1. 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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  2. 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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  3. 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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"Bukas Palad"
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I hope you will find in these posts something that speaks to you of the God who loves us all and who always holds us in the palm of his hand. Blessings!
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Fall in Love, Stay in Love
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"Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute way final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything."

Pedro Arrupe, sj, Superior General, 1965 - 1983

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is a 50something Catholic who resides in Singapore and works for the Church. He is a priest of the Roman Catholic Church.
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