Tag Archives: Homily for year B

Aug 11 2012

Expressing our desire for God

Homily for 19th Sunday in Ordinary time year B 2012

  1. I am going to tell you a secret and you can tell this to anyone- God has written something in our own hearts, in each one of us. Do you know what this is? It is ‘the desire for  him’ (CCC 27). Yes, whether we like it or not God has already put that there. That is why, we couldn’t really say with much honesty and transparency that we are happy with everything we’ve got and with who we have become if we don’t put God  in the picture. ‘Only in God will we find the truth and happiness that we are searching for, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
  2. Interestingly this desire for him, is not always strong. It just comes up especially when we are confronted with a difficult situation or in big challenges in life. The Olympics in London is one avenue wherein this desire is really evident. According to the report, in the Olympic Village there is a considerable number of daily mass attendance. It is amazing.  Many of us here might have also heard of the terrible flood happening in the Philippines, affecting almost 2 million people, displacing thousands of families, and destroying houses and properties. Yet, the desire for God is on the fore. People would not just ask for food which is really their immediate need, but also for prayers. One scene that really moved me is this woman walking on the waist-deep water carrying nothing but the statue of the Holy Infant of Prague. I don’t know if that’s the only thing she could salvage from her house. But it really speaks of her faith, that even in the midst of a desperate situation, she hangs on to her faith.
  3. Jesus however, would want  that we would not just wait for a desperate situation or a difficult challenge to allow God to be real in our lives. That’s why he has given us the Eucharist (his body and blood) to be our food (necessary for life) and to be taken as regular as it should be for us to survive in the journey of life.  If food becomes so part of us, so must also be the Eucharist. Even more. The Eucharist that we partake must be a living force for us to go on with life and to go on with our mission. Pope Benedict would remind us this when he wrote in his Apostolic Exhortation sacramentum caritatis (The Sacrament of love). When Jesus said: ‘The bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world,’ the pope understands this as the revelation of the true meaning of the gift of his life for all people (SC 88). In the Eucharist we have an experience of the true and eternal life. This experience must therefore be shared with all people in our ‘service of charity towards our neighbours.
  4. St Paul also in  our Second Reading today  gives us hints to express this desire for God in our lives daily. St Paul calls us to imitate God himself  by following Christ in loving and in giving himself up for all of us.
  5.  And our First Reading today, the example of Elijah is another way to express our desire for God. We heard that he almost gave up with his mission. ‘Lord I have had enough, take my life…’ he prayed. But he listened to God still through his angels, and ate the food prepared for him (prefiguration of the Holy Eucharist) and he survived the journey.
  6. As we continue today let’s pray that we continue to desire God over everything for only by desiring him that we gain and can enjoy everything to its fullness. Amen. 
Jul 29 2012

The Good news in the Gospel

Homily for 17th Sunday in Ordinary time 2012, Year B

Our Gospel today is really a Good News for all of us for many reasons.

 

  1. The first good news is that we are God’s priority. We remember last week’s gospel, Jesus was wanting to have time with his disciples alone after their first missionary experience, but due to the big crowd following them, whom Jesus felt  like they are sheep without a shepherd, Jesus had to  forgo his own needs and tended to the needs of the people. In our gospel today, we have Jesus feeding the crowd of five thousand men and women and children out of few loaves and few fish.

  2. The second good news for us today is that God’s goodness and grace is so abundant that there is always extra  or leftovers even  after we had our fill. We can hear this from the stories of people who are giving so much of what they have and never went broke. I don’t want to brag about myself, but I can attest to this. I give what I can, and God just compensates everything I gave  away and sometimes even he doubles the compensation. Because God loves a cheerful  giver (2 Corinthians 9:7).

  3. The third good news  from the gospel today is that we don’t have to be great or popular or rich for God to use us as his  living instruments and signs of his love and care for us all. We don’t even have to have a name to be able to share what we have. The boy in our gospel today has no name. We can call him ‘barley lad’ maybe, or ‘fishy fellow’ but it doesn’t matter for Jesus. We may not remember who he is, but he will be always remembered by what he does. He gave up the little provision he had to Jesus and that made so much difference. It was able to feed thousands, and plenty of leftovers. The man in our First reading today has no name too, but his little gift of twenty barley loaves to Elisha, was able to feed a hundred men. If we focus more on our personal gain when we give, we can’t go without ringing TV crews or Media personalities to record everything we’ve done. But our gospel today reminds us that it is in and through our littleness or nothingness that God’s love and concern for us  is more evident and more effective.

  4. The fourth good news for us today is that Jesus did not just feed us once or twice or thrice, but always. We know this because we are taking his body and blood as our food and drink every time we celebrate the Eucharist. Yes, it is in the Eucharist that we realise  Jesus  always feeding us not only with his living Word but more so of his body and blood to nourish us and to sustain us as we journey towards eternal life. And the amazing thing is every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we are witnessing a great miracle. We are partaking in the great sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. In the Eucharist we personally become part of the drama of our salvation. Through holy communion, we are receiving the real and living body and blood of our Saviour. This reality enables St John Vianney to say: ‘If we could comprehend all the good things contained in Holy Communion, nothing more would be wanting to content the heart of humankind. The miser or the miserable would run no more after his treasures, or the ambitious after glory; each would shake off the dust of the earth, leave the world, and fly away towards heaven,”

Such is the beauty of holy mass and holy communion that Padre Pio also exclaims: ‘The world could survive without the Sun but not without Holy Mass.’

 So we must remember always in the Eucharist, we experience the utmost generosity of our God, in a real and personal way.  I would also leave you with the words of St Francis de Sales:

“When you have received Him, stir up your heart to do Him homage; speak to Him about your spiritual life, gazing upon Him in your soul where He is present for your happiness; welcome Him as warmly as possible, and behave outwardly in such a way that your actions may give proof to all of His Presence.”

 So, as we continue our Eucharistic celebration, let us thank the Lord for making us his priority and for giving us  himself to be our food and drink. At the same time, let’s pray that we no longer lament on our being small,  having very little, or being insignificant because in the eyes of God, everyone is someone. We can do this with Jesus and by listening to St Paul in our Second  Reading today to live our lives according to the vocation that God is calling us to live. By doing this, we become good news to other people.  Amen.

Jul 14 2012

Never give up and never give in

Homily for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time , year B 2012

I’m heartbroken. My heart breaks as I read the news about Syria today. The uprising that has started over a year ago has already cost hundreds  if not thousands of lives. And this includes civilians, innocent people, children, women, and elderly victims. Just today, someone has posted a video that broke my heart. It shows a clip of some people being massacred by the Regime there. Apparently, it is just a glimpse of  the dozens of people that have been massacred there just very recently.

What really got me was the young man hovering over  the dead body of his father, lying on the street, wrapped with a blanket. This man was crying as he tried to wake his father up. “Come on, dad,” he said, “For the sake of God, get up.”

This really breaks my heart because that was a video of a real thing, not scripted. The act of killings is really happening there in many different ways regardless of who the victims are. And this just shows us an absolute disregard of the value and the dignity of human life.  It shows a complete neglect of the culture of life and an apparent embrace of the culture of death. This is clearly showing us a sign of a social decay as Prophet Amos (in our First Reading) preached about.

It is upsetting. It is really is unless we play indifference here. And we can always do that. We can always act as if we don’t really care. Anyway, that didn’t happen in our immediate surroundings. That didn’t happen in Australia. That only happens on their side of the world. But for God’s sake, let’s get up and do something. Let’s stand up to eradicate this social decay.

But how? How can we stop this apparent culture of death?

Jesus would answer this in our Gospel today. He is sending us to be his witnesses to the ends of earth by proclaiming the real and eternal life that he brings. So with his help, we can stop and change this culture of death. So for God’s sake, let’s get up and do something.

But what can we do, we may ask?

Upon reflection on the Gospel today, an insight came into my mind: ‘Let’s never give up doing our best to eradicate the social decays,  and never give in to the false hopes and promises that the world has laid out before us.

With the grim situation in Syria and in many parts of the world, there is always a temptation to give up and say: ‘I can’t really do anything about it. It is beyond my control now.’ But Jesus, as in  our gospel has given us power and authority to be his witnesses, to be  the messengers of his love and care, and to be instruments of his  compassion and forgiveness.

Therefore, we are not to give up upholding and embracing life. We must not give up clinging to God who is the source of our life. We need him always, and even more than ever. It is only by clinging to him, in a personal relationship with him that we come to renewal in ourselves and eventually to renew our society. With God, we are strengthened to be firm in our cause for the dignity of human life. By his solidarity with the human race we can also extend solidarity with the whole of humanity especially those who are   suffering. We can pray for them always, yes, but we are called to be praying with them by uniting our hearts and minds with them in their sorrows and pain, in their yearning for peace and for justice.

Furthermore, let’s not give up praying and working for peace in the whole world. Let’s be people of peace. And a way to become people of peace is the readiness to forgive. A forgiving heart is a grace to ask God for and an attitude to cultivate. If we are not forgiving people, we are not concretely representing our Lord and God, because He himself is a God of love, a God of justice and a God of forgiveness.

The second way we can do to eradicate the social decays like killing and violence is not to give in to the temptations of the world. Jesus has urged  his disciples not to expect so much comfort, luxury or compensation as they  go and proclaim the gospel. Like them, we, who are the witnesses of Christ in our time and age, must not give in to the false promises of security, fame, and name that the world  laid out before us. Let us not give in to the temptation of selfishness and self-preservation, and not showing care and concern for our needy neighbours. One concrete way to realize this is to make sacrifices, by denying ourselves of some things we want to do or want to have. For instance, if we spend 15 dollars for a meal in a restaurant every week, that means 60 dollars a month. We can sacrifice two weeks of those, and give 30 dollars to Caritas or Catholic Mission and other reliable agencies to help provide for the needs of these people.

So as we continue our Eucharistic celebration today, let’s pray that we grow more into  an Eucharistic people by not giving up proclaiming Christ in our lives and to others everyday. Let’s remind ourselves always that it is only in and through Christ that God’s abundant blessings be poured on us as St Paul tells us in our Second Reading today. Let us also pray that we may not give in to the voice of the world telling us that life that we have now is all that there is. So for God’s sake, let’s get up and be true to our Christian identity and mission, before God and before others. Amen.