1. Year B / Christmas / The Nativity of the Lord
    Readings: Isaiah 52.7-10 / Responsorial Psalm 98.1-6 (R/v 3c) / Hebrews 1.1-6 / John 1.1-18


    Memories.  They have the power to make us smile and laugh when we recall happy times. They can also make us weep in grief or sigh in regret because of a hurtful past. In such moments, memories can trap us in the pain of disappointment or free us with thanksgiving. It does not take much to trigger a memory in all of us: a sound, a taste, a smell, an image, even words or phrases, bring us back to someone, some moment, some experience.

    Our memories of Christmas past play a big part in how we celebrate Christmas today. Of Santa Claus and carols and gifts. Of shopping and baking. Of family feasting and greeting. Of those special curries and festive cakes. Even, of particular Christmas Masses, or homilies or manger scenes that made the Christmas story come alive for us.

    A treasured memory I have is of being 5 or 6 years old with my family cleaning up our house on Christmas Eve, decorating the staircase railings with Christmas cards and trimming the Christmas tree—all of us making room for Christmas Day and eagerly anticipating it. 

    What are your cherished Christmas memories?  

    Personal  memories are powerful. Shared memories of God are more powerful. They are universal and they reside deep within everyone. They influence us individually. Collectively, they shape the whole course of human events. Christmas returns us to this more powerful memory of God. Our shared memory of a God who could, and would, play an active role in human life and for human history. Our gospel proclaims this truth: “and the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1.14).

    While Christmas is about many things for many people, the one truth underlying all of them is that Christmas reminds all that God chose to intervene to save us. 

    Intervened in the life of one couple. Not an ideal couple. Mary was unwed, pregnant, an illiterate young girl. Joseph’s ancestry was stained and soiled: his ancestors included scoundrels, thieves, schemers, foreigners and adulterers, as Matthew and Luke remind us in their gospels. Yet, when the time came for God to intervene and save, God chose this woman’s womb and this man’s family to bear his beloved son to the world.  

    Intervened also by choosing Bethlehem, an obscure Jewish village in Roman occupied Israel for Mary to give birth to her son. And with no room in the inn, by providing a manger, the messiest, dirtiest, poorest of spaces, for Mary to lay her son to sleep and Joseph to stand watch beside. 

    Intervened most of all in the form of a baby. Tiny. Vulnerable. Insignificant. Yet, this is Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, and God for us and our salvation.

    As we remember the first Christmas and how God intervened in the life of Mary and Joseph, not such a perfect couple, and we look at our own imperfect lives, we can hope. For if God can work in the life of Mary and Joseph, God can surely work in my life too.

    As we remember the first Christmas and how God intervened in the life of Joseph's family full of scoundrels, thieves, schemers, foreigners and adulterers, and we look at our own messed up families, we can hope. For if God can work in Joseph’s disordered family, God can surely work in our families with their own black sheep, difficulties and failures

    As we remember the first Christmas and how God intervened in the history of one town, one country, and he did it amidst the odor and squalor of a manger, we can hope. For if God can be born in a stable 2000 years ago, then he can be born amidst the chaos, violence and uncertainty of our world today

    As we remember the first Christmas and how God intervened in the quietest of ways, in the silence of an ordinary night, and in the smallest of ways, in a tiny babe, we can hope.  For if God can come like this once, then, God will come again and again into our lives today in the ordinary and in the simplest, indeed, always coming to be present to us.

    Isn't this why we are here? To remember and celebrate this memory of God labouring for good at Christmas? If your answer is “yes”, as mine is, then let us renew our belief  wholeheartedly today that “The Word became flesh and lived amongst us” (John 1.14)

    It good and right then for us to join the psalmist and “Sing to the Lord a new song for he has done marvellous things” (Psalm 96.1). Yes, we have every reason to lift up our voices to rejoice and sing—not just together but with all creation: all lands rejoicing, the sea making a noise, the rivers clapping their hands” (Psalm 96.7-8) 

    Why such jubilant rejoicing?  Not just because God has come to save. But because we can now see God’s glory. This is what the shepherds saw in the manger: Jesus, the face of God’s love. Recall these words from our second reading: “We are gazing at the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being” (Hebrews 1.3). Isn’t this what you and I do in faith when we come to the manger to gaze upon baby Jesus—to glimpse God?

    God did something remarkable at the first Christmas: God turned he relationship between Godself and humankind upside down. Until the birth of Jesus, no one could see God’s glory and live. In the Hebrew Scriptures God granted only Moses this gift to approach and see God’s glory. No one else could. But with Jesus’ birth and in his person, every person, whether male or female, slave or free, Jew or Gentile, saintly or sinful, can now approach God. We can because God in all his glory graciously approached us in Jesus. This is an act of unimaginable love because the unapproachable God became flesh, and came to us in a small child.  And on the face of this child we see “his glory, the glory of the only Son of God, full of grace and truth” (John 1.14) This is the wonder and mystery of Christmas. This is our Christmas joy.

    And all this happens because God intervened once, as God will continue to intervene. Intervene especially in our lives to bring us home to Godself, especially those who are afraid and confused, lost and in sin. Intervene because God will not spurn us, as God did not spurn Mary’s womb, Joseph’s messed up ancestry, Bethlehem’s insignificance, the world’s sinfulness. 

    It doesn’t matter that our lives or our families or world are imperfect. What matters is that we make a space, no matter how small, for God in our hearts. When we do this, God will do the rest to bring to birth Jesus in the Bethlehem of our lives and the mangers of our hearts.

    May be then we will come to know the real surprise at Christmas—that as much as our hearts are restless until they rest in God, it is really God who has come to rest in us in Jesus. This is the Christmas proclamation. It is our Good News. And we will begin to realise this truth when we see how it is not Mary who is holding Jesus but it is God in Jesus who is actually embracing Mary.

    For us, this Good News cannot just be a powerful or joyful Christmas memory. It is our hope-filled Christian reality: God always comes to us in love and with mercy. This hope empowers us to live daily: we know God will come repeatedly into the craziness of our lives, our families and our world to embrace us in Jesus—Jesus who did not come once but will come always to you and me because in God he wants to hold us, cherish us and cradle us, forever.




    Modelled in part on a homily by the monks of the Society of John the Evangelist

    Preached at Church of the Transfiguration, Singapore
    artwork: adoration of the child by gerrit van honthorst
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  2. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 34 / Sunday: Solemnity of Christ the King
    Readings: Ezekiel 34.11-12, 15-17 / Psalm 23.2-2, 2-3, 5-6 (R/v 1) / 1 Corinthians 15.20-26, 28 / Mathew 25.31-46


    Tis the season, is it not? No, not of Christmas yet. But of holidays to rest and relax, to unwind and chill, to have quality time with family and friends. A number of us will do this by holidaying abroad.

    Over the past few weeks in St Joseph’s Institution, my teachers have been sharing their holiday plans with me. Three young teachers are now in Finland for the snow; they are posting winter scenes on their Facebooks. A few will depart on family holidays to Japan for the food. Several are heading to Australia to be with their children and grandchildren. The international staff are going home for Christmas. My young Buddhist teacher who quotes St Paul is making his silent retreat in a monastery. Listening to them, I could not help but think that they are all trying to find that most wonderful place, that happy destination, to be at in the world at this time.

    But you and I are here on this last Sunday of the liturgical year. I wonder if we would allow ourselves the time and space right now to appreciate how being here, at the end of this past liturgical year, is indeed a most wonderful place to be at, even if we feel we have not lived the past twelve months well as Christians.   

    Looking back, I am sure we all have had many moments when we did live our faith well. We were in happy friendship with Jesus. We deepened it; we live more fully; we gave thanks for it. May be we live it so well that the love of God in us enliven and enriched our family, friends, colleagues and even strangers. Let’s celebrate these.

    However, there would also have been times when we did not live our faith in the Christ-like ways we wanted to. In these moments we knew were far from God and that we hurt others.  Let us be honest about these. Like: when our gossip hurt friends, our infidelities and addictions pushed loved ones away, our stinginess denied someone hope, our unforgiveness dismayed God. We might regret these. Today, our remorseful might make us identify with the goats and rams in today’s gospel reading whom the Son of Man judges as unfaithful and unloving, fit only to be condemned into hell. 

    If this judgment about failing to care for others is all that we take home from today’s readings, we would miss the Good News that today’s readings are collectively proclaiming.

    These readings are chosen for the Feast of Christ the King. The Church insists we end our liturgical year, our past year of faith, by celebrating Christ as “king.” Did the Church think that our readings can help us understand our past year?

    The simple answer is, “yes”. Because we will better make sense of our lives this past year when we look back at to see where Christ was present, labouring for our wellbeing. Our readings can help us do this. They offer images of sheep and shepherd to help is consider our relationship with Jesus this past year. 

    The First Reading challenges us with the honest demand to consider if our words and actions have scattered God’s sheep over the face of the earth, away from God and one another. God’s sheep who are those we love, those we work and study with, those we do ministry with here, those who come, go, and pass us by every day. 

    How have we tended them—led them to pastures to grow and thrive or have we ‘eaten’ then up? Listen to how God attends to them: “I shall look for the lost one, bring back the stray, bandage the wounded and make the weak strong”. Isn’t this how God has been acting in our own lives? Coming to seek us out, caring for us, repeatedly, and inviting everyone into mutual relationship with Him.  This God shepherds—not just protecting but also shepherding all into fullness of life. 

    We know this truth and this is why we so readily find comfort, assurance and hope in our responsorial psalm. We sing it at funerals and at profession of vows, we pray in difficult times and we give thanks with it in joy.  As we sang it, paying attention to the numerous ways God has shepherded us through life, didn’t we smile knowing God is faithful as he promised. God’s goodness and kindness are all around us. God has walked us beside restful waters, through green pastures. 

    But God’s shepherding is not a holy ideal, a theological proposition, a scriptural image. It is concrete: its form is Jesus, as we hear in our second reading. Shepherding was how Jesus lived and ministered on earth. He preached to Jews and Gentiles. He ate with tax collectors. He forgave the adulterous. He healed the sick and infirmed. He shared life and faith with the apostles. He laid down his life for all to have eternal life. 

    These are ways Jesus revealed how great God’s shepherding is. It was always real and present, always giving life and life-changing. How can we experience Jesus’ shepherding now that he is with God and we are on earth?

    By making Jesus’ invitation in today’s gospel reading real and present, life-giving and life-changing in our interactions with one another. This is the invitation he makes: “whatever you do to one of the least of my own, the Lord says, you do it to me”. 

    His invitation calls us to become more like him in the coming liturgical year that begins next Saturday with Advent. A new year, a new beginning, another chance to live our Christian faith better by following Jesus. We follow Jesus best by doing onto others what God has done onto us—loving selflessly and giving life lavishly.

    We experience this goodness of God in how Jesus shepherds us, his sheep. Today he invites us to become shepherds to others, as he is to us. 

    Pope Francis reminded priests and laity at the Holy Chrism Mass in 2015 that Christ-like shepherding begins when we put ourselves aside to place others before us. Then our shepherding will smell of them, God’s sheep. This is the grace of imitating Jesus’ shepherding; that the odor of God’s people becomes our own. Jesus exuded it in his life and ministry. It did not stink. Instead, it is that rich, fragrant scent of God’s love alive in him.

    You know this scent. You can smell it in those who shepherd like Jesus. It is part of them; it remains with them. It lingers because it is God’s faithful presence laboring in them to serve all, especially the hungry and the thirsty, the naked and the imprisoned, the ill and the needy, the stranger. Serving them is God's plan of salvation for each of us. Jesus revealed this through his shepherding, most especially to the end by laying down his life for all.

    To shepherd like Jesus, we must willingly offer everything we have and we are for others—not because it is simpler but because this is the way Jesus enfleshed God’s love and life amongst us. He leads them to God and cares for them in God’s ways. Being with them, he smells of them, God’s sheep. This is who Christ the King is: shepherd-king with us and for us always. 

    As King, Christ is not remote, far away from his subjects. He is “in the trenches”, doing the shepherding himself. He calls us to join him to shepherd everyone. This is Jesus’ initiative. Even if we have not shepherded each other perfectly in Christ-like ways this past year, we did humble ourselves to let God into our lives to lead us. For Jesus, our openness to God, however much we tried, is good enough for him to invite us to shepherd others alongside him again.

    So here we at the end of another liturgical year. It is the most wonderful place to be in the world right now not because we’ve reached a destination or place. Rather, it’s wonderful because of who we find is with us here—Jesus. 

    Jesus who shepherds us by caring for us and thinking of us. Jesus who prays for us and who keeps us in his heart. Yes, Jesus who assures us he is with us to the end of time—this Jesus who is Christ, the King. King of the universe, but, more so, King of our lives.




    Preached at St Ignatius Church and Church of the Transfiguration, Singapore
    photo: https://benziher.wordpress.com

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  3. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 33 / Sunday (World Day for the Poor)
    Readings: Proverbs 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31 / Psalm 127: 1-2, 3, 4-5 / 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6 / Matthew 25:14-30


    Sunday evenings are my family dinner nights. Now and then, one of us brings a gift for our nephews, Daniel and Glenn. It might be a t-shirt, a toy, or some crayons to paint.  After playing with his gift for a while, with some ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ and a giggle or two, Daniel usually takes it to someone in the family, not the giver, to share his gift with. ‘Ta-dah’, he would say. We all would laugh, and his mother, my sister, would say, ‘Good boy, Daniel!’

    A happy scene. For me, Daniel’s action offers us a happier, richer lesson for life—the wisdom of multiplying a gift. 

    Today’s gospel reading of Jesus teaching the parable of talents echoes this theme. A rich man entrusts three persons with varied amounts of money. Two multiply their amount; one does not.

    In contrast, our first reading focuses on wisdom. On the  wisdom of a loving wife who diligently takes ordinary things, like wool and flax, and remakes them to improve the quality of life for her husband and the poor. She is praised for her efforts.

    What is the connection between wisdom and talents, these seemingly unconnected ideas? Why would such a connection, if any, be good news for Christian life? 

    In Jesus’ parable, two persons multiply the money entrusted to them. A third does not; he keeps what was given so as not to lose it.  Jesus teaches that even the little this third person has, which he buried for fear of his master, will be taken away and given to the one who had and made  more. This doesn’t sound just, merciful, or even Christian, does it? How are we to make sense of Jesus’ harsh teaching?

    By recalling another teaching of Jesus: "Where your heart is, there also is your treasure" (Luke 12.34). Wisdom is not about knowing all things. Rather, wisdom is about knowing all things truthfully: knowing where they come from, what they are for and where they can take us to when we use them.

    Upon receiving a gift, we might think that we know exactly what it is and how to use it.  A wise person, on the other hand, takes time to reverence the gift. She approaches it with humility and openness. She never assumes she knows everything about gift, how to use it, or why it was given in the first place. A wiser person sees the invitation in each gift: to receive it and share it. Such a person is generous because she understands the wisdom of multiplying the gift.

    This lens of wisdom can help us understand what more Jesus is teaching us in today’s parable: that we must honestly locate the real treasures in our lives.  

    To locate is to find or situate our position: where we come from; where we are; where we should be heading. So, who or where from do our gifts come? What should we do with them? Have we unwrapped all? Did we throw some away? Are these gifts cluttering our lives, or are they enabling us to live fully? Do we allow our gifts to lead us to God? Or, are they entrapping like the man who buries the money give because of fear?

    When—and if—we dare locate the real treasures in our lives in the right place, with the right giver, God, then, we might begin to answer the why, what and how questions about the gifts we have in life and for our life. 

    This wisdom enables us to appreciate God and God’s gifts in our lives. This wisdom, moreover, helps us to better understand what these gifts are really for: for us to develop and use them well, not for ourselves but to return them back to God by renewing the world. This is what responsible Christian stewardship looks like.

    A good way to do this is to share these gifts of God’s love and life with all.

    The men who multiplied their given amounts had faith in their master. And so, they opened themselves to what more his gifts offered. The man who had little faith in his master did nothing with his gift; he entombed himself from its promise of more. We are invited today to be like the men who multiplied their gifts. Is our faith in God one that is open and trusting of God's abundance? Or, is our faith like the man who feared, feared because he was too secure, too certain that faith in God is always about obeying rules and laws? Which one are you?

    I believe Jesus uses this parable to challenges us to use our gifts better. 

    The fear of God should not be what keeps us in good standing with God. Rather, what must keep us in good standing with God is holy boldness. Holy boldness is the daringness we must have to trust God and, more so, to risk developing and using the gifts in our lives lavishly for others. This kind of wisdom should embolden us to believe that God gives us gifts for sharing. And it is in our sharing that we will be blessed.

    This weekend, the Church celebrates the First World Day of the Poor.  Pope Francis hopes this day will make us more aware of our Christian duty to respond to the poor with mercy. He wants us to love and care for the poor, the needy, the disenfranchised, not with words but with deeds. He writes:  
    Whenever we set out to love as Jesus loved, we have to take the Lord as our example; especially when it comes to loving the poor.  The Son of God’s way of loving is well-known… It stands on two pillars: God loved us first (cf. 1 Jn 4:10.19), and he loved us by giving completely of himself, even to laying down his life (cf. 1 Jn 3:16).
    Such love … can only happen if we welcome God’s grace, his merciful charity, as fully as possible into our hearts, so that our will and even our emotions are drawn to love both God and neighbour.  In this way, the mercy that wells up – as it were – from the heart of the Trinity can shape our lives and bring forth compassion and works of mercy for the benefit of our brothers and sisters in need. (Message for First World Day of the Poor, 13 June 2017)
    Francis’ call echoes Jesus’ teaching today—a teaching about how we should receive God’s gifts and multiply them well.  

    If we say that there is no need to be wise about how to live after hearing Jesus’ parable, we will forfeit our growth as Christians. But if our reflection on Jesus’ parable leads us to take the risk to develop and share our gifts with all, we will live as the early Christians did: sharing all they had in common and multiplying God’s life and love. Then others will say of us, as the ancients once said of the first Christians, “see how they love one another”.

    This wisdom for Christian living is what today’s World Day for the Poor also demands of us: to share God’s mercy that you and I have received, so many times, with the poor. This is how we will multiply God’s mercy for all in a world so much in need of compassion, forgiveness and reconciliation.  

    Daniel comes running to my Mother with his gift of Elmo. ‘Ta-dah,’ he says. Grandma takes it and wiggles it about. ‘Ta-dah,’ she replies, handing it to back to him with a hug and a kiss. Then, Daniel snuggles up in Mama’s warm, loving embrace. ‘Yay,’ he chuckles.

    Love received; love shared; love multiplied abundantly. 

    This is true of the gift of God’s love in our lives too, only magnified a hundredfold, and even more, if we dare to multiply our faith by sharing it with God and with one another. 

    Shall we dare to share?




    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: http://www.saintgeorgesworcester.org.uk


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  4. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 32 / Sunday 
    Readings: Wisdom 6.12-16 / Psalm 62.2abc, 2d-4, 5-6, 7-8 / 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18 / Matthew 25:1-13


    We had a scare in the family recently. Our eldest aunt reported that there was blood in her urine. All of us were extremely concerned. We advised her to see her doctor. Her doctor however was away. We waited for her medical with anxiety, anguish and angst. We were worried that this signalled a relapse of her cancer that was in remission. We were scared for her—scared that her end was in sight.  She however was calm and collected: she want about her daily life as usual, attended Sunday Mass faithfully, loved and cared for us as she does so well.

    My aunt’s attitude and aptitude to live in the face of illness and death made me ask this question: would I live differently if my end is around the corner—as Paul suggests to the Thessalonians in today’s second reading? What about you: would you live differently, if your end is in sight?

    The end of this liturgical year is in sight. We are two weeks away to its end with the Feast of Christ the King.  Our calendar year is also coming to its end. As of today, there are only 50 days left to the end of 2017. At this time of endings, a recurrent theme in our liturgical readings is the expectant coming of God. Let those with ears hear: the end is here and God is near. 

    We hear this same refrain in today’s gospel reading. There are ten bridesmaids, five of them foolish, five wise. The foolish ones have brought no oil reserve for their lamps, in case the first allotment runs out. The groom is late. Finally, he appears at midnight. The unprepared call out to the others, “Give us some oil.” But the provident tell the foolish to get their own. And so the chance is missed, the door barred, even as those left behind cry for opening. It is too late. The moral of the story: “Keep your eyes open, for you know not the day or the hour.”

    You and I will never know the hour or the day when our life will end, nor the hour or the day when God will come. We should always be ready for this in every moment of our lives. Knowing this is wisdom: wisdom we need to focus on the things that will last. 

    To be wise, then, is not to calculate the time of departure. To be wise is to spend the present moment—this time of waiting as end times approach—well. Well to welcome what will come to us and lasts forever in our lives.

    This week’s readings make this point. They invite us to receive what will stay with us and last for us: the saving love of God. The first reading reminds us peacefully and beautifully to watch for God at dawn. We are being asked to keep vigil for Wisdom, for God’s Spirit, that will – paradoxically – come to meet us in our waiting. The antiphon of our Responsorial Psalm boldly names our craving for God: “For you my soul is thirsting, O God, my God.” And the Gospel adds, “stay awake!” Together, they invite us not to be foolish or forgetful about being ready for God, and to prepare well to welcome Him.

    How should we prepare? By persevering in our waiting and practicing vigilance as our hope. To do these well, we must dare to rethink how we understand waiting. With eyes of faith, this must mean waiting in God’s time and longing for God’s presence as we wait.

    To wait in God’s time is to dwell in God’s present-ness. With God, there is no past or future; there is always God’s present. God is. And because God is, God simply invites us to dwell with him as we are, no matter how good or bad we are. To long for God’s presence is to make ourselves more alert the goodness of God’s labour in our lives, however much or little we perceive it to be. Waiting in God’s time and longing for God’s presence. These allow us to simply be with God and one another as companions to the end, but, more so, beyond and into the fullness of God’s life.

    If we dare do this, we will realise that waiting in God’s time and longing for God’s presence is never wasted or wasteful. Standing still, being idle, not preparing cannot be the way to wait for God. This option will only lead us astray: we will lose track of who and what we are waiting for. The example of the five wise bridesmaids who prepared well, who remained alert, who longed for the bridegroom’s coming as they waited, must be our choice if we want to live purposeful Christian lives.

    Today, Jesus wants us to choose this option, not because it is the better choice. But because it must be our only choice if we wish to face our end times meaningfully. What we are really being invited to is not just a choice but the wisdom needed to keep our hearts open to God and God’s love that saves us. This is today’s Good News as announced in the parable of the ten virgins. 

    This is how Pope Francis explains this Good News. “The Bridegroom who is the Lord, and the time of waiting for his arrival is the time he gives to us, to all of us, before his Final Coming;...it is a time of watchfulness; a time in which we must keep alight the lamps of faith, hope and charity, a time in which to keep our heart open to goodness, beauty and truth....What he asks of us is to be ready for the encounter—for a beautiful encounter, the encounter with Jesus, which means being able to see the signs of his presence, keeping our faith alive with prayer, with the sacraments, and taking care not to fall asleep so as to not forget about God” (Homily at Holy Mass and Ordination, 9 November 2015).

    I believe we can do this when we ask for the grace of not yet.  We must beg God for this grace. In school, “If you get a failing grade, you’d think, ‘I’m nothing, I’m nowhere’. But if you get the grade ‘Not Yet’ you understand that you’re on a learning curve. It gives you a path into the future” (Carol Dweck, ‘The Power of Believing You Can Improve’)

    Spiritually speaking, the experience of “not yet” is itself grace-filled. It orientates us to wait and to long. To wait expectantly for Jesus. To long for his coming. The grace of not yet keeps us alert and attentive to welcoming God in Jesus who is with us in our daily life.

    This grace of not yet gives hope. Hope that empowers us to persevere in our waiting and embolden us in our longing. But this hope must be grounded in a faith that never gives up on God. Such faith confidently believes that God will come—come always. 

    We are here because we have such faith. We believe God comes to us in Jesus especially when bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. Our “Amen” when we receive Communion expresses our faith. It also echoes these words Paul closes our second reading with: “so, we shall stay with the Lord forever”.

    Perhaps, this assurance is the grace of not yet our aunt has: that with God, eternity is not just that advent to come, as it is also our experience of God already with us. What we really need then is to be alert. Alert because at our life’s end, no matter the hour or the day, we will be able to truly welcome God because we have already learnt to be attentive to Him in our waiting and our longing.  

    Isn’t this assurance good enough as our end time draws near?




    Preached at the St Vincent de Paul Society Mass, Agape Village, Singapore
    photo: oneido.com (internet)

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  5. Year A / All Saints (Solemnity)
    Readings: Revelation 7.2-4, 9-14 / Psalm 23.1-2,3-4b. 5-6 (R/v 6) / I John 3.1-3 / Matthew 5.1-12a

    On the Feast of All Saints, we are bound to have many thoughts. We might think about the saints in heaven. We might recall a favourite saint, or a beloved one who has gone before us. We might ponder on life and death. “What is your image of heaven?” you might ask another.

    Our first reading offers us a picture of heaven: of the heavenly multitude praising the Lamb on a throne, of angels and elders, of praise, worship and thanksgiving, even of the cost of heaven, the sacrifice of the Lamb. Many painters have painted this scene; it is etched in our imagination, whether as individual Christians or the Church. 

    There is another image of “saints”. It is to be found in St Paul's letters; he called the early Christians “saints”. I would like to suggest that it is also good for us to remember this today because Paul is also calling us "saints" as we read his letters or listen to them proclaimed. I wonder what it would be for us to want to be saints. 

    “Wanting to” is indeed the advice Thomas Merton, Cistercian monk and spiritual writer, received about becoming a saint. 

    In his biography, The Seven Story Mountain, Merton writes about a conversation he had with his friend, Lax, as they walked down Sixth Avenue in New York City. They talked about many things that friends talk about. Suddenly, Lax asked Thomas this question: “What do you want to be?” Thomas replied, “I don’t know; I guess what I want is to be a good Catholic”. “What do you mean, you want to be a good Catholic?” Lax inquired. Thomas provided several lame reasons that Lax rejected 

    “What you should say”—Lax told Merton—“what you should say is that you want to be a saint.” This is how their conversation ended in Merton’s words:
    A saint! The thought struck me as a little weird. I said: “How do you expect me to become a saint?” “By wanting to,” said Lax simply.
    Indeed, becoming a saint has everything to do with wanting to find God—God who always surprises us by finding us first to become his  saints. 

    And isn’t this what Jesus is teaching his disciples in today’s gospel passage? 

    First, that they should want to live the promise of the Beatitudes. Such beatitudes as being poor, meek, merciful, and clean of heart are the certain Christ-like ways that will surely lead them to God and to inheriting a place in God’s heavenly kingdom. 

    And second, that they should want to take up the challenge of living out these beatitudes. This is how the reign of God will flourish for God’s children—these  who are the blessed ones, the saints on earth and in the present, like those in heaven and of a time past.

    On this Feast of All Saints, Jesus is inviting you and me to reflect on the depth of our wanting to become saints. Do we really want to be saints so badly that we are prepared to let go of all that we have and are, and become poor for God to bless us even more?

    Do we want to? The saints wanted to. They understood what Jesus really meant when he said: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven." The saints knew this need for God. We know it too from their life stories of wanting God so much that they threw themselves onto God’s mercy? 

    And what did they find when they did so? That Jesus who came to redeem us had first descended so low that after this no one would be able to fall so low without falling into him (Hans Urs von Balthasar).

    If the saints could fall into Jesus, it is because they were first and foremost connected to Jesus and lived in his ways. What about us who call ourselves Jesus’ disciples? Do we dare fall in our pains and fears, fall in our failings, and fall in our sinning into Jesus? I believe we can because whenever we fall, we will find Jesus already there for us. There to break our fall. There to catch us. There to hold and uplift us into life again. 

    I’d like to suggest that it is when we can recognize our desperate need for God that we can truly let go and let ourselves fall backwards into Jesus’ compassionate embrace. This truth is always disconcerting but an exquisite refuge and relief. In this moment we will experience that wanting God the saints had.

    On this Feast of All the Saints, let us then remember, celebrate and believe in this kind of wanting. It led the saints to put everything else aside for the love of God in Jesus. And it will help us let God make us saints too.



    Preached at St Joseph’s Institution
    photo: daily express (www.express.co.uk)


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  6. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 30 / Sunday
    Readings: Exodus 22.2-26 / Psalm 17.2-3a, 3bd-4, 47, 51ab (R/v 2) / 1 Thessalonians 1.5c-10 / Matthew 22.34-40
    My nephew Glenn looks forward to Halloween each year. He gets to dress up as part of the celebrations. He has worn Spiderman, Batman and pirate costumes. When I asked him about his costume choices, his replies go something like this: “I want to be like them!”

    “I want to be like them.” Don’t we sometimes say or think like this when we look at the saints or at saintly Christians we admire? 

    Who amongst us hasn’t tried to emulate the selfless self-giving of Mother Teresa as we reached out to the needy? Or, want to have Pope Francis’ open-hearted compassion to say “Who am I to judge?” liked he did to our children, siblings and friends who are gay or divorced or remarried, even as we struggle to understand, forgive, love, accept, welcome them? And who amongst us here is not inspired by the steadfast faithfulness of our elderly parishioners who come, rain or shine, to pray and worship in our church no matter how infirmed or ill they are? Don’t we also want to be like these good Christian men and women when we grow older?

    To be like them; this is what imitation is about.

    Imitation is important for Christian living. This is the message our second reading makes.  Paul praises the Christians in Thessalonica for the quality of their Christian life that announces to all God’s salvation in Jesus. They are able to do this, Paul points out, because they imitate him and his collaborators who preach Jesus, God’s Good News. But Paul and his companions can only inspire and enliven these Christians because their own lives and ministry are first and foremost an imitation of Jesus’ life and ministry. 

    The grace of imitating Jesus is that one becomes more like him. This happens when we imitate those who imitate Jesus. In the process, we come to resemble Jesus. This is what the Christian calling is about: that we become more like Jesus in whom we see God’s image. It should not surprise us that the ultimate hope of Christian imitation is to share in the family resemblance that Jesus has with the Father: “to see me is to see the Father,” Jesus says. 

    Today, Paul suggests two ways to imitate Jesus so as to resemble God: by receiving and by sharing. 

    He reminds the Thessalonians—and us—that living a Christ-like life begins by receiving God’s word. We should receive it with joy in the Spirit. Why joy? Because joy humbles us to thank God for God’s generosity to give us Jesus, God’s Word. This is how God enlivens us to share the Good News: this is better done in action than in words. In fact, this is how Jesus on earth lived in God, proclaimed God in his life and ministry and served God by incarnating God’s love in our midst.

    But aren’t we trying to live the Christ-like life, already and as best as we can? Don’t we come to Mass weekly to thank God and pray daily for God’s daily bread? And don’t we share the cash, the kind, the time we have with all in community, especially the poor? 

    I know we all do these, and we want to do these better. I believe that we can when we imitate the many good Christian role models in our life and among the saints.  Their examples inspire us to imitate them so that we can love others like them even more. Indeed who and what we choose to imitate will make all the difference to how we live the Christian life. 

    We have one Lord; we profess one faith; and we share one baptism. Yet, for so many of us we see two ways to interpret religion, two ways to live it. One is the way of “Being Correct”. The other is the way of “Living with Love”. At every moment, we have to choose between them.  

    If we choose “Being Correct”, then we agree to live by the following dictums: “Do the right thing,” “Follow the teachings,” and “Observe the rules”. Many people live their Christian lives in these ways. They are all about being correct. Being the correct Christian. Living the correct Christian life. Knowing the correct Christian relationship with God and neighbour. Many Christians want to imitate this way of Being Correct. Their mantra in life is “Be good, do the correct thing and you’ll go to heaven.” But if the only way we live is by Being Correct, just correct always, then we end up fixated on ticking off all the boxes on the Do and Don’t list just to be correct with God so that going to heaven is our reward.

    The way of “Living with Love’, on the other hand, involves imitating with the heart. The one whose heart we should pray to imitate and have is Jesus. His heart is totally for God and neighbour. Jesus’ heart has so much love for God and neighbour that while he was on earth, he was prepared to break rules so that he can love another better, to surrender power so that he can love totally, and to humble himself by taking a “lower” position in order to love selflessly. His life and ministry were about receiving God’s love and life only to give it all away. Jesus could do this because he prepared his heart to be vulnerable for another, to enter into relationship with all, to value the wonder of another’s good and to be completely self-giving to all.

    Do we want to a heart like the heart of Jesus ? Dare we imitate Jesus?

    As Christians, we imitate best by imitating Jesus. He shows us the way to be in love with God and stay in love for others. Love is God’s greatest law: it is the greatest value, the greatest practice and the greatest result we find in Jesus. Jesus teaches this truth of love in today’s gospel story. Love must be the source, the reason and the goal of imitation. The way of “Being Correct” makes no sense without the way of “Living with Love”. 

    Living with love so as to be correct is Jesus’ way of living for God and loving others. This is how Jesus wants you and me to imitate him. This is how we are to live especially with others and always love them in every circumstance. He is asking all of us to shepherd each other, as he shepherds us.

    We can only do this when we imitate Jesus’ big-heartedness to love and to live in love everyday for God and with neighbour. Then, we will be able to reach out, welcome, embrace and uplift those who have disappointed or hurt us, those we fear, those we hate, those we are trying to love—like our gay, divorced and remarried sisters and brothers. They too are God’s beloved, just like we are. Imitating Jesus helps everyone to get to heaven. 

    You and I have a choice about how we want to live our Christian life: either by “Being Correct” for the sake of being correct or “Living with Love” for the sake of Jesus’ call to love. We can either be correct or be in love, either keep a rule that hurts and damage someone else or break a rule to care and give life. We can either choose to be correct to impress God or live with love trusting in God’s mercy, and either be obedient but unforgiving or be forgiving and mercifully just. We can either live anxiously to get everything correct in order to go to heaven or live confidently in God’s love and led God’s Spirit lead us onward to eternal life. The choice is ours.

    Halloween is a few days away. I’m eager to see what costume Glenn will don this year. Whatever it might be, I am praying for him, as I am for us, that what we will always dress ourselves up in the love of Jesus. Jesus’ love must be garment we should cloak ourselves in. Cloak ourselves in so as to imitate him more faithfully, more closely. Jesus’ cloak is meant for us to don all the days of our lives.

    Let us wear Jesus’ cloak of love so that we can truly imitate him, and hence, practice the way of “Living with Love”, even when we have to correct others. Then, others seeing us live like this may say this of us: “See how they love one another like Jesus loves them; yes, they must surely be Christians”.





    Preached at St Ignatius Church and the Church of the Transfiguration, Singapore
    photo: www.bairddigest.com

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  7. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 28 / Sunday
    Readings: Isaiah 25.6-10 / Psalm 23 (R/v 6cd) / Philippians 4.12-14 / Matthew 22.1-10


    Last July, DPM Teo Chee Hean’s Personal Assistant called me to ask, “What would you be wearing, Fr, to SJI’s 165th Anniversary Dinner?  DPM plans to wear a green batik shirt. He’s trying to coordinate his dressing with SJI colours and with all seated at the VIP table.”  I took a second or two to consider. Then I said, “What else would a priest wear but his black and white?”  “Ohh, you mean suit and tie, Fr? So, formal, really?” she said.  “Oh, no, no, just the usual—clericals,” I replied. 

    Sisters and brothers, have you ever had to consider what to wear because of a dress code? Should it be the formal black dress or the sarong kebaya for the wedding dinner? The lounge suit or smart casual for the charity dinner? 

    Today’s readings have to do with an invitation and a dress code—with God inviting us to his feast and the correct attire we should wear to attend it.  

    In our first reading, Isaiah recalls the lush image of a banquet, that same feast that we hear in today’s psalm, of food prepared in abundance, of cups running over, of heads anointed with oil. All who partake of this feast will experience forgiveness of sin, eternal redemption and tearless happiness. They will because God, in whom humankind hope for salvation, is the host.  

    We want to be at this feast. This is our hope, but it is yet to be. This is why we want more of the goodness of God’s feast right here, right now. Isn’t this what we want when we ask for God’s help in such important moments as passing the PSLE and O Levels and finding the right spouse? Or, in the seemingly inconsequential each day like finding a car park space (as the nuns taught me to pray, “Hail Mary full of grace, give us now a car park space”) or getting to work on time?

    We all have done so, and we continue doing so, because we live with having enough and yet wanting more. In the second reading, Paul concludes that this paradox is the reality of Christian life. For him, living out this paradox of life is grace-filled in two ways. It humbles us before God who provides for everything in our lives. It opens us up to God who wants to give us more. 

    Living with the abundance of plenty and the poverty of wanting is however grace-filled. It reminds us that God alone is source of our strength. Or, as Paul notes in our second reading: God will fully supply whatever we need. The imagery of the feast in today's readings rightly reminds us that God provides for our every need. This feast promises to nourish us abundantly. 

    This morning, Jesus invites us to this feast using the parable of the wedding feast. How then should we present ourselves before God? What should we be wearing to God’s feast?

    Many refuse to come to God’s feast wearing the right garment. Their garments bear this one brand name: “I, Me and Myself”. They prefer the superiority of some to the equality of all. They prefer revenge to forgiveness. They prefer their discriminatory relationships to inclusive friendships. They to prefer solve social problems with self-righteousness than to solve them with solidarity and compassion. All of them prefer to love, care and advance themselves only; they are not concerned with another in need. All of them refuse to share in another’s goodness or joy. They are unfit guests. Aren’t we sometimes like these guests? 

    Who then will be graciously welcomed to God’s feast? Jesus says, “the bad and good alike from the streets who are willing to come. Why these, and not those who should be invited, like the honoured, the devout, the pious, the obedient or the righteousness, these worthy people you might say, or identify with? Because the street folk come to the feast willing to wear the right attire. They come as there are, naked before God, yet trusting that God will find them worthy for the feast and will clothe them as his guest. 

    For St Edith Stein, this nakedness has everything to do with the Christian vocation. It is about standing before God with the singular longing to be with God. This longing is the acceptable attire to dress in for God loves us and wants us to simply stand before him as we are, however good or bad we are.

    Here we are at Eucharist. We want Jesus, God’s daily bread for our spiritual nourishment. We all know the Church’s teaching that all who come to communion must be in a state of grace. Yet how many of us are really in that state of grace for communion? If we are honest, some of us will confess otherwise. Yet we come. Why?

    Because of the deep human longing for God. All of us have this longing; we want communion with God. We have come because we are sinners yearning for God’s compassion. We have come believing that we will encounter Jesus in the Eucharist, and through him, we will share in God’s life and we receive God’s love. Pope Francis echoes our innate human longing for God in the Mass with this line: “We celebrate the Eucharist not because we are worthy, but because we recognize our need for God’s mercy” (General Audience, 12 Feb 2014). 

    If we come to the Lord this morning as Francis describes, it is because we have come dressed in our poverty, I believe. A poverty that depends on God’s mercy for forgiveness and God’s love for life. If this is how we have indeed come, then, blessed are we for we are ready to let God dress us in our nakedness. 

    I believe when we let God dress us like this, we might begin to see how our nakedness is reflected in the nakedness of Jesus that God cloaked with his love to cure the ill, feed the hungry, save the sinful. Indeed, there is no other way for Christians to clothe our nakedness than for God to help us put on the love of Christ. When we wear the love of Christ as our daily garment, Jesus will guide us into greater solidarity with those who are naked. With Jesus, we can serve them as Jesus served us first in our nakedness—with compassion and love to uplift and give life. We are called to do this because this is the way to salvation. It involves doing onto others what God has first done to us—and it is simply this, to clothe another in the love of Christ. 

    The love of Christ transforms us. We find ourselves moving away from just receiving and keeping what God gives us; we become more open to receiving and to giving it all out to the world. Jesus did this. When it was time to let go of it all—friends and ministry, peace and possessions, even life itself—he did that too, with the love of God. Christians follow Jesus; how can we not do likewise? Indeed, we can only follow Jesus and do what he did when accept that God alone is our strength in the same way that Paul confesses “I can do all things in Him who strengthens me”.

    This morning God is inviting you and me again, through Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast, to make a radical choice. It is not a choice about what to wear to the feast. It is the radical option to choose whether we wish to accept God’s will to save us in Jesus. Our answer gives God permission to clothe us in Christ’s love or not. 

    If your answer, like mine is, ‘yes,’ then, it is right and good that we come to this Eucharist with our longing and our poverty. Together, they weave the garment of our nakedness, that garment good enough for God to welcome us to the feast. Indeed, God does not require any other garment for us to be here. He has no dress code. He has only his invitation: "Come as you are; I will clothe you as my guest."



    Preached at St Ignatius Church and the Church of the Transfiguration, Singapore
    photo: youtube (internet)

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  8. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 27 / Sunday
    Readings: Isaiah 5.1-7 / Responsorial Psalm 79. 9 and 12, 13-14, 15-16,19-20 (R/v Is 5.7a) / Philippians 4.6-9 / Matthew 21.33-43

    Joshua and his mother are walking on the seashore. He is playing with the waves coming in and out. He pauses to look out to the setting sun. He tries to catch the first twinkling stars above. “Mommy, Mommy, come and see.” She is busy picking up seashells. She is preoccupied with gathering them. She wants more of them to add to the many she has amassed over the years. So she walks on, collecting.

    Joshua’s invitation to his mother is exactly what Jesus is asking us to do right now; to stop, see and savour the fruits of life and faith God gives us to have and to share.

    God provides for our every need. No matter how much or little we count God’s goodness is in our lives, all of us would agree that God’s love and care provides for our wellbeing and happiness. 

    Often times however we are not thankful enough. We grumble much. Our complaints are many. We want more. Do these sound familiar: God hasn’t answered my prayers. My family doesn’t care. The people around me are burdens and burdensome. I don’t have enough. I need more to feel safe, more to climb up the social ladder, more to show others I am successful.  

    Whenever we groan and demand like this, we blind ourselves to God’s ever present provision, particularly in the simple and ordinary. Like waking up alive, being happily surprised, experiencing forgiveness, being lovingly touched by family, having a friend’s shoulder to cry on, pausing to see the sunset, praying quietly. 

    So, what will make our lives full and fruitful? Our first reading and gospel offer us a possible answer. 

    Both tell a story about vineyards. In each story, the owner sets up his vineyard to yield fruitful harvests. He provides good soil, choice vines and ample protection. But there is no rich harvest, either because the vineyard cannot produce or the tenants refuse to give him the fruit. 

    Both stories point out that failure to yield good fruit has penalties. The unfruitful vineyard will be left to ruin. The tenants who withheld the good fruit will lose their lives and their lease will be revoked. These are logical choices many would agree. 

    But what is the fruitfulness that we should fear not having?

    Is it the fruitfulness that comes when we use all our gifts, all of the time, in every situation? Or, the fruitfulness of being effective in ministry? Is it the fruitfulness resulting from doing the most good for the most poor? Could it be the fruitfulness of praying more and repenting often? Or, is the fruitfulness of being successful in school, at work and at home? 

    A false presupposition undergirds all these questions. It is this: that our work and only our work results in fruitfulness. In both stories, the owner of the vineyard is God. It is God who plants the vines, tills the soil, removes the stones and protects the vineyard. If the vines bear fruit, it is because God has worked so hard at the vineyard.

    We are the vines God cares for. Our lives are fruitful not because of awards or accomplishments. They are fruitful because of God’s Spirit dwelling in us. No lack of success in work, no lack of work itself, can keep us from responding to God’s call to be fruitful. God’s Spirit alive in us empowers us to be fruitful in faith and in life. This is the fruitfulness that we must be so fearful not to have.

    The difficulty most of us face is that we are afraid of being fruitful as God wants us to be. We struggle with totally giving God permission for us to be fruitful in his ways. And we grapple with selflessly letting our fruitfulness be God’s gift to others. 

    God has always desired humankind to be fruitful. In the Old Testament, God tells Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1.28) and to Abraham “I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens” (Genesis 22.77). In the New Testament, Jesus says, “I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit” (John 15.16). Fruitfulness in Christian life is more than procreation; it is also about living our lives to make a positive difference daily, to care to uplift another, to build God’s kingdom in the world. 

    Today Jesus challenges us to be fruitful in God alone. Nothing we have is ours. Nothing we do makes us fruitful. Everything fruitful that we make and have is from God and for God. This is why keeping our gaze on God alone must be the right disposition for us to be truly fruitful.

    The tenants in today’s gospel did not do this. By taking for granted that the vineyard was theirs, and that they could live on it as they wanted and possess the harvest as they pleased, they forgot about the owner of the vineyard. 

    Like them, we can so easily take the many things in our everyday life “for granted” instead of “as granted” by God—“as granted” by God who wants us to live fruitful lives and to share the fruits of our lives with all.

    The chief priests and elders were upset with the tenants for their attitude of taking for granted. Hence, their demand for punishment. Jesus responds angrily to their demand because it is based on the world’s spirit of tit-for-tat and vengeance. Do unto others as they have done unto you, and when someone does you wrong, you get even. For Jesus, this worldly spirit cannot bear fruit for life and for community.

    Throughout the parable, Jesus highlights the compassion of vineyard owner: he keeps sending servants, even his own son, to the selfish, thankless and hurtful tenants in the hope of reconciliation. This is who God is and how his Spirit acts to bear good fruit in life and for the community. 

    For Jesus, God’s Spirit expressed as God’s grace, God’s unconditional love, God’s unfailing mercy all always bear good fruit—of forgiveness and reconciliation, of loving better and giving life more. With God, there is mercy, never vengeance. The chief priests and elders fail to see this in the parable.

    We can see: in Jesus we experience and know God’s mercy. He reveals this because the fruits of God’s Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—are alive in him and his ministry. 

    We are called to walk in God’s Spirit by following Jesus. Paul reminds us in the second reading to keep on doing what we have learned and received and heard and seen in Paul’s teachings about Jesus—that Jesus shows us the way to live in God’s Spirit and be fruitful. To live in God’s Spirit means no more living by getting even or with an “eye for an eye” attitude. It means living with forgiveness as we are forgiven, with mercy as we have been shown mercy. It simply means to live by “loving your neighbour as yourself.”  

    Indeed, to live in God’s Spirit makes us gracefully fruitful to stand in companionship with one another and to kneel in humble gratitude before God always.

    “Mommy, stop!” Joshua cries out. He tugs at his mother’s sleeve; she drops all the shells and pebbles she had collected. She falls to the sand to pick them up. She is furious. She looks up ready to scold her son. She sees his face. It dawns on her that God’s gift of life and love is before her. And she tears in gratitude.



    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: www.olgasimera.gr
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  9. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 26 / Sunday 
    Readings: Ezekiel 18.25-28 / Responsorial Psalm: 24.4bc-5, 6-7, 8-9 (R/v 18a) / Philippians 2.1-11 / Matthew 21.28-32

    Sisters and brothers, have you ever you made a promise but did not keep it?

    I did during my training to be a hospital chaplain in New York City one summer. Part of my chaplaincy involved caring for Catholic patients in the surgical ward. Mario was a patient I always visited. He was out of intensive care and recovering well from a heart by-pass operation. He was looking forward to going home to family. Our conversations were lively. He was buoyant: he had a new lease of life; the future was promising. I got to know his wife and children. One morning, his bed was empty. He had died unexpectedly. His family was grieving. They asked me to do the last rites for Mario.

    I promised Mario and his family that I would always be there for them in hospital. Now, I struggled; the last rites are for the dying, not the dead. I did not what to do next. I found myself in a NATO moment—no action, talk only.

    Today’s gospel parable is about two sons whose father asked them to work in the vineyard. One said he would not but he did. The other said he would, but he did not.

    The world is God’s vineyard. He invites us to build his kingdom. This involves caring for one another and Creation and to bring them back to God, better. Many of us want to do this work for God.  

    Some of us talk a lot about what must be done. They identify and analyse problems. They call attention to the social ills we face and divide us: poverty and hunger, discrimination and oppression, injustice and inequality. Others take action. They challenge the systems and structures behind these problems. They work on solutions to make things better. They act to do good.

    Whether we are doers or talkers, Jesus uses today’s parable to challenge us to look out for others and their interests, and care for them. The first son looked beyond the narrow mindedness of his own wants to help his father. Jesus wants us to live like this: focussing ourselves on others. Paul echoes Jesus in the second reading: “humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, look not at your interests, but also of others.” No action, talk only is how the second son lives; he exists on empty promises. For Jesus, we must act, not just talk.

    For Pope Francis, this is how priests ought to live: stop pontificating from the pulpit about life and faith and enter into the living realities of people’s life and faith, whether ordered or messy. We priests will only make a real difference when we live with ‘the smell of the sheep’, he challenges. You can tell when we have shepherded well, can’t you? We will smell of you. If you proclaim that we do love one another, shouldn’t you be smelling like this too?

    The father asked his sons to work in the vineyard. One of them did; the other did not. Which of the two sons are we like in our daily life?

    Aren’t we the second son when we say “Lord, Lord. Yes, yes. Sure, sure” to look good, only to then not do or disappear. 

    Aren’t we also the first son when we reply “Ah, no, thanks, I don’t think so. Leave me alone.” Then at the eleventh hour, we turn around and change our minds, after having wasted time and energy being angry, procrastinating, doubting and obstructing God.

    Often times, however, we are more like the second son because our hearts can be hard and closed. This can be especially so when we relate to God.  We want things our way. We want God to meet us half way. 

    Jesus warned the chief priests and elders about having hard hearts. They prevent one from entering God’s kingdom. The tax collectors and prostitutes will enter because they have opened their hearts to God. Are our hearts opened or closed?

    The first son opened his heart because he changed his mind. His action wins God’s favour. Saying ‘yes, Lord’ but doing nothing, does not. 

    Every change is difficult. Particularly when it has to do with our values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Yet change is necessary for the conversion of our lives, from our ways to God ways. Change helps us to live better Christian lives. This is why Jesus keeps exhorting us to convert our hearts. Only when we do, will we see and receive what God has in store for us.

    Take the struggle we all have about coming to Mass, from time to time. It’s too early. It’s too late. My son has football training. My wife has to market. We need family time. I am travelling. I’m tired. It’s ok, God understands. There is always this and that reason. “Yes, coming” we say to our parents and to God. But we sometimes never turn up

    Yet God keeps inviting us to come and see, come and abide, come and follow, come. Why?

    Because the Eucharist allows us to be our truest selves by doing the most human thing before God. Give thanks. Eucharist is Greek for thanksgiving. To come and give thanks is to actualise our God-given power to be human. 

    Because the Eucharist also empowers us. It is our source of strength and the wellspring for us to serve. “Do this in memory of me,” Jesus said at the Last Supper and we recall it at every Mass.  What we do in Jesus’ memory is to make our lives like his: we live to serve, even if it means laying down our lives. 

    Because the Eucharist transforms us to become the Body of Christ. “Behold what you are, become what you receive” (St Augustine). Jesus is God’s daily bread, broken for us to live. In communion, we come bread broken so that others can have life to the full.

    We can easily forfeit all the goodness described above that God wishes for us, if we say “yes” with our lips and do nothing. But if we change our minds by going against our wants, we will open ourselves to God. Then, something divine happens. 

    Our hard hearts will be gracefully broken. God’s grace will make them big and generous. So big and generous that we can more wholeheartedly receive all of what Jesus has in store for us. His fullness of life. His boundless love. The totality of Himself. 

    Then, we will know the love of God as Jesus knows the love of God. Then, we will love one another as Jesus loves us, in the love of God. Then, we will remain in Jesus as he remains in God.

    Our hearts will be transformed when we practice Christ-like humility. This is Paul’s invitation in our second reading: “Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus”. Jesus’ attitude is humility. Its form in Jesus is the self-emptying Paul describes: Jesus took on human form, even to the point of death on a cross, though he himself was one with God. 

    We cannot change our minds and open our hearts unless our daily routine in life and faith is one of self-emptying for God. Only when self-emptying is our constant everyday habit of Christian living will we find ourselves turning more and more towards God. This is what conversion is all about, and the salvation the Lord promises in the first reading: “But if he turns from the wickedness he has committed, he does what is right and just, he shall preserve his life.”

    Sisters and brothers, we might be breaking our promises, not because we cannot keep them or we know not what to do, but because we have yet to open ourselves more to God who calls us to do his will faithfully.

    Is it time to change our minds, open our hearts, and turn ourselves more to God?



    Preached at Church of the Transfiguration and St Ignatius Church
    photo: the bridgemaker.com (Internet)

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  10. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 25 / Sunday 
    Readings: Isaiah 55.6-9 / Responsorial Psalm:  144.2-3,8-9, 17-18 (R/v 18a) / Philippians 1.20c-24, 27a / Matthew 20.1-16

    Sisters and Brothers, isn’t it crazy that even though some of us here are longtime parishioners and others are first timers we accept each other at this Eucharist without envy or jealousy? Crazy too that no matter how long, or short we have served in this parish—or, even, not at all—we celebrate our equal right to a place at Lord’s altar? We don’t ask who’s more entitled to be here, nor do we ask anyone to leave. Instead, you and I acknowledge each other’s worthiness by worshipping together.

    Isn’t it crazy too that when Mass ends, we will do the opposite? We will return to our homes, schools and work places, and find ourselves—for one reason or other, and at some time—envious of those we interact with. Who amongst us has not resented others who are treated equally as we are? Or, begrudged their better accomplishments? Or, even acted self-righteously and defensively about our rights?

    None of us sets out to act in these ways but we have done so. We are prone to turning into angry, disgruntled and disappointed green-eyed monsters when we are treated unfairly and unjustly. 

    This is why we can readily empathize with the longer-serving labourers in today’s gospel passage. We know their outrage and dismay. They have worked harder and longer than the latecomers, but they get the same wage, nothing more. Don’t we feel their pain that a grave injustice has been done against them? Their grumbles echo ours.

    Jesus challenges us to think otherwise: “for the last will be first, and the first will be last.” He offers a logic that is contrary to today’s business ethics and labor practices. These demand that salaries are commensurate to hours of work, scope of job, and reach of responsibility. In matters of faith, this translates into the logic that God rewards us for more prayer, more penance, more good works.

    Today, Jesus reminds us that everyone is entitled to share in God’s love. This the commonsense of God’s commonwealth, or goodness  

    Yes, God loves us in unique and special ways because we are individuals, but God gives out his love equally because his love is for everyone. I think many of us know God loves all and gives his love to all. I wonder if we know this more in our head than in our hearts. 

    If Jesus’ parable about equal pay for unequal work does however disturb you, then give thanks. Give thanks because you letting Jesus’ parable turn your views of fairness and unfairness upside down. More importantly, you are letting Jesus help you know God as God is.

    Many of us have the image that God rewards those who do a lot for God. And so we do pray more, sacrifice more, and more good work. The more we do, the better God’s rewards will be, we believe. Repeating this belief through our words and deeds blinds us to the truth about God’s unconditional love for all.

    Today, Jesus wants to shock us—shock us out of that common but complacent understanding that God only rewards those who do more. Shock us out of this because it misrepresents God. To think that God only rewards those who do more reduces God’s love to an economic exchange. 

    Pope Francis repeatedly challenges this way of thinking about God: God is not calculative. For Francis, God’s heart is so much bigger than we can ever imagine: it is so large, so deep, so expansive. God’s heart so big yet it cannot contain God’s mercy. God’s mercy wants to always pour itself out to save us all, again and again and again. God cannot contain his mercy: it is for you and me. God does not calculate who deserves mercy; mercy is for all.

    Today’s parable is about the utter limitless God’s mercy and generosity. Jesus is challenging us to open our eyes to how God really measures our worth. In God’s eyes, our worthiness has nothing to do with how much we do, or how much we earn in pay, or how well we perform, or by any of the yardsticks we use—like status, popularity, social achievement, wealth, looks. God simply measures our worthiness by the goodness of our human hearts. 

    The hired workers in today's gospel exhibit this goodness. They come simply because there is work to be done, and they want to do it. They have no expectation about the kind of wages they will get. They simply come because the landowner offers them work. 

    They are the ones. Jesus teaches, who are now the first. They are first because they simply appreciate the privilege of sharing in the landowner’s work in the vineyard. Jesus wants us to see in them how true reward has to do with the privilege of being called to God’s work. This is the richness of kingdom of God—everyone is being called. Do we recognize this richness God wants to give us by calling us to come to his kingdom, or are we too fixated on rewards we expect from God?

    God does not understand fairness and unfairness as the world does. Rather, God works with a different focus, in a different way, and by different standards. So, who deserves to be rewarded by God? The one who comes to God and works with God without any expectation of wages, rewards or benefits, or even the promise of something better to come. God wants to give to all who simply come—come, for no other reason than this truth: that you, I, we are call simply called by God to come and be with him.  “Come and see”.  “Come and follow me”. “Come and abide in me.” 

    Anyone who comes is like the latecomer who works in the vineyard. Will we dare come to God like this? Dare to come without expectation, especially every Sunday, without worrying whether we will be first in the queue or last in line? Dare to come and trust that God’s bounty is always more than enough for our salvation and fullness of life?

    I say “dare” because we can only live this way if we are prepared to lose ourselves completely in doing God’s work with Jesus. Following Jesus is about losing ourselves in the privilege of being called by God, and in doing so, finding how much God savours us for the goodness of our choice. Such daringness demands we turn our backs on chalking up rewards we expect from God because we have ticked off the list of do’s and don’ts of Christian life. 

    Isn’t it crazy then that Jesus wants to remind us about this today? I believe Jesus does this because he recognizes something profoundly beautiful and ever present in us—that everyone of us is capable of living the Christian life well. Jesus recognises this because he appreciates we are all intrinsically good and worthy of growing into God’s likeness. This is what captivates him about us, whom he calls friends. 

    Jesus is driven, I sincerely believe, by a craziness for us. His craziness is his excitement that values each one of us for the good potential we have for change and growth. It is a craziness that believes we will simply come to him as friend.

    Can you and I, in turn, be equally crazy to believe this about Jesus? Crazier too to let him teach us how to receive our equal and fair share of God’s goodness, even if we now come to him, late with our repentance to turn our lives around, or late with our willingness to work in his mission, or late in recognising that our difference is not bad?  

    May be when we dare to come, we will find Jesus revealing how much more crazier God is than we have ever imagined—God whose love is limitless, whose bounty is generous, whose mercy is without condition. Then we know how true these words are that we heard in the first reading: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord”.




    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    photo: "his hand" by jhopgood (www.bishopinthergove.com)

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

Pedro Arrupe, sj, Superior General, 1965 - 1983

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