31. Mt 12: 46-50

Mt 12: 46-50: Passage through the red sea inaugurated the beginning of the people of God. Our baptism is also the beginning of a process of our maturing in the Lord. The truly significant bonds that join people are not biological but spiritual: the shared experiences of school, seminary, political campaigns, joy, sorrow and deliverance. Jesus tells us that those who listen to and keep his word are his brothers and sisters in a new family that knit together by the Holy Spirit. We all have experienced deliverance through baptism.

30. Mt. 24: 37-44

Mt. 24: 37-44: The second coming of Christ is predicted. Only God knows the hour and event in detail. We are not to speculate these things but to wait and watch. These things take place suddenly when the rest of the world go easy in life and lead the life normally. And in such time we are asked to believe in God and those issues of life and death, which are in his hands. It will be time of separation and judgment.

29. Mk 10: 35-45

Mk 10: 35-45: The disciples were not a company of saints. They were ordinary men set out by Jesus to change the world. They were ambitious having failed to understand Jesus, his mission and the purpose of his coming. In them we find the amazing confidence and the amazing loyalty in Jesus. Jesus raised these ordinary men to change the world as apostles and his ambassadors of the Divine plan – the will of God to which Jesus submitted himself to.

28. Lk 6: 43-45

Lk 6: 43-45: A man cannot be judged in any other way than by his deeds. Teaching and preaching are both ‘truth through personality’. Fine words will never take the place of fine deeds. The modern secular movements can never be defeated by mere words, writing and so on than proving that Christianity produce better man and woman.

27. Lk. 17: 11-19

Lk. 17: 11-19: 10 lepers were healed  but only one who came back to thank God, was told “ your faith has saved you” while the 9 Jews who were healed responded to the legal requirements, the latter was the one who happened to be a non-Jew responded straight from his heart. Among the many people asking God for healing and favours, how many will come to that saving faith which is a new relationship to God through Jesus?

26. Mk. 13: 3-13

Mk. 13: 3-13: people, confused are easily fooled by propaganda and ideologies. Fear makes them blind and they persecute those who do not share their fanaticism. That is why they hate the true believers. Jesus asks his followers to bear witness to him as the only savior and proclaim what the Gospel demands of the individual and of society.

25. Mt. 10: 16-25

Mt. 10: 16-25: Jesus warned his disciples that the days to come they might well find the state, the church and family conjoined against them. Christianity preaches a view of man which no totalitarian state can accept. Christianity aims to obliterate certain trades, and professions and way of making money- it still does – and church can never closes her eyes towards the malpractices of the state, church and family members.  So is a Christian liable for persecution.

24. Lk 6: 12-19

Lk 6: 12-19: The 12 disciples including St. Bartholomew were called by Jesus to be with him as friends and messengers. They were called from the 72 disciples to become apostles to be sent out as ambassadors of Christ.  They were very ordinary men with strange mixture –hot tempered, zealots, tax collectors, fisherman with their own emotional attitudes. All of them found themselves peaceful co-existence in the company of Jesus.

23. Mt. 7: 15-20

Mt. 7: 15-20: Teaching people in a brilliant way, working miracles are gifts though good for the community does not guarantee that one is pleasing to God. True faith activated by love is the real key for the kingdom of heaven. To explain this message Jesus uses the parable of grapes and its fruits. The true disciples are those who produce fruits of love. 

22. Jn. 4: 27-38

Jn. 4: 27-38: The desire to tell others of the Samaritan women’s discovery about Jesus killed in her the feeling of shame –a shame of being an outcast and now being cured by Jesus her intimate sinful status, made her to discover Jesus as the Messiah and she ran to tell her neighbors and the people of her village whom she was avoiding till now. Once she is cured from her inner self, she is free to share Jesus to them. She understood to do the will of God and for her that was the only way to happiness.

21. Mk. 4: 26-34

Mk. 4: 26-34: Like the mustard seed that grows into a great tree the beginnings of faith are small. The image illustrated the enormous potential locked into our baptismal grace. With the passage of time and the grace of the Holy Spirit, circumstances reveal the power of faith and it can reveal the enormous potential of our faith and love.

20. Lk. 16: 19-31

Lk. 16: 19-31: The wall the rich man makes willingly in this life becomes after his death, an abyss which no one will be able to bridge. The one who accepts this separation will find himself on the other side forever. So Jesus asks us to work with a view to remove the abyss which separates them in this life by this parable.

19. Mt. 11: 20-24

Mt. 11: 20-24: What was the sin of Chorazin, of Bethsaida and of Capernaum? They forgot the responsibilities of privilege. We cannot condemn a man who never had the chance to know any better but if a man who has had every chance to know the right and does the wrong. People of Tyre and Sodom were of the former type while people from the towns of Galilee are the latter type. Knowing the right, they did the wrong. They didn’t believe in Jesus.

18. Mt. 22: 34-40

Mt. 22: 34-40: The striking point in today’s Gospel is not that Jesus commanded to love our God and our neighbor but that he joined them as two sides of the same coin. It is not artificially connected. If a person really loves his or her neighbor, such a person loves God at the same instant.

17. Lk. 12: 49-53

Lk. 12: 49-53: The zeal that Jesus enkindle in one, will spotlight sin and the one turns away from it will gradually create reaction and generate conflict and strife in the other who are servants of sin. It is the kind of reactive strife that one is faced with and that in turn create division - people for Christ and against him.

16. Mt. 9: 35- 10: 1

Mt. 9: 35- 10: 1: What we learn through our struggles with darkness can help others to see light. It can be our way of bringing in the harvest. We all struggle to find God in our life. If we pursue in the ‘dark night of the soul’ or ‘spiritual aridity’ to the conclusion, we can emerge from them with deeper and clearer sight.

15. Jn 2: 1-12

Jn 2: 1-12: Independence or Liberty is the celebration of the spirit. If the spirit cannot celebrate due to a physical bondage or the absence of a physical need, how can there be true independence? Bl.V. Mary did the same. She helped the host family at Cana to have good wine in abundance by a miracle by her son Jesus. She freed the spirits of the people there. She gave importance to the spirit than her physic. So she also indicated to the true freedom by her Assumption to heaven or her son showed humanity the true freedom by his mother’s assumption.

14. Lk 18: 25-30

Lk 18: 25-30: The whole tendency of possession is to shackle a man’s thoughts to this world. He has so big a stake in it that he never wants to leave it, and never things of anything else. It is not a sin to have much wealth-but it is a danger to the soul and a great responsibility. So one must struggle as ‘a camel going through the eye of a needle’. This struggle of one to enter the kingdom is an important message in this season of Kaitha.

13. Mk. 7: 1-13

Mk. 7: 1-13: Religion to Pharisees became an instrument of self-deception and neurosis. Jesus restores the commanding vision of Genesis where life is a gift from God to be reverenced and celebrated. Religious traditions must make life coherent and insert us into a wide community of faith and meaning.

12. Lk. 9: 49-56

Lk. 9: 49-56: Our tolerance must be based not on indifference but on love. We ought to be tolerant not because we could not care less,  but because we look the other person with eyes of love. We must never regard the other person as an enemy to be destroyed but as a strayed friend to be recovered by love.

11. Mk. 8: 22-26

Mk. 8: 22-26: Unlike all other miracles of Jesus which happened suddenly and completely, this miracle happens in stages. It is gloriously true that sudden conversion is a gracious possibility, but it is equally true that everyday a man should be re-converted. With all God’s grace and glory before him he can go on learning for a life time and still need eternity to know as he is known.

10. Mt. 10: 5-15

Mt. 10: 5-15: Love and fidelity are the norm of matrimony for husband and wife. There is no other way as indicated here. Husband and wife are not two but “they shall be one body” (Genesis 2:24) Jesus says the same in 10:8. Thus their conjugal union binds them in an indestructible bond.

9. Mk. 1: 16-20

Mk. -1: 16-20: The call of the first four disciples: What they hear from Jesus first is ‘follow me’- a call to commit themselves to him. They follow him sharing their lot with him, leaving behind their families and jobs. True discipleship starts when we take seriously Jesus’ call to follow him and change our way of life accordingly.

8. Lk. 4: 25-30

Lk. 4: 25-30: Jesus opposes the idea and belief of the jews that all misery and suffering is that of the sinners. Jesus shows mercy to the oppressed and people of suffering. So the reference of Elijah and Elisha coming to help the poor, needy and oppressed, angered the Jews.

7. Mt. 23: 34-39

Mt. 23: 34-39: God wanted to protect, love and care the people of Jerusalem. But they refused the prophets, Christ and first Christians who came in the name of God and spoke His Word. But they were killed and rejected. Destruction of Jerusalem was a punishment of its crimes. God’s plan and way cannot be objected, blocked by any one.

6. Jn. 9: 1-12, 35-38

Jn. 9: 1-12, 35-38:  The incident speaks about Jesus as the light for the blind eyes. Now is the time for the work to be done, decisions to be taken and appropriate steps to be initiated. Jesus is still doing things which seem to the unbelievers far too good and far too wonderful to be true

5. Lk 14: 15-24

Lk 14: 15-24: The parable speaks about an eschatological final gathering into God’s community of salvation. For this heavenly banquet which will take place at the end of time, Jesus sends out the invitations. The time to respond is now! Those who are invited (in the parable the cream layer of the Jewish people) seem to have rejected the invitation on the false pretexts their own concerns. The second invitation to the Jewish people who are poor, crippled, outcasts and the marginalized and the third invitation to the gentiles indicate the togetherness of a wider community of God.

2. Jn. 12: 23-28

Jn. 12: 23-28: Unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies (v.24) speaks about the universal law for all life that will be fruitful. The seed that is stored in barns doesn’t produce life and fruitful. It is by scattering into the earth that the seed produces its fruits. The first believers were already saying: “the blood of the martyrs is a seed.” 

1. Lk 6: 20-26

Lk 6: 20-26: ‘If you set your heart and bend your whole energies to obtain the things which the world values, you will get them –but that is all you will ever get’. But on the other hand if you set your heart and bend all your energies to be utterly loyal to God and true to Christ, you will run into all kinds of trouble; you may be according to the worldly standards look unhappy, but much of your payment is still to come; and it will be joy eternal.