my Articulate Heart

Most pleasing experience of the human soul is to be at the fountain of the sweet presence of God the father, drinking non stop from the perennial source that offers joy, peace, a great sense of purpose and a life of gratitude. As children, we live in the father's house and His presence is never absent in the house. It is certainly our right and privilege to be in the Father's presence always. Imagine having to be confined by a schedule that stipulates this privilege to be with Dad. Being in God's presence is a matter of being aware of God who is always present. We can call it God consciousness. We leave this most fulfilling presence of God when we turn inward and become self conscious much like the prodigal son. To be at the fountain and not leave the presence of God requires training and discipline of the self. The fallenness of our nature pulls us away world ward. Thus we need to inculcate habits to counter this natural pull. When we repeat actions over and over it...

Same are the tears that roll out of our eyes but reasons for it are many. Tears fall when we get hurt, when we fail to achieve, when expectations are no met, when we lose someone dear to us and also tears fall when we are sympathetic to the predicament of a fellow human being. Lent is a season ear marked once every year for tears!. Question is which of these kind of tears do we cry during lent?  Most of the time, when we think of the events that led to the crucifixion of Jesus, the emotions that run in our veins are a crude mixture of sympathy and righteous anger. It does opportunistically move us to tears. We feel good and self content shedding these lenten tears as though we have done our part to sympathise with God who met with a misfortune.  "Jesus turned and said to them, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children" [Luke 23:28]  Crucified Jesus is not a victim of unfortunate circumstance or someone's v...

Communion is to hear the voice of God.  My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. [John 10:27].  The communion is also what Jesus refers to as abiding in Him. Jesus said  I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.  The invitation God extends to have communion with Him is an open invitation to liberate oneself from the need to fit in, the need to prove one's self-worth and the need to achieve or to be successful in order to be be accepted and loved. To have communion with God is to experience a true liberation from the slavery of self-centredness, in other words, freedom from the needs and concerns of our own self. We are the sheep of Jesus the Good shepherd. The sheep of His flock is not under pressure to prove or achieve in order to be loved and accepted. They are free to be themselves. They are free to do what they are naturally good at. T...

The most important truth every human person needs to hear is that he is "loved" and "forgiven". God never ceases to whisper these words into our ears. No evil act we commit is capable of stopping God from loving us and forgiving us. If it is so, why do we fail to hear it? It is because we seek to hear these words in the thunderous roars and the monstrous cries we create and manipulate around us. But alas! this gentle whisper can only be heard in the deepest recess of our being as we resolve to seek our joy and fulfilment in God alone and in nothing else. Man experiences God as the provider first. In the fascinating story of the prodigal we see that the lost son comes to his senses when he realises that he is missing the meals he savoured at home and that his father's servants are eating much better meals than the morsel of husk he is struggling to grab fighting the pigs. Then it is the experience of having forgiven by God that makes him abide in God. It is by...

Jesus said to his disciples   “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in name of the father son and the Holy Spirit. And teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” These compelling last words of Jesus must shake us out of the comfy sofas. This is a matter of urgency. Do we heed this urgent call? The Church exists to evangelize. All Christians without an exception are called to evangelize. The challenge of time is to make “faith” relevant to a highly secularized society that is desperately attempting to de-Christianize the world. And also re awaken those Baptized Catholics who lost their flavor and are living merely as Sunday Christians. Our beloved Pope Francis, during the World Youth Day at Rio, challenged the youth to courageously proclaim the Gospel with their life and word. He asked them to be missionaries. He reminded them that it is not an option but mandatory. Do we he...

Know your self first The key to knowing your spouse is knowing your own self first. It is only in God that we discover ourselves. As God reveals more of Himself to us we begin to understand more of ourselves. As we understand more of ourselves, we begin to understand others. If you seek to understand your spouse, begin by seeking God whole-heartedly. The mystery of Man and woman  The uniqueness of man and woman can only be understood in the mystery of the Trinitarian God. Creating human beings in his own nature, God made them man and woman. The union of man and woman points to the unitive and procreative nature of God’s love. The desire to give one self totally to the other is engraved in our bodies. The language, our bodies speak is that of self-donating love. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. [Mathew 16:25] Through disobedience humanity experienced sin and it left us wounded and broken. Jesus resto...

You and I are all called to be Holy. We become holy not by what we do but by what God does within us. Jesus lifting the bread in his hands said “Take this and eat, this is my body broken for you. And then he took the chalice and said, drink this, this is my blood, The blood of the new covenant, poured out for the forgiveness of your sins. It is Jesus who makes us holy like Him by giving us his own complete self - body, blood, soul and divinity. In the holy mass, during the Communion service, what takes place is a profound and mysterious exchange. Jesus takes upon himself our broken and wounded bodies and gives us his holy body.  Our old sinful self is crucified with Jesus and we become a new creation. The old is gone and the new comes in. Because of this priceless exchange, we can now say with confidence, Its no longer I but Jesus who lives in me.  God the father, out of his immense love and mercy, sent his only begotten son to become the worthy sacrifice and ...

When I come to realise that my body causes me to sin, I live in conflict with my body. Like St. Paul I lament in despair " how wretched I'm, who will deliver me from this mortal body ". All my efforts seem futile and I'm discouraged. It is not by my sincere striving that I become holy but by my faith in Jesus. My sincere striving must be to believe with absolute certainty that Jesus has taken my broken body and replaced it with His. The word of God says  "My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."   [Gal 2:20] When I believe in the word of God that says I'm a new creation, the Holy Spirit makes the Word come true in me. It is the profession of this faith that renews our mind. The body follows suit. The old body with all it's disordered passions is crucified with Jesus. "He hims...

We are more keen to appear holy than to be holy. The prayers uttered are often a recounting of our own goodness. It becomes a mere hypocritical act to praise ourselves and to hail us better than others. We are obsessively content with exterior display. We are content if we look good in the eyes of others. This is vanity, pride masquerading as humility. Our prayers do not pierce the clouds, instead destroys what is left of spirituality within us. In the eastern tradition, during the lent, the monks would disperse themselves into the desert far from each other. The penance, self dedication, mortification etc that they do were only known to themselves and God. Even when they are back in the monastery, nobody asks what they did. This was done so that no one does anything in order to look good in the eyes of the other, but purely for the love for God. True humility is unpretentious and is effortless. For the humble, his own sinful nature will always be a reality before him, even if h...

The poor in spirit are pure in spirit.  They belong in the kingdom of God. Worry and anxiety does not hinder their vision. They see God face to face. Poverty is a blessed prerequisite to the kingdom of God. But in todays materialistic world poverty is branded as backward and undesirable. The very first beatitude underlines " blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the the kingdom of God . [Mathew 5:3] If you want to know how poor you are in spirit, check how peaceful you are within. Worry and anxiety about the things of this world are signs of pride and lack of trust in God. We are slaves of our own desires. These desires dominate us and blinds our vision. But if our will rises above them, we will have clear dominion over them and experience the fulfilment of all our desires in union with Christ. When our soul is able to see the face of God, It can do wonders with our bodies. When our Body submits itself totally to the soul aligning itself to the will of God, we ex...