1. Year A / Ordinary Time / Solemnity of St Ignatius of Loyola (Parish Feast Day)
    Readings: Deuteronomy 30.15-20 / Psalm 1 / 1 Corinthians 10.31-11.1 / Matthew 8.18-27
    “I’m looking for someone to share in an adventure.” 

    This is a line from the film, The Hobitt. Gandalf speaks this line when he raises the possibility of an adventure with Bilbo Baggins. Bilbo rejects his invitation because adventures, he says, are nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things. Yet, Gandalf’s call does lead Bilbo on an adventure, which as Gandalf promises is very good for him. 

    I found myself coming back again and again to this line as I prepared for this homily in which I wish to reflect on Christian life as a journey. A journey that God calls us to, leads us on and promises us will be very good for our salvation. And like all journeys it can be the adventure of our lifetime.

    We envision this metaphor of adventure in various ways to describe the Christian journey. Sometimes, it is a rugged track in the forest of life. At other times, it is the bridge over troubled waters or that necessary meandering in the desert of life we have to make. Then, there are times when it is the restful path through a lovely, landscaped park that life can also be. 

    However we image this adventure of Christian life, I believe what you and I especially hope for is that it will lead us from darkness into light, from pain into healing, from disturbance into peace. Our first reading recognizes this hope when it offers us the choice of life and prosperity over that of death and doom. But we have to make a choice to realize this hope.

    “I’m looking for someone to share in an adventure.” Haven’t we heard Jesus say this too when he called his first disciples to follow him? Perhaps, this statement Jesus makes is more than a request for a companion. What if this statement expresses his deepest desire to call all he encounters into the gift of choosing life to the full?  This gift that is the reality of what following him is truly about. 

    Matthew’s narrative of Jesus instructing potential followers that we hear today is often interpreted as a lesson in Discipleship 101. 

    Here, Jesus teaches about the cost of discipleship. It demands sacrifice because discipleship is hard work. It involves discomfort and uncertainty because following Jesus is following his way of utterly trusting in God’s providence. Indeed, discipleship asks of disciples nothing less than to let go and let God lead, as Jesus did. 

    Here, Jesus also teaches about how to respond to his call to discipleship. The disciple should respond promptly, without delay. She should do this confidently because God will care for those she leaves behind. He should fix to his gaze only on Jesus who leads as God leads him, and no other.

    The cost of discipleship and the response to become a disciple. These two lessons have to do with following Jesus. But I’d like to suggest that they teach something more: they show us the way to choose life and prosperity in God through Jesus, who calls us into discipleship in order to save us from death and doom.

    Aren’t we living out these lessons now? Aren’t we responding to Jesus’ call as best as we can? Aren’t we continuing to accept the cost of being his disciple with our sacrifices? Aren’t we remaining faithful to his promise of living in God’s life and love, even as we struggle to live Christian lives? I believe we do these because we have chosen to live and to prosper.

    What evidence do we have to make this claim? Simply these: that you and I come faithfully to Mass every Sunday; that you and I continue to seek reconciliation and peace with God and with one another; that you and I do share our time, our gifts, our riches (no matter how much or how little) to make God’s reign real in our midst. 

    These speak of being in communion with God and each other. And this communion helps us answer the question, “Where are you, God?” We each ask this question daily in the adventure of our own Christian lives. We especially ask it when we are in pain, confusion and despair. In these darkest moments, haven’t we cried out, like the disciples on the boat swamped by the waves in our gospel passage, “Lord save us!”?

    And when God answered our cry, weren’t we surprised to discover God’s nearness? God who is always in our midst, with us and for us. We are reminded again of this astonishing truth when Jesus calms the storm that ends our gospel passage. Can you recall a time or two when God was with you, saving you?

    “Where are you God?” “I am with you always till the end of time” Jesus assures us as he ascended into heaven. Jesus himself is our assurance of knowing that we will always find God with us and for us, now and always. This because it is through Jesus, with Jesus and in Jesus that we experience the nearness of God’s saving love.

    The challenge we have is to remind ourselves of God’s presence in our daily life. The Ignatian phrase “Finding God in all things” can help us do this. In our parish, we have heard this repeatedly as a reminder that God is with us. We have been taught how to find God in the difficult and the comfortable, in the discord and the peaceful, in the sad and the happy. And, as a parish, we have been trying to live the invitation to find God in all things, especially, in the poor and marginalized by caring for them.

    But we would limit our Christian life, individually and as a parish, if we fixate our Christian adventure on only finding God in all things. Because we will always find God in all the different faces, phases and phrases in our lives, St Ignatius would ask more of us so that we can better mature as Christians.

    Why? Because Ignatius recognized that we cannot measure our spiritual progress simply by being able to find God. Rather, the right measure of our spiritual growth, he would advise, lies in how open you and I are prepared to be to let God lead us onward once we have found God.  

    “I’m looking for someone to share in an adventure.” Ignatius heard Jesus’ call, and he lived his faith as a journeying Christian. However, hardly anything Ignatius did on his journey turned out the way he wanted it to be. He tried living a life of penance and austerity; God did not want that for him. He went to the Holy Land to live like Jesus; God sent him home. He thought he would become a lay evangelizer; God, through the church, stopped him. In his time, he wanted the Jesuits to be free of attachments and to be on mission anywhere; God thought better and Jesuits began schools everywhere.

    With all these false starts, why should we pay attention to Ignatius and his life’s journey? Because, “Ignatius saw that the journey is the thing; this is what mattered most. Ignatius called himself ‘the pilgrim.’ He travelled a long way, and at every step he was alert to the still small voice of God pointing him to what’s next in his life” (Jim Manney).

    Today, you and I are being invited to hear Jesus’ voice. He says, “I’m looking for someone to share in an adventure.” Jesus is saying this not from some faraway place but beside us because he has already come into our midst. 

    “Where are you, Lord” cannot be the only question to ask. Wouldn’t it be be much better then for us, as a parish named after Ignatius, to do the right thing and to prayerfully ask Jesus, “Lord, what’s next that you wish to do for me, for us, for our parish?”

    (inspired in parts by Jim Manney's writings)

    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore.
    photo:  ignatiancamino.com

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  2. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 16 - Sunday
    Readings: Wisom 12.13, 16-19 / Psalm 85 (R/v 5a) / Romans 8.26-27/ Matthew 13.24-30
    When I first joined my Jesuit community in Boston, I was asked to care for the garden. This included weeding the flowerbeds that skirted the side of our house. To do this, I had to learn the difference between what a small flowering plant is and what a weed looked like. I would weed every Saturday morning to ensure that the weeds would not choke the flowering plants. Yet, the weeds always reappeared among the plants. 

    Today, Jesus speaks about this same image as he tells the story of weeds being sown among a wheat field. 

    A landowner planted good wheat seeds in the field. As the wheat began to grow, weeds appeared amongst them. An enemy had planted these weeds. The workers wanted to tear out the weeds so that the wheat would grow better. Being a wise man, the landowner knew that the workers would accidentally pull out the growing wheat when they pulled out the weeds. And so, he counseled patience; he told his workers to let the wheat and the weeds grow up together. Then, at harvest time, it would be easy to separate them. 

    I think this story of the weeds amongst the wheat us can help us to live our Christian life more freely and with more peace of mind.

    The story of the weed and the wheat can remind us of our own lives, which is always a mixture of good and bad. We each have a rich field of good wheat. Our strengths, our talents, our gifts are the wheat in our lives. But we also have also some pesky and persistent weeds in our lives. These are our bad habits, our unhealthy addictions, our sinful ways of living. You and I want to plant and harvest the good things in our lives so that we live the Christian life well. But let us be honest: some of our thoughts, actions and words do plant and grow weeds. These suffocate our Christian faith and stun our Christian life from flourishing.  

    Isn’t this mixture so much a part of our lives? For example, just think of how our friendships are like this. They can bring out all that is good in us—our desire to care and share, to love and to build up. But it can also be the space where we see more clearly the weeds in our lives—jealousy because my friend does better than me, anger because she doesn’t fulfill my expectations, bullying because I want him to conform to my demands. 
    And so, we struggle with such weeds in our lives because we recognize how disappointing, messy and imperfect our Christian lives are.

    I believe none of us wants our lives to be full of weeds. You and I try again and again to stamp out their existence: we work to correct our bad habits, to overcome our addictions, to change our sinful ways. When we feel we have cleared the weeds in our part of our lives, we find new weeds in another part. It seems like we cannot overcome them. Our natural instinct is to pull out these weeds. But so often, don’t we feel that this task is too difficult to accomplish well? And so, we usually end up tired and frustrated. 

    Remarkably, Jesus is familiar with this struggle each of us has: this is the truth about life that he expresses in this parable of the weeds and the wheat.  And isn’t it consoling then that Jesus assures you and me today that God still loves us, even in our sinfulness?

    Jesus tells us this parable because he wants us to recognize that God knows the messiness of our lives, even as God certainly grieves the sinfulness in the world and in us. But like the wise landowner, God continues to love us by being infinitely patient and merciful. We hear this when Jesus tells us the wise and patient landowner: who else could Jesus be referring to but God, the true owner of our lives who does not require us to forcibly remove ourselves of the weeds we have sown. 

    Why not? Because God knows that if we do this we could harm the goodness present and growing within us. Instead of letting us perfect the goodness in us, God wants to perfect it for us. And God wants to do this in God’s time and in God’s way, which always includes working through the weeds, these imperfections and  sinfulness in our lives.

    This then is how God continues to love us as we are, to love us unconditionally, and to love us into salvation. God loves in this way because in the end God’s love in Jesus will always save us. 

    This is truth about God is what our first reading proclaims: mercy is God’s name; forgiveness is truly how God acts; and justice is God’s belief in the worthiness of our goodness, not the unworthiness of our badness. This is why you and I can join the psalmist to say with hope, “Lord, you are good and forgiving.”

    As I have gotten older, and perhaps, a little wiser, I have learned to be more accepting of my weeds. I do not like them and I wish I can rid myself of them. But I have grown accustomed to their presence. I have become more comfortable with my weedy sinfulness.

 Perhaps this too is your experience of living the Christian life. But being more comfortable with our weeds is not the same as being complacent. It means being more accepting of them as part of everyday life in which God is already working to make each of us a better person, even as we struggle with these weeds. 

    Yes, we do not want the weeds to multiply endlessly and choke the life out our goodness. What we want is to be more at peace with the weeds. I believe you and I can have this peace because today Jesus assures, once again, that when our earthly life is done God will mercifully and gently separate out the weeds from among the wheat of in each of our lives. God will do this so as to gather into his arms the rich harvest of our goodness, which has always been there amongst the weeds of our lives.

    Yes, the weeds within us will never be totally eradicated in our lifetime. But God will always sift out and find the wheat in us at harvest time. God is willing to wait patiently for this moment because God can live with the mixture of weeds among the wheat of our lives. Can we do the same as we live our Christian life?



    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: internet. christianitytoday.com 


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  3. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 15 - Sunday
    Readings: Isaiah 55.10-11 / Psalm 64 (R/v Lk 8.8) / Romans  8.18-23/ Matthew 13.1-9


    The sower sowing his seeds. 

    We are all familiar with this parable Jesus teaches his disciples. Many of us understand it as his teaching about a God who desires to sow in order we might have faith. How much our faith will grow and mature depends on how receptive we are to welcoming God into our lives. This is the lesson Jesus also teaches as he describes the different types of soil the seeds fall on in the parable.

    Our familiarity with this interpretation of Jesus’ teaching in the parable might lead us to ask, “What else can I possibly learn from it?” This is a natural question to ask, especially by those of us who pray daily, come to Mass faithfully and read the Bible regularly.

    I’d like to suggest that this parable of the sower and the seeds does have something more to offer us for Christian life. We can begin to appreciate what this is by reflecting on it through the lenses of our first and second readings. 

    These readings offer us lenses in the form of an image each. Each image helps us to see more clearly a detail that is often overlooked when we read about this parable of the sower sowing his seeds. This detail has to do with how God interacts with us and how we interact with God.

    The first image comes from our reading from Hosea. The image is of God’s faithful sustenance. God’s rain and snow comes down from heaven; it stimulates and nourishes growth on earth. This, in turn, provides humankind with daily sustenance. This image is assuring: it expresses the certainty of God’s faithful care: what God provides will never fail; God will always make it flourish. 

    Jesus declares this goodness of God’s certain sustenance when he describes the outcome of the sower’s seeds falling on rich soil. They will always produce crop, be it a hundred-, sixty- or thirty-fold. It is not the amount that matters. What counts is that the seeds always produce abundance. I think the message for us is that God the sower cares less about the quantity produced. What God really cares about is that there will be growth always. 

    This truth is what I believe God is more interested for each of us to know and to embrace. Whatever the many and varied seeds God gives us—like the grace to be loving, the grace to be merciful, the grace to forgive, the grace to reconcile—they are God’s certain ways of growing our faith and bringing it to fruition. 

    Hence, what we should really concern ourselves with in this parable is the truth that our God is a provident God. God not only gives us faith but God grows this faith in our lives. Indeed, the true seed God plants in us through baptism is Jesus, God’s Word, who will always give us life to the full. Our Christian life will be poorer if use this parable only as a checklist to tick off the degree of how receptive we are of God’s Word according to the four soil types Jesus talks about. 

    The second image comes from Paul’s letter to the Romans. It is of one groaning as in childbirth. For Paul, “groaning” is how he pictures human yearning to be freed from sinfulness so as to live more fully as God’s children. You and I know this longing; it is the constant craving we each have for that something more in life—this more that we believe only God can satisfy.

    “Groaning” is an image associated with pain and suffering. But it is also call to another for help. “Groaning” is therefore an action rooted in trust and directed towards salvation. For Paul, we groan to God because we trust in God’s saving love. “Groaning” is therefore hope-filled because it will always open us up to God who we always depend on to save us. 

    God’s faithful sustenance and our human groaning for God. Two images to help us to see more clearly that what Jesus is also teaching about in this parable of the sower and his seeds is hope. 

    Jesus teaches us that hope in God’s providence will always accomplish its goal of giving life by multiplying it abundantly. He also reminds us that we best experience God’s provident goodness when we hunger for it with hope, like soil thirsting for water that gives, promotes and sustains life. Together, these images teach us that hope is really God’s assuring response to our hunger for life. This is the often overlooked detail in this parable Jesus teaches us again today. 

    We can glimpse how hope gives life when we look at farming. Every year farmers sow seeds in hope of a harvest. They do this even though they know full well that drought, storm, or insects can bring about ruin. But it is their hope of a harvest—no matter how abundant—that warrants their effort of sowing seeds. These farmers sow in hope of meeting our hunger. 

    I believe Bible Sunday invites us to practice this kind of hope. We hunger for life with God, and God hungers to give us life. God’s life-giving hope for us meets our hope to live in God. God does this by giving us Jesus, who draws us into faith, as he also nurtures and brings it to fruition in us with lives that love God and neighbor. Indeed, Jesus is God’s Word sown into our lives for us to grow into eternal life. This truth is what Christian faith gifts us with, baptism draws us into and the Bible sustains our Christian living for.

    Many of us judge ourselves harshly for not reading the Bible enough or using it more in prayer. Today’s celebration however calls us to have the confidence farmers have—that we can always hope that the harvest God will gather up finally will be the bountifulness of our individual lives. In his 1st Letter to the Corinthians, Paul reminds us that we can have this hope because it is always God who causes the seed of our faith to grow, not the one in the Church who planted or watered it.

    Today, we are being invited to allow our hunger for life to open us up even more to the mysterious but certain action of God’s life-giving Word, Jesus, in our frail and human lives. Perhaps, this is all you and I really need to do so that our Christian life can flourish.

    What then can we really do to let God the sower continue sowing God’s Word in our lives today? 

    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    Photo: from www.fineartamerica.com

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  4. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 14 - Sunday
    Readings: Zechariah 9.9-10 / Psalm 145 (R/v c.f1) / Romans / Matthew 11.25-30


    Who amongst us here would readily want or happily welcome what is soiled, stained or dented? 

    If we had to choose between something that is bright, new, polished and something that is dull, old and tarnished, the choice is obvious. Who does not want what is better, if not the best?  This yearning is human.

    I noticed this preference for the better some years back in my nephew, Glenn. Then, he was fascinated with Lightning McQueen, that bright red, shiny sports car in the animated film, Cars. “Uncle Adrian, that’s my favourite car!” he exclaimed whenever I asked him why he didn’t like Sir Tow Mater, another character. “He’s super!” Glenn explained. Though he never elaborated, I guessed it was because Tow Mater didn’t look as super as Lightning McQueen; Tow Mater was after all a rusty, unpolished, tow truck whose chassis was very much dented, here, there and everywhere. 

    Don’t we have our dents too, like Tow Mater? Haven’t we been bumped around, knocked about, slammed into some walls now again? Hasn’t life been tough on us, and even family and friends a tad harsh on us? And let’s not even begin to count the self-inflected dents we’ve made with our bad choices. 

    Yet, here we are with our different dents. They are many and we want Jesus to heal them all. A sadness that seeks understanding. A worry that yearns for comfort. An ache that hungers to be soothed A way of life that needs reordering. A sin that hopes for forgiveness. Like Tow Mater, we carry these dents on our individual bodies, and on the Body of Christ that we together are. And in spite of our many dents, we remain God’s chosen people—chosen for the fullness of life God desires to give us in Jesus.

    Sometimes these dents are obvious to everyone.  Sometimes we are pretty good at hiding them.  At times, we recognize our dents; at other times, we deny them. But all of us here are dented in some way or other.

    Today, Jesus says to his disciples, and to us, who are all dented, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” As a people of faith, his invitation cannot be anything less than comforting and assuring. How can it be otherwise for us who have staked everything we are and all that we believe in on Jesus as the One to give us comfort and rest eternally?

    Isn’t this why you and I desire to be nourished by Jesus’ words and to be fed at his table? After a week of struggling to live and love, to pray and play more faithfully, more generously and more joyfully as Jesus did, I think we all here because we want to not only say thank you for this past week but to ask Jesus for more daily bread to better live our Christian life next week.  

    And whatever this daily bread might be—the grace to be more generous, the grace for better self-control, the grace for patience on the roads, the grace to stop gossiping—it is precisely in our asking for it that we will know who we truly are to God in our “dentedness.” We are not just human and dented, but we are always divinely love in Jesus because of our humanness and “dentedness.”

    Jesus gave us this assurance with his resurrection. He came to his disciples and freely showed them his wounds. They prove who he is, the Christ. But these wounds, these dents, on Jesus’ transfigured body also tell us of his unity with us, who have dented our bodies with our sins.

    This is why Jesus invites again today into communion with God. He bids us come as we are, not perfect and holy but dented and broken. For it is in this communion that God receives, embraces and transforms our weariness, our burdens, our dents and gives us life fully. After all, where else will you and I, who are wounded by our many dents, be healed, if not in the loving embrace of Jesus, the Wounded One himself?

    Jesus tells us how we can help him heal us of our wounds when he says: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

    Often, we think of  “yoke” in its noun form. It is an object of bondage and servitude; it connotes the loss of freedom and choice. We picture this yoke to be a heavy burden only one person must bear. Perhaps, this is why some of us, myself included, find it a real challenge—every now and then—to completely take on Jesus’ yoke, even if he promises that it is easy and light to shoulder.

    But the word “yoke” is also a verb: as in “I yoked my oxen to the plough” or “Maria is yoked to John in marriage.” As a verb, “yoke” suggests connectivity and relationship.  Being joined with or connected to is what the verb “yoke” can conjure up in our imagination. Hence, it is natural that the image of teaming up with another comes to mind. This is the image I found when I googled “yoke” on the Web. There were many images of double yokes, designed for working animals to pull in tandem. 

    How might it be for us to imagine this kind of a yoke, a double yoke, as the kind of yoke that Jesus was talking about? A yoke that we don’t have to pull or bear alone, but a yoke that he wears and shoulders with us. A yoke not for servitude, not for bondage, but a tool of connection, a way of being in relationship with Jesus that makes our work easier, not more difficult.

    Perhaps, we are struggling with so much difficulty, heaviness, and exhaustion as we try to repair the dents in our lives because we want to do this by ourselves and in our ways. Jesus invites us, instead, to yoke our lives, with its many dents, to his life. He asks us to trust that when we yoke ourselves with his yoke—yes, when we yoke ourselves to him alone—he will help us make our way ahead. He will do this by laboring besides us, giving us the energy and the wisdom to carry on in life because he has yoked himself to us. Indeed, when we take on Jesus’ yoke that we allow Jesus to take on the yoke of our lives, with all its dents and to lead us onward into a fuller life with God. 

    May be, when we do this, we can better understand that life with Jesus is not meant to be any less complicated, with all its woundedness, struggles and sinfulness. Rather, it is meant for entering into a relationship that opens us up even more to the Christian road to eternal life. Relationship with Jesus will always do this for us. His friendship is thus the life-giving yoke that makes us less resistant to God’s grace remaking our dents and giving us life again. This is why his yoke will be easy to wear and its burden light to carry. 

    Jesus’ yoke is therefore not a law or a set of rules. Rather, his yoke is his friendship. He offers it to us as gift because he has heard our cry for healing and for life in God. 

    “Who amongst us here would readily want or happily welcome what is soiled or stained of dented?" is the question I posed at the beginning of this homily. We know the answer: Jesus. He will always embrace us as we are with all our many dents. And he will do this again and again with these words, “Come to me if you seek God, if you seek life, and I will give you rest.”

    Isn’t Jesus’ yoke the right yoke for you and me?




    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: from the internet

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Fall in Love, Stay in Love
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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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