bukas palad: 2020

Dec

25

Homily @ Christmas: What Really Matters

Year B / 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

“The Word was made flesh, he lived among us.”

What joyful proclamation today! The angels herald it. The shepherds adore God’s Word alive in our midst. Mary and Joseph hold their new born and love him. We too should rejoice: Hallelujah! Glory to God and peace to all peoples.

But how much does Jesus’ birth really matter to you and me?

This Christmas isn’t going to be quite the same for many. Fewer will gather for the Christmas liturgies. Celebrations will be smaller and muted. Loved ones will be apart, some quarantined. Frontline workers will work harder to keep us safer.

Today it matters that we hear greetings of “Merry Christmas” or “Blessed Christmas.” Also, words of love and expressions of loving between family and friends. Some thanksgiving too for gifts exchanged and, hopefully, for the gift we are to one another.

But what we really want to hear, I suspect, are more comforting words.  Like this: “Thank God, you are safe!” They assure us that God laboured through our sacrifices, hard work and vigilance throughout this pandemic, and looked after us. Yes, God has, and so we resound “All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.”

What must especially matter then this Christmas is this. Not just that God loves, cares and saves us. But that He is indeed God-with-us, especially in hard times now, as illness, anxiety and uncertainty swirl around us.

By giving us his only Son God offers all who believe eternal life, not death. This is God’s faithfulness, the Gospel announces. Throughout this pandemic, we’ve experienced the depth of God’s faithfulness: Jesus walks with us.

Yes, 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 so true and real in this pandemic. Indeed, God’s love always acts in our favour. This matters. How can anyone miss this Christmas truth coming alive this year? “None” I dare say because Jesus’ coming encourages humankind to look for the face of God. More importantly, Jesus’ coming teaches many how to reveal God’s saving love.

Regardless of faith, race or tongue, we have learned to do this because we have all stood once before the child Jesus in Christmas cribs in churches or shopping malls, and even metaphorically, in story and music.  A child, vulnerable and helpless — with outstretched hands, waiting. Waiting for our response.

Many still look, see and move on. But for those who dare to quieten ourselves before Jesus, open our hearts and listen, something happens. Jesus’ quiet prompting in our hearts, oftentimes soiled and messy, moves us to care. To welcome him who is little and least. To uplift him who is weak. To care for him who is poor. To love him who is infinite and infant. Will we still?

Our Advent hope is for God to come and save us. At Christmas, God fulfils our hope. God also hopes we will welcome Jesus into our lives. Then, God can make our hearts big, even bigger in time, to love. He will by humbling us to see him in every face of all in need, pleading for our care. Particularly, the small and weak, the least and last, the poor and outcast.

This is God’s plan. Not for today and tomorrow; it extends into the future – our future with one another on earth, and with God in heaven.

Today, we rejoice for Jesus dwells amongst us. In him, we know we are God’s own. Let us respond gratefully in the best human way we can – in deeds of care for many, not words. Then, we can best show forth what must really matter: that God’s glory is indeed Jesus caring for all with love beyond all telling. Let us.

A Blessed Christmas.

Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
Photo: humanitarian aid relief trust website (internet)

Posted 25th December 2020 by adrian danker

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Dec

20

Homily @ Advent: Be Hope-filled

Year B / Advent / Week 4 / Sunday
Readings: 2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16 / Responsorial Psalm 89:2-3, 4-5, 27, 29. (R/v 2a) / Romans 16:25-27 / Luke 1:26-38

“Hail, full of grace. The Lord is with you.”

This is how Angel Gabriel greeted Mary at the Annunciation. His words touch us and move us. They comfort us for we believe they are God’s greeting. These words from the Gospel have also inspired painters and poets to capture this moment. Whether in art and word, each has richly and rightly expressed every person’s longing for God and God’s love for us in return.

Today’s readings attest that God hears us in our need and He reaches out to us. Don’t our Advent readings point us to the gurgling infinite and infant Jesus who fulfills all our wants and needs?

As uplifting as Gabriel’s words are, they disturbed Mary: “She was greatly troubled at what was said.” I wonder if his greeting would disturb us as much if God does the same to you and me, calling us by name to say, “Hail, full of grace.” How should we react?

With gratitude and hope, I will suggest.

With gratitude first, after the surprise has settled. God comes to disturb us in our busyness. To stop us in our tracks, remind us of His presence, and demand we pay attention to Him. God-is-with-us.

Perhaps, this year, more than any before, we need God to disturb us at Christmas. For in our busy efforts to keep safe, protect others, and survive this pandemic, we may have been too busy to remember God. Some of us might have busied ourselves, even more, to avoid God and hide our messy, sinful lives.

When God does disturb us – and God will – let us be wise and consider the manner and reason for God’s intervention. Mary did; she pondered what sort of greeting this might be.

“The Lord is with you.” This is Gabriel’s answer to Mary. It consoles. It must be our answer and consolation too.

Unlike Mary, born without sin, we might feel our sinful lives have nothing for God to find favour with. Yet, hasn’t God repeatedly shown us otherwise? When family mercifully forgives us for mistakes. When friends compassionately care for us in illness and disappointments. When colleagues and classmates value our deficiencies as gifts and together we uplift others. These are the many times God intervenes. He disturbs us to remind us we are worthy. Like today, again: “Hail, full of grace.”

With hope too in our gratitude. Hope because God reveals the mystery of Jesus’ birth to us. Kept secret for long ages, proclaimed by the ancient prophets, it is now revealed: the good news of Jesus Christ, as St Paul reminds us in the Second Reading. Once, God chose Mary to bring alive this mystery. She accepted God’s call to bear Jesus to birth, and at the right time, she bored him to the world. Let heaven and earth rejoice (Psalm 96.11). And yes, let us too.

Today, God chooses us to do the same. He is asking us to open ourselves to Jesus, let him dwell in us, and at the right time, go forth and bear him to all peoples. Does this demand disturb you?

God doesn’t just want to be with us. Like Mary, God wants to come and dwell in us, and through us, to stay in the world. The Greek translation of John 1.14 expresses this best: “the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.”

Are we ready to let our lives be Jesus’ tent, his dwelling place in today’s world? Or, truth be told, do we have some cleaning up and clearing out to do for Jesus to come to birth in the manger of our hearts?

God’s faith in our worthiness. God's demand that we be his tent on earth. These are radical messages to hear. The word ‘radical’ has its origins in Latin for ‘root.’ This should give us confident hope. For God is affirming once again what He did at Creation, and has been inviting humankind to claim ever since. First, the truth that we were created good and worthy for God. Second, the desire God always has to be with us. In the Annunciation story, we hear God speak his hope. Mary heard it once. She responded with a “yes.”

What about us? What response will you and I make to God?

Preached at the Courage Ministry Advent Recollection and St Ignatius Church, Singapore
photo: rachelutainsevans.com

Posted 20th December 2020 by adrian danker

Labels: Advent Breaking Open God's Word

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Dec

15

Homily @ Advent: Be Joyful!

Year B / Advent / Week 3 / Sunday
Readings: Isaiah 61:1-2a, 10-11 / Responsorial Psalm - Luke 1:46-48, 49-50, 53-54. (R/v Is 61:10b) / 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 / John 1:6-8, 19-28

“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God, my saviour.”
We know these words. We ponder and bring them to prayer. We strive to live them in our daily lives. These are part of Mary’s Magnificat at the Annunciation. They are her grateful, joyful praise of God’s graciousness in her life and in the lives of many.
Today, these same words make up our Gospel Acclamation. They call us to rejoice and be glad because we celebrate Gaudete Sunday. Yes, we should because the Lord is coming. He is on the way. Indeed, Christmas is even nearer now.
Are we however truly joyful?
Maybe we find it difficult to be, like the Israelites Isaiah addresses in the First Reading. They struggled in exile, facing opposition and obstacles. We are now struggling with the coronavirus and the prolonged pain, suffering, uncertainty it has wrought in our lives. Even with a vaccine in sight, many are grappling with the reality of less festive and family Christmas celebrations, if not, none at all.
Maybe it is even harder to rejoice in this Advent because we feel that we are insufficiently prepared spiritually. Who amongst us has not been more preoccupied with keeping safe and well and not taking any risks, for family, friends, and at work? Circumstances have shifted our focus.
These real, everyday reasons do weigh us down. We may wonder if there is indeed any good reason to really rejoice today.
Today’s readings rightly direct our gaze to Jesus’ coming at Christmas. They demand we be glad and rejoice. They reveal another reason we can be glad.
We find it in the repeated focus they make on the Lord’s Spirit. This Spirit brings glad tidings to the poor, heals the brokenhearted, proclaims liberty to captives and announces God’s favour on his people. Filled with this same Spirit, John the Baptist announced the Lord’s coming, converted sinners and brought many to Jesus as we hear in our Gospel reading. This Spirit is none other than God’s Spirit in Jesus.
Today we are reminded that we are filled with this same Spirit. We have it because we are Jesus’ disciples. Jesus’ coming opens the way for God to gift us this Spirit. This is why we can do what John the Baptist did once before – announce the Lord’s coming into our midst. “There is one among you whom you do not recognize.”
As with John, this Spirit empowers us to be that voice crying out in the wilderness. In today’s wilderness where many are lonely and despairing and where apathy and unbelief abound among many. They are looking for light and healing, comfort and peace. We can bring these to them and be their hope by proclaiming Good News like John the Baptist did for many.
St Paul calls us to pray unceasingly in our Second Reading. We should beg God to fill us with His Spirit and move us to bring glad tidings to the poor. We should also pray unceasingly in thanksgiving. For, after all, what kind of a God would anoint us with His Spirit and invite us to partner him in Kingdom-building? A kind and loving God. He gifted us with Jesus once in history and every moment daily so that we receive his mercy and know his compassion.
Today, we have every right to rejoice: our anticipation for Jesus is real and his sure coming is our certain joy. Our rejoicing will be greater if we humble ourselves enough to realise that we know this because God’s gift of the Spirit has empowered others to announce Good News to us like John did to many. How can this unconditional love of God for us not compel you and me then to do the same to another who awaits this Advent?
Who then should we reach out to and help them rejoice with us?

photo: dailywalkdevontional.com

Posted 15th December 2020 by adrian danker

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Dec

6

Homily @ Advent: Be Consoling

Year B / Advent / Week 2 / Sunday
Readings: Isaiah 40.1-5, 9-11 / Psalm 85. 9-10, 11-12, 13-14 (R/v 8) / 2 Peter 3.8-14 / Mark 1.1-8

“Console my people, console them.”

Sisters and brothers, these are God’s words that we hear in the First Reading. His words are to assure His people: He will come to comfort and console His own. At Christmas we celebrate how God made His words come alive and true once before in history, and how He still does for us daily – in Jesus’ coming to be amongst us, to love and forgive us, to save us.

But who is God asking to console his people? Who is to bring His comfort to them?

While it is right and good that Advent prayer focuses us on the Lord’s coming, today we are being challenged to focus on who it is to bring the Lord’s consolation and comfort. It is us. We are the very ones who God wants to send to console and comfort all humankind.

God does not just want us to go and announce His sure coming, like John the Baptist did, and so prepare for this. He also wants us to be like the joyful messengers to Zion, Jerusalem and all the cities of Judah; we must also proclaim to all peoples, “Here is your God.” The Good News is more than the call we must heed to prepare well for the Lord’s coming. It is also and always the important work of prophesying the truth that God is here with us now.

You and I know how true it is that God is with us. We have all experienced his goodness and presence in our lives. This gives us the confidence to live our Christian faith. Are we, however, announcing God and God’s saving love in word and deed to all around us like John the Baptist and the joyful messengers did? Their work is important; they collaborated with God to console the people. They were His heralds.

This Advent when the pandemic has heightened our fears and anxieties, we need God’s heralds to comfort us. Even more, we need them to assure and uplift us this Christmas. Come, we pray, because everything we associate with Christmas – family gatherings, festive meals, gifts exchange, and even Christmas Masses with Glorias resounding – will be stripped away, if not pared down to the minimum.

More than ever, we do not just want God to be with us this year. We really need God, I believe. Who are the heralds He will send if not you and me?

An image the Advent narrative offers for our prayer is that of a pregnant Mary making her way over the countryside to be with her cousin Elizabeth. This visitation is an act of charity; Mary comforts and consoles the elder Elizabeth in her pregnancy. In fact, she who receives Jesus within her is to gift him to all around her. This is how God uses Mary to present Himself to us. Aren’t Christians to do likewise – to gift Jesus, the incarnate compassion of God, to others in charity, and so console the many in need?

It is easy to be introspective and prayerful at Advent to prepare ourselves for Christmas. But the more Christian act in this time, I suggest, is to herald God’s coming, not as a future event, but as the immediate reality that God is with us, in our midst. This is what Mary proclaimed to Elizabeth with her visit, and, more so, make real that God is in charge.

Who then should we visit this Advent and how should we make this visit count for another? Let us learn from those who have visited us and shown us the loving face of God. We can only give what we have. God has visited us in different ways, through various people, and his compassion is our comfort. Let us give what is good and loving from God in our lives to those who cry out for our help and care.

Maybe when we act in these ways, consoling and comforting them as God demands we must today, we will hear them echo resoundingly the very Good News those joyful messengers announced in the first reading – truly, “here is our God.”

Isn't this a good way to bring Advent hope to many? Shall we?

photo: ccn. com (internet)

Posted 6th December 2020 by adrian danker

Labels: Advent Breaking Open God's Word

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Nov

29

Homily @ Advent: Be Watchful!

Year B / Advent / Week 1 / Sunday
Readings: Isaiah 63. 16-17, 19. And 64.2-17 / Psalm 80:2-3, 15-16, 18-19 / 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 / Mark 13:33-37

“Where are you, God?”

Sisters and brothers, isn’t this the question we and many have asked repeatedly during this pandemic? Asked in the face of a virus that has wrecked the world and our lives, of constant mask-wearing, of sickness and death, of staying apart and staying apart from loved ones. Everything we know as life has changed drastically.

Haven’t we asked this question because we are bothered and bewildered, hurting and grieving, confused and fearful, worn out and exhausted? Yes, where is God?

Our readings today do not ask this question. They insist on naming and lamenting God’s hiddenness. “O that you would tear down the heavens and come,” cries the prophet Isaiah. “Restore us, Lord,” the Psalmist pleads, “let your face shine that we may be saved.”

Our readings demand that we face the honest truth that this year is not okay, that our world is not okay and that our lives are not so okay. They challenge us to stop pretending and get real about life and faith.

This is an unusual way to begin Advent. As odd as it is, it is maybe the right and necessary way especially this year. After all, doesn’t Advent insist that we confess honestly about what we are seeking at this time and always – God alone?

Jesus makes this same demand in our Gospel reading. Not just to be alert and watchful for the Lord’s coming. But that we embrace the necessary practice of waiting for God. Necessary because we need and want God to come to us.

God will however come at the anointed time that is best for us. And, God will come in the manner God wishes for us. Isaiah imagined God to be big and powerful and able to do mighty things to save the exiled Israelites. Maybe this is how we have hoped God would also be in this pandemic – to come and solve all our problems and console all our pains.

The Christmas surprise we know is that God came as little and least, with less. Is this the God we really need at this time? Yes, we believe – God to be with us, to be like us, and most of all to be for us.

We cannot welcome and receive this God unless we wait with honesty in the present realities around us and that we are involved in. Wrestling with a broken world. Struggling with our hurts, fears and confusion. Grappling with the seeming hiddenness of God.

Yes, let's be honest. We are here at this time, in this pandemic. And here we are praying as we begin Advent for God to tear down the heavens and come down to us. Come to show us his face so we shall be saved (Responsorial refrain).

Let us wait then and let us pray and prepare this Advent to welcome the Lord. But more so, let us allow ourselves to receive something good, something true, and something beautiful that comes to birth in us. Comes to birth to love and save us.

Indeed this coming to be is simply divine hope dawning in us that we are God’s. For as Isaiah reminds us today, you and me, and all the world, are being held by God. In His hands, we are being moulded and shaped. This is indeed how God is with us in Advent – preparing us to receive Jesus who reveals Him and Him alone at Christmas. We must watch out for this grace of God labouring in our lives, preparing us for Jesus. Do we then really need anything else this Advent?

So, let us “be watchful!” as Jesus asks us to be. Will we?

Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
photo: pinetrest (Internet)

Posted 29th November 2020 by adrian danker

Labels: Advent Breaking Open God's Word

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Nov

22

Homily: He Smells of Them

Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 34 / Sunday: Solemnity of Christ the King
Readings: Ezekiel 34.11-12, 15-17 / Psalm 23.2-2, 2-3, 5-6 (R/v 1) / 1 Corinthians 15.20-26, 28 / Mathew 25.31-46

“When the Son of Man comes in glory….” This is how Jesus speaks of his second coming in today’s gospel. Perhaps, this is how we associate Jesus as King – the one who comes in glory, with power and might, majesty and authority.

Is this how we are to understand Jesus’ kingship?

Our readings offer us a different image of Jesus as king. As shepherd-king. I would suggest that this is a good image of who a king is and what a king does – one who leads not by power and authority but with care. Genuine care for his people. In fact, genuine care for others must distinguish good leadership by Christians and non-Christians alike. Empathy, understanding and uplifting the other must characterize such leadership, even for kings.

Today we hear again of the kind of shepherd-king Jesus is. He tends to the flock. He leads all to the safe, restful pastures. He guides all onto the right paths. He rescues the lost and scattered. He feeds all who hunger. He tends to the injured. He brings all home safely. Each of us knows this truth about Jesus as the Good Shepherd in our prayer, the homilies we hear, and the spiritual writings we read. We especially know this through the goodness of many people who look out, care and support us, and so remind us of the kind of shepherding Jesus does for all peoples.

But why and how is Jesus the shepherd-king we ought to celebrate? For several reasons that remind us of the kingly nature of his care.

The shepherd-king leads and cares by going to the people and attending to them in the everydayness of their daily lives. He leaves the safety of the sheepfold and shepherds his sheep in the wilderness and the unsafe, in the messy and the soiled, stained and sinful world of their lives.

The shepherd-king does the work of caring for his people himself. Notice how he repeatedly says in the Frist Reading, “I myself” will pasture, rescue, look for the stray, bandage the wounded, and watch over everyone. Here is the king shepherding his people in the pastures and the trenches where they live and work, pray and play. He does all this himself. This is how he leads his people: he shows them the way to care for others.

Indeed, the shepherd-king leads his people not by power that enforces people into obedience, nor by authority that insists his might and right. The good king cares for his people not by majesty that scares his people to follow him in fear, nor by dictates, pronouncements or laws that confine, bind and restrict their freedom to do good.

The shepherd-king cares not for himself and his wellbeing but for those entrusted to him to steward. One way he cares best is to model the way to live well and happily. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus’s life and ministry show his disciples how to live life better – for others, in God’s love and for God’s life.

Hasn’t Jesus accompanied us through this pandemic to live in this way? Caring for our wellbeing – spiritual and material – every day so that we can do likewise for all around us? Caring for our salvation by helping us to still live in God’s ways even when we’ve had fewer opportunities to be in Church for Eucharist and faced more challenges to pray daily and live the Sacraments fully as we battled the coronavirus? Most of all, caring for us to become his shepherds in our charity and almsgiving to many in need at this time?

The message of today’s gospel is that Jesus will judge us on the quality of our own shepherding, of how we care for one another when our earthy life ends. "I have been with you and for you, shepherding you as your king; have you done likewise too?" Yes, how are we caring for others? Take heart if we haven’t: there is still time to be kind and to care for each other.

Pope Francis demands that priests should smell of the people they serve if we are truly shepherding as Jesus shepherds. I want to suggest that this same test – “Do we smell of the sheep in our care?” – must be for all Christians. If we are seriously Jesus’ disciples, we must all smell of the people God entrusts into our lives to care, to forgive, to reconcile, to uplift, and to love. This is how Christ the King would want his people to be – like him in caring for everyone and smelling of them.

Do we smell of each other? Will Christ the King also smell this of you and me?

Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
photo: egyptindependent.com (internet)

Posted 22nd November 2020 by adrian danker

Labels: Breaking Open God's Word

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Nov

8

Homily: Be Ready

Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 32 / Sunday
Readings: Wisdom 6.12-16 / Psalm 62.2abc, 2d-4, 5-6, 7-8 / 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18 / Matthew 25:1-13

Sisters and brothers, imagine that we are facing death. I wonder if we will look back on our lives at that moment and ask this question, "Have I lived my Christian life well enough that I am ready to meet God?"

In today’s parable, Jesus focuses us on preparing for his coming. He is the groom whose arrival we do not know the day or hour. We are the bridesmaids waiting for his coming. Some of us have prepared well and are ready to join him in celebration. Some of us remain foolish and are not readying ourselves.

Wise are we who hear Jesus’ teaching and ready ourselves well. We can do this by living in such a way that enables us to stay focus on the things that matter and will last. Of all these, the most important is the truth that God loves us and wants us to be with Him eternally. Do we want God as much too?

Wisdom is not preparing for God when we are older or when we have accomplished everything we want in life. Rather, wisdom is to be looked out for or sought for as we hear in the First Reading. You and I will find wisdom in how we spend the present moment — this time of waiting for God — well. Well enough by readying ourselves to welcome Jesus not just when life ends but even now in everyday life.

How should we prepare, especially as our souls thirst for God as our psalm rightly expresses? By daring to wait in God’s time and longing for God’s presence as we wait.

To wait in God’s time is to dwell in God’s present-ness with us. With God, there is no past or future, only the present for here God is. And because God is, God simply wants to dwell with us as we are now, no matter how good or bad we think are.

To long for God’s presence is to make ourselves more attentive to God’s good labour in our lives, no matter how deserving or unworthy we feel we are to receive God's goodness.

These two actions should make us appreciate God even more and prepare ourselves better by living in God’s ways as Jesus teaches. They will enable us to persevere in our preparations for God and practice vigilance in our waiting for His coming.

The sensible bridesmaids exemplify this kind of waiting and longing. They prepared well, remained alert, and longed for the bridegroom’s coming. We must live like them if we want to ready ourselves for God. Are we?

One way Christians can live more purposefully for God is by serving others. St Ignatius reminds us that deeds not words matter if we are serious about living the Christian life. The foolish bridesmaids returned with lit lamps, crying, “Lord, Lord, open the door for us.” But the doors remain shut. Deeds not words do matter to the Lord.

Today, Jesus offers us more than a choice. He is giving us the wisdom we need to prepare well. Wisdom that guides us to keep our hearts open to God and to let God’s love form us for Him alone.

This wisdom is Good News. It invites us to let God’s grace of not yet work in our lives.

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. It gives you a path into the future” (Carol Dweck, ‘The Power of Believing You Can Improve’).

The grace of not yet gives us time to stay alert, prepare well and welcome God in Jesus into our life. This gives us hope to persevere in our waiting and embolden us in our longing.

This hope grounds our faith. It gives us confidence not to give up on our preparation to make our lives worthy for others, and through them, for God – for God who never fails to come, love and save us in Jesus.

This is why we can and we must live differently by using the time we have now to prepare well for Jesus. Will we?

Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
Photo: peoples-results.com (internet)

Posted 8th November 2020 by adrian danker

Labels: Breaking Open God's Word

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Oct

31

Homily: What Saints Desire

Year A / Solemnity of All Saints
Readings: Revelation 7.2-4, 9-14 / Psalm 23.1-2,3-4b. 5-6 (R/v 6) / I John 3.1-3 / Matthew 5.1-12a

Sisters and brothers, what about saints are you thinking of today? Of the communion of saints? Of your favourite saint, or a person everyone calls a living saint?

Our first reading offers us a picture of saints: they are the heavenly multitude praising God for Jesus whose sacrifice redeemed us for eternal life. This image of saints in heaven is etched in our Catholic imagination.

St Paul presents us with another image of “saints”. In his letters, he calls the early Christians “saints” because they believed in Jesus and lived Christ-like lives. We share their belief and live Christian lives.

Do we recognise ourselves as saints? Do we want to live as saints?

“Wanting to” is the advice Thomas Merton, Cistercian monk and spiritual writer, received about becoming a saint.

In his biography, The Seven Story Mountain, Merton writes about a conversation with his friend, Lax, while walking down Sixth Avenue in New York City. Suddenly Lax asked Thomas, “What do you want to be?” Thomas replied, “I don’t know; I guess what I want is to be a good Catholic.” “What do you mean, you want to be a good Catholic?” Lax inquired. “What you should say”— Lax told Merton — “is that you want to be a saint.”

This is how their conversation ended in Merton’s words:
A saint! The thought struck me as a little weird. I said: “How do you expect me to become a saint?” “By wanting to,” said Lax simply.
Becoming a saint has everything to do with wanting to. It begins by wanting God unreservedly so as to live in God’s ways totally.

Isn’t this what Jesus is teaching his disciples in today’s gospel passage? For all to be like Him.

First, that they should want to live the promise of the Beatitudes. Being poor and meek, being merciful, and clean of heart are Christ-like ways that will lead them to God and to a place in God’s heavenly kingdom.

And second, that they should want to take up the challenge of living out these Beatitudes. When they do, the reign of God will flourish on earth, like in heaven, for all peoples. Then, they are God’s saints on earth and in the present, like those in heaven and for all time.

Today, Jesus is inviting you and me to be brave and to have the audacity to want to become saints.

Are we prepared to let go of all we have and are, become poor, and let God form us to be his saints? How seriously do we want this?

The saints seriously wanted sainthood. They understood what Jesus really meant when he said: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven." The saints understood the human need for God. In all things, they repeatedly threw themselves onto God’s mercy.

What did they find when they did so? That Jesus who came to redeem us had first descended so very low in death that after this no one would be able to fall so low without falling into him (Hans Urs von Balthasar).

The saints could fall into Jesus because they lived in his ways and wanted to be his saints. What about us? Do we dare fall into Jesus in our pains and fears, fall in our failings, and fall in our sinning?

I believe we can because whenever we fall, we will find Jesus already there for us. There to break our fall. There to catch us. There to hold and uplift us into life again. This truth may disturb some of us. It is however our exquisite refuge and our eternal relief.

I’d like to suggest that it is when we dare to recognize our restless need for God that we will be able to let go and let ourselves fall into Jesus’ compassionate embrace. And when we do this, we will experience what the saints desired and received – God alone.

Is this our desire too?

Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
photo: by victor alemán of john nava's "the communion of saints" tapestries in the cathedral of our lady of the angels in los angeles

Posted 31st October 2020 by adrian danker

Labels: Breaking Open God's Word

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Oct

24

Homily: Simply, 'Thank You'

Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 28 / Friday (SJI Thanksgiving Assembly – Morning Mass)
Readings: Ephesians 4.7-16 / Psalm 121.1-2, 3-4a, 4b-5 (R/v see 6) / Luke 13.109

“I…implore you to lead a life worthy of your vocation.” Here is St Paul in the First Reading calling, exhorting, pleading that you and I live a life worthy of our vocation.

How do you feel hearing this today at our final Mass for this school year? What is the vocation we are to live?

Josephians, you are students. In school, your vocation is to learn how to learn and how to live. It is also about how to make friends and grow up.

Teachers, your vocation in school is to educate. This means more than teaching. It is what you do so well: to care, to nurture, and to love our students and one another.

All of us as Christians have a vocation too. It is to live like Jesus to love God and to love our neighbour – and to do this with all the giftedness we have. Don’t we strive to do this well in our families and with our friends?

Paul reminds us that the best way to live this vocation is to practise charity toward each other, and this involves selflessness, gentleness, and patience. We ought to do this, he teaches, because this is how all vocations are meant to be lived – fully and happily with God and for others in community.

Hear again how he describes community: one Body; one Spirit; all called to the one hope of being with the Lord in the one faith and one baptism we share. Why one? Because God is the one community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Today we hear the call to be one. Isn’t this how we live in SJI too? Whether we are secondary or JC students, boy or girl, teacher, or student or administrator, we are all Josephians. We are because we are one community.

This year more than any other year, we have had to work so much harder to stay together as community. The pandemic has disrupted school as we know it. So much of our school life has changed. We spent a whole term of teaching and learning at home. Back in school, we wear masks, we have reduced CCAs and CAS-es, and we interact with strict safety measures to stay healthy.

Though change has come, we’ve continued to stay as the SJI community, and flourish. We’ve had to find new, innovative ways to teach, learn, and carry on school life. We’ve done much, and sometimes in surprising ways, to keep our spirits buoyant and hope-filled. We’ve worked hard to strengthen our community by nurturing our bonds of togetherness.

I believe we have done all this because we know how important community is to us in SJI. We read about its importance it in this quote from St John Baptist de la Salle that is outside the Staff Room:
Union in a community is a precious gem… If we lose this, we lose everything. Preserve it with care, therefore, if you want your community to survive. (Meditations 91.2)
Today we assemble to give thanks for the year that has been. Let us begin by thanking God for helping us to preserve our community. Everyone is safe and together. Every student and teacher has lived and can continue to live our vocations fully and happily when all around us in this pandemic there is so much death and suffering, anxiety and uncertainty.

How were we able to preserve community? Because God helped us to do the right thing that Jesus challenges the crowds in the Gospel Reading to do: to interpret and respond to these times in God’s ways.

“Let us remember we are in the holy presence of God.” We recite and hear this prayer school every morning when we begin school and every time we pray in school. What is this holy presence? We can think of it as God’s presence surrounding us. God’s presence is also God’s Spirit dwelling in our hearts. ‘He and I are one,’ as we sing in a hymn.

It is God’s Spirit within us each of us that helped us to interpret these difficult times to respond as God wants us to as Josephians and as a school. This Spirit guides and directs us, helps and comforts us. This Spirit has enlightened us throughout this challenging year to teach and learn, to speak and act, to choose and decide, to care and share, to be and stay as community in the ways God wants us to be SJI. Indeed, God, working through each of us, has preserved our community. Thanks be to God.

Jesus teaches that the failure to interpret as God’s Spirit invites us to is harsh. This year, we have humbled ourselves and listened, and we have let God lead us through this pandemic.

And so, it is good and right that we come to Eucharist. This is the right place to thank God for this year. Our readings today are the Church’s readings for today’s Mass. We did not choose special ones. Yet, they help us to appreciate even more our thanksgiving as we end this school year. They rightly help us to remember, celebrate and believe in God’s faithfulness and goodness to all of us in SJI and our school. This is God’s assuring providence that He is with now and as we begin our holidays. It is God’s providence that will also gather us again in January 2021 to begin the new school year.

There is however one more gift we must thank God for. As we lived out our respective vocations and interpreted how to live in God's ways as a community, I believe God has in fact blessed us even more. This year, through all the pain and anguish, loss and disappointment, and, more so, with everything familiar, comforting, and cherished stripped away, God has shown us more really his steadfast love.

His mercy, in the care of a friend who asked, “Are you ok?” His faithfulness, in your teachers' concern that you turned up for HBL class and now in their ever-present availability for you. His compassion, in your parents who continue to give you the best even as they juggle the many challenges at home and at work this pandemic has wrought.

Yes, more than in any other year, I believe God has shown himself to you and me in the faces of every one of us in school in 2020. If you agree with me that this is how God has indeed come to us, now and always, then join me to respond to God in the most proper of human ways we can by simply saying, “thank you.”

Preached at SJI Chapel
photo: ‘all in a row’ by adrian danker, sj, sji, august 2020

Posted 24th October 2020 by adrian danker

Labels: Breaking Open God's Word Schooling Days

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Oct

18

Homily: In the World

Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 28 / Sunday (World Mission Sunday)
Readings: Isaiah 45.1, 4-6 / Psalm 95. 1, 3, 4-5, 7-8, 9-10a (R/v 7b) / 1 Thessalonians 1.1-5b / Matthew 22.15-21

Sisters and brothers, can you remember being chosen to be on this or that team when you played catching or hide-and-seek as a child? Didn’t it feel good to belong because you were chosen?

Today’s Gospel reading challenges us to consider who we belong to by our words and actions, our choices and decisions – either God or Caesar. “Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar – and to God what belongs to God,” Jesus says.

Christians know we belong to God and we should live in God’s ways. We, therefore, strive to imitate Jesus. He shows us how to love God wholeheartedly, and why God’s love in our lives compels us to love all peoples through charity and service. Are we doing this enough and well? Or, are we more focused on Caesar, a metaphor for worldly values and outcomes, and practising worldly ways to get ahead?

For example, are we here for Sunday Mass because this is our Catholic way of life with God, or are we Sunday Catholics fulfilling this obligatory weekly hour so that we can get on with more important worldly routines and pleasures on weekends?

We often struggle to choose between God and the world. Like when what we owe to God is in conflict with the civil authority, for example, in how we care for migrant workers, uplift the poor, and ensure fair and equal justice for all. When these conflicts arise, is it Caesar or is it God we serve?

It is too simplistic to answer that everything of Caesar must go away because it is not of God, or everything of God has to be put aside for the world has no place for God. We can’t. We live in this world and we live as God’s own.

A more realistic response would consider whether God and Caesar can co-exist. So, what if God created you and me to live in this world, so frequently described as secular, materialistic, and relativistic, to simply be God’s presence in it? We can respond, crying, “we are unworthy” or bargain, “yes but not yet,” or confess, “thanks but no thanks.”

But seriously, what if God created us to live and move and have our being in this world because we are to be, like Jesus, the face of God amidst his people? Or, as St Teresa of Avila wrote, “Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

Today is World Mission Sunday. The Church invites us to remember, celebrate and believe in its mission: to share the love of God with all. “The great O-mission,” Fr James McTavish notes, “is when there is zero mission.”

Though we fail with temptation and fall in sin, God still forgives us and calls us to His mission. God does this because we are His and we are worthy. This is good news. Doesn’t this give us the confidence that “God puts us into the world to be holy in it, to be friends with the things of Caesar? To work in the world of sin in spite of our own sins?” (John Foley, SJ)

Like how God used the Persian King Cyrus in the First Reading to liberate the Jews from years of Babylonian captivity. God anointed Cyrus for this saving work. In today’s world, God anoints us for this same saving work.

In the Second Reading, Paul describes God’s chosen doing this saving work with faith, as they also labour in love and endure in hope. They are ready for this mission because they “belong to God.” We belong to God too.

So, if there is one tax that we must pay today, like many good Christians have done in the past, for the Church’s mission, then, it must be this: our self-giving to God and all that bears the image of Jesus. Shall we not do this that is just and right?

Preached at St Ignatius, Church, Singapore
photo: twin towers and church ©Jake Rajs, 2011, flickr

Posted 18th October 2020 by adrian danker

Labels: Breaking Open God's Word

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bukas palad

with open hands, we give what we have first received. and with open hands, we receive what we will divest, once again. this is blessing itself: the giving and receiving of life and love, the sharing of faith and God.

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