1. Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 20 / Sunday 
    Readings: Proverbs 9.1-6 / Psalm 33.2-3, 20-11, 12-13, 14-15 (R/v 9a) / Ephesians 5.15-20 / John 6.51-58


    Dear sisters and brothers, have you ever considered the difference we experience when we clench our fists and we open our palms? The difference matters: a lot.

    Let me begin this week's homily with this story.

    Once there was a farmer called Dmitri. He owned the best olive farm in all of Cyprus. It had the richest soil and produced the juiciest olives. He himself planted the seeds, watered and tendered their growth and when the olives were ripe, he harvested them with his sons. He treasured the rich, fertile soil of his olive farm. When he died, his family buried him with this soil in his clenched, closed fists.

    St Peter welcomed Dimitri to heaven. Dimitri eagerly wanted to enter with the soil from his farm.  St Peter said he could enter if he let go of his soil.  Dimitri clenched his fists tighter, “No. I must carry my soil into heaven.” Day after day, Dimitri came with his clenched, closed hands filled with the soil. Day after day, St Peter turned him away. Then, one day, Dimitri came and said, “I am tired”. Then, he opened his palms, and the soil poured out, falling onto the ground at heaven’s gate. Seeing this, St Peter opened the gate.  And lo and behold, Dimitri saw what God had wanted to offer him when he opened his palms to enter heaven -- his farm again, and now larger, lusher and much more luxuriant. “Welcome, home,” St Peter said as he ushered Dimitri into heaven.

    The difference between clenched fists that speak of Dimitri’s foolishness to have his own way and his opened palms that express a discerning wisdom to receive all that is good is the message of this story. I’d like to suggest that our readings today offer this same message for our Christian life.

    Our first reading is about Wisdom. She is personified as a woman who has prepared a rich banquet of food and wine for many. She calls all to this feast, hoping that those who are foolish, because they want to continue living in their own, set ways, will have a change of heart and step away from them. Then, they will come to eat and drink of Wisdom’s goodness and live.

    Who will come to Wisdom? Yes, those who listen, discern the good she offers and humble themselves.  They will come with opened palms to receive. Who will not come? Those who hold onto their folly, their foolish ways. They choose to continue living with clenched fists.

    Christians must have wisdom to discern their lives and to reject their foolish ways. St Paul teaches this in the second reading. They are to be very careful about the sort of lives they lead in the world where evil is real. They should not live foolish, senseless, and debauched lives. They should live in Jesus’ Spirit, follow God’s will and always be grateful for God’s goodness in Jesus’ name.  Here is Paul exhorting them to live wisely in God’s ways. Those who insist on living their own lives in their ways have clenched fists. The wiser open their palms to receive God’s life and live in God’s ways.

    Closed fists and opened palms, and the choice we must make between them, matters. It must matter to you and me as Christians because of what God wishes to offer. Not a what but really who God wishes us to be with. 

    And this is Jesus  –  “the living bread come down from heaven”. God’s living bread for our nourishment and salvation, and for the life of the world. This is how Jesus offers himself to the Jews, to us and to the world. The Jews fear that his invitation to eat his flesh and drink his blood is an invitation to cannibalism. There are many non-Christians today who share this view about Jesus in communion.

    Jesus is not asking all to eat his flesh and drink his blood literally. Rather, by eating and drinking he is asking the Jews then and us today to appropriate and assimilate into our very being all that he teaches, his vision, his values, his understanding of the meaning and purpose of life. Jesus wants us to imbibe all that he is to God and neighbour: to live fully by loving God faithfully and loving neighbour selflessly. This is how we will have real life.

    What Jesus really invites us to do is to lose ourselves in him alone and completely. To lose ourselves in that radical action of living in him as he lives in us that we hear in today’s gospel. Some translations articulate "living in" as “remaining in”. To remain in is to abide in another, to be one with another, with no other purpose then to become like the other.

    This how the mystery of God works in and through the Eucharist. Our offering of simple bread and ordinary wine are given a new and awesomely profound meaning: they become the very person of Jesus. When we eat this bread and drink this wine, we are invited to live, abide and deepen our relationship with Jesus by becoming more and more like him.

    In Eucharist, we meet God in this mysterious and dramatic way of God giving himself to us through Jesus, with Jesus and in Jesus. In return,  we try through our communion with Jesus to shape our lives, as best as we can, into a loving gift for God.   

    Today, Jesus invites us to choose him. It is a challenging, even dangerous invitation: to choose Jesus is to give God permission to transfigure us to become what we receive – the Body of Christ. 

    Will you and I accept his invitation and open ourselves to God, or will we hold on to the folly of our sinfulness, the foolishness of insisting that my way is better than God’s way?

    I believe we know our answer. We express it so publicly by coming to communion. We say it with faith when we open our hands to receive Jesus in the consecrated host. “The Body of Christ”. “Amen”, we respond with hope in our redemption as Jesus is placed in our opened palms. For a brief moment, we hold God in our human hands, scarred by sin but always imprinted with God’s love, filled with God’s life. We then consume Jesus with trust that we will indeed become what we receive — the Body of Christ.

    Isn’t this what we truly desire in communion and in prayer, in life and at death? To share in God’s life, not just daily and but eternally? In the fragility of the bread and wine is strong food and joyful drink. These are the fruit of God's creation and the work of human hands for us. Together, they are the gift of God who has become one of us.

    It is however the gift of love because of  sacrifice.  We know the quality of such a gift in our lives and that of others because we too have sacrificed ourselves for others. Sacrificed in those human acts of crying for another's woes or laughing for another's joy, or holding a hand in sympathy or just listening when there were no answers.

    For Pope Benedict, “we have to rediscover God, not just any God, but the God that has a human face, because when we see Jesus Christ we see God”.* This is the beauty of the Eucharist we desire: for it is truly Jesus, and in him we know God is close to us and all creation.

    Clenched fist or opened palms. This is the demanding challenge before us today. It is however the more tender and merciful invitation Jesus is making for us to have life to the full. When we say “yes” to this, we will surely taste and see the goodness of the Lord (Psalm 33.9a).

    Let us pray for the wisdom to do what is true, what is good and what is beautiful for God, for ourselves and for others – that we want to come to Jesus and open our palms to receive him through whom God only wants to “bestow on the world all that is good” (Eucharistic Prayer III).




    *Pope Benedict's Interview with Vatican Radio, German Television Networks , 13 August 2006.

    Preached at Church of the Transfiguration
    photo: www.patheos.com


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  2. Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 19/ Sunday, 
    Readings: 1 Kings 19.4-8 / Psalm 33.2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9 (R/v 9a) / Ephesians 4.30-5.2 / John 6.41-5


    Dear sisters and brothers, have you ever found yourself reflecting on why you have been invited to an event?

    Invited to a special event, like a friend’s 21st birthday dinner or a family wedding, your child’s graduation or spouse’s promotion ceremony? Or, invited to the ordinary gatherings of family meals and drinks with friends?

    Today we are here for Mass. We gather to listen to God’s Word, through our readings, and to be nourished by God’s bread, through the Eucharist. We are really here for Jesus who is God’s Word and God’s bread for us.

    Jesus tells us in today’s gospel passage that “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father”.  If Jesus is right, we are only here because God wants us to be here.  

    You might say however that you are here because “I have to fulfil my Sunday obligation”. Or, that “I am accompanying my Catholic spouse and children”. Or, that “I have my warden, my lector, my communion minister, my choir, my altar server duty”. 

    Whatever the reason, I believe that deep down we truly know that we are here because God invites us here – and we have come.

    Why would God invite us here – always invite us here – to Eucharist when we sometimes feel like we shouldn’t be here because we struggle with sin?  Because we are hungry and God knows it.

    We live as hungry people in a hungry world. Isn’t this why we hunger for more than we already have?  More learning and tuition for better grades.  More work opportunities to succeed, to be promoted, to earn more. More pay for more things so we can live the good life. More and more. 

    Yes, to be human and alive is to be always looking for something to sustain and nourish our lives, something that will feed and energise us every day, something that will fill, satisfy and complete our lives. 

    Don’t we already have that? We have faith to give us meaning and family, for purpose. We have shelter, food and health to sustain us. We have enough to live relatively well, with a little more for the extras.  We have citizenship and community, and a share in the common good. I’d like to believe we already have enough – enough bread to live.

    Yet, many of us want more. The problem is not so much that we don’t have but that we are hungry – hungry not for more but hungry really for the right bread to fill us with.

    Metaphorically speaking, the world and us eat many varieties of bread today. 

    In the Middle East, those fighting eat the bread of violence and war. In the US, Republicans and Democrats share the bread of negativity, hostility, and name-calling. In Europe, many eat the bread that they are stronger, purer and better and do not want to share the foreign bread of immigrants and refugees. 

    Closer to home, some eat the bread that never satisfies: local is bad, foreign is good. Some demanding rights and self-expression are forcing their bread onto others, instead of breaking bread together. 

    All of us here have eaten the bread of power of control, of insisting we are right and getting our way. We sometimes eat the bread of hurt feelings and resentment, the bread of loneliness and fear, the bread of sorrow or guilt. Other times, and I hope many a time, we eat bread that gives us life, makes us happy, fulfills our wants, and we generously it with many too.  Yet, we seem to want more.  

    There is indeed an appetite so basic, so powerful, so natural to who we are as humans. This appetite is our hunger for God. For God who alone can complete us and make us happy. This is why we hunger for God: we are made for God.

    In last week’s gospel, the people looked for Jesus to feed them. He offered them God instead.  “Do not work for the food that perishes,” he taught them and us last week, “but for the food that endures for eternal life.” Only God can give food for eternal life. Jesus himself is this food. 

    Today we hear these people murmuring in disbelief that Jesus is God’s bread to them. They cannot believe because they see Jesus only as a man, son of Joseph and Mary. They fail to see him revealing God through his life and ministry. 

    So, Jesus teaches them that it is God who invites and draws them to him. To him who will save them from death.  To him who will teach them about God and to live in God’s ways. To him who they can believe is their bread of life, their  salvation for eternal life. 

    Today’s gospel ends with Jesus proclaiming: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world”. He is indeed the bread of life for us and the world. 

    We come to the Eucharist to receive Jesus in consecrated bread and wine. Do we come really believing in Jesus as God’s bread to feed us in our hunger and to save us in our need

    Jesus is God’s bread that also and always sustains us on earth. This was how Elijah experienced God’s bread come down to him. God’s bread fed and saved him. And it nourished and sustained him for his journey through the desert to God’s mountain. This is why we must pay attention to the angel’s action of waking Elijah up a second time to eat. His action is to teach us that God’s bread is necessary for us: it is bread that strengthens.

    Don’t we come again and again to the Eucharist to be strengthened and sustained, like Elijah? Strengthened and sustained to go through life’s many challenges as we journey home to God? 

    We want Jesus. We hunger for him as our daily bread. But we struggle to come to him because of our sinfulness, our doubts about God and our disappointment with God. 

    Yet God still calls us to come to Jesus. God sends angels into our lives to do this, like God did to Elijah. Who are the family, friends, and fellow Christians who keep inviting us to Jesus, again and again? 

    And isn’t their invitation really to come to Jesus in “The Eucharist”, which Pope Francis reminds us “is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.” (The Joy of the Gospel, §47). Medicine and nourishment to transform us who receive Jesus in faith into a living Eucharist. This is how we become what we receive: the Body of Christ.

    Isn’t this transformation why God invites us repeatedly to come to Jesus? That in Jesus we are not just saved to live and to have the fullness of life, but we also become like Jesus for others. Our transformed lives, Paul reminds us the second reading, will then be marked by Christ-like kindness, compassion, forgiveness towards others, and even sacrificial love to reconcile them to God.   

    Today God invites us, again: not to an event but to the person of Jesus. To Jesus who reveals himself to be God’s Bread. God’s bread we receive in our hands that is broken and distributed for the life of the world. God’s bread that we consume because it is to be eaten, but never exhausted. God’s bread that we say “Amen” to because it consecrates all who believe in Jesus, and eat him. Indeed, Jesus is God’s True Bread to feed our hunger and satisfy our appetite. 

    God’s invitation presents us with a task. To come to Jesus and to taste and see God’s goodness in Jesus who feeds us, saves us, gives us life. We have more to do however. We have to come remembering always that we are hungry, even desperate for the food, the sustenance that Jesus is our lives. This why being hungry for Jesus must matter in our lives.

    Today Jesus reminds us that no one can come to him unless drawn by God. We are here because God invites us in our hunger for life. Aren’t we blessed that God makes us hungry for Jesus, His bread of life? 






    Inspired by the Trappist Monks of St Joseph’s Abbey, Spencer, MA.

    Preached at Church of the Transfiguration
    photo: http://olmlaycarmelites.org

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  3. Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 17 / Thursday


    I believe we all strive to live God's call to holiness. We work hard at getting this right every day. We do this because we sincerely want to live as good Christians so that our hope of being saved can be accomplished.

    Sometimes however we fall into sinfulness, and we feel unworthy to come before God. Yet God desires nothing more than to hold us again and make us anew.

    We hear this truth in our first reading. It offers us the image of the imperfect vessel the potter still takes up. Instead of throwing it away, he holds it again in his hand. More significantly, he holds it to remould and remake it into a more perfect vessel.

    This image of the potter and what he does -- never throwing away but seeking to salvage and make better -- reminds me of God. God who always looks at the good in us. God who values the good in us. God who seeks to discard the bad in us from the good in us, like the householder in today’s gospel who is sorting and cleaning out his storeroom.

    Indeed, God appreciates the good in us as indeed good enough for God to love us and make us better, in spite of our sinfulness and imperfections. Like the potter, God sees beyond the imperfect vessels our lives are to the goodness of the clay, the holy desires we have in life, as worthy to remade, remoulded, and refashioned into something good and much better.

    We can be confident that this is how God wants to work for our wellbeing and happiness because God, like the potter, always holds our imperfect lives in his hands. Nothing is more intimate and life-giving than to be held in someone's hands, especially, if it is God's hands that holds us.

    This is why I am consoled by Hans von Balthasar's understanding that Jesus who descended into the dead will always catch us when we fall into sin*. For Balthasar, Jesus’ descend into the dead on Holy Saturday is God’s assurance that when we fall, Jesus, who has fallen even lower than us, through this act, will indeed be there to break our fall, catch us and lift us up into resurrected life, as God had raised him in the Resurrection from death into life. This should give us confident hope that you and I are indeed meant for salvation in Jesus.

    Let us come to Jesus then as we are -- not so perfect at times but always good enough to God. Let us come to Jesus who wants to catch with his mercy when we sin, hold us in his love and remake us anew with his life. Yes, let us come to Jesus who desires nothing more than to lift us up to God, saved and made whole again.



    *Hans von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale

    Preached at Courage Ministry
    photo: youtube (together in the harvest ministries)


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"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!
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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

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