The Ground of Blessing (Matthew 5:1-12)

We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. - Thomas Merton

 

Most of us grow up believing that to be blessed means something good has happened-a prayer answered, a door opened, a problem resolved. Blessedness becomes proof that God has noticed us, chosen us, perhaps even rewarded us for doing something right. When life goes well, we quietly claim the word blessed. But when life unravels-when prayers go unanswered, when grief arrives, when we fail or fall short-we begin to wonder if we have lost something, as though blessedness were fragile or conditional.

 

But what if blessedness was never something to be gained or lost? What if it is not a reward for the faithful or a consolation prize for the fortunate, but the ground of our being itself-given at the very beginning and never withdrawn? What if the question is not whether we are blessed, but whether we recognize that we are? Jesus, climbing the mountain, does not begin with commands or conditions. He does not outline how to qualify or who belongs. He simply names what is already true. Blessed are you. Not someday. Not if. Not when. Now. The Beatitudes are not instructions for becoming blessed; they are reflections of what life looks like when we remember who we already are.

 

“Blessed are the poor in spirit”-not because lack earns favour, but because letting go of self-sufficiency makes room to notice what has always been there. “Blessed are those who mourn,” because love and loss belong together, and even here we are not abandoned. “Blessed are the meek,” those no longer trying to prove their worth.” Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for what is right,” not driven by control, but shaped by trust.

 

When blessedness is forgotten, we shrink. We compare ourselves to others, grasp for approval, protect our fragile sense of worth. And in that forgetting, we sometimes wound one another out of fear. But when blessedness is remembered, something loosens. Our world widens. We become less defensive, more patient, more open. Mercy, purity of heart, and peace-making emerge as natural expressions of a life rooted in belovedness When I know myself to be blessed, I am more fully myself. I no longer need to prove anything or earn approval. I am freer to be present, to love imperfectly, to live honestly. The Beatitudes are not a ladder we climb, but a mirror held gently before us, reminding us of who we are at our deepest and truest. We are already blessed. The work is not to become something more, but to remember what we have always been.

 

- Lilly Pushpam PBVM

Follow me... Be available... (Matthew 4:12-24)

 

 

St. Teresa of Ávila writes, “Christ has no Body now but yours.”

That single sentence names what is really happening when Jesus walks along the sea and says, “Follow me.”

Jesus begins his ministry after John’s arrest. The story opens in loss, danger, and injustice. God enters what is already wounded and uses it. And if Christ now has no Body but ours, then it is through human lives that God chooses to enter such places.

 

To follow Jesus  is to allow what God, for reasons we may not fully understand, allows and to trust that love is still present and still working there. It is to suffer, ever so slightly, what God suffers eternally: the pain and the hope of loving a world that is not yet whole.

 

The fishermen are not chosen because they are better, perfect, or more faithful. They are chosen because they are available. They are willing to become the place where Christ continues to live and act. They represent everyone. God is calling not just a few chosen ones, but all people and all creation back to God’s own self.

 

Following Jesus is not about religious status. It is about consent: consent to carry what God carries, consent to love what God loves ,consent to let one’s life become a body through which Christ can touch the world.

 

This calling has little to do with believing the right things about God, beyond the one truth that contains all others: God is love itself. Those who respond are not those who are certain, correct, or complete. They are those willing to bear the cost of reconciliation within themselves. They become the leaven, the salt, the remnant, the mustard seed - small and hidden, yet entrusted with the slow transformation of the world.

 

Something about Jesus captivated these fishermen, and “they left everything and followed him.” We usually hear that as a demand. But it may be an invitation to a deeper question: What am I holding on to, and what is it giving me? We hold on to beliefs and opinions, grudges and resentments, fear, guilt, and shame, old wounds and disappointments, the way things used to be, comfort, control, and familiarity, biases and judgments.

 

We also hold on to what is holy: people we love, relationships that sustain us, joy and gratitude, faith and hope, values and integrity, meaning and purpose, all that is good, true, and beautiful. We will always hold something. The question is whether what we hold makes us more or less available to God’s love.so the call by the sea is not only “follow me.” It is: let your life become the place where God can love the world again.

-  Lilly Pushpam PBVM

The Lamb who stays (John 1:29-34)

“Where you are is where God is.” - St. Teresa of Ávila

God is here-in the ordinary, in the unfinished, in the fragile moments we often overlook. What we call brokenness, chaos, or failure is precisely where God chooses to dwell.

John stands at the edge of the river and points. God is no longer an idea, a rule, or a distant promise. God is suddenly present, embodied in ordinary time, in an ordinary body, on ordinary ground. History is no longer just the stage where God acts; it becomes the place where God chooses to dwell. Calling Jesus, the “Lamb of God” is not poetic softness; it is a shock. We expected a Lion of God-strength that dominates, authority that conquers, power that fixes everything. Instead, John names a God who chooses vulnerability. A God who refuses to rule through force. A God who chooses freedom over dominance, relationship over control, presence over power.

And then comes the phrase that reshapes everything: “who takes away the sin of the world.” Not sins, plural. Sin, singular. One fracture. One shared wound. One collective distortion. Just as salvation is collective, so is brokenness. Evil is never only personal; it is communal, historical, systemic. It lives in how we organize, consume, ignore, protect, and dominate. None of us stands outside of it. We are implicated because we are interconnected. No one can finally say, “I did nothing wrong,” because we all belong to the same human story. The Lamb does not erase this from a distance. The Lamb takes it. Carries it. Holds it. Forgiveness happens through solidarity and closeness. God forgives the world by becoming part of it. This is where incarnation becomes luminous. God becomes human. If God becomes human, then it is good to be human.  History is not abandoned. Incarnation itself is already redemption. When the Spirit descends and remains on Jesus, permanence replaces distance. God commits to humanity, to history, to the whole. John even confesses, “I did not know him.” Recognition is always unfolding. God continues to appear beyond our expectations, beyond our systems, beyond our images of power.

This is why salvation cannot mean rescuing individuals apart from one another. God is saving history. God is saving humanity. God saves the whole. All came forth from God. Everything carries God’s mystery. Everything is being drawn back into God-not because of worthiness, but because of belonging. We are saved because we are connected. The Lamb reveals a God who would rather be wounded with us than worshiped without us.

- Lilly Pushpam PBVM

Beloved before Becoming (Matthew 3:13-17)

“Before I ever prayed, God loved me; and before I ever sought, God found me.” - Julian of Norwich

This is the truth we forget, and in forgetting it, we lose our way. We believe that we are not worthy of love. We begin our spiritual lives from fear, guilt, or shame, what begins in negativity stays there. Jesus shows us another beginning. Life with God does starts with belovedness.

Jesus goes to John, someone lesser in authority and status, and allows something to be done to him.  He does not defend his dignity. He consents.  Baptism means to be dipped, to be immersed. Jesus is immersed not only in water, but in vulnerability itself.  Then the heavens open. God does not give him a mission or a command. God simply names him: “You are my beloved Son; in you I am well pleased.” Nothing has been accomplished, and yet everything has already been given. Jesus is not made beloved in that moment. He is revealed as beloved. it is a recognition. Identity comes before action. Love comes before purpose. Even Jesus needs to hear it with his own ears. And once he does, his life changes. He cannot be stopped. For the next three years, every word he speaks and every step he takes flows from a center that is finally secure. He simply lives from what he knows to be true.

Julian of Norwich understood this deeply. Love is not something God starts doing when we behave well. Love is God’s first act. We are loved before we know how to pray, before we know how to seek, before we know how to fail or succeed. Belovedness is our origin. We spend our lives searching for our worth in achievement, approval, success, and distraction. We look for it in the eyes of others, hoping someone will finally tell us that we are enough. We measure ourselves by what we do, what we accomplish, and how we are received. Yet all the while, we fail to recognize what has been true from the beginning: we are already beloved.  It is not rooted in our performance, but in our being, in who we are in God. Nothing we achieve can make God love us more, and nothing we fail to do can make God love us less. Love is not the reward for a successful life; it is the foundation on which life is meant to be lived. We do not become beloved. We awaken to the fact that we always were.

- Lilly Pushpam PBVM

 

From Seeking to Seeing (Matthew 2: 1-12)

The star appeared without announcement. It shone quietly, the same way for everyone. Yet only a few noticed it, and fewer still allowed it to change the direction of their lives. Perhaps the difference was never in the star itself, but in the longing that lived within those who were able to see it. As Rumi says, “What you seek is seeking you.” The wise men were not merely observers of the sky; they were people shaped by longing. So, when the star appeared, it did not explain itself or offer guarantees. It simply invited them to give direction to their longing. And they moved-because staying where they were no longer felt faithful to the search stirring within them.

The journey, however, was not a straight one. At one point, it led them to Herod - into a place of power, fear, and unease. This, too, belongs to the story. In our own seeking, we often pause in the wrong places, mistaking noise for guidance, authority for truth, or security for God. Yet even these detours are not wasted. The light continues to lead, patient and steady, even when we briefly lose our way. Herod’s response reveals why some recognize the light while others resist it. He was troubled because truth asked something of him. We recognize this same resistance within ourselves, the quiet hesitation we feel when light reaches parts of us, we would rather protect. When the wise men finally arrived, they encountered a mystery that overturned every expectation: the Almighty as a child. The search that began in the stars ended in stillness. Words were no longer needed. They offered what they had, not to receive anything in return, but because encounter itself had become enough. And then they went home another way.

This final movement completes the journey. The wise men did not simply find Christ; they were changed by the encounter. They returned to the same lives, carrying a quieter strength, a deeper freedom, a light now living within them. Once they had met him, returning the same way was no longer possible. Epiphany reminds us that God continues to reveal himself gently and patiently - like a star that waits, trusting that longing hearts will follow. And when we do, the journey may lead us through uncertainty, even wrong turns, but an encounter with Christ always leaves us changed, walking another way.

- Lilly Pushpam PBVM