The Editorial November 2011 was another memorable and colorful month filled with blessed events. Christ-mas is already in the air and our parish activities are geared up for all the events coming up. One of the most eagerly anticipated and still ongoing activities is Christmas caroling at different locations across the Greater To-ronto Area with families and friends. This is one event that brings families together in the Christmas spirit. Thanks to a tremendous response and lots of practice, caroling activities have been a roaring success so far, and have launched us into the Christmas spirit. On November 20th, our parish youth and chil-dren participated in the Christ-mas Carol Night organized by the Kerala Christian Ecumenical Fel-lowship, Toronto (KCEFT). The event is a reminder that despite small denominational differ-ences, we ultimately worship the same God and His only Son, Je-sus Christ. The coming together of excellent choirs from different
churches under one roof was a dazzling spectacle, a musical feast to the ears; the united spirit being the shining beacon. This month, we have a feature written on “25 Days of Fast be-fore Nativity of Our Lord” by Neil Thazhamon which talks about a brief history of what this fasting means, how it originated and how it has influenced our Ma-lankara Church community to-day. Furthermore, we have an article by Rajesh Jacob called “Eucharistic Adoration – An es-sential component of Catholic Life” which gives us an inspira-tional lesson and reminds us what it feels like to be “at home.” Last but not least, in the column “Snippets from Science – Glimpse of God’s Beautiful Mind” by Amit Mathews, his article “The Road to Eden” takes on the debate of Creation Vs. Evolution. Wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a Blessed and Prosperous New Year 2012. ~ The Editors
Ecumenical On November 19th, our church participated in the annual Ecu-menical program. The Ecumeni-cal is an event that is meant to promote the solidarity of its sis-ter churches, while at the same time, showcase the musical tal-ents present within each church. A total of twelve
churches participated this year, each with their own songs and instruments. The Christmas spirit was prevalent throughout the event as members of each church filled the auditorium wearing different colours of reds, greens and blue. As for our church, the two songs were
sung by the Sunday School children and the youth, and played by a guitarist and pian-ist. All in all, the event was a joyous and memorable experi-ence and was a wonderful way to start the Christmas festivi-ties. ~ Jonathan M.
Holy Father’s Intentions for the Month
GENERAL INTENTION That all peoples may grow in harmony and peace through mutual understanding and respect. MISSION INTENTION That children and young people may be messengers of the Gospel and that they may be respected and preserved from all violence and exploi-tation.
Eucharistic Adoration - An essential component of Catholic Life Summer vacations are a time of great joy filled with cherished memories. I remember travel-ling for sixteen hours and com-ing back home for summer va-cations after each year was done at the university. The warm welcome, the home made food, and the undivided atten-tion, I would receive at home were great experiences of love. Turning back to those years, I would say, for me “to come home” meant, being in the com-pany of those who love me the
most. It was much later in life that I realized that one could come home to one more person- JE-SUS – the one who loves you the most. On Sundays, as we see the Holy Mass, most of us may remember for a short dura-tion, about the presence of Je-sus in the blessed sacrament. But later, as soon as the final blessings are done at the end of the mass, we meet our friends, share our stories, have our fun, and we are back to the normal
day to day chores, agendas and anxieties for another week. We often zip by in our fast cars, on safe roads; we would easily pass by a catholic church with-out realising that the Blessed Sacrament (Jesus in the Eucha-rist) is present there in the tab-ernacle. We would know about churches that hold perpetual adoration, en route to our work, or close to our home, or close to our grocery store, or close to other places we frequently visit,
Snippets from Science – Glimpses of God’s Beautiful Mind THE ROAD TO EDEN Richard Dawkins is a British Ethologist and also one of the most well known Evolutionary Biologists on the planet today. He is also one of the staunchest atheists known, and backs his reasoning with his knowledge of Biology. Most of his works are bestsellers. He shot to fame in 1976 with his book The Selfish Gene, where he introduces the concept of Evolution. Another famous book in which he fur-ther explores the concept is The Blind Watchmaker (1986). His more recent works, like his 2006 book, The God Delusion, have directly attacked the con-cept of God or any supernatural entity. According to him, believ-ers in God are in a state of de-lusion (goes without saying, the very title of the book suggests that!). In 2006, he was part of a national debate on the topic of God vs. Science. Supporting the concept of God was the famous American Biologist Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland; well known for his work on the Human Genome Project. Both of them made ex-cellent points and no clear win-ner emerged at the end of the debate. I welcome all readers of our parish, especially our par-ish Youth to read excerpts from the debate that came out in the
November 13, 2006 issue of Time Magazine. The link:http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171, 1555132,00.html. In this month’s column, I face up to some of the arguments put forward by Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene and from a purely scientific standpoint, make a humble attempt to set the record straight. An “accident” in soup A current evolutionary position on life’s starting point is sum-marized very well in Dawkins’ book The Selfish Gene. He speculates (like most support-ers of Evolution theory) that in the beginning, Earth had an at-mosphere composed of carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia and water. Through energy supplied by sunlight, lightning and ex-ploding volcanoes, these simple compounds reacted and re-formed into “Amino acids”. Amino acids are the building blocks of Proteins, constituents of all living matter, and an ab-solute requirement for life. He goes on to theorize that a vari-ety of these Amino acids gradu-ally accumulated in the sea and combined into protein like com-pounds. Ultimately, Dawkins conjectures, the ocean became an “organic soup”. Then accord-
ing to Dawkins’ description, a particularly remarkable mole-cule was formed “by accident” – a molecule that had the ability to reproduce itself. Though ad-mitting that such an accident was exceedingly improbable, he maintains that it must never-theless have happened. Similar molecules clustered together, and then again by an exception-ally improbable accident, they wrapped a protective barrier around themselves, some sort of a membrane like structure. Thus, he claims, the fist living cell was formed. Life is shown as a result of a succession of incredibly improbable events or “accidents”. Most other books on evolution also either totally skims over the staggering prob-lem of explaining the emergence of life from non-living matter or have a fantastic description similar to the one I just out-lined. Storm in a flask, er, teacup In a famous experiment in 1953, an American chemist named Stanley Miller devised an apparatus to test the spon-taneous production of complex organic molecules from simple inorganic starting material. In a large flask containing a concoc-tion of primordial gases mim-icking the primitive atmosphere
was similar to the one in his experimental flask. The fact is, any attempt to establish earth’s primitive atmosphere is only guesswork or assumption. The simple truth is that we don’t know what it was like. Besides, the same energy that is theo-rized to have created amino ac-ids would also rapidly decom-pose them, and an aqueous (watery) environment favors breaking up of big molecules into smaller ones rather than smaller molecules clumping into bigger ones. There is, how-ever, another stubborn problem that confronts this theory. There are over 100 amino acids, but only 20 are needed for life’s proteins. Moreover, they come in two shapes: some molecules are “left-handed” and others are “right-handed.” Should they be formed at random, as in a theo-retical organic soup, it is most likely that half would be left and the other half right handed. There is no known reason why either kind should be preferred, yet, of the 20 amino acids pro-ducing life’s proteins, all are left handed! Life, like truth, is stranger than fiction. Neverthe-less, Stanley Miller’s experiment created a furor of jubilation within scientific circles, and was quite the shot in the arm to Evolutionary Theory. Although the experiment itself was full of
holes, it’s been extolled like no other experiment before and has since been a pivotal part of Evolutionary Theory. Chance favors the prepared mind What chance is there that the correct Amino acids would come together, link themselves in a chain and make a mean-ingful and active protein? Let’s approach this question with a useful analogy. Let’s imagine that you have a pile of 100 dif-f erent k inds of beans (representing 100 different kinds of amino acids) colored red and white (representing the left-handed and right-handed kinds). The numbers of red and white beans are equal and you thoroughly mix this pile. What is the chance that when you plunge a scoop into this pile, you get a bunch of beans that contain only 20 specific kinds of red bean from a possible 100 red bean and 100 different kinds of white bean? You are not allowed to pick out the beans, only allowed to scoop them out. Would any amount of stirring and scooping in our hy-pothetical bean pile pick out only the red ones and only 20 specific kinds leaving out the other 80 different kinds of red bean and 100 kinds of white bean? The short answer is ‘No’.
You could keep scooping for a million years and still not be able to do this task. Now let’s do the math. The proteins needed for life are a chain of left-handed amino acids in a cer-tain order. What is the chance of even a simple protein mole-cule forming at random in the organic soup? On running the numbers, it has been calculated that the chance is only 1 in 10113, a number larger than the estimated total number of at-oms in the universe! This num-ber is bigger than the googol (10100). Remember the googol from November 2011 newslet-ter? What are the chances of obtaining all of life’s proteins at random from an organic soup? That’s 1 chance in 1040000! More tangibly, it means that it would still be impossible to get all the meaningful proteins appearing at random even if the whole universe were made up of Amino acid soup! With odds like these, I would put my stakes on any theory other than this. Which other theory has larger odds stacked smack against it? It’s quite obvious that life’s pro-teins or Life itself did not origi-nate out of some cosmic gam-ble. Even from a purely scien-tific vantage point, it does seem there was a surefire plan and a definite reason why things are
Snippets from Science – Glimpses of God’s Beautiful Mind con tinued
Snippets from Science – Glimpses of God’s Beautiful Mind con tinued the way they are. All scientific evidence, in fact, points out to-wards some sort of complex outside interference. Interfer-ence by God, that is. Fun with Numbers: The King and the Vizier One unfortunate victim of over-whelming numbers was King Shirham of India, who accord-ing to an old legend, wanted to reward the grand Vizier for pre-senting to him the game of chess. The desires of the tricky Vizier seemed very modest. “Your majesty!”, he said kneel-ing in front of the King, “give me a grain of wheat to put on the 1st square of this chessboard, and two grains on the 2nd square, and four grains to put on the 3rd, and eight grains to put on the 4th. And so on, oh noble King, doubling the num-
ber for each succeeding square, gives me enough grains to cover the all 64 squares on the board”. “You do not ask for much, oh faithful servant,” ex-claimed the King, silently enjoy-ing the thought that in return for the game of chess, the Vizier had asked for almost nothing in return, the grains of wheat asked being of negligible cost to him. The King ordered a bag of wheat to be brought. But when the counting began, with 1 grain for the first square, 2 for the second, 4 for the third and so forth, the bag was emptied before the 20th square was ac-counted for! More bags of wheat were brought before the king but the number of grains needed for each succeeding square simply exploded and in-creased so rapidly that it soon became clear that with all the wheat crop of India, the King
could not fulfill his promise. The number of wheat grains that the clever Vizier had de-manded may be represented as follows: 1 + 2 + 22 + 23 + 24 + 25
+ ….... 262 + 263; a geometrical progression. This progression adds up to a total of 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains! Assuming that a bushel contains about 5,000,000 grains one would need some 4000 billion bushels to satisfy the demands of the Vizier. That’s about equal to the world’s wheat production for a period of some two thousand years! The King found himself deep in debt and it is not clear how he dealt with the Vizier’s demand. Next month: Journey to the Edge of Forever. Stay tuned! ~ Amit M.
As the saying goes, Christmas is the season to be jolly! What better way to be jolly than to sing carolling song with family and friends!! The Toronto Mis-sion began Christmas carolling on Nov 18. So far, we have cov-ered homes in Pickering, Ajax, Trenton, Stratford, Guelph, Burlington, Hamilton, Milton, Oakville, Brampton, Malton, Mississauga and Etobicoke.
Our community has done countless practices perfecting Christmas jingles and we are excited to celebrate this festive season with everyone! As we continue with the carolling ac-tivities in the coming weeks, we humbly request for the contin-ued support and cooperation from those involved. May the Lord bless our Church carolling group abundantly and keep
25 Days Fast before the Nativity of Our Lord The fasting this year at our church has been welcomed with great enthusiasm. Based on the Syrian tradition, it is said that this fast is of spontaneous origin and lasts for forty days to give thanks to God, the Father, remembering his selfless love by giving his unique son for the salvation of the world. The Church thinks it is right for every believer to fast this sea-son, before the Nativity of Jesus Christ, that is designed for the Father for having given us his son, for forty days. However, in the Malankara Church today, this fast lasts for 25 days, from the first of December till Christ-mas day, and all the faithful are bound to observe it with great vigour. Abstinence is also en-couraged to be taken up during this special season. Tradition-ally, it is meat, at least every Friday; however this has changed over time and can be
seen to be altered mostly in younger children, such as en-joyable activities or sweets. Fasting and Abstinence is about giving up material joy in search for spiritual joy. In the book of Matthew, it is made clear, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treas-
ures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:19-21) This Christmas season may we all place our treasures in heaven and be ready for the birth of our Saviour, in our hearts.
- Neil T.
Liturgy of the Month
Week Gospel Readings Epistles Old Testament Readings
Dec 4 Luke 1: 57-66 The Birth of John the Baptist
Acts 13: 16-25 2Cor 3: 1-11
Ex 2: 1-10 1 Sam 1: 1-18 Isaiah 40: 1-5
Dec 11 Matthew 1: 18-25 The Birth of Jesus the Messiah
Eucharistic Adoration - An essential component of Catholic Life con tinued but our lives are too busy to step in and spend sometime in the company of the one who loves us the most. When thought about it seriously, and to put it very bluntly, isn’t it just like travelling to India for a holiday and yet not caring to pay a visit to your own parents and relatives. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches the Eucharist to be the “source and summit of Christian Life” (CCC Paragraph 1324, source Lumen Gentium). On a personal level it can be experienced as a -source of every goodness
-source of healthy relation-ship with our brothers and sisters
-source of divine love, which will teach us how to love our neighbours
-source of divine wisdom -source of healing, especially
of inner wounds -source of divine counsel
“Open Wide the doors to Christ” - Throughout the twenty seven years of his pon-
tificate, Blessed John Paul II proclaimed this message to the whole world. Jesus tells us that if we open the doors of our heart, HE will come in and dine with us. (Revelation 3:20). Dur-ing Eucharistic adoration, when we adore HIM in front of the Blessed Sacrament, we are opening wide the doors of our heart to Christ, and letting HIM come and dine with us. He will heal us, listen to us, talk to us, present graces to us, give us good counsel, and eventually we will enjoy a personal relation-ship with HIM. Jesus says in the Gospel according to St. Mathew 11:28 – “Come to me all of you, who labour and are bur-dened and I’ll give you rest” Amongst all those who are born of human origin, no other human being has loved Jesus or known Jesus as much as our beloved mother Mary. Blessed John Paull II in his ap-ostolic letter “Rosarium Virginis Mariae” (paragraph 10) calls mother Mary “the model of con-templation.”
It is to be ascertained here, that to love Jesus – it’s something to be learned from our blessed mother Mary. Practice of Eu-charistic adoration and careful attention to the reception of the Holy Communion in a worthy manner (after using the sacra-ment of penance and reconcilia-tion appropriately) are true catholic practices that can be exercised only with the help of the Rosary. Prayerful, meditative, and contemplative recitation of the rosary, both individually, and as a family, is an inte-gral requirement to develop-ing a devotion to the Eucha-rist. Let us take inspiration from these bible verses “The master is here, and HE is calling you” – John 11: 28 “- - - - Come Let us adore HIM.” - Mathew 2: 2b ~ Rajesh J.
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Dec 25 Christmas
Date Candle 1 Candle 2 Marbahasa 1 Marbahasa 2 Bell Readings Thurible
Dec 4 Samson Christopher Neil Reuben Lynn
Dec 11 Reuben Samson Deepak Christopher Neil Lynn Br. Jobin
Dec 18 Samson
Dec 25 Neil Reuben Samson Deepak Christopher Lynn Br. Jobin
