Wise Men Always Seek Him

A journalist once asked Mother Teresa, “If I ask you, ‘Who are you?’ and ‘What are you doing?’, what will your answer be?” With her characteristic simplicity, she replied, “I am a little lamp in the hands of God, and I am trying to share this light with people living in darkness.”

On this Sunday after Christmas, (or on the solemnity of Epiphany), we recall the captivating story of the wise men’s visit to the infant Jesus, a tale of a star and the extraordinary journey it inspired. These wise men embarked on a long and arduous journey to Israel, prompted by the appearance of a unique star that signified the birth of the King of the Jews. Their persistence eventually brought them to the feet of the newborn Jesus, where they paid Him homage.
Insights into the Wise Men’s Journey

Who exactly were these “wise men from the East”? The Bible offers limited details about their identity, but traditions provide several theories. Some suggest they were priests from Persia; others believe they were astrologers from Babylon. A longstanding tradition identifies them as three kings from the Orient, named Melchior, Balthazar, and Caspar.

The Bible doesn’t specify their number, despite mentioning three types of gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The significance of the story, however, lies not in their identity or number but in their actions.

Why Were They Called Wise?
Evangelist Matthew calls them “wise men,” and their actions justify this title:
They Sought Jesus Diligently
The wise men followed the divine sign of the star, journeying great distances to find and worship Him.

They Overcame Challenges
They persevered through the hardships of travel, the indifference of others, and even personal disappointments. Their determination reminds us that seeking God often requires persistence and faith, even in the face of trials.

They Worshipped Him
Upon finding the child Jesus, they offered Him gifts and worshipped with reverence, acknowledging His divine kingship.
Lessons for Us

What can we learn from these wise men? God calls us to seek Him with the same diligence in our lives. The “star” that guides us today is His Word, which illuminates our path. It is through the Word of God and the life of the Church that we encounter Christ and grow in a personal relationship with Him.

Just as the wise men followed the star, we too must follow the Word of God, allowing it to guide us through the deserts and challenges of life. Walking with the Church, where the Word has pitched its tent, ensures that our journey is lit by a light far greater than any other.
Becoming Stars for Others

Mother Teresa’s words, “I am a little lamp in the hands of God,” remind us that, like the wise men, we are called to reflect Christ’s light. By seeking Him and living in His light, we too can become guiding stars for others, leading them to the source of all light, Christ Himself.

Let us resolve to follow the Word of God diligently, letting it shine in our lives, so that we may, in turn, illuminate the lives of others. Amen.

Birthday of Modern India

15th August 2013, modern India is celebrating its 67th Birth Day. As citizens of this nation and heirs of a great cultural heritage of the world, we are proud to say ‘mera bharath mahan’. 

The leaders of our freedom movement, under the stewardship of Mahatma Gandhi, had a dream of an independent and prosperous India. On this day in 1947, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru took the first step towards the realization of it by hoisting the Tricolour flag at the Red Fort. The journey we began on that day is now 67 years old. We have achieved much in these 67 years. We should never forget the sacrifice of our national heroes, who sacrificed their life for our well-being. 

Today is certainly a day to celebrate the success of our democracy. However, on this occasion we should also introspect about what remains to be done. Do we have independence in its true and full sense. In the early hours of the 15th of August, 1947, when our nation had just become Independent, our first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru spoke to the nation and asked one important question: “Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?” This is a very relevant question, because as we have the right to freedom we also have certain responsibilities. We would achieve independence in the true and full sense only when we are able to banish corruption, poverty, illiteracy and discrimination on the basis of caste, religion and gender from our country. As responsible citizens of India, we must learn from our failures and we must make every effort to resolve these problems so that our nation may grow into independence in its full and true sense. 

Even as we face these problems, we should be encouraged by the fact that we have achieved extraordinary successes in many areas in the last 67 years and now we need to continue these successes in new areas of human and social development. Today more of our citizens than ever before, and specially the youth, are taking interest in issues related to the progress of our society and country. We know that the difficult problems which India face can be resolved only with the cooperation of the common man. If we stand together as one nation, I believe, no power in the world can stop our country from achieving new heights of progress and development. What is needed is that we work together as one people for the success of our country. Let us once more resolve that we will continue to work for a progressive, modern and prosperous India. 

In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad, there is a sloka:
sarvé bhavantu sukhinaḥ , sarvé santu nirāmayāḥ |
sarvé bhadrāṇi pashyantu , mā kashchid_duḥkha-bhāg-bhavét ||

It means, may all become happy, may all be free from illness, may all experience what is auspicious, may no one suffer. May this be our prayer this day!

Priesthood: a Vocation and a Profession

In St. Ephrem’s Theological College, Satna, I am taking a course on ‘Professional Ethics’ for the fourth year theology students. As we were discussing in the class room whether there should be an ‘ethical code for Catholic priests’ and can priesthood be identified as a profession, students began to raise different, rather contradictory opinions. The following is an article on the basis of those discussions and some of my personal reflections (definitely, thoughts acquired from my personal readings) on this issue.

  Professional ethics, in the simplest sense, is the discipline of applying ethical principles to professional affairs and relations to determine what is right/ wrong or good/ bad in those affairs and relations. It offers people principles and guidelines to handle professional situations with ethical priorities in mind.[1] So, as Velasques notes, it is “a study of moral standards and these apply to the systems and organizations through which modern societies produce and distribute goods and services, and to the people who work within these organizations. Professional ethics, in other words, is a form of applied ethics. It includes not only the analysis of moral norms and values, but also attempts to apply the conclusions of this analysis to that assortment of institutions, technologies, transactions, activities, and pursuits that we call profession”.[2] It encompass the personal, organizational and corporate standards of behaviour expected of professionals. According to Ruth Chadwick, “professional ethics concerns the moral issues that arise because of the specialist knowledge that professionals attain, and how the use of this knowledge should be governed when providing a service to the public”.[3] According to S. Kannan and K. Srilakshmi, they “are moral principles, rules and standard of conduct guiding professionals in performing their functions”.[4]

In the present day society the interest in a ‘code of ethics in the work place’ seems to have assumed much importance and we see it everywhere. Each year we hear more reports of universities and professional institutes offering special courses in professional ethics and offering seminars on the ethical dimensions of their profession. But practically very little attention has been given to the ethical problems arising in the ministry of a priest.[5] “In general, priests, unlike many other professionals, have no code of ethics to which they can turn for support and guidance”.[6] Today, many people (faithful) complain and express their disappointment for lack of professionalism in priestly ministry and they opine that today we have a lot of confused, directionless, incompetent, inefficient, insecure, dictatorial or authoritative, visionless priests. “The idea of priestly professionalism may make some people nervous and may raise discomforting questions. But people who are comfortable with it see priests lagging behind in professionalism in their ministry and service”.[7] In this context, our interest here is the moral demands that arise from the professional exercise of any pastoral ministry.

   The trend to make ministry more professional has aimed at improving the quality of the practice of ministry. But the sense in which ministry can be considered a profession and how professional ethics can help us to understand the moral responsibilities of the minister is a controversial issue in itself. It seems to me that we have more to gain than to lose by qualifying pastoral ministry as a profession, by expecting pastoral ministers to act professionally, and by holding them accountable as professionals. Yet, a common objection that we hear for treating pastoral ministry as a profession is that it is a religious vocation. As a ‘vocation’, so the objection goes, it is such a unique kind of Christian leadership that it cannot be compared to other professions. They argue that, to ‘professionalize’ pastoral ministry is to reduce it to tasks and to ignore its spiritual, transcendent dimension. My conviction is that pastoral ministry as religious vocation is compatible with pastoral ministry as profession. In fact, the two aspects strengthen one another. I contend that, because pastoral ministry is a religious vocation we must even more respect the responsibilities that come with being a professional as well. Although the ministry may not be strictly parallel to the other professions in every feature, it is sufficiently analogous to them to warrant learning from them and drawing from their procedures and standards, and then adapting where there are true differences. I am afraid that if we were to cut ministry loose from professional requirements altogether, we would easily fall into the temptation of saying, “I have a vocation from God; therefore, rules and expectations that apply to professionals do not apply to me”. But we must resist the temptation to hide behind a ‘religious vocation’ in order to avoid fulfilling sometimes demanding moral duties. To give ministers an exemption from the moral demands of being a professional on the basis that they have a ‘vocation’ opens the way for all sorts of special pleading to make excuses for substandard performances or even moral improprieties.

   To say that pastoral ministry is a vocation means that it is a free response to God’s call in and through the community to commit oneself in love to serve others. The communal dimension of a vocation means that the call to ministry is heard within the Church, is sustained by the Church, and is to serve the mission of the Church. There is no private, individualistic vocation to ministry. We are not called into ministry primarily for our own benefit, but for the sake of the mission of the church. A person’s attraction to ministry and ability to serve must be recognized and confirmed by the Church through the bishop. In whatever shape pastoral ministry takes, the communal dimension of vocation means that pastoral ministers ought to give priority to serving the good of the community over individual goals.

The voluntary nature of a vocation means that we must be willingly self-disciplined so as to subordinate self-interest to serving the well-being of others. The transcendent dimension of a vocation is that we stand for ‘something more’. As a vocation, then, pastoral ministry is a free response to our experience of God in and through the community. Through the ministry, we live a life of service that promotes the mission of the Church to bring everyone into fuller communion with God. If we try to understand the history of the development of the professions, it shows that the word ‘profession’ in its original nous means ‘to stand for something’. What we ‘profess’ to be, defines our fundamental commitment to the community. The oldest use of the term ‘profession’ carried fundamentally a religious meaning. The professions derive from the religious setting of monks and nuns making a religious ‘profession’ of their faith in God by taking the vows of poverty, celibate chastity, and obedience. So, making a ‘profession’ and having a ‘vocation’ go together. By the late Middle Ages, through a process of secularization, non-religious institutions were set up to serve the functions once provided by the Church. Even though the term ‘professional’ no longer applied just to religious, it continued to carry the connotation of being motivated by love to commit oneself to serve the world.

The trademark of being a professional in the classical sense entailed the commitment to acquire expert knowledge and skills and to serve human needs with good moral character. Ideally, then, professionals are to reflect a high degree of congruence between what they publicly declare to be committed to and the way they carry out their tasks. They are to apply their specialized knowledge and skills according to standards of excellence for meeting, first and foremost, basic human needs and not to be seeking to advance their own interests.

   This classical sense of being professional is lost on many today. It comes from the negative connotations associated with being professional. For example, when some hear ‘professional’ they think immediately of someone’s being interested more in making big money than in rendering a service. For others, being professional means having the privileges that come with high status in society. If this is what being professional means, then no wonder some pastoral ministers resist being identified as ‘professional’. These characteristics all run counter to what true pastoral ministry is about.

   But being ‘professional’, in its classic sense, does not mean any of these things. The positive meaning of being professional connotes a specialized competence, a commitment to excellence integrity, selfless dedication to serve the community, and to holding the public trust. These are features everyone wants to consider characteristic of pastoral ministry as well. I agree with Gaylord Noyce, who concludes his essay, The Pastor Is (Also) a Professional, by saying, “Thus, rightly understood, the professional tag is not destructive. Quite the contrary. It can firm up our sense of purpose and our understanding of how to go about the work of ministry”.[8] Pastoral ministry is a vocation and a profession means recognizing the moral responsibilities of being a pastoral minister that arise not only from the social conventions of being professional but also (ultimately) from the voluntary positive response to the invitation of God to be his ministers in this world in a very special way.

---

[1] Cfr. Mathew Illathuparambil, Business Ethics, Macfast Publications, Thiruvalla, 2005, 41.

[2] M. Velasques, Business Ethics: Concepts and Cases, Pearson Education, New Delhi, 2002, 15.

[3] Ruth Chadwick, “Professional Ethics” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, E. Craig (Ed.), 1998.

[4] S. Kannan, - K. Srilakshmi, Human Values and Professional Ethics, Texmann Publications, New Delhi, 2012, 131.

[5] Cfr. Edward LeRoy Long, A Survey of Recent Christian Ethics, Oxford University Press, New York, 1982, 151.

[6] Richard M. Gula, Ethics in Pastoral Ministry, Paulist Press, New York, 1996, 3.

[7] Paul Fernandes, “Priesthood and Professionalism: The Need to Support the Process of Professional Development in the Church”, in Jnanadeepa Journal of Religious Studies, 13/2 (2010),166-167.

[8] Gaylord Noyce, “The Pastor Is (Also) a Professional”, in The Christian Century, 105 (Nov. 1988), 976.

Challenge of Value Education and Task of Professional Ethics in India

In India, the need for value education has become all the more important in the modern context where globalization, consumerism, religious fundamentalism etc. have gained stronger roots. The impact of mass media, particularly visual media has tremendous impact in the minds of modern youth. In this complex background, there is a craving need to impart value education in the proper perspective especially in the midst of professional students and youth so that they are not misled. The family system in India has a long tradition of imparting values from generation to generation. However, with the progress of modernity and fast changing in the role of parents, it has not been very easy for parents to impart relevant values in their children. Here comes the importance of value education in schools in a general way and naturally in professional institutes in a specific way.

The Catholic Church has always given careful consideration to the paramount importance of value education in the life of human beings and its ever-growing influence in the social progress of this age. Considering the importance of value education, in India, the Preamble to the Constitution and National Policy of Education 1986/1992 has focussed the need for inculcation of values in children.

Man is basically a moral being and he cannot simply ignore or be indifferent to the call of the good - to do good and avoid evil as far as he can (natural tendency). This moral imperative binds all his freely made plans, choices and actions, including of course professions and business enterprises. Profession and business is not just for money and material gains but for people. In the first decades of the twentieth century people began to think more about human dignity, human rights,social justice etc. So, in the human-centred and social nature profession and business makes it necessarily an ethical affair. 

Professional education is a branch specializing in the various aspects of effective profession like social service, production, distribution, publicity, marketing, human resource development, management, etc. Ethical principles required to discern and assess the rights and wrongs in all these operations. They are to be sought in the discipline of ethics. Therefore, professional ethics supposes earnest and enlightened collaboration between profession and ethics. It should be handled by persons qualified in ethics/morality and have enough expertise in the ground realities of profession. No teacher in professional ethics could provide his students with ready-made solutions for all the diverse ethical problems they might face in their professional career. But they should be equipped with the ethical vision, value-hierarchy and application skills which will stand them in good stead in their career decisions so as to protect and promote in the best way possible the good, well-being and interests of all those who are really involved in a given profession.

Further, most of the topics constituting professional education as such are very practical, result-oriented, evoking and perfecting the natural talents of the students involved. They are therefore appealing and challenging. In this context, ethics which is theoretical and rather prescriptive is not likely to be equally appealing and that makes its teaching and learning more difficult. It may also appear to some as a block to ‘smart solutions’ of easy profit making and easily solving problems, and sometimes ‘smart solutions’ expressing their skills and creativity. Here the policy of the institution in highlighting the importance of ethics in professional education and practice and the dexterity of the teacher in handling the subject dedicatedly and innovatively are important.