1. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 4 / Sunday
    Readings: Zephaniah 2.3, 3.12-13 / Psalm 145.6c-7, 8-9a, 9bc-10 (R/v Mt 5.3) / 1 Corinthians 1.26-31 / Matthew 5.1-12a

    We gather around this altar, as we do every Sunday. Today our gathering is a little different: there’s a festive air. 

    More red dresses and shirts dot the pews. Many of us are buoyant in spirit because of the good conversation, hearty laughter and happy catch-ups we’ve had at reunion dinners and from visits to the elders and friends. The young and single however remain expectant for the ang pows in many a handbag this morning. I believe we’ve all come with greater awareness for the goodness of abundance in our lives—so much indeed for us to celebrate in thanksgiving. 

    Today’s gospel passage offers us an added reason to celebrate. It is however easy to miss it because of our familiarity with Matthew’s presentation of Jesus teaching the Beatitudes. We are familiar with the details: the location, the disciples and crowds, Jesus teaching. We are familiar with the purpose of Jesus’ teachings: to describe conditions for a new way of living and promised blessings to all who live this way. Conditions and blessings such as: 
    Blessed are the poor in spirit,for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
    Blessed are the meek,for they will inherit the land. 
    Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,for they will be satisfied. 
    And, blessed are the merciful,for they will be shown mercy.
    We are familiar with Jesus’ Beatitudes because of the countless homilies we have heard about it, the many reflections we have read about it, and the spiritual experiences we had about it in prayer. Our familiarity with the Beatitudes is good, but it can blind us to a reason for us to live more gratefully as Christians.

    What exactly is this reason? How will we find it as we read the Beatitudes?

    We will find this reason in our attitude—that is, the disposition of our hearts—to welcome Jesus and the Beatitudes he teaches.  We’ll know it when we recognize and accept it. What this attitude is is our poverty to receive, to welcome, to accept and to celebrate Jesus.

    The Jesuit Dan Harrington taught me Scripture in Boston College. Whenever I remember his Ascension Day homily, I think of this question I asked when I heard it: “Where is Jesus today?” Dan’s brief but succinct homily centered on these phrases: “Jesus came; Jesus cared; Jesus died; Jesus rose from dead; Jesus saved; Jesus went up to heaven; no more Jesus.” They challenged all of us gathered at Mass that day to acknowledge that the risen Jesus remains with us and amongst us even though he has ascended. Yes, Jesus lives with us still—he is especially to be found with the downtrodden and needy, for he is small like them. His Spirit is real and alive amongst them.

    The very first Beatitude Jesus teaches is about God’s blessing on human poverty. It is a blessing for all who are oppressed and in need. 

    The Greek word for ‘poor’ in this passage on the Beatitudes literally means “beggar”. Beggars are the truly poor: they are in need for they have nothing at all, including no access or right to choice. Beggars depend on the mercy and generosity of others.

    We are really not so different from beggars. Yes, we have our material wealth. Yes, we have intellect and skills. Yes, we have enough abundance to celebrate Chinese New Year, and some of us even have the boldness to want more. But if we dare to look at ourselves honestly, we might discover that we are indeed poor, poor like the beggars. Poor in our hunger for forgiveness. Poor in our woundedness for healing. Poor in our loneliness for love. Poor in our thirst for life. Poor because we depend. We depend on another family member or friend or stranger, or even an enemy, for forgiveness, for reconciliation, for healing, for love, for life. 

    But more than another person, we ultimately depend on God: depend on God for our physical and our spiritual needs. We know we are beggars because we desperately long for God. And God gives us Jesus to meet our deepest human need for mercy, again and again. 

    Yet our poverty for God and for God’s mercy is ironically all that we need to give back to God.  Such poverty is our wealth. It is all that God asks us to first offer to Him as we gather around his altar today. Not our abundance, not even our liberty, our memory, our understanding, our entire will, all that we have and we call our own.  Before all else, God asks us, “Give me your poverty”. 

    This is why I think Jesus shows us the way to God through the Beatitudes. These conditions to live in God’s ways and the blessings to receive God’s promises are founded on this first Beatitude Jesus teaches: “Blessed are the poor in spirit”. 

    To live a life poor in spirit, a life of radical dependency on God, from moment to moment, is what Jesus teaches as the foundation of Christian life.

    We are not the economically poor and destitute. But we are like them because we have no choice about many things and the myriad circumstances in our lives. Like beggars who are the poor in spirit, we come to God and beg for mercy, blessings and life. 

    We can’t beg God, we can’t depend on God, however, unless we first recognize our poverty of spirit. But we need to do more than recognize it; we need to understand our poverty. Understand it from God’s point of view—that our poverty of spirit is, in fact, a blessed “emptiness to be filled to overflowing with Jesus’ peace and most affectionate compassion”* 

    Today’s good and happy news is that God treasures our poverty. Jesus teaches this truth in the Beatitudes. Wise are we who will make this truth the bedrock of how we live and love, how we play and pray, how we act and interact with others. 

    We are and we will always be poor in spirit. God recognizes this reality of human life. And God loves it even more in us because being poor in spirit humbles us before God. Only in humility can God’s mercy transform us. Blessed are we who recognise God’s mercy laboring for us in our poverty.  Then, we will know how to celebrate it well: by doing onto others in poverty what God does for us who are poor in spirit. 

    In a few minutes we will come to Communion. We will receive Jesus who gives himself to us that we might have life to the full, and so enjoy happiness, freedom and peace.  We will take and eat. We will be nourished by God through Jesus, our daily bread. Then, we will depart to continue our Chinese New Year celebrations for a few more days, and thereafter return to school and work and daily life. Our families, our schools, our work places, even our recreation and prayers spaces, that we will return to will be the same: still incomplete and broken, still soiled and stained. Yes, there’s a need to improve them.

    Yet it is in how we live our poverty of spirit, individually and together, in these very spaces that we can discover, again and again, that we are never poor but rich—rich because God comes to us in our imperfect ways as we live in this imperfect world to always give us abundant life.  

    So let’s see today's celebrations in a different perspective as are now gathered around the altar. Isn’t our poverty of spirit then a very good reason for us to celebrate even more this Chinese New Year—even more than the abundance of goodness that we have and possess, because this poverty is in fact God’s gift for us to enjoy the fullness of life in Jesus?




    *Inspired by monks from the Trappist Monastery, Spencer, Massachusetts 



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


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  2. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 3 / Sunday
    Readings: Isaiah 8.23-9.3 / Psalm 27.1,4, 13-14 (R/v 1a) / 1 Corinthians 1.10-13, 17 / Matthew 4.12-23


    We stood in parallel lines. The outgoing council on one side with lit candles; the incoming council on the other side with unlit ones. The flickering candles cast a warm glow onto our faces, bathing us in its light.  We stood before the school. Words were said about service, about leadership, about caring for the community. Then, the outgoing councilors lit our candles. I was seventeen and in Catholic Junior College (CJC).

    I remember this moment because Matthew presents images of light, of call, and of serving others in community in today’s gospel passage. It is about Jesus finding and calling his first disciples. 

    I’ve often struggled with Matthew’s description of this event: it appears as if it was meant to happen. Jesus called the unsuspecting fishermen. Peter and Andrew, James and John responded. They left everything behind. They followed him immediately, without hesitation. What’s going?

    “What’s going?” is the question we have all grappled with many times when we’ve been forced to pause and take stock of our lives. Haven’t we tried to hold on to our joys and hopes? Didn’t we grapple with our disappointments and sorrows? Don’t our regrets make us ask, “what if?” and our happiness makes us exclaim, “thank you!” 

    It’s always easy to reflect on these when they have already happened or are happening in our lives. It’s much harder however to reflect on the future—we don’t know much, if not anything about, or we can't control when and how it comes and what it will be like. May be this is why I struggle with Jesus’ call of the four disciples—they said “yes” to an unknown future without any fear. “Can I do what they did?” I’ve asked myself again and again. May be their boldness challenges you too. I think we struggle when the future confronts us because we have to choose: either embrace the risk and advance into a future we don’t know about or stay put in a familiar present and be safe.

    “Follow me,” Jesus says to the four fisherman, “and I will make you fishers of men.” These men knew how hard and dangerous work fishing is. They would also really know, I believe, how much more challenging and rigorous it would be to be fishing for people. Yet, they immediately dropped everything when they heard Jesus’ call to help him bring about the Kingdom of God. 

    Like these disciples, each of us has a story of how Jesus called us out of the life we were living into the life of discipleship we now have with him. His call doesn’t end here. Each day he invites us to grow in discipleship; this involves stepping into a future only God knows and moving forward as God directs.

    Do we want to do this? If we do, what can give us hope to walk with Jesus into the future, like the disciples did? 

    The assurance of God’s light. God’s light to venture forth—light to guide us onward, light to help us step forward, light that draws us into God. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light”. This is the kind of light we need for the future; it gives us courage and makes us hope-filled. For Isaiah, in our first reading, this light transforms, uplifts, and gives life as it shines upon all who dwell in gloom.  

    Matthew quotes Isaiah to introduce the public ministry of Jesus: “The people who sit in darkness have seen a great light, on those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death light has arisen” (Matthew 4:16). Jesus came as God’s light into human life so as to guide humanity back to God. 

    Jesus came into the lives of the four fishermen as the dawning experience of God enlightening them. They learned that their lives were meant for greater things than fishing. Encountering Jesus opened them to the call that they too were to be God’s light for the world.  “You are the light of the world,” Jesus said to his disciples later in the gospel: light not to be hidden but light that must shine for others to see their good deeds and glorify God (Matthew 5:14-16).

    You and I have seen and experienced God’s light in our lives. Have we let God’s light become our light? Have we shone to help others and to draw them to God, as Jesus did? Or, are we faintly blinking, if not altogether extinguished?  

    Many insist that to shine as God’s light we must go to the missions, reach out to the poor and needy, and act in radically selfless ways. But there’s another space where we need to shine as God’s light and another way we can do so. This space is our Christian community. Be it family, parish, neighborhood group, school, workplace, friends, this must be the first and foremost space we must shine as God’s light for one another.
      
    Sometimes we interact in these spaces like the early Christians at Corinth whom Paul scolds in our second reading. They were divided by rivalries, different factions boasting about being mentored in the faith by Paul, or Apollos, or Peter. Aren’t we like them when the traditionalists and the progressives, the haves and have-nots, and the holier-than-thou and the lapsed and the lukewarm divide us?

    I believe we can overcome these divisions by focussing on where God’s light keeps directing our gaze onto: on the whole. This is the thrust of Paul’s instruction in his letters to the early Christians: he focuses them on unity and community, on sharing their gifts, on caring for one another, on praying together, on living in the one Spirit. Paul's teaching must inform how we interact with one another. When we do this, we will make out of many parts one body.  We will heal, nurture and keep the Body of Christ—that we are—one, not broken. This is how we shine as God’s light for others. Then, they will note and say, “See how the love one another”.

    This is in fact the mission of making God’s Kingdom come alive in our midst. Jesus passed it on to the disciples he called. They have in turn passed it on to us through many others. This mission is ours because of a call in the past. It becomes real in our present. We will fulfil it in the future we make. We need not fear this future as long as we keep listening to, dialoguing about, valuing and believing in the truth that God is labouring in, among, and with us.

    Today’s readings offer us hope to do this. Isaiah’s prophecy of a great light dawning is fulfilled in Jesus. With Jesus, the Kingdom of God is in our midst. Disciples become fishers of men. And through Jesus’ passing on his mission, they did likewise to announce the Good News. These should give us confidence to brave ourselves for the mission ahead.

    Passing on is an action of sharing and empowering: our seniors passed on the CJC spirit of servant leadership when they lit our candles with flames from their candles. Passing on is also an action that proclaims: every Christian announces the Good News when we pass it on from those we received it in faith. Finally, passing on is an action that illuminates. Pope Francis teaches this: “Let your joy in the gospel be contagious, so that those who see it will recognise that this joy comes from the heavenly Father, not you”.  

    Today, we are being asked to pass on God’s light that Jesus is for us and our world. Like the disciples Jesus called and sent forth, our lives are meant to radiate God’s light for others. It would do us good now and again to recall this line we’ve all sang before: “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine!’” Yes, let us be God's light for all. 





    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    photo: mylifeoflisting.wordpress.com

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  3. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 2 / Sunday
    Readings: Isaiah 49.3, 5-6 / Psalm 39.2 and 4ab, 7-8a, 8b-9, 10 (R/v 8a and 9a) / 1 Corinthians 1.1-3 / John 1.29-34


    When I was a young boy, the extended family on my father’s side would gather for Christmas. We’d come from different parts of the island to celebrate the season and catch up with one another.

    Part of the conversations among the uncles and aunties would be about the young ones: how they were; what were they doing. This is how I’d learnt about my older cousin Freddy and his good progress in school and in the army. As I grew older, I attended Freddy’s wedding and his children’s baptisms. I admired him. But I never really got to know Freddy until recent years when we met up more and shared about family and faith.

    In today’s gospel, we hear John the Baptist sharing about his cousin Jesus.  He tells us who Jesus is and the work he will do: he is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”. John makes this certain and clear pronouncement about Jesus because God revealed to him that “whomever you see the Spirit come down on and remain, he is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.” That one is Jesus.

    Until this moment, John the Baptist did not know Jesus. We hear him say this in today’s gospel. His admission has always puzzled me. Perhaps, it’s like how I knew about Freddy but I didn’t really know him until our recent interactions. I am sure you’ve had similar experiences of knowing about someone but not really knowing this person until you saw him or her in a new light. Then, you knew more clearly.

    Such was John the Baptist’s experience of seeing Jesus anew at the Baptism. God’s revelation of Jesus’ identity as the Son of God opened John’s eyes to see Jesus more clearly: he was not only cousin but also the Saviour. John the Baptist’s experience of coming to see Jesus more clearly is an important lesson for Christian life: it invites us to be surprised by another.

    All too often, we interact with one another on auto-pilot mode: we see, we hear, we think what we want to of others in our lives.  We repeat this way of interacting, day in and day out. Hence, we tend to be blind to their circumstances, deaf to their needs, closed-minded to their dreams.

    Parents, consider how you treat your children. Children, consider how you relate to your parents. Husband and wives, consider the openness you have to hear, really hear, each other. For all in authority, do we really listen to those we teach, we employ, we make decisions for? For all in employment, do we try to understand those who lead or do we gossip, gripe, and grumble? Let’s be honest: we are all guilty of these ways of closing our eyes, our ears and our hearts to others, now and again.

    If we dare to be even more honest, we’ll have to confess that we also interact with Jesus in these same ways sometimes. He comes into our everyday life, but we fail to let Jesus surprise us with who he really wants to be with us and what he truly wants to do for us.

    Today’s gospel then challenges us to pay attention to Jesus as John the Baptist reveals him to us. He is the Lamb of God, the Christ, God’s Chosen One, to save us. This revelation builds on last Sunday’s Epiphany when Jesus was revealed as God’s Light to the Nations. It also builds on last Monday’s Feast of the Baptism of the Lord when Jesus was revealed as God’s Beloved.  

    There’s a reason the Church places these three revelations about Jesus at the beginning of the new year. It is this: to help us be clear, as we continue our Christian journey, about who Jesus is and why God sent him into the world—to save us and to give us life to the full.

    Let me suggest that “to be clear about” is a grace worth praying for this week. It can help us enter more deeply into contemplating about Jesus—about his identity and mission. Such contemplation is really the effort to recognize how we value Jesus in our lives.

    Imagine your friend who is seeking to meet her spouse. Each man she dates isn’t the one. Finally, she meets the one who she wishes to share the rest of her life with. “I think he’s the one”, she confides in you.

    In a funny way, John the Baptist recognizes Jesus with the excitement and ardor as your friend does. “Behold…he is the one”, John announces to his disciples and to us. Yes, John’s context is different from a woman who’s dating, but isn’t the desire to look for, to be clear about and to recognize another as the long expectant one, the one who will not disappoint, the one who offers real fulfillment, nothing less than that human yearning we all have to be loved by and to love another, mostly completely by God?

    John the Baptist points Jesus out to his disciples and to us. If this action is to help us become better Christians, it will when we are clear about who Jesus is for us. He cannot be the one we look at from afar. He must be the one, the very foundation, on which we have to build our faith on. Build it by going deep into Jesus’ life, and in this way become more like him to live as he did—in love for God and in love with God’s people. This is how we become children of God.

    We cannot accomplish this unless we learn how to see Jesus like John the Baptist did—with clarity and certainty. In fact, this is the challenge the Gospel of John makes to its readers: we are to see, to look, to behold Jesus, to check him out, to encounter and to know him, to let what we see of him transform us, to go out and do as he does—to save the world.  This is Lord’s call to Isaiah and to us in our first reading.
      
    Truth be told, I suspect many of us, now and again, wonder whether or not we are seeing “enough” of Jesus to live and talk and act like him in our everyday life, especially in the darkest, difficult moments we face. We want to see Jesus more. So, we ask for more light to see him and more signs to confirm what we see of him. Sometimes, we are convinced that we see nothing or nothing new of Jesus. We don’t seem to be growing in clarity or certainty of who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing for us. We don’t know how to look ahead if we cannot see Jesus.

    Yet, the recurrent refrain throughout John’s gospel is “come and see” God. In fact, in the section after today’s gospel, Jesus will say to two of John the Baptist’ disciples, “What are you looking for? Come and see”.

    You and I, we want to see God. And God wants us to see the revelations of God in our lives, so that we can reveal God to others. We see this exemplified in Paul’s self-introduction of his identity and work as Jesus’ apostle in our second reading.

    God came to us in the person of Jesus once in history so that we might see, believe and follow. In our present times, God comes to call us to do likewise through the gift of others—cousins, family, friends, strangers.

    Shouldn’t we pray then to see in their visible faces the traces of our invisible God calling us to see him more clearly and to recognize him more truly so that we can live with him more fully?



    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    Photo: from Imgur (source - annestreetstudio.com)



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  4. Year A / Christmastide / Solemnity of the Epiphany
    Readings: Isaiah 60.1-6 / Responsorial Psalm 71.2, 7-8, 20-11, 12-13 (R/v cf 11) / Ephesians 3.2-3a, 5-6 / Matthew 2.1-12


    “What are you looking for?” We might ask someone gazing intently at a painting in an art museum. Her intense, focused attention on the lines and strokes, the hues and shades, the shapes and forms of the painting could be because she is trying to discover its deeper truth.  She is waiting for that a-ha moment when it reveals itself to her.

    “What are we looking for?” is a question a Jesuit friend asked when we had to look at the painting Census at Bethlehem by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in one of our Theology classes. The painting presents a busy town scene: crowds are gathering in the forefront of the painting for census taking; the town’s inhabits are scattered throughout engaged in various activity; in the distant, travellers are coming to participate in the census. The sky is overcast; snow covers the ground; the trees are leafless. There’s a sense of winter, of struggle and hardship, of the daily ordinariness of life. “What are we supposed to be looking for?” he asks again.  For a pregnant Mary on a donkey that Joseph is leading to the census and onto Jesus’ birth. It’s easy to miss them; they are lost in the crowdedness of life, in busy chaos that our days can be. But isn’t this how Jesus was born into these realities? Into the midst of human life that distract? Isn’t this why we sometimes cannot find Jesus amongst us? 

    Today’s great feast bears the Greek word “Epiphany”, meaning a showing or manifestation of Divine Glory.  What ought we to look for in this celebration of Epiphany?

    Jesus is the visible face of the invisible God. In him is revealed God’s glory. Through him shines the light of God’s glory for the nations. With him we God’s glory is the revelation of our salvation. But we will never grasp the depth of God’s glory that Jesus reveals until we take care and look attentively upon this scene of the Magi adoring Jesus. Matthew paints it for us in today’s gospel. We might be too familiar with it that our gaze rests only on the surface before us; what we stand to lose is the gift of epiphany. 

    This is not only the “epiphany of Christ” as light to the nations , but also the “epiphany” of humanity in Christ. Of a Christ who in all things but sin was one of us, who lived amongst us and who died to save us. Of a Christ who showed us the way to God, the truth about God and the life of God that is for us. It is precisely because Jesus lived his humanity in this way--with love of God for all peoples--that today’s feast demands we answer the question, “What are you looking for?”

    I have no doubt many asked the Magi this same question as they followed the star and journeyed to Bethlehem.  They were seekers. They trusted their wisdom and follow where it led them.  And it led them to Jesus whose birth in a manger they only came to know not in the knowledge of the skies and stars they had but from scripture of a God who comes to give himself to his people.  Their search led them to Jesus, God-with-us. In him, their long search was fulfilled.  Are we like them, searching for fulfillment, searching for God? 

    What did Magi find in Jesus?  What will we find in Jesus?  The same answer: that in Jesus is revealed the newness of being human—the newness of how to live, to love, to act, to forgive, to care, to uplift, to hope. The newness of being fully alive, which St Irenaeus rejoices is the glory of God. 

    If this is indeed what the Magi saw, what we celebrate today as Epiphany, what we come to know as our experiences of Jesus alive within us--of God revealing himself in Jesus to the whole world--then it is no wonder that the Magi have to returned home “by another way”.

    Speaking at the World Youth Day festivities in Cologne in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI reflected on this other way the Magi return.  Here, the word “way” refers to more than a physical route. It is a transformation of self, so as to live in another way. The Magi are no longer seekers who know ways of the skies and stars. Encountering Jesus, Benedict writes, “they must become men of truth, of justice, of goodness, of forgiveness, of mercy. They will no longer ask: how can this serve me? Instead they will have to ask: How can I serve God’s presence in the world? They must learn to lose their life and in this way to find it. Having left Jerusalem behind, they must not deviate from the path marked out by the true King, as they follow Jesus”.

    In fact, there is no other way for anyone who really lets himself encounter Jesus to return the same. Whether in Adoration like the Magi, or in forgiveness like the adulterous woman, or in healing like the blind man Bartimaeus, or even in friendship like Peter has with Jesus, to encounter Jesus is to begin walking the way he walked before us. Christmas reminds us that this way is of God humbling himself to become like us in Jesus. Indeed, the Magi found Jesus because they humbled themselves; they found him not by using their wisdom but following God’s wisdom as the prophet revealed. 

    In his Christmas Homily of 1971, Blessed Paul VI reflected on God’s way of humbling himself to become small, frail and weak. He understood God’s action to mean that no one need to be ashamed to approach him or afraid to close to him and draw near to him. In humbling himself God “narrowed the gap between him and us, so that we can speak intimately with him, trust him, draw near him and realize that he thinks of us and loves us”. Isn’t this how Jesus’ coming makes us live anew? Paul VI insists that we really take time to think about what God’s coming in Jesus should mean for you and I.

    I’d like to think The Magi did think about who God is and what God was doing through Jesus in drawing them to him.  Their adoration gives us this clue for living more Christian lives this year: we will only meet Jesus who humbled himself for us when we humble ourselves for him by humbling ourselves to others. After all, isn’t humility what one really needs to experience the “a-ha” moment of deeper truth when one looks at a painting? Perhaps, the question we need to repeatedly ask ourselves this year is not “What am I looking for?” but “How can I look for God?”

    The Magi looked for Jesus; by humbling themselves, they found him, only to be transformed by him. We too can be transformed when we find Jesus. In fact he comes to all peoples as  God's light that reveals the way of humility we must walk to look for and to know God. Indeed, we need no other good news than this on today's Feast of the Epiphany.



    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    Photo: www.thedarlinglife.com

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  5. Year A / Christmas / Solemnity of Mary, Holy Mother of God
    Readings: Numbers 6.22-27 / Psalm 66.2-3, 5, 6, 8 (R/v 2a) / Galatians 4.4-7 / Luke 2.16-21


    We have several sculptures by the Lasallian Brother Joseph McNally throughout the Malcolm Road campus of St Joseph’s Institution (SJI). One of these is The Spirit of SJI. Its curve form and copper-blue patina recall traditional figureheads we find on the bows or fronts of sailing ships.

    In the past, these ships were fitted with figureheads, usually of women, to act as lookouts that would lead sailors safely on their way. McNally created this sculpture to recall the ship that carried the first Lasallian Brothers to Singapore in 1852. He also wanted it to remind and assure students that the school spirit accompanies them on their journeys in school and in life.

    If a figurehead is supposed to help lead a ship through the waters, what do we need to make our journey through this new year?

    For some of us, 2017 bids good riddance to a bad year of global tragedies like Aleppo and uncertainties like Brexit and Trump, as well as personal pain and loss, disappointment and regret. For the more anxious, it is time to steel ourselves for a possible recession locally and growing nationalistic tensions regionally. Most of us are thankful for 2016. Almost everyone hopes 2017 will be better.

    Whatever our thoughts and feelings are this first morning of this new year, our faith invites us to find God amidst our letting go of the past and our embrace of the future. I believe we—who begin our Eucharist here in the fading darkness of night and who will receive Jesus in the dawning light of a new day—understand the gift of a new year that God is offering us: it is another chance to grow with Him. We can choose this, or we can remain stagnant in our set ways of relating with God. What's your choice?  

    Today’s readings are about God’s blessings.

    Our first reading describes how God desires to bless the Israelites—not with gifts or answers to their petitions. Rather, God wishes to bless them in these ways: to keep them; to let his face shine on them; to be gracious to them; to give them his peace (Numbers 6.22-27). These are blessings for life with God. They come out of one’s relationship with God. They aim to deepen one’s relationship in God. They build on the passage that precedes our first reading from the Book of Numbers: that earlier passage outlines how those dedicated to God are meant to live. We dedicate ourselves to God through baptism. We profess belief in God through Jesus, and want to live like him with God and to serve God like him by serving all we interact with, especially those in need. To live and serve like Jesus is to live our Christian identity to the full.

    Paul reminds us in our second reading that Christian identity is God’s blessing: we are heirs of God because he has sent the Spirit of Jesus to live in us, so that like Jesus we can call him “Abba, Father” (Galatians 4.4-7).  The gift of calling God “Abba” must for us as intimate as it was for God to be held by those who embraced him at the manger—Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and the kings. This exchange of God being intimate with us, as we can be intimate with God, in Jesus is indeed what Christmas joy is also about.

    Such joy is to be pondered upon. It is to be richly savored. It must be because it is God’s blessing for us—God’s joy for us to delight in and to be assured by. Advent directs our gaze onto this joy as our hope in Jesus’ coming as God-with-us. Christmastide, in turn, invites us to go deeper into this joy as the living truth that God has indeed come in Jesus. 

     We know we delight fully in this joy when we make Jesus, God’s goodness, our own goodness through the Christmas joy we spread and share when families reconcile and love, when friends care and uplift, when strangers look out for each other. Aren’t these truly God-with-us moments?

    Often times, however, we are too distracted to notice and enjoy these moments at Christmastide. Excessive Christmas feasting, anxious Christmas gift-giving, romanticized Hallmark Christmas greeting, even frivolous new year drinking take us away from God and God’s joy. We fixate on our joy and ourselves.

    It is therefore good that the first gospel reading of the new year offers us Mary for prayerful contemplation. This morning, we hear how Mary, having seen, heard, smelled, touched, and experienced all that the first Christmas was with Jesus’ birth, “kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart” (Luke 1.19).

    “Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart”.  What things? The call to become the Mother of God. The unexpected pregnancy. Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Joseph’s fidelity. The trials and tribulations to find a place to give birth. The stink, squalor but safety of a manger to lay her new born in. The shepherds' visit to see her son, and their message that angels proclaimed Jesus to be the long expectant Savior. She pondered on them all: they made up her joy in a good and faithful God—a joy that came alive and true in Jesus she cradled. Indeed, Mary must have welcomed Jesus as God’s blessing upon her.

    What about you and me this Christmastide? Have we allowed ourselves to see, hear, smell, touch, and experience God’s goodness? Have we gone deep into the joyful truth of God’s faithfulness in Jesus, God's blessing on us? Have we kept our Christmas experiences, and reflected on them as Mary did?

    I’d like to suggest that that we must do as Mary did if we want to begin the year well, and, more so, if we want to live this year more fully with God. Pondering on God and God’s faithful goodness is a good daily practice for the new year; it is like drawing fuel for a long haul drive. 

    Indeed, Mary lived her life in relationship with God and all around her by pondering on God’s faithful goodness. She pondered it at the first Christmas. She pondered it upon finding Jesus at the temple. She pondered it at the foot of the Cross. The depth of her pondering enfolded her in God’s love and life. It gave her strength and hope to stand by Jesus even as he died: she did not crumble in the face of evil; she overcame defeat in the face of death

    Mary’s strength and hope are what we need for this new year.  They are rooted in her intimacy with the truth that Jesus is God-with-us. Let us make the desire for intimacy with Jesus, and to grow in it, our grace for 2017. With Jesus, we do not have to be afraid as the angels proclaimed. With Jesus, we can have a hope-filled stance to lean into the new year, whatever our fears and anxieties are, however life’s uncertainties will unfold, and no matter how God fulfils our hopes and prayers.

    I believe that asking for this grace each morning this year will help us become like the sailors on ships long ago, like those first Lasallian brothers that sailed to Singapore, indeed, like Mary on Christmas morning—yes, be like them all who came to understand that it is not a figurehead that leads humankind onward but faith. 

    Faith in God who has come to be with us and to walk with us, and so assure us that we can lean into the future, let go and let God lead. This is the Christmas blessing Jesus’ coming bestows on us: that because of him, we do not have to search for God—he has come into our midst, he is already here and he is drawing us to himself. Oh, what a grace-filled blessing this is for the new year! Yes, let us ponder; yes, let us rejoice!





    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    Photo: www.pinerest.com


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

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