Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today's Scripture

I have been waiting for the right opportunity to share this story. In the collection basket we received a rather small but heavy envelop. Cindy, our parish secretary, gave this to me later and said that I must see it. So here it is – an envelop with 13 cents stuck inside with a tape. The note reads, “Won $1.27 playing cards 1st time for a long time.”  This card was sent in jest because I am so associated with the Blessing of Ten program. But it is the attitude of this lovely lady that I am most touched by. What if she made only a dollar and fourty cents! She finds a reason to express her gratitude... and humor.  As they say, “Small is beautiful.”

Solemnity of All Saints

Today's Scripture

I am going to begin this homily by sharing my grandma, Sarah Antony’s story. She died recently at the age of 93. Grand ma had a hard life. She was a widow for 63 years. Grand pa died when she still had a suckling baby in her arms. She worked hard at the farm to provide for the needs of her children. When her oldest son was getting to the age where he could support the family, she lost him. He died from a reaction to a flu shot. She never really got over that. About five years before she died she buried her youngest daughter who died from cancer at the age of 59. For the last two years she had gotten extremely weak. The last two months were perhaps the hardest. She spent these two months in the hospital and gradually faded away. However, it was her and death and the events that followed that are incredible. Because she was in a Catholic hospital, my mother who stayed with her was able to attend mass each day at the hospital. Mom prayed hard that her death may be peaceful. One such morning, mom had just come back from mass and within moments, drawing three small breaths, grandma passed away ever so peacefully. My uncles were all present as well. For them, those few moments of peaceful death, as it were, made up for sixty-three years of pain. But it got even better. When I reached India for the funeral, it had been raining for days because of the monsoon except of course, from ten in the morning to about five in the afternoon the Wednesday of the funeral. Because there are no funeral homes in India, the family takes the body to the church in a coffin. Any rain would have made this impossible. But on that day, just for those hours we had clear blue skies with the sun shining brightly over us. It started raining again that evening and it hadn’t stopped till I left on Friday morning. The peaceful death and the clear skies communicated to us the presence of God. God’s presence at the moment of her death and her funeral made up for sixty three years of hardship and challenges.