1. Year A / Eastertide / Third Sunday 
    Readings: Acts 2.14, 22-23 / Psalm 15.1-2a, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11 (R/v 11a) / 1 Peter 1.17-21 / Luke 24.13-35


    What do you do when you are distressed, disappointed or dismayed? My friend Joshua takes a walk with a friend and talks. This helps him to understand what’s going on, how he and everyone is and to process it all. This is Joshua’s coping mechanism. I describe in 3 phrases: “walk with me, ” I need to get away,” “let's go and talk.” 

    The two disciples do the same in today’s gospel reading: “walk with me,” “I need to get away,” “let’s go to Emmaus.” They are sad and distressed. They are trying to make sense of Jesus’s killing and the confusing news of his resurrection. They are grappling with their dashed expectations and hopes for the future. 

    Don’t we do the same when life gets hard and meaningless, when we are plunged into the darkness of sickness or economic burdens, when we are weighed down by work, exams and managing the family? Don’t we turn to family or friends and say: “Let’s go to Emmaus,” “need to get away,” “walk with me”? 

    And don’t family and friends hear and respond when we ask them to? Don’t they walk and talk with us, accompanying us in our pain, lending us their shoulders for us to cry on, embracing us in forgiveness and understanding? 

    When they do, aren’t we experiencing something of what happened to the two disciples — that Resurrection comes to us?

    A stranger comes to these disciples. They share their troubles and the struggle to make sense of the horror of Jesus’s killing. The stranger speaks as if he knows them. He goes back to Moses and traces the events that led to the death of their beloved companion. His words help to settle their hearts but it is the breaking of the bread that opens their eyes. Before them is their Jesus — alive. 

    Today’s gospel demands that we recognise the risen Jesus in the surprising company of the strangers we encounter. 

    Strangers who offer no quick fixes or easy answers. Strangers who test our patience and acceptance. Strangers who try our welcome and hospitality. Strangers who accompany us and console us. Strangers we prefer ignore; strangers we stay away from. Strangers who come seeking us out. Strangers like unrecognisable risenJesus the disciples encountered. 

    Can we accept God meeting us in the strangers we encounter? Do we dare let God transform us through strangers? 

    It is easy to dismiss strangers. “What do they have to do with me?” we ask. Often we choose to ignore them. The two disciples did not. And they encountered the risen Jesus. 

    Wise are we to pay attention because the quiet and calm manner Jesus comes is astounding in its simplicity. His coming is modest and humble, never loud or spectacular, with no fanfare, even strange.

    This is how the disciples going to Emmaus experienced the resurrection— in an unrecognisable stranger who reveals the closeness, compassion and tenderness of God’s love. They experienced it in his willingness to enter their pain, his compassion that comforts their suffering and his mercy that offers hope to begin anew. 

    Today’s message is simple: the resurrection can come even in the goodness of the stranger. How so? Because the stranger who breaks bread at table and gives it to the disciples is not just the guest; he is the host. More truly, He is the host of our lives. His name is Jesus.

    Don’t strangers do the same when and where we least expected it, especially when we let them into our lives? They host us in myriad ways. When they answer our need for company and help. When they welcome us in our tiredness and sadness. When they care for us in our injury and pain. When they give us hope in our despair. In every encounter, they draw us into the goodness of God’s life. 

    If we recognise they are like the risen Jesus who is really hosting us in God’s care and mercy, our eyes will be opened to the stranger who comes to you and me. Something happens; our perspective changes. How can we not see the face of Jesus in the faces of strangers in our lives? How can we remain deaf to Jesus’s cry in their cry to be welcomed, accepted, loved?

    This is how Jesus accompanies us through life in every stranger. Be  they our new neighbours, those at the same table at the hawkers’ centre, and even the unfamiliar face of a fellow Catholic next to you and me in the same pew. Yes, Jesus is with us and amongst us 

    So let us welcome the strangers God sends into our lives. When we do, don’t be surprised our souls will come alive for we will hear Jesus say — “Here I am; I'll walk with you.” Then, experiencing His goodness, let us say to one another, like the two disciples did, “Did not our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road?”   

    Shall we?



    Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart

    Adapted from the original homily in 2017
    photo by Deva Darshan on Unsplash

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  2.  

    Devotion to the Sacred Heart – Friday, 21 April
    Reflection based on Luke 15.3-7 


    “Rejoice with me.” Tonight we hear these happy words. The shepherd speaks them to his friends when he finds the lost sheep. 

    With faith we know this gospel story is about us: we are Jesus’s friends and He is our shepherd. The lost sheep are those Jesus seeks out and saves. Some of them include our family and friends. We too are the lost sheep. He will always save all of us.   

    “Rejoice with me” is Jesus’s invitation to celebrate those saved. Aren’t these apt words for the Easter season too when we celebrate Jesus saving all from being lost to sin and death?

    In the resurrection stories, we hear Jesus say: “Peace be with you.” In prayer, I imagine Jesus saying “Rejoice with me” to everyone he met after the resurrection. I wonder how the disciples he encountered would have responded. Perhaps with surprise.

    What amazes me about the phrase “Rejoice with me” is how spacious and inclusive Jesus’s love is. It is spacious because He risks his safety and comfort to seek out the lost sheep who strays away. He doesn’t do this for himself but for the community. By returning this sheep to everyone, he restores the community to how it ought to love – by including everyone. I wonder if this also explains Jesus’s joy, and He wants everyone to share his joy. 

    Only a spacious and inclusive love can share such joy boundlessly.

    ‘Rejoice with me’ is also Jesus’ way of saying, ‘I’ve room for you.’ No matter how saintly or sinful our lives are, Jesus’s words testify to what his resurrection proclaims is true: that there are indeed many rooms in my Father’s house, as he taught. 

    Only love that is spacious and inclusive can assert this claim and, more so, make it real! 

    Tonight we gather in the reality of this love. We have experienced it every time we gather for our devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We do in three ways.

    First, we come to better know who we are. We are God’s beloved. He doesn’t  forget or abandon us. We may be lost but we will always be found. Haven’t we experienced this each time Jesus answers a petition we have, however different from our expectations?

    Second, we recognise how much God delights in us as we are. God calls us to Jesus. He hopes and trusts we will place our burdens and hopes with His Son. He does not expect us to present ourselves otherwise. Don’t we experience this every Friday when God’s generous, kind, forgiving and joyful love gathers us into Jesus’s Sacred Heart?

    Third, we learn even more that God cannot stop loving us. We belong to God. We matter greatly to him, particularly, our salvation. Aren’t we experiencing this truth, especially now in Eastertide as Jesus’s resurrection enables us to see everything and everyone anew, particularly, our worthiness – however little we think – that God really loves.

    ‘Rejoice with me,’ Jesus says. We can and we must. Not because we’ve experienced being lost and found. Rather, because Jesus’s inclusive and spacious love gives us room to abide in God forever.



    Shared at Church of the Sacred Heart
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  3.  

    This homily was preached in 2014

    Year A / Eastertide / 2nd Sunday (Divine Mercy Sunday)
    Readings: Acts 2.42-47/ Psalm 118 (R/v 1) / 1 Peter 1.3-9 / John 20. 19-31


    Easter reveals to us the beautiful truth of who we are in the risen Jesus. You and I are God’s beloved. And as God’s own, we can live as God’s Easter people. You might say that we are called to be “eastering” all the days of our Christian life.

    What is “eastering”? We can catch a glimpse of what it is about by paying attention to our 1st Reading at every Sunday Mass from Easter to Pentecost. These readings from the Acts of the Apostles tell us of how the first disciples live their faith; they live in the Spirit of the risen Jesus. This is what Easter living is about.

    Our 1st Reading describes what Easter living entails. The Christians listened to the apostles’ teachings about living in Jesus’ ways. They practiced them by living in community, and by sharing everything in common. They prayed to God through Jesus. They worshipped at Eucharist together. More importantly, they live in Jesus’ Spirit of joy that praises God, in his Spirit of sincerity of heart that follows God’s ways and in his Spirit of generosity that fulfilled God’s will to serve all peoples.

    Indeed, Easter is God’s invitation for you and me to live like them, in Jesus’ Spirit.

    In our gospel passage, the risen Jesus shows us how to "easter" in the daily life we share with one another. He brings peace and joy to his disciples who are in sadness because they think him dead. He brings them love when they feel abandoned because he is no longer with them. He brings them fellowship by coming among them when they feel alone. And, he brings them certain hope when they are fearful and doubtful about how to live as he taught them.

    Indeed, in Jesus we can live as an Easter people. He is our hope to accomplish this. Our 2nd Reading reminds us of this. According to Peter, we are can live this Easter life because of our love for Jesus: “although you have not seen him you love him.”

    But you and I know how challenging—even difficult—it can be for us to live out our love for Jesus fully and happily. Perhaps, when we struggle with living the Christian life and see how we fail to do this well, we say, “O Lord, will I ever get it right?” Or, when we find ourselves committing the same sins this past week, even after a good Lenten confession for Easter, we might have cried out. “Lord, this is too hard; why should I bother?” 

    But we can take comfort that none of us is alone in this struggle. You and I are struggling together. The good news is that Jesus is faithfully keeping company with us in this struggle. And, because we are all walking together on the road of Christian life with Jesus, we can support one another. The even better news is that God’s Spirit is already and always at work in us; it is this Spirit that helps us to love Jesus and to follow him.

    Consider how true this is for us today: we have come again to hear Jesus' words that teaches us and to be fed by his body and bread that nourishes us. Why do we keep coming to Jesus? Why do we continue loving him? Why does his memory not fade away from us?

    A good Jesuit friend answered these questions in this way: “If we love Jesus it is because he is still with us. Humans beings do not love old memories. We may be curious, even passionate, about old historical facts, but we do not change our lives because of them. We love Jesus not as a vague memory, but as someone who is our contemporary. We are not neurotic people: we love Jesus because he lives with us today.”

    And, we find Jesus most especially with us when we gather, like we do now as the church. Jesus is present here with us, loving us and allowing us to love him, and as we love one another by worshipping together. 

    Today’s gospel reminds us that we will always find Jesus in our midst; he comes to be present to us. This is the experience Thomas had. He was not with the community of disciples on Easter Sunday. Hence, he did not experience meeting the risen Jesus. Thomas’ doubt was not because he didn’t believe in Jesus; it was because he had not yet seen the risen Jesus. The next Sunday, Thomas was with the disciples, and when Jesus came, he immediately recognised him, and cried out, "My Lord and my God."

    John’s message in today’s gospel is clear: our Sunday gathering is where we will encounter Jesus most fully. This is where we too cry out, "Our Lord and our God." To be sure, Jesus does not appear to us here as he appeared to the disciples then. This does not mean, however, that Jesus is absent. It does not mean, either, that our faith is blind. It simply means that Jesus is not anymore visible in his historical body. But he is present, not absent. We know this from the fact we are loving him and that we continue to experience the abundant life that flows from him. Indeed, we know Jesus is with us because it is in our loving Jesus that we experience him loving us. This is the truth of how Jesus is in us and we are in Jesus. This truthful reality is what can enable us to live as an Easter people. And because we can live it, Jesus refers to us when he says to Thomas, "Blessed those who believe without seeing." 

    The place where we best can be with Jesus is when we are one with the Church, the body of Christ. I’d like to suggest that it is when we participate more fully in the life of the Church, in the life of the body of the Christ, that we can touch Jesus: the sacraments make him visible; the Word of God make his voice audible; our living together as his body make his touch, his embrace, his lifting us up palpable. 

    Indeed, it is in our coming together to pray, to worship, to care, to forgive, to lift up one another that we keep the memory of Jesus alive for us and living in our midst. When we do this, we make God’s Easter love for us real, this love of God that saves us and gives us fullness of life. Indeed, when we do for this with grateful rejoicing, especially for others to know God, we are in fact “eastering.” 

    Some of us may be disappointed or even angry with the Church, disfigured as she is by human sinfulness. Yet, it is in the Church, in our coming together as a Christian community that we can always live as an Easter people. Why?  Because Jesus keeps calling us to come together to live more fully in his risen Spirit. No matter how sinful and broken we might be, or how saintly and whole we are, Jesus keeps calling us to become one with him, so that we can know the love of God in him and so live God’s love with and for one another. This is how we are to live we as an Easter people. 

    Let us live like this, then. And as we do so, let us join the Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins in praying this simple but hope-filled prayer for Christian living he once wrote: “Let Jesus easter in us, and let him be a Dayspring to the dimness of us.”





    Preached at St Peter’s Parish, Dorchester, Boston
    photo: easter vigil from www.christchurch.org
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  4. Year A / Eastertide / Easter Sunday
    Readings: Acts 10.34a, 37-43/ Psalm 118.1-2, 16-17, 22-23 (R/v 24) / Colossians 3.1-4 / John 20.1-9


    Today is Easter. Everything we sing, pray, and celebrate professes ‘Christ is risen! Alleluia!’ With the psalmist we can truly proclaim “the Lord made this day; we rejoice and are glad.” 

    Dear friends, we do all this seated as we are as do at every Sunday Mass. We do this with altar servers, communion ministers, lectors, choirs, even priests, who are familiarly the same. 

    But has anything changed, really changed, for you and me this day?

    Jesus’s resurrection insists something has happened. We believe he has conquered sin and death for us. Yet his resurrection will not solve our problems with aging, health and dying. Our life will still have daily struggles and work stresses, family hurts and disappointing friendships. Our faith will still be lukewarm at times. Our Church will still love imperfectly. Our world will still be unjust and unfair. 

    What change should we expect in our lives? This: a greater clarity about God’s faithfulness. Henri Nouwen explains: “The resurrection is God's way of revealing to us that nothing that belongs to God will ever go to waste” (Our Greatest Gift).  Simply put, “what belongs to God will never get lost.”

    Mary, Peter and John learned this that first Easter morning. It began in fear when Mary discovered the tomb stone rolled away and ran to tell Peter and John. It became a possibility as these apostles ran to the empty tomb and entered it. It dawned as a reality for John who saw and believed. 

    Their experience echoes that of the women in the other gospels who were told  “Jesus is not here: for he has been raised.” 

    Something did happen. This: their growing awareness that Jesus’s teaching was true – that he would rise from the dead. This came alive especially when the risen Jesus encountered each of them. With words of assurance, ‘Do not be afraid.’ With words of consolation, “Peace be with you.” With words of commission, “Go and tell.” Yes, even with Mary’s name when she did not recognise him.

    As we recall these stories of the Resurrection, what should really dawn on us is the certain faithfulness of  God.

    This faithfulness of God that accompanied Jesus through his passion and death, and also raised him up from the dead. His resurrection is the light that scatters the darkness of grief and loss every disciple the risen Jesus encountered that morning.  Yes, Jesus is alive with God forever; sin and death have no hold on him.  More startling for them was their dawning faith: that with the risen Jesus, God promised them resurrection life too. 

    God’s promise is also for us. Today we hear this again. Let us be even more convicted of God’s certain faithfulness for everyone. This is why in the risen Jesus, you and I are also alive. His resurrection is not for today but everyday. 

    With him, we can face the many dark and chaotic places in our world, and no doubt those dark places in our own lives. With him, we can overcome the fears, anxieties, hurts and resentments that restrict our understanding, stifle our faith and cripple our love. With him, our crosses will flower and our tombs will break open. Now, with him we can walk into the light of eternal life. From the very depths of our sorrows and losses, we can honestly proclaim with hope, “Alleluia! Christ is risen!”

    With Jesus alive, God gives us the beginning of a new story of our lives. This is possible, Caryll Houselander insists, because “We are his resurrection; he continues to rise within us.”

    We hear this echo in today’s readings. The second reading reminds us that since Christ has brought us to true life, we must look heavenwards, think of heavenly things and know we live with him in God. The first reading teaches that all who encounter the Risen Jesus can live and witness in a new way to glorify God. Don’t we each yearn for this?

    Take heart; we can make Jesus’s Resurrection our Easter way of life. We hear how to do this when the risen Jesus gives the women in Matthew’s narration of the Resurrection this instruction: “Don’t be afraid, go and tell my brothers.” 

    Before this moment, Jesus called his followers disciples and friends. Never ‘brothers.’ The Greek translation of ‘brothers’ refers to those who share spiritual relationship with each other in God. Now, by calling his disciples ‘brothers,’ he intimately claims them as family. In the risen Jesus, we are all brothers and sisters to each other. 

    Dear friends, look around us here. We are not acquaintances or strangers but brothers and sisters in the risen Christ. We are here to serve, not to be served. We are here to forgive and mend our brokenness, not to judge and condemn. We are here to share our giftedness and build a community that cares for all. These are the ways we can live together as God’s Easter people.

    And this is how God reminds us of his faithfulness – that what belongs to God will never get lost. However we have sinned or judged our lives wasted, Jesus' resurrection proclaims otherwise. We belong to God. His love doesn’t forget. His love remembers. His love brings us to Himself. We are never lost.

    This is why the joyful reality of Christian life is that Christ is risen. This must burn in our hearts now and always. His resurrection is our certain hope in God’s faithfulness. 

    Let us ponder this wondrous truth. As we do, we might hear again what God repeatedly says throughout the scriptures, ‘Do not forget what I have done for you.’ 

    Can we ever forget? 


    A Blessed Easter, dear friends.





    Preached at Church of the Sacred Heart
    photo by nicole hauser @ myclickmagazine.com




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  5.  Year A / Holy Week - 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



    “Jesus came to Simon Peter, who said, 'Master, are you going to wash my feet?'" (John 13.6)


    What would you say if Jesus came to you now, took off his outer garments, took a towel, tied it around his waist, poured water into a basin and began to wash your feet? What would you say?


    Maybe like Peter we would object in shock and confusion. “How can this be?” we would protest because of our sinfulness. “Who am I that you, Jesus, would kneel to wash my feet?” 


    But Jesus will insist, as he did to Peter, “Unless I wash you, you can have no share with me.” Here is Jesus wanting to wash us clean so we can share in his life. He will do this by serving us. This is what Jesus’s act of foot washing is about.

    Jesus invites us to let him wash our feet. He never insists or demands. Peter had to choose. What will we choose when Jesus comes to wash our feet, saying, “Yes, you didn’t ask, nor have you earned this, but I want to.”


    “I want to.” These three words express the fullness of love of Jesus. It has no reservations and knows no limits. Such love simply loves. 


    Today’s readings show Jesus teaching this love in two actions. First, in sacrifice. At the Last Supper, in the breaking of bread, Jesus shows us how our love, however imperfect, ought to be a sacrifice for all, an offering to God, and a practice of Christian life and faith. This is what our second reading is about. Second, in service. In the gospel reading, Jesus’ action of foot washing is how he makes this love fully alive, clearly visible, and wondrously tactile in our midst. Here is love that can touch us deeply.


    “May I help you?” is the real question Jesus is asking if we let him wash our feet. We all struggle to answer this question honestly.  How many times have friends and loved ones asked us this question? How many times have we honestly admitted our need for help? Our common responses are: “I am fine. It’s ok. Don’t worry. I’ll manage”.


    There is another answer we can give. It is: “Yes, thank you.” Tonight Jesus wants us to share in his way of life. We cannot do it unless we ask for his help. “May I wash your feet?” he asks. “Yes, thank you,” we should respond. As Jesus’s disciples, let us learn to always make these three words –- “yes, thank you” –- our response to his command, “love one another as I have loved you.” 


    Tonight the priest washes feet, like Jesus did. It should remind us of Jesus’ action of selfless service. We also recall Jesus’ command that we wash another’s feet. “What I have done for you, you should also do".


    Anyone wanting to wash feet like Jesus must however risk who we are and what we have. To risk our very selves so that we can love as Jesus loved. So much love to wash feet in service and to die sacrificially for others. 


    Only by risking can we humble ourselves to follow Jesus and live his way of service. The more we humble ourselves, the greater our love will be to lay down our life for another.  Yes, we must let Jesus wash our feet first; this is how we learn to be like Jesus.


    Why feet? Because they metaphorically express who we are.

    Human feet may seem insignificant, yet they reveal much more. Some feet express status and privilege, pampering and pride. Others reveal wounds and hurts that disable us. They betray our everyday struggles and so they are battered and scarred, dirty and smelly. We stand on our feet that are weighed down by the burdens of our failings, our imperfections, our disappointments. Our feet help us run to those we love. Our feet dig deep into the ground whenever we fear, doubt or despair; they root us in our sinfulness. Our feet say so much about our joys and hopes, our pains and anxieties, our heartaches and obstacles. Sometimes, we hide these all of this more than we express them.


    All our feet express what Jesus really wants to wash clean. When we let him do this, we give him freedom to enter into our lives and serve us. However we feel about Jesus’ desire to love and serve us in this way, “Yes, thank you” is the only proper human response we can make to Jesus.


    Saying “Yes, thank you” means very little unless we translate it into action. Who does Jesus want you and me to touch with our hands to serve and save? Foot washing is also about letting others wash our feet to care for us, maybe 'save' us. Who do you know wants to do this for you?


    We all know it is harder to receive than to give. We all struggle to receive another’s help, be it from loved ones or friends, neighbours or strangers. But we need to receive in order to give: we cannot give what we don’t have. Let us be wiser to welcome all who come to help us. When we do, don’t be surprised to see Jesus himself coming and kneeling at our feet, offering his love through them. Will “Yes, thank you” be our response?


    Tonight, we will receive love from Jesus in the Eucharist.  This night, Jesus will invite us to practise his love when we wash feet with water and basin. From tonight onwards, Jesus commands us to share his love and, more so, to receive his love. 


    Now, let us be silent and let Jesus love us deeply, feet first.




    Preached at St Joseph’s Institution
    Photo: revlisad.com
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  6. Year A / Lent / Palm Sunday
    Readings: Matthew 2:1-11 – for procession of palms / Isaiah 50:4-7 / Psalm 21.8-9, 17-18a, 19-20, 23-24 (R/v 2a)/ Philippians 2: 6-11 / Matthew 16:14-27:66 


    “The Lord has opened my ear” (Isaiah 50.5)

    We heard this line in the first reading. It could well be what we might say about today’s readings. They are to open our ears to all Jesus will experience this Holy Week. More so, to what the week can also be for us.

    Today, Palm Sunday, we hear about the crowds laying down cloaks and branches on the dusty road and cheering. They wave palms and sing Hosannas. Amidst this festive swirl of adulation and anticipation is Jesus, riding a donkey. They hail him as their Messiah-king. Swept up by the emotions this spectacle conjure up, the crowd expect it to end with Jesus freeing them from Roman oppression.

    Today’s readings also sweep us into the current of a great river that is Holy Week. It will bear us along with the current of its unfolding story. It will lead us to the unimaginable triumph of Jesus over sin and death and the ineffable joy of God’s resurrection life for us.

    To get us there, the readings have one and only one direction: downwards. 

    Today Jesus enters Jerusalem triumphantly. The coming days will hurriedly spin downwards into complete disaster. In a matter of days, Jesus will give himself up to be arrested, tortured horribly, and sentenced to death. He will be condemned and hung upon the Cross to die a slow, humiliating and excruciating death like a common criminal.

    What nails Jesus to the Cross? My sin and my evil. Your sin and your evil. Yes, all our sins and our evil. I suspect we would rather pass over this recognition. This is too hard to hear. We’d rather get to Easter quickly. Not for us the truth and guilt that our sin kills Jesus. 

    There is indeed no other way to Easter except by going downwards first, in order to rise anew.     Jesus reveals this. In love, he freely dies for us. With even greater love, God wants to raise him up in glory. 

    Throughout Holy Week we learn Jesus’s self-sacrificing way to give of ourselves to one another and the needy especially. Practising his way moves God to raise us into resurrection life. Compassionate self-giving makes this possible.

    Holy Week demands that we live like this. We can begin with our own compassionate self-giving to accompany Jesus to the Cross.

    Honestly, we struggle to take this downward turn with Jesus, whether this week or often. It challenges us to surrender what we want and accept what God wishes for us. It insists we give up power and embrace service. It means not having my way and following Jesus’ way. Ultimately, it demands obeying God’s commands that we die to ourselves, particularly to the sinful in us. And we must if we want God to raise us up.

    Ask and you shall receive. Let us ask to rejoice at Easter. But first, let us beg for the grace to accompany Jesus through his Passion and Resurrection. Then, we will not be disinterested bystanders, nor self-righteous devotees this Holy Week. We will be like Mary, John and the women walking with Jesus to the Cross. Suffering with Jesus in his pain. Staying with him at the foot of the Cross, loving him to the end, as he loved them and us to his very end.

    Let us ask for the same closeness, compassion and tenderness they had — qualities of the heart they first learned from Jesus himself.

    Can we do this? Yes, we can. So, let us open our ears and learn again from St Paul about Jesus’s compassionate way of self-giving. Listen: “Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather he emptied himself” (Philippians 2.7).

    Jesus emptied himself. It led to him suffering and being crucified, to dying for us and being buried. And according to the Apostle’s Creed, on the third day — a day we are eagerly awaiting for — Jesus rose again from the dead. This is Jesus’s way. It must be our way too this Holy Week. 
    So, come, let us follow him. Shall we?




    Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart photo: reformedperspective.ca

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  7. Devotion to the Sacred Heart – Friday, 31 March
    Reflection based on Luke 23.35-46


    We are a society that talks a lot. Our world is filled with technology and social media. It compels us to keep speaking, be it with words, pictures, or videos. Background music follows us everywhere. There is pressure to comment about every event, photo share every meal, facebook every family milestone and post every opinion we have on Whatsapp, Tik Tok, and many social media platforms.

    This obsession with speaking makes us forget the value of silence. Yet, silence will feature throughout the Passion of Jesus we will participate in during Holy Week. We might however miss it, distracted by the noise and spectacle the Passion is.

    In the gospel accounts of Jesus’s trial, suffering and death, there will be moments when Jesus does not speak. He remains mostly silent. Considering the injustice he suffers, his silence is annoying. Like in today’s gospel. The people at Golgotha watched Jesus on the Cross; they jeered at him:“He saved others, let him save himself if he is the Christ.” One of the criminals abused him: “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us as well.” Such were the taunts and jeers hurled at Jesus. Amazingly he remained silent. 

    “Why?” we might ask. Not because he was overwhelmed by the people’s despicable and blasphemous insults at him. Rather, because he was obedient unto death to do the Father’s will. That is, he willingly took on the sins of the people, including ours, to save us by sacrificing his life on the Cross.

    Simply put, Jesus was silent because he was obedient to God. Silent because it meant that He did not try to talk his way out of what was happening. Indeed, you and I have every right to say with humble faith, “He died for my sins.” 

    Jesus’s silence helps us to hear even clearer, and feel more palpably, the few words he uttered from the Cross. His cry of agony from the heart: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” His faith when he committed his spirit into his Father’s hands. His obedience that he persevered to the bitter end when He said, “It is finished.” And yes, his immense mercy to save when he said to the repentant thief hanging beside him - and to us tonight -  “Indeed, I promise you today you will be with me in paradise.”

    Here we are. One week away from Good Friday. Here to pray to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We believe mercy pours forth from his heart. His mercy will answer our prayers and petitions, console and comfort, heal and restore, and yes, ultimately and simply, love and save us.

    We’ve come tonight with faith in Jesus because he is a Saviour who does not come down from the cross, but who stays on the cross – who in fact willingly came there in the first place. The great miracle is that Jesus chose to be on the Cross because of his infinite love for sinners. For you and me. He would not come down from it, until the hands of others pried his lifeless, cold body from the cruel nails of the cross. Then, he was truly silent. No word. No sigh. 

    But in heaven, all would begin singing that joyful refrain, “Alleluia!” Even now, we are called to strain our ears to hear this hope-filled song; it comes alive with Jesus’s resurrection.  

    This is indeed the Good News we must believe to make the journey with Jesus to the Cross and beyond into Easter. It is in fact the Good News we must speak resolutely about as our Easter joy. Yes, ‘He is risen, Alleluia!’ are the most Christian words we must always speak.  Shall we?





    Shared at Church of the Sacred Heart
    photo by Henrique Jacob on Unsplash

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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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