1. Year A / Christmas / Christmas Day
    Readings Isaiah 52.7-10 / Psalm 97.1,2-3ab, 3cd-4, 5-6 (R/v 3) / Hebrews 1.1-6 / John 1.1-5, 9-14


    Have you ever wondered about the paper that wraps our Christmas gifts?

    Its color delights us. Its design makes us smile. But we’re more eagerly focused on the gift. We shake it and feel it, sometimes we smell it, to try and guess what the wrapping paper and trimmings hide. At best, the wrapping paper completes the whole package making it Christmassy. Almost all us, especially children, then simply rip and tear and pull apart the wrapping paper to get to the gift.  

    It’s all about the gift, isn’t it? The paper is useless—simply decorative, simply ornamental, simply unimportant.  No one pays much attention to it. After it is ripped and torn apart, it’s useless. It’s done its job. It’s thrown away.

    Don’t we throw away much more than Christmas wrapping paper in our lives? Throw away someone else’s forgiveness, care and love by being ungrateful and uncharitable in return. Throw away ordinary things and moments that are our daily bread by believing that the expensive, the superficial, the passing provide. Throw away countless opportunities for a fuller, happier life by being calculative, jealous, miserable, frighten.  Yes, may be, even throw way God and God’s wishes for us, now and again, by insisting that our self-centered, self-righteous, self-preserving ways are best. And don’t we sometimes feel like thrown away paper—unappreciated, undervalued, unloved?

    Today, we celebrate Jesus’ birth.  In him, God reminds us that we are meant for God, not to be to be thrown away because of sin and cast into the dung heap of death. God gives us Jesus as our hope-filled joy that we are his. How does God do this? We hear it in our gospel reading: “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth” (John 1.14).

    Christian scripture, song and art always presents the new born Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes. But God became human, like you and me, by wrapping himself in human skin. It is in human skin first and foremost that our God wraps himself up to dwell amongst so as to love us and to serve us in Jesus. 

    Does this shock you? That God wrapped in human skin?  Wrapped himself in human skin, so prone to disease and death, to sinfulness and evil? What can it mean for us that God choose to wrap himself in human skin? Nothing more, nothing less than the goodness of human skin, our skin, for God. 

    In birth, Jesus reveals the glory of God as fullness of grace of who we are to God. By wrapping himself in human skin, God acknowledges that it is frail, and that our humanity can be as sinful as it can be saintly, but more than this, that we are in our skin, warts and all, always good enough for God. Jesus coming daily into our lives proclaims this.

    In birth, Jesus also reveals the glory of God in the truth of who God is and how God wants to interact with us. God wishes to be with us, not throw us away. God desires this because “everything in Jesus speaks of God’s mercy; nothing in him is devoid of God’s compassion” for us (Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, 8). By choosing to wrap himself up in our skin, so often scarred by infirmity and weakness, yet also traced with hopes and joys, God very clearly wants to get involve with and in our lives.  

    By meeting us in human skin, God in Jesus allows us to meet him in our skin. We can touch him, as we can also speak with him, hear him, see him, know him, live with him. Yes, God has come to us in Jesus to abide in us, so that we can abide in him (John 15.4). This indeed is reason for Christmas celebration because as Paul writes in his letter to the Hebrews it  is now in our time that God no longer speaks in partial and various ways, through prophets of old, but fully through Jesus who comes to redeem us for God (Hebrews 1.1-3). 

    Part of exchanging gifts is acknowledging what we receive. We say “thank you”. We shake hands in thanksgiving. We give an embrace in appreciation. We kiss in the love of being loved, and we smile in gratefulness.

    God gives Himself to us in Jesus. He is God’s gift. We visibly represent this in the baby Jesus in the manger. As we stand or kneel before Jesus in the manger, what will we say or do to express thanks? How shall we respond to God who comes to us wrapped in our very skin? 

    Many will welcome Jesus with words of thanksgiving and greet him with praise. Some will ask for graces such as the grace to be generous and make promises to follow and serve better. 

    There is another way to acknowledge God’s gift of Jesus. An Ignatian way. Anyone who has done the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola would have prayed the final contemplation. It invites us to love God and love others more in deeds than in words. 

    A deed we can make this Christmas is to let Jesus wrap us in God’s very skin. And what is God’s skin but love? In the Letter to the Colossians, Paul urges Christians to put on love, God’s love that binds all together in perfect unity (Colossians 3.14). To put on such love, you and I must wrap ourselves in the very skin of God, God who is Love and Love that is God’s way to live. 

    Does it scare you to want to put on God’s skin and make it your own? I think you, like me, are afraid because we honestly know how unworthy we are to do this and how weak we are to accomplish it.

    Jesus however can do this for us. So, let us be audacious as we humble ourselves before Jesus in the manger, and beg him to wrap us anew in God. Let us have the holy boldness to plead for this from him in whom God has redeemed, transformed, and made whole again human skin, our skin. Indeed, let us be as confident as St Ireneaus who understands that Jesus’ coming brings all the newness for us to live with God more fully, more hopefully, more joyfully.

    If God wraps himself in human skin in Jesus, then it is only in Jesus that we will be enfolded into God’s skin. In Jesus, God touches humanity in skin that enfleshes God’s mercy, God’s love, God’s life. In Jesus, God calls us to do likewise. This is why every time we reach out in Jesus’ name to touch another’s skin, especially, skin we fear because of disease and colour, difference and vice, corruption and sinfulness, we let him wrap us more and more in the love of God.

    I believe we all want to live and serve like Jesus. But we struggle because we are so wrapped up in our own skin. We need new skin, God’s skin, to wrap us anew. At Christmas, God becomes what we are in order to make us what he is himself. To make us what he is himself—there is no other way this can happen unless we take on God’s skin, take on his love so as to love like him. This is how human skin can be stretched, reshaped, made new by Jesus who comes so that "we become fully human…by letting God bring us beyond ourselves" (Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel, 8).

    At the manger, then, let us offer ourselves as gifts to God, not perfect, not saintly, but just as we are. Let us let Jesus wrap us up for God, wrap us in nothing better than in the same human skin he has wrapped himself in—skin that he has redeemed and renewed through the Incarnation. For, like the wiser, older family ones who gingerly peel back the scotch tape to save the wrapping paper for another gift, another occasion, let us let God save us and use us anew. Yes, this action is also what Christmas joy must be about: that today God makes all things we throw away very valuable again in Jesus. 



    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    photo: from the Internet (scripture for today. bloodspot.com)


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  2. Year A / Advent / Week 2 / Sunday 
    Readings: Isaiah 11.1-10 / Psalm 72.2, 7-8, 12-13, 17 (R/v cf 7)  / Romans 15.4-9 / Matthew 3.1-12


    Have you ever read a “whodunit” mystery novel, like The Hound of Baskerville by Arthur Conan Doyle? The kind whose complex plot is riddled with many clues to help you discover more about the mystery, and with this fuller knowledge, solve it, like the protagonist does?

    What if Advent is a bit like a “whodunit” mystery we are trying to make sense of?

    Throughout history, humankind waited expectantly to encounter God. They called this waiting Advent. They tried to understand who God is and why God is important their lives. They tried to make sense of how God worked in their lives. We do the same today—trying to make sense of our own waiting, our own Advent. In faith, we understand Christmas as the fulfillment of Advent: God comes into human time and space to save us in the person of Jesus. 

    Everybody likes Christmas: everything about it is good, joyful, bountiful, and blessed. But Advent comes before Christmas so that we can prepare ourselves to go deeper into the true meaning of Christmas. Go deeper by going beyond the superficialities of Christmas, like Christmas trees and trimmings, twinkling lights and feel-good carols, prettily wrapped up presents and the merriment of gatherings. Go deeper to appreciate that God comes to us in Jesus to save us from sin and death, and so draw us to Godself—draw us to that destination and destiny we don’t know exactly where it is or how it will be but we will know what it is because in that moment, in that space, we will experience being in the fullness of life with God. In faith, this is what we believe.

    Today the Prophet Isaiah gives us a vision of this future Jesus’ coming promises: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together” (Isaiah 11:6). He gives us an image of a place where justice flourishes and peace reigns. It pictures why Jesus came and where he will lead us. It assures our belief in God; it guarantees our hope in Christmas.

    Daily, we need hope: hope to believe that we will remain faithful to God, even as we struggle with our unchristian words and deeds. Universally, many yearn for hope: hope to live through the world’s troubles and uncertainties, its pain and suffering. Where are we to find this hope? Paul points us in this direction in our second reading: “Everything that was written long ago in the scriptures was meant to teach us something about hope from the examples scripture gives of how people who did not give up were helped by God” (Romans 15.4).

    Advent reminds us that we are indeed God’s people: we are always in need and God is always ready to help. Our Advent readings set our sights on this truth in Jesus—he is our Christmas hope. We can learn to appreciate this hope, and deepen it, by considering the clues our Advent readings provide—clues that enable us to remember, to celebrate and to believe in Jesus, “the Son of God who became man so that we might become like God” (St Athanasius). This is why Jesus is the reason for our salvation. This is why our Advent waiting must be joyful anticipation.

    Today’s readings offer us two clues to help us better embrace Christmas hope: the shoot of Jesse and John the Baptist.

    “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots” (Isaiah 11.1). We heard this line in our first reading, It is an unusual image to picture Jesus’ coming. I learned to call such a shoot a sucker in Biology class. A shoot growing out of the stump of a chopped down tree is in fact an eyesore. But in scripture this shoot symbolizes Israel that God protects and perpetuates. Israel’s enemies tried everything to end the family line of Jesse from which David became King and Jesus comes as the long expectant Messiah. They failed; God prevailed.

    How should we interpret this clue? This tiny shoot is about to sprout. It is fragile yet it bears much promise. Such is the coming of God in Jesus. He comes not in triumph or power. He comes vulnerable, defenseless as a newborn child. He comes like a small shoot but a shoot graced in God’s spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and insight, of knowledge and fear of God, of delight in God, to transform and save the world. More than this, he comes to make real the angels’ announcement to the shepherds, “Be not afraid”. This is the hope we need today, as our ancestors in faith needed in history.

    This image of the shoot also calls us to pay attention to how they grow into branches. They grow right at the edge of a tree. They grow because new cells at the tree’s edge produce shoots that sprout; in time, they grow into branches that go outward and upward. They are fragile in the beginning; they become strong as they mature. Parts of our lives are like shoots; they are our growing edges. They are fragile but they offer us the opportunity to mature in hope. We need to have hope to be brave that this will happen. What might some of these edges be for you? Will you be brave enough to let them grow this Advent so that you can go deep in your hope for Christmas?

    Going deep in hope is exactly how John the Baptist is able to prepare the way for Jesus’ coming. He does this by being more than a voice in the wilderness for us to hear. In fact, he models the way to welcome Jesus: he shows us what happens when one dares to enter into one’s own wilderness to meet God in hope and to know this hope is indeed God's coming in the person of Jesus.

    What should shock us about John the Baptist is not his appearance or diet, his threatening language or truthful message. It is this observation he makes and puts into action in his life: “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees” (Matthew 3.10). He has laid the ax to his life by emptying himself totally for God.  This is why it matters to enter into the wilderness of one’s life and depend solely on God in hope—and on God who transforms. In the wilderness, John emptied himself of his fear and ego and God formed him into the prophet who announces Jesus’ coming and the power of Jesus to forgive.

    How should we interpret this clue that John the Baptist is for our Advent preparations? In John's example we understand why we have to empty ourselves for God: this is the only way to prepare well to receive Jesus. We can do this in Advent by laying the ax to our lives and chopping down and rooting out of all our habits of greed, shame and selfishness. Then, we will truly empty ourselves for God’s coming.

    A shoot and a prophet. Two clues from today’s Advent readings to help us prepare better for Christmas. Clues that dare us to go into the wilderness of our lives, those places of vulnerability, those edges in our lives bearing the promise of growth, like shoots on a tree stump, and to grow in hope. Clues that challenge us to discover the breadth, the depth and the height of our hope in God in our Advent preparation of emptying ourselves to welcome Jesus. Clues that ask us to gamble all we believe in God to be true this Christmas by still seeing in things as tiny as a shoot or in moments as empty as the wilderness God’s faithful, saving presence as our hope.

    May be when we grasp the gift these clues are, we will appreciate even more how Isaiah’s vision of the fullness of life Jesus’ coming—“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together”—is fulfilled because of the one all the Advent clues point us to: “a little child who shall lead them” and all of us onward into God’s presence. And this child's name is Jesus. 




    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    Photo: www.butternutvalleyfarm.com
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  3. Year C/ Ordinary Time / Week 34 / Saturday (Last Mass of Year C)
    Readings: Revelations 22.1-5 / Psalm 94.1-2, 3-5, 6-7 (R/v 1 Cor 16: 22b, see Rev. 22: 20c) / Luke 21.34-36


    Imagine you are at home. You’re doing your own thing. There’s an unexpected knock on the door. ”Who could it be?” you ask as you head towards it, anxious to open and see.

    Here we are at last Mass of this liturgical year. This evening, Advent begins with Vespers, and we take our tentative first steps into the new liturgical year.

    We may not say it but I suspect we all harbor a sense of anticipation—we are eager for a time we have longed awaited for this whole year. This time we have hoped for, this time of the coming of the Lord, Jesus. It is dawning upon us.

    This morning we stand poised on the brink of Advent. Our mouths are beginning to quiver: “Maranatha!  Come, Lord Jesus!” they are beginning to voice—voice more confidently what we just recited in our responsorial psalm.

    Our readings are apt for the Advent about to dawn upon us, and its invitation that we look beyond the darkness of human sin and failure to the radiant light of Jesus’ coming. They express what we want to proclaim with greater and greater joy as we come closer and closer to Christmas but we do not dare to do wholeheartedly yet: that with Jesus the reign of God comes alive into our midst.

    Our first reading evokes a vision of God's wellspring for us. Its crystal clear water promises to cleanse us and to wash over us as preparation for us to worship and to gaze into God’s face. The reading conveys a sense that God is coming with this promise; the right response we can make is to prepare ourselves.

    This is what the coming Advent should mean for us: preparing ourselves to open our hearts to Jesus in whose visible face we see the invisible face of God’s mercy in our midst. His face that turns our faces—no matter how imperfect each is—to what we are all meant to become: a lot more human so as to become a little more divine.

    We can however miss this Advent invitation to re-orientate our Christian lives onto Jesus.

    It’s like the miss I made during my first year of studying Theology in Boston. Fall in Boston is indeed a most wonderful season: beautiful and magical. The changing colours. The faintly mingled leafy perfumes. The nippy cold of winter setting in. However, one can “nod off” and miss these subtle autumnal changes. I did: I was drowsy with the anxieties of a student’s daily life of reading, preparing for tests and writing papers. I was too focused on my schoolwork to lift my gaze upwards and outwards often enough to wonder at the splendour of everything changing throughout autumn from summer into winter.

    Did you make miss like mine when you look back on your relationship with Jesus this past year? Could we all make this same mistake in Advent and forego the Advent grace of re-orienting our lives? Possibly.

    This is why we should heed Jesus’ warning in the gospel reading against nodding off. If we did, we would miss his coming—not as a past event we celebrate but as his daily interventions in our lives.

    “Behold, I am coming soon” is Jesus’ message. The author of the Book of Revelation repeats it in our first reading. For him, Christians must live in hope-filled anticipation of Jesus’ coming for where he is, there too will be the life-giving wellspring the first reading describes.

    “Behold, I am coming” says Jesus. Are we anxious when we hear his words because we know we are ill-prepared to welcome him? Or, are we jubilant, expectant, hopeful because we know we’ve prepared well be with him? Let us hope that it is the latter.  Then, we can indeed say—with gratitude and joy—“Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus”. Our mouths will no longer quiver these words; they will proclaim his coming wholeheartedly.

    Yes, today’s gospel reading presents Jesus admonishing his disciples, and us, with these words: “don’t let the day of my coming catch you like a trap.  Be vigilant; expect me at all times”. They are harsh and challenging words for us to hear today.  But they are Jesus' wisdom for us to hear him and be saved.

    Those who hear and humble themselves are wise: they know the value of the Advent grace to re-orientate our lives. By seizing it, they make of their lives in Advent so much more hospitable and welcoming to embrace God who comes to us in Jesus at Christmas. To know this and to make it real in our lives empowers us to answer Jesus’ challenge with these words: “Come, Lord, we are ready for you.” 

    You hear the unexpected knock. You go to the door. You open the door. You see the face of a friend that you have often spoken to, but have not seen for some time.  Recognizing his face, joy floods you and you pull him to you and into your home.

    Imagine this surprise you will experience when you answer that unexpected knock on our door. 

    Expect such a surprise. Anticipate such joy. This is the Advent promise: all your preparation will lead you to open your door to Jesus. He is coming to be with you. Don’t hesitate; be expectant; look forward to that knock on your door.


    Preached at mass for ACCS' REAP Programme at Catholic Junior College, Singapore
    Photo: trappist monastery at spencer, MA, usa, dec 2013 by adrian danker, sj
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  4. Year C / Ordinary Time / Week 34 / Sunday: Solemnity of Christ the King
    Readings: Samuel 5.1-3 / Psalm 122. 1-2, 3-4, 4-5 (R/v cf v1) / Colossians 1.12-20 / Luke 23.35-43


    What a crook.

    Could this be possibly how you and I, and quite a few of us here, might feel as we end the Year of Mercy today?  Feel like a crook for we say we are Christians but our actions are unchristian this past year? Feel like a crook because we have experienced God’s mercy in Jesus, but we have been are less than merciful, in turn, to those in our lives and those we have met?

    This past week, our readings offer us three images for Christian life. The image of people seeking Jesus and experiencing God’s mercy, like the blind man who experienced mercy through Jesus’ healing, and Zacchaeus, through Jesus’ fellowship at his table. The image of end times that remind us to use what we have been given wisely and to share our gifts and talents sensibly. Finally, the image of the Kingdom of Heaven that promises us that God will prevail, as long as we keep some space for God in our lives.

    Can see ourselves in these images? I believe we can because in them we see the reflection of our efforts to always seek out God through Jesus, to use our lives to live the Christian faith fully, and to make space for God in our lives.

    Haven’t there been times however when we have been less than Christ-like in our ways? We hurt others with our gossip. We pain them whenever we reject or ignore them, especially, the last, the lost, the least and the little. We refused them our love by not forgiving them, even after they have apologized.

    To know how unchristian we have sometimes been in loving God and neighbor surely pains many of us. We grieve our faults. We confess our sins. As this Year of Mercy ends, this awareness of having lived our Christian life lesser than we should have probably fills us with contrition and remorse.

    This is why we might find ourselves drawn to the two thieves hanging beside Jesus in today’s gospel passage. We might think of ourselves hanging on our own cross of shame because we keep repeating the same sins, and so, feel unworthy of forgiveness. Hence, our attempts to hide from Jesus in its shadow. We might also think of ourselves hanging on our own cross of regret because though we want to repent to live better Christian lives, we find ourselves failing and falling.

    Such honest reflection on what we have done and what we have failed to do in this Year of Mercy will surely lead us to feel a lot like the two thieves—crooks that they are. Yet Jesus hangs between them, and he mercifully forgives the one who asked for forgiveness and promised him eternal life. We believe that this same Jesus forgives us because he died for us to have life with God forever.

    Today, the Church invites us to proclaim this Jesus, King of the universe. King because he frees us and all creation from sin and death. He reconciles everyone and everything to God through his death and resurrection, and so redeems all for God.

    But what kind of a king is he who is spat on and scourged, crowned with many thorns, and crucified to death? What kind of king is he who willingly suffers on an contraption of torture and death instead of saving himself with power and might?

    Our first reading helps us understand the kind of king Jesus is, and who he is as king in our lives.

    The king is first and foremost a shepherd. A shepherd who takes care of his flock, who protects his sheep, and who goes out to search for the one lost sheep, at the expense of the ninety-nine. He is the shepherd who guides them on the right path, walking with them through valleys dark, and who leads them home to dwell with him and to feast with him at his table.

    This is the kingship of Jesus we celebrate today. A king who suffers with the thieves on the cross, and with us in our struggle to live our faith well. A king who forgives the thief, as he forgives us repeatedly. A king who sacrifices his life to save the thieves and all peoples, as he saves us to fulfill his promise that paradise is ours.

    Yes, we may be crooks because of our sinful ways, but to Jesus the King we are much more. How so, you may ask? An answer lies in how we understand the word “crook” with faith-filled eyes.

    In English, the word “crook” has two meanings. The first is that of a thief. The second is that of the curved branch a shepherd uses as a staff for his work. The shepherd uses a crook to shepherd the sheep, to move them along, and to herd them finally into the safe confines of the sheepfold where they will find rest and nourishment.

    If you and I are crooks, we are crooks to Jesus only in this second sense of the word—as his instruments for his mission. In the hands of Jesus, the King and the shepherd of our lives, we are the crooks he uses to make real and alive his love for all peoples.

    No matter how bad, miserable or poorly, you and I might think that we have lived our faith this past Year of Mercy, I believe, Jesus has in fact used us well to bring light, love and life into the darkness, emptiness and nothingness of another’s life.

    Consider how Jesus has worked through your everyday concern for your family to assure them that they are loved unconditionally? Consider how Jesus has reached out through your actions of hospitality this year to welcome and uplift the less fortunate when they’ve felt abandoned and despised? Consider how Jesus has embraced a workmate or school friend in pain and suffering through your care and encouragement each time this past year?

    What are these actions if not the love and mercy for God working through you and me? This how Jesus has labored to use our faith in God, no matter how limited it is, to bring about greater faith in many others for God. This is how we gain our salvation. Indeed, this is how Jesus makes out of our limited faith a proclamation of God’s Good News to all first, and then, through this action, to us that we are worthy of salvation. We will see this truth of who we are to Jesus more clearly if we dare to we peer through our regrets and remorse—for we are not thieves, criminals, sinners as we are in truth instruments, vessels, messengers of God’s grace to uplift another and to transform the world.

    This truth is the delight I experienced when I first read these lines from the Singaporean poet, Anne Lee Tzu Peng: “We are all crooks caught in the hand of the Chief Shepherd; he uses us as hooks to bring the strays back”.


    Shouldn’t this be our delight as we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King today?

    Our delight because Jesus comes as King not to judge and condemn us, but as our King who always judges us to be good enough to be with him and to partner him in God’s work. This is how he judges us because we are to him worthy to collaborate in his good work of shepherding one and all into the green pastures of eternal life, into that divine space of feasting and of resting, into that space saved for us to live the fullness of life in God’s loving fold. Yes, into that one space you and I rejoiced to sing about in our responsorial psalm—this space that is no other than the house of the Lord, our home.

    This is why I believe today’s good news is the delightful exclamation Jesus our King will voice here and now to everyone of us gathered around his table of plenty: “Oh, what crooks you are—worthy indeed for my hands!”





    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    photo: http://newkilpatrickblog.typepad.com
      
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  5. Year C / Ordinary Time / Week 33 / Sunday
    Readings: Malachi 3.19-20a / Psalm 95.5-6, 7-8, 9 (R/v cf 9) / 2 Thessalonians 3.7-12 / Luke 21.5-19


    The Great Flood was coming. There was fear, confusion, uncertainty. The world was coming to an end. Noah and his family began building the Ark. They gathered the animals to save them. They brought them two by two to the Ark. They looked for the biggest, the fastest, the fittest animals. They forgot the smallest, the slowest, the insignificant, like Mr Snail.

    But Mr Snail wanted to survive. So inch by inch, at a very slow pace, Mr Snail tried to make his way to the Ark. The rains finally came; the waters rose; the Great Flood became a reality. And there on the Ark, with Noah, his family and the hundreds of animals was Mr Snail. Yes, "by perseverance, the snail reached the Ark” (Charles Spurgeon).

    Why listen to this story about perseverance or endurance at this time of the year?

    Because we are like the snail facing an end.  This year, 2016, will end in seven weeks’ time. In Church, this liturgical year will end with the Solemnity of Christ the King next week. For students, school has ended. For workers, we are ending our year with our work reviews. For homemakers here, the end of the year is a busy, anxious time with Christmas and New Year celebrations. Like the snail, we may have some fear of what is to come as we face these endings. Our fear is natural because endings connote loss and sadness, pain and uncertainty.

    Yet, like the snail, we are also looking ahead with hope to a new beginning—be it a new school, a new job, a new state of life. The brighter, the better, the happier: these are the promises we associate with beginnings.

    If every ending is a beginning, wouldn't it be wise of us to consider the quality of our perseverance to the end as this year draws to a close and the new year beckons?

    Endings and beginnings before God is Malachi's focus in our first reading. He presents us with an image of a harvest that is done. The good grain has been gathered and taken away. Only the stubble is left; soon it will be set on fire.

    For Malachi, the stubble is a metaphor for the Israelites who have resisted God’s ways; they will be burned away.  He speaks about them in lines that precede our first reading. These Israelites have turned away from serving God, from keeping God’s laws by cheating and speaking ill of God, and from humbling themselves before God because they hold on to their tithes for self-gain. The bad news for the unfaithful is that their relationship is reaching the end. But Malachi announces good news for those who have trusted and lived in God’s ways; they will be blest like the earth is blessed by the rays of sun. God will be just to those who are faithful to God. God will fulfil their heart's desire for God.  Life with God results in a rich harvest while life without God results in a fruitless field that must be burned away.

    Hearing this passage can be difficult: we might not know which group we belong to as this year ends. We wonder whether we will be burned up and purified for not living our Christian life well this year or we will be given more life and fertility of grace for being good Christians. Truth be told, we can find ourselves in both groups. And so, it is natural for us to hope for the best and to fear the worst as we stand before God to account for this year.

    May be this is why we come to the Eucharist and to the person of Jesus. We come to remind ourselves of who we are in God’s eyes and how God’s mercy works for us—we who are sinful sometimes in our human ways, but always and at all times, beloved in God’s way.

    When Malachi writes about the “healing rays” flowing from the “sun of justice” and resting upon those who “fear” God’s name, he wants to console the faithful whose fear of the Lord is not about being afraid or living in terror, or being fearful of punishment to come. Rather, their fear is about living in reverence of God.

    How can we live this kind of reverence, especially in those dark, difficult, despairing times that seem like the end times in our lives?

    Jesus teaches us how to do this in our gospel passage. Jesus is with his disciples who are admiring the temple. He tells them that it will be destroyed. Yes, its beauty testifies to God’s presence in their midst but it will not last. Jesus' announcement is a statement of fact: everything changes. Such is the reality of being human and living as we do.

    The disciples are upset; they are anxious; they want to know when this destruction will happen. We are like them. Changes upset us. We want certainty about the what, when, why and how when change intrudes into our lives.

    Many of us don’t like change. Change happens whenever something, some relationship, or some event ends in our lives. In these moments we most probably wonder how we can continue living so as to embrace the promised beginnings these endings harbor and have life to the full as Jesus came to give to everyone?

    “By your perseverance you will secure your lives.” This is how Jesus wants us to answer the question and, more so, to live, to flourish and to be happy as we manage the constant change in our lives. Perseverance is about steadfastness and constancy. It is about an endurance characteristic of anyone who keeps to their purpose and is loyal to faith and piety, and in this way, willing to endure the greatest trials and sufferings with patience.

    Today, Jesus is calling us to practice perseverance by keeping faith to the commitments that we have  made in Jesus’ name to know God and the power of God’s love to save us in and through Jesus’ death and resurrection. Commitments we have made at Baptism, and kept faith with in each Eucharist, at every confession, whenever we pray, however often we read scripture and reflect on it, and every time we do what Jesus did to our neighbor. All of these are how we come to know Jesus, so as to become more like him in faith to love God, in charity to serve others, and in hope that God will always save.

    How confident can we be of persevering in our commitment to Jesus? By recognizing how committed God is to persevere with us in Jesus.

    Here we are today at Eucharist, as we are Sunday after Sunday, in spite of our sinfulness and frailties. Aren’t we here because we have experienced nothing less than God’s grace in our daily life? Isn’t God’s surprising love for us and our families, a life-giving and constant love that sustains, each day, every moment, the reason we gather? Hasn’t Jesus' assurance that our perseverance secures our lives become our saving reality because Jesus has made good what he promised:"I will be with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28.20)?

    If you and I have answered “yes”, “yes” and “yes” to these three questions, then, let us rejoice for the gift of perseverance in our lives. Perseverance that empowers our faith to overcome fear. Perseverance that enables us to believe in the promise of beginnings  to defeat the darkness of endings. Perseverance that assures us that hope bounds in us to lead us onward.

    Let those who have ears, hear Jesus’ guidance that it is good to persevere to the end. And more than hear, let us live it as we sang in our gospel acclamation: “Stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand” (Luke 21.28).

    The Great Flood receded. The Ark landed on dry land with a thud. The rainbow bridged the wide expanse of the clear blue sky. Noah let down the door to the Ark. All the animals trooped out, safe and sound. Mr Snail inched his way out too. Indeed, by perseverance the snail did reach the Ark; by perseverance it stayed safe on it; and by perseverance it now walked out free and alive.

    We too can walk free and be fully alive, even in the face of endings, if we but persevere in God who already and always perseveres for us in Jesus. This is the Good News we hear today. Shall we not continue to persevere, so that we can begin new?




    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    photo: wallpaperswide.com


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  6. Year C / Ordinary Time / Week 32 / Sunday
    Readings: 2 Maccabees 7.1-2, 9-14 / Psalm 16.1, 5-6, 8b, 15 (R/v 15b) / 2 Thessalonians 2.16-3.5 / Luke 20.27-38


    “What’s this all about?” This story in the first reading about seven brothers and their mother being violently tortured and murderously killed. This story too in our gospel reading about Sadducees questioning Jesus on which of seven brothers who married the same woman would be her husband at the resurrection. Yes, “What’s all this about?”

    “What’s this all about?’ might be how we are feeling as we do our various end of year reviews. Students do their year-end reflection. Employees review their work performance for the year. Management appraises the staff and programmes to plan for the new year.  

    However we do our year-end reviews, I suspect we all grapple with this nagging question:  “Could the year have been better if we had lived it differently?” It’s a dangerous question to ask: our answers might lead to deep soul-searching for much needed change for the new year. 

    This same question is present whenever we face death and we consider resurrection, like we do in today’s readings. Today's readings do call us to evaluate how we have lived our Christian life this year in the light of a death we cannot escape and the assurance of resurrection life in God. 

    Melanie (not her real name) made a similar evaluation when I ministered the sacrament of the anointing of the sick to her one Sunday afternoon in 2013. She didn’t have long to live; she was dying from pancreatic cancer. 

    We began with small talk to get acquainted. She explained her medical history. She shared her love for her family. She spoke passionately about her ministry of teaching little ones catechism in her parish; this was her joy, she repeatedly said. She would miss this most, she added. 

    She reflected on her life; she made her confession. Then, I anointed her and gave her communion. She smiled. There was a peace about her. “I’m ready,” she said.  Finally, we spoke about death, and in particular about her youngest son whose increasing awareness of her impending death made him ask repeatedly, “Mama, where will you go when you die?”

    Where does one go in death? Many ask this question whenever a loved one dies or when we think about our own death. Death ends our human life. As Christians we believe however in the resurrection, that our life is changed not ended. What allows us to believe in the resurrection? Melanie’s reply to her son offers us an answer: “I am not sure where I am going to but I believe God will raise me up. This is my hope.”

    Hope in God. Hope in God who saves us from sin and death for resurrection and fullness of life. Hope in God who is our reason to live, even in the most painful of times. Hope in God now and not later. 

    Have we lived this past year with such hope in God? 

    Jesus’ point in today’s gospel is that what we want resurrection life to be is, in part, how we live our life with hope in God now. Our present life, Jesus is saying, should lead us to life with God; it cannot be an end in itself.

    Sometimes, may be too often, we live for ourselves and in ways life must be for us. For example, we decide the form and promise resurrection life must be for our daily life and us. For some, it must be a continuation of our present life; for others, it has to be a reward over and above what we now have. And so we use up lots of energy and time to ask about or to imagine what resurrection life looks like.

    When we live like this, we sideline what God wants to give us in resurrection. Our preoccupation with ourselves makes us deaf:  we cannot hear clearly Jesus’ teachings and promises about God’s resurrection that should order how we live as Christians. Only our voice matters; only our version of resurrection life counts. 

    But those who seriously and honestly contemplate death are not deaf to Jesus and the resurrection life he offers. Whether they face death like Melanie did, or when they daily contemplate it, like those praying everyday for a happy death, they understand what Jesus is teaching us today: that what truly matters is God’s promise of resurrection life, not how we want or imagine it to be.  

    These believers are not preoccupied with the look or feel of resurrection life. They go beyond the superficiality of death; they go deep into the truth that resurrection life in God is already promised, and more than promised, it is indeed theirs because of Jesus’ death and resurrection. They channel their energy and time toward making the security of this promised resurrection life real and alive in their everyday living. This is how they have hope; and by practicing hope wholeheartedly, particularly, in the face of death, they witness to the hope-filled quality of Christian life. Christian discipleship invites us to embrace Jesus’ promise of resurrection life in God as our way of living in hope, for ourselves and for others. 

    Today’s readings call us out, like Jesus called out the Sadducees. They put us on the spot with this question: have we lived our hope in resurrection life this year according to our expectations or as God wants to give it to us—always within that wider arc of possibility where God’s grace strengthens our belief in the resurrection in the here and now?

    In the here and now that is also this November time of remembering our dearly departed. We celebrate God’s mercy that redeemed them. And we believe they are with God, and that even those in Purgatory will be with God eventually. 

    We can practice such remembrances because God’s grace abounds in us as hope in the resurrection, no matter how little it may be, or how skeptical we may be about it. Such hope is born out of love for our dearly departed and of our belief in God’s mercy for them. But I’d like to suggest that this hope really springs forth from the many deeper, richer, surer experiences we have each had in Jesus of being loved by God who repeatedly saves and claims us as God’s own.

    This is why our year-end review of Christian life cannot be anything but hope-filled. Yes, this year will hurtle fast and furious towards its end, and many of us will be exhausted, tired, and may be remorseful that the year could have ended better and brighter. In the midst of all this, however, there is Christmas again—God’s way of strengthening our belief that Jesus comes to us as Emmanuel, God-with-us—God of the living, not of the dead, God for whom all are alive. 

    If we believe that this is what really matters about God as Christians, then our lives must be founded on the hope that resurrection life is ours because Jesus came into our history, Jesus is with us in everyday, and Jesus will be with us especially at the hour of death. 

    If you believe in this truth, as I do, then we will indeed know what this life we have is really all about—being with God who is with us forever.



    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    photo: www.beingabusinesscelebrity.com



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  7. Year C / Ordinary Time  / 31st Week / RCIA Rite of Scrutiny (3rd Scrutiny)
    Readings: Wisdom 11.22-12.2/ Psalm 144.1-2, 8-9,10-11, 13c-14 (R/v 7a) / 2 Thessalonians 1.11-2.2 / John 11.1-45


    Winter in Boston is a good time for long meditative walks. A space I enjoyed walking in the cold when I studied there was Mount Auburn, Boston’s first landscaped cemetery. In wintertime, Mount Auburn’s undulating lawns are covered by snow. Leafless trees and stubborn shrubs of various kinds pepper it. Tombs and memorials of all shapes and stones poignantly complete the silent scene. 

    Many of us would walk about Mount Auburn in wintertime. Quite a few of us aimed to ascend to the lookout point overlooking Boston. Our walks were sobering; they reminded us of life amidst death. We walked amidst he stick-like trees harboring buds waiting to burst forth in spring. We walked amidst family and friends remembering their beloved at gravesides.  You could say we walked amidst signs that give faith and signs of faith lived. 

    Faith is at the heart of today’s gospel story today. We tend however to focus more on the miracle of Jesus raising Lazarus from death to earthly life again. For some, this miracle is the culmination of Jesus’ ministry. For others, it symbolizes the promise of eternal life. If we are too fixated on this miracle, we will sadly forego a richer message this gospel story offers. It is this: a faith challenged is a faith strengthened. Martha experiences this truth when her faith is tested by Lazarus’ death. 

    Lazarus’ death pains Martha and Mary. They mourn his death. They also lament Jesus’ absence. “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died”. But Martha has faith in Jesus. She believes he is the Christ who saves. She professes this faith when Jesus asks if she believes he is the resurrection and the life for all. She does, even as her brother is lying dead in the tomb. She needs no miraculous deeds to believe in Jesus; she simply believes.

    Why should our catechumens and we reflect on Mary’s faith and her act of believing in Jesus? What lesson can we learn to better follow Jesus in everyday life? These are the questions the three RCIA Scrutinies invite catechumens and the baptised to meditate on  each time they are celebrated in Church. In particular, we are being asked to consider the stages of faith in our lives, and the quality of how we live out our faith. 

    The gospel reading of the 1st Scrutiny focused on the Samaritan woman meeting Jesus at the well. Here we meditated on the initial coming to faith. In the 2nd Scrutiny, we read about Jesus healing the man born blind. Here, we considered how this incipient faith takes root with testing. In today’s 3rd Scrutiny we reflect on how this faith deepens even more through the most painful of human experiences, death.

    Let us now telescope our attention onto Martha’s struggle as a way to answer the questions posed. Martha believes that Lazarus will be raised up in resurrection on the last day. She believes in Jesus who is the resurrection for all. Yet, hers is an incomplete faith, for she wishes that her brother had not died and she hesitates when Jesus order Lazarus’ tomb to be open. 

    Do we see ourselves in Martha? Are we like her when life is difficult and we cannot see and feel Jesus’ presence? At such times, don’t we too cry out “Lord, where are you?”—we who faithfully come to mass, pray and practice the Christian life? 

    Like Martha, we believe in Jesus and we want to believe our belief is deep. But the truth is that our faith is incomplete. What we need is for our faith in Jesus to go deep so that our love for God and neighbor can grow wide. 

    All too often we look for signs like miracles to help us deepen our faith. John the evangelist reminds us to focus on Jesus and not on the signs. It is therefore right and good that we meditate on Martha’s profession of faith in Jesus, not on the miracle of Lazarus’ resuscitation. For John, the goal of Jesus’ mission is not resuscitating Lazarus. Bringing the fullness of God’s life to all is. Anyone and everyone who receives Jesus and God’s life that he brings must accept that true faith is really about believing in Jesus: he is the source of unending life. 

    Acceptance is not enough; we must live out our faith in Jesus fully. We will do this well when we live each moment—the good and best, but, more so, the worst and difficult—confident that the promise of God’s life in Jesus, with Jesus and through Jesus’ resurrection is ours even now on earth. This is how our faith is strengthened.

    How can we live true faith in Jesus confidently and fully, especially in difficult, challenging times? By making our faith in Jesus our hope. 

    Part of Jesus’ relationship with Martha and Mary was to give them hope. He did this by preparing them to understand the paschal mystery that they would witness in the resurrection—that out of death comes new life in Christ. This hope enabled Martha to profess faith, even before the miracle.

    The RCIA team and sponsors are preparing our catechumens in the same way. They are preparing them in the most fundamental lesson for Christian discipleship: to know the person of Jesus and to have hope in Jesus who offers salvation to all.

    Such preparation is important for Christian life. It helps believers to understand Jesus’ words about the resurrection, and to go beyond the human logic that death is death. It schools our Christian faith and anchors our Christian hope.

    If such preparation is important, then, you and I, the baptized, must ask ourselves this question: what are we doing to help others understand, know and hope in Jesus? Our answer depends, I feel, on the depth of how we are living out our faith in Jesus. Only we know this depth. Only we know how deep it is because of our life’s challenges. However deep it is, it is always a gift good enough to help another to grow in Christian faith. 

    This is the richer reason why I cherish my winter walks through Mount Auburn. I treasure them not so much for the snow or the quiet, nor even the wonderful winter view of Boston from Mount Auburn’s highest point. What I most cherish them for is the reminder about faith when I see family and friends, all bundled for warmth, praying at the beloved’s graveside in winter silence. Their act of faith offered me once, as it now offers all of you, the glory of this Christian truth: that in the face of death, it is not nothingness or emptiness before us, but the fullness of God’s life truly alive in us and for us that only faith in Jesus can give as our hope to live. 
    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    Photo: www.vdberk.co.uk

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  8. Year C / Ordinary Time  / 30th Week / Sunday (Mission Sunday)
    Readings: Ecclesiasticus 35:12-14, 16-19/ Psalm 33:2-3,17-19,23 (R/v 7a) / 2 Timothy 4.6-8, 16-18 / Luke 18.9-14


    Altitude. It’s a distance measurement. In aviation, geometry, geography, altitude, it is about the vertical or “up” direction. Height is our common word for altitude.

    Whenever we stand at some height or attitude above ground, like on a high floor or a peak, we see differently. Our perspectives on things and people change. Don’t people look really tiny from way up high? Sometimes, we stand on such heights as being right, as being holy, as being superior to others that our attitudes towards them slowly but surely alters.

    Altitude and attitude. They figure in today’s parable of the Pharisee and the tax-collector in Luke’s gospel. Here, Jesus teaches us about humility in prayer. In particular, he is teaching us to practice a prayerful attitude towards God and each other. Such attitude is possible when we inhabit the right altitude to live life and faith as Jesus’ disciples, and so carry on his mission.

    For Pope Francis, Jesus’ mission is “to announce the mercy of God, the beating heart of the Gospel” (Misericordiae Vultus, §12). You and I are invited to recommit ourselves to this mission on Mission Sunday. I believe we can do this well when we embrace a prayerful attitude for mission.

    Let us return to the parable and consider how Jesus uses altitude and attitude to instruct us for prayer and mission.

    Two men go up to the temple to pray. The Pharisee stands by himself in the holy space he feels is his rightful place because of his position. The tax-collector stands away from this holy place, some distance from it, at the periphery because he feels unworthy. They inhabit different altitudes to relate to God and each other.

    The Pharisee prays to himself, thanking God that he is better than other people. He does not ask for God’s help; he is full of himself. The tax collector prays to God, repeatedly asking for God’s mercy and forgiveness, desiring reconciliation. He depends on God. They have different attitudes towards God and about themselves before God.

    Jesus ends the parable teaching that God values the pray-er who knows himself and his relationship with God. God is interested in the right attitude for prayer and the right altitude to prayer from.

    The tax collector has the right attitude -- dependence on God -- because he inhabits the right altitude -- humility -- before God and with others. His prayer allows him to deepen his relationship with God.

    Why should we pay attention to the altitudinal and attitudinal location of the two characters in this parable? Because Jesus is warning us against having the naiveté of the Pharisee. Such naiveté is a bluff: it makes a person believe that he is better than everybody else in life and faith, and that God needs no one for the mission but him alone. This is a very dangerous blind spot to have. We all have this same blind spot, if we dare to examine ourselves.

    If I have learnt anything from my life’s journey, it is that I have usually fallen and failed not from my weaknesses, but in my strengths. These often are my blind spots. Perhaps, you’ve realized this too. The irony is that we did not guard our strengths; and in the shadow of our glittering self-images of who we think we are and what we are capable of doing, these strengths failed us and we fell.

    Today Jesus is offering us wisdom for salvation. He teaches us the importance of relating to God from a humble position, never a highhanded one. This is the space to practice the right prayerful attitude for Christian life, faith and mission.

    This is why we need to be honest about ourselves as we listen to this parable. Luke tells us that addressed it to those “who prided themselves on being virtuous and despised everyone else”. We are these people too, these Pharisees, sometimes, even as we desire the sincerity and humility of the tax collector to be in right relationship with God and neighbor.

    In our Pharisee-like moments, we perch ourselves high above others, look down on them, and minister to them from our point of view. In these moments, we depend more on ourselves than on God. These are perhaps less than Christian moments in mission. Moments like treating the less skilled and educated with less attention and care. Moments like offering our help and hospitality to Christians only. Moments like taking care of ourselves and our loved ones, and forgetting the rights of others. Moments like judging who in our midst here can and cannot receive communion.

    But God surprises us even in our most Pharisee-like moments whenever we come to God as we truly are: good as we are bad; human as we need God; sinful and repentant as we hope to change and grow in holiness.

    To come to God like this is to come like the tax collector did in the temple -- with a prayerful attitude. It is a graced attitude. Such attitude springs from his hope that God will meet him in God's mercy, and that he, a sinner, can reach out to God in his humility and dependency.

    This attitude springs from being on level ground with God: this is the right altitude for life, faith and mission with God. This is Jesus’ insight into how right attitude and correct altitude play a part in Christian life. He teaches us this today. It is challenging to hear but it is hopeful to live by; and it is necessary for mission.

    Having this prayerful attitude by being with God on the same level will enable us to work with Jesus on God’s mission. It opens us to hear God’s call to mission, as Jesus did. It allows us to know our strengths, our giftedness, our suitability for the mission, as Jesus knew. It draws us back into prayer to renew ourselves, as Jesus practiced the day’s mission is done.

    Perhaps, the most important reason to desire this prayerful attitude for mission and to practice it is because it binds us in solidarity with those we serve. It is only when we can see, connect, love and care for one another prayerfully while on mission that we can discern how to do God’s will faithfully and to do it for no one other than another like me, a sinner yet always God’s beloved.

    This is why knowing the right altitude to live and move and have our being before God and with one another, especially, those in need of our help, will indeed guard us from being morally superior and being quick to judge and condemn. It will moreover preserve us from being blind to others and acting as if they don’t matter.

    Ultimately, having and practicing a prayerful attitude in daily life empowers us to always keep rediscovering what God finds good enough to love in each one of us, whether we are like the Pharisee or the tax collector.

    And what this goodness is is the human potential to yearn for God. This is what God values in us. This is what gives God hope in humankind.

    This goodness is what saved the tax collector for life with God. This goodness is what Jesus hopes the Pharisee will hear in his closing words to the parable: “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the man who humbles himself will be exalted”. And yes, this goodness what you and me should listen to in Jesus' call this evening.

    It is a call about going deeper, about increasing the distance in which we can go deep in our friendship with Jesus, and through him, go deep in our relationship with God. Depth is also a vertical measurement; it is about altitude too. The altitude of going deep. We need this depth; it anchors our discipleship deep in Jesus so that we can go far and wide to carry on his mission for God.

    Sisters and brothers, shall we not embrace this depth, and live it daily, this good news for going deep into God for others?


    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    Photo: willis tower deck by vito (www.smartdestinations.com)


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  9. Year C / Ordinary Time / 29th Week / Sunday
    Readings: Exodus 17.8-13/ Psalm 121. 1-8 (R/v cf  2) / 2 Timothy 3.14 - 4.2 / Luke 18.1-8


    What do you pray for? Often times, we petition God for this or that. Sometimes, we complaint and grumble, and we beg God to better our lives or the lives of others. Then, there are times when we simply give thanks, and praise and reverence God. 

    In her poem, “Praying”, the American poet Mary Oliver envisions prayer as “the doorway into…which another voice may speak”.

    She captures well what many of us desire when we pray: to hear the voice of God. To hear God’s voice comforting and assuring us, forgiving us and guiding us, and dare, I add, to even sometimes hear God’s voice challenging and correcting us. But most of all, don’t we really want to hear in prayer God speaking God’s love for us? Don’t we want to catch the timbre of God’s voice as we surrender ourselves more and more to God when we lean more and more into prayer? 

    “Here I am, Lord”, we cry. “Here, I am too, with you”, says God. Isn’t this God’s reply, God’s answer to our prayerful plea? Sometimes, however, and maybe for longer periods in our life, we might have experienced, nothing. Just utter silence, not a squeak, nor a whisper from God. It these moments it is natural for us to feel disappointment, confusion and despair.  

    And yet as tempting as it was to give up on God when our prayers were unanswered, when we did not hear his voice—which admittedly I have done sometimes in the past, and I would guess some of us have done likewise too—we kept on praying, didn’t we? Why?

    Today we hear of Moses and the widow persisting in their petitions: Moses petitions God for Israel’s victory over the Amalek, while the widow petitions a corrupt judge for a just ruling against an opponent. 

    What about you and me: do we persist and persevere in prayer, do we stay the course, trusting that God will answer our petition?

    All of us can be most persistent about what is important to us, like exercising to keep fit, practicing the 10 year serious to ace the PSLE, O Levels and A Levels to perform well, and baking till we get the sugee cake recipe for Christmas right. Shouldn’t we also persist in prayer too, persevering always when we pray to God?  

    I think this question is a no-brainer for us who gather here Sunday after Sunday, faithfully nurturing our faith: we know our answer. We persist because this is how we ought to be in relationship with God— resilient.

    We know the value of persevering in prayer. A deeper trust in God. A stronger faith to live everyday, especially in adversity. A humbling of ourselves that frees us to follow God more closely in our lives. An imitation of Jesus who prayed often and best by teaching us to pray to our Father. But what allows us to persevere in prayer? 

    The image of Moses with his hands raised up can give us an answer. This is a posture we often see in children. A child does this to get attention or to be cared for. This child-like stance is hope-filled: one hopes mommy will cradle her in mommy’s embrace, and daddy will let him lay his head on daddy’s shoulder.

    With his hands held up, Moses’ stance is really the child-like disposition of opening oneself to God and trusting that God will provide. Trusting, even when one doesn’t hear God’s voice or feel God’s presence.

    St Therese of Lisieux has a wonderful story about the Christian and child-like trust in God. A child is at the parade with her father. A crowd surrounds her. They block her view. She hears the parade going by: the marching steps; the band’s rousing music; the cheers and hurrahs of the crowds. She wants to see is the parade. She has her arms up in giggly, gleeful expectation.  And without needing to be asked, her father picks her up, lifts her up with one swoop onto his shoulders, and there, way up high on his shoulders, she delights in the parade.

    We all need to have this child’s trust when we pray to God. We need this trust because it empowers us to persevere. Indeed, every time we pray, especially when we don’t hear God’s voice, we tend to raise and open our arms. It’s not an image of giving up.  Rather, it echoes Moses with his hands up: it is about praying with trust in God. Does God respond? Yes, certainty, though, not ways in the ways we want. Ask and you will receive. We have asked; we have received. God has answer our prayer; we know we can trust. 

    This trust makes us resilient. We need such resilience for the long haul of our pilgrimage home to God. The world however judges trust and resilience as nothing less than foolhardiness humankind doesn’t need. For us Christians, however, this foolhardiness cannot be anything less than graced; it allows us to persevere in prayer. Don’t call it foolhardiness then; call it holy boldness. We grow into this daring boldness every time we keep praying and trusting, trusting and praying to God. Indeed, the Holy Spirit transforms our limited faith into the likeness of Jesus’ unfailing faith in God. 

    We pray so that we can be with God and we allow God to labor for our good. Prayer then leads us to this central human truth: we are not god; we are limited. Every one of us desires union, peace, and joy. We love being human until we experience needs, losses, injuries, and fears. Prayer invites us to humble ourselves in the midst of it all and to trust God, so that we can ask. Prayer invites us to announce our dependencies and proclaim the truth that you and I, we, need God.

    “Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth”. This is the refrain in our psalm this morning. We can only say it like the psalmist did when we dare to trust God’s sure help in the hope Jesus shows us on Cross: never death; always salvation. Such trust deafens every silence we encounter in prayer, and fills each empty experience we have of an absent or distant or non-existent God. 

    This is why Paul’s advice to Timothy in the second reading is also meant for us: “You must keep to what you have been taught and know to be true” that we are saved “through faith in Christ Jesus”. His counsel anchors our perseverance in prayer, as it tilts our prayer toward the hope-filled orientation towards God.

    Jesus reminds us in our gospel reading that we need to pray continually and never lose heart. We need trust and perseverance to do this well. Let us pray then with holy boldness, not lukewarm mediocrity. 

    We can indeed pray like this when we make all of our life—the way we live and move and have our being—a prayer. Be it a petition or a thanksgiving, our prayer will only be prayer when it is our desire, our yearning, for God, and not an obligation we have to do or a tick to put on our day's checklist. For it is when we thirst for God in prayer that we can constantly abandon ourselves into God, so that God can catch us securely in love but, more so, lift us up to the fullness of life, like the little girl in Therese of Lisieux’s story. Then, we will have reached our prayer’s end: we rest in God, as God rests in us. 

    Indeed, what matters most when we persevere in prayer, is not that we hold God within ourselves, but that we try, as best as we can, to hold ourselves in God. 

    And isn’t this, my friends, a petition worth persevering in prayer for?



    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    Photo: from the internet (sharingrace.com)

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  10. Year C / Ordinary Time / Week 27 / Sunday
    Readings: Habakkuk 1.2-3;2.2-4 / Psalm 94. 1-2, 6-7, 8-9 (R/v 8) / 2 Timothy 1.6-8, 13-14 / Luke 17.5-10


    Have you watched parents teaching their children to ride a bicycle? 

    They’d begin their little ones on tricycles. In time, they’d graduate them to bicycles with two supporting wheels in the rear to finally only cycling on two wheels. They'd push them from behind to prevent any falls. They'd also guide them from the side, with encouraging words. They’d do this again and again, until their child makes his first unsupported solo ride. 

    On that day, Daddy would seat the child down and fix the safety helmet a tad tighter. He’d give a short pep talk to reassure the little one. He would go position himself some distance further away, usually at the end of this historic ride. Then he'd probably beckoned his kid to start riding, by shouting out loud, “1,2,3, Go! Just ride, buddy. Just do it!”

    "Just do it”.  We’re all familiar with this Nike trademark. I’d like to suggest that it could be the key we need to unlock Jesus’ message in today’s gospel passage. His message is to teach his followers about the purpose of faith and the role of duty in their lives.

    "Increase our faith," the apostles ask Jesus. Their request opens today’s gospel. The apostles ask because they want to live out his teachings. Teachings like: change your hearts or perish; love God and neighbor more than sacred ritual; put God before everything including family and self; forgive enemies; share your wealth with all; seek out the lost and  lead no one into sin. These are challenging lessons to live. It’s no wonder they ask for more faith.

    We too hear Jesus’ teachings in the gospels. They were also part of the gospel readings these past few Sundays. Like the apostles, we want to live as better Christians. It’s logical then that we also ask Jesus, “increase my faith”. 

    Jesus would reply to us as he did to his apostles: Were your faith the size of a mustard seed, you would already have all the power you need to perform tremendous feats. His reply is enlightening: the faith we have is good enough to live as he teaches us to.

    The operative word here is: “were”. By definition “were” is the simple past tense of the verb “be”, which has to do with the temporary or permanent quality someone has. When Jesus uses the phrase “were your faith”, he is referring to the faith one already has. He is not questioning the quantity of the apostles’ faith, or scolding them for a total lack of it. Rather, Jesus recognizes that the disciples’ faith, while miniscule, could still empower them to live out his teachings, if only they would use it. 

    Jesus wants us to also use our faith, no matter how much we have of it, to live in his ways. What’s the best way to do this?

    Christian discipleship is about witnessing actively to God’s love in the world as Jesus proclaimed it.  Our words will not accomplish this mission. What will is our self-sacrificing deeds of loving God and loving neighbor, particularly, those in need.

    Faith is the necessary fuel we need to do this mission and to achieve it. This is a purpose faith has in Christian life. We would be lazy and irresponsible Christians if we think of Jesus like a dispenser, giving out more faith whenever we feel we want to do the mission. 

    The truth is that Jesus has already given us a tank full of faith in baptism. It is given for us to complete the mission by living in right relationship with God and one another. We are responsible for topping it up. We do this best by living our faith actively: then, faith multiplies. But faith left idle evaporates, till nothing's left.

    In this gospel, Jesus tells us that we already have the faith needed to live in his ways and to carry on his mission. Our task is to grow it. There is no need to ask for more faith. We need to use our faith, or we will lose it.

    Jesus describes the life of duty as the gospel ends. Such a life is one way faith can grow. The servant dutifully attends to all his master’s needs, he accomplishes them before his own, with no regard to being thanked. Jesus calls us to live a similar life: always serving and when all is completed, to say, “we are merely servants: we have done no more than our duty.” 

    I believe we all want to say “yes” to following Jesus' call;  we do so using use our heads to help us rationalise this. But our hearts struggle: we would rather say “no” for we would prefer to set the agenda for our discipleship and define the kind of disciple we want to be. Such is our reality of living in today’s world that preaches individualism and individual rights. 

    Early Christians reading Luke’s gospel, however, would have understood the richer meaning of Jesus’ example of the dutiful servant for their lives. It is this: that there is no place or time when the Christian disciple can say, “I’m done serving; now I want to be served”. For them, a Christian must do as Jesus did: dutifully serving all and dutifully serving always. 

    These should be difficult words for us to hear because Jesus is insisting that we cannot live our faith by selectively serving God and neighbor. If we want to grow in our faith, we have to learn that we have a duty to do this: to be selfless and humble to serve someone else always. If this is the right thing Christians ought to do, shouldn’t we just do it?

    I think there is no other way to just do this than by practicing attentiveness to God’s many invitations to use our faith to serve. Each of these invitations in our everyday life draws us into imitating Jesus more closely—Jesus who shows us that service for others must be the right and just shape  for us to express the depth, the breath and the height of our faith in God.

    Practicing faith like this is about making it come alive, not about adding to its quantity. This is why the faith we already have—however much or however little it is—is truly good enough for God to grow in us. This is Paul’s point in the second reading: with the Spirit’s help, we have to fan the gift of faith into a flame that witnesses to God. 

    Let us then heed the wisdom in today’s psalm: O that today we would listen to God’s voice! Hardened not our hearts. In every opportunity to serve others, God is growing our faith. We assist God by answering this question daily: “How have I lived today for another to have life?” We can begin our answer by listening to how God speaks to us in every possibility to serve others each day. The more we open our hearts to God as we do this, the more we will know our answer. Jesus lived like this. When we do likewise, we let God grow our faith.

    Grow. Growing. Growing up. This is how the little ones learn to build confidence to make their first solo bicycle ride. From learning to pedal with four wheels to then with two wheels that Daddy and Mommy help them to ride with to finally their solo ride, they grow in confidence by practicing again and again. Sometimes, they fall, and have a few scrapes too.  But it is in practicing that they know they will make it to the end when they set off on their own. 

    We too can have this same confidence to live our faith through lives of service. We don’t really need to ask for more faith; we just need to practice, practice, practice it more. Today God is urging us to simply do this and so grow our faith. “Go,” God says, “just do it!”  Shall we?




    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    photo: from the Internet
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    Labels: Breaking Open God's Word
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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."

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