Monday, May 5, 2014
Saturday, May 3, 2014
કવિ શ્રી યોસેફ મેકવાનને "કુમાર સુવર્ણ ચંદ્રક" એનાયત c/o BBN
Friday, May 2, 2014
કવિ શ્રી યોસેફ મેકવાનને "કુમાર સુવર્ણ ચંદ્રક" એનાયત
જાણીતા ગુજરાતી સામાયિક "કુમાર" દ્વારા દર વર્ષે કાવ્યો, ચરિત્ર, સાહિત્યિક લેખો વગેરેને ધ્યાનમાં રાખીને કોઈક વિશિષ્ટ સર્જક માટે"કુમાર સુવર્ણ ચંદ્રક" આપવામાં આવે છે. આ સંદર્ભમાં ઈ.સ. 2013નો "કુમાર સુવર્ણ ચંદ્રક" ગુજરાતી સાહિત્યના પ્રસિધ્ધ કવિશ્રી યોસેફ મેકવાનને એનાયત કરવામાં આવ્યો છે.આ અંગેના નિર્ણાયકો તરીકે ડો. શ્રી ચિમનલાલ ત્રિવેદી, શ્રી વિનોદ ભટ્ટ અને ડો. શ્રી ચંદ્રકાંત શેઠ હતા.
2012માં કવિ શ્રી યોસેફ મેકવાનને દિલ્લી સાહિત્ય અકાદમીનો બાળ સાહિત્ય અંગેનો રાષ્ટ્રીય કક્ષાનો એવોર્ડ "આવ હયા, વાર્તા કહું" બાળ વાર્તા સંગ્રહ માટે એનાયત થયો હતો.
છઠ્ઠા દાયકાના ગુજરાતી સાહિત્યના આધુનિક પ્રવાહના શ્રી યોસેફ મેકવાન નોંધપત્ર સર્જક છે તેમના જાણીતા ગ્રંથોમાં 'સ્વગત' (1969), 'સુરજનો હાથ'(1983), 'અલખનો અવસર'(1994), 'અવાજના એક્ષ રે' (2000) વગેરે નોંધપાત્ર છે.
'સબંધ વિનાના સેતુ' એ લઘુ નવલ અને વાર્તાઓ છે. 'હળવે હાથે' (વ્યંગ નિબંધો) 'કાન હોઈ તે સંભાળે'(લઘુ નિબંધ) જેવા ગધ ગ્રંથો છે
'પ્રાણી બાગની સેર', 'પમરાટ', 'કલરવ', 'વાહ રે વાર્તા વાહ', 'રુમ ઝૂમ પતંગીયું', 'જાદુઈ પીછું', ઢીચકું 'તોફાન', 'ડીંગ ડોંગ, ડીંગ ડોંગ' આ સંચયોને પણ ગુજરાત સરકારના ઇનામો મળ્યા છે.
આપણી ગુજરાતની ધર્મ સભા માટે એમનું જાણીતું અનમોલ પ્રદાન તે 'સંપૂર્ણ બાઈબલ'માં આવતા સ્તોત્રો ને છંદોબધ્ધ ગુજરાતીમાં કર્યા છે.
કવિ શ્રી યોસેફ મેકવાનને "કુમાર સુવર્ણ ચંદ્રક" માટે BBN અને આપણા સૌ તરફથી હાર્દિક અભિનંદન.
- ડો. થોમસ પરમાર
2012માં જયારે તેમને દિલ્લી સાહિત્ય અકાદમીનો બાળ સાહિત્ય અંગેનો રાષ્ટ્રીય કક્ષાનો એવોર્ડ "આવ હયા, વાર્તા કહું" બાળ વાર્તા સંગ્રહ માટે એનાયત થયો હતો ત્યારે તેમની BBN સાથેની મુલાકાત માટે નીચે આપેલ વીડિઓ નિહાળશો
Third Sunday after Easter (A) 4 May 2014
Third Sunday after Easter (A) 4 May 2014
Luke 24: 13-35
José Antonio Pagola
Welcome and use the power of the gospel
Two disciples of Jesus are leaving Jerusalem far behind them. They are sad and desolate travelers. In their hearts the hope they had placed in Jesus died when they saw him die on the cross. However, they continue to think of him. They cannot forget him. Was it all an illusion?
While they were talking about and discussing all they had lived through, Jesus catches up and begins to travel along with them. However, the disciples do not recognize him. The Jesus in whom they had placed so much trust and had loved perhaps passionately, now seems to them a strange fellow traveler.
Jesus joins their conversation. The travelers listen to him surprised, but slowly a new feeling grows in their hearts. They don’t know exactly what. Later on they will remark: “Were not our hearts on fire while he spoke to us on the way?”
The travelers felt attracted by the words of Jesus. A time comes when they need his company. They don’t want to let him go: “Stay with us”. During the supper their eyes will be opened, and they will recognize him. This is the first message of the story: when we welcome Jesus as a fellow traveler, his words can awaken in us lost hope.
In the course of these years, many people have lost their faith in Jesus. Slowly he has become a strange and incompatible person to them. All they know of him is what they can put together in bits and pieces starting with what they have heard of him from preachers and catechists.
Undoubtedly, the Sunday homily plays an indispensable role, but it is clearly insufficient for people today to come into direct and living contact with the Gospel. The way it is done today, before a congregation that has to remain silent, without spelling out their anxieties, questions and problems, it is difficult to regenerate the vacillating faith of so many people who seek, sometimes without knowing it, to meet Jesus.
Has not the time arrived to launch a new and different forum, outside the context of the Sunday liturgy, to listen to the Gospel of Jesus? Why do we not, lay men and women, priests, convinced Christians and people who are interested in the faith, gather to listen, share, dialogue, and welcome the Gospel of Jesus?
We have to give the Gospel the opportunity to enter with all its transforming power into direct and immediate contact with the problems, crises, fears and hopes of the people of today. Soon it will be too late for us to recover among us the original freshness of the Gospel.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Resurrection of Jesus
Resurrection
of Jesus is the foundation of Christian faith; although it is a future
reality it has serious implications for the present
For
us Christians Easter is a feast of joy when the defeat of the Good
Friday is converted into victory. Jesus Christ overcame death and
entered into a new life, a new existence, signifying that death is not
the end of life, but only an entry into a new existence. Resurrection of
Jesus is the guarantee of the resurrection of all those who believe in
him. Faith in the resurrection of Jesus gives his followers the strength
and courage to face any crisis in life, including death.
Resurrection
of Jesus is so foundational to the Christian faith that there are 213
references to the death and resurrection of Jesus in the New Testament
according to a biblical author, Ryan Turner. St. Paul’s letters alone
have 81 references to the death and resurrection of Jesus.
There
is a story about of an archaeologist who after doing research for many
years in the holy land came to a strange and devastating conclusion that
he found the body of Jesus Christ in the grave and he announced his
discovery to the world. This news sent shockwaves throughout the
Christian world. Churches became empty; convents and religious houses
were closed down and priests left their priesthood. The whole Christian
world faced the threat of its very existence. Seeing the gravity of the
crisis the researcher declared that he had said a lie; he did not find
the body of Jesus. The story brings to light the crucial significance of
faith in the resurrection of Jesus for the followers of Jesus. That is
why St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians says, “If Christ has not
been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We
are even found to be misrepresenting God.... If Christ has not been
raised, your faith is futile” (1 Cor. 15:14-17).
On the day of Easter we, the followers of Jesus, declare to the world, “An
amazing man, Jesus who is the epitome of God lived an incredible life
and was cruelly put to death. Afterwards - something amazing happened-
he rose from the dead and lives among us”. The celebration of Easter
should reaffirm our faith in Jesus in such a way that we will be able to
say along with St. Paul, “Who
will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or
distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?(Rom 8:35)
According
to the description of the resurrection of Jesus by St. Mathew, Mary
Magdalene and the other Mary are the first to receive the news of the
risen Lord and to encounter him. They had been there at the foot of the
Cross; they had been there when Jesus was laid in the tomb; and now they
were receiving love's reward; they were the first to know the joy of
the Resurrection. According to William Barclay, a renowned Gospel
commentator, they were given three tasks.
(i)
They are urged to believe what Jesus had already predicted about his
death and resurrection. (ii) They are urged to share the news with
others. "Go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the
dead” is the command that came from the angel. (iii) They are urged to
“rejoice”. The word with which the Risen Christ met them is “Chairete”
and its literal meaning is "Rejoice!" The implication is that the person
who has met the Risen Lord must live forever in the joy of his presence
from which nothing can part him anymore.
We,
the followers of Jesus, also have the three responsibilities: to
believe in the resurrection of Jesus, to share with others the good news
of Jesus’ resurrection and lead a life of joy whatever may be the
circumstance in which we are placed. We can see that the members of the
early Christian communities fulfilled these responsibilities and as a
result they could attract many people to their fold.
The
resurrection of Jesus has serious implications for our life on earth
too. Faith in the resurrection of Jesus calls upon us for a radical
transformation, a transformation from exclusiveness to inclusiveness,
from narrow mindedness to a broad vision, from an old way life to a new
way of life. Before the resurrection, Jesus was mainly limited to a
small geographical area, but after the resurrection Jesus became
universal, as savior and liberator he became available to the whole
world irrespective of caste, class, creed, religion, language, culture
etc. Faith in the resurrection of Jesus invites us to transcend our
narrow identities like language, religion and culture and embrace the
broader and higher identities of humanity and the fatherhood or
motherhood of God.
Faith
in the resurrection of Jesus invites us for a transition from the old
way of life to a new way of life as depicted by St. Paul in his letter
to Ephesians (4:22-24). “Put off your old nature which belongs to your
former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts….. and put
on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true
righteousness and holiness.” St. Paul again describes the
characteristics of the old man and the new man in his letter to the
Galatians (4:19-23). The characteristics of the “old man” are
immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife,
jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy,
drunkenness and the like. The Characteristics of the “new man” are love,
joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and
self control and they are the fruits of the spirit. It will be a great
contradiction if we confess our faith in the resurrected Jesus and at
the same time live a life of the “old man”. Both can never go together.
Let
the celebration of Easter deepen our faith in the resurrected Jesus who
is always with us, calling us and inspiring us to lead a life of
resurrection, characterized by joy, peace and compassion.
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Vincente Canas - Jesuit Brother
A
Martyr in the Amazon
For
the month of April the Jesuit 2014 calendar, which commemorates the 200th anniversary of the restoration of the
Society of Jesus, focuses on Vicente Cañas, a Spanish Jesuit brother who lived
among the indigenous tribes of the Amazon for nearly twenty years. Paul
Martin SJ thinks about the life of a man who, ‘through the Spiritual Exercises,
found the interior freedom to offer his very self to Christ’.
When
I was asked to write these words on Vicente Cañas, the guidelines given were,
‘don’t concentrate on dates, places and events – people can get all of that
from Wikipedia. Make it
more a personal reflection.’
Well, naturally, before writing I thought I myself had better
first checkWikipedia! Following a link from there led me to the Aragon Jesuit Provincewebsite
where an article (thanks to the wonders of Google
Translate) gives even a non-Spanish-speaker a good sense of the ‘dates, places
and events’.
Along with this article there are a number of striking
photographs. So, before knowing even a single date, place or event you are
caught up into something of the spirituality and mysticism that weave those
‘dates, places and events’ into the unity that was the life of Vicente Cañas
–offered with total generosity to God and laid down in love for his friends.
In the first photograph at the beginning of the article, a group
of indigenous Amazonian children stand laughing in the company of an adult man.
At first glance the adult appears to be another Amerindian – the father of some
of the children perhaps? The beads he wears over his bare chest, the large
wooden earrings, the hair cut in a clear line high over his ears, the cord tied
around his upper arm... each feature in every way identical to the children he
is with.
But for those who know indigenous people, one thing is strange
and out of place. It is the man’s thick beard – a thing unheard of among the
native peoples of the Amazon whose facial hair runs at most to a few wispy
strands under the chin. It is the beard that gives this man away as a European.
So who is this European and what is he doing there? The smiles
and laughter that he shares with the children are the clue. Here, there is
mutual recognition; here, there is understanding; here, there is respect; here,
there is encounter.
The children belong to the ‘Enawene-Nawe’, one of over 200
different tribes of indigenous people that live in the Amazon forest. In
1974 they were considered an ‘uncontacted tribe’, their lives untouched by the
‘outside world’. For them, the bearded man is their ‘contact’. He is the
face of the ‘other’. How beautiful, therefore, is the smile on this man’s face
and the answering laughter from the children? He does not threaten, he does not
impose, he neither ridicules nor rejects. He understands, he accepts, he
identifies with, he recognises that mysterious bond of shared humanity that
unites as equals the forest-dwellers of the Amazon and the sophisticated
twentieth-century European.
Sadly, in the 500 years since Columbus set foot in the ‘New
World’, contact between Europeans and the indigenous people of the Americas has
rarely taken this form. Violence, invasion, domination and death have been, by
far, the more usual characteristics of contact. First come the miners looking
for gold and diamonds, then the loggers ripping out the lungs of the world for
the money to be made from the sale of timber, and behind them, the ranchers who
put more value on the price of beef than on the human beings that once occupied
the land their cattle now roam. The violence is blatant – even in our
twenty-first century, indigenous people are killed and their villages burned to
clear them from the lands they occupy. For this reason it is naive to argue
that the uncontacted tribes should be ‘left in peace’. Contact is bound to
happen. The only question is whether that contact will be made by those driven
by greed for profit, or by men and women, like Vicente, who desire that the
indigenous people might be recognised and respected as human beings with
rights.
Vicente’s first ‘encounter’ with the indigenous world came
in 1969 when, as a young Jesuit brother newly arrived in Brazil from Spain, he
was called on to form part of a medical team needed to respond to a disaster
among a people known as the ‘Beiço de Pau’. A few months before Vicente came to
work with these Amerindians they numbered 600; by the time he arrived their
numbers had been reduced to a mere 40. In their case, death had come not
through violence but through disease, a disease no more mysterious than the
common cold; but for a people with no natural resistance, the flu caught from
contact with a European proved more deadly than the ‘Black Death’. Vicente was
asked to assist the Brazilian government agency FUNI in a campaign to immunise
the remnant of survivors and then help them move to a new location.
This experience marked Vicente deeply. It sensitised him to the
precarious nature of existence for the indigenous people of the Amazon. Yet, at
the same time, it opened his eyes to the strength and wisdom of the indigenous
culture. They had a way of life that was perfectly adapted to their
environment. They did not need anything from the outside in order to find what
was necessary for existence, and indeed to find fulfilment and joy in their
lives.
Vicente spent the next five years working with a number of
different indigenous groups in the Amazon before beginning the delicate process
in 1974 of making first contact with the Enawene-Nawe, and then identifying
with them and living among them for over 10 years.
I will depart from my instructions just briefly and highlight
one date and event in Vicente’s life. The date is the feast of the Assumption
of Our Lady, 15 August 1975 and the event is Vicente’s profession of final vows
in the Society of Jesus. Most tellers of Vicente’s story might pass over this
date and event as unremarkable but in many ways I think it holds the key for a
true understanding of what made it possible for Vicente, as a European, to
enter so fully into the way of life of the indigenous people of the Amazon, and
what gave that identification its meaning and value.
For priests and brothers alike it is the experience of making
the Spiritual Exercises that lies at the heart of Jesuit formation. Before
final vows each Jesuit will have made the full ‘thirty day retreat’ twice, once
as a novice and again in a final year of formation called ‘tertianship’. Each
year, throughout his life, every Jesuit renews this key experience in a
shorter, eight-day retreat.
The Exercises are an experience of personal encounter – the
direct encounter between the one making the Exercises and the Creator of all
that exists, made possible through the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ,
‘who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as
something to be grasped. But rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a
slave, being born in human likeness.’ (Phil 2:6 ff)
A pivotal moment in the Exercises comes in the meditation on the
‘Two Standards’. Here, the one who is making
the Exercises is invited to recognise the ways in which he or she is being
tricked into building a false sense of identity out of the riches and honours
that he or she has come to possess. We equate our success in life with our
possession of ‘status symbols’. These need not be the crass material objects –
the large house, the fancy car, the diamond ring, the Rolex watch – that seem
so important to ‘worldly’ people. The academic who thirsts for recognition of
his work or even the philanthropist who prides herself on the number of
hospitals she has founded are still being driven by a false spirit. Our true
identity comes from recognising ourselves to be children of God and that
everything we have comes to us as gift. Paradoxically it is in letting go of
the things the world tells us are indispensible that we come to know who we
truly are.
Because Vicente found his sense of identity in his encounter
with Christ in the Exercises, he was able to let go of all that would normally
define a European man and so enter fully into the culture and way of life of an
Amerindian tribe. He did not observe them from outside, recording and analysing
their culture for anthropological research. He became one with them, taking
part in their daily chores of farming and fishing but also in the religious
rituals that gave a sense of meaning and purpose to these activities. He did
not come to ‘convert’ them, to impose his Western world view. Vicente desired
to learn to see the world as the Enawene-Nawe saw it.
Seeing the world from the perspective of the indigenous people,
he became an outspoken advocate for their land rights. In this way he incurred
the hatred of those outsiders who wished to take the Amerindian lands for
themselves.
At the centre of the Christian gospel stands the mystery of the
Cross. ‘A man can have no greater love than this, that he lay down his life for
his friends.’ (Jn 15:13) In the crucifixion of Jesus,
God’s unconditional offer of love is revealed. Yet at the same time the crucifixion
reveals the human refusal of that offer. The Cross is an invitation to
conversion. On which side do we stand: with Christ or with those who crucify
him?
Vicente Cañas, through the Spiritual Exercises, found the
interior freedom to offer his very self to Christ and to be led to divest
himself of his European culture in order to enter fully into the culture of the
Enawene-Nawe: ‘and being found in Amerindian form he became humbler yet, even
to accepting death... death at the hands of those who would rob the Amerindians
of their lands.’
Vicente, the man of peace, the man with whom the children of the
forest felt so at home, met his death at the hands of violent men. On 5
April 1987, Vicente sent a radio message to colleagues to let them know he was
setting out from the small hut in the forest that he used as a base to go and
spend time in the Enawene-Nawe village. This was a journey he was never to
make. On 16 May some
of his colleagues happened to be visiting his hut. They saw the boat in which
he should have travelled to the village, loaded as if for a journey but half
submerged. On entering the hut they found clear signs of a struggle and
Vicente’s dead body with stab wounds to the stomach. Probably he had been
killed on 6 April.
It is the gap of over one month from his death to the discovery
of his body that is perhaps the most moving part of Vicente’s story. His
colleagues found nothing strange in the fact that he had not made any radio
contact. Their visit to his base was not motivated by anxiety to know where he
was. It was the nature of his life with the indigenous people that he could go
for months without having contact with the ‘outside’ world. In the eyes of that
world, he lived an ‘insignificant life’ and he died unnoticed. Yet, to the eyes
of faith, Vicente’s life and death take on the profound significance of
participation in the mystery of Christ. They become a proclamation of the
gospel with an eloquence unequalled by the finest theologians, since, as St
Ignatius states, ‘love expresses itself more clearly in deeds than in words’.
Our world has become saturated by words. Perhaps it is good,
therefore, to finish this reflection with another image: the photograph of
Vicente and the Amerindian boy on the calendar. Vicente’s death is an invitation
for us all to concern ourselves with how the child might find ‘life – and life
in all its fullness.’
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Monday, March 31, 2014
Monday, March 17, 2014
Fr Susaimanickam goes to his Father in heaven
Rev. Fr.
Susaimanickam, the Parish Priest of Tarapur passed away at 9.30 p. m. on
16-03-2014 due to a massive heart attack.
Fr.
Susaimanickam was playing in a volley-ball tournament at Nar village along with
Tarapur youth at 7.30 p.m. Around 9.30
p.m. he fell on the ground and in a few moments he was no more…
We will inform
you the place and the time of the funeral little later.
May his soul
Rest in Peace.
Yours devotedly in Christ
+ Thomas Macwan
Bishop of Ahmedabad
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Happy New year, Pope Francis
HAPPY NEW YEAR, POPE FRANCIS!
-Fr. Cedric Prakash sj*
It was just a little
after midnight of March 13th - 14th 2013. Like millions
of others all over the world, I too was impatiently waiting for that white
smoke which would emerge from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican
heralding the news that a new Pope was elected. There were all kinds of rumours of the “going-ons” :who would be elected, what are the possibilities,
how long it would take etc etc and suddenly the
ticker on one of the news channel which I was searching on my computer,
announced that the plume of white smoke had emerged. A Pope had been elected!
A Pope elected! But who
was he? From where was he? Was he one of the ‘papabili’?
There were hundreds of questions that crossed my mind as I desperately tried to
look for the answer from one news site to another and suddenly the spokesperson
from the Vatican arrived at the window telling us that name ‘Cardinal
Jorge Mario Bergoglio’ from Argentina was
elected as Pope and would take the name of ‘Francis’. Then ‘Bergoglio’ who? I had never heard of him? And why the name of Francis? Just as I was doing a ‘google search’ I got a call from a friend
congratulating me for the first Jesuit Pope in history; my reply was “a Jesuit?
It just cannot be!” I had taken for granted that a Jesuit cannot become a
Pope. Well my ‘google search’, was still
on and my friend was really right!
Bergoglio
was indeed a Jesuit – a well-known one at that. In the meantime, I began
receiving email messages, texts and calls from all over. I was too excited to
speak that night. And then I was in for a shock. As millions of people both in
the Vatican Square and across the world watched, Pope Francis wished all
gathered a very simple ‘good evening’
and in a style that was soon going to be the hallmark of his papacy, he asked
for the prayers of ‘all men and women of
goodwill to help him lead the Catholic Church’. This was something out of the ordinary. No Pope had ever done that before! The
revolution had begun!
A revolution indeed! As I look back at this one eventful year for
the Catholic Church and perhaps for the whole world, I try to place before me
the challenges that Pope Francis has thrown not only to me but to all of us. Personally, I am challenged in several ways.
·
Pope Francis
challenges me to simplicity
Wow! This man has
taken the name he chose “Francis” all too seriously! His gestures
and actions have gone beyond the ‘cosmetic’ or ‘symbolic’
- All of us seem to be noticing everything: the fact that he has refused to
stay in the Papal mansions; that his attire and even his shoes are not what the
past Popes ordinarily wore; his sensitivity to make a phone call or to write a
letter to the most ordinary person in a most unassuming way; the fact that he
can allow a little child to slowly walk up to the stage and literally take his
seat; the affection he exudes when he embraces a man with a disfigured face;
his warm simple gestures all the time has indeed warmed the cockles of many a
heart. St. Francis of Assisi whose name he chose must surely be
smiling from above, that the head of the Catholic Church today has the courage
to take him and all that he stood for very, very seriously.
·
Pope Francis
challenges me to be inclusive
And Pope Francis has done
this in a most amazing way. He has
reached out to perhaps every group on Planet Earth very specially to the poor,
to the marginalized, to the minorities. On July 8th, 2013, he
visited the Sicilian island of Lampedusa (which is
closer to North Africa than mainland Italy) which sees the influx of thousands
of immigrants from Tunisia, Morocco, Libya, Egypt and other parts of North
Africa as they seek a better future in Europe.
In his homily, he greeted those present saying, “I
give a thought, too, to the dear Muslim immigrants that are beginning the fast
of Ramadan, with best wishes for abundant spiritual fruits. The Church is near
to you in the search for a more dignified life for yourselves and for your
families”. A clear message to one and all that Christianity is about inclusiveness,
about going to the margins and welcoming “the least of our sisters and
brothers”. The Holy
Father then continued with a very powerful message to the whole world: “Today no one in the world feels responsible for this (the deaths
of immigrants); we have lost the sense of fraternal responsibility; we have
fallen into the hypocritical attitude of the priest and of the servant of the
altar that Jesus speaks about in the parable of the Good Samaritan: we look
upon the brother half-dead by the roadside, perhaps we think “poor
guy,” and we continue on our way; it’s none of our business; and we
feel fine with this. We feel at peace with this, we feel fine! The culture of
well-being, that makes us think of ourselves, that makes us insensitive to the
cries of others, that makes us live in soap bubbles, that are beautiful but are
nothing, are illusions of futility, of the transient, that brings indifference
to others, that brings even the globalization of indifference. In this world of
globalization, we have fallen into a globalization of
indifference. We are accustomed to the suffering of others, it
doesn’t concern us, it’s none of our
business.”
·
Pope Francis
challenges me to live the Joy of the Gospel
On November 24th,
at the conclusion of the year of the Faith, Pope Francis gave to the world his
first Apostolic Exhortation entitled “Evangelii Gaudium” (the Joy of the Gospel). In
this path-breaking document, he literally challenges the Christians to
transcend their narrowness and self-centredness in
order to truly understand the person and message of Jesus. In no uncertain terms, he reminds all that “the Gospel tells us constantly to run the risk of a face-to-face
encounter with others, with their physical presence which challenges us, with
their pain and their pleas, with their joy which infects us in our close and
continues interaction. True faith in the
incarnate Son of God is inseparable from self-giving, from membership in the
community, from service, from reconciliation with others. The Son of God, by becoming flesh, summoned
us to the revolution of tenderness”.
·
Pope Francis
challenges me to be more of a Jesuit
It still is such a dream
that the Pope is a Jesuit - something perhaps unthinkable just over a year
ago. I joined the Jesuits in 1974 when
General Congregation XXXII became a watershed for Jesuits the world over with
the faith-justice mandate becoming the
heart of the Jesuit way of proceeding.
In his one year as Pope, the world has not lost sight of the fact that
Francis is a Jesuit to the very core.
His words, his actions, his attitudes are Jesuit through and
through. When he speaks about
“conversion” he is obviously using the Spiritual Exercises of St.
Ignatius of Loyola which has been so dear to him right from the time he joined
the Society of Jesus. In his native Argentina, he always championed the
cause of the poor. Last December, he
canonized Peter Favre, a close companion of St.
Ignatius of Loyola whom he praised for being “in dialogue
with all, even the most remote and even with his opponents.” Pope Francis has constantly been searching
for the magis in
all things just as St. Ignatius wanted all Jesuits to be doing so.
Challenges indeed for me
and for all and I am sure in the years ahead, we will have many more challenges
-Happy
New Year, dear Pope Francis! Thank you
for being my Pope, my brother and my Shepherd!
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