1. Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 3 / Sunday
    Readings: Jonah 3:1-5, 10 / Responsorial Psalm  25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9 (R/v 4a) / 1 Corinthians 7:29-31 / Mark 1:14-20



    “Lord, make me know your ways” (Psalm 25.4a)

    We heard these words in our psalm. The psalmist sang them once long ago; today we sing them too. It is good and right that we do; for like the psalmist, we desire to live in God’s ways. Truly, “Lord, teach me your paths. Make me walk in your truth, and teach me.” 

    Isn’t this why we profess to follow Jesus who shows us the way to the Father? Here we are then at Mass to hear the Word of God proclaimed in the readings and to receive Jesus, himself the Word of God, in Holy Communion. We want to hear and receive Jesus to strengthen our resolve to be Christian. More, we want Jesus to help us preserve as good Christians in today’s world.

    Honestly, we know something more than Sunday obligation draws us to Mass. We need this something more. The early Christians at Corinth sought it too. Like them, we know our earthly life is fleeing. For St Paul: “the world as we know it is passing away.” He exhorts us to detach ourselves from every cherished good: family, pleasures, business, worldly purpose. Though every good gift is from God, none of them is God’s very self. What we want is God himself. In fact, we need God alone.

    “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you,” St Augustine wrote. His longing for God is our longing too. This is truly the deepest desire all humans have: for God only.

    Hence we search for God all the time. We seek God out every chance we get, in the best or worst of times. We yearn for God at every stage of our life. With great love, and much hope, we look to see God in one another. 

    As Christians we believe we will find God first and foremost in Jesus. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” Jesus declares to Philip. We know this. Not because we have heard it; rather because we have experienced this truth in our own relationship with Jesus. 

    Isn’t this why we turn to Jesus so often and fervently, even when we have sinned like the prodigal son? For isn’t it our experience that every time we run home to Him from our wasteful, wanton wanderings in sinfulness, He simply embraces us back tenderly, saying ever so gently, ‘You are mine”?  Truly, nothing can separate us from the Love of God, Jesus himself.

    Today’s gospel reading announces this Good News: Jesus comes to us even before we come to Him. This is how Jesus comes to Simon Peter and Andrew, James and John and calls them to follow him. They are going about their ordinary life, doing their everyday business as fishermen. They are not even looking for Him. Yet Jesus comes to them; they are the disciples he wants.  His call transforms them - from fishermen to fishers of men for God.
     
    As Jesus called his first disciples, He is calling each of us. To know him more intimately, to love him more dearly, and to follow him more closely. And don’t  we want Jesus to call us?

    However much we want to be with Jesus and follow Him, we must first choose to collaborate with Jesus. This happens when we readily let him transform us. “Repent and believe the Good News,” Jesus declares as he begins his public ministry. This is his mission. In fact, this has always been God’s saving work. This is why God sent Jonah to the people of Nineveh; He demanded they make a radical change in their manner of life. Today Jesus is making the same demand of us. Are we hearing Him? How willingly are we to change? 

    Many of us sincerely want to be with Jesus, follow Him and serve others with Him. Hence our daily efforts to try to set our minds and hearts on the things that are above where Jesus is in heaven. On earth, we do this by turning to the Word of God as we pray and meditate on Scripture, study and proclaim the Good News it is. 

    Indeed, the Word of God ought to be central to our life, faith and mission as Christians. Today on Sunday of the Word of God, we are reminded about the importance of the Word of God  in our lives. For Pope Francis, celebrating, studying and sharing the Word of God will help us “to experience anew how the risen Lord opens up for us the treasury of His Word and enable us to proclaim its unfathomable riches before the world.”*

    Jesus, God’s Word in human form, labours in every Christian’s life to bring this about. This is how we can     live the richness of Christian life in various ways. By practising dying to ourselves to love God more fully and serve all more generously. By considering everything to be nothing at all compared with knowing Christ Jesus, our Lord. Because of Him, to set everything else aside, because in comparison, everything else is a pile of rubbish. To want more and more to know only Christ Jesus and the power of his resurrection. By sharing in his sufferings  even now and so become like him in his death. And because it matters, to believe that because Jesus died and rose we can attain the resurrection life too. 

    Indeed the Word of God keeps us pressing on to make it our own because Jesus has made each of us his own. Our drawing closer to him in order to follow him is only possible because he draws us to himself. What we need is to be constantly available to this 'drawing.' 

    Indeed, this is why the Word of God matters. It draws us to God Himself through His word, Jesus. Jesus coming to us and calling us, his mission for us and our discipleship with him, are not time-bound. It is not tied to a past event, a present encounter, or a future possibility. Rather, now is when the Word of God must matter in our lives. This is the time of fulfilment. For we are now being called to partner Jesus to complete his mission. And yes, now is also the right time or us to turn to Jesus and pray, “Lord, make me know your ways.”  

    Shall we?




    * Pope Francis, 

    Aperuit Illis

    , 30 September, 2019

    Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart
    Photo: from the Internet




    Posted by
    Labels: Breaking Open God's Word
    0

    Add a comment

  2.  
    This homily was first preached in 2015

    Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 2 / Sunday
    Readings: 1 Samuel 3.3b-10, 19 / Responsorial Psalm 40.2-4, 7-8, 8-9, 10 (R/v 8a and 9a) / I Corinthians 6.13c-15a, 17-20 / John 2.35-42


    Do you remember that moment when a classmate or office worker became your friend? Or when it dawned on you that you found your life’s partner?
     
    Perhaps, it was the moment you saw her care for your parents. Or, it was when you felt safe in his presence on the rollercoaster. Or, it was when the both of you saw yourselves sitting on a swing and growing old together.
     
    These are defining moments between friends. They tell us when our interactions become friendships, hopefully for life. More importantly, they teach us that true friends don’t ask us to be anyone else but ourselves. They accept and love us as we are. Such friendships allow us to live freely without pretence or the anxiety of never being good enough. Value these moments, we must. 
     
    And celebrate them, we should. As people of faith, friends manifest God’s goodness. Through them, our friends show us how God enlivens and enriches our lives and faith, not because we deserve friendships but because, through them, God simply wants to be in friendship with us. The right and just response is joyful gratitude; this is the most human act we can make. 
     
    Even if friendships challenge us, it is because God labours in and through them for us to live the Christian life better.  These can sometimes be difficult but this is how God purifies, refines and deepens our friendship with God and one another.
     
    We have all had similar experiences with Jesus in whom we meet God. Human as we are, we tend to forget these moments of encountering Jesus. Our daily struggles and distractions in school, at work and in our family lives and friendships often divert our gaze from Jesus. 
     
    But aren’t these moments life changing? Life changing as Jesus transforms the ordinariness of our interactions with God into the extraordinariness of God’s friendship with us. You might have had such a moment in prayer, worship or when you served the poor. It might have happened at a difficult time of pain and suffering or in a time of grace and joy. It might even have been in the ordinariness of everyday sitting among friends at the hawkers’ centre or lullabying a new-born to sleep.
     
    Why should we pay attention to these moments with Jesus? What good is it to remember them when the world demands we focus on the immediate and pleasurable?
     
    In film The Sound of Music, Maria teaches the children to sing by starting at the very beginning, a very good place to start, with the Do-Re-Mis. If we seriously want to live our Christian lives better, Maria’s advice is worth heeding. It should remind us that the quality of our Christian life depends on how well we anchor it in that definitive moment Jesus began his friendship with us.
     
    Our gospel story on these first of many Sundays this year is about the beginning of Jesus’ friendship Andrew and the other disciple. It begins with questions to get to know one another and it ends with an invitation to come home.  
    'Where do you live?' they asked. Jesus replied, 'Come and see'; so that they went and saw where he lived, and stayed with him that day.
    Jesus invited both disciples to that most intimate of places we call home. Here, they stayed with him. Here, they came to know who he is. Here is where they remained with him. 
     
    To live with someone is to share one’s life. It is also to interact with another’s inner thoughts and feelings. And to allow someone to enter our lives is to permit her to share herself, as we have shared ourselves. This mutual sharing with one another of all that is good and all not so good is the very foundation for something beautiful and fruitful to come into being. What this is is genuine friendship. And we experience it most fully in the everydayness of life.
     
    John the Evangelist must have been so deeply impressed with this encounter the disciples had with Jesus and their resultant friendship that it imprinted itself on his memory. Almost 80 years after this encounter, when John wrote his Gospel, he found it important enough to remember this tenth hour, which is 4 o’clock in the afternoon. It is remarkably noteworthy that John records this hour because much of the gospels do not tell us the dates and times when Jesus encountered people.
     
    John’s description of this 4 o’clock encounter the disciples had with Jesus should challenge us: “Can you and I remember that significant moment when we encountered Jesus? When was it?”
     
    Perhaps, as we remember this moment we will see again how Jesus invited us into genuine friendship, even before we reached out to Him. More importantly, our remembering will help us see more clearly how this definitive moment, this 4 o’clock hour, offers us the reason to live our Christian life better this year. This is the moment when Jesus assured us that His friendship is ours for all times and in every situation.
     
    This morning the Church, through the readings, invites us to remember that Jesus became our friend to save us. He does this by teaching us to listen to God’s instruction on how to live the good Christian life. Samuel lived such a life -- one that God planned for him. He learned to do this by listening to God’s voice. This is why Eli asked Samuel to say, “Speak, God, your servant is listening.” We should make this humble disposition our daily practice. Then, we can delight God with words and deeds that say, “Here am I, Lord, I come to do your will.”

    If we seriously want to live our Christian faith well in the coming days and months, we must recall the definitive moment when you and I met Jesus, like the two disciples did in the gospel. Yes, it matters because that was when our world turned upside down for God. And this happened when God choose to befriend us in Jesus. Since then, has anything ever been the same again for you and me? 
     
    My friends, when was your 4 o’clock hour with Jesus?




    Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart
    Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash


    Posted by
    Labels: Breaking Open God's Word
    0

    Add a comment


  3. Devotion to the Sacred Heart – Friday, 12 January
    Reflection based on Matthew 15.21-28 


    “Will I be healed?” I wonder if this is what each of us is thinking about as we reflect on the gospel reading. Perhaps we are because the petition of the Canaanite woman to Jesus is in fact our own. After all, aren’t we quietly asking ourselves, “Will Jesus answer the petitions I have brought to Him tonight?”

    This question has to do with expectations. Our expectations of God, and what we want God to give us. Oftentimes at devotions, like ours to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we expect God to sprinkle some goodness as His answer to the concerns we bring to Him. 

    Our faith assures us God does perform miracles like Jesus did for the Canaanite woman. Her daughter was healed. He told this woman to go home. Her daughter had been healed. 

    We’ve all experienced this goodness of God. Hasn’t He repeatedly answered our prayers and petitions? Yet don’t we sometimes fail to see this truth, that God is good all the time? Usually, this happens when God’s response to our particular needs is not the expected outcome we want.

    For some of us tonight’s gospel reading is challenging to hear, even more, to enact in our own relationship with Jesus.  We feel that we’re not good or faithful enough to ask Jesus for help. We worry our petitions won’t be answered because we’ve turned our backs on someone who needed help. We sit in tentative hope that this time, yes, this time round, Jesus will answer our prayers even if He didn’t answer them before. Yet, here we are before Jesus; like the Canaanite women we want to say, “Lord, help me.” Her words mean this: “I have faith and I am putting my faith into action. My thoughts in my head and the presence of my heart is connected to you, Jesus.”

    Maybe this helps us understand the grace working in and through her perseverance as Jesus’ own response shifted from rebuffing her to listening to her to granting her petition. All He was doing was to steadily bring her into closer and deeper relationship with Him. This is how He led her to contentment and peace even in the face of her daughter’s possession and illness, of her trial and tribulation. This is Jesus’ labour of love to save.

    Tonight we hear about Jesus’ encounter with this woman. Though an outsider to Jesus’ community, she defied all boundaries and approached Him. She did this with holy boldness because she believed He could help her. Love compelled her to do this. She loved her daughter so much that her faith took her to places that she would not have normally gone, asked for help, and was responded to in the manner that strengthened her faith.

    I wonder if Jesus is doing the same for you and me too. That he draws you and me here, Friday evening after Friday evening, throughout the year to strengthen our faith. More so, for us to learn and know that the only place to find life and salvation is in His Sacred Heart. It is not just meek and humble; it overflows with boundless love that gathers us to Him and with unreserved mercy that meets everyone's needs, most of all to be saved.

    Jesus said, “Ephphatha.” Be opened. Yes, be opened tonight and receive the healing power of God you seek. He is merciful and helps us even when we are not aware. But first, ask. Yes, ask the Lord for this; it is how our faith continues and becomes strong, and we become whole. 

    Let us then pray, reverence and adore Jesus tonight. After this, go home for your faith has deepened a little more; it is stronger tonight than it was last Friday. Yes, go home and do not doubt. Go home and do not worry. Be at peace. Be at peace and know that is well. Truly, be at peace and know that all will be well. Amen.




    Adapted in parts from a sermon by Canon Carolynne Williams


    Shared at the Church of the Sacred Heart
    Photo by Clint McKoy on Unsplash


    Posted by
    Labels: Reflection @ Sacred Heart
    0

    Add a comment

  4.  
    Year B / Christmastide / Solemnity of the Epiphany
    Readings: Isaiah 60.1-6 / Responsorial Psalm 71.2, 7-8, 20-11, 12-13 (R/v cf 11) / Ephesians 3.2-3a, 5-6 / Matthew 2.1-12


    “They returned to their own country by a different way.”

    This is how the gospel story of the Wise Men ends. It reminds us that while all our journeys to Jesus may be about us and our efforts to come to Him, we go forth however after meeting Him in a different way – in Jesus’ way. He desires this for us but we must want it.

    The Solemnity of the Epiphany celebrates God’s revelation in Jesus to the world. The Wise Men were pagans, non-Jews, to whom God revealed the same love and mercy to save, as he did to the Jews that first Christmas. Today St Paul’s reminds us this is the same inheritance, the same promise Jesus makes to everyone. 

    For Christians, this is the Good News. So good that the angels on high sang ‘Gloria’ and ‘Peace to people of goodwill’ that first Christmas night. The Church calls us to believe that in Jesus God came to save all peoples. This is indeed radical Good News: it challenges us to sing like the angels that God’s saving love in Jesus is also for our Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist neighbours, even the atheists, as it is for us. Will we sing too?

    The Epiphany story is also about a gift God wishes everyone to have. Regardless of race, language or religion, it will help all of us make our way home to God. To God by Jesus’ way, different from our own ways and the world’s way. 

    We can glimpse this gift in the ending of the Wise Men’s journey. Nothing is said about what happened to them after their encounter with Jesus. Only this: “that they returned home by a different route.” They seem to have slipped away quietly and disappeared into the background of the Christmas story. Yet, their action enriches the Good News Christmas is: God has come to hold us safe in His Hands. This is God’s assurance for their return home. 

    God gave the Wise Men this gift in and through their journey to Jesus; it transformed them. We see this in what they really offered. Not expensive gifts to Jesus. Rather, and more truly, their very selves into the safe hands of God. In fact they had been doing this from that first moment  when they chose to follow the star that led them throughout their journey to Jesus.

    Their self-offering allowed God to work in the depths of their hearts. He transformed them from inside out. This is why they could entrust themselves to God. Their return home in a different way expresses the depth of their trust. No more for them, their own cleverness to study the heavens to find their own way about. 

    The Wise Men’s journey to Jesus is also our journey. We make it everyday, most especially to the Eucharist, like we do now. Along the way, we struggle, get lost, and encounter our own Herods as we diligently search for Jesus. 

    And like the Wise Men, we need to keep our eye on God’s star. For us, it is this: the truth that we are his beloved, no matter how saintly or sinful we are. This truth helps us stay the course in all our journeys. It can because it points us in one direction, towards one destination: we’re all homeward bound to God.

    We need to hear this as we begin this new year. It assures us that even if we lose sight of the truth and the way ahead seems unclear, and even when evil threatens to thwart our journey, we can trust that God. He will never leave us in the darkness. His truth will shine in us and lead us homeward to Him.

    We hear Isaiah proclaim this hope-filled truth again today: that, though darkness may cover the earth, God’s light will come to gather, bless and lead God’s people onward. 

    For Pope Francis, Jesus who reveals God’s love for all peoples in the Epiphany is also the same Jesus for everyone who feels far away from God and from the Church. He says, “The Lord is seeking you. The Lord is waiting for you…he loves and seeks you, you who at this moment do not believe or are far away…this is the love of God” (Angelus, 6 January 2014).

    I believe the Wise Men experienced this love of God. First, in the light of the star that beckoned and guided them to Bethlehem, and then in Jesus who they met God face to face, loving them. Even more, the love of God that holds them safe in his hands, like He did bringing them to Jesus and He will by sending them home in a different way.

    We too have experienced this closeness of God. When we have been held and cuddled as infants, embraced by the love of family, hugged into comfort by friends in our mistakes, cradled in our sickness or dying. And yes, even when we have done the same for loved ones, the poor and all society sidelines. Indeed, how else have we felt securely loved than when we are being held in another’s safe arms and hands? Hasn’t Jesus held us in prayer, worship and confession with God’s loving, merciful hands, whenever we have sinned and failed?

    The story of the Wise Men reminds us that Jesus has come for all peoples, whatever their situation, wherever they are. We are these people gathered here. In a few moments we will meet Jesus personally in Communion, just as the Wise Men encountered Him in the manger. They recognised him as God. Then, they returned home in His different way. I wonder how ready you and I are to encounter God in Communion and let Him do the same: hold us safe in His hands and lead us forth -- out from this Mass, back home and to the world -- by a different way.

    Maybe if we dare let God do this, we will value how Jesus’ birth changes everything. Indeed, because of Christmas, we cannot live the same way we have again this year. It must be different, in His way -- to love one another as He has loved us.

    Shall we?





    Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart
    Photo by Arleen wiese on Unsplash

    Posted by
    Labels: Breaking Open God's Word Christmas
    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