1. Year B / Ordinary Time / Twenty-second Sunday
    Readings: Deuteronomy 4.1-2, 6b-8 / Psalm 14. 2-3ab, 4cd-4, 5 (R/v 1a) / James 1.17-18, 21b-22, 27 / Mark 7.1-8, 14-15, 21-23


    Have you ever fallen in love? 

    Been so bewitched, bothered and bewildered that thoughts about the one you’re in love with fill your every waking moment and every dream? Been so excited that every beep on your handphone may be his latest text or every ping on your Facebook may be her liking your post again? 

    I’d like to think that many of us here—married, in love, or once in love—can identify with this falling in love experience.  If I were to ask you, how do you know you’re in love, you’d might say, “I know with whom my heart is.”

    Where does your heart lie? 

    This is in fact the question Jesus is asking the Pharisees in today’s gospel passage. It is hidden amidst the exchange we are so often focused on between Jesus and the Pharisees over purification and eating. The Pharisees are fixated on obeying the Law: purify yourselves before you eat, they teach. Jesus is challenging them: know the real reason for obeying and practicing the Law.

    In the midst of this exchange, it is easy for us to miss this significant line Jesus says: “This people honours me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.” This is the crux of Jesus’ response to the Pharisees and his teaching to the crowds and us today. 

    What Jesus challenges us with is this blunt honesty: the one who acts according to God’s Law but whose heart does not lie with God is really a hypocrite. 

    Yes, Jesus is challenging us to look at how we observe and practice God’s Law. It cannot be an end in itself. Rather, how we observe and practice God’s law must reflect where our hearts really lie. For Jesus, the one and only reason that must motivate us to follow God’s law is that our hearts are truly centered on God

    I don’t know about you but I find Jesus’ teaching today difficult to hear. It cuts so very close to the bone of how I am sometimes less Christian than I ought to be, less authentic than the person I make myself out to others, less a man of integrity before God. Perhaps, you feel like this too as you listened to today’s gospel passage.  

    I have a feeling that we squirm at Jesus’ harsh, honest words. We do because Jesus is forcing us to look at the masks we wear. That behind our veneer of the faithful church-goer, the loving parent, the filial child, the upright citizen, the humble priest we are like these Pharisees in some ways. That our words and action, yes, our very lives, can be hypocritical sometimes, and for some of us all the time.

    In a moment like this, I’d like to think that we share the same discomfort the Pharisees felt when they heard Jesus’ words. It’s also the same unease that fornicators, liars, adulterers, thieves, killers, sensualists, the envious, and the arrogant feel when the truth confronts them.

    Harsh words to hear on a Sunday evening. Hard talk from Jesus to us. Not the best way to end the weekend and start the week, is it? 

    Or, may be it is. It is because Jesus’ teaching today invites us to change our ways and to reset our heart’s orientation right again: on God. 

    Some of us will listen politely to Jesus’ teaching, squirm quietly, then go home and put it aside till next Sunday. I call these the “Out of Mind, Out of Sight” Catholics. Others will pick and choose what they’d like to take home to better live their Christian faith this week. These I’d call the “Buffet Catholics.”  A few others will hear Jesus’ teaching and then say, “No, it’s not about me but it’s about that divorcee who keeps receiving communion, this fake man who thinks he’s so good, those gossipers who help out in the parish—they are the sinful hypocrites, and I hope Jesus’ teaching makes them change their ways.” These are the “Point and Brand” Catholics.

    We all have a bit of the “out of mind, out of sight, buffet style, point and brand” way of living out our Christian life poorly. When this becomes more and more how we live, we become like the Pharisees of old: we know what is right and wrong and we recognize sin, as long as these don’t apply to us. Then, we become righteous, may be even self-righteous, in how we relate to one another.

    This is why Jesus’ teaching this evening must challenge. He is asking us if we disregard God’s commandments by putting our way first. He is confronting us to consider how we obey God’s law, this way of living Christian life right and fully: with lip service or with our whole heart centered on God?

    Does listening to Jesus’ teaching sting a bit? Does it sting because it is asking us how much we cherish what has been handed down as God’s law for us to live our Christian life well? And if we cherish God’s Law, does Jesus’ teaching sting because Jesus is asking us how vigilant we are in placing our hearts in the right place?

    If our hearts are stung by Jesus’ challenge to the Pharisees, then, be grateful. 

    His harsh teaching has achieved half of what I believe Jesus intended to accomplish when he challenged the Pharisees: to re-orientate where our hearts should be directed towards -- God. 

    If we felt stung, then the healing of our hearts has began. How then can we complete this healing of our hearts? 

    By learning from the very human act of falling in love. Why? Because in this state of falling in love and staying in love, our hearts are orientated well toward and onto the one we love. Aren’t all our words and actions centered on our loved ones, be they spouses, children, parents, or friends? 

    And so, it must be with God: where God is, there is our heart too. 

    One way to obey and practice God’s Law is to take up this advice by the former Jesuit Superior General Pedro Arrupe:
    Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in Love in a quite absolute, 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, whom 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. 
    Can we fall in love with God? Should we fall in love with God so that we can obey and practice God’s Law out of love and not out of human expectations?

    I think we can and must fall in love with God because God has first fallen in love with us. This is the subtext when Moses teaches us in our first reading that the wisdom of God’s law is that it expresses where the heart of God lies: close to us. 

    God’s heart lies with us because God loves us. If this is true, then the one and only purpose we ought to have, then, in observing God’s law is to keep our hearts close to God. 

    And isn’t this hope then worth working for this week? 




    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: engagement in central park, nyc by adrian danker, sj, february 2014




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  2. Year B / Ordinary Time / Twenty-first Sunday
    Readings: Joshua 24.1-2a, 15-17, 18b / Psalm 33.2-3, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21, 22-23 (R/v 9a) / Ephesians 5.21-32 / John 6.60-69


    When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

    We’re all familiar with this phrase. It can however mean different things. For some, it means studying hard to ace our examinations. For others, it’s about persevering through our army training to survive its rigors. It could also be about giving that little bit more to get the umpteenth work email or boss’s instruction done. And it might even be taking up grandma’s advice to start over after one’s divorce.  

    Digging deep into one’s beliefs to get on with life is another interpretation of the phrase, “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

    It’s an interpretation that came alive for me when our B Division soccer team from St Joseph's Institution (SJI) entered the National Finals this year. Our opponents were Hong Kah Secondary, 5-time National Champions in the last six years. SJI was the underdog; we only began to rebuild our soccer programme four years ago. This was our first finals since the 1980s. We worked hard to get here. But we weren’t strong enough. Our boys played well but Hong Kah played better. Each time they scored a goal, our boys regrouped and played on. As the margin increased from 2 to 4 to 6 goals, and we still had not scored, our team played with even greater determination, never giving up, and our supporters, cheered on, never letting up. Sadly, we lost the Nationals. But our spirit won. And life goes on. Yes, when the going gets tough it is good that the tough get going.

    What enabled our SJI team and supporters to do this? I believe it's because they made a choice to believe. They made that choice not to say “alamak, let’s give up” but to say “yes, we can, and we can because we’re Josephians.”

    Making a choice is what Jesus’ disciples face in today’s Gospel reading. 

    Listening to Jesus teach that he is the Bread of Life, we hear them murmur: “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” What is this saying? It is the choice Jesus offers them in this line that comes just before today’s passage: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” Jesus says: “whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world” (John 6.51). 

    Jesus is offering them a choice: to believe that he is God’s bread for their life. He is so because his words are God’s Spirit and Life for their salvation. Many of the disciples struggle with Jesus’ teaching. It is a tough teaching: to them, it sounds like cannibalism, and this disturbs them. But Jesus clarifies that it is not cannibalism; he is inviting them to choose him as the one God sends to save them. 

    But they still find it tough to accept Jesus. Why? Because Jesus does not back off from demanding their total commitment of faith. He is being tough on them because he is forcing them to make that fundamental choice for life. The evangelist John tells us that many of his disciples could not do this; they found it hard to make this necessary life-giving choice. And so, they “returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.” 

    What about you and me? Do we want to make Jesus our fundamental choice as our Bread of Life? Today, Jesus is demanding the same total commitment of faith from us. 

    Will we say, “Yes,” completely, unreservedly, totally? Or, we will choose Jesus on our own terms and conditions? Will our choice be resolute or lukewarm? Or, it will be, “Why should I even bother?”

    For a Christian, not bothering about choosing Jesus is unacceptable. Jesus, must be our fundamental choice for life.  Why?  Because Jesus’ teachings and way of life show us how to live, how to be happy, how to be saved, especially when the going gets tough. 

    Our daily life is graced with moments of light, acceptance and peace. But it is also riddled with shadows, challenges and struggles. The difficulties and hardships in these moments make living tough. We can feel defeated. We can resign ourselves to despair. We can give up. Or, we can choose Jesus who will give us what we need to be tough in such times and to get on with life. 

    What will Jesus give us? God’s love as fuel to get on with life. How do we get this? By choosing to dig deep.

    If you love wine, you’d know how too much heat and too little water is not good for grapes. The grapes will dry out and become overripe. Instead of a Zinfandel smelling like fresh raspberry or cherry, it may have a not-so-lovely raisin bouquet. This is why I lamented about the drought’s impact on the grapevines when I visited a friend’s family vineyard in Napa Valley this summer. 

    “It’s a pity,” I said. “Oh, no,” he replied; “thank heavens for the drought. It forces the roots of the vines to go deeper, deeper till they hit the water table underneath. Then, they can draw all the water they need. It will irrigate the vines, and they will grow. Then, the grapes will thrive.” 

    Digging deep. Finding water. Being nourished. Having life. Flourishing. 

    These are words we should keep in mind when our going gets tough as Christians. They are words that chart Jesus’ way for us to get tough and to live our Christian faith better: “I am the vine you are the branches.” 

    Yes, we need to dig deep into our belief in Jesus if we want to live and grow as Christians because he offers us God’s loving salvation. But to do this, you and I must make that fundamental choice to stay true to Jesus so that we get on with life in God. If we seriously want to make the choice, Simon Peter’s answer in today's Gospel passage models for us the right response: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” 

    There’s really no need to end this homily with a question that some of you expect me, like some of my Jesuit confreres, to ask as we close our homilies. It’s a no brainer to ask you to reflect even more about whether or not you want to choose Jesus. I believe  you all, like me, want to make this choice; our presence here this evening proclaims this.

    The SJI team and its supporters chose to get tough and to keep on playing when the going got tough by digging deep into their Josephian spirit. If you and I want to get tough when our going in life is tough, we need to admit to ourselves, to one another and to Jesus that we too can dig deep: dig deep into our belief in Jesus because his words are life. 

    I believe we want to. So, let's not wait anymore; let’s dig deep: Jesus wants to give us life.




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





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  3. Year B / Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
    Readings: Revelations 11.19a; 12.1-6a, 10ab / Psalm 45.10, 11, 12, 16  (R/v 10bc) / 1 Corinthians 15.20-27 / Luke 1.39-56


    My father loved country and western music. He would play it as our blue Datsun 100A meandered through the then verdant far-flung corners of rural Singapore on our many car rides, a favourite family weekend activity. One of the songs he would play was “Homeward Bound” by Glen Campbell. The song is about traveling home on a train to something better, or as a line in the song says, “home to where my love waits silently for me.” 

    What if Christian life is indeed like a train journey? Where will our individual train rides bring us? What is the promise of being homeward bound? Is it a glory worth embarking on and journeying towards in the first place?

    I’d like to suggest that we could find an answer or two by reflecting on Mary’s life on earth and her Assumption into heaven that we celebrate today. 

    Mary’s life journey finds its fulfillment in God, and in no other end. I think this is the good news today’s solemnity proclaims. Our first reading expresses this very good news in this line from our first reading: God had made a special place for the woman.

    This is a place of safety, of peace, of being one with God. This is where humankind experiences the glory of God’s saving love. You and I are promised this glory as Jesus’ friends. How so? Because to be Jesus’ disciples is to make the same journey Mary made in life. Like her, you and I are called to be God’s humble and faithful servants on our individual pilgrimages from earth to heaven.

    Mary’s Assumption—her being raised to heaven body and soul—is the truth of what our earthly life is meant for: to bring us home to God who desires to share life with us, not only joyfully but for all eternity. 

    I don’t know about you, but I find it difficult sometimes to fully appreciate the truth Mary’s Assumption promises. You might too. We probably find it difficult:
    difficult when we make mistakes so bad, so wrong that we feel that “I’m really worthless, really a sinner”; 
    difficult when we look at the tall standards of Christian life, and think to ourselves, “How can I ever live this Christian life when I gossip, am lazy, watch porn and masturbate, grab more food and drink than I need, spend my time and money wastefully”; 
    difficult when we struggle to make sense of the death of a loved one.
    Yet, in the face of these struggles and doubts, the wisdom of our Christian faith says to us: 
    no, you are not a worthless failure but life’s learner;  
    no, your Christian future is not wasted, but always work in progress; 
    no, you beloved dead is not dead but alive with God.
    These echo what Mary’s Assumption teaches us again today: the Christian promise of fullness of life.  

    We will face many death-like moments, like failure and sin, and death in our lives. Being human, we can despair in angst and think that there nothing worth living for in such moments. But as Christians we are challenged to look beyond such nothingness to God who is always present in our difficulties and pains, confusion and disappointment. And with God in our lives, we are indeed bound for the glory of eternal life.

    This is how St Edith Stein explains this truth: when we look at a dead body, the Christian question to consider is not “How did death come?” but “Why am I am alive?” For her, God is the answer. 

    I believe God will be our answer too. We believe in God because we know the glory of eternal life is indeed our salvation. And we dare to profess it, again and again, in our Creed, especially when we end with this statement: "I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen." 

    If we truly believe the glory of eternal life with God that Mary’s Assumption returns our human gaze to, then, you and I must ask ourselves this hard question: Where are we keeping our gaze on in Christian life? On the earthly and human to satisfy ourselves? Or, on the holy and heavenly we must strive for?

    Often, we think of this glory of eternal life in future terms: it will come; we have to wait for it; not now but later. But Jesus’ death and resurrection has already saved us into eternal life. We are in fact living such a life with God now.
    Yes, now, no matter how we may have previously lived our lives, be it saintly or sinfully. 
    Yes now, no matter how we are loving God now, be it abundantly or limitedly. 
    Yes, now, no matter how we may continue caring for each other, be it generously or selfishly. 
    Yes, even, now. no matter whether we are baptised or not.
    This rightful inheritance of being with God now -- God whose time is always eternal time  -- is truly the glory you and I are bound for.  No, not “bound for” as future event that we must wait to come, but “bound for” in that equally meaningful definition of being tied or tethered to. Yes, we are bound for glory with God because you and I are already bound to Jesus who always binds us to God.

    How should we respond to this truth of being bound to God in Jesus? With humility. Humility was Mary’s way of responding to God. In today’s gospel story, Mary sings the Magnificat. It is a song of joyful praise. And it is rooted  in her humble understanding of who she is to God and who God is to her. She is God’s servant, as she proclaimed at the moment of the Annunciation, and God is her Savior.

    Today, you and I are being invited to also proclaim our praise of God. We cannot do this however unless we do the Mary thing: humble ourselves to name, claim and proclaim who we are to God and who God is for us – we are his servants and God is our saviour. Humbling ourselves in this way is the best way for us to respond to God. This humble stance is how we can let God better order our lives for salvation as we continue along our journeys of life and faith. 

    This is why Dom Damian, the abbot of the Trappist monastery at Spencer, Massachusetts, urges us to consider today’s solemnity as Mary’s invitation to you and me to humble ourselves and join her in singing the Magnificat.* Whether we are near to or far from the fulfillment of our life journeys, praising God’s compassion, justice and greatness in our lives is the right and just way to live our Christian lives.

    May be this is why that image of a family singing “Homeward Bound” as their little Datsun 100A rumbled around Singapore challenges me to end with this question: “Might it not be good for us to come together more often, and sing with Mary that we are truly bound for God’s glory?”




    *Dom Damian, “Feast of the Assumption,” 2010


    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    photo: onelifesuccess.net

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  4. Singapore's National Day - 50 years of Independence
    Reading: Isaiah 63.7-9 / Psalm 126 / Colossians 3.12-17 / Luke 12.22-33
    Home is where the heart is, they say.

    Each of us has different reasons for calling a place “home.”  Family. Friends. Food. Where I grew up. Where we fell in love and stayed. Where they found work and a new life.

    Today, we celebrate 50 years of nationhood -- of growing up and being Singaporean.

    Some are proud of Singapore’s successes. Some grumble about life here. But I know all of us would confess that Singapore is home.

    And it is a good home. We have harmony and peace, success and development. We have friends from other races, colours and religions. We have ample food and portable water. We have access to shelter, education, health, employment and parks. Yes, much more could have been done; the next 50 years give our young a chance to do just that.

    Many will attribute Singapore’s success to the vision, the “can-do” determination and the sacrifices of our founding ministers and our pioneer generation. Today, we are citizens and foreigners building on their foundations as we work long and hard for ourselves, our family’s happiness and this country’s good. Yes, we’ve built this city.

    But if we looked with eyes of faith, we’ll see that behind the Singapore story of all that we’ve built and achieved, there is God.

    Our psalm calls us to remember, to celebrate and to believe in this truth with these lines:
    If the Lord does not build the house, in vain do its builders labour; if the Lord does not watch over the city, in vain does the watchman keep vigil.
    Yes, we have not built in vain because Singapore is God's own enterprise. I believe God allowed our being thrown out of Malaysia, blessed us with the right people to lead build Singapore, and accompanied us through good times and bad to this happy day. And like every good builder, God continues to keep watch over us

    God’s faithfulness and providence in our Singapore story is why we can and must celebrate today. And, yes, we ought to do this with much rejoicing for all the good we have and possess, individually and as a nation, are but God’s marvelous deeds for us, as Isaiah reminds us in our first reading.

    This is why our mood today must be joyful thanksgiving. And the right Christian action to do this is to sing praises to a good God who has “lifted us up and carried us throughout the days of old,” as Isaiah recalls.  

    Why would God bother with this little red dot? Bother to bring this nation into existence, to nurture its people and to make it flourish?

    I can think of no other reason than of who we, Singaporeans, are to God: God’s chosen race, his saints whom God loves, as Paul teaches us in his letter to the Colossians. We are all God’s people, regardless of race, language or religion.

    What can being God’s saints mean for us who live, study and work in today’s Singapore? Two things: saints have a disposition for life and saints have a task in life.

    A disposition for life
    You might have heard of the saying, “pray as if everything depends on God, and work as if everything depends on you.” Many interpret this to mean turning all we have over to God in prayer, and then working tirelessly and urgently to do God’s work. 

    I prefer to reverse it: “pray as if everything depends on you, and work as if everything depends on God.”

    Prayer must be central in our lives. It must also be urgent for God wants to do something dramatic and good in our lives but we need to let God in. Prayer moreover puts our work in the right perspective: if work depends on God, we should work hard but leave the outcome up to him. For if God is in charge, then we can surely tolerate mixed results and not be Number 1 all the time, as we can also endure failure when it comes.

    Saints do all these. They can because they abandon themselves into God’s providence. They have that Christ-like disposition of trusting dependence in God.

    I believe this is the necessary disposition we need to go forward as a nation.  A Singaporean who prays does not need to wear herself out; she only needs to make competent and sufficient effort, and then leave the rest to God who can do all God pleases, which is always very good.

    In fact, this is the very disposition Jesus is asking his disciples and us to have in the gospel: do not worry about food, health or clothes for God always and faithfully feeds and provides. Jesus calls us to set our hearts on God’s providence, so that “all these other things will be given you as well.”

    What are these other things besides our daily needs? They are what our children pledge themselves to every morning after our red and white, our stars and crescent are raised: happiness, prosperity, and progress for our nation.

    A task in life
    What a home is depends on how much its inhabitants invest in it. The same is true for any country. This Facebook post by a 30something year old Singaporean father and teacher echoes the kind of Singapore many of us want:
    Let's make it better. Let's take better care of the poor, old, sick, and marginalised in our country. Let's be more compassionate. Let's give a voice to the disenfranchised. Let's be more accepting of difference. Let's be more loving to all: our fellow citizens and PRs and also foreign guest workers who build our skyscrapers and schools, clean our estates, teach our children, nurse our sick.*
    You and I can build this kind of home for Singapore by learning from Paul’s exhortation to the Colossians; to these saints he gives the following instructions to build community:
    live in sincere compassion, in kindness and humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with one another; forgive each other…and practice love, to keep all together.
    Our SG50 celebrations then cannot just be about grateful remembrances and joyful celebrations. It must also be about believing in the life-giving role we each have in caring for one another, in walking with each other, and in uplifting all, especially the little, the lost, the last and the least in our midst. This is what moved me when I saw this video about such people in our midst. Today, they especially challenge us to love them as our own. Then, when they and us become truly one, we can better give back to God this song about us, this song of praise, this song of God’s goodness living in everyone of us, no matter who we are.


    And yes, this is also where God knows God is home, with us.



    *Mark Rozells

    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore

    photo: fiftymm99 on flicker
    video: home by homes; produced by starhub

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  5. Year B / Ordinary Time / Eighteenth Sunday
    Readings: Exodus 16.2-4, 12-15 / Psalm 77. 3-4, 23-24, 25, 54 (R/v 24b) / Ephesians 4.17, 2-24 / John 6.24-35


    One of my delights as a teacher is to see my students learn, graduate and mature successfully and happily in life. A greater joy is to become friends with them after school. A number of them have become my close friends, and we meet for dinner every two to three months in Thomson. Their wives and children join us.

    The food at these dinners is simple, familiar and homecooked. We will always have vegetables, fish, meat, egg or shrimp and rice. There’ll be wine and fruit too. Sometimes someone surprises with siew yoke or char siew, while another brings cheese or cake for dessert. And yes, there is always good conversation, lots of laughter and a deep care for one another.

    Regrettably, I sometimes take these moments for granted. I forget the grace I find myself in: food; fun, friendship. I’m blinded to God’s bounty in my life by my preoccupation with work.

    Is this your struggle too? Taking God and God’s goodness for granted?

    Our first reading is about the human struggle to appreciate God. The freed Israelites are grumbling. Though they are no longer under from Egyptian oppression, they complain about their journey to the Promised Land. They do the whole “poor me” thing as a community. “Poor me” for lack of food.  “Poor us for travelling in the desert. “Poor people are we” for not having our fleshpots and our fill of bread as we did in Egypt. 

    And how does God respond to their complains and regrets? By caring abundantly. God still provides for them faithfully; God rains down bread and meat for their journey. 

    I believe everyone desires God’s abundant care. Isn’t this what we pray for when we say, “give us this day our daily bread”?  

    The crowds in today’s gospel story follow Jesus to the other side of the lake. They are looking for God’s bread; more of it for they had tasted God’s goodness when Jesus previously multiplied five loaves and two fish. Now, they come to Jesus again looking for this bread to satisfy their hunger. 

    But Jesus offers them more than physical bread. He offers them himself. “I am the bread of life,” Jesus declares: God’s bread who gives life to the world, and who feeds the hungry and quenches the thirsty who believe in him. 

    Today, Jesus teaches them -- and us -- that the best way to receive God’s life is to embrace it wholeheartedly. That is, by believing with all one’s being in Jesus himself. 

    For Jesus, this kind of believing must be like consuming a whole loaf of bread; there shouldn’t be any leftovers. Selectively choosing how much of God’s life to have and when to have it is unChristian. Such piecemeal sampling cuts one off from the fullness of God’s life. 

    In John’s gospel, Jesus uses the metaphor of “eating” to illustrate how believing in Jesus must mean more than saying, “Yes, I believe.” It must mean interiorizing ones' belief in Jesus fully, so as to live out more fully God’s life that Jesus reveals in word and deed. And isn’t living out this life in God and with one another what we are gathered here for?

    All too often, we are focused on the consecration in Mass. This is the moment when bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. In this moment, we adore and praise God, and we give thanks for God’s care in feeding us with Jesus, our daily bread. Yes, it is right and just to do these.

    But the fullness of the grace of Mass is not in the consecration. It is to be experienced when we take, we eat and we become one with Jesus and with each other. 

    This is the experience of becoming one, or “one-ing” as Julian of Norwich calls it. It is beautifully expressed in the action and word “communion.” This is how St Augustine describes communion: “Behold what you see, and become what you receive.” 

    Behold what we see: the body of Christ. Become what we receive: the body of Christ.

    Is becoming the Body of Christ what Jesus really offers us when he proclaims, “I am the Bread of Life”? 

    Take; eat; become: become the Body of Christ. Then, be blessed, broken and given to one another.  Given so that someone else, preferably the lost, the least, the forgotten, can have life to the full in God.  

    Might this be the gift and the task of communion, of our eating the Bread of Life? 

    Paul emphatically tells us in the second reading that it is: for in Jesus we “put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.” This new self that is the Body of Christ you and I can become when we take all of Jesus into our lives.

    Indeed, the whole chapter and discussion about Jesus as “bread” in John’s gospel is not specifically or even symbolically about the Sacrament of the Eucharist.  Rather, Jesus is asking us to receive and acknowledge him as the “one” specifically “sent” by God to be the life of the world. “Merely consuming the Eucharistic presence as some kind of ticket to heaven is a terrible abuse of the gift of Jesus, the whole Jesus, to us.” (Larry Gillick, SJ)

    The truth is that Jesus always comes to nourish us again and again, in all aspects of our life, and he is more than enough. In this light, Jesus’ declaration that he is “the Bread of Life” makes sense. Jesus gives us new life to become his own body. 

    Do you and I really appreciate the gift of Jesus as God’s daily bread that gives us life by transforming us into Christ’s body? Or, do we take Jesus, the Bread for our life, for granted when we come to communion? 

    We ask for many grains of nourishment when we pray for God’s daily bread. We pray to do God’s will. We pray to receive what God gives us at any one moment, be it like crumbs or crust, or quite stale. We pray for what we will eat.  We pray for forgiveness, for happiness, for peace, for hope. 

    Yes, “our daily bread” is God’s love, shared not only through the Eucharist, but by eating more of the life of grace, the life of God’s love, in the one we follow Jesus. Indeed, it is as the bread of life that Jesus is God’s pledge that we will never be abandoned, or left to go our own way grumbling that we did not get enough.

    At the end of our dinners in Thomson, my friends and I give each other a hug, give thanks and promise to meet again. We return home, satisfied and spirited. We leave renewed, but always a little more changed as our relationships continue to transform us from strangers into teacher and students, and now into lifelong friends. 

    How will you and I go forth after today’s communion with Jesus? Will we do so transformed a lot more after beholding what we see and becoming what we receive -- Jesus, the Bread of Life?



    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: www.tastingtable.com

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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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