By Fr. Antony Christy, SDB –
Samuel is a prominent figure in the Old Testament story as many a new thing began with him. Can we name him the first prophet among Israel, strict to that definition, for till then there were only priests. He was the one through whom God gave Israel their first king, Saul and the one that followed, David.
And how does that remarkable prophetic journey begin: as a young lad! Samuel was a son of promise – Elkanah and Hannah had promised to offer him back to the Lord if the Lord deigned to grant them a son after all the delay. It happened so. Growing in the temple Samuel had a special experience as a boy: he heard the Lord call him in the night. Young as he was, he thought it was Eli, his master who was calling him. But soon instructed by Eli, he makes that renowned response: Speak Lord, your servant is listening.
Ever since, Samuel becomes a special messenger of the Lord, carrying out everything at the Lord’s behest. What is the message that Samuel gives us: Firstly, the Lord Speaks. Many youngsters ask a sarcastic question, ‘why doesn’t the Lord speak nowadays?’ Let us ask, why don’t we ever listen? Second message from Samuel is, the Lord Calls. The Lord challenges the young to listen to the Lord and follow the Lord’s ways. While it is so hard that youngsters even listen to the Lord, how can they follow the Lord’s ways?Vocations to Priestly or Religious life has reduced drastically these days, the call is to the young – to listen. Thirdly, the Lord Directs. We see that the Lord directed the entire life of Samuel right from when he was a small boy.
The point was that he was pliable. He was not swayed by the trends of the world or the whims of the day, he remained focused on the Lord and the Lord used him for mighty things amidst the people of Israel. The Lord speaks, the Lord calls and the Lord directs provided we are ready to listen, ready to respond and ready to follow.
My dear young friend…
– do you believe that God speaks to you in simple things that happen in life?
– can you grow in your capacity to listen, to respond and to follow God’s ways?
YOU CAT
SAINTS, SINNERS AND ELTERNAL LIFE: The Catholic-specific Faith experience (Questions 145-165) This is the very final section of part one: WHAT WE BELIEVE. There are three faith experiences discussed here – the Communion of Saints, the Forgiveness of sins and the Life everlasting. With Mary and the rest of the saints we have our forerunners in God’s presence who could plead our cause. Though Mary is very special among the saints, as the mother of the Lord, she is but a creature like us, who has lived her life to a perfection that sets her apart from the rest.
Our deceased brothers and sisters either intercede for us or stand in need of our spiritual assistance, depending on the process of purification they have undergone post life. The Church has been conferred the power to forgive sins and the Church does it through Baptism and the sacrament of Reconciliation. Eternal life is entering into God’s never ending presence.
In God’s love for us, God unites us thus to Godself and grants our mortal beings immortality, that we call redemption. God does not only redeem our soul, God redeems through Christ our entire being – body and soul. At death our body decays and our soul leaves to encounter its source and destiny, God, from whom the soul receives its existence. The soul awaits the last day when it will reunite with the body that will be raised as the risen body. Heaven, hell and purgatory are not places but state or conditions of existence of the soul – in total communion with the Lord or total separation from the Lord or a process of purification respectively.
– How do you relate yourself with the Saints in Heaven and fellow beings here with you?
KNOW YOUR CHURCH:
Is Church a society?
Church – is it a society? Or does the Church find itself in a society? Church is the people of God, as we know. A group of people living together with commonalities can be called easily a society. But can Church fit into that definition? It cannot. Church is much larger than a society and Church finds itself in a society and Church itself cannot be limited to the understanding of a society.
First of all, it is not a human institution; Church is initiated by God. Secondly, the Church has the role to be a prophet to the Society. The Church has varied responsibilities towards the society in which it finds itself – for its holistic human development, for the building up of a just social order, for the upholding of rights of the weak, to stand for the values that are vulnerable and so on. Thirdly, when the Church begins to look at itself as a society, the human elements tend to dominate that outlook. The very ills that are found in the society find their place within the Church and the people of God degenerate into an ordinary people, losing the image that the Church is expected to have – the image of the Sacrament of Salvation – that is a sign of God’s salvation here on earth.
The Church has in itself a strong nature of a sacrament, signifying externally the grace of the Lord that is to be experienced internally by every human person on earth. Church should thus challenge the society towards its ideal existence – where common good and solidarity prospers.
DO CAT
BASIC PRINCIPLES OF CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING (Questions 84-111) – The principle of Dignity of the human person, the principle of the Common Good, the principle of Subsidiarity and the principle of Solidarity are the four major principles of Catholic Social Teaching.
The reasons these principles are applicable are that they are reasonable, they stem from Catholic faith and are surest ways of following the commandment of love that the Lord has given us. They are interrelated and are found together in a social reality, if it has to be ideal.
While we have spoken of already the dignity a human person enjoys intrinsically, the other three can be understood in simple terms thus: common good is social and community dimension of the moral good, that is the good of all human beings beginning from the fundamental rights of a person to those of the community as a whole; subsidiarity ensures that an agent at a higher level will offer to do or assume the responsibility to do something, only if and when the group at a lower level is not able to do what it has been assigned to do (for example what a family cannot do, the state offers to do only at necessary moments); solidarity establishes that no person has the right to live for himself or herself alone.
Arising from these four principles, we can find three fundamental values for a fine social living: truth, freedom and justice. Freedom is the capacity to choose the good (and not whatever one wants); Truth is affirming what is, with honesty and truthfulness; Justice is the constant will to give the due to God and to one’s neighbour. The origin of all these values is God, for God is love and if love ruled the world there would be no need for laws.
– How strong do you find yourself in these principles of Social living?
Fr Antony Christy is a Salesian Priest from 2005, who has a Masters in Philosophy (specialisation in Religion) and a Masters in Theology (Specialisation in Catechetics). He is currently pursuing his doctoral research in Theology at Salesian Pontifical University, Rome. Walking with the Young towards a World of Peace and Dialogue is the passion that fires him on.