bukas palad: November 2020

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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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.

Homily @ Advent: Be Watchful!

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Homily: He Smells of Them

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Homily: Be Ready

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