1. Year B / Ordinary Time / Thanksgiving Mass for School Year 2021
    Reading: Jeremiah 31:7-9 / Psalm 34 / Mark 10:46-52


    “I will always thank the Lord, I will praise God’s name” (Psalm 34.1).

    This refrain from our Responsorial Psalm expresses our reason for today’s Thanksgiving Assembly. To thank God for this school year. In the Catholic faith, Mass is also called Eucharist. Eucharist means thanksgiving in Greek. It is therefore good and right that we begin our Thanksgiving in God’s holy presence.

    What can we thank and praise God for?

    We might struggle to do this in this pandemic year. This isn’t the school year we had hoped for. We still wear masks. We still keep a safe distance from each other. We still can’t camp or have school trips overseas. Recess is in classrooms. Some fell sick. Some were mandated to stay at home because of Covid, and missed exams. Many struggled.  All of us feel tired, even overwhelmed, and may be anxious about next year.

    But haven’t we been blessed too? Like these ways. Passing exams and being promoted. Getting a good grade for projects and papers. Winning those games and competitions we could take part in. Celebrating still our school events even via zoom. Gathering every morning for prayer and assembly. Being surprised now and again with Ice Cream Day and National Day breakfasts. And yes, for having good friends and teachers, faithful colleagues, and loving families who helped us get through this year. 

    Yes, all these are good reasons to give thanks. And so is the hope of a new year to come, our 170th as St Joseph’s Institution (SJI).

    Our readings speak about difficult, challenging, even painful experiences. The Israelites are in exile in the first reading. Bartimaeus is struggling with blindness in the gospel reading. These readings also reveal God’s saving action. God reached out to gather the Israelites back as a nation. Jesus healed Bartimaeus and he could see.

    Hasn’t God also reached out and saved us this year? In moments when we faltered and failed because we were weak? On days when everything seemed to go wrong? When difficult people pained and hurt us repeatedly?

    It is always easy to celebrate God’s goodness in our successes and progress, in what we have done right, in how others treat us well, forgive us for our mistakes and give us a second chance. We delight in this goodness. And saying ‘thank you, God’ is easy.

    But as we look back on this year, can we see God's goodness in our weaknesses and limitations, our mistakes and faults, even our sinfulness, and still give thanks? Maybe we can if we begin to see how we have grown up, become better, matured in wisdom, and allowed ourselves to be more compassionate and selfless this school year.

    This growing up and becoming a better person is how God has made us whole and good. For St John Baptist de la Salle, making us whole and good is how God saves us in everyday life

    Three questions can help us appreciate how God did this for us.

    First, were we weak enough to recognize our need for God? 

    If we did, were we surprised that God came to us repeatedly to be with us and to labour for our wellbeing and happiness? If our answer is ‘yes,’ then we have learned that our weakness is grace. Weakness is the very space God labours in us to make us better persons.

    Isn’t this how we’ve learned from our weaknesses and mistakes throughout this year? Truly God cared for us. 

    Second, were we broken enough to let God shape us to serve others? 

    We come to school to learn and grow up. School helps us do this in a special way: by breaking, shaping, and forming us anew to become the persons God wants us to become -- always better than we are. School is the right place for this. Here we are broken of our small-mindedness and arrogance, of our selfishness and individualism, of our hard-heartedness and fixed mindsets. 

    Broken again and again so that we can become learners who are friends, teachers who accompany selflessly, and a community who cares for each other as brothers and sisters. Ultimately we are broken to become like JesusIn the Catholic faith, Jesus in the Eucharist is God’s bread blessed, broken and given to transform many lives for good. 

    Whether we are Catholics or not, didn’t God break us in order to use us this year to help others become better, live life happier, and care for them so that together we all have made it across this school year’s finishing line?

    Third, were we brave enough to let God open our eyes like Bartimaeus and to follow Jesus’s way? 

    Jesus cured Bartimaeus’ blindness. Through this year, I believe God ‘cured’ us too of the different ways we are blind. Blind to learning new things. Blind to caring more selflessly for others. Blind to contributing to others because we prefer grabbing from them. Blind even to our giftedness and potential to be the best whenever we choose mediocrity and the same old, same old. Yes, haven’t we been ‘healed’ in some way this school year?

    Doesn’t this healing make us braver to live more in Jesus’ way of loving all and serving everyone? If we are, then we will begin school next year more grown-up, more sensitive to those in need, more open to being friends, and more hopeful to becoming a stronger SJI community.

    Yes, did we allow God to meet us in our weakness, brokenness and need to be brave this school year?

    If we did, can we now marvel at how good God was and is in caring for everyone in SJI, teacher and student alike? Doing all this to really prepare us to celebrate our 170th year with fresh eyes. To look forward, no more backward, to the promise of all that God wants to bless us and bless SJI with.

    If you ask me, God’s good work in our lives and in SJI is the miracle we must give thanks for this year. God’s good work to come in our 170th year is also worth our thanks and praise ahead of time. This is a startling way to believe and live in God – ahead of time, expectant of God’s future good for us. This is a blessed way to live. Let pray and make this our SJI way forward.

    Why would God do all this? So that we can share in the same family resemblance we have. You and I know it by the common name we bear – Josephian.

    Such is the love of God for you and me. Strong in our weakness. Providential in our challenges. Faithful in enabling us to grow up and be better always. This is God’s love for us now and always. 

    Yes, this is why we have much to be thankful for as this school year ends in SJI.  Thankful for what we received. But thankful even more for God in whose holy presence we abide.

    Amen.





    Peached at SJI 
    photo by adrian danker, sj, september 2019
    0

    Add a comment

  2.  

    Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 29 / Sunday
    Readings: Isaiah 53.10-11 / Psalm 32.4-5, 18-19,20, 22  (R/v 22) / Hebrews 4. 14-16  / Mark 10.35-45


    “What is it you want me to do for you?” (Mark 10.36).

    Jesus asks James and John this question in today’s gospel. I believe he asks this same question of all who come to him seeking forgiveness and healing, teaching and direction to live. 

    Jesus’ first response is always to listen. This was how Jesus began caring for the people in the Gospels. Listening to Jesus is also the first step in living as his disciples

    Today Jesus is asking us, “What is it you want me to do for you?” How will you respond?

    When Jesus asks this question he is in fact reversing the usual dynamics of the disciple/teacher relationship. He is now the one serving. He is serving us. What a contrast this is to James and John who demand, “Master, we want you to do us a favour.” They expect Jesus to do what they ask; they expect to be served. Haven’t we acted like them, expecting Jesus to serve us too?

    By asking James and John how he can serve them – and yes, asking us too – Jesus reveals another reversal: glory is not given to those who seek to be “first among” others. It is instead bestowed upon those who choose to serve others by giving their lives for them. Do we seek for ourselves or serve others? 

    As Jesus’s disciples, we must answer this question honestly. Our answer reveals the quality of our discipleship. We all exercise this human tendency toward self-promotion. We do because we seek glory and happiness. The world’s values fuel self-promotion; they encourage us to crave power, prestige and predominance. 

    In contrast, throughout his life and ministry, Jesus showed us God’s way to real glory and happiness -- by serving others, never seeking places of honour. As disciples, we know this message with our heads: to follow Christ means to serve, just as he came to serve, not to be served. 

    Our hearts however need to learn and re-learn this. We must because we harbour the same desire James and John have to sit next to the Lord. We will never admit it publicly but we all want to be up close with Jesus, now and, more so, eternally. Jesus asks if we are ever ready to drink his cup, be baptised with him in his passion, and share in his death. Yes, take up the Cross, Jesus commands. Will we?

    We can learn and re-learn to carry the Cross and serve in the different schools of love God places us in – our families and friendships, the places of learning and working, those spaces where we serve and care.  Many will challenge our willingness to serve. When we do, it often costs. It will because Christ-like service is indelibly marked with the Cross

    Yet it is in becoming available to others, especially through self-giving, that “we become freer inside, more like Jesus,” Pope Francis teaches. “The more we serve, the more we are aware of God’s presence,” particularly in those who cannot give anything in return, the poor, he adds. Through them, we discover God’s love and embrace.* 

    Today we join the universal Church to begin a two-year preparation for the Synod of Bishops in 2023. Then the Church will discern anew to rediscover God’s love and embrace. The Synod process begins by consulting us, the People of God. 

    The Church wants to listen to you and me. Listen to our experiences of journeying together since the Second Vatican Council and its efforts to renew the Church. Listen to our hopes about continuing this journey as the pilgrim and missionary People of God Vatican II envisions for the Church.

    Yes, the Church really wants to listen. If we believe the Church is the continuing presence of Jesus on earth, then it is really Jesus who wants to listen to our thoughts and feelings about the Church today and for tomorrow. He wants to for no other reason than this: “What is it you wish me to do for you – God’s people, God’s Church?”

    This is why we must participate wholeheartedly in the Synod. For “everything changes once we are capable of genuine encounters with Jesus and with one another,” Pope Francis explained when he opened the Synod process in Rome last Sunday. “But we must encounter simply as we are,” he added. 

    Indeed, Jesus wants to listen to us as we are – good-hearted people wanting to serve with and for the Church. Let us then listen to Jesus also. He shows us how to truly serve – through self-giving love. Wise are we to listen because in and through his self-gift, God glorified him: “he shall see the light in fullness of days,” as the Prophet Isaiah proclaims. Then, we will better understand Jesus’ command to serve – following Jesus, our self-giving also saves others and lets God’s glory shine. Yes, let us serve. Shall we?





    * Pope Francis, Angelus, “The true measure of success is what you give, not what you have,” 19 September 2021

    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: www.catholicsun.org

    0

    Add a comment

  3. Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 28 / Sunday
    Readings: Wisdom 7.7-11 / Psalm 89.12-13, 14-15, 16-17 (R/v 14) / Hebrews 4. 12-13 / Mark 10.17-30


    “I prayed…and the spirit of Wisdom came to me” (Wisdom 7.7)

    Wisdom, our First Reading teaches, is far greater than having possessions. These riches are nothing compared to wisdom. In the gospel, Jesus teaches that following him is greater than possessions. Such is the way of wisdom.

    Where can we learn such wisdom from? From our encounters with the Word of God. We especially learn wisdom each time we pray, meditate and sit in silence with Scripture. If we are honest we will admit having received wisdom to live and pray, study and work, even to play, from Scripture. Praying with Scripture then should be part of our daily way of life. Is it part of yours?

    At the heart of prayer is relationship. That of us and the Word of God interacting with one another. The second reading reminds us that the Word of God is alive and active. Whenever we read, engage and pray the Word, we are in fact having a conversation with God. Through these conversations, God consistently invites us to bear fruit in our lives and those He entrusts into our care. What are some of these fruits flourishing in your life?

    Jesus is the Word of God. We encounter Jesus not just when we pray or study the scriptures. We encounter Jesus daily in our lives

    What does Jesus bless us with when we encounter him?  His teachings about how to live in God’s ways. His healing about how God’s mercy forgives and restores. His miracles about how God’s power cares and saves.  His presence about how God keeps faith with us. Most of all, we receive Jesus’s love that reveals the big-heartedness of God for us, his beloved. These make up the wisdom we need for daily life, and more so, now, in this challenging pandemic. This wisdom assures us we can hope in God as Father.

    The rich young man could not see the wisdom Jesus was offering him as they conversed about how “to inherit eternal life.” He missed Jesus’s look of love for him for having kept the commandments. 

    He missed it altogether because he was fixated on looking out for the right answer to do the right thing to inherit eternal life. When Jesus challenged him to one thing further, give up everything and follow him “to enter the kingdom of God,” he could not. Singularly focussed on the possessions he was called to give up, he was blinded to Jesus’s look of love inviting him to discipleship.

    Jesus is also inviting us to discipleship. He is really asking everyone out of love is to make that fundamental choice, that radical ‘yes,’ to let Jesus alone – never things – possess us. This includes giving up the greatest of possessions we all have: our every self. 

    At the heart of discipleship with Jesus is the gift of relationship. This is that something more Jesus is asking of us. Do you and I really want this?

    I suggest we bring our response to Jesus in prayer today. Converse with him about his invitation to give away all our possessions and follow him alone. Share our thoughts and feelings with him who we cannot hide from and before whom everything is uncovered.  As we do, pay attention to Jesus looking at us with love. “Come, follow me,” Jesus calls out. 

    We might struggle, finding excuses to follow. “I can’t give up what I have.” “I can’t do what you are asking of me.” “I am too scared to say ‘yes.’” “I am unworthy.” “Not me, Lord.” These echo the response of the rich young man – to walk away from Jesus.

    This is why Jesus’s look of love matters. It’s the gaze of God looking at us, loving us, living with us. “We need that gaze to fill our hearts, a gaze that tells us who we are, and how much we are loved. It is a gaze that is unchanging, eternal and unconditional.”**

    Once we catch Jesus’ gaze on us, everything falls in place, and this truth makes sense: we belong to God, as God belongs to us. We learn this wisdom by praying about Jesus, the Word of God, in our lives, not from words on pages in the Scriptures.  

    Let us then look out for that gaze of Jesus in our everyday life. It matters. His look loves us and calls us to him. How shall we respond?





    **James McTavish, FMVD, 'Sharper than A Sword'

    Preached st St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    artwork: prayer of christ by lance brown 
    0

    Add a comment

  4.  

    Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 27 / Sunday
    Readings: Genesis 2.18-24 / Psalm 217.1-2, 3, 4-5, 6 (R/v c.f 5) / Hebrews 2.9-11 / Mark 10.2-16


    “If we love one another God remains in us and his love is brought to perfection in us" (1 John 4.12).

    This is our Gospel Acclamation today. It is from the First Letter of St John to the early Christians. He is exhorting them to recognise God’s gift of relationship, and through it, union with God.

    The familiar story of Adam and Eve echoes this truth about relationships. “From the beginning of creation” God intended that humankind live in community and be in life-giving relationships with each other and all of creation. 

    The relationship Adam and Eve share expresses how mutual belonging fulfills individual longing. How mutual dependence satisfies individual want. How mutual happiness uplifts individual anxiety. And yes, how mutual love completes our individual need to love and be loved. Relationships are therefore good, and in God’s eyes, very good.

    Today Jesus challenges us to consider how we are relating with one another in the relationships we have.  In our gospel reading, he highlights two contrasting ways we may be practising as we interact with each other.

    The first has to do with hardened hearts. This way focuses on the self, never on the other. It is all about me, I and-myself.  Love of self, not love for another, is the focus of such a relationship. This often leads to sin. 

    For Jesus, this “hardness of…hearts” led to the Mosaic Law permitting divorce.  Moses allowed this because the Israelites were unteachable: their hard hearts made them deaf to God’s plan about marriage. Getting married and staying married are sacred to God because it is fundamentally God’s gift of relationship. It is rooted in mutual commitment and dependence for a couple’s shared wellbeing and happiness. This is why Jesus teaches that “whoever divorces his wife commits adultery.” Yes, hardness of hearts, Jesus insists, destroys marriages, if not relationships

    Isn’t hardness of hearts the cause of the failed relationships in our own lives and those we know – be they marriages, family ties, friendships, working partnerships, amongst members in a community, even between church collaborators?  Don’t our own hard hearts make us obstinate towards God and each other now and again?

    The second has to do with opened hearts. For Jesus, “openness of hearts” is the good and right disposition for life-giving relationships. By letting the children come to him, Jesus models the way to open our own hearts. Then, we can welcome, embrace, celebrate and bless others as God’s gifts in our lives, like Adam did when God created Eve for him in the Genesis story.

    “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts” (Psalm 95:8). We hear Jesus’ voice. We know the better choice. 

    As Christians opened hearts must be our choice in every relationship. It must especially be when we relate with those with hardened hearts. It is never easy to do this because we need to enter into their messy and dark, stubborn and sinful lives to bring God’s mercy to them.  Yet, this is really the only way to love one another as Christians, even those who are divorced. 

    We hear in our second reading how this is the kind of love Jesus has. It is love that is merciful. It is love without reservation for sinners he calls his own brothers and sisters. It is love that lays itself down to save.

    Today Jesus teaches us God’s truths about relationships. In marriage, the relationship is for life, not for divorce. When interacting with one another, the relationship must be about understanding and forgiving, accompanying and restoring each other, including the divorced. Yes, all relationships, even marriages, flourish when all interact with an openness of hearts.

    Relationships are about people. We cannot solve their problems like a mathematical equation, Pope Francis reminds us. “As a Christian,” he adds, the way is to ”help that person…help those marriages that are facing difficulty, that are wounded, on their path to approaching God.”* 

    When we relate with one another like this, with the openness of hearts, the kingdom of God is among us. Then, God’s love makes the already opened hearts more expansive to serve. It even softens the hard-hearted to love again. Isn’t the choice obvious? What’s stopping us from making it?





    * Pope Francis, “God is not an equation,” Morning Mass, May 20, 2016

    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo by Kevin Mueller on Unsplash

    0

    Add a comment

"Bukas Palad"
"Bukas Palad"
is Filipino for open palms
Greetings!
Greetings!
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!
The Liturgical Calendar / Year C
Faith & Spirituality
Tagged as...
Blog Archive
Blog Archive
Fall in Love, Stay in Love
Fall in Love, Stay in Love

"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

About Me
About Me
My Photo
is a 50something Catholic who resides in Singapore and works for the Church. He is a priest of the Roman Catholic Church.
Disclaimer
Disclaimer
©adrian.danker.sj, 2006-2018

The views I express in these pages are personal. They do not speak for the Society of Jesus or the Catholic Church.
Loading