WHAT WOULD JESUS (yoUth) DECONSTRUCT THIS CHRISTMAS

I was just thinking to myself the day I gave my name to give this Sermonette or rather my reflection for this Christmas. Browsing through the bookshelf in the Library, I came across a book called What would Jesus Deconstruct and found it very interesting and fascinating. And perhaps my thoughts will surface from this particular book – authored by John Caputo. What would you and I deconstruct this Christmas? This Christmas novena? Or rather what would you and I deconstruct as being a religious, a Salesian. But wait!!! (pause) Actually speaking you and I cannot deconstruct what would it be like…simply because GOD IS…Well, may be what would you and I deconstruct if given a thought to this perhaps we could make an attempt to deconstruct our lives by living a new self with Jesus and in Jesus beginning this Christmas.

I may sound like the empty vessel or the air filled in the balloon or a web that is created in the corner of the wall which may create an irritating sound from the vessel or words that disappear like the air or a cob-web to be cleared form the wall. But all the same give a thinking thought to this thought reality. The Church doesn’t need someone in order to be deconstructed, because it got Jesus! The deconstruction of the Church happens from the inside. Deconstruction is a work of love, and it happens because it is animated by a vision for something different. Just as the law is deconstructed with a view to the advent of justice, so the church is deconstructed with a view to the advent of the kingdom.

It should be no surprise that the domesticated Jesus is directed most specifically against the distinctly domestication of Jesus associated today with the Religious. The title thus really asking, What Would Caputo Deconstruct? Or What Would You and I Deconstruct? But that’s not the question I am asking. nothing less than to confront ourselves with a Jesus who resist all our domestications. And so I invite you and me to ask: What would Jesus deconstruct if he was sitting here or rather giving us this sermon? Or what would he deconstruct if He was moving about or walking on the corridors and sitting in our in study places or in the offices? Or what would he deconstruct if He came with us for our walks? Or what would he deconstruct if He would have been sleeping where we normally sleep, be it in our dormitory or rooms? Or what would He deconstruct if He showed up during our moments of Prayer? or for U wherever you are..... It is a sign of vitality that I leave you with such questions at the beginning of what haunted me when I was thinking about this revealing question or rather an existential or postmodern question. But it is best to serve and love Jesus’ by never ceasing to ask these questions in our lives, lest they’ll leave you haunted.

What would Jesus Deconstruct? Winsomely articulates why so many people are nervous about orthodoxy – radical or not, and suggests that Catholics or rather we religious need to think more seriously about being postmodern. Here we have a lens and a lexicon to see the phenomena in a new light. Deconstruction happens it is not something that you and I do. But it is an event that sets off unforeseeable and disruptive consequences. In a scene of deconstruction, our lives, our beliefs, and our practices are not destroyed but forced to reform and reconfigure-which is risky!!!

Over the ages the spiritual masters have described spiritual life as a journey. Indeed, we might even venture the thought that to be “religious” in its deepest sense is to be a searcher, living in search of something. When Bobby Kennedy used to say, “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why…I dream of things that never were and ask why not?” he was speaking with a religious heart. Religious people are the people of the “why not?” the people of the promise, of the hope against hope. We restlessly search for something, for a certain sort of “transcendence”, which means to be on the go, making a crossing, attempting to get somewhere else. That is what I mean by giving the spiritual journey some postmodern teeth. I agree this is a little unnerving, to what I just called “hyper-realism.”

On the 3rd of December we commemorated with solemnity the feast of St Francis Zavier, the day also of celebration for the Mumbai Province. As I was walking pass by the Rectors Office, my eyes happened to read the notice board which read, In His Steps, on this quotation I began to ponder and wonder, following “in his steps”, that would mean following someone different, following a very different way, but all with the same heartfelt conviction and deep faith of the “here”.

The reason we are on a journey is precisely the contingency and givenness of the world in which we find ourselves and the desire we have for a guide - companion. The spiritual journey on which we are embarked is, we say, a journey of faith. So we ought to undertake the project posed by (1 Peter 2:21) - the task of following ‘in his steps’. Jesus is not the way unless you are lost, even as Jesus is not the answer unless you have a question. In the postmodern situation, the very idea of a spiritual journey seems to presumes that we are all a bit lost. It is thus not surprising that when we frame such a question as to “What would Jesus do?” therefore a journey we never complete, where that incompleteness is not an imperfection but testimony. To give a very concrete example of what I mean, when we profess, you and I say, “I do” but whatever we become, is unknown and unforeseen. That is a risk, what Levinas called a beautiful risk. But the risk is constitutive of the vow or the commitment. It is the faith, the willingness to go forward, even though the way is not certain, that leads us to describe it as beautiful. If it were a sure thing, it would be about as beautiful as a conversation with our loved ones.

Think about faith, hope, and charity singled out by St Paul when is faith really faith? Not when it is looking more and more like we are right, but when the situation is beginning to look impossible, in the darkest night of the soul. The faith that is said to move mountains. So, too, hope is hope not when we have every reason to except a favorable outcome, which is nothing. It is beginning to look hopeless, when we are called on to hope against hope. This is above all true of love, where loving those who are lovable or those who love you make perfect sense. But when is love really love? When we love those who are not lovable or who do not love us. In other words, we are really on the way of faith and hope and love when the way is blocked; when the way seems impossible, where this impossible makes the way possible. It is precisely not this that makes the path kick into high gear. But a paradox of Love and by a common appreciation of the path, not a well-paved, well-marked superhighway but as an obstructed path, a step. The real challenge is to walk with courage, in his steps. Real journeys are full of unexpected turns and twists, requiring a faith that can move mountains and a hope against hope, where one does not see what one was attempting to do until the journey is completed, which postmodernists call the absolute future. It is not a matter of becoming who you already are but of becoming something new, a new creation, which eye has not seen nor ear heard nor the heart felt neither the mind imagined, an openness to the coming of the other, which we don’t already possess. We must instead allow it to happen (arrive) to us. Jesus’ own path of thought or ‘journey’ His whole life was a journey, an adventure. Deconstruction is adventure, a risky business, as is life. Each step I take on that is full of apprehension, excitement, and discovery.

Thinking about the Christmas gift, the gift is created out of love, and love, as Meister Eckhart said, is without why. Love is its own why; love is for its own sake. It does not demand a further or external reason. When I do something for love of my parents or guardian or siblings or friends or neighbour or when a lover is with his/her loved one, a mother breastfeeding her child this is an expenditure made without expectation of return, even tough we understand that in fact the circle of return is always there. The fore of deconstruction in this context is to preserve the madness of the gift giving. There is, there ought to be, something that we do in life that is not for a return but just because what we are doing is life itself, something a little mad. That is the gift. Deconstruction is the affirmation, the affirmation of the impossible, of the coming of the event, the hyper-real, which participates in the structure of the step. Love means to surrender to the impossible, to render oneself over to, and give oneself back to the impossible.

St Paul called this the weakness of God which is perhaps the ultimate madness of the kingdom of God. In Jesus there is the divinity that lies in the emptying of divinity. There is an ancient Christian tradition of being fools for God. Let us be fools for Christ. My thinking is that when time to time we meet people in whom the figure of Jesus is imaged like the religious, we might find ourselves ridiculing them as weak or mad or foolish, as indeed they are I mean YES we are – in a very precise sense.

All this in order to get down to about what Jesus would deconstruct. We have just proposed what is distinctive about Jesus in this question, analyzed the deconstruct and pointed out the hermeneutic force of the would. Now it is time to ask just what Jesus would deconstruct, to say more exactly what is what. That is why we require hermeneutics. It is our responsibility to breathe with the spirit of Jesus, to implement, to invent, to convert it into the praxis, which means to make the order resonate with the radicality of the vision. When Jesus said do you think I have come to bring peace, no I bring the sword (Mt, 10:34), when he said that he comes to bring fire and division (Lk, 12: 49-53), he did not mean a physical sword and arson. He did mean that we must be prepared to endure the harshest difficulties in the pursuit of peace and justice, even to hating our father and mother, which was his idea of family values in the kingdom. He meant that we should be prepared to die for what is... His word is hard and who can bear it? His most characteristic sayings are a scandal to the world of Roman power (here I mean is the present world politics in the secular as well as the religious world), deeply paradoxical contradictions of the ways – like offering a set of beatitudes that make a virtue out of meekness, mercy, humility, and poverty, everything the Roman world mocked and despised. The replica that Jesus set is impossible. It requires loving and forgiving what it is impossible.

Here I would like to highlight the point of giving witness as Jesus, you and I, living in this charism of Don Bosco – Daha Mihi Animas Cetera Tolle. What is you and I doing for this Institution of Christ, the Church and Don Bosco, the youngsters?

Strategically, diplomatically, socially, politically, morally, economically, diplomatically, evangically, spiritually, religiously and in every possible way, that can be thought of, Jesus was a witness - yesterday, Jesus is a witness – today and Jesus will be a witnesses – forever. As religious, we too are witness let you and me live to this here and there, to this gift, to this love, to this deconstruction from this Christmas.

Hey yoUth what are you upto this CHRISTMAS???

Hermeneutics for Mary

“All human beings desire to know,” This opening sentence of Aristotle’s metaphysics brings out the peoples’ innate longing for truth. The task of hermeneutics is the service to the text and going beyond the text. On the other hand, returning to the text is an indispensible step for meaningful hermeneutics. Hermeneutics clears the way towards a more holistic approach to the ‘being’ and ‘understanding’ of humans and their world. Hermeneutics is an awareness of the truth that cannot be encapsulated in proportions but a truth that constantly and critically draws our attention. I have chosen to speak of the doctrine rather than the dogma, and this calls for hermeneutical comment. All I want to do is to try out some new ideas, new ways of looking at the dogma of the immaculate conception, in the hope that this may contribute to a clear understanding of the universal dialogue. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception invites us to take a deeper look, to turn towards the divine mystery that will shape our life. Mary is presented as a model. Mary is a door to the mystery. The Biblical picture of Mary invites us to take again this concept into account in our Marian Hermeneutics, piety and doctrine.

Mariology, far from being peripheral in the totality of revelation, is rather the meeting-place for a great many Christian doctrines. Anthropology, Christian theology, Ecclesiology and the mystery of salvation are among the doctrines associated with Mariology. Mariological doctrines, such as the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, throw new light on the truths of faith from which they have been derived and strengthened the coherence and unity of the many elements, which together constitute the Christian faith. The second Vatican council, in choosing to portray Mary as the model of the Church, opened the way to new interpretations. With Mary, we begin to understand the depth, fullness and mystery of humankind. The Marian dogmas are seen as specifically symbolizing the created freedom and the final transformation of the world for which humans hope. Here I analyze the dogma on the basis of an anthropology that is human-centered and unifying. Marian dogmas, which exalt Mary, immaculately conceived, reflect our own human destination. The task is to recognize the potential of this dogma in order to give meaning to our life and to human destiny for our times.

Let me begin my interpretation……there is one privilege, in particular, that we consider fitting to treat here is her Immaculate Conception. The Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without any stain of sin was solemnly defined in 1854 by Pope Pius IX in these words. We declare and define that the most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by the singular grace and privilege of Almighty God and in view of the merits of Christ Jesus, the Saviour of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.

 The most Blessed Virgin Mary was preserved immune from all sin. This means that her whole being is included in God’s grace. She becomes the symbol of the redeemed world.

 From the first moment of her conception. In this, she differs from John the Bapist who was sanctified in his mother’s womb at the greeting of Mary.

 By the singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, she is sanctified by God before making a personal decision. In this, we find an analogy in infant baptism.
 In view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, it is Christ Jesus who redeems her by preserving her from original sin.

It is commonly accepted today that the term ‘original sin’ is to be understood not only as the sin committed by Adam, but also as the sinful state in which the world exists now. Every person that comes into the world becomes part of this world of sin and his life is going to be subjected to that movment of deviation away from God. By the sacrament of Baptism, the Christian is inserted into the new world of Jesus Christ, the risen Lord. He acquires a new relationship with God in Christ and a new relationship in Christ to the human community. It is important to note here that there is a relationship, which is ontologically realized, that is, by the action of God. Applying the above concept of original sin and its removal to Mary, we will be able to trace a more appropriate picture of the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Mary was born into the world of sin. If this was not the case she would have no part with Jesus Christ in saving the world, and consequently she would not form part of the history of salvation. As such, we may say that she is also the daughter of Adam. This is clearly shown in the genealogies of the gospels.

o Immaculte Conception is entirely an action of God on Mary, to which Mary had to give her personal response all through her life. But as far as God was concerned, it was a reality that was done once and for all at the first moment of her human existence. But as far as Mary was concerned, it was to be realized through a daily struggle of fidelity.

o Immaculate Conception did not free her from all the consequences of belonging to a sinful world. She had to experience the weight of sin, not because she committed them, but bacause she had to struggle against them. It is in this Mary becomes the model of the Church.

o Mary’s Immaculate Conception is a privilege, which carries with it also a service. It is also a service through suffering and struggle. Mary’s Immaculate Conception initiates her into a constant battle against evil through suffering and sorrow, thus becoming the New Eve, collaborating with the New Adam in the building up of the new human community.

o Mary’s Immaculate Conception, by initiating her into the world of Christ, already from the beginning of her life, makes her life become a life of apostolic witness.

o The Immaculate Conception breaks down the stuctures that stand on the way of the coming of the Kingdom. When God’s love is fully translated into human love, we have the kingdom of God.

The only obstacles to it are the kingdom that we have built, in continuation of the effort of the first man to beomce like God through longing for power. “You will be like God” (Gen 3:5). The sinful structures of today are the outcome of the wrong interpretation of the kingdom by the evil one. Mary, instead, understands the kingdom of God in the correct way and collaboration with God in building it up by her constant effort to build up a community of love.

Dear friends, Mary is not a static or plastic model to be merely admired or imitated. She is a dynamic person who is present to us today through her glorification. If she is with God, she is also with us, in our pilgrimage towards the kingdom of God. The word “spiritual” here should be understood as the action of the Holy Spirit operating in the whole person. The Immaculate Conception is a reality that affected the whole person of Mary. Mary is an active model of liberation. Let us become like her a full collaborator in the liberating mission of Christ.

This is a Sermonette given by Cl. Robert Iniyasi thought it sort of captured my mind and so here it is.

THE PRAYER LIFE

For Teresa, mental prayer was the beginning of the path to new ways of understanding, to the tasting of the deep mysteries of faith, which included the indwelling presence of the Trinity and of Jesus Christ in his humanity and divinity, as well as insights into sin and grace, the Church and the sacraments. Her visions were both spiritual and physical, and she eventually experienced the grace of perfect union with Christ so that she became inseparable from Him ‘as when a little stream enters the sea.’

We need courage for the prayer of agony precisely because we need even more courage for the prayer of ecstasy. How can this be? Because the prayer of ecstasy is often more incredible, more exhausting, and more unbearable in its wonder. Her metaphors for the ecstasy of prayer are once again colorful, dramatic, and flamboyant. This prayer is like being raised up by a mighty eagle and carried aloft on its wings, drowning in an infinite sea of supreme truth or quickly reaching the end of a long journey and finding everything all at once.

Prayer is like being in a garden where the fragrance of the flowers permeates the entire atmosphere or being inebriated with a kind of divine wine. In a uniquely Hispanic image, she says prayer is like watching a bullfight. If we pray, we are like the people in the stands, safe from the bull. If we don’t pray, we are defenselessly down in the arena, confronted by a raging, snorting bull.

Ecstatic prayer is a shining sun and a tremendous Yes! In earthly matters is both ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ but in this prayer there is only ‘yes.’ ‘No’ only comes afterward, when our delight ends and we cannot recover it. In this prayer, we may feel like a tiny bird, tired of flying, in great need of rest. God suddenly comes and picks us up in His own hands, laying us gently in the nest. Using more scriptural expressions, the prayer of ecstasy is like being the thirsty deer who finally gets to the water, the dove who finally finds the olive branch, or the bride who finally receives the bridegroom’s kiss.

All these descriptions are graphic, physical, and earthy. How could we except anything but an earthy approach from a woman who loved perfume and wore bright orange? Teresa knew that prayer is earthy because God, too, is earthy. Everything on earth, then, becomes the stuff of our prayer. Real prayer erupts everywhere and any time. We must not become prayer-conscious but God-conscious, and bring all of life into our prayer. We must be earthy mystics not only mystical – too misty. This creates a more dynamic and balanced spirituality.

Teresian prayer includes all five senses. When Teresa prayed, she sometimes felt a powerful fragrance spreading through all her senses, as though a sweet ointment were poured into the marrow of her bones. Sometimes it felt as if a flaming brazier in her inner-most depths was exuding a sweet-smelling perfume. Our prayer will not be the same as Teresa’s. But to grow in a healthy life of prayer under Teresa’s earthy influence, we must come to our senses! We must live sensuously: see as much as we can see, touch as much as we can touch, and taste as much as we can taste.

The sense of sight may be the most important in prayer, as it is in the whole of life. Teresa explains how prayer is looking at Him who is looking at us. When we heighten our awareness, we understand that God never takes His loving eyes off us. What is wrong with us that we do not keep our eyes on Him?

How often I have read lives of saints and mystics and wanted to ask: ‘but exactly what did you do in your prayer?’ Teresa tells us. Her answer is similar to St Francis, who said: ‘I look at Him, and He looks at me.’ The important is not to think much but to love much. Though thinking and reasoning play a crucial role at certain stages, when we move into the more contemplative aspects of prayer, excessive rationality spoils and even precludes prayer. Teresa’s entire teaching on mystical prayer can be summed up in one simple phrase: ‘Just look at Him.’ Look at Him made palpably present in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Look at Him continuing His presence in the tabernacle. Christ is as tangibly present to us today, in the Blessed Sacrament, as He was when He walked on earth. We are tempted to say, ‘Oh, if only I could have looked on Him then, it would be easy for me.’ But if we do not sense His sacramental presence now, what makes us think we would have responded to His physical presence then?

Teresa usually writes clearly and lucidly. But when she describes prayer as holy madness, she becomes endearingly ‘cuckoo’ as she exclaims, ‘I don’t know any other terms for describing it besides madness, foolishness, and this delightful disquiet. The soul doesn’t know what to do. Wanting all of us to enjoy this blessed madness,’ she continues, ‘May we all be sick with this kind of sickness. May we all be mad for love of Him who for love of us was called mad!’ We may well say, ‘This is madness,’ thinking that wild Teresian prayer is fine for some, but not for us. After all, we are sensible – we have jobs, families, important ministries, global, economical, financial, religious concerns. But we must be more honest with ourselves. To what extent do we use our noble responsibilities to evade our primary responsibility to be men and women of God, of prayer? Teresa is a great model precisely because she was so busy. She is not only one of the greatest contemplatives in the western spiritual tradition, but also one of its greatest activists. Tremendously involved with people and projects, constantly on the go, She still found time to make prayer a priority.

Prayer is a spontaneous human act as natural as breathing – a necessity. It is not a matter of taste, choice, socio-economic class, education, or religious tradition. Prayer is to the human heart what breath is to the body. As Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said, ‘If we don’t breathe, we die. If we don’t pray, we die spiritually.’ Christian prayer is a vast realm of experience that ranges from the verbal recitation of ready-made prayers to the affective dimensions of spousal prayer and the highest stages of contemplation without words, thoughts, or props of any kind.

Teresa describes it as an ‘intimate sharing between friends.’ If prayer is friendship with God, then the same lessons which apply to friendship between human persons also apply here. Good friendship means taking the time, making the time to be alone with the one we love who also loves us. Prayer is not an exercise but an encounter, not a practice but a presence, not a technique, but meeting the Beloved. We need to ask the ‘how to’ questions. But they cannot be answered with mechanics. Prayer is more readily caught than taught. We cannot control it, but we can create the climate for it.

The key to authentic prayer is openness. We must let go of any expectation and cultivate a spirit of expectancy. We must remain empty, like the Virgin Mary’s womb, and wait to be impregnated however God sees fit. ‘Fiat, be it done unto me,’ we pray with the lady. As we learn from Teresa, prayer is not always tranquil but sometimes tumultuous. Serenity is an important aspect of some prayer, but not all. Sometimes prayer is full of worry, sorrow, and existential anxiety; sometimes full of laughter and joy. We may be still or restlessly pace the floor, arguing with God like Job or struggling with him like Jacob, as a result of our love-wounds and painful concern for the world.