bukas palad: February 2025

Year C / Ordinary Time / Week 6 / Sunday

Readings: Jeremiah 17:5-8 / Psalm 1:1-2, 3, 4 and 6 / 1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20 / Luke 6:17, 20-26

Sisters and brothers, what does it take for someone to get through challenging, even trying, times and thrive?

In 2018, John Seow, a student of mine at St Joseph’s Institution, shared with parents how they could support their sons to do well for the O Level examinations. He spoke about exam strategies and teacher support, parents’ love and self-care. Then, surprisingly, he spoke about turning to God during the exams. He ended saying, “Pray, hope, and don't worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful and will hear your prayer.”

For many present, this was key message of John’s sharing: we need to anchor ourselves, even better stay rooted, in God, no matter what.

The first reading invites us to also root ourselves in God. If you have walked along a river or stream you might have noticed how big, how leafy, how green the trees on its banks are. The prophet Jeremiah uses this image to describe the person who trusts in God: “Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose hope in the Lord. He is like a tree planted beside the waters that stretch out its roots to the stream” (Jeremiah 17.5-8).

Water is the secret to the tree’s growth, stability, and strength. Water makes it flourish. The trees thirst for it.

We thirst for water too. Even more, we thirst for God. Isn’t this why we come Sunday after Sunday to be nourished by God in Word and Eucharist? We turn to God to forgive our sins. We pray for God’s help in difficult times. Yes, we need God.

Jeremiah’s message insists that like the tree rooted in water, we too must always stay rooted in God if we want our life to be fruitful, our faith to flourish and our wellbeing safeguarded. Listen again to Jeremiah’s wisdom about the metaphor of the tree by running water for our Christian lives: “not fear when the heat come; its leaves are always green; in the year of drought he shows no distress, but still bears fruit.”

I believe we all want to live like this. But are we immersing our lives in God’s life every day to live like this? Jeremiah's reaching about the tree insists we acknowledge that it is not enough to be with God once a week at Sunday Mass, pray when we need Him or reconcile with Him only at Lent or Advent.

Immersing ourselves in God every day is hard work but it is necessary. When challenges come or we think God doesn’t our prayers, we struggle to believe in God. When other attractions catch our fancy, fulfil our wants, and make us feel superior, we question why God and God’s ways are boring, unfulfilling and inferior. When there are more pleasurable things to do, we easily excuse ourselves from God.

In these moments, we would be wise to recall Jeremiah’s words that “the tree fears not the heat when it comes” because its roots are securely in the water.

Don’t we want this same fearlessness when challenges and difficulties, sufferings and disappointments confront us? If we do, we must choose to root ourselves in God every day. We need to because He is our strength and hope.

Prayer is one way to do this. The gospels describe the intimate relationship Jesus had with prayer. He always prays to God. He prays to God when He heals, does miracles, makes important decisions, even before He eats. Through prayer, He invites God into his life. Prayer enables Jesus to immerse himself in God. Do we?

We see the power of prayer in Jesus at Gethsemane. When Judas and the soldiers come to arrest Him by calling out for Jesus of Nazareth, he steps forward courageously and pronounces “I am He.” He has no fear doing this and entering His passion because His prayer binds Him to God. Having a daily prayer life with God does the same: it will form and shape us to be more and more like Jesus.

This happens because in prayer we are gently broken in God’s loving hands and formed anew. In prayer, our laziness is broken, so we can go the extra mile. Our sinfulness is broken, so we can live better. Our self-centered plans are broken, so we can care for others more selflessly. Our hard hearts are especially broken to become tender and bighearted for everyone.

Most of all, it is in prayer that Jesus comes to know the love of God and live it selfless by serving everyone This is the source of his happiness. To be truly happy, you and I must also choose God and his sacrificial way of loving.

Jesus makes the same demand in the gospel reading. He offers us a choice. There are the Beatitudes, the ‘Happy indeed are those who…’ statement that call us to be happy by living in God’s ways. There are also the ‘Alas for you…” statements that can take us away from God if we fail to heed them.

As Christians, the choice is obvious. Be assured we can make that right choice because Jesus’ death and resurrection empower us to choose God and eternal life with God. This is St Paul’s hope-filled message today.

This is indeed the long view we must keep in mind as Jesus’ disciples. John Seow knew this. He practiced it by keeping God at the center of his life even as he prepared and sat for his O Level examinations. His prayer life helped him do this.

Let us do what John Seow did: strive to stay close to Jesus, especially in the heat of things not going right in our lives. When we do, we need not fear because God is with us. Then, our lives will flourish like that fruitful tree by the flowing waters because He will prosper our lives. If you agree with me that this is how God loves us to give us life to the full, then, our response must simply be this — to stay rooted ourselves in Jesus. Shall we?

Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart

Photo: seekingalpha.com

Year C / Ordinary Time / Week 5 / Sunday

Readings: Isaiah 6:1-2a, 3-8/ Ps 138:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 7-8 (R/V 1c) / 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 / Luke 5.1-11

“...what matters is that I preached what they preach and this is what you all believed” (1 Corinthians 15.11)

This is how St Paul closes his teaching to the Corinthians in today’s second reading. His words describe the essence of his mission: to proclaim the Good News that Jesus Christ preached and the apostles handed on. Throughout history Christians imitated St Pau; many heard and believed the Good News. We have received this Good News too, and we believe. Our Christian task is to hand it on to others.

St Paul’s words remind me of this instruction to deacons: “Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practise what you teach.” The ordaining bishop says it to them at their ordination. They are ordained not just to proclaim the Good News; they are to live Jesus’ way of life – for service.

The call to service is the message in today’s readings. Serve the Lord by serving His people. This call is for you and me, as it is for deacons and those first Christians St Paul addressed at Corinth. We know this call. Today God repeats it to us. Are we hearing God?

St Paul preaches Jesus, God-with-us, loving and saving us. He preaches with words, even more, with his life. He does with a selfless ‘yes’ to the Lord.

We also want to say ‘yes’ to the Lord. We want to echo Isaiah and say, “Here I am, send me.” This is our holy intention because we want our Christian life to count for something.

The honest truth is that we all struggle to do this. Like Isaiah, we know how wretched, how lost, and how unclean we are when we sin. Even more, we know it when we look into the face of God and encounter his immeasurable goodness and love. For many of us, God’s mercy to forgive overwhelms, and we want to run away from God and hide.

Run away: this is how the Evil One seduces us. Tempting us that we are never good enough. Never good enough especially for God.

Today, Jesus’ words and actions remind us that we are more than good enough to stay with Him and live His call to serve. Stay and serve with him on mission. With Him beside us. With Him who – first of all – steps into the boats our lives are.

In the gospel reading, Jesus steps into Peter’s boat. He does not ask permission. He takes Peter’s place in the boat. From here, He preaches and teaches God’s people with authority. Indeed, Jesus steps into Peter’s boat and the people’s lives as the Good Shepherd who looks out for His own and cares for them.

To hear God’s Word, and then to trust and follow it. This is how the miracle of the surprising, plentiful catch of fish happens. By stepping into Peter's boat, Jesus makes out of the emptiness of our lives much good. A wasted night of fishing nothing is no more. Now there is an overflowing abundance that even spills into the other boat. All this happens because Peter listens, trusts and follows Jesus’ instruction.

Even more, it happens because Jesus’s bold, even impertinent, act of stepping into the empty boat changes everything. Peter does not lose his boat nor does Jesus possess it. Rather, both enter into friendship and this makes Peter’s faith, life and service come alive and flourish.

Jesus wants to do the same for us; He is inviting us to partner him, and as our friend He will let our lives flourish by serving others. If we do, the empty nets in our lives will be filled, often with excess beyond our imagination. There will be fish for the catch, food for nourishment and life in abundance instead of emptiness or lack.

What we don’t have, Jesus will provide, often with much more that we can possibly imagine. When we don’t have, Jesus will turn up and give, always surprising us. This miracle of something more and better out of nothing is Jesus’ assurance that God keeps his promise to be with us and for us.

Again and again, Jesus reminds us what God’s expectation is: that we share generously, even better, that we do it selflessly. Many others need this goodness that sustains and nourishes, refreshes and remakes us and our lives. Once again, Jesus calls us to share what we receive from Him through lives of service. Are we?

Right here, right now, Jesus is indeed stepping into the boats of our lives. However fragile, broken, shabby, unsightly, even ill-fitted for the open waters, we are, Jesus is stepping into our lives through today’s readings, today's Eucharist.

Stepping into our lives because Jesus chooses us to join Him and serve everyone. His love is bighearted that where we see our unworthiness, he values us worthy. Worthy, and, even more, worth His while and His love to be His.

Indeed, our life becomes His boat -- wide and deep enough to include and shelter many. A boat sturdy and strong enough to brave stormy seas to bring all to safety. With Him in the boat of our life, He will lead us far and wide across the waters to those in need at the horizons. Indeed, we are truly His vessel to carry the lifesaving cargo of the Good News to all peoples.

You know how true this is when you live in God’s Spirit and let Him shape your life for the good of others. Can you recall a moment when you made a difference for others? Now that’s how good your partnership with Jesus can be for someone else.

Jesus does this for everyone through us and with us because He wants to. He desires so very much to step into our lives and set himself up in order to transfigure us for better. He will do this by forming us to:

believe what we read in Scripture,

teach what we believe to everyone,

practise what we teach in our lives.

Today we have every right to be joyful because Jesus wants to make us better to serve Him by serving others. We can help Jesus make this happen by cooperating with Him in our lives. Let us begin by responding, not just hearing, this instruction He says to us, as he once said to Peter, “put out into deep water and pay out your nets for a catch.”

Shall we? Dare we?

Preached at Church of the Church of the Sacred Heart

Photo by shayan abedi on Unsplash

bukas palad

with open hands, we give what we have first received. and with open hands, we receive what we will divest, once again. this is blessing itself: the giving and receiving of life and love, the sharing of faith and God.

Homily: Rooted

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Homily: Stepping In

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