1. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 30 / Sunday

    Readings: Exodus 22.2-26 / Psalm 18. 2-3, 3-4, 47, 51 (R/v 2) / 1 Thessalonians 1.5c-10 / Matthew 22.34-40



    “Make us love what you command, so that we may merit what you promise.”

    These words are from our Opening Prayer. They are a reminder that Jesus calls us to follow his teachings. What could it be today?


    The coming Halloween provides a context to answer. When my nephew Glenn was younger, he would dress up each Halloween. Whether he wore a Batman, Superman or a pirate costume, he would explain, “I want to be like them!”


    Don’t we say or think like this when we look at the saints or at saintly Christians we admire?  To be like them; this is what imitation looks like.


    Imitation is important for Christian living. Today we hear Paul praising the early Christians for their exemplary Christian life. He recognises that they could because they imitated him and his collaborators who lived and preached the Good News. Paul and his companions could live such lives because they themselves imitated Jesus’ life and ministry. 


    There’s a grace in imitating Jesus. We become more like him. Jesus is asking his disciples to do this. It should not surprise us, then, that the ultimate hope of Christian imitation is to share in the family resemblance that Jesus has with the Father: “to see me is to see the Father,” he says. 


    We begin to imitate Jesus when we open ourselves to receive God’s Word and live a Christ-like life. Many of us are already working hard to live such a life. Don’t we come to Mass weekly, even daily? Say our prayers and go for retreats? Forgive those who’ve wronged us and ask for forgiveness from those we’ve wronged? And don’t we share the cash, the kind, the time we have, even ourselves, with so many, especially the poor? 


    Indeed, we are, and we want to do them better. We can when we imitate how the saints and good Christian role models in our life imitate Jesus. They inspire us because we see ourselves in their human struggles to imitate Jesus. They teach us that who and what we choose to imitate will make all the difference to how we live the Christian life. 


    For many, the Christian faith can be lived in two ways. The way of “Being Correct” or the way of “Living with Love”. It seems that we have to choose between them.  


    Living the way of “Being Correct” means to “Do the right thing,” “Observe the rules” and “Don’t question the teachings; just follow.” Many live the Christian faith like this. They want to be the correct Christian, live the correct Christian life and know the correct Christian way to relate to God and neighbour. Their mantra is “Be good, do the correct thing and for your reward, you’ll get to heaven.” 


    If the only way we live is by Being Correct, just correct always, we might end up being fixated on ticking off all the boxes on the Do and Don’t list.


    In contrast, the way of “Living with Love” involves imitating Jesus. Specifically, to ask for his heart to live the Christian faith. His heart, that is totally for God and neighbour. His heart, that has so much love that Jesus was prepared to break rules while on earth in order to love like God. His heart, that is humble, ever ready to surrender power in order to love everyone selflessly, even, sacrificially . 


    Jesus loved this way because his heart was ever so vulnerable for another, always ready to enter into relationship with all, and orientated to value the dignity and wonder of another as God’s own.


    Do we want a heart like the heart of Jesus ? Dare we imitate Jesus?


    To be Christian is to imitate Jesus, no other. He shows us the way to be in love with God and to stay in love with others. Love is God’s greatest law: it is the greatest value, the greatest practice and the greatest result we find in Jesus. Jesus teaches the truth about love in today’s gospel reading. Love must be the source, the reason and the goal of imitation. 


    This is why the way of “Being Correct” makes no sense without the way of “Living with Love.”  This makes better sense: that we live with love so as to be correct with God and neighbour. This is in fact Jesus’ way.


    This is how Jesus wants you and me to imitate him, and so love God and everyone in every circumstance. We can do this when we imitate Jesus’ big-heartedness to love and to live in love everyday. Then, we will be able to reach out, welcome, embrace and uplift those who have disappointed or hurt us, those we fear, those we hate, even those we are trying to love—like our gay, divorced and remarried sisters and brothers. They too are God’s beloved, just like we are. Imitating Jesus helps everyone to get to heaven. 


    You and I have a choice about how we want to live our Christian life: either “Be Correct” or “Live with Love.” Live either to be correct or to love like Jesus, either keep a rule that hurts and damage someone else or break a rule to care and give life for another. 


    We can choose to be correct to impress God or live with love trusting in God’s mercy. Be obedient but unforgiving or be forgiving and act justly with mercy. Live anxiously to get everything correct to get to heaven or live confidently in God’s love and let God’s Spirit lead us onward to eternal life. The choice is ours.


    At the coming Halloween, children will wear costumes for trick or treat. Some adults will dress up for parties. Seeing them should remind us of what we must wear as Christians – the love of Jesus. Jesus’ love is the right garment to cloak ourselves in every day. Yes, dress ourselves in Jesus’ love so as to imitate him more faithfully and follow him more closely. 


    Today, Jesus calls you and me to put on his cloak of love. No other garment is needed. Let us. And when we do, we can embody his love for God and neighbour in our words and deeds. Then, those who experience Jesus’ love through us will say this of us: “See how they love like Jesus loves; surely they are Christians.”

    Shall we?



    with insights from Steve Garnaas-Holmes

    Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart
    Photo: 123rf.com



    Posted by
    Labels: Breaking Open God's Word
    0

    Add a comment

  2.  

    Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 28 / Sunday (World Mission Sunday)
    Readings: Isaiah 2.1-5 / Psalm 66 (R/v  5) / Ephesians 3.2-12  / Mark 16.15-20



    “Go out to the whole world… proclaim the Good News to all creation” (Mark 16.15)

    This is Jesus’ command to Christians to be a missionary church. What will move us to be such a church? How can we  be missionary Christians?

    The theme for this year’s World Mission Sunday offers possible answers. The theme is ‘Hearts on fire, feet on the move’ (cf Luke 24.13-35).  ‘Hearts on fire’ is about the missionary spirit in us. This is the fire Jesus has to care for souls and save them. ‘Feet on the move’ models for us how to live and serve as missionary disciples. This is Jesus’ style of going to the people for them to encounter God and God’s saving love.

    This theme is inspired by Jesus journeying with the disciples to Emmaus. Reflecting on it, Pope Francis writes that “their encounter with Christ in the Word and in the breaking of bread sparked in them the enthusiastic desire to set out again towards Jerusalem and proclaim that the Lord had truly risen. Their hearts burned within them, their eyes were opened, and their feet set out on the way.”*

    We encounter Jesus in the same way as those disciples. Jesus comes to us as God’s Word every time we read and pray the Scriptures, hear it proclaimed, meditate on it in retreat. Jesus comes to us as Eucharist in Communion at Mass while we go to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament in Adoration. Do our hearts burn? Are our eyes opened? Have our feet set us on the way to proclaim Good News?

    ‘Yes’ must be the answer to each question. Yes, Pope Francis says, because “the primary and principal resource of mission are those persons who have come to know the Risen Christ in the Scriptures and in the Eucharist, who carry his fire in their heart and his light in their gaze. They can bear witness to the life that never dies, even in the most difficult of situations and in the darkest of moments.”*

    Too often, however, we downplay God’s gift to us of already knowing Jesus through the Scriptures and the Eucharist. Instead, we rejoice that others receive this gift and declare they are God’s chosen to proclaim the Gospel. We call them missionaries. Today, we celebrate and support them and their work as they preach and live the Gospel among those who have yet to receive it, particularly in foreign lands.

    Sadly we don’t see ourselves good enough to be missionaries like them. Yet, every encounter we have had with Jesus fills us with enthusiasm to joyfully share the Gospel with others.  Aren’t we in fact ready to join Jesus on mission?

    A community I know that understands this is Courage, our Church’s ministry to LGBTQ Catholics. Through their encounter with Jesus in Scripture and the Eucharist in the Courage community and the Church, members live their Christian faith by caring for a group of elderly transsexual persons, abandoned by their families. Through them, these ageing women of different faiths and races, including Catholics, experience God’s closeness, tenderness and compassion. 

    For many, especially more conservative Catholics, these LGBTQ Catholics are the unlikeliest missionaries. Yet God chooses them to be co-partners with Jesus in serving these women who are even more marginalised than them in our society and our Church. They serve because others have cared for them and revealed the face of God to them. These are missionaries to the Courage community. They include many compassionate Catholics who listen to their stories with respect and sensitivity, attend to their wounds and needs like the Good Samaritan, and restore them to the Church community like the prodigal father did for his son to live fully and happily as his beloved again. Because some cared, these LGBTQ Catholics now do the same, not overseas but here in our midst. They remind us that God also sends us on mission to those around us and closer to home.

    ‘Hearts on fire, feet on the move.’ We see this alive in our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. Their example invites us to consider how ready you and I are to be missionaries and do the same. We must because the world still needs to discover the Good News of Jesus who brings truth, love, and freedom from all that enslaves us.

    We do this best when we open our hearts and minds to Jesus Christ. Paul’s message to the Ephesians challenges us to do this. They are foreigners yet Christian like us. All of us are members of the same body and sharers in the same promise. I wonder who are today’s Ephesians in our midst? Paul’s message expresses the radical nature of Christian faith: we are one, made in God’s likeness, gathered in God’s one family, however motley we are individually.

    “That they may all be one” (John 17.21a).  This is Jesus’ mission: to care and save all to be one with God and one another. Yet, don’t we exclude all the time? Her skin colour is too dark. Those people aren’t like us. His child is noisy in Church. They don’t pray like us. We don’t want that kind - the ex-prisoner, the adulterer, the druggie.

    Today, our Gospel lesson stops us right there. “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news in the whole creation,” Jesus commands. Go to all the world, the whole creation – not just people who look, act, talk like us.  

    If we pray honestly to the Holy Spirit, I believe God will give us these questions to better discern the kind of Church Jesus missions us to build together: Who are we excluding? Who is missing from this Mass and our Church? Lord, are you challenging us to be bold and proclaim the good news to everyone?  

    I wonder what the Lord will say. Even more, I wonder if we will hear and follow, and let Jesus lead us on mission. 

    Dare we listen to go on mission?





    *Pope Francis, Message for World Mission Sunday 2023

    Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart
    photo: Nico Andrea Di Benedetto

    Posted by
    Labels: Breaking Open God's Word
    0

    Add a comment

  3.  

    Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 28 / Sunday
    Readings: Isaiah 25:6-10 / Responsorial Psalm 23:1-3, 3-4, 5, 6 (R/v 6cd) / Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20 / Matthew 22:1-10


    How do you know when you matter, especially to someone? 

    Perhaps, in that moment when a classmate, office worker or fellow parishioner says, “You are my friend.” 

    Maybe, it was the moment you saw her care for your parents. Or, when you felt safe in his company on the rollercoaster ride you feared. Or, was it when you felt comfortable and understood in the silence you shared, that familiarly reminiscent goodness of long-time friends that require no words?

    These are defining moments. They tell us someone values us. They teach that true friends don’t ask us to be anyone else but our real selves. We learn to accept and love each other as we are, without pretence or the fear that we are never good enough. (Sadly, when another promises much but nought is all we receive, it's human to think, “Do I really matter?”)
     
    Our faith reminds us that these defining moments are God moments. They express God’s goodness that enlivens and enriches us through our friends. Some spiritual writers say they reveal the face of God as friend.

    We have had such experiences with Jesus in whom we meet God.  It might have happened in prayer or on retreat, in Mass or during ministry. It might have happened in difficult times of suffering and loss or of grace and joy. It might have even been in the everydayness of sitting among friends at the hawker’s centre or exercising together.

    I wonder if all this was possible because Jesus extended an invitation to encounter God and we responded. Could his invitation be that defining moment in our individual relationships with God? That moment when our lives changed for the better. That moment when light broke through the darkness and hope lifted us from despair. That turning away from sin. That realisation when the ordinariness of our interactions with God is truly the extraordinariness of God’s friendship with us. These moments mattered. Again and again, they define, if not redefine, God as friend.

    “In English we say we fall in love but we make friends”* Jesus constantly made friends. With Zacchaeus, he invited himself to dine with him. With Mary, he let her sit and listen to him. With Peter, James and John, he invited them up the mountain to the Transfiguration. With the Samaritan woman, he asked for a drink in spite of her sin. Because of his invitation, they came to know Him and his Father, as He also came to know them. How about now? Even now, could Jesus be inviting you and me into deeper friendship?

    In today’s readings, we have striking parallels in God’s graciousness and his invitation for all to partake of it.

    Isaiah speaks of a grand feast God prepares. It promises sustenance and joy, a removal of sorrow and a lifting of burdens. Isaiah also says that God will gather his people up the mountain — up to this feast. In the gospel, Jesus offers the parable of the wedding banquet, where a king invites guests to celebrate his son’s wedding. 

    Both readings have a clear message: God’s love is steadfast and God’s outreach is constant throughout the scriptures. Even clearer is this truth: God never stops inviting. 

    The feast in Isaiah represents God’s promised salvation and eternal joy, yet many miss out on this divine opportunity. Similarly, in Jesus’ parable, the initially invited guests ignore or disdainfully treat the king’s invitation, itself representing God’s call. They neglect God’s offer of spiritual wealth for fleeting worldly gains.

    Throughout the Gospels, Jesus uses parables to shed light on our relationship with God. Today, I wonder what our response would be when God invites us. 

    When I was in Boston studying for the priesthood, John, a dear Jesuit friend, never failed to ask anyone skipping community dinners, “Why? Have you got a better deal elsewhere?” Maybe we’ve got too many such deals that we neglect God’s invitation. If we do, it only speaks volumes about how you and I are really missing out on God’s opportunities and neglecting His divine calls.

    In the parable, Jesus also teaches that when those initially invited turned down the invitation, the king invited everyone else, irrespective of their background or deeds. This expresses God’s inclusive manner. His love is truly available to all; his salvation really for all peoples. God invites everyone. He never fails to.

    Do we hear this message that God invites everyone? Do we also hear Him calling us to extend this invitation to all?  Providentially, we hear all this as the Synodal Assembly meets in Rome. This message echoes the Assembly’s work: to pray and discern how the Holy Spirit is calling us to become a more welcoming, compassionate and inclusive Church. Isaiah prophetically describes this effort as “enlarging the space of our tent” (Isaiah 54.2). 

    For Pope Francis, this means the Church must extend God’s invitation:
    to reach the daily thoroughfares, that is, the geographic and existential peripheries of humanity, those places on the margins, those situations where the hopeless remnants of humanity camp out and live. 

    It is a matter of not settling for comforts and the customary ways of evangelization and witnessing to charity, but rather of opening the doors of our hearts and our communities to everyone, because the Gospel is not reserved to a select few. Even those on the margins, even those who are rejected and scorned by society, are considered by God to be worthy of his love. He prepares his banquet for everyone: the just and sinners, good and bad, intelligent and uneducated.**
    Could this be another defining moment for us and our Church? God inviting us again into deeper friendship — now with many more who are excluded and marginalised. And He calls no other than us to extend an invitation to everyone. 

    I hope you and I will because we know what it means to matter to God. We know how good this is. We are experiencing it even now, gathered here as we are by Him to receive Jesus in Communion. We are indeed God’s invited guests. Shortly, when we receive Jesus we will say, ‘Amen.’ It will resoundingly profess who we are – guests transformed into the Body of Christ. 

    Then, with Jesus in our hearts, God gives us boldness and grace to invite others unreservedly to Himself. When we do, I believe they will experience God’s love. It will be their defining moment for they will know they matter to God too.

    Shall we go then and invite others to God?







    * Timothy Radcliffe, OP, Synodal Retreat Meditation no. 4, 2 October 2023
    ** Pope Francis, Angelus, 10 November 2020


    Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart
    Photo by Aman Shrivastava on Unsplash
    Posted by
    Labels: Breaking Open God's Word
    0

    Add a comment

  4. Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 27 / Sunday
    Readings: Isaiah 5.1-7 / Responsorial Psalm 79. 9 and 12, 13-14, 15-16,19-20 (R/v Is 5.7a) / Philippians 4.6-9 / Matthew 21.33-43


    A story to begin:
    Joshua and his mother walk along the seashore. He pauses to look at the setting sun. He catches the first twinkling stars above. “Mommy, come and see.” She is preoccupied, busy picking up seashells. So she walks on, ignoring him, collecting.

    Joshua’s invitation reminds me of what Jesus is asking us to do daily. To savour God’s goodness and recognize how He entrusts it to us, for our good and the good of all.

    We know God provides for our every need. Yet, we complain more than we give thanks. Our complaints are many and varied. From God is demanding to my family doesn’t care to everyone else is the problem, our grumbles don’t seem to end.  

    Complaints hardened our hearts to God’s many blessings. They make them small to delight in goodness and selfish to share it with all. Particularly simple blessings like waking up each day, having food and shelter, being happily surprised, being loved by a friend, praying quietly.  

    How can we learn again to appreciate God’s blessings not just for ourselves but through us for others? Our first reading and gospel can help.

    Both tell stories about vineyards.The vineyards stand for God’s people. The owner is God. In the first story, the vineyard fails to produce fruit. In the second story, the tenants of the vineyard control it and refuse the owner his fruit. 

    Both stories highlight the dire consequences when we are unfaithful to God, particularly with goodness He entrusts us with. In the first, the vineyard will be laid waste. In the second, the tenants will be removed and new ones will manage it. The message is clear: God’s blessings are for us to love God and serve neighbour. This is what living fruitfully looks like. Are we?

    Jesus says, "I am the vine, you are the branches. Anyone who remains in me, with me in him, bears fruit in plenty” (John 15.5). In Baptism, Jesus unites us to him in a very real way — as real as that between a vine and its branches.  Our Christian vocation is therefore to grow in Jesus. Like branches to the vine and branches bearing fruit. 

    We do not know how we will be called to grow and adapt; we cannot predict the direction growth will take. But we know Jesus' law to love and his exhortation to persevere. These teach us how to live fruitfully. What does this look like?

    I don’t think it is the fruitfulness of our giftedness used well. Nor is it the fruitfulness of being efficient and effective at work, in school or in church.  It is not the  fruitfulness of doing the most good for the poorest or praying more and repenting often. It is certainly not the fruitfulness of success. All these depend primarily on our efforts. 

    Our Christian lives are fruitful when we let God’s Spirit labour for our wellbeing and happiness, and through us, for others    . This is when we are truly alive, flourishing as persons; then, the glory of God shines through us.     Indeed, if God plants the vines, tills the soil, removes the stones and protects the vineyard, his people, He is labouring hard to bring about the bountiful harvest for them and for their wellbeing. We are his people and our lives are meant for fruitfulness.

    Yet don’t we struggle to accept the fruitfulness God wants to give us? Even more, being fruitful as God wants us to be? Most of us cannot accept that our fruitfulness is good enough to be God’s gift to others. 

    In the Old Testament, God tells Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1.28). In the New Testament, Jesus says, “I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit” (John 15.16). In Christian life, fruitfulness is more than procreation or child-bearing. It is also about living daily to make a positive difference, to care to uplift another and to build God’s kingdom in the world. This kind of fruitfulness comes when we keep our gaze on God. He alone bestows on the world all that is good.

    The tenants in today’s gospel did not do this. They took for granted that the vineyard was theirs. They took for granted that they could live on it as they wanted and possess the harvest as they pleased. They forgot about the owner of the vineyard. 

    Like them, we can so easily take the goodness in our everyday life “for granted.” “For granted” instead of “as granted” by God. “As granted” by God who entrusts his blessings and goodness for us and, through us, for everyone. Even more, “as granted” by a compassionate God who forgives us repeatedly for reconciliation, like the hopeful vineyard owner who keeps sending servants, even his son, to the selfish, thankless and hurtful tenants for their conversion. 

    Today St Paul invites us to pray for anything we need. Let us pray to turn again to Jesus and to learn from him how to live for God and others. On earth Jesus’ mission was to care for everyone with God’s love and save them for God. We follow Jesus; His mission is ours too. 

    This is why the Synod in Rome is now praying to discern how we as the Church can do better in our pastoral and missionary life by following Jesus more closely to build the Kingdom of God. This is a moment of grace for us. It calls us to not be small-minded about what our Church is, selfish about who it is for and whether it is for the traditionalists or progressives. Rather, let us follow Jesus who, in mercy and compassion, gathered, welcomed and included everyone into God’s good company. 

    If we do as Jesus did, what is that good fruit God hopes you and I will produce for our own good and the good of all? Saint Paul tells us it involves

    everything that is noble, 
    everything that is good and pure, 
    everything that we love and honour, 
    and everything that can be thought virtuous or worthy of praise. 
    …Then the God of peace will be with you.

    Perhaps this is the peace Joshua’s mother experiences in the story. Finally, she hears his call. She stops picking shells and looks up towards him. She sees his delight watching the sunset. She sees her son. A dawning recognition comes: he’s more than a child; he’s God’s gift. He’s really God’s peace come to her. 





    Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart

    Posted by
    Labels: Breaking Open God's Word
    0

    Add a comment


  5. Devotion to the Sacred Heart – Friday, 6 October
    Reflection based on Luke 23.33-34 


    This past August I was away on a short holiday to rest. With good friends, we were on a road trip through South Australia. Part of the trip was visiting vineyards, and yes, winetasting. You could say it was a spirit-filled trip, of the earthly kind.

    Having studied in Adelaide 32 years ago and visiting the vineyards in the Adelaide Hills then, I was familiar with the landscape surrounding them. Rows and rows of grapevines, lush greens surrounding them, and the blue skies. For me, this was the familiar comforting sight of vineyards from those years.

    A surprisingly exotic sight however greeted my friends and I when we drove towards Seppeltsfield Vineyards in the Barossa Valley. To the left and the right of the dusty earth road leading to this vineyard, in neat lines, are large Canary Island Date Palms. It felt like we were driving through Malaysia with oil palm trees on either side of the road. These palm trees are taller; their fronds larger. It was indeed a majestic view. 

    At the vineyard we learned that the road was called the Avenue of Palms. We also learned the story behind it. The owners, the Seppeltsfield Family, had their workers plant these palms during the Great Depression in the 1920s-30s.The Family was concerned about their workers as many in Australia and around the world were losing their jobs at this time. The Family didn’t want their workers to become unemployed and suffer economic hardship. They were concerned about the wellbeing of their workers and their families. Hence, they instructed their workers to plant these palm trees along the long and winding avenue, around their large vineyard estate and in various parts of town. 

    There’s a more remarkable fact about this story. The Seppeltsfield Family cared for their workers when they themselves were suffering economically. Their wine sales had dropped drastically because everyone was suffering economically during the Great Depression. Yet, their first priority was their workers, not themselves.

    I remembered this story as I reflected on today’s gospel in my prayer. Jesus crucified is suffering on the Cross. The thieves hang beside him. The crowds mock him. Jesus must in utter pain. We cannot begin to imagine what he is experiencing. 

    We can however see and hear. The gasping for his breath. The weight of his body pulling down on his nailed hands and wrists. The searing shock his tortured and scarred body endures. The fear of death gripping him. 

    Yet in this moment Jesus cares more for all who crucify and jeer at him that he turns to God, his Father, and asks that He forgives them. Truly, his mercy is turned towards them. He does not with words but with a simple, humble, honest prayer for them. Yes, for them and not for himself. What can possibly move Jesus to do this?

    Walter Cardinal Kasper writes that mercy is “God’s free and gracious turning toward to the human person with care.”* Here in Jesus is God’s mercy turned towards those who hurt and murder him. Yet he continues to care for them. 

    Isn’t this the same mercy of God that we experience every time we are forgiven for failing Jesus, however many times we sin or reject him? God’s mercy poured for us as the blood Jesus shed once on the Cross to redeem us and as the consecrated wine we daily partake of at Communion. 

    Tonight we come with our petitions and prayers for many we love, care for or are concerned about. We bring them to Jesus, burdened as we are by our own struggles and mistakes, our hurts and sins. We offer up these intercessions because we care for them. 

    Only love enables us to do this. Love for others and love for Jesus. This love compels us to turn to Jesus whose care we have experienced and still do. Indeed, we are turning to Jesus right here and now because he has first turned to us in mercy. He still does. And he will always.  

    Now who else could Jesus be asking each of us to turn to and care for? Let’s ask him to show us who this is as we pray with confidence, saying, “Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust in You!”






    *Walter Cardinal Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life, 2014, p43


    Shared at the Church of the Sacred Heart
    photo: lifehopeandtruth.com

    Posted by
    Labels: Reflection @ Sacred Heart
    0

    Add a comment

  6.  
    Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 26 / Sunday 
    Readings: Ezekiel 18.25-28 / Responsorial Psalm: 24.4bc-5, 6-7, 8-9 (R/v 18a) / Philippians 2.1-11 / Matthew 21.28-32


    “If anyone loves me he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him” (John 14.23a)


    Jesus speaks these words in the Gospel of John. Today, they are proclaimed in the Gospel Acclamation. They are Jesus’ call to keep His word. 

    We hear Jesus’ call and we want to follow. As His disciples we do because His love compels us to. More so, we believe that through him, God the Father, will come to us. 

    However, it is difficult to listen to Jesus’ call, isn’t it? There are many other voices, different voices, all around us. They compete for our attention. Their messages are much more alluring than Jesus’. They easily seduce and take us far away from Him. In fact, they are so noisy that Jesus’ voice is drowned out. We can’t seem to hear Jesus anymore.

    There is however another kind of noise we must pay attention to. A noise we often ignore, even refuse to hear. It is those bangings within us, those clangings bouncing about inside us. This noise challenges and disturbs us to be more honest about who we are and how we ought to live as Christians.

    What if God is using this particular noise to help us sort out the truths from the falsehoods in our lives and around us? Using this noise to move us to prayer? For there, we will listen to no other voice but His. He who wants to help us sort ourselves out and the world for the better.

    The name of this noise is ‘change.’ Many of us struggle to hear and accept it. Change disrupts what we are accustomed to. It upsets what gives us meaning. Even more difficult is how change turns our world upside down. Change makes many unhappy and traumatises some. 

    Yet, to be Christian is to be open to change. Change is God’s constant invitation to become better. 

    I believe change is what Jesus is teaching us about in today’s gospel. The first son had to grapple with it. He was doing his own thing when his father asked him to work in the vineyard. He said "no" first; then he changed his mind and did as his father asked. Jesus affirmed him and his choice rather than his brother who said "yes" but did nothing. 

    We will never know the reason that changed the first son’s mind.  What we know is that this change enabled him to do the right thing for his father – to tend to the vineyard – and for himself – to love his father.

    I’d like to suggest that the change the first son chose invites us to change. To move us from ‘no’ to ‘yes,’  from stubbornness to openness, from doing it my way to following another’s way. In fact this latter way is God’s way of righteousness. It saves us from sin and death for virtue and eternal life. 

    Jesus, in today’s Gospel passage, praised the sinners who embraced this way of God’s righteousness after hearing John the Baptist’s call to change. They acted like the first son.

    In fact, Jesus called many to change their ways, including the chief priests and elders. In their self-righteousness, they remained deaf and refused to change. They acted like the second son. 

    Today, amidst the many noises around us, Jesus is calling you and me to change by choosing God’s way of righteousness. We hear him but are we listening? 

    One possible response is to act like the Israelites in exile. Choose good and turn away from wickedness out of fear of the Lord. ‘Do or die’ is the self-preserving attitude behind this action. 

    There is a better response: to change for salvation. Change – whether it has to do with house, job, schools, marital status, and much more –  is difficult. More difficult is conversion, that change of self — our values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. Even more difficult is conversion to Jesus and His Christ-like way to salvation. 

    Many in the Gospels chose conversion. Think of the tax collectors and prostitutes, of the many Zacchaeuses and Mary Magadelenes. As Jesus’ disciples, we too must choose. If we are sinful, Jesus says, “change and convert.” If we consider ourselves good Christians, I think Jesus would insist, “better change, better convert even more!”.

    Jesus’ call to conversion is for individuals, as it is also for the Church. Our church wherein Jesus gathers everyone into God’s family. Wherein each person has a place at God’s table. Wherein no sinner will be turned away because God’s mercy saves everyone. 

    This is the vision of the Church the coming Synod on Synodality will be discussing about. In Rome, beginning on 4 October, 464 Church leaders and representatives from around the world will discern how the Church can realise this vision by renewing her pastoral and missionary life for today. 

    Some are anxious and concerned this Synod will result in the Church abandoning her dogma and compromising her moral teaching. The Synod will not do this. It will listen to the Holy Spirit to understand how the Church can be more compassionate, welcoming, and inclusive while staying faithful to the Church’s traditions and teachings.

    To really listen is difficult, especially when ideas and positions are different and challenging. This is what the Synod will do in order to hear how God, through the Holy Spirit, is inviting us to become a more inclusive Church. Then, we can be that truly missionary Church that Jesus established - to reach out, evangelise and gather everyone into God’s family as He did when he walked amongst all on earth.

    This is how our Church is listening to Jesus’ call to change and convert, and so renew herself. By being responsive to today’s needs. By enlarging the space of the Church and including  all who have been pushed aside, left behind, ignored, even condemned as no longer God’s own. 

    Jesus’ call to each individual and Church is ultimately a matter of utter honesty with ourselves, God, and others about who God created us to be – God’s people, everyone of us a saint. 

    To live as saints, we must have the mind of Christ as St Paul teaches. That is, making Jesus’ humble, loving and resolute ‘yes’ to God and for God’s pleasure our own. This is how we can strive to change. This is better than our half-hearted and tone deaf responses each time Jesus calls us to conversion.

    Here we are at Eucharist. We are neither deaf nor refusing. Rather, we hear Jesus’ call to come, and we have. More than this, we’ve come to receive Jesus. Our ‘yes’ today should console us even more; it is nothing less than God’s grace working deep in us to draw us to Jesus.

    So let us open our eyes and recognise God at work in our lives. He is indeed bringing about that graced reversal we need, in fact, we want so much in receiving Jesus in Communion. 

    All this possible because our ears are attuned once again to the right noise we must listen to and follow  – Jesus’ voice. Do we hear Him, really hear Jesus?





    Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart





    Posted by
    Labels: Breaking Open God's Word
    0

    Add a comment

"Bukas Palad"
"Bukas Palad"
is Filipino for open palms
Greetings!
Greetings!
Peace and welcome, dear friend.
I hope you will find in these posts something that speaks to you of the God who loves us all and who always holds us in the palm of his hand. Blessings!
The Liturgical Calendar / Year C
The Liturgical Calendar / Year C
Faith & Spirituality
Faith & Spirituality
Tagged as...
Tagged as...
Blog Archive
Blog Archive
Fall in Love, Stay in Love
Fall in Love, Stay in Love

"Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute way final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything."

Pedro Arrupe, sj, Superior General, 1965 - 1983

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

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