Liar, liar, designer pants on fire

Getting married in Bombay society - and I suspect most societies in urban India - is nothing short of a grand production. Nia Vardalos should have thanked God for her big fat Greek wedding, which is nothing compared to our over-the-top, ridiculously ostentatious weddings.

There are a *great* many things to be thankful for in our weddings - like the many family and friends who genuinely wish the couple well - but sadly a few things also mar the blessed occasion.

I have been shocked to hear the questions my family and I have been asked - right from which vendors we are using, to how much we are paying for *everything* - not because people are genuinely interested to find out details for their own functions - but just to boast that *they* have sourced better vendors, or they are spending (or have spent) much more on their weddings!

This horrible, petty, competitiveness that exists - consciously or not - is not only for weddings, but also for routine parties.

Something I’ve noticed more and more of late, is the way so many people lie about the designers they wear or about the amount of money they have spent on clothes or jewelery.

What’s even sadder than hearing someone lie about which designer has made the sari they’re wearing / which designers they buy their clothes from / which jeweler is their best friend / how much they’ve spent on something when you haven’t asked - is the fact that almost *everyone* knows that these same people are lying. How horrible it is to have a friend look at your face and lie to you so easily!

It’s so sad that these are the same people who’ll tell you that another is lying about the designer they’re supposed to be wearing and about how much they paid for the thing!

While growing up, my dad & mum often told my sister & me that people who lie, get caught in their lies. That you can never remember lies you’ve told and you’ll eventually be caught out. Dad often reminded us of the saying that “you can lie to some people all the time, all people some of the time, but not to all people, all the time”.

All very good reasons to tell the truth.

But besides not getting caught, there’s one more reason to tell the truth.

This is because JESUS is the Truth.  So when we tell the truth, we emulate Jesus!

And sadly, the opposite is also true - when we lie, we emulate the devil.

This is not just my opinion (or my parents), but from the Bible.

We read in John 8:44

“You belong to your father, the devil … He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies”

What strong words! Our father — the devil??! God forbid.

And yet, we lie, daily, so naturally. To people’s faces. And after that we attend Mass, we go to prayer meetings, we raise our hands and “worship” the Lord.

Revelation 21:8 tells us very clearly

But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

I do not write this from a righteous point of view. I have to admit that I too find myself struggling to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth on a daily basis. Especially since society accepts “white lies” (there is no such thing before God!) as a-ok!

However we need to be conscious of whether we are telling the TRUTH in everything.

We have to be conscious about WHY we lie:

• to save our reputations?
• to impress people?
• to show off that we’re better than other people?
• “just because”?

Are any of these reasons good enough to lose eternal life for?

I challenge you to NOT LIE for 24 HOURS. Just start with one single day. Consciously monitor if your “my dog ate my homework” attitude has seeped into your adult life at work or in society.

It’s more difficult a challenge than you would think. I know - I’ve tried it and failed. But the trick is, when we fail, to confess with an honestly contrite heart - and then to try again.

Truth shouldn’t only be the Best policy - it should be our Only one.

3 Mistakes I’ve made at Mass

(01) Come in Late: Can you imagine if you were given the chance to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama? Regardless of what your political views are, it would be a great honor & opportunity that no one would miss. Most likely, you’d pick your clothes out carefully, if you’re a woman, you’d probably also get your hair done, you’d ‘casually’ let it slip that you were going to meet the president (or perhaps not so casually, by blogging about it!). Whatever you’d do however, this is one thing you would not do: you would not be late.

You’d probably even be very early, just so that you could get a good place if possible & to make sure the security checks didn’t make you run behind time. All this to meet with a human being.

And when we’re given the Amazing, Miraculous, Divine honor & opportunity to meet with & receive Jesus in the most Holy Sacrament of Mass, what do we do?

Often times we do it on automatic, routinely, just doing what we have to do to complete an obligation. I’ve been late to Mass one time too many. If I say I love the Lord and if I truly believe He’s really present during Mass, then how can I be late, no matter what the human justification?

To combat this area, I now pick out my clothes the night before (helps especially since I go for an early Mass on Sunday). I also aim to reach church a whole 15 minutes before Mass starts - that way even if I get 5 to 10 minutes before Mass starts, it helps me settle in & pray before, rather than run in all huffing & puffing just in time or miss anything because I’m late.

What distracts you during Mass?

(02) Paid more attention to the Punctuation & Pronunciation of the Reader than the Reading: I fancy myself a good orator. And so, many times when the lector (churcy term for the person who reads the readings during Mass) makes a mistake in pronunciation or the like, instead of letting it go & concentrating on what the Lord is saying to me, I have laughed in my head. Or wondered how “these people” can go to read.

This shameful pride of mine is just the door Satan needs to enter into me and steal away the precious gifts the Lord intends to give to me during the Reading of His most Holy Word during Mass.

To combat this area, I consciously ask the Lord to remove all pride from me & if my focus does shift off the reading to the reader, I ask the Lord for pardon & consciously try to focus on the reading again.

(03) Post Communion Fashion Parade: Am quiet ashamed to say I ever did this, but yet it is true. There was a time that after communion, I’d settle down & quite happily look at whatever everyone else receiving communion & walking down the aisle - or the fashion ramp in my head - was wearing. Worse still, I’d judge them: “too skimpy for church / what, no time to get out of tracks? / too fat to be wearing that!”

Yes, I know. I was horrible.

Mercifully the Lord pardons all sinners who’re truly repentant - which means those who are not only sorry but also make a concerted effort to not repeat the sin.

And to this extent, I now sit on the first pew & pretty much kneel & close my eyes until well after communion is over.

As an added benefit of doing this, I’m able to concentrate on praying after communion better and the whole experience of receiving the real Presence of our Lord is now a valued one.

Have noted only three mistakes, but there are so many other things we are all sometimes guilty of:

• Being distracted by the Choir / Cantor / Musicians (for no fault of theirs)
• Being judgmental about the Priest celebrating / giving Holy communion
• Being distracted by other people in Mass (again for no fault of theirs)
• Not actually praying the prayers, but only saying them automatically like a machine
• Rushing off before the last hymn is sung!
• Fussing about with children during Mass - good tip: sit near the exits so that in event of an emergency / crying baby, you can leave without a big to-do!
• Keeping Cell phones on during Mass!
• Talking to person near by during Mass
• Fussing about with hair / adjusting clothes too much

Remember Holy Mass is a Community form of prayer - if we fail to do our part, besides not receiving all the great things in store for us as Mass, we’re also letting down the whole community.

Glorify God.. in our Movie choices?

The foundational verse this online magazine Glorify God, was built on is 1 Cor 10:31 which states:

“whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God”

Even for those of us who theoretically agree that we should follow the Bible to a T - how many of us go the extra mile to do this practically in our everyday life?

Today a few friends and I got watching a rented dvd of the movie ‘Zohan‘. The movie hardly started and I was put off by the crude and vulgar “humor”. My friends chose to continue watching despite my cringing. About twenty minutes into the movie, I had a choice to make - either I was going to continue watching this horrifically immoral & perverse movie (I don’t even want to mention the obscenities, worse than ‘The Hangover’ too, which I also hated) or I was to leave alone.

It was not even a few seconds after I left that I knew I had made the right choice.

Glorify God in our choice of movies?

Yes, absolutely.

Back home, the Lord led me to read Hebrews 11:16:

^“See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son”

And I felt the Lord explaining to me - by the blood and the sacrifice of Jesus, we are made children of God and hence and heirs to the Kingdom of God. That means we have “inheritance rights”.

Yet, we are warned - not to be “godless” like Esau.

For those of you who may not remember the story of Esau & Jacob, we see it in Genesis 25:

One day when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau arrived home from the wilderness exhausted and hungry. Esau said to Jacob, “I’m starved! Give me some of that red soup!” (This is how Esau got his other name, Edom, which means “red.”) “All right,” Jacob replied, “but trade me your rights as the firstborn son.” “Look, I’m dying of starvation!” said Esau. “What good is my birthright to me now?”

It is easy to have sympathy for Esau. After all he was hungry and tired after all & he was tempted with the soup and he made a wrong decision, which ultimately cost him his inheritance.

It initially seemed to me, rather harsh of Paul to call him godless!

But then I realised that this was a warning to us - it is so easy to sometimes choose instant gratification. It is so easy sometimes for us to make wrong choices, for various reasons.

Esau was only concerned with temporal (not eternal, fleeting) things. Jacob on the other hand was driven by the eternal, he wanted the long term privileged the birthright would give him. Even though he got it by underhand means, the desire of his heart (for the eternal) was what God saw & rewarded him for.

We today gain our eternal inheritance rights simply by accepting Jesus as our Lord & Saviour. Unlike Jacob, we don’t have to scheme to get anything. However, let’s not take our inheritance for granted or so lightly because of that!

Let’s not, Esau, be driven by the temporal aspects of life. Let’s not lose our anointing, that Jesus suffered so much for us to have.

It’s so easy to forget about God completely in everyday choices - be they the movies we choose to watch or the language we choose to speak or food we choose to eat.

Remember, it may be instantly gratifying - or the easier choice to make - but let’s not forget God over a bowl of soup.

The next time you’re faced with a tough choice, say to yourself, “this soup’s not worth it”.

podCatholic.com is now online!

Good news people!

After a seeming eternity of a wait, podCatholic.com has finally got it’s first podcast live!

It will feature stories that will (hopefully we pray) impact your lives. It will also touch upon the general state of Catholics & Catholicism in India.

We welcome your suggestions on improving the podcasts - and we appreciate your prayers for this our “spoken word” branch of online ministry.

As you may know, we were earlier at podCatholic.wordpress.com – this url has now been deleted but we’ve shifted our older podcasts (from September 2008) to podCatholic.com for you to still download.

The Slighted Guest

A while back, a friend kept inviting & re-inviting me to stay at her place if I ever planned to holiday around her parts. When I finally did take her up on her offer though, I was in for a rude shock.

For all her seeming enthusiasm on the phone and every time we had met before, she hadn’t done one thing to prepare for me coming to her house. The room I had to sleep in was untidy beyond belief; the sheets hadn’t been changed - or even cleaned, there was a huge mud stain in the middle. My friend didn’t bother about my meals the whole time I was there, very often not even bothering to talk with me at all the whole day except for once or twice when she mentioned in a round about way how me being there was so much extra work for her!

I felt slighted and unwanted, even though she was the one to invite me in the first place! “Perhaps she didn’t really think I’d come?”, I wondered, “maybe all the invitations were just a farce?”.

I tried to ignore my friend’s rude behavior and subtly ask if everything was okay with her but was met with more rudeness in reply so I changed my plans around so I could stay in a hotel in a different city, so as to not insult her and not burden her either.

The whole thing left a bitter taste in my mouth though - and now I am very wary of staying with friends homes while on holiday.

–

To change the topic, I woke up very grieved this morning at the immorality of some married people I happen to know. One married man has an open relationship with his girlfriend, taking both his wife & girlfriend to every party he attends. His justification is: “so many ‘others’ are having extra marital affairs, at least I’m being open, upfront and not hypocritical about it. Besides if my wife doesn’t have a problem, who’re you to judge me?”. Another (single) man I know is now ‘dating’ a married woman, because her husband is ill and apparently “doesn’t have a problem” with it.

In the higher rings of Indian society, these types of alliances (& worse) are heard of, far more commonly than one would like (the very sad toon alongside is one I found online, depicting an Indian woman in a sari as the wife of a man with a shapely mistress). Many of us Indians like to think of the “big bad western countries” as the place with degrading moral values, but an honest look at our society (especially but not only the higher classes) reveals a deep thread of immorality in our midst.

So many of our politicians and film actors openly flaunt their affairs. Recently the cell phone provider BPL Mobile which changed to Loop Mobile had a series of advertisements for prepaid customers to get itemized billing, one such advert which was splashed on billboards all across Mumbai city read “Wife 20 minutes. Girlfriend 240 minutes”.

It’s very sad when you hear of people of any religion behaving this way, but it’s all the more heart breaking when you hear of Catholics or Christians who do these things.

This is because when Catholics administer the sacrament of matrimony to each other - or when Christians marry - they invite Christ into their partnership as a third partner. We hear the “Christ is the third partner of our marriage” slogan very regularly!

Yet, all too often we - and I’m not just talking about the people I mentioned earlier - but lots of married Christian & Catholic couples - just seem to forget all about their third partner.

How can any married person justify immorality saying husband and wife both agree to it? Christ the third partner has never agreed to any immorality. He has, on the contrary, asked us not even to lust for other people in our minds. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27 -28).

We invite Jesus into our marriages as a third partner and then treat Him as an unwanted guest. Or forget He’s even in the house. Or worse still, brutally kick Him out with our sins, as if He came in without permission.

And what about us single people? Or us charismatic people? Or us simply church going people? Do we also not invite Christ into our lives, time and time again - whether at retreats or at prayer services - or at Mass every single time we receive Holy Communion?

And what do we do after all our enthusiasm and our seeming wanting Christ to come into our lives? The bedrooms of our heart are ill prepared to keep Him. We try to house Him in the same room as sins we refuse to give up. We refuse to surrender or share our problems with Him. Worst, we think we have the “right” to do what we like with our lives because they’re “our lives”, as if He didn’t pay for our lives - literally - with every drop of His blood.

This Christmas as we all will re-invite Christ into our lives again - lets make an honest attempt, with His grace, to not treat Him as an unwanted guest. Let’s not invite Him in at Christmas Mass and then slight Him by forgetting all about Him in the merriment of the holidays. Let’s not forget He is partner with us in our marriages and that every decision we make, should also be approved by Him.

It’s His birthday - let’s give Jesus the love we profess and the love He’s due.

Learning to Walk from a Man without Arms or Legs

If you’ve ever heard the quote:

“I complained because I had no shoes; until I met a man that had no feet”

… then you’ll know exactly how I felt when I met Nick Vujicic for the first time.

I had read & heard about Nick a long time ago through the internet; the email fwds about the boy with arms or legs (usually titled something like “No Arms, No Legs, No Worries”), the occasional youtube video and I had even stumbled upon his site Life Without Limbs.org

I’ll be honest though - nothing prepared me for the miracle that is Nick.

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How to react when Spiritual Leaders fall / backslide:

Sometime back I heard the very distressing news of the divorce of a couple I knew personally. They were known not only in Indian but had made waves in international ministry too. Then somehow everything crumbled. The husband fell victim to an addiction and eventually things got from bad to worse, leading to a messy divorce.

Their divorce was even more painful than most, because they had often testified openly on how the Lord ordained their marriage and how the Lord brought them together.

Everything they had once done for the glory of God now seemed like a testimony for the evil one.

I couldn’t understand how and why the Lord would permit this to happen. I prayed to Him, distressed, searching for answers.

Instead, in the weeks that followed, I learnt of another couple in local ministry who though still living under the same roof, were for all practical purpose separated. The husband had been one of my early mentors and someone whom I had looked up to when still an infant new-born in the Spirit and again I couldn’t understand how something of the sort could happen.

While I sat focusing on these two couples in prayer one day, quite disturbed, quite at loss to understand how and why these things could happen, God touched my heart.

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Lessons from the strange race between the Tortoise & the Hare

One of the fables I’ve learned from childhood and has always stuck to me is that of the Tortoise & the Hare.

All of us who’ve read it knows it’s a fable about the two animals, very different in their natural make up, racing each other. It’s a strange race to say the least. On one hand is a fast-on-his-feet Hare & the other, a slow-by-nature Tortoise. There’s seemingly no doubt who will win. However, The over-confident Hare after a excellent start, stops to nap & is thus overtaken by the Tortoise, who ends up beating him in the race.

I think sometimes our spiritual walks can be compared to the race of the Tortoise & the Hare.

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Religion or Spirituality?

September in Mumbai India, especially in the lovely suburb of Bandra in which I live, is associated with the feast of Mother Mary. Scores of people, thousand upon thousands seemingly, descend on us to pay patronage to our Lady of the Mount either by making the 9 days novena or simply to pay a visit to our Bandra Basilica and offer up candles – many of them in different shapes (houses, body parts etc) to pray for specific needs.

While many admire the “simple faith” of many people who do these things, lots of people criticize them as having “no real faith” and only running to follow religious dictates with no personal spirituality of their own.

Many such critics put down religion and “religious spirits” and claim “the rituals are not important, the personal faith is”

I often have had discussions with people on this exact same topic – and it saddens me how more and more “born again” Christians leave the Catholic Church for this reason.

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Biblical Catholics

There is a Billboard on the opposite side of Mahim Church in the city of Mumbai, India, where I live. Passing by yesterday, I commented to my friend sitting in my car with me, that the board obviously was owned by a Catholic, as I’ve always seen Scripture Passages on it whenever it was not sold to an advertiser.

My friend’s reply shocked me - It was obviously not a Catholic, she reasoned, but a Christian. She then proceeded to ask me if I read the notice boards outside most Churches in the city. “Have you ever read Scripture on them?”.

Witty sayings, yes. Religious thoughts, definitely (though not always, I inwards grimaced). But Scripture? I honestly could not remember a single Catholic Church I had passed by in Mumbai city, which had Scripture verses on it’s notice board.

My friend then sealed her case with - “You see, if it belonged to a Catholic, you’d see pictures of Saints or some such”

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