1. Year C / Christmas Season / Feast of the Holy Family
    Readings: 1 Samuel 1:20-22,24-28 / Psalm 83.2-3,5-6, 9-10 (R/v cf 5a) / 1 John 3:1-2, 21-24 / Luke 2:41-52

    The Waltons was a television series I’d faithfully watch with my family when I was younger. It revolved around a multi-generational American family at the time of the Great Depression. Each week we’d watch them live as they interacted, quarreled, struggled, forgave and loved. The eldest son, John Boy, was the main character. He would begin each episode by introducing the week’s story and he would end it by reflecting on lessons learnt about family life. 

    But it was how The Waltons ended each week that captured my attention then and remains etched in my childhood memories to this day. We would see the family house at night, all dark, with light in some rooms. We’d hear each family member say good night: “Good night Mama, Papa”; “Good night, Mary Ellen”; “Good night, John Boy”; “Good night, Grandma and Grandpa”; “Good night, Jim Bob”; “Good night, children”. Then, the lights would extinguish one by one and all would sleep.

    Today, we remember another family and their struggles, and we celebrate their life because of God's labor in their lives.

    Every year we hear readings and homilies about this Holy Family. Same old same old: same invitation, same challenge, you and I say: “My family can never be like the Holy Family; we’re such an unholy family.” 

    Honest feelings and understandable thoughts: after all, don’t we all struggle with our varied tensions of being family? Sometimes we feel frustrated, resentful and angry towards our family for one reason or another. At other times, we might feel trapped, manipulated and offended by their words and actions. Our divorced and remarried family members, and those who didn’t succeed might disappoint us. Our imprisoned or homosexual family members might embarrass us. Try as we do to love them as a family, our love may be wanting, if not unchristian at times.

    But we all know that we will be lesser without our families. They give us joy, comfort and hope. They save us from sadness, loneliness and despair. In fact, don’t they redeem us from the sin of selfishness and greed by drawing us into the grace of selflessness and generosity? And doesn’t our love for our families—no matter how much we give—always bless us into life? I believe “yes” is our answer to these questions. 

    And “yes” is possibly how each family member in The Waltons came to terms with living in their family. Their family bonds and responsibilities kept them faithful to each other. They also saved them. They saved each other from self-centeredness by teaching them generosity. You can say that this family’s interactions schooled them into holiness: they taught each other to be more giving, more trusting, more thankful, more disposed towards life, even as they struggled with the daily realities of being family.

    Don’t our families do the same for you and me? Don’t they school us to become Christian in our attitudes and behaviors, in our words and deeds towards one another? Aren’t our family disagreements and discomforts really teachable moments for us to become more loving, more forgiving, more accepting, more caring, more family? 

    Perhaps, the most important school we need to attend and pay attention to is our family life. Here, we will learn to grow up more Christian and become holier.

    No phrase supports “Holy does not mean perfect” better than “Holy Family”. If holiness has much to do with trusting God’s dreams and graces for us, then, the Holy Family exemplifies this. They lived this holiness by responding faithfully to God’s plan for them. Christian families should respond to God’s dreams and graces that can convert us to holiness. 

    Learning to grow in holiness then is why we must cherish the Holy Family. They show us how to strive as a family to find God’s grace and to grow in God’s ways

    From the angel announcing Mary’ pregnancy to Joseph following the angel’s instruction to remain as Mary’s husband, this couple lived amidst life’s tensions to follow God faithfully. However the Jewish laws threatened their union or puzzled kinsfolk questioned their unnatural situation, Mary and Joseph turned towards each other, then towards the crib, then towards Egypt and finally towards Nazareth, but always with God in their lives. From finding Jesus in the temple to standing with Jesus at the foot of the cross, from fleeing into Egypt to leaving home to begin Jesus’ ministry, this family learnt to let go of their wants and to let God lead them through life’s uncertainties.

    For us, these tensions are obstacles to overcome and resolve. For the Holy Family, these are where God’s dreams enter into human life; they are the very spaces where God’s graces can grow in us and perfect us in holiness. 

    The Holy Family shows us how to do this: by seeking God; by trusting God; by letting God lead. In short, the Holy Family practiced obedience. 

    We hear about their obedience in today’s gospel story: Mary and Joseph obeyed the Law of Moses that Mary purify herself after childbirth, that they present their first born to God, and that they thank God with sacrificial offerings. And Jesus’ obedience growing up found favor with God. Obedience is in fact writ large in the stories about the Holy Family. Joseph obeyed the angel despite his fears. Mary obeyed God to bear Jesus. Both obeyed each other as husband and wife. Their mutual obedience to God and one another taught Jesus how to obey His Father in heaven and his parents on earth. 

    It is their obedience to God and one another that enables Jesus, Mary and Joseph to grow in holiness as a family. We would be wise to make obedience our family way: for it will be obedience that will open our hearts to God’s mystery of salvation in our lives.

    Indeed the story of Mary and Joseph looking for Jesus today is a meditation on opening our hearts to God. It very well describes our own Christian living. We look for Jesus when we, like him, seek to be in God’s presence; when we, like him, choose to be obedient; when we, like him, grow in wisdom. Along the way we discover that Jesus enlarges where we look for him, how we find him, and what new understanding comes to us through our encounters with him. 

    This is the pattern of faithful Christian living for fullness of life. We find this pattern first in our family; we then share it with the family of God that we are. And we live this obedience best by interacting with every family member at home, in church and in society in Christian ways.

    This is why we must resist how society devalues the family as an economic shelter, a baby-making machine, a curb to individualism. We must instead pray to love our families with God’s eyes: as the source of our holiness in God and the graced place to grow in it. 

    Christmas helps us to do this. We remember how Jesus brought holiness to Joseph and Mary by making them family. We celebrate how Jesus brings us into holiness by embracing us into His family. And though Christmas Day is over, the birthing of Jesus in our lives should not be. His entry into our lives should make us make more room for him in our lives first, and for him, to make even more room for our family. This is how we can let Jesus work with our family to convert us into holiness, as we can do the same for them.

    Growing into holiness is indeed the Christian promise of God meeting and perfecting us in the tensions of family life. Shouldn’t we then learn to value our families even more? 

    May be when we value our families as they are in the same way God loves us mercifully as we are, we might be able to really wish each other in our families, “Good night, Mom”, “God night, Dad”, “Good night, daughter”, “Good night, Grandpa and Grandma,” “Good night, son”, “Good night, everyone”. Then, we'll definitely find ourselves living as family that is always grateful, always at peace.


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

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  2. Year C / Christmas Season / Christmas Day
    Readings: Isaiah 52.7-10 / Responsorial Psalm 98.1-6 (R/v 3c) / Hebrews 1.1-6 / John 1.1-18


    “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.”

    These words end today’s gospel reading from John. They are cause for us to remember, celebrate and believe in the Christmas story. Because today God who once entered into human life in history to redeem us makes real again God’s promise to keep redeeming us in our life stories. For is it indeed by becoming one like us that God has made us to become one like God, no matter our human struggles and sinfulness.

    Yes, God has come, God is with us, God will always be here for us.  We proclaim this truth when we stand before baby Jesus in the crib. We see his gleeful face. We sense his outstretched arms inviting us to lift him up and to draw him into our lives. This is Christmas joy: to know God is with us.

    What else can we experience but joy when Jesus comes amongst us, with all our faults, to reveal the glory of God’s saving love? A glory the angels sang as they praised God in the heavens and announced God’s peace on earth. That glory the shepherds experienced at Jesus’ birth. The glory reflected in Joseph’s contented face and Mary’s beaming smile as they gaze at Jesus. This same glory you and me honour by kneeling before Jesus lying in the manger as our Lord and God. This is why we can come with all our successes and failures, our hopes and regrets, even our holy and unholy actions, and place them before this child. For in this small, vulnerable, fragile child, Love divine, all loves excelling, meets us to save. This is the glory of God.

    But we can easily lose sight of this glory. Hallmark cards reimagine it as Christmas quaint and traditional. Popular Christmas songs sugar-coat it. Shopping malls reduce it to Happy Holidays and bargain buys. These distortions of Christmas glory can make us forget why God comes to us in Jesus. What is this deeper, richer reason?

    We can glimpse it in the opening line of John’s gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

    This line makes us think of Jesus, the Word, with God, the Father. Both side by side with each other. We do so because of the preposition ‘with’. The Greek word for ‘with’ is ‘pros.’ ‘Pros’ suggests turning towards another, being orientated towards another, moving towards this other.

    The Greek translation of the opening line then images the Word always turned towards God, always actively reaching out to God, always wanting to be with God. And God too is also turned towards the Word, actively reaching out to it, always wanting to be with the Word.

    We believe Jesus shows us the way to God. He does this by modelling this more active way of turning, orientating, directing oneself towards God. Christian discipleships calls us to do likewise. But Jesus can turn towards God, and we can too, because God is always first turned towards him and us.

    This Greek insight about being turned toward another reveals something profoundly beautiful about God and God’s reason for coming to us. Knowing this must matter to you and me today.

    It must matter like it does for those who swing on the flying trapeze: it’s a matter of life and death.

    Holding on to bars, two men swing to and fro, trying to synchronize their swings to that perfectly timed moment when one can let off of his bar, fly freely through the air, and be caught by the other to swing together, and not fall.

    A moment of thrill and fear. A scene of wonder and grace.

    Before this event however hours of practice. By one who is younger and inexperienced, wanting but hesitant.  And by the other who is older, more experienced, surer of his moves and confident. Tries upon tries of stretching of one’s hand to the other, but not daring enough to let go. Tries upon tries to soar but always fearful of falling down.

    Until that day when the swings are synchronized and the timing right, and that older, more experienced catcher reaches out, grabs the other’s hands, lifts him up, soaring through the air, never falling. 

    What if this movement in practicing flying trapeze is what Christmas is also profoundly about? Being caught and lifted up.

    What if the desirous but hesitant flyer is you and me, always wanting to reach out to God but fearing we can’t? And that catcher saying, ‘now’ is God, God knowing that this is the anointed time to lift us up into God’s life? Lifting us out of darkness into God’s radiant life. Out of sinfulness into fullness of life. Out of discord into peace. Out of despair into hope. Out of unbearable sadness into indescribable joy.

    Yes, isn’t Christmas really about God coming to us in Jesus and lifting us up, and taking us beyond our human limitations and sinfulness to God’s pre-ordained possibilities of how much more like God we can be.  Isn’t this what Jesus did for us by being born like us to show us the way to God? Show us this way of always turning ourselves towards God? 

    And what else is God’s action of reaching out to us but God’s mercy? Mercy in its simplest but truest meaning -- of entering into the chaos of another’s life and to lift her out of it and up into God’s life, light and love.

    God’s mercy we receive through Jesus, with Jesus and in Jesus. The mercy of God we first glimpse in his infant face at Christmas. And as Jesus journeys with us through life, this mercy we come to truly know whenever we look upon his face, matured with age, scarred by suffering and death but always etched with God’s love for us, no matter our sin. This face we see every time we look at the crucifix.

    This is why meditating on the face of the infant Jesus will lead us into that deeper, richer truth that Christmas is first and foremost about God’s mercy coming to usComing not because we’ve earned salvation. But coming because God wants us to be with us in our messiness and to lift us up from it -- Jesus born in a dung-filled manger to be with us; Jesus dead on the Cross to raise us up.

    All this can be God's gift to you and me if we but trust: trust that in Jesus we will truly receive God’s mercy.

    Let us do this as we come before Jesus in the crib this morning: let us let go of our fears; let us lose ourselves in trust; and let us let God catch us in Jesus and not fall.

    And if we meditate on Jesus long enough, we will be surprised: for it will not be us who will lift Jesus up into our embrace. Instead, it will be Jesus drawing us deeper into God’s life, light and love. Then, let us savour God’s mercy as Jesus lifts us up with his outstretched arms to let us soar again in life this Christmas.

    As we do this, we will not hear angels singing “Glory to God in the highest, and peace to people of goodwill” as the shepherds did that first Christmas night. But you and I will want to sing those same words because this great truth of Christmas has began to dawn again in our hearts and in our minds: that God has come and his mercy is forever ours, not just today but always

    For you and me, this must be all that must really matter in our lives.  Oh what joy that God’s mercy is indeed ours!


    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore

    artwork: klebercampion.prosite.com
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  3. Year C / Advent / Week 4 / Sunday
    Readings: Micah 5.1-4a / Ps 80 (R/v 4) / Hebrew 10.5-10 / Luke 1.39-45

    Lord, make us turn to you,
    Let us see your face and we shall be saved.

    These words are the response in today’s Psalm. I think they aptly express our desire at this point in Advent. We have waited expectantly for a long time for Christmas to come. We want these last days of Advent to pass by quickly so we can come to Jesus in the manger.

    But don’t these same words echo that more familiar everyday struggle you and I have—of trying to find and see God’s face? To look for this face amidst the ordinariness of our own lives. To look for God in the pressing concerns our families and friends have. To look for God's face in the never-ending suffering and strife so many in our world still face.

    I believe we all look for God in the human realities of our living and loving, our working and studying, our praying and playing. And when we find it so difficult to see God, haven’t we cried out, "Lord, let us see your face”?

    Today we are on the threshold of Christmas. No matter the quality of our Advent preparation, we are now turned more decisively toward God coming into our lives, becoming one like us, living among us as Jesus, and saving us for God as the Christ. We are eager to see this God. This is why the gurgling, smiling face of baby Jesus in the crib on Christmas morning will be for you and me reason enough to believe that God is truly Emmanuel, God-is-with-us.

    But before that let us meditate on the Visitation to better appreciate this face of God.

    Pregnant, Mary travels with urgent haste, and probably some discomfort, to visit Elizabeth. Mary goes to care for her cousin who is unexpectedly pregnant in her old age. They greet each other with an embrace.

    In visiting, two women experience consolation and concern for one another. In embracing, their love comforts and binds them. Visiting: an image of caring and comfort. Embracing: an image of loving and belonging. 

    Two images that echo the depth of God’s mercy in coming to us in Jesus. Indeed, it is Mary’s visit and her embrace with Elizabeth that leads to John in Elizabeth’s womb leaping in joy before Jesus whom Mary bears within her.

    Perhaps, this is why we find the Visitation a comforting reading.  Doesn’t it remind us of such visits in our lives as: a friend repeatedly assuring us in our loneliness; a parent lovingly cradles us into life again when we experience emptiness; a colleague encouraging us with hope-filled words; and even a stranger kindly offering us her MRT seat. Don’t we find ourselves like Elizabeth in these moments, surprised by God visiting us? 

    God visits us because God always remembers us, counts us worthy and loves us beyond all telling to be with us. This is the message the Visitation presents us with today: God is always present, always laboring for our good.

    This joyful truth of the Visitation can now help us to sharpen our Advent focus to see God reaching out to visit us, and on Christmas morning to see even more clearly that God chooses to stay with us.  

    Yes, God comes to live with us in no other place but in our earthly space. Though it is so often soiled, broken and messy, God choses to dwell in this space, and within it to love us into the fullness of life with Godself.

    God’s love is not abstract, theoretical or heady. It is not a long ago action we sentimentally remember at Christmas. Neither is it a future second coming we can only attain because we have obediently ticked off all the boxes on the Catholic To Do List.  No, God’s love has concrete form: it can be felt and known in the present, and God's love is even more merciful and abundant than we can ever imagine.  

    No experience of this is more palpable than when human beings embrace each other, like Mary and Elizabeth did. In this most intimate deed of connecting with one another, God’s love is experience more truly than any theology, prayer or homily can express. 

    If there is a deep longing we all pine for as human beings, it is to be touched, to be held, to be embraced. We yearn for this from another, especially from the ones we love because this makes their love and concern, their friendship real for us. In an embrace, we become alive to one another. 

    This is why a mother cuddling her baby girl warms our hearts; why a man cradling his dying brother moves us to tears; why a couple’s forgiving embrace makes us smile, and why the hearty hug of friends and strangers at the sign of peace makes us smile.

    We have all experienced something of God in such embraces: of God giving birth to us and caring for us; of God forgiving us and laughing with us; of God loving us to no end. In these moments, God’s love is far more real than any catechism, hymn or book can convey.

    We are not seeking to satisfy our physical wants or to gratify our emotional longings when we seek another’s embrace. What we are seeking for deep within us is to experience God’s love through another’s embrace.

    God’s visitation and God’s embrace. These come alive because of how God chooses to come into human lives—by entering into the lives of the small and the insignificant. Mary, a young girl in a culture where men dominate. Elizabeth, a barren woman in a community that prizes fertility as God’s favour. And lowly shepherds, instead of the mighty and powerful when Jesus is born. 

    All of them small. All of us small too before God because of our human faults. Yet each one of them and us is more than small in God’s eyes. In God's eyes, we are in fact always worthy to bear Jesus. Bearing him to dwell in us and bearing him to present to the world, like Mary did. 

    God comes into human life today through another’s “yes” to God’s ways. This was how God once did it through Mary’s “yes”, and through her to Elizabeth in a visit and to the world in a birth.

    This is why Mary and Elizabeth’s embrace cannot speak of anything less than the surprising, gratuitous gift of God in Jesus. Of God visiting us by embracing human form so as to embrace us in turn as one of us. 

    In Jesus who lived amongst us, loving us as we are, we see the face of our God who saves. And in Jesus, we can turn towards God and embrace God back gratefully in a loving return of ourselves.

    Indeed, in Jesus, we can believe in the Christmas truth made flesh: that we are created to be in touch with God who always desires to touch us first.

    Mary proclaimed this truth in bearing Jesus to Elizabeth and Elizabeth celebrated it by welcoming Jesus. So, let us do likewise: let us bear Jesus to the many people in our lives, and even to those God is yet to send into our lives. Then, having met Jesus in us, they can say: 

    Lord, you have turned to us, 
    we have seen your face and we rejoice for we are saved.




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

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  4. Year C / Advent / Week 3 / Sunday
    Readings: Zephaniah 3.14-18a  / Psalm: Isaiah 12.2-3, 4, 5-66  (R/v 6) / Philippians 4.4-7 / Luke 3.10-18


    “I want, I want,” cried Daniel, my two-year old nephew. He stretched out his hands, eager to receive his birthday presents. Receiving them, he ran excitedly to Mommy and Daddy. Then, he gleefully tore the wrapping paper apart, letting out an “Oh” and a “Wow” with each unwrapped gift.

    Who amongst us here has not witnessed our own children or our nephews and nieces doing the same at their birthdays and Christmas? We note their good cheer. We see their attention on the gifts. We hear parents and grandparents instructing them on opening their gifts. 

    Today we hear John the Baptist instructing the crowds who have come to him seeking their own deliverance. He instructs them to be charitable and just and to live by God’s commandments. Listening to him, they are excited; he appears to be the messiah they have long awaited for to save them. But John announces that there is another to come who is mightier than he is. He directs them to look beyond him to the coming Messiah, Jesus. 

    Don’t we sometimes find ourselves like the crowd at Advent time? Caught up as we are with checking off on the To Do List all the material preparations needed for Christmas—as well as all the Advent prayers, retreats and rituals that we feel obligated and rule-bound to complete—only to realize sadly that Jesus is absent in our hearts and in our minds as God-with-us, coming to stay for us? Aren’t we like the little children so fixated on our presents that we forget that presence of the ones who gifted them to us?

    We receive more than a present at birthdays, Christmas or Lunar New Year. What we hold in our hands is another’s love and care for us, even her interest. Indeed, what I am really being gifted with is the presence of a family member or a friend. Long after I have torn apart the wrapping paper and found the gift, Mom’s presence will remain. And after the birthday guests have departed, the gift of the book I now read will remind me of my friend. Indeed, at the heart of all the presents we receive is the gift of another’s presence.

    And so it must be with God at Christmastime: that through Jesus, with Jesus and in Jesus, God’s present, we have the presence of God, no longer just in heaven but on earth with us. Today, we focus on this truth by looking ahead more expectantly to our coming celebration of the Incarnation.

    We call today “Gaudete” Sunday. We have rose-colored liturgical vestments; they remind us that we can look ahead joyfully. We sing more upbeat Advent hymns; they prepare us for the coming Christmas cheer. Our readings explain why we can rejoice: God is truly coming to dwell amongst us.

    Zephaniah tells a timid, disheartened people: “Fear not, be not discouraged....God will rejoice over you with gladness”. The psalmist calls us to cry out with joy and gladness for God is among us; no matter our fears, weaknesses and sinfulness, this good news should make us confident and unafraid. Paul instructs the Philippians who squabbling among themselves and fearing communal division: “Be unselfish. Dismiss anxiety from your minds. Just trust our God and present your needs.” This is how God’s peace and harmony will come into their lives and prevail in community. And with John, we hear this joyful news, pregnant with expectancy: the Messiah is very close

    And didn’t this hope come to pass with the angels' glad tidings that first Christmas: that God has come and is with us, one like us, and for us and our salvation? Don’t we echo this refrain of God’s goodness each Christmas in liturgies, prayers, songs and even in gifts exchanged? Peace on earth and goodwill to all peoples—this, the Advent promise.

    Peace and goodwill, you say?  How can that be when so much of our world is in pain and suffering? How can the Advent messages of happiness and hope lift us up when many are still hungry, still in poverty, still imprisoned unjustly, still gunned down senselessly, and still marginalized cruelly for race, gender, sexuality? What if Advent just doesn’t work for some of us because the holier-than-thou among our community have judged who can and who cannot receive God’s mercy in communion and confession?

    How are we—the ones hurt by the Church, disappointed with the world, betrayed by others—to reconcile ourselves with the Advent promise and prepare meaningfully for Christmas? Can we find that joyful reason to consider ourselves worthy to come before Jesus in the manger?

    So much of our Advent preparation should challenge us. No matter how well our preparations are proceeding, or if we are just beginning to prepare, even now, Advent can help us confront the stark truths of who we are as we prepare to come to Jesus. The individual burdened by anxiety. The self weighed down by ego. The troubled person. The small-minded man. The self-serving woman. The self-righteous believer. All of these—us, really—faithful Christians struggling with repeated sins and bad habits we want so much to stop but keep failing because of our human condition.

    But it is precisely in this confrontation and struggle with our diminished selves, our losses, our sadness, and our weight of sin that Advent is most gracious and merciful. It affords us time and strength, hope and reason to take those first steps, once again, to move out of this darkness and to journey into God’s radiant light that dawns with Jesus’ coming.  
    It is in this movement into God’s light that God will burn off those dark and shadowy, melancholic and burdened parts of us. God will do this with the fire of love. And who else is this fire of love but Jesus. “I am baptizing you with water, but there is one to come who is mightier than I”, John declares today. “He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn in unquenchable fire”.



    John’s words are not meant to scare us about who is saved and who is lost. Instead, they are to encourage us to welcome Jesus who redeems with fire. “Fire is not the fate of the lost, but the refining of the blessed. We all have our chaff, our dross, our waste”. We need to winnow out these parts of ourselves, and with God’s help.  “And it is the fire of Christ that will burn them away. The burdens we carry do not make us unfit for Advent’s message. They qualify us as prime candidates”*. Who amongst us then cannot rejoice in God who finds us worthy for salvation in Jesus? 

    Today, you and I are being invited to look more deeply into John’s announcement so that we can better discern Jesus’ imminent coming and the redemption he brings. This is how our joy of receiving Jesus can be more complete at Christmas. 

    May be our joy, then, will be a lot like the joy I believe my nephew Daniel has come to know growing up: that it’s in giving love that the giver is the true cause of joy and the reason for smiles. Now, wouldn’t receiving God in Jesus like a child help us to better grow up, smile and rejoice at Christmas time?





    * John Kavanaugh, SJ  

    penned whilst on retreat at De La Salle Brothers’ Residence, St Patrick’s, Singapore
    photo: huffingtonpost.com

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  5. Year C / Advent / Week 2 / Sunday
    Readings: Baruch 5.1-9 / Ps 126.1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 6  (R/v 3) / Philippians 1.4-6, 8-11 / Luke 3.1-6


    Advent is a time of waiting expectantly. We wait for the coming of Jesus, like the Jews did once before. And, we also wait as Christians to welcome Jesus into our daily life. We already have an assuring image of expectant waiting. It comes from last week’s gospel reading: to stand with confidence before Jesus. And isn’t is what we await eagerly to do on Christmas morning: to stand before Jesus lying in the manger?

    Advent is also a time of preparing ourselves for Jesus’ coming. Advent invites us to repentance, to turn away from our bad habits and sinful ways so that we better welcome Jesus into our lives this Christmas. The image of John the Baptist preaching a baptism of repentance to the Jews in today's gospel reading reminds us of the Advent call to repent.

    Advent can moreover be a time of discerning. We don't often think of Advent in this way but I'd like to suggest we reflect on this possibility as part of our Advent preparations.

    Consider Paul’s invitation to the Philippians to discern in our second reading: “This is my prayer: that your love may increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception, to discern what is of value, so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ” (1:9-10). His words aptly express what Advent preparation must be about: discerning the value of God in our lives.

    Wouldn’t our Advent preparation be blessed if we discern what it is that God calls us to be and to do on Christmas morning? Advent discernment is about answering the questions “Who is God?”, “Who am I to God?” and “How am I to respond to God coming to me at Christmas?”. I believe God desires to hear our answers when we come before the infant Jesus lying in his lowly manger.

    Today, John the Baptist calls us to “prepare the way for the Lord”. Through John, the Lord is calling out to us amidst our everyday noise and clamor. His call should strengthen us to begin and persevere in our Advent preparation. And we can begin and persevere because the Lord is coming with certain hope to transform our lives, as  Baruch tells us in our first reading. The Lord will indeed come. He will remove the cloaks of mourning and misery that shroud us. He will then enfold us anew in cloaks of mercy and justice and show us forth to all in glory.

    Yes, the Lord who is coming is calling us to action through John's cry, “prepare the way of the Lord”. We often think of this action as that necessary turning away from the bad choices and sins we make that limit or prevent God from entering into our lives. 

    Advent discernment can help us see something more in John’s cry: that God is also calling us to turn towards God’s mercy. And this turning — conversion — isn’t only about what we have to give up; it is more truly about accepting the gift of mercy in Jesus that God is offering us. 

    As we prepare to enter into the Year of Mercy on 8 December, it will also be good to include these two truths into our Advent discernment. First, that in Jesus, through Jesus and with Jesus, you and I are still and always God’s beloved, in spite of our sinfulness.  Second, that the only right and good respond we can make as we stand before Jesus is to say thank you with an “Amen”, like we do when we welcome Jesus into our lives at Communion.

    How can Advent discernment help you and I to better prepare for this year's Christmas? By being that graced exercise of reviewing our lives—reviewing what we value in life, how we live the faith, who we share our life and faith with. Doing this can help us overcome the risk of forgetfulness: that forgetfulness that our hopes and promises only find their fulfilment in a life committed to Jesus.

    In fact we would be wise to do this for we live in a time of competing ideas and viewpoints, a clamoring of voices, that can disorientate and confuse. How do we make sense of terrorist attacks in Paris and the Middle East? How do we reconcile the Church’s teachings and care for divorced, remarried and homosexual Catholics? How do we bridge the divide between the haves and have-nots? 

    Yes, it can sometimes be difficult to discern what is really worthy of our attention, even at Christmas with those saccharine Hallmark images, the never-ending feasting and merrymaking we partake in, the 'feel good' Christmas tunes we immerse ourselves in and zone out from the spiritual, and the pressure of getting that right present for those we love.

    So, how can we begin this Advent discernment to better focus ourselves on the reason for the Christmas season, Jesus? By stilling ourselves in quiet and by paying attention to the voice of God that calls out to us in mercy and peace. We do this best when we intentionally leave behind the clamoring voices of worldly concerns and distractions and allow ourselves time to discern God's presence in us daily and, especially for us at Christmas

    Today's readings offer us three graces to pray in our Advent discernment. 

    With Baruch, we can pray to deepen our belief in the promise of God’s faithfulness. God will come to us, like God did to the Israelites in the deprivation and desperation of their exile. God will not only take off our mourning robes, Baruch tells us; God will come to come to lead us, like God led Israel, with glory, mercy and justice, and so show all the earth the splendour of who we are to God: his beloved. Yes, God is indeed our hope.

    With Paul, we can pray to celebrate this hope because God always fulfills God’s promised salvation. Paul assures Philippians—and us, too—of this: the good work God begins in a Christian community to save will always be completed. Paul’s words and the Philippians response should console us; like them, we live in difficult times. Paul writes this letter from prison; external forces and internal divisions besiege the Philippians. But we hear the same good news Paul brings to the Philippians: God’s never gives up on us. Yes, God strengthens us to accomplish our Advent journey to Jesus.

    Finally, with Luke, we can pray to truly hope in God who makes the impossible possible. Luke’s story of John the Baptist affirms that Jesus comes, as God’s certain hope amidst almost impossible odds. Jesus’ imminent coming is announced in the ominous shadow of human power: Tiberius Ceasar rules and Pontius Pilate enforces; Herod is tetrarch and Annas and Caiaphas are high priests. They are the mighty and important; but they dangerous to God’s plan. Yet hidden amidst all their earthly domination and dominion is that single voice of John, raised to preach repentance and forgiveness. 

    The Jews heard his voice. Today, we hear his voice again. John calls us to prepare the way of the Lord and to welcome him into our lives. Advent discernment—to hear, to believe, to follow John’s voice because he leads us to the singular truth that is most important, most enduring, most lasting in the face of empires falling, achievements passing, and religious righteousness prevailing. 

    And it is this: that with Jesus’ coming all things impossible become possible because of God alone. We can call God, Father; we have Jesus as Messiah and friend; we are sisters and brothers, equal in Christ. 

    Indeed, Advent discernment is God’s gift to us and our task to give back to God. Gift, because it invites us to prepare well for Jesus’ coming. Task, because we can make out of Advent that holy way by which Jesus can enter unhindered and give us knowledge of God’s love for us. 

    Yes, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths into our lives. 

    Could there be any other better advice than this for us, as we prepare for Christmas?



    preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: www.goodmeetings.com

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  6. Year C / Advent / Week 1 / Sunday
    Readings: Jeremiah 33.14-16 / Ps 24. 4-5ab, 8-9, 10, 14 (R/v 1b) / Thessalonians 3.12-4.2 / Luke 21.25-28, 34-36.


    “To stand with confidence before the Son of Man”.

    Today’s gospel reading ends with this image.  We often think of it in terms of a future action: God judging us at death into heaven or hell.

    But “To stand with confidence before the Son of Man” is also an appropriate image to begin our Advent preparations on. 

    After all, isn’t Advent meant to help us move towards Christmas morning when we will stand before the infant Jesus in the manger, gaze upon his comely face and praise, reverence and delight in him who is Son of Man and Son of God?

    Now what if how we stand before the baby Jesus at Christmas is in fact how Christians should live daily? Standing before God as we are, with all that is bright and all that is dark about us, and to give God permission to love us still.

    If you agree with me that Christian discipleship is about standing before God who wants to perfect us, let us consider why our standing before God this afternoon is indeed Advent grace. 

    “Your redemption is at hand”. Jesus proclaims this message to his disciples and to us in today’s gospel passage. We heard this as we stood before God here. 

    It is fitting to hear this Good News in these troubling, worrying, confusing times we live in, isn’t it? Terrorism runs amok globally and threatens us locally. Political and economic decline up north heightens our concerns. The mismanagement of a local church’s funds disappoints. But God’s redemption is still at hand. Yes, even, if the heavens shake and the nations on earth may quake in dismay, God will be there, saving us, Jesus assures.

    God’s salvation will come not through action but through a person, the Son of Man. He will come in power and glory. He will come as radiant light to dispel our darkness.

    In faith, we know this Son of Man has already come: come as one like you and me. Come to us poor and lowly, vulnerable and human. Come as Mary’s boy child, Jesus Christ, Son of Man and Son of God. Come in a birth that has overcome sin, transformed the world and conquered death.

    But it is his second coming that is our present advent: we are waiting for the reign of God to flourish in our midst. The reign of God we seek to build for one another. The reign of God wherein we will dwell eternally with God, no matter our successes or failures, no matter what we have done right or what we have failed to do.

    Hasn’t God’s reign already come into our midst? Jesus tells us in the gospels that it is has.

    If this is so, then we should not fixate ourselves just on preparing for God’s future coming. Instead, we should better prepare ourselves this Advent to sincerely find God already in our midst, and to recognize God’s ongoing labor for all human good, including ours.

    So, do we recognize God’s goodness  
    – when our love ones forgive us and we forgive them?
    –  when nations and homes welcome the refugee and homeless?
    –  when human care and solidarity overcome terrorism’s murderous hatred?

    I believe we do, but not often and gratefully enough.  

    May be when we can glimpse, experience or make the reign of God alive in our lives and in the lives of others, in every act of justice and compassion, of love and concern, of reconciliation and peace, you and I will see and know how God’s redemption is indeed at hand. Then, we have every reason to give thanks.

    This is why Advent invites us to look forward by looking back to the one – our First Reading speaks of – from David’s line who does what is right and just in the land, the one who secures us and makes us safe. The one we call Jesus.

    He has indeed come and saved us, and given us his Spirit to live fully in love with God and with neighbor.

    But this story of our salvation that God began in Jesus is not complete; it awaits our fulfillment. We hear Jesus calling us to complete it in the gospel reading. We are to be vigilant, to pray, and not to be drowsy from carousing and drunkenness. We are to prepare ourselves to stand before the Son of Man who will come to judge us.

    And how blessed are we that he comes to judge not only as God but as one like us. One who knows what and how it is to be human. One who is truly concerned about us, as only a fellow human being can be—loving what is human and life-giving in each of us and hating the inhumane and life-denying actions we are also capable of. How can we not be hope-filled when Jesus who will judge us will do so with sympathy of one who has lived amongst us and with us?

    To welcome this Jesus is the reason for our Advent preparations.

    In these next four weeks, many of us will busy ourselves: we will shop for presents, bake our cookies and sweets, trim the Christmas tree with friends and family, and even charitably bring Christmas cheer to the lesser amongt us.

    But shouldn’t we also make these Advent weeks a graced time for our conversion and renewal? A time: to make right the wrongs in our lives, and to make room within each of us, and between ourselves, to welcome Jesus again at Christmas time. 

    I believe we can do all these, if we but let the grace of Advent work in us. And we should do all this so that we can better stand before Jesus, God-with-us, not just at judgment time and Christmastime but daily.

    Why would we want to stand before Jesus? What will we see and hear?

    Looking at his face, we will see more clearly how Jesus has first gazed upon us and loved us from sin into life through every human face we have encountered: the face of an innocent babe gurgling at us; the weary, anxious faces of the poor thanking us for our help; the tear-streaked faces of sinners we’ve embraced; and even the surprised faces of enemies we’ve forgiven. Indeed, Jesus continues to love us through the countless faces we live and work with, we play and pray with, we love and are loved by.

    And in Jesus’ countenance, we shall also see the faces of everyone who has been good and kind and gracious to us, and whom we have done likewise too, looking back at us, and loving us even more too.

    Then, if we quietened ourselves, we may hear his voice coming through these faces, saying: “you did this and this and all that is good for the least of my sisters and my brothers; and you did these for me.” Indeed, his voice, rich in love and tender in mercy, will come from a face like yours and mine. And it will not fade away: it will simply fill our very being from here to eternity, giving us life again and again.

    How can we, then, not lift up our faces this Advent towards that face of Jesus, Son of Man and beloved Son of God? And how can we not do this with the confidence of the forgiven and the hope of living who now recognize that our redemption is indeed always at hand in Jesus?

    May be when we know we can do this, we will come to that lowly manger on Christmas morning, and stand before the infant Jesus lying in it, to adore him, but, more so, to say to God, with greater wonder and much more gladness, “Thank you.”




    preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: enchantmentwithintheheart on www.tumbler.com


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  7. Year B / Ordinary Time /Thirty-third Sunday
    Readings: Daniel 12.1-3 / Psalm 16 (R/1) / Hebrews 10.11-14,18 / Mark: 13.24-32


    We’ve come to that time of the year, again; a time we all know so well as one of either delight or disappointment, relief or anxiety. 

    We have a name for this time in school: it’s report card time. For us who are students, teachers or parents, a report card sums up how well one has lived and studied this past school year. It also tells the student if she has arrived at the next stage of studies. 

    Our readings today invite us to consider how we want to arrive next Sunday to celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King and mark end this liturgical year. 

    Like students with their report cards, what can you and I expect to see in our report card of faith for 2015? What will it say about the quality of how we have encountered God and lived our Christian life? 

    We began this liturgical year last November with Advent, preparing for God’s coming closer to us through the Incarnation. We prayed his birth, his life, his death, and resurrection in the Christmas, Lent and Easter seasons. We prayed with his teachings, his healings, his comfortings and his callings in the season of ordinary time.  As we end this year, it would be good for us to reflect on how much we have grown as Christians by trusting in God’s love. 

    How can we evaluate ourselves for this report card? By reflecting on today’s readings; they are like an end-of-year examination we can take to find our scores for the report card. 

    An examination not in that traditional sense of being tested for what we have learnt. But examination in that Ignatian sense of looking over our life to find how God has labored for us, and so to relish God’s goodness joyfully and gratefully. And where we need to, to improve on so that we will be better relationship with God and one another next year.

    The first examination question our readings pose us is: “How well have you kept the faith, especially in difficult times?” 

    Both Daniel and Jesus speak about distress and tribulation, about the dead rising, about the darkened sun and moon and stars falling from the sky. 

    I don’t know about you but they frighten me. They frighten me because they speak about the end of the world and about the inescapable reality that I  and those I love  will die. They frighten me a little more because they remind me that when my life is done I will stand before God who will weigh how selfish or charitable my acts of loving God and neighbor were. And today they frighten me much more because they remind me that so much of human suffering, pain and grief is caused by human evil, the kind of evil that broke our hearts yesterday when so many in Paris were massacred senselessly by terrorists.

    In our First Reading Daniel speaks of wars and distress besieging God’s people. But he also prophesizes about God taking care of them, especially those named in the “Book of Life”. Daniel’s prophecy calls God’s people to have faith in God and to live accordingly to God’s plan: that human life will not end in death but in resurrection. Happy are they who know this; they live justly before God and with neighbor. Their lives shine forever like the stars.

    Have you and I lived our Christian lives this past year wisely, especially, in our struggles and difficulties? Living with faith in God and in one another? And living in this way, living with enough trust to love God justly and to love others mercifully? 

    Today’s readings pose this second examination question: "How observant have you been of God’s fidelity to love us still?"

    In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus uses dramatic images of the end times to get this point across to his disciples and us: that amidst disaster and destruction, the Son of Man will come with power and glory for all the wise and waiting.

    But how can humankind, so often caught up in suffering, anxiety and despair, experience this power, this glory, this hope?  By recognising the Son of Man as God’s gift of Jesus, who is our assurance that “all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well in the end”* So, how can we experience hope?

    By paying attention and being observant. “Learn a lesson from the fig tree,” Jesus tells his disciples. What is this lesson? That there is always hope whenever there is life. “Observe the fig tree’s branches becoming tender and leaves sprouting”, Jesus adds. These are signs of summer coming and winter left far behind. These are signs of life, not death. These are signs of hope in the small details of life that are so often forgotten in pain, grief and despair. 

    And where there is life and hope, there is God. God always present, especially with the suffering and despairing, and laboring for their wellbeing and happiness.

    If God is indeed to be found in the small details of life, think of how God visited you, saved you, labored for your good when everything seemed to have crashed and burned, or so you thought. Perhaps with such simplicity as:

     your spouse saying, “It’s ok, honey, I love you still.”

     a colleague holding your hand and whispering, “It’s over; let’s get on with the job.”

     your doctor saying, “your checkup's fine; you’re healthy.”

     and yes, even for those affected by the terrorist attacks in Paris through many who have hashtagged #Porte Ouverte, “Open House, come and be safe”.

    Today Jesus’ teaching is this: be observant of the details in your life; God is always there. And finding God is how we will know that what we believe in is indeed true: that this God, who has saved us in Jesus, wants to be nowhere else but with us and for us.

    Have you and I paid enough attention to God’s faithful and life-giving presence in our lives this year? Have we then let God love us in our failings and give us life in our hoping? 

    Today's examination of our past year asks us to evaluate just two things in our lives:  the quality of our fidelity to God and the depth of our gratitude for God’s fidelity to us. I wonder what grade we will give ourselves for these in our report card to God and to one another.

    What about God’s report card to us? 

    Today’s readings challenge us to become more attentive to God in the details of our living and our loving. This wisdom will help us to know how to live life confidently and love mercifully like Jesus when life is harsh. Wiser still are those can do this selflessly by caring for others and uplifting them to a fuller, happier life. 

    Then, when the world darkens and everything we know seems to fall apart, we will better understand why we should heed Daniel’s call that we live lives faithful to God:  for this is how we can shine brightly like the stars, shinning for others and revealing to them the good news that our God is indeed a God-who-is-with-us always, loving us into fullness of life.

    And I believe that God will deeply appreciate our effort to be good Christians and give us an A+. Yes, an A+ for having accomplished a fuller discipleship in Jesus. Now wouldn’t that a wonderful report card from God for us to finish this liturgical year well and happily?




    *Julian of Norwich


    preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore.
    photo: www.spotlightlearning.ca

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  8. Year B / Ordinary Time / Thirty-first Sunday / All Saints (Solemnity)
    Readings: Revelation 7.2-4, 9-14 / Psalm 23.1-2,3-4b. 5-6 (R/v 6) / I John 3.1-3 / Matthew 5.1-12a


    What does it mean to be a saint? 

    Our answers depend on the varied images of saints we hold dear, the countless stories of saints’ lives that inspire us, and the unwavering hopes we have in some saints to intercede for us.  

    Whether it is St Francis of Assisi, or St Therese of Lisieux, St Ignatius of Loyola or St Anne, our answers speak about saints being holy people God sets apart. The quality of their Christian life or their heroic martyrdom distinguishes them as exemplary Christians. The Church holds them up as examples of how living the Christian life fully is the indeed the path to sainthood.

    But it is God who makes the saint, not us. This contrasts with what we are so often told: be good, be selfless, be God-fearing, be God-like, and so become a saint.  

    If God is our maker, then saint-making must be God’s work. Our work must simply be to give God permission to do this for us and to cooperate fully with God to complete it. 

    Paul called the early Christians “saints” because he knew that saintliness has to do first of all with letting Jesus’ way, truth and life become the very manner God empowers us to become saints. Through baptism, God bestows a blessedness on believers to live this Christ-like life. This blessedness in every Christian is Paul’s reason for calling them “saints” in his letters to the early Christians in Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, and Rome. 

    For Paul, ordinary Christians are saints because they allow the spirit of Jesus to cloak them in God’s love, to live the fullness of God’s life and to become one with God. This understanding of Christian saintliness from scripture is a far more hope-filled understanding of who  the saint is for you and me who often struggle to live the Christian life well. 

    But we forget Paul’s understanding of saints because we are told so many times in Catechism class, in homilies and in biographies about holy men and women that saints are only those the Church canonizes as holy, righteous, pious, consecrated.  

    But isn’t Paul’s insight about being a saint – even before becoming one – our rightful inheritance as God’s children? Our second reading assures us about this: as God’s children, we can hope that when we see God, we will be like God, for we will see God as God is. Saints know this truth. 

    And what will God be like when saints see God? St Bernard of Clairvaux writes that God is good to those who seek him, for they will find no better gift for them that God himself. Indeed, God gives himself as prize, reward, and refreshment for the soul. The one who finds God, Bernard adds, is bound to repay God with love, even if this human love is much less than God’s boundless love. 

    But the beauty of this exchange of love, Bernard notes, is paradoxically our assurance of salvation: for “no one can seek God who has not already found Him” (On Loving God, Bernard of Clairvaux). This paradox is indeed the key we have to surrender to God, if we want to let God open the doors of our lives wider and so enter to form us as God’s saints. This key will help us to want to seek God more, to want to know God more, to want to be with God more. The name of this key is “wanting to”.

    “Wanting to” is indeed the advice Thomas Merton, Cistercian monk and spiritual writer, received about becoming a saint. 

    In his biography, The Seven Story Mountain, Merton writes about a conversation he had with his friend, Lax, as they walked down Sixth Avenue in New York City. They talked about many things that friends talk about. Suddenly, Lax asked Thomas this question: “What do you want to be?” Thomas replied, “I don’t know; I guess what I want is to be a good Catholic”. “What do you mean, you want to be a good Catholic?” Lax inquired. Thomas provided several lame reasons that Lax rejected 

    “What you should say” – Lax told Merton – “what you should say is that you want to be a saint.” This is how their conversation ended in Merton’s words:
       
    A saint!  
    The thought struck me as a little weird.  
    I said: “How do you expect me to become a saint?”
     “By wanting to,” said Lax simply.

    Indeed, becoming a saint has everything to do with wanting to find God who first finds us because God wants us to be saints. 

    And isn’t this what Jesus is teaching his disciples in today’s gospel passage? First, that they should want to live the promise of the Beatitudes. Such beatitudes as being poor, meek, merciful, and clean of heart are the certain Christ-like ways that will surely lead them to God and to inheriting a place in God’s heavenly kingdom. And second, that they should want to take up the challenge of living out these beatitudes. This is how they will make the reign of God flourish for God’s children who are the blessed ones, the saints, both in the heavenly and the earthly, the future and the present.

    Today, Jesus is inviting you and me to reflect on the depth of our wanting to become saints. Do we really want this so badly that we are prepared to let go of all that we have and are, and become poor for God to bless us even more?

    Do we want to? The saints wanted to. They understood what Jesus really meant when he said: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven." The saints knew this need for God. We know it too from their life stories of wanting God so much that they threw themselves onto God’s mercy? 

    And what did they find when they did so? That Jesus who came to redeem us had first descended so low that after this no one would be able to fall so low without falling into him (Hans Urs von Balthasar).

    If the saints could fall into Jesus, it is because they were first and foremost connected to Jesus and lived in his ways. What about us who are Jesus’ disciples? Do we dare fall in our pains and fears, fall in our failings, and fall in our sinning into Jesus? I believe we can because whenever we fall, we will find Jesus already there for us. There to break our fall. There to catch us. There to hold and raise us up into life again. 

    I’d like to suggest that it is when we can recognize our desperate need for God that we can truly let go and let ourselves fall backwards into Jesus’ compassionate embrace. This truth is always disconcerting but an exquisite refuge and relief. In this moment we will experience that wanting God the saints had.

    On this Solemnity of All the Saints, let us then remember, celebrate and believe in this kind of wanting. It has led the saints to put everything else aside for the love of God in Jesus. And it will help us let God make us saints too.



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


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  9. Year B / Ordinary Time / Thirtieth Sunday
    Readings: Jeremiah 31.7-9 / Psalm 125.1-2b, 2d-3, 4-5, 6 (R/v 3) / Hebrews 5. 1-6 / Mark 10.46-52


    The Way. This is the name non-Christians gave to the early Christians and the faith they practiced. It probably came about as they recognized how Jesus’ way of being in relationship with God and neighbor was the model for Christian living.

    We call ourselves Christians, followers of Jesus. Our way of life is meant to follow Jesus’ way of loving, serving and living with God and neighbor. What does this way look like? How can this way of living like Jesus be our way of life too today? These are questions a discerning disciple should always be asking.

    Mark offers us a reflection on the Christian way we should live our lives in today’s gospel passage. Most of us cannot see it however because our familiarity with this gospel passage focuses our attention more often on the miracle of Jesus healing the blind Bartimaeus. In fact, for many of us, this passage is another of Jesus’ wondrous miracles about God’s goodness in our lives, a theme in today’s Sunday readings.

    But we can glimpse how today’s gospel passage is about Christian discipleship if we see it staged. Instead of reading it in prayer or hearing it proclaimed in church as we usually do, imagining how today’s gospel passage can be staged opens us up to seeing anew and learning an insightful lesson for Christian discipleship.

    Imagine yourself looking down on a stage in a theatre. You might find Bartimaeus sitting on the ground, on the lower right hand side of the stage, with his hands stretched out, begging. You might see Jesus slowly walking across the stage, from right to left, making his exit out of Jericho. His disciples are accompanying him. In between Bartimaeus and Jesus are the crowds, speaking loudly, excitedly about Jesus. The entire stage is fully lit to convey daytime, if not the sweltering heat of Jericho. Then, you hear Bartimaeus’ plea: “Jesus, have pity on me.”  The crowds rebuke him: “sssh,” they utter to silence him.  But Bartimaeus’ cry goes up again, “Jesus, have pity on me.”  Jesus hears and says, “Call him to me.” Then we hear the crowd echo Jesus’s and we now see Bartimaeus grappling, groping, struggling with outstretched hands as he clumsily crosses the stage to reach Jesus. Jesus cures Bartimaeus; his sight restored, Bartimaeus follows Jesus out through the audience on their way to Jesus’ next place for ministry. End of scene.

    Is this all we see? If so, I think we are blind to a small, quiet, even forgettable detail that I believe any director of this scene would include: someone or a group of people going to Bartimaeus, lifting him up, and assisting him to Jesus. 

    It’s a detail that we don’t often think about when we read or hear this passage because we are too focused on the goodness of Jesus’ miracle. It is right and good that we focus on the miracle; but shouldn’t we also be asking ourselves, “Who helps Bartimaeus to come to Jesus?”

    I’d like to believe that between Jesus’ call and his healing someone or some group of people did help Bartimaeus to come to Jesus. Mark does not describe this action, nor does he name the helpers in the gospel passage. But how can a blind man move through a crowd to reach Jesus unless another assists him?

    These helpers remain unnamed and unknown, yet, their actions are significant: they changed Bartimaeus’ life. Their example is hidden in today’s gospel passage; it awaits our discovery as God’s gift to help us follow Jesus more closely.

    The unnamed helper or helpers show us how their action is a gift for discipleship: it is about disciples building bridges to save another into God’s life. Yes, there was a gap between Bartimaeus and Jesus, and these helpers bridged it. 

    I’d like to believe that these helpers knew what to do when they heard Jesus say, “Call him to me.” They knew that Jesus’ command meant more than just speaking about him or pointing others to him. They understood it to really be about bringing someone to him. This involves going to the person, lifting him up, and assisting him to Jesus. They understood that being a follower of Jesus is to do this because this is what Jesus does.

    Isn’t so much of what Jesus does in the gospels about bridging the gap between heaven and earth? In his healing, he brings the sick to health in God’s life. In forgiving sinners, he reconciles the divide between them and God’s mercy. In teaching them about God, he closes the chasm between a life without God and a life in God. And in gathering all kinds of people to form his community of disciples, he fosters communion where is divide and distrust. Jesus walked the talk: all his life was about bringing about a saving relationship that restores and gave life to those who were far from God but who sought God with all their heart.

    This is why the possibility of how Bartimaeus comes to Jesus in today’s gospel passage is important for us. Are we like those unnamed helpers who help Bartimaeus? Do we walk the talk like Jesus did, and bridge the different gaps our families, friends, and, more so, the many who are sidelined face? Or, are we merely onlookers?

    Jesus wasn’t an onlooker in the messy affairs and realities of human life. He rolled up his sleeves and got his hands dirty by entering the lives of those who suffered and were in need of God. In his healing, his preaching, his forgiving, and his miracle-making, Jesus got involved to bring people closer to God. Yes, he bridged the gap so that all could be saved into God. Do we do the same? Do we roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty to help others experience God’s salvation, or do we keep them clean by standing aside and being just another onlooker?

    As I prepared this homily, I wondered why Mark didn’t describe the possible action of these helpers or named them. I can only think of this answer: that like the early Christian communities who knew how to live in Jesus’ way, these first disciples of Jesus knew the way to act as they followed Jesus. They did what they saw Jesus do: they walked Jesus’ talk. And because they did so, it was already so much part of their ordinary everyday way of life. Yet, this way was surprisingly extraordinary for many others. Indeed, in the seeming ordinariness of reaching out and assisting another to come closer to Jesus, they lived out lives that imitated Jesus’ way of bridging the divide between humankind and God

    Christ-bearer is the name we call someone who brings another to Jesus. We use its Greek translation, “Christopher,” to name our sons. I’d like to suggest that our gospel passage this evening invites us to ask, how am I a Christopher to someone else? And, if we dare to take on this role and live it fully, are you and I prepared to practice it in ways that result in our good works remaining unknown and our identities never being revealed, like Bartimaeus’ helpers? If our answer is “yes,” we will do what these unnamed helpers realized: that our good work of bridging the gap is truly worthy because they do not point to us but allow God’s good work to shine through, like these helpers did when Jesus restored Bartimaeus’ sight.

    As we prepare to go on our way this evening to family dinners, or an outing with friends, or just home to prepare for the same old, same old routine next week, it would do us good to remember the part we can each play in bringing about God’s goodness in this world. Let us do so: for then we can celebrate how our Christian lives can truly be lived in no other more meaningful and life-giving way than in Jesus’ way. 


    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    Photo: www.cbc.ca

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  10. Year B / Ordinary Time / Memorial of St Teresa of Avila
    Readings: Romans 3.21-30a / Psalm 129.1-2, 3-4, 5-7a (R/v 7) / Luke 11.47-54


    Have you ever assured someone, “It will be fine; God is with you”, trusting as you said this that God alone is enough to console, to affirm and to uplift her?

    God alone is enough is the concluding line of a prayer St Teresa of Avila once wrote and prayed. Many of us know this prayer:

    Let nothing disturb you,
    nothing surprise you,
    all things pass:
    God does not change.
    Patience wins everything;
    whoever holds onto God
    lacks nothing;
    God alone is enough.


    What gives St Teresa and us that quiet confidence to declare in prayer for ourselves or in care of others this truth that God alone is enough?

    I’d like to suggest that we can find an answer to this question in the refrain from our responsorial psalm today: “With the Lord there is mercy, and fullness of redemption”. You and me, and St Teresa too, have all experienced the Lord’s mercy, and, more so, the fullness of God’s redemption in our lives, not once but repeatedly. 

    We know this experience to be true and real because as unbelievable as it may seem to many, we have encountered the God of mercy we believe in very palpable ways. When a friend receives a friendly Facebook like for his kind act, would he not sense God affirming his goodness? When a child feels her father’s encouraging pat on her back after failing a Maths test, would she not think of God’s care too? And when spouses forgive each other, would they not believe even more in the fullness of God’s forgiveness and compassion?

    What about us, Lasalle brothers and Jesuit priest, who teach and lead in our Lasallian schools? We work hard to show our students the love of God in the faith we share, in the service we give and in the community we are as a school daily. What empowers us to do this? I'd like to suggest this: nothing less than our own own encounters with a God who loves us as we are, sinners, yet finds us—no matter how incomprehensible it is to our rational minds—always worthy to be God’s beloved. And not just good enough to be loved, but very good in fact to continue the good work God began with St John Baptist de la Salle. 

    I suspect it is because we have each experienced God’s mercy in our brokenness only to be redeemed again and again to live more fully in God's ways that we want our students and teachers to experience this same love of God. Isn’t this why we strive so hard and so long to give so much of ourselves to touch our students’ hearts, to engage their minds and to transform their lives?

    Yes, to those who have received much, much will be asked of them to work with Jesus to bring about God’s kingdom. We have received much. And we can still give more in our teaching and leading because God alone is indeed enough reason, strength and hope for us to do so.



    Preached at the Lasalle Brothers’ House, SJI, Malcolm Road
    Photo: sunset in harvard square by adrian danker, sj (boston, june 2015)

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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
Fall in Love, Stay in Love

"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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