HEATWAVE IN INDIA By Melvyn Brown

People in India this summer have an excruciating experience with a heatwave sweeping across the nation, almost like a filmstrip taken out of a science-fiction movie. The mercury is on the tip of 40.C and rising.
On Saturday (23 May) it was 47.C in Jaipur, Bhopal 45.C, Delhi 44.5C and Lucknow 44.4C. Calcutta was 39.3 C. Now, all that is truly a scorcher. In Calcutta it is predicted to last for the next four days. Today (Sunday) headlines state 335 dead across India.
In Calcutta taxi drivers have suffered heat-related deaths, and the taxi Association have stopped them plying from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
In my city of Calcutta the cases of heat stroke and heat exhaustion are constantly coming up. A few dare to visit café’s to chill off and others splash around in water amusement parks with no relief from the heatwave.

The Humble Servant by Melvyn Brown

On the eve of her canonization I find that Mother Teresa has left behind many gifts of peace, love, caring and inspiration. As a young freelance journalist I had many blessed moments with Mother discovering the flashes of her wisdom, ostensibly to inspire people of all generations. She once said against a backdrop of increasing conflict between youth and the pace of a fast-growing society with often warped visions : “ The world today is hungry not only for bread but hungry for love; hungry to be wanted, to be loved.” Someone once light-heartedly knighted her, the saint of the gutter. A year later Mother received the Noble Peace Prize. “The poor are very good people”, she once said, adding, “ they can teach us many beautiful things.” I can also recall reading the words she most believed in: “We can do great things; only small things with great love.” Today’s children receive far more freedom than their predecessors did. Not long ago the ‘saint of the gutter’ had said: “Love begins at home.” There is one saying of Mother which I keep in my wallet: “Intense love does not measure, it just gives.”

Beyond The Reasoning Mind By Melvyn Brown

Courtesy: The Secular Citizen- 18 May 2015

Prayer- Our Lady Mother of Mercy by Melvyn Brown

Prayer to Our Lady Mother of Mercy..........Inspired by the Holy Spirit is in preparation for the coming
Jubilee Year of Mercy 

(8th December 2015 - 20th November 2016)

BEGIN BY BEING MERCIFUL BY MELVYN BROWN

It’s often a foolish errand to predict the course of future events. The stock market might crash next week. School reform, issues within free trade, the national economy and the last horse could win making upsets and fissures in their own backyard.
The war in Iraq and Syria is a ridiculous crisis. However, the larger scramble for Christians worldwide is to focus attention on the changing face of the Catholic Faith which is on the threshold of mentoring efforts to streamline a better tomorrow within and outside holy Mother the Church. This is not a foolish errand not when Pope Francis keeps emerging with new views in polished themes: a ‘poor’ Church; to abolish a ‘fortress’ mentality; to receive couples living in sin; to make ‘divorce’ less complicated.
The pontiff wants the Church to be a “Witness of compassion”. The Holy Father said: “Let us never tire of asking for forgiveness.” He considers his papacy as a “Kairos” of mercy (meaning a privileged moment in God’s plan of salvation). He is the ‘Pope of Mercy”. I am proud to be a Catholic.