{"id":33489,"date":"2015-03-22T04:21:27","date_gmt":"2015-03-22T04:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/malankaraorthodox.tv\/?p=33489"},"modified":"2015-03-23T04:22:02","modified_gmt":"2015-03-23T04:22:02","slug":"devotional-thoughts-for-the-6th-sunday-of-the-great-lent-22nd-march-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/malankaraorthodox.tv\/?p=33489","title":{"rendered":"Devotional Thoughts for the 6th Sunday of the Great Lent &#8211; 22nd March 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"yui_3_16_0_1_1427084048273_6029\" class=\"thread-body\">\n<div id=\"yui_3_16_0_1_1427084048273_6069\" class=\"body undoreset\" tabindex=\"0\">\n<div id=\"yui_3_16_0_1_1427084048273_6068\" class=\"email-wrapped\">Reading: From the Gospel according to St. John 9: 1- 41<br \/>\nDear and Respected Brethren,<br \/>\nBy the Grace of God we are entering the sixth Sunday of the great<br \/>\nLent. It is the Catholicate day or the day of the Church. (Sabha<br \/>\nDinam) Our Church Fathers have named this Sunday as the Stewardship<br \/>\nSunday. This Sunday we remember the miracle by which a blind by birth<br \/>\nwas cured and eye sight was re-instated in him. All of us will agree<br \/>\nthat the Holy Church is the divine body of our Savior where as we<br \/>\noften forget the other part of this statement that we all are parts of<br \/>\nthe divine body. Are we not responsible for keeping up the purity,<br \/>\ndivinity and holiness of the divine body? If any one of us would be<br \/>\nfilthy, it would affect the entire body. So let us get ourselves<br \/>\ncleansedbefore we might observe the day of the Holy church.<br \/>\nWe might have heard about the Aandu Kumbsaaram. (Yearly confession) It<br \/>\nis a pre-qualification of a faithful to attend the General Body<br \/>\nmeetings of the Parish. It was meant that all members of the Church<br \/>\nmust have undergone the sacrament of Confession before celebrating or<br \/>\nobserving the Catholica Dinam. All matters regarding the<br \/>\nadministration of the Parish as well as the entire Church are to be<br \/>\nholy. We often take these instructions so easily and with much<br \/>\nnegligence.<br \/>\nIn today\u2019s reading we find a blind by birth on the way of our Lord and<br \/>\nHis beloved disciples. The Apostles used the occasion to clear their<br \/>\ndoubt. They asked: \u201cMaster, who did the sin, .this man or his<br \/>\nparents.\u201d Our Lord answered: \u201cNeither has this man sinned nor his<br \/>\nparents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.\u201d<br \/>\nOur Lord confirms the following two facts:<br \/>\n1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There is no connection between the diseases and sins<br \/>\n2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Whenever and wherever there is a gift of God, it must glorify God.<\/p>\n<p>We too often try to find the link between the diseases of others with<br \/>\ntheir sins. As none is aware of the sins of others, we depend the<br \/>\nimaginations and go further. Are we not so reluctant to praise God by<br \/>\nhearing or watching the blessings bestowed upon others? If we are so<br \/>\nwe must change our attitude and we must be the first ones to praise<br \/>\nGod and glorify God\u2019s mercy.<br \/>\nIn today\u2019s reading we read, \u201cHe spat on the ground and made clay of<br \/>\nthe spittle and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay<br \/>\nand said unto him, Go wash in the pool of Siloam.\u201d\u00a0 The term Siloam<br \/>\nmeans \u2018Sent\u2019. In fact who is the \u2018Sent\u2019. He is none other than the<br \/>\nonly begotten Son of God Almighty. We must think with what our Lord<br \/>\nhad anointed the eyes of the blind. It was dirt and filth. In our<br \/>\ndaily lives we anoint our eyes ourselves with so many types of dirt<br \/>\nand filth and hence we have become blind. And as a matter of fact we<br \/>\noften lose the direction of our further journey. Here we have been<br \/>\nasked to go to the one who is Sent. He has established the sacrament<br \/>\nof confession for our wash and chance to attain cleanliness. It is the<br \/>\nseason when the Holy Church is preparing every one of her children for<br \/>\na wash in Siloam. Our Siloam is in the Church it is the clergy. Let us<br \/>\nprepare ourselves for the real confession with due and needy<br \/>\nrepentance. The Holy Church insists her children to have the Aandu<br \/>\nKumbassaram during the great Lent. The permission to attend the Parish<br \/>\nGeneral Body meeting is secondary. First of all we must clean<br \/>\nourselves. This Sunday cautions us to clean our eyes and to have<br \/>\nproper eye sight. If our eye sight is poor, it is gone. Our lives<br \/>\nwould be miserable. Let us long to have a proper and bright eye sight<br \/>\nand a blessed life without sin. During the Lenten prayers we do pray<br \/>\n\u201cLord enable me to have this day without sins.\u201d When the blind washed<br \/>\nin Siloam, he got the eye sight and he returned to Lord Jesus as<br \/>\nseeing. When we would get forgiveness of our sins, we must go back to<br \/>\nour Lord God. We must be grateful for His abundant mercy and<br \/>\ncompassion. We often forget or we might pretend to forget to return to<br \/>\nour Lord God.<br \/>\nThere is a traditional faith about the Pool Siloam. It is believed<br \/>\nthat the tree of knowledge of good and evil,\u00a0 which was in the center<br \/>\nof the Garden of Eden, was lying in the pond since so many years and<br \/>\nthe same timber was used to construct the cross for the crucifixion of<br \/>\nour Lord and Savior. The sixth Sunday of the Great Lent is exhorting<br \/>\nttus to go to our Lord and Savior and have a real and meaningful<br \/>\nconfession as well as forgiveness of our sins and trespasses.<br \/>\nMay God bless us all<br \/>\nJose Kurian Puliyeril<br \/>\nKottayam<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Reading: From the Gospel according to St. John 9: 1- 41 Dear and Respected Brethren, By the Grace of God we are entering the sixth Sunday of the great &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devotional-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/malankaraorthodox.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/malankaraorthodox.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/malankaraorthodox.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/malankaraorthodox.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/malankaraorthodox.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/malankaraorthodox.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33490,"href":"http:\/\/malankaraorthodox.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33489\/revisions\/33490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/malankaraorthodox.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/malankaraorthodox.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/malankaraorthodox.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}