Faith is trust in a person that He will not leave us alone. Faith in God is the strong assurance one has at the bottom of his or her heart that all those things that are impossible for human being are possible for God.

Once I had an opportunity to interact with a couple and our discussion is still fresh in my mind. The Husband is around 48 years old and the wife is 46. They have no children yet. They prayed a lot but no answer was favored to them. With great enthusiasm I asked them a question, “Do you still pray for a child even today in this situation? Do you believe that God can work miracles even in this crisis?”

Their response was just a hum which was so interesting and thought-provoking. I believe that the answer cannot be Yes, as I noticed their grieving face, desperate eyes and in their eyes I could read the answer to my question “How can a child be conceived at this age? Even the uterus was also removed due to the illness” there is no scope for a different answer than this.

This made me to think more about the man’s faith in God. Most of our faith is not much different from those couple I interacted with. Since there is always a logic involved in our faith like that of the couple, our trust is more relying on our abilities than God’s power to do greater things in our lives.

1. Child who is brilliant and has the capabilities to study better will win in the Exams
2. Since the uterus is capable and the age is suitable, a child may be conceived..
3. Since the body is responding to medicine, healing may happen.

Our logical thought goes like this; If that is the case, the God who formed the heaven and earth even before you were formed in your mother’s womb and given you name is an omnipotent God and for Him everything which is impossible for man is possible.

Abraham and Sarai

Nothing different is the experience of Abraham the father of all believers and his beloved wife Sarai. Genesis 13:14-16 says that “The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him; Raise your eyes now and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward” For all the land that you see I will give to you and your ‘offspring’ forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Rise up, walk through the length and breadth of the land for I will give it to you. What a strange promise when one looks at this with his logic because Abram is Childless when God promised this and they must have longed for a child after Abram and Sarai become one.

Still Abram was sure that God will favor his prayers and God is faithful to his promises and that is the reason that Abram went towards the Promised land which is offered to his own descendents even when he was childless. Abraham experiences a delay to reach in to God’s promises and probably which could have caused his heart to go dim and to doubt than trusting in God’s promises.

Again the merciful and compassionate God speak to Abraham in a vision that we read in Genesis 15:1-6, “After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid Abram, I am your shield, your reward shall be very great. But Abram said, ‘O Lord God what will you give me, for I continue childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Demascus?’ And Abram said, you have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.’

But the word of the Lord came to him, “This man shall not be your heir no one but your very own child shall be your heir.” He brought him outside and said “look towards heaven and count the star, if you are able to count them”. Then he said to him “so shall your descendents be and he believed the Lord and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.

However, after long-awaited interval Abraham still experience the withdrawing faith and he listened to Sarah’s words and obeyed Sarah’s advice to go to her slave girl and obtain children by her. It clearly tells us that even Abraham or Sarah could not believe what God promising many a times in their lives before.

However, we see the merciful and compassionate God again and again intervening in his life and promising the same thing even at his age of 99 in Genesis 17: 1-6 God tells him “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and make you exceedingly numerous.” Then Abram fell on his face, God said to him, as for me this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of Nations. No longer shall your name be Abram but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the multitude of nations; and I will make you exceedingly fruitful. “

Now it is Sarai’s turn because the logic is that a woman cannot conceive after certain age, and see in Genesis that God even making Abrams heart strong to believe that everything is possible for God we see in Genesis 17:15-19, God said to Abram, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her and she shall give rise to nations; King of people shall come from her. At this time when God spoke to him Abram fell on his face and laughed as his logic questioned him if a child can be born to such an old lady like Sarah who was 99 years old and Abraham who was 100 years old.

However, even the merciful and compassionate God comes down to meet Abraham again and again whose faith had grown down and could not believe in God’s providence and promises as he being completely a human being crammed with logics.

In Genesis 18:9-15, God appears to him and ask where is your wife Sarah, “There in the tent, then one said, I will surely return to you in due season and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” Sarah was also listening to this conversation at the tent entrance behind him, could not believe as to how can an old woman like her and her old husband have pleasure was her argument.

Still what had happened in their lives? Abraham and Sarah’s life is not different from those couples whom I had introduced you before. Genesis 21 ;1-2 gives us an answer to that question” The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him.Here we clearly understand that one who waits for God’s own time will experience God’s greater miracle. The wonder here is that the Bible says that the 99-year-old lady nursed her son Issac with her own milk till he grew up instead of substituting it with any other food.

All these incidents in Abraham and Sarah’s life gives us ample evidence and proof that nothing is impossible for God Almighty and God works in one’s life in his own time. Therefore, it is good to believe in God’s power and ability than trusting in one’s own abilities and capabilities. God can work in your life in a mighty way even when there is no hope in your life and you feel you are left out with no scope for things according to your logic and ‘reasons. If you are willing to believe strongly inside your heart that God will do great things in your life, certainly it will be done for you.

The wax melts at a certain degree Celsius is a scientific proof and hence we believe it. However, faith means believing that God can work even where science has no scope. Each and every Christian has a call to grow in faith which goes above ones logic. If Christian life is not growing beyond rituals and if the rituals are not becoming an outward expression of an intimate and unbreakable relationship with Christ, One cannot experience the depth of the deep-rooted faith in God’s ability. It is difficult for a human being to have such strong faith in God when his logic rules him.

When we question about the place of God in Man’s life, the answer is correct that the place of God in Man’s life is extremely high. However, man’s reasoning limits him to think about God as a powerful person who is extremely high and above from man’s reach and slow in answering his prayers. However when we realize that our Lord is the God who is powerful, compassionate and merciful and that He came down from the heavens to the earth to live with us humans, we will flee from our sins and come out from the lack of faith in his abilities and will have a passionate desire to live with him and this will enable us to acquire a strong faith to believe that nothing is impossible for God.

Read Nothing is impossible for The Lord

When God becomes an intimate and loving family member who always stays with us, we stop wandering for materialistic pleasures and seeking reasons in everything else than God’s ability. May the Holy Spirit help us to experience him more closely so as to have a strong faith in his ability.

- – - written by Thomas Philip

It is impossible for us to know all about God, because He is totally beyond our understanding. The only way to know God is for God to reveal himself to us. Ever since God created man in his own image and likeness, man has been creating God in man’s own image and likeness. Some of the attributes humans apply to God are downright false, and an affront to Him.

However, God has revealed himself partially to genuine seekers. There have been great sages who were searchers, and to them God has revealed some of His aspects. For example, Indian sages have concluded that God is satchitanandanityaparipoorna, that He is a being, intelligent, bliss, eternal and perfect. In the Gayatri Mantra, God is described as the support of our life, destroyer of pain, bestower of happiness, shining like the sun, unique, destroyer of evil, and divine intelligence.

Through Jesus Christ, God has revealed something astonishing about His inner life: that He is not a solitary individual, but a community, a community of three distinct persons who are equal and yet one through love. This inner life of God is known as the Holy Trinity. To distinguish these three divine persons from one another, one is called Father, the other Son, and the third Spirit. This is a tremendous and amazing revelation about God’s inner life, an aspect which we would not have been able to discover through our limited intelligence.

This unique revelation implies many things. God’s inner life is full of activity, the Father is turned towards the Son, the Son turned towards the Father, and the Love between them being another person known as the Spirit. The Father is outgoing, the Son is outgoing, the Spirit too is outgoing; reaching out in love everywhere and always. God reaches out to His creation, especially to humans. The Son becomes a human being in Jesus, and the Spirit hovers over the earth, especially guiding, inspiring and strengthening humans everywhere.

Also Read The Trinity Explained

The Holy Trinity thus becomes the model for all relationships, especially for every community, every family, every assembly. The quality of our life depends on the quality of our relationships, and if our relationships are modeled on the Trinity (three different persons, yet equal and related to each other in perfect love) life becomes a joyful and pleasant experience. Love is to be always outgoing, love is sharing, love is respectful, and between lovers there is equality.

The Trinity emphasizes that solitariness is hell and that individualistic selfishness is a curse, unbecoming of any human being. We are born to foster relationships. From the moment we are born, we are related to our mother, father, siblings, grandparents, cousins and the extended family. We are to grow in this relationship, reaching out beyond our extended family. We are to establish relationships with all people, castes, races and nations – which should lead to fellowship, understanding, mutual help and well-being. We are to create a family of nations.

No man is an island, and we all belong to the family of man, and to the family of God. The Son became man that we might become divine. If we understand this and accept it, there would be no more wars, corruption, and exploitation. This is the challenge that the Holy Trinity places before us – be like God, become divine! Becoming divine is an invitation to love, sharing, communion, community, self-communication and joy in giving and receiving. Praise and glory to the Holy Trinity!

Because we are created in the image and likeness of the Holy Trinity, we tend to create communities: families, associations, clubs etc. We try to reach out to others. But then sin comes in and destroys everything. Selfishness, lust, avarice, jealousy destroy whatever we try to build. We have to overcome sin if we want to be constructive.

The doctrine of the Trinity enables to understand how Jesus, a human being could also be divine, the Son of God. The Son became man without losing his Sonship, his divinity. This is very well expressed in the Preface of the Mass for the feast of the Holy Trinity: “You are one God, one Lord, not in the unity of one person, but in the Trinity of one substance. For what you have revealed to us of your glory we believe equally of your Son and of the Holy Spirit, so that, in the confessing of the true and eternal Godhead, you might be adored in what is proper to each Person, their unity in substance, and their equality in majesty”.

Let us pray the Prayer to The Holy Trinity

- – - written by Fr. George Kureethra

Lack of space for Jesus, was lack of space for God in the heart of the people. It stands for this Christmas too.

We, as believers, are once again being fondly invited to the banquet-table of a Redemptive Incarnation and in the garden of our heart there unfolds, like the fragrant December Lilies, a full bunch of reminiscences of this historic event. As we engage ourselves in creating cribs, setting star-lights, lining up, in newly sewn attires holding burning candles, at the church-courtyard for the midnight-holy ceremonies and preparing delicious edibles, let us pause a while and ask ourselves:

Is there a little space available, in our heart, for the Baby Jesus?

The effulgent flame of the Blessed Birth of the Lord is one that throws beams of light upon contradictions of manifold kind. We, fragile humans, can only stand amazed at each of them: the’ Millionaire-God’ becomes a ‘bankrupt-human’!; the Sacred One assumes the form of a profane transgressor!; the sole Sustainer of the entire universe, renouncing the riches above, takes birth in a mere manger!; the Son of God becomes the Servant of servants!, and above all, as the Gospel testifies, the First-born Son of the Creator-God is deprived of a little space to be born in, even in an inn (Lk. 2:7).

Bethlehem, that day, was exceptionally noisy with the preparations for Census. Roads and rest-houses grew overcrowded. No one there wished to be a host to another. Everyone had amply rehearsed to pretend to be a stranger to the other. Was it not for the same reason that Joseph, a poor country carpenter and Mary, his expecting and weary wife were left orphans there at that chill nightfall? Yet, disregarding the scorching sorrows ruthlessly offered by each of the slammed doors and sour-soaked insults, they moved ahead through those busy streets, looking for a square-foot of soil for the Nazarene.

But, neither a mansion nor a decent dwelling, on the surface of the earth, was set apart for Him, the Lord of the land, the seas and the skies! The Saviour-God, hence, was born on a grass-mattress in a manger! No door lay wide open for Him who came as the WAY; no inn gifted a little space to Him who was born as the TRUTH, and no emperors or mobs marched up to shout praises to Him who flushed forth as the Fountain of everlasting LIFE! There was lack of space for God. Blessed, of course, were those simple shepherds on the hillside to whom was given the fortune to worship the new-born Child and those breezes and stars in the sky that lulled Him to slumber in that snowy yet holy night!

The dark world of ours, today, is busy with scripting the screenplay of haste and hurry. People of the present generation prefer to settle themselves on the shore of the turbulent ocean of haste. The earth-dwellers, to a great extent, caught in the octopus grip of a deadly consumerist culture that degrades parents as obsessions, kith and kin as booms, relatives as abominable liabilities and neighbours as ill-omens, seem to be growing excessively fond of playing what one may call ‘dumb-dances’. The farther the human race advances in the spheres of science and technology, the less it becomes aware of its rapidly shrinking noble values and virtues.

Today our relationship with one another is minimized to mere phone-calls; acquaintances vanish at the flash of short smiles and conversations hide themselves behind occasional head-nods! We no more have either space or time at our disposal to host and accommodate our own near and dear ones in the inn of our lives. The twenty-four hours of a full day and night seem to be insufficient for the varying and hectic transactions of our daily living. Children of the present often stand empty of mindfulness and filial affection to look after and light up the setting days of their aging parents who brought them to sunshine and toiled hard to provide for them. A good majority of us is enslaved by our insensitive senses that ignore and take pleasure even, in the mishaps at our neighbourhoods.

There, of course, prevailed a time when our handkerchief remained soaked in the overflowing tears of our sorrowing fellow beings; a time when our hands grew stronger to help those drowning in the whirlpool of misfortune to get out of it; a time when our little huts were spacious enough to render asylum to one more homeless lot, and a time when the crops of compassion and care got heaped up in abundance in the granary of our heart! But how different are this world and its residents! Noble values are demoted; broadmindedness is as rare as precious gems; faith-life grows shallower; face of the earth looks deformed and the wicks of mercy in human eyes begin to flicker and die out!

People love to be content within their well­locked glasshouses built in isolated islands. Many of us, regularly humiliating and avoiding the empty hands and swollen eyes of the abandoned and poor, choose to conveniently take a different route. Narrow and shadowy corridors are very often our choices. The fast-multiplying epidemics and unexpected natural disasters pin at the pleasure, comforts and tranquility of every one without distinction. Financial crises and irregular seasons, with the havocs and miseries they breed, constantly keep pulling people forcefully into the sea-bed of uncertainties and anxieties.

It is amidst the over-influence of these uncommon phenomena that we prepare ourselves, in spirit and gaiety, for the nearing Christmas. If so, it’s an occasion for us to objectively examine our words, deeds and thoughts in both the resonance of our conscience and the lime­light of truth. Do we have space for God? Let us learn serious lessons from our faults and falls, generously amend our wrongs and debilities, throw the entrance of our heart broad open for the Lord who waits outside knocking (Rev. 3:20), and re-own a fleshy heart that will ever grow sensitive enough to love and help our fellow brothers and sisters.

May the One, who sanctified the manger at Bethlehem and turned water into wine at Cana, be born in the little cradle of our heart. Then, with Him, we too will be reborn as renewed creations full of finer virtues and holiness and consequently, the Feast of Incarnation will continue to remain an indelibly personal experience in the very core of our being throughout the days to come.

- – - written by Fr. Thomas Pattathilchira, CMF