Merry Christmas !

Since last few years we have been taking effort to spend our weekends attending Christmas programs  during Christmas season (Starting Nov 30 to Dec 31st) . We try to go for as many programs as possible irrespective of church or organizations. Programs usually consists of Christmas carols, short skits , children’s carol and nativity scene and of course Christmas message. Christmas message is most of the time given by the chief guest (Mukhya Athithi) who in most cases is a Bishop (Thirumeni, Catholic/Orthodox/MarThoma/Malankara ) or a Bureaucrat (Mantri). I must admit (all these years) most of the time I loose interest and track of the message after 10 mins , as most of the time I don’t feel connected to what the Speaker says ….. But yesterday was an exception , not just did I listen to the message without getting distracted, but I smiled and laughed and almost cried listening to the speaker who captured everybody’s attention and thoughts for not just 20 25 mins of what he spoke but long after his speech was over.

Fr. Davis Chiramel – When he came on stage to deliver the speech , I had no expectation, Catholic priest who would talk about relevance of Christmas , will quote some Bible verses and then the program will start is what I thought . He started speaking , and I realized his accent (Malayalam) was from Trichur side (which is kind of sing song type) though not too heavily accented but it was a welcome change, in the first 5 mins of his talk , he started speaking about his first point ‘To humble yourself’ (‘Apney aap ko chota karna’ ‘Cherrudd aakuga’) and the examples he gave was I am sure everybody in the hall could connect with – he got everybody’s attention from then on – Mothers from Old age home going to Orphange as ‘Christmas Mamma’s’ feeding kids and one of them adopting a child, A young couple driving a car getting into a race with mini bus full of kids who would scream Hey hey hey ‘ when the overtake the car and when the car overtook then would make sound ‘ooooooo’ in disappointment and after few rounds of ‘Heyss and Ooooo’ the guy driving the car stops and lifts the bonnet  allowing the bus to pass with a Loud “HEY HEY HEY ‘ …….  To humble yourself,  to slow down , to let go , to share , to give, to see god in people around ....  I wish somebody could upload the speech in youtube ….  It was wonderful ....

Towards the end  of his talk we came to know that he is associated with ‘Kidney Federation’ of India, though I did not know the details , but we were so impressed that Anil wanted to meet him personally and tell him that how touched we were through his speech … and we saw there were many others who felt the same and were meeting Fr. Davis . We approached him and said we would like to know more about his work and if we could get contact number or address , he asked us if we had been to Trichur, and we said yes and that I am from Trichur, he said then just give a Google search for ‘Fr. Davis Chiramel’ you will find all the details about me and what  I do . He was in hurry as he was going back to Trichur the same evening and we said goodbye …  Both of us mesmerized after such a good talk wondering how Fr. Davis is able to connect so well with people with his anecdotes while so called leaders (Thirumenies and Mantries) are not able to connect with people …

So I thought I will check out about Fr. and gave a search …   As he had said one google search and everything about him was there … …  http://frdavischiramel.com and I knew the reason how he could connect with people … for someone who does not believe in just preaching but practicing what he preaches, someone who could think about people around, someone who could donate his kidney to a complete stranger, it is not difficult to  touch and change people’s life ….  He definitely is Priest beyond preach …  His Christmas message makes more sense to me now … To be humble,  to slow down , to let go , to share , to give  …… that’s what Christmas is all about …  Merry Christmas!!