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How real and alive Christ is in our hearts?

Posted by junix28 on April 7, 2013 in Homilies, Homilies and Reflections

Homily for 2nd Sunday of Easter year C 2013

  1. faith and doubtWe are now on the Second Sunday of Easter and today the challenge for us is to assess our faith in the Risen Lord. We need to ask ourselves: How real and alive Christ is in our hearts?

  2. Somebody commented on my posts on Facebook before about my way of speaking about God, about Jesus, as my friend. I said to him: ‘That’s just what  he really is for me and this keeps me going. This makes me proud to be a friend of Jesus.’ He is real and alive  to me as my personal friend. I can tell him everything and I can assure you, he listens most of the time. I have to admit though that there are times I doubt of this friendship. There are times that I doubt my faith in him. At times, this makes me feel bad, because I should not doubt my faith. But I can’t help it. I expect that friends are always there to support each other and as my friend, I expect more of Jesus. When I’m in a difficult situation I’d expect him to help me overcome it or even change it. As a friend, though he knows what I’m up to.  I realized that God doesn’t always change the situations as I like it to be. What he does however, is he changes my attitudes towards a particular challenge or towards a certain situation. But I still have doubt at times.

  3. And yet I thank God for making me doubt especially about my faith because doubting our faith is one way to assess if the Risen Lord is really alive in our hearts. This doesn’t mean that we doubt if there is God or not. This also doesn’t mean that we doubt if Jesus Christ is true or not. Far from it. This means however, asking ourselves: Why do I believe in God, in Jesus?

  4. Thomas in our gospel today has offered us a couple of ways to answer this question. First, for him, he believed and even made his profession of faith in Jesus “My Lord and my God”, because Jesus was true to himself, true to his words and to his deeds. This is perhaps one motive why Thomas doubted the report of his fellow apostles about the risen Lord. He needs to see the proof. He needs to see the ‘wounds’ because only the visible marks of the wounds could convince him that this risen Jesus they are talking about is the same Jesus he was following before. He needs to see if Jesus was really true to himself when he said to them he has to die yet to rise again in three days. And his doubt was transformed into  faith. Thomas is an example of a practical man with a practical faith. It is not bad. But it has a tendency to be lost or to be set aside if things turn out the way we didn’t want to be, or when our expectations are crushed.  Second, Thomas came to believe in the Risen Lord because he has been given the opportunity to touch the wounds of Jesus. Seeing the wounds of Jesus shattered his illusions. He was expecting of a messiah who is so strong, powerful, not killed by anyone, etc. But touching the wounds of Jesus helped him realize that the true messiah is the one who loves unconditionally to death, who serves humbly, and the one who  would rather take on mortal blows and mortal wounds just to defend his sheep from the wolves and  from eternal death.

  5. However, the Risen Lord is not only challenging the faith of Thomas by helping him face his doubts and by allowing him to touch his wounds. He is also challenging our faith now. Thus, we heard him saying in the gospel: ‘Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe.’ He is now telling this to us because this is about us. We are still in the rejoicing and in the celebration mode because of Easter, that momentous event in our salvation history when our doubts and despair  are being transformed into an experience of salvation and a hope for our future resurrection. Yet with rejoicing comes the invitation, the challenge, the mission- the  mission to go and proclaim the Good News. So, Jesus in our gospel today is sending us out with power of the Holy Spirit, to proclaim this Easter faith. We need not worry so much because  he has given us power to do this. He breathed his Spirit on us. And this power of the Holy Spirit gives us courage, gives us hope and even makes us proud of our being a Christian. This is what the apostles did and experienced in the early Church. After the Pentecost they went out preaching despite the threats of death and persecutions. They couldn’t keep the beautiful and the amazing experience they had with the risen Lord, that they could only say to the authorities: “We just can’t help but tell others of the Good News we’ve got.” Also today’s first Reading gives us a glimpse of their wonderful experience. People brought their sick to the streets hoping that Peter and the other apostles would cast his shadow on them and they would  be healed. This is not about working miracles. This is all about influencing others with the Gospel of Jesus. This is another challenge for us today- that we be good influence to others by touching the wounds of Christ found in our sisters and brothers. The problem is we cannot see Jesus now in person. What we can do however is to see the woundedness of Jesus in persons, in the people around us and in the situations surrounding us. And we can do this if we look at others in the eyes of faith and through the mind and heart of Jesus.

  6. Let us always remember only with faith we can say with confidence that the risen Lord is alive and real in our hearts. Let us not forget too: Faith may not give us control over everything but it enables us to live in the midst of a tupsy-turvy world. It also enables us to be who we are and what we are capable of doing. The swimmer doesn’t have control over the sea or over  the waves, but being a swimmer enables one to enjoy it or to brave it . So our faith may not guarantee us of having control over everything, but it assures us that despite everything that happens to us or around us, if we persevere to the end, overcoming doubts and uncertainties, then something great awaits us and it is worth waiting for. 

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Resurrection of Jesus- a call to be Easter People

Posted by junix28 on March 30, 2013 in Homilies, Homilies and Reflections

Homily for Easter Vigil year C 2013

Tonight is the night of all nights. Tonight we celebrate our salvation. Tonight we remember and re-live that momentous event in our salvation history when our God  has shown us that there is an end to sin and to death through the resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ from the dead. This calls for our celebration because this shows us that God has given us not only another chance to live but really he has given us a new life. So to celebrate this, we have taken parts in all the rituals for this Easter vigil.  We have done this by making ourselves available to become symbols and concrete expressions of being saved by Christ. We lit the Easter candle, the light of Christ, which points out to us that through Christ the darkness (of our sins and of our world) has come to an end. From that light of Christ we also lit our own candles and that tells us that we allow Christ to be our  source of light and nothing or no one else. We would express this in a more concrete way later when we renew our baptismal promises. We have also heard the series of readings (both from Old and New Testaments) which are particularly organized for this Easter Night, recalling the history of our salvation, and our journey with God from creation to our redemption. We have also with us tonight, people who are going to be baptised, confirmed and receive the Holy Eucharist for the first time. These new members of our Church  tell us that indeed tonight we are celebrating a new chapter in our life, a life with Christ. So we have all this fuzz if you like, because Christ, our Saviour, our Messiah, our God has risen from the dead. It is worth celebrating and rejoicing because Christ’s rising from the dead gives us strength and gives us hope that Good Friday is not the end of it all, but only a necessary component for the day of Resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus tells us that suffering is not and should not be what characterizes our being a Christian, but our being an Easter people.

We therefore are called Easter people. And we are called to live this out in our lives. We have to take the challenge to show it in our faces that we are worth dying for as to what Jesus has done for us.

Being Easter people, we need to put an end to our search for the living among the dead. This means that we stop looking for Jesus Christ among the dead. He is not there anymore, he is risen. He can now be found among the living, in each one of us. And to see the risen and  the living Jesus we need to stop searching him from among the dead and/or deadly things such as atheism, materialism, greed, envy, pride, self-righteousness, selfishness, etc. This means we need to see Christ in others by looking at one another through the eyes of Christ whose eyes looked beyond the physical features, who sees the sinner over the sins, who looks at the person over what he/she has done or has failed to do, and loves the person no matter how much it cost him and no matter what it takes, even death.

Being Easter people also means we need to bring the good news to others, like the women in our  gospel for tonight. How can we do this? We need only look at how Jesus Christ did it. He stood on his principle of love, forgiveness, justice, compassion, and mercy. He came to serve, not to be served. He taught and spoke of the truth even if it was a big risk to take for him. He was constantly in touch with his Father in prayer and in solitude thus making him for firm and strong in obeying the will of his Father. He dined with sinners and didn’t discriminate. He loved the unlovable. He touched the untouchables. Lastly, he lay down his life for his friends.  

So tonight as we receive the Lord in the Eucharist, let us thank him in the silence of our hearts for loving us, for making us feel special and worth dying for, for allowing us to experience a new life again, and for showing us that if we persevere till the end even if we have to suffer for the sake of truth, justice, love and peace, there is resurrection awaiting for us after all.

May this Easter season be a happy, holy and a wonderful celebration for each one of us. May Christ be truly alive in our hearts.  

Happy Easter.

 

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Seeing our real worth: Jesus’ way of love

Posted by junix28 on March 17, 2013 in Homilies, Homilies and Reflections

Homily for 5th Sunday of Lent year C 2013

If we found a crumpled, even slightly torn off five-dollar note on the road, why do we take it. By the look at it, it seems not pleasant at all. It might be soiled but still if no one is looking, we would readily pick it up, well I am speaking for myself now.

We do pick up dollar note no matter how badly it has become not because of its appearance but because of its value, because of its worth. We can still use it. We can buy something out of it despite its appearance because of its real worth.

This is more or less the same message that Jesus wanted to express in our gospel today. He wants to show us that there is more to us than just following the what the  law tells us to do. There is more to the person than just looking at what he or she has done or has failed to do.

The Pharisees and the Scribes wouldn’t realize this because they didn’t really care for the woman at all. They were not concerned of her at all. They just took advantage of her humble and unfortunate situation to further their own self-interests and to realize their plot to get rid of Jesus. They wanted to have their way done in their favour, no matter whose life it may need to sacrifice. All they are interested to hear was Jesus’s answer to their case, and for them, so they thought, there is no way out for Jesus. He has to say YES or NO. And for both answer they have already made up an accusation against him. If Jesus said ‘no’, they’d say he’s breaking the law of Moses. If he said ‘yes’, then many of those following him would immediately stop following him because his YES would betray his claim of a loving, forgiving and a compassionate Father.

But Jesus didn’t like what they are up to. He knew they had lost sight of the reality of the situation. So he had to remind them that he looked at the person as he/she is, not on what he/she has or has done. He has seen that the woman was helpless and thus needing his help, his mercy, his forgiveness. He also has seen that all the people around him, the Pharisees and the scribes included had to be directed back to the real perspective.

He did that quite subtly yet powerfully. He didn’t make any judgment over anyone or over the woman. He seemed to have done this by saying like this: ‘Come on people, there’s life at stake here…and you are still thinking of your own self, of your personal interests, of your distorted understanding of the law of God. Look at the person, not on what he or she does or has failed to do.’ What he did was challenging everyone to have a life check and a lifestyle check. So he said: “If there is one of you who has not sinned, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.’ That caught the Pharisees and the scribes by surprise. They didn’t expect that answer from Jesus. They lost the case, so they left. Of course, the might have realized how narrow-minded they were. And Jesus gave the woman another chance to live.

However, this episode must not lead us to think that Jesus just takes sin lightly. In fact, he is serious about it. He even died on the cross for all our sins and for us sinners. What he did rather here is to show us that  if we humble ourselves before him, acknowledge our sins, come to him as we are, he would not only forgive us but he also would give us another chance to live and take on life, and even promised us of  eternal life.

And this is the beauty of our saviour. He knows that because of pride we tend to focus more on ourselves. Yet, he always gives us another chance. He always looks at our real value and worth despite everything we do and have. But we need to listen to him. We need to respond to his invitation to renew our relationship with him especially when we break it through sinning.

This beautiful and wonderful God has also come into the life of St Paul. He met him on the way. Again, in St Paul God didn’t look at his background or what he did. He looked at his inner goodness, which is his fidelity to the commandments of the Jews. Jesus only had to re-direct him to be faithful to his mission of proclaiming Christ to all the world. Today’s second reading is an example of this. So we heard St Paul  exclaimed: “For him I have accepted the loss of everything, and I look on everything as so much rubbish if only I can have Christ and be given a place in him.” St Paul realized that Christ is his supreme advantage because he died for all of us and for each one of us to live. For Christ, and even St Paul would agree with me in here,  we are worth dying for.

So as we continue our Lenten journey, let us have a life check and lifestyle check. Are we living according to our real worth and value that God has put on us? Are we seeing others as they are (with all their flaws and imperfections) as Christ sees them? We have to realize that no matter how sinful or bad we are, God sees us in our real worth, which cost him dearly of his blood. So then, let us  endeavour to appreciate the gifts that God has given us everyday without us even asking for them. Let us also begin, if not continue to see others the way Christ sees them, to bring Christ to others and to bring others to Christ. Amen.

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Loving like the father of the prodigal son

Posted by junix28 on March 10, 2013 in Homilies, Homilies and Reflections

Homily for fourth Sunday of Lent 2013 year C

“A father froze to death while sheltering his nine-year-old daughter from severe weekend blizzards that swept northern Japan…” the news report stated the other day. “Mikio Okada died as he tried to protect his only child Natsune against winds of up to 109 kilometres per hour, as temperatures plunged to minus 6 Celsius. Okada was one of at least nine people killed in a spate of snow-related incidents as blizzards swept across Hokkaido Island, police said Monday… Okada’s body was uncovered by rescuers looking for the pair after relatives raised the alarm… Natsune was wearing her father’s jacket and was wrapped in his arms, newspapers and broadcasters said.” (www.news.com.au/world-news)

Stories like this always moved my heart. Yes, reading stories such as this made me shed a tear  at times. And yet despite the feeling of sadness and sympathy, I also felt consoled. I felt consoled to know that there are still people, real people  in our time, who are more than willing to die for the person they loved. These heroic figures are those people who have a kind of  love that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI described in his encyclical Deus caritas est,  as agape. According to the Pope, this kind of love as agape  “expresses the experience of a love which involves a real discovery of the other, moving beyond the selfish character that prevailed earlier. Love now becomes concern and care for the other. No longer is it self-seeking, a sinking in the intoxication of happiness; instead it seeks the good of the beloved: it becomes renunciation and it is ready, and even willing, for sacrifice.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, encyclical #6) Wow! What a beautiful definition of love! And what a wonderful world it would be if we live in love, selflessly and unconditionally. It is a big challenge. It is hard but it is not impossible.

Today, in our gospel Jesus is telling us a parable that teaches us a lesson that to be in love selflessly and without measure is indeed possible. And it is only possible if we learn from the love of the Father to the prodigal son and imitate his loving ways.

What can we learn from the father’s agape to his ‘prodigal son’ then?

There are three things we can reflect on in here.

First, God’s love sets us free. It would have been a painful sight for the father to see his youngest son leaving him and his brother with no assurance of coming back. Yet, he let him go with all his share of the property to exercise his freedom. The father would have hoped that his son would take his freedom for his own good. Unfortunately, his son used his freedom irresponsibly, selfishly and carelessly. He couldn’t care less for his dignity and reputation by ‘squandering his money on a life of debauchery’ (Lk 15:1-3) and by committing sins against heaven and against his own father. Because of his sinful ways, his dignity was degraded. He worked as a hired servant in a piggery (a repugnant thing to do esp. for Jews who considered pigs as unclean animals.) This is also what happens to us when we sinned. When we commit sin we break the relationship between us and God. Through sinning our dignity as son or daughter of God is being degraded and demoted into a slave- slave to sin. But then again, God’s love couldn’t allow us to perish in sin forever. He takes the initiative to invite us back in and to enjoy his company forever. So he offers us the sacrament of reconciliation and penance to come home again to the house of God.

Second, because of love, God waits for us eagerly no matter how long it takes, how far we have gone, or how sinful we are. Such  is the love of the father that he waited everyday  with expectancy for the return of his son. He was continually looking at the road for any sign or just a shadow of  his son. So we heard in St Luke: When he saw his son coming, he ran towards him and embraced him. This is a beautiful thing about love. Love enables someone to go even an extra mile, even going to an unfamiliar grounds or even in an awkward situations. Let us just try to imagine, an old man running towards his young son. It must be a funny thing to behold and an awkward gesture for the father. But because he loved him so much, he can’t be bothered by anything else because his son was the most important person for him at that moment.

Third, because of love, God wouldn’t want us to settle for less. As long as we come back to him with open, humble and repentant heart, he’d take us back in and even restore our fallen dignity. The father did two extraordinary things here: One, he knew his son was repentant so he didn’t even let him finish his prepared speech, instead he welcomed him, and restored his fallen dignity by giving him a robe (security & protection), a ring  on his fingers (authority in his household) and sandals (dignity as son not as a slave whose immediate indicator was being a barefooted) and threw in a party his homecoming. Two, he left his place of honor in the banquet and went out to talk with his other son who was upset and wouldn’t want to go into the house. Sometimes we too are like the eldest son. We tend to discriminate others, because they are less lovable, or less fortunate or more sinful than we are. So when God invites us in to his banquet (Eucharist) we sometimes make this comment: ‘I don’t like going to the Church, they are all hypocrites.’ Like the eldest son, we at times are too focused with our self-righteousness and our almost to the letter following of the rubrics to the extent that we missed the underlying motivation of it all, i.e. to grow in love with God and with our neighbors as we love ourselves. However, God wouldn’t want us to settle for less. This is the beauty of our God. For him, there is no one who deserves lesser or greater love. He loves each of us equally and genuinely. We are all equal in his eyes. It is only that some of us think that “we are more equal than others.” Such is his love for us that he always goes out searching for us, to forgive us of our sins and to bring us back to his company, no matter who we are, or how sinful our lives were. Such is his love for us that he wouldn’t mind to take an extra mile (even dying on the cross) just to tell us “All I have is yours”.

So as we continue our Lenten journey, let us ‘laetare’ (rejoice) because like that Japanese father who lay down his life for his daughter to live, God is doing it for us even more. Because he loved us so much, he took on our very humanity, embraced the punishment of sin (death) and opened for us the door of glory that leads to his kingdom of love.  It is something to rejoice about and to hope for.

 

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