Looking eastward

  Text :  Ephesians 1:3-14 The chosen text - Ephesians 1:3-14 – deals with the work of the Holy Trinity in our salvation. In the beginning itself, the blessed St. Paul talks about the joyful privilege we have been given with as the children of God - " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ."    Indeed, God has blessed us so much, and hence the Christian life is a response to God’s initiative, especially that of the Father but also that of the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. The heavenly places talked about here, are the presence of Christ and the Holy Spirit within us, which are experienced in Christ, that is when one is joined with Christ in baptism. This is the born-again life, the eternal life that we experience in the present because the Kingdom of God is now within us. Because this is a lifestyle that can only be experienced rather than describe...

Psalm 91 is one of the most comforting of all the psalms. My parents had me memorize the same when we were kids, and I would recommend that all Christian parents do the same for their children. It is a powerful psalm that talks about how God protects His people from all dangers, just like a mother hen protects her chicks under her wings.  Anybody casually reading this psalm in modern times may feel disconnected from the verses. After all, a lot of the terms used are connected to ancient times - fowler's snare, arrows, pestilence etc. But when you read the psalm in its entirety, you will understand that this is a psalm of praise - from one who has experienced God's complete protection from all harm - war, enemies, opponents, diseases, wild animals and all other kinds of things that can cause us hurt. If you've seen the 'Final Destination' series of movies, you will understand that we can experience calamities at any moment in time from a multitude of factors, even as...

Selected Text for Meditation - Isaiah 49:7-13 Many times life is filled with ups and downs. Now, while we’re quite happy about those up times, those down times are what we dread because they seem to go on for forever, especially when we are in the midst of them. But years later when we look back on them, we realize that they don’t seem so bad now in retrospect. We sometimes wonder as the purpose of those bad times. Why does God allow us to go through difficult times? When we search the Scriptures for answers, we often find that these times do have a purpose. Sometimes God allows them so that we will learn lessons and become stronger, and sometimes these are a punishment for our sins. And the Israelites knew this well because they had faced these down times so many times.   But we must remember that God doesn’t punish His people for punishment’s sake. He does it so that His people, His beloved children can be restored. And that’s what we see in the many of the prophetic books – ...

July 3 is celebrated as St. Thomas Day in the Indian (Syrian) orthodox tradition. This day is significant because it was on this day that the relics of this holy saint was shifted from India to Edessa, Mesopotamia. Indian Christians actually remember St. Thomas on three days – December 18 (the day he was lanced with spears), December 21 (the day he died) and July 3 (the date of the shifting of his relics). These feasts are very important for Christians in Kerala as it reminds us about our rich tradition and faith. St. Thomas the Apostle is one of the 12 Apostles of Christ. He was known as ‘Didymus’ which means ‘twin’. Traditions say it was because two fingers on the hand of St. Thomas were joined that he received this name. Another tradition claims that it was because he was born as the twin brother of Adai. But we do not have much historical records about the life and work of St. Thomas. Since he doubted Jesus’ resurrection, he’s often known as “Doubting Thomas”. But we should remembe...

From my childhood till my twenties, I belonged to a Pentecostal denomination which taught that having any picture or image in the church was bordering on idolatry. So I used to look at every Orthodox and Catholic church from the outside and think that they were not true Christians because they had a lot of symbols and pictures. It is only when I went to seminary and went through the course on "Worship and Preaching" that I came across the topic "Importance of Signs and Symbols in Worship". I was surprised to see that topic because until then I had never thought this was even a necessary part of worship. But like I used to do with all things that I felt didn't concern me, I just brushed the topic aside without trying to even understand it. Things changed when my church started making the move to orthodoxy. We started using a lot of symbols and imagery in our church. The first thing we began to adopt was the 'cross' in all our churches. The next t...

One of our Church youth asked this question the other day " Why do we take blessings from the Bishop? Is it necessary? It doesn't make sense to me ". For those who are not familiar with the context, he was referring to the practice in the church where the members and even priests receive blessings from a Bishop by bowing down in front of them and allowing the Bishop to place his hands on their heads as a sign of blessings imparted. In other churches, the same practice is followed although in different forms. Sometimes the Bishop would fold his hand in a fist and touch the member's head with his ring. This may look strange but this action symbolizes that the blessing is granted from the authority given to the Bishop by the Church and the head of the Church - Christ our Lord. In other cases, the Bishop may stretch out his hand for the faithful to kiss his ring, which is again a sign of respect for Christ our Lord. But despite its many forms, this practice of receivi...