Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid;
From now on, you will be catching men.”
I have been catching women—as an ob/gyn and gyn/onco now! I have caught women who fainted, who cried, who delivered healthy babies and stillborns, and who got cancer for the first time or multiple times; family members who sobbed holding my hand; and, every morning and evening as I round on my patients post-surgery, those who say, “Thank you!”
But the last few weeks—I could not catch myself—I was slipping slowly and steadily into a rut of life—running to work, trying to do my best, and messing up. I finally just sat for mass and sang my heart out with the choir—I shut my eyes and sang all the hymns from my heart, and boy, that alone uplifted my soul! It pushed something in me and made me feel so light—I am calmer and better.
Catching men is a way of life for the evangelical Christians, and it sometimes transpires into a lot of hostility. Since I belong to a country where St. Thomas and St. Francis Xavier themselves converted ancestors centuries ago—the Portuguese rule added to the churches built—my mixed identity is as an Indian with an English name. A lot of the country has been ruled by people who want to cut down on us minority communities, and unfortunately right now the Catholic churches in India are financially being destabilized by the government.
Protests and sudden raids on churches and assaulting religious persons have become a regular occurrence. One such gruesome incident occurred when I was a young girl in another state of India. Quoting the Wikipedia page—
“Graham Stuart Staines (18 January 1941 – 23 January 1999) was an Australian Christian missionary who, along with his two sons, Philip (aged 10) and Timothy (aged 6), was killed by being burnt to death in India by members of the Bajrang Dal, a Hindutva organization.[1] In 2003, Bajrang Dal member Dara Singh was convicted of leading the murderers and was sentenced to life in prison.[2]
Staines had been working in Orissa (Odisha) since 1965 as part of an evangelical missionary organization named “Mayurbhanj Leprosy Home,” caring for people who had leprosy and looking after the tribal people in the area who lived in abject poverty.[3] However, some Hindutva groups alleged that during this time he had supposedly tricked, lured, or forcibly coerced many Hindus into believing in the Christian faith. The Wadhwa Commission noted that there was no evidence of forced conversions.[4] Staines’s widow Gladys has also denied the allegation of forced conversions.[5][6]
Gladys continued to live and work in India caring for those who were poor and were affected by leprosy until she returned home to Australia in 2004. In 2005, she was awarded the fourth highest civilian honor of India, the Padma Shri, in recognition for her work in Orissa.[7][8] In 2016, she received the Mother Teresa Memorial International Award for Social Justice.
Often as Christians we are subject to a lot of hate and injustice; sometimes my skin color and not my name get me patted down twice at an international airport or spoken to very rudely outside my country. As someone accustomed to all these ways of being treated like an outsider—I hope Jesus catches more men and WOMEN and helps us build his kingdom, one day at a time!
AMEN
