bukas palad: June 2018

This is the homily I preached at the Opening Mass for the 2018 Lasallian Buttimer Institute Summer Programme

Readings: Wisdom 11: 22 - 12:2 / Psalm 145: 1-2, 8-9, 10-11, 13, 14 (R/v cf 1) / Luke 19.1-10

Sisters and brothers, have you ever considered climbing up higher?

I suspect we struggle with this thought, let alone do it. It involves too much effort and sweat, we say. So we don’t climb up higher often. We would rather find easier ways to climb higher if we have to.

Yet we have climbed to come here today. Not just the many steps to come up this Chapel for Mass, but to reach Manhattan College for our Buttimer Programme. Wherever we have come from and wherever we disembarked at in New York City, be it Penn Station, JFK or Newark, airports or a bus station in the city, we have all metaphorically climbed up to be here at 109 feet above sea level.

This is a detail many of us would not know. But it is a significance we should attend to and reflect on as we begin our Buttimer experience.

Climbing up higher is very much part of today’s gospel.

We know this gospel well. Zacchaeus is a short man. He wants to see Jesus. There is a crowd. He climbs up a tree. He encounters Jesus. They return to Zacchaeus’ home. Zacchaeus has a change of heart; he lives differently.

Many homilies focus on the act of seeing and the miracle of transformation. Today I’d like to suggest we focus on Zacchaeus’ climb because it offers us three thoughts to meditate what Buttimer can mean for us.

First, climbing up creates necessary distance. Zacchaeus climbs up the tree because of his limitation and the discrimination he suffers as a tax collector. If he stayed on the ground, he would not be able to see Jesus. He would be caught up in the crowd. He would be overwhelmed by the masses and submerged by their collective concerns. He would be prevented from meeting Jesus. And so, he climbs up in hope to see Jesus. This is his deepest desire.

We are like Zaccheaus in Buttimer. We want to see too. We want to see and encounter John Baptist de la Salle better. To know him as Founder. To understand his pedagogy. To live his spirituality.

But we too are caught in the crowd that surrounds us every day. The crowds around us immerse us in many everyday concern each of us has as educator or administrator, as family and friend, as person and believer. In the everydayness and crowdedness of life that we are so closely connected with, we cannot see so clearly.

So we need to climb. We need to climb physically, emotionally, and psychologically. Most of all we need to climb spiritually to see, to know and to follow de la Salle, and the Jesus he himself followed. Buttimer affords us space to climb. It is a graced space.

Second, climbing up gives right perspective. Climbing up, now higher, Zacchaeus can see better. He sees the crowds below. He observes the action unfolding. He recognises Jesus coming towards him and the crowds. Most of all, climbing up higher allows Zacchaeus to see Jesus calling out to him -- Jesus calling out to him, even before he called out to Jesus. Here is true perspective Zacchaeus learns: that it is Jesus who always comes to him, and to all, first. This is right perspective he gains.

Here we are at Buttimer. Many reasons bring us here. Our desires and hopes. Someone else’s instructions and commands. Time to renew. Time to rest. Time to take a bite of the Big Apple. Whatever our reasons, I’d like to suggest that our climb to be here to Buttimer will help us open our eyes, and even more open our hearts to the one who has really called us here: God alone. Not ourselves. Not someone else. Everything in Buttimer can help us to become aware of this right perspective, so as to know this truth.

But even more this, I believe God calls us here to give us clearer perspective of who it is we follow, whose pedagogy we use in class, whose spirituality informs our daily prayer and our constant charity: de la Salle.

Third, climbing up helps us on our way again. Jesus calls out to Zacchaeus who is up a tree. But he encounters Jesus by calling him down to continue his way in life again. To continue as a changed man however. To continue like Jesus does with compassion for others.

This transformation is the mercy of God for his own creation; God is never one to discard his creation. He always loves it. His love transforms the created to become a bit more divine by becoming a lot more human each time his mercy forgives and renews. We hear this truth in our first reading. This must be today’s good news we hear and our hope for the journey onward.

Hope because we who have climbed up to Buttimer will climb down when this programme ends and we have to return back to our workplaces and homes. The value of Buttimer in our lives will not be in the knowledge we gain. Rather, it will be in the transformed lives we bring to all. God’s gift of transformed lives we can have when we predispose ourselves to Jesus, like Zacchaeus did, by climbing up.

Will you and I predispose ourselves to encountering Jesus who wants to transform in our choice to climb up in Buttimer?

I believe all of us want to be transformed because we know the grace of climbing up is to meet Jesus. Here in Buttimer, God is opening our eyes and hearts to know more fully, to love more intimately and to follow more closely Jesus who worked in de la Salle’s life and ministry. And Jesus worked particularly by empowering de la Salle to do the very opposite of climbing up -- to lower himself before God, to empty himself for God, to create space in his life to be with God, in such ways as:

to give up wealth and become poor for the Brothers and students to have more and have life;

to give up the status of a canon-priest and to remain a founder-priest so that the mission could thrive; and

to give up control and command and to led God increasingly and imperceptivity shape him and the mission.

This downward movement of becoming less so that God can become more in us is really what you and I are being challenged to embrace in our choice to climb up in Buttimer.

Will we dare to do this by giving ourselves permission to climb out of our comfort zones about who we are as Lasallians, to breakdown our fixed mind-sets about Lasallian education, to expand our understanding of de la Salle, and even during these two weeks, to reach out to one and another in the spirit of Lasallian fraternity?

May be if we dare to do some of these -- totally, freely and loving – and more during Buttimer -- we might come to know that what was so true and alive for de la Salle in history must also be for us today. What this truth, this wisdom, this joy is is what we see and hear in a transformed Zacchaeus.

And it is simply this: that our lives have no meaning apart from Jesus who lives in us. Indeed, “live Jesus in our hearts forever”.

Preached at Buttimer Institute, Manhanttan College. New York City

photo: kbat.com (Internet)

Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 9/ Solemnity of Corpus Christi

Readings: Exodus 24.3-8 / Psalm 115.12-13, 15, 16bc, 17-18 (R/v 13) / Hebrews 9.11-15 / Mark 14.12-16, 22-16

Food. It has a special place in our lives. We cannot live without it. May be this is why we make a fuss about food.

“You must eat to grow taller”, my sister tells her growing children. “Don’t play with your food”, my grandmother used to say to me. “Never waste your food”, my father often reminded us.“If it’s good food, we’ll eat there”, my brother, the foodie, announces whenever we are looking for a place to eat.

I am sure you have heard the same pronouncements in your family and among friends.

We make a greater fuss over important food. Much fanfare surrounds the sugee cake at a Eurasian baby’s Christening. Peranakans spend hours preparing for the Tok Panjang dinners. We light the candles and dim the lights as we parade the birthday cake in a hearty “Happy Birthday” song. In fact, every culture has peculiar customs relating to food, because food is important and worth making a fuss over.

As Catholics, we believe the Eucharist is the most important food we have. So, what sort of fuss do we make about it?

The Eucharist is the summit of our worship. The Eucharist is at the center of our lives. We especially celebrate the Eucharist with today’s solemnity of Corpus Christi or the Holy Body and Blood of Christ. We parade the Eucharist in procession. We expose it for adoration. We celebrate all the major feasts in the Church with the Eucharist. We commemorate our lives with the Eucharist: First Communion and Confirmation, weddings and funerals. Yes, all this is how we make a fuss about the Eucharist.

But the Eucharist is also unusual food. It is the living presence of Jesus. With eyes of faith, we believe that bread and wine are completely changed into the body and blood of Christ when a priest consecrates them at Mass. Thus, Jesus is with us wherever we parade or expose the Blessed Sacrament at. And Jesus is still in the Eucharist if we drop the host by accident. And yes, no sacrilege to the host harms Jesus, though the one who damages the host harms his soul. Here in the Eucharist, all initiative and power is indeed Jesus Christ’s.

“This is my body”. “This is my blood”. With these words, Jesus offers himself as food for our journey, daily bread that we pray for and God’s gift for our lives. We hear these words at every Eucharist we celebrate. We will hear them in a bit. We heard them in today’s gospel. But what do those words mean to you and me? What do you think Jesus is saying to us in these words?

I believe we would be so wrong to think that there is only one action when we eat the Eucharist: that we alone consume and incorporate into our bodies Jesus Christ. The miracle of Eucharist is that we become the Body of Christ. We do because Jesus himself ‘consumes’ us and makes us part of his body. In fact, this should be the greater fuss we make today about the Eucharist.

Jesus consuming us. It is hard to understand how this can happen. Today’s gospel helps us understand how Jesus does this: by making us one with him.

The disciples ask Jesus, “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?” It appears they are will take charge of the preparations. But it is Jesus who is in complete control. He instructs them on what to do and where to find the room. He tells them to ask the owner, “Where is my guest room, where I am to eat the Passover with my disciples?”

“My guest room”, Jesus says. Not the owner’s room. The disciples find it 'furnished and ready'. No one but Jesus could prepared this room.

Here in this guest room Jesus will be with his disciples for the Passover. Here in this space they will have their last supper. Here in this place Jesus will make this promise: “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may also be” (John 14. 2-3).

Jesus’ promise comes alive each time we eat the Eucharist. Yes, we receive Jesus sacramentally in the Eucharist. And as we do, Jesus receives us into himself “that where I am, there may you also be”.

We come to communion to receive Jesus. We come with our joys and hopes, our griefs and the anxieties. And in communion Jesus comes to us. Comes to lift us up from the earthly to the heavenly, to that upper space where we will be with Jesus and the Father. “Where I am, there may you also be”.

Our first reading echoes this good news. We may find Moses dashing blood onto the altar and people repulsive. But for the Israelites, it symbolises new life given by God and to be lived toward God. Here is God calling humankind to be one with God. Here the Israelites are being invited to commit themselves to God by living in God’s ways.

No blood is splashed or dashed upon us at Mass. Instead, the Eucharist is always offered to us at Mass. Do we recognise in the Eucharist God’s same invitation for us to have fullness of life and the same call to us to live as God’s people?

We can celebrate God’s gift and God’s call if we profess that the Eucharist is truly Jesus’ self-sacrifice for us to live and love fully, like he did for God and for neighbour. If we do, we make the message of our second reading real and alive for many and us. That Jesus’ death and resurrection brings about cleansing from and forgiveness of our sins so that we can live in a new way: worshipping the living God and living fully new life the risen Jesus gives.

To live fully, we must accept that the new life we receive in Holy Communion transforms us to do with our lives what Jesus did with his for everyone: that we become bread broken for others, that we pour out our lives for all, as Jesus did on the cross. When we do, we live as the Body of Christ.

Today we are being asked to make a great big fuss about the Eucharist. But really it is God who makes a great big fuss about us.

God’s great big fuss is that we are gifted to receive the Eucharist, to become the Body of Christ through the Eucharist, and as the Body of Christ to heal and uplift the world.

God’s great big fuss is that it is right and good that we eat Jesus’ body and drink his blood so that we become his body and his blood for the many who are hungry, thirsty, in prison, needing forgiveness, wanting hope, seeking a better life.

God’s great big fuss is that the Eucharist will always be God’s divine food for us. It is, it must be because Eucharist is Jesus who loves us and desires to give himself lavishly upon us, so that where he is, we might also be.

"Believe what you see, see what you believe and become what you are: the Body of Christ”, St Augustine wrote about the Eucharist. And he added: “when we say ‘Amen’, we are saying ‘Yes! I believe this is the Body and Blood of Christ and that I will be the Body of Christ to others’”.

Yes, the Eucharist is indeed God’s divine food for you and me. It must always have a special place in our lives. You and I, we cannot live without the Eucharist.

Inspired in parts by the writings of Fr Leon Pereira, OP

Preached at Church of the Transfiguration

photo: www.connectacec.com (from the internet)

bukas palad

with open hands, we give what we have first received. and with open hands, we receive what we will divest, once again. this is blessing itself: the giving and receiving of life and love, the sharing of faith and God.

Homily: Climb Up

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Homily: Eucharist

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