1. Year C / Ordinary Time / Week 21 / Sunday
    Readings: Isaiah 66.18-21 / Psalm 116.1,2 (R/v Mk 16.15) / Hebrews 12.5-7,11-13 / Luke 13.22-30


    Doors. They surround us everywhere. We see them every day. We use them every time. Open doors suggest a new beginning, a way out or a warm welcome within. So, we enter. Closed doors symbolise a dead end or no entry, imprisonment or a ‘do not disturb’.  And so, we stand and wait, or we move on. Revolving doors, however, can trap us into going round and round mindlessly, with no exit. 

    We are invited this Jubilee Year of Mercy to contemplate on Jesus who is the face of God’s mercy. Jesus is also the door or gate to God because he shows us “the way” to life (John 14.6). 

    This is why we have the Holy Door each jubilee year; it reminds us of conversion in Jesus. Pilgrims passing through it express their choice in Jesus to leave behind sin, slavery, and darkness and to cross the threshold into grace, freedom, and light. The Holy Door for the Year of Mercy is in Rome. Locally, we have five Holy Doors to celebrate this year's Jubilee. One of these is at the Church of the Holy Cross in Clementi. The face of Jesus that covers this Holy Door helps us remember his words: “I am the door; if anyone enters through me, he shall be saved” (John 10.9). It is Jesus then who gathers the sinful and the broken in order to redeem all into the wholeness of being one with God.

    This image of “gathering” is a central theme in the Scriptures. The Old Testament tells of God gathering one people out of many tribes. The theologian Gerhard Lohfink considers this “gathering” of the scattered to be a key biblical term for the event of salvation. Salvation is therefore not about being saved for heaven after death, as we know it. Rather, salvation “is about gathering people in communion, thereby restoring the good creation that sin and violence have torn apart” (William T. Cavanaugh). Only God gathers like this. And in the New Testament, we learn that God gathers all into God’s life through Jesus, with Jesus, and in Jesus. 

    In the first reading, Isaiah records that this is indeed God’s desire: “I come to gather all nations and tongues” so that “they shall come and shall see my glory”, God says, “and I will set a sign among them.” God’s gathering is creation itself: God makes from the many a new and holy people whom he sets apart with God’s sign. It is right and just that the psalmist calls “all you nations” to praise God for God’s steadfast love.

    We too want to acclaim God. Isn’t this why we are here again at Mass: to praise and reverence God? And when we become the Body of Christ in Communion, to go forth to serve God’s people? But could it be that we are here because we consider ourselves the chosen and the saved? If we come for these reasons, then, we have forgotten that there is a challenge that goes with being chosen — it is Christ-like discipleship.

    I think we all forget about this challenge, every now and then. We do because of that selfish human tendency in all of us to take things for granted, including our faith life. Isn’t the Church always here whenever we want to go to Mass? Aren’t the sacraments readily available when we want them for our children and ourselves? Don’t the priests and parish community serve us whenever we need them? 

    In today’s gospel, Jesus uses three images of doors* to teach us how we can become more responsible for our discipleship. 

    First, the narrow door and the lesson on the cost to discipleship

    We grow as Jesus’ disciples in and through the relationships we have with God and others. We become part of this community of relationships through the process of discipleship. 

    This involves the practice and discipline of letting God correct and train us so that we grow to become more like Jesus. This is Paul’s teaching in our second reading. Such a relationship is however not cheap or easy. It demands a life of discipleship through which we share and participate in God’s holiness. This is why Jesus says, “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able.”

    For Jesus, the narrow door expresses the challenge of following him to be with God by serving others selflessly. We enter when we take up the Cross. This is the cost of the narrow door.

    Second, the locked door and the lesson on taking our faith seriously 

    We mature as Jesus’ disciples when we really listen to Jesus teachings that we live our discipleship fully in his ways.

    Jesus uses the image of the locked door the master has secured his house with to warn us that the door to God can be shut.  When that happens, we will stand apart from God and we will feel the heart-wrenching pain of the closed door. His words are harsh but they are graced. They are to wake up self-righteous and spiritually smug disciples who consider themselves the chosen and saved. They can re-ignite the complacent faith of such presumptuous disciples. 

    The strident, urgent tone of Jesus’ words should jolt you and me to do the same and make the right choice today, and not tomorrow or another time because these may never come to be. Choosing the narrow door is the right choice. When we choose otherwise, we ourselves close that door to God. So, let whoever has ears, hear what Jesus is teaching today.

    Third, the big, wide and opened door and the lesson on God’s largesse 

    We celebrate that we are Jesus’ disciples when we selflessly share God’s goodness in our lives with everyone, especially the sinful and the needy.

    Luke’s gospel reminds us that all are invited to participate in God’s life: “people will come from east and west, from north and south”, and they will feast in God’s kingdom. While some present are the expected, many are not, surprising us. And not everyone who thinks they’re “in” will be for the master of the house will leave then out, saying, “I do not know where you come from.”

    I believe that all who are present and feasting at this banquet have come through the big, wide and opened door of God’s mercy. Luke’s gospel does not mention it but it is there. 

    This is the door God audaciously flings open to any and everyone who seeks God. Jesus unhinges this same door of mercy and re-purposes it as God’s table of plenty for everyone, saint and sinner alike. And yes, you and I can enter this open door to celebrate with God because Jesus has made squeezing through the narrow door doable for all through the Cross.

    The doors we encounter daily can teach us much about life and faith. Our faith experience has shaped many of us to think that the narrow door is for the chosen few who will be saved. But this isn’t Jesus’ message. For him, God’s goodness will always lead everyone to the narrow door. 

    As Jesus’ disciples, we should permit God to walk with us to it, and together pass through it with hope — with hope because nothing less than God and God’s goodness awaits us on the other side. Maybe then, we will truly know that God has always constructed this door to be big and wide — never narrow — to gather and save everyone, no matter our state of grace. 

    Are you still waiting to enter? Wait no more; God eagerly awaits our coming. Let us enter.    





    * Inspired in parts of James Prasnell

    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    photo: talentcutlure.com 

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  2. Year C / Ordinary Time / Week 20 / Sunday 
    Readings: Jeremiah 38.4-6, 1-10 / Ps 39.2, 3, 4, 18 (R/v 14b) / Hebrews 12.1-4 / Luke 12.49-53


    Sisters and brothers, what plans have made you made for a happy and meaningful life? Or, in the words of the American poet, Mary Oliver,  at the end of her poem, ‘The Summer Day’ – “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?”

    I ask all our first-year students in SJI, be they in Secondary 1 or JC 1, this question.  I ask them this at Orientation as they look ahead to their learning and growing up in SJI. I ask them again at graduation when they look back on all they have accomplished as Josephians. 

    This is an important question. It has to do with making choices – making choices that shape the kind of life we want to live and how we will make the best of our lives for others.

    I’d like to suggest that this invitation to make choices is a helpful lens for us to appreciate our readings today. I am suggesting this because Jesus is challenging us in today's gospel reading to consider the choices we make daily: do they empower us to live our Christian life with fire and passion, like he does? He says: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized and how is my anguish until it is accomplished (Luke 12.49-10).

    What is the fire Jesus talks of? When I was young, I imagined it to be a fire that burns and destroys everything. I thought of it as a fire that damages, hurts and causes great pain. But as I grew and learned, and matured in our faith, I realised that fire is also a symbol of love. 

    I believe love was the fire that empowered Jesus to live, serve and care. Through the gospels we read, see and hear about this fire of the love of God alive in Jesus. 

    It was a fire that empowered him to heal as many as he needed to and to teach repeatedly as he had the voice to speak. It was that fire that energised him to visit many and as far away as he could walk to. This was the fire that moved him to forgive sinners as often as he had to and to serve all as selflessly as he knew God wanted him to. Finally, this was the burning fire that emboldened him to sacrifice his life for the salvation of all.

    You and I have this same love of God. It was given to us in our Baptism and at Confirmation. It is the Holy Spirit already poured into our hearts as God’s flame within us. It is meant to burn brightly in us, like the fire that guides us onward. It is to be the fire that purifies, refines and perfects us, as it also galvanizes us to become strong, faithful Christians. Indeed, it is to be that fire empowering us to love God and in this love to serve all.  This fire is that flame St Paul instructs Timothy to nurture as a Christian: “fan into a flame the gift you have” (2 Timothy 1.6). He is also instructing us.

    Sadly, this fire sometimes does not burn as brightly and strongly in our lives. It is more like the embers of barbeque or campfire coals. We must blow gently on to fan the flame and make it fire if we want to be alive as Christians. Jesus is challenging us to make this choice today. He wants us to see us blazing, being on fire with the love of God. He wants us to live our Christian life with passion. 

    But you and I often settle for being lukewarm in our faith and in how we practice it. 

    Wise are we when we recognise how dangerous it is to choose to be lukewarm about our faith and how we practise it. Such a choice normalises or says “it’s ok” to have and practise an attitude of spiritual laissez faire, of anything goes in our choices as Christians, and of compromising how we live our Christian life. 

    The result of being lukewarm is turning our back on being the saint that God wants for us. We bluff ourselves into thinking that being lukewarm is just about being lazy.

    Jesus brings to the world the fire of love. It is different from the fire of judgment that we often hear in the Old Testament. That kind of fire is vengeful; it condemns and destroys.

    Jesus’ fire of love is different. It is not touchy-feely, all is is hanky-dory, everything is going well, no worries. His fire of love corrects and sets right. It also is life-giving and life-sustaining. This is so, Pope Benedict XVI reminds us, because Jesus, as Judge and Saviour, is the fire burning in us to save us. To choose Jesus and to live in his ways is to encounter him, as fire that “burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become more truly… totally ourselves and thus totally of God”.  This is a painful transformation, Pope Benedict adds, but it is in the pain of this encounter with Jesus that we find our salvation. (Spes salvi no. 47)

    I believe we want to make this choice – to let Jesus be the fire that transforms us so that we can be like Jesus on fire so as to reach out to care for others and save them. However, many of us, myself included, keep thinking of ourselves as unworthy to make this choice. Unworthy because of our repeated sinfulness that is the result of our being lassiez faire and lukewarm about how we live our Christian faith.

    Though this is how we might think of ourselves, God does not think or believe so. Listen to the Responsorial Psalm again. Listen to the psalmist who reveals to you and me the good and hope-filled news of who we are to God, and how God wants us to be and act in the world with him.

    Yes, we may join the psalmist and judge ourselves “wretched and poor”. But this God knows us to be much more than our needs and our faults. To God, we are his beloved because we are his very own. God, therefore, cannot do anything but all that is very good for us and our salvation. Isn't this why we are hopeful as we hear the Psalm because here is our God lifting us up from the pit, setting us upon rock to make our footsteps firm, and putting a new song into our mouths to praise God? Surely those who see God doing all this for us will “see and fear and trust in the Lord” as the psalmist celebrates.

    How can we then not choose our God, and make of our one wild previous life something better to love God more and to serve others even more?

    I believe this is the good intention we all want to put into action. We might be afraid however because we fear will we are easily distracted, weak when tempted and unable to sustain it. Today we are reminded that we don’t go through life alone, nor do we have to make the choices alone.  God gives us many people to be with us and to aid us. 

    The second reading reminds us that we are accompanied by “so many witnesses in a great cloud on every side of us”. These are the saints in heaven and the people of goodwill on earth. They accompany us through life. We, therefore, need not fear to lose “sight of Jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection”.  

    Yes, today God assures us we can live our Christian lives better.  We can because like Jeremiah who experienced the fire of God’s love burning in him to do the right thing, you and I already have this same fire to guide us as Christians.  

    Let us choose then to fan it into a great fire burning passionately for God and selflessly for many. May this fire of love, in turn, kindle the fires in others so that together we will set the world ablaze with the love of God.  Let us ask for this grace.




    Preached at St Stephen’s Church, Singapore
    Photo: www.thenewtimes.co.rw

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  3. Year C / Ordinary Time / Week 19/ Sunday 
    Readings: Wisdom 18.6-9 / Ps 32.1, 12, 18-19, 20, 22 (R/v 12b) / Hebrews 11.1-2, 8-19 / Luke 12.32-48


    Sisters and brothers, we have all had made a leap or two of faith to follow God – maybe even many more too. The Israelites in the first reading had to make such a leap to begin their journey into the unknown desert land. 

    What enabled them to make that leap of faith? What can enable us to do likewise as modern-day Christians?

    Perhaps we can after making smaller leaps, maybe a hop or two, of faith in everyday life. Then, with more such leaps over time we will find the confidence to make bigger leaps of faith. 

    Making small leaps brings to life what we hear in the opening line in our second reading – that “Only faith can guarantee the blessings that we hope for”. This reading aimed to encourage the early Christians to live out their faith as they waited for Jesus’ second coming that they believed would happen but did not know when it would be. They could only do this as uncertain as they were because they let their faith in God deepen. 

    To do this, they had to trust because trust strengthens faith, especially when faith is exercised in waiting and tested by vigilance.

    We see this in the example of Abraham in the second reading. Abraham had faith in God. Listen to the number of times Abraham, and Sarah too, acted by faith because they trusted God: “by faith Abraham obeyed”, “by faith he arrived in the Promised Land”, “by faith Sarah conceived”, and “by faith Abraham offered up Isaac and God returned Isaac”.  With every act of faith Abraham and Sarah made, God blessed them with new land, a son, and descendants “as many as the stars of heaven and the grains of sand on the seashore”. 

    Abraham exemplifies the believer whose faith grows strong because he trusts God.

    Do we trust God enough, like Abraham, to strengthen our faith?

    We should try to answer this question because it expresses the challenge Jesus poses in today’s gospel. 

    Jesus tells a parable of a master who has gone away but promises to return. His homecoming is however indefinite. He has entrusted his servants with his property, goods, and household. They are to act justly and live soberly. Above all, they are to wait and be vigilant for the Master’s return at any moment. 

    This parable is about you and me. We are the servants; Jesus is the master.  If a master gives his servants their life, purpose, and identity, then, it is through Jesus that God bestows on the world all that is good, especially, our life, purpose and identity, and yes, even our salvation. Isn’t this good enough reason for us to keep trusting God even as we wait for God’s answers to our prayers and remain vigilant for God’s coming that we await?

    I believe we all try to keep faith with God. We, however, fail now and again to have the faith we want. When we fail, it is easy to give in to anxious concerns, painful disappointments, and sad regrets – like these that the poet Andrew King describes:

    Not yet is that kingdom come upon us:
    not yet the peace that is God’s loving will;
    not yet the swords turned into plowshares;
    not yet the wolves lying down with lambs;
    not yet the lands where refugees
    may dwell in joy and safety;
    not yet the bellies of children
    unswollen from their hunger;
    not yet the world’s enslaved going free,
    not yet the poor finding lives of fullness,
    the cities where the gun no longer sounds.
    Not yet.*

    Where is God? we lament. How then can you and I still trust in God so that our faith can be strong? 

    By daring to rethink waiting as waiting in God’s time, not as wasted time, and vigilance as alertness to God’s presence in our midst, not as a future event to come.

    To wait in God’s time is to dwell in God’s present-ness. That is, God is always present in every moment with us and for us. This is because God simply loves us as we in the here and now, no matter our past, be it good or bad, or how we will become in the future. For us, God is and God saves.

    To be alert to God’s presence is to let ourselves live in no other space but God’s. With God, we experience how good God is as God labours for our wellbeing and happiness. I believe we have all experienced God's goodness – when a family member mercifully forgives us for our wrongs; when a friend compassionately cares for us in our need; when we are given second chances in spite of our mistakes. And more than these are the many people God has placed in our lives to show us this goodness.  

    Waiting in God and being alert to God. These Christian practices help us to reclaim this truth the world often forgets: that we are created to simply be ourselves before God and in relationship with one another. And even more, to act in love of God and to serve one another with love. 

    To love: this is how God repeatedly calls us to trust Him who has great trust that we can indeed love. This is why God keeps inviting us, no matter our state of grace, to join Jesus to do what is right and just, good and compassionate, noble and uplifting for all:

    And so (Andrew King points out) not yet can we turn our eyes from duty,
    not yet can we turn from service to others,
    not yet can we cease from seeking justice,
    nor cease from a wide compassion;
    not yet can we rest from kindness, from mercy,
    from pursuing peace, from lifting up
    all those who are trodden down.
    Not yet.

    God who is our conscience pricks us. How can we turn away from those who need us when God never turns away from inviting us to build his kingdom with Jesus? God keeps faith with us because we are his beloved and, more so, because God trusts us to love another. Can we then keep faith with God and often enough?

    We can by praying for the grace of not yet. We must beg God for this grace. 

    In school, “If you get a failing grade, you’d think, ‘I’m nothing, I’m nowhere’. But if you get the grade ‘Not Yet’ you understand that you’re on a learning curve”.** ‘Not yet’ gives us the confidence to make those small leaps of faith that we can and will get better bit by bit and one day succeed.

    Spiritually speaking, the experience of ‘not yet’ is itself hallowed. It orientates us to look ahead with confidence. ‘Not yet’ good but we can wait expectantly for Jesus who will make us better. ‘Not yet’ perfect but we can keep a careful watch for his coming to perfect us. Yes, ‘not yet’ a saint but we can be alert and attentive to welcome God whom Jesus reveals and shows us the way to be his saint one day.

    The experience of ‘not yet’ is therefore sacred. It allows us to grow in faith with God one step at a time, one small leap of faith each moment, and always a step and a leap taken with trust in God. 

    The grace of not yet gives us hope. Hope to help us persevere in our waiting and embolden us in our vigilance. 

    However, this hope must be grounded in faith. In a faith that never gives up on God. In a faith that believes God will come soon. In a faith that trusts in the possibility of so much more you and I can become in God. All this is indeed the promise we hear in the first line in our second reading: “Only faith can guarantee the blessings that we hope for”.

    This is why we must trust God and pray the grace of not yet. It can powerfully draw us forth into having certain faith that life with God is indeed ours to come, as Andrew King sums up confidently this hope:

    Not yet that banquet table,
    not yet that feast of the kingdom’s
    completion where all are guests of love.
    Not yet the time to extinguish our lamps
    in the rays of a new day’s sun.
    Not yet.

    And yet –
    hear what unwearied hope says:
    Maybe soon.

    Yes, maybe soon. So, let us always trust God and be brave to make those leaps of faith – for where else we will land when we do so but into God’s loving, saving hands.




    * Andrew King, “At An Unexpected Hour”
    ** Carol Dweck, The Power of Believing You Can Improve


    Preached at Church of the Transfiguration and St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    Photo: www.easterpeople.me

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  4. Year C / Ordinary Time / Week 18/ Sunday
    Readings: Ecclesiastes 1.2; 2.21-23 / Ps 89. 3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14 and 17 (R/v 1) / Colossians 3.1-5, 9-11  / Luke 12.13-21

    Sisters and brothers, what does it mean to be a disciple and Christian? 

    What does it mean for us to ponder this question in today’s world when society tells us that the criteria for success are the size of our house or the make of our car and that the greatness of our worth is having the right degree from the right university or the top position in the top company?

    At first glance, we might not think that today’s readings can give us any answers because they seem ancient in time and far removed from today’s realities. After all, the Book of Ecclesiastes, a collection of ethical teachings, was written around 180 BC, while St Paul’s letter to the Colossians was written about AD 60 and the most recent the Gospel of Luke was written around AD 85.  Even if they had answers to offer, aren’t they the same old, same old lessons and teachings we are so familiar with? 

    Is there anything they can say to us?  A lot because the Bible is the Living Word of God and, if we are open to it, God’s voice will answer our needs when we read or hear these readings. We must, therefore, listen attentively with courage to hear God, and having heard God, to respond with generosity.  To listen in order to act is, in fact, St Benedict’s instruction to his monks. In his Rule writes: “Listen carefully, my son, to the master’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart” (Rule of St Benedict).

    Our readings demand that we listen to God. They insist that to live and work, pray and play as a Christian and disciple in today’s world we must first know what matters to God and always hold on to it.

    Our readings do not just remind us of this. They in fact demand that we put it into practice – put into action in our lives what we know matters to God. 

    Let me suggest three phrases to help us listen to God speaking through today’s readings so that we can act on God’s word and practice it.

    First, “Know your priorities”. For many of us, the word ‘vanity’ grabs our attention in the first reading. It is repeated seven times, tolling like a bell whose sound keeps ringing in our ears. Often we think of ‘vanity’ as pride.  

    The more accurate translation here is ‘pointlessness’. All that Preacher in this reading says is meant to challenge us to answer this question: “What’s the point of it all?” What’s the point of having wisdom and being skilled, of working excessively and playing indulgently? What’s the point when all will these will end when life ends?

    I’d like to suggest that this reading demands we know and identify our priorities in life. 

    Do we make time to pray? To work honestly? To cherish family always and be with friends often? To read wisely, laugh wholeheartedly, to play joyfully? Or, are we too fixated, obsessed, preoccupied with wealth, possessions, position, fame, and accumulating more of these? Are we unhappy, anxious, angry as work for them? Yes, it is good to have these if we can, but when life ends, these end too.

    Here is God speaking through this reading and challenging us to know what must matter for us as disciples and Christians. I think this quote from Louisa Mae Alcott from her novel, Little Women, sums up the point I am making best: “Love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy.” What end is this but that which all want – to be with God eternally.

    Second, “Seek the heavenly”.  St Paul’s reminds the Colossians to do this in the second reading: “If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above”. What is above is God and life with God. 

    We are the baptised. We have been raised with Christ. We are to seek what is above, the heavenly, not the earthly.  Do you and I do this enough? Or, are we drawn repeatedly to earthly distractions that become our addictions and bad habits over time? Do we keep our focus on God as we go about our daily lives and God’s people He entrusts to us to care for and uplift mercy and compassion?

    Here, through St Paul’s teaching, God is challenging us to turn away from those earthly actions that cause us to sin – like immorality, impurity, evil passions, greed, lying and in today’s world, hatred, injustice, self-righteousness as our religious right – so that we can live the life Jesus calls us to live for God and with God. 

    Jesus came to us to model the way to God. This is why we must dare to remember and practise what our Baptism empowers us to do: “take off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self”. 

    Third, “God is life”. Jesus uses a parable in the gospel to discuss a rich man who is “not rich in what matters to God”. This man has stored up enough possessions to guarantee a good life without worries — so he self-confidently and self-assuredly thinks. 

    Jesus challenges such thinking: do not rely on wealth and possessions for they are all fleeting, as is earthly life.  Instead, Jesus reminds us to focus on what must matter to all of us: that God is the fullness of life we seek, especially for eternity.

    As much as this life is God’s free and gracious gift to all of us through Jesus’ death and resurrection, we must also work to make it truly our. We can by refocussing our lives on God and choosing God’s ways. Our second reading reminds us to do this.  

    Here in the gospel, God is reminding us about what matters to Him – that we live our Christian lives by choosing to detach and dispossess ourselves of anything that hinders us from growing into the fullness of life with God. The wise disciple, the faithful Christian knows this, and more than know he practises it.

    Know your priorities. Seek the heavenly. God is life. 

    These three phrases can help us hear more clearly what God wants us to know today  – that we must put God as the center of our lives; and more than this, we have to keep God at the center as we go about living, praying and working amidst today’s realities.

    Keeping God at the center of our lives. This is how Jesus lived – live a life well spent with God and a life serving many with compassion, generosity, and sacrifice. We are called to live like Jesus.

    Keeping God at the center will challenge us to be honest before God and open to God’s desires of us. Keeping God at the center will insist we face up to the darkness and sinfulness in us, particularly how we relate to others.  Keeping God at the center will give us hope that God loves us to save us. Yes, keep God at the center of our lives and it will make all the difference.

    Listen to Anne Osdieck describing how it much it matters that God is with her in life:

    Lord, in between my first breath and my last
    — before you call me home— 
    you give me time.

    Time to work hard, time to pray well,
    time to play and time to give;
    time to be with friends,
    time to love and be loved. 

    When my hours are spent,
    please let me hear you say
    “I was here with you through it all.
    I gave you precious time.
    You have used it well.”

    Yes, today you and I have heard God calling us to live our Christian lives better. So let us not harden our hearts anymore, any further, any harder but rejoice that with God, we are in his refuge from one generation to the next.





    Preached at Church of Christ the King and Church of St Ignatius, Singapore
    photo: www.discover-chartres.com

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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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