1. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 26 / Migrants' Sunday 
    Readings: Ezekiel 18.25-28 / Responsorial Psalm:  55 (R/v 6a) / Philippians 2.1-11 / Matthew 21. 28-32


    "Choo-Choo. Choo-Choo." When my nephew Glenn was younger, he made this sound every time he played with his favourite toy train. "Choo-choo," he cried out as he rolled Thomas the train towards me. "Choo-choo," he gleefully laughed when a nursery rhyme video about trains ended. 

    “This train is bound for glory / This train is bound for glory / This train is bound for glory / Children get on board” are the simple lyrics of this nursery rhyme. Its tune is catchy and the image it presents  is vivid.

    What if human life is like a train ride, a journey, each of us is being invited onboard for? Where will our train ride take us? What is this promise of glory that we are bound for?

    Train rides are how some migrants seek out the good life. Their rides are movements from poor economic conditions to better, brighter possibilities for them and their loved ones. Many poor, rural South Americans do this to try to enter the USA. They make long, dangerous journeys on trains for the green, green grass of another country, another way of life, another standard of riches they yearn for. They do this in hope.

    Around us, the Bangladeshi and Indian workers who are building the condos, houses and HDB flats we live in have the same hope. So do our Filipino, Myanmarese and Indonesian domestic helpers who cook for us, clean after us, care for our young. They are migrants hoping in the promised new life of peace, prosperity and progress.

    Migrants fleeing from homelands ravaged by war also share this hope. The persecuted Vietnamese who braved oceans wide and stormy in the 1970s sought this. Today, Christians and ethnic minorities in Syria and Iraq do likewise; they seek safety and survival as the ISIS continues to ruthlessly persecute them.

    Pope Francis recently reflected on migrants and the Church in his Message for the 2015 World Day of Migrants and Refugees. Migrants leave their homelands with suitcases full of fears and desires. Their trips hope for more human living conditions; often they turn dangerous as they face suspicion and hostility by many. 

    Francis denounces those who harm migrants. “Who are they to judge them alien and discriminate them different when they know nothing of these migrants’ lives, stories or histories?” he asks. We call such people prejudiced, bigoted, xenophobic and their actions hurtful, damaging, ruinous. Some of these people are Christians. But for Francis they are unchristian.  

    These actions by our fellow Christians should sadden us. But less we act self-righteously and condemn them, Francis warns us that we can also be like them in how we treat migrants. He explains: “though we sense in our conscience the call to touch human misery and to uplift the sufferings of migrants by loving them as neighbors, like Jesus did, the weakness of our nature can also tempt us to be that kind of Christian who keeps the Lord’s wounds at arm’s length.” 

    Migrants, like refugees and exiles, are the Lord’s wounds; they are the living marks on the risen but wounded Body of Christ that we are. You and I make up this body; the migrants also make up this body. We are one with them; they are one with us. 

    Some of us might be so embarrassed that they pockmark our community that we use social, institutional and governmental makeup to hide their existence, if not fade out their presence on our conscience.

    Some of us might be pained that their sufferings scar the communal body we share as nation, church and world that we reach out to help and heal, to repair and save, to bring them to health again.

    And there are some of us who only want to see their different language, colour, education and skills as problems that must be pressed down, controlled and policed. But don’t their faces look like ours? Even more, don’t they resemble the one who once called us friends and who then laid his life down for our salvation? Jesus is “waiting to be recognized in migrants,” Francis assures us. Do we really want to see him?

    This is why it is right that our Opening Prayer is directed to Jesus.  To him, no refugee, exile or migrant is a stranger and none is without his compassion. We asked Jesus to restore them to a homeland, that place of being with God. This is the glory they are bound for, like we are too. And we asked Jesus that we each can have a kind heart for the needy and for strangers.

    But how can we ask for such a heart if we don’t honestly understand that we are also and already migrants? We are not economic migrants. We are not war-torn refugees. We are not political or cultural exiles. We are spiritual migrants. As a people of faith, we are on a migration from the earthly to the divine. This is why the Church repeatedly reminds us that we are God’s pilgrim people.

    It is as spiritual migrants on our journey to God that we can share in the plight of our sister and brother migrants on earth. Like them, we struggle to hope and not despair. Like them, we suffer misunderstanding, hate and abuse from others for our Christian faith and way of life. Like them, we grapple with poverty—not so much of want or riches in this parish but of spirit, a poverty of living more honestly and or loving more selflessly.  If we are indeed like our fellow migrants, especially those who have come into our midst to work with and for us, who are we to judge them lesser or to treat them poorer? 

    We can only look at, live with but, most importantly, love the many migrants in our lives anew when we truly interiorize Jesus’ teaching in today’s gospel reading. Make a change of mind. This is today’s good news. Jesus teaches us its importance in example of the change of mind the first son makes. His initial answer to his father was honest: he never intended to be obedient, but he "changed his mind" and did what his father asked. In contrast, the second son's seemingly obedient "Yes, sir" in fact was dishonest—he "did not go." Changing one's mind—choosing conversion of self—is a matter of utter honesty with self, God, and others. 

    Today, Jesus is challenging you and me to seriously change our minds, our attitudes and our interactions towards migrants. But we can always say, “no, thank you.” I think that if we do this, we will be no better than the dishonest chief priests and elders whose self-righteousness Jesus condemns. 

    Any change is always difficult. Even more difficult is a change of self—changes of one’s values, beliefs, attitudes, behaviors. As difficult as change is, it is the necessary element for living the Christian life better. I believe this is why Jesus is exhorting us to change our minds and hearts to better care for our migrants. Only then our love for God is authentic.

    Making this change involves practicing Christ-like humility that Jesus modeled for us in his life and ministry. This must be the better response you and I can make to God’s invitation that we continue our migratory journey into that space of glory, being at home with God. 

    "Choo-choo," the train sounds. We hear the all board call. Its destination, heaven. Its host, God.  The train of our lives is indeed bound for glory. "All board," Jesus calls out to us once again. Will you, will I, will we, humbly climb onboard today, not alone but together with others, and always with the migrants in our midst? 



    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: wsj blog (Internet)


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  2. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 25 / Sunday 
    Readings: Isaiah 55.6-9 / Responsorial Psalm:  145 (R/v 18a) / Philippians 1.20c-24, 27a / Matthew 20.1-16


    Isn’t it crazy that even though some of us here are longtime parishioners and others are first timers we accept each other at this Eucharist without envy or jealousy? Crazy too that no matter how long, or short we have served in this parish—or, even, not at all—we celebrate our equal right to a place at Lord’s altar? We don’t ask who’s more entitled to be here, nor do we ask anyone to leave. Instead, you and I acknowledge each other’s worthiness by worshipping together.

    Isn’t it crazy that after God has nourished us equally with God’s Word and God’s daily bread today, we will return to our homes, schools and work places to find ourselves—for one reason or other—green with envy of those we interact with, now and again? I suspect that our past record of human relationships tells us that we are prone to such behavior whenever we are overlooked for another.

    Yes, it is crazy that you and I who are capable of worshipping as equals in Church are equally capable of interacting with others in the world in unChristian ways. Who amongst us here has not resented others who are treated equally as we are? Or, begrudged their better accomplishments? Or, even acted self-righteously and defensively about our rights, often self-centred in nature?

    None of us sets out to act in these ways but we have done so. We probably turned into angry, disgruntled and disappointed green-eyed monsters when we were unfairly and unjustly treated. I would like to propose that these experiences allow us to empathize with the longer-serving laborers who grumble in today’s gospel passage. We can understand the outrage these laborers felt. They had worked harder and longer than the latecomers, but they got the same wage, nothing more. Don’t we feel their pain that a grave injustice has been done against them? 

    Jesus challenges us to think otherwise: “the last will be first, and the first will be last.” This is not logic or commonsense as the world knows it. It rebuts business ethics and labor practices that warn us against equal pay for unequal work.  What this is instead is commonsense about God’s commonwealth: everyone is entitled to share in God’s love. God loves us in unique and special ways because we are individual but God’s love is equally shared with all. Does this confuse you? 

    If Jesus’ parable about equal rights for unequal work disturbs you, then give thanks. Give thanks because by challenging us to turn our views about fairness and unfairness upside down, Jesus is daring us to change our image of God and of our relationship with God. 

    As people of faith, Jesus’ parable should agitate us to ask,  “Is that image of God I have been taught—that God’s love is reward for how much I work for God—really all God is?” If God has freely—and more importantly, already—poured out his saving love for us and our redemption in Jesus, then, how can God be a calculative judge, fixated only on our sins, and ever ready to punish us if the sum total of our lives doesn’t add up? 

    Today, Jesus wants to shock us out of this common misunderstanding of God. Out of this distortion that God demands that we have to do things to please God and so earn God’s love. Out of this misperception of God others have burdened us with; they mean well but they have myopically reduced God’s love to an economic exchange. Through their teaching, preaching and living, they present God rewarding only those who follow rules and regulations. Pope Francis repeatedly challenges this way of being, living and acting as Christians: this way is not in keeping with God’s character or purpose. For Francis, the good news is that God’s heart is so much bigger than we can ever imagine: it is so large, so deep, so expansive that it cannot contain God’s mercy because the very nature of this mercy always pours itself out to save us all, again and again and again. 

    Jesus uses this parable for us to see God beyond our need to calculate every event in terms fairness and unfairness. He is inviting us to catch a glimpse of the utter limitless generosity of God. This is Jesus’ dare to us today: seize it and appreciate once again how God really measures our worth. In God’s eyes, our worthiness cannot be measured by how much we do, how much we earn in pay or how well we perform, or by any of our usual measures—status, popularity, social achievement, wealth, looks.

    God’s measure is the goodness of the human heart. We see this goodness in the hired workers in today's gospel and in all of us gathered here; it is in everyone who always strives to hear and to respond to God’s invitation. Our coming here Sunday after Sunday witnesses to this goodness in each one of us. No matter whether we are first in the queue or the last in line, God's boundless belief in our goodness is why God loves us into salvation and fullness of life with Godself. 

    God does not understand what is fair and what is unfair as the world does. Rather, God works with a different reality, in a different direction, and by different standards. So, who deserves to be rewarded by God? The one who comes to God and works with God without any expectation of wages or benefits, or even the promise of something better to come. This is the one who just comes—comes for no other reason than this enlightened realization: that she is already privileged to share God’s life and work just by coming to God. Such a person is like the latecomer to the vineyard. 

    As we wind down for the year, our Easter enthusiasm to live the faith better might have waned by this time. We need encouragement on our Christian pilgrimage home. Jesus’ teaching that God’s love has no reservation and knows no bounds can be our needed fuel for this journey. Like every good teacher who has cared for us, Jesus wants you and I to know that our ongoing participation in God’s thoughts and ways is how we can grow into our salvation. 

    We can only do this however when we dare to completely lose ourselves in something we enjoy doing; this is enough reward in itself. Following Jesus must be like this; it is about the privilege of experiencing God’s love in his good company. Following Jesus cannot be that burdensome anxiety of scrupulously checking off “yes, done this; no, didn’t do that” on a list of do’s and don’t’s. This can never be the basis of a good friendship, with God or with anyone else. 

    Isn’t it crazy then that Jesus wants to remind us about this, no matter if we are here today a little more saintly this week or a lot more sinful than last week. I believe Jesus does this because he recognizes something profoundly beautiful and ever present in the midst of the craziness we each are—that person capable of living the Christian life and equally capable of not living it well. This is what Jesus recognises in us: that we are intrinsically good and worthy of growing into God’s likeness. This is what captivates him about us, whom he calls friends. He is driven, I sincerely believe, by a craziness for us. His craziness is his excitement that values each one of us for the good potential we have for change and growth.  

    My sisters and brothers, can you and I be equally crazy to believe this about Jesus and to let him teach us how to receive our equal and fair share of God’s goodness not alone but with someone else, not just today but always?



    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: Internet (careergym. com)

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  3. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 24 / Sunday - Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross
    Readings: Numbers 21.4b-9 / Responsorial Psalm:  78 (R/v 7b) / Philippians 2.6-11 / John 3.13-17


    Crossing bridges. Crossing bridges is what my friend Joshua does when he visits a city. In San Francisco, he walked across the Golden Gate Bridge. In Sydney, he walked across the Sydney Harbor Bridge. As a Singaporean, he likes walking across the Helix Bridge now and again to look at the city's skyline afresh. 

    Crossing bridges helps him to appreciate the city from different perspectives. More importantly, this is how he bridges the space that separates a city into two. Sometimes, it is a river that divides. Other times, it is a bay. However, a city is divided what matters most to him is being about to cross over, to bridge the space and to experience what the other side has to offer.

    I’d like to propose that bridging—this action of overcoming division—can help us better appreciate what we are celebrating in today’s Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. 

    Today we are being invited to remember, to celebrate and to believe in the truth of God’s greatest work: the defeat of death and the opening of heaven’s doors as God's saving love that assures us of our eternal life. What we should be delighting in is the Cross as the glory of God’s saving love for us. 

    This is how our reading from John’s gospel expresses this truth: God so loved the world that he gave Jesus, his only Son, so that all might be saved. And as Paul reminds us in our second reading, Jesus saved by humbling himself, like a slave, to become obedient even to death on a cross. This is why we can proclaim “By your holy Cross, Jesus, you have redeemed the world” when we pray the Stations of the Cross in Lent and on Good Friday. Yes, it is by Jesus’ Cross that you and I are saved to be with God eternally. 

    But you and I do not just know this love of God as a religious truth or a historical event. We know it as the lived experience we have of God’s saving love in our everydayness. We recognize it whenever we are forgiven for our mistakes. We feel it whenever someone shows us mercy and lifts us up. And we live it whenever the second chances we are blessed with allow us to live life more fully and more happily. Yes, God’s love continues to save us daily. This is the same kind of love that saved on the Cross—God’s love that saves without reservation against anyone’s sinfulness; God’s love that is always confident of the goodness each one is for salvation. 

    I’d like to suggest that we are able to experience this love of God in our lives because God has bridged heaven and earth through, in and with Jesus’ Cross. And the grace of this divine bridging has dramatically altered how humankind lives, not only for a future hoped for but even now. All of us are already living as God’s redeemed people, raised up with Jesus through the Cross to exaltation, that is, into the joyfulness of being one with God. 

    As people of faith, this divine bridging provides us certain hope: God’s sure and saving presence has not only entered into our lives but through Jesus God has indeed come to be with us to the end of time. Yes, God is never going to leave us alone. 

    Our gospel reading provides us an important clue to understand how the Cross can proclaim the goodness of God’s bridging in and for our lives. We find this clue in Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus; it is the vocabulary of spatial dimensions of how God and humankind interact in Jesus. 

    Jesus speaks of “up” and “down”: of how humankind can go up to heaven only because Jesus has come down to earth so that all who believe in him will be lifted into eternal life. “Up and down are words that capture the contradictions in Christian life and faith. We can substitute this pair of words with other pairs like “right” and “wrong”, “faith-filled” and “doubtful”, “kindness” and “selfishness”, “free for God” and “enslaved to sin”. All of them describe in one way or another the struggles we have in living the Christian life well.

    Today, we are reminded that the space of contradictions between these opposites, between up and down, heaven and earth, divinity and humanity, the hope of salvation and the despair of sinfulness in our lives is closed by Jesus’ obedience, self-emptying, and fidelity to God’s love that saves. The Cross of Jesus overcomes these contradictions, bridges this space and raises us into the delightful union with God. This is how God saves through the Cross.

    Meditating on the mystery of the Cross should draw us more fully into God’s saving and life-giving embrace both now and always. But this delight, this exaltation of the Cross in and for our lives, cannot be simply for us to just see and know, to just receive and experience. God hardly means for us treasure this joy only for our self-gratification, our self-possession, our self-righteousness. 

    Rather, the exaltation we find when meditating on the Cross should be the treasure trove of a joy that challenges us to action. This joy, I believe, asks you and me to commit ourselves to authentic action for God: we should not only want to also bridge the divide as God did but to do this more freely and more intentionally. Only then can our efforts to bridge our distance from God be more sincere and more wholehearted. Then, as we bridge the space between God and us, between life and death, between being saved or perishing, we can begin to appreciate the depth of our belief in God. How much do we really believe?

    I'd like to suggest that we will not find our answers in a theological treatise or a dogma or a catechism teaching, and yes, not even in this homily by this priest. Instead, each of us will discover the depth of our belief in that simpler, humbler, more human act of faith we always do, now and again: when we make the sign of the cross. The words "up" and "down" in this morning’s gospel point to heaven and earth, which we tend to think of as places. But the mystery of the Cross that we celebrate today challenges us to move us beyond the notion of place to relationship, choice, belief, and salvation.

    For isn’t each moment that we sign ourselves in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit about entering into relationship with God? Aren't these moments of signing the Cross also choosing again and again to confess to ourselves and to the world that we are Christian? Isn't each moment that we sign ourselves also a proclamation of    the truth we believe in--that in the Cross God saves us because God loves us? And don't we remember with hope as we sign ourselves in the name of the Father and the of the Son and of the Holy Spirit that God destines us for salvation, for the delight of communing with us, no matter how much we struggle with sin?  

    Perhaps, we know the depth of our belief best when we experience that very palpable shift in our consciousness each time that we sign ourselves: we find ourselves crossing over into the divine, of bridging the human world with its many distractions and entering more fully into God’s presence, no matter for how long or short this might be? 

    If your answer to each of these questions is “yes,” then shall we not take the way of the Cross? This same way that God has crossed into our time and bridged into our space so as to save and lift us up into the fullness of God’s life and love.  

    Perhaps, if we can be as determined as Joshua is in crossing the bridges and overcoming the divide in each city he visits, you and I might discover that when we do the same for God, we can begin to really savour what more God has to offer us on the other side, not just eternally but here and now joyfully. All we need to do it is to make that choice for God and to cross over our spiritual bridge to God today. 




    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: from Corbis (Internet)

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  4. Year A / Ordinary Time / 23rd Sunday
    Readings: Ezekiel 33.7-9 / Responsorial Psalm: 95 (R/v 8) / Romans 13.8-10 / Matthew 18.15-20


    A family. A band of friends. An estate of neighbors. A school of students and teachers. A group of working colleagues. A parish of believers.  A nation of citizens.

    Each of us inhabits several of these spaces everyday. In these spaces, we are not just individuals, distinct and separate from each other. Rather, we are individuals always in relationship. We are bound together by blood, race, language, religion, shared experiences, common history and citizenship. The word “community” best describes these relationships. 

    You and I know the benefits of living in community. It roots us. It gives us an identity. It nurtures our growth and supports our everyday life. It enables us to interact and to enjoy life. And it helps us to fulfill our aspirations. 

    But you and I also know how much living in community can be a struggle. We labour to overcome differences so as to be united in fellowship. We endeavor to value difference, to forgive hurts and to build up all. We strive for commonsense and common understanding. We seek to share our commonwealth so that no one is left behind. Sometimes we do these well and sometimes we fail miserably.

    Community life is a theme in our mass readings in September. This is a challenging theme: it demands we make an honest evaluation of how we are living in community as Christians. These readings provide contrasting sets of virtues and vices for us to consider this question: “Are you fostering or destroying relationships?” This is why they will encourage us to build up the community by being more willing to communicate and to forgive. They will also warn us of how jealousy and envy, pride and lust will tear the community apart. 

    "Why is it important to make an honest evaluation of the quality of our communal life with one another?" you may ask.

    Paul provides an explanation in his letter to the Romans: it has to do with how we love as Christians. The lack of love causes us to sin against each other. The abundance of love empowers us to build up each other. When we withhold our love, we deny another life. When we generously share our love, we enrich another’s life. How we love determines the richness of community life we have with one another.

    If Christian love—the kind of love we profess we have because God loves us—is the fulfillment of the law, then, you and I would do well to make an honest assessment of how we are practicing it in community. Doing this allows us to let God perfect us even more to love one another as God loves us in Jesus.  

    But don’t we already know this lesson about love? Haven’t we learnt this in catechism as a child and as an adult? Don’t we hear it in the many homilies about modeling ourselves on Jesus’ love of God and love for neighbor? Aren’t we challenged so often to live this kind of love by caring for the poorer amongst us?

    I believe that we know what Christian loving is all about. And so it would be natural for us, as we hear this morning's readings, to ask: “What else can we learn about how to love as Christians in community?”

    I’d like to suggest that Jesus wants to remind us today that to love to not just about doing. Rather, it is first and always about being--being present to and being with another. We hear this reminder in these words with which Jesus closes our gospel reading: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in your midst.” The following story can help us appreciate the reason behind Jesus' reminder.
    There was once monastery on a mountain. It was famous for the 101 monks and their holiness. For many years the people on the plains looked up and said, “Ahh, there God dwells.” Visitors sought out the monastery to heal their wearied souls. 
    Because of the monastery’s fame, the monks grew jealous and petty with one another. Many visitors felt their animosity. Over time, many monks left. The people on the plains looked up and lamented, “Ohhh. The light of God is dying.” 
    The Abbot of the monastery was distressed. He didn’t know what to do. So, he sought the advice of the wise hermit who lived at the foot the mountain. After listening to the Abbot’s woes, the hermit said, “Go back and looked for the Messiah; he dwells among you." Then, he closed his door.
    The Abbot was flabbergasted: what kind of an answer is that, he muttered to himself as he climbed back up.  
    When the few remaining monks heard the hermit’s words, they grew silent as they began to look into each other’s faces. Is this one the Messiah? Is that one the Messiah? Who really is the Messiah amongst us? 
    From that day on the mood in the monastery changed. The monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect, on the off chance that one of them might be the Messiah.  
    They began serving each other, looking out for opportunities to assist. They began seeking healing and forgiveness where offence had been given. They began loving again. 
    As one traveler, then another, visited the monastery word soon spread about the remarkable spirit of the place. People once again sought out the monastery and found themselves renewed and transformed. Now the people on the plains looked and exclaimed, “Ahh, yes, see how they love one another: God has come home.” 
    And all this came to be because those monks knew the Messiah was among them.
    “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in your midst.” The monks enfleshed this communion with Jesus by being in communion with one another.

    The monks discovered this promise of communion by learning to be in loving relationship with one another. The people observed this in the monks. This morning, you and I also learn from the monks that the way of loving communion is indeed our path to salvation. Their way is indeed Jesus’ way for Christians to live and move and have our being in community by being with God. 

    Why then is this a hope-filled lesson that we can take home today to live and to share with our various communities? In the words of the Brazilian author Paul Coelho this is why: 
    “One does not love in order to do what is good or to help or to protect someone. If we act in that way, we are perceiving the other as a simple object, and we are seeing ourselves as wise and generous persons. This has nothing to do with love. To love is to be communion with the other and to discover in that other the spark of God” (By the River Piedra, I Sat Down and Wept).
    The spark of God and communion. This is why we love the way we do as Christians in community. It is Jesus’ way of loving because in each one he met in gospels and in each one of us here whom he meets daily he does not judge the bad. Instead,  he always looks for the spark of God in each of us, that spark that draws him into communion with us and with us into union with God.

    How then can we not love as Jesus did by being more attentive to the spark of God in one another in the various communities we inhabit, and so savour God’s life-giving love in our midst?




    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    Photo: courtesy of St Joseph’s Institution

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  5. A Homily for Teachers’ Day (preached at St Joseph's Institution,Singapore)
    Readings: Jeremiah 1.4-10  / Psalm 34. 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9. (R/v 9a) / Matthew 5.13-16


    What word did you first speak? Probably “Mama,” “Papa,” uttered clumsily as babes to our parents, our first teachers.

    As we grew up, other teachers taught us. Kindergarten teachers taught us “A is for apple,” “B is for boy,” and “C is for cat.” Primary school teachers provided us skills and knowledge to read and write and to do arithmetic.

    Here, in St Joseph's Institution (SJI), teachers help us to understand the whats, whys and hows of life. The whats that are facts and figures for us to make sense of the world. The whys that answer our curious questions about the mysteries of life and faith. The hows to explain things as they are in our lives and how else we can improve on them.

    It is therefore right to thank our teachers, particularly, our SJI teachers, today. I believe our thanks isn’t limited to the knowledge, values and skills they impart to us. They extend and include such life-giving lessons they have taught us as: every person is inherently good; every one deserves a second chance; everybody can succeed. And in SJI, that every student best lives out his Josephian education by wasting it on another in greater need, like Jesus did, and not by hoarding it selfishly.

    And don’t you and I see the goodness of what wasting oneself for others can do in our prodigal SJI teachers? Prodigal in that sense of freely and extravagantly giving to another what is most precious, one’s life. Consider how one or two or more of our teachers have been prodigal to you, for you, with you? If we are honest to them, to ourselves and to God, our thanks must also and always embrace the priceless gift of themselves to us.

    These are all very good reasons for our thanksgiving to God today. But what more can we, as people of faith, celebrate about our teachers and their teaching? Our readings offer us three more reasons.


    First, that God created teachers, empowered their teaching and sent them to teach.
    Ask our teachers why they teach, and many will say, “It’s my vocation.” Vocations are about listening to God and following God’s lead. Vocations do not come out of the blue; they have always been God’s design for each of us.

    Our first reading is about the gift of vocation. In Jeremiah we see how God had always meant for him to be God’s prophet, that he was to prophesize and that God’s words would be his prophetic words.

    The teaching vocation is no different. Seen with eyes of faith, it originates in God’s Word that each teacher experiences as God’s goodness. And this goodness cannot be contained or bottled up; it transforms itself into a prodigious enthusiasm that sweeps a teacher on that wild, wild tide of selfless sharing to others. Teachers know that they sometimes cannot help but want to give away this goodness, again and again, through the knowledge, values and care they impart. 

    And as we teachers share in this manner I’d like to think that we, like Jeremiah, are constantly humbled by a God who keeps anointing and transforming our limited, youthful vocabulary into wise, life-giving words for our students. Seeing this, how can we who are teachers not marvel at how God transforms the seeming scarcity of our limitations into the rich giftedness that allows us to teach, to minister, to love?

    Through these acts of self-giving, all of us, students and teachers alike, will keep discovering that the call to teach is nothing less than to do what Jesus does -– to welcome, to embrace and to bless every child and person a teacher encounters to feel the love of God.


    Second, that teaching is a prophetic ministry.
    When teaching is truly focused on the child, done with compassion and directed towards him resembling more and more God’s likeness, it is, I believe, as God wishes it to always be: hope-filled.

    This is what God sends Jeremiah to do. He is to proclaim God’s work amongst the people. He is not only to correct and change, but to build and to plant. That is, he is to reveal to them new life in God. New life that our responsorial psalm reminds us is not in a distant future to come, but already present: we can indeed taste and see God’s goodness in our midst.

    Prophesizing is about helping others appreciate hope as God’s presence in our midst. Teaching can do this when it inspires, challenges and leads students to live the fullness of life that is God in the here and now.

    This is why hope-filled teaching is especially relevant as many of us struggle to understand a world soiled by painful suffering, stained by confusion and uncertainty, and pockmarked by doubt and despair in many parts.

    As teachers, you and I, and even you dear parents, have a responsibility to help our students experience more fully the hope that is the reign of God already amongst us. Let us ask for the grace to do this daily. Perhaps, this will enable more of us to savour that foretaste of God’s reign and its goodness on earth.


    Third, that teaching is for lighting up the world.
    Transforming students and sending them into the world to make a difference, especially, for the lost, least and forgotten, has always been a goal of Lasallian education.

    In today’s gospel passage, we hear the foundation of this goal. It is Jesus. Jesus’ mission is to light up the world with God’s love. Teaching is one way he did this.

    To teach, then, in a Catholic school, must be to do as Jesus did: to light up the world. It begins by teachers lighting up their students’ imaginations, igniting their passions, and enflaming their lives. Then, with hearts on fire they can go and enlighten the world. We Jesuits also speak of mission in terms of a fire that kindles other fires.

    Today, we also celebrate that to teach and to be taught is to be part of Jesus’ mission. But what does teaching to light up the world look like? How can it be a fire that kindles other fires?

    It is the kind of teaching the risen Jesus did as he accompanied the two despairing disciples on the road to Emmaus. His words clarified and answered their questions. His words renewed and refreshed their spirit. His words gave them life anew and empowered them to go forth and proclaim the very good news that Jesus Christ is risen, Alleluia.

    The infectious fire of Jesus’ teaching excited these disciples and the apostles, sent them forth to baptize in his name and gathered the faithful round a table to break bread.

    We too are gathered around a similar altar to celebrate Eucharist together. We do this in the name of Jesus who is not only Saviour but also Teacher. His teachings help us learn why we live and move and have our being in God: to be loved and to love.

    The disciples at Emmaus said: “Were not our hearts burning within us while Jesus was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?”

    What can you say as students when you come alive because a teacher walks with you to know and live your Christian faith better? What will we say as teachers when we experience God’s presence working through us as we teach?

    Perhaps, in such moments, as today’s mass also is, it is a word, not a phrase, that can best voice our thanksgiving for our teachers and their teaching.

    And there can be no better word than this: “Amen” (So be it.)




    photo: from the internet (www.evergreen.edu)


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"Bukas Palad"
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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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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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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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The views I express in these pages are personal. They do not speak for the Society of Jesus or the Catholic Church.
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