1.  

    Year C / Eastertide / Divine Mercy Sunday 
    Readings: Acts 5:12-16 / Psalm: 118: 2-4, 13-15, 22-24 (R/v 1) / Revelation 1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19 / John 20.19-31


    “These are recorded so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, 
    and that believing this you may have life through his name" (John 20.31).

    This is how John the Evangelist ends our Gospel reading today. On the note of truth. On an invitation to believe. That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and He gives us life. This line is John’s response to Jesus’s statement to Thomas: ‘You believe because you can see me. Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe’ (John 20.29).  He reminds everyone that  believing in Jesus has everything to do with encountering Jesus as he and the disciples did after the resurrection. 

    Jesus has ascended to the Father. We cannot encounter him physically. Yet we believe. How can this be? 

    The theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar provides an insight about believing without seeing Jesus. He writes: gratitude is the hinge that can turn us around from experiencing God to believing in God. Gratitude helps us see God’s goodness in our lives even if God is not present. Then, by this same gratitude, we choose to believe that God is good.

    I wonder if this describes Thomas’s experience in the gospel. Jesus does not rebuke him  for doubting his resurrection. Rather, Thomas experiences the peace of Jesus. Peace that allays fears. Peace that forgive. Peace that enables accepting the reality of suffering and death as doorways to new life. 

    Peace: this is the goodness of Jesus Thomas experiences. I imagine him grateful for this, and, more so, for Jesus alive. And so, Thomas believes. 

    This is how Thomas comes to know the truth of the resurrection. Indeed, ‘Peace be with you’ is not what Thomas hears with his head. Rather, he experiences this peace with his heart that understands Jesus’s love for him and his brother disciples. 

    This is why we need to remember the peace of the risen Jesus we have experienced with grateful hearts. 

    Thomas and the disciples experienced Jesus’s peace particularly as forgiveness. 

    Forgiveness for the disciples who locked themselves in the room. Ostensibly because they feared being hunted down as Jesus’s disciples. Also probably, because they were hiding from the risen Jesus, afraid he would come to scold and shame them for abandoning him during his passion and at his death. Jesus responds with forgiveness. 

    Forgiveness for Thomas who doubted his resurrection.  Presumably because he had little faith to believe. More realistically,  because he wanted to encounter the risen Jesus and to know for a fact. Jesus responds with forgiveness.

     When have you and I experienced Jesus’s forgiveness as our peace?

    The peace Jesus gives when He forgives blesses us with new life. Thomas and the disciples experience this. Easter proclaims we are God’s new creation, empowered to live this new life.

    One way to live this newness is to forgive as the risen Jesus does --  by remembering without bitterness. 

    We need to hear this because everyone of us wants to forgive those who hurt us. Sadly, we struggle to do this. Because we have been harmed, disappointed, even damaged, there is some bitterness within each of us. However little it is, it holds us back from forgiving wholeheartedly.

    Jesus’s example of forgiving Thomas and the disciples should encourage us to do the same.  Jesus comes to them – and yes, to us to – and shows everyone his pierced hands and side and bares his broken heart. “Come touch me,” he says. “Put your hand into my side.” His wounded body holds the remembrance of his passion and suffering. Yet he comes without bitterness to forgive. He comes only to love and the longing to console us.  

    Here He is, the one who is all merciful. Out of his wounds, mercy flows unreservedly for all. Mercy that forgives Thomas and the disciples. Mercy that forgave in his agony his persecutors and that poor thief  on the cross next to him. Mercy that forgives again and again without any bitterness.

    If in mercy, Jesus could embrace Peter after his betrayal, and even now, so readily forgive you and me every time we sin, who are we to ever withhold forgiveness or nurse a grudge against another? “Peace,” Jesus says and he breathes on us. Yes, others may have done too much wrong to us but forgiveness is worth it, love is worth it. Yes, Jesus's peace is indeed worth it.

    We need to experience this kind of forgiveness – that which remembers without bitterness. Then, we will know how merciful forgiveness really is.

    Forgiveness cures and restores. This is the mercy of the risen Jesus working for our wellbeing, like it did through the apostles who healed many sick in the first reading. 

    Forgiveness frees us. This is the mercy of the risen Jesus that empowers us to witness. We can proclaim the truth we hear in the second reading of Jesus unlocking  the doors to new life not only for himself who is “alive for ever and ever” but also for us.

    And yes, this kind of forgiveness humbles us to also forgive everyone, especially, our enemies, as Jesus forgave them once and like he does for us when we sin against him.

    This forgiveness is truly God’s mercy labouring for our salvation. We all experience it in the risen Jesus alive in us and for us. It is not enough to remember it on Divine Mercy Sunday. We must live it not just for ourselves but for everyone to believe. For as Luke proclaims in the Acts of the Apostles, “all who believe in Jesus will have their sins forgiven through his name” (10.43).  The question is: do we dare entrust ourselves to Jesus and ask for his mercy?

    Let us pray, “Jesus, I trust in you.”





    Inspired and adapted in parts from the writings of Cistercian monks at Spencer Abbey

    Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
    artwork: medium.com

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  2. This homily was preached at Mass for the Courage community

    Year C / Easter / Thursday in the Octave of Easter
    Readings: Acts 3:11-26 / Psalm 8:2ab+5, 6-7, 8-9 / Luke 24:35-48


    “You are witnesses to this” (Luke 24.48)

    Here is Jesus, risen and alive, reminding the disciples of a privilege God gives them: they are witnessing His resurrection.  They are experiencing the truth of what Jesus had been teaching them – that His love sacrifices, His mercy saves, and God gives life to the full. 

    Jesus enters into the locked room the disciples are hiding in. They, his closest friends, are terrified he is a ghost. Their fear turns to joy when they recognise Jesus alive, not dead. He has flesh and bones. He eats with them. He helps them understand what the Scriptures say of Him. He explains how he had to suffer, die and rise from the dead. 

    Because the disciples witness and hear Jesus, they become convinced and convicted that He Himself is the Good News worth announcing and even to die for.  Hence, their missionary work of preaching repentance and forgiveness of sin to all peoples.  Peter and John do this in the first reading. They draw people closer to Jesus. They offer what they have – Jesus. Peter explains: “I have neither silver or gold but what I do have I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean rise and walk” (Acts 3.6).

    Christians say we have Jesus with us, and we want to give Jesus to others. This is what Christian witnessing is about. Do we really do this? Or, do we pick and choose what about Jesus and which of his teachings we want to witness to?  

    We must honestly answer these questions because Jesus’s gift is His life for us. “I have come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly” (John 10.10). Jesus himself repeatedly teaches us how to receive His Life – by repenting, converting and becoming convicted that He alone can give it and, more so, that we live in His sacrificial manner of serving everyone. There is no other way. 

    We desire His life but we struggle to receive and live it. Fear is a reason we struggle. We fear living His Life because we think we can’t for we are sinners.  We fear if we tried, we would fail repeatedly. Like the fear of the disciples, our fear leads us to lock ourselves up from God. Isn’t this the same fear that leads LGBT people to hide in the closet? To fear being turned away from Church? To fear having no place at the Lord’s table? To fear being denied salvation? To fear being unloved?

    Jesus comes to all who fear and offers peace. “Peace be with you.” This is how Jesus comes to the disciples who feared being rebuked and shamed for having abandoned him in his passion and death. This is how Jesus also comes into our ordinary lives, often weighed down by burdens and fraught with pains.  And yes, Jesus always comes with peace into the lives of every LGBT man and woman. When one hides in the closet, he enters to free. Where one is hated and hurt, he seeks out to comfort and heal. When one is rejected and discriminated, he brings this beloved home, restores his dignity and celebrates her life.  

    All these ways describe the life-giving encounters everyone who meets the risen Jesus has in the post-resurrection stories. He comes to each who is afraid, confused and in pain so as to empower them to move onward suffused with His care, compassion, and love beyond all measure.

    As we hear, pray and meditate on these stories, can we allow ourselves to feel, savour and even delight in how good each of these encounters must have been? Too often, we overthink and over-imagine the resurrection stories with our heads. Can we simply do the same when Jesus encounters us in our daily lives?

    To encounter someone implies a relationship with the other person that is special in its depth. The disciples knew Jesus. His coming after the resurrection deepens their relationship to an even more intimate level. They experience him as truly loving them in spite of their failure remain loyal and faithful during his passion and death. We have a relationship with Jesus. He comes to us even when we sin. Can we recognise Jesus inviting us to this deeper intimacy every time He forgives us?  

    To encounter someone then is a more profound experience than simply being physically next to him or with her, or even amidst others.

    Look at the community of Courage gathered here every Thursday evening. We are not just physically present to one another. We interact with each other in prayer. We hear each other’s stories, the ups and downs, the graces and sins. We attend to each other’s burdens and accompany one another in our joys. We care for every one and we are concerned for each person’s wellbeing. In all we say and do in Courage we express the same intimacy the risen Jesus shares with his disciples when he entered the locked room and says, “Peace be with you.” This is the intimacy of peace friends find in one another. The intimacy of trust in shared vulnerability. The intimacy of chaste, mutual love that cares for each other’s happiness and holiness. This is how Christians are meant to live – with the love of the risen Jesus.

    If we can recognise that this is how our Courage community is – alive with the spirit of the risen Jesus – then we might begin to appreciate how the disciples’ encounter with the risen Jesus is filled with deep emotion and love given and received. 

    In a few moments Jesus will come to us in the Eucharist. He will give Himself. We will receive Him with an “Amen.” Amen to Him transforming us – rich or poor, healthy or sick, straight or LGBT – into His Body. Together, the Body of Christ to witness to everyone that His love saves, like the disciples did when He commissioned them to preach to the world. 

    This evening, the risen Jesus is with our Courage community and he reminds us that His Resurrection saves everyone, us too. We are witnesses to this. Now He dares us to be witnesses of this truth to all, especially to those who hate and discriminate.  

    Shall we?





    Preached at April’s Mass, Courage meeting
    photo: shutterstock

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  3. Year C / Eastertide / Easter Sunday
    Readings: Acts 10.34a, 37-43/ Psalm 117.1-2, 16-17, 22-23 (R/v 24) / Colossians 3.1-4 / John 20.1-9


    “Now we are those witnesses … after his resurrection from the dead 
    – and he has ordered us to proclaim this to his people” (Acts 10.41-42).

    Here is Peter witnessing about the risen Jesus to Cornelius and his household. Aren’t we like Cornelius and his household this morning, listening to three messages about the resurrection this morning?  

    Peter’s message of Jesus’s death and resurrection. 

    Paul’s message to the Colossians that Jesus’s resurrection brings us back to true life with Christ and we must therefore look for the things that in heaven, not on earth.  

    And Mary of Magdala’s message of the empty tomb that sets Peter and John running to find Jesus.

    All we have to remember, celebrate and believe in the risen Jesus are these messages of the resurrection. 

    Luke tells us that the women who went to anoint Jesus' dead body received such a message. Instead of finding Jesus whose body was missing, they encountered angels who said “Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but he has been raised” (Luke 24.5-6).  Yes, Jesus lives. He is not a dead memory.

    The angels’ message did not lead them immediately to enlightenment or joy. Rather, it brought confusion and not clarity, fear, not consolation, anxiety, not comfort. Yet all they had was the angels’ message of the resurrection.

    All we Christians have today about the resurrection are these messages. Each handed down to us from those who have experienced Jesus dying and rising, and now truly alive in our midst. 

    The angels’ message. Mary’s message. Paul’s message. Peter’s message. The messages of many more over history. In our own lives, messages about the resurrection our parents and godparents tell us, our catechists teach us, and our priests, religious and lay ministers share with us in homilies, retreats and in ministries. Even, our friends who witness to the resurrection in their personal testimonies. The message of Jesus's resurrection also resounds in the kindness of strangers, the forgiveness of our enemies, the care of front liners during this pandemic and the mercy of God in the sacraments of the Eucharist and reconciliation.

    All these messages of the resurrection fly in the face of our normal experience of death, like it did for the apostles. The dead, they are dead. 

    Reason and science cannot explain the resurrection. Only our Christian faith can. And so, we believe Jesus is risen. Our belief helps us experience and know the goodness of his resurrection: it transforms us from within for better, particularly in  our relationships with God and one another. 

    Even now we are experiencing the risen Jesus alive with us and for us. Not with alleluias, exuberant singing or festive celebrations but with that quiet confidence deep within us that Jesus’s resurrection defies death and enlivens us with hope to live with God forever.

    The women’s message of the empty tomb is more than a statement of fact and loss. It is an invitation to action and hope. Yes, the tomb is empty; so, come and see. 

    This is why Peter and John set off. Their example witnesses to the impact the message of Jesus’s resurrection should have: it gives us courage to boldly ask that most important question of faith: “Is Jesus alive?” So Peter and John seek Jesus out.  Will we seek the risen Jesus beyond this Easter Mass, this Easter day?

    Easter invites us to move beyond the certainty of death to a hope-filled belief in new life and new possibilities. There is no more appropriate human response to this invitation than the word ‘maybe’ — “Maybe it’s true!” 

    This hope moves Peter and John to act. They might have thought Mary’s message was nonsense at first. But listening more to her outrageous message, they couldn’t help but wonder. “What if it is true?” “What would life be like then”  “What would my life, right now, and even in the future, mean?” This ‘what if’ sets Peter, John and all who encountered the risen Jesus off on the journey of a lifetime. And it will set us off, if we let it! 

    Setting out to seek out Jesus and finding him alive. This could possibly be some of the experiences felt that first Easter morning. 

    The women, fearful yet joyful, after seeing the empty tomb and hearing the angel’s message of the resurrection, encounter the risen Jesus as they run to the disciples. 

    Mary Magdalene distraught at Jesus’s missing body encounters the risen Jesus who she recognised by his voice, not his appearance.  

    And, this could also be John’s experience as he ran with Peter to the empty tomb, looked in, and saw linen clothes. Then, taking a deep breath, he believed. Believed because all Jesus had said has now come true.

    What about us?  What if all it takes this Easter is just a minute for you and me – amidst our Easter liturgies and celebrations – to look for Jesus risen and alive amongst us today? To see anew what is the unimaginable? To recognise hope when all is despaired? To believe again when having faith seems so hard to do?

    Maybe like Peter and John, we must set out and run to the empty tomb. We must because we hear again the message of the resurrection. It proclaims more than our Christian truth. It is God’s merciful invitation for us to deepen our faith in the risen Jesus.  

    This morning the Easter joy of encountering the Jesus risen awaits us. We should claim, celebrate and believe it. We can never do these wholeheartedly unless we recognise that Jesus’s resurrection is not the property of the past. It is God’s future breaking into the present of our lives here and now. 

    “This is why Easter isn’t something for us to remember. It is something we must live and breathe. Through the living Jesus we receive the gift of life.”* 

    This is why you and I are also to witness to Jesus’s resurrection to everyone. Who are we then that God calls us to do this but His beloved, saved forever. 

    Would God offer us anything less?







    *Inspired and adapted in parts from the writings of Cistercian monks, Spencer Abbey.

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

     

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  4. Year C / The Paschal Triduum / Holy Thursday – Mass of the Lord’s Supper
    Readings: Exodus 12.1-8, 11-14 / Psalm 115.12-13,15-16bc, 17-18 (R/v cf 1 Cor 10.16) / 1 Corinthians 11.23-26 / John 13.1-15


    “Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11.24).

    St Paul tells us that Jesus said these words to his apostles at the Last Supper. John the Evangelist reminds us that Jesus commanded his disciples to love one another as He did by serving with water basin, towel and foot washing. In the Book of Exodus we hear God instruct the Israelites to remember and celebrate the Passover as a feast each year. 

    In all our readings tonight the Lord asks his people to remember. Here and now we do this too. 

    But we are not just remembering stories about the Israelites or the apostles. We are really remembering God. God’s words and example, particularly in Jesus, God-with-us, at his last. Remembering God’s goodness through Jesus’s self-giving – to nourish everyone with his body and blood for all to have life. Remembering God’s compassion through Jesus’s self-emptying service – to wash everyone’s feet to care and restore.

    Indeed all that we do at this altar to receive communion and in the action of foot washing to serve, we do in remembrance of Christ who loves and saves all.

    We are therefore remembering in a special way. Not like when our memory is jolted as we remember a person we have forgotten or an event past.  Rather we are remembering like a surgeon does – to suture some membrane that has been severed. It is to take something that is cut off, broken, lost, detached in our lives, even in our relationship with God, and reconnect and reattach it. That is, to put together the separated parts, to put these in touch again. This is the kind of re-membering we are called to make tonight. Isn’t this is what everyone of us desires, no matter how saintly or sinful our lives might be right now?

    Tonight God wants to help us re-member in order “to quite literally get in touch with Jesus, and at the deepest possible level.”* What does this mean? Simply: to remember how to live and love in Jesus’s way – in total self-giving, in sacrificial self-emptying. Listen to this teaching Jesus gives: “as I have done for you, you should also do” (John 13.15).

    Yes, we remember, and we also celebrate and believe. These are three actions tonight’s Eucharist invites us to do. We must because in Jesus we have the way, the truth and the life to live. We are not just to follow Him and do obediently. We are in fact to imitate Him and live fully. We are to make His way our way. We are to become Christ-like and live like Christ.

    When we do this we realise our mandate to be Christian. The word ‘maundy’ that describes today is ‘mandatum’ in Latin, meaning mandate or command.  “As I have done for you, you should also do,” Jesus teaches.  This is how we will rightly claim our fundamental identity – Christian. Yes, Christian first and always even before we are called by each of our baptismal names, be it Francis or Claire, Thomas or Theresa,  or even Adrian.

    Pay attention to the attitude Jesus takes to be bread broken and to wash feet for all. It is that of friendship. “I no longer call you servants,” He proclaims, “I call you friends because I have revealed everything I have learned from the Father” (John 15.15). To love as a friend is to see in another what is loveable, redeemable, and always wonderfully made by God that sin cannot ever darken or destroy in God’s eyes. Such love is ever ready to serve with self-emptying care and ever willing to be broken, even by laying down one’s life, with sacrificial self-giving. Indeed, what Jesus finds in each of us, he loves and he will always save. This is why He has gathered us here; his love compels us to come. 

    The liturgies over the next three days invite us to enter more deeply into the mystery that is the dying and rising of Jesus. In fact, to enter more intimately so as to know who Jesus is. In washing his disciples’ feet and offering himself as Eucharist for all tonight. In suffering and dying on the Cross to redeem everyone on Good Friday. In the silent night of Holy Saturday when the Easter Fire and the light of many candles illuminate the darkened churches. In the earth shattering revelation on Easter Sunday that He lives and so we do. In all of this, we will know Jesus as never before if we but let God gather us into Jesus’s love.

    When we do, we will experience the depth and breadth of Jesus’s heart – a heart that is mercifully sacrificial, lovingly self-giving. His heart for you and me. His heart that can be our hearts if we let God have his way with us.

    Humility is really what we need to ask God for to make our hearts like Jesus’s heart, our lives like His Life. This is the kind of re-membering  God wants to bless us with in these holiest of days. Let us dare say, “yes, Lord.” Then, when we sing, “God is dwelling in my heart, He and I are one” it will no longer be words or a prayer but truly our life together.

    Shall we?





    *Bro Curtis Almquist, 'Maundy Thursday Remembrance."

    Preached at the Mass of the Last Supper, St Joseph’s Institution
    artwork: 'washing of the feet at the last supper' by sadao watanable


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  5.  

    Year C / Holy Week / Palm Sunday
    Readings: Isaiah 50.4-7 / Psalm 21.8-9, 17-18a,19-20, 23-24 (R/v 2a) / Philippians 2.6-11 / Luke 22.14-23, 56


    “’Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’ 
    With these words he breathed his last” (Luke 23.46)
     
    These words were proclaimed when we read the Passion of Jesus. Then, we knelt. To reverence Jesus. To acknowledge his death. To recognise that our Lenten journey leads to this moment. To Jesus sacrificially giving up his life for us. 

    Jesus dead. We might feel sad. We might experience loss. We might get angry at the injustice of an innocent man killed. This was an uncomfortable moment for Jesus’s disciples. It disturbed them then; their hoped for Messiah is dead. It should disturb us even more because Jesus has revealed who He really is.

    The Christ who remained resolute, refusing to be shamed, even as he suffered every insult and spittle for us when others tortured him, as the Prophet Isaiah narrates.

    The Christ who though equal with God humbled himself to be one with us. Even more, to be the One who accepts death for us, as St Paul teaches.

    Yes, the Christ who is God with us. God who sacrificially died for us.  This should shake us up. 

    In fact Holy Week should shake us and our world again.

    It begins today. Jesus enters Jerusalem to begin his final ascent to the Cross. Luke describes the people rejoicing and laying down their garments to welcome him. Matthew describes this same scene differently. Jesus enters and all of Jerusalem is in turmoil. In Greek, ‘turmoil’ literally means to shake or to quake, as in an earthquake.

    Our readings this week will continue shaking, unsettling and creating turmoil in us, if we but let them touch our hearts.*

    On Monday, Mary will lavishly pour costly oil onto Jesus’s feet. Everyone watching will be shaken. “What waste”, they will lament in dismay. Jesus will simply embrace her love that is uninhibited, gratuitous and compassionate. Shouldn’t this shake us to examine how much we really love Jesus?

    On Tuesday, Peter will hear Jesus’s invitation to die to self before one’s death. His invitation demands that his followers live and love like he did – sacrificially. Shouldn’t this shake us to consider how we believe and live as Jesus’s disciples?

    On Wednesday, Judas will betray Jesus. His betrayal confronts us to be honest. We too have betrayed Jesus in our sinful choices, words and deeds.  Shouldn’t this shake us to appraise how we value Jesus?

    On Thursday, Jesus will intimately touch and wash his apostles’ feet. He will command them to do the same for others. To live as Christians we must do the same: intimately touching, washing and kissing one another’s feet in service. Shouldn’t this make us tremble because it shakes us to ask, “Are we really Christ-like in our care for all?”

    On Friday, the Cross will dig deep into the earth as it is raised. Jesus will die on it. The rocks will split. The veil in the Temple will be torn into two. Darkness will cover the earth. And hopefully with compassion, our hearts will break open. Shouldn’t all the earth and everyone shake and quake for here is God dying for us?

    In the silence of Holy Saturday, Jesus will descend into hell and the gates of hell will shudder and burst open. In this silence, we will also wait expectantly to hear again the story of that great earthquake when the angel rolls the stone away from Jesus’s tomb and it is empty. Yes, Jesus lives, Shouldn’t this earth shattering truth shake us upside down for better?

    Shaken. Broken open. Turned upside down. These are uncomfortable experiences. Holy Week invites us to enter them with humility and faith to walk with Jesus to the Cross, and beyond into Resurrection.  We must because somewhere in each of us we need Jesus’s saving love. We need to experience His death so as to rise again as His own – fully alive. This is  the mystery of Jesus’s dying and rising come alive in us and for us.

    Today we take the first steps with Jesus to the Cross. He enters not just Jerusalem. He enters into each of our lives to shake it up, break it open, turn it upside down. Jesus must and will do this for it is the only way we can accompany him – when everything uncomfortable this week will strip us empty for Him alone who is God for us. Him who humbles himself to become vulnerable like a slave for us. Him who wants to humble us to become vulnerable for Himself. Only when our vulnerability meets Jesus’s vulnerability can we unite ourselves intimately with Him.** 

    Perhaps then we will truly understand the depth of his love that sacrificially lays down his life to save us, his friends.


     


    * Inspired and adapted in parts from the writings of the Trappist monks
    ** Lance Ang, points given at a retreat.



    Preached at St Ignatius Church. 
    photo: grottonetwork.com


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  6. This homily was preached at the Courage SG Retreat for Lent

    Year C / Lent / Week 5 / Sunday
    Readings: Isaiah 43:16-21 / Psalm 126:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 6 (R/v 3) / Philippians 3:8-14 / John 8:1-11


    “See I am doing a new deed, even now it comes to light; can you see it?” (Isaiah 43.19).

    This is the Lord’s assurance to the exiled Israelites we hear today. He is making all things new. He is bringing possibilities to life. In the wilderness, a road. In the wilds, paths. In the desert wilderness, water for his chosen to drink. “Can you see it?” he asks them. 

    The Lord is now asking us the same question. We need to answer it. Aren't all our Lenten efforts to bring about newness? Whatever these efforts are, however much we have done, or how ever well they are, haven’t we tried to enact a new way of relating to God, have a new mindset about God’s mercy, and live anew as God’s creation? Don’t these express our Lenten hope to repent, convert and renew how we live with God and one another?

    If we have been cooperating with God this Lent, hasn’t God been doing just that? Do we see it?

    We must strive to see God’s action re-creating us anew – not just in Lent but every day of our lives. This will give us meaning, more so, hope, because so often we face the reality of loss. In life, the sad loss of loved ones and comfortable means. In Lent, the  necessary loss of bad habits and poor choices that self-gratify and lead us to sin. In faith, the graced loss of our fixed ways of knowing God when He surprises. And in this retreat, the needed loss of our proud, powerful selves as God invites us to be more honest, vulnerable and authentic. 

    The loss of our very selves. We find such loss difficult, painful, even confusing. Among the many thoughts and feelings that anyone facing loss has is fear. Like the fear sinners face: never to be saved. This is the fear the adulterous woman experiences.

    The Scribes and Pharisees bring her to Jesus. They make her stand in the middle. In their self-righteousness they want to make an example of her as a grave sinner deserving death. 

    Her fears are many. Shame and ridicule. Losing her dignity. Having the truth that she is God’s own stripped away. Being judged sinner and nothing more. Being condemned to death and utterly unworthy of God’s redemption. 

    As sinners, we know her loss. We recognise her fear. We’ve experienced her shame and unworthiness. We’ve stood like her in the middle of self-righteous accusers, including family and friends, classmates and work colleague, each judging us a sinner and condemning us. Haven’t our LGBT brothers and sisters experienced all of this again and again, and all too often more terribly?

    The hardest loss to accept is the loss of our own lives to death. More so, when others take it away from us unjustly. Ever more tragic is when Christians lose life because of sin.

    We hear their resonance in the story of the adulterous woman because it is our story. 

    What is Jesus’s response to the adulterous woman and all who sin, including you and me? We want His response because our losses leave us nothing but a void within, a groan of utter sorrow, or an ache too difficult to name.  

    How then does Jesus respond? By entering into our losses. More truthfully, into our lost lives. There, he heals the burden of our sin and even the burden of those who sin against us.

    We do not know why Jesus knelt or what he wrote in the sand. Perhaps, it is his way of entering into the burden of this woman’s sin and the pain of her loss. It could even be to let her accusers do the same as they waited for his response, and as they did so, to become aware of their sinfulness too. This is mercy at work – entering into the messy, chaotic sinfulness of each of our lives to suffer with us first. Out of suffering with us, Jesus forgives, heals and gives life to start anew.

    Haven’t you and I experienced this each time Jesus gives us second chances after sinning? When He reconciles with us in sacrament and through broken relationships repaired. When He returns us to community no matter our faults. When he restores our dignity as His own regardless of how others put down our gender or sexuality, race or religion, ability or disability. Yes, we have all received His mercy and we will continue to receive it. 

    This is why Jesus commands us to “to go and do likewise”: his mercy is also for everyone who hurts others. Many have hated, misunderstood, and prejudiced the LGBT community. Yet this Courage community, like many LGBT Catholics, has endeavoured to forgive them. Can our community continue to forgive, even those in Church who still discriminate?

    Every Christian can and should do as Jesus did to the adulterous woman because we have experienced God’s mercy. Mercy that humbles us to choose “the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus and remaining with him,” as Paul teaches (Philippians 3.8). He admonishes us not to be prisoners of our sinfulness but to strain forward to new life that lies ahead. We live this new life best when we are compassionate towards one another.

    Compassion is indeed Jesus’s way of entering into the losses in our lives, and more so, our lost lives, and to remake them anew.  We experience this because we are caught up in the mystery of the Cross. In this mystery of His dying and rising, Jesus enters the void of death that includes our losses and fills it with resurrection life overflowing.  

    We are moving towards Holy Week. Closer to the Cross where Jesus will redeem human suffering. Closer too to the resurrection when the life of the risen Jesus becomes our life. So let us join Jesus by turning our faces to the coming holy days and pressing onward.

    But for now, let us remain with Jesus like the adulterous woman did when her accusers left them alone. Remain with Jesus to face our sinfulness truthfully; then choose to stay with him. Stay because though we sin, Jesus desires nothing more than to give us new life.

    Can we see this? See this Christian truth that re-makes us anew?




    Preached at the Courage Lenten Retreat 2022
    Photo by Quinten de Graaf on Unsplash


     



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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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