Know at the Church Doors for Mercy

Pope Francis opening the Holy Doors of the Cathedral in Bangui in Central African Republic said, “The Holy Year of Mercy begins earlier in this land that has suffered for many years as a result of war, hatred, misunderstanding and a lack of peace.” This means the Year of Mercy has already has been dedicated. It amazes me, why Pope made this spontaneous choice to open the doors of the Cathedral in a place where sectarian violence between Christians and Muslims prevail even today. Pope’s deliberate and spontaneous actions of showing mercy reveal that God is active in our Church. Our parish church belongs to that Church which shows mercy who knocks at the doors of our Church.

Holy Father has released the Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Year of Mercy. In his bull, Pope Francis has called on the Church to “be merciful just as the Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary to bring Father’s Mercy to every human person. Mercy has become visible through Christ in our world. Through Mercy, God has come to meet us as the ultimate and supreme act to the humanity. When humanity is faced with gravity of sin, God responded to us by sending us His own Son through Mother Mary. Mercy of God is His loving concern for each one of us and this is evident in the scriptures. God desires our wellbeing, happiness and peace. In order that mercy of the Father to be effective, we must be merciful to each other just as the Father is merciful. We will have to gaze attentively to the mystery of that mercy so that we also can be effective sharers of the Father’s Mercy.

I urge my dear brothers and sisters, if you are in need of that mercy from God, don’t hesitate rather be the first to knock at our Church’s doors. There may be others around us who are in need of mercy, let us bring them before God through the Church so that our Church becomes an instrument of mercy. 

Year of Mercy: A Year of Lord’s Favour

St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, 12:8, encourages us to be cheerful, “he who does mercy, let him do it with cheerfulness.” Jesus Christ proclaims the year of Lord’s favour after he read and explained the scroll of Prophet Isaiah. He proclaims that the Spirit of God is on Him to liberate every person in bondage of all sorts, (Luke 4:18).

Freedom in the Year of Mercy

Holy Father expresses his desire that every person who is bound by the modern forms of slavery in the society must be free. We need to help persons to see who are caught up in themselves, and either refusing to see others or blinded by themselves. We also need to restore dignity of the each person. As Pope’s universal intention for the month November states, we must be open to personal encounter and dialogue with all, even those whose convictions differ from ours.  Pope John Paul II in his encyclical “Dives in Misercordia” (Rich in Mercy) expresses that we must not forget the theme of mercy in our cultural milieu in the contemporary world. Hence, this mission is given to each one us in the year of Lord’s Favour.

Sacrament of Reconciliation

The Holy Father speaks about the Sacrament of Reconciliation during the Season of Lent in the Year of Mercy. Mercy is intense during this season because the scripture readings during the Lent show us a merciful Father. Pope is proposing that every diocese must celebrate “24 hours for the Lord” on Friday and Saturday preceding fourth week of Lent. So many people, including young people can an opportunity to return to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, because through Reconciliation, we find interior peace. Pope is asking the priests to be authentic signs of the Father’s mercy through the sacrament of reconciliation, and above all, the priests must allow themselves to be penitents in search of the Father’s mercy. Priests also can go out to look and show mercy for the son who stands outside, incapable of rejoicing.

Conversion of the Criminal and Corrupt

Holy Father is directing the invitation of the message of mercy to conversion of those whose behaviour distances from the grace of God, particularly, men and women belonging to criminal organisations of any kind. This call to conversion is for their own and good of the others because violence inflicted for the sake of amassing riches soaked in blood makes one neither powerful nor immortal. No one can escape from God’s judgement. This same invitation is extended to those who either perpetrate or participate in corruption. An invitation to change their ideas and lives because corruption threatens very foundation of personal and social life and most importantly, its tyrannical greed shatters the plans of the weak and tramples upon the poorest of the poor. We have responsibility for each other even more to the poorest of the poor.

Mercy towards Judaism and Islam

Every religion considers mercy to be one of God’s most important attributes. Among the privileged names that Islam attributes to the Creator are “Merciful and Kind”, therefore, we have share a common attribute of God. We must know that no one can place a limit on divine mercy because its doors are always open. May our unity foster brotherhood and eliminate every form of closed mindedness and disrespect and drive out every form of violence and discrimination.

I would like to conclude with the last paragraph of the Pope’s bull, “I present, therefore, this Extraordinary Jubilee Year dedicated to living our in our daily lives the mercy which the Father constantly extends to all of us. In this jubilee Year, let us allow God to surprise us. He never tires of casting open the doors of his heart and of repeating that he loves us and wants to share his love with us. The Church feels the urgent need to proclaim God’s mercy. May the Church echo the word of God that resounds strong and clear as a message and a sign of pardon, strength, aid and love. May she never tire of extending mercy, and be ever patient in offering compassion and comfort. May the Church become the voice of every man and woman, and repeat confidently without end: “Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for the have been from of old.” (Ps 25:6)

Year of Mercy: A Church for all

Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ brings a compassionate and loving message of His Divine Mercy through St Faustina Kawalska on February 22, 1931. In her diary she writes these words of our Lord, “The pale ray stands for the Water which makes souls righteous; the red ray stands for the Blood which is the life of souls. These two rays issued forth from the depths of My most tender Mercy at that time when My agonizing Heart was opened by a lance on the Cross.... Fortunate is the one who will dwell in their shelter, for the just hand of God shall not lay hold of him." The image of the Divine Mercy of Christ shows forth compassionate and merciful hand of the Father in the world. It gives me bliss to share a few thoughts on the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy. 

Holy Father will be Opening the Holy Doors of the Cathedral of Rome, the Basilica of Saint John Lateran on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady on the 8th December 2015. In the following weeks, the Holy Doors of the Papal Basilicas will be opened. After which, Pope will announce to the local church, at the Cathedral, the mother Church of the faithful to do the same for the Year of Mercy. Pope Francis has twofold intention for this symbolic gesture, namely, closing of the 50th anniversary of the Vatican Council and the Holy Door will be opened to all, especially broken and wounded. The Diocese of Georgetown will be opening its Holy Doors on the 13th December 2015. Some of the parishes in the Diocese also will hold several activities pointed towards the Year of Mercy. 

Merciful Father

Holy Father has released the Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Year of Mercy. In his bull, Pope Francis has called on the Church to “be merciful just as the Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary to bring Father’s Mercy to every human person. Mercy has become visible through Christ in our world. Through Mercy, God has come to meet us as the ultimate and supreme act to the humanity. When humanity is faced with gravity of sin, God responded to us by sending us His own Son through Mother Mary. Mercy of God is His loving concern for each one of us and this is evident in the scriptures. God desires our wellbeing, happiness and peace. In order that mercy of the Father to be effective, we must be merciful to each other just as the Father is merciful. We will have to gaze attentively to the mystery of that mercy so that we also can be effective sharers of the Father’s Mercy. 

Mercy in the Church

Christ intended that His Church be merciful as He has been merciful. If anyone us has an experience of Mercy from God, we also must be merciful to our brothers and sisters. If God can be merciful towards his creation, why not His creation be merciful? Mercy is the very foundation for the life of the Church. Our pastoral approach must be tender and compassionate, especially towards the weak and vulnerable. The Church is mercy personified, hence, wherever there is Church present, mercy of the Father must be evident. We must never be tired of extending mercy in the Church. This way, a Church can become voice to every man and woman. 

Works of Mercy

Let us now reflect on the Corporal and Spiritual works of Mercy. Christ Himself introduces these works Mercy and it is evident in the Scriptures as well, especially Mathew’s Gospel 25:35-40. 

Corporal Works of Mercy: Feed the hungry, quench the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome strangers, heal the sick, visit the prisons, and bury the dead. 

Spiritual Works Mercy: Counsel the doubtful, instruct the ignorance, admonish sinners, comfort the afflicted, forgive offences, be patient towards who do us ill, pray for the living and the dead. 

I would like to conclude with the words from Pope’s bull, paragraph 15, “In this Holy Year, we look forward to the experience of opening our hearts to those living on the outermost fringes of society: fringes which modern society itself creates. The Church will be called to heal wounds and to assuage them with the oil of consolation, to bind them with mercy and cure them with solidarity and vigilant care. 

Halloween: a Christian Tradition

Has it occurred to you, why is that some people prefer a scary costume and people chanting scary groans during the time of Halloween? Why do people spend significant amount of money on this day? Where did it all begin? 

Halloween dates back to ancient Celtic period who lived 2000 years ago in the surrounding area of Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France. The Celtic festival was called Samhain and was celebrated to mark the new year on November 1. This marked the end of bright summer and harvest season and beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time associated with death. Celts believed that the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred just before their new year. On the October 31, the Celts celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghost of the dead returned to earth. 

To commemorate the event, the Celts built huge bonfires and burn the crops and sacrificed animals. People dressed typically as animals and attempted to tell the fortune of each other who are awaiting them long winter. Therefore, we can trace back the origins of Halloween to the Celts. 

On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III (731–741) later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1. By the 9th century the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted the older Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D., the church would make November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It is widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. All Souls Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All Saints Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Irish immigrants make this festival popular in America. Taking from Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition. 

The American Halloween tradition of “trick-or-treating” probably dates back to the early All Souls’ Day parades in England. During the festivities, poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them pastries called “soul cakes” in return for their promise to pray for the family’s dead relatives. The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits. 

Halloween dressing in costume has European and Celtic origins. People were anxious and frightened of the long dark nights and cold winter. People dressed as ghosts in order to disguise from the ghosts visiting the earth.  On Halloween, to keep ghosts away from their houses, people would place bowls of food outside their homes to appease the ghosts and prevent them from attempting to enter.

Halloween needs to understood properly in order not to slide into superstition or public disorder. Its origins show us that this festival is celebrated for a reason and reason being cold and long winter nights. It has its significance to Christianity where in the people dressed as saints on all Saints Day to remember the holiness of the persons. Let us not be paranoid or overwhelm at Halloween festivities. Let us make this celebration to benefit someone as the Europeans did by giving "soul cake" to the poor. 

In sickness and in health… Together we become saints

There are a few people who make impressions in our lives and a few who  make a long lasting impressions, one such model couple who

made a deep impression in my life are the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux. Their commitment, love, complementarity, harmony, pragmatic faith and endurance in suffering are the key virtues that we can draw our inspiration. Saints Louis and Zelie Martin are the first married couple to ever be canonized together.

The couple had nine children, four of whom died in infancy. The remaining five, all girls, became nuns. The youngest, Therese, died of tuberculosis aged 24 in 1897 and was canonized in 1925.

Pope Francis praised the couples’ humble attitude towards others, which is evident in the way that they practiced service within the family, “creating day by day an environment of faith and love which nurtured the vocations of their daughters, among whom was Saint Therese of the Child Jesus.”

I had the privilege of interviewing a few couples for Catholic Television in view of Synod on family which is currently underway in the Vatican. Every couple expressed that marriage has to be based on love; a covenantal love that couples profess in the Sacrament of Marriage.

It is marvellous timing that Louis and Zelie are canonized during the Synod on the Family. It is also the reminder of the Second Vatican Council’s ‘universal call to holiness’, that is, the fact that married men and women, including singly men and women are just as holy as bishops, priests, sisters and brothers.

Louis and Zelie Martin had circuitous journey to marriage and family life. Louis wanted to be a priest and Zelie a woman religious. A number of circumstances prevented both of them from those paths, and this was a great disappointment to both of them. But in time, they found one another and married.

Louis and Zelie and their children were a family of prayer. They prayed every night before the statue of the Virgin of the Smile. Prayer was the key to their family life, which helped St. Therese to be the spiritual guru and a spiritual giant. Their four children out of nine died in infancy, the remaining five, all girls, became nuns. Zelie says of the deaths of her children, ‘when I closed the eyes of my dear children and prepared them for burial, I was indeed grief-stricken, but, thanks to God’s grace, I have always been resigned to His will. I do not regret the pains and sacrifices I underwent for them.”

This couple had a magnificent trust in God even in the situation of uncertainty and grief. Zelie writes about her faith in God, “When I think of what this good God, in whom I have put all my trust, and into whose hands I have resigned the care of my affairs, has done for me and for my husband, I cannot doubt that his Divine Providence watches over his children with a special care.” In their love for each other, in raising a large family with all its attendant worries and responsibilities, and in their love of God, shown when they were tried as models for any married man or woman living today. They are inspiration to many of our couples who grow through hardships of life; the tragedy of a young mother dying of cancer and leaving a large family, and the heartbreak of a dearly loved member of the family being in a mental institution, and the problem of caring for a sick and elderly relative.

I would like to conclude with the words of St. Therese about her parents, “God gave me a mother and father more worthy of heaven than of earth.”

Parents as the first Catechists

My address at the parents/catechists meeting at the parish. 

Dear Parents 

Good evening and you are all most welcome any time in this parish. I would like to take this opportunity to thank each one of your for your commitment to raise your children in the catholic faith. You have made every effort to bring your children in training them in the faith that you have received and most importantly you have manifested your faith to your children through your deeds and worthy living as Christians. Don't ever let go of the precious treasure of faith and always make sure your children also grow in the same faith. 

God has been ever showering his graces on you as parents. I know how hard it is to make time for prayer, mass, adoration and other spiritual activities in the family or at the church because of your commitment and a world of competition. It requires a great integrity of heart and mind in the fast moving world. 

Parents, you've promised to the Christ and his church to raise your children in the catholic faith at baptism. You've accepted the responsibility to train your children in the practice of the faith. You have promised to keep the light of faith burning brightly. It is important we renew and review those promises especially when we enroll our children in the catechetics. We all need to grow in our faith.  When the disciples could not heal the oh with demon, Jesus tell them, "because you've so little faith, if you had like that of the mustard seeds you can to this mountain move here and it will move." Dear parents Jesus points out to his disciples that they need to grow in their faith. And when we grow in our faith we can help others grow. Parents, you've grown in your faith, I think so, now your duty is to help your children to grow in their faith. Children learn from their parents.

Catechism of the Catholic Church in paragraph 2225 says, "Through the grace of the sacrament of marriage, parents receive the responsibility and privilege of evangelizing their children. Parents should initiate their children at an early age into the mysteries of the faith of which they are the "first heralds" for their children. They should associate them from their tenderest years with the life of the Church.34 A wholesome family life can foster interior dispositions that are a genuine preparation for a living faith and remain a support for it throughout one's life."

So you are the first catechists for your children and your family is the domestic church. Hence, parents see that your children learn the faith from you both in theory and practice, may be more in practice. 

Parents one such concrete practice is to pray. Prayer can bind families, a family that prays together stays together. Prayer is the window towards God and his mysteries. It is through prayer God manifests and reveals to us. Let us teach our children to pray. The catechism of the Catholic Church expresses in paragraph 2226. Family catechesis precedes, accompanies, and enriches other forms of instruction in the faith. Parents have the mission of teaching their children to pray and to discover their vocation as children of God.35 The parish is the Eucharistic community and the heart of the liturgical life of Christian families; it is a privileged place for the catechesis of children and parents.

Parents, the Eucharist has a utmost role to play in the life of a child. Today we do not see many young persons at the liturgy of the Eucharist. Why is that? Is the church only for adults? Many times parents tell me, "father please tell my children to come to church". Do you think they will listen to me if they do not listen to you. Do we as church and parents talk to them about the significance of the mass and prayer? Let us talk to them whilst they are small and when they grow up they will be strong in their understanding of the Eucharist and prayer. 

I would like to extend any form of support for the children and young people and any time. May gods blessings be always with you. 

Eucharistic community

It was an early church community experience to celebrate mass at the Sophia housing scheme. A plan to celebrate mass was fulfilled on Sunday last when Fr. Jerri with the help of Mr. Alfred Bhulai ventured in to this huge housing scheme. The mass celebrated in a small house sit-out; truly an experience of community among the most needy people of the area. There were about ten people, mostly home bound and elderly. They expressed the need to celebrate mass in their own community. They were grateful for the privilege of celebrating mass after a long. One of them expressed, 'God is truly present among us and he is coming to our homes in the form of communion.' 

The Sophia housing area was missions to Fr. Jerri in order to develop and  encourage catholic community. Hence, he with the help of St. Teresas parishioners is exploring different possibilities of establishing a catholic community. The Catholics expressed that there is need for that because some of them go to far away parishes or go denominations closer to their homes. 

There will be mass every third Sunday in the mint at 11 am in the scheme. It will be celebrated in homes of different people. People interested are asked to contact St. Teresas parish for more details. We ask your prayers for these people in the scheme.