1. Year A / Christmastide / Feast of the Holy Family
    Readings: Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14 / Psalm: 128:1-2, 3, 4-5 / Colossians 3:12 / Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

    Sisters and brothers, we are almost there: the end of 2019. Just three days more after all the ups and downs this year. 

    We have all had a year filled with many blessings and many challenges. We have had good days and bad days. We have had people who loved and supported us and people who disappointed and hurt us. We have done likewise: touched their lives, making them happy and better, but we have also wounded them with our words and actions

    This past year we have also experienced God’s faithful accompaniment daily, God’s merciful forgiveness repeatedly, God’s life-giving providence always. If we are honest God’s love has constantly called us to become a little holier. Hasn’t God helped us do this?

    If you look back on this year, what are you grateful for?

    Today is the Feast of the Holy Family. It is a joyful feast; it celebrates the family and all that is good about belonging, living and loving together. 

    It is also a difficult feast. Some experience brokenness and separation in their families. Others, the lack of love and understanding, the absence of forgiveness and reconciliation, the poverty of being family or knowing how to be a family. It’s hard to be thankful if our families are struggling to love, hurting when forgiveness is withheld, aching when others misunderstand us.

    Yet here we are almost at year’s end. Haven’t our families, because of their love that supports or their failings that make us hope more, revealed God walking with us? Is this good enough to give thanks for?

    Our gospel reading is about the difficult, challenging, even painful experiences the Holy Family face. They are persecuted. They are refugees. They are poor. They depend on the goodness of others, like the innkeeper who provided the stable, the shepherds with their company, the wise men with their gifts.

    If we focus on the Holy Family’s struggle more closely, we may see clearer God’s action in their lives. God’s enduring goodness provides, protects and prepares them to grow in holiness as a family.

    What does it mean to be holy? A family that is holy? 

    Listen to these concrete behaviours the First Reading suggests: honouring and respecting each other and obeying one’s parents. In the Second Reading, St Paul has the same instruction to families and the Church as a family: be compassionate and kind, be humble and gentle, be patient and forgiving.

    Is this how our families, at home and as a parish, interacted this year? Is there room for improvement?

    Holiness is not a goody-goody, otherworldly mode of living. It involves living realistically by engaging life in all its facets, especially, the difficulties, struggles, and tensions of human life and relationships.

    Holy people don’t run away from these everyday realities. Rather, they engage them as God wants them to. God always meets their faithfulness with his loving fidelity – his holy presence and his saving labour.

    Today’s gospel passage proclaims this truth. Joseph protects and provides for his family because God wants to safeguard them from danger and to bring them home safe. Whether going or coming Joseph is attentive to his family’s needs. He can do this because he is first and foremost attentive to God’s presence and guidance in his life and family. I believe Joseph shared this wisdom with Mary and taught it to Jesus. 

    Scripture teaches us that Jesus, Mary and Joseph discerned God’s will, risked change for each other’s growth and good and united themselves as family faithful to God and each other. 

    Today, we are being invited to be this same kind of family – holy. How can we be, you ask, when my family is struggling? 

    Perhaps, by first recognizing God's good labour in our families. It is much easier to identify and celebrate God’s goodness. When everything is well and we feel blessed, it is easy to give thanks. We readily count God's blessings in our successes, in the positive impact we made, in how far we have progressed, in how much we have done. And we delight in them.

    But can we see God's goodness in our family’s weaknesses and limitations, our mistakes and faults, even our sinfulness, and to still give thanks? It is challenging. 

    We can by reminding ourselves constantly of how much God is with us in our weaknesses and limitations, our mistakes and our errors. And not just present, but God labouring to comfort and forgive us, to set us right and accompany us to become better, and so saves us. 

    A report card summarises progress. What would a report card on our family life for 2019 show? 

    How shall we write it? By reflecting honestly on whether we were weak enough for God to work in our lives this year. For in our weakness, God's grace abounds. It certainly did in the life of the Holy Family.

    Here are three questions for our review

    First, were we weak enough to recognize our need for God? If we did, were we surprised that God faithfully and repeatedly came to us and laboured for our wellbeing and happiness? If we answer ‘yes’, then you and I would have learned that our weakness is graced. Our weakness is the very space God fills us with His Spirit. This Spirit that frees us from burdens to live a flourishing and fruitful life. 

    This is how the Holy Family lived trusting God. Can we trust that our families are the very spaces where God is working for us in the best and worst of times?

    Second, were we broken enough to be Christ-like? Our families teach us how to grow up and become persons and Christians. But they also break us to form us anew into the persons God wants us to become -- always better than we are. 

    Families are the right places for this transformation. Here our small-mindedness and arrogance, our selfishness and individualism, our hard-heartedness and fixed mindsets are broken. Broken again and again so that we can become a family who accompanies and cares, loves and forgives each other. Ultimately what we are broken for is to become what we are in Communion: the Body of Christ. This is Jesus for you and me. And in us and through us, Jesus makes his saving presence real for all. 

    This is how the Holy Family lived for one another and God. Does their self-sacrificing love invite us to practice sacrificial love for family and community?  

    Third, were we brave enough to be totally dependent on God who wants to serve and lift us up? The Holy Family depended totally on God’s providence and guidance in everything. God never failed. Their radical dependence on God assures and delights them. 

    Can we make the Holy Family’s way of relying completely on God to be our family way too?

    If we are following the example of the Holy Family, give thanks. If we desire to follow them, give thanks too. And if we have many other blessings for this year, give thanks also. 

    As we do this, I pray we may be more like the Holy Family this year: giving thanks for God’s love shining through when those moments when they were weak, broken and brave only to discover the profound truth about being human. 

    You and I already know it. We have experienced it repeatedly this past year. 

    Let me explain. Today, St Paul says, “Over all these, to keep them together and complete them, put on love.” But we know from our experience how often it is really God who first and always cloaks us in his love.

    This deeper truth rightly focuses our thanksgiving for this year. Not for the many things or blessings received but for the one who gives -- who gives nothing less than himself. 

    How can we then not delight in this giver, God with us? 



    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: adamkatzsinding.com


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  2. Year A / Christmas / Christmas Day 
    Readings Isaiah 52.7-10 / Psalm 97.1,2-3ab, 3cd-4, 5-6 (R/v 3) / Hebrews 1.1-6 / John 1.1-5, 9-14


    Sisters and brothers, today is Christmas. Many of us will gather with family and friends for meals and drinks; there will be good cheer and glad tidings shared. We will greet each other. We will catch up on the past year. We will speak to one another.

    What do you hope to hear today? Greetings of “Merry Christmas”, “Holy Christmas”, “Blessed Christmas”? Or, words of love and expressions of loving between family and friends. Or maybe, thanksgiving and gratitude for the gifts we give each other, and, hopefully, for the gift we are?

    Why would we wish to hear these words? Because today of all days in the year, on this holy Christmas day, we are filled with so much joy overflowing that we want to give and share and to receive and welcome. 

    There is someone like this. Once he gave everything he had, including that which he treasured most. He gave so that others might receive. Not just receive but also embrace his most cherished gift. He does this so that we can delight when we receive it. This giver is God and we are the receivers.

    John the Evangelist tells us what God gave us once in history: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3.16). God continues to give us Jesus. Christmas reminds us of this truth.

    Today’s gospel is about God’s Word. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God” (John 1.1).  Jesus is God’s Word come down to us. Come down as radiant light to guide. Come down as daily bread to feed. Come down as healing balm to restore. Come down as consoling wisdom to guide. Come down as grace upon grace for us to have life to the fullest. Come down to save us. 

    Come down to simply, and joyfully, reveal the face of God to us and his immense saving love for all.

    What do we hear about God’s Word at Christmas? The angels heralded it, announcing Jesus as the Christ and his peace to all people of goodwill. The shepherds came to adore him as God’s Word alive, now in our midst.  Mary and Joseph held their newborn and loved him.

    This is what we will see when we stand before the infant Jesus in the crib or manger in Church. But if we look longer, more intensely, we will also see him — this vulnerable, helpless baby — with outstretched hands, waiting. 

    Waiting for what? Waiting for you and me to pause, to quieten ourselves, to open our hearts before him, the Infant Jesus, as we go about celebrating Christmas today, and living day to day, to just listen. More honestly to dare to listen to him who is in our hearts. Hearts that like the crib or manger are sometimes messy and smelly, dirtied and soiled by sin, our sin. Yet God values us as worthy enough — very worthy enough, in fact — to be his dwelling place. Yes, God is indeed dwelling in our hearts. In Jesus, with Jesus and through Jesus, God is with us.

    When we dare to listen to Jesus, what will we hear him say as he reaches out to lift us up, as he always does before we even reach out to him? Simply this: “You are mine.”

    Maybe then we will understand that God is also waiting to hear from us. Waiting with a great big heart to welcome and receive us, no matter our state of grace. Waiting to hear nothing more than these words I believe are the right, humble and joyful words that are the best we can say in response to Jesus: “And I, Lord, I belong to You”.

    A Blessed Christmas! 



     A reflection
    photo: outdooornativitystore.com

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  3. Year A / Advent / Week 4 / Sunday 
    Readings: Isaiah 7.10-14 / Psalm 23.1-2, 3-4ab, 5-6  / Romans 1.1-7 / Matthew 1.18-24


    Sisters and Brothers, Jesus is coming. He comes for the world, especially for us by entering those dark, hard recesses in all our hearts in order to light up our lives. This is the joyful news Christmas proclaims. We have every reason to rejoice. 

    But this mystery of Jesus’ birth is not just for next Wednesday. We should celebrate it in our day to day life.  How can we not when God comes to dwell among us every moment? We only have to open our hearts in trust to welcome God.  

    We all want to do this. Yet, sometimes, we doubt and we turn our backs on God. At other times, we fail to do what is right and just. Now and again, we don’t even know what to do. In all of this, we can miss God and his graces for us. But God keeps coming like God will in Jesus at Christmas.

    Why would God keep coming to us?

    Today we hear of a dream that changed Joseph’s life and ours. A dream like what we have at night. A dream so important for the safety of Mary and the child Jesus. And if we are humble enough to admit it, a dream equally important for our salvation.  

    We would be wise to reflect on Joseph’s encounter with God in a dream. It offers an example of what we ought to do to experience God who is with us like Mary and Joseph did. 

    In Joseph’s dream, an angel of the Lord tells him that Mary’s pregnancy is God’s work. She readily accepted it but without really understanding. The angel tells him that he should not be afraid of the pregnancy, even though he has not yet married Mary.

    How can he not be afraid? Mary is pregnant but unmarried. Many around Joseph see Mary as an unfaithful Jew; she had conceived outside of the sacred act of marriage. She is a sinner. He needs to end their engagement. Hence he arranges for a ‘quiet divorce’. Yet the angel conveys God’s message that he take Mary as his wife. He is perturbed. 

    Have we not received perturbing news like Joseph before? News that disturbed and confused us. News that we didn’t know how to react to or to accept. News that paralysed us from taking action. How did you react when you received such perturbing news?

    But what if this news is really from God? From God who comes to us in our most difficult, challenging, and saddest moments because God wants to be with us and to do good things for us?

    I believe that this was Joseph’s struggle with the dream, particularly, with God’s message the angel announced. Can he really trust this dream he has? He did for after this, he reversed his decision to divorce Mary. He took her as his wife and stood by her at Jesus’ birth. This commitment to do God’s will empowered him to protect them as they fled to Egypt and provide for them as husband and father.

    So why in the world would Joseph reverse himself and trust a dream? 

    For many of us, dreams are about our psyche processing our everyday experience. They do not give us literal truth. We cannot rely on them for life-changing messages. Yet Joseph did. We might be able to better understand his actions if we use the lens of Ignatian discernment.  

    Discernment is about examining the internal reactions or movements in our hearts, especially in prayer. There are many movements. Do they lead us toward God or away? Do they move us to do God’s will or refuse it? How do they affect our relationship with God in the long-term? Are they quiet, helping us to sense God’s saving presence? This is why we need spiritual directors. They help us to discern which experiences are from God and which are not.

    There is one movement in Joseph’s dream that can help us understand his experience of God.  “It is a grace so gently strong that the person who is praying has an inner assurance that the experience did not come from imagination but from God. Somehow it is impossible to doubt it”(1).

    I believe that this is the movement at work in Joseph as he dreamt. It gave him a quiet certainty that God is with him. More than this, he was convicted that God indeed labours for his good and the good of others. He probably still had doubts and he certainty feared public disgrace to take Mary as his wife. But he had a clarity that God is with him and God’s will is best. 

    Such certainty and clarity gave him peace and courage to do as God commanded: he took Mary into his home

    This clarity also enabled Joseph to recognise that the state of affairs in his life is not what it appears to be. “Mary is not unfaithful, but faithful. Mary is with child, but a virgin. The infant is not only an earthly child, but also a heavenly One. Yet the infant is not heaven-bound, but an earth-bound Emmanuel. Joseph is not the father, but in a father’s role names the Child Jesus.” By cooperating with God, Joseph experienced that “something altogether new is happening: mystery abounds, ‘God is with us’”(2). 

    Today, God is offering us this same clarity. It can help us be at peace in these final days of Advent and wise in the actions needed at this time. At peace that God trusts us to welcome him. Wise, to prepare ourselves better for Christmas, even if our Advent preparations so far are lukewarm or non-existent.

    Yes, the Lord is coming, and we must be extra vigilant. We need to be because we are amidst mounting distractions that demand we begin Christmas early: the parties, the gift giving, the merry-making.  Such clarity that we must be extra vigilant keeps us focussed on God who is coming to be with us. It enables us to stay on the right path toward Christmas. 

    This assurance reminds us of Pope Francis’ call when Advent began – that we should “assume an attitude of pilgrimage, of walking towards Christ”(3). So, let us keep walking towards him. No, not walk anymore but run. Run towards him who is the hope we expectantly await for.  “A hope that cannot disappoint because it is founded on God’s Word”(4).  

    And God’s word is Jesus.

    Jesus who God revealed in Joseph’s dream to be no other than ‘God is with us’. Revealed like a mother’s face expressing love to her child with a smile. Like a father’s mercy embracing the stray and wayward home in forgiveness.  Like the voice of a close friend who assures all, “Be not afraid; I am with you always.”

    This is the mystery at work in our lives right now.  It is of God. It promises something new happening to us soon, and very soon. God wants us to have it. We can when relinquish control and expectation, and simply open ourselves to God’s unexpected love.  

    How can we prepare for this? By praying for the “grace of apostleship” and the “obedience of faith” that Paul models for Christians in the second reading. They will enable us to cooperate with God like Mary and Joseph did. We should do this for no other purpose than to allow something altogether new to come alive in us. 

    What is this?  The surprising joy that Jesus comes to you and me not in a crib or manger in Church but in our hearts. Here is where God desires to come to birth. In us. In that crib that is each of our hearts. Here, to stay with us. And more than stay, to labour for our happiness and salvation always.  

    Here in us, and nowhere else, is ‘God is with us’.

    Can there be anything better than this for us to truly ever want this Christmas and in life?





    (1) John Foley, SJ, “An Inner Assurance”
    (2) Anne Zimmerman et al, “Working with Word”, The Sunday Website.
    (3) Pope Francis, Angelus, First Sunday of Advent, 2019
    (4) Pope Francis, Angelus, First Sunday of Advent, 2013



    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    Photo: modernagespirituality.com

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  4. Year A / Advent / Week 3 / Sunday 
    Readings: Isaiah 35.1-6a, 10 / Psalm 146  / James 5.7-10 / Matthew 11.2-11


    Sisters and brothers, today is Gaudete Sunday. In Latin, Gaudete means “rejoice”. Jesus is our reason for rejoicing: he is coming. This will happen. It is imminent. He is very near.  Yes, we have every reason to be joyful and sing, "Hallelujah".

    But are you and I really feeling joyful? 

    Throughout Advent, we read and reflect on Isaiah’s hope-filled words. Words like these that we have heard.  God will establish his house amongst the people. God will prepare a feast for them on the mountain. God will remove the mourning veil and destroys death.  God will turn suffering and grief into healing and comfort. God will bring wolf and lamb to lie down beside each other. God will bring joy to the lowly. God will gather his own and carry them in his bosom.

    They echo an expectant and joyful refrain: God is faithful; God is coming; God will save his peoples. 

    We hear this same refrain in our first reading. Like the exiled Israelites, Isaiah is addressing, what we hear should astonish us too.  

    Astonish us for “the parched land shall exult and bloom; they shall bloom with abundant flowers”. You might say, doesn’t God do this year after year, with today’s rains? But this is the desert: dry, barren, wasted land. It now rejoices, Isaiah declares, because it ‘sees the glory of the Lord and the splendour of our God’. This is unexpected. We should be astonished. 

    Astonished too, Isaiah adds, to see how God “strengthens the hands that are feeble, makes the weak knees strong….opens the eyes of the blind, clears the ears of the deaf, gives strength for the lame to leap like a stag and the tongue of the speechless to sing….And for those in exile, God will bring them home with song and everlasting joy.”

    For Isaiah, all this heralds the unexpectedness of God and God’s unexpected saving love. They will console and comfort the Israelites. More so, they will bring joy. Joy to seize these Israelites’ hearts and uplift them in rejoicing. 

    Are we equally astonished by the unexpectedness of God’s action in our own lives? Astonished enough to want to rejoice?

    Or, will our response be, “But really?”

    Such was a young lady’s response at an Advent sharing group I was part of in Boston. We were reflecting on Isaiah’s readings in preparation for Christmas. Many were encouraged by his writings about Jesus’ coming while the few who struggled with their faith were consoled. “But really?” she asked. 

    Haven’t we asked this same question of the Lord, whether in prayerful need, in frustrating anger or in disappointing confusion? 

    Asked it when things didn’t go our way or our hearts are broken by rejection, or when we struggled to provide for our family, or our best efforts led to nought? Asked it when common sense isn’t so common in society, when compassion is sorely lacking in community, when deceit, injustice, and hate are increasingly acceptable behaviour? Asked it most poignantly as we struggle with our repeated sins of gossiping, of watching pornography, of not loving enough: “Lord, is your mercy, really, so boundless to forgive me, really save me even with my messed up lives of lies, addiction and hatred?”

    How has God answered us? Always with a “Yes!” 

    I suspect we struggle to accept God’s immense goodness, often so unexpected. We do because the human tendency is to doubt, to fret, to be sceptical. So we keep asking, “But, really?” 

    When we do so, we are at odds with Advent. This time of the Christian year dedicated to expectant longing and to believing that God is mysteriously at work to save. Evil and conflict are real but they are not ultimate. What is, is God. God’s grace and redemption are certain.

    Advent assures us that God is coming. He will answer our many ‘But really?” questions. More truly, he is the answer we seek – so unexpected surely but the truth certainly.  

    In the second reading, James tells us that those who wait for the Lord are like a farmer “waiting for the precious fruit of the land”. Such an expectation cannot be anything but joyful. One is willing to wait; it will be worthwhile. Honestly, such waiting is tough. James reminds his listeners and us to therefore “strengthen our hearts, because the Lord’s coming has drawn near”. Many might miss his alert; we take this as another Mass reading in Advent. 

    But those waiting expectantly for God would catch James repeating the “Lord’s coming” twice and stating emphatically that the Lord, “the Judge is standing before the doors”. They paid attention. They know their expectant joy is near.

    Yes, the Lord is close. But how close, really? 

    I’d like to suggest that this need to know moves John the Baptist to instruct his disciples to ask Jesus this question, “Are you the one who is to come, or have we got to wait for someone else?”

    Though John the Baptist is in prison, he hears of Jesus’ good works, and wonders if he is the Messiah.  Hence, his question. It is to answer his hope for the Messiah. Like him, our Advent preparations are to help us confirm that Jesus is our hope in life. 

    “Really? Are you the one who is to come?” We do not ask because we doubt. We ask because we believe, and want to strengthen our faith that Jesus is indeed God’s Saviour for us. 

    Jesus answers John the Baptist’ question not by confirming that he is.  Instead, he tells John the Baptist’s disciples to see the joyful unexpectedness of God already working in their midst, all around them – the handicapped are cured, the sick are healed, the marginalised are restored, and the lowly are uplifted. 

    Then, he reflects with the crowd on how God’s unexpected goodness empowers John the Baptist to announce the expectant Messiah. God’s goodness, moreover, raises no one greater than John the Baptist from among those born of women. This is how God holds up this prophet as the one we must hear and follow if we want to prepare well for Jesus’ coming.

    But it is through John the Baptist that Jesus reveals who God wants to really be close to. He says: “‘But the one of least significance in the Kingdom of the Heavens is more important than him.” Presumably this “one of least significance” refers to you and me. 

    Did you expect this line to be about you, about us?  Surely, this is totally unexpected. It is truly surprising. This is indeed remarkably good news. 

    We are the ones the Lord wants to come very close to. Are you astonished?  Really?

    God’s unexpected goodness is that he has come to us. And with us, God is labouring for us because his only desire is to always be very close to us.

    Our task on this Gaudete Sunday, and all this week, is to keep a look out for God. He comes always in many simple, ordinary ways. We’ll meet God if we but open our eyes in joy.

    What do you think you will see if you did so?  For me, it was watching a young Malay boy sheltering an old Chinese lady under his small umbrella from the bus stop, over the overheard bridge to her HDB block in this incessant rain. His kindness cared for her: she was dry; he got drenched.

    Here is God very near to us. He is because we are very dear to him. 

    Yes, we have every reason to rejoice. Not because God is coming in two weeks’ time in Jesus in the Christmas manger. But because God is already here with us, and he will never stop coming into our lives to save us. 

    This is why there is only one answer to that question John the Baptist is asking Jesus and we echo in Advent, “But really, are you the one?” Knowing how very close God is to us, our joyful answer can only be, “Yes, really!” 



    Preached at St Ignatius Church and the Church of the Transfiguration, Singapore
    Photo: from the internet

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  5. Year A / Advent / Week 2 / Sunday  
    Readings: Isaiah 11.1-10 / Psalm 72.2, 7-8, 12-13, 17 (R/v cf 7) / Romans 15.4-9 / Matthew 3.1-12


    Sisters and brothers, have you read a “whodunit” mystery novel, like The Hound of Baskerville by Arthur Conan Doyle? The kind whose complex plot is riddled with many clues for you to discover and solve the mystery like the protagonist does?

    What if Advent is a bit like a “whodunit” mystery we are trying to make sense of?

    In ancient times, humankind waited expectantly to encounter God. They called this waiting Advent. They tried to understand who God is and why God is important in their lives. They tried to make sense of how God worked in their lives. 

    We do the same today — trying to make sense of our own waiting, our own Advent. In faith, we understand Christmas as the fulfillment of Advent: God comes into human time and space to save us in the person of Jesus. 

    Everybody likes Christmas: everything about it is good, joyful, bountiful, and blessed. But Advent comes before Christmas so that we can prepare ourselves to go deeper into the true meaning of Christmas. 

    Go deeper by going beyond the superficialities of Christmas: Christmas trees and trimmings, twinkling lights and feel-good carols, prettily wrapped up presents and the merriment of gatherings. Go deeper to appreciate that God comes to us in Jesus to save us from sin and death, and so draw us to God and to live life with God. 

    Today the Prophet Isaiah gives us a hope-filled vision of life with God when God’s Saviour comes to us: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together” (Isaiah 11:6). Justice will reign. Peace will flourish.  Unity will come true. 

    As people of faith, we want this vision of hope to be real in daily life, especially when our world offers much dread, disappointment, and despair. Where will we find this hope for God and live with God? In those around us who live with hope, St Paul teaches in our second reading: “Everything that was written long ago in the scriptures was meant to teach us something about hope from the examples scripture gives of how people who did not give up were helped by God” (Romans 15.4).

    Our gospel offers us such a person of hope for our reflection: John the Baptist. Going deep in hope is exactly how John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus’ coming. He is more than a voice crying out in the wilderness that the Lord is coming. He models for us the way to welcome Jesus. It begins by entering into the wilderness, in particular, the wilderness of one’s life – those dark, sinful parts we hide and avoid – to meet God there in the hope God's mercy will forgive. This encounter cracks open our hard hearts, making them tender to anticipate, welcome and embrace the saving gift of Jesus into our lives.

    John the Baptist’s example should shock us into action. It is not his appearance or diet, his threatening language or truthful message that do this. Rather, it is this observation he makes and puts into action in his life: “Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees” (Matthew 3.10). He has laid the axe to those parts of his life that need to be chopped away. This is how he empties himself totally to welcome and receive God. 

    How should we interpret this clue that John the Baptist is for our Advent preparations? John the Baptist's example is the Advent clue for us to also empty ourselves for God: this is the only way for us to prepare well to receive Jesus. Advent demands we lay the axe to our lives and chop down the root of the habits of greed, shame and selfishness we practice. Then, we will create space within us for God’s coming.

    Advent calls us to enter into the wilderness of our lives. Like John the Baptist, we too have to depend solely on God in the wilderness.  When we do, God can transform us. In the wilderness, John emptied himself of his fear and ego, and God formed him into the prophet who announces Jesus’ coming and the power of Jesus to forgive. What wilderness have you to enter? Who do you want God to transform you into?

    Today’s first reading also offers us a second clue to the Advent mystery. “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots” (Isaiah 11.1). This is an unusual image to picture Jesus’ coming. 

    A shoot growing out of the stump of a chopped down tree is, in fact, an eyesore. This is why it is called a sucker in Biology class. In Scripture, however, this shoot is valued. It symbolizes Israel that God lovingly protects and perpetuates. Israel’s enemies tried everything to end the family line of Jesse from which David became King and Jesus comes as the long expectant Messiah. They failed; God prevailed.

    How should we interpret this clue? This tiny shoot is about to sprout. It is fragile yet it bears much promise. This shoot of Jesse’s stock is Jesus. In him, God will come not in triumph or power. He will come as a newborn child, vulnerable, defenseless, and small. Yet he is graced in God’s spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and insight, of knowledge and fear of God, and of delight in God. He will grow up and save the world. 

    A shoot that grows out of a stump becomes a branch. It grows like this because new cells at the tree’s edge produce shoots. In time, they grow into branches that go outward and upward. They are fragile in the beginning but they become strong as they mature. Parts of our lives are like shoots; they are our growing edges. They are fragile but they offer us the opportunity to mature in hope. We need to have hope to be brave that this will happen. What might some of these edges be for you? 

    “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots”. This Advent clue is hope-filled. It calls us to be like Jesus who grew, matured and flourished into adulthood and ministry in and with the love of God. Our ancestors longed for a Messiah once in history. Today, God offers this same hope that Jesus will come to save us because in him alone we will know the way, the truth and the life to grow up, mature and flourish as Christians in life and ministry. 

    A prophet and a shoot. Two clues from today’s Advent readings to help us prepare better for Christmas. Clues that dare us to go into the wilderness of our lives, those places of vulnerability, those edges in our lives bearing the promise of growth, like shoots on a tree stump. Clues that challenge us to discover the breadth, the depth and the height of our hope in God as we continue our Advent preparation of emptying ourselves to welcome Jesus. Clues that ask us to gamble all we believe in things as tiny as a shoot or in moments as empty as the wilderness that God’s faithful, saving presence will come to be in Jesus. Clues that are given by a good and gracious God for no other reason than to lead us to Jesus.

    Maybe when we grasp the gift these clues are, we will appreciate even more how all of Advent will point us to a little child whose name is Emmanuel, and whose face reveals the love of God smiling at you and me.



    Preached at De La Salle Brothers' Residence (in an abridged form)
    photo: lloyd’s register (Internet)

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  6. Year A / Advent / Week 1 / Sunday 
    Readings: Isaiah 2.1-5/ Psalm 122  / Romans 13.11-14 / Matthew 24.37-44

    Sisters and brothers, today we begin Advent, God’s gift for us to prepare for Christmas.  How will you and I do this?

    The Jesuit community that I lived in when I was in Boston would begin our preparations in this way. We would spend this first evening of Advent decorating our house with Advent greens. We will forgo the Christmas tree and lights, the shiny baubles and trimmings for another two weeks.  We will do this to remind us of what Advent is about: a time of quiet anticipation for Jesus’ coming. 

    In the same way, our Advent liturgies, prayers and songs here in the parish and at home can help us wait expectantly for Jesus. This time of preparation will direct our minds and hearts wait for his coming in two ways: his second coming at the end of time, and his coming to birth in our hearts as we recall as his coming once in history.

    After decorating our house with Advent greens, my Jesuit companions and I will gather around a simple Advent wreath. We will light the first Advent candle to remind us that we are waiting for Jesus. But Jesus is God’s light that comes, so this candle draws us into the truth that God’s deepest desire is indeed to come to us in Jesus. 

    God comes to us through Jesus for no other reason than to meet our need for God

    Over the next three Sundays, we will light the remaining Advent candles one by one. Each candle lit brings more light, and this reminds us that Advent invites us to make more room for Jesus in our hearts and in our community. We do this so that Jesus, our True Hope, can grow and flourish, as he once did in the secret darkness of Mary's womb.

    I’d like to suggest that the two Advent images of waiting expectantly for Jesus, and making room for him can help us prepare well for Christmas this Advent. They can because they echo Jesus’ call to you and me today: “Stay awake! For you do not know the day nor the hour the Lord will come.” Here is Jesus calling us to be vigilant. We can by waiting expectantly for his coming and by making room to welcome him.  

    We would be wise to hear Jesus’ call. We would wiser still to heed and practise it. The monks at the Trappist monastery at Spencer in Western Massachusetts explain why we should do this:  
    Perhaps one good reason that Jesus so urgently exhorts us to be attentive is that he comes so often in ways so unassuming, so ordinary, so unremarkable, and also almost forgettable. We need to keep alert or we’ll miss out.
    Miss out on Advent as God’s time for us to better know who this Jesus is, this Jesus who walks with you and me each day, this Jesus who has come once before and will come once again.

    This is why Advent invites us to be more alert to Jesus' presence, and not miss him. But we can easily miss Jesus because our Christmas preparations can so easily be focused more on the many shopping trips for presents, the endless fussing over the perfect Christmas meal, the merry-go-round of Christmas parties to attend and maybe, even our dogged holiday planning to get away from it all, from family and friends at this time.

    Advent invites us to prepare spiritually for Jesus’ coming. It invites us to enlarge our hearts to better receive Jesus’ coming into our midst. This is only possible when we practice it as Advent waiting -- this expectant anticipation for Jesus. This is the right and proper disposition for this season.

    After all, isn’t this how we naturally come before God and before one another in love? Don’t we stand before another with hope, opening ourselves up, waiting to receive their love expectantly, never demanding it? And when they give their love to us, don’t we experience that profoundly delightful sense of being blessed?

    I believe those of us who have fallen in love, who have married, who know the goodness of friendship with a friend and with God, understand this. 

    To wait in this way -- expectantly and by making room -- allows us to welcome and accept all things into our life.  And more so to let them come to fruition as God intends them to be for us, in God’s time and in God’s ways.

    Advent waiting involves us practising wakefulness. This is St Paul’s encouragement to the Christian Romans in our second reading: “awake from your sleep. For the hour of our salvation is nearer now than we first believed.”

    For the monks, Advent waiting is all about practising wakefulness. This is how we will be attentive to how Jesus comes into our lives and not miss him. We have to practise wakefulness because Jesus comes to us in silence and obscurity, in ordinariness and hiddenness that the monks described thus:
    Hidden first of all in the warm womb of a pregnant virgin mother, he then lives a hidden small town life as a carpenter and wandering preacher. Then in the excruciating hour of his death on the cross, all his beauty and power will be hidden, smeared and obscured by the blood and spittle and scorn of his passion. And finally even in his joyous resurrected return to his disciples; he will sneak in through locked doors to whisper, 'Peace” and to ask quietly for something to eat.
    This is how Jesus comes into our lives. Does this startle and shock us? It should to force us out of our complacency and even arrogance that we know what Jesus means when he says, "Stay awake." Yes, “stay awake” because Jesus wants to come and meet us as we are, not as we would like to present ourselves before God.

    Jesus wants us to come to him on Christmas Day as we are -- with our lights and shadows, our giftedness and brokenness, with holy desires and our sinful faults. This is how interested Jesus is that we come to him at Christmas as we are -- as his very own, so much more than all these contraries put together.

    Not for him, then, how decked out we are in our best finery, or how all laden we are with gifts galore, or how ready we are to feast and be merry. No, what matters is that we come to him who will say to you and me, “I have come because of you, because I love you, because I want to be with you.” He stretches out his hands because he wants to embrace us, as much as he wants us to lift him up, this infant who is God.  

    Today’s readings remind us that Jesus wants to come to us and to be with us as we are, here and now. He wants to especially meet us in our own hiddenness, in those hidden spaces of our lives: the hidden closets, the hidden skeletons we have, even the very spaces we try to hide in, away from him. 

    If we dare to embrace Jesus’ call to make room for him as we await his coming, we will be surprised. Truly surprised to find out that he has in fact already come into our lives, even as we are preparing to welcome him. Jesus has already come into our lives, especially in those dark recesses of our lives because he wants to be with us. And even more than this, to labor for us and for our salvation. Yes, Jesus is nearer than we think. This is why we can hope.

    My sisters and brothers, our Advent journey is just beginning. It would be wise for us then to adopt the kind of looking ahead that we will need to have a spiritually meaningful Advent. This way of looking is Isaiah's way of looking ahead towards God's coming that our first reading announces.

    Therefore, let us look, let us see, let us keep our gaze on Jesus. He who is coming to be with us. He who will illuminate our darkness. He who will gather all peoples and bring peace. He who will come to us as Emmanuel, God-with-us. Yes, let us expectantly await Jesus' coming: he is our hope.




    Preached at Church of the Transfiguration, Singapore
    photo: frontierdreams.blogspot.com

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  7. Year C / Ordinary Time / Week 33 / Sunday
    Readings: Malachi 3.19-20a / Psalm 95.5-6, 7-8, 9 (R/v cf 9) / 2 Thessalonians 3.7-12 / Luke 21.5-19


    Sisters and brothers, we know what perseverance is. But what does it look like?

    When the Great Flood was coming, there was a snail. As Noah and his family began building the Ark and gathering the animals to save them, they forgot about Mr Snail. 

    They gathered the biggest, the fastest, and the fittest of animals. Two by two they brought them into the Ark. They however missed Mr Snail, the smallest, the slowest, the most insignificant.

    At this time, there was fear, confusion and anxiety everywhere. Mr Snail wanted to survive the Great Flood. So inch by inch, at a very slow pace, Mr Snail tried to make his way to the Ark. The rains finally came and the waters rose. And there on the Ark, with Noah, his family and the hundreds of animals was Mr Snail. Yes, "by perseverance, the snail reached the Ark” (Charles Spurgeon).

    By perseverance Mr Snail made it.

    This is a good story to hear at this time of the year. In seven weeks’ time, we will say goodbye to 2019. In one week’s time, we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King and the end of this liturgical year. Students have ended their school year. Workers are doing their year-end reviews. Homemakers are ending this year preparing for Christmas and New Year celebrations. 

    Looking back on 2019, the question we might ask is: How have we persevered this year? Were we like Mr Snail slowly making our way through this year to end it well, in spite of our fears, worries, and struggles? Or, did we persevere like Mr Snail to look ahead to next year and new beginnings?

    Endings and beginnings is Malachi's focus in the first reading. He presents us with an image of a harvest. The good grain has been gathered and taken away. Only the stubble is left; soon it will be set on fire.

    For Malachi, the stubble is a metaphor for the Israelites who resisted God’s ways by cheating others, selfishly caring for themselves, not others, and speaking ill of God. They did not follow God’s laws and God’s way. The Lord God will burn them like stubble is burned, Malachi announces.

    For the Israelites who trusted and lived in God’s ways, Malachi announces good news: they will be blest like the earth is blessed by the rays of sun. God will be just to those who are faithful to God. God will fulfill their heart's desire for God.  

    Simply put Malachi reminds you and me that life with God results in a rich harvest. Those who reject God are like a fruitless field that must be burned away.

    I find this reading challenging, hard to hear as the year ends. You might too. I wonder which group I belong to. You might too. If we didn’t live this year well as Christians, would God want to metaphorically burn up our lives and purify us? Or, if we did live our year well, will God give us more grace to live better? 

    Truth be told, we have a foot in each group. It is there natural for us to hope for the best and to fear the worst as we account for this year before God.

    Maybe this is why we come to Jesus in the Eucharist. To remind ourselves of who we are in God’s eyes and how God’s mercy works for us — yes, we are sinful sometimes, but we are always in God’s eyes, his own, his beloved.

    Malachi writes about the “healing rays” flowing from the “sun of justice” that will rest upon those who “fear” God’s name. This fear of God is not fear of a vengeful and punishing God. It is reverence for God. It is knowing who God is and who we are. Malachi writes to console those whose lives revere God.

    Have we lived such lives this year, especially when it was difficult and despairing? If we have, give thanks. If we have not, let's work to live better in the new year. Can we accomplish this?

    Jesus teaches us how to live such lives in our gospel passage. “Your endurance will win you your lives,” he says.

    He teaches his disciples this lesson as they admire the beauty of the temple. It will not last he reminds them because everything changes. The disciples are upset and anxious; they want to know when the temple will be destroyed. We are like the disciples. Change upsets us. We want certainty about the what, when, why and how when change intrudes into our lives. Many don’t like change because it disturbs us: how can we continue living? 

    As people of faith, we must answer another question. It is fundamental to who we are as Christians: can we still live with hope in God if the change is painful, hard and disorientating? Yes, Jesus says. “Your endurance will win you your lives,” he reminds us. 

    Endurance or perseverance is about steadfastness and constancy. It is the hope-filled capacity to stay focussed on one’s purpose. This gives strength to endure great trials and sufferings with patience. You can call this, “keeping the faith.”

    Keeping the faith is what Jesus is calling us to do today. He is challenging us to practice endurance or perseverance in our lives. We do this best by keeping faith to our commitment that Jesus is our Saviour. “I myself,” Jesus proclaims in today's gospel reading, “shall give you an eloquence and a wisdom” against your enemies and be your protector.  

    We made this commitment at Baptism. We stay faithful to it in each Eucharist, at every confession, whenever we pray, however often we read scripture and reflect on it, and every time we do what Jesus did to our neighbour. 

    Why do we keep this commitment and persevere in it? Because we believe that in Jesus we will know God and the power of God’s love to save us. The saints knew this. For them, staying close to Jesus and persevering in life with him forms us to become more like him — in faith to love God, in charity to serve others, and in hope to believe we are meant to belong to God always.

    What will give us the confidence to preserve in our commitment to Jesus? God’s fidelity to persevere for us in Jesus. This is his commitment to us. It is his encouragement we can preserve too.

    And we do when we come to Eucharist and Confession and when we pray and care for others, in spite of our sinfulness and frailties. Every time we do these we persevere. Isn’t our experience of God’s constant and life-giving love as we persevere the enduring reason we can keep the faith even in difficult times? As we do so, don’t we come to know the truth of Jesus' promise "I will be with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28.20) because in Jesus we see, encounter and know God?

    If we answer is “yes” to these questions, then, let us rejoice for the gift of perseverance in our lives. Perseverance that empowers our faith to overcome fear. Perseverance that enables us to believe in the promise of beginnings to defeat the darkness of endings. Perseverance that assures us that hope always leads us onward.

    Let those who have ears, then, hear Jesus’ guidance that it is good to endure and persevere to the end. And more than hear, let us live it as Jesus calls us to in Luke’s Gospel: “Stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand” (Luke 21.28).

    Perseverance, endurance, keeping the faith, staying true to our commitment to Jesus — this is God’s gift for us to walk free and be fully alive, even in the face of endings. We can because God is already and always committed to persevering with us and for us in Jesus. This is the Good News we hear today. 

    Perseverance was very good for Mr Snail.  When the Great Flood receded and the Ark landed on dry land with a thud, a rainbow bridged the wide expanse of the clear blue sky. Noah let down the door to the Ark. All the animals trooped out, safe and sound. Mr Snail inched his way out too. Indeed, by perseverance Mr Snail did reach the Ark; by perseverance, he stayed safe on it, and by perseverance, he walked out free and alive.

    Mr Snail’s perseverance made his hope come alive.

    Today, Jesus reminds us that it is good to persevere in our faith: it makes us alive in God and for God. We can because of him. He is our hope. Can you and I then keep our faith in Jesus’ promise that our endurance will indeed win us our lives?



    Preached at Church of the Transfiguration, Singapore
    photo: www.rajeshseshadri.com


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  8. Year C / Ordinary Time / Week 32 / Sunday
    Readings: 2 Maccabees 7.1-2, 9-14 / Psalm 16.1, 5-6, 8b, 15 (R/v 15b) / 2 Thessalonians 2.16-3.5 / Luke 20.27-38


    Sisters and brothers, have you considered what resurrection is life like, beyond St Peter and the pearly gates,those fluffy clouds, and the multitudes praising and worshipping God eternally?

    “What’s it all about?” This might be the same question you have about our readings today. The first about seven brothers and their mother being violently tortured and murderously killed. The gospel about Sadducees questioning Jesus about which of seven brothers who married the same woman would be her husband at the resurrection. 

    Yes, “What’s it all this about?”

    This might be the same question many of us are asking as we end the year. Students as they do their year-end reflection. Employees as they review their year’s work performance. Management as they appraise the staff and programmes to plan for the new year.  People of faith as they examine their life in year-end retreats and recollections.

    However we do our year-end reviews, I suspect we all grapple with a nagging question:  “Could I have lived this year differently?” It is a dangerous question to ask: our answers often lead to deep soul-searching and possible change.

    We ask this same question when we face death and hope in the resurrection. 

    Today’s readings are about death and the resurrection. They especially demand we evaluate how we have lived our Christian life this year as no one can escape death and all of us believe in resurrection life with God. 

    Some years ago I anointed Melanie who was dying from pancreatic cancer. She didn’t have long to live. She too asked the same question, “Could I have lived life differently?”

    We began with small talk to get acquainted. She explained her medical history. She shared about her love for her family. She spoke passionately about teaching little ones catechism in her parish. This was her joy, she repeatedly said. She would miss this most, she added. 

    She reflected on her life; she made her confession. Then, I anointed her and gave her communion. She smiled. There was a peace about her. “I’m ready,” she said.  Finally, we spoke about death, and in particular about her youngest son who repeatedly asked her, “Mama, where will you go when you die?”

    Where does one go in death? We ask this question whenever a loved one dies or when we think about our own death. Death ends human life. But as Christians we believe in a greater truth: there is resurrection. This is why the liturgy of the Church reminds us that in death our lives are changed not ended. 

    What allows us to believe in the resurrection? 

    Melanie’s reply to her son offers us an answer: “I am not sure where I am going to but I believe in Jesus. He will raise me up.” This hope in Jesus is our hope in God who saves all from sin and death. We believe this hope is our reason to live, even in the most painful of times. 

    Hope is therefore for the here and now; it is for us to live in the present. It is not for later, after death. How then have we lived with such hope in God this past year? 

    Jesus’ message in today’s gospel is this: the future resurrection life we want depends on how we live with hope in God now.  Our present life, Jesus is saying, must lead us to life with God.

    Sometimes, may be too often, we have already imagined or decided what resurrection life looks like. And so we live on earth with this end in mind. If we think that resurrection is a reward, we will live hard-pressed to tick off all the boxes to get that admission ticket into heaven. If we think resurrection is guaranteed because we have faith, we will live for ourselves and however we want, forgetting Jesus’ call to holiness and serving neighbour.

    When we live in these ways, we slowly become deaf. We no longer hear and follow Jesus’ teachings about how we ought to live and so gain resurrection life.

    But those who seriously and honestly contemplate death are not deaf to Jesus and the resurrection life he offers. Whether they face death like Melanie did, or when they daily contemplate it, like those praying every day for a happy death, they understand what Jesus is teaching us today: that God’s promise of resurrection life is so much more than we can ever want or imagine it to be.  

    These believers are not preoccupied with the look or feel of resurrection life. They go beyond this superficiality. They go deep into the truth of resurrection life in God. It is good because of God. It is true in God. Its is beautiful with God. And with God, it is eternal.  This is indeed our blessed assurance because of Jesus’ death and resurrection. “I am the resurrection and the life,” he proclaims, “He who believes in me will live, even though they die” (John 10.25).

    This is why they live lives like Jesus did: lives of hope every day, not only for themselves but for others. They channel their time and energy to witness to the hope-filled quality that distinguishes Christian life. 

    We see this best when we experience something of God in our midst in how we love and forgive, share and care, whether lived ordinarily, or better still, extraordinarily. Experiencing the divine uplifts everyone and reminds us can hope, especially in difficulties and despair.  Isn’t this how Jesus made the difference while on earth? Do we do likewise as his followers?

    Today’s readings call us out, like Jesus called out the Sadducees. They put us on the spot with this question: how have you and I we lived our hope in resurrection life this year not just for ourselves but for another?

    Our dearly departed lived such lives. This is why we join the universal Church each November in remembering and praying for them. We especially celebrate their hope that God through his mercy and love now fulfils as he reconciles them to himself eternally.

    Like them we have practiced our hope in the resurrection this past year in little ways. Be it the hope to wake up in the morning, to make it through life’s problems, to recover from serious illnesses, to be forgiven for a mistake, to love and be loved, or even as trivial as the nuns who pray, “Hail Mary full of grace, give us now a carpark space”, all of these are our experiences  living with hope.  And hasn't God met us in our hope in all these experiences this year? If your answer is “yes”, then, you and I have experienced the deeper, richer, surer ways God has repeatedly come to be with us, to labour for our wellbeing, and to save us.

    How can our year-end review of Christian life then not be hope-filled? Yes, this year is hurtling fast and furious towards its end, where we will be exhausted, tired, and may be remorseful that the year could have ended better and brighter. Yet, in the midst of all this is Christmas again and our joyful celebration that Jesus comes to us as Emmanuel, God-with-us—God of the living, not of the dead, God in whom all have the fullness of life always in Jesus the Christ. If this is who God is and what God will do for us in Jesus then resurrection life must be true and truly ours. 

    If you and I believe in this truth, then what our life is now, as resurrection life must also be, is this: that we belong to God now and forever, and resurrection is God's sure hope for us to know we are his always.



    Preached at Church of the Transfiguration and St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: the prodigal son by rembrandt (detail)


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  9. Year C / Ordinary Time / 31st Week / Sunday 
    Readings: Wisdom 11.22-12.2/ Psalm 144.1-2, 8-9, 10-11, 13cd-14  (R/v cf  1) / 2 Thessalonians 1.11-2.2 / Luke 19.1-10


    Sisters and brothers, when did your classmate or workmate become your best friend, or your date blossomed into the friend you married for life? When did someone you dislike reach out and you responded and a friendship began?

    When I look at how our young men and women in SJI (St Joseph’s Institution) become friends and community instead of strangers and individuals, I see it happen over a meal or two, in fact, over many meals as they bond over the canteen table. 

    Maybe our youth here know how true this is in their lives. Indeed, aren’t these the moments for young people, as it is for us young at heart, when our interactions change into relationships?

    Moments over a meal like: Mom’s packed lunch in the canteen; that first dinner with the in-laws; a doughnut and coffee at Starbucks; canteen food at recess time.

    And isn’t there a grace at work when this change happens? For as you ate together, you probably let down your guard, became comfortable being yourselves, and started sharing more and more who you each really are, what you truly think and feel. Honestly. Acceptingly. Joyfully.

    Indeed, inviting someone to the table to eat with you can be that defining moment when a stranger becomes a friend, a face in the crowd becomes a name on our lips, a nobody becomes somebody — eventually, somebody we cherish.

    With eyes of faith, we see and know something good is happening. We have a word for this: transformation — when ordinary interactions become relationships that matter. Like family ties that understand, forgive and nurture, parishioners that care as community and friendships that support and accompany.

    All these are possible because there is love in all these relationships that matter.

    Love at the heart of relationship. This is the focus Luke invites you and me have as we meditate on today’s gospel reading.

    Jesus and Zacchaeus feasting together. They feast together not as rabbi and tax collector, not as holy and sinful, but as friends. As the Son of God in friendship with a son of human parents.

    How does their friendship come to be? When Jesus invites and Zacchaeus accepts.

    Jesus enters Jericho, into Zacchaeus’ everyday life. And meeting Zacchaeus there, Jesus invites himself to Zacchaeus’ home. Zacchaeus accepts, and Jesus comes and eats with him at table.

    Jesus comes; Jesus enters; Jesus stays. 

    Isn’t this how Jesus comes to meet us through strangers and acquaintances, classmates and colleagues, neighbours and parishioners? 

    Come to us in this way, because as St Teresa of Avila so poignantly reminds us, “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body.”

    Can it then be that Jesus comes to us through our family and friends? Come when they enter into our lives to laugh with us and into our grief to grieve with us? Come to heal us in our suffering with life-giving words? Come to bring us home to God when we lost our way in faith?

    Why would Jesus come to be friends with to someone like Zacchaeus, much despised by the Jews for being a tax collector? Come to us too who sometimes disappoint God and others with our less than holy human lives?

    Perhaps, Jesus comes for no other reason than to remind us — ever so gently, so intimately, so compassionately — of this truth: that we are God’s own and God’s alone.

    We hear this same truth about God and about who we are to God in the Book of Wisdom we read earlier: “you are merciful to all, because you can do all things and overlook men’s sins so that they can repent. Yes, you love all that exists, you hold nothing of what you have made in abhorrence, for had you hated anything, you would not have formed it” (Wisdom 11.23-24).

    I believe this is the reason Jesus reached out to Zacchaeus in friendship: to remind him that God made him good and desires that he live the good life with God.

    Today, Jesus is doing the same for us.  For us who have climbed up many steps from Farrer Road to come here or driven up the hill to come here. For us who climbed up 22 meters above sea level to come to see Jesus. For us who are like Zacchaeus in our desire to see Jesus, sinful as we are also hope-filled that our encounter with Jesus will turn our lives around.

    Jesus knows us and our hearts’ desires. This is why he comes to us.

    But he didn’t just come to Zacchaeus. He stayed with him. He could because Zacchaeus climbed down and began a friendship with him. We have climbed up here for Mass but at Communion Jesus will invite us to climb down metaphorically by humbling ourselves to receive him in communion. We climb down so that he can go deep into our being — deep in order to stay with us always.

    And he will stay with us in the love of God that seeks us out in our sinfulness. This is how we can let Jesus embrace us back, again and again. He cannot help doing this because his love that forgives unreservedly will bring us home to God.

    Here we are in God’s home. We have come here by taking the same steps Jesus takes to come to us. Zacchaeus took these steps too. Hearing Jesus’ invitation, he welcomed Jesus’ friendship. Jesus with him; Jesus transforming him; Jesus helping him to repent and save his life. Jesus calls us here to do the same for you and me. This is the Good News we hear today.

    But the real miracle Luke wants us to focus on is this: Zacchaeus staying in Jesus’ company, as Jesus stayed with him. He stays by turning his life around to live in God’s way: he shares what he has with the poor and returns more than what he has exhorted. 

    In a few moments, we will gather around the altar. Jesus invites us to come to his table. Like Zachaeus, we come, saint and sinner alike, because we believe Jesus will feed us who hunger and thirst for his friendship. Isn’t this why we believe Communion brings us closer to Jesus who comes to dwell in us?

    Some of us will judge who can and who cannot come to Jesus, who can and cannot receive Jesus at Communion. In word, in deed, these Christians are no better  than those in the Gospels who are ever so quick  to judge, condemn and punish by throwing the first stones on the sinful.

    To them, I say, listen carefully Jesus’ words to those who complained that him came, sat and ate with Zaccheus: “‘Today salvation has come to this house, because this man too is a son of Abraham; for the Son of Man has come to seek out and save what was lost’” (Luke 19.9-10)

    Jesus came to save. He threw no stones. He lavished mercy and love on all who sinned. We know this because this is how Jesus has always treated us in friendship, even when we sinned. If we have experienced mercy, how can we not do the same for another?

    We are here today because we know and believe these words Jesus speaks in the Gospels: I have entered your life, called you by name for you are mine; I have come so you might have life and have it to the full; be not afraid, I am with you always.

    If we listened more attentively to Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus today, we might also hear him say, Yes, I have come to you and stayed with you; will you stay with me too?



    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: newindianexpress.com

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  10. Year C / Ordinary Time / 29th Week / Sunday (to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Sr Linda Lizada's life as a Cenacle Sister)
    Readings: Exodus 17.8-13/ Psalm 121. 1-8 (R/v cf  2) / 2 Timothy 3.14 - 4.2 / Luke 18.1-8


    Sisters and brothers, why have we come to pray today?

    It is Sunday, the day of obligation. But oh happy day this Sunday is. We pray in joyful celebration for the 50th anniversary of Sr Linda’s entrance into the Cenacle as a postulant. We pray in thanksgiving too that on this day in 1946 in Espiritu Santo Church, Manila she was baptised. 

    Today is Mission Sunday, and so we pray that we may live and serve as Sr Linda does – on mission, proclaiming Jesus because Baptism calls all of us to do this, to fill the world with love.

    Such must be our prayer today. 

    Prayer that ordinarily we petition God for this or that, for more, for better, for ourselves and others. Prayer that is sometimes our complaint and grumble to God. Prayer that is in the best of times our thanksgiving, praise, and reverence to God. 

    In her poem, “Praying”, the American poet Mary Oliver envisions prayer as “the doorway into…which another voice may speak”.

    Indeed, all of us desire to hear God’s voice. Comforting and assuring us; forgiving us and guiding us. And if we dare to hear God’s voice, challenging and correcting us. 

    But most of all, don’t we really want to hear God’s love for us?  “Here I am, Lord”, we cry. “Here, I am too, with you”, says God. 

    Sometimes, however, and maybe for long periods, we might experience nothing from God. Just utter silence. When this happens, don’t we feel disappointed, frustrated, confused, abandoned?

    As tempting as it is to give up on God in these times, we keep on praying. Why?

    Today we hear of Moses and the widow persisting in their petitions. Moses petitions God for Israel’s victory over the Amalekites. The widow petitions a corrupt judge for a just ruling against an opponent. 

    What about you and me: do we persist and persevere in prayer, do we stay the course, trusting that God will answer our petitions and guide us to do the Christian mission?

    I believe we do because we keep trying our best to do this well.  

    Doing this over time brings us into that graced awareness that persisting in prayer is about God and us becoming one.  About the two of us persevering for that faithful loving and faith-filled living together.

    We all recognise this reality in Linda’s life and ministry, especially in how she embodies it as a woman of prayer. 

    Hasn’t she in turn gifted so many of us to embody this kind of loving and living in prayerful faithfulness with the Lord? We who are here, we are the answer: her fellow Cenacle sisters and affiliates, her directees and retreatants, friends, all she has ministered to.

    Saint Thérèse Couderc the founder of the Cenacles wrote, “when one belongs to the good God, it is not right to belong half-way”.  All or nothing. 

    Isn’t this why we really pray: to belong to God totally?

    What enables us to do this as we persevere in prayer? Moses raising his hands gives us a possible answer. 

    Toddlers raise their hands often. They do this to get attention or to be cared for. This is a hope-filled stance: that mommy will cradle her in an embrace, and daddy will make time for him.

    With his hands held up, Moses is like a little child. He opens himself to God and trusts that God will provide. Trusting, even if one doesn’t hear God’s voice or feel God’s presence.

    St Thérèse of Lisieux has a wonderful story about child-like trust in God. 

    A child is at the parade with her father. A crowd surrounds her. They block her view. She hears the parade going by: the marching steps; the band’s rousing music; the cheers and hurrahs of the crowds. She wants to see is the parade. She has her arms up in giggly, gleeful expectation.  

    Without needing to be asked, her father picks her up, lifts her up with one swoop onto his shoulders, and there, way up high on his shoulders, she delights in the parade.

    We all need to have this child’s trust when we pray to God. It empowers us to hope as we persevere. 

    Indeed, every time we pray, especially when God seems silent, we metaphorically raise our arms and open our hands. This isn’t about giving up.  Rather, it echoes Moses with his hands up: it is about praying with trust in God. 

    Does God respond? Yes, though, not always how we want. Ask and you will receive. 

    I imagine the baby Linda at Baptism, gurgling, her open hands lifted up.  Her parents’ hands are opened to lift her over the baptismal fount. All their hands opened asking the Lord for faith.

    Opened hands. Opened palms. Bukas palad. They opened their hands to ask and to receive God’s blessings to begin his good work in Sr Linda

    What the parents asked for, we have received as a Cenacle sister for us. 

    God formed Sr Linda as a religious in the US, and nurtured her for ministry, service and even leadership in the Philippines and Rome. 

    Then in 1983, God began sending her to us in Singapore. To train priests and religious to become spiritual directors. This effort gave birth to the Life Direction Team. She kept coming to conduct ongoing training for them.  Finally, in 2011, God missioned her to live and work amongst us.

    If you have prayed for good, holy, selfless religious to come, live and care for us, then Sr Linda’s coming answered your prayer. You trusted God.

    Such trust makes us resilient. And we need resilience to do God’s mission, and, more so, to make it home to God. 

    The world tells us that trust in God is foolhardiness. We don’t need it. For Christians, this foolhardiness is graced; it allows us to persevere in prayer and do God’s mission. 

    Don’t call it foolhardiness then; call it holy boldness. Every time we keep praying and trusting, trusting and praying to God, we grow in holy boldness. 

    We will because the Holy Spirit transforms our limited faith into the likeness of Jesus’ unfailing faith in God and his selfless love for the mission. This is what Holy Spirit did in the Cenacle at Pentecost.

    Such holy boldness I believe gave Sr Linda the courage to say ‘yes’ when she entered the Cenacle Sisters and eventually pronounced vows, ‘yes’ as she persevered as a religious, and ‘yes’ to different works in varied places she was missioned to.

    This holy boldness in prayer reveals this human truth: we are limited; we need God.  We pray so that we can be with God, allow God to labor for our good, and let God lead us on the mission. 

    It is right then that we join the psalmist to sing, “Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth”. 

    Only trust can empower us to sing that refrain, and, more so, to make it real in our lives. Trust that dares us to believe God’s sure help is the hope Jesus reveals on Cross: never death; always salvation. 

    Paul’s advice to Timothy we hear today is really meant for us: “You must keep to what you have been taught and know to be true” that we are saved “through faith in Christ Jesus”. His counsel should tilt us into prayer and into God.

    Titling towards God: this is the orientation of Sr Linda’s whole life. It is an orientation that she keeps inviting us have too.

    This orientation reveals our human heart’s deepest desire. Linda knows it so well and so true to say ‘yes’ and ‘yes’ repeatedly to the Lord. 

    And it is simply this: that what matters most when we persevere in prayer – as in all of life – is not that we hold God within ourselves, but that we strive to hold ourselves in God.

    Such orientation is nothing less than surrendering ourselves to God.  A surrender that Saint Thérèse Couderc knows will us lead to true happiness as she describes thus: “It is not about abandoning or devoting ourselves to God. Rather is to die to everything and to self. It means that my concern with self is to keep it always turned toward God.”

    Such turning toward God allows us always to delight in his divine providence.

    Sr Linda, you have done this with faithfulness, generosity and joy for fifty years. You have helped many of us to do this too, and we are grateful.  And so we say: “Napakahusay ang nagawa ng aming mahal na si Sr Linda!”

    And so it is right and good that we join you to give thanks for all the Lord has done for you and through you – doing this for no other reason than his love desiring to delight in you always. 

    Amen. 


    Preached at St Francis of Assisi Church, Singapore
    photo: Internet


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"Bukas Palad"
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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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