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MAGNET – a precious and unique gift to everyone who has subscribed for it (I wish all could/should subscribe and experience the power of transformation Magnet brings), truly is a wholesome and nutritious food for the mind and soul. I make sure to read from cover to cover and re-read  again and again some articles and it has been a great blessing for my personal life as well as for my mission. It’s so magnetic with lovely, warm, inspirational, enjoyable and relevant articles written in simple  language, a great help to enjoy and relish them with cartoons, appropriate pictures and layout all done with  precision, passion and perfection. My sincere grateful thanks and appreciation to Fr Joe Mannath and his excellent team of columnists and others for their unique contribution to make Magnet our favourite magazine!

As in every issue, unique with its theme and content, the month of March issue brought in a very apt and relevant theme: “Indian Religious Orders: Top Priorities Today.” The Cover picture, the excellent Editorial and the Cover story by Fr Joe Mannath with life stories of concrete people is indeed wonderful, thought-provoking, soul-searching reflection, self and community evaluation and renewed commitment to our First Love. Thank you, Fr Joe, for this much-needed reminder and I do hope that Indian Religious Orders, in a busy world, will not miss to focus on Top Priorities Today!

“He Understood God’s Dream” by Fr M A  Joe Anthony SJ on Archbishop Desmond Tutu is an excellent tribute to a man for all seasons and an inspiration to all peoples. In a few words Fr  Joe Antony has brought out the best in this legendary figure of our times. Truly he is quoted and will be quoted and remembered for generations to come. Our National Education Policy 2020 also quotes him. “Inclusive, good-quality education is a foundation for dynamic and equitable societies.” ~Desmond Tutu (NEP 2020)

It was a pleasant and inspirational reading of ‘The Cafasso Squad’ by Fr Leon Cruz SDB, which was indeed a lovely curiosity and happy to know more about Fr Joseph Cafasso (Don Bosco’s Confessor) and the creative initiative of starting one of the groups of the Salesian Youth Movement and making the young people involved in Prison Ministry. Young People love social commitment and adventure, and I am sure it will usher a new phase of Prison Ministry India (PMI) through the young people who are creative and daring. Kuddos to the initiators of “The Cafasso Squad.”

“How the poor love one another” by Fr Mathew George, sharing his personal experience, was truly heartwarming and inspirational. Indeed, the poor are our teachers and we have so much to learn from them. In our modern world when money, wealth, power and market make the survival of the fittest and elimination of the weakest a sad reality, the poor keep their humanity alive and teach us to become better human beings. Thank you, Fr Mathew George. Your articles are always inspirational. Congratulations for the commendable loving service to the poorest of the poor!

‘Taking the First Step’ by Bro Carmel Duca MC (in fact, his every article under “Life on the Margins”) is indeed amazing, inspiring, full of humanity. He is great at touching the lives meaningfully among the people whom he ministers. I loved those beautiful last lines – Sometimes I wonder, if our founders and foundresses analysed and rationalised their vocation, and minutely planned all the details, they would not have started what they were being called to do. Instead, they just took that first step and kept walking. So true! I thought of Don Bosco! Thank you, Brother Carmel! You are an inspiration!

“Characteristics of a Synodal Community” by Fr Jose Kuttianimattathil SDB is a great help in understanding, participating and living the Synod and Synodality. They are practical and easy to understand and live. Looking forward for the characteristics of a synodal way of exercising authority in the next issue!

While we warmly welcome the new National Secretary: Sr Elsa Muttathu PBVM, our grateful, sincere thanks and appreciation to Fr. Jose Mannath for his loving and dedicated, fruitful and quality service to National CRI. I really hope and pray that MAGNET, which has been one of the greatest initiatives of National CRI, will live long and maintain quality for a very, very long time. Best Wishes!

Sr. Celine D’Cunha fma
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Asked last month by the editor of the Jesuit magazine, Jivan, about the relevance of religious vows today, I started my article by quoting a good laywoman I knew in Rome. She stayed single, and was known for her readiness to help anyone. She was active in her prayer group. She told me one day, “God loves me. God did not make a vow to love me. I want to live my life loving God and doing good. I do not see the need for making a vow to do this.” Isn’t she talking sense?

What is the purpose and meaning of this vow? (And of the other vows as well?)

Our cover story has a quick look at this.

In it, I quote Father Henri Nouwen’s words, “a rich celibate is like a fat sprinter—a contradiction in terms.”

Do you believe this? That you cannot be a rich celibate. You can be a rich spinster or bachelor, but not a rich celibate. For celibacy means you want to live as Jesus lived and taught. He did not insist on anyone being celibate; but he did speak about the cult of money. God versus mammon. This idolatry is a constant temptation for all of us.

As for the vow, the quotes under “Inspiration” has this thought-provoking saying by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, whose TV talks used to attract huge crowds: “There are about 200 million people in the world who would gladly take the vow of poverty if they could eat, dress and have a home like I do.” True, isn’t it? We, who make the vow of poverty, are certainly much better provided than a good section of humanity. This was particularly visible during the recent pandemic.

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Not only money, but power and control can hold persons and groups in a vicious grip. See what Pol Pot and his party did in Cambodia. They murdered some two million citizens out of a population of five million! And in very cruel ways. They brain-washed young Cambodians into becoming ruthless executioners of their fellow citizens. The cruelty was diabolic. They would kill babies and children by smashing them against trees. They killed grownups with atrocious ferocity. When a heartless ideology grips a person or group, there is no limit to the evil that human beings can do. Sadly, it seems easier to motivate people to hatred than to love. This happened in Cambodia. It happened in Sri Lanka, which is now facing the consequences—drastic shortage of essentials, including food and fuel. Why don’t we, human beings, learn from history to avoid ideologies of hatred? Mutual love and respect are not just nice words; they are the only way for human beings to survive.

Since we all learn much better from people than from theories, our articles present real life heroes—in medical work, in religious life and ministry, in settings of intense suffering. Read and see.

When we, members of religious orders, look at our vows, it will be good to remember some basics: Just as we did not learn to take bath or brush our teeth after joining religious life, the basics of life are learnt elsewhere. The long and somewhat artificial setting of a celibate “vowed” same gender community is meant to help us reach what all humans are called to reach—to become good, compassionate, just, caring persons. This is what Jesus showed in his deeds; this is what he asked us to be. He did not, in this sense, teach something new or something hard to understand. His parables are real life stories which anyone can understand and respond to. If there is something new, it is the depth and intensity of love. We are asked to imitated God’s own way of loving. And to see and treat everyone as God’s precious son or daughter.

If our vows and complicated practices and our long, expensive formation help us to become good human beings, it serves a purpose. If not, what a huge, organized waste of time and money! What a counter-witness! A small reminder from the Synod papers will also help: The highest dignity is that of Baptism (not religious profession, ordination, etc.).

May this vow—and the other two—free my heart to love more deeply and more extensively. May it heal and free me of the greed for power, pleasure and possessions, which fuels hatred, leading to wars, persecution and robbing of the poor.

Fr Joe Mannath SDB

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Allow me to use two quotes from my book, A Radical Love. They are words I heard from two knowledgeable and sincere “outsiders.”

One of the senior-most doctors at CMC Hospital, Vellore: “We would like to learn from Catholic priests and religious your dedication.” This experienced medical professional had come across extremely dedicated Catholic priests and religious.

An educated and very friendly Hindu lady, talking to Catholic friends: “I have come to know a number of Catholic priests and sisters rather well. I am not impressed by most. Before being members of special groups, you are human beings, like the rest of us, with all our weaknesses. If you have found ways of overcoming the human weaknesses we all face—greed, jealousy, anger, egoism—then, you have something to teach us. Otherwise, why should anyone come to you to learn?”

Joining a special group—a religious order, or the IAS, or an elite unit in the army, or a gym—is for a simple reason: to do more competently and more professionally what everyone is called to.

Speaking as an “insider” to other insiders, we will know our strengths and weaknesses even more clearly. We will be familiar with the saints, heroes, mediocrities and unsavoury characters among us.

All professional groups have heroes, mediocrities and utterly disappointing members. All groups officially claiming higher motivation and commitment to service have done inspiring, relevant, courageous service—and also disappointed.

When we discuss urgent priorities—whether in a family or one religious house or a whole religious order—opinions differ. That is why we have house assemblies, provincial chapters, general chapters, etc.—to listen to one another and to those for whom we work, to pray and discern God’s plans, and to choose the best options, rather than go for what is merely easy or the whim of a few.

Having met many religious of all ages and positions, and after listening to a good number in the intimacy of spiritual direction (where people reveal their deepest experiences and most painful problems, which do not come out in community discussions and WhatsApp messages), I see the following as our topmost priorities. I do not claim that this is the best list possible. It is more than likely that equally well-informed and sincere religious may tick off priorities differently.

Fr Joe Mannath SDB

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Around 2003 Johnnie Walker produced a short video to promote their whisky. It showed a school of fish moving in the same direction. The fish took a human form, and while swimming close to the surface, they started jumping out of the water. It was then that one of them, coming closer to shore, put his feet on the seabed, stood erect out of the sea and started walking. The caption of the video then read, “Take the first step. Keep walking.”

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

I had just inserted the key in the office door when I heard the phone ringing. It was 8.30 am. Since Monday was my day off, on Tuesdays I am usually welcomed with a lot of small papers pushed underneath the door by the inmates. I thought it was too early for the phone; so I did not answer it. While I was collecting all these bits of papers and skimming through the various requests, the phone rang again. This time I answered.

“Carmel, you’re the one that I want.” I recognized Deputy White’s voice. “Can you come to my booth as soon as possible, please?”

I left the papers on the desk, made sure that the door was locked behind me and walked down the hallway. That morning, Deputy White was working in the school dorm called “5550.” I knocked on the door and he buzzed me in the deputies’ booth—a small dark elevated room with a panel full of buttons which controlled everything which happened in the dormitory from opening and closing doors to putting on and off the lights. The whole room was surrounded by a thick dark glass window, thus, the deputies had a 270º view ranging from the open bathroom and showers, to the sleeping bunks and the recreation area where the TV was.  The deputies always kept the lights of their booth off so that the inmates could not see through the windows.

Bro Carmel Duca MC

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It was a usual Sunday morning. As I was getting ready to leave for Baghar, a slum in Howrah, where I have been spending the Sundays for the past several years, a phone call came from the coordinator of the projects there, asking me not to come as a tragedy had struck the place during the night before. Taken aback, I asked her for details. She told me that two young boys had got drowned in the pond in the middle of the slum while the  immersion of an idol was taking  place,  and that the whole community was in mourning. I expressed my shock at this tragic news and I told her that I would be coming shortly.

Pall of Gloom

Baghar is the garbage dumping ground of the Howrah Municipal Corporation. Every day. hundreds of trucks carrying waste materials collected from the corporation area dump them here. Several mountains of garbage dot the place. Some three hundred families, mostly migrants from Bihar, live around this dumping ground, eking out an  existence by collecting recyclable materials from  the garbage and selling them. The whole place reeks with slime and dirt and unbearable stench, and smoke envelopes the region. People live in highly unhygienic conditions under plastic sheets and in dilapidated huts. Children suffer from malnutrition and from sicknesses associated with unhygienic living conditions.

Eight years ago, the Don Bosco Development Society, the social work wing of the Salesians of Don Bosco in Kolkata, launched a programme in Baghar with a view to weaning  away the children and youth from collecting waste materials and putting them on to the path of  education and skill training.  A number of projects were launched—nutrition programme for babies, health camps, medical help, educational support, computer classes, drinking water supply, making of community toilets, low cost housing and educational tours. Over a period of time, these projects began to bear fruit. They made tangible changes in the slum, especially in the increased admission in schools and decreased school dropouts.

Fr Mathew George SDB

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St Joseph Cafasso, considered a model priest, lived in the city of Turin, Italy, in the 19^th century. He was given the nickname “the Priest of the Gallows” for his pastoral care of criminals, especially those condemned to death. He stood by their side as they were lead to the execution.

After his ordination, he went to Turin to attend one of the post-graduate courses at the Convitto Ecclesiastico (a resident institute for priests). He was then asked to teach there, and proved to be a brilliant lecturer.  He aimed at making the young priests not only learned but saintly men and efficient ministers of the Gospel.

Fr Cafasso spent long hours in the confessional. His fame for learning and sanctity attracted great numbers of penitents there. Besides teaching, he found time for other forms of apostolate, the chief of which were teaching catechism to poor children, visiting the sick and the various prisons of the city.

Visiting the Prisoners

The prisons during Fr Cafasso’s time were gloomy places infested with vermin. The prisoners were free to communicate with each other and the worst of them had the greatest influence in the prison. It was among these outcasts of society that Fr Cafasso spent most of his free time. He visited each prison at least once a week, and some of them once a day. He returned home each night bringing with him the vermin of the prison, which he jokingly called “living silver and moving riches.”

Fr Leon Cruz SDB

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An extraordinary man’s remarkable life came to an end the day after Christmas last year. It generated an outpouring of sorrow and tributes from all over the world. The people of South Africa, who lovingly called him ‘the Arch,’ felt devastated.  Thanks to a rare blend of qualities and gifts—a sharp intellect, a refreshing sense of humour, an infectious laughter, a ready wit, boundless compassion and courage in the face of threats—Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a much-admired and much-loved figure for decades.

Desmond Mpilo Tutu was born in a poor Methodist family on 7 October 1931 in Transvaal, South Africa. Later they shifted to the Anglican Church. He grew up watching the horrible implications of the cruel, racist apartheid system in South Africa that gave all the political power to the minority whites and discriminated against the blacks, who were the majority. In a system that rigidly segregated the citizens on the basis of their skin colour, the blacks had no right to vote.

After his high school, Tutu dreamed of becoming a doctor and managed to get admission in a medical college, but his parents could not afford the expensive fees. He courted Nomalizo Leah, a friend of his sister. Leah happened to be a Catholic and Tutu agreed to a Catholic wedding ceremony, after having their marriage registered. They both became teachers, but when the racist government, in a blatant attempt to promote inequality, passed the Bantu Education Act, which deliberately lowered the standards of education for black South Africans, they quit teaching. Tutu took to learning theology and was ordained an Anglican priest in 1961. Next year he went to England to earn a master’s degree in theology and returned to South Africa in 1967.

Not Revenge, but Reconciliation

Tutu spent some time in East Jerusalem, learning Arabic and Greek. He taught theology in South Africa for five years and then went again to England to be the vice-director of the Theological Education Fund of the World Council of Churches. When he returned to South Africa in 1975, he was appointed the Dean of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg, then the Bishop of Lesotho in 1976 and the Bishop of Johannesburg in 1985. The very next year he became the first black person to hold the highest position in the South African Anglican Church—the Archbishop of Cape Town. He was named the president of the All Africa Conference of Churches in 1987—a position he held until 1997.

Fr M A Joe Antony SJ

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“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart; … I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” These words from the book of Jeremiah (1:5) are apt for my life and vocation.

I am the second child in the family. I have an older brother and a younger sister. Ours is a lower middleclass family in a remote village in Mangalore. Our house is surrounded by thick forest, full of greenery. Very beautiful place. We have a close-knit bond with our parish. My parents, very pious people, instilled in us love for God and our neighbours and the Kingdom values from our childhood. They provided us with an Old Testament story book and the Lives of the Saints. When we were small, mother used to read those books for us and we children and daddy sat near her and listened to her attentively. When we went to our maternal grandparents’ house, we heard moral and chivalrous stories. What joy it was to listen to them!

God called Abram when he was seventy-five year old, but He called me before I was formed in my mother’s womb. At the age of four my litany was: “I am going to become a Sister,” even though I could not even pronounce that word (sister). In any problem, big or small, mother used to ask me to pray. Believe it or not, my Beloved Jesus responded to me—most of the time immediately and sometimes a little later.

On my fourth birthday, my parents presented me with a pair of earrings. Even though in those days our financial condition was not so good, they gave me joy. I was so delighted with the new thing I ran hither and thither. In the evening my mother saw that one of my earrings was lost. She swept the whole house and even the yard. At last, my mother called out my pet name and asked me to pray. I earnestly asked Jesus to help me to find the ring.  i went out to the yard and I saw something shining near the well (which is in the yard). I called out to my mother, who came out immediately and was overjoyed to see the ring in my hand. So many people had passed that way and stamped upon it (as many of our neighbour come to fetch water from our well), but nobody had seen it or taken it. I thanked the Lord immediately.

Sr Lavina Anitha of the Holy Trinity AC

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“The one who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The one who walks alone is likely to find oneself in places no one has ever been before,” stated Albert Einstein.

Every woman who walks with God has a story to tell us: Sarah will tell us, “Nothing is too hard for God.” Hagar will tell us, “Even in the wilderness, God is there.” Rahab will tell us, “God can use anything.” Hannah will tell us, “My God answers prayers.” Ruth will tell us, “It’s not over until God says so.” Esther will tell us, “God can turn a nobody into somebody.” Elizabeth will tell you, “You will give birth to greatness.” Our Blessed Mother will tell us, “It shall be done according to God’s word.” The woman with the issue of blood will tell us, “When all fails, God never fails.” Mary and Martha will tell us, “Dead things can live again.” Yes, these are the women through whom God made history.

A Call to Action

Year after year, humble, blessed, confident, courageous, intelligent, and determined women from all over the universe make big and great ‘success’ in various fields. They make the world proud with their sterling record of achievements. Every year on the 8th of March, International Women’s Day is celebrated across the globe. It’s a day to recognize female achievement and a call to action encouraging everyone to stand up for women’s rights and gender equality. The day is also used to recognize women who made significant contributions to the advancement of their gender.

Sr Lini Sheeja MSC

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Is it possible to wholly trust God with your future when your past is marred with pain?

I was not fortunate enough to be born in a Catholic family. I come from a staunch Hindu home. All through my life I kept searching for God.

Seeking and Finding

In Jeremiah 29:13, the Lord says, “If you search for me, you will find me, if you seek me with all your heart.” It was only when I reached first year of college, I casually went to the famous St Michael’s Church in Mumbai to attend a Novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour. At the end of that Novena, I had tears streaming down my face. It was as if I had met Mother Mary in person. As the prayer goes, “Lead us to Jesus, your loving Son.” it was Mary who led me closer and closer to her Son Jesus.

I was the only child of my parents. Usually when I say, “only child,” people assume I must have been very pampered. In my case, it was just the opposite. My childhood was filled with loneliness, depression and sadness. My parents were constantly busy making ends meet. I never experienced their love. My dad was a very strict man. Just one look from him was enough to bring tears to my eyes. I was so afraid of him. So, for nine long years it remained a secret between my Jesus and me.

In the year 1998, I went for my first retreat to Divine Retreat Centre in Kerala. Though still a Hindu at this retreat, I received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. I was blessed with the gift of praying in tongues and also received the Spirit of boldness to face the world outside. I was no longer afraid of what my parents would do, but couldn’t imagine another day without Jesus.

Irma Raymond

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