1.  

    Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 22 / Sunday
    Readings: Deuteronomy 4.1-2, 6b-8 / Psalm 15. 2-3ab, 4cd-4, 5 (R/v 1a) / James 1.17-18, 21b-22, 27 / Mark 7.1-8, 14-15, 21-23


    “The just will live in the presence of the Lord” (Psalm 15.1a)

    This is our response in today’s Psalm. I believed we proclaimed it with conviction, if not with hope, no matter how often we pray or read this psalm. 

    We all want to live with the Lord now and forever. We, therefore, strive to act justly, love mercifully and walk humbly with God and each other (Micah 6.8). Today’s Psalm describes ways we can do this: "live blamelessly, act uprightly, speak the truth, keep our tongue under control, do no wrong or discredit our neighbour, do not cheat each other” (Psalm 15.2-5)

    Yet we fail repeatedly by being unjust, acting without mercy, and living proudly apart from God and away from others. We know we have failed because our wrong words and hurtful actions prick our conscience. Before others, this ‘ouch’ bites. Before God, this guilt weighs heavily on us.

    I suspect Jesus’s admonishment to the Pharisees in today’s gospel also stings. It does because we know how true his words are about our lives. Yes, from within us evil intentions emerge. 

    However aware we are of our sinfulness, we continue being the Pharisee, now and again, don’t we? Quickly we demand others to obey God’s commandments.  Sanctimoniously we judge them sinful when they don’t. Like the Pharisees, we say they defile themselves.

    Jesus challenges the Pharisees’ notion of ‘defilement’ and turns it inside out. The Pharisees use it self-righteously to mean being ‘sullied’ by unholy people and unholy things one encounters. Jesus turns this around. For him ‘defilement’ should be a check on ourselves, a warning not to defile ourselves by allowing evil to enter the world through us.* 

    Pay attention to Jesus’s challenge. Does it sting us even more deeply because we receive Jesus in Communion and believe that receiving Jesus in the Eucharist should transform us from within? How come our words and actions are still sometimes evil?

    Perhaps, because we forget how close Jesus is to us to save us. Not physically but intimately to love and transform us for the better. His presence is God’s presence in our lives. God is as near to us as God is to the Israelites who Moses reminds will save them whenever they call on Him.  Human as we are, we forget, worse still, we ignore, or even reject, this oneness with God whenever temptations come, and so, we fail to ask for help to save us from sin. 

    These are our life’s struggles as Christians but our faith in the risen Jesus is hope-filled. We are an Easter people, destined for resurrection life with God. 

    The Apostle James echoes this hope. For him, God’s word of truth, Jesus, saves, and God has given us Jesus. Hence, he challenges Christians to live as “doers of the word, not hearers only” (James 1.22). We must live like Jesus — caring for all, especially, the needy, and living in God’s ways. These ways help Christians center their lives on God. The Spirit of God empowers them to do this. Will we let God’s Spirit do the same for us? 

    The Pharisees heard and followed the Law. They however ignored centering their hearts on God while practising it. To Jesus the Pharisees were hypocrites; they honoured God with their lips but their hearts were far from God. This explains their rigidity.

    For Pope Francis, such rigidity is dangerous:
    Be careful around those who are rigid. Be careful around Christians — be they laity, priests, bishops — who present themselves as so ‘perfect,’ rigid. Be careful. There’s no Spirit of God there. They lack the spirit of liberty. 

    And let us be careful with ourselves, because this should lead us to consider our own life. Do I seek to look only at appearance, and not change my heart? Do I not open my heart to prayer, to the liberty of prayer, the liberty of almsgiving, the liberty of works of mercy? ** 
    Here is Francis echoing Jesus: there is no point observing God’s commandments unless we do so in God’s Spirit, that is, to live for others and for the love of God.

    In a few minutes, the love of God compels us to come to Communion. We come seeking spiritual nourishment and healing. We come to be one with God in Jesus. Let us come then with humility and earnestness and ask Jesus more sincerely to transform us from inside out to become more like him and live just lives. Then, He will make our words and actions like His that give life to all. Then, He will enable us to live God’s commandments as He does, with love for God. 

    Today’s readings are instructive for living a just life. They remind us how and why we should obey God’s commandments — by centering our hearts on God because He loves us and wants to save. Indeed, to whom else shall we go?






    * Prayer text from 'Pray as You Go,' 29 August 2021
    ** Pope Francis, Homily at Casa Marta Oct. 26, 2018

    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: Royal Museum Greenwich (Internet)

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  2.  

    Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 21 / Sunday
    Readings: Joshua 24.1-2, 15-17, 18b / Psalm 33.2-3, 16-17, 20-21, 22-23 (R/v 9a) / Ephesians 5.21-32 / John6.60-69


    “Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life” (cf John 6.63)

    These words are from today’s gospel acclamation. We didn’t sing them because we are observing safe measures in this pandemic. If we could, I wonder if we would because like Jesus’s disciples we might be struggling with some of Jesus’ teachings. They are not always easy to hear and accept.

    The Evangelist John records that Jesus’s own disciples, not the crowds, are murmuring. “This teaching is hard, who can accept it?” they are complaining after hearing Jesus’s claim that he is their food and drink: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life” (John 6.54)

    Maybe you’ve had the same reaction – and still have – to this teaching and other things Jesus says. Which of them do you find difficult to accept?

    Yet Jesus keeps saying them to us whenever we read, pray and proclaim the Gospels. Like these:  
    “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5.3). 

    “Seek first God’s kingdom and his justice and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33). 

    “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 16.24). 

    “Every one of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple. (Lk. 14.33).
    Why does Jesus give us these teachings and sayings? Because He really wants us to choose that which gives us life. 

    Joshua’s message to the tribes of Israel echoes Jesus. Joshua challenges them to choose who they should serve: God or the many gods. For Joshua and his household, there is only one answer: God. Will this be our answer too?

    Today’s world makes it hard to choose God. There are many attractions, distractions, temptations, and sinful ways of living. They purport to offer us life and its pleasures to be satisfied and happy. They don’t because they take us far away from God and from living in God’s ways, which Jesus reveals is what life to the full is all about.

    We struggle with these worldly ways. We struggle even more when the Church disappoints us or her priests and lay ministers hurt us. It could over differences about the Church’s position on women in ministry, its attitude toward homosexual Catholics, and its care for divorced Catholics. It could be suffering pain, ridicule, or disregard by hard-hearted priests and self-righteous lay ministers. For some, this is reason enough to choose to leave parishes, ministry, the faith, even God.

    In these moments, Jesus’s question to his apostles, “Do you also want to leave?” becomes real. For the disheartened and disillusioned, the example of the many who left Jesus and returned to their former ways is appealing. 

    What should we do? How should we choose? Peter’s response to this question can help us. 

    For Pope Francis, Jesus’s question forces Peter to make a decision. He does; by making a confession of faith: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” This is “an example of faith and trust amid a crisis,” Francis teaches. “This is not the time to make changes. It is a moment of fidelity, of fidelity to God, fidelity to the decisions we have made before. Also, it is a moment of conversion because this fidelity will inspire some of us to change for the better. In times of crisis, be very firm in the conviction of faith.”*

    In this light, our second reading about the interaction between husbands and wives returns us to the conviction of faith a couple shares to marry – selfless loving.  Some argue this reading perpetuates a male-centered Church lording over women. For St Paul, however, husbands and wives should equally choose to defer to and to revere one another in the same way Jesus treats every person – with self-sacrificing love that lays itself down totally for another. Yes, this is another of Jesus’s hard teachings, and His words are Spirit and life. They are for us to live and flourish.

    “Decide today whom you will serve,” Joshua calls out to all. In marriage, as in discipleship and in life, we serve not only each other but God. The choice that confronts married couples and the disciples confronts us too: will we accept Jesus’s hard sayings and stay with him because they are his way to life? Yes, will we?





    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: Strategic and Heuristic IT Management (internet)


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  3. Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 19 / Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
    Readings: Revelations 11.19a, 12.1-6a, 10ab / Psalm 45.10, 11, 12, 16 (R/v 10bc) / 1 Corinthians 15.20-27 / Luke 1.39-56


    “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.” (Luke 1.45)

    This is how Elizabeth affirms Mary in today’s gospel reading. I wonder what Mary felt and thought hearing it. 

    We hear Elizabeth’s affirmation too. I wonder if it consoles, encourages or challenges us.

    Today’s feast celebrates the “great things” God has done for Mary. More so, it proclaims God’s faithfulness – he will lift up the lowly. Not just Mary, God’s lowly servant, body and soul into heaven, but all who are lowly. God will: not because they are faithful but because God is faithful. This is the promise of God’s mercy.

    God fulfills this promise in Jesus, especially through his death and resurrection. Indeed, throughout the entire history of God’s promise of mercy, death came through Adam, and life came through Christ, St Paul teaches (1 Corinthians 15.20-26).

    We want to believe in God’s promise in our lives. So we ponder about God’s actions in life and prayer, in work and service. And we seek assurance that God keeps faith with us, speaking to us and accompanying us. This is why we keep looking out for God and his promise through the events and people in our lives. Or, do we not?

    Sometimes, our life circumstances constrain our belief in God’s promise.  In these situations, the ups and downs are our joys and sorrows, achievements and burdens, dreams and regrets. They can distract and hamper us from finding God in our midst.  

    We need to break free of them.  When we do, they become graced portals of encounter: God is really with us through it all.

    I believe Mary and Elizabeth did this in their life situations. Their actions enabled them to live fully their faith. One was too old and barren. One was too young and a virgin. Yet both were pregnant. Neither allowed their circumstances to define who she was or who would become. Elizabeth was not just a childless, infertile woman. Mary was not another unmarried, scandalous woman. Both permitted God to fulfill his promise of mercy through them. Elizabeth gave birth to a prophet of God who converted many. Mary bore the Son of God who brings salvation to all. 

    Such was God’s action in their lives. We are familiar with it because of God’s actions in our own lives and those of others. What should surprise us is the expectant faith these women had. They believed God’s promise would come true even in their circumstances. It takes audacity to have such faith.

    Look at Mary. She said, “Let it be done onto me according to God’s will” at the Annunciation (Luke 1.26-28). She had no certain knowledge of her future. However, she did trust God – “for nothing is impossible to God.” She lived her faith in God’s promise boldly. When she was told a sword would pierce her soul. When she lost Jesus for three days. When she would have worried about Jesus’ struggles as a wandering rabbi. When she anguished as he suffered and died before his resurrection.  Yes, even as she was assumed into heaven. Indeed, “Let it be” is an audacious prayer. Dare we make this our prayer?

    Mary’s “Let it be” led her to praise and thank God in the Magnificat. For the American theologian, Barbara Brown Taylor, it expresses “Mary's unreasonable willingness to believe that God who has chosen her will be part of whatever happens next – and that apparently is enough to make her burst into song. She does not wait to see how things will turn out first. She sings ahead of time.”* Praising God ahead of time. Thanking God ahead of time. Believing in God’s goodness to come ahead of time. This is a startling way to believe and live in God – ahead of time. A blessed way, indeed. 

    Can we see ourselves believing and living in God ahead of time, that is, with an expectant faith that trusts? We can by learning from liturgy. Often we celebrate today’s solemnity by remembering what happened to Mary in the past. Here in Eucharist, in liturgy, we just don’t recall a past event. We allow God’s Spirit to draw us into divine mystery where that event is present now.

    Today then, we can join Mary in singing her Magnificat to praise and thank God for his faithfulness to the lowly, who we are too. We have been blessed. We can also entrust ourselves to God who will lift us all up Him, whatever the circumstances of our lives. We will be blessed. We do these with Mary. We can dare believe and live in God because He fulfills his promise always. This is the Good News we must celebrate. 

    So, “Let it be” must be our prayer and our praise, now and ahead of time. Shall we do this and proclaim the greatness of the Lord and exult in God, our saviour?




    *Barbara Brown Taylor, Home by Another Way

    Inspired in parts by the Cistercian monks at Spencer Abbey, MA


    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: justdisciple.com 

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  4.  

     At this Mass on 6 August in SJI, we prayed for our nation’s 56th National Day


    Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 18 / Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord
    Readings: Daniel 7.9-10, 13-14 / Psalm 96.1-2, 5-6, 9 (R/v 1a & 9a) / Mark 9.2-10


    “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him” (Mark 9.7)

    Here is God, at the Transfiguration, commanding the disciples, Peter, James, and John to listen to Jesus. Today, God is asking us to do the same.

    Why should we listen to Jesus? What should we be listening for?

    The disciples heard God’s command on a mountain top. You and I know the difference in perspective whenever we move from street level to a higher point of view. We see more. We see further. We see better.

    When I was younger, my parents used to drive my siblings and me up to Mount Faber. There at the lookout point, we could see the tall buildings along Shenton Way, the port area at Tanjong Pagar, and the many ships in harbour. We could see that what we were learning in school about Singapore’s progress was indeed true. We had a busy port. We were a developing city. On this high point up on a hill, we could see clearly.

    Seeing clearly is what the disciples also experienced during Jesus’s Transfiguration. They were given an awesome glimpse of his glory. We witness this too. We are not bystanders hearing the priest proclaim the gospel; with the disciples, we glimpse God's glory shining through Jesus.

    This glory is also the promised transformation we will experience when we are raised from the dead to live with Jesus forever. Then, his divine nature will transform every part of who we are. Indeed, our bodies will be transfigured and gloried. This is the basis of our hope in Jesus. As Christians, this is the heart of our faith.

    Is it possible that something more could have happened on that mountain top – like the disciples being transfigured to see Jesus more clearly, to know him more intimately, and to believe in him more fully? I’d like to suggest that God commands them to listen to Jesus because they now know who he really is. The transfiguration reveals Jesus as God’s beloved Son. He is not just a teacher and healer, their friend and master. Yes, no one has seen the Father but the Son. And God's Son, Jesus, came to share everything he knows about the Father with Peter, James, and John – and with us. 

    I wonder if God commands us to also listen to Jesus because our familiarity with him sometimes blinds us to really know Jesus as God’s beloved Son. Don’t we sometimes think, speak and pray to Jesus according to our mental models of who he is to us? I’d like to suggest that God’s command humbles us to consider honestly our need to see, hear and know Jesus anew – from God’s point of view. Then, we will know Jesus as he is – God-is-with-us. 

    In her poem, ‘Aurora Leigh,’ the American poet, Elizabeth Barret Browning observed that:
    Earth’s crammed with heaven,
    and every common bush afire with God.
    But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
    the rest sit around and pluck blackberries.
    Today we celebrate our National Day in school. On Monday, 9 August we will celebrate it as a nation. In the midst of this pandemic and its challenges, listening to Jesus helps us to know our reason to celebrate. He teaches everyone that God has crammed our world with His good bounty. Yes, even in every nook and cranny in Singapore, and in every Singaporean and resident on fire with God’s love and compassion for many. We’ve experienced this truth in recent months when many have cared and stood up for those who suffered because some spoke hateful words, made entitled demands, and acted selfishly and righteously. God comes to aid all in need through the goodness of human compassion, "regardless of race, language or religion."

    Choosing otherwise – that is, to ignore Jesus’s teaching that God is good and God’s goodness abounds – only leads to more despair and hopelessness at this pandemic time. The truth is, going about our everyday life can be a grind. We know our crosses can be many and heavy. Some of these burden us greatly. How can we carry them?

    Before and after the Transfiguration, Jesus told the disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and die at the hands of the elders. Jesus’s transfiguration helped the disciples to bear the sorrow of the Cross because they saw the glory that lay ahead. Like the disciples, we need to live with hope. Today’s feast reminds us that Jesus is our hope. God commands us to listen to Jesus. This is God’s loving way of getting us to stay close to Jesus and live in his presence. If we do, we will never lose sight of Jesus.

    Isn’t this the Good News we need to hear today?




    Preached at St Joseph’s Institution
    photo: singaporeglobalnetwork.gov.sg
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  5.  Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 17 / Feast Day of St Ignatius
    Readings: Jeremiah 20.7-9 / Psalm 34.2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9, 10-11 (R/v 9a) / 1 Corinthians 10.31-11.1 / Luke 14.25-33


    “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Luke 6.20)

    This phrase describes St Ignatius of Loyola aptly. He was poor in spirit because he understood his need for God and who God is and who he was. He knew that without God, he would not be alive, and without God’s gifts, become the person God created him to be.

    Being poor in spirit humbled Ignatius: he learned that everything depends on God alone. This is the necessary disposition for a saint’s heart. 

    We can easily forget this today. We celebrate Ignatius’s saintliness for founding the Jesuits and writing the Spiritual Exercises. We think him saintly for the phrase “Ad majorem Dei gloriam" (For the greater glory of God). We recall his sainthood whenever we sing “Noble Knight” to herald Ignatius as God’s solider.

    In contrast, our readings invite us to savour this Good News: that a sinner’s first steps toward sainthood begin with his real need for God. Truly, Ignatius prayed: “give me only your love and your grace that is enough for me, Lord.” Shouldn’t this be our first step toward sainthood too? 

    Jesus insists it must be: “none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions” (Luke 14.33).  To give all up is difficult, especially for God. We would rather be in control, have possessions for ourselves, and freedom to direct our lives.
     
    Ignatius knew otherwise. When we let go of everything and surrender all to God we will live fully, freely and happily. What matters is our self-offering to God; He will prosper us. Truly, Ignatius prayed: “Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all I have and call my own.”

    For us, this pandemic is too long and painful, too exhausting and heartbreaking. Yet it is graced. With so much stripped away, so much beyond our control, so much we lack and need, where else do we find ourselves but in God’s hands? Only faith allows us to see this: truthfully, we are all poor in spirit for God.

    Ignatius experienced the same. Whether hit by a cannonball, at Manresa in a cave, by the river Cardoner or failing as he planned to serve in Jerusalem, God drew him into his loving embrace. Not just to heal, learn and serve but to be transformed more like Jesus. 

    Certainly, God was never done with Ignatius at any stage of his life. Throughout his life, God labored slowly and surely to make him a saint. This is what conversion looks like. This is in fact the grace of the Examen we pray. 

    I believe God wants to do the same for us; God is not done with us yet! This is why we should beg God for this grace. Because “for Ignatius, a life of poverty [of being poor in the spirit] was an expression of intimacy with Jesus... it was a sign of his interior transformation, of his growing indifference to preparing himself to follow God’s will, of his sense that everything came down from above as God’s gift.*  It is good to consider if we are living like Ignatius as an Ignatian parish, as partners in mission, and as Jesuits.

    For God to do in us and for us, as He did for Ignatius, we must humble ourselves. Such humility, Jesus teaches, enables the builder to complete the tower and the king to secure peace, not war, for his people (Luke 14.25-33). Humility helps us know our strengths and weaknesses, abilities, and limitations. Humility alone allows us to trust God totally. 

    Ignatius prayed: “You have given all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will.”  More importantly, he lived this prayer.  By emptying himself of self-pride, self-possession and self-preservation, he handed himself over to God. Like a pilgrim. One journeying through life’s vicissitudes. One relying only on God to reach the end. One confident God will provide and care. This is how he learned to carry the Cross like Jesus – with God, everything suffices. 

    Every pilgrim comes to know these graces. They learn these from their life-giving encounter with Jesus along the way. This matters more than reaching the destination. Like Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus, they come to know Jesus as God-with-us through accompaniment, conversation, and the breaking of bread. No wonder many pilgrims’ hearts burn with Jesus’s spirit.

    Ignatius’ heart burnt too, even as he limped from the cannonball injury but also from being poor in spirit. We are pilgrims too, each with our own limp. Jesus walks with us, as he did with Ignatius. Are our hearts burning too?

    For St Paul, imitating Jesus to love God, serve neighbor, and save all is the best way to live the Christian life (1 Corinthians 10.31-11.1). Ignatius took Paul’s words to heart. For him, his Jesuit brothers, and lay partners in mission, the only way to live, pray and serve lovingly and selflessly is in Jesus’ company. Many have learned from Ignatius and followed him. This should be everyone’s choice.

    Today, we celebrate how poverty of spirit is really God’s way of seducing Ignatius into sainthood. And Ignatius said, “yes.” To be seduced to see and act no longer as he wanted but “to see all things new in Christ” to act like Jesus. This is God’s work of ongoing conversion in our lives. Its end is for us to be with God forever. Indeed, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 

    How else then shall we live for the love of God?




    *Fr Arturo Sousa, Superior General, Society of Jesus

    Preached at St  Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    Photo: connectusfund.org

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"Bukas Palad"
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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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