Our time and lives

In our fast changing times and lives, we seem to be living in a paradox. 

In our times, where the funeral matters more than the dead. 

The wedding ceremony is more important than the couple or the love between them and their families. 

The curriculum, rank and name of the school matters more than the child or the student. 

Building large and beautiful edifices is more urgent and necessary than having qualified and competent teachers. 

Having several social media portfolios and channels is more important than having genuine friends or clear conscience. 

The brand of our phone matters more than the quality and content of our conversations. 

Ask, seek, knock

 Listening to today's gospel about the passage from St Mathew's text, where we hear: 

Ask and you shall receive. 

Seek and you will find. 

Knock and the door will be opened for you. 

The imagery and thought that flashed across my mind as Fr Wilson was preaching on this theme, was a totally weird and different one from the one being preached. 

Ask. Seek. Knock. 

I was struck by the third one. Not for what the Gospel meant, but for what I felt as one mode of operation. 

Perhaps at times there is also the need to knock.  Knock, not at a door to ask or plead, but to literally give a knock on one's head!  For some, we begin by asking, then really seek but if there is no response, a knock on the head is what will waken them up to straighten themselves. 

Jonah's obedience

Abraham obeyed Yahweh and we become the children of faith. 

Due to Moses' obedience, the Israelites were saved from Pharoah's wrath. 

Because of Jonah's obedience the Ninevites were protected from Yahweh's anger. 

Since Jesus was obedient, we received salvation. 

Not every one who obeyed knew or consented to what they agreed to do or be. Nor did they all have perfect trust in the one who was asking them to do something different or abnormal - yet, they obeyed. 

And others benefited! 

Signs of the time

 In the introduction to the mass this morning we here presentation of child Jesus in the temple. In the temple there are Simeon and Anna who have an insight that they are about to encounter someone special. And when they do meet him the RECOGNISE him. 

It is interesting to know it that neither of them had a photo of him or description of his parents or the type of entry he would make in order to identify the child. Yet they did recognise him. 

I guess this is what reading the 'signs of the times' means. To be able to recognise God in the regular, routine events of life. To be able to identify him in the hundred and one things that we do everyday of our life. One can read this presentation as a once in a lifetime event or have the wisdom to understand it as a daily occurrence.

Like Rabindranath Tagore says in his poem, "He comes, he comes, he ever comes."

The heart of the Andes

 There is painting of the American artist Frederic Edwin Church, titled 'The Heart of the Andes' that I had set as my laptop desktop background image for a couple of years now. 

Initially I thought the painting was 'The Church in the Andes'... I had mixed up the name of the artist and the art piece itself. Today while reading something more about the same painting I learnt that it was a tribute to the philosopher naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. So basically it is a piece of art depicting nature. The title given to the painting also is this justified - nature being the most prestigious element of South America. 

Nonetheless, I found asking myself, what is the cross doing in that painting? More specifically, what is the cross doing in the HEART of the Andes? One could brush aside this question attributing the cross in the painting to the artist's colonial and Catholic affiliation. Perhaps there is an element of truth there. But why is it there at all? That too in that size. The cross isn't central. Neither large nor immediately evident. It is part of the whole natural landscape. But it is there!

I interpret it as God being part of one's heart. Not overriding or displacing everything else, but an integral element. Greater still is the artist's depiction of the people in the painting: near the cross. Not bathing, not working in the field, not elsewhere. 

In a way the painting is, for me, a microcosmic depiction of the human being: the human as one tiny part of nature and reality; and at the same time a macrocosmic aspect: God at the heart of all reality.