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Expressing our desire for God

Posted by junix28 on August 11, 2012 in Homilies, Homilies and Reflections

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. 
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Christian Community: Community of love

Posted by junix28 on August 11, 2012 in Homilies, Homilies and Reflections

 Sunday XIX B 2012

Only last week we read that the people whom Moses had led to freedom soon began murmuring / whispering / complaining because they had left the comfort of captivity behind. They no longer had the food they’d always enjoyed in Egypt. Did he want them to die of hunger in the desert? When Moses passed on the complaint, God began to send them manna, bread from heaven.

And what do we have in today’s gospel? The Jews were complaining to each other about Jesus, because he had said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven’. He ordered them to stop complaining and listen. But by the end of his teaching some of them were going to be horrified. Let us look closely at what he says. No one can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father who sent me. There seems to be a sketch of a plan here, and by implication some are drawn to Jesus and maybe some are not. It is no accident that the first reading today concerns Elijah’s journey into the wilderness. In fact he was running away from the vengeful Queen Jezebel. He wasn’t going anywhere in particular; he was just trying to escape. He was exhausted and ready to die. As he slept an angel came to wake him, provide food and tell him to eat. This happened twice, with the angel saying: Get up and eat, or the journey will be too long for you. He had no plan, but God did. Strengthened by that food he walked for forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. There he was to encounter God and receive a fresh commission to purify Israel. God was drawing Elijah to himself, and not just to say hullo.

The gospel continues: It is written in the prophets: They will all be taught by God, and to hear the teaching of the Father, and learn from it is to come to me. This is a fairly free quotation of a verse of Isaiah, but it calls to mind a passage from Jeremiah that we read at Mass last Thursday: Deep within them I will plant my Law, writing it on their hearts. Then I will be their God and they will be my people. This is God the lover seeking to draw his people to his embrace. Jesus has come in his Father’s name to pursue this task. That is why he says: Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the one who comes from God: he has seen the Father. I tell you most solemnly, everybody who believes has eternal life. We saw last week that Jesus told the crowd that the work God required of them was to believe in the one he had sent. Today he repeats what we read last week; he says: I am the bread of life. And I repeat what I said last week, that the rabbis commonly used bread as an image of the wisdom which is the knowledge and love of God. Belief in Jesus is our path to life.

Your fathers ate the manna in the desert and they are dead; but this is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that a man may eat it and not die. It is unlikely that his hearers really understood what he was saying here. The manna which fed the ancestors was material food for material bodies. The people listening to Jesus would also die, but their souls would live on in a better place if they accepted and applied the teaching he was giving them. He stressed: I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever. The prophet Amos had written: Behold the days are coming when I shall send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but for hearing the word of the Lord. That was an announcement of punishment to be endured unless the people returned to the Lord and observed the terms of the covenant. By contrast, the book of Ecclesiasticus, promises the man who fears God and practices the Law, that Wisdom will nourish him with the bread of understanding and give him the water of learning to drink.

Up to this point, then, Jesus is speaking the language of rabbinical wisdom which at least some of his hearers would have recognized. Then comes the shock: the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world. Here he is giving the word ‘bread’ a Eucharistic meaning which we will explore next week. To recapitulate, Jesus is the Teacher, sent to help us to appreciate the beauty of the Law, and to understand the Father’s love for each and every one of us. Given our own weakness, he is going to give us a new and special food to sustain us on our journey through life.

Today’s extract from the epistle to the Christians of Ephesus gives practical advice for the life of the community. While he doesn’t say so in so many words, St Paul is aware that tensions do arise even between good people. So he advises: Never have grudges against others, or lose your temper, or raise your voice to anybody, or call each other names, or allow any kind of spitefulness. In moments of irritation, take a deep breath and remind yourself that you, too, have your faults which others may find very trying. Paul writes: Try to imitate God, as children of his that he loves, and follow Christ by loving as he loved you.

Those of you who have been following the Olympic Games will be aware that in many sports the winner is the athlete who has done whatever it is – running, swimming, canoeing – fastest. Prayer is not like that. There is no medal for saying the fastest Our Father. For that reason I recommend that you slow down each time you say it and think about the words. First of all, the very words ‘Our Father’ recall our privileged status as members of God’s family which we acquired at the moment of our Baptism. Towards the end we ask God to ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against’. With those words we acknowledge our own imperfections – and declare that we forgive other people theirs. God could certainly argue that if we don’t forgive others when they annoy or harm us, there is no reason for God to pardon us. Paul reminds his correspondents to: Be friends with one another, and kind, forgiving each other as readily as God forgave you in Christ.

The outstanding characteristic of the Christian community should be love. At times we have to work hard at loving our neighbour, at desiring what is good for them. When stressed we should pause and recall what Christ has gone through for us. (Quentin Howard)

11-08-2012 

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What does it take to give up everything for Christ?

Posted by junix28 on August 5, 2012 in Homilies, Homilies and Reflections

Homily for Youth Mass (Bendigo, Australia)

Giving up everything for Christ

Four years ago, a young man made an international headline because of his surprising move to give up his very promising career and entered the seminary to become a Catholic priest. Chase Hilgenbrinck, a very promising soccer-player who made it to the Major League Soccer in 2008 (the New England Revolution), let go of his celebrity-status and joined the Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in northern Maryland. His decision caught many by surprise except those who knew him.

Because Chase did well in the Sports Arena, he became a celebrity. As a celebrity, he became, famous and popular. As a celebrity he could have gathered millions of followers now in his Facebook and twitter if he didn’t sacrifice his passion for soccer to pursue his dream to become a priest. 

He has no regrets  so far, as it seemed. Few months ago, his former teammate caught up with him and one of the things he said really made me appreciate him all the more. He said: Looking through human eyes, it seems impossible that I would leave behind everything that I knew and everything that I worked for. But when I look with the eyes of faith and I realize that there’s so much more to life than the game, I realize just how blessed I am to be in a seminary.’

Friends, you might have heard his story or have read it somewhere, but it’s worth repeating. Stories like Chase’s, always inspire us, especially for  young people of today who may have all the ideals in life but are also caught up with the many detours, distractions and diversions along the way.

Chase realized that there is more to life than the game. Good on him. Jesus in our gospel would also have the same wish for the crowd who had followed him. Yet as he said in the gospel: ‘You are not looking for me because you have seen the signs but because you had all the bread you wanted to eat.’

But Jesus here is calling them to faith in him, ‘to believe in the one [the Father] has sent.’ He is sort of saying: ‘Following me is more than just getting the bread that you need for free. Following me is much more than just getting something out from me. Following me means accepting me as one of your circle of friends  and allowing me to form a big part of your life.

This is what Jesus wants to tell the crowd in today’s gospel. And he is reminding each one of us here and now this  same invitation: to be his friend.

The good thing is it’s always God who makes the initiative to reach out to us. As a Jesuit priest wrote: ‘We will never find God, but surely He’ll find us first.’ He is calling us to be his friends, and as any friendship entails, it has to be two way, meaning we have to do our part as well to meet God half-way so to speak.

But how? That is the question.

Pope John Paul II, in his homily given at the 10th World Youth Day held in Manila Philippines in 1995, would answer this question for us. The late Pope said:

‘Beloved ones, sisters and brothers: build your lives on the one model that will not deceive you! I invite you to open the Gospel and discover that Jesus Christ wants to be your “friend” (Cf. Jn. 15: 14). He wants to be your “companion” at every stage on the road of life (Cf. Lk. 24: 13-35). He wants to be the “way”, your path through the anxieties, doubts, hopes and dreams of happiness (Cf. Jn. 14: 6). He is the “truth” that gives meaning to your efforts and your struggles. He wants to give you “life”, as he gave new life to the young man of Nain (Cf. Lk. 7: 11-17), and gave a whole new future to Zacchaeus who was dead in spirit through ambition and greed (Cf. ibid. 19: 1-10). He is your “resurrection”, your victory over sin and death, the fulfilment of your desire to live forever (Cf. Jn. 11: 25). Because of this he will be your “joy”, the “rock” on which your weakness will be turned into strength and optimism. He is our salvation, our hope and happiness and peace.’

To grow into friendship with him though demands of us an attitude of gratefulness to God for taking care of us in all our needs  as we can reflect on our First Reading today. We need to thank him everyday and every Sunday when we go to mass for his gift of himself as the bread from heaven that sustains us in our Christian journey. To become a real friend of God, not just in theory but really in our practical life, means we must stop living ‘the aimless kind of life that pagans live’, as St Paul would tell us in our Second Reading today.

And I can tell you, if you have this sense of friendship with God, you can tell him everything because you can rely on him on everything. One way to do this is by writing a journal. And it is just amazing every time I read my journal, the experience comes back to me. And it is always a consoling experience, or a healing one even. I have to admit though, that yes, God is  my friend now, but I am not the very faithful of friend. Sometimes I would tend to do my own thing by not allowing him to play his part, but it always comes up either bad or a failure. I can sense God saying to me: ‘I told you so.’

So as we continue our celebration of the Mass today, let’s pray that we now open ourselves more to friendship with God. Because it is by this that we can come to realize that there is more to life than just eating, or drinking, or becoming popular. Life is walking alongside with our real and  the most dependable of friend, Jesus Christ.

 

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How real God is in our lives?

Posted by junix28 on August 5, 2012 in Homilies, Homilies and Reflections

Homily for 18th Sunday in Ordinary time year B 2012

Four years ago, a young man made an international headline because of his surprising move to give up his very promising career and entered the seminary to become a Catholic priest. Chase Hilgenbrinck, a very promising soccer-player who made it to the Major League Soccer in 2008 (the New England Revolution), after playing as a professional player in Chile, cut short his celebrity-status and joined the Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in northern Maryland. His decision caught many by surprise except those who knew him.

When I heard the News then, I was rejoicing silently. I was rejoicing of the fact that God’s voice  calling someone to his service, overwhelms all the other voices that this young man was trying to pay attention to as well. Being  a celebrity, we can just speculate of the pressure to satisfy social expectation. Being a celebrity, we can imagine the promise of fame, popularity, security, and now with twitters and facebook, the easy ways to attract followers.

Yet Chase Hilgenbrinck gave it all up and followed his dream- his dream which is motivated by the desire to be obedient to the  faith and to the call of God he heard in his life.

 And it seems that he has no regrets of his decision. After three years and a half in the seminary, his former teammate caught up with him and this is one of the things he said to his former buddy: ‘Looking through human eyes, it seems impossible that I would leave behind everything that I knew and everything that I worked for. But when I look with the eyes of faith and I realize that there’s so much more to life than the game, I realize just how blessed I am to be in a seminary.’ http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2012/01/20/what-ever-happened-chase-hilgenbrick

Friends, you might already have heard this story or have read it somewhere, but I think it is worth repeating. Chase realized that there is more to life than the game as he looks at it through the eyes of faith. Interestingly, Jesus in our gospel today would have said the same to the crowd who followed him on the other side of the lake. He would want them to realize that there is more to life than eating bread or satisfying one’s hunger for food.  He would want them to see and understand that following him means more than just expecting ‘bread’ (i.e. food, security, or personal satisfaction) from him. He wants that people would listen to God speaking in their lives- the God who generously gives them the Bread, the food that endures to eternal life. And this is only possible through faith which is God’s precious gift to us. Without faith, God wouldn’t make any sense for us. And Jesus really stresses it here, that by it is not enough to say we have faith in God. We must therefore ‘believe in the one he has sent’– Christ.

Christ is ‘our window on God. His words and actions are like so many panes of glass through which we can see what the Father is like,’ according to Pat Collins, CM. (P.173, Intimacy and the hungers of the heart).

So we need to ask ourselves: How real is Christ in our life? How real God is for us in our life?

We can find the answer to these questions by reflecting on the words of St Paul in our Second Reading today. Let’s have a reality check. We claim to be Christians, so therefore as St Paul would  advise us, we are ‘not to go on living the aimless kind of life pagans live.’ This means, to live every moment with God, unlike the unbelievers who live as if there is no God at all. ‘Without God’, Pope Benedict wrote, ‘[human being] neither knows which way to go, nor even understands who he is.’ (#78 Encyclical Caritas in veritate)

Our First Reading today also offers us another answer to the question how real God is in our life.

The Israelites were freed from the slavery of Egypt by God.  They were taken to the desert. But unfortunately they missed the meaning of the sign of being there when they felt the hunger. So as human frailty dictates they would rather be remaining as slaves in Egypt when they ‘can sit down to pans of meat and could eat bread to [their] heart’s content.

So God had to show them the meaning of his move to liberate them- that it is he now who is to serve them whatever they need, that it is he now who would tend to their wounds, and that it is he now whom they should serve  because he doesn’t rule by enslaving people but in freedom.

God takes care of us in all our needs. It might be arguable or even hard to believe because at times, we felt like he hasn’t cared at all. ‘Many of us struggle with the revelation that God our loving Father, loves us unconditionally,’ says Fr Patrick O’Sullivan. ‘We struggle because we still think we need ‘to get it right’, to behave as we should, so that we can be sure that God really loves us (Prayer and Relationships), p 9.) ‘The only way to break this circuit’, Fr O’Sullivan continues, ‘is to trust Jesus in what he has told us about his Father (P& R, p 10.)

We therefore need to continue believing and trusting in Jesus Christ. We therefore need to look at Jesus always, says our retired Cardinal in Cebu. Cardinal Ricardo Vidal says: ‘We really see Jesus when we don’t always long for the relative beauty, the luxury, the pleasure, the noises in our world  today. We really see when we  long for the real beauty which is by giving ourselves for others. We could see Jesus in silence, in meditation and in prayer (You’re still Young, I’m Old, p 14-15).

If God is real in our life, like Chase we realize that there is more to life than just eating or drinking or fame or money. So as we continue our celebration today, let’s thank God for the gift of faith. Let’ also thank God for giving us himself not only as our food but really our assurance for life. Amen.          

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