Ravi S. Iyer: Spiritual

Some notes, small extracts and my comments from/on  http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/a-day-of-ancient-ceremony-to-create-two-modern-saints/2014/04/27/290f167f-c579-4694-885b-1f7c26d4d00e_story.html : Pope Francis canonized John Paul II and John XXIII, both towering figures of the 20th century, as saints. [Ravi: I completely support honouring leaders of the Roman Catholic Church of the 20th century for their service to the catholic church and spreading the life & teachings of the Divine Jesus Christ as captured in the New Testament. I did not know anything about John XXIII prior to this beatification news. But, of course, I had read a lot about John Paul II, whose long stint from 1978 to 2005 (third-longest in church history) and whose globe-trotting ways, made him a well known figure in India and the world. Whatever I had read and seen (on TV and print media photographs) of John Paul II, largely, was very positive. Personally I found his public statements to be largely...

Last updated on 25th April 2014 This post uses the gospel of John from http://www.rc.net/wcc/readings/john.htm . For the scripture sections that are referred the associated link is provided. Ideally the reader should read the specified sections in the associated link and then the comment prefixed with my name, Ravi. Scripture: John 2:1-11, http://www.rc.net/wcc/readings/john2v1.htm [Ravi: The above scripture sections seems to me to be a simple and straight forward account of perhaps the first well-publicized miracle of Jesus. Jesus was born and raised among simple Jewish peasant folk of Galilee and his followers seem to come mainly from simple peasant folk. They saw these miracles and were inspired to give up their professions and follow Jesus Christ, and then spoke about these miracles and finally wrote them down for posterity. Having had direct experience of some of the paranormal powers of Sri Sathya Sai Baba I find the above account (and later accounts of miracles) to be be...

Over the past few days I watched, in parts, The Visual Bible - Gospel of John, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emlHESNWFGI , 2 hr, 53 min, 12 sec. I found it to be a very engrossing and spiritually powerful account of the life and wonders of Jesus Christ. I thought I should put down my thoughts about the video right away, even though they will lack easy-to-refer info. Next, I plan to, on a part time basis, go through the text of the gospel of John, http://www.rc.net/wcc/readings/john.htm , and provide my thoughts based on the text readings where I can also easily provide the text references (and extracts). So here are my thoughts: *) The divine/paranormal/miraculous powers of Jesus Christ are shown in a simple and matter of fact way. *) The disbelief of many of the "learned" people - especially the Jewish priestly class in Jerusalem - slowly gives way to acceptance of such powers that Jesus has. I find it to be very interesting that the Jewish leaders tend to accept th...