Does God Create?

Full of anxiety and worried about my Future the day I completed my Masters degree in HRM from Loyola College during June 1997. While winding up my Masters degree I was attending a retreat in Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Kilpak, Chennai. The retreat was conducted by Rev.Fr. Agustine Valloran from Chalakudi/Pota from Kerala. During the adoration time on the last day of the retreat, He called specifically my name and said, Francis, 'Do not fear, for I am with you; Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.' These are the assurance he proclaimed while holding the Blessed Sacrament. Till this day, I realize these words are verily true and resounding in my ears.



The Next day, I approached Mr. Anto Vincent in his residence in Alwarpet, he asked me whether I am interested to join with his son Mr. Arul Dev to run “People First Consultants Pvt. Ltd” I was delighted to begin my career and started my work with assistance of Secretary in the building adjacent to St.Antony’s Church in Paris, Chennai. During my career he sponsored me for a “Communication workshop” conducted by Prerana Institute. There the instructor taught me to have a paradigm of “Everything and Nothingness” He enabled me to back track my life and to get rid of ego. The mindset of divine consciousness is singularity of Nothingness and Fullness; it is a state of being, Wherein I create communication in this mindset and being response able. (Responsible).



Later on, I attended “Art of Living” workshop conducted by Swami. Sukabodananda. He taught me, our mind is having a pattern of thoughtfulness and thoughtlessness. Like ridges and furrows (waves) happens in our mind. We need to sustain and experience the “thoughtlessness” as nothingness in our mind. This is called in Vedas, “Chidambara Rahasiam” thus explained by Swamiji. The Sunyata and the Pleroma, it is a state of being and it is not a plenum of action.



Christian mysticism always recognizes the "You" of God.

Yes, it isn't dissolution; it is encounter.

Christian mysticism is characterized by the Incarnation, which is always a gift; it isn't something that the human being gains.

In it, the "You," the duality of a God who gives himself and the man who receives, though there is fusion, always recognizes the other.

We are speaking of duality in unity, as a spiritual marriage. The two always recognize one another; they are not confused; they keep their own identity.



Experience is a category that is used in all the disciplines. I prefer to speak of mystical experience; it is something that God gives to man who receives it passively, and, in fact, makes an effort on receiving it.

It is what John of the Cross calls "the night."There is collaboration in the acceptance, but the initiative is always God's, who makes Himself known. And the greatest revelation takes place in Jesus Christ.

Hence, mystical experience is always Christ-centered and Trinitarian. And it is revealed only gratuitously, without our merits.



Mystics are men and women of this world. Not from another world! Today there is a tendency to trivialize mysticism, as if it were something of another world, and that it has nothing to do with us. But it isn't so. Moreover, the mystics' experience fits in the Church and is related to faith, not foreign to it.



Mystical experience cannot be separated from faith; it can only take place in it. Mystical experience calls for a mystical theology, a reflection whose basis is mysticism itself.



Today there is a persistence of the mystical event. It is part of the post-modern society. This universal mystical richness is rediscovered in Western and Eastern religiosity. And Eastern mysticism has exercised great fascination in the West.



Religion and mysticism are different realities, and it is necessary to make distinctions.



Why does God create? Why is this necessary for a Perfect Being, who is perfect in its quiescence?



It is God, not man, whom the Lord makes the criterion; the heavenly Father, not the dread moral governor as made known to Israel, but our Father. What are His affections, what His will about us? Nothing is more foreign here than the delusion of our being freed now from the indwelling evil of our nature.

"Ye therefore shall be perfect," says the Lord, as your heavenly Father is perfect." His is love, because He is love; it is the energy of His nature going out in goodness where there is need, and above all reference to merit, or congruity with what He loves and is. And this in all its perfection He was then showing in the Lord Jesus, image of the invisible God.

"Many more happy returns of this day, Holy Father."

Pope Benedict XVI turns 82 on Thursday, 16th April 2009. He appeared tired and hoarse during the solemn three-hour-long Easter Vigil service Saturday, but seemed well-rested by Sunday morning.
Happy Birthday Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI is one of the most accomplished Roman Catholic theologians, the aim of his pontificate is not the construction of a new “grand theory” for Catholic theology. Neither is his goal to remake the Catholic Church according to the personal tastes and inclinations of Joseph Ratzinger. Instead, Benedict’s top priority is to reintroduce the fundamentals of the Christian gospel and of Catholic tradition to the modern world.

I like papa Ratzi! Let us greet Benedict XVI and pray for him on this his 82nd birthday.

My inspirations from him are the following:

1. Real love comes at a price. That’s the kind of love that Benedict describes in Deus Caristas Est.
2. My Papa Ratzi is reminding the world that, in Jesus of Nazareth, we see the definitive revelation of the meaning and ultimate destiny of human life, is a cornerstone of Benedict's papacy.
3. His moto is Cooperatores veritatis: "co-workers of the truth". The chief challenge facing the Catholic Church as a "dictatorship of relativism". I've been agitated by these waves - tossed from one extreme to the anoter; from Marxism to liberalism, from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and so on... To have a clear faith, according to the Creed of the Church, is often styled as fundamentalism. Benedict believes, freedom to realize our highest potential as sons and daughters of God. Truth and freedom are thus not opposed, but interdependent.
4. Faith and Reason Need One Another.
5. The Eucharistic is the heart of the Christian Life. I will use an image well known to us today, (Consecrating the Eucharist) is like inducing nuclear fission in the very heart of being-the victory of love over hatred, the victory of love over death. The more lively the eucharistic faith of the People of God, the deeper is its sharing in ecclesial life in steadfast commitment to the mission entrusted by Christ to his disciples. Eucharistic comes with a mission. What we consume, meaning to model ourselves on Christ. On a social level, it means efforts to build a world in which the self-giving love of Christ, which is made new each time the Eucharist is celebrated, is the cornerstone upon which society is constructed, as opposed to ideology, profit, or the blind will to power. Eucharist can change the world-indeed, it's the only thing that can.
6. Chritianity is a positive message. Man and women are made for each other, that the sacle of sexuality, eros, agape, indicates the level of love and it's in this way that marriage develops, first of all, as a joyful and blessing-filled encounter beween a man and woman, and then the family, that guarantees continuity among generations and through which gnerations are reconciled to each other and ever cultures can meet.
7. The Church forms consciences but stays out of politics. In his first encyclical letter, Deus Caritas Est, that "Justice is both the aim and intrinsic criterion of all politics." A christian must work toward a just social order, and special concern for the poor. Benedict endorsed what exponents of liberation theology have called the "preferential option for the poor", saying it is "implicit in the Christological faith in the God who became poor for us" For Benedict XVI, fidelity to Church teaching and Tradition are not opposed to social concern; to conceive of things that way, he believes, would be to pit faith against works, a position that Roman Catholicism rejected during Protestant Reformation more than five hundred years.
8. The importance of Catholic Identity. Catholic Church alone is the true Church willed by Christ. "Today more than ever, the Christian must be aware that he belongs to a minority and that he is in opposition to everything that appears good, obvious, and logical to the "the spirit of the world".
9. Christ and the Church are inseparable. "Profound, inseparable, and mysterious continuity""to gather and to save" a people, which is Church. One cannot truly love Jesus or follow his teachings, Benedict insists, without taking one's place in the family faith that Jesus called into being. Being part of that family comes with no guarantees of perfect contentment; like any family, the Church has its ups and downs, its moments of disappointment and heartahe. If that's true of a human family, how much more it is of a global Church of more than one billion people, carrying the weight of 2,000 years of history! But just as one does not walk away from a family when things get rough, similarly a disciple of Jesus does not walk away from his Church. In response to the cry of "Yes to Jesus, No to the Church. " Benedict XVI responds, "Yes to Jesus means Yes to the Church.
10. The virtue of Patience. He is a very patient man.

God, our times are in your hand: Look with favor, we pray, on Pope Benedict XVI as he begins another year. Grant that he may grow in wisdom and grace, and strengthen his trust in your goodness all the days of his life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.