christmas today!!

2000 years today

She sat on the street among the pile of all their belongings. They had been just vacated from their house by a builder who forcibly evicted them and began demolishing the structure. Suddenly they were homeless and along with them all of their neighbors. This was her husband’s home and he lived here all his life. She was to have a son, a boy who was to grow into a great man and do wonders for humanity, so the old woman who lived near her had told her and she too hoped secretly like every mother. Her husband like all the other men was now frantically looking for a place to stay but to no avail. Other colonies were already demolished and all the available rooms were already leased out. He found help from one old kind man who told him he could spend the night in his garage but just one night. Tired, insecure and frightened she went into labor that night and before her husband could move her to a hospital she delivered their first son. Unprepared and with all their belongings in a mess they wrapped the baby in little pieces of cloth they found.

A group of rickshaw drivers after the day’s work had parked their autos on the main road nearby and were sitting around when they heard about this ‘miracle baby’. They all came to see the child and took turns in caring for the baby while the parents caught up on much needed sleep. That week three doctors from the Europe traveling through India also stopped over to meet this ‘miracle baby’. They were amazed to hear the story and brought expensive baby care products with them. They too left saying that this boy was destined for greatness and was going to be a big leader when he grew up.

The ‘boy’ grew up in a tough area where might was right and ‘gangs’ ruled. It was not safe for women and girls to walk alone at night and fights broke out anytime. There was no quiet time ever and always if it was not one neighbor’s loud blaring TV there was the other neighbors fighting or some drunken father creating a scene late in the night. He went to his community school but never did well in his studies. He tried but never managed that. He loved football and soon captained the school team. He discovered he had this love for religion and never missed Sunday school. He read, learnt studied about his faith and often confused ‘Sister’ with his questions. ‘Father’ too had a tough time dealing with his doubts but they all loved his passion and thirst for knowledge about his faith. The ‘boy’ was kind and caring and all the ‘aunties’ loved him. He was funny and loved to tell stories, he captivated his audience and never found himself alone. He loved his parents and was very close to his mother. He scared the daylights out of them when he got lost in the ‘Bandra Fair’. They found him later sitting in the church telling stories to a bunch of old men.

Time flew and the ‘boy’ grew into a ‘young man’. He barely scraped through school and was now working with his father’s business. They were interior decorators and did mainly woodwork for people on contract. Business was good and with the fluent English he spoke he soon started getting better work and a more elite clientele but it was not what he wanted. He felt strongly for his community and had a strong desire to change the situation around him. He requested his friends to join him. They left their BPO and call center jobs where most worked and followed him. Together they began from a small room, they ran a day care center in the morning, free tuition and music classes in the evening and in the night they invited people to come and pray with them. They thanked the ‘Lord’ sang hymns and praised the ‘Creator’ late into the night. He used his unique story telling skills to tell people in a simple way to repent and turn to the ‘Lord’. Miracles happened as he thanked the ‘Father’. Word spread and people began following him. Wherever he went people were healed in the name of Jesus. His humble mission grew bigger as people came forward to help him. He found himself attending page3 parties where he mixed around with the rich and influential and also visited very poor homes distributing food and praying for the families. He worked relentlessly, fought with the authorities and used his influence to build better roads and sanitation in his area. People of all faith’s respected him and followed him wherever he went.

His fame was soon a threat to all political leaders, many of who had approached him to work with them. His refusal was perceived as his ambition to displace them from their positions of power. One evening they stormed into his meeting and smashed into his premises breaking everything they saw. The mob even assaulted women and children present there. They handed him to the police and accused him of ‘forced conversions’. The police interrogated him all through the night, which in Mumbai involves bamboo lathi’s and leather patta’s. Finding no fault they released him in the morning but the political mob would have none of that. He was found later that night killed in an ‘encounter’ along with two other ‘terrorists’. A stunned city mourned the death of this ‘great man’. People spoke out demanding a probe into his killing and news channels cashed in on the TRP splurge. A central investigating team revealed the truth in a couple of days.

Heads rolled, ministers resigned and the truth was revealed as the glory of HIS life was restored once again.

Too filmy?? Maybe! But this is not a work of fiction these are real-life stories straight out of day-to-day living in amchi Mumbai. Christianity is a modern religion what was then is still now. The teachings of Jesus are real and applicable even in today’s day and time. So before we splurge on new clothes, sip into our expensive ‘duty free’ alcohol, put up decorations and rip open our presents let us think about the true meaning of Christmas. Let Jesus be born in our hearts and let the world experience the love of Jesus through our actions and deeds. Join me along with hundreds of other people and pledge this Christmas to spread Love, Peace and Joy all through this city with little deeds of kindness today and everyday.

After all 2000 years ago is still today.

The Meaning of christmas

By one of those happy chances, I stumbled upon the ninth chapter of St Mark’s Gospel. Mark tells how Jesus having heard his disciples disputing as they walked together were along the road, knew that they had been arguing about who was the greatest. So he takes a child and sets the child in front of them and says in effect this little child is the greatest. If you want to be great, you must be like this little child.
In the Acts of the Apostles we are told that when Paul and Silas came to Thessalonica on their missionary journey, they were complained about as the men who had turned the whole world upside down. But it is God who turns the world upside down in its assumptions, its pretensions of power, its self-aggrandizement. At Christmas a little child, a fragile, vulnerable, new-born baby is set in the midst of us; the one who has the whole world in his hands, turning the world upside down. As his mother Mary sings in her Magnificat, “He has put down the mighty from their seats of power and has lifted high the humble and meek.”
It is of this that our Christmas cribs remind us. It sets before us this amazing grace and love of God; the God who turns our worldly expectations upside down.
The wonder, the overwhelming wonder of Christmas, its enduring magic and mystery, is this astounding reaching out of the love of God to the world and to each one of us. To enter the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem the doorway is so low that you have to stoop to enter. The baggage which all of us carry, of status, pride and possessions, must be left behind if we are to come and adore the child in the manger. Our God is not an autocrat, a powerful tyrant, our God is a God, who as St. Paul says, “empties himself”, “makes himself nothing”, stoops down to the lowest part of our need. He comes into the world in a cattle shed. His family flees from massacre and terror to be asylum seekers in Egypt. He is among the outcast and the marginalized, and at the end he dies an excruciating death between two thieves outside the holy city, condemned by religious leaders and political power brokers alike.
So “he humbled himself”, made himself nothing, and of him we dare to say, yes, here is God. We call it ‘incarnation’, the enfleshing of God, God taking our nature upon himself. The Creator in a free outpouring of re-creating love for a world gone wrong, for human beings who think themselves little gods, for men and women enslaved to greed or drugs or distorted desire, comes down to the lowest part of our need. And why? That we may find in that love ‘”so amazing, so divine” the very thing for which we were made, that which reaches out to change and transform us, to draw us to share in that love, to become Christ like, to be even, as St Peter tells us, “partakers of the divine nature”?
May the God of this surpassing love and wonder, who came to us at Bethlehem and took us by the hand, bless you all this Christmas and fill your lives, even in the darkest places, with his grace and his glory.
On behalf of all the parish fathers, the parish office team & all the members of various parish organizations I wish you and your family a Happy Christmas and a God filled New Year!!