1.  

    Year B / Eastertide / Fourth Sunday — Good Shepherd Sunday
    Readings: Acts 4.8-12 / Psalm 118.1,8-9, 21-23, 26, 28, 29 (R/v 22) / 1 John 3.1-2 / John 10.11-18


    “I am the good shepherd, I know my sheep, and mine know me” (John 10.14)

    We know how true these words of Jesus are in our lives. This is why we celebrate Jesus our Good Shepherd today. 

    Before Jesus speaks these words in today's Gospel passage, he heals the man born blind. This man could only hear Jesus’ voice. Believing in Jesus’ voice was his way of ‘seeing’ and knowing Jesus as his healer.  His example teaches us the importance of really listening to Jesus. 

    Each time Jesus says “I am” in the Gospel of John he is inviting all who listen to really know him. Then, we can say with confidence “I am” and “we are” his own.

    “I am the bread of life,” Jesus says. So we confidently say, “We are yours who you feed daily.”

    “I am the light of the world,” Jesus says. So we confidently say, “I am yours who can see again.”

    “I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus says. So we confidently say, “We are yours who you save for God by your death and resurrection.”

    Today Jesus is addressing us as listeners, not sheep. He tells us He is our shepherd. He explains that He shepherds by caring, watching over, and protecting us. Indeed He will smell of us when he intercedes for us before God. He will because He lives amongst us, even if our lives are soiled and stained by sin. 

    What kind of shepherd is this but the one who is ever-ready to lay down his life? This is how he embodies goodness. The hired man works only for earnings. He runs away when danger is near. He cares for himself, not the sheep he must watch over.

    We hear this truth in the tenor and timbre of Jesus’s voice and message. We must however listen attentively to Jesus to really know this.

    It can be difficult to do this. We struggle with many other voices within and around us competing for our attention. Worldly voices that attract. Tempting voices that invite. Comforting voices that console. Sometimes they seem like Jesus’ voice.  How can we tell? 

    It takes us time to attune ourselves to Jesus’s voice to really listen, hear, know and follow him. Our experiences of Jesus in life and prayer can help us figure out the difference. Again, we must listen attentively to Jesus. 

    Christian discipleship is about learning to pay attention to Jesus meeting us in our life and prayer. This is how we will learn to know Jesus. Not with head knowledge but by the experience of the heart. I call this the experience of being known — known by Jesus as His own and His beloved.

    This truth empowers us to live anew.  We will learn to recognise our fears, not obsess about them. We can overcome our pride and selfishness, not indulge in them. We can see the world’s gifts and potential, not conform to its injustices and excesses. 

    Jesus shepherding us as his beloved. This truth deserves our attention. It frees us to live in God’s ways. Are we doing this enough? Do we have to focus better to listen to Jesus’ voice in our lives?

    Today Jesus is telling us that He will keep on calling us, and when we begin to follow, He will keep speaking. His voice will be the same. Those other voices within ourselves and around us will persist. We need to keep looking out for Jesus’s voice. Then, by listening to Him attentively, we will know Jesus more intimately, love Him more dearly and follow Him more closely.

    If we dare to do this, we will find ourselves listening to Jesus inviting us into the mystery of God's love. This is the resonance of Jesus's voice: God's love resounding through time and space. This love is never for ourselves alone. It is everyone. 

    This is why good shepherding always happens outside the fold — in the wide, open and sometimes wild spaces. It is moreover right shepherding when it is for everyone, especially, those scattered, lost and abandoned. Indeed, the Good Shepherd seems to be calling always to you and me, His own and His beloved, to follow Him into the unfamiliar, those pastures further afield, over there, where the others also are.

    Out there is where we will especially know His faithfulness in our lives and the lives of all, and knowing this, every one of us will truly flourish. Jesus wants to lead us there. Will we let Him?





    Inspired by the writings of Larry Gillick, SJ

    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: stpaulsmonastery.org 


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  2.  

    Year B / Eastertide / Second Sunday – Divine Mercy Sunday
    Readings: Acts 4.32-35/ Psalm 118.2-4, 13-15, 22-24 (R/v 1) / 1 John 5.1-6 / John 20.19-31

    …that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ...and that believing this you may have life through his name. (John 20: 19)

    This is the ending to today’s Gospel story. It is of the risen Jesus appearing to the frightened and despondent disciples.

    What did the risen Jesus give to his disciples in these post-resurrection appearances? Peace to live unafraid again. And much more to live freely and as his friends, as he called them at the Last Supper.

    “Peace be with you,” Jesus says the first time to his disciples before showing them his wounds. In Art, artists portray Jesus's pierced side and hands as gaping and open wounds, wide enough for Thomas to put his finger and hand into. Yes, Jesus has risen but his wounds, scars of human evils on his body, are not a pretty sight. They remind us of evil, sin, and death in our lives.

    To those grappling with painful tragedies in life, struggling to accept suffering and evil, and fearing death, like the disciples in the Upper Room, Jesus brings peace. Peace to comfort the grieving. Peace to encourage the injured. Peace to strengthen the anxious.  

    Hasn’t Jesus’s peace consoled us again and again amidst life’s harsh realities? 

    “Peace be with you,” Jesus says a second time before he breathes the Holy Spirit onto his disciples and commands them to do as God sent him to do – to forgive and reconcile. No one can do this godly work by themselves. Only God’s Spirit accomplishes this. Cooperating with God’s Spirit empowers us to forgive unreservedly and reconcile wholeheartedly. 

    To all who struggle in sinfulness to accept Jesus’s call to do God’s work, Jesus comes with peace to affirm them that they can. To all overwhelmed with unworthiness to forgive and reconcile like he does, Jesus comes with peace that enables them to forgive and reconcile with all. To all afraid of partnering Jesus in God’s mission, he comes with peace that emboldens them to say, “I can with you, Lord.” Jesus brought such peace to his disciples struggling with guilt for abandoning him and fear to remain his own. 

    Hasn’t the risen Jesus repeatedly done the same for us, bestowing us his peace to receive and give forgiveness and to reconcile with all? 

    “Peace with you,” Jesus says the third time to Thomas. “Unless I see the wounds and touch them, I will not believe,” he says skeptically of the disciples’ reports about Jesus’s resurrection. He must see Jesus alive to know and to believe. Jesus's reply is simple: ‘Put your finger here [in] my hands. Give me your hand; put it into my side. Doubt no longer but believe.’ 

    To all struggling to believe in God wholeheartedly, professing faith in God but have doubts, and following God but questioning God’s ways, Jesus comes. Not to scold, shame or avenge. Jesus comes as God’s peace to love even more. Moved by Jesus’s gratuitous love, Thomas now knows the risen Jesus not by sight but by being truly loved.

    Hasn’t the risen Jesus continued loving us, in spite of our doubts, questions, and hesitance? Can this be reason enough for our belief in God to grow stronger even without seeing Him?

    Today’s feast teaches us that every time Jesus comes with the peace He brings He is truthfully God’s mercy come amongst us. Mercy is God’s willingness to enter into our chaotic, disordered, and sinful lives. In Jesus God’s mercy does not just stay with us. Jesus’ death and resurrection is God’s mercy fully alive for us – He saves. Total blissful peace every day is not human life. To imagine it is is to bluff ourselves. Struggles are part of life and of being alive. The good news is that we will always have God’s peace. “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you” (John 14.27).

    Such peace empowered the early Christians to live “united, heart and soul,” sharing everything in common and testifying to the resurrection of Jesus (Acts 4.320-35). God’s mercy in Jesus’s resurrection made this possible. It began that “the first day of the week” John records for us as today’s gospel story begins (John 20:19). Just like Creation – at the beginning on that first day. Indeed on that first day that the risen Jesus lives God makes all things new again.

    Such is God’s promise of life in Jesus’s name. How much do we really want this life?




    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
      

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  3. Year B / Eastertide / Easter Sunday
    Readings: Acts 10.34a, 37-43/ Psalm 118.1-2, 16-17, 22-23 (R/v 24) / Colossians 3.1-4 / John 20.1-9


    They killed him by hanging him on a tree, yet three days afterwards God raised him to life and allowed him to be seen. (Acts 10.39b-41)

    Here is Peter speaking to Cornelius and his household as we hear in the First Reading. He is giving witness to Jesus’ Resurrection.

    Here we are. We have risked everything in life and faith to believe Jesus will rise from the dead. And today, “Jesus Christ is risen!” Indeed, He is.

    Many know this Easter truth from the Resurrection stories and Easter liturgies. As sinners, we know this truth more deeply because with faith we have participated in Jesus’ life these past three days. On Holy Thursday, we thanked Jesus for giving himself in the Eucharist and washing our feet with compassion. On Good Friday, we mourned Jesus’s suffering and death for us. On Holy Saturday, we contemplated in silent trust as Jesus laid in the tomb.

    Today, God raises Jesus from the dead. He raises us up with Jesus too. Truly “Alleluia!” for God’s love redeems us and God’s life is ours! 

    The women going to the tomb to anoint Jesus’s body in the Gospels didn’t expect this. We go with them. The stone is rolled away. The tomb is empty! How can this be? 

    Yet isn’t this how God acts to announce good news — always with a surprise? God surprising humankind every time since Creation to love, forgive and save.  God surprised Abraham with descendants. God surprised the Israelites with freedom. God surprised Mary with Jesus. Indeed, God surprises us when we do not expect to move our hearts closer to Him. Today God surprises the whole world with salvation in Jesus’s Resurrection. Yes, Resurrection life is ours now! 

    The women run in haste to announce this surprise. Peter and John run in haste to the tomb, and looking in at only the linen clothes, they believed. Indeed, “he must rise from the dead,” as Jesus said, and He truly has. 

    Whenever God surprises, hasn’t everyone responded by acting in haste? The shepherds went in haste to find Jesus that Christmas night. Andrew went in haste to tell Peter that Jesus is the Messiah. The Samaritan woman at the well went in haste to announce Jesus’ presence to her people. Indeed, everyone God surprises acts in haste, leaving whatever they are doing to participate more fully in God’s good news.  

    What about us? Will we risk even more because of Easter and go forth in haste to announce boldly, “Jesus is risen,” to a world burdened with hurts and pains?
     
    Our Christian mission is to announce Jesus, risen and alive, loving us by saving us already. Our world really needs to hear this Good News. There’s an urgency to share this, the joy of Easter. It demands our haste. Who better to do and proclaim it than us?

    Paul offers us three points in the Second Reading to bolster our Easter proclamation that Jesus lives.

    First, that we are already raised with Jesus. Nothing anyone can do to you or yours can change the fact that in the risen Jesus God triumphs over evil, sin and death.

    Second, that we seek what is above, where Jesus is seated at God’s right hand. Where Jesus now is, there we are too — in God’s good company. We can always turn to God through Jesus. 

    Third, that we think of what is above, not of what is on earth. Even if our lives and the world are spinning out of control, the risen Jesus is our sure and certain hope. He has turned the worst evil can do, kill a man, into God’s glory that saves all. He will surely and always save for God.

    Peter told Cornelius that God made the risen Jesus visible “not to the whole people but only to certain witnesses God had chosen.” Like Peter, we are those witnesses today. 

    So, let us be silent no more. Mourning must end. T'is time to rejoice. The fullness of life awaits. For today and henceforth, something of God has happened and is happening still. Everyone is part of this Easter goodness and we will all never be the same again —  just much better because Jesus Christ is risen today.  Alleluia!

    Happy Easter! 





    Inspired by Pope Francis, Easter Sunday Homily, 2018

    Preached at St Ignatius Church
    photo: axel bimashanda on unsplash (internet) 
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  4.  

    Year B / Holy Week - Triduum / Holy Thursday / Mass of the Lord's Supper
    Readings: Exodus 12.1-8, 11-14 / Psalm 115.12-13, 15-16bc, 17-18 (R/v cf. 1 Cor 10:16) / 1 Corinthians 11.23-26 / John 13.1-15

     

    Jesus came to Simon Peter, who said, "Master, are you going to wash my feet?"

    What would you say if Jesus came to you now, and began to wash your feet? Yes, what would you say?

    I think many of us will be speechless. Some would be shocked.  Some would be confused and unsure. “How can this be?” we might cry, echoing Peter, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
     
    Maybe we would protest. “This cannot be your role, Lord – to wash my feet. This cannot be your place, Lord – to kneel before me. No, it is I who must serve you, Lord. It is I who must kneel before you.”
     
    Would we act like this because we are afraid? Afraid that Jesus comes so close that he discovers the real me? Me who is not so saintly, never so good, always a sinner.
     
    Last night as I prayed this passage, I ask myself: “Who am I that you, Jesus, would want to wash my feet a sinner?” Maybe you are wondering too.
     
    Jesus came to Peter and his disciples to wash their feet. Now He comes to you and me to do the same. He says, “Unless I wash you, you can have no share with me.” Jesus can’t be with us and share God’s life unless we let him forgive us, heal us, and love us in life again.
     
    In choosing to wash our feet, Jesus wants to share what He has in common with us – that we are all God’s own and God’s beloved. This is how Jesus makes us whole again and saves us for God. There’s more: “That as I have done for you, you should also do,” He commands us.
     
    Will we let Jesus wash our feet, so that we, in turn, can wash the feet of others?
     
    A priest once said to me in confession:  “Jesus already knows how big or small your sin is, or how long ago or recent your previous confession was. What truly matters to Jesus is that we come home to God.”
     
    Jesus is waiting for us to come home. Home to God in whom we can be freely ourselves, not ashamed but grateful that we are God’s beloved as we are. Jesus knows we want this because when we often lose our way to God and get trapped in sin all we want is God, and for us to live better in God's ways.
     
    This is why I believe we will be surprised yet consoled that Jesus comes to us wash our feet: “Yes, you didn’t ask, nor did you have to earn this but I am offering to wash you, right now, as you are. I want to.”
     
    Such love has no reservations and knows no limits. Such love chooses to enter into the messiness of our sinful lives and world. Such love is not pretty words said or nice feelings sung. Such love is truly loving and excelling. It intentionally wants to enter our sinful messiness. It willingly chooses to come and embrace, to accept and forgive, to reconcile and make us make whole again. Such love simply loves. This is God’s love that Jesus is and how he acts.
     
    “Love one another as I have loved you,” Jesus teaches at the Last Supper. Through our readings, Jesus models this way of loving most powerfully in two actions.
     
    At the Last Supper, in the breaking of bread, Jesus offers himself to us and for the word. In and through the Eucharist, He shows us how our lives ought to be an offering to God and a sacrifice for all. As Jesus is bread broken for us, so are we to be bread broken for all, no matter how imperfect our lives are. This is what our second reading is about.
     
    It is founded on Jesus’ action of washing feet in the Gospel reading. Foot washing is how Jesus makes God’s love fully alive, clearly visible, and wondrously tactile in our midst. Here is love that can touch deeply and transform everyone for better, if we but practice it.
     
    “May I help you?” is the real question Jesus is asking us in the washing of the feet. Everyone struggles to answer this question honestly.  Often our replies are: “I am fine.” “It’s ok.” “Don’t worry. I’ll manage.” All this we say repeatedly, even if we need help.
     
    It is better to answer honestly.  Like this: “Yes, thank you”. “May I wash your feet?” “Yes, thank you.” This simply acknowledges our need for help.
     
    All of us here struggle with sin. All of us here struggle to come home to God. All of us here struggle to let Jesus enter into the messiness of our lives.
     
    Tonight Jesus wants to wash our feet. Tomorrow on Good Friday Jesus wants to die for us and save us. At Easter, Jesus wants to raise us up with him into the fullness of life. What right response can we make for Jesus’ saving love? Only these three simple words, “Yes, thank you.”
     
    We will say these words with heartfelt gratitude when we dare to let Jesus wash our feet by risking all that we are and all that we have. If we dare do this, we will discover that greater Christ-like love in us to lay down our life for another. Then, we will indeed be able to do this too, like Jesus – by washing another's feet, being bread broken for many and sacrificing our lives for others to live.
     
    It all begins by risking to let Jesus wash our feet. They may seem insignificant, yet they reveal much more. Some feet express status and privilege, pampering and pride. Others reveal wounds and hurts that disable us. Still more betray our everyday struggles: they are battered, scarred, soiled; they are dirty and they smell. We stand on our feet that bear our weight but also the burdens of our failings, our imperfections, our disappointments. Our feet help us run to those we love; they help us to jump in hope. Our feet dig deep into the ground whenever we fear, doubt or despair; they root us in our sinfulness. Our feet say so much about our joys and hopes, our pains and anxieties, our heartaches and obstacles. Sometimes, we hide these more than we express them.
     
    All these that our feet metaphorically express are what Jesus really wants to wash clean. When we let him do this, we give him the freedom to enter into our lives to serve us.  And we also give ourselves the freedom to follow Him to do the same for many. We can because we give what we have: the love of God in our lives.
     
    Tonight, we will receive God’s love in Jesus at Eucharist.  This night, we will let God’s love in Jesus wash our feet with mercy and compassion, not water and basin. From tonight onwards, God’s love in Jesus will move us to love one another as He has loved us if we but let Him.
     
    Now, will you and I then let Jesus love us deeply, feet first?
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Inspired by and adapted in parts from “Feet First” by Luke Ditewig
     
    Preached at St Joseph’s Institution
    artwork: detail from 'jesus washing peter's feet' by ford maddox brown at dsj.org
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"Bukas Palad"
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is Filipino for open palms
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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!
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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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The views I express in these pages are personal. They do not speak for the Society of Jesus or the Catholic Church.
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