CHRISTMAS


The birth of Jesus was so planned and the parent was so prepared. The birth was acknowledged by shepherds. This is the way a person is born. Jesus was fully human. This means, in the perfect way of the birth of the human being child Jesus is also born. The angels’ singing was heard by shepherds.

The birth of any child is in the same way. But many do not experience all these, because there is no enough preparation.

Christmas is also a time to remind us about the need of preparation of new child and recognition of the birth.

May the CHRISTMAS BLESSING be with all my readers.

Take care of God within

Parents have duty to care and bring up their children. If the children are spoiled all blame the parents.

There is divineness within a person. This holiness has to be cared like a parent cares his child. It needs constant attention, care and so on. This means one has to take care of oneself. Caring oneself is caring the God within the person.

The God within has gift of God. It is our duty to care and nurture it to its completion. There comes our spiritual success.

Ageing

Years ago when I saw the Haley's comet it dawned in me that this event is seen for the last time. Last week when the moon became closer after a period of 15 years I wondered if I would live to see it once again. It is the same as seeing our children growing amidst us as they mature with the constant dose of our belief and philosophies. This is what we live by in the process called ageing. We must gracefully accept and go day by day to live with our commitment of our belief. This deep routed spiritual faith should mold us to accept age as the maturing element in certifying us to reach our prime in life.

Often we find ourselves conscious of our appearances. Many tend to have all the beauty care to see that their youthful image is maintained. The women are too conscious as their social order of weakness tends to make them feel attractive. Men also in the years try to see that they want also an appearance of attractive elegance. Many spend money/hours to therapies including facial, dyeing, grooming and rejuvenation including many of the religious taking pains to trim, shape and dye to display a sense of youth with visible sagging skins. Is it that we are afraid to age? Why can’t we accept and move on to grow above such physical feature. Isn't wisdom coming within us with every grey hair or are we trying to hide? The answer being that though our body’s age it is the mind that should remain young. Didn't Jesus say: Unless you become like little children – innocent - you will not see the kingdom of heaven?

Moses went up into the mountains and returned with the greatest wisdom displaying the Ten Commandments. According to the bible he lost his youthfulness after being in front of the burning bush, returning as a changed wise man with long grey hair and beard. It was the first display of greatness of a person laced with spirituality, induced with wisdom.

What makes one to run away from such a situation? Isn't it the fear of death? Many times we tend to hide ourselves behind the mask of reality. To look at death in a different manner is to accept everyday as a day lesser. Live with great respect to the Creator make it different, accomplishing/learning something everyday to build us into a wiser person. As we see the sun rise and set it is also important to equate it to our lives, accepting every day been given to us as another life.

It is how we make use of the times of our lives, living every moment of it in good times and bad with good determination avoiding reasons for comparison.

Children should be taught to value time, to be accountable for usage of time in studies, sport and leisure. As they grow up, the management of time should be so disciplined that they should never regret having lost much of it for wasteful unproductive need nor laziness or excessive sleep. We need to use every moment of it to learn as much as possible of the miraculous reality of life, the wonders of the universe, the magic of sciences or the personality/history of humanity.

Somehow talents are born with such indulgences of interests sown into our personality. Many of us have so many unborn talents but we leave it to hibernate. Our minds should be woken up every moment with sharing in spreading good values of life. It structures our brain to have the feel good factors to have contention to bring about our happy state of mind leaving besides any guilt feeling of wasted time.

The best time for one to consolidate and establish their foundation of life in the years from 23 to 45. Men should mainly take this as the best part of their life so that all strain and tensions can be absorbed by the youthful body. Working harder at these ages is important as much as financial management to steer the family they need to support. Proper discipline with the spouses can assure good happy living with contentment of their resources. Happiness comes with a ticker -- Live according to the situation, be cheerful, and think you are fortunate. Money alone will never buy happiness but love will. Time spend to overindulge in work should be restrained.

Growing older we could never take as much of the strain as we did years ago. It would be better to reduce strains on body and mind with this feeling of satisfaction of the life spend. By contributing our knowledge with faithful humility our expression of giving wisdom enlightens us. We had graduated in projecting life with different prospective achieving doctorates/masters in guiding younger lives. This could be the best feeling reassuring us having navigated to achieve our goals with the best approach. No negatives or foolishness would stand up unless it had taught a lesson to accept, learn and grow on, continuing with the duty given to us - OUR LIFE.

Cultivation of many such views could develop many of us to face life in our pursuit for happiness. Time never waits but we must never let it pass without making use of it every moment. Such treasures are the best memorable moments of our life as we sit down in our last chapters to rewind and play as many times to be satisfied to ourselves, to fulfil our dreams with ideology sown in from our understanding of Our Way of Life.

Jesus Christ came to us 2000 years ago to spread the message for us to cultivate within a moral, social code of life. The ultimate aim was for us to grow in the images of God, to respect and live happily. There was no mention of fear inducement, no mention of action taken but only the principle thought that one needs to be happy one has to do certain sacrifices but with humility, unselfishness and faith. Sadly we are moving away from what the practical expression of the designed Christian life. Our time seems wasted on building infrastructures, establishments, and petty politics rather than improving lives of our brethren.

How much can we change? Who must take the initiative? Who must benefit?

All but for our struggle to have a Life and to be Happy in the second place.

Prepared by Mr. Donald D’Cruz -

Living with Terrorism

Terrorism has no heart, no feelings but humankind has to live with but we need to make corrections in our way of life.

Every citizen should wake up to patriotic feelings shed away differences of religion, caste, region and vote to bring impartial candidates. Support the law keepers to allow stringent

Enemy

Some animals are natural enemies because of hunger; humans are often mutual enemies because of greed and pride.

Disturb God

Jesus was always very sensitive to the needs of the people. A blind man asked Jesus for healing.

The man disturbed Jesus. And the disciples stopped him from disturbing Jesus. But He welcomed that disturbance. That is the love of God.

We are allowed to disturb God and blessed by God

Loving Touch


A wise physician said to me, “I have been practicing medicine for past 30 years and I have prescribed many things. But in the long run I have learned that for most of what ails the human creature, the best medicine is LOVE.”

“What if it doesn’t work?” I asked

“DOUBLE the dose” he replied

A Moment to Meditate

A Moment to Meditate - yes! We can.

Jesus is angry with the masses furiously asking them to get out of the church rather than a market place. In the recent times we find that commercialization of our faith and belief is eating into our system. Pictures of The Sacred Heart which we hold in the first door step of our houses , blessed and revered now finds place in garbage’s/ dustbins, kicked around in pavements, stuck on walls and corners where people deface. The pictures of Jesus of Mercy, Of Saints, are at no mercy too. Many of these are the advertisements for the numerous retreat sessions we have all along the year that many tend to believe it greater than the sacrifice of the Holy Mass. How are we going to get our people to understand the faith reposed in the catechism of the Catholic Church?

The second point is the disturbances that such session create to the neighbourhood that our identity as a peaceful community stands questioned. (Such movements by protestant / evangelistic groups were not approved by Catholic Church of our younger days)

Do we require to blare the shouts of Alleluia, with nerve racking blasts so that our multi religious society of elders and children keep quite rather be termed antichristian? What about our attitudes to watch this punishment to children studying for numerous exams? Are we persecuting them too?

At the drop of a hat we have people who attend retreat sent out to the common masses, the business communities with the pictures of our Lord maybe with a novena asking for donations to such retreats. Isn’t it high time that we have a standard to refrain us from putting people in such tight spot? What has happened to our missionary way of life? Printing a coupon is all what is required for collection not knowing how the poor manages, many of them out of fear would part while the affluent will stand up only to be noticed. Many ways could be thought to generate funds but without resorting to such ways. Also the transparency in such accounts should be published which never happens. We find also that many of the present younger religious hold the costlier mobiles, laptops, motorbikes and a/c cars for PERSONAL USE. How much are they contributing as we deny to our children many of such to contribute to needs within poor families and the Church.

I make this honest appeal to the religious community to hold retreats in a more spiritual way than resorting to shouts and chants to he heard in heaven, I am sure Our Lord is not Deaf.

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Donald D’Cruz


Parents

Children are not only a gift of God, but also the work of God.

If God has given you children, then your first duty to God is to raise those children right. Your children are God's work for you. They're His children too, of course, but He wants you to take care of and train them.