1. 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
    Posted by
    Labels: Advent Breaking Open God's Word
    0

    Add a comment


  2. 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
      
    Posted by
    Labels: Breaking Open God's Word
    0

    Add a comment

  3. 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


    Posted by
    0

    Add a comment

  4. 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



    Posted by
    Labels: Breaking Open God's Word
    0

    Add a comment

"Bukas Palad"
"Bukas Palad"
is Filipino for open palms
Greetings!
Greetings!
Peace and welcome, dear friend.
I hope you will find in these posts something that speaks to you of the God who loves us all and who always holds us in the palm of his hand. Blessings!
The Liturgical Calendar / Year C
The Liturgical Calendar / Year C
Faith & Spirituality
Faith & Spirituality
Tagged as...
Tagged as...
Blog Archive
Blog Archive
Fall in Love, Stay in Love
Fall in Love, Stay in Love

"Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute way final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything."

Pedro Arrupe, sj, Superior General, 1965 - 1983

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

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