1. 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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  2. 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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  3. 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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"Bukas Palad"
"Bukas Palad"
is Filipino for open palms
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Peace and welcome, dear friend.
I hope you will find in these posts something that speaks to you of the God who loves us all and who always holds us in the palm of his hand. Blessings!
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Fall in Love, Stay in Love
Fall in Love, Stay in Love

"Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute way final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything."

Pedro Arrupe, sj, Superior General, 1965 - 1983

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is a 50something Catholic who resides in Singapore and works for the Church. He is a priest of the Roman Catholic Church.
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©adrian.danker.sj, 2006-2018

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