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Let me first relate an anecdote to help you decide if Christian Missionaries pose a conversion threat in today’s India.I spend some five months a year in the countryside in Raigad, Maharashtra, overseeing my plantations where I also own a bungalow.A year ago, my cook-cum-caretaker told me that he’d absent the next day because he had a severe toothache and he needed to have a tooth pulled out. To me it sounded like a guy cutting off his head to cure his headache.So, I told him, “Hang on, before a plumber with a plier pulls out your tooth, let me take you to the Convent Hospital.”Next morning at 8:30, we reached the hospital, and I saw its dental section spotlessly clean. A woman dentist, who was on duty, quickly attended to the cook, asked him to return every day for three days, and he got OK.My total expense: 50 rupees for an admission card plus the cost of some medicines the doctor prescribed.The Raigad hospital was set up by a trust managed by the Catholic Sisters, and it’s the first and only destination for anybody who falls ill there. Most of its doctors are Christians, but the Maharashtrian patients are all Hindus. Maharashtra has ten Christians for one thousand Hindus, according to India’s last population census in 2011.But go anywhere in India and it is Christians who run the best schools, the best colleges, the best charity hospitals, the best orphanages, the best old-age homes, the best homes for destitute, the best homes for l
October month is dedicated for Our Lady and rosary and this 2019 October is an extra ordinary one with an extra ordinary celebration of mission month. Each Christian is a missionary by Baptism, called to live and share Christ’s love. And this mission month is a God given opportunity to have an introspection about our missionary call.As a religious nun I am proud to be a missionary. As a member of CMC Congregation I am proud to be a part of thousands of sisters who are working as missionaries in different parts of the world proclaiming Christ through our words and deeds. We have sisters working in rural interior villages of India and mountain tops of north-east India in the name of Jesus. Our sisters are working not only in India, but Africa, America, Canada, Europe and now even in Iraq. We have sisters working metropolitan cities too. We are running institutions in rural areas as well as in other towns and cities. Places may vary, tasks may vary, but what makes me a missionary is - Am I in the name of Jesus, proclaiming Him to others?As soon as my first profession I was Send to a remote village in Maharashtra where our Avila Mission of Vimala Province, Ernakulam is having a convent. We are there in collaboration with Vincentian Fathers of St.Paul Mission. Without any proper road and transportation and with a bonus of 12 hours of power cut, fathers and sisters are there for many years. I consider it as one of the best chance I got to live as a true missionary. Toda
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