Your righteousness must go deeper (Mt 5:20)
The powerful invitation of the Sermon on the Mount, that we continue to listen to in the gospel reading of today, is to embrace the previous revelation of God and to be available to the God who is here and now. It is also an invitation to embrace the Law and to go beyond it. And to be part of the Kingdom of God, your righteousness has to be go beyond that of the scribes and Pharisees (Mt 5:20).
This is the time of New Dispensation. Righteousness is not legalism. The word ‘righteousness’ could be translated as justice, uprightness, virtue, perfection. Matthew is constantly proposing a new and deeper meaning of righteousness. It is not mere conformity to law, but a response to the plan of […]
Author: selvam
Sermon for 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A Homily
5th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A
You are the salt of the earth… and light of the World (Mt 5:13-14)
The sentences that we hear in the gospel reading of today immediately follow the Beatitudes. It is still part of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth… you are the light of the World” (Mt 5:13-14). Maintaining the same tone of the Beatitude (Blessed are you…), the opening line of today’s gospel is a promise and an invitation: You are the salt of the earth…you are the light of the world, and you be the salt of the earth and light of the world. What does that mean?
Let me start with the easier part – at least in meaning if not in practice: You are the light of the […]
Research on Secularisation Among Young Adults
African scholars have claimed that African peoples are “notoriously religious”. Is this still the case? Empirical literature on the subject is meagre. Therefore, the objective of this study was to examine the antecedents, triggers and response of secularisation and spirituality among lapsed-Christian young adults in Nairobi, Kenya, the participants were aged between 18 and 35, who were baptised but have abandoned Christian faith in favour of secularisation or non-affiliated spirituality. Qualitative data, from semi-structured in-depth interviews among the 14 participants, sampled through a snowball process, was recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analysed by the two authors. Eleven emerging themes were identified from 10 hours of data. The first two themes suggest that mixed faith backgrounds of parents and discordant relationship within the family act as antecedents in adopting a […]
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Habits make us. Habits also break us.
This book is about habits. It is a guide to getting rid of habits that break you and building habits that make you.
Habits that build you up and others around you goes to form your Character Virtue. Character Strengths are said to contribute to individual and collective wellebing.
In effect, this is not a book. It is a manual for a Christian pilgrimage towards inner freedom and wellbeing. It provides guidelines daily, for forty days.
There is something wonderful that is going to happen to you at the end of this pilgrimage. You are likely to have a renewed vision, restored motivation, and revitalized energy.
Walk one day at a time. Walk to inner freedom. Walk to the embrace of God.
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Sermon for 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A Homily
4th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A
Blessed are you…
In October 2000, I had the privilege of visiting the home village of the late Julius Nyerere, the father of the nation of Tanzania. We were visiting the grave of this great Catholic, now a Servant of God and whose process of beatification is still in progress. In this dusty little village – Butiama, not far from Lake Victoria – world’s great leaders had gathered a year earlier to lay to rest the remains of the first president of Tanzania. It was an awesome experience to note that an African president had spent his early days and the final days in this remote simple location: with no drive, no gates, no green lawn, no mansions. As I stood praying at his grave, […]