|
| | | | | Comments On News Reports | | | Re: [Gulf Goans] Blessing & Inauguration of New Prayer Room, Sacristy & Community Hall in Utorda
----- Original Message -----
From: floriano
To: gulf-goans-owner@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2010 9:23 PM
Subject: Re: [Gulf Goans] Blessing & Inauguration of New Prayer Room, Sacristy & Community Hall in Utorda
Dears,
This piece is triggered by Lino's post below.
I have no grudge what so ever against religiosity, prayers and persons trying to attain the aura of being 'holy' or against persons having roots grown on their knees doing prayers. I am only expressing my thoughts connected to religiosity and prayer, being a person who relates to both, but most privately.
Being Christian and looking back at the public life of Jesus Christ, we see him as a crowd puller. We do not see a time when he prayed with the people [except that he taught them the most basic and simple prayer 'Our Father', a prayer which is potent and most relevant for all times]. All that we see is that he talked to the people. And his talk gave them the inner courage to face life and hope for the better and for this reason they thronged after him.
I believe in prayers, always have. To me, prayer give the inner strength, resilience and the confidence to face a hurdle in life. Come exam time, how would it seem if a student prayed all the time asking the powers that be [GOD] to get him through the exams and, for his part, just never opened the books? Pray and play does not seem to go together. On the contrary, if one prayed hard, one also worked harder [burning the midnight oil as we say] to achieve what is being prayed for. Prayer seems to goad the person to work harder, and most often the results are there to see. This is true of my personal life too.
Today, our prayers have become a publicity seeking tradition. One must be seen praying alongside the community to be accepted in the community, therefore the prayer rooms, chapels, churches, temples, mosques etc. It seem that the more noise one makes in praying, the better the prayer is. It has become a big show and the effective result of that prayer is a big ZERO. For all that matters, one could be praying under the tree or anywhere else where a direct channel is opened between the praying and the prayed to. BUT, when it comes to a collective praying, it is a different thing all together. A collective prayer such as a prayer meet, could be even ear splittingly loud, for example, to pray to GOD that our GOA be delivered from the CORRUPT, COMMUNAL, SELF-SEEKING, GREEDY and VOTE-BANK politicians. And immediately after such a prayer, there must evolve an understanding, a cohesive plan of action to achieve what one has just prayed for and to disperse with a vow to work hard and even harder in days to come until the prayer is answered. In this case the prayer does not become just a big empty show but a tool in the hand to work harder towards what is prayed for. Just praying and then going home to fall in line to vote for the same people you prayed against would be senseless and a meaningless exercise. If Jesus Christ was leading such a prayer, he would detail the plan to go about achieving that prayer and not leave it to His Father in Heaven to go about whipping and stripping the corrupt, the greedy etc. etc for you... Would He now??
I am talking about politics because politics, for me, is the most important subject. It runs my whole life and that of my immediate family members and friend circle. If, as a tax-paying citizen, I was not bothered where my tax rupee is going, it would make me irresponsible, to be taken for a jolly good ride, and that too at my own cost. And then I would go and attend a prayer meet to pray to God to deliver me from these rascal politicians and again fall in line to vote, for example, the most corrupt Congress MLA, because I am afraid that if I didn't, the BJP would come to power. Ha'. What perverted logic !.
I once took an appointment with the new parish priest we had, who seemed to me that he was genuinely concerned about the community. In that talk, I proposed to him that he start a 'community mass' on Sundays, a mass well advertised, a mass where the actual service would be shortened drastically to use the time for interaction with the congregation while in the church itself. The interacting topic could be the 'Bible Reading' of the day and relating it to personal lives of the participants, to encourage parishioners with difficulties to speak up. This way there would be a building of a community which the so called Catholics do not have. Why I am saying this is because the so called 'catholic community' does exist only in name. If this interaction did take place, neighbors of perhaps a family in distress could intervene. If the persecution was from a non-community member, a gathering of the community members of the family in distress could send a strong signal to the persecutor that the family in distress was not alone. In other ways, there could be good job posting opportunities and references, marriage proposals, business opportunities etc. etc. See how Manohar Parrikar's government inducted the RSS cadre into the Police force lock stock and barrel??? However, I was disappointed when the said parish priest told me that this was not possible and that this type of community work is being taken up by small communities.
To illustrate the point I am making, a long time ago, I approached our parish priest to read-out an appeal I had drafted during Sunday services, that a certain parishioner was hospitalized and since he had no co-operative family members, parishioners who are free could be with him in turns, especially since the hospital requires sombody to be with the patient all the time. The PP laughed at such an appeal and said " Floriano, this will not work" . "Let us see if it works or not .... least you can do is read it out" I told him. At that he laughed and said " If it was a party it would be house full". To that my response to him was " You might as well close down the Church, father, because in a few years time, this is inevitable"
I shall want to give another good example of our non-existent community. If there was an altercation between a community member and a non community member and should there be fist-fight et al, our own community members would prefer to watch through the closed window but never want to come out and help the community member. On the contrary they would approach the non-community member to commend him and to tell him that he should have done more, that the own community member deserved what he got. I am not manufacturing these tales. I have personally experienced this. Is there a hope in such a hypocritical community?
In short, what I am saying is that the Catholic community is indeed a force to reckon with here in Goa. Despite this, see the governance that we have?? Sure, we fall down on our knees every single day without fail and pray for better governance. But then we go home and forget what we have prayed for. Therefore, I believe that in a community, people must talk to one another and come out with a solution to the problems. Not just pray and wish the problems away. The leader of the community is surely the Church. It must not merely lead the people into prayers but also, like Jesus Christ would do, lead the people into action to solve the devastating problem we have in our Goa with governance.
But, like I said earlier, what do we see??? Our Church is more worried that the communal BJP will come to power and therefore works hand in glove with the corrupt as well as communal CONGRESS to deny its own community and the other communities at large the actual taste of real good, effective governance, the governance for which the Church stands for, with all its might, only through its preaching. I said "Communal CONGRESS". Wasn't our Chief Minister Digamber Kamat a professed member of the RSS-BJP for years together, even wielding power??? A food for thought for our Church leaders who seem to have forgotten how to read history.
Cheers
floriano
from PPS to PPS
9890470896
www.goasu-raj.org
----- Original Message -----
From: Lino B. Dourado
To: gulf-goans@yahoogroups.com
Cc: Lino B. Dourado
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2010 7:08 PM
Subject: [Gulf Goans] Blessing & Inauguration of New Prayer Room, Sacristy & Community Hall in Utorda
|
|
| LIFE LINE |
Goa Su-Raj Party has been in existence since 31/08/2000.
|
|
|
