bukas palad: January 2021

Jan

23

Homily: For Others

Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 3 / Sunday
Readings: Jonah 3:1-5, 10 / Responsorial Psalm 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9 (R/v 4a) / 1 Corinthians 7:29-31 / Mark 1:14-20

“God saw their efforts to renounce their evil behaviour, and God relented: he did not inflict on them the disaster which he had threatened.”

These words end the First Reading. They describe God and God’s actions. What kind of God changes his mind and rescinds his decision? Only a God of mercy.

Such a God knows that our human hearts can be selfish, self-preserving, and stubborn. There is no space for God to dwell with us. Yet, a God of mercy understands us differently. He knows our need to be loved. This is why God desires most of all to save. God bothers because he loves. And so, God sends good people to help save.

People like the Prophet Jonah. To sinful Nineveh, he announced God’s disappointment and anger. He declared God’s judgment and condemnation. For many, this God is exacting. You cannot negotiate with God – obey or else.

Yet God sent Jonah to move the hearts of Ninevites to repentance and conversion. They did. God saw and relented. God changed his mind and saved all. Yes, only a God of mercy does this.

Can we imagine God’s love softening his heart to forgive and save us however grievously we sin? Maybe it’s hard to imagine but we hear this truth today. It is not just for our listening. It is in fact for us to experience and know. Jesus does this for us in today’s gospel by calling his disciples for us and our salvation.

This story moves our hearts. We choose it when taking vows or ending a retreat, even to begin a new school year. We are moved because Jesus calls a motley group to serve and build God’s kingdom. It involves sacrifice, leaving everything to become Jesus’ disciple. It demands obedient discipleship, following Jesus in every aspect.

This story is moreover about love. About Jesus loving and choosing in trust and the disciples responding with a trust that loves. All this to do to gather disciples to do as Jonah did – announce God’s saving love.

I wonder if these disciples were aware that their words and actions, like Jonah’s, could move others to act in ways that touch the heart of God, change the mind of God and move God to love even more mercifully.

Here is God opening his heart to give everyone a second chance, if not many more chances. Don’t we know this truth from the many times God forgives and restores our lives when we have sinned?

Hasn’t God done this through the people in our lives? Their words and actions softening our hardheartedness and moving us to repent and change our ways.

Today, Jesus is calling us to do for others as we have experienced and now know to be true – God’s mercy is alive in our lives. He calls us to speak words and embody them in actions that make this Good News real – that God's mercy is love giving everyone a second chance.

I think we struggle to believe we can do this good work. We doubt because we think we are not holy or good enough for this mission. Our failings and sinfulness in life and in ministry might frustrate us too. Can we endure the setbacks and dashed hopes in life and ministry and keep on believing in Jesus’s call that we proclaim the Good News?

St. Paul’s words today give us a hope-filled answer. We can continue proclaiming by practising radical detachment from every cherished good. Whatever we have, family, feelings, successes, everything good and lovely, none, however, is God's very self. Though all these come from God’s good bounty, none is the Giver Himself.

God alone is all we need: his love is ours, and his mercy is sufficient for salvation. This is a very good message for our present times. We Christians have and know it to be true because this is our relationship with God.

They say we can only give what we have. We have this truth of God. We can give and share it. Let us proclaim it then as we all make our way home to God. We must do this because we are not just pilgrims; we are also prophets and apostles. This is how we ought to practise our Christian responsibility: to teach others to know, love and live in God’s ways.

Then, all will learn how to let God love them as they are, and in return, how they can love God and touch his heart as only the beloved can. Will we do for others?

Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
Photo: by tom gralish at www.inquirer.com

Posted 23rd January 2021 by adrian danker

Labels: Breaking Open God's Word

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Jan

17

The 4 O'Clock Hour

A Reflection on John 1.35-42
-- first written on 9 July 2009

Can you remember the moment when a classmate or office worker became your friend? When did it dawn on you that your girlfriend or boyfriend is really the wife or husband you wished to share the rest of your life with?

Perhaps, that moment was when you invited her to eat and drink with the family. It could also have been when you found in him the safe space to reveal your true self honestly. Such are the defining moments in friendships that truly matter: in these relationships we find ourselves living more authentically and fully because our friends don’t mind who we are, loving us as we are.

These moments however mark more than a transformation of relationships. Seen with the eyes of faith, these are celebratory: we can recognize God’s goodness in these friendships and marriages that enliven and enrich our lives and faith. Even if these relationships challenge us, we continue to find our friends and significant others gracing us to maturity and authenticity.

I’d like to believe each of us has a similar moment with Jesus as our friend. Human as we are, we often forget this moment. Daily struggles and distractions divert our gaze away from such times, which we may have had in prayer or a retreat, or even in something as ordinary as the goodness of friends gathered in His name for a meal with no other intent but to just be together.

John 1: 35-42 expresses well the definitive moment when the apostles John and Andrew met Jesus:
The next day as John stood there again with two of his disciples, Jesus went past, and John looked towards him and said, “Look, there is the lamb of God.” And the two disciples heard what he said and followed Jesus. Jesus turned around, saw them following and said, “What do you want?” They answered, “Rabbi”--which means Teacher--”where do you live?” He replied, “Come and see”; so that they went and saw where he lived, and stayed with him that day. It was about the tenth hour.
Jesus invited both men to come and know who he is in that most intimate of places we call home. Here, they stayed with him, that is, they lived with him. To live with someone is to share not only one’s life but also one’s inner thoughts and feelings. Indeed, to allow another to enter one’s living space is to permit this other the blessing to share himself similarly. That this mutual sharing of all each one is to the other -- all that is good and not so good -- is the reason that something beautiful and fruitful can come into being. What this is is genuine friendship.

This encounter must have deeply imprinted itself on John. Years later when he wrote his Gospel, he found it important to remember this tenth hour, which is 4 o’clock in the afternoon. John’s notation is remarkably noteworthy because dates and times when Jesus encountered people are not recorded with similar precision in the Gospels.

Reading John’s description of his 4 o’clock encounter with Jesus should challenge us, I feel. It insists that we too recall the significant moment when our relationship with Jesus transformed into friendship. Recognizing this moment can allow us greater clarity to see that even before we reached out to Jesus, he had first invited us to be his friend. Indeed, how often has Jesus said to you and me, “come and see and live with me.”

Re-reading John's story of this meeting, I feel we are being invited to assuredly claim this moment as our treasure: Jesus’ friendship with us is for all times and in all situations.

Dear friend, when then was your 4 o’clock hour with Jesus?

photo: sola network (internet)

Posted 17th January 2021 by adrian danker

Labels: Breaking Open God's Word Friendship

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Jan

12

Homily @ Christmastide: Immerse

Year B / Christmastide / Feast of the Baptism of the Lord
Readings: Isaiah 42.1-4, 6-7 / Responsorial Psalm 29.1-2, 3-4, 9-10 (R/v 11b) / Acts 10.34-38 / mark 1.7-11

‘You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you.’

We hear God’s words at Jesus’ baptism. They affirm Jesus’ identity and assure him of God’s favour. They console us who follow Jesus.

We are the baptised, and our lives are meant to be lived more and more in God’s thoughts and God’s ways. This is how we become God’s own. However, when we sin, it’s hard to appreciate ourselves as God’s beloved.

Yet as Jesus’ disciples we must continue his work. This is the mission God gives us in Baptism. How can we do this when we struggle with sin?

By understanding the hope-filled encouragement Jesus’ baptism offers us for daily life.

Jesus joined the crowds at the River Jordan to receive the baptism of repentance from John the Baptist. Why would Jesus do this when he is God’s Son, not a sinner?

To reveal God to us, and also to reveal us to ourselves. Jesus does this by being in solidarity with us – one like us with the human nature that needs God’s forgiveness of sins, even though he himself is without sin.

Jesus takes upon himself the condition of our sinfulness to show us the truth of our humanity: we are meant to live sin-free. In his life and ministry, in his teaching and healing, Jesus shows us how to live the fullness of our humanity by overcoming sin.

We believe Jesus is truly divine and truly human. In him we learn what it means to be truly human: to live without sin. He does this by living in God’s ways, even as he accepts the frailty of the human condition, marked by its struggle with the temptation to sin and the inevitability of decay and death. This is why Jesus must be for us the way, the truth and the life to understand how we can live fully as human persons by rejecting sin.

Jesus’ baptism reminds us of how God’s invisible grace can work in our human nature to save. By choosing to be baptised, he is seen to be like us, a sinner. By entering into our wounded human life and nature, he takes on our human struggles. Here is the adult Jesus doing what he first did as the infinite infant at Christmas: the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us to save us. By dwelling with us, the baptised Jesus shows us how to reject sin by letting God’s love come alive in us for others.

Think about it: don’t we sin less and less often when we are focussed on caring for others than obsessing with ourselves? You and I can count the times when satisfying ourselves leads us more into sin – too often.

Indeed, when we live our baptismal call fully by practising our faith not just in prayer with God but more fully in service to all in need, we do good that moves God to say, “with you I am well pleased.”

Our celebration of Christmas ends today. Not with the infant Jesus, but with the adult Jesus being baptized and beginning his saving mission. As baptised Christians, he calls us to carry on his work of salvation. We can forget Jesus’ invitation whenever we consider Baptism to be just a ritual in time.

Let us then appreciate our own Baptism as Jesus's personal invitation to immerse ourselves in his mission daily. As we do, we might hear more clearly in our prayer and through the words and actions of those we serve, God saying, “You too are beloved.”

Now isn’t this a consolation to desire for?

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

Posted 12th January 2021 by adrian danker

Labels: Breaking Open God's Word Christmas

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Jan

3

Homily @ Christmastide: His Light Leads

Year B / Christmastide / Solemnity of the Epiphany
Readings: Isaiah 60.1-6 / Responsorial Psalm 72.2, 7-8, 20-11, 12-13 (R/v cf 11) / Ephesians 3.2-3a, 5-6 / Matthew 2.1-12

“We saw his star at its rising and we have come to do him homage.”

We are familiar with the gospel story of the Magi -- of the star leading them to Jesus, of Mary presenting Jesus, and of them offering gifts on bended knees. It cheers us up. It comforts us.

In our familiarity with this Christmas story, might we however forget the proclamation today’s feast makes – that God shows Himself in Jesus to all peoples, not just Christians?

It matters that everyone can hold fast to today’s proclamation as we begin 2021. Now, we are buoyant, our spirits hope-filled, and our enthusiasm optimistic for better, brighter times after last year’s suffering and pain. The pandemic continues, however. If it worsens, many will get disheartened, even Christians with God whom we trust. This proclamation can console everyone; it is the light we need if the pandemic prolongs and darkens our lives.

‘Long walk; price of gift.’ This phrase can help us better appreciate today’s feast. Two teenagers shared this phrase with Sean Cardinal O’Malley after making a 3-hour trek across St Thomas Island to bid him farewell when his mission there ended.

The Magi’s journey to Jesus was long and hard. So is our human pilgrimage through life and faith to God. They faced challenges, like Herod’s deceitful plotting to kill Jesus. We struggle with our own difficulties, including temptations that deceive us into sin. In spite of obstacles, the Magi diligently continued searching for Jesus. Shouldn’t we also remain steadfast in our search for God?

The Magi offered Jesus gifts. Gold, to confess Jesus’ divinity as King of kings. Frankincense, to acknowledge Jesus’ holiness as Son of God. Myrrh, to recognise Jesus’ humanity as Son of Man.

Every year, the Magi’s example challenges us to consider our own gifts to Jesus. What if the right gift for Jesus is not things or sacrifices or offerings but our very selves? The good we have done, like the value of gold? The prayer life we practised in word and deed for others and ourselves, like frankincense burnt and offered? And the mortality of our lives we seek to keep improving and make better, like myrrh that embalms? Can all this be the price of our gift at the end of the long walk we make to God?

Can we do this? God’s divine light, the First Reading proclaims, shines upon us to lead us, to gather us, and to enrich us with God’s own splendour. The Magi knew this and followed the star. It is God’s light that guides, even when the way ahead is dark and no longer clear. Like the Magi, let us walk in God’s light and become that light of God for others who also search for Him.

The more wondrous truth today’s feast proclaims is this: that God will find us and show us that He is really in our midst.

Once, God led the Magi to Himself who is God with and for us all. To the mystery of God taking on our very flesh and blood. We call this Incarnation. To God showing Himself to all peoples in Jesus. We call this Epiphany. Today, God does the same for Christians and non-Christians. In Jesus God satisfies our human longing for the divine. In Jesus’s Spirit, we experience God showing Himself in everyday graces like comforting smiles that love, forgiving words that reconcile, compassionate deeds that care and justice for more.

Indeed because God is with us and for us, everything is changed. All human ordinariness is transfigured. All that is commonplace is blessed and everything secular can possibly become holy.

Let us pay attention then to God who comes and shows Himself to all peoples. The more we do, the deeper everyone’s appreciation of God’s presence and goodness in our midst. Our thanksgiving will reach deeper into our being. And when we know it is right to respond, we will.

But what manner of response is appropriate? Perhaps, none other than to praise God humbly as Simeon gratefully did, “My own eyes have seen the salvation which You have prepared in the sight of every people. A light to reveal You to the nations.” So, let us.

Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
photo: steve russell, toronto star via theconversation.com

Posted 3rd January 2021 by adrian danker

Labels: Breaking Open God's Word Christmas

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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: For Others

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The 4 O'Clock Hour

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Homily @ Christmastide: Immerse

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Homily @ Christmastide: His Light Leads

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