1. Re-run. This homily was previously preached in 2017

    Year A / Lent / Week 5 / Sunday
    Readings: Ezekiel 37.12-14 / Psalm 129.1-2, 3-4ab, 4c-6, 7-8 (R/v 7) / Romans 8.8-11 / John 11.1-45


    “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Singapore Changi Airport, where the local time is 5.36pm. The outside temperature is 36 degrees Celsius, with 94% humidity, and there is a chance of showers this evening. Please wait until the seat belts signs are switched off before moving about the cabin”. 

    I am always comforted when I hear these words after the plane I’m traveling home on touches down safely. I believe we all want to hear similar words when we arrive safely at the different destinations we travel too.

    Today’s readings, however, offer us sobering words about the destination of human life: it ends in death. We hear of Lazarus' death in our gospel reading. We hear of the dead buried in graves in our first reading and of bodies dead because of sin in our second reading. Our Psalm, so often read at funerals and sung at requiem masses, expresses our pain, our despair, our hopelessness when we mourn the death of a loved one.

    Death. Despair. Hopelessness. We are familiar with these themes. They are part of our lives. We anguish over them when our loved ones die. We grapple with the many more deaths we read or hear about: the deaths of innocent Christians and minorities massacred in the Middle East, of unsuspecting civilians slaughtered in London, Jakarta, and Orlando and of starving hundreds of children in Africa. These remind us starkly of where human life ends — in death.

    Today, we hear that Jesus goes to the place of death, to where his friend, Lazarus, died and is buried. Many come to comfort Martha and Mary who grieve the dead brother like he now comes to do. Seeing Jesus, Mary cries out: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” She weeps; the Jews accompanying her weep too. It must be quite a sound — this sound of death. At the sight of her tears, and those of the Jews who followed her, Jesus said in great distress, and with a profound sigh, “Where have you put him?”

    Whatever language we speak, it is always difficult to talk about emotions, let alone translate them into another language. The Greek word used to denote how deeply moved Jesus felt is ἐνεβριμήσατο (enebrimēsato). It literally means “to snort out of anger, indignation or antagonism”. This suggests a more primitive, even animalistic behaviour: snorting like a horse. The Greek word for “profound sigh” is ἐτάραξεν (etaraxen). It literally means to stir up or to shudder in emotional agitation. 

    Jesus is indeed deeply saddened by Lazarus’ death; he weeps because he has lost a close friend. But he is also filled with so much anger that he shudders. English translations of the Bible generally do not describe this quality of character in Jesus. The Greek translations express it better: they describe it as it is — that in the face of death, Jesus is agitated, vexed, furious and so angry that he is trembling. Why so?

    We know that Jesus is not despairing that his friend had died. We also know from John’s gospel that Jesus knows all things: he would, therefore, have known that he would find Lazarus dead and that he would call him forth and raise him up. Jesus would also have known the depth of faith Martha and Mary would have as they grieved their loss. Jesus probably pitied the mourners as many would have been hired. If Jesus is not angry with Mary and Martha or the mourners, why is he so angry?

    He is angry at the situation that has brought such devastation into these people’s lives. Jesus is angry at Death — this manifestation of Satan’s evil in the world that came through Adam and Eve’s disobedience. He directs his anger at Death, the source of grief itself. Death’s presence in the Lazarus’ tomb does more than stink; it stirs Jesus to action. He is indignant in its presence and intolerant of its temporary power. He snorts like a horse and hot tears stream down his face. He demands the stone covering the tomb be rolled away. He calls Lazarus forth and raises him up. Lazarus’ tomb is therefore where God who gives life overcomes Satan who destroys life, especially through sin. For Jesus, death cannot be the last word about life. 

    We know Jesus died and was raised from the dead. His resurrection is different from Lazarus who will die again. This is why the Paschal Mystery must matter to us: in Jesus’ death, we die, but in his resurrection, we are raised to eternal life — God alone makes this possible. The story of Jesus raising Lazarus, therefore, prefigures Jesus’ own death and resurrection. In Jesus, our Lenten journey does not end in death; he leads us through it to life eternal. Death then cannot have the final claim over us.

    Jesus does four actions in today’s story that assures us of the certain power of God working through Jesus to raise us up from death. 

    The first is that he stayed where he was after hearing of Lazarus’ death. There was no reason holding Jesus from going to Lazarus. He intentionally waited; he delayed going; he stayed. Why? Because he saw in Lazarus' death the in-breaking of God's glory, and he wanted to make sure no one missed it. By staying two more days before returning to enact the miracle, he made sure Mary, Martha, and the mourners accepted Lazarus’ death but more so that they would ache for God’s saving presence. Their ache is nothing less than humankind’s poignant, fragile hope for God's saving action.

    The second is that he wept. He wept because he identified with those who had lost a loved one and who simultaneously have lost confidence in God's redemption and power laboring in their midst. When Martha confessed that she believed Lazarus would rise again at the last day, Jesus reminded her of God’s immediate presence: "I am the resurrection and the life", even now, even here. Jesus can say this because he is God-with-us; he shares in our humanity and in our human life.

    The third is that he commanded Lazarus to come out. Jesus’ command bestows life where there is nothing, only death. By calling Lazarus from death into life, Jesus reminds us that the responsibility for life — for creating it in the first place and recreating it once again — is exclusively God's.

    The fourth is that he instructed others to unbind Lazarus. His instruction reminds us that everyone has a role to show forth God’s mercy. While creation and redemption are God's work, activity, and responsibility, God needs us to play a part, and so, glorify God.

    Staying. Weeping. Calling out. Unbinding. Individually and collectively, these actions Jesus does confront and overcome death. More significantly, they witness that God is with us and that God wants to save us and raise us to eternal life.

    Soon you and I will face another death. It will end differently from how every human life ends. It will end when a stone is rolled away from a tomb and the one who consoled a grieving sister with the words “I am the resurrection and the life” will snort at death because God called him forth from the dead and raised him to the fullness of life. Jesus Christ is this risen one. And in his risen life, you and I will find our own.

    What other destination than Jesus would you and I want to arrive safely and happily at when our Lenten journey ends? And as we come home to the risen Jesus, don’t we yearn to hear him say to us, “I am the resurrection and the life”?



    Inspired by Debra Murphy

    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    Photo: jornalmaker.com

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  2. Re-run. This homily was previously preached in 2017

    Year A / Lent  / Week 4 / Sunday
    Readings: 1 Samuel 16.1b, 6-7, 10-13a / Psalm 23.1-3a, 3b-4, 5-6  (R/v 1) / Ephesians 5.8-14 / John 9.1-41

    This week our JC1 and 2 footballers will compete for the first time in the A Division Football competition. They are a young and inexperienced team, but they have enthusiasm, passion, and determination. They have trained long and hard to get here. This is why I have every confidence that they will play well to win for St Joseph's Institution.

    At the end of their first half of their first game, I imagine Coach Kadir addressing them in this way: “That’s it. The first half is over. Time to regroup gentlemen.” Our players will welcome the halftime. The team has the opportunity to gather themselves again. They can rethink their strategies and refocus their efforts. Their actions will be about re-creating themselves as a stronger, more spirited team for the second half, especially if they are down a goal or two.

    I’d like to suggest that re-creation is a theme in today’s readings. Our Eucharistic Preface echoes this theme when it prays for our regeneration as God’s adopted children. This is the Lenten promise; it should be our Lenten goal.

    Our First Reading tells of God choosing David to be the new king for Israel. Through the prophet Samuel’s anointing, God re-creates David: he is no longer shepherd boy but king. Our Gospel Reading tells of Jesus healing the man born blind. Through Jesus’ healing, God re-creates this man: he is no longer a blind man and an unbeliever but a believer and a follower of Jesus as Lord.

    God re-created David and the blind man to witness to God’s saving action in their lives. What about us? Are we letting God re-create us on our Lenten journey? Why would God want to do this?

    Our Psalm helps us understand that God wants to re-create us so that we can be with him eternally. Here is God the Good Shepherd who wants to walk with us through our darkness and to free us from all that oppresses us. Here God who wants to set us on right paths that lead to no other place than to his table where we will feast together. And in a remarkable sign of God’s love, here is God who wants to anoint our heads, fill us with all that is good and kind, and let us stay with him all the days of our lives.

    This vision of eternal life with God is not a future event we await. Neither is it a reward for us rigidly obeying the Church’s rules and regulations. Rather, it is God’s unmerited gift given to us already. Paul assures us that this is so in our second reading. God has given us this gift through Jesus’ death and resurrection. God has done this to save us from sin and death, and to bring us into eternal friendship with Godself. God’s action has indeed re-created us as God’s own. This is why Christians are indeed children of light, Paul writes; we are to live in God’s light and to be God’s light for one another.

    No other reason explains this action of God than love — God’s prodigious love for us, a love without limit or bias, a love that is freely given and unreservedly outpoured for all, no matter how much we struggle with sinfulness and fail.

    Today, we are at the mid-point of Lent. Throughout Lent, God has been reaching out to share with us his merciful and saving love. God does not just reach out to us in our sinfulness; he reaches out because we are his re-created children that Jesus has already saved. Have we welcomed God’s love into our lives in the first half of Lent? Or, do we have to adjust our lives even more to let God better re-create and perfect us as God’s own in these remaining Lenten days?

    Only when we dare to grapple with these questions will we appreciate what God is offering us today: the grace of halftime

    Halftime is important in every soccer and rugby, basketball and hockey game played. Halftime provides a short rest to refresh and to recharge. Halftime permits us to look at what worked well in the first half and to stay the course if all is going as planned. Or, if we’ve played the first half badly, halftime is about taking stock, evaluating, confessing what went wrong and planning anew to finish the game well. Halftime is the opportunity to regroup and review, reconsider and reposition ourselves to return to the game with greater focus and clarity, and with renewed energy for this next half.

    God is inviting us to do the same at this halftime mark in our Lenten journey. To do this, we need to be truthful about our Lenten life, open ourselves to the need for change, if we must, and admit we need to cooperate with God to change.

    How much our Lenten journey will re-create us more and more into bearing Jesus’ image and likeness depends on our sincerity and enthusiasm to make this year’s Lent different from last year. To accomplish this, we need to change the way we are doing Lent thus far. If we do this responsibly and honestly, we might discover how we are sometimes blind to God this Lent, and to what God is offering us in Jesus — merciful love that saves and re-creates us anew.

    There might be several reasons why each of us might be blind. We may have become too familiar with what Lent is, and so we do not bother enough with practising the Lenten discipline. We may be too apathetic or lazy to make the needed changes. We may be too careless with our "take-it-for-granted" attitude that God will always forgive, so this year's Lent is just like every other year before. I know the blindness I have this year and that I need to work on it. What about you?

    If we chose to remain blind to God's desire to re-create us this Lent, we pay a costly price: God can’t perfect us in his saving love. Such a choice makes us like the real blind men in today’s gospel, the Pharisees. They could see but they chose not to see who Jesus is, the Christ, and what Jesus offered, eternal life. They refused and so lost the graced opportunity to be re-created for life with God. In contrast, the blind man’s openness to Jesus, and to believe in Jesus as the Christ, saved his sight and his soul.

    For Pope Francis, Lent is a journey towards becoming a new person whose destination is to remain in the love of Jesus Christ forever. Throughout Lent thus far, you and me have been striving to become such persons so as to better reach the Christian destination — home with Jesus and sharing God’s life. This is the resurrected life Easter joy gives us a foretaste of.

    It is timely then for us to reflect on God and God’s saving love for us, but, more so, on how we are responding to God, at this halftime in Lent. For all that we have lived well and helped us change for the better, let’s give thanks and stay the course. For all that we have not been doing right thus far to let God perfect us, let us be honest and make those necessary actions now so that we can finish our Lenten journey well.

    The good news is that there is still time to let God work in our lives to turn us around if we but let God do so.

    So, let us make full use of this halftime opportunity. Let us embrace it with the kind of hope that Lent calls us to believe in — that with Jesus, in Jesus and through Jesus, we will die to our sinfulness to arise with him to the fullness of life. At that moment, we will know the true joy of Easter.

    In fact, I believe that if we listen to Jesus as the coach of our life and faith on our Lenten journey we might hear him echo this hope-filled joy in this way: “the first half is gone, everyone; there’s only the second half now. So, go out there, do better and make good the next half! All is not lost. The best is yet to be!”



    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    Photo: jesseswanson.com, 2010
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  3. Re-run. This homily was previously preached in 2017

    Year A / Lent / Week 3/Sunday
    Readings: Exodus 17.3-7 /Psalm 94.1-2, 6-7, 8-9 (R/v 8) / Romans 5.1-2,5-8 / John 4.5-42


    “If you only knew”. If you only knew the importance of Chinese Language for this job, you would have taken your Mother Tongue lessons more seriously. If you only knew his obsessive-compulsive side, you might have not rushed into marriage. If you only knew the value of self-care in managing your demanding work expectations, you would not be suffering from high blood pressure.

    “If you only knew”. We often hear these words after we have made poor decisions, entered into hasty actions and realized our failings. Others will say them to us, and we will feel regret.

    Today we hear Jesus say these same words to the Samaritan woman in our gospel reading. “If only you knew”: “If only you knew” the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink, ‘you would have asked him instead and he would have given you living water,” Jesus says.  

    Lent is as much about encountering and conversing with Jesus, as it is about listening to Jesus and following him better. Our Lenten prayer, alms-giving and fast should draw us to know Jesus more intimately so that we can follow him more closely and love him more faithfully. In fact, these are the necessary spiritual acts that enable us to journey with Jesus to his passion and death on Good Friday and through his Resurrection at Easter. Practising them over Lent helps us to die to our sinfulness so that we can be raised anew as God’s redeemed.

    I would like to suggest that thirst — specifically, thirst for God — makes us want to deepen our encounter with Jesus for the Lenten journey. In particular, we thirst for God’s mercy because we know we sin repeatedly and we need God’s life-giving forgiveness, again and again. In our thirst, we cry out to God as Moses and the Israelites did in the desert in the first reading: “Is the Lord in our midst or not”. Times may have changed but our need for God has not. Neither does God change; God hears our cry for salvation: as he gave water for their parched throats, so he gives us Jesus for our spiritual thirst.

    Yes, God knows our every need. But as with every relationship, it is always good to hear what another honestly wants of us. So it is with God: God wants us to speak our needs so that God can respond wholeheartedly to meet them. Lent is especially the favourable time for us to have such a conversation with God. Indeed we see this grace at work in the conversation Jesus and the Samaritan have: it is not just humankind conversing about ourselves and our thirst and our need for God; it is also Jesus conversing with us about God’s certain desire to save us. Indeed, such conversation is one way we can experience God’s real presence and care in our lives. Too often we complain God is absent, but have we given God enough chances to speak with us?

    “If only you knew”. The Samaritan woman hears Jesus say these words. How achingly beautiful and somewhat disorienting they must be for her to hear. “Is God present before me? What is this promised gift of eternal life?” she might be asking herself.  After all, she only came to the well to draw water for drinking; now, Jesus is offering her eternal life.

    For the theologian Sandra Schneiders, Jesus and the Samaritan are having a lively and real exchange. Theirs is an authentic conversation. In listening to and talking with each other, they come to know one another more honestly. The woman gradually experiences Jesus’ self-revelation as the face of God’s mercy, even as she reveals herself to him, and he tells her the truth about herself.* 

    Isn’t such truth what we really want in our relationship with Jesus? True knowledge of God and of ourselves, and of God redeeming us in Jesus? I believe we all thirst for this truth. 

    We might not always admit we need God, but we know that God’s truth will set us free. We try to be free and happy in countless ways, but they are limited and limiting. Lent timely focuses us on the only truth that matters — God’s mercy in Jesus redeems us. That we are here again, that we practice the Lenten disciplines intentionally, that we go to confession readily in Lent, are sure signs to ourselves and to others that we want God’s truth that liberates and saves us.

    Jesus proclaims this truth to the Samaritan woman at the well. If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water”.  His words invite them into a deeper conversation where God’s mercy meets human sin in order that divine compassion can uplift the sinner. Isn’t Jesus also reaching out to us through the conversation — we the less powerful, like this woman; we the different, like the Samaritan she is; we the sinful, like she is her promiscuity? If our answer is “yes”, then what other response can we have but to repeat her plea: “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water”?

    The Jews would have considered their meeting inappropriate: Jesus is Jewish and a rabbi; she is a Samaritan and a sinner. Sometimes we act like them: we ignore those we meet who are Samaritan-like because we are close-minded and biased. Today Jesus’ action insists that there is no other way to be Christian than to share God’s mercy for us with others. The Lenten practices challenge us to selflessly engage, love and care for them, not us, as Jesus did. Backing out and away from doing this is not the Christian option.

    Jesus wants us to live the truth of God’s mercy fully by reaching out to others through authentic conversations. However, we must first practice such conversations with God ourselves. Then, we will know how God’s truth redeems. 

    This is how the Samaritan woman experiences the truth in Jesus: she hears about her sin and, more so, about God’s mercy to forgive her sin and redeem her. Her experience sets her free to put aside everything and to live as Jesus’ disciple. The water jar she leaves behind to proclaim Jesus to her townsfolk symbolises this. In encountering Jesus, “she has been understood, she has heard the truth, experienced God’s freedom and loving regard and she believes. She has been brought home to herself, to God, to her community”.** She knows God has come to save her in Jesus. When we ourselves experience what she does in Jesus, we too will know that God’s truth does truly set us free. Then, we will know how to do likewise for others.

    Lent calls us to detach ourselves from worldly preoccupations so that we are more readily disposed to receive God’s gift of eternal life. Everyone struggles to practise detachment well. The Samaritan woman’s openness to encounter Jesus and to listen to the truth he announces shows us how to protect ourselves from hardening our hearts to God. To close ourselves from Jesus is to lose our access by faith to God.

    Let us then follow the Samaritan woman and open ourselves to truly converse with Jesus this Lent. It will be a mutual, marvelous exchange that will surprise us with the joyful truth that God’s mercy is ours not because we deserve it, but because this is God’s unmerited way to love and save God’s creation that we are, never to be condemned and lost. Yes, we will hear Jesus say that he is our refreshment and life. More remarkable will be us hearing him say what he will cry out from the Cross on Good Friday, “I thirst” — yes, he thirsts for no other than us and our redemption.

    Indeed, how can we not honestly assess the quality of our Lenten journey thus far, and improve on it if we must, knowing as we now do that Jesus also thirsts for us?





    * Sandra Schneiders, Written That You May Believe.
    ** The Trappist monks of Spencer Abbey.


    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    Photo: www.manchester.ac.uk
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  4. This was preached at the Jesuit Community Saturday Mass 

    Year A / Lent / Week 2 /Saturday
    Readings: Micah 7.14-15, 18-20  /Psalm 102.1-2, 3-4, 9-10, 11-12 / Luke 15.1-3, 11-32

    Brothers, how are you and I living and ministering this Lent?

    Lent is challenging if we allow ourselves to enter fully into its spirit. It demands that we be honest about embracing God’s call to change our way of life and be transformed. This is really about becoming a lot more human so that we can be a little more like God as we mature in faith. Simply put, Lent invites Christians to be more intentional about living more like Jesus.

    Today’s readings challenge me a lot. This question expresses it:  “What disposition of the heart am I bringing into Lent and practising?” Every Christian should try to answer it. Praying the readings this morning, I grappled with the question as a priest whose life and ministry are meant to shepherd God’s people to salvation, regardless of race, language or religion. 

    Lent is often associated with the desert. Here we encounter barrenness, waste, suffering and death. Here we also encounter the truth about ourselves. You and I are human and prone to temptation, sin and death, but we are also God’s own  created for loving, life-giving relationship with God and one another. Like Jesus, we enter the desert so that we can choose this truth and live.

    At this time of the COVID-19 outbreak, we are in a desert-like experience. We are wandering like exiles, far from our safe, everyday spaces and ways of living and praying. Seemingly, also far from God.  How real this makes Lent for us, a friend remarked. 

    Many of us are anxious and troubled. Some are suffering and in pain. Others are confused and despairing. With Masses suspended, we Catholics are thirsting for Mass and hungering for Jesus in the Eucharist. This is why I find myself grappling with the question, “What disposition of the heart am I, as God’s priest, bringing into this time of COVID-19, and practising for God's people?”

    Here we are at our community Mass, all priests and a scholastic. All ordained to be God’s shepherds, and one preparing to be. What is the disposition of our hearts at this Lenten time, this COVID-19 time, as God’s ministers? It’s a question worth our reflection and prayer, I’d like to suggest.

    Our first reading reminds me that God faithfully shepherds his people. He looks out for his flock. He cares, feeds and leads them to safety and rest. Mercy marks God’s shepherding — his love cares, protects and saves.

    The gospel reading is familiar; we know it as the parable of the prodigal son. Many identify with the younger son who squandered his inheritance in sin, and now remorseful, comes home to the father. Others identify with the faithful, obedient older son who serving the father feels entitled to just recognition and reward. The father loves both. He embodies mercy. Mercy that reaches out to forgive the younger, and mercy that appreciates the elder whose inheritance he assures.  Mercy marks this prodigal father — his love is excessive, abounding, and extravagant. Simply, it is also faithful.

    As priests, we especially care for the spiritual lives and souls of God’s faithful in Lent.  At this COVID-19 time, when Masses are suspended, we must also care for the physical wellbeing of all God’s people. How can we care for those like the younger son who desire to come to God, to reconcile and be with God, and to receive God through the Eucharist? At the same time, how can we also care for those like the older son who justly ask for their right to come to the Father's Feast?  

    With mercy. The same kind of mercy God the shepherd has to care for his flock. The same kind of mercy the father embodied as he holds both his sons in his embrace. Such mercy flows from hearts that love unreservedly.

    This is why the father runs to the younger with joyful excitement and listens to the elder with heartfelt patience. This is why the shepherd walks with his sheep, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind but always beside them. Both go out of their comfort and safety, out of their spaces and habits of familiarity and wellbeing to them in the very spaces they are in. They go to where their sheep and kin are to save. They go out there. Out there is where they will care wholeheartedly and best.

    For St John Baptist de la Salle, God’s salvation is about making people whole and well again, as God created them to be  His own. Indeed, to go out there to care, to save and to make whole is what real shepherding is all about. It cannot be done anywhere else but out there  with the sheep, in the open that is sometimes dangerous. 

    Maybe this is where you and I as God’s ministers must be at this Lent, this COVID-19 time  out there. With all God’s people in their desert-like spaces, now more clearly than ever before out there beyond our church space and our church times. So, let us go to them out there. And there with God, let us minister and care for them and their wellbeing. As we do, let us give God permission to transform us, his ministers, more and more into the likeness of Jesus that is Lent's promise.




    Preached at Jesuit Community Saturday Mass, Kingsmead Hall, Singapore
    photo: Pope Francis’ meeting with youth, Vatican, 28 May 2016 (Reuters Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

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  5. Re-run. This was previously preached in 2017.

    Year A / Lent / Week 2 /Sunday
    Readings: Genesis 12.1-4a /Psalm 32.4-5,19-19, 20, 22 (R/v 22) / 2 Timothy 1.8b-10 / Matthew 17.1-9


    “Shh, listen.” We say this when we want to keep others quiet so that we can hear something important. We do this when the noise is too loud and hearing is difficult. We utter this when we need to get another’s attention to listen and understand what we need to say.

    I do this a fair bit as I accompany young men to hear God’s voice and to discover God’s will in their lives. For some, it will be to marriage or the single life. For others, it will be to religious life or the priesthood. Our conversations revolve around God’s call in their lives. Is God calling you? Why is God calling you? Where is God calling you to? How is God calling you?

    However God’s call comes, they tell me that this is a powerful experience. It is a call to something worthwhile, even something of God; and this buoys them up with hope through times of doubt, difficulty, and indecision.

    As we continue to our Lenten journey, I wonder how many of us really embrace the Lenten invitation to renew our lives to live our Christian faith better. This is our primary vocation, even before we discern to marry, remain single, join religious life or be ordained a priest. I wonder about this because Lent challenges us to examine how we are living our primary Christian vocation to be holy.

    Our readings today can help us do this. They call us to reflect on how we listen and follow God. Vocation comes from the Latin word “vocare,” to call. We cannot know and live our vocation in God’s ways unless we hear and understand God’s call.

    We might find God calling Abram to leave everything and to go where God wants in today’s first reading difficult to hear. “Go!” says God to Abram. “Go from your house and your kindred and your Father’s house to the land that I will show you”. To Abram, God’s call must have been surprising, confusing, even shocking, for it is a command to go somewhere he did not know.
      
    Abram's story might challenge, even frighten, us when we begin to see how God's radical challenge to Abram is ours too this Lent: God calling us to go into a space we do not usually want to enter. To go into the interior of our lives, that desert space, where we know we must face the demons of our pride and righteousness, our riches and selfishness, our craving for honours and greed? To go there where we must honestly confess that we really need God’s mercy to save us, and God’s compassion to perfect us as Christians?

    Do we hear God’s call, like Abram heard? Will we go where God calls us to, as Abram did? Are we daring enough to let go of our fears and inhibitions, our control and self-determination to let God lead us through Lent as he led Abram to the promised land?

    God’s call is also part of the Transfiguration story in today’s gospel. Our familiarity with this story often focuses us on Jesus’ transfiguration. This is why we often overlook that Peter gets transfigured as well, or at least, that this is where Peter's transformation into a disciple really begins, on this mountain with Jesus.

    If we are present at this scene and watch it unfold, we might first be in awe of Jesus’ transfiguration. Then, we might see how hilarious Peter is in declaring that he would build three tents, and God’s voice suddenly and literally interrupting him. “Would you stop talking, and learn to just listen to Jesus!” God says to him. This moment is not funny however; it terrifies Peter who falls to the ground, probably covering his ears and shutting his eyes tight. Then it is over: no voice, no light, no prophets of old. Nothing is left except Jesus, who is reaching out to Peter, James and John. He tells them, “Stand up; do not be afraid”. Don’t you and I want to hear Jesus say these words to us daily, and especially when we sin? Aren’t Jesus’ words the foundation upon which we examine our lives and seek conversion in Lent? Don’t we pray to hear Jesus’ assurance when we make our Lenten confessions?

    Over time, Christianity has interpreted Peter’s “moment” of becoming the apostle when he confesses that Jesus is the Christ and Jesus calls him “the rock”. This happens six days after the Transfiguration. But could it possibly be that Peter understood his true identity when God’s voice interrupted him, his plots and plans, on the mountain and announced that Jesus is his beloved son and Peter’s real vocation is to listen to him? I’d like to think that this is the moment Peter first began to know his vocation as Jesus’ disciple. It began when he heard God’s voice.

    Lent invites us to remember when we ourselves first heard God’s call to listen to Jesus and be his disciple. Like Peter, we want to listen to Jesus and to follow him. Like Peter, our human condition makes us prone to failing and falling in our discipleship repeatedly. Jesus will, however, keep reaching out to us, like he did to Peter who fell onto the ground at the Transfiguration and who failed Jesus by betraying him finally. We have all experienced Jesus reaching out to us again and again in mercy so as to raise us up to the fullness of life.

    What allows us to stand up and be raised? The experience of remembering that God’s words transfigure us. I like to think that whenever Peter fell down and got up again after Jesus’ Ascension, he would recall God’s words, "Just listen to him!" This is the moment when Peter's transfiguration began — for he heard in God’s assuring voice that above and beyond everything else, beyond failing and falling, that his vocation is to first listen to Jesus in whom God does not condemn humankind to sin and death but promises to raise us up to the joy of new life.

    Whatever our doubts and insecurities, can we see ourselves in the Transfiguration story? Isn’t this story about Peter and Jesus our story too? Aren’t we also called both to "listen to Jesus" and to "be raised by him"?

    Peter’s experience of being interrupted by God who demands that we listen to Jesus is in fact the pattern of transfiguration that God uses to shape each of our lives as Christians. Like Peter, we, too try our best to live as Christians. Sometimes we succeed well; other times, we fail miserably. We have moments of insight and moments of denial. And yes, we fall down in sin and fear but God raises us up repeatedly to continue living in confident hope. The task of Christian living is to listen — to really listen and to discern God’s way for us through this world, and in this way to partner God in living life fully. This is how Christianity calls us to be transformed and transfigured — by really listening to Jesus, God's Word. 

    Transfiguration. I believe this is the promise Lent offers you and me, and Easter makes it real and alive in us. Today we hear again that promise, as well as a mission. God makes a promise to Abram at the end of the first reading: “I will bless you so that you can be a blessing.” Indeed, to remember and to celebrate our vocation today is also to listen and hear Jesus’ command that we follow him by doing like he did for others. Our Lenten practices are meant for mission: to edify and inspire others, even as they are to help us to go deeper in our vocation to be holy.  

    Let me therefore suggest two questions for our ongoing Lenten conversion: “Can I hear God’s call this Lent to I live my vocation to be holy more fully?” and “Am I living my Lent in ways that help others to become holy too?”

    I believe that we will find our answers in prayerful silence with God. Lent is indeed the favourable time for us to indeed “shh” ourselves and others so that all of us can truly listen to God’s voice in our lives.




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