1. 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
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  2. 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
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  3.  

    Year A / Ordinary Time / Memorial of the Guardian Angels (Mass for Graduation)
    Readings: Exodus 23.20-23 / Responsorial Psalm 139, 1-3, 7-8. 9-10. 13-14ab (R/v 24b) / Matthew 18.1-5, 10


    Josephians, why have you come and spent 2 or 4 or 6 years in SJI? To get an education, you say. To become a Josephian, we say. To learn, pass well and to move on to your next stage, your parents say.

    Our psalm today challenges us to consider why God wants you to come to school: to form you to be wonderfully made. Our Psalm describes God forming you in your inmost being, knitting you in your mother’s womb, and guiding you along everlasting ways. School is where you are also being formed for life and your future. Why would God have brought you to school if not to do this?

    You – wonderfully made. This is what we celebrate today at your last Mass in SJI. We celebrate with thanksgiving for what you have become and who you will be for many more people, especially those in need, as a graduate of SJI. 

    You – wonderfully made. You are because of God’s labour in each of your lives. God labouring to prepare you for today, Graduation Day. Indeed, we celebrate this truth of God’s goodness, and, even more, that here you have come to know God and know that you will always be in God’s holy presence. 

    These are two very good reasons for us to gather this morning to say, “thank you, God” at the best place we can to do this – at Eucharist. 

    How has God laboured to wonderfully make you? Let me answer by reflecting on today's Feast of the Guardian Angels. It is providential that you graduate on this feast. 

    On this feast day, we celebrate our Christian belief that God gives us a guardian angel each. This prayer we make reminds us why guardian angels matter: “Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here, ever this day be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.” Take a look at our lives: haven't there been many times when God has cared for us in these many ways?  I believe God did so, and God will continue to do so because He is always watching over us through His guardian angels. I wonder if you know the name of your guardian angel?

    On earth, we know the names of our family and friends, our classmates and teachers who have cared for us because of love and concern, friendship and responsible care. I suggest that they are also God’s angels in our lives. Consider how God works with them to help form you to be wonderfully made, especially during your SJI years. Each of them has helped us become the person today at graduation. I’d like to invite you to give thanks to God for them at this Mass.

    Why would God place you in the hands of these earthly angels in SJI?  Because everything you have learned in SJI is not for an IB score, an O Level L1R5 grade, or a leaving certificate to get you on to the next stage of your education. All you have learned is in fact to form you to be a saint for the world. Yes, be a saint. You can do this best because of all that you have learned to be a Josephian for others. For others – isn’t this what angels do by reaching out to caring for each person with total love and in complete charity,  especially to those most in need? I believe this is how angels and saints reveal the face of God and God’s love.

    Today you graduate, dear Josephians. Always remember that you are wonderfully made to be an angel so that you will be God’s saint for all.



    Preached at SJI Chapel
    photo: thearticle.com (Internet)
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  4. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 27 / Sunday
    Readings: Isaiah 5.1-7 / Responsorial Psalm 79. 9 and 12, 13-14, 15-16,19-20 (R/v Is 5.7a) / Philippians 4.6-9 / Matthew 21.33-43


    Sisters and brothers, this is graduation season.  At countless graduations, schools celebrate students and their accomplishments. They receive graduating certificates and gifts. They are thanked and reminded of their strengths. They are exhorted to succeed. 

    Graduations express our belief that each student has used his talents and her gifts well. They have learned and grown-up, contributed to society and impacted others positively. All have realised their potential. They have not wasted their time in school.

    Compare these students’ efforts to those tending to vineyards in today’s readings.  They have failed to yield good fruit for the owner. 

    There are penalties for failing. The unfruitful vineyard in the first reading will be left to ruin. The tenants who withheld the good fruit in the gospel reading will have their lease revoked and will lose their lives. 

    For Christians, the message in these readings is clear: God punishes those who fail to produce and be fruitful. 

    God blesses us with talents and gifts. We know we should use these for the good of all. For St Ignatius of Loyola, we do this best by choosing what is of greater value for God’s work and glory. As we reflect on today’s readings are you, like me, asking this question: “Are our efforts to love family and friends, to study and work hard, to pray and do good works, good enough for God and so fruitful?” 

    But what if God is in fact in charge of how fruitful our lives are? Both readings imply the owner of the vineyard is God.  Jesus teaches us that he is the vine and we are the branches. God prunes all who bear fruit; he cuts off those who do not.

    Jesus teaches that if our lives are fruitful, it is because God is working to bring this about.  Often our greed, disregard for others and rejection of God constrain God’s work. Sometimes, they stop it altogether. 

    Wise are we who see how in Jesus’ hint about the rejected stone becoming the cornerstone God will overcome human sin and bring about fruitfulness. God does this in Jesus. He comes willingly among us and into our sinfulness. He comes not to die and be buried but to rise and raise us up to resurrection life. Perfect love brings about this fruitfulness in the vineyard of our imperfect lives. It cannot be otherwise for there God is with us and for us.

    Today Jesus challenges us to be fruitful in God alone. Nothing we have is ours. Nothing we do makes us fruitful. Everything fruitful that we make and have is from God and for God. 

    We must keep our gaze on God to be truly fruitful. The tenants in today’s gospel did not have this right disposition. They focussed on themselves, not on the owner. They took many things “for granted” instead of taking them to be fruitfulness “as granted” by God.  Are we like them sometimes?

    If God indeed makes our lives fruitful, let us practise Paul’s advice in the second reading. That we make known to God through prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, all we need. Then, we will experience God’s peace. 

    This peace helps us confront another struggle many have: our fear of being fruitful as God wants us to be. We struggle with totally giving God permission to be fruitful in his ways, and especially to be selflessly fruitful for others. But didn’t Jesus say, “I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit” (John 15.16)? 

    Each graduation ends with students being sent into the world; they are to make it better. When Mass ends we are sent forth to do the same. “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your lives.” There is however a distinct difference. Here, we receive Jesus. He nourishes us with God’s fruitfulness. Doesn’t this give us the confidence to go forth from Mass and share God’s goodness with one and all?



    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: insidefmcg.com.au (internet)
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"Bukas Palad"
"Bukas Palad"
is Filipino for open palms
Greetings!
Greetings!
Peace and welcome, dear friend.
I hope you will find in these posts something that speaks to you of the God who loves us all and who always holds us in the palm of his hand. Blessings!
The Liturgical Calendar / Year C
The Liturgical Calendar / Year C
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