33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

 Prov. 31:10-13,19-20,30-31; 1 Thes. 5:1–6; Mt. 25:14–30

In George Eliot’s novel Silas Marner, Silas is a lonely weaver whose life has been wounded by betrayal. He withdraws from people and pours his whole heart into earning gold. Night after night he works at his loom, and the gold coins accumulate beneath his floor. He occasionally takes them out simply to look at them and count them. Then one night the gold is stolen. Silas is devastated because the treasure he had guarded has disappeared. But later another “treasure” enters his house—a little orphaned girl named Eppie. Silas takes responsibility for her, raises her and loves her. Slowly the lonely miser becomes a father, neighbour and friend. The great change in Silas is not that he acquires more; it is that what he already possesses—his capacity to work, care and love—is finally invested in another human being. Perhaps that is a useful doorway into today’s Gospel. Jesus tells of three servants receiving talents. Two put what they receive to work. The third carefully preserves his talent by burying it. Nothing is stolen; nothing is wasted in the usual sense. He returns exactly what he received. Yet that is precisely his tragedy: nothing has happened to the gift.

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

 Wis. 6:12–16; 1 Thes.4:13–18, and Mt. 25:1–13.

In Samuel Beckett’s famous play Waiting for Godot, two men, Vladimir and Estragon, spend their time beside a lonely road waiting for someone called Godot. They talk, argue, joke, remember, forget, become tired, think of leaving, and then continue waiting. At the end of the day, a boy arrives with the disappointing message that Godot will not come that evening but will surely come tomorrow. Tomorrow arrives, and again they wait. The play is sometimes funny because the two men hardly know what to do with themselves while waiting. In fact, it resembles some of our own waiting. At a doctor’s clinic we look at the clock every three minutes and become restless. At an airport, when the board says “Delayed,” suddenly everybody becomes an aviation expert. Human beings are not very good at waiting. Yet today’s readings are entirely about waiting—Jesus tells us about ten young women waiting in the night for a bridegroom. Unlike Beckett’s Godot, however, the Bridegroom does come. The question of the Gospel is not whether he will come, but what happens to us while we wait.

Jesus is in my Mother

In the room of a priest, Fr Mary John of Quilon diocese, only a photo of his mother who died recently was found. I asked him, “Why, there is no photo of Jesus or your father.?” He replied, “In the photo of my mother, there Jesus and my father.” He wiped his tears during his answer. He spoke his meditative insights,

"What I am today is because of my mother.

After the death of my father, my mother became my father and mother.

They are still with me.

They still give me strength.

They interceed for me.

They are in heaven with God." -Fr Mary John

All Saints (A)

 Rev 7:2-4, 9-14; 1 Jn 3:1-3; Mt 5:1-12

My dear brothers and sisters,

One of the greatest gifts God has given humanity is the gift of people who inspire us to become better human beings. We all need examples to follow, people who encourage us when we are discouraged, who strengthen us when our faith becomes weak, and who remind us that goodness, sacrifice, compassion and holiness are still possible in this world. We may learn many things from books, but it is the lives of good people that often teach us the deepest lessons. A child learns generosity by watching a generous parent; a young person learns courage by observing someone who stands for truth; and a Christian learns holiness by looking at the lives of those who have allowed God to transform them. This is precisely the importance of saints in our religious life. They are not merely historical personalities or figures whose statues adorn our churches. They are living witnesses to the power of God's grace. They demonstrate that the Gospel is not an impossible ideal but a way of life that ordinary human beings can practise.

Today, as we celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints, the Church invites us to look beyond the visible world and recognise that we belong to a much larger spiritual family. The saints are not distant strangers living in a world completely disconnected from ours. They are our brothers and sisters who have completed their earthly pilgrimage and now share in the glory of God. The Church celebrated not only those officially

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

 Ex. 22:20-26; 1 Thess. 1:5-10; Mt. 22:34-40

Oscar Wilde tells a beautiful story called The Happy Prince. High above a city stood the statue of a prince, covered with gold, with sapphires for eyes and a large red ruby on the handle of his sword. When the prince had been alive, he had lived inside a palace where sorrow was carefully kept outside the gates. Everyone called him the Happy Prince because he had never seen suffering. But now, standing high above the city as a statue, he could see everything—the poor seamstress struggling to care for her sick child, the hungry young writer shivering in his room, and children suffering from poverty. A little swallow, preparing to fly away to warmer Egypt, rested at the prince’s feet. The prince asked the swallow to take the ruby from his sword to the poor woman. Then one sapphire eye went to another person in need,