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I have been living in St. Charles Home for Senior Citizens, Kamba Village, Kalyan, Maharashtra, for five years now. Not only have I aged since then, but I have had a ringside view of the ageing process in the inmates here. Eleven of them have passed away during this period, most of them going gently into the night. Death, as a result, has become less frightening for us all. We have shared the tears and the grief of those left behind, when their spouses passed away. We have also through sheer closeness and proximity been an emotional support to those who were faced with the death of their near and dear ones. We live like a family here, supporting and caring for each other.

Some of those who came walking upright, laughing and talking have slowly walked into a twilight existence of non-recognition, disability and loss of memory. Others keep their minds active by following cricket, the daily news and even venture political opinions.

Janina Gomes

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I faced death recently. I gave away all my possessions. Corona hit me hard, and seemed to win. Today, I am so grateful to be alive. I had never appreciated the preciousness of life as I do today.

I am thirty-three years old. I am a tribal young man from Odisha. Today, I am a social worker living in Delhi. I live alone in an apartment. As the second wave of the pandemic hit the nation, I was also one among the thousands who were affected by the Corona virus. Today, as I speak about my experience, I feel so grateful to be alive.

I started developing symptoms in the first week of April 2021. I went to a government dispensary near my office.  They did an RTPCR. The results were getting  delayed so much that I decided to get a Rapid Antigen Test. I tested positive. The people at the dispensary asked me and some other patients to wait in a corner. There were no chairs and I was tired of standing, so I just sat on the floor. As time passed, I started feeling weak but there was no response from the authorities

Staying at a rented place, I did not tell anyone about my condition. I was afraid I would be asked to vacate the room. Managing alone was really tough. I was dead tired, with a fever of 102 to 103 degrees. In this condition I could not ask anyone to come over.

Bijay Kumar Hembram

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MESSAGE OF POPE FRANCIS FOR THE 2021 WORLD DAY OF VOCATIONS (25 April 2021)

[The following text is taken verbatim from the Pope’s message. The complete document is found on the Net.]

Through his ordinary life, he [St Joseph] accomplished something extraordinary in the eyes of God.

God looks at the heart (cf.1 Samuel 16:7), and in Saint Joseph he recognized the heart of a father, able to give and generate life in the midst of daily routines. Vocations have this same goal: to beget and renew lives every day. The Lord desires to shape the hearts of fathers and mothers: hearts that are open, capable of great initiatives, generous in self-giving, compassionate in comforting anxieties and steadfast in strengthening hopes. The priesthood and the consecrated life greatly need these qualities nowadays, in times marked by fragility but also by the sufferings due to the pandemic…

Saint Joseph suggests to us three key words for each individual’s vocation. The first is dream. Everyone dreams of finding fulfilment in life. We rightly nurture great hopes, lofty aspirations that ephemeral goals – like success, money and entertainment – cannot satisfy. If we were to ask people to express in one word their life’s dream, … the answer [would be]: “to be loved.” It is love that gives meaning to life… Indeed, we only have life if we give it; we truly possess it only if we generously give it away. Saint Joseph has much to tell us in this regard, because, through the dreams that God inspired in him, he made of his life a gift.

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Here are inspiring human beings of today from different backgrounds who truly see and treat everyone as their own. Their lives show us that the ideals presented in FRATELLI TUTTI can really be lived out in practice.

 Everybody is Mine!

I met Balwant Singh Dalwani years ago in Kochi, at the World Conference on Religion. The conference had participants from various religions. I have forgotten most of the learned papers presented there, but not a simple prayer uttered by this good man.

Every morning, people were to free to pray in their own way—which meant that each religious group met separately for their prayers. Thus, for instance, the Catholics had Holy Mass in a room, the Buddhists met to have their prayers, etc. Dalwani, instead, liked to pray with a different group every morning. And he took part respectfully.

One day, the organizer invited Dalwani to come to the stage and say a prayer. We did not understand what he said; I suppose it must have been in Punjabi. When it was translated, I found it one of the most touching prayers I had ever heard. That prayer—and the man saying it—taught me much.

What he said was this:

“When I have found Thee,

There is no ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’;

Everybody is mine.”

A few Sisters from Maharashtra who knew Mr Dalwani told us, “He not only says this in prayer. That is how he lives.”

Mr Dalwani belonged to the prestigious Indian Foreign Service (IFS). He retired early and came back to India—not to join politics or seek government posts, but to serve the needy. He dedicated himself to looking after leprosy patients in rural Maharashtra. He did not see those patients, who belonged to a different state, and whose condition made them ‘untouchable’ for most people, as ‘not his.’ No, “everybody is mine.”

………

FR JOE MANNATH SDB

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A famous statesman recently spoke of the human beings he admires most. He mentioned Pope Francis as “a genuinely good man.”

Pope Francis is not only the head of the Catholic Church. Why is he one of the most admired and influential world leaders?

The reason is simple. “We like to listen to this Pope,” said The Washington Post (by no means a Catholic newspaper) “because he talks like Jesus, acts like Jesus, and is like Jesus.”

As a bishop and cardinal, he lived in a slum among the poor, cooking for himself and another prelate. He used public transport for travel. When, at his election as Pope, journalists went to that slum in Argentina, they asked the local people, “Do you have a photo of the bishop?” “Yes,” most of them replied in delight. They would go into their poor house, and come out with a photo—not OF the bishop, but WITH the bishop. He was one of them, not someone who lived in a palace, with his office distributing framed photos to be kept in convent parlours.

One of his first trips as Pope was to the island of Lampedusa, the spot where African refugees, fleeing poverty and violence, tried to enter Europe. Many had perished in the Mediterranean Sea.

He lives in a simple room in the Vatican Guest House, not in the Apostolic Palace, where his predecessors had their quarters.

On Maundy Thursday, years ago, he shocked and inspired the world by washing the feet of refugees of different races, including some who were not Catholics.

Five years ago, he wrote Laudato Si, calling on all people of good will to care for the earth, our common home.

He also insists on certain priorities which make him the hated target of a several super-rich people and some church leaders who do not like his insistence on the church being poor and of the poor. His life and words challenge their comfortable life-style. He says what the world needs: “An economy centred around human beings, and not around profit.” Which profit-worshipping magnate would like to hear that?

…….

Fr Joe Mannath SDB

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We can all learn from—and be challenged by—by the vision and loving commitment of a highly qualified priest-professor who heart reaches out to the poorest. I have seen how the eyes of the poor, especially of children, light up when they see Fr Mathew. A model and a challenge.—Editor

What we see depends on where we stand. This a truism coming from our everyday experience. It can be understood both literally and figuratively. Literally, our physical sight is limited by the space that we occupy. We can see only what is around us. We cannot see, for example, what lies beyond the horizon. Figuratively, where we stand refers to what we stand for, ahat defines our personality and gives meaning to our existence. It is about our priorities, our value systems and our principles. So, our lives will be shaped definitely for the better or for the worse by where we stand and what we stand for.
If we stand in an airport terminal or a luxury shopping mall, then we will see the glittering side of the advancement brought about by science and technology – everything about it is so flashy and spectacular. There is a touch of class in the building, the furniture and the lay out. The rich top layer of humanity can be found there, as they go in and out of such places. If we stand in a slum surrounded by shanties infested with rats and dirt and slime, and with human beings swarming the area like maggots, we see another aspect of humanity and existence. Both these types of places that I have mentioned can influence our perspective and impact our ministry.
During the past decade—by a quirk of circumstances or Divine Providence, depending on one’s point of view—I have been doing ministry in places where I was able to encounter human misery in all its inhuman dimensions. Though it liked a quirk of circumstances, I believe it was the definitive plan of God that took me to such places and people. If we live for the Lord, we will find ourselves in the right at the right time. I am sure this is something that many people can vouch for from their experience. Besides my assigned responsibilities in the community, I was able to find time to reach out to the neighbourhood. I would like to share with you some of my profoundly heart-wrenching experiences in working with people in a garbage dump land-fill and a slum along a drainage canal.

………

Fr Mathew George SDB

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The one whom I’d like to hold up this month as a shining candle is a person who seems to be an extraordinary combination of intellectual prowess and spiritual depth, somebody whom we would always admire, applaud and praise God for.

But you may not have heard of Dr Francis Collins, the Director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). He is not as widely known as Dr Anthony Fauci, who has been interviewed dozens of times by the American TV channels, on the country’s fight against COVID 19 that has killed more than 500,000 Americans in less than a year. But, in fact, it is Dr Francis Collins, who, as the boss of Fauci, oversees his contribution and that of so many others to the fight against the killer pandemic. The media have highlighted the fact that the way Collins has handled his job as the Director of NIH will help his country not merely contain this virus soon but also be prepared for the next pandemic.

Francis Sellers Collins, 70, is a physician-geneticist who discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and led the Human Genome Project. Homeschooled by his mother during his childhood, Collins was interested in science from the beginning. In 1970 he received a B.S. from the University of Virginia, and went on to Yale University to earn an M.S. and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry. But he realized he wanted to be a doctor – not just a scientist. “I’m a physician scientist,” he says.  “It’s interesting when you read the life of Christ how much of his time he spent healing the sick. There must have been a reason for that—he was modelling for us what it is we are intended to do by following his path.”

After earning an M.D. at the University of North Carolina, Collins joined the University of Michigan as an assistant professor. His work there earned him a reputation as one of the world’s foremost genetics researchers. While leading the National Human Genome Research Institute, Collins was elected to the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences. In 2005, Collins and his colleague, Craig Venter, were honored as two of “America’s Best Leaders” by U.S. News & World Report and the Harvard University Center for Public Leadership.

……..

Fr M A Joe Antony SJ

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KEVIN

Greetings beloved Magnet family, or perhaps more appropriately, “Grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor 1:3)  As I write to you this month, I am filled with a great appreciation for who we are as children of God, members of the same family, the Body of Christ.

Memories at Mother’s Funeral

We are just back from my beloved mother’s funeral.  My mom, Marie Louise, was a wonderful, faith-filled mother of nine children. While partings are always somewhat sorrowful, I find myself full of joy and hope. Marie was 89 years old and suffering with dementia over the last six years. She remained a faithful woman who regularly shared with the Lord her readiness to be called home. God blessed her with a peaceful death and I am sure a rousing welcome into eternal life.

While the sadness comes naturally as a result of the death of a loved one, joy returns quickly when I reflect on what is lost.  As the song writer Joni Mitchell once sang, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.” The days leading up to the funeral Mass were filled with family members sharing vivid memories of a woman of great faith and service. We all remembered our mother gathering her rambunctious brood around the radio to pray the family rosary on a Saturday night or standing over a hot stove preparing another freshly cooked meal for that same crowd every night of the week. In retrospect, it appeared as a gift of true grace, Christ Himself loving and serving our family.  I felt so blessed by God to have only positive memories, especially since I know that isn’t always the case for others.  Nine Kids and seventy years of loving and giving… wow!

Dad: Not Perfect, but a Blessing

It was so easy to be flooded with grateful memories of my mother, but one of the surprise blessings of the past week was the call of the Holy Spirit to reflect on the blessing that my father Thomas was in my life and the life of the family.  …….

Crystal and Kevin Sullivan

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Introduction

The scope of this article is limited to the understanding of “member” and “membership” in a Society (registered under the Societies Act/s) and not with other forms of organization, such as Trust or Company or Corporation, etc.  References will be made to the Society Registration Act 1860 (SRA-1860) legislated by the Central Government.

1.     Who is a member?

According to the SRA-1860, an individual human person will be considered a “member” of the Society when: (a) the person has been admitted according to its Rules and Regulations (R&R), (b) has paid the subscription fees, (c) has signed the roll or list of members, and (d) has not resigned according to its R&R.

Membership in a Society is a free act. A person cannot be forced to become a member of a Society, nor is it a matter of the religious vow of obedience. A Society too cannot be forced to admit a person to its membership against its R&R. The provisions of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 (such as, minimum age limit, sound mind, no moral culpability, communication to be done in writing, exercising free will, etc.), will apply when admitting/rejecting a person to membership. In a Society governed by Religious Congregations, admission to membership can be limited to the permanent members of the Congregation, and such a clause can be inserted into its R&R.

Granting of membership to a person is the prerogative of the Society and not an inherent right of any individual. A person cannot demand that he/she should be given membership. The key word in understanding membership is “admitted,” which supposes that there should be defined rules and procedures to be followed while accepting a person as a member.

2.     Procedure for admission

The rules for admission to membership should be clearly mentioned in the R&R of the Society, and these should be strictly adhered to. The procedure about application form, time-frame, etc., can be mentioned in the accompanying manual of administration of the Society. The procedure for admission may be along the following lines:

…..

Fr Trevor D’Souza OFM

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Christianity is said to have been introduced in India in the first century by St Thomas, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ, who might have landed on the Malabar Coast in AD 52. Christianity is the first foreign religion to be introduced to the natives of this country. It is today the third largest religion in India, making up 2.35% of the total population.

The Catholic faith is today practised by over 19.91 million people in India, which represents just 1.55% of the total Indian population, and 65% of the total Christian population. Most Catholics reside in South India, with significant numbers in North East India. Though Catholics are a small minority community in India, their contributions in the fields of education, culture and languages, health care, social services, administration, defence, and tribal welfare and development are significant and well known.

Catholic Education: Numbers and Quality
Education is central to sustainable and overall development. It empowers people and builds a nation. Investment in education benefits the individual, society and the world as a whole. Education is the answer to many socio-economic and political problems.
Catholic involvement in educational work in India has a long history. It is part of the larger educational system in the country. The original purpose of Catholic institutions was to impart education to Catholic children, but, in due course of time, it was extended to children of other faiths as well.

Fr J Felix Raj SJ

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