1. Memorial of St Joachim and St Anne,
    Parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary


    "The Lord is kind and merciful."
    We join with the psalmist of old to proclaim
    this truth of who God is this evening.

    This truth is expressed in our reading from Exodus
    of Moses meeting God in the tent.
    Here, in this man-made space,
    Moses and the Israelites come to consult God.

    But the ironic beauty of this encounter
    is that God deigns to dwell in this tent,
    conceived in human thought and fashioned with human hands.
    Even more delightful is God speaking face to face with Moses,
    “as one man speaks to another.”
    And in this conversation, God reveals Godself
    as “a merciful and gracious God
    slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity,”
    whose goodness extends not only to the Israelites saved
    but to all generations to come.

    God’s decision to dwell with Israel
    enlarges the tent that Moses pitched:
    it is not just a place of encounter.
    God in kindness transforms limited, human craft
    into the boundless sacred ark, God’s dwelling place,
    not only for Godself but for humankind to be with God always.
    In this place, then, Moses not only comes to know God
    but stays with a merciful God who saves humankind
    for nothing less than eternal covenant.

    “Widening the tent”
    can help us better celebrate today’s feast of Joachim and Anne.
    We know nothing of them scripturally.
    But tradition invites us to meditate on Joachim and Anne,
    as God’s faithful people.
    In their prayer, charity and fidelity, they call our attention to
    God’s quiet invitation that we necessarily widen
    the tent of our human faith
    to welcome the messianic saving action
    of a kind and merciful God into our lives and the world.

    But widening our faith-filled lives,
    this space where God dwells in you and me,
    can only come to be if we dare to heed Jesus’ words
    as they are really meant in today’s Gospel,
    “Whoever has ears ought to hear.”
    What Jesus’ call is is for us to open, expand, broaden ourselves
    to and for God, in ways God only wishes.

    We who have ears so often claim
    that the parable of the weeds and the wheat
    is about the good and the evil, the dutiful and the disobedient,
    the saved saints and the unsaved sinners.
    About two groups of people:
    those who will be admitted into
    and those who will be cast out
    of communion with God.

    I’d like to think that Jesus speaks more profoundly about God
    who saves all, including ourselves, in kindness and mercy.
    I’d like to believe that if Jesus were here,
    he would challenge all thus:
    listen, hear, understand:
    know that each and everyone, including you,
    my beloved companions,
    are filled with weeds and wheat.
    Weeds smother, suffocate,
    the wheat from growing to its full potential.
    Your weeds diminish
    your giftedness to widen the tent of your life and faith
    to God and for others,
    and in this way, to live to the full.
    So, we who have ears cannot help but hear
    in today’s readings, a call to pause,
    to reflect honestly on, and to grow up from this:
    we build our own tents
    -- tents communal, political, racial;
    -- tents patriarchal and sexual;
    -- tents theological.
    And yes, there in these spaces, we will indeed find God
    for God is always present to us.

    But could it be that in these very tents,
    shaped by reason, culture and prayer,
    God is,
    in God’s continuing kindness and mercy,
    challenging us to enlarge,
    to broaden, to widen even more these spaces
    for God to be God,
    and for us to be a little more human, and a lot more divine?



    This is the final homily I preached to Xavier Jesuit Community this summer.



    photo: farmlands by adsj (french countryside; july 2009)

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  2. Gospel Reading: Matthew 12: 46-50 (Doing God's Will and becoming part of the family)


    It all begins with a 'yes,' doesn’t it?

    Hopes come true
    when we say 'yes' to making them real.
    Human life finds expression and fulfillment
    when we say 'yes' to living it fully.
    Faith becomes meaningful
    when we say 'yes' to service and generosity for others.

    And it is indeed a 'yes'
    that begins a gift of friendship
    and the wonder of relationship that it can become.

    Today’s Gospel reading calls
    attention to our 'yes' to God.
    More than an obedient, dutiful 'yes,'
    Matthew invites you and me to reflect on
    our 'yes' to relationship with God through friendship with Jesus
    and through this 'yes,' on our interactions with others.

    Matthew records Jesus speaking of this relationship in familial terms:
    to listen to God’s will, he teaches,
    helps one become his brother, and sister and mother.

    The phrase 'to become' invites us to appreciate
    that friendship with Jesus is about transformation:
    of a self who can reclaim her rightful inheritance
    as God’s good and beloved creation,
    of social interactions that can indeed express and live
    God’s familial love,
    of human living as indeed the child-like glee of just communion
    with God and one another.

    But how does this transformation take place?
    We can find a glimpse of an answer, I’d like to suggest,
    in the silent but every present image of Mary in today’s Gospel,
    whose 'yes' in the Annunciation is to share in God’s saving life.

    Mary’s finite fiat opens her finitude
    to God’s unconditional, infinite 'yes'
    to realizing the wondrous reality humankind is created to become,
    imaged in God’s likeness.

    Saying 'yes,' then,
    is about opening oneself to another
    who can help each of us realize our human potential for the divine
    Mary’s 'yes' opened her young self
    to God’s Spirit who enters and transforms her into Mother of God,
    into bearer of God’s Word,
    in herself and to the world.

    Sharing life in and bearing God’s Word
    is Jesus’ call to his disciples then,
    and to us this evening.

    For us who call ourselves companions of Jesus,
    we come to share in and bear God’s Word
    more truly in the small, everyday 'yeses'
    we make in our lives and community:
    to shadows that invite us to conversion,
    to lights that guide, strengthen and enliven our lives and faith,
    to times and tides that draw us into closer familial bonds with God and the world.

    Friendship with Jesus then transforms our relationship with God
    and our interactions with others
    because it is a communion of continuing perfection
    that God began and we are only asked to cooperate with our 'yeses.'

    Dear friends, what 'yes' today have you and I made to become more Jesus’ family?




    This is a homily I preached at this evening's Eucharist at Xavier Jesuit Community.



    photo: together by adsj (yosemite park, california, june 2010)

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  3. Readings: Exodus 1:8-14, 22; Psalm 124: 1b-3, 4-6, 7-8; Matthew 10: 34-11.1


    Our help is in the name of the Lord.

    We recited this refrain in today’s psalm.
    The psalmist composed it to remember
    God’s saving action in Israel’s history.
    The Israelites heard it in their communal recitation,
    and once again, experienced God’s redeeming love in their midst.

    To hear God’s Word is also the very first instruction of the Rule,
    written by the saint we commemorate today, Benedict.
    He writes: “Listen carefully my child
    to your master’s precepts and incline the ear of your heart.”

    A story is told in Benedictine circles of the importance of listening to God’s word:
    One evening, Benedict joined the novice master and his novices for Vespers.
    As they recited the Office, there was a knock at the door.
    It was faint at first.
    The novice master ignored it,
    insisting that all focus on worshipping God.
    But the knocking grew louder and louder;
    it became more insistent.

    Unable to ignore anymore,
    a young novice got up, went to the door and opened it.
    A beggar stood before him. He asked for food.
    The novice gave him some.

    Upon returning to the chapel,
    the novice master berated the young man
    for being distracted,
    rebellious, unfaithful
    to the God who must be worshipped
    in chant and word, with bows and incense,
    in strict liturgical observance and in holy monastic silence.

    Benedict listened. When the novice master was done, he said:
    "Good Master, you are right:
    we should offer God
    our attention and reverance, our praise and worship.
    But is it not far better, and more
    Christian, to hear the knock of one in need
    and to open the doors of our hearts to him?
    For who else would knock when we pray but the Lord himself."
    Indeed, to hear God knocking is to hear the name of God,
    as God wishes to present Godself to us in each moment.

    Have we not encountered God whose name is
    -- disturbance…
    that demands we stop and reflect on God’s challenge or correction?
    -- or, sacrifice and love…
    that invite us to respond with no other gift but the free gift of ourselves in return?
    -- or even, audacity and courage…
    that we break the rules so that God’s greater glory can shine through our human presumption and small mindedness?

    The young novice, like Benedict, like the psalmist,
    heard the name of the Lord.
    Each heard him, this Lord,
    whose words we too hear in today’s Gospel reading:
    Before father and mother, before sibling and friend,
    Before all else, I am.

    To put the Lord Jesus first --
    to put on his intimate love for the Father
    and to put the Spirit of this Love for others
    -- before self is what saves.
    It saved the young novice:
    from a pious but unlived faith,
    from rule-bound religious observances,
    from self-righteousness,
    to the liberating, expansive communion
    of daily sharing life and faith in God with others.

    And Benedict, joyful at seeing this, would have,
    I imagine, cried out with the psalmist,
    "Our help is indeed in the name of the Lord."

    Dear friends, how have you heard the Lord’s name today? How has he been your help?




    This is a homily I preached today on the Feast of St Benedict at our weekday Mass in Xavier Jesuit Community.


    photo: alone by adsj (east 21st street, new york city; july 2011)
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I hope you will find in these posts something that speaks to you of the God who loves us all and who always holds us in the palm of his hand. Blessings!
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"Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute way final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything."

Pedro Arrupe, sj, Superior General, 1965 - 1983

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is a 50something Catholic who resides in Singapore and works for the Church. He is a priest of the Roman Catholic Church.
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