Someone has said, ‘A beautiful soul cannot be forgotten.’ This is true of Ms Crescy John who passed away peacefully on the morning of September 4, 2019 in Pune at the age of 87. Many would have heard about her but a few really would have known her for what she was.Ms.Crescy John, born at Calicut in Kerala, accepted the call to join the Secular Institute (Khristsevikas) which was in the process of being formed and made her way to Rome on January 1, 1961 where she along with other young ladies joined a three year course in Theology at Regina Mundi and later a year of Spiritual Formation in Germany. She also did some studies in Hinduism. She was especially fond of the Bhagavad Gita. After the period of formation this group of Indians made their first commitment on September 16, 1964 and returned to India on January 15, 1965 to start their mission in Raipur, Madhya Pradesh under the guidance of the then Apostolic Administrator, Msgr. John Weidner SAC, where the Pallottines had their mission. Ms Crescy John was appointed the first President of the Khristsevikas and held this office for another four terms at different times. She also contributed to the formation of members.Crescy, with her God given talents gave her best to the beginnings and growth of the Institute. She would seek advice from experts on various questions, and also from the group itself, always making sure the Institute was on the right path. She along with another first member, Ms Joyce Almeida, prepar
Sometimes the readings for Mass are very “providential”: they suit our need here and now, as we celebrate the Special Mission Month—whatever that may mean.The first three days of this week (7 – 12, October) we are reading Jonah. During their stay in Babylon, the Jews met some wonderful non-Jews. One of them eventually becomes the anointed of the Lord (messiah, Is 45.1) for them, who not only allows the exiles to return home, but also provides financial assistance for rebuilding Jerusalem and its temple, and protection while they are at work. Now the Jews face a new theological problem: What is the place of non-Jews in God’s design. A creative theologian narrates a wonderful story to deal with this question: the book Jonas was written between 400 – 200 B.C. Jonah, a very traditional Jew, is asked by God to go to a ‘pagan’ people. He believes that it is a mission that is doomed to fail: they have no chance of salvation. He is devoured by a large fish. The fish instinctively feels that she is about to devour some dangerous stuff, but she is hungry and so devours it without any bite, but with one gulp. But soon she feels uncomfortable, and she vomits him, and thus is saved from food-poisoning.Jonah is symbolic of us, who are not open to any fresh theological thinking. We have a ‘virgin’ mind, not ‘penetrated’ by any new ideas. By refusing to go to the non-Jews, Jonah lands in a dark room, with absolutely no light, and very little air: the foul-smel
On Sunday 23 March 1980, in powerful homily Archbishop Oscar Romero made a passionate plea for disarmament and peace; he minced no words as he castigated the Government and the military of his country, “I would like to make an appeal in a special way to the men of the army, to the police, to those in the barracks. Brothers, you are part of our own people. You kill your own campesino brothers and sisters. And before an order to kill that a man may give, the law of God must prevail that says: Thou shalt not kill! No soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God. No one has to fulfil an immoral law. It is time to recover your consciences and to obey your consciences rather than the orders of sin. The church, defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity, the dignity of the person, cannot remain silent before such abomination. We want the government to take seriously that reforms are worth nothing when they come about stained with so much blood. In the name of God, and in the name of this suffering people whose laments rise to heaven each day more tumultuously, I beg you, I ask you, I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression!” He was assassinated the very next day!Just about a year ago, on 14 October 2018, Pope Francis at the canonisation ceremony of Archbishop Oscar Romero lauded Romero for leaving “the security of the world, even his own safety, in order to live his life according to the Gospel, close to the poor and to his p
The report of Russians returning to religion, but not to the Church is based on three surveys conducted in 1991, 1998 and 2008, by the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). It is reliable data. This phenomenon may disturb some members of the clergy: their prestige, power and income will go down. To me it is a healthy development: people moving towards Christianity which itself is moving away from Churchianity. When we are Churchians, our focus is on our church, its clergy and their rituals. We tend to be confined to our compound. When we become Christians, our focus is the Kingdom of God, which was also the focus of the life and ministry of Jesus. Then we have no compounds but open space. We move towards and interact with people of good will. Then we are less occupied with empty rituals and have more time for actions that promote human wellbeing. We spend less time, money and energy on cult, and make our resources more available to the needy. We need not worry if our churches are empty, provided we have good Christians, disciples of Jesus. We should worry when our churches are full but we have few Christians.Subhash Anand St Paul’s School, Bhupalpura, Udaipur
I was saddened by the exclusion of some 1.9 million human beings in Assam from the citizenship of India. I am not particularly upset that the family of the former President, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmad, is also among the excluded. To me, one human being is as valuable as another. If a Kargil war hero can find himself among the quarantined, there is no margin for sadness or surprise. For the first time in our history, citizenship has assumed a sting about it.After learning of this massive exclusion –which reduces tens and thousands of human beings into State-less non-entities- I found myself drawn to reading H. G. Well’s book –a collection of his talks- titled The Salvaging of Civilization, published in the wake of the first World War. In that book, Wells makes a passionate plea –and a cogent argument- for a World State: something like The United States of the World. He decries the idea of divisive national boundaries and poisonous patriotisms that, he says, have taken a huge toll on our species and degraded our humanity. The only way to enduring peace is to dissolve national boundaries and to create a World State focused on peace, rather than on war-mongering.I was also reminded of Immanuel Kant’s argument in his essay titled “Perpetual Peace” that the creation of a world government is a necessary condition for preserving peace in the world.Ironically, jingoism and malignant nationalism have only become more strident in the wake of Globalization that was en