1. Year B / Holy Week - Triduum / Holy Thursday / Mass of the Lord's Supper
    Readings: Exodus 12.1-8, 11-14 / Psalm 115.12-13, 15-16bc, 17-18 (R/v cf. 1 Cor 10:16) / 1 Corinthians 11.23-26 / John 13.1-15

    Jesus came to Simon Peter, who said, "Master, are you going to wash my feet?"

    What would you say if Jesus came to you now, took off his outer garments, took a towel, tied it around his waist, poured water into a basin and began to wash your feet? Yes, what would you say?

    I think many of us would say nothing at first. We would be shocked,  confused, unsure, even afraid by his actions. 

    “How can this be?” we would probably wonder. It echoes Peter's question: “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Last night as I prayed this passage, I myself asked: “Who am I that you, Jesus, would want to wash my feet? 

    Would we not resist and protest if Jesus comes to wash our feet? “This cannot be your role -– to wash my feet, Lord. This cannot be your place –- to kneel before me, Lord. No, it is I who must serve you, Lord. It is I who must kneel before you”. 

    Would we not be afraid that our relationship with Jesus will change because he comes so close? Change because he might discover the real me who is not so saintly, never so good, always a sinner. We might doubt if Jesus will love me still, and it is natural we will.

    If Jesus did come now, I think we might cry out: “No, don’t wash my feet. I don’t deserve you, Lord. Leave me. I’ll do the washing”.

    But Jesus said to Peter then, as he now says to us here, “Unless I wash you, you can have no share with me.”  Here is Jesus telling is that he cannot be with us and share life with us unless we let him forgive us, let him heal us, let him love us, let him bring us home to God. Jesus wants to be with us. He wants to as the one who washes us clean, the one who saves us, the one who loves us and gives us life to the full. Will we let Jesus do these for us? Let him be Jesus to us?

    A priest once said to me in confession: “Jesus already knows how big or small your sin is, or how long ago or recent your previous confession was. What truly matters to Jesus is that we come home -– home to God who wants to save us in Jesus, through Jesus and with Jesus”. 

    Jesus is waiting for us to admit that we need him to bring us to God. He is waiting to set us free for God. We need him because we often lose our way to God and find ourselves trapped in sin. 

    I believe Jesus will surprise us when we come to him with these words: “Yes, you didn’t ask, nor have you earned this, but I am offering to wash you, right now, as you are. I want to”.

    Such love has no reservations and knows no limits. Such love simply loves. This love is who Jesus is and how he acts. “Love one another as I have loved you.” At the Last Supper, Jesus teaches that our life must be all about love. 

    Today’s readings show Jesus teaching this love most powerfully in two actions. At the Last Supper, in the breaking of bread, he shows us how our love, no matter how imperfect, ought to be a sacrifice for all, an offering to God, and a practice of Christian life and faith. This is what our second reading is about. It is founded on Jesus’ action of washing feet in the gospel reading. Foot washing is how Jesus makes this love fully alive, clearly visible, and wondrously tactile in our midst. Here is love that can touch us deeply.

    “May I help you?” is the real question Jesus is asking us if we let him wash our feet. We all struggle to answer this question honestly.  How many times have friends and loved ones asked us this question? How many times have we admitted our need for help? Chances are these are our common responses: “I am fine. It’s ok. Don’t worry. I’ll manage”.

    I’d like to suggest that there is another answer we can give. It simply is: “Yes, thank you”. May I wash your feet? Yes, thank you. This simply acknowledges our need for help. However we all struggle to admit our need for help. We struggle to honestly and always say so. So, let us learn to make these three words –- “yes, thank you” –- our response to Jesus who wants to wash our feet tonight, who wants to die for us on Good Friday and who will raise us up with him at Easter.

    Tonight the priest washes feet to recall Jesus’ action of selfless service. We also recall Jesus’ command that we -– who receive love, life and salvation from him -– go forth from here and wash another’s feet. “What I have done for you, you should also do".

    We need to risk who we are and what we have achieved to do the kind of foot washing Jesus did. To risk our very selves so that we can love as Jesus loved so much to wash feet. To risk everything. Why? Because it is only by risking that we can humble ourselves. Indeed the more we humble ourselves, the greater our love to lay down our life for another. But our humility first gives Jesus permission to know us intimately and to love us even more because he can wash  our feet.

    Human feet may seem insignificant, yet they reveal much more. Some feet express status and privilege, pampering and pride. Others reveal wounds and hurts that disable us. Still more betray our everyday struggles: they are battered, scarred, soiled; they are dirty and they smell. We stand on our feet that bear our weight but also the burdens of our failings, our imperfections, our disappointments. Our feet help us run to those we love; they help us to jump in hope. Our feet dig deep into the ground whenever we fear, doubt or despair; they root us in our sinfulness. Our feet say so much about our joys and hopes, our pains and anxieties, our heartaches and obstacles. Sometimes, we hide these more than we express them.

    All these that our feet metaphorically express are what Jesus really wants to wash clean. When we let him do this, we give him freedom to enter into our lives and serve us. However we feel about Jesus’ desire to love and serve us in this way, the only proper human response we can make to Jesus is in these three words “Yes, thank you”.

    However, saying “Yes, thank you” means very little unless we translate it into action. “Love one another as I have loved you.” Who does Jesus want you and me to touch through our hands? This action reaches out to save others. “Love one another as I have loved you.” Who is Jesus asking us to be like him to love us in our lives? This action is about receiving from others who want to 'save' us. 

    I think it is harder to receive than to give. I am sure you know it too. We all struggle to receive another’s help, be it from loved ones or friends, neighbours or strangers. But we need to receive in order to give: we cannot give what we don’t have. Let us be wiser by paying welcoming all who come to help us for who else but Jesus is really coming and kneeling at our feet, offering love. Will “Yes, thank you” be our response?

    Tonight, we will receive love from Jesus, in body and blood at Eucharist.  This night, we will practice his love when we wash feet with water and basin. From tonight onwards, Jesus commands us to share his love and, more so, to receive his love. 

    Now, let us be silent and let us allow Jesus to love us deeply, feet first.




    An adaptation of “Feet First” by Luke Ditewig

    Preached at St Joseph’s Institution
    artwork: "Jesus Washes an Apostle's Feet" by Laurie Olson Lisonbee, 2006
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  2. Year B / Holy Week / Palm Sunday
    Readings: Isaiah 50.4-7 / Psalm 21.8-9, 17-18a,19-20, 23-24 (R/v 2a) / Philippians 2.6-11 / Mark 14.1-15.47

    Last night I read about Lieutenant-Colonel Arnaud Beltrame on a friend’s Facebook post. Beltrame had died after he took the place of a woman that a gunman in Trebes, France was holding hostage. Beltrame’s brother said that he would have known all too well the risk he was taking in taking the woman’s place. "He certainly knew he didn't stand a chance," he said. "He gave his life for another." 

    My friend wrote that this story reminded him of another story that took place 2000 years ago that we remember this week in the Church calendar. That story is of Jesus.

    Jesus lived a sacrificial life too. Our Palm Sunday and Holy Week readings especially proclaim this. In his preaching and teaching, his healing and forgiving but most of all in his death on the Cross, Jesus showed us what living a sacrificial life is all about: it exists for another to have life to the full. Indeed in Jesus God reveals the purpose of human life as God created it for: to be a total self-giving to God by the sacrifice it makes for others. 

    Jesus’ death on the Cross reveals much more. That before all else, God has sacrificed what he loves most, his Son, for us and for our salvation. Paul beautifully describes how Jesus incarnates this truth for all to see in today’s second reading:
    Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2.5-8)
    Everything in Holy Week echoes this truth about Jesus and his humility of self-giving. They remind us that Jesus’ self-emptying action has a divine origin: it is rooted in God’s compassion that gave us God’s only son. His self-emptying also points us to its divine destination: resurrected life with God because Jesus’ sacrifice for us delights God who only asked that he love completely, selflessly and to the end.

    Jesus himself calls us to imitate his self-emptying in our lives, so that we can to make God’s compassion come alive for others. The irony of doing this for them, especially those most in need, is that God saves us in mercy as we reach out to uplift and save all in God’s love.

    “Isn’t self-emptying about giving up, putting aside, letting go?” you might ask. “What’s the point of going downwards?” But where can we go from going down but up? Indeed, there is no other way to eternal life but through death, as there is no other way to be raised into Easter life than by self-emptying.

    To give ourselves completely for another’s salvation for no other reason than God’s love is what distinguishes a Christian. We cannot bear the name “Christian” unless we accept to live like Jesus by emptying our lives unreservedly so that others can have life to the full. Then our compassion is truly Christ-like. We will fulfil this when we embrace the crosses in our lives as Jesus embraced the Cross in his life. With faith, we can see more clearly how Jesus’ Cross and our crosses are not just instruments of burden, pain and death. They are moreover graced ways for us to humble sacrifice, to greater love and to true salvation. 

    In the week ahead the drama of Jesus’ self-emptying will unfold. He will be betrayed and tortured. He will suffer and die. He will rise again from the dead. We will not only see and hear this played out in liturgy and sacrament, prayer and song. We will in fact participate in it and experience the sombreness of Maundy Thursday, the pain of Good Friday and the joy Easter morning brings. We will therefore move with Jesus from suffering into death and then be raised with him into resurrected life. This is the arc of our Christian life, and it leads to God alone.

    Today we commemorate Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem (Mark 11.1-10). We remember how the Jews waved palms, shouted Hosannas and threw their cloaks down before a donkey carrying Jesus to welcome him as King. Their cloaks were costly not because they were expensive but because they gave them wellbeing and dignity. Yet, their generously gave these up for Jesus. What about us? What cloak will we lay down to welcome Jesus as our saviour? What self-emptying should we make?

    Jesus himself first laid down a cloak so previous, so divine, so beautiful before us. It was a cloak he shared by being one with God. He laid it down to be one with us. That cloak was his divinity – his divinity in love for us and in love to save us for divine life. What cloak of ours should we lay before him who comes as our Saviour always.

    So, let us be more silent this week, and let us ponder the goodness of God’s self-emptying love to save us in Jesus. Then, let us empty ourselves for God by accompanying Jesus this Holy Week, to die with him to sin and death, and, more so, to let God raise us up with him.   



    Preached at Church of the Transfiguration
    Artwork:  http://utmost.org

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  3. Year B / Lent / Week 4 / Sunday
    Readings: 2 Chronicles 36.14-16, 19-23 / Psalm 136.1-2, 3, 4-5, 6 (R/v 6b) / Ephesians 2.4-10 / John 3.14-21


    Can you remember what was here in Punggol before our Church, Waterway Point, Waterway Park and the flats around sprung up?  The younger ones here might not know. The older ones among us will probably do.  

    We would remember Punggol as a rural district dotted with farms, serviced by dirt tracks and long stretches of roads with no traffic lights. It was one of Singapore’s oldest settlements. The Malays originally settled here. Then the early Chinese immigrants came in the mid-19th century to work in the rubber plantations. Over time, they introduced poultry, pig and fish farming. The last pig farm closed down in 1990. Then came the high-rise HDB flats of Sengkang New Town and Punggol New Town. 

    Remembering our past is valuable; it deepens our appreciation of who we are and what we have today.  

    Our readings on this 4th Sunday of Lent invite us to remember. It is right and good that we remember today at the half-way point in Lent. Many of us are trying hard to make this a good Lent. Some of us are beginning this effort. A few remain indifferent and may not have done nothing yet this Lent. Wherever you are on your Lenten journey so far, today’s readings invite us to pause and take stock by remembering what Lent is all about. They can help us put into clearer focus why Lent must matter for you and me. 

    Lent calls us to conversion from sin, so that we can prepare well to receive God’s salvation in Jesus that Easter celebrates. This is why Lent must matter: it is God’s time for us to remember, to celebrate and to believe in God’s saving love for us. Jesus is the name of this love.

    The first reading from the Book of Chronicles records how the Israelites and God related with one another. Today, we read about their exile that God punished them with for their infidelities against God and against one another. We also read about God’s mercy that gathered them as nation again and restored their temple through King Cyrus, their enemy. We can read about all this because the Israelites remembered God. Most of all we read about how God’s mercy set right what was wrong. 

    Jesus’ message to Nicodemus in today’s gospel story reiterates this truth of God setting all things right: God sends God’s only Son to save the world from sin. His proclamation invited Nicodemus to embrace this truth because it gives all who receive it fullness of life. Christians believe we have this fullness of life because we are baptised in Jesus, follow his way of loving God and neighbour, and we saved by his death and resurrection. Paul reminds Christians in the second reading that all this is possible because of the great love God has for us. We experience God’s love through our faith, which we have because it is God’s gratuitous gift to us, not because of our effort or merit. 

    Today’s readings then express the depth of God’s love for humankind since ancient times. The gospels express this in that surprising and humbling sight before us of Jesus on the Cross who died to save us. Surprising, because it reveals how much God loves us as we are, even in our brokenness and failures. Humbling, because we have to acknowledge in our sinfulness that we do not deserve such selfless love.

    Jesus on the Cross is therefore the definitive sign in Christianity of God’s foolishness to love us constantly and faithfully. This is why the Crucifixes we wear, we place in our homes, we stand before in every Catholic Church is God’s grace-filled invitation for us to remember, celebrate and believe in God’s patient, saving love for us. And God extends this invitation repeatedly to us even as we struggle between right and wrong, truth and evil, light and darkness, life and sin, not because we are bad but because we are good enough for redemption. 

    Do we recall this saving love of God in Jesus often enough? Do we marvel at the depth of this love of God in our lives and give thanks for it always? Do really appreciate Jesus as our saviour and count the blessings he gives us?  

    I’d like to suggest we spend some time today or this week to reflect on these questions. Let us converse about our responses to God in prayer. Then, let us keep silent and listen to God’s response, whether it invites us to honest changes we must make and to greater love we must give to God and neighbour. 

    Remembering God’s saving love in Jesus can free us from the clutches of sin. It helps us to recognize “the weight of our sins daily and in our heart in secret, and so humble ourselves to embrace God’s offer of mercy” in Jesus (John Henry Newman, Parochial Sermons 1). Lent then focuses us on the truth of God’s saving love each time we are forgiven, accepted, uplifted, and loved, however rebellious, sinful and unchristian we think our lives are. Yes, Lent must matter to you and me because it returns us to the central mystery of our faith: that in Jesus God saves us because God loves us.

    Every time we pray as a family, worship as a community, care for those in need as Christians, we make real God’s saving love for all of us, not just for one of us.  We were created to love God and neighbour. Love completes us as humans; it makes us whole. Without the experience of loving one another, how can we experience God’s love for us? Jesus’ call today is that everyone who believes in God’s only Son might not perish but might have eternal life. We are to help others experience this promise of God. We can do this by loving them as God loves us.  

    We all want God’s love. We all want to be with God eternally. We all make the effort to do this as best as we can by living holy lives In Jesus’ ways.  Some days we succeed. Some days we fail. But I know we all try and strive to be Christ-like always. Nicodemus too had been searching quietly for God in his life. For Pope Francis, Jesus’ night-time dialogue with Nicodemus helped him to finally understand that “he had already been sought by God and that he was personally loved by Him” (Angelus, Saint Peter's Square, Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Sunday 11 June 2017).

    Today God is also encountering us through the readings and speaking the same message to us that Jesus spoke to Nicodemus: God is always seeking us first, loving us first and waiting for us to return love. We hear God’s message best in this truth Jesus proclaims: for “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16).

    Hasn’t God been faithfully and constantly saving us through Jesus in our everyday lives and giving us life? Consider the many times have we been spared from potential accidents or failures. Or, the number of people God has sent to uplift us from the bleak and hopeless situations we were caught in. Or, the unexpected and bountiful goodness amidst our suffering and pain. Or, the courage we have had to do the right thing even though we feared doing it at the start.

    If you can see God at work in these situations, and many more, how can God’s saving action once on the Cross remain a distant historical event or a past catechism lesson or a weekly homily for us? If you agree with me that God’s salvation in Jesus is indeed integral to every moment in our lives, then we must do more than just remember. We must celebrate and, more so, continue believing in the truth that God loves us so much as we are to save in Jesus today and always. This truth is God’s goodness that we should never keep silent about or forget. It is truly the Good News we must proclaim to all and praise God for every day.




    Preached at the Church of the Transfiguration, Singapore
    photo:  www.andyszekely.ro

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  4. Year B / Lent / Week 3 / Sunday
    Readings: Exodus 20.1-17 / Psalm 18.8,9,10,11 (R/v John 6.68c) / 1 Corinthians 1.22-25 / John 2.13-25


    Sisters and brothers, have you ever made a mess and had to clean it up?

    Last Wednesday my friends and I did just that when we did the customary Chinese New Year “lo-hei”.  We poured the different sauces, condiments and salmon over the shredded vegetables. Then, we tossed everything together. We tossed high as we wished for blessings and goodness in the new year. We tossed heartily and happily.  And like many of you, we tossed some of the “yu sheng” out of the platter and onto the table. What a mess we made! Thank goodness everyone helped clean it up.

    “What a mess!” I think we’ve all exclaimed it whenever we realised we were in a mess. Sometimes we are in the very mess we create ourselves. Like when our indifference leads to disappointing family lives. Or, when our ingratitude leads to friendships fading away. Or, when inattention leads us to fail in exams or our complacency leads to poor work performances.

    There are times however when we need to make a mess to set things right, to do better, to become well again.  This is what we see in today’s gospel reading. 

    Jesus spills coins, overturns tables, and drives out of the Temple the moneychangers and the merchants selling sheep, sheep and pigeons for sacrifice. He even destroys the most important institution in all of Israel— the temple as God's dwelling place — by declaring that God’s holy presence among people is not in a building but in the “temple of his body”. Yes, what a mess Jesus makes.

    Jesus’ zeal for God is the reason for this mess. He makes this necessary mess to cleanse God’s Temple. His action must challenge us who believe our bodies are God’s temples in whom God’s Spirit dwells (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). 

    We want to be holy. Often however we struggle to holiness because we are easily tempted by many worldly distractions. Choosing them, we fall into sin and live unchristian lives. This is why yJesus’ action of cleansing today should disturb us. It must because it challenges us to reflect on the messiness in our lives, and to ask how we can clean it up.

    Lent is a time for conversion; a time for us to clean up our act, our lives. For many of us, Lent is about doing more fasting, prayer and almsgiving. But Lent is also a time to learn how to live better in God’s ways, and so more seriously cooperate with Jesus to clean up the messiness in our lives.

    The readings in Lent can help us do this; they instruct us in God’s ways. For example, the readings this past week presented a God who gently teaches us to be like Him, to choose His ways and to place our trust in Him. They invited us to express our deepest desire to God and to let God prepare us to receive what He has to offer. These ways teach us to live in God’s ways.

    Today’s gospel reading does the same; it teaches us how Jesus’ zeal is important to follow God and to do God’s will. His zeal for God empowers him to do everything he must do to cleanse God’s Temple and make it holy again.  Do we need this Lent to ask for this same zeal to make our lives God’s holy temples again? 

    If this question troubles you, give thanks. Yes, give thanks because it invites you to examine the state of your Christian life more honestly. “Am I going through the motion of living my Christian life?” If your answer, like mine, is “yes,” then Lent is doing its job. Lent should mess up our sometimes complacent attitude, indifferent outlook and unchristian lifestyle that take us far from God, and force us to take stock of our relationship with God. This is why Lent is God’s gift to help us turn away from sin and to return to God.

    Scripture speaks about God’s desire from the beginning of time to be with humankind. The Ten Commandments we hear about in today’s first reading express this truth. They are to help the Israelites to live in loving relationship with God. “Covenant” is the special word to describe this relationship between God and humankind. Covenant is founded on a life of mutual love for and with each other.

    Our faith hands on these same commandments to us so that we too can live holy lives with God.  Many a time however, we fail, we fall, and we regret. We come to confession to say “sorry” and to ask God for forgiveness. And every time we say, “I’m sorry God that I have sinned”, God never condemns us. Instead, God always forgives and reconciles with us. I believe God does this because God knows we are still growing up as Christians. We will grow better by knowing Jesus more fully, loving him more intimately, and following him more closely. Why Jesus? He is the way, the truth and the life to God.

    This is why Jesus is our salvation: he shows us how to live in God’s ways, ways the Ten Commandments teach. In Jesus, moreover, God frees us from sinfulness for salvation. His cleansing action is hope-filled: it is Jesus and only Jesus who can cleanse us from sins by his death and raise us into new life with God through his Resurrection. Jesus himself declares this: his enemies may destroy him in death but God will raise him up to new life — and the Spirit of his new life that now dwells among us and within us because, through Baptism, God created us to be Easter people.

    God’s desire that we have new life in Jesus is really the message in today’s gospel reading. Jesus cleansed the Temple to stop the Jews from buying and selling sacrifices, from going through the motion of worship and from living a life at odds with God’s ways. By cleansing the Temple, Jesus challenged them to enter more fully into relationship with God and to enjoy the fullness of life. 

    Today, the Church is inviting you and me to do the same with God. In particular, we ought to stop being lukewarm or dismissive of God’s call to conversion in Lent. The story of Jesus cleansing the Temple offers us the assurance that he will help us clean up the messiness in our lives. Pope Francis urges us to let Jesus do this by opening our hearts to him and saying, “Jesus, look how much filth! Come, cleanse. Cleanse with your mercy. Cleanse with your tender words. Cleanse with your caresses” (Pope Francis, Homily, Third Sunday of Lent, 8 March 2015). 

    Many of us will struggle to believe that God wants to do this for us because we have convinced ourselves that our messy, sinful lives are too soiled, stained and spoilt for God’s saving grace. But as Paul reminds us in the second reading, in Christ crucified God reveals his salvation for us by giving us his only son so that we can have eternal life. Such is God’s foolishness in loving us — totally beyond our human power and wisdom (1 Corinthians 1.22-25).

    Let us then ask Jesus to cleanse us this Lent. And let us, in turn, imitate Jesus and do the same for others in their messiness. We can help them by listening to their woes, forgiving them of their wrongs, caring for them in their poverty, uplifting them in their pain, and giving them hope in their despair. Yes, let us do this for them, as Jesus always does for us, no matter how big or small our sin is. 

    May be when they experience a similar cleansing that we experience through Jesus’ love washing us clean again, they too will join us with much delight to sing the Easter truth our responsorial psalm proclaims, “you, have the message of eternal life, O Lord”. 





    Preached at Church of the Transfiguration
    photo: www.honeybearlane.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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