Reception Meet Address

Dear friends in Christ,

 

Almighty God in His divine wisdom is pleased to appoint me through the Mar Thoma Church to serve you and the people at large as a shepherd in the Western region of India.  At this time we look up to God for guidance.  The great Good Shepherd, that is Jesus Christ, calls us by name and invites us to follow Him as His disciples.  He is the great Master and Lord and in Him we experience the great love of God.  I commit myself once again in His hands trusting in His promises and praying for His grace to strengthen me to carry out the given ministry in the Church and society.

I’m glad that all of you have come.  The presence of the bishops from the sister churches makes this meeting ecumenical.  It reminds us that we are called to work together to see the common concerns and join our hands together to serve the less privileged.  The ‘Swanthanam’ in Navi Mumbai is such an engagement.  The presence of City Mayor and Mr. Benjamin (IAS) reminds us that we are in a cosmopolitan city and we need to see our house rich with people of different culture, language, creed and sex.  We are all together under the same umbrella as one human community loving the nature and sharing the same earth.  Let us express our oneness through this meeting.

 

Thank you, all the achens and all brothers and sisters, for your presence today in this function.  You have come from near and far and you represent the various parishes and congregations in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Goa.   Your presence is an expression of your unity in Christ, loyalty to the Church and assurance of your participation in the great ministry of the Church.  You have come to welcome me to this Diocese; in turn I take this opportunity, on behalf of the Diocese, to welcome all the Clergy who joined us on May, 2016.  Let us remember that we are called to share the goodness we have received from God, from time to time, and the spiritual insights we inherited from our predecessors.

 

Thank you for the kind words that are spoken here and for welcoming me to this Diocese of Mumbai. I’m cautious of the magnitude of the challenges and responsibilities that I have to shoulder in the coming years.  God is with us and you all are with me.  Thank you for giving me an opportunity to serve you.  This gives me an opportunity to re-read the Holy Bible, the history and heritage of the Church, the liturgy that we use for worship and sacraments and re-look at the mission and ministry in which we engage in, in the context of our life and our life in the Western region of our country I’m not forgetting the foundation laid here by my predecessor Bishops, clergy, my brothers and sisters who ministered and are ministering.  I’m not alone.  We are a community- A Faith community and a Worshipping community.

 

We are a Diaspora community and at the same time a settled community.  Churching the Diaspora and disciplining the families are attempts in which Mumbai Diocese is still engaged in. We are an ancient Church tracing our history from St. Thomas in India who preached the Gospel in the first Century (52 AD) and at the same time being a Church in modern times.  Hence our struggle should be to find out how the positive aspects of our ancestral faith and religious culture can translate in order to address the challenges of modern times so that the values become intertwined with the local cultures and practices, leading to the evolution of a synthesized tradition of our times.

 

We should not be more traditionalists but ‘tradition makers’ where the clergy and the laity shall join hands to receive and reform our tradition so that our life in the Church will be relevant and meaningful. I applaud the pain and the struggles of our elderly members of the Church who took pain in organizing parishes, getting number of achens for leading and guiding the spiritual ministry and possessing ‘places of our own” for regular worship.  This process is still going on.  Let me remind everyone present here that we are not simply interested in building or owning the structures, we are also engaged in building the people and enriching the relationships.  Relationships come in many forms and are what connects us as human beings. Relationship involves learning about one-another and working together.  Relationship should grow and strengthen our fellowship in the Church. Fellowship demands mutual accountability, an attitude of recognizing the need of the other and responding to it, studying our differences and committing to stay together and witness together.

 

So the pertinent question is: what does it mean to be the Church in our world today?

 

Now, I live in a place here in Navi Mumbai where there are academic institutions on one side and religious centers on the other side.  This is quite symbolic! We have so many academic institutions in Mumbai and in the Diocesan area of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Goa.  Our religious community is rich with members of high academic excellence and our clergy/religious leaders have high academic standards and large years of experience in being at various covetous post. The Church has a rich human resource and our Diocese and parishes are engaged in running the schools at different places for the wider public. In the same way, the Diocese is rich with various religious traditions and with religious people holding high civil and religious post.  It is an irony that our modern times is in the grip of secularization that creates religious ‘none-s.’ We should have the wisdom to know the difference between the two and a foresight to know the consequential danger if we ignore this trend for some more years.  Let us be wise like a serpent and innocent like a dove (Matthew 10:16)

 

I’m glad that our younger generation is active in our Church life.  They are not only the future of the Church, but also the strength of the day.  If some are inactive in the Church, it is not because our liturgy or sacraments are not relevant, but because our Church life is not becoming relevant and meaningful to them.  “The world has changed.  It is absolutely essential to bring more young people to the Boardroom in the world they live in.” (‘The Times of India’ May 06, 2016)

 

• Church is to be a Grace-filled Church-inclusive and welcoming. What is the grace that we are speaking about?
• Can we see the ‘Grace of God’ at work in Christ blessing the Samaritan woman to proclaim the good news to the whole people of Samaria? (John 4)
• Can we see the ‘Grace of God’ in Christ transforming a demon-possessed in Gerezene to be an evangelist in the 10 cities of Decapolis? (Mark 5)
• Can we see the ‘Grace of God’ in Christ walking with a thief (criminal) to the Paradise on Good Friday?

 

In the same way, is our Church Grace filled, inclusive and welcoming?

 

I am proud that our Diocese is a Missionary Diocese with Navjeevan Village, Navodaya Movement, Marathi Congregation, Save-a-Heart program and the like.  These are all visible expressions of our mission and ministry.  But do we own them?  Do we welcome them?  Do we spend our life in and through them? Are we open and welcoming:

 

• In recognizing full-fledged parishes in Navjeevan Village where the members are not able to say who their parents are;
• In dumping yards where children are picked up from the community of Rag-Pickers;
• In places where there are concentration of transgender
• In places where we take care of the terminally ill people or people who are attending to them?

 

Church the body of Christ is to be Grace-filled, open and welcoming.  There is meaning in ‘Being the Church’ and ‘Becoming the Church.’

 

Friends, we have gathered here at a time when 29,600 villages in Maharashtra are hit by severe drought.  There are thousands of people, who are not getting adequate drinking water.  There are people who are dying.  There are families who are migrating.  There are parents who commit suicide simply because they are not able to give food and water to their own children.  These people are all our brothers and sisters.  Who are our neighbors? Rather to whom do we become good neighbors? Are the words of Jesus echoing in our ears: “I was hungry, you gave me food; I was thirsty, you gave me drink?”

 

Thanks to our Diocesan Council members who have decided to provide water to the drought hit areas.  Thanks to the generous parishes represented by the Clergy and the laity here who motivated the Diocese to be merciful in providing water.  We will be supplying water to the people in Jawahar (Junijawar,…….…), Aurangabad (…….) and Gujarat (Sherpada, …..) regions from the coming week onwards on a daily basis.  The ‘other’ out there is not ‘it’; the ‘other’ is a ‘person’ and hence is not an object, but subject of God’s mercy.  They are sons and daughters of Abraham like Zacchaeus or ‘bent woman’ who came to Jesus.  They are our brothers and sisters.

 

Let us ‘Be the Church’ or ‘Become the Church’ and reveal ourselves as ‘Ambassadors of Christ’ filling our world with the fragrance of Jesus.

 

Pope Francis said, “God’s other name is Mercy”

 

The Church cannot remain complacent of her achievements.  The Church is called to face the challenges of her life every day, giving preference to the marginalized, to do justice and bring peace in the midst of their pain and struggles.  As a faith community in Mumbai Diocese, we need decisive will and creative power to carry out the given ministry now and in the years to come, to do His will, all for His Glory.  To this end let us commit ourselves.

 

Amen