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 new branch of online ministry.

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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Jesus is Alive. Need Proof?

I’m just back from a Special English Growth Retreat held at Tabor. The last Growth Retreat was held about a month ago.

It was during that retreat, on the 27th of August, to be precise, that a miracle took place during the Holy Mass.

It was a Holy Mass being concelebrated by one of the resident priests, Fr. Joby and by Fr. Anto, a priest who happened to be attending the retreat that week.

During the Epiclesis (part of the prayer of consecration), Fr. Joby noticed that there was suddenly many drops of water and blood falling on the altar cloth. He immediately announced to the congregation that Jesus was pouring out His Blood and Water and continued with the Holy Mass.

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How to come out of a Spiritual Downward Spiral

The beautiful parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32) opens our eyes towards not only the immense, unconditional & everlasting love of the Father for us - but also to the fact that nothing - no sin - can ever separate us from this love of His (Romans 8:38-39)

Recently I worked myself a disastrously deep pit and I subsequently found myself spiritually spiralling downwards.I knew all the answers, knew exactly what to do to get out of it – indeed I had even counseled so many people in similar situations – and yet, I was falling. And, faster than I knew what to do about it.

The months that passed by saw me attempt so many things to reconnect with God but somehow despite everything I did, nothing seemed to be working.Deep down inside though, I knew what needed to be done.

I had been locked into a situation I did not know how to get out of. Time & time again, I heard the Lord saying to me, “Walk in the Light”, but the light seemed out of my reach.

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