SPRINGBOARDS and WALKING STICKS

 Separated by approximately 6,000 kilometres, India and Germany share a surprising depth of connection. In India, German engineering excellence is abundant through brands like BMW , Mercedes-Benz , Porsche , and Audi . We listen to the compositions of German masters— Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven . We study German philosophers— Martin Heidegger , Friedrich Nietzsche , and Karl Marx . We celebrate Oktoberfest with Hefeweizen and Pilsner . Reciprocally, Germany boasts numerous scholars of Indology and Indian languages , with arguably the finest library collection on Indian studies anywhere in the world. Germany's fascination with India runs deep and has endured for generations. In 1911, Hermann Hesse —later to become a celebrated author—travelled to India on a spiritual quest. He arrived with an idealised vision of the subcontinent, expecting to find sadhus meditating everywhere and hoping to discover definitive answers to his religious questions. Instead, wh...

 We must pray continually and not be discouraged ( Luke 18:1-8 ). Pray, call on God and goodness, and hold on—persist and persevere in justice, nonviolence, fairness, and honesty . Even the hardest structure and injustice will crack. The woman who persevered until justice was done is the hero of today's gospel, for her persistence is relevant for all times. Nothing good and just comes to you without time and effort. Long Walk to Freedom is an autobiography by Nelson Mandela , South Africa's first democratically elected President, first published in 1994. The book profiles his early life, coming of age, education, and 27 years spent in prison. Born in 1918, he was a key figure in the fight against apartheid , a system of racial segregation, which led to his imprisonment for 27 years. Upon his release in 1990, he helped dismantle apartheid and worked to create a new, multiracial South Africa, earning him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. Do you want to be relevant in your classroo...

  Prophet Nathan approached King David to confront him about his immorality with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah , and he did it without direct accusation. If it were direct at a time when the king had so much power, he would have been instantly done away with; instead, Nathan told a story. When Changampuzha Krishna Pillai (1911-1948) wanted to expose feudal exploitation in Kerala , he wrote a poem. Separated by millennia, culture, and context, both narratives employ the same powerful technique: they make injustice visible through art. Art, be it a poem, a story, a film gives people time and space to process. People feel safer to accept it. In Nathan's Parable to David ( 2 Samuel 12:1-7 ), There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It ate from his table, dra...

 There is something more damaging than refusal or inability to do good; and that is spreading lies, false accusations, Beelzebul accusations about people who are doing good. Jesus the healing one, merciful one, inclusive one, and someone who is ready to die is a dangerous truth for some to accept. What Jesus does is an undeniable truth to all: the lame walk, the mute speaks, sinners receive forgiveness, and the outcaste experience inclusivity; no one could refute it, so they bring in a confusing false narrative. "He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of demons." Here we encounter something deeply unsettling—the human capacity to witness truth and then fabricate a counter-story that serves our resistance to it. The miracle itself was not in dispute. The man spoke. The demon was gone. What was contested was the meaning of the event, the source of the power, the narrative framework into which this reality should be placed. This is the essence of false narratives : the...

 When the disciples approached Jesus with the simple request, " Lord, teach us to pray ," they were expressing something far deeper than a desire for religious instruction ( Luke 11: 1-4 ). They had watched Jesus navigate the complex terrains of life— social tensions , religious controversies, relational conflicts—and they observed that prayer was his anchor. In their asking, we discover their longing to cultivate both a spiritual and moral compass that could guide them through their own challenging journeys. This moment represents a universal human yearning: the recognition that we need divine guidance, that we cannot navigate life's complexities on our own strength alone. "Let us pray, teach us to pray"—these words echo through generations as expressions of hope for a better world, a transformed life, a reoriented heart. Reorienting Our Spiritual Compass The Our Father prayer begins with a radical reorientation of our spiritual direction. Like the prodigal ...

  On the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, three worlds collide around one broken body. The parable of the Good Samaritan is not merely a story about helping strangers—it is a diagnosis of the human condition, revealing three distinct ways of being in the world (Luke 10: 25-37). The Exploiter: What I Have Is Mine, and What You Have Is Also Mine The parable begins with violence. Thieves strip a man, beat him, and leave him half-dead by the roadside. These are the exploiters—those who see the world as a zero-sum game where their gain necessitates another's loss. They recognize no boundary between mine and yours; everything is potentially theirs for the taking. The exploiter's world is built on predation. What matters is not mutual flourishing but personal accumulation. The beaten man on the road is not a person but an opportunity—someone with possessions to be seized, vulnerability to be leveraged, dignity to be trampled. We meet exploiters not only in dark alleys but in boardrooms...

 In celebrating Teachers' Day we honour not just the memory of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, but every teacher who has ever lit a candle in the darkness of ignorance. Across religious traditions, the divine and the teacher are one. Sri Krishna, seated on the chariot, instructing Arjuna on detachment and selfless action, was a teacher. Prophet Muhammad taught lawful living and the importance of brotherhood. The Buddha offered the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. Jesus, gathering people on the mountainside or by the shore, challenging them to love and forgive, was a teacher. In most faiths, God is teacher, and the teacher is godlike. There are few professions as noble as teaching. My greatest joy in a long academic career—serving as Head of Department, Academic Dean, and in other roles—has been simply to be known as a teacher. Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, despite being the first Vice President and second President of India, despite holding many major positions, wanted...

 The gospel, Luke 17:5-10, chastises the apostles into faith and dutifulness. It places before the apostles an uneasy parable of a master and his servant. A master who is at the enjoying end constantly, and a servant constantly at the serving end is a poor parable for our times that detests master-slave relationships and existence. So it is natural that when we read the perpetuation of the same in Scriptures we find ourselves repulsed. Where's the warm Jesus? Where's the love, the affirmation? Where is the Jesus who took out his garment and knelt down to wash his disciples' feet? This passage of the gospel has to be read in a particular context. It is material for people who are pursuing novitiate formation. Note that all through Jesus was addressing the crowd who followed him, whom Luke kept addressing as disciples. But here (see verse 17:5) Jesus is precisely speaking to the Apostles, whom Jesus is forming to be his committed and uncompromising followers. Novitiate is a p...

 Nothing fascinated St Francis of Assisi more than the Word of God: the Incarnate Word and the Written Word. From the tenderness of Jesus in the first ever crib that he made in Greccio to his passion of receiving the stigmata on Mount La Verna, it was Francis being possessed by the Incarnate Word—Jesus. From the naïve stories of Francis picking up written words from the ground to keep them away from people trampling on them, to Francis literally obeying the gospel words read in a church, to him becoming an embodiment of the Word of God, it was Francis being consumed by his fascination for the Word of God. Firstly, Francis had a deep and holy reverence for the written word and would often pick up scraps of writings from the ground. His actions were based on the belief that those pieces of paper could contain the name of God or words from the Gospel. Secondly, for Francis the Word of God was something that brought in absolute clarity in his life. The defining moment of Francis's spir...

 Chapter 10 of Luke's gospel begins with Jesus sending out his disciples to preach; he had told them to take nothing for their journey, no gold, silver, or copper; no haversack, sandals, or two tunics. Perhaps they must have gone out grumbling and complaining. It was only a while ago they had fought to establish who is the greatest among them, and who would sit at the right and left of the one who sits on the throne in heaven. Here in Luke 10:17-24 we find them returning back rejoicing; what really made the difference? Let me draw a parallel to St. Francis of Assisi: born in 1181, he lived an unconscious, unattended, normal life, like any other, for the first 24 years. Returning home from the Assisi-Perugia war as a loser and wounded, he then left home and spent the next 20 years of his life wandering, reading, writing, singing, preaching to creation, loving, giving, forgiving, losing to God, being wounded, praying, bending down, groaning in loud cries. A 24-year-old Francis once s...

 Our expectations differ according to the degree of efforts and possibilities provided. What we expect from a desert, which is dry, does not receive any rain, where nobody spends time on it tilling, sowing, or fencing it to protect it from wild animals, is different from what we expect from a fertile land, that has enough rain, farmers tilling, sowing, and protecting it with fences around it. In Luke 10: 13-16 we see this comparative expectation articulated about Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum where Jesus spoke the gospel and worked many wonders, and Tyre and Sidon where they had no privilege of being recipients of Jesus’ words and wonders. To whom much is given much is expected. Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum received every bit of Jesus’s providence but refused to reciprocate. St. Paul has a lovely expression about the people of Corinth in 2 Corinthians 3:3—you are a letter of Christ. Corinth was a rich city, but it had a morally very loose way of living. Paul preached the...

 Gandhi named the book of his autobiography "My Experiments with Truth," not "My Discovery of Truth" or "The Truth I Learned," but experiments —plural, ongoing, fallible. He approached life like a scientist approaches a lab: with hypotheses to test, failures to document, variables to adjust. He experimented with the spinning wheel: what happens to a nation's soul when it produces its own cloth? Or what happens to a person if he limits himself to wearing just two pieces of clothing—a dhoti and a shawl? What happens if dissent and resistance hold on to non-violent means? What happens if people practice civil disobedience when the laws become oppressive and unfair? Perhaps the most dangerous thing we do on days like, Gandhi Jayanti is to celebrate him as if he is a finished work. As if non-violence has won, permanently. He'd likely find our veneration more troubling than our criticism—because worship puts an end to inquiry, and inquiry was his religio...

 The call is for violence (Luke 9: 51-56). This is a common reaction when people face frustrations, do not get what they want, or don't make as much profit as they desired—they conquer others through violent and ugly means. Jesus was at the height of his ministry. Look at chapter 9, he sends out his disciples to preach, he shows his majesty and glory in transfiguration, he feeds thousands of people, he is able to send people ahead of him to get this ready. To use a modern term, Jesus was influential, powerful, and dominant. James and John frustrated by the nonacceptance of Jesus by a Samaritan village wanted to bring down fire from above and destroy them. Jesus was definitely able to destroy that village even without bringing down fire from above. He could even initiate a  communal violence for he had a very large following. But note the response of Jesus to the call for violence. He not only refused it but also rebuked them. Peace is a deliberate choice made by the dominant o...

 The Gospels resound with an extraordinary truth: no matter how far you have fallen, how lost you have become: you could be the lost sheep, the run away son, the thief on the cross, a sinful person who is caught, a corrupt tax collector, poor, blind, sick, and old; the kingdom of heaven remains within your reach (Luke 16: 1-13). This is not merely inspirational rhetoric—it is the very heartbeat of Jesus's ministry, demonstrated repeatedly through His encounters with society's most marginalised and morally compromised individuals. Jesus taught that heaven is worth everything we possess, declaring, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it (Matthew 13: 44-46). The merchant didn't hesitate to negoti...