The bridge between the seen and unseen is a microscopic thread that launches one, however, to indescribable and unimaginable lands of multi-stellar lands of differences; the one is the land of the Living and the other the gloomy regions of silence that creates violent cries and furies of hopelessness. That which is a blessing eternal is unending and unconquerable by simple terrestrial means. The present transitory plane of existence is a bonus given to us for working our own destiny, whether to be transported to the lands of gardens, Paradise, or the dark dungeons where democracy is an outdated fashion that has no rights or permission to complain in the darkest region of the unknown. Our secular Governments give us choices, whereas the sub-terranean dark continents don’t entertain any memorandums; the ombudsman there is Beelzebub who is even craving to rule the celestial land of the Creator. This is the time and place that give us the choice of selecting who our lord should be after we exit from this plane. This choosing place of our destiny is a blessing given by the Most Holy One.

Understanding that there is lately a move to bifurcate between the spiritual and temporal administrative affairs of the Parish, I would like to shed some of my thoughts on this topic that I am familiar with for years, at least in a microscopic form. Jesus, our role model and His apostles have shown us a clear-cut policy of how one has to deal with what is due to God and what is due to Caesar. Despite the Son of Man was a pauper, not having any money, wealth or a place to hide His head, He set apart a portion of what He received from His faithful followers for the sake of helping the destitute and the downtrodden ones. The omniscient Saviour knew well in advance the way how His financial manager Judas had been manipulating the charity fund. In spite of having crystal knowledge of his derailed mind, Jesus, instead of changing his portfolio, warned him that he was pursuing a policy that befits him to be identified with the powers of darkness. “Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil? Jn.6: 70; 12: 5-6; 13: 18; Mt.26: 24-25. Despite all such grievous and heart-breaking warnings, he weaved his own destiny to receive the blood money of 30 silver coins that pushed him to his destiny, in spite Jesus had spelled out the true nature of his mission in His Sermon on the Mount, Mt.6: 19-24. Few of them are explained clearly below for our perception.

Wealth:
“Do not lay up yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves breaks in and steal,….For where your treasure is, there your heart be also. The eye is the lamp of the body…but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness…If the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness….No one can serve two masters;…you cannot serve God and Mammon”. The dichotomy meaning of ‘eye’ is very significant here. The external eye that has a focus of wealth and money certainly can darken the inner eye of the heart that emit light to every cell of our body, the light which washes our body from darkness. This light of the inner eye is the sparkle from the Holy Spirit who indwells in us. When our dark inner eye that disseminates darkness all over our body, we come to a state of not able to serve the Lord of the Light of Life, but only the Lord of Darkness. Money and wealth that can plunge us into the darkness weaves our share in the land of silence, where gnashing of teeth and biting of worm is the legacy that we benefit out of our glamorous earthly life. “Take heed, and beware of all covetousness; for a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions, Lk.12: 15.

The Builders of the Church:
Knowing such Heavenly message, the apostles also followed a similar lifestyle of penury and frugality after quitting from their skilled fishing work. St.Paul earned his livelihood by carpentry work, while working hard in his Master’s vineyard. “If we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content….For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through these craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs”, 1.Tim.6: 7-10. St.Peter said, “I have no silver and gold, but I give you what I have…”, Acts.3: 6. They translated such code of ethics in their actions, not only in their preaching. Not only that they forgo all their worldly wealth, family and lifestyle, they became the fishers of men by laying down their precious body and spirit that no living animal would like to part away with. They crossed the boundaries of earth for the evangelization of the gospel truth by spilling their lifeblood as a pawn to animals and bigots. Those who celebrate their birthdays and wedding anniversaries with pomp and decoration and leading a high-tech deluxe life should remember that those pioneers of faith had nothing in this world except Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. This has been the lifestyle of hermits and ascetics who shed their blood during the first three centuries of persecutions by the imperial Roman rulers and other rulers of other lands where the disciples devoted their life time for the Messiah, the root cause for them to break down the fortress of gloom. If our clergy claims that they are the heirs of the apostles; they also ought to have followed a narrow track that is full of trenches, puddles and wild animals.

Apostles’ modus- operandi:
“And the 12 summoned the body of the disciples and said,” It is not right we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables....Pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word…”, Acts.6: 1-6. The apostles selected 7 men exclusively for their daily distributions of food and service. There is a difference between serving at Lord’s Table, Altar, and serving at the tables; many people have conceived a wrong notion that giving to charity work is as equivalent to serve the Lord in parish works, despite both are aligned to be together because there is no faith without charity works, but there can have almsgiving without faith for an everyday person.

Serving at the Altar is a Holy Spirit’s special clerical call that entirely requires full dedication and devotion. There is not much room for them to get muddled up with administrative and other works of paraphernalia that includes financial and other social dealings. Clergy’s mission is to serve the food for the souls, for which they need their full time in a sort of monastic way of life; frugality, detachment and denunciation is the language of that life culture because their field is an ocean that has no bounds and limits. Religious ministry, which embraces both spiritual and physical service, should be the only mission for the clergy that mainly administers the food for the spiritually hungry, not administration and financial dealings that breeds cronyism and animosity. St.Paul even didn’t baptize many into the church, so also Jesus.

Spiritual Commitment and Family Life:
The family life is more important than serving the flock because an ideal family life of clergy itself is a witness of the Lord. “If anyone aspires to the office of bishop, he desires a noble task. Now a bishop must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, sensible, dignified, hospitable, an apt teacher, no drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and no lover of money. He must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in everyway, for if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he care for God’s church?, 1.Tim.3: 1-7. “Just as a city set on a hill, let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven”, Mt.5: 16.

This is the case of a presbyter too. “If any man is blameless, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of being profligate or insubordinate. “For a bishop, as God’s steward, must be blameless…, Titus.1: 5-9. A priest who earns disrepute due to his dysfunctional family life and transactions bring shame to the Lord and the flock; hence he has to find more time to be with his wife and children for earning good credentials and credibility for the family that also is a part and parcel of his divine mission. A sacramental spiritual life, together with an ideal family and social life for a cleric, including the believers, invites a full-time spiritual exercise that includes meditation, preparations for preaching and counseling. He is responsible for carving out salvation for the flock, as well as to his dependants and for himself and also looking after the spiritual well being of his dear ones. A true cleric is crucified with Christ.

Parish Administration:
Wherever the humans congregate, it will be solitude for the dark powers for their mission work that brings a multitude of problems, which manufacture sins on a mass scale, particularly in the religious venues, where the Creator is meant to be worshipped with purity of heart, full vigour and enthusiasm. Just as what Jesus and His apostles had done, there must be a clear-cut distinctive gulf between theocracy and plutocracy that distinguish between the temporal and spiritual fields. As the flesh is weak, the Vicar shouldn’t be allowed to handle the administrative and financial matters at the same time because his divine work field is unending and unseen. Leave the issue of financial affairs to the Parish MC that collect and spend money, for which the full authority should rest upon the MC to run the parish. The Vicar is there to perform and run all the sacramental rites and the duties involved in the spiritual arena. The Parish Managing Committee, therefore, should have a laity president to run the Parish, with a restrictive liaison involvement with the clergy at certain point of time where there is a complaint from the members or MC. It simply means that the MC is the overall overseer of the parish financial and administrative venues. A Vicar in such a predicament will try to become a centre of attraction to the parish and the community by his high spiritual and moral life.

Whichever, the Vicar tries to exemplify as a real shepherd, there could be opportunities for conflicts of interests and personal gratification to play with money and power games. If Judas could be dragged out of the inner circle of Jesus due to money and power gimmicks, who else will have the immunity to refrain from the worldly magnetism of power, money and sex? Despite there is election for the MC and organizational positions, the despotic tendency of the Vicar at the present set-up, comes to prominence, on accounts of personal interests and selfishness because he will be there for only a limited period of three or four years. His eye usually is mainly how to run in a cheap popular way and survive there for that short period of time without emitting much smoke and fumes. Only few members of the MC will have certain goals and vision of the future of the parish that can cater spiritually and beneficially to the members on a long time basis.

What usually happens is that the Vicar tries to get the support of a group, usually the youth, that doesn’t have much experience and prognosis of spiritual maturity, so that he gains victory over the dissident members to the periphery and make a good harvest of implanting himself safely and solidly. Few senior laity members who are vying for power also get hold of coming to the front by shedding crocodile tears for the youth and women, a copycat culture of the secular typhoon, that is insinuated for charity work and bringing the parish modus-operandi into a pattern of club and cultural life. Money has converted today’s human beings as a mad and paranoid species due to the club life that instills the passions of the flesh to be dominated over the inner instincts; otherwise what is the reason for the misuse of alcohol, hard drugs and ecstasy tablets. Today’s churches and religions tend to serve for mainly the body of man, not for souls. Fanaticism and religious extremisms are the escape routes of inner profligacy that whet the body for any animal masquerades. No hesitation of bringing the parish as a nerve centre of a pagan and street culture because of the lust for power that rules the day. In this deluxe high-tech life, the exoteric that suffocates the esoteric takes prominence in every walk of life.

Deficiencies of today’s religious ministers:
Right carpenters for seasoned woodworks. Before the dawn of modern academic theology, the devotees used to sit at the feet of Malpans or Gurus for acquiring knowledge and wisdom that equip them for a higher spiritual attainment. Such monastic discipline that caters a frugal and denunciation life used to regulate their whole life with high potency of spiritual enlightenment. Materialism and modern education swallowed everything that was there once conducive for our spiritual nourishment. One who is only lisping into the young adulthood and inducted into a theological course has not enough insight in sifting between the ideal and pedestrian; implanting the seeds of a hybrid theology that germinate and bloom into his heart flower tend to make him an ordinary religious stereotype.

As a young minister has no knowledge and experience of today’s financial and market economy, high-tech miracles and its fall outs and backlashes and secular apathy for religiosity, his style of running the parish can fragment it into different layers of activists and propagandists. Once when his survival is threatened, he is likely to adopt a policy that appeases the inexperienced and misguided because his deficient spiritual literacy and numeracy and its applications in all fields of life leave him as a rudderless minister who fails miserably as a caterer of inner food. The real threat that befalls in such occasion is religious apathy and aversion, bringing in all materialistic, pagan and street culture into the body of Christ. High pompous celebrations and decorations are the outward sign of inward moral and religious turpitude. Autocracy and cronyism, the artificial yardsticks, only can be the saver of such a regime. Even God finds it difficult to control a sophisticated and stereotyped laity that is in sixes and sevens due to materialistic acrobatics.

Reading and writing:
The higher inner ability that comes by the synchronization of the body and spirit of man by rigorous training within the age of forty years, according to the theory of Plato’s philosopher king, is a rare commodity of today because artificial ripening before the fruit is allowed to maturity will be a thing that is not useful to society. Wisdom is a product of maturity and age. Practical wisdom comes by being with natural laws and keen observation, whereas piety and religious thirst is an outcome of meditation, denunciation and reading and writing, despite it is usually an inborn impulse. Reading is a communication with other souls who are alive and beyond the veil of the grave. To be conversant with the autobiography and biography of Church Fathers and their writings, not the animated mass media inculcation and cheap magazines that thrill the senses, will have an impact upon the life in the early chapters of one’s life.

The present theological students are the products of either religious extremisms and banal writings of crossbreed theological hyperboles of pagan nature. Theology has become a science now, not a medium of spiritual high rises any more. As our modern clerics don’t get a chance to be in communion with any of these qualitative mental and social or secular qualifications of higher values, due to their induction into the control of the flock at an early stage in life, they are likely to be drifted away to any direction to any wind that anchor their small canoe to any bank, adding more head weight which harness the community that they are leading. This is only an observation that should help the hierarchy for taking a U turn and examine our strengths and weaknesses, not for shooting at the messenger who is only a fragile mechanism of flesh and blood. Classical studies and literatures are inevitable recipes for our spiritual and inner development because most of what we have produced under the glimmer of electric light and heat has proven to be is of mundane and materialistic. We have choked our souls for over feeding our bodies that find its anchorage in ephemeral and banal impulses.

Exoteric versus esoteric:
That which is terrestrial is always against celestial. In order to compensate the celestial, people nowadays switch to fake and fancy spiritual dynamites. Every Perunal festivity now a days is in the model of opening and closing ceremony of the Olympics games, the outward show that kills the essence of spirituality. Electrical decorations that carve out the saints’ and Jesus’ image upon the church, graveyard and other buildings are the signs of a showcase spirituality. Our religious ministers who like to harvest fame and money blindly support the groups that make use of such simulations for their glamour and glory. Choir group, the match-making place, is an unwanted appendage that performs orchestra for enhancing their own magnetic personality. Candles or censors, portraits and icons that are only symbolic expressions have become excesses of our paraphernalia which have been substituted for our repenting tears. We don’t have the glow of our inner eyes to realize that self-worship, such as birthday and wedding day prayers and celebrations and heretical fasting and festivals, is suicidal. The peripheral theological veterans who indoctrinate their teenage students with fanaticism of materialistic nature take the budding generations as their toys that dance to their tune and remote-controlling. Though the war against the exoteric against esoteric has been there from the very beginning, the electricity age that killed the inner eye and its light has driven out the grieving Spirit from us, leading the way for the infernal forces to permeate their darkness in our system that infect all sort of maladies and lethal diseases.

Sound Systems:
The serene and tranquil countryside is polluted with thunderous sound of electrical sound system that neither allow one to sleep during day or night nor think profusely for the cleansing of the inner sound system that run man who is formed from cosmic and comic sound. We were not allowed to film or record our worship, but now it has become an industry even for clerics to sell the liturgy in tapes and CDs, thereby annihilating the sanctity of our worship that once used to soothe and wash our body systems and natural environments of rural lifestyles. Sound pollution is a disastrous phenomenon that can pervert and distort our whole being because the Word, sound, became man. “Silence is the best speaker”. Even if the influence of pop culture and secular stereotypes are a threat to the main stream churches and becoming a carbon copy of the charismatic avalanche is not the remedy to stop the flow of believers into other pop churches and cults. Mixing the heterogeneous with homogeneous and making an impure amalgam is not an ideal set-up in any religious venues. The carnivorous anarchy in the main stream churches is a sound harvest for the charismatic denominations, the place of sound and fury signifying nothing. The basic element of man is sound and colour; sound pollution is suicidal.

The clergy that don’t have a clue of the esoteric knowledge misinterpret the word of God and thrive by the net profit of it in an irreligious way. This is how the blind lead the blind. Both inside and outside of man is important here and hereafter. Allow the clergy to undergo rigorous training up to the age of 40 under the Gurus of the first order, and then throw them into the vineyard of clerical works. As the trend is in an adverse direction, the late move to separate between the work of the clergy and the laity, spiritual and temporal, in each parish is a healthy change; despite there could be problems in any sphere due to animal magnetism, particularly when the social and moral anarchy rule in this doomsday culture.

When there are disputes in the MC presided by the laity, there must be enough room for the Vicar to negotiate in ameliorating the situation in an amicable manner. Such a system will only give enough chance for the clergy to devote more time in his spiritual exercises. Meddling with parish administration and money and spirituality is a volatile and firebrand cocktail that can overturn the real life into a carnival of pandemonium. Don’t think that I am accusing the clergy or laity; as we don’t have time to brood over to the inner instincts, when the adults in the family are all working for daily livelihood, the ultimate casualty come to our spiritual life that affects us and everyone around us.

If the so-called role model swerves out of the way, the flock or the followers also either accuse or pursue the supposed lodestar who finds no time in coping with the pressures of daily life and spiritual crises, devaluing the institution that finds difficulty in catering the sumptuous spiritual food. Physicians, first heal thyself. The laity that tries to influence the clergy for spiritual holocaust also is equally responsible for the moral turpitude that affects one and all in that parish or community. We know that time is money in this sophisticated, organized chaos that certainly affect our religious vigour; it is seemingly better to demarcate between the temporal and spiritual because both serve as the head and tail of our ephemeral earthly life. “You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body, 1.Cor.6: 19-20.

[Contents of the Articles are personal perspectives and views of the Author]