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    Year C / Lent / Week 3 / Sunday
    Readings: Exodus 3.1-8a, 13-15 / Psalm 102.1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8 and 11 (R/v 8a) / 1 Corinthians 10.1-6, 10-12 / Luke 13.1-9


    “…leave it one more year and give me time to dig round it and manure it” (Luke 13.8)

    What a comforting image of second chances Jesus gives his disciples and us in the parable of the fig tree. It is about giving time for change to happen. Time for extra care to bring about this change.  Yes, one more time for the tree’ to realise its potential to bear fruit.

    This is what the gardener in the parable can see. The orchard owner cannot. The gardener does because he cares for the fig tree; he sees the life still there and wants to give it every chance. The owner cannot because he focuses only on the  produce: no figs, no good, cut it down.

    Jesus’s parable is really about you and me. About our life and how we live. About how we realise our potential. About how we let our Christian faith come alive in us for God and for others. About how sin does waste away the life within us and prevents us from flourishing and bearing fruit. And yes, about God's care to save us.

    This parable must encourage us onward this Lent. It invites us to ‘pause,’ ‘see’ and ‘return.’ For Pope Francis these three words can remind us that Lent is God’s time “to remedy the dissonant chords of our Christian life.”*

    We pause in order to look and contemplate the state of our lives. We see the real face of Jesus who reveals God’s mercy. We return without fear to God to experience His healing and reconciling tenderness.  

    Wise are those who hear Jesus’s words and act on them. Foolish are they who ignore or rebuff Jesus. How will each of us respond?

    For many of us, a tree full of fruit, an abundant harvest, a net full of fish and new wine aplenty are signs of fruitfulness. They express God’s favour. Barrenness is the opposite of fruitfulness. It is not good; it says there is no life left. It promises nothing but continued sterility and empty.

    We know what barrenness looks and feels like. It stares us in face when we honestly pause and recognise that we are stuck and sinful and seemingly unfruitful. It confronts us when family and friends make sinful choices and live sinful lifestyles. Barren lives scare us. If barrenness is all we give back to God on judgment day, I believe we fear hearing God judge us with those words the orchard owner said,“ Cut it down.”

    God’s mercy will however outdo our fears. Jesus says, “leave it one more year and give me time to dig round it and manure it.” Doesn’t he do this for us every time we sin?  Jesus does because he is the Gardner of our lives. He understands we need time to turn around from bad habits and sinful ways. He knows we need space to convert from selfish self-centeredness to selfless self-sacrifice for others. He does not give up on us to grow up, become better and be fruitful. This is why He awaits our turning back to His grace.

    Some of us may say, Jesus’s patience and compassion gives me even more time to live my life the way I want and for the end I crave. When all is done, I will repent and come back to God. Such a person might pray, Please God, make me good, but not just yet like St Augustine did. This is however his famously insincere prayer.

    Today, Jesus demands we stop bluffing ourselves. The reprieve for one more year is how Jesus points us to the urgency of repentance and a change of heart. Yes, “Now is the acceptable time. Now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6.2).  We have this time of Lent to change, and there is no time to lose. 

    We can change because God is with us. In faith, we believe this. He willingly enters into our chaotic, messy and sinful lives. This is how we experience God’s mercy. In the person of Jesus who bothers to join us in the rubble of our sinfulness, littered with our failings and faults. Entering into our lives to give us enough time to change. Entering with extra care to help us to repent and convert.

    Indeed, this how God’s mercy has always worked.  Listen again to God speaking with Moses:  “I have witnessed the affliction of my people. I have heard their cry; and I know well what they are suffering. Therefore, I have come down to rescue them.” To rescue his own is the love God has for us. St Paul teaches how God’s warnings to Israelites not to stray from Him are really God’s reminder that He will come in Jesus to give us to new life. At the Ascension, we hear Jesus’ promise that he will be with us to the end. Such is the steadfast love of the Lord; it never ceases  and his mercies never have come to an end (Lamentations 3.22).

    It should not surprise us that God always gives second chances, and a lot more. The hard work we must do in Lent, and also every day, is to keep on repenting for conversion. We are used to hard work. Growing up takes hard work. Getting ahead in life takes hard work. Deepening our relationship with God and others takes hard work. All this promises much good. Our Lenten efforts to change promise the same – the goodness of our lives flourishing in Jesus and bearing fruit.

    Is this the goodness you want?





    * Pope Francis, Homily at Ash Wednesday Mass, 2018

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

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  2.  

    Year C / Lent / Week 2 / Sunday
    Readings: Genesis 15.1-12,17-18 / Psalm 36.1, 7-8a,b-9abc, 13-14 (R/v 1a) / Philippians 3.14-4.1 / Luke 9.28b-36


    “It is wonderful for us to be here” (Luke 9.33)

    Peter says these words after seeing Jesus’s face change and God’s glory shining through him. He wants to build three tents to remain in Jesus’s presence. Peter recognises how comforting, consoling and even uplifting it is to be with Jesus.

    I wonder if we also desire to be with Jesus and to remain with him like Peter.

    Today, Peter, James and John follow Jesus and climb the mountain to pray. They trust him and he leads them to God. 

    This Lent we want to change and to go to God as better Christians. And so, we are also climbing a mountain to meet God in Jesus.  That mountain of our inertia to meet God in our prayer with Jesus. That mountain of our indulgence to fast like Jesus for God’s Spirit to fill us and lead us. That mountain of our indifference to care for all God’s people through our almsgiving to imitate Jesus’s own self-giving. 

    We create these mountains out of our sinful choices and lifestyles. Lent demands that we climb and overcome them. And we do, risking the climb because we believe that God will change us for better when we encounter Jesus. This is the Lenten hope we have.

    On Ash Wednesday, we might have started Lent with a burst of energy, enthusiasm and enterprise. Eleven days into Lent and we might begin to slide back into the same old Lenten attitudes and practices of previous years. These might make us tired with Lent; our focus becomes scattered and our zeal lukewarm. 

    We need God’s encouragement, even more, his comfort, to finish Lent well as we prepare for Easter. God’s comfort that assures us our Lenten efforts do count, however we struggle and how much we sacrifice to turn away from bad habits and overcome persistent sins. I know I need God’s comfort this Lent. You might too because everyone of us is experiencing something difficult, in some way, and to some degree to make a good Lent. 

    Even now, some of us are already feeling spiritually dry and tired. We are trying to repent and change. Our lack of progress or the many good things we ‘fail to do’ might begin to discourage us. “Comfort us, O Lord, comfort us,” might be the prayer we need to cry out.

    We need the kind of comfort that assures us that God knows and loves us as we are. Even more, that God understands our efforts to change and convert this Lent and God will encourage us when we slip, fall and sin.  We need the comfort of a God who walks with us faithfully in life, and especially in Lent as He stretches us to grow and become better. 

    This God is with us. His name is Jesus. He expresses his love in boundless mercy that welcomes and forgives, uplifts and delights, and yes, saves every sinner and saint. Everyone who encounters Jesus experiences conversion in some manner for better. It is no wonder their prayers sound like this: “Lord, make my heart like yours.”

    Today we join Peter, James and John to climb to that mountain top. Here we experience the comfort of God we seek in Jesus’s transfiguration. For the apostles, it is the assurance that the passion of the Cross leads to the glory of the resurrection. For us, it is the truth Paul proclaims: that the risen Jesus will “transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of his glorious body” (Philippians 3.21). This is the comfort we need to hear and see in Lent. 

    We can catch a glimpse of our own possible transfiguration if we do Lent well; it is our conversion over these Lenten days to become that better person God desires. 

    This can energise us to do Lent better going forward. There are thirty-two more days to go in Lent. God wants to use each of these days to turn our lives around. Will we let Him?

    We can by trusting God like Abraham did when he left his homeland to go where God led him to. He trusted in God’s comfort that his descendants will be as many as the stars. God responded by making a covenant with Abraham. God has already given us Jesus as his covenant. In him, through him and with him, we are meant for God. This is why we must keep our eyes on Jesus. 

    And yes, this is also why we must climb the mountain of our inertia, indulgence and indifference to see Jesus transfigured. Through his life, death and resurrection God transfigures us for salvation

    So often this story of salvation fades into the background of our daily lives. We are too busy to see it. We are overwhelmed by too much noise to hear it. In Lent, we can also forget it because we want to do more and many Lenten practices and observances. Conversion is God’s work. Our task is to cooperate with God. Conversion is never the result of how much or how many more we do in Lent.

    When we dare to humble ourselves and let God convert and transfigure us, we will find the freedom to love and reconcile, to care and restore, to accompany and comfort others. To do all this with the mercy of God that first frees us to live and serve like Jesus

    We might still struggle to do these well this Lent. But God comforts and assures us that Jesus will show us the way: “This is my Son; the Chosen One. Listen to Him.” Truly, it is wonderful in Lent to have Jesus lead us up the mountain to God.

    Shall we follow Jesus?






    Preached at St Joseph’s Institution, Year 1 Retreat
    Photo by Jack Sharp on Unsplash




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  3. Year C / Lent / Week 1 / Sunday
    Readings: Deuteronomy 26.4-10 / Psalm 90-.1-2, 1-11, 12-13, 14-15 / Romans 10.8-13 / Luke 4.1-13



    “Filled with the Holy Spirit” (Luke 4.1)

    This is how our gospel passage begins today. With the truth that Jesus did not enter into the wilderness alone. The Holy Spirit was with him.

    What comforting words to hear as we enter into Lent. We need this consolation because Lent – if we seriously let its grace work in us – will draw us into the wilderness within us. Into this space of our failures and regrets, our barrenness and desolation. This space wherein we know how lonely and empty we possibly are. This space of spiritual dryness. One we create and perpetuate with our bad habits, poor choices and sinful living. 

    Lent demands we enter into this wilderness. We must to face our temptations and sinfulness more honestly and open ourselves more wholeheartedly to conversion

    Isn’t conversion for better our Lenten desire? One we expressed with ashes as we embrace again our mortality and recognise our dependency on God. That which we are practising with the Lenten discipline of praying more, fasting more, and giving more to the needy. That we will recall with each Lenten tradition like Stations of the Cross, Lenten recollections and abstinence on Fridays. 

    I believe many of us fear facing the spiritual dryness in our lives. We do because we know it is the reason we sin when tempted.  Today Jesus’s actions in the desert teaches us how to face both this dryness and temptations. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus enters the wilderness. There he resists the devil’s temptations that he put aside his humanity and act like God. Jesus chooses to remain true to himself – he is one like us in his humanity – and true to why he came – as the One from God to save us.

    Jesus’s choice is Spirit-filled and, more significantly, Spirit-lead. He reminds us that this same Spirit is also with us. We received it at Baptism and Confirmation strengthens us with its power. Indeed we are not alone entering Lent, nor are we when we face our spiritual dryness and temptations. The Spirit is with us. It always accompanies us and directs our actions. Do we live and move and have our being in the Spirit like Jesus did, especially when tempted? 

    In the wilderness Jesus doesn’t eat for forty days. He is empty within and he hungers. If we do the Lenten discipline well, we will empty ourselves of our ego, attachments and distractions. The Holy Spirit will fill our emptiness and empower us to better respond when we are tempted – always with God’s Word within us, as Jesus does by quoting from scripture to the devil. The Spirit will also lead us  in our hunger to God who St Paul reminds us will save us. God will because we believe He raised Jesus from the dead (Romans 10.9). Our belief allows the Spirit to labour within us, constantly reminding and reconnecting us with who and whose we are - God's. 

    This truth gives us the right focus for Lent: that God loves us so much to save us in Jesus because we are His own, and not because we are unworthy sinners

    We can appreciate this focus better by re-imagining the wilderness within us in terms of silence, not dryness. In the dry wilderness of a desert we seek another’s footprints, if not God’s own, to lead us onward. When the winds blow the sands shift and these footprints are erased forever. We are lost again. In contrast, silence is ever present in the wilderness. It is all around us. We are immersed in silence. This is like a retreat experience of being in the quiet. In the quiet to pause from everyday life, reconnect with God and be renewed for life again

    This is how I sometimes imagine Jesus’s forty days in the wilderness – a silent retreat where he connects with His Father and the Spirit to prepare himself for the ministry ahead.

    Our Lent can be like a retreat too. A graced time to go deeper into ourselves to recognise our need for God as Father and God’s Spirit to convert us for better. This how the Spirit prepares us to live the Easter life that Jesus’ resurrection saves us for

    In this silence we will hear God more clearly He will invite us to let go of the roles we busy ourselves with, the many masks we hide behind and the ‘shoulds’ that burden us. When we do, we will have time with God. We will quieten the noise that distances us from God. We can see God coming.  We can hear God saying again, “you are my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”  And we will know God’s immense mercy for us through Jesus’s life, death and resurrection.

    This Lent God wants to renew our relationship with Him if we let him. When we do, we will know again the name of God with us – Jesus. “Do not be afraid,” Jesus assures us, “I am with you always.” Then, filled and led by Jesus’s Spirit we can overcome the devil’s temptations, praying with trust as the psalmist prays, “Be with me, O Lord, in my distress.” 

    And shall we add, “Also in my coming back to You, Lord, with all my heart?”*
     




    *cf Joel 2.12

    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore 
    Photo by Matt Noble on Unsplash




     

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"Bukas Palad"
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is Filipino for open palms
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Peace and welcome, dear friend.
I hope you will find in these posts something that speaks to you of the God who loves us all and who always holds us in the palm of his hand. Blessings!
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Fall in Love, Stay in Love

"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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