1.  

    Year C / Advent / Week 1 / Sunday
    Readings: Jeremiah 33.14-16 / Ps 24. 4-5ab, 8-9, 10, 14 (R/v 1b) / Thessalonians 3.12-4.2 / Luke 21.25-28, 34-36.


    “For you are God my saviour” (Psalm 24.5)

    Here is the psalmist declaring who God is in our lives. Since Creation, humankind has yearned for God’s saving love. In Advent, we recall the Jews and their desire for the Messiah. Every Advent, Christians are invited to get in touch with our own longing for God. Do we?

    Advent is anticipation. Listen to Jeremiah’s excitement: “The days are coming when the Lord will fulfill the promise...He will raise up a just shoot...He shall do what is right and just in the land…and Judah shall be safe and Jerusalem secure.” 

    Advent is promise and prayer. Listen to St Paul’s desire: “May the Lord be generous in increasing your love and make you love one another and everyone.”

    Anticipation. Promise. Prayer. These express our Advent longing.

    The child in us waits eagerly for what comes after Advent, Christmas. For lights on Christmas trees and presents underneath. For Christmas carols in the air and the Christmas manger in Church to see. For Midnight Mass and family gatherings. And for arms that will reach down to lift us up in love. 

    Yet, like every child, we have fears. The unknown, the unmanageable, the treacherous all around us. The fear of being hated, ignored, forgotten. Now, the worry of possibly more sick and dead and even a prolonged pandemic because of the Omicron variant. 

    All we want is the familiar, the comforting, and the loving in our lives. Like a parent coming home, a friend’s comforting message, and even forgiveness again from those we have hurt. Could what we really need be the opportunity to hope?

    Advent focuses us on Jesus. He is our hope. He will fulfill our longing. 

    This is the message of today’s gospel reading. Even as Jesus speaks of the portents of the end times, he promises hope – “the Son of Man coming on a cloud.” We can indeed “stand with confidence before the Son of Man,” Jesus assures.

    We associate this image of standing with God judging us for heaven or hell. But “To stand with confidence before the Son of Man” is the most appropriate image to begin our Advent with. Doesn’t the Advent journey lead us to stand before the infant Jesus, adoring him in the manger, at Christmas? 

    How do we get there? By attending to our longing for Jesus.

    This involves waiting. We are however too busy to wait. We are all rushing about, doing everything quickly, and demanding instantaneous interaction with Whatsapp, Instagram, and Discord.  Often, we don’t wait properly for things to unfold, for relationships to develop, or for people to reveal their true selves. We want everything now.

    We rush about like the young boy who puts a candle to heat up a cocoon and open it, albeit gently. He wanted the butterfly to come out quicker. He was impatient that it was taking a long time to emerge. The butterfly finally came out but it couldn’t fly. The added heat had disturbed the process of the butterfly forcing its way out of the cocoon and so strengthening its wings for flying.

    The butterfly would fly if there was time to wait. Instead, there was haste and no respect or reverence for the process. 

    Advent means waiting. Waiting with reverence. For God to come to us in Jesus. For our longing to be fulfilled. For others to share our advent journey.  We have a part to play in all of this: we must make our hearts bigger for Jesus to come to birth in each of us at Christmas.  What is needed is time. To wait and to prepare. We must respect this.

    Yes, “before the messiah can be conceived, gestated, and given birth to,” Ron Rolheiser writes, “there must always be a proper time of waiting, a necessary advent, a certain quota of suffering, which alone can create the proper virginal space within which the messiah can be born.”*  Will we wait like Mary waited?

    In the coming weeks, we will be busy. Shopping for presents. Baking Christmas goodies and preparing for Christmas meals. Writing Christmas wishes. Decorating our homes. Gathering for Christmas celebrations, however, we can in groups of 5s. Even bringing Christmas cheer to the lesser. These might seem like Christmas has come and Christmas gifts opened early. 

    But on Christmas morning, would our longing for Jesus be fulfilled? Perhaps not because the process of advent waiting had been short-circuited. The needed time to attend to our longing had been truncated. There hadn't been enough advent.

    Our readings today propose we wait and prepare ourselves properly for Jesus’ sure coming. We can begin by acknowledging the longings within our souls for God: our unanswered desire; our anxious need; the questions we don’t have answers for.  Then, let us pray for God who knows everything to meet us in our longings. 

    If we dare do this, we will be grateful for the grace of advent longing. It is our opportunity to hope. To receive Jesus, there must first be some reverence to receive. To have a feast, there must first be some fasting. To appreciate love as a gift, there must first be some respect for Giver. This is why we must learn to wait – for God our Saviour, for love excelling to come down, for Christmas joy. Will we?




    *Ron Rolheiser, “Advent - A Time to Learn How to Wait”

    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: by Paul Gilmore on Unsplash

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  2. Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 34 / Sunday: Solemnity of Christ the King
    Readings: Daniel 7.13-14 / Psalm 92. 1ab, 1c-5, 5 (R/v 1a) / Revelations 1.5-8 / John 18.33b-37


    “Yes, I am a king. I was born for this … to bear witness to the truth” (John 18. 37)

    Here is Jesus replying to Pilate’s interrogation. His kingly mission, he declares, is to witness to the truth of God and God’s saving love in the world. 

    When have you experienced Jesus’ kingship? Was it in his peace that cares or his mercy that reconciles?  Might it be in how his concern heals or his love gives life?

    Growing up, we all needed heroes. For some, the kings we read about were those heroes. It’s not surprising a few played king with paper crowns and blankets as capes. The power, bravery, and majesty of kings were attractive and inspiring. 

    We hear echoes of such kingship today. The First Reading describes an eternal Lord coming from on high to receive sovereignty, glory, and kingship. In the Psalm, a king robed in majesty has a throne that is firm from of old. The Second Reading presents a Ruler of the kings on the earth.

    But Jesus the king is unlike the kings we know. He comes with love – with love for us and with love to liberate us. Today we hear how His love – merciful, compassionate, and sacrificial – leads him to be on trial. He is alone; his best friends have panicked and deserted him. The crowds condemn him. He is humiliated, spat on, and rejected by leaders, jealous, and afraid of his kind of loving. He will die a criminal: crucified on the Cross.
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    This is how John’s Gospel portrays Jesus as king. He is powerless. He suffers.  He is broken. All our expectations of kingship are turned upside down. 

    In fact, Jesus is the servant-king. He washes his disciples’ feet and eats with sinners. He mixes with the poor, seeks out the outcasts, sets free the oppressed, and uplifts the burdened. He feeds the hungry, cures people every day of the week, and touches lepers, becoming unclean himself.  He unravels what we know kings are and do. For the apostles, the long-awaited Messiah isn’t supposed to do all this. 

    There’s more. Jesus’s love forgives, even the woman caught in adultery. It also challenges her male accusers to drop their stones to kill her, not because she isn’t guilty, but because we all are guilty. We have all failed repeatedly to love like God loves. This is our shared truth. The reason Jesus has come is simple: God yearns to redeem everyone for all are His beloved. 

    For love of everyone, then, Jesus dies to wash away our sin with his blood (Revelations 1.5). None of us can do this and gain eternal life. He alone can. His action saves. It says God won’t have it any other way.

    Throughout the Gospels, Jesus proclaims, “God’s love saves.” He focuses us on this truth, not on calling him king. This is why he tells Pilate, "You may call me a king, if you choose, but I assure you my kingdom does not belong to this world.” 

    Jesus’s only desire is for God’s kingdom to flourish. It does wherever everyone is included and whenever everyone matters. Jesus taught us this when he prayed and forgave, healed, and cared. For Jesus, every life counts. This is why he died for us. This is the utter truth of Jesus as king – he bothers to save us all.  Yes, there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for others to live.

    We recognize this whenever we turn our gaze to where Jesus is enthroned king. Nailed on the cross, condemned like the criminals beside him, crowned with thorns, disfigured, bleeding and panting.

    “Here Jesus is most truly king — king of upside-downness. King of little ones. King of losers and last ones. King of those burdened, disappointed, and rejected. King who becomes a guilty outsider with the outsiders.”* King also of those who sinned against him. King too of all who are at the margins of the Church – the divorced, the gay, the questioning – even as the pious, devoted, and saintly claim him as their King. Yes, we are all these very ones Jesus is king for.

    As king of everyone, Jesus lives, serves, and dies for us to have life to the full, now and eternally. Everything he says and does fulfill our need to belong to God.

    Many wrestle with Jesus’s call that we imitate his kingship of sacrificial loving and co-build God’s kingdom he announces. We struggle to respond because we feel unworthy and the task looks too difficult to accomplish

    Yet many others have. Jesus’s kingliness summons their loyalty. His call to serve and save, not to dominate, draws them to follow him. They find life and purpose in joining him to live and die for God’s kingdom. Their example is encouraging. Can we let them inspire us?

    Today Jesus says he wants to be in union with us. He wants us to enter into his life, as he desires to enter ours. He has come to be with us so that we might be with him.  He wants to do all this as our King. “Listen to my voice,” Jesus says. We will hear this: all this King desires is the union of our hearts – his and ours. Yes, a union of hearts. Nothing more, nothing less.

    Do we desire this union too?





    *from the writings of the Trappist monks, Spencer Abbey, USA

    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo: guideposts.com  
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  3.  

    Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 33 / Sunday
    Readings: Daniel 12.1-3 / Psalm 15.5 and 8, 9-10, 11 (R/1) / Hebrews 10.11-14,18 / Mark: 13.24-32


    “Heaven and earth will pass away but my words will not pass away” (Mark 13.31)

    It is good to hear Jesus assuring his disciples that he will be near at the end of times.  Today, he assures us too. 

    Jesus’s assurance is timely. This year is ending. Many will lament, “Where did the year go?” More will cry, “Another wasted year.” Even those travelling nowadays want this year to end quickly. So much pain, frustration, and exhaustion because of the continuing pandemic.

    The year began with a promise: life would be better. It ends with continued doubt about next year. It’s hard then to accept the saying “every beginning finds it fullness in an ending.” 

    Yet we are ending this pandemic year with experiences of fullness – of care for the sick, compassion for the dead, and provision for the needy. Fullness too in how many supported the affected like hawkers, cheered on front liners in hospitals and schools, and looked out for the elderly. 

    Simply put, we are ending with more of us loving and caring for one another.  

    If every ending holds the potential for a new beginning, how can we move forward from this year into the next with hope?

    It seems the familiar signposts that direct have faded and the usual lights that guide have dimmed. What do we do? Everyone grapples with this question when our world as we know it seems to fall apart. Terminal illness, unexpected trials, and lost opportunities test us. More traumatic are the hurts of broken relationships, the wounds of unforgiving friendships, and the scars of abusive interactions. These have been our crosses at different times. Darkness easily overwhelms us. “Where are you, God?” is our constant cry. Yet, we believe God is present with us, abiding in us, and staying with us to the end.

    Such experiences tempt us to take control. To do something: solve the problem, numb the pain, and escape the uncertainty. And don’t we do this to go back to before, to return to what used to be, to fix it back again? But we can’t really. 

    Time has passed. Life has moved on. People and circumstances have changed. And God calls us onward — anew. 

    How did this happen? Because God redeemed us. God didn’t undo or sort out our lives in our darkest moments the way we wanted or expected. God saved us.  

    In those times, He drew us deep into the mystery of his saving love. And there, God restored us.  There, his mercy humbles us; He cracks us open to receive His grace. He reminds us we do not know everything. He cures our blindness that we alone see all possibilities. He punctures our pride to predict, take charge, and control all things. And so, we live anew – healed and forgiven, uplifted and restored.  

    God will do this for us repeatedly for this simple reason. For us to receive Jesus, God’s Word, to dwell amongst us.  Dwell with us in those dark moments we struggle with, like endings that unsettle or life-changing moments. Dwell for us when we fear losing our faith, despairing in hope, and even struggling to love. God always comes – to redeem us in Jesus. We simply need to be open to receiving.

    How? “Learn a lesson from the fig tree,” Jesus says. Annually, the fig tree sheds all its leaves in winter, and in spring new sprouts bud, promising abundant fruit in summer. Yes, new life arises out of seeming deadness.

    In the same way, our disturbing endings, difficult moments, and dark times are graced because Jesus “is near.”  He comes “with great power and glory” to heal and save us, often in the messy and sinful parts of life.

    Today, Jesus teaches his disciples – and us too – that all beginnings and endings happen in God alone. For God gives life.  Like a leafless fig tree will bloom and bear fruit annually, so will new life thrive in the face of destruction and death. Jesus’s death and resurrection proclaim this.

    Yes, when darkness overtakes us, Jesus is near. When endings come, Jesus will be with us to the end of time (Matthew 28.20). When heavens and earth pass away, Jesus, God’s word, stays with us to the end. 

    “Stay awake and stand ready,” Jesus exhorts us (Matthew 21.42). We should because he always comes to save us. Wise are we who are vigilant, always looking out for him and paying attention to how he reveals God’s goodness for us, whether saint or sinner. 

    Let us learn this truth well and instruct many in virtue and about God. Then, God’s delight will lift us up to shine “as bright as stars for all eternity” (Daniel 12.3). Don’t these words encourage us onward as Christians?




    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    photo by Steven Su on Unsplash

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  4. Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 32 / Sunday
    Readings: 1 Kings 17.10-16 / Psalm 145.6c-7, 8-9a, 9bc-10 (R/v 1b) / Hebrews 9.24-28 / Mark 12.38-44


    “He sat down … and watched the people” (Mark 12.41)

    This is what Jesus is doing in today’s gospel reading.  

    Jesus sees the rich put in ‘a great deal’ into the treasury but they contribute from their surplus wealth. The scribes, Jesus says, parade their piety but they are not honest about who they are. The poor widow however is, Jesus notes. She puts in two small coins, all she could give. The rich and the scribes would consider her coins almost worthless donations. Yet she gives and is not ashamed to let people see her for who she is.

    What is Jesus watching out for? To know who we are and how we live with God and others. He watches us even now in daily life. Let me suggest three reasons Jesus does so.

    First, Jesus looks to understand and encourage the disciples we are.

    We profess to follow Jesus and live in his ways. We believe that knowing, loving, and believing in Jesus will lead us to God and our salvation.

    'Give all.' This is how Jesus wants us to love God and love others. Throughout the gospels, Jesus challenges his disciples to live like this. To give all they have without counting the cost, calculating self-gain, or seeking attention.

    'Give all.' To do this always. When caring for the needy. When forgiving loved ones. When needing to sacrifice much for justice and right. Even, when loving, praising, and serving God. Indeed, the “whole livelihood” Jesus wants his disciples to give is their very selves.

    How are we living our Christian life? Like the self-important scribes and the rich who present themselves as good to God and others? Or, like the humble, self-giving poor widow who gave “all she had,” living her poverty truthfully, fully, and sacrificially?

    Jesus looks at us with love. To understand why we live like the rich, the scribes, and the poor widow at different moments. More so, he does this to encourage us, like the disciples, to live better when we fail and saintlier when we live well. Shall we?

    Second, Jesus looks with the hope we will love generously.

    God gives us free will. He respects how we speak and act, choose and decide, and even how we love. Yet God pines for us to love like He does. We should not be surprised God yearns for this: He created us to love.

    In Jesus, God reveals the depth, breadth, and height of love, and how we are to love. We hear it when Jesus said, “No greater love does one have than to lay down his life for another” (John 15.13). This is how Jesus loves – generously, sacrificially, even onto death for everyone to have life to the full.

    In offering her all, those two coins, the poor woman reveals how magnanimous, even sacrificial, her love is. For Pope Francis, her example is an appeal to generosity. “Generosity,” he teaches, “belongs to everyday life; it's something we should think: 'How can I be more generous, with the poor, the needy? … How can I help more’? ... We can do miracles through generosity. Generosity in little things....broadens our hearts and leads us to magnanimity. We need to have a magnanimous heart, where all can enter. Those wealthy people who gave money were good; that elderly lady was a saint.”*

    Jesus wants us, like his disciples, to learn generous loving from the poor widow. He looks with hope that we will. Shall we?

    Third, Jesus looks to bless us.

    All of us come to God with the best and worst of ourselves. Yet God consistently blesses us. We know this truth because “every saint has a past and every sinner a future” (Oscar Wilde).

    Ten years ago, on the last day of my hospital chaplaincy training at the Veterans’ Hospital in New York City, a patient put a few dollars in my hand. ‘J’ had been locked up in the psychiatric ward for five months because of severe PTSD and several failed suicide attempts. He thanked me for accompanying him with conversation and prayer. I tried returning the money to him. He wouldn’t take it back. When the shift ended, I took the lift down with the duty doctor. She shared that those few dollars were ‘J’’s only allowance for the week. “He ain’t having his Coca-cola and Snicker’s this week; he’s ain’t got no cash,” she said. “Mighty good of him, to thank you” she added. The gift was huge. She understood.

    Like the doctor, Jesus watches and understands the widow. His mercy overflows. His compassion feels. He alone understands her two coins – they are not money; they are her generous, sacrificial love. He teaches his disciples this.

    How many times has Jesus really, truly understood each of us? Accepting our context. Hearing our stories. Recognizing our own need to be mercied by him. Even now he is gazing on us with generous love. He understands and calls us blessed. He commands us to do likewise. Shall we?

    Yes, Jesus watches us always. To know us. To hope we will love generously. To bless us as we are. He looks out for us with love to become better – for God and everyone. Isn’t this the Good News we need to hear today?



    *Pope Francis, Homily, 26 November 2018

    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    Photo: gifer.com

     

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"Bukas Palad"
"Bukas Palad"
is Filipino for open palms
Greetings!
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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!
The Liturgical Calendar / Year C
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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

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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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©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.
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