Book Review - Rome Sweet Home

The journey of a man, and his wife from being a staunch Catholic-hating Presbyterian to becoming a devout and loving Catholic. 

Since ages I wanted to get my hands on this book, being a cradle Catholic, conversion stories have always fascinated me. This was one of those books that I kept hearing about on and off during my readings of other bloggers and converts, a book about which I had only heard praises. A book which I just couldn’t wait to read.

 

So when I finally spotted the title a month back my happiness was unending, I immediately bought the book. I devoured the book in two days, lapped everything up that it had to offer.

 

Scott and Kimberly Hahn have written their conversion story in the most candid and heartfelt way, their unabashed honesty and their clarity of thought is what makes the book so captivating. While reading the book it feels like they are actually sitting across the room talking to us. In their simplicity in writing, the miraculous power of God is portrayed, one can’t help but connect the proceedings in the Hahns lives with the Divine Intervention of God. The story is not only of Scott and Kimberly, and how they found the way back home, it is also of God the Father, Jesus, Mary and other saints and how they nudged and guided them back home. It is a journey of hope and despair, cheers and tears, human follies and divine wisdom but above all, its a journey back home,

 

The book may not answer all your questions on Catholicism, it is not going to explain to you the theological aspect of every Catholic tradition, neither will it turn you into a Catholic enthusiast in a day. But the book will surely show you the way, to discover your own way back home, the book will definitely give you the inspiration to delve deeper and to get inside your Faith, to know the Faith and know how to defend it.

This book is a must read of all Catholics who are struggling to believe the Church Doctrines and for those who are despairing and doubtful of their conversion to Catholicism.

The Other Side of The Cross

A few days back I had a short chat with a sister. And the thing that touched me the most was her simple and loving explanation of the hardships and troubles of life that we all must go through. She showed me the cross she was wearing around her neck, she showed the side on which was Christ crucified and then turned over the cross and showed the plain side, that’s the place for us. 

It is on the other side of the cross, that we too must crucify ourselves, as the loving disciples of Christ, and His children. Every time you are persecuted, each time that you are mocked, you are on the other side of the cross. If your master was mocked, betrayed, framed in false charges, beaten, persecuted, harassed, what makes you think that you won’t also be persecuted and mocked and betrayed?

And just look at the beauty of it all, He has left the other side for you. This way you will be joined with Christ in an inseparable way, the lance that pierced His side will pierce your heart too, connecting you and Him together as one. The world may take away all else from you, but you will not be separated from the love of Christ.

Today take out some time, to meditate on the crucifix, look at the Savior who gave up His all, and then turn the cross, see the other side of it, it’s plain, its empty, its a space reserved for you. Not because God wants you to suffer, but because He loves you so much that He does not want to be separated from you in your sufferings. He wants to embrace your suffering self and weave your sufferings into His, taking away all that ails you, and turning it into a love filled gift.

So when the next time you are assailed with hopelessness of your situation, just look at the other side of the cross!

5 Surprising reasons why you cannot memorize that verse

You just cannot memorize that Bible verse! You’ve tried everything from pasting a print of it on your bathroom wall to writing it multiple times. But no, each time you need to quote it out of your memory you fail. Just how do those preachers and teachers commit so many verses to their memory? And why can’t I? Sounds like a familiar situation? Read the following and you will know why can’t you memorize bible verses (or for that matter any other text that you are trying to learn by heart.).

 

 

You cannot memorize it because:

1. You are trying to memorize it: Since you are trying to memorize a particular verse all you are trying to do is pressurize your brain somehow add this particular verse permanently in your memory. The problem is, you just cannot inject things like that into your memory. Try to learn from the verse, try and know what it speaks to you. Simply trying to mug it up will never help.
2. You are committing it to short term memory: You take a verse, read it 5 times, close your eyes and repeat it exactly without seeing it! And you are happy you memorized it, and never ever go through that verse/text again. A few weeks later, when you need to reproduce that verse out of your memory, you are lost. So what just happened? Hadn’t you successfully memorized it? Well actually, yes you had memorized it, but only for a short term. When we see a something and remember it to be recalled only a few minutes/hours later, it goes into a short term memory. So the verse that you did memorize went to that short term memory, and then you never even refreshed it by reading it more often.
3. It has no personal relation with you: The things that we remember till our death are the ones that are very personal and close to us. The same is for Bible verses, if its just a piece of text you want to memorize so that you can impress your friends then you better not expect to remember it for a lifetime. On the other hand, if this verse touched you in a personal way, helped you out of a tragedy, strengthened you in the times of trouble, you are more likely to remember it without any efforts.
4. You do not use it frequently: Even if you do manage to get it into your head, the Bible verse may not be used by you frequently enough and slowly it slips out of your memory, sometimes without leaving a trace behind. Once you have memorized a verse try and use it as frequently as possible, in your prayers, in your conversations, etc.
5. You are not reflecting on it: How do you expect you learn something by heart, that you don’t know the meaning of? It is difficult to memorize a bible verse, if you haven’t got a clue of what it means and what is it trying to say. So sit and reflect before trying to cram it!

Now you know the big why! So stop memorizing and start personalizing the biblical verses that you want to learn by heart.

Pentecost is not the “Happy Birthday” of the Holy Spirit…

…it’s the “Happy Birthday” of our spirituality…

Catholic Church celebrates Pentecost as a solemnity, a day to commemorate the descend of the Holy Spirit upon Mother Mary and the apostles

The upper room wasn’t exactly a nice place to hangout before the Resurrection! No. It was a refugee room for those who were afraid, lost, didn’t believe, lacked courage, who were hiding from the Roman centurions. It was a dark and dead place.

 And then, Jesus appeared to them in the same upper room! What joy it must have been for the apostles and the women and most of all for Mother Mary! The upper room was now a place of prayer, worship and deep fellowship.

This was what I call the ‘Jesus-encounter’ of the apostles. Do you remember your own ‘Jesus-encounter’?

For the next forty days Jesus stayed with them, teaching them, encouraging them, guiding them, and making them understand the mysteries of the Kingdom of God (Acts 1:3). On the day of Ascension, he commanded the disciples to wait, for the promised Gift of the Father, which would empower them to bear witness to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:4-8). And whoosh! He was taken up to heaven.

So what did the disciples do? They waited. And they prayed in one accord till the day came for them to receive the Holy Spirit. On the glorious day of Pentecost the Spirit of God descended upon them like great tongues of fire, they began speaking in strange tongues (some even thought that they were drunk!), and Peter stood up before all those people (3000 actually) and spoke boldly, bravely of Jesus and what a speech he made (yes that fisherman dude), people actually heard him and asked him what should they do! He asked them to repent and to get baptized. And guess what, all those 3000 people sold their property, turned from their sin and really did get baptized (now that’s what I call mass conversion!) and took Jesus as their Saviour.

So why didn’t this feat happen at the Resurrection? Or at the Ascension? Why didn’t Jesus directly ‘convert’ these Jews? And why didn’t Peter begin his ministry right after he saw the resurrected Lord?

Because, Jesus wanted the disciples to carry on his work, and the disciples needed the Gift to carry out the work!

You need a ‘Jesus-encounter’ to believe, the belief turns into faith with more such encounters and learning and deepening the faith, your faith becomes your spirituality, and your spirituality is incomplete without being a witness to the faith. To complete that spirituality you need the Gift.

So, it’s a day when your spirituality was complete! Happy Birthday! :)

Is India truly free?

I know it’s been a long time since the Republic Day and Independence Day is far away. But I did want to post this on a regular non-teaming-with-patriotic-sentiments day.

I boarded a bus to go to my college one day, it was mostly empty (an unusual thing), and so I chose a comfortable window seat, looking out the window. A few stops later a woman boarded the bus, with a child in her arms, inspite of many empty seats to choose from, she sat beside me. I gave her a smile and resumed my gazing out of the window exercise.

She opened the conversation after a few idle minutes. Asked me where I was going, in return told me the place she was headed to, she asked what I studied, in what year I was and so on. We chatted genially asking a few more general questions to and fro and then she dropped the bomb on me.

“You are a Patel?”

I told her I wasn’t; she was mildly surprised, told me I looked like one. Moments later she asked me again, “So what caste do you belong to?” With respect and the same genial manner I told her that I was a Christian.

She put her baby on her shoulder, grabbed her bag, and without a word got up from my seat and went to sit on another far away seat at the back of the bus. I was numbed with shock. Unable to believe what had happened. After a while I collected my thoughts, chose not to take it too personally and began gazing out of the window again!

The incident shook me to the core. The India about which I studied in a Social Studies class and the India I met in real life where stark opposites of each other.