I BELIEVE IN………

“I believe in God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth”. This is a traditional Christian Credo. The Marxist differs, and says, “I believe in Man, the maker of heaven on earth”. How does a Christian respond to the Marxist challenge? My personal credo is a combination of both. I therefore profess “I believe in Man the maker of heaven on earth, by God’s grace “!

So let me share my credo, with you. For millennia, the Catholic Church preached about the here after; heaven, hell, final judgement etc. It often lost focus on the imminent, the here and now. Christians were exhorted to accept poverty, injustice and pain, as part of the redemptive suffering of Jesus, for which they would be suitably rewarded in the next life. Unfortunately, many Christians did not have the “stamina” required to hold out for so long, for something intangible, but blindly accepted in faith. So they “fell by the wayside”.

It is this “fallen state” that bred the French Revolution and Marxism, in the Christian bastion of Europe. Hand Christianity laid equal emphasis on the existential as to the escalogical, we would never have heard the Bastille cry for “Fraternity, Equality and Liberty”, nor the Marxist accusation that “Religion is the opium of the masses”. Pardon a pun, but did the triumphalistic, opulent, holy Catholic Church, actually make attendance at Sunday Mass the opiate for all that afflicted the masses?

I am an existential Christian. For me Christianity or my personal faith, cannot be lived or expressed in a vacuum. Thankfully my faith evolved in the Post Vatican II era. Had I been writing such things before that, I would either have been ex-communicated, or would have left the Church in disgust.

Vatican II wrought a revolutionary change in the mindset of the church. We may be familiar with Vatican II ecclesiology and the landmark document “Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World”. In the light of what I have just stated, it is befitting to recall the opening lines of that historic document. “The joys and the hopes, the grief and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in anyway afflicted; these too are the joys and hopes, the grief and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in these hearts …. This community realises that it is truly and intimately linked with mankind and its history“(GS 1).

My Christian faith (credo) is based on my experience of Jesus (Christology), which in turn impacts my understanding of, and involvement in, the Church (Ecclesiology). I was brought up as a good Catholic, who did not know Jesus! I encountered him in a youth animators programme conducted in 1975 by Holy Cross priest John Desrochers. Like the rich young man in the gospel, I had kept all the commandments (cf Mat 19:20), but Jesus did not think it enough. He was exhorted to leave everything and follow Jesus, but he could not do that, and Jesus was sad (Mat 19: 21–22).

I felt like that young man. I began to pray and study the Bible. I felt the call of John the Baptist “Prepare a way for the Lord” (Mat 3:3). After 6 months of search and study Bp Patrick D’souza of Varanasi directed me to Jyotiniketan Ashram, Barielly, run by a holy priest Augustine Deenabandhu OFM Cap. Here again I was enamoured of the scriptures and the life of St. Francis of Assisi. His early life and aspirations were so similar to my own. Even our ages matched – 25! I could no longer defer a decision. As a dedicated layman I took the name of chhotebhai (friar minor in Hindi). I literally followed the Franciscan and Gospel way, travelling without money, just a set of clothes, a Bible and a crucifix in a cloth bag. I also worked among youth.

Then I bumped into the Jesuits. I made two 30 day Ignatian retreats – one at Fr Dan Rice’s ashram in Bihar, and the other under Fr. Josef Neuner SJ, at Denobili College, Pune. From the Jesuits I learned the gift of discernment, to comprehend what God is asking of me. I realised that I needed to follow the teachings of Vatican II, being inserted in the world, not isolated from it. I got married and now live a “secular” life, but with strong convictions and commitment to both church and society.

To commemorate 2000 years of Jesus, I encapsulated my thoughts in my book “Beyond 2000 – The Other Side”. It was my way of sharing what Jesus meant to the modern world. I was happy and satisfied with this monumental faith sharing of 300 pages. Then I got goose pimples. As I was writing the concluding chapter I had a rather deflating experience – for all my cleverness, I really didn’t know who Jesus was!

However, during this exercise, I began to identify myself more and more with St. Peter – his request to Jesus to leave him, his desire to bask in reflected glory at the Transfiguration, his triple denial of his master, and ultimately his inability to categorically state that he loved Jesus. Peter was weak in faith. Yet Jesus said that on this rock (pathar/ petrus) would he build his Church. St. Paul fathomed this mystery when he confessed, “When I am weak, then I am strong (2 Cor 12:10). My journey of faith in Jesus has led me through the experiences of great saints like John the Baptist, Francis of Assisi, Ignatius of Loyola, Peter and Paul. Let me be but a small fraction of what they were, so that I may strive to make heaven on earth, by the grace of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Brother.

* The writer is the author of 3 books, and hundreds of articles on Christian faith and praxis.