Father Dominic Emmanuel
Lessons of Holy Week
I too was invited in the multi-faith prayer service at Jantar Mantar to support the cause of social activist Anna Hazare and the team. On the third day when I finished a reading from the Bible, the Sikh gentleman sharing the dais with me expressed in total bewilderment that such a teaching was almost impossible to live by.
The spirit of giving
In my last column, which appeared on March 21 (Prayers to help Japan), a few days after the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the north-eastern coast of Japan taking with it more than 10,000 lives, I had suggested that we all can help the affected people of Japan through our prayers. While highlighting the importance of prayer in such situations, I had promised that in my next column I would deal with how else we can help people in distress in addition to praying.I am sure many of us are continuing to pray for the people of Japan.
Be brave and try to forgive
Someone has rightly said that it is easier to climb Mount Everest or battle the sharks in the deep sea than to forgive someone who has wronged us.
Forgiveness becomes all the more difficult if the person who wronged us happens to be our friend or a close relative. We then spend endless time thinking about why a person has done that to us, knowing well that no amount of thinking on the subject is going to bring any satisfactory answer.
Shun rituals, just love God
“Pharisaic attitude” is a phrase that is used for describing the mindset of those who are self-righteous and consider themselves superior to others, especially when it comes to religious and moral pra
Shun greed, corruption
Some readers might take the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew so literally that they would easily give up on them rather than try and find their real meaning to see how they could draw something out from it for life. The words, “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell” (Matthew 5: 29-30), can clearly not be taken literally.
Don’t crib,just do
In my last column I suggested how life would be different for us and for the rest of the world if we started looking at things positively rather than cursing situations, people, life, religion etc.
Look back with hope
I am sure most people will agree with me that the year 2010 has not been as bad as some of the newspaper editorials and critics have painted it. In my opinion, every year has its own high and low points. Of course, how one looks at the events of the year depends entirely on one’s outlook towards life, towards people and indeed towards God. What I am trying to say is aptly described by Frederick Langbridge: “Two men looked out of the same prison bars, one saw the mud, the other saw the stars”.
Seek peace this Xmas
Ever since Jesus was born 2,000 years ago, the story of his birth has been narrated over and over again, not just in words but also through poetry, paintings, songs, radio dramas, classical dance form
In God’s company
Those of us who have the task of teaching pupils in schools find ourselves dinning into them to improve their handwriting or their pronunciation, saying, “practice and keep practicing, for practice wi
The magic of hope
In my last column I wrote about the instances of supreme hope of sportspersons doing better than their best till the very last moment and more elaborately on the hope that kept the 33 Chile mine survivors alive and sane nearly 2,300 feet below the earth for 69 days.
