‘Faith is a conviction… theoretical knowledge is not enough’

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INTERVIEW WITH BISHOP MAR THOMAS ELAVANAL By Sheena George & Nelson C. J.  Soft-spoken and affable Mar Thomas Elavanal, Bishop of Kalyan Diocese, never minces words while talking about various issues related to the faithful and the diocese. In an interview, Mar Elavanal spoke about vocation, maintaining a personal relationship with God, Catholic teachings and ways to tackle inroads by Protestants, sustaining faith and the need to maintain a watch over children while using new technologies like internet and smart phone. Excerpts:  As we celebrate the year of consecrated life, how can we, as parents, encourage our children to take up this as their vocation? Vocation is a call from God. First of all what we need is prayer from the part of parents. Second, set a good example to the children. Everyday my parents used to go to church and in the morning they used to pray Rosary for us. So I was always attached to the church… and as an altar boy I used to recite the prayers in Syriac language. I still remember how my parents used to talk about priests. With at most respect they used to talk about them, like they are men of God. If a priest visited our home, my mother would go and kneel before him and kiss his hands. If she cooked something special at home, we children were entrusted to take a share of it  to the parish priests. Actually my parents never asked me whether I wanted to become a priest. My two sisters are nuns and my brother is a priest. Some of the examples of priests also motivated me to become a priest.  At home, if the parents talk negatively about priests, children will never get an idea to become a priest or nun. To conclude, I would say that the vocation to priesthood is a gift of God and I got this gift of God, the vocation, through my parents. So the parents should take up the responsibility to make the children understand that it’s a sublime vocation. Your Excellency, do you think Sunday catechism and family unit meetings are enough for children, or even adults, to get into a personal relationship with Jesus? If not, what else is necessary?   Sunday school is helping the children and youth to grow in faith. Theoretical knowledge about faith can be given through Sunday school. There also, children need good examples to get a conviction about what they learn in Sunday school. In school or college, or to become a good engineer, theoretical knowledge is sufficient. But faith is a conviction. That’s why after teaching the disciples for 3 years Jesus asked them: "who do you say I am?" This He asked to know whether they got the conviction "who He is". So whenever I talk to Catechism teachers I tell them to give the children living examples and conviction about what they learn.   Last week, when we priests were attending a retreat conducted by Fr Dominic Valanmanal, he spoke about his life experience of living in faith. That motivated me very much. Maybe I have learned the same or even more about faith theoretically but his life example inspired me. Good relationship with Jesus will give a good relationship with the church also. A good relationship with Jesus will always reflect in the relationship with our brethren and with the church. So children will never go away from the church when they become youth if they have good relationship with Jesus. How can we prevent ourselves from getting into the trap of protestant teachings?  First of all, this happens because of our lack of knowledge about our faith. We don’t know how to answer their questions or express the correct knowledge about our faith... hence we can get easily influenced by them. That’s why faith formation must be a continued process. So we must have a platform to discuss our doubts. In Catholic Church, we have three fortresses to protect our faith: 1. Word of God; 2. The Magisterium or the official teaching of the church and 3. The Sacred tradition or the teachings of the Fathers of the church. In Catholic Church, the deposit of faith is never the teaching or interpretation of one person, it’s the collective teaching. Unlike protestant teachings, Catholic Church gives importance to the Sacred traditions as a source of faith. it's never a thought or interpretation of one person. It must always fall in line with or in the light of the tradition of the church. It’s a teaching of 2,000 years. So in order not to get influenced by wrong teachings, we must have platforms to discuss and clear our doubts. Hence an ongoing adult faith formation is a must. I know about one such platform. Parents’ (who are waiting in the church to take their children back home from Catechism classes) get together on Sundays and a resource person to guide them. Whenever we get doubts about venerating Mother Mary or about matters of faith like purgatory etc., we must have such platforms for discussion to clarify our doubts. But somebody must be guiding the discussion. As inter-caste marriages are on the rise in the diocese, what can be done about the situation? What's your assessment?  Why do we discourage inter-caste marriages? In marriage, God is bringing together two persons, making them one in body, mind and spirit. They have to be one in faith to be one in spirit. If faith is not one, they can never become one in spirit. Actually speaking, they cannot pray together. Even ideologically, they can be one. But the foundation is not stable. If the one partner, who is not in Christian faith, is willing to change his/ her faith then you can say it’s a little better than keeping their different faith and getting married. In that case, you can say it's 75 per cent solved. Because there are cases of conversion and there are people who faithfully keep it.  So if somebody does that (conversion), it should not be as a mask just to enter into marriage. When the partners keep their different faith and get married, what about their children? I say this inter-caste marriage is a crime against their children. Which faith should they follow? Who will teach them? They are confusing their children. The Bible teaches no marriage is allowed with non-believers because you will lose your faith. But unfortunately many a time we have to give the consent letter. You know why? Some parents who are living in good faith find their children adamant in marrying someone from different faith.  Seeing these parents' tears and fearing that if they're not allowed to marry in the church we may lose both, we give the consent. So to keep at least one in the Church we give dispensation. But that (inter-caste marriage) is not considered as a sacrament. To receive the sacrament of matrimony, both the partners must be Catholics. I take classes for the youth and when they understand the teaching even they say this kind of marriage must not be allowed in the Church.  What are the challenges before the diocese at present and in the coming years? Has the diocese been able to take the message of Jesus to interior regions of Maharashtra?  We have four missions. I can say, to a great extend, we are able to take the message of Christ. Sangli mission is the topmost. There we have social and charitable activities -- Christ witnessing events. There was one priest in one of the villages. Every morning he used to pray before the Holy Eucharist in the church. He told the villagers if they have any prayer intentions they can give it to him so that he can pray to God about it. One day, villagers asked whether they can join the prayers. The priest agreed and together they started praying. It so happened that the villagers found their intentions answered and the number of people increased like 25-30.  One day, when I visited this place they were praying. All of them were Hindus but they were praying around the Holy Eucharist. All came to greet me touching my feet. The end result was that a whole village received our faith and we have a parish there just for Marathi people. There was nobody to oppose as the whole villagers took  the decision together and not one person. It’s a small village comprising only 35 people.  We don’t have any challenges at present or even recent times for our diocese. In most of the places, there is an understanding between us and other communities. The advantage they see is that we work for the poor out of love for our Lord and as per His commandment. We had crisis situation before but not at present. We have 185 priests in the diocese including the mission areas.  How can we prevent the young generation from endangering themselves by modern technology? For example, smart phones and internet etc...   A conscientisation must be given to the youth about this through classes. We must keep a watchful eye on them. Only parents can give that. Even in seminaries, our brothers are not allowed to use personal cell phones. The use of computer by our children must be given even more vigilant attention. Even though modern technologies have made our life easier, it has many adverse effects as well. Distraction from their studies is one of them. An enticing or tempting world has been created by the digital world. So we have to be all the more watchful or else there is every chance that our children will go wayward.  How can we encourage our youth to get involved in religious work?  What I suggest is give them various responsibilities, guiding them from behind and correcting them whenever necessary. That will make them more responsible and confident. When I visited Kalewadi parish, Pune, I saw the second trustee was a young person -- from the youth section. I was surprised. Children born and brought up in Kerala are prompted to do things more responsibly than their counterparts in Mumbai. Here in Mumbai, they are provided with whatever they need. So they are not that self responsible. So it is better to train them, giving responsibilities at a young age itself. Then they will do church work without any reluctance. Entrusting them with responsibilities, having confidence in them and giving proper guidance and correction are necessary to make them responsible. How can we the parishioners help you in your ministry?  What I feel is that members of Kalyan Diocese are a group of people who love the church and the diocese. It's not me alone... but also the priests who have visited here feel the same. People are more co-operative here than in Kerala. It's not because here it is a small number, but here we are responsible to build everything for us. In Kerala, everything is provided. Here we can have a church only if we personally contribute.    Each person plays an important role. Major Archbishop visited various churches in our diocese. After visiting these churches, the Major Archbishop asked me, how were you able to build these beautiful churches? I had to tell him, here in our diocese, we have people who are generously supportive and who collaborate with the church. It's because of the people of God we are able to build. Here we feel a sense of belongingness.  Your Excellency has turned 67 years, the diocese is 27 years old and this is your 18th year as Bishop. What do you feel when you look back all these years?  I have satisfaction and joy. When I say joy, I didn’t have any crisis situation at all. Satisfaction because Lord has done many things for our diocese like helping us build churches, buying places etc. We needed a minor seminary and a pastoral centre. All these we got by His grace. That’s why this satisfaction. Another thing is we don’t have any tension like big financial crisis or problems in relationship between priests and the bishop or with the people.

Many of us Christians behave like mummies in a museum

 How serious are Christians in their faith? Many of the Christians -- Catholics included -- are not taking their faith seriously. I would rather say many of us are also-ran and behave like mummies in a museum. We are not seeking Jesus Our Lord; He is not considered as our Saviour and Redeemer.

  For many of us Christians, Church is some kind of a club to climb the social ladder or get business deals. Many of us treat Church as a place to be seen and manage things. And so the biggest threat of all gradually takes shape: “the gray pragmatism of the daily life of the Church, in which all appears to proceed normally, while in reality faith is wearing down and degenerating into small-mindedness”.

 As Evangelii Gaudium says, a “tomb psychology” thus develops and slowly transforms Christians into mummies in a museum. Disillusioned with reality, with the Church and with themselves, they experience a constant temptation to cling to a faint melancholy, lacking in hope, which seizes the heart like “the most precious of the devil’s potions”.

  Called to radiate light and communicate life, in the end they are caught up in things that generate only darkness and inner weariness, and slowly consume all zeal for the apostolate.

  Most of us are like the crowd that followed Jesus when he went to the house of Jairus to see his sick daughter. (Please read Mark 5:21-43). A big crowd was milling around Jesus. They didn’t know know who Jesus really is. They just followed him and saw His miracles. “Many of us are like the crowd that followed Jesus. We don’t know him. We go for Holy Mass and sit in the church as if some drama or cinema is going on there,” says Rev Fr Biju Kollamkunnel.


 This mentality was displayed by the crowd  around Jesus who was on the way to Jairus’ house.
  That said, there are some people who have deep faith and belief in Jesus like that woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. ^“When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.”  Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering,” Bible says.
 The small group of people like the sick woman seeks Jesus and trust in Him. And miracles happen in their life. This small group gets healed.

 Mark 5:35 says, “while Jesus was still speaking, some people came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher anymore?” The people who said this don’t know Jesus. They didn’t know He was the son of God. If they had known that they wouldn’t have said this.  
 The Bible continues, “He went in and said to them, ’Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.’ But they laughed at him.” The Bible says “they laughed at him”. They thought Jesus arrived late and the daughter of Jairus has already died. So what can Jesus do now? The crowd underestimated Jesus. Later we read that Jesus brought her back to life.

 Yes, we are also part of this crowd. We don’t know Jesus. We also behave like the way this crowd behaved. We attend the Holy Mass or praise and worship without knowing Him. We sit in the Church or prayer hall as if we are in a cinema hall or a theatre. And then, we call ourselves Christians.  

 Pope Francis uses harsh words to lambast such people. He says spiritual worldliness lurks behind a fascination with social and political gain, or pride in their ability to manage practical affairs, or an obsession with programmes of self-help and self-realization. It can also translate into a concern to be seen, into a social life full of appearances, meetings, dinners and receptions. It can also lead to a business mentality, caught up with management, statistics, plans and evaluations whose principal beneficiary is not God’s people but the Church as an institution.

 This leads us to display a “tomb psychology” and slowly transforms Christians into mummies in a museum. Jesus doesn’t want us to be mummies.

  

  

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Sanctify your secret life… Mene, mene, tekel, parsin, God warns

‘Do we have a secret life? Yes, most of us have a bad and evil secret side. We don’t disclose this evil life to anyone. Not even to priests or pastors. But Bible says very clearly that we need to sanctify our secret life. We need to confess our sins, repent our sins and reconcile with God.      

 Mene, mene, tekel, parsin’: This is God’s warning to everyone, not to King Belshazzar alone.

 We indulge in lot of things that God doesn’t want us to do. This can be an adulterous life, addiction to porn, living a sinful life without a sense of sin, violation of God’s commandments and refusal to repent the sins, murder, character assassination etc. etc. Then we keep away from people and society. We hide somewhere. We remain lonely, like Elijah in a cave. 

  We must come out of that dark cave to the sunlight. We must sanctify our secret life. Yes, sanctification through confession, repentance and reconciliation. Sadly, we live like modern-day Cains.

  God asked Cain: “where’s your brother Abel?” God is not questioning Cain alone – He’s asking us also. Where’s the baby that I had given life in your wife’s womb? You must ask yourself about the aborted child. It can be your aborted child or your own father whom you despise or your neighbour with whom you have an enmity. Your Abel may be your father, neighbour, brother or your own kids.

 Rev Fr Nelson Job OCD, one of my favourite charismatic preachers, vividly explained this recently on a television programme. Fr Nelson quoted some good examples from Bible to drive home the importance and necessity for sanctification of our secret life.

1.  When you read King David’s story, you come across an incident. When David was ruling as a “Mr Clean”, Prophet Nathan came to his palace and told him a story. “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

 “Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.” David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! ⁶ He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.” Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man.” Then King David repented. He had earlier despised the word of the Lord by doing what was evil in his eyes. David struck down Uriah, his army chief, with the sword and took his wife to be his own. David had violated commandments 9, 6 and 5 and ruled as a “Mr Clean”. King David had a secret life which Nathan pointed out to him and he repented.  

2. Let’s move to Daniel 5:25: "This is the inscription that was written: mene, mene, tekel, parsin.”  

 These words were written by a mysterious hand on the wall of Belshazzar's palace, and interpreted by Daniel as predicting the doom of the king and his dynasty. 

  Holy Bible says: Once when King Belshazzar was giving a banquet to his lords and drinking wine from the golden vessels of the Temple of Yhwh, a man's hand was seen writing on the wall certain mysterious words. The king got frightened by the apparition and ordered his astrologers to explain the inscription; but they were unable to read it. Daniel was then summoned to the royal palace; and the king promised him costly presents if he would decipher the inscription. 

 Daniel read it "Mene, mene, tekel, parsin" and explained it to mean that God had "numbered" the kingdom of Belshazzar and brought it to an end; that the king had been weighed and found wanting; and that his kingdom was divided and given to the Medes and Persians.

 Yes, these words -- Mene, mene, tekel, parsin – are supposed to sanctify our secret life. These are warning words against your evil secret life. 

3.  Come to 2 Kings 20:1: Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, "This is what the Lord says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover." Hezekiah then knew that God had come to know about his secret life. He repented and prayed. Amoz then came back and said God had extended his life by another 15 years.

 When he was able to sanctify his life, God extended his life span.  

4.    Fr Nelson narrated an incident. Once a lady, with foul-smelling wounds came for a charismatic prayer retreat. After the retreat, she was admitted to the hospital from where she requested him to come and pray for her. When he went there, he understood her physical condition was very weak and struggled to sit in the room because of the intense bad odour from her festering wounds. She gave a long confession that lasted for 20 minutes. She told the priest about many secret deeds that she committed over several years --- things she had never disclosed so far. She repented. The he got a message from Jesus that she is being healed. After around 20 days, all her wounds were healed and she regained normal health.

  The message is simple: sanctify your secret life and God will shower His blessings. But you have committed several sins and still living with these sins. 

5. Lets turn to John 4:16: “Jesus told her (Samaritan woman), “Go, call your husband and come back.”  “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

 When Jesus revealed her secret life, she confessed. Jesus gave her a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

 Jesus makes it clear: Sanctify your secret life.

6. John 8:7 says: “When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” People who were about to throw stones at a prostitute were taken aback. Their hands went down, stones fell.

 Jesus revealed their secret life. They were all big-time sinners. The woman – Mary Magdalene – repented and turned to God. She became a new creation after the sanctification of her secret life.  

 In short, sanctification is a key process to achieve eternal life. We need to realize it before it’s too late.