Never alone!

A beautiful card found at the church today.
Wishing everyone a blessed Sunday.
Refreshing and spiritually rejuvenating!

Mission Congress & Basic Christian Community Convention

View of the church from the East on 8th October, 2017

Mission Congress and the Basic Christian Community Convention was conducted at Vallarpadam on 6th, 7th & 8th. Nearly 4000 members participated in the congress and convention representing the communities from all over Kerala. The event is without precedence in the history of the Latin Catholic Church of Kerala. There could not be a better venue than Our Lady of Ransom's Basilica at Vallarpadam for such a big gathering. 

After the lunch everybody who had come from the different diocese of Kerala, spent some time quietly, inside the old Basilica. Up in the front in the red waist band is the secretary of Congregation for Evangelisation of people from Vatican Arch Bishop Protase Rugambwa and sitting along side His Excellency is our Archbishop Kalathiparambil.

Their humility and grace was such a blessing to see and experience. 

RLCC's publication stall at the venue. They had some very good books to sell at a very discounted rate. 

Convention & Congress concluded with a high mass celebrated by the Archbishops and the Bishops of the church. 

Mary's statue which was taken out for display during the two weeks of celebration of the feast was back inside the church in its usual place. 

Starting from the Marian Pilgrimage its been a month of celebration at Vallarpadam, with the retreat then the feast and now the convention and congress. The Diocesan administrators, the Rector, church members and the staff and a team of volunteers worked very hard to make everything a success.

May God Bless you all. May the light at Our Lady of Ransom at Vallarpadam burn ever brightly and those who seek her blessing find Peace and Joy of our Jesus in life.

8th day of the Feast

I couldn't, due to my work, come to the church on the feast day. As usual, the church was crowded on the feast day and the week preceding and following it. Pilgrims & devotees from far and wide and all religious background continued to visit the church on these days. As we all know, Lady of Ransom has a special place in the hearts of those who work in the sea. Such communities make their annual pilgrimage to Vallarpadam on these days. This year too, many of them were there on the day I went to the church. 

The procession after the 11.30 am mass. It went around the Rosary Park and returned to the church. 

Though it looks like ants on the church during day time, the lights were beautiful at night. 

My blessing this year was to know more about the Saint Peter Nolasco. An year earlier I had a dream in which I saw Saint Peter Nolasco standing at the altar of the church. I didn't know the saint then, on enquiry the church staff had told me that we have a statue of the saint in the church. On this feast day, I found the statue beautifully decorated and his name written in bold letters at the bottom. More about the saint in a later post. 

The best drink to have at any time of the day. Sugar Cane Juice are nutritious and very organic, unless the vendor contaminates it. The latest machine and technology make the juice maker's job easy and the waiting less for the thirsty. 

The feast of Our Lady falls in the month of "Kanni" which is called the best month in our Malayalam Calendar. Neither rainy nor summer, just the mild weather of Kerala. 

The Unmistakeable icons of the feast, the status quo accompaniments of the Church and the feast.

One more year, My Lord, I have come to the feast with my grand mother, that is the first visit I could remember and to all the feasts after that when I was home and here in Kerala. 

My Lord and My God, I pray bless all those who seek you with the grace and knowledge to live by You and live in your peace and Joy. 

Amen. 

After the rain!

A beautiful morning here in Kochi. After four days of continuous rain, the sky cleared very well and I could go to church and offer mass today

Feast

Retreat Prior to Mary's feast at Vallarpadam

Beautiful Gateway to Our Lady of Ransom Church

Evening Sun lighting up the Vallarpadam Sky

The new building near the highway lit by the evening's golden sun

With the annual retreat and the Marian pilgrimage this year's feast is just about starting at Vallarpadam. I was lucky to be there on a Monday evening.

Good luck

Eventually, the opportunity I was sharing in my last post materialised. They called me for the training with a few others which was infact open test of public display of skills.
I survived.
That was in the week before Onam, which took me with a happy mind to the festival week. 

Judgement

Every day My Lord Jesus we go through different situations. The influence of these situations influence our emotions and the judgement of the persons & circumstances involved, they can be sometimes positive, some other times negative. Negative influence lead us to fear, hatred, anger, revenge, jealousy. It crowds our mind and blind our eyes making us do wrong things, obstructing us from dealing with the situation and persons the right way.

Jesus, You taught us to be non - judgemental in our attitude. But I understand that it is not humanly possible always. Help us My Lord not to be carried away by situations and persons. Help us Jesus from emotions choking us and defeating us in understanding the persons and the situations.

In the work I do there are certain projects which are not only very lucrative but prestigious to be associated with. These are projects offered by certain specialised companies and they invite applications every year to train the ones they hire. Since I was relatively new to the industry I did not know about this and the colleagues who knew never shared the information. The opportunity stayed with a select few. This year, I came across the information and applied. Unfortunately, the company official who was very encouraging over the phone misplaced my application and proceeded to publish the list of the selected, naturally my name was not there. I was disappointed, not because I was not selected but because I didn't made the grade inspite of my hard work to be among the best.

An elderly colleague who came to know about my plight called up the official and enquired about the status of my application to which she  sheepishly admitted that she has misplaced my application and asked me to resend it.

Ofcourse the elderly colleague was a God sent Angel, but my judgement of the situation and the persons influenced were so negative that it blinded me completely to see things right and react well for a some time.

Jesus, My Lord, for ordinary people like me, to survive we need a good mind to work our way through the day, I Pray and ask in your name Jesus,  let me not judge and fill my heart with wrong thoughts. 

Thank you.