1.  
    Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 26 / Sunday
    Readings: Numbers 11.25-29 / Psalm 18.8-10, 12-13, 14(R/v 9a) / James 5.1-6 / Mark 9.38-43, 45, 47-48


    “Anyone who is not against us is for us” (Mark 9.40)

    Here is Jesus teaching his disciples about discipleship. It means doing good works “in his name.” It also means receiving all others who do good “in his name.” His message is for us too. Are we listening?

    “Us” and “them.” This is the context of John’s complaint to Jesus as today’s gospel begins. He criticises someone who drives out demons but is not a follower of Jesus like he and the disciples are. 

    “Us” and “them.” Isn’t this how we often express ourselves and interact with others in word and deed? Consider this: you, me; men, women; local, foreigner; house owner, apartment renter; straight, LGBTQ. Yes, “us” and “them” is a divide as ancient as the Israelites claiming Yahweh to be their God against the Egyptians and as contemporary as the anti-vaxxers confronting the vaccinated.

    We experience this same division in the Church. The good, devout, and pious are welcomed. The bad, lukewarm and struggling are judged and sidelined. The traditionalists battle the progressives over how Christians should live and serve. Some push Latin for Mass, others want their native languages; ironically, everyone wants to worship God.

    Christian or not, everyone repeatedly judges others on our terms, not God’s. I am guilty of this; may be you are too.  

    This is why Moses’s refusal to stop Eldad and Medad from prophesying should challenge us. He recognised God’s spirit anointing them even though they were absent when the elders were blessed. Because God chose them to prophesize, God blessed them all.  

    I wonder if we can be like Moses and accept this truth: that God’s spirit is in everyone, even if they are seemingly not Christian enough, even more when  we disagree with them or they’ve hurt us. 

    We hear this echoed in Jesus’ instruction in the gospel reading. It demands we answer two questions: “Who can do works in Jesus’ name?” and “Who is a follower of Jesus?” How we answer them matters. Either, it frees us to partner Jesus and others to do God’s work or it cripples us from collaborating with them and so hinder God’s work.

    Whether we work in the world or minister in the church, whether we are lay, religious or ordained, whether we are charismatically gifted or spiritually lacking, God calls everyone to Jesus’ mission. We’re to do this together, never alone.

    This is Jesus’ message when he answers John’s complaint. Those who do good work, do so in his name and they should not be prevented from doing so. To Jesus, they are indeed His collaborators.

    Indeed, when we understand this and welcome each other as fellow collaborators in our life, faith and work, God’s goodness in each one empowers us to live and serve together. When we are competitors or enemies, God’s work cannot get done. Just look at our families; can we see how true this is?

    Christian discipleship involves building unity with God and nurturing inclusivity in the community. Dividing and excluding others, even God, from our lives is not the Christian way. There is no room for “us” and “them.” There’s only we.

    Many things fuel this “us/them” divide. Jealousy is one of them. It is an unfortunately natural, jealous reaction in us that resents that someone isn't a follower of Jesus "the right way." And, we miss the grace, the presence of the Lord working in that person, through that person, because it isn't happening the "approved way." Worse still, we ignore this truth: God's grace and God's gifts don't always come in the pathways we always expect.

    Over the past few Sunday Masses, in the second readings, we have reflected with St James on jealousy. Several weeks ago, he challenged us about whether we treat a wealthy visitor better than a poor one. The next week, he reminded us of "good works" and care toward others. Last week, he warned us about the results of "jealousy and selfish ambitions" and the divisive "passions" within us. Today, he teaches that wealth is "corrosive," and it will "eat into your body." And, he powerfully declares that our injustices towards others are crying aloud.

    How to overcome jealousy? Today Jesus teaches two ways. First, be generous towards others and welcome all into the community. Second, do not lead others into sin because it divides the community. Both are about including others and building the community.

    For St Paul,  a Christian community ought to live and serve together, that is, as that one body of many parts proclaiming the reign of God, not dividing it. If we agree with St Paul, then, Jesus’ teaching is not about being better than others for ministry. Rather, it is really about being better together for ministry. 

    To do this, we need to examine how we relate with others, especially those we call “them” -- them who are not like us. But they are indeed like us, children of God, all of us bearing His likeness. We know Jesus’ teaching to welcome and respect them, to treat them with compassion and sensitivity. We read this in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (§2358). Pope Francis’s recent visit to us and the other nations, all on the margins of Christendom, declares clearly that whether we’re Christian or not, we are all God’s own.

    So, why are we so jealous of others and judgmental towards them? Why do we seek to be self-serving, care for ourselves, have more than them? Aren’t we unjust when we discriminate others?

    Only when we dare answer these questions truthfully, can we begin to ask them for forgiveness, and together, begin to heal. By first identifying what instincts, practices and habits you and I must change. Change is difficult because we have to admit that we’re part of the “us-and-them” problem. But when we honestly do, God’s love and mercy begin to fill our hearts with gratitude for them. For they help us truly walk the talk that we are Christians. For they compel us to truly love one another as Jesus has loved us. This gradually heals the wounds and the brokenness that divide. Then, slowly and surely, God can draw us closer together to become more truly His one family.

    Jesus’s single-minded focus to love God and serve neighbour is the reason for his big heartedness for everyone. Today we experience it in his open-minded acceptance of all the good works and good people doing them. This is how He lived. This is how He calls us to live too.  

    Shall we?




    Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart
    Photo by Larm Rmah on Unsplash

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  2. Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 25 / Sunday 
    Readings: Wisdom 2:12, 17-20 / Psalm 54:3-4, 5, 6, 8 (R/v 6b) / James 3:16-4:3 / Mark 9:30-37

    “What were you arguing about on the road?” (Mark 9.33)
     Here is Jesus questioning his disciples about their argument on their way to Capernaum. On the way with Jesus. That’s how they were with Him, whenever and wherever. With him, as He taught and healed, forgave and uplifted many, journeying together to the Cross, and beyond to the resurrection. This is why the followers of Jesus called early Christianity ‘The Way.’
     Christians today continue this way of life and faith. Through our prayer and worship, in our life and work, as we serve and minister to others, Jesus is with us on our way to God.
     Some are however on another way. The way to becoming Somebody. Honestly speaking, all of us aspire to become somebody. We study hard and work even harder to better ourselves. Nothing wrong; it’s human to strive for recognition, status, and wealth. It’s about making our lives matter. It is the antidote to mediocrity. However we need to pay attention because this drive can tempt and seduce us to become egotistical. We sin when we fixate only ourselves and when our choices and actions become self-centered and self-preserving. When this happens, there’s no room for God and others in our lives. 
     Indeed any disproportionate focus on the self puts us in direct opposition to Jesus’ call to focus on God.  No one can move toward God who remains focused on him or her self. In fact, nothing less than ego led the disciples to argue among themselves about who was the greatest. They were self-serving, preoccupied with advancing themselves as Jesus’s disciples. They wanted to be Somebody. Their  behaviour is our behaviour too; we are in fact those disciples. 
     “What were you arguing about on the way?” Jesus asked. They said nothing because they knew the truth of their sin: wanting to be the greatest Somebody. I believe they cringed. I think we would too if Jesus challenges us when we are too self-absorbed.
     ‘Selfish ambition’ is the name St James gives for this all-too-human manner of thinking and acting. We hear it in the second reading. It breeds “disharmony and wicked things of every kind.” The disciples’ obsession to be the greatest points to this disease that afflicts every human heart, yours and mine too.
    We have all encountered egotistical people in our society, our Church and the world. Their words and actions damage many. We know this so well, for sometimes we too are egotistical even as we strive to be Christian. Today St. James challenges us to return to Jesus’ way: that self-sacrificing love Christians must practise towards everyone. If we don’t, dare we ourselves Christian?
     For St James, Jesus’ way is God’s wisdom for everyday life. It enables us to live in peace and kindness, consideration and compassion. If human knowledge puffs us up, love, as God loves, builds each person up. Not for us the disparaging way of competition that brings about disorder, division and derision that pains and injures. Christians need to be peacemakers. St James explains, “Peacemakers, when they work for peace sow the seeds which will bear fruit in holiness” (James 3.16-18).

    Pope Francis describes peacemakers as “those who make themselves servants of all, those who serve everyone, not those who have titles.” Servants are always considered among the least. Yet, for Francis, they are far more important in the Church than “the Pope, the bishops, the monsignors, the cardinals, the pastors of the most beautiful parishes, the presidents of lay associations.”*

    In Jesus’ time, the child was one of these least. For Jesus, the child represents the countless nobodies around us. Nobodies because many bluff ourselves that they are not like us who are abler, better, and holier. 

    Today, Jesus challenges us to reach out and serve these nobodies. When we dare do this, we reject the world’s label that the poor, the oppressed, and the abandoned are losers. Instead, we will boldly declare that God values them as his own and they are worthy. 

    I wonder who else we should reach out to, serve and include. Who because in God’s eyes, these others are not lesser, never not good enough for communion, even salvation, and still beloved even if they struggle with sin? Could amongst them be the migrant workers, the ex-prisoners, the unwed mothers and divorcees, the special needs and handicapped, the LGBTQ community, each one of them like us, God’s child? Let me suggest this challenge is Jesus’ task to every Christian: to claim each nobody as Somebody to God and for others.

    Jesus is adamant that we do this. Hear him say:  “Whoever welcomes a child, welcomes me.”. That is, whoever welcomes the least and little, the last and lost – these nobodies – is the one who serves the most. This is Jesus’s way. This must be our way too.

    We need humility to walk this way. And we should walk this way if we want to seriously live Jesus’ call to serve everyone, choose the last place, not climb the ladder.* When we dare to do this, we will experience God’s mercy. Then, like the psalmist, we’ll know the Lord sustains, upholds and saves not just us but everyone. It is indeed good to sing the refrain, “The Lord upholds my life.”

    We especially need humility and gratitude now as we prepare to receive Jesus in the Eucharist. At Communion shortly, the little piece of consecrated host we receive is not nothing. It is Jesus. We believe He is the One we desire above all things. And as we receive Jesus into our very selves, he will transform us all into the Body of Christ. 

    If we believe this is truly who we are to Jesus - loved as his own and worthy to be his - then is there a need for us to argue anymore about who’s the greatest? For with Jesus, don’t we already know the way to God?



    * Pope Francis, “Greatness in the Church comes from service.” Homily, Mass at Casa Marta, Feb. 25, 2020
     Preached at Church of the Sacred Heart
    Photo: Azmanl | E+ @ CNBC.com


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  3. Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 24 / Sunday 
    Readings: Isaiah 50.5-9a / Psalm 114.1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9 (R/v 9) / James 2.14-18 / Mark 8.27-35


    “The Lord has opened my ear.”

    This is the opening line in the first reading. We just heard it. After today, I wonder if we'll really proclaim its goodness each time Jesus challenges us to live better Christian lives. Today’s readings demand we do.


    In the gospel reading, we follow Peter as he recognises Jesus as the Christ, then to a moment of struggle, questioning and doubting and finally Jesus affirming the need for surrender. Today we’re not observing this. We are in fact with Peter when Jesus asks the question: “Who do you say that I am?” He is questioning us too. I wonder what our answer will be.


    Knowing who we think Jesus is can help us answer that question. In turn, this helps us value our lives and what they are meant for. When we know our answer, we’ll live differently. We will understand this when we reflect on Jesus explaining to Peter the journey ahead to the Cross that they will make: there will be moments of suffering and hardships. We have the same challenges as we journey to God. Like family and friends who may discourage us from living the Christian life. Also, the world’s values that inflate our ego and make us hungry for more money, more things, more friends, more status. In contrast, Jesus calls us to live simply, depend on God, and live with and for others. Will we balk or will we surrender to Jesus’ call?


    Only you and I will know our individual answers. But others will glimpse it by the way we live our Christian faith. They will see it in how free, ready and generous we are to embrace this demand Jesus makes: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.”  


    We’ve all heard this demand. We know it. Like the apostles, we may find ourselves equally dumbfounded, anxious and uncertain. “What does Jesus really mean? Is he expecting us to follow him, take up our cross and die on it?”


    “Of course not.” “Not this painful way of following him.” “Not this terrible way to die.” The apostles probably uttered these responses. We probably do too each time we recognise the demands of Jesus’ call to follow him and take up the cross. Honestly, it’s really hard to do it.


    But what if this is God’s message when we open our ears and pray, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening”? In our first reading, God opened Isaiah’s ear and he heard God say that He alone is Isaiah’s help. 


    Here we are; we’ve also opened our ears to hear the Good News today. It isn’t the usual message of Jesus doing good that warms our hearts, lifts our spirits and gives us hope. Rather, Jesus declares a challenge to save us and through us, others. It's demanding.


    But pay attention. The sheer strength of Jesus’ words, the insistent demand of his call, the urgent plea he announces should tell us how important this is to Jesus. He wants us to do as He did to love God and neighbour. If we are serious about being Jesus' disciples, we must ready ourselves to take up our cross. To do this with all our life, not our words. This is the most Christian way we can live. 


    Let's be clear: we must reorder the priorities and principles in our lives to do this. No longer ourselves and our needs, first. Rather, God and neighbour, first. This is the Christian way of life. Jesus teaches this. It is the way to salvation. 


    Jesus demonstrates the value of doing this. By His death and resurrection, He transforms the cross. With Him, it is no longer an instrument of death; it is the symbol of God’s saving glory. The cross is no more where one loses one’s life. Instead, it is by which one gains everything life-giving.


    Only faith in God enables us to understand and accomplish this. Jesus knew this; it is the will of God for Him. God’s will for you and me is to live and love sacrificially. We do this well when our faith comes alive in good works of selfless love, mercy and charity for one another, as St James teaches in the second reading. Can we live like this?


    We can. By learning to make simple sacrifices for others before ourselves everyday. Let’s begin with this. We must. This is how we will prepare ourselves to make that most important sacrifice God is asking of us. It is this: the self-offering of all that we are and have, and all that we hold dear, even our losses. This reminds me of the following prayer by St Ignatius called The Suscipe:

    Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,

    my memory, my understanding,

    and my entire will,


    All I have and call my own.

    You have given all to me.


    To you, Lord, I return it.

    Everything is yours; do with it what you will.


    Give me only your love and your grace,

    that is enough for me.

    This is most probably the hardest prayer you and I will ever make from the heart. Yet, Jesus believes we can. He trusts in our potential to make it. With love for God in us, and with God’s love and grace to guide us for others, we can. This is good news. So, let’s open our ears, and hear it. Then, let us do as God calls us to: give ourselves to Him and to everyone.  


    Shall we?




    Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart

    Photo by Hayes Potter on Unsplash





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  4.  

    Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 23 / Sunday 

    Readings: Isaiah 35.4-7a / Psalm 145. 6c-7, 8-9a, 9bc-10 (R/v 1b) / James 2.1-5 / Mark 7.31-31




    “Then looking up to heaven Jesus sighed and he said to him, “Ephphatha!” — “Be opened!”  (Mark 7.34)


    Today we witness Jesus miraculously healing the deaf-mute man. What are his ears being opened to really hear? God’s salvation. What is his tongue being loosened for? To announce God’s salvation.


    “Be opened!” Jesus commands us too. If we do, what about God’s salvation we will hear? What must we proclaim? Our readings offer three points.


    First, God’s salvation surprises; it is better than anyone can ever imagine. 


    The Israelites experienced this. Having wronged God, they feared His coming to save them. They expected God’s vengeance and retribution. Instead, God came and healed, as the Prophet Isaiah proclaims: blind eyes were opened; deaf ears, heard; lameness, healed for dancing, and dumbness, no more but joyful singing. God did not punish; God blessed.


    All who encountered Jesus experienced the same. Jesus began his public ministry by quoting this same text from Isaiah. Its message is prophetic: God is with us and for us. Throughout his life, Jesus fulfilled it. He showed God putting right everything that is amiss in our lives and the world. 


    When have you experienced this goodness of God in your lives?


    Second, God’s salvation is particular and personal. 


    When Isaiah speaks of God healing the blind, deaf, dumb, and lame, he is explaining the conditions God wants to save them from. By taking the deaf-mute man aside from the crowd and healing him alone, Jesus reveals that God does this personally – to each of us, for each of us. 


    For Jesus, the deaf-mute man is a unique and individual person. Doesn’t God treat us similarly? By bothering to know our individual stories and dreams. By comforting us in our own pains and troubles. By delighting in our particular joys and hopes. By lamenting our specific sinfulness with us and lifting us up in our individual saintliness. God does because He wonderfully made each of us for Himself and for all (Psalm 139). 


    “You are mine” is how God loves and saves us each by name. Notice how Jesus’s ministry is repeatedly intimate, personal and particular to each person he attends to. He heals the blind Bartimaeus. He forgives the adulterous women. He teaches Martha to be like Mary. He affirms the sinful woman who washes his feet with her tears. He lets John rest on his head on his chest. 


    For Pope Francis, this style of God is distinguished in three ways.* By closeness, that is, He comes up close to each person to really know him. By tenderness, to really listen with his heart to the innermost thoughts and feelings, concerns and hopes, joys and pains of every one. By compassion, to attend to each person in the particular way she needs care and salvation.


    When has Jesus done the same to you and made God’s love personal for you?


    Third, God’s salvation is for everyone, regardless of disabilities. 


    Our readings focus on physical disabilities people have. You and me, and everyone, have disabilities too – our weaknesses, faults, and bad habits. Sometimes, they lead us to sin.


    One way to understand anyone with a disability is to ask him how he wishes to describe himself. If we listen attentively, we will know their simple, common hope: to be seen and heard, to be respected, valued and treated with dignity, and to be welcomed and included.


    The Apostle James echoes this hope when he challenges the Christian community to treat the poor and the rich alike, and not judge each differently. Everyone deserves to be treated equally because God treats all the same, even as He creates each uniquely, loves each one individually, and saves each person as is.


    This is the consistent message Isaiah, James and Mark make in today’s readings. Are we practising this message in our relationships?


    God’s salvation surprises. God’s salvation is particular and personal, as it is for all. We know this but Jesus still commands us, “Be opened.” He does this to save us. He knows we are often spiritually deaf and dumb, even blind, to those suffering and needing help. More so, to those we shun and are hard-hearted towards. In these moments, we do not hear and see them, nor do we feel or care for them. We also side-line God. We do all this because we’re only fixated on ourselves. When we live like this, our  life is lonely, miserable, and empty. 


    Jesus’s coming opens and frees everyone’s hearts. He makes God’s salvation real and alive, here and now. He reminds us we are capable of fully living with God and others when we allow Him to crack open our hearts to love. 


    For Pope Francis, Jesus comes to help us hear God’s voice, speaking especially for our good and the good of all His people. From God, we can “learn to speak the language of love, transforming it into gestures of generosity and self-giving,” Francis insists.** Many will then experience God’s salvation in the ways they understand welcome and care, forgiveness and restoration, love and life.


    Today, Jesus teaches us that we need 'to be opened' before we can hear, see and speak more truthfully about God’s salvation. Jesus always says “Ephphatha!” to the closed parts of our lives, so that he might dwell in us. “Ephphatha!” is Jesus’ commandment to the deaf man. And to you and me, “Ephphatha!” is simply His longing for every one of us to know Him and His saving love.


    “Ephphatha!” Jesus says to us today. Do we hear Him?






    * Letter to Fr James Martin, SJ, 30 September 2019

    ** Angelus, “Be opened” Sept 9, 2018



    Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart
    Photo by Max van den Oetelaar on Unsplash


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  5.  
    Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 22 / Saturday

    Readings: 1 Corinthians 4.6b-15 / Psalm 145. 17-18, 19-20, 21(R/v 18) / Luke 6.1-5


    If you have tried juggling before, you’d know how difficult it can be. Just keeping the balls in the air and not letting any drop takes a lot of coordination and attention, not to mention skills and courage.  It’s a real challenge.


    Life is equally challenging; it is indeed a juggling act with many balls in the air. Be it family and friends, work and studies, church and civic commitments, volunteer work, ‘me’ time, etcetera, etcetera. The number of balls we have to keep in motion at one time can be overwhelming.  It’s no wonder we easily find ourselves exhausted, breathless and essentially ‘out of sorts.’


    You and I know what that feels like—tired, stressed, burned out and at odds with our friends and family. In this whirlwind of commitments and obligations, it’s not uncommon to sometimes drop the most important balls; that of our relationships with God, with others and with ourselves. However, when we are tuned into what really matters, we’re better at juggling.


    Jesus was tuned into those things in today’s gospel reading as he and his disciples went through a grain field on the Sabbath. They were hungry and his disciples picked up kernels of grain to eat them. The Pharisees were not pleased as they did this on the Sabbath, a day in which no work was to be done.  They were referring back to the law that God established at the onset of creation. The Jews were to obey this law; they were to keep the Sabbath holy and for rest.


    The Pharisees, however, took the law and began to embellish upon it, creating all sorts of rules and restrictions to ‘keep it holy.’ They were trying to trip Jesus on these rules. Jesus essentially pointed back to King David and his troops, who were starving, entered the temple and ate the bread kept only for the priests. He did this to point out that the purpose of keeping the Sabbath is not a legalistic obligation to a rule. Rather, it is a principle that was created for our own good.

      

    So what's the purpose of the Sabbath? In the creation story, God created the Sabbath to step back and take satisfaction in what He had created. We too need a Sabbath to create rest and balance, a time to spend in worship of God and a preparation for the challenges of life ahead.  We need to learn from God’s action of stepping back on the Sabbath to use our Sabbath well.


    Here we are; it’s the weekend. You and I are in Sabbath time now. How will we use our Sabbath? To rest and relax, refresh and renew ourselves for life and faith? To reconnect with those who mean the most to us – family, friends and God - and not lose sight of them?  Or, to waste the Sabbath by wasting ourselves away? 


    I’d like to suggest we must welcome the Sabbath and give thanks for it. Not only is it God’s gift to reset and renew. It also gives us time to stop juggling for a bit, step back and let God do the juggling for us. Maybe then, we will learn from Him how to better juggle the balls. After all, He might be tossing them higher, giving more time in between to juggle well. So, let’s really learn how to use the Sabbath wisely for life, faith and the relationships that matter.  Shall we?




    Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart
    Photo: ahpworkforce.com





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  6.  
    Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 22 / Sunday
    Readings: Deuteronomy 4.1-2, 6b-8 / Psalm 15. 2-3ab, 4cd-4, 5 (R/v 1a) / James 1.17-18, 21b-22, 27 / Mark 7.1-8, 14-15, 21-23


    “Your words are spirit, O Lord, and they are life: you have the message of eternal life.”

    This is today’s gospel acclamation. It points us to Jesus. We believe He alone gives us eternal life. We are happy to hear this, like we are when we hear Jesus’ message in the gospels of love and care, forgiveness and healing, salvation and life everlasting.

    We struggle however when we hear Jesus’ commandments about how God wants us to live. Listen again: follow me and obey; choose life, not sin; forgive your enemy; put others before yourself; love sacrificially. It’s difficult to hear them; it’s even harder to practise them as our Christian way of life. It is indeed challenging, even demanding, to be a Christian.

    This is why I wonder how you feel hearing today’s readings because they focus on God’s law in three ways. Why it is important. How it looks when someone practices it. What is at its core. 

    Our first reading helps us understand the importance of God’s commands. Following them leads to life - the fullness of life. This means we cannot just receive them; we must make them our own. When we observe God’s commands, we also grow wiser. Others, seeing this wisdom, appreciate it as a sign that God is close to the people. Indeed what we hear is how God’s law is really a sign of his care for our wellbeing. Ultimately, God’s law leads us to eternal life, and Jesus shows us the way to live God’s commands.

    This is why any of us strive to act justly, love mercifully and walk humbly with God and each other (Micah 6.8). Today’s psalm describes some ways we try to do this. We "live blamelessly, act uprightly, speak the truth, keep our tongue under control, do no wrong or discredit our neighbour, do not cheat each other” (Psalm 15.2-5)
     
    I believe we all work hard to get this right, but we struggle to do this well. From time to time, we fail when we are unjust, act without mercy, and live proudly apart from God and away from others. When we do, our wrong words and hurtful actions prick our conscience. Before others, this ‘ouch’ bites. Before God, this guilt weighs us down.

    But God is patient and good; through the readings, He reminds us that His Law leads us to the good life, His life. When we obey His law and live it fully, others experience its goodness too. 
     
    We have all already experienced this goodness: in and through the rules and structure that helped us when we were younger to grow up, live with one another and care for many. These taught us much. How to ask for help and offer gratitude. How to treat each other with respect and care. They also encouraged us to participate in our communities and build them. They even disciplined us to care for ourselves. And as ordinary as our childhood prayers were, we learned how to talk to God. 
     
    If these rules were good for us as children, what more, God’s commands for us as adults. Even a structure like the rhythm of daily prayer or weekly ministry enables us to live our Christian faith better. 
     
    God’s law to Moses is indeed the sign of his care for us. When we learn from his care the way to care for others, for ourselves, and for God, we will better appreciate Jesus’ commandments. They enable us to live and love in God’s ways. To pray and repent, to forgive and unite, to be merciful and to evangelise. Then, we can live the fruitfulness of Christian life and grow in Christian wisdom. 

    For St James the Apostle, Christians must live as doers of the word, not hearers only. This is his message in the second reading. We can only do this when we speak and act from that center deep within us - there, where God is dwelling in our hearts. Only from this place can we honestly follow God’s law, act for justice, care for the vulnerable and suffering, and do no harm towards each other. The more we do, the more we will understand that the fruits of God’s law are far more important, far more enduring, than the rules themselves.
     
    The Pharisees knew the Law. They adhered to it in their daily life to be perfect. Hence, they rigidly followed the Law. To Jesus, they honoured God with their lips but not with their hearts. “Hypocrites,” he called them.  Pope Francis warns us about those who are Pharisee-like:
    Be careful around Christians — be they laity, priests, bishops — who present themselves as so ‘perfect,’ rigid. Be careful. There’s no Spirit of God there. They lack the spirit of liberty. 
    And let us be careful with ourselves, because this should lead us to consider our own life. Do I seek to look only at appearance, and not change my heart? Do I not open my heart to prayer, to the liberty of prayer, the liberty of almsgiving, the liberty of works of mercy? * 
    We should heed Pope Francis’ warning for we ourselves can become rigid. Rigid in how we understand and live our Christian faith, especially towards those we disagree with or consider never good enough for Jesus to save. Simply put, today’s readings teach us that there is no point observing God’s commandments unless we do so in the Spirit of Jesus, that is, to live for others and for the love of God. When we do, we cooperate with Jesus for our salvation. This begins when we are prepared to walk the talk that we are Christians.

    Can we do this? We can because of what we will do in a few minutes. We will come up to receive Jesus in the Eucharist. We will come for our spiritual nourishment and healing. And, God Himself will also come to us in Jesus. He will because He simply wants to be one with us, to invite us to walk in His ways and to save us. 

    So, let us come with humility and earnestness. Then, before Jesus in the sacred host we will hold in our palms, let us sincerely ask Him to transform us from inside for then we can truly be his people, live out God’s commandments and enjoy life to the full, now and for eternity.  

    Shall we?





    * Pope Francis, Homily at Casa Marta Oct. 26, 2018


    Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart
    Photo by adrian danker, ‘kin,’ bali, march, 2017

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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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