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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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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