1. 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

    Posted by
    Labels: Breaking Open God's Word
    0

    Add a comment

  2. 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)

    Posted by
    0

    Add a comment

  3. Year B / Ordinary Time / Twenty-eighth Sunday
    Readings: Wisdom 7.7-11 / Psalm 89.12-13, 14-15, 16-17 (R/v 14) / Hebrews 4. 12-13 / Mark 10.17-30

    I like listening to Jazz standards sung by Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and Michael Buble. A standard they have all sung and I like has this opening line: “All of me, why not take all of me; can’t you see, I’m no good without you.” The romantics among us may have sung these words to the one we love. Others might echo it to those we emulate and want to follow. 

    I’d like to think that the rich young man in our gospel reading today also had these words in mind when he asked Jesus how to inherit eternal life. What else can his question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” be but that yearning to give all of himself to do everything that will help him gain eternal life.

    But when the rubber hits the road, when Jesus asks him for that one more thing needed for salvation, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t sell his possessions and give those earnings to the poor. Yes, he couldn’t abandon himself totally to follow Jesus.

    Aren’t we sometimes like the young man? Haven’t you and I wanted to give ourselves totally to following Jesus? Haven’t we thought about this now and again in prayer, and uttered it a few times during retreats? Who amongst us here has not especially pledged all of ourselves to Jesus in exchange for passing our exams, finding our life partner, getting the right job, or procuring a loved one’s healing from sickness and death? I know I have; I think you have too. 

    Sadly, when Jesus asks more of us, our human instinct is to hold back parts of ourselves from him. Surprisingly, we do this most often in good and happy times. It’s no wonder our buoyant holy desires to give all of ourselves to Jesus often just fizzle out and go flat.

    Because we know that we have failed and that we will fail again and again, I think many of us would find Jesus’ image about the camel going through the eye of the needle startling and challenging. It should disturb us because its a stark reminder that it is indeed impossible for you and I, as we are, to give all of ourselves to God. We simply can’t do this on our own effort.

    Perhaps, you are shock to hear this, as I was shocked when I first realised it in prayer. The disciples were equally shocked as they heard Jesus speak about the ease of the camel entering the needle’s eye and not the rich into heaven.  

    The rich should be able to secure first class tickets into God’s kingdom with their good works. They could build synagogues, help the needy, sponsor the Temple sacrifices with their wealth. But for Jesus, their wealth was an obstacle to salvation.

    Jesus’ image of the camel and needle is in fact addressed to us, we who are pious in our faith practices, generous in supporting the poor, fastidious in observing the church’s rules and regulations. Like the wealthy in Jesus’ day, we who go to confession regularly and come to communion Sunday after Sunday faithfully could find ourselves without those first class tickets that will admit us into God’s kingdom. How so? Because the quality of our Christian lives may be the very obstacle to our salvation.

    Wealth brings power and pride, and, often, the delusion that one has no need for others, even for God. Similarly, the ways we practice our Christian faith can make us self-righteous in judging others, self-centered in sharing the faith and self-serving in caring for the poor. We need to be careful that we don’t make our faith a way of life with God that is all about me-I-and-myself. 

    If being rich can cause one to think of himself as the center of the world, being a holier-than-thou Christian can lead us far away from Jesus and his way of giving all of oneself to God and neighbor. 

    If what I have shared disturbs you, you have every right to ask Jesus the same question the disciples asked him, “Who can be saved?” Jesus’ answer surprises: he does not identify who will be saved; he simply proclaims who will save us—God.  

    God will save us because it is humanly impossible for us to save ourselves. God gives us Jesus’ self-giving spirit as the gift to save us. This is the spirit that empowers us to give ourselves completely to God and neighbor.

    We receive this gift at baptism. God renews this gift in confession, and in communion God nourishes it. But it is when give all of ourselves to God in right relationship and to neighbor through life-giving friendships that care, accompany and uplift others that we are truly saved. Then, we fulfill our Christ-like identity: we live and love like Jesus did. 

    The rich young man keeps the commandments, but for Jesus even this isn’t good enough for salvation. His property runs his life, and he is not free enough to follow Jesus by losing himself to find himself. 

     What about you and me? We keep the faith, even as we struggle to do this well, but what really keeps us from being free to follow Jesus now, and to find ourselves by losing ourselves in him?

    Today Jesus startles and challenges us to up the quality of our Christian life. We could go home remembering only this. But our gospel reading is richer; it offers us certain hope that we can in fact give all of ourselves to Jesus.  We find this hope in how Jesus addresses his disciples as he teaches them. 

    When Jesus muses, “How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God,” he addresses the disciples as “my children”. This image of disciples as children brings us back to last Sunday’s gospel reading. Then, we heard about how the disciples were trying to shoo away some children. Jesus became indignant and instructed them to let the children come to him for their rightful inheritance is God’s kingdom. “Amen I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.” 

    For Jesus, one receives God’s kingdom by being child-like. If you’ve observed children, you’d notice that they happily receive gifts with an enthusiastic openness and an abiding trust: they put out their hands and say, “give me.” The relationship they have with mommy and daddy give them the confidence to do this.

    We too can be like children and come confidently to God to ask for our inheritance of eternal life in God’s kingdom. We can do this because our relationship with Jesus in the present allows us to enjoy God’s kingdom now, even as we await its fullness to come. The rich young man wanted to earn his inheritance as a future reward from God. Being in relationship with Jesus must assure us otherwise: eternal life is an inheritance we can already savor even now. This should give us certain hope that it is in giving all of ourselves to Jesus that we will have the way, the truth and the life to God.  

     May be when you and I dare to give all of ourselves to Jesus, we will then hear in the timbre of his voice the loving cadence of God saying to us, “all of me, why not take all of me?”  How will you answer God?


    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo by christopher peterson, www.dailymail.co.uk

    Posted by
    Labels: Breaking Open God's Word
    0

    Add a comment

  4. Year B / Ordinary Time / Twenty-seventh Sunday
    Readings: Genesis 2.18-24 / Psalm 217.1-2, 3, 4-5, 6 (R/v c.f 5) / Hebrews 2.9-11 / Mark 10.2-16

    Let’s imagine Adam and Eve meeting for the first time. Adam is walking through the Garden of Eden. He recognizes all the animals he has named. Though they surround him, he is lonely. He longs for a companion.  Eve is also walking through the garden. She is attracted to everything around her, but she doesn’t feel complete and happy with them. In longing for another, Adam and Eve spot each other; they recognize that each is somehow like themselves, but not quite the same. Finding each other, they then stroll together through the garden to pet the animals.

    “Longing and belonging”. I think this phrase, which the story about Adam and Eve expresses, is at the heart of our scriptural readings this evening.

    I suspect that whenever we hear today’s readings proclaim, we are quick to focus on the themes of sex, sexuality and marriage. We learn about these themes from homilies preached, or Theology of the Body talks we’ve attended, or from conversations with our married family and friends. As we do so, we learn about the sacredness of these themes for Christian life. But we also come to know that each theme remains a mystery we are continually invited to reflect on and understand better. Perhaps, this explains our everyday struggle to express, live and celebrate human love as truly sacred. Or, as I’d like to say, to become a little more divine by being a lot more human.

    This is why I think today’s readings invite us to consider how our longing for and belonging to another in relationship is really about God’s good action of ordering our lives for wellness and happiness.

    Our first reading from Genesis is part of the creation story that speaks of God ordering time in terms of days and nights, space in terms of heavens and earth, and life in terms of fauna and flora. The climax of this is God ordering humankind and their relationships. This order is best summed up in this line we hear today: “the two of them became one flesh”. 

    All too often we fixate ourselves on the “two” becoming “one” in sexual terms. There is a richer, more intimate way we can understand this coupling: it is about becoming one to assist God’s continuing creation in an orderly manner. Eve may be absolutely different in Adam’s eyes, but she is absolutely like him in God’s eyes. She may be bone and flesh of Adam, human, but she is God’s divine gift to complete and make him happy.  And together they are to partner in caring for God’s creation.

    Each of us longs for someone to belong to; this is probably the deepest human need all of us have. For Adam, it was Eve. For us, it might be our spouse or a best friend we now have, or a soulmate we hope for. This human longing to belong to and be completed by another is an integral part of the Adam and Eve story. It can therefore help us to understand how God intended for human beings to live in community and to be in life-giving relationships with each other and all of creation. God’s wish is for us to enjoy this good order of human life.

    If you agree with this scriptural way of understanding how God brings each of us into relationship, first, and then together to care for God’s creation, the natural question that follows is this: “How should you and I treat those we are in relationship with, especially, those we intimately share life and faith with?”

    With openness of heart towards others. Its opposite, hardness of heart, destroys relationships. An American Jesuit friend describes this hardness of heart as the persistent stain of original sin we all have. It manifests itself whenever we are “self-loving”, “self-serving”, “self-obsessing” and “self-preserving” in our relationships with others, especially, those we are significantly bound to by vows and promises. Aren’t you and I guilty of being singularly self-centred every now and then in our interactions with others? In these moments, we do not gain anything of worth, only ruined relationships, lost possibilities, and empty lives.

    In today’s gospel reading, Jesus tells the Pharisees who question him about marriage, divorce and the Law that it is hardness of heart that moved Moses to command the Israelites against divorce. This is because such hardness is the unhealthy breeding ground for divorce; it constricts one’s heart, closing it slowly but surely to God’s gift of another in relationship, and to God's promise of a happier, fuller life this other person brings into our lives. This is why Jesus admonishes against self-centredness by affirming marriage and condemning adultery. 

    But there is a more foundational reason Jesus insists on the sacredness of marriage: it is rooted in God’s plan to bring two into one communion with each other, and together into one union with God. This is the divine order God created human love and life for. We know this because Adam and Eve’s story is also about both discovering how the one they seek to complete and give them true happiness is not each other, but God. Their eating of the forbidden apple is a self-centered grasping for God that is not life-giving.

    How then can we become more open-hearted towards God and those God gifts us in relationships? By following Jesus’ example of welcoming and blessing the little children in today’s gospel passage. Jesus can do this because he understands that the children and the parents who brought them to him do so in trust; they trust that he will care for them as they give themselves over to him, and so belong to one another in relationship.

    I believe this is the kind of trust that can help marriages to endure and to flourish. Such trust enables a partner to come to his other half in every moment of married life, whether in good times or bad, and to place himself into this other's care by asking this question, “Can I please belong to you all the days of my life?” 

    Isn’t this same desire to belong what we also want from God when we sin and seek reconciliation? Surely, in those moments that we did so, we experienced God’s boundless mercy, not only to forgive us, but, more surprisingly, to embrace us back into relationship again, and again and again. 

    If we have experienced God’s mercy and love repeatedly, how can we not open our hearts wider to embrace another in our marriages, in our families and in our friendships? This is why marriage must be about how each one commits himself to embrace what “could be better” in the hope that it will be. Like marriage, our relationships with family and friends are also about committing ourselves to the hope-filled possibility of what more they can become through our actions of longing and belonging. 

    Indeed, it is when we dare to love another who longs to be with us in life and to belong to us through love that we will experience the kingdom of God Jesus speaks about. This is so because God’s kingdom is the divine embrace of what more “could always be better” in ourselves and in the community we are when we are in relationship.  We know this reality to be especially true when the relationships we have and share welcome, embrace and bless us daily. 

    Who then is longing for you today? Who else wants to belong to you this day? Someone does. God most surely wishes to. What will be your response?



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

    Posted by
    Labels: Breaking Open God's Word
    0

    Add a comment

"Bukas Palad"
"Bukas Palad"
is Filipino for open palms
Greetings!
Greetings!
Peace and welcome, dear friend.
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!
The Liturgical Calendar / Year C
The Liturgical Calendar / Year C
Faith & Spirituality
Faith & Spirituality
Tagged as...
Tagged as...
Blog Archive
Blog Archive
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

About Me
About Me
My Photo
is a 50something Catholic who resides in Singapore and works for the Church. He is a priest of the Roman Catholic Church.
Disclaimer
Disclaimer
©adrian.danker.sj, 2006-2018

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