Tag Archives: Sunday

Mar 3 2013

Repentance: Stop, look and listen (to God)

Homily for 3rd Sunday of Lent year C 2013

  1. Brothers and sisters, in this third Sunday of Lent we are all urged to repentance and to bear fruit. But we may ask, how might we do this? What might be the best way to take to a true repentance? If you went around the Philippines during Holy week you will see many different ways people would take this message of repentance and penance to heart. Of course, there would be a long queue going to the confessionals. Some people walked about the streets lashing or whipping themselves. In Cebu  for instance, starting at Midday in Good Friday, most of the radio stations and televisions would hook up to the happening in the Cathedral wherein Priests, and bishops would lead people in the reflection on the seven last ‘words’ of Jesus (e.g. Father, into your hands I commend my spirit, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing, Today you will be with me in paradise, etc.) But some people too would go to the extreme. They would have themselves really and actually crucified, to somehow follow exactly what Jesus has shown them. The only difference is that they wouldn’t die, and if they would die in the process I wonder if they would rise from the dead on the third day too.

  2. However, our gospel today tells us the way to take to a true repentance. In fact, the gospel today tells us of two ways. First, is that we stopped comparing ourselves with others. It means we stop being self-righteous and self-centred to the expense of neglecting the other people. It also means we stop thinking that we are better than other people. In our gospel Jesus had to assure his disciples that the people who have been slaughtered by Pilate and those who are killed in a building accident in Siloam were not more sinful than they are. For Jesus it is not a question of who is more sinful and  who is saintly. For him, we are all sinners and we need  repentance.

  3. The second way to take repentance to heart is to endeavour to become fruitful in our lives and it has to be a good fruit. It must not be a fruit that poisons others, kills others, puts people off, or that which takes advantage of other people. Bearing fruit is a real sign of repentance. And repentance must be from within us, from our hearts. If we really have a truly repentant heart it expresses in our actions. It shows itself by the fruit we bear.

  4. So the question now: How can we bear fruit? Based on our Readings of today, we can bear fruit in three  ways. First, listening to the voice of God calling us to conversion-and acting on it. ‘Moses’ burning bush ‘take off your shoes’ (security, grounding, protection). This means letting go of our security and let God take over.

  5. Second, appreciating the bountiful graces of God and not taking God’s gifts for granted. St Paul would remind the Christian community in Corinth of this. Using the history of the Israelites in their journey through the desert, St Paul urged the early Church to accept the grace of God with open heart- to accept Christ in our hearts. For Paul, complaining is not helping us to grow in repentance. Instead it would slowly create in us an attitude of negativity towards ourselves, towards others and even towards God. But we do complain at times. We can’t help this. The Israelites always complained about many things towards Moses and towards God (e.g. Egyptians might overtake and kill them, food (manna & quail), water, Moses taking time on the mountain- they couldn’t wait so they made golden calf and worshipped it). But God is patient. He put up with them. He always puts up with us too.  And this would lead us to a third way to repentance- that is to allow God and other people help us as we grow so that we may bear fruit. This is what the gardener does. He tends the fig tree, waters it, nurtures it. He gives it a chance, another chance, one more chance. So also God does for us. So to grow up and bear fruit we need help from the outside too. But if we don’t take the nourishment from the outside, the love and care from others around us, we would remain barren and fruitless.

  6. So  as we continue our celebration today, we pray that we take our resolve to repentance to heart and take it on as a serious, urgent and as a top priority especially in this time of Lent. Amen.

Apr 21 2012

Jesus is real: Not an Ilusion

 Easter III B 2012

The gospel passage we read today is the last we shall read on the Sundays after Easter relating appearances of Our risen Lord. This one occurs near the end of St Luke’s gospel. Again the emphasis is on the joy of the disciples. Their joy was so great that they could not believe it, and they stood dumbfounded. Jesus took the initiative and asked: Have you anything here to eat? The fact that he was able to eat a piece of fish before their eyes satisfied them that he really was there in the flesh; he was not an illusion.

This incident follows the return of the disciples from Emmaus. When Jesus joined them as they walked towards the village, he drew their attention to all the passages in Scripture which spoke about the Messiah – this without revealing that he was speaking of himself. It was only when they were at table that they recognized him in the breaking of bread. Back in Jerusalem he repeated the lesson for the Eleven: Everything written about me in the Law of Moses, in the Prophets and in the Psalms has to be fulfilled. And after explaining everything he concluded: So you see how it is written that the Christ would suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that, in his name, repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. And the punch line is: You are witnesses to this.

Once the Holy Spirit came upon them at Pentecost, their fear left them and they did indeed begin to testify to the fact that Jesus, who had been crucified, had risen from the dead. His death won pardon for our sins. He is the Son of God. The Acts of the Apostles is concerned mainly with just two apostles: Peter and – above all – Paul. In the early part we can read several of Peter’s sermons, and today’s first reading was taken from one of them. Addressing a Jewish audience, he tells them bluntly: the same Jesus you handed over and then disowned in the presence of Pilate … It was you who accused the Holy One, the Just One, you who demanded the reprieve of a murderer while you killed the prince of life. Peter recognizes that there were mitigating circumstances. They didn’t know that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah. And in any case the prophecies had to be fulfilled. When all was accomplished, God raised him from the dead, and to that fact we are the witnesses.

 I expect you remember that last Sunday we read St John’s account of Jesus’ apparition to the disciples on that first Easter Sunday evening. It was then that Jesus gave them the power to forgive sins – the sacrament of reconciliation. St John touches on this matter in the letter from which our second reading was taken. It is concerned not so much with what priests can do for sinners as with what Jesus does for us all: If anyone should sin, we have our advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, who is just; he is the sacrifice that takes our sins away, and not only ours, but the whole world’s. Jesus’ suffering and death have won us pardon, but if we do sin after Baptism he will continue to argue that we should not get our just deserts. He never ceases to implore the Divine Mercy for us.

To recapitulate: in the gospel Jesus told his followers that they were to be witnesses to his death and resurrection. In the Acts we see that they had begun to do that. Bearing witness to the resurrection is expected of every Christian – including ourselves.

A lady who heard me last week suggested that I should tell you something of my experience of missionary work in Africa. It is a form of bearing witness, but there is much more to it than standing up in a market place and shouting “Jesus is alive”. For a dozen years I worked in country parishes in Burkina Faso, a poor, dry, land-locked country in West Africa. Missionary activity began there in 1900 and has made good progress to the extent that there are now 15 dioceses, each headed by an African bishop, with many vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Despite that progress there are still many people who follow the African Traditional Religion, who make sacrifices to the spirits of their ancestors asking them to intercede on their behalf with the Supreme Being. There are many Muslims too. In the cities you find that the great majority are either Christians or Muslims, but in country districts many still follow the traditional religion.

Why does anybody change? The motives are usually mixed. People follow their friends. Or there may be economic reasons such as not being able to hold a stall in the market unless they become Muslims. Or – and this is important – they may be attracted by the mutual support they see in the Christian community, and the hymns they hear the Christians sing as they worship. If somebody wants to become a Muslim, it’s very easy: they just have to raise their finger and say: “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet”. This can be done without giving the person any instruction at all – which means that there are lots of very ignorant Muslims around. By contrast, someone who wants to become a Christian, must follow instruction for several years; at the end of each year they will be examined on what they have learned and if they don’t answer well enough they’ll have to repeat the year. Meanwhile, they are expected to participate in the life of the Christian community, come to Mass regularly, take part in working bees and live upright virtuous lives.

On the Sundays of the last Lent before their Baptism, the catechumens take a number of steps towards reception of the sacrament. On one Sunday, for instance, the priest formally teaches them the Lord’s Prayer. In fact they will have learned it long before, but on this Sunday it is transmitted to them, phrase by phrase, in the presence of the whole community. When we got to that part of the Mass on that Sunday I would always ask the catechumens alone to lead the community in saying the prayer.

Their initiation reached its climax during the Easter Vigil when, after years of preparation, whole crowds of catechumens were baptized. At the beginning of Mass they were dressed in their ordinary clothes, but once the waters had been poured they went out into the night with their godfather or godmother and put on new white clothes, then processed back into the church while the choir – and congregation – sang this joyous hymn “Tônd fâa soob daare” (= “The day of our Baptism”). And the festivities continue on Easter Sunday.

Missionaries do much more than teach the faith and administer the sacraments. We work at promoting development, sinking wells and bores, trying to improve agriculture, maternal and child welfare, responsible citizenship. The tasks never end. All are aspects of bearing witness to God’s love for humanity. And we have vacancies! (Quentin Howard)

22-04-2012

Feb 5 2012

A Day in the Life of Jesus

Homily for 5th Sunday in Ordinary time 2012

If you may have remembered, three Sundays ago, we heard Jesus inviting the disciples of John the Baptist  to ‘come and see’ where he lives. Then on the following Sunday, we heard him again as he was walking along the sea of Galilee. This time he was inviting certain fishermen to follow him. And we heard the story, they left everything behind (their nets and even their father) and followed him. The disciples followed Jesus and they saw how Jesus observed the Sabbath day. Last Sunday, the gospel tells us that He went to the Synagogue  and there he cured the man possessed by an unclean spirit, in the presence of everyone. Today’s gospel is sort of a continuation of how Jesus spent his day. After the synagogue, he went out with his newly-made friends and even cured the illness of one of his friends’ mother-in-law. Then he attended to the crowds who came to him with all their sick and possessed and he cured ‘many.’ Then later on, early the next morning, he left the house and went off to a lonely place and prayed there.’

This must have been the typical day for him.  He’s got time for his friends. He’s got time for the people coming to him. But most importantly  he’s got time for himself and for his God. In a way, he knows his priorities and he knows how to balance things out. This is for me, the secret ‘ingredient’ that made Jesus so popular for many  (poor and needy) in his time and even for us now.

As followers of him, we also ought to imitate the life of Christ as one classical author -Thomas a Kempis said. This doesn’t mean imitating him in his miracles or in his way of preaching but following him in how he keeps grounded on being with his friends, with the people and with his Father all at the same time.

And thus, because of his firm priorities, He transcends any cultural barrier or  standard of ritual purity prevalent in his time and culture. He cured in the Sabbath, which is an ‘illegal’ act to the authorities in the synagogue. He ‘touched’ the sick mother-in-law of Simon Peter and cured her from fever. He allowed her to ‘wait’ on them which is not acceptable in his time. The gesture of Jesus was repugnant for the Jewish authorities for they had a strict rule of ritual purity at the time which allowed ‘no adult woman’ to ‘serve a man at table.’

He maintains his personal relationship with his Father in everything he did or said. When he preached he always notes that ‘He is just doing the will of his Father.’ When he cured or did miracles he would make people realize that the kingdom of his Father is a Kingdom of ‘wholeness and holiness, of perfection and eternal happiness.’ This is the secret of his success if we like to call it that way.

Like Jesus we are to make our priorities right. For Him, doing the will of his Father is the main motive of everything he does and says.  It is important to remember always that God has willed each and everyone of us to live our lives to the full in the light of his love and care. We can only realize and accept this truth this if we give time for ourselves. We can only see this if we keep our communication with God open. For it is only in the silence of our hearts that we can hear God speaking to us and guiding us in what we are to do in our lives.

However, in our world wherein ‘getting busy or acting like busy body’ is the ‘seemingly’ motive in doing things, keeping time with God  is a tough call. It is difficult to stay still and ponder on how God works in us now because we are in the world wherein ‘rushing’ is the name of the game. The consoling thing is that  despite our busy times, we still have time to spend with our friends and relatives and with some people around us. Yet at the end of the day, if we don’t go back to God, if we don’t sit down before Him, if we would listen to ourselves, if we wouldn’t confront our own selves, we would eventually lose the meaning of our life. No wonder, we heard in the News, people who are seemingly well-off, with good circle of friends, rich and famous, who have taken their own lives. This can happen if we are just caught up with what we are doing, and not in who we are representing to. We are called by God to be Christ for others. If we neglect this noble Christian and human responsibility we would eventually end up being alone in the midst of the crowd or being impoverished in the midst of plenty. 

It is by giving time for ourselves and by bringing our troubles, problems, and concerns to God that we would come to realize that things are not really that bad as they appear to be. If we look at what  we have become now, we will realize that sufferings are just really part of our life, but sufferings are not forever. Unlike Job, in our First Reading  today, we would  come to realize that there is hope amidst all these troubles we are facing, that we can still see and experience happiness here and now despite the sorrows and sadness we may  feel at times. St Paul in our Second Reading today also offers us a consolation. For Him God is not a dominant figure telling you what to do and what not. But for Him God is the Good News to be preached, the Good News that He loves and cares all of us now despite our weaknesses and limitations.

So as we continue our reflection for the Day, let’s ask ourselves: Am I living a balanced life?

Do I spend quality time with myself and God just as I spent good times with my friends?