Grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ
5th Sunday in Lent (Cycle C) – Jn 8:1-11
 Sometime back, I was participating in a training in Spiritual Accompaniment.  During the days of training we also had ample time for personal prayer and reflection.  One of the meaningful discoveries that I made during that week was to pray by just doodling. After every period of prayer, I would make some pencil drawings to relive my moment of prayer.  I realised that these ‘childish’ drawings helped me a great deal in deepening the feelings that I had experienced during prayer.  I discovered that, perhaps, doodling could be a non-verbal expression of the process of integrating our thoughts and feelings.
In the gospel passage of today we see Jesus writing on the ground, in a manner that could be considered very similar to doodling.  I would like […]

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The God who offers me a second chance
3rd Sunday of Lent (Lk 13:1-9)
Is the God you believe in, a coach or a referee? What does a coach do, for instance, in the context of football?  He trains his team before the match.  He is there during the struggle of his team.  He may not play the game, but he encourages, gives directions.  He may shout at the players, but only for their own good.  Generally, the coach is concerned with the quality of the game and how well individuals and the team have played it.
On the other hand, the referee expects you to know the rules of the game and just to obey.  He is not concerned with the results of the game.  For him, a good team is that which has obeyed the rules – blindly.
Do you feel your […]

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Towards an experience of Jesus
 For almost five years I was privileged to live at the foot of Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa.  Every morning we looked up with a great expectation if the snow-capped peak would show itself. When it did, my day would begin by spending a few minutes just admiring its grandeur.  For the Chagga people of Tanzania, who live around Kilimanjaro, this once a volcanic crater is the abode of God: ‘Kilima cha Ruah’ – as they called it!  Mountains are seen as locations of God-experience in many traditional cultures, and in many of the world religions.  It is not by chance then that one of the classical works of St Johnof the Cross is called, The Ascent of Mount Carmel (1579); and more recently, Thomas Merton entitles his autobiography as, The Seven-Storey Mountain (1948).
The […]

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The 3Ps: Pleasure, Possessions, Power!

1st Sunday in Lent – Cycle C
 We say the Season of Lent lasts forty days, as the Latin word, ‘Quadragesima” suggests.  When I was a young seminarian – sceptical as I was – I took the calendar and wanted to make sure for myself if there were indeed 40 days from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday.  To my surprise, I found there are actually 47 days.  I had reasons to be sceptical, after all!  So I had a question for the teacher of liturgy, who, of course, was taken by surprise.  Later he came up with a meaningful explanation:  even on Sundays in Lent, we celebrate the Resurrection of the Lord, as we do every Sunday; and hence they are not counted as days of fasting and penance.  So Lent does have forty weekdays […]

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