1. Year B / Eastertide / Fifth Sunday
    Readings: Acts 9.26-31 / Psalm 22.26-27, 28, 30, 31-21 (R/v 26a) / 1 John 3.18-24 / John 15.1-8


    My Dad loved to garden. When we lived in Changi, he planted gardenias, bougainvillea, hibiscus, Japanese primrose (my favourite) and even papaya.

    He would teach my siblings and I to dig and plant, and to get our hands dirty as we weeded and fertilized. He taught us about seeding and watering, about planting according to the wet and dry seasons. He showed us how to graft a desirable trait, say a branch from a particular fruit or flower, onto another plant with stronger roots and stock.

    Though I don't have a green thumb, everything I know about gardens and gardening comes from him. He taught me to like gardens and to appreciate the hard work gardening is.

    Like every good gardener, Dad knew the value and necessity of pruning. Cutting away what is dead, unwanted and overgrown is hard work. As it is hunting for and destroying slugs. But he did all this to prune, prune, prune the plants and shrubs: not just to keep our garden neat, but to let it flourish and be lush with new growth.

    Pruning is a good metaphor for how we ought to let Jesus shape us so that our relationship with him can bear good and abundant fruit. This kind of spiritual pruning involves courage to hear Jesus’ call to conversion and generosity to say, “yes, I wish to be healed.”

    But don’t we find ourselves struggling when we give Jesus permission to prune us to grow anew in our Christian life and faith? Struggling to turn our backs on bad habits and addictions? Wrestling to remove the self-centered, self-righteous, self-serving ways we live? Grappling to clear out those parts of our lives that are dead to Jesus’ love? 

    I’d like to think that sayings “yes” to being pruned is also saying “yes” to the grace that struggling, wrestling, grappling with Jesus promises us: that Jesus’ pruning will make something divinely better of our human lives.

    Why grace? Because these struggles involve the necessary and life-giving work of gradually surrendering ourselves into Jesus’ life and love. This is how we can begin to root out our vices and to plant God’s virtues in our lives. This interpretation of Jesus’ teaching is about the call to conversion so that we can live more fruitful Christian lives. A conversion we have to choose by remaining connected to Jesus or by rejecting him.

    But there’s another, richer lesson that Jesus teaches us today. It is about the beauty of how abiding in God is our true life. Easter joy is about knowing this truth, and living it out fully. 

    We need Jesus to help us convert our lives and to enjoy the fruitful life God wishes us to have. But we will experience this good life fully when we respond to Jesus’ call to abide in him. Our readings throughout the Easter season echo this call in the constant invitation they make to us: that only in Jesus will you and I fully live in God. And this life is ever growing.

    Last Sunday, Jesus gave us the image of the good shepherd. His words and ministry brought this image to life. In doing so, Jesus taught us that God’s saving action is primary to who God is and what God does in our lives.

    Today Jesus gives us the image of the vine and branches. It describes the kind of relationship we ought to have with God through him, with him and in him. A symbiotic relationship like the vine and the branches have: they abide in one another for life.

    This image is indeed hope-filled because it speaks of how God’s primary action in our lives -- to save -- isn’t finished. “God’s action is ongoing; it is pregnant, growing, life-giving. Jesus, the vine doesn’t go anywhere; he patiently, peacefully provides strength and sustenance for us, the branches. The branches hold fast to the vine, letting life flow through them, bearing fruit.  They are free to grow because the vine supports them.”*

    The promise of the branches abiding in the vine is the freedom to live freely and fruitfully. As an Easter people, this is the kind of life the risen Jesus bestows on us to live in and through his Spirit.

    Such a life must matter to us: it testifies to how God in Jesus is indeed the source of life for us; God will raise us from the dead as God raised Jesus into eternal life. This is why we should abide in Jesus: through him we come to abide in God. And when we abide in God, we come to experience and know how God’s action for our wellbeing and happiness always precedes our actions. This is why we can believe that God’s actions always save: God attends to our every need even before we ask God to intervene.

    If you agree with me that God is always present in us and for us, and that God is always laboring for our salvation, then we have to acknowledge this fact of Christian life: that our actions do not create the conditions for our free and fruitful lives. Rather, our actions only enable the growth that life in God first produces and always enables.

    Isn’t this a lot like gardening? Gardeners only aid the growth of plants and shrubs. What makes a seed grow is the life source in the soil, in the air, in rain and moisture, in the ground.

    My Dad never taught us this insight explicitly; he simply repeated what Mom always taught us about living each day: observe, record and take note. This is how my siblings and I learnt that there is indeed growth in the mysterious process that transforms an ugly brown bulb into a glowing scarlet amaryllis.

    Yes, growth is all about that one breath of life -- never finished, always evolving, forever bestowing new possibilities to grow, to live, to fruit. And you and I are also grafted into this one breath of life, as are the unfortunate slugs in the garden. 

    This one breath of life we know, we believe, we profess to be life in God.

    Perhaps, this is why the ancient monks interpreted Jesus’ teaching about pruning and abiding as the good and necessary work of “soul keeping” we must do with Jesus daily.

    We would be wise then to keep in mind that today Jesus tells us five times to bear fruit in him, and eight times to remain in him. How many more times, then, must you and I let Jesus continue to shape us to bear good and abundant fruit for God and for one another?




    *Katie Munnik, “Abiding is a wonderful verb”

    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore on 3 May 2015
    photo: 2paragraph.wordpress.com (Internet)
    Posted by
    Labels: Breaking Open God's Word Easter
    0

    Add a comment

  2. Year B / Eastertide / Fourth Sunday (Vocation Sunday / Good Shepherd Sunday)
    Readings: Acts 4.8-12 / Psalm 118.1,8-9, 21-23, 26, 28, 29 (R/v 22) / 1 John 3.1-2 / John 10.11-18


    Consider how mottos impact the way we live:
    “You’re a great way to fly”: and so, the Singapore Girl makes sure your SQ flight is memorable. 
    “Be Prepared”: and so, boy scouts and girl guides are always ready to do their best.  
    “No pain, no gain”: and so, many athletes train hard to excel in sports. 
    “By giving mercy and by choosing”: and so, Pope Francis proclaims God’s agenda for his papacy.
    These mottos of a business, a uniform group, of athletes and a pope tell us how mottos encapsulate the beliefs each of them holds dear. Their mottos guide them to live and work, to play and pray. 

    Mottos are helpful: they are like a GPS or a compass that enable one to find her direction and to move towards her desired destination. 

    What is your motto in life and faith? How is it guiding you? 

    Today is Vocation Sunday. It is a good day to reflect on these questions about mottos and our Christian vocation. What is the Christian vocation? How are we living it? Are we guided by a motto to be better Christians? What is the motto the risen Jesus left us?

    Often we associate the word “vocation” with religious life and the priesthood. Married life and single life are also worthy vocations in our Church.  “Vocation” is a word society also uses to describe how some jobs are not tasks but calling. Teaching, nursing, cooking, painting, even parenting come to mind.If so many things can be called vocation, what then is at the heart of vocation? 

    Vocation is not about doing, as it is about being. It is about living in a particular way and for a specific purpose. For Christians, it must be about living with God and for God. We understand “vocation” as living in holiness to praise, reverence and serve God, and we do this best in community, and by caring for God’s people. 

    How are we to live this holiness? By listening to God’s call, responding to it, and living God’s call fully in our lives.This is at the heart of vocation. The Greek word for “vocation”, “klay’-sis”, expresses this as a calling, a summons. The Gospel writers use “klay’-sis” to describe God’s call to humankind. This is why they present Jesus calling all to God through his preaching and teaching, his healing and caring. What are we to trying to really hear in Jesus’ words and actions is God’s motto for us to live life fully and happily. 

    In today’s gospel story about the Good Shepherd, Jesus invites us to discover again this motto to help us understand and live the purpose of Christian life.

    Jesus compares the good shepherd to a mere hired man. The good shepherd cares about the sheep; he lays down his life for them. The hired one is mainly interested in getting paid; he cares for himself and runs away when wolves attack, leaving his sheep in danger. 

    Aren’t you and I sometimes like the hired hand? Don’t we put own wants and preferences head of God’s desires for us and of the hopes others have in us? 

    I suspect we do this because we feel we have to hold on tightly to various handles for the good life. Handles like career and assets to assure us security in life. Handles like looks and honors to protect our reputation. Handles like money for home and education to safeguard our families. Even handles like giving enough to charity, making enough sacrifices, saying enough prayers to ensure we will get to heaven.

    What do you and I own that we cannot lose? I suspect much; and so, we grab our own handles tightly to hold on. The more we do this, however, the more we take the road downwards to become like the hired hand: not just self-centered but also irresponsible towards family and friends, employees and superiors, the poor and the needy, God entrusts into our care.

    If the hired man had a motto, it could well be “Grab and Keep.” This is why Jesus offers us the counter example of the good shepherd; he lives and serves by a different motto. 

    The good shepherd knows his sheep intimately; this is why he can lay down his life for them. His sheep are not his possessions or handles to grab and keep. Rather, they are like handles he is called to open. Jesus reached out to all in need to open their hearts and minds to new ways of knowing God, of experiencing God’s love, and of living in God’s ways. After all aren’t shepherds opening gates and fences to lead their sheep out of the paddocks to greener pastures and a better life? A shepherd’s life is at the service of those they serve. 

    How can the good shepherd do this? Because at the heart of shepherding is real love. Real love involves letting go: it receives humbly and it gives fully.* There is nothing to grab and posses about real love. Instead, it is about receiving and letting go. Real love – which is rooted in God’s Love – is what empowers the shepherd to love his sheep into his self-sacrifice for them. Such love recognizes that all one has received comes from God as gift, and that it becomes truly one's gift when it is given away. 

    The good shepherd knows this. We know this kind of love too. Isn’t this the Christian love you and I wish to have and to practice in daily life?

    The motto of the good shepherd then is “Receive and Let Go.” I’d like to suggest that this is the motto Jesus wants us to remember from today’s gospel story but, more so, to live each day of our lives.  

    “Receive and Let God”. This motto calls us to love, like the good shepherd does: by sharing everything we receive from God’s love with everyone. This is the joy of the Gospel: that in Jesus, we come to know with thanksgiving our God who gives everything to us and that we live our humanity fully by sacrificing and sharing everything we have with everyone we meet.

    This is why Jesus contrasts the good shepherd and the hired man. They show differences in the degree of their commitment and responsibility, their effort and care, and even their love, towards all. The good shepherd insists on living a life that is differentiated by the degree of the more: he is more responsible, more caring, more self-sacrificing, more loving. Jesus lived this way; it is the more excellent way of being human, as God created all peoples to be. Jesus calls us like this.

    Living more lovingly by receiving and letting go is how we can better live holier lives. But this is a dangerous motto to live by: it will ask us to die to ourselves, to those parts of us that grab and keep. I believe Jesus lived out this motto: he received life and love from God, and on the Cross he gave them away for us to have God’s life and love. 

    If we live by this motto, our vocation – in whatever form it takes – we can become more Christ-like. Yes, Christian vocation must be about letting go of what we have first received from God so that someone else can also have life in God. 

    This is why the Good Shepherd can risk his life for his sheep. And this is why we must dare to waste our redeemed lives in Jesus on others who are in need of Easter life and Easter joy. 

    Then, you and I, and all we share our Christian life and faith with, will truly come to know the richness of the gift the good shepherd's motto is. And it is this: that it is only in dying that we are born into eternal life.




    *Inspired in parts by John Foley, SJ

    Preached at Church of the Transfiguration
    photo: Internet (www.fromanxietytolove.com)

    Posted by
    Labels: Breaking Open God's Word Easter
    0

    Add a comment

  3. Year B / Eastertide / Third Sunday 
    Readings: Acts 3.13-15, 17-19 / Psalm 4.2, 4, 7-8, 9 (R/v 7a) / 1 John 2.1-5a / Luke 24.35-48

    He waited expectantly for the promised Thomas the Train set. Mommy and Daddy handed down his elder brother's train and he cried out “No, don’t want; old!”

    She placed the earrings, a family heirloom, into her daughter-in-law’s hands. “They’re not even 24 carat gold,” the wife complained to her husband. 

    They moved into their renovated offices: the paint was fresh, the fittings new but some furniture was as before. “Still broken,” they grumbled.

    No to the old. Out with the dull. Reject the broken.

    Isn’t this how you and I sometimes look at things in our lives? Don’t we prefer the new, the bright and the expensive? Who amongst us happily accepts and gives thanks for what we don’t like?

    And isn’t this how we sometimes treat others: the poor, the criminal, the prostitute, the homosexual, those domestic maids, those foreign workers, those aged aunties and uncles selling tissue at hawker centres? These who some consider alien, sinful, spoilt, lesser, dirtier.

    Isn’t it ironic then that the one we most long for, the risen Jesus, comes to us wounded, broken, scarred? 

    This is how Jesus comes to his friends in today’s gospel story; he stands alive in their midst but with his wounds visible, to greet them with “Peace.” 

    I’m sure the disciples did not expect "peace" to be the first word the risen Jesus would say to them. They had failed him, and they probably expected to hear words of regret, recrimination, and reproach. 

    But “Peace” is all Jesus said. 

    In this moment of astounding simplicity, Jesus simply offers the gift of silent acceptance and unconditional love.* His peace that accepts them as still his friends and his love that still wants to care for them. Peace Jesus gives them, his peace, no matter how much his disciples had failed him. 

    And yes, Jesus' peace for us too, no matter how grave and how often we sin.

    “Peace” helps us understand why Jesus asked them, “Why are you troubled?” Troubled because they wanted to make sense of Jesus risen and alive. But troubled much more, I think, because Jesus continues to love. “How can Jesus still love, after we have failed him?” they could have asked themselves. 

    We too should be troubled by Jesus’ continuing presence in our lives, moment by moment, and in every choice we make for good or for bad. We should be troubled by his unconditional love that wants to save us.  

    How does Jesus prove his enduring, saving love for us all? “Touch me and see,” he says. 

    The wounds in his hands and on his feet speak of God’s love. With his wounded, broken and scarred body, Jesus revealed the love of God to his disciples once, and again to us today. This love of God led him to the Cross, and to being disfigured with wounds and bruises. 

    In the Resurrection, Jesus’ risen body continues to be scarred by his wounds. Now, these wounds are however transfigured by God's love into channels of mercy through Jesus for us. Jesus' wounds are salvific: God's life flows through them for us.

    In today’s gospel story, Jesus patiently led the disciples to experience and believe in his resurrection. He came to them where they were. He invited them to touch his body; it may have been wounded, broken and scarred by human evil but it was raised into life by the love of God. And by eating a “piece of baked fish,” he testified that he had indeed risen. 

    Doesn’t Jesus also patiently bring us into his resurrection life? Doesn’t he come to us where we are -- to touch us with his forgiveness, and to invite us to come to his table, feeding us with his risen Body, wounded, broken and scarred as it is?

    In a few minutes, we will hold Jesus' body in our hands, before nourishing our lives with his body in Communion. Isn’t this the most concrete way Jesus continues to prove his saving love for you and me no matter how saintly or sinful we are as we come to him? 

    “Touch; see; eat.” And so we do because we believe in Jesus risen and alive. 

    “Amen” is the right and holy response we can make as God’s creation to the resurrection life we partake of in Jesus, most palpably at every Mass. It is in fact the most human response we can make to God. Yes, “Amen,” “so be it that you, my Lord and my God, have risen, and we, your friends, are alive.” 

    Today we are being invited to let the risen Jesus come alive in us and for us. But let us do this so that the risen can come alive amidst all that we don’t like and all that we don’t want. 

    Can we let the risen Jesus reveal himself in the old we don’t want, in the dull we would rather shun, and the broken we prefer throwing out? Do we dare step back and allow Jesus to come alive in our encounters with those we have judged wounded because they have sinned, or those we have branded broken by their lifestyle choices, or even  those we have scarred by our hatred, bias, discrimination, rejection, gossip? 

    Perhaps, if we dare to let Jesus reveal himself in our lives and in our encounters with others we have rejected, ignored, judged lesser, we might discover the gracious mercy of God labouring in them all for us and our salvation. That divine mercy which never condemns what human evil disfigures but bends low to embrace everyone and everything up, like a mother for her child, so as to make better by transfiguring them in divine love. This is the glory of God’s saving love that Jesus reveals through his wounded, broken, scarred but risen body. 

    So, let us invite Jesus to come alive in us. This is how we can experience the immense goodness of God’s merciful love in us and for us -- we who are also wounded, broken and scarred by sin yet are profoundly loved, mercifully forgiven again and again, and truly saved already by God's love in Jesus.

    Then, we can come to really know the depth of Easter as God wishes for us. And it is simply this: to experience the joy of being wrong.** 

    Wrong to see that God’s saving love is restricted to the good, the wholesome, the clean of heart: because God is also there in the bad, the broken, those whose hearts are stained by sin to redeem them like God has redeemed us.

    Wrong to insist that God’s saving love depends on how many boxes we tick “yes” as obedient Christians: because God is also there for us when we fail to tick those boxes or when we fail as Christians because God sees our faith in God, no matter how little it is.

    Wrong to think that God’s saving love is mine alone in Jesus: because God is always there in Jesus for all people of goodwill, even if they are of another faith.

    Yes, Easter life is to have the grace to look back on our sinfulness of not liking and not wanting what we have or what we are given, and to appreciate how God is already there waiting to redeem us for life. 

    This then is the Easter joy of being wrong about ourselves, about who God is and who we are to God in Jesus. The disciples discovered this truth in the risen Jesus’ first word that consoled, uplifted, and loved them: “Peace.”  They then went forth and proclaimed this good news.

    Will you and I let Jesus speak his peace to us, and show us the Easter joy of being wrong today? For only when we humble ourselves in our wrong because we come to know that God loves us even more, can Jesus teach us how to proclaim to another and to all, "peace be with you".  

    Let us ask for the joy of being wrong today. 





    * The Monks, Spencer Abbey
    ** James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin Through Easter Eyes.



    Preached at St Ignatius Church and the Church of the Transfiguration
    photo: www.cruxnow.com


    Posted by
    Labels: Breaking Open God's Word Easter
    0

    Add a comment

  4. Year B / Eastertide / Divine Mercy Sunday 
    Readings: Acts 4.32-35 / Psalm 117.2-4, 16ab, 17-18, 22-24 (R/v 1) / 1 John 5.1-6 /  John 20.19-31


    Dear sisters and brothers have you ever experienced the peace of being forgiven?

    I did when I was younger. I must have been 3 or 4 years old then. I hid myself in the storeroom because I was scared. I had emptied my mother’s perfume bottle onto her swivel make up chair. As I poured the perfume, I turned the chair around and around. The room smelled fragrant. I was laughing. Mommy walked in; she was not smiling. She was furious. Daddy had given Mommy expensive French perfume for their anniversary.  She gave me the look; it said it all. (You know the look; the one mothers give when they annoyed and angry.)  I knew I had done something wrong. So I ran and hid. I was scared.

    In the dark storeroom, I cried and cried. I heard my Mommy and Daddy coaxing me to come out. I didn’t dare to. Then the door open, and my mother’s hand reached in, inviting me out. Dad called out to me. I was still scared. When I came out, Mom and Dad hugged me. They forgave me and said they loved me still. I felt loved. I experienced peace.

    I’d like to think that you have had similar experiences in your life. Today's gospel passage describes such an experience of being forgiven and of finding peace in the disciples' lives.

    The disciples were scared. They were hiding that first Easter evening. They were fearful, confused, and uncertain. I find their behaviour strange because they should have already heard that Jesus had risen from the dead from all who experienced something of the resurrection that morning. The women who heard Angel proclaim Jesus’ resurrection in the empty tomb and then met the risen Jesus whilst on their way to the disciples. “Do not be afraid”, Jesus told them (Matthew 28-1-10).  Peter and John who entered the empty tomb, saw and believe (John 20.1-10). Mary Magdalene, who recognising the risen Jesus when he called her by name, announced to them, “I have seen the Lord” (John 20.11-18). In spite of all this, the disciples locked themselves in the room, scared.

    They probably had many reasons for being scared. Perhaps, they were indeed fearful of the Jews as the gospel tells us—fearful that the Jews who hated and killed Jesus, their master, would do the same to them. Maybe, they were uncertain what Jesus being alive meant.

    I think they might also have been scared by this question they could have been asking themselves: “If Jesus is indeed alive, wouldn’t he come and punish us because we did nothing for him?” They knew the wrong they did. They slept while he prayed at Gethsemane. They fled when the soldiers arrested him. They abandoned him as he suffered and died. Peter betrayed him. Only John stood at the foot of the Cross. In short, they cared not.

    They feared Jesus’ being alive and coming to them and doing what most humans who are wronged and hurt would do—take revenge.  There’s a name for such behaviour: “tit-for-tat”. This kind of behaviour manifests itself with vengeful words and in revengeful acts. People act in these ways because they carry an anger that wants to punish, a hatred that wants to put down, and a disappointment that wants to hurt.  Haven’t we all had such vengeful feelings at times? Haven’t we sometimes acted in revengeful ways?

    But when Jesus comes to his disciples, he simply says, “Peace be with you”. His first words do not cry out for vengeance, for revenge, or for punishment because he has been wrong or hurt or abandon.  His first word is “peace”.  Peace that calms their fear. Peace that heals their pain. Peace that clears their confusion. Peace that gives them hope. He knows what the disciples needs most: peace.

    The risen Jesus bestows peace on all peoples, even the most obstinate, like Thomas. Jesus comes to Thomas who is obstinate in his unbelief about the resurrection with remarkable serenity and understanding when he returns a week later and meets Thomas where he is. Jesus does not just say “peace; he incarnates the peace with which he greets the disciples and embodies forgiveness in his encounter with Thomas whose finger Jesus takes, puts into his wounded side and says, “Believe”.  

    Such peace liberates. You and I know how freeing peace is when we are forgiven—in confession, after a fight, when a disagreement is settled, when families reconcile.

    I believe we experience this peace most palpably in the Eucharist. Here, Jesus’ peace  reconciles us with God. Isn’t this why we keep coming to the Eucharist, even when we have sinned? Aren’t we hoping to hear Jesus say, “Peace” and experience him taking our finger, placing it in his wound, and saying, “Believe”? 

    Indeed, Easter reminds us that peace is the risen Jesus’ first gift to all who suffer and fear, all who are confused and despairing, all who cry out, “help my unbelief, Lord”. His peace empowers us to overcome all our fears and break our silence (Pope Francis, Easter Vigil, 2018). 

    What else is this peace the risen Jesus brings to us but God’s forgiveness that changes everything about how God interacts with us.  From now on, we have God’s mercy that is limitless and immeasurable and we will always experience God’s mercy that bestows peace, never retribution. 

    The risen Jesus enters into the disciples’ midst and reveals that God’s mercy always desires to enter into the chaos of our human lives, and meeting us there, will raise us up. In Jesus, God’s mercy comes to all  wherever they are and, more so, however their lives may be, whether saintly or sinful. “Peace be with you” Jesus says to everyone. 

    “Peace be with you”. We will say these words to each other in a few minutes when we exchange the Sign of Peace. Let us mean what we say when we do this. Then, we will know the depth of Jesus’ peace: that it bridges differences and it draws us together. We will also experience the breadth of Jesus’ peace: that it is for everyone of us, no matter our state of saintliness or sinfulness. Finally, we can hope in the heights Jesus peace will lead us up to: that peace raises up into newness of life. Only when we experience the peace Jesus gives us through one another can we give peace to all peoples.

    On this Solemnity of Divine Mercy, we acknowledge how God’s divine mercy works in our lives through the risen Jesus who breathes “peace” into our lives. Such mercy will never let us be the same again. We will change and become better.  And no matter how sinful we may think we are, the good news today is that Jesus will look for us and come into our midst, like he did to the disciples and greet us with peace—his peace that will make us wonderfully new again in God’s mercy.

    Try as we might, we will never be able to understand or explain God’s mercy for us. It will probably bother and bewilder us often, but it will always humble us into gratitude. Then, we will find ourselves giving “thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love is everlasting”, as we sang the responsorial psalm earlier. 

    Yes, Jesus rose from the dead at Easter not to judge the guilty and sinful. Instead, Easter is resurrection day when God surprises all of us, like God did with the disciples, with divine mercy that Jesus makes real for you and me through forgiveness and peace. And yes, Easter was also that moment when Mommy and Daddy found me in my fear, hugged me, loved me still and blessed me with peace.





    Preached at the Church of the Transfiguration
    Photo: from Internet (pinterest)




    Posted by
    Labels: Breaking Open God's Word Easter
    0

    Add a comment

  5. Year B / Eastertide / Easter Sunday
    Readings: Acts 10.34a, 37-43/ Psalm 118.1-2, 16-17, 22-23 (R/v 24) / Colossians 3.1-4 / John 20.1-9

    “Still Days”. This is what some Christians in the West call Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. Still Days are for mourning Jesus who suffered, died and descended to the dead. These Christians mourn in silence. During these days, the church bells do not ring; they are silent too.

    Here we are, up early like every Sunday morning. In the quiet of this morning, we seem to do the same things. We walked or took the public transport to church. We attend Mass now and have breakfast after. We are here as always, with family or friends or alone. We pass the same surroundings. We see the same sky. We enter this same church and see the same people around us. We are here again, the same people we are last Sunday as today, to be with Jesus. 

    And we might have woken up this morning feeling the same as we have these past three days when everything was still, sad, and sombre. What happened to Jesus might still be weighing on us this morning. But this morning is not another Still Day, nor can it be like another Sunday. Today is Easter.

    Today must be different because something happened that first Easter morning and everything changed. The Gospel reading tells us how it happened.

    It was the first day of the week. Mary of Magdala went to the tomb. Mark’s gospel tells us she went with other women to anoint Jesus’ body with spices. They thought it would be another Still Day for them. Like the Thursday when they witnessed him arrested and tried, and the Friday when he died on the Cross, battered by torture, bruised by suffering, bloodied by injury and killed by evil. The Sabbath, that Saturday, when Jews were expected to rest, they still mourned Jesus’ death.

    On that Sunday, like today, something happened. They approached Jesus’ tomb and saw the great stone at its entrance moved aside. Mary, in fear, ran to Peter and John who hearing her surprising account ran to the opened tomb. They looked in and saw only the burial clothes. Jesus’ body was indeed not there. And John who saw this, believed. 

    Something happened that morning. John describes this in the gospel reading by contrasting death and life. He uses the word “tomb” seven times, as if to suggest the seeming finality of Jesus’ death. But he ends with the certitude that Jesus “had to rise from the dead”. 

    Yes, something did happened. Jesus rose from the dead. He was alive. He overcame death that no longer has the final say over human life. John recognised this truth.  When he looked in, saw, and believe, he had crossed a threshold, perhaps unawares.  He had entered a space where God’s mercy and love had enacted the greatest deed of power and glory in history. God had just raised Jesus from death to life. 

    John could see and believe, have this kind of clarity, because of love. Love for Jesus. A love that moved him to follow Jesus. A loved deepened through his discipleship with Jesus. A love so intimate and trusting that he could lie on Jesus’ chest. A love Jesus knew John had and could give his mother when he died. 

    Such love is founded on openness genuine friends share. “Whoever loves me,” Jesus said, “I will love him and reveal myself to him” (John 14:21). Such love trusts each other to the end.

    Hasn’t Jesus love us in this same way, revealing all of God to us? Hasn’t he done so because of how we have strived to love him? By keeping faith with him throughout Lent and over these past three Still Days?  By really trying to be Jesus’ friend every day, even when we failed and sinned? 

    I believe Jesus knows and values our love for God, however much or little it is. This is why I cannot think of any reason but Jesus himself giving us the audacity of our faith to believe he has truly risen. He does this because he loves us and wants us to know God’s glory. 

    So, here we are standing before the risen Jesus. He is God’s glory.  Standing and not hiding our face like Moses hid his face in terror when he saw God’s glory in the burning bush.  Standing and not falling down in great fear like the prophet Ezekiel who saw God’s glory. Standing and not overcome by fear like Peter, James and John who saw Jesus’ face shining like the sun at the Transfiguration and fell down. 

    Yes, something has truly happened between God and us that empowers us to stand and see. It is this: that in the risen Jesus God loves us so much that God reconciles us to himself. More than this, God promises us the same resurrected life the risen Jesus now has. God does this because he is the God of Life. 

    The Still Days of mourning, and the many more days when pain, sadness and disappointment scar our lives, must now give way to Easter Days. We can stand and rejoice because Jesus’ promise that he will die and rise for us to have life to the full has come true. Indeed, from this day onwards, we can always stand before God as beloved and worthy of salvation, no matter our struggle with sin. We can do this because Jesus’ resurrection has won for all of us new life with God. 

    The more amazing truth Easter so joyfully celebrates is that God has crossed the threshold of sin and death to forgive us and reclaim us as his own. God renews our world as holy ground. God makes all things new. And God redeems us for eternal life. All this happens because God’s love changes everything.

    Something is also happening to us this Easter. Why we live, what we say, how we act will change.  Paul tells us in the second reading that “If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above”. Jesus’ resurrection lifts out gaze upwards to God. Our lives will change because we will center ourselves on God, and not on earthly things.

    We will be more than disciples; we will become witnesses to preach God’s good news Easter proclaims — that in Jesus crucified and risen all are forgiven. We hear about this transformation in our first reading: the apostles are transformed after encountering the risen Jesus.

    Easter makes this change possible in us. This is because Easter gifts us with the spirit of the risen Jesus who can now take root deep within us to renew us. Then, we can stretch out our hands as far as he did on the Cross to give to all, to uplift everyone. Then, God can lift us up as high as God raised Jesus from the dead. 

    When we dare to let the spirit of the risen Jesus do all this for us, we experience Easter joy into our lives. The power of this joy enlivens us to live happily with God and one another. We can rejoice. Easter Days have come; the Still Days are gone. For as Pope Francis says: Easter breaks our silence about the events of those Still Days and overcomes our fears about the future because the risen Jesus assures us that we are truly alive in God! (Homily, Easter Vigil, 2018).

    So, let us be silent no more. Mourning is over. Let us rejoice. Fullness of life awaits. For today and henceforth, something has happened and is happening still, and we will never be the same again.  

    Truly, Easter is here and Easter is ours. This is so because Christ has risen. Alleluia!




    Preached at Church of the Transfiguration, Singapore
    Artwork: “he is risen”, walter rane (from internet @ lajendi.typepad.com/lajendi/art/)

    Posted by
    Labels: Breaking Open God's Word Easter
    0

    Add a comment

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

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

Pedro Arrupe, sj, Superior General, 1965 - 1983

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

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