Solitary Soul

THE RIGHT NOTE ! Cl. Mario D’Couto SDB             Music is such a phenomenon that if a wrong note is played, it can disrupt the whole harmony and that is because music itself is harmony! What makes a music soothing to listen is the harmony and the rhythm that is present in it.             Keeping this as our background, we can compare this to our salvation history. An orchestra director has before him a score. It was written by a great composer, and all the adequate directions have been scored for a perfect rendition. The musicians are all free; they can follow the directions of the conductor, or they can ignore them. They can be either reactionary and never turn a page or they can be liberal and just play anything.             Now suppose that one of the musicians decides deliberately to hit a sour note. ...

STAND BY YOUR CONVICTIONS ! Cl. Mario D’Couto SDB             “The unreflected life is not worth living!” This statement made by the great philosopher Socrates is something worth taking note of. There is every possibility that we could live our lives very passively, watching everything go by. Reflecting on our lives is something essential as it helps us form our convictions. We are called to be “Contributors” not “Passive observers.” It is in giving that we find greater joy than just being passive. We are called to live for something.                         So what is conviction? A conviction is a belief system that one forms in himself or herself over a period of time. This can be formed through the influence of somebody else or from the ideas or thoughts that one has imbibed over a period of time. While it...

God’s Greatness Cl. Mario D’Couto SDB             It has always been said that the truly great people in the world are the most humble and there are enough and more evidence to prove it. Somehow this is the paradox of life that we all have to live with. Not that it is wrong or bad, but it is just that the way we humans think is not the same as God Almighty thinks. This may or may not be a consoling factor for some.             Once I was reading a book called, “Life of Christ” by Giovanni Papini and he begins the book with a beautiful reflection. He begins the story by speaking about the birth of Jesus. Unlike many traditional paintings of the Nativity which seem so flawless, so clean, so orderly, so tidy; the real stable was a complete opposite. It was a foul-smelling, dirty and disorderly place. Hence if we were to think that the Manger in which Jesus was born ...

IGNORANCE IS A BOON AND A BANE ! Cl. Mario D’Couto SDB             As the oft repeated dictum goes , “Ignorance is bliss” , it would seem that ignorance is truly a positive phenomenon. Well, that is one side of the story. It also has its dark side. Let us now examine the good and the bad side of ignorance.             The bad side of ignorance is that if ignorance were truly bliss then why is it that there is still poverty around? Philosophers like Nietzsche would speak about the “ Superman ”. The “ Superman ”, for Nietzsche, is the one who is able to make sense out of non-sense. This is closely tied up with Sartre’s idea of freedom of the will. As human beings, we constantly face a lot of choices and our lives depend on the kind of choices we make.             I remember once when I was doing my Masters in...

TAKING THE PLUNGE ! Cl. Mario D’Couto SDB             Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India once said, “The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all.” Quite often in life, there may be occasions where we may experience fear. It could be the fear of an exam, fear of what the other person will think of me, fear of failure and so on. There is nothing wrong in experiencing fear for fear is what keeps us alert. However, while there is the positive side to fear, it would be equally wrong to be overtly pre-occupied with it. Life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful and this implies that to be mature means to face and not evade every fresh crisis that comes in one’s way as it is rightly said, “Courage does not mean the absence of fear but rather it means to go ahead knowing that you are afraid.”             Muhammad Ali, one of the wor...

LAUGHTER! Cl. Mario D’Couto SDB             “Laughter is the best medicine,” so the saying goes. It is an emotion that exists right from the smallest child to the oldest adult and surprising as it may seem, laughter is one emotion that occupies or takes up a few muscles while to resent back in hostility, would take a person more muscles. From this, it is quite obvious indeed as to why people who take themselves too seriously, experience certain physical ailments such as blood pressure, headaches and so on. The reason being that in such situations, their minds are not at peace.                         Thomas Carlyle makes a nice statement with regard to laughter. He says, “Laughter is one of the very privileges of reason, being confined to the human species.” Laughter is, indeed, God’s gift to us. It eases the...

     IS JUSTIC THE SAME AS EQUALITY? Cl. Mario D’Couto SDB             Is justice the same as equality? As the title suggests, I must acknowledge that this short reflection on the aspect of justice in human life comes from a seminar which I had attended some time ago. This is based on a talk given by a certain professor named Mr. Trevor Allis, who teaches at Sophia’s College, Bombay. The title of his speech was “Conceptualizing Justice” . Apparently, the title of this speech may give one the impression that this is just another inter-play of words but actually it is not.             In order to arrive at an answer to the above question, we should note that there are two approaches to this problem. The first is the egalitarian approach while the other is a need-based approach. When we speak about the “egalitarian” approach the basic stand on the issue...

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES: TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN Cl. Mario D’Couto SDB             We live in a world that gives a lot of prominence to winners. Winning signifies a person’s strength in a particular ability. But is winning everything? If we did not have losers, then where would the winners be? Our idea of winning comes directly from the fact that we all know what it means to lose.             In the context of Christian living, often at times, there are many who, I may say, are ‘put off’ by the fact of being holy and there are many reasons as to why it is so. To mention one of the reasons, some of them feel that being or becoming holy in today’s world is like a far distant dream. The reason? Materialism, pragmatism and other such cultural trends.             This is indeed a great cause of concern as it...

PEACE Cl. Mario D’Couto SDB             The world that we live in today is filled with so many things. Life has become more complex. Gone are those days where people were content with the little that they had. Society today has become one big rat-race where each individual is vying with the other in attaining or acquiring money or wealth. And yet in the midst of all this, there are many who are looking for peace. This is because deep down within each individual, no matter how much of wealth a person may acquire, there is a void that needs to be filled. So this therefore brings me to the question, “What is true genuine peace?”             I have, in a way, laid stress by using the words, “ true ” and “ genuine ” because there are many who equate peace with having money, a beautiful house, maybe certain benefits at one’s work place and so on. Yet, perhaps this would ...

TEMPTATIONS Cl. Mario D’Couto SDB             We all go through temptations and human life seems to be characterized by this struggle. Temptations, we could say, is actually a conflict of choices. It is like for example, the doctor has told me not to eat sweets but whenever I look at sweets, I feel tempted, that is to say, I am always confronted with the choice of “Should I or should I not.” In this sense, temptations always become a struggle between what one ought to do or to be and one’s desires.             Sometimes some people feel guilty when they experience temptations. They feel that temptations should come only to the so-called “bad people.” As long as we are human and we are living on this earth, temptations will continue to be a regular feature in one’s life. There is nothing wrong about it. Temptations are not bad in themselves. But giving into our tem...

GOD AND HUMAN FREEDOM CL. MARIO D’COUTO SDB             The Gospel account of St. Luke (7:11-17) speaks about how Jesus raises the widow’s son. What is striking about this incident in the life of Our Lord is that he Himself goes out to heal the widow’s son. Surprising isn’t it! If we go to examine the various miracles that were worked by our Lord, we see that it was the people who wanted to be cured that came to Jesus; He did not go to them. There are a number of examples that can be given in this regard like the healing of Jarius’ daughter, the curing of the blind man, the woman who suffered from a blood hemorrhage for several years and so on. There are very few occasions where our Lord directly intervened by Himself.             Another example that comes to my mind is the Canaanite woman. In this incident, it seems as though our Lord did not even give a second loo...

Talents and Aptitudes Cl. Mario D’Couto SDB             The more one uses his or her talents and aptitudes to the full, the happier he or she will be.             The meaning of the word ‘talent’ comes from the Greek word “Talanton”, a monetary unit of high value. As we are taught by the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, a talent that is not “invested” or used is more of a liability than an asset. The talents we possess but don’t use will be taken away from us or rust to a point of uselessness.  We are obligated to put them to use.             Interests and aptitudes often go together as Dr. William Moulton Marston would say, “A man’s future success depends on his ability plus what he enjoys doing. The only person who can give vocational advice is likely to be a psychologist who finds out what you ...

SUFFERING: A PROBLEM OR A MYSTERY? Cl. Mario D’Couto SDB             Problems and mysteries are part of human living. But what is exactly the difference between a problem and a mystery? There are not many clear cut answers to this question but perhaps what Gabriel Marcel says could in some way help us arrive at an understanding between a problem and a mystery. According to him, a problem is that which can be solved while in a mystery, one may not have the answers to one’s questions but yet he or she is called to live with it.             Suffering can be understood or taken in both ways, depending on the situations or circumstances in which one may find one’s self in. When a person has lost his or her loved one and then asks, “ Why me Lord? What did I do to deserve this?” There is no clear cut answer in such situations. This is a kind of suffering. But suffering, ...

Silence – The Other Side of Prayer Cl. Mario D’Couto SDB             The word ‘prayer’ for most of us is associated with a series of petitions. We ask God for so many favours and sometimes it seems as though the ‘content’ of our prayer is just that – asking God for this or that. There is, however, another side of prayer which most of us forget and that is silence.             Imagine a boy and a girl going on a date for the first time. If one of them is going to be talking or bragging about one’s self all the time, it is most likely that one’s first date is going to become a ‘flop show’. In fact, this is one of the ground rules of “First dates”. Keeping this as our back ground, meaningful prayer does not consist in making a series of petitions. Our Heavenly Father knows what we need even before we could ask Him, as Jesus as our Lord has rightly asserted in the Gospel...

GRATITUDE IS THE BEST ATTITUDE CL. MARIO D’COUTO SDB Gautam Buddha once said, “Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we did not learn a lot today, at least we learned a little and if we did not learn a little, at least we did not get sick and if we got sick, at least we did not get die, so let us all be thankful.” J. P. Vaswani, on similar lines would say, “When you pray, ask less, thank more.” The greatest gift that we could all have is the gift of life and this is something, I believe, we should all be thankful to God since life is the basic necessity in order to enjoy the other things in life. If we were not alive, everything else is useless. All of us have our moments of ups and downs in life. Life at times can become difficult and it can also become easy at times. Good or bad, it all depends on how we view and accept the circumstances of life. Mistakes are part of being human and we need to appreciate them for what they are since the precious lessons of l...