1. 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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  2. 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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  3. 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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  4. 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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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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