1. Year C / Lent / Week 3 / Sunday
    Readings: Exodus 3.1-8a, 13-15 / Psalm 102.1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8 and 11 (R/v 8a) / 1 Corinthians 10.1-6, 10-12 / Luke 13.1-9



    Sisters and brothers, aren’t we often in a haste? In a haste to get from A to B. In a haste to get the job done and move on. In a haste to get it right, however, we do it. In haste to say something, sometimes without thinking. In haste to judge, find fault and to correct. 

    Can we do with less haste?  Yes, we can. But why should we? Because less haste allows for more grace – more of God’s grace into our lives.

    For me, this is the lesson Jesus teaches in today’s parable.  Consider.

    A man planted a fig tree and wanted it to bear fruit quickly. He comes each year every year for three years to check. It bears no fruit. He decides to cut it down. In anger. In disappointment. In haste. 

    Aren’t we like the fig tree when others so quickly judge, criticize and put us down? 

    Aren’t we also like the man who planted the fig tree when we judge our family and friends who disappoint us because we feel they love us less, not always, never wholeheartedly?

    Aren’t we like this man when we give up on work and school because we cannot see immediate or good results after working so hard and giving our best?

    All these actions are done in haste. For what? Lots of waste. Wasted relationships and effort. Wasted dignity and dreams. 

    In contrast, the gardener wants to give the fig tree one more year. One more year for him to cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it. One more year to wait for fruit. One more year to let the fig tree grow, mature, and flourish. One extra year of grace. Grace for the gardener to care, to tend, to nurture, to bring to life. Grace for the tree to live. 

    Yes, less haste for more grace. 

    Lent has begun. We began it with holy desires to do more prayer, more fasting, more almsgiving. Many are giving up more in sacrifice. We are each doing more in Lent because we want to let God’s Spirit more into our lives to turn our lives around.  We do because we want to live more in God’s ways as his children. 

    To accomplish this, I believe we are trying, again and again, to know Jesus more intimately, to love him more intensely so as to follow him more closely. Isn’t this why we throw ourselves into the thick and thin of everything Lenten by rightly focusing on Jesus’ journey to the Cross?

    But are we doing all this with too much haste?  With too much haste to do go to every Lenten event possible? With too much haste to do as many Lenten practices as we can and tick off all the right boxes so that our Lent is complete. With too much haste that our focus is on doing, doing, doing.

    We have tried doing all these in the first two weeks of Lent. Some of us may find ourselves failing. We are not having a holy Lent so far.  We are struggling to keep the many promises made for Lent. So, in haste, we say, “enough,” “no use,” “I can’t” and “I give up.” We may have then fallen back into our bad habits and sinful ways. Then in haste, we decide not to bother and end up wasting God’s gift of Lent for our conversation. 

    But what if we make our Lenten efforts with less haste, and give God more time and space to work his grace in us and for our conversion? Yes, less haste, more grace.

    At every ordination ceremony, the bishop says, “May God who has begun the good work in you, bring it to completion.” I love this line. It reminds us that the work we do is not ours, but God’s. This puts in perspective all our efforts in Lent. Yes, we must make the effort to change. Hence, the Lenten practices we must do. But the work of conversion is God’s – if we let God more into our lives in Lent, as we must every day.

    God wants to intervene in our lives to save us. For God to do this, we must let go and let God take control of us.  Then, God can be the gardener of our lives. This is Jesus hope-filled teaching today.  

    To follow Jesus’ teaching, we need to have a humble self-knowledge. Such knowledge comes from an experience of being humbled before with the living God. Our first reading shows us how Moses had and practised it. When God calls out to Moses, he replies, “Here I am.” “Here I am,” he is saying, “as I am, in my truth. This is me. Only I know who I am in front of God.  

    And what is God’s reply? “I am who am.”  In Hebrew “I am” comes from the verb “to be or to exist.” God says he is the God of Moses’ ancestors as he is the God of the Israelites. God is always present with his people, throughout history. But God is present in a distinct way: to save. God says. “I have seen my people’s suffering, I have heard their cry for freedom, and I have come down to rescue them.” Here is a God who wants to be with his people, ready to intervene and save all

    Here indeed is our God desiring nothing less than to be with and for us, as we are.

    Is this the God you and I believe in as we come to today’s Eucharist, perhaps, failing repeatedly in our Lenten promises yet trusting God loves us as we are? Do you and I come believing God has seen our efforts at conversion, heard our cries in disappointment, and still wants to give us his grace to make this a good Lent? 

    If we do, we are practising the kind of humble self-knowledge Moses had: that God is God and we are God’s creation. God wants to save us because we are God’s beloved. God does not want to waste us in hasty condemnation but to redeem us, his beloved, in bountiful grace.  Yes, God is patient because God works with less haste to give us more grace.

    So let us ask ourselves today and each day this Lent three questions. When has God been reaching out to me this Lent, even when I’ve failed and sinned?  In these moments, how has God been calling out to me, like God called Moses to come to him? And what is God saying to me about his desire to be with me and everyone and to save us all? 

    These are good questions for daily prayer and reflection in Lent. They can help us act with less haste and give God the needed time and space for his grace to work in our lives and for our conversion. 

    God must the gardener of our lives, as Jesus reminds us in John’s gospel.  God wants to take care of us who are the branches as Jesus is the vine. Indeed God is the good gardener because he will prune and cut off every branch that does not bear fruit so that they can yield more.  

    Maybe the real challenge in Lent is this: for us to give God permission to prune our lives at his speed, in his time and with the graces he wants to give, not what we want, when we want and how we want.  We can embrace this challenge by choosing to do one or two Lenten practices well with less haste. In this way, we let God’s grace go deep in us by cooperating with God at God’s pace and in his way to bring about truer conversion in us. 

    I think we all want this hope to become real in our lives this Lent. It can be so. We simply need to shift our focus and say “No” to doing too many and too much in haste this Lent and saying “Yes” to God and God’s grace for us. 

    So let’s say “yes” to God with nothing less than great haste. Let’s wait  no more. Let’s do it.




    Preached at Church of the Transfiguration
    photo: Evan Sung, New York Times

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  2. Year C / Lent / Week 2 / Sunday
    Readings: Genesis 15.1-12,17-18 / Psalm 36.1, 7-8a,b-9abc, 13-14 (R/v 1a) / Philippians 3.14-4.1 / Luke 9.28b-36


    Sisters and brothers, have you ever considered the relationship between hope and risk? Between how much we hope and the amount of risk we must take to realise it?

    I often find myself thinking about this when I listen to the song “A Sky of Stars” by the British band, Coldplay. Listen to its opening lyrics:

    Cause you're a sky, cause you're a sky full of stars
    I'm gonna give you my heart
    'Cause you're a sky, cause you're a sky full of stars
    'Cause you light up the path.

    There are many interpretations of the song. The one I find myself returning to is this: it is about the hope one finds in falling in love and the risk it involves to love.  Everything seems so bright and nice when one is in love – like a sky full of stars. But being in love is risky. It can lead to sadness and disappointment if things don’t work out, as it can also lead to surprising possibilities beyond our imagination for love can lift us up where we belong.

    Hope and risk are themes at the heart of today’s Lenten readings. They invite us to reflect on how much we hope in God depends on our much we are willing to risk for us to become more intimate with God.

    Our first reading presents us with an image of hope: God promises Abraham as many descendants as the countless stars and new land for them to inhabit. What God offers Abraham is hope in new beginnings.

    God is offering us this same hope today.  Should we, who believe that God has already saved us in Jesus, bother with this hope, or let ourselves be bothered by it? I’d like to suggest we must if we want our Lenten observances this year to be more meaningful as we prepare for Easter.

    “How so?” we may ask. Abraham asked this same question when he heard God’s promise. God answers our “How so?” questions by making a covenant with us. This is God’s way of promising hope through new beginnings. New land was God’s covenant with Abraham. God’s covenant with us is the Easter joy, that upward movement into the fullness of life with the Risen Jesus. Its foundation is Lent that invites us into new beginnings.  

    But we need to be daring and risk ourselves to be God’s partner in the covenant. Then, we can begin nurturing the covenant well. Indeed, this is how we exercise our trust that God is our light and our salvation, as we sang in today’s psalm. 

    Abraham took this risk by following God’s commands to make offerings. God reciprocated with land for his descendants to dwell in, multiply and prosper. 

    What will God give us if we risk our trust in God this Lent? I’d like to suggest God will draw us into new spaces to better live out our Christian lives. 

    Spaces where we can reconcile with someone who has hurt us. Places of greater honesty and warmth with family and friends. A space of confidence to surrender ourselves to God’s will in daily life. A graced place to let go of our attachments and to move on with life.

    God can lead us to these spaces when we risk our trust in the relationship we have with God. The hope we have to do this comes when we dare to share greater intimacy with God. 

    We find such intimacy in Luke’s narration of Jesus’ transfiguration. There are no crowds, only Jesus and his closest companions. They climb the mountain, and there, they enjoy intimacy with God. 

    In Scripture, the mountain is always where God is intimate with humankind. God talks face-to-face with Moses on the mountain. On the mountain, God meets Elijah in a gentle breeze. Jesus—God with us—teaches and feeds the people on a mountain. And it is on a mountain that Jesus discloses who God is and the depth of God’s love by offering his life for our salvation. 

    So, on what mountains, what places, in your life has God met you, and enjoyed with you, each other’s intimacy? Imagine the new spaces God waits to bring us to this Lent. It is in these spaces that we will only truly know the depth of God’s love. It is possible when we risk our trust to be completely intimate with God. 

    Jesus’ life and ministry revealed his intimacy with God. Their intimacy empowered him love all through selfless service. In fact, this intimacy gave Jesus certain hope to embrace the Cross as God’s will to save all peoples. Obedient love is really how Jesus entered more intimately into God’s life

    You and I were created to enter into and dwell in God’s intimacy. I believe this is the hope we all live for now, even as we desire for this eternally. Lent focuses us on Jesus’ death and resurrection to help us remember that we are made for God alone

    Peter’s words today, “it is good that we are here”, voices this deepest desire in every human person for God. Indeed who amongst us here doesn’t long for this?

    It is no wonder then that Peter wants to build those tents and to remain in the goodness of God’s love. The truth is that we can never prepare a tent good enough for God for God will always outdo us. God will always prepare the best tent for the both of us to dwell in, intimately, happily, eternally.

    Usually, we interpret the revelation of Jesus’ glory in the Transfiguration as our promised salvation after a life of discipleship following Jesus. Hence, Paul’s line in our second reading: Jesus Christ will “change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body”. 

    Let’s get real: we will never experience this change, savour the goodness of this transfiguration by simply contemplating this moment in prayer or listening to it proclaimed or preached about, or seeing it in a painting.

    We have to live it. Live it like Jesus lived his transfiguration. Then, we will know God’s providence that transforms and us.

    Consider. Jesus’ “face changed.” The apostles saw his glory. Jesus, however, did not remain on the mountain. He came down, served all and continued his journey to Jerusalem and the Cross. Every action revealed God’s love. His death and resurrection revealed the fullness of God’s love. This is how Jesus showed forth the glory of God’s love. However, he had to risk his belief that God’s love really loves. Only when he dared and risked did Jesus savour the goodness of God’s redemption.

    This Lent, we too are being asked to risk our belief in God by entering more intimately into life with Jesus. Peter, James, and John trusted that Jesus’ lead up the high mountain would be good for them. It was: they met God there. 

    We practice almsgiving to uplift the poor in the hope God will change our hearts. We pray more in the hope God will embolden us to embrace the crosses in our lives. And we fast in the hope God will help us to better imitate Jesus. We do these because we hope Lent will help transform us. Lent can enable our transformation when we dare to risk and let Jesus take greater control of our lives

    Today’s readings speak about taking a risk and giving one’s heart to another  like Abraham to God, the disciples to Jesus, and Christians to the risen Jesus. Lent challenges us to do this now — to hand ourselves more completely over to Jesus in whom God’s love never fails but always shines through as the glory that saves

    We know how difficult it can be for us to truly hand ourselves over to Jesus, and to do it well. Should we still risk doing it? Can we hope this is the right choice? 

    I believe we can. Indeed God assures us we can and we must because in Jesus we will know the way, the truth, and the life to say yes”.  All we need is to remember God saying, “This is my son; the Chosen One. Listen to him”.



    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    Photo: www.understandingboys.com.au

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  3. Year C / Lent / 1st Sunday
    Readings: Deuteronomy 26.4-10 / Psalm 9-.1-2, 1-11, 12-13, 14-15 / Romans 10.8-13 / Luke 4.1-13


    Sisters and brothers, have you ever considered how the word “if” works in your lives?

    In the English Language, the word “if” is what we call a conjunction. We use “if” to express possible results or effects that may happen or come true. Like this: If you are giving, people will respect you. If you are forgiving, your friendships will last. If you are cheating, you will hurt others.

    Most of us don’t pay much attention to how “if” impacts us. It can, however, cause us to doubt ourselves. Consider: “If you are giving…” Am I? “If you are forgiving…” Do I? “If you are cheating…?” Did I?  The real question behind these moments is “Who am I?” 

    In today’s gospel, the devil uses the conjunction “if” very well. “If you are the Son of God, Jesus, you would turn stones to bread, you would accept glory and authority from the devil, you would put God to the test, the devil says. 

    The devil uses “If you are...” statements to draw Jesus into insecurity, confusion and vulnerability. The devil tempts Jesus after 40 days of testing in the wilderness. 

    The devil tempts us daily in the wilderness of our sinfulness. He tempts us especially with “If you are...” statements in life-changing moments. Like graduating and beginning work. Like choosing to marry or enter religious life Like coming to terms with one’s sexual orientation. Like facing death. Even, like entering into Lent as we now do.

    In all these moments, the devil’s strategy is to tempt us with “If you are...” statements to lead us into sin. The devil’s temptations blind us from seeing ourselves as God’s children. They bluff us with power and fame that we do not need God. They drug us with self-centered addictions that God’s ways cannot satisfy. They hoodwink us with hollow self-righteousness that we do not need God to earn our right, our place, our value in this world.

    This is why these temptations intoxicate us so much. Consider these ways. If you are staying at the right postal address, have the newest car model, and possess the latest device, you are somebody. If you are one who has built a business, completed higher studies, and hold high positions, you are valuable to family and friends. Our society constantly demands we complete the statement “If you are…”, and many of us answer “yes we are” with self-indulgent, self-gratifying Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts.

    These “If you are” temptations are in fact the devil’s most subtle, craftiest and deceitful way to destroy our belief that we are God’s own and our life is valuable to God. When we let the devil do this to us, we grapple with accepting ourselves as God’s own, with believing that God forgives our sins, and with letting God love us as we are. Aren't these how we feel when we are in sin?

    Today’s Gospel is providential for us who want to embrace the Lenten call to conversion. It offers Jesus’ lesson on how to reject the devil.

    The devil’s temptations try to draw Jesus away from God. More significantly, they try to confuse Jesus about his true identity, Son of God, and turn him away from God’s mission of proclaiming God’s mercy and love. Each temptation the devil makes tries to seduce Jesus that because he is the Son of God he can do anything and everything for he does not need God. 

    Jesus responds to every “If you are the Son of God” the devil makes with an affirmation of God in his life and God’s purpose for him. He is in fact saying, “Yes, I am God’s Son because of God,” “Yes, I am in relationship with God because of God” and “Yes, I am to do God’s work because of God.”

    Here is Jesus turning each temptation to sin into his choice for holiness: to live as the son of God. 

    For many, Lent is a difficult, challenging time. We struggle with repentance and conversion, as much as we want these. Yet Lent is “a sacred time for the renewing and purifying of our hearts” so that we can be free from sin and totally for God  (Preface II, Lent). Grace and hope are in fact two words we should also associate with Lent.

    All of us want to have a holier Lent, one that brings about our conversion. But beware:  the devil will tempt us even more in Lent with material attractions and sexual distractions, with selfish acts and lazy prayer to take us away from God. 

    It is therefore right and good that Lent begins with the example of Jesus saying “no” to the devil. He shows us how to reclaim our rightful holiness as God’s children.  Where the devil tempts us to be unfaithful to God, Jesus invites us to imitate his faithfulness to God. Where the devil wants us to do our own thing, not God’s, Jesus reminds us that loving God totally and loving others selflessly must be what truly matters in our lives. 

    Yes, Jesus’ rejection of the devil shows us how to live truly and fully as children of God, like Jesus did as Son of God.

    Simply put, Lent demands we answer this question: Do you and I want to live and act like Jesus did – to love God and live in God’s ways by rejecting temptation and sin?

    Our answer will determine the kind of Lent we will have this year. Either one with freedom to die with Jesus on the Cross to sin and to let God raised us up with him into the fullness of life in the Resurrection.  Or, one where we continue with our same old same old sinful ways that will enslave us even deeper into sinfulness.

    I believe we accomplish real conversion and have that holier Lent we yearn for when we make the effort to imitate Jesus’ example of choosing holiness daily instead of falling into temptation and sin

    If we repeatedly make choices for holiness our daily practice, we will find ourselves entering more surely and deeply, even if it is slowly, into a fuller relationship with God when we come to Easter.

    More significantly, we will come to know what Jesus knew in the face of the devil’s temptations. This truth: that our lives cannot be about “ifs” because God is God and we are God’s own

    Jesus wants us to remember this truth and never to forget it. Why? Because this truth empowered Jesus to reject the devil’s “ifs” and so free himself from temptation. Because this truth enabled him to declare that God is life, and God’s love is for us and our salvation.  Because this truth helped Jesus to remain true to his identity as Son of God. Because this truth was Jesus’ strength to resist temptation and focus on God and God’s mission for him to save all.

    Today Jesus teaches us how to say “no” to the devil. His action is really God’s first lesson to help us have a holy Lent – we simply have to imitate Jesus and choose God instead of sin.

    Let us be bold and daring then this Lent by practising Jesus’ way of rejecting the devil and his temptations. Let us do this more often and more freely this Lent. And as we do this, I pray all of us will come to hear God saying to us this Lent with much love and more delight, “truly you are mine.” 




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

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  4. Year C / Ordinary Time / Week 8 / Sunday
    Readings: Sirach 27.4-7 / Ps 91.2-3, 13-14, 15-16 (R/v cf 2a) / 1 Corinthians 15.54-58 / Luke 6.39-45


    Sisters and brothers, who amongst us here do not want to be appreciated for the good we do or the goodness we share?

    I believe we all do. We hope others will judge our actions good, value our good character and praise our good self. Often when they do, we are consoled, affirmed and uplifted. 

    Yet we are sometimes not good, particularly in our interactions with one another. When we judge another truly unworthy, we deny his personhood. When we judge another’s actions as questionable without fact, we reject her goodness. When we judge others solely because of their faults, failings, and sins because of what we only see, we, in fact, condemn them.

    In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus points out our hypocrisy when we judge others sinful while ignoring our own faults and sins

    When we judge like this, we often do it too quickly and harshly, and oh so self-righteously, with little or no mercy and compassion. We act like this because of the human tendency all of us have, myself included, to obsess ourselves with the splinter in another’s eye while ignoring the wooden beam in our own.

    If we are honest, Jesus’ teaching is difficult to hear. It offers us, however, a grace for Christian living: to see more clearly that those we judge are indeed as good as we are – we who are, yes, good but also sinful.

    Jesus’ teaching then demands that we truly appreciate the sum of all our parts, that is, the totality of our humanness. Being human, we are a mix of strengths and weaknesses, of sinfulness and holiness, and of all that is bright and life-giving as well as all that is dim and does not always give us life.

    When we look and judge someone as bad, deviant, and sinful, we fixate ourselves on those individual moments of difference, of contradiction, of dismay, of disappointment that we have with them at that one time. In such moments, we forget that the one we are judging is so much more than his fault, her mistake, their sins. We ignore the goodness of their whole being.

    Each of us is a complex mix of good and bad, of words that inspire another and mouths that put down the one we dislike, of hearts that uplift another and hands that tear down the other’s dignity. This is the ironic beauty of who you and I really are and how we live. 

    Yet this is the same beauty God sees in us. Jesus teaches us that God does see the flawed, the weak and the sinful selves that we are. But God also sees the goodness, the kindness and the graciousness that we are too. We may feel mixed up and messy. For God, however, this is the beauty of being human. Most especially, the beauty in the hopeful promise we each have to become better. This is the sparkle in our humanity. This is our human potential to transcend, our lesser, sinful selves. This is what seizes God’s gaze and draws God to us with an urgent, almost relentless hunt for us and our souls. And so, God seeks us out to help us to become more than we are in our sinfulness.

    This is why Jesus reaches out to save the adulterous woman, to include Matthew the tax collector among his disciples, and to forgive Peter for his betrayal. 

    And isn’t this why Jesus does the same for you and me? Reaching out in mercy to us repeatedly to forgive us and reconcile with us? Reaching out in love to care, to save and to restore us to live with God? 

    Why would Jesus reach out and do this for us?

    Because he wants us to know God. To know how much God is enchanted with us, as his beloved. To know how much God is in love with us, even when we have sinned. To know how much God believes in us as his own and in our capacity to realize all that is good not just for ourselves but for all. In short, God desires nothing more than for us to be saints, to live as saints and bear fruit that only saints can for everyone.

    Our readings offer us encouragement to become saints.

    In the first reading, Sirach teaches us that the quality of fruit a tree bears depends on the care it is given. How we treat others, how we speak with others and speak of them also depends on how we care for them in our hearts and minds first. We have all experienced the harm and pain of words said senselessly and words that were written cruelly. This evil took shape first in human hearts and minds, as our hearts and minds. Indeed Sirach is right, “one’s speech discloses the bent of one’s mind” (Sirach 27.6). Here is wisdom to live the saintly life with and for others.

    Jesus builds on this teaching in the gospel. He speaks of good trees not bearing bad fruit and bad trees not bearing good fruit. He then makes this comparison: “A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks” (Luke 6.45). If we draw from our dislike, hatred, anger, and resentment against another and judge him bad, sinful and no good in our minds and hearts first, before we do so in word or deed, then we draw from the evilness within us. If we make this a habit of how we interact with others, we will slowly but surely become those judging hypocrites Jesus condemns. Here is wisdom to safeguard us from falling into sinful ways.

    Wise are we then to refrain from gossiping and slandering because they plant the seed of judging. Wise are we to verify what we hear to know the truth and not judge falsely. Wise are we to stop having a “blame first; judge now” attitude by engaging another sincerely, listening compassionately and understanding mercifully. 

    The wisest among us will learn from and imitate the many saints who say, “Be harsh with yourself and gentle with others.” They heard Jesus’ teaching, made it their daily practice and examined their lives frequently to note their own defects instead of only noticing the faults of others. They teach us not just what a waste of time this hobby of spotting faults in others is but how grave a fault it is in us: it diminishes our humanity and cripples us from becoming saints.

    Want to be a saint?  Do what Jesus says – attend to our sinfulness first and work to remove it. Only then can we clearly see how to help others to the same and become better. Only then will our lives be fruitful for we will live as saints.

    To do this we must embrace the certain and painful honesty it demands of us: to see our shortcomings and ourselves as God sees. Often, we are too ashamed or afraid to see our true selves as God see us as we desire to become better. Paul encourages us to do this: “My beloved brothers, be firm, steadfast, always fully devoted to the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15.58). We do not perfect ourselves; God perfects us. Can we let God do this?

    Today Jesus demands that we stop being hypocrites. Instead, we are to be saints. We can be by taking on the look of God who sees each of us as more than sinners – that look of God who sees us in the fullness of our humanity and especially our potential to become better in Jesus’ company.

    Let us do this. Then, maybe all around us will see us as we are on the journey through life and faith we make with Jesus – and yes, sometimes failing, often times good, but always, as God’s own, his saints.




    Preached at St Ignatius Church and Church of the Transfiguration, Singapore
    photo: wearefromlatvia.com

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