PFA the LENT

                      

Its been more than 2yrs since I left my software job but still PFA, MOM, OOO etc means more than 3 alphabets to me! All software engineers will have a "yea I got it" smile in their face nw. For the others I just want to focus on PFA which suddenly assumes a new role in my Lenten schemes. PFA denotes 'Please find attached ' while sending mails with attachments but in this post it will stand for Prayer, Fasting & Almsgiving. Yes I am heading off to the Lenten season.  I am writing this on a Monday and by Wednesday Lent 2011 will begin attached with PFA!

PFA

Traditionally on Lent season we do the following - we fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, abstain from meat the whole period, meditate on the Way of the cross every Friday some places every day, do visits to orphanages and poor homes etc. Though this has worked out well for so many years, I feel this approach fails to see the unifying theme or purpose of PFA. To get more clarity I turn to Pope Benedict XVI message for lent 2011. He says "….we are moved to free our hearts every day from the burden of material things, from a self-centered relationship with the "world" that impoverishes us and prevents us from being available and open to God and our neighbor". Each of the elements in PFA specifically aims at these underlined keywords. Fasting helps to turn our focus away from 'us' and the world. Prayer helps us to gaze upwards to God and Almsgiving demands our attention towards our neighbors.

P for Prayer

Will there be a difference in our prayer during the Ordinary times and the Lent season? Tough question and even tougher answerJ It seems to me that prayers during Lent season should be focused more on sincere conversion not merely on a peripheral level but on a deeper level - dwelling deep into our inner selves seeking out those areas where we have denied access to Jesus! If we are successful in finding at least one such new area this Lent and purified it with the grace of Jesus, our P has hit right on the nail!

F for Fasting

Last Advent I had an interesting discussion with a lapsed catholic (LC) and a priest regarding the purpose of fasting. The LC was training his guns at the hypocrisy of fasting which involves mere abstinence from meat. He was arguing that we should save money through fasting and give it to the poor, only then fasting will be meaningful. Obviously he was repeating the same mistake of replacing holiness with goodness which is a topic I would like to reflect on later. The priest was explaining how the tradition of fasting came into existence and rather than skipping meals it should be sacrifices which will affect our personal lives. Listening to both, I felt the meaning of fasting is still not explained or understood well. Again I turn to the wisdom of our beloved Pope, he says "Fasting, which can have various motivations, takes on a profoundly religious significance for the Christian: by rendering our table poorer, we learn to overcome selfishness in order to live in the logic of gift and love; by bearing some form of deprivation – and not just what is in excess – we learn to look away from our "ego", to discover someone close to us and to recognize God in the face of so many brothers and sisters."

A for Almsgiving

Pope says"….the Church, especially during the Lenten period, reminds us to practice almsgiving – which is the capacity to share. The idolatry of goods, on the other hand, not only causes us to drift away from others, but divests man, making him unhappy, deceiving him, deluding him without fulfilling its promises, since it puts materialistic goods in the place of God, the only source of life." This makes us search for the real meaning of being happy or joyful. As children of God we can find 'real' happiness only when we start looking into the happy eyes of our neighbors – our brothers and sisters. To make them happy we need to do something and let's start doing it this summer!

P.S:- This Lent I have decided to stop facebooking and tweeting to take the focus away from 'my profile' and turn to the profiles of God and my neighbors who are not available in any networksJ

Missionary Mosquito

                    

Ouuch….Oops…aah…thus we were crying out by the mosquito bite on a nice evening in Bangkok. I was returning from the chapel after our daily 5pm mass along with the Father. While I was complaining about the cruelty of mosquitoes Fr who never runs out of funny stories & jokes told me about mosquito Evangelization. Having never heard of it before, I forgot the painful drilling for a moment and asked him eagerly what does it mean? He replied, "It is said that when we do evangelization we are supposed to be like mosquitoes! They have a very short life time but in that lifespan their aim is to bite maximum number of people who come across their way. Same way we have a very short life span, we should try to evangelize as many people as possible, who come across our daily life".

I laughed and we quickly dispersed trying to escape from the mosquitoes. Back home this new term came back to my mind again and again, I am not sure if it is the mosquito humming in my ears or the Spirit calling me to ponder more on this. Thoughts flied back to my first year in college. I was straight from my first Jesus Youth retreat during the holidays. Full of zeal and joy of Christ I baldy wanted to tell people about the love of Christ and for that matter to start a prayer meeting in college. I walked around, talked to all, made friends and waited for the right moment. But there was one problem.

Being a perfectionist I was not yet ready to start the prayer meeting. The reason – I am not even in the first 10 ranks in my class! How can I - a child of God tell others about the love of God and the victorious God when I myself was struggling to cross the 65% 'honour' line in engineering? Let me try hard and score well and then I can start a prayer meeting – I decided. No marks for guessing when that moment finally cameJ

I believe each one of us face this same situation or throw up similar excuses when faced with the question of evangelization. Let me become holy first…let me finish this work….let me complete the exams...let me finish the appraisal…let me change job…let me decide on my marriage…n the list goes on endlessly. Going back to our mosquitoes I did a Google search on mosquito bite to see how effective they are in their 'mission'. The results were shocking - mosquitoes are the most deadly animal found on land and on water overtaking African Lion, Elephant & even great white shark! [http://listverse.com/2007/07/13/top-10-most-deadly-animals/]. They kill over 2 million people every year and infect another 70 million with deadly diseases!!!

Now imagine each mosquito to be an evangelizer or a catholic or even a Jesus Youth! We would have got 2 million people who get to know Jesus every year or another 70 million who will start their quest for God. Are we missing the killer instinct when it comes to telling the story of Jesus? Next time you try to find an excuse, remember the Oouch…n aahasJ

Disclaimer: Evangelization should not hurt/disturb/irritate people; it should be done gently through utmost respect and love for the hearer.