the apostles are to wait in Jerusalem for baptism with the Holy Spirit a...