Ash Wednesday, Dustification and the End of the World
Christification of the Universe
PROFESSOR ANTON MEEMANA
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Part of Christ’s holiness was his earthiness, his down to earthness.
Christification cannot be separated from planetisation of sanctity.
When Christ will dwell, rest, relax and repose in your heart, you too will feel truly rested, relaxed and reposed. Real human rest comes from resting in Christ.
Real relaxation stems from relaxing in Christ Jesus. Christ is the masseur par excellence. His is the real massage parlour. Our authentic self is a mirror of Christ.
Ash Wednesday reminds us of the most realistic perspective on life. Ash Wednesday is the celebration of our earthiness, dustiness, soilness, clayness, fleshness, ashiness and the liberation it facilitates towards Easter. There is no resurrection without immersing ourselves in our dusty human reality.
Our True Homeland and Fatherland
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To redeem is to reveal our true identity, our true homeland. Our true homeland is to live in God at each second. Homeland is beyond one’s country of origin. The one who has found one’s homeland is well on the way to Fatherland (or Motherland). Home is God, our real home is God. All the other homes we try to dwell in are slums and shanties, tents and huts. No other home can truly satisfy our homelessness. Searching for God is longing for our real home. The deeper the search for God, the more intense the at-homeness.
We feel at home when we live and move in God. Every day we must go in search of this home. The real shelter is divine shelter. The real shade is divine shade and the divine shade will never shake. So we can have a true foretaste of heavenly joy here and now. That is the true spirit and joy of Christmas. The birth of Christ is the beginning of our heavenward journey. Right now, let us take the first step towards it.
Christmas as a Decision to Love
Christmas day is a decisive day, a day to make some tough decisions. Every decision we make is either for God or against God. There is no neutral ground. Life is never neutral. There is no third possibility. Either we live in and with God or we do not. And if we sincerely feel that we do not, then we can always go back to the divine path. Every decisive day is a joyful day if we know how to discern in God. Decision-making is not a reason for fear and trembling.
Every crisis is a spiritual opportunity for us to deepen our character and broaden our horizon; the deeper the crisis, the greater the opportunity. Every day we need to make a decision to follow Jesus Christ and each subsequent day we need to renew, reinstate and reiterate that decision for to follow Christ is an ongoing decision.
If humanity is to progress, Christ is inevitable. No one can kick him out of history. Jesus restores in us our capacity to love for he is the true lover par excellence. Jesus is the sinless one (Sebastian Moore) for he gives us back our capacity to love. Sin blocks our true nature which is to grow in love.
Jesus has called us out of bondage, out of captivity, out of idolatry. The one who loves mostly is the freest innermostly. The one who loves freely lives joyfully. Christ is closer to us than we are to ourselves. In Christ, there is true freedom and there is no any other source of freedom except in Christ. Military victories cannot restore real freedom. Christ is our true freedom. To restore and to maintain freedom, people need to live like Christ.
Love indwells amongst us, takes flesh in the midst of us. Love makes its tent amongst us. Love makes a permanent abode in our slums, shanties, and shabby shelters in order never to leave us. One does not need to be a holy person to recognize it. A sinner’s recognition of this truth is the beginning of a new prospect of a new life.
It is true that people seldom change or some will never change significantly. We need to look at such people very sympathetically and not judgementally. Even if they do not want to change, they deserve our love, patience and sympathy. It is true that people are lazy, selfish, complacent, greedy, evil, cruel, vengeful, hateful, arrogant, stupid, silly, idiotic, loathsome, banal, ruthless, lustful and weak. But still we have to love them precisely because people are such.
The divinity of Jesus is not a separate reality but hidden, contained deep within his humanity. Humility is another name for humanity. Humility is not timidity or backwardness or feebleness. It is born of innermost freedom, strength and magnanimity of one’s character. Humility is the virtue of the brave, the strongest and the courageous. A weakling can never radiate it or practise it. Pride is the existential condition of the weakling. That is precisely why humility is such a rare virtue amongst us humans.
This is the conclusion of Professor Anton Meemana’s article on Christmas. It is an honor for me to have known such a remarkable and wonderful human being. Like Christ from birth up to His final years on earth the persecutions He encountered did not deter him to find the value of His birth, life and death.
Professor Meemana is very much alive after having his name constantly in the roster of established critics of the Sri Lankan government. His flight to the Philippines during the height of the methodical arrest and execution (that includes lynching) of any oppositionist was unmistakably miraculous and providential. This was despite his being an atheist, a staunch believer of the Marxist ideals and Darwin.
For more than twenty years he lived alone without any relatives in the Philippines. He found a home in many people’s heart all over the Philippine archipelago.
This final piece of his essay talks about our belongingness to something more profound than any place we can imagine.
Divine Nativity and Human Captivity
The divine nativity is the death of human captivity. The moment of his birth is the moment of a new birth for humanity and the memory of it is the memory of joy and peace, light and love. We have no future without keeping that memory alive. The glory of human existence is in its best memories. Nativity liberates us from captivity in all its myriad manifestations. Christ is the true light which yearns and burns in our hearts. Without his nativity, there is no real freedom in our lives.
The only ultimate meaning in life is to love God. The failure to do so is the origin and summit of all our misery, emptiness, and suffering. Emptiness is the absence of love in our hearts, it is the absence of fire, the lack of embers in our innermost chambers. The divine fire propels us to serve and love, to break and die, to bless and pray. Without a burning and a bleeding heart, one cannot contain the divine spark in one’s heart. All finite human love points to an infinite divine love. All our conditional love yearns and longs desperately for unconditional love and real frustration in life is not to glimpse it.
One’s interior darkness, gloominess can darken, further and add to the already existing exterior darkness. By the same token, one’s interior light can also lighten the exterior light further; more light is added to already existing light.
Jesus is the true torch bearer; that is , Jesus is the torch as well as the bearer. He is the true light and the carrier of it as well. Without divine light, love is not possible. One cannot love heart-bleedingly if one lives in darkness. The quality is love is in proportion to the light we bear and breed. He it is that loves us saves us. He saves us so that we can continue to love Him.
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