1. Re-run / This homily was preached in 2018

    Year B / Ordinary Time / Solemnity of the Holy Trinity
    Readings: Deuteronomy 4.32-34, 39-40 / Psalm 32. 4-5, 6 and 9, 18-19, 20 and 22 (R/v 12b) / Romans 8.14-17 / Matthew 28.16-20

    Sisters and brothers, how do you make sense of a mystery? Have you tried to read up on it? Have you tried to analyse and dissect it? Have you asked around for answers? Did you feel you must problem-solve this mystery?

    The Holy Trinity is the mystery of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One God yet three persons. They are united, co-equal and living in perfect communion. What does all this mean? Hence, our questions: What is the Holy Trinity? Can God be one yet Three Persons? Are Father, Son and Spirit doing their own thing if they are one God?

    Today’s readings and prayer do not solve the mystery of the Trinity. Instead, they simply invite us to experience and appreciate God as the Holy Trinity –  God who wants to share life with us and in whose love we are called to live in. 

    The focus of today’s celebrations is the living presence of the Trinity in our lives: this Trinity that continually creates, saves and sustains us and all of creation.

    One way we can understand and experience this living presence of the Trinity in our lives is to reflect on Andrei Rublev’s icon called “The Trinity”. The icon “The Trinity” depicts the three angels who visited Abraham at the Oak of Mamre (Genesis 18:1–8).  Because of its rich symbolism, it has been interpreted as an icon of the Holy Trinity throughout the centuries. 

    Here then are Father, Son and Holy Spirit sitting around a table. They are feasting, celebrating and communing together. This is a beautiful image of the One God. 


    But this is an icon, not a painting. We look and admire a painting. We pray with an icon; contemplating it helps us enter into the mystery of God. Rublev’s icon is inviting us to contemplate God as Trinity. See how the Father, Son and Spirit each acknowledge the other with the tilt of his head. See the relationship and life they share: intimate, life-giving, loving. 

    Yet together their faces are turned outwards to you and me, inviting us into their gracious communion, calling us to complete the circle, to be one with them. To enter into the mystery of the Trinity and to live with them. This is the invitation our gospel reading makes today.

    We hear this invitation in Jesus’ command: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”. 

    What does it mean to baptise them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit? For all of us, the sacrament that we received as a baby at Baptism or as an adult through RCIA comes to mind. There is also an understanding about the strong desire some have to be baptised.  However we understand “to be baptised” the Greek word for baptise means “dip” or “immerse”. This reminds us that Baptism is about being immersed into the life of the Trinity who dwells in us and lives with us. So, how many are on your life’s journey? The right answer is four: you, and God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit! 

    This is why I find Rublev’s icon comforting, hopeful, and life-giving. Here is God who is Trinity inviting me to enter and to sit with the Trinity. To share life with them. To receive their love as I want to share my love with them. To be one with them as they want to one with them. Today God is making the same invitation to you.

    We are being invited into the goodness of our relationship with God. This is Paul’s message in our second reading. God's life in us is not something abstract but a relationship of children to our “Abba, Father.” This is the work and gift of the Spirit of God through Christ. This is how God lives in our lives as the Trinity. This how God is so close to us. 
    God is the Father who created us in love and who mercifully forgives us every time to save us. 
    God is the Son, Jesus who shows us how to live with God and with one another. 
    God is the Holy Spirit who always accompanies us into freedom from sin so that we can live as God’s children.  
    Of all the beautiful churches and the many golden tabernacles in the world, the Trinity’s favourite dwelling place is the human heart. This is why God is with us wherever we are or go, and in whatever we do and say. 

    Like the disciples, Jesus asks us to share this relationship with all. “Go out, and baptise the nations in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”, Jesus commands.

    Who are these nations? All the countries of the world, to be sure. But also those metaphorical "nations" closer to us: those nations that are our own families and friends, our classmates and co-workers, everyone who is part of our lives. 

    And what are we sent to do? To draw them into the circle of the Holy Trinity’s life and love. In this circle, all savour the fullness of God’s goodness. To be in the circle of relationship with the Trinity is to experience the loving embrace of the Trinity.

    We can draw many into the Trinity’s embrace because our baptism empowers us to be God's presence among the “nations.” We are the visible sign of Jesus' promise: “I am with you always.” 

    Let me suggest three simple ways we can imitate the Holy Trinity’s work in our lives and so embody God’s presence to all. These are:
    By being like God, the Father, who is always the first to reach out, to forgive and to embrace us back in love. Let us give life to others with words and actions that bless. 
    By being like Jesus, the Son, who teaches, heals and reconciles so all can live with God and one another in peace. Let us be persons who bring about reconciliation in our families, our work place, and our world. 
    By being like the Holy Spirit, who transforms our lives with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5.22-25). Let us be agents of God’s transforming love to care, console, uplift and make all happy.
    We can live and act like these ways when we say “yes” to God’s invitation to relationship in the Trinity. Then, we can live in the Trinity, dialogue with the Trinity, and listen to the Trinity.* These are how we can better know the love of God and be empowered by to share this love of God. Here is the Trinity’s presence working in us to transform us into Jesus' disciples to the nations.

    This is why that open space at the front of the icon is important. It is the very space God is inviting us, and those we will baptise, to enter and become part of the life and mission of the Trinity which is to create, save and sanctify.

    So, let us try to interact more with our God as Trinity this week. Let us live and talk and listen to the Trinity. 
    Let us say to God, the Father: “Father, this is how I feel like today. What do you think?”.  
    Let us speak with Jesus, the Son: “How are you, Jesus? How can I use my gifts and talents to make you happy today?” 
    Let us interact with the Holy Spirit: “Thank you for giving us life, Holy Spirit. Help me to share this life with others”.
    Let us interact more with the Holy Trinity this week. As we do, I pray you will come to know that you don’t have to solve the mystery of the Trinity. Rather, immerse yourself in the Trinity and savour the goodness of Father, Son and Spirit in your life. This is what matters most every day. 

    Then, I hope you will come to appreciate the truth the refrain in today’s responsorial psalm proclaims: “Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own”. You are God’s blessed. You are God’s own. Indeed, you are God's chosen ones because in you God dwells as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. How wonderful this is!



    *attributed to Fr Jamie Bonet, FMVD

    Preached at Church of the Transfiguration
    artwork: underwater by jacob sutton

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  2. Year B / Eastertide / Pentecost (Vigil Mass)
    Readings: Genesis 11:1-19 / Psalm Ps 103. 1-2, 24 and 35, 27-28, 29-30 (R/v cf 30) / Romans 8:22-27 / John 7:37-39


     “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful”  
    This is part of today’s Gospel Acclamation. We didn’t chant it but we know it well. We pray it. We cry it out in our pain. We sing it aloud in praise and worship. “Come Holy Spirit” expresses the deepest longing in every person for God. 

    I think this is why most of us readily identify with Paul’s declaration that “The Spirit helps us in our weakness.” It prays our prayers and pleads our pleas before God when we cannot. Yes, the Spirit is Advocate and Helper.

    Someone once wrote that the Spirit is present when we find ourselves “in the unpredictable, in the place of risk, and in areas over which we have no control.” 

    Wasn’t this the experience of Jesus’ disciples at the first Pentecost? Isn’t this our experience now in this pandemic — grappling with uncertainty, worrying about risks, feeling like we have no control?  We have had many more times like this before and we will have many more in the future. Yes, “Come Holy Spirit.”

    Pentecost is more than a mighty wind, a great noise and tongues of fire resting on heads. Pentecost is the Spirit setting everyone on fire, transforming lives, and turning the world upside down. So, the disciples spoke in foreign languages, the crowds understood, and all were amazed by God’s marvels.

    Such is the Spirit’s unpredictable action. It can seem very risky and definitely beyond our control. Yet this is God’s love working in our lives. A love that transforms and saves, even as we and all creation groan for freedom and salvation. It begins with the Spirit kindling the fire of God’s love in us. We have to fan this fire bigger. 

    Why? Listen. Visiting Abba Joseph, a young monk said, “Father, I say my prayers, I fast, I meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” The old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “You must become fire itself.”

    Become fire itself. The only way to do this is to let fire consume us totally.  Pentecost makes this demand on us. That we let God’s Spirit inflame us totally. Then God, through his Spirit, can transform and renew us for God and God's works alone, like the Spirit renewing the face of the earth. Dare we want this?

    We know about God scattering the people at the tower of Babel. They no longer spoke one language, nor were they one. Their sin was their pride to reach heaven on their own merit, not God’s. Pentecost healed this division; speakers of myriad languages heard the disciples’ one message. Truly, the Spirit unites.

    As Christians we know this. We are baptized into one Body – the Body of Christ, no matter our race or language, education or work, gender or sexual orientation, and even whether we are progressive or conservative in our faith. God’s Spirit gathers us individually together, not because we are the same but because we are gifted differently. Pentecost proclaims that only the Spirit can hold us like this, one and diverse, always with the promise that we will prosper.

    But, even together there is risk, unpredictability, and lack of control. For sure, in every community we inhabit — family or friends, work or school, religious or parish — we are with other people who look, think, talk, and act differently from us. Whether we seek closeness, support, or some measure of safety in community, we often find ourselves in the holy struggle to live and work with people just like us, broken yet good, everyone desiring God. Yes, “Come, Holy Spirit.”

    Indeed we need the Spirit to live in community. Today, Jesus invites us to come to him. He knows we thirst for the Spirit. He wants to give it to us. Once he breathed his Spirit into the disciples and so re-created them. Today he wants to do the same for us: to make his Spirit-breath the very indwelling of God in us. Then, filled with this Spirit we can live with Christ-like charity for each other — always loving, ever ready to forgive and genuinely wanting reconciliation. 

    One prayer can make this possible and real:  “Come, Holy Spirit, come.” Shall we pray it?





    Inspired in parts by the Cistercian monks at Spencer Abbey, Massachusetts, USA 

    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    artwork by julie lonneman (nrconline.org)
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  3. Year B / Eastertide / Week 7 / Sunday
    Readings: Acts 1.15-17, 20a, 20c-26 / Psalm 97102.1-2, 11-12, 19-20ab (R/v 19a) / 1 John 4-11-16 / John 17.11b-19


    Jesus prayed, “Holy Father, keep those you have given me true to your name, so that they may be one like us” (John 17.11)
    Here is Jesus praying that the Father will consecrate his disciples to be his continuing presence in the world.  It is not easy to be such a presence. To be in the world but not of the world. To be hated for believing in God yet finding joy in God alone. To be tempted by evil yet protected from the evil one. 

    We know this difficulty. It is our Christian struggle in this world. Sometimes, this experience overwhelms and paralyzes us. What gets us through this? The power of prayer – especially, prayers said for us.

    Jesus knows this. He prays for the disciples and us. Not that life will be easy. It won't because sin spoils our world. It brings about scarcity instead of abundance, fear instead of courage, injustice instead of fairness, and selfishness instead of sacrificial love.  

    What Jesus prays for is that God will be with us. Jesus also prays that God will keep us one with himself so that we can share in his joy completely.

    Jesus’s prayer should encourage us. Though we struggle with sin, we strive to live good Christian lives for God and neighbour. This does not eliminate the tension of living in the world as Christians. It in fact heightens it. This is why Jesus prays: we need God to live in the world as his continuing presence. Hence, he prays that we be one with God and consecrated to God. 

    We fulfill Jesus’s prayer when God’s ways of loving, forgiving and reconciling become our own way of living with one another. Listen again to St John teaching us this: “as long as we love one another God will live in us and his love will be complete in us” (1 John 4.12).  This is how Jesus lived, loved and served while on earth. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus commands us to do the same. God’s love, he reveals and teaches, empowers us to live Christ-like lives for everyone.
     
    Human goodness compels us to live such lives but oftentimes our pride, selfishness and hurts get in the way.  Isn’t this why we are consoled and encouraged when others pray for us? “I prayed for you.” “I will pray for you.” “You are in our prayers.”

    Whether it is family or friends, intercessory groups or religious, those who love us or those who we’ve hurt, their prayers for us echo Jesus’s prayer for his disciples – that God protects us, be one with us and reveals Himself to us.

    Such is the goodness of prayer – God’s nearness to us. I imagine the disciples experiencing this as Jesus prayed for them at the Last Supper. Realizing Jesus would soon to taken away to suffer and die, no teaching, miracle, or healing could make a difference. Jesus’s prayer did.

    Like them, knowing that someone is praying for us gives us hope. It consoles us in our pains, eases our burdens, lessens our anxieties and brightens our darkness. We can soar on their generous prayers to God who always stoops down to meet us daily. 

    We know this line from Scripture: “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matthew 1.12). Those who pray for us join Jesus to assure us of God’s faithfulness. Let us do likewise for others whenever we pray for them – be it daily, over a hospital bed, when we say the rosary, in school or at meals.

    This week, many prayers will be said for you and me. We don’t earn them. We don't deserve them. We may not even ask for them. Those praying for us will imitate Jesus praying for his disciples.  Each of their prayers seeks only God’s best for us.  We simply need to give thanks in response.

    Truly, we all need prayers. Isn’t praying for another then a good deed we must do? Who today needs your prayers?





    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: Frantisek Duris on Unsplash
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  4.  

    Year B / Eastertide / Sixth Sunday (Mother's Day)
    Readings: Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48/ Psalm: 98:1, 2-3, 3-4 (R/v cf. 2b) / John 15:9-17


    “A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15.13).

    Does hearing Jesus say this disturb you? He demands we sacrifice our lives for others. Does this bother you at all?

    Often times it is hard to hear these words Jesus says in today's Gospel reading.  It is even harder to practice them. Maybe we struggle because we associate them with death. I think Jesus’s call to live sacrificial lives is more palatable when we associate it with those who have lived such lives. Like Jesus. Like all who died fighting for justice, in wars, or righting a wrong. 

    Today Jesus is demanding us and no one else to lay down their lives for others. This should challenge us. Maybe this statement by the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer echoing Jesus will: “When God calls man, he bids him come and die.”

    Die to ourselves. Die to our selfish, arrogant, inconsiderate selves. Die so that we can care more selflessly for another, walk more humbly with God, and think more sensitively of others.  Die in simple, ordinary ways.  Yes, die to ourselves in the little things of everyday life so that others can live and thrive. 

    Like bothering to buy tissue from the disabled aunty instead of ignoring her.  Like forgiving family for their hurts instead of being righteous and hard-hearted. Like spending time nurturing community and friendship instead of prioritizing working for success.  

    These and similar acts are how we can lay down our lives daily. Then, we will really live out Jesus’s commandment “love one another.” Others come first. Others are valued. Others can live. Everyone matters. All are loved and saved. 

    Our everyday sacrifices give them life to the full as Jesus promised. He did this on earth. Now, risen, he needs us, his disciples, to do likewise. Sometimes we do them well; other times, we don’t. Is there someone you need to love more sacrificially today?

    No one’s love is more sacrificial than a mother’s love. For most of us, our mother's love is total, faithful, selfless, and to the end. She always puts us first, herself last. Such is a mother’s love because she understands what laying down one’s life for others is really about – sacrificing for another to live and be happy. Through them, we experience Jesus’s sacrificing love that we might live.  Isn’t this worth celebrating today?

    Everyone wants a satisfying, meaningful, and happy life. We seek this joy throughout life. Jesus offers us joy too. It is a joy the world cannot give. It is his joy. It completes us because it is what love is: that God loves us and saves us (1 John 4.10).  

    Mothers, I suspect, glimpse this joy in seeing others living and flourishing. They know this is possible only when they love by remaining in love.  In love with their family, no matter how difficult mothering can be. By remaining in love they are able to look beyond labels, hurts, and disappointments. We’ve all experienced such love: it is wholehearted, without reservation, distinguished by repeated sacrifices.  Their love is instructive.

    In fact, this is the kind of loving Jesus us to practise when he gave us the commands to remain in his love and to love one another. These two commands are one: remaining in his love is to love others with Jesus’s love, laying down our lives. By remaining in his love, like the vine, we, the branches, bear fruit that values and loves everyone as a friend. 

    For the Apostle Peter, Jesus’s call to remain in his love did not mean that he and the other apostles should stay put in Jesus’ love. In the First Reading, Peter demonstrates how Jesus’s call powerfully moves them to reach out and baptize the Gentiles whom God also wants to save. Yes, love one another, as Jesus commanded.

    Such love demands Jesus’s disciples to lay down our lives for all, especially the non-Christians around us. It is not a request or a wish. It is the demand to do onto others what God does for us: love us.  Our mothers heard it and live it fully for us. Today, we hear Jesus's call to love. Will we make it our way of life too?




    Preached at St Ignatius Church
    photo: sg.theasianparent.com

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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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