bukas palad: June 2015

Year B / Ordinary Time / Twelveth Sunday

Readings: Job 38.1, 8-11 / Psalm 106. 23-24,25-26, 28-29, 30-31 (R/v cf. 1b) / 2 Corinthians 5.14-17 / Mark 4.45-41

“You can do it, Josh.” He checked the helmet on his 4 year old son; it was safely strapped on. He checked Joshua’s feet; they were on the pedals of his bright red bicycle. The supporting side wheels were removed for today’s big ride, Joshua’s first on two wheels.

Kneeling down, his face alongside Joshua’s, Dad then stretched out his arm, his index finger pointing to the end of the pavement: “Go, buddy, ride across to the other side; you can do it, son!”

And off Joshua went. Pedaling hard to pick up speed. Pedaling hard to keep his balance. Pedaling hard to get from here to there. Then he wobbled; he panicked; he was afraid he could not get across.

“Let us cross to the other side,” Jesus says in today’s gospel passage from Mark. He is inviting his disciples to join him there as he continues proclaiming the Good News that God’s Kingdom is in their midst. Before this moment, Jesus teaches them how God’s kingdom is like seeds that God scatters onto fallow land and God grows into abundance. “Let us cross over to the other side.” There, Jesus will teach them about God’s power to cure the sick. Learning about God’s power to give life, whether in creation or through healing, is how Jesus schools his disciples to also proclaim Good News.

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church’s calendar. In Ordinary Time, we do not celebrate a specific aspect of Jesus’ life, like we do in Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter. Instead, we are to devote ourselves to growing in intimacy with all aspects of Jesus’ life in Ordinary Time.

You can say that Jesus is inviting us in Ordinary Time to journey with him, to cross from where we are now to where he desires to lead us to in the future with God. Crossing over from bad habits to a good life, from selfishness to selflessness, from mediocre Christian living to a worthier life in Christ, from sinfulness to saintliness.

I believe we all want to make this journey with Jesus to God, and we want to do this as fellow pilgrims. Our efforts to live the Christian life daily; our coming to mass and confession regularly; our honest prayer to God and our generous sharing with neighbours: all these speak of our faithful, persevering and hope-filled efforts to accomplish this journey of crossing over.

But don’t we struggle on this journey? Don’t we fail now and again? Two steps forward, one step back. Saints have described the difficulties of their spiritual life in terms of a rocky road, an arid desert, and the dark night of the soul. Today’s gospel passage images this rough, tough struggle on our Christian journey as a raging storm.

Storms come and go; they have a life of their own. No matter how sophisticated today’s weather forecasting is, we cannot control when storms will break or how strong they will be. Our life storms should remind us that all of us, including the prayerful and saintly among us, will always have challenges in following Jesus.

But the good news is that in the midst of each of our Christian journeys, there is Jesus, with us and for us. He always is, even if he was snoozing away when the storm broke and the disciples had to wake him to calm the waves. The disciples must have felt like scared children.

But it is when they are like children, vulnerable and in need, that Jesus challenges his disciples to deeper faith in God. “Do you not yet have faith?” He asks them this question from within in their midst, not apart from them. He responds to their fears and needs, delivers them from danger and urges them to greater faith by being with them. Here is Jesus making the crossing over with his disciples.

Isn’t this also how Jesus is with us too? Always challenging us to deepen our faith in God in the most difficult of times when we are drenched and tossed about in those storms that besiege our life and faith.

But why does Jesus allow these storms into our lives when he can command the wind and rain? Because storms are graced-filled moments that induce faith and trust in us.

Faith and trust are how we can open ourselves to God’s love. God does not cause pain and sorrow. But God cares enough about us to allow pain and sorrow to find us, and to draw us into deeper life-giving relationship with Godself. Instead of only happy, painless living as human beings, we can now partake in the life of God who took on human form, and once in a storm long ago taught all that God is never far away but very near if we but have faith.

This is why finding God in all things is a faith-filled way to live the Christian life. It guides us to keep looking out for God, like a child on a wobbling bicycle looking out for his father’s assuring presence.

It also invites us to hope and not despair as Pope Francis teaches us as he ends his new encyclical, Laudato Si. Yes, the earth, our common home, is in bad shape. Yes, we have messed her up. But we can make the needed changes and save it, Francis encourages, because Jesus is with us still to help us do this:

In the heart of this world, the Lord of life, who loves us so much, is always present. He does not abandon us, he does not leave us alone, for he has united himself definitively to our earth, and his love constantly impels us to find new ways forward” (§245).

Jesus gave his disciples a new way forward through the storm. Jesus died for us to journey forward in new way: as God’s new creation (2 Cor 5.17).

Today, you and I have reflected on Jesus who cares for us like a father does – paternally loving, paternally forgiving, paternally life-giving.

That Jesus fathered his disciples safety to life is how we can also remember our fathers. Our fathers who picked us up when we first scraped our knees. Our fathers who raised us up onto their shoulders to see parades when others blocked our view. Our fathers who walked us into adulthood. And yes, my father too who taught his children to welcome life eternal as we cared for him to his death.

The bicycle wobbled. Joshua thought he would fall. Then Dad came, steadied him and helped him pedal, pedal, pedal to the end, all the time keeping him balanced on two wheels.

Yes, isn’t this too how Jesus is with us too, always steadying us into fullness of life, steadying us like only God can as our Father?

Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore

Photo: www.babblebikes.com

Year B / Ordinary Time / Eleventh Sunday

Readings: Ezekiel 17.22-14 / Psalm 91.2-3,13-14,15-16 (R/v cf. 2b) / 2 Corinthians 5.6-10 / Mark 4.26-34

Have you ever been bothered, bewildered and bewitched by unexpected abundance?

Recently, a good Jesuit friend and I hiked through Point Reyes National Park in California. We strove to reach Tomales Point, a bluff that dropped into the blue and wild Pacific Ocean.

As we hiked along the crest of these cliffs that bordered the ocean, the terrain before us was stark and barren, brown and bare. No trees. Not much greenery. Just scrub and rock in most parts.

Making our final trek down to this northernmost point in Point Reyes, the landscaped unexpectedly burst into colour: a myriad of spring blooms in yellow, white and lilac greeted our sight and scents. We felt like we were walking in a garden.

How could this have happened on these wind-swept cliffs? Science and geography can provide us reasonable answers. Suitable soil conditions; plentiful water and sunshine; seeds borne by bird and wind. Yes, these explain how a garden comes to be.

But there is also that quiet, unseen force that gives life and leads to growth. As people of faith, we call this life force God’s life-giving power.

The first parable in today’s gospel reminds us of this divine power:

a man scatters seed on the landhe sleeps and rises night and dayand through it all the seed sprouts and growshe knows not how.Of its own accord the land yields fruit,first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the grain is ripe.

Small, disparate bits at first, but at the last, an abundant crop, ready for the harvest. Through it all, a mysterious process at work. Through it all, an invitation for the farmer to work together with this process.

I think this mysterious process is indeed at work on Tomales Point. And it is good enough for life to take root, to grow and to flourish.

In today’s gospel passage, Jesus reminds us that this mystery of abundant life is what the kingdom of God is about. How can you and I experience the kingdom of God? By paying attention to two lessons from todays’ gospel of two parables.

The first lesson is from the first parable: fallow for abundant growth.

Jesus speaks about the man scattering seeds onto fallow land. Such land is always ready to receive life and to let it flourish. I think we are called to make our lives truly fallow lands for God. Our lives should be open to God, always ready to receive the life that God wishes to plant and grow in us.

We become fallow not by our holiness or faithfulness. Rather, we become fallow for God by humbling ourselves. Saints and sinners make this most human of actions before God in their daily lives. Humility makes us fallow for God to grow our lives into fullness. Holiness and faithfulness are the fruits of such humility.

The question is: do we want to humble ourselves before God whose ways for life are not our ways to live?

The second lesson is from the second parable: trust that growth will flourish.

Jesus speaks about the tiny mustard seed growing into the largest of plants. The farmer simply sows this seed. He does not control, manipulate, or determine its growth. He scatters, and he trusts that the seed will mature. He has confident patience that it will flourish.

I think we are called to really trust that our Christian growth in God will flourish abundantly. God’s actions in our lives are usually small, quiet, ordinary. They are often unnoticeable to many of us. Even the most prayerful among us do not always attend to them for they are taken for granted. And yet, God’s exceedingly tiny, silent, modest ways of laboring for our growth and our good invite us to trust: to trust that something greater, better, more wonderful than what we can make of our ourselves will be bestowed on us and for us by God’s power to give life prodigiously. This is why we can wait in hope.

The question is: do we have the hopeful confidence to await this moment when all will flourish? When the smallest of our desires, the tinniest of our dreams, the minuteness of our belief will not just grow into abundance but will flourish aplenty, like the five fish and 2 loaves that fed thousands and still had much more leftover?

Fallow yourselves so that God can grow you for life. This is what I think Jesus is inviting us to prayerfully reconsider for our lives this week.

To accomplish this, you and I, must rearrange ourselves humbly and trustingly to let the mystery of God grow in us. According to the Jesuit John Foley, this rearrangement involves detaching ourselves from distractions and fascinations that pull us away from being God’s own. If we sincerely wish to become more and more like God, then, detach we must. Then we can more fully embrace what God’s aims to grow in us: the fulfilment of God’s image we are created in. How much do you and I want to grow into God’s likeness?

The good news is that God loves each of us as we are.

Isn’t this true for each one of us here at this Mass? Aren’t we going to come to Jesus, God’s ultimate gift for everyone of us, at Communion, no matter how saintly or how sinful we are? We come because we believe God loves us as we are, and that God loves all equally as God’s own.

This is the depth of love that moves God to quietly plant the different seeds for our growth, seeds like faith, hope and charity; and not just plant but continue to nurture, care and prune them. The depth of this love also moves God to let each of us grow at our own pace, going on to the next step when we are ready. Yes, God tends to our growth according to our individual pace, but always in God’s time and in God’s ways. We only need to say “yes.”

Our Christian duty must be to prepare the land of our lives for God to do God’s work of growing us, and finally, to see the result that happens of God’s own accord. Then, we can say with the psalmist: “Lord, it is good to give thanks to you.” Good and right to praise for as our first reading reminds us, God wishes to grow us into flourishing abundance for no other reason than this: it is God’s loving will for each of us to have life to the full.

Perhaps, in those moments when we experience our lives flourishing, it will dawn on us then that what has indeed grown so big and so good in our lives and communities is not you and me but God’s life-giving presence. As Foley adds, “If God who is great enough to be loved above all things and within all things, taller than a man or woman’s head, so to speak, then God is large enough to found our greatest plans or hopes.”*

And these moments, I will add, are when the unexpected abundance of God growing in our lives and communities should always bother, bewilder and bewitch us into greater faith and much more delight.

*John Foley, SJ, "Grow Unobserved."

Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore

photo: tomales point, point reyes national park, california by adsj

bukas palad

with open hands, we give what we have first received. and with open hands, we receive what we will divest, once again. this is blessing itself: the giving and receiving of life and love, the sharing of faith and God.

Homily: Pedalling with Jesus

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Homily: Fallow for Growth

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