Catholic Homilies with Fr. Dindo Purto, SSP: Recent Episodes
Dindo P
As part of his ministry as a priest, Fr. Dindo D. Purto believes that social media is a gift that should be used to and maximize to its greatest potential for evangelization. He believes that the Church should be going out of herself to bring Good News, using every means possible to reach the peripheries. True to the charism of the Society of St Paul, Fr. Dindo will be delivering his homilies and other 'grace moments' in the best way he can especially to an English speaking country.
I hope this podcast finds you well. And today we are already on the Second Sunday of Advent. And I will dwell on this theme: How did God find his home in us? And I think the readings that we have today will help us go deeper into this.
In the First Reading, the prophet Isaiah talks about the time of redemption. When we talk about redemption, what is it? It’s God’s movement towards his beloved people, Israel. We recognize in the story that Israel was in the desert. And Isaiah has to uplift the community: Prepare the way of the LORD in the desert. It’s one way of saying: Let us be consoled for God will pass by even in this desert. God will find his home even in our personal desert.
In the second reading, Peter is encouraging his community, who probably might be tired of waiting for the coming of the LORD. They thought God is delayed in coming. And their patience is already running out. And so Peter has this to say: The Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard “delay,” but he is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
This repentance is being highlighted by John the Baptist in the Gospel today. When we talk about repentance or conversion, it’s always about God who is making his way to us, wanting to walk with us, hoping to find his place in us. When we are in-synch with God, when God’s time and our time meet, miracles happen. I think this is what we call the “fullness” of time. We experience God truly in our lives.
Have a blessed Sunday everyone, may God bless you.
I would like to share with you one of the interesting realizations I had these past few days. I believe and it’s my conviction that from the very beginning I think God has already in mind the ending of our story, each of our personal stories. And what would be that ending? I believe God has always wanted us to end up with him through Jesus, his Son.
But we know that as our lives unveil its mystery to us every day we realize that there are many choices that we make that oftentimes did not represent the will of God for us, the desire of God for us. He is so good that he grants us the gift of freedom. It’s the best gift that we can ever have from God because we use this gift of freedom against him who gives it. Yes God is there, but we are responsible for our daily choices. And most often than not, sin enters when we begin to use this sense of freedom to our own advantage. That means to say we want to be god by our own right. And so when that tendency comes to mind, we remove all other gods including the true God so that we can live on our own, without someone dictating us. And so this ending that God wanted us to be with him suddenly collapses.
But the Good News is that despite our weaknesses and sinfulness, God still never gives up on us. That is why he sent his only begotten Son, Jesus, for you and for me, that through him, we will be able to discover deeper how much he loves us in the first place. And when we accept Jesus and follow him we will be able to arrive at that destination which God has prepared for all of us from the very beginning. But this begs the question: Do you accept the invitation of Jesus? Come and see. Have a blessed week everyone. May God bless you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
In this Podcast I would like to offer you three points of reflection in relation to our Gospel reading today.
First, we can affirm that God is good. I think goodness is the essence of God and in fact we cannot talk about a Christian God without referring to his goodness. Here in the Gospel, we see that Jesus is telling a parable about a man who entrusted his goods to his servants… And we can derive from this that our God is not a selfish God.
Second, since God is not selfish he shares his goodness to all of us, to his creatures. When we trust someone, there is a risk: either you win or you lose. Imagine, God is trusting each one of us. And so the big question that we need to think about: Does God win through us or does he lose all the more? We can see at least from this perspective that God is making an investment of his goodness in and through us.
Third, this also entails an accounting time. We are accountable for everything that God has entrusted to us. And so if we try to look at our lives right now, does it reflect the goodness of God in us? We hope that in the end, we won’t regret anything and that what happened to the servant who did not act rightly, may we not end up into the darkness outside where there is wailing and grinding of teeth.
We are already on the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time. And from our readings we can see three precautions that we need to take into consideration:
First, be wise, not foolish. Wisdom is not solely about knowing information but it’s about making most of what you have at the moment. That’s why sometimes wisdom is described as practical knowledge. Knowledge requires information, yes, but don’t you know that we can only remember the information that is significant or related to our life’s contexts? Here in the Gospel we see ten virgins and they have knowledge of the arrival of the bridegroom but what they do not know is the time of the arrival.
This would lead us to the second precaution: be always prepared. We do not know the time, our time. And the question that we need to address right now is this: So how do we prepare ourselves? Those who do not prepare will always have regrets in their lives, just like the five foolish virgins in the Gospel.
And so the Gospel tells us about the third precaution, stay awake. Life is short. And the grace of God is always available for those who stay awake. I remember St Ignatius of Loyola who used to say: All that God created leads us to God himself. Our life is a constant process of perfection. And so at the end of our life there is only one thing that we need to think about: Did all the things I do make bring me closer to God? I hope that when the time comes, we don’t have regrets, only grace.
Today we begin the first day of November, remembering all the saints, not only the canonized ones in the Catholic Church, but those who have been faithful in their following of Jesus. You know, faithfulness is prerequisite to being a saint. We cannot be holy unless we are faithful. If we try to remember it, even the nascent Church, the Church of Antiquity, will call the faithful followers of Jesus, saints.
Why is this so? Let’s see that the disciples of Jesus, even the Apostles themselves, were hunted down and even killed in the process of the proclamation of the Kingdom. If we try to read the Acts of the Apostles, after the Ascension of Jesus, it is up to the Apostles, discerning and following the movement of the Holy Spirit, that the Church will flourish in the name of Jesus. That’s why the Gospel that we have today taken from the evangelist Matthew, Jesus is portrayed as handing down the new commandment: Blessed are you … who remain faithful even if bad, ugly, unpleasant things will get in the way. That’s why the lives of those who follow Jesus to the maximum will never be the same again.
The more faithful we are, the more that we look like Jesus. We have to remember this, following Jesus faithfully entails taking up our daily crosses. And our faithfulness is tested through the cross that we carry. How do we look at our daily crosses in life? So the question that probably we may need to answer today is this: How can I be faithful despite these crosses? I would like to use the daily philosophy of the new;y beatified Carlo Acutis who said: Be original, not photocopy. Many people were born original but they died as mere photocopies. When we follow Jesus, we become more original in the way we proclaim the Good News through our lives. Amen.
We are already on the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time. And today I would like to focus my reflection on how we remember God. We know that God always remembers. There’s no question about that. He doesn’t forget us. He will always find a way to make us known that he is there, even in unlikely circumstances or situations. But the question that we need to answer right now is this: “How do we remember God? Do we really remember God? In what way can we say that we remember him?
You know, when we say remember, it’s not only about calling to attention all the things that happened in the past. It’s not only a process of recalling the memories, but rather, it’s about making memories present in our daily context. And that means to say, by remembering God, we make God present now, at this very moment of our lives.
We can see this in the first reading wherein God is reminding the people of Israel of the covenant, of the ten commandments at Mt. Sinai, through Moses. And God is saying: Remember me, I am compassionate with you. When there are strangers among you, remember what I did to you. If these strangers will cry to me because of what you do to them, I will make you accountable. This is a good reminder for each and everyone of us. Every person is a mystery. And we are not entitled to mistreat them. If we cannot help strangers among us, we should at least respect them.
In the Gospel today, we see Jesus summarizing the commandments into one: love God and love our neighbors. We can only say that we love God if we remember him through our neighbors. That’s why Jesus emphasizes that there is no partition between love of God and love of neighbor. In fact, St John, the evangelist would say: If anyone says, “I love God, but hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. This sounds familiar, isn’t it? For God created all of us in his image and likeness. So if we want to see God, we look at ourselves. If you cannot see God, there might be a problem, big problem. And so today we pray to God through the help of the Holy Spirit that we will always remember him all the days of our lives. Amen.
Today 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, allow me to center my reflection on God’s fidelity to his people. We know that God never gets tired of loving and caring for his people. In fact here in all of the liturgical readings that we have today we can see a faithful God who always finds a way to communicate his love to his people, a God who can even choose unexpected instruments to carry out his love.
Here in the first reading, the prophet Isaiah is presenting to us the person of Cyrus, who probably might have not known the God of Israel and yet God chose Cyrus to be an instrument in order to carry out his love for his people Israel. I think this also happened in our life. There might be people whom we least expect, to be God’s instrument of love. Sometimes we refer to them as angels, God-send messengers… But of course there are also people who came into our lives whom we idealize and greatly honored but they failed to live up their commitment which oftentimes scandalized us. And we can see these kinds of people in the Gospel today. The Pharisees who should have known God better, who are supposed to be experts of spirituality and things of God, they, however, become an instrument of injustice and division.
And so the answer of Jesus, “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God” is a warning against a dual life. Our spiritual Christian life is not separated from our daily life. Sometimes we behave well inside the Church. Sometimes people perceive us to be prayerful and yet when we are outside the Church, we morph into a monster, rather than a person of grace and goodness. And so St Paul is telling us, we need the Holy Spirit in order to live authentically the values of God. And so we pray today to the Holy Spirit that he may continue to help us and teach us to really give what belongs to God and what belongs to our neighbors. Amen.
In today’s Podcast we are going to center our reflection on God’s generosity. I think when we talk about God’s generosity, it always abounds, it overflows. But the question is not about the capacity of God to give more, but it’s about our capacity to receive. God is willing to give, undoubtedly, but are we willing to receive? God can give his 100, but can we take the 100, given our receptacle? The receptacle which should I say is our faith in God? Is it 100% empty or full? Or half-empty. We don’t know. God’s generosity is proportional to our receptivity.
In the gospel today, we see God prepares everything. He dispatched his delegation to send the invitation for a wedding feast. But this invitation was refused, not once but twice. But what was interesting in the story was that everyone did not seem to mind. The question here is priority. Is God your priority?
And so the invitation, luckily, was extended even to the undeserving—the good and the bad as our gospel would indicate. So here we can assume or we can derive again God’s generosity. You know, even if we feel unworthy, which in fact, we are, God still invites us to share in the feasting.
But here we can also see that yes we are invited by God, unworthy creatures that we are, but we need to do our part of the deal. That is we give God what he deserves. And so today I will leave this question to all of you: Am I generous to God as he is to me? How can I express my generosity to God? In what concrete way can I express my generosity to God in my daily practice of faith?
And today we are going to dig into this question: How do we use God’s gift to us?
But before we get into that, we need to know what gift God gave to humanity? I think everyone would agree with me if I say that the first gift God gave to humanity is creation. Even if we try to look at the point from the view of the Bible, we see from Genesis that God’s first act is to arrange, to put in order the vast, empty wasteland, which we now call the world. There are two traditions we can see from Genesis, but, whether God created man and woman or the world first, we can imply undoubtedly that God re-order it in such a way that it would look good and habitable for man and woman.
And so anything in this world should be good. But what happened? This would lead us to another important gift, and for me, the greatest gift that God gave humanity. And what is it? You guess. All of us have this gift and if we do not use this gift to its good use, we can end up using it against God! It’s the gift of freedom. So as I said, it’s important and probably the greatest, because we can use it against God! We can choose not to serve God. We can choose not to love God. We can choose to disobey God and to use it against him. Philosophically and theologically, this is the only gift that God cannot touch… But the Good News is God continues to offer “good” gifts, hoping to make us choose him again. And finally, God chose to offer us the best gift to attract us to himself, who is the good, the beauty, the true God. And this is not a “what” gift but a “who” gift, the gift of the person of God himself, Jesus, sent not to condemn us but to save us and to put back our life in order again like what he did on the first creation.
Today we’re going to talk about giving our 100% to the life that God gave us. I think this is what God is asking for all of us: What else do we need in order to give our all to God, our 100%?
In fact, if we try to think about it: Is there anything else that God did not give us in our life? I bet God has already demonstrated his 100% for all of us. Remember what St Paul the Apostle tells the Philippian community: Though he was in the form of God, he did not regard himself equal to God. This, we cannot understand. Rather, he emptied himself, becoming like us, he humbled himself. This is the way God gave himself to us. In humility, God gave his 100%.
Sometimes it’s hard to give our 100% because 100% means there is no turning back. This means we remove other options in order to give our all. Some marriages fail, some relationships fail because this 100% is not maintained. I think for all of us, for all the things that we do, we need to give our 100. I think 100 is not THE maximum; it’s the minimum because once we go below, we will entertain other options. And we allow other temptations to come, until our 100 will eventually decrease each passing day without us noticing it.
I think for all of us, we need to work for our 100%, the minimum. I think when we already give our 100% in every aspect of our lives: health, relationship, family, work, care for the environment, I think we will no longer regret every day and we begin to appreciate all the gifts and blessings that God continuously gives us. And so we pray that the Holy Spirit will inspire us and work with us so that we will give back to God our 100% or more.
A blessed Sunday everyone. Today, we are going to talk about God’s generosity. I think everyone of us already knows about this. But oftentimes this is overlooked because we are busy comparing ourselves to others. And the more we compare ourselves to others, the more that we will not see our own giftedness and all the gifts God bestowed on us personally. How many of us really make an inventory of what God has given to us?
You know most of the time, when we cannot see the generosity of God, we become bitter persons. We complain to God and even accuse God of our misery. Comparing ourselves to others will make us even feel worse about ourselves. It does not help. You know I realized, there’s only one person we need to compare ourselves with. And I am grateful to realize this early on in my life. Woe to me if I am the same person yesterday! I do not need to compete or compare myself to anyone, I just need to compete with the person I was yesterday. It’s like saying: I have to be a better version of myself today, better than yesterday. I think the gap between what we were yesterday and what we are today, there lies God’s generosity.
And this generosity of God can only be recognized through an act of gratitude. A thankful heart always sees a generous hand. And so today, Jesus illustrates in our Gospel the generosity of God. That all of us are called to a fruitful life. That everyone of us deserves better. That everyone of us needs to be a better version of ourselves.
Today, we ask the Holy Spirit to help us see the things that we need to be thankful for so that we will be able to see God’s generosity in our lives.
Today on this podcast, allow me to continue my reflection last Sunday about forgiveness. We know that forgiveness is one of God’s attributes, if not, the essence of God himself. His being a forgiving God makes himself our God.
The question that is raised by Peter in our Gospel reading today is, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?” Actually if we try to look at it, Peter might have echoed our way of thinking regarding forgiving our neighbors.
I think the quality of our love determines the number of times we need to forgive the person who sinned against us. If our relationship with this person is numeral, meaning we love this or that person by the number of good things we received and gave them, then when something gets wrong in the process, accounting begins. You know some of the good, authentic relationships sadly or tragically end with counting. And that is sad!
But the question remains. Why is it so hard to focus on the good things when a person sinned against us? I just realized that we tend to magnify too much on the damage caused by sin than the goodness that this person brought to us. I remember this one phrase: Focus on the gain, not on the gap. If we focus more on the gap, we can only see the distance between this person and us. But if we focus on the gain, remembering the goodness, the memories, and the happiness that this person brought to us, just like our God, there is also a big chance that we can salvage or restore our relationship.
And so today we are challenged to evaluate our relationships. What is the quality of my relationship with others? Our motto today may sound like this: Quality determines quantity.
In today’s podcast we are going to talk about forgiveness. But we can only learn about true, authentic forgiveness when we understand the meaning of sin. Why is it so hard to forgive? Probably because of the sin inflicted in us.
You know sin can be defined as missing the target. It is like saying we do not get the point. So since we do not understand the point, we eventually miss the target. Don’t you think it’s the same with the way we understand God. He is the good who wants all the good for us. He is the beauty who wants to make us as beautiful as he is. Not a beauty that is physical, but the beauty of our being creature of God. He is the truth. And yet we believe in lies. So this is what happens to Adam and Eve. God wants them everything but they miss the point of God.
Next we can say that sin is a kind of a debt. It is something that we need for. You know in the old translation of the Our Father, we discover the phrase: And forgive us our debts as we forgive those who are indebted to us. When we sin against someone we become indebted to that person. That’s why St. Paul would say, God paid the price of our sins. Redemption means payment. You have to pay for something in order to get something. It’s kind of a ransom.
Lastly, we can say that sin is a kind of trespassing. I think the old translation of the Our Father would also say “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. It’s crossing the line, the privacy of someone else. All of us have the right to put a limit or condition which one cannot evade without our permission or consent. If we violate someone’s limit, we sin against that person. You crossed the line. You went beyond what you were supposed to. You trespassed a private property and so you deserve punishments.
Sin is a violation of a relationship; it reduces the value of the person. And so we realize how hard it is to forgive. But Jesus today wants us to forgive not because the person deserves it, but because we deserve it. There are two words we can get from forgive: for and give. We are giving it for ourselves. Don’t you realize that when we are not able to forgive, we eventually lose the goodness in us, what is beautiful in us, and what is truthful in us. So if we do not want to get old and ugly, forgive for the justice of God comes in his mercy.
Today the theme that I would like to give on this Sunday Podcast is about the relevance of pain and suffering in our life. Many of us want to run away from painful realities of life. But I think there is wisdom in pain.
There is this one quote I read in the Internet: You cannot beat pain, but you can accept it as a necessary component of life — and then use it to learn. Don’t you realize that most of our learning experiences happened during our difficult, painful moments in life. We have to undergo it for a while and then learn from it.
You know pain is there to tell us that we are in danger. Imagine if we cannot feel the pain when we put our hand on burning fire, we might hurt ourselves even more. Pain alerts us that something is wrong with our body. When we realize that something is hurting in our body, it tells us to stop, look, and listen. And I think this is true with our relationships. When we feel bodily pain, it means that probably there might be something wrong going on that we need to address. Do not neglect your pain. Our pain gives us the signal that we are in danger.
But pain and suffering are always paid off. They are wasted for nothing. Like for example, a mother giving birth to a child. There is pain. But this is paid off with joy upon seeing his beloved child crying. If we put it in the spiritual perspective, we experience pain because we are about to give birth to a new life, the groaning pain according to St. Paul. No pain, no gain. I think this is true.
In our Sunday’s liturgical readings, Jesus is going to Jerusalem and predicted his suffering and death. But Peter wanted to impede the plans of Jesus. Peter does not want Jesus to undergo pain and suffering. And so Jesus tells him, “Get away, Satan.” Satan does not pain and suffering. And he tries to tempt us to be discouraged and get away from God himself. He will infiltrate our private space and will shout, “Why?” Why Lord?
Pope Francis offers us an encouragement and I will quote: In facing life’s great ‘whys?’, we have two paths: either stay and wistfully contemplate past and present sepulchres, or allow Jesus to approach our sepulchres… We are tempted to always seek [solutions for] ourselves, brooding and sinking into anguish, licking our wounds, instead of going to him… Let us not be held captive by the temptation to remain alone and discouraged, crying about what is happening to us. Let us not give in to the useless and inconclusive logic of fear, resignedly repeating that everything is going badly and nothing is as it once was… The Lord instead wishes to open the path of life, that of encounter with him, of trust in him, of the resurrection of the heart. This is what the Lord asks of us, and he is by our side to do so.
In this Sunday’s Podcast, we will talk about the importance of asking questions. Reading our Gospel today I realized that Jesus is asking a question that he knew the answer already: Who do you say that I am? And Jesus praises Peter for getting the answer right. “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!”
There are many instances in the Gospels where we see Jesus asking questions. In fact, Jesus would usually initiate the healing process by asking a simple question: “What do you want me to do for you?” We can assume that Jesus knows what we want. When we pray, we assume God knows what we want. But if we ask ourselves what we want, do you really know what we want?
Questions make us wiser, makes us open to more possibilities, and also, it makes us get quality answers. Famous for doing this kind of stuff are philosophers. The lifeblood of philosophy is the quality of questions that people of today ask. But in the context of Jesus, he is not a philosopher, but he is the Way, the Truth and the Life. When Jesus asks questions, it is for us to know the Way, the Truth, and the Life, who actually is Jesus himself. No one who comes to Jesus without experiencing these three: finding a way, knowing the truth, and having a quality life.
But we cannot also discount the fact that there are many questions that are really mind-boggling, very hard to answer. Like for example, when someone asks us seriously: Do you love me? We pause for a moment and think twice or thrice before we can even give the answer. What do you want? This is a basic question, but it’s hard to answer. We ask ourselves, “What do I want today to happen in my life?” And if we respond, “I wanna be happy?” “How do I get there?” “How do I know if I already got there?” It’s a series of questions. That’s why it’s hard. But questions lead us to Truth. The more we ask questions, the better answers we get.
Peter got the answer right but this happened because Jesus posted the questions. So which is better? Questions or answers?
And questions make us innovative. The more questions we post, the more solutions we get. Jesus asks his disciples in the middle of a commercial city, Caesarea Philippi. There are many things that are attributed to Jesus. And when Peter said, “You are the Messiah” Jesus said not to tell this to anyone. Peter and the rest of the disciples might mistake Jesus as a solution that the people might have been waiting for long, a political Messiah. No! Jesus will give them the solution after his Resurrection. For the resurrection will answer all the questions.
So today we listen to Jesus. What could be the question that Jesus would ask us today? May God bless you and your loved ones, in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today we are grateful because it’s a new day, the beginning of the week, the day of the LORD. And today we are going to focus our reflection on this question: What are we going to do with those who demonize us?
In the Gospel today we see a woman running after Jesus, calling his attention for help. “Have pity on me, Son of David. My daughter is tormented by a demon.” While the woman begged Jesus to expel the demon away from her daughter, the reaction of the disciples appears as if the woman is also a demon: Send her away, LORD. It’s one way of saying to Jesus: Send her away because she will continue to demonize us.
There are two impediments that we can see here: First, the woman is Canaanite, therefore, she does not possess any right inside the house of Israel. Second, she is a woman, and, in patriarchal society, she does not deserve any attention.
But what a turn of event when the woman acknowledges her place before Jesus: Even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from their master’s table. Dogs in the bible are considered unclean animals and so they have no right to be inside the house. But the Canaanite woman humbles herself before Jesus. And her humility silenced the demons around her. And when Jesus recognizes her faith in humility, she gets what she asks for.
And so if we want to silence the demons around us, just be humble. Ralph Washington Sochman has this to say: True humility is intelligent self-respect which keeps us from thinking too highly or too meanly of ourselves. It makes us mindful of the nobility God meant us to have. Yet it makes us modest by reminding us how far we have come short of what we can be.
Have a blessed Sunday everyone! And if you feel blessed by this podcast, please continue to share to your friends and don't forget to subscribe for a weekly update. May God bless you and your loved ones, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
19th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Do you ever have that feeling waking up in the morning and then suddenly you realize that something is not right? Everything might be in the right place but still you feel so wrong about yourself, about your life? Probably you might have experienced praying so hard, but still you cannot feel the LORD, you cannot see Jesus.
Hard times come. Difficult moments come even to good people, even to good, faithful, holy people. I remember some sentiments of people crying before God when situations did not favor them. Questions such as: "Where is God when it hurts?" "Why did God allow bad things to happen to good people?" "Why is God so silent when I need him the most?"
Today we are on the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time and the readings today propose to us how we should deal with the storms that threaten our life.
The response of Jesus to Peter to come and walk on the water is actually a call for maturity. We need to be mature with what we ask from Jesus. Sometimes like Peter we are sinking because we are doubting. When we put Jesus in front, the storms in the background will die down. No matter how strong the storms are, if we have Jesus, we can deal with them.
Only when we pray in faith that Jesus will pass by the storms and he will catch us back to him. I will just quote the beautiful image of Pope Francis regarding faith. Faith is a journey; it is a history. God did not reveal himself by dictating abstract truths but by acting in human history. The response of faith, in turn, is historical, meaning that it must be renewed and refreshed again and again. Francis even suggests that faith is not genuine unless it is tinged with a trace of doubt. “The great leaders of God’s people, like Moses, always left room for doubt. We must always leave room for the Lord and not for our own certainties. We must be humble. Every true discernment includes an element of uncertainty open to receiving spiritual consolation.”
Have a blessed Sunday everyone! And if you feel blessed by this podcast, please continue to share to your friends and don't forget to subscribe for a weekly update. May God bless you and your loved ones, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today is the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time and our liturgical readings give us this assurance: God sees beyond what we can see. In fact what we see as nothing God sees as everything. And to see is not only to use our physical sight. Jesus teaches us today to see not only with our eyes but also with our ears, the art of listening. You know seeing and listening comes together.
In the first reading God demonstrates us the relationship of seeing and listening. You who have no money, come, heed me, and you shall eat well, you shall delight in rich fare. Come to me heedfully, listen, that you may have life. So God does not only manifest himself through what we can see. We still need to pay attention to his voice. Come to think of it: Even if God will give us everything, if we are not listening, we will not still be able to see God. Listen, that you may have life.
In the Gospel today we see concretely that the disciples of Jesus did not see what Jesus sees. And the Gospel is quite particular with this detail: When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them. What the disciples see however is the physical hunger of the crowd: It's already late. Dismiss the crowd so that they can buy food for themselves. But Jesus surprises them with his response: “There is no need for them to go away; give them some food yourselves.”
And thanks be to God, they see what they have and they listen to Jesus. You know Jesus does not leave us empty-handed. When we go to God in prayer, he will always see to it that we bring something… only if we listen. In prayer, we see God better when we listen.
Remember what St Paul tells us in the second reading? What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Have a blessed Sunday everyone! And if you feel blessed by this podcast, please continue to share to your friends and don't forget to subscribe for a weekly update. May God bless you and your loved ones, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
On today's Sunday reflection, I would like to share with you about the importance of self-investment.
If we look at the first reading taken from the first book of Kings, we see here that the LORD is asking Solomon what he wants. And Solomon, after a careful evaluation of what the LORD did to him from the beginning, is quick to ask, "Give me an understanding heart." He did not ask for a long life. He did not ask for riches. He did not ask for the life of his enemies. We would ask for these things if we were Solomon. But an understanding heart makes him see what is right. I think this is a very good self-investment.
And St Paul affirms in the second reading that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. I think all of us are called for a certain purpose. And if we only know this purpose in our lives, we will be able to see how much God truly loves us in the first place. What is your purpose in this world? You are not here because of something, but you are here in order to do something…
And in the Gospel today, Jesus narrates to us using parables regarding self-investment. We invest in ourselves because we know that we have a purpose. How many of us really invest in ourselves? In short, what have we done so far for ourselves? If we discover the pearl that God buried in our being, we will be able to possess an understanding heart to see what is right and from whom we can see it. Invest in yourself. But first you need to discover your purpose. And you can only do that once you discover that pearl, that treasure that God buried in you in your heart.
In the first reading, we have the affirmation from the book of Wisdom that God, like no other, has the care for all. God loves you and he cares for you and for me. He even planted in each one of us a seed of goodness even if at times we are seeing ourselves growing together with "weeds" as expressed by the Gospel today.
Most often we want to pluck out the weeds, get rid of them as much as possible, the sooner, the better. But Jesus uses the wisdom of the master of the field to teach us a lesson: "Let them grow together." Does it ring the bell? Don't you realize that wherever we go, the weeds will follow suit. There's always the desire in us to grow in goodness, in holiness, "I want to be good" but the field, the place where we are planted, there always exists the weeds.
Don't you realize that Jesus uses three parables today and they are all about growing, about growth. We only stop growing when we are already dead, right? But the question that we need to address today is that: Are we growing, not only physically, mentally, or financially, but most of all spiritually? Are we maturing in our faith day by day?
I think we can only say that we grow spiritually when we find God in us. That when we look at ourselves in the mirror, we discover God and we look like God himself. Even if we are put into a certain environment we don't like, the survival kit that we have is to grow or to die? We cannot control our environment, like persons, circumstances, or things, and that's true, we cannot have control over something that is outside of us. What we have full control of is ourselves. At the end of the day, we reap what we sow. We can regret our life or be grateful for it. But remember what Jesus tells us today: the righteousness will shine like the sun in the kingdom of heaven. So we choose: are we the seed that makes other's grow or are we the weed that makes others lament in sorrow?
Have a blessed Sunday everyone! And if you feel blessed by this podcast, please continue to share to your friends and don't forget to subscribe for a weekly update. May God bless you and your loved ones, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
We are already on the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time. And today we're going to answer three important questions that may help us to appropriate the Word of God better in our day to day life.
The first question is, "So what?" After hearing the liturgical readings for today, so how is this relevant to my present context. How does God speak to us? One of the priests told me once, "In your homily, give people what they want to hear?" I think there's something missing in this line of thought. Most often than not God speaks not according to our terms, to our way of thinking. We cannot be selective in our hearing. Let's say for example when Jesus said, "Love your enemies." That is not something that we want to hear, right? When Jesus said, "Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me..." Many of us would resist, right? There are many instances that Jesus demanded a lot from his disciples. "Sell what you have and follow me." Today we see a sower, in fact, a wasteful sower. If we are looking at the sower right now, we'll be scandalized by his lack of attention. But Jesus wants us to see the other side. What we see as wasteful, Jesus probably would say, "The sower is just generous." The generosity of God always abounds. I think this is the theme of today's reading. God is generous because when you love you will always give to the full.
And then? This is the second question. Looking at the relevance of the Gospel today, then what should I do? Recognizing the generosity of God, then what are my action plans to respond to this invitation of God to me today. In the first reading, we hear from Isaiah that the word of God should not return empty. So once we hear the Word of God, we are responsible for its completion, for its fulfillment so that it will return to God empty. How many of us would really hear the Word and act on it?
The third question is, and what now? We know that God is generous to us. And so what now? How can I make this generosity of God visible in my Christian life?
Today we are already on the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time. And Jesus invites us today to take a rest, "Come to me all of you who are weary and burden and I will give you rest?" But what does this rest mean? Does Jesus mean rest as an absence of activity? Or is it just a passing of time like watching Netflix, YouTube or engaging in Social media? Or is there something else that we miss to see that Jesus wants us to see better? And for us, what does it mean to take a rest? I will just give you three important points about taking a rest which I derived from the liturgical readings this Sunday.
First, God invites us to rest from external stimuli. Our lives can be so conditioned by the things outside us that we become restless without them. Probably this coronavirus pandemic teaches us to take a rest from the world, from the pleasures of the world. You know I realized also that the world, the environment, our Mother Earth, needs to take a rest also, a recovery from our exploitation and lack of care. When we try to take a look at the first reading, we realize that Zechariah mentioned different places which the LORD will restore to its former glory. By resting, we also allow our surroundings to take a respite.
Second, God invites us to take a physical rest. You know when we do this physical fitness stuff, the common advice that we usually hear is to be mindful of the rest period because it is in this period of rest that our body tries to recover and recuperate. Our body needs rest. When we try to listen to our body, we will see that it is also speaking to us. When we feel pain, our body is telling us something. When we get sleepy, our body tells us something. And if we are not generous with our body, it will take its toll and we will pay the price for not paying attention. So physical rest is necessary. Allow your body to rest so that the Spirit will dwell in you.
Third, God invites us to a spiritual rest. And spiritual rest only happens during prayer. When we look at Jesus today in the Gospel he is praying to the Father and he recognizes that only through prayer that he can encounter God. You know when we realize that we have God everything becomes light and easy. It is in resting that we are able to discover and recover our relevance, our sense of meaning and purpose, and our values in relation to the gift of life that God entrusted to us. So this Sunday Jesus tells us to rest—rest from the world, a physical, bodily rest, and spiritual rest. So we make the most out of this gift of resting.
Have a blessed Sunday everyone! And if you feel blessed by this podcast, please continue to share to your friends and don't forget to subscribe for a weekly update. May God bless you and your loved ones, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the two important protagonists of the Church, St. Peter and St Paul, great apostles of Jesus Christ. Today the theme that I would like to develop for this Sunday's reflection comes from the question of Jesus: Who do you say that I am? When we look at Peter and Paul, their lives become an answer to this question. Who do you say that I am?
Probably Jesus has always been asking this same question to us every day: Who do you say that I am? When we pray to Jesus, what comes to mind? Who is Jesus to us really? When we are suffering, who is Jesus to us? When we fall to sin, who is Jesus to us? When someone rejects us, who is Jesus to us? When we have troubles with our love life, who is Jesus to us? When we feel that no one loves us, cares for us, who is Jesus to us? When we are sick and lonely, who is Jesus to us?
When we are honest to ourselves, our personal lives will become an answer to this question: Who do you say that I am? Just like St Peter and St Paul, they offered their lives even to the point of martyrdom and death because they know who Jesus is for them. So what Sts. Peter and Paul teach us and invite us to do today is to look deeper into ourselves, into our Christian life and see if truly we become an answer to this question of Jesus: Who do you say that I am?
You know there are many of us who are regular Mass-goers, members of Church organizations, Marian devotees and other ministries in the Church, and even myself, a priest at that, can be accused and cannot be excused because of our questionable and dual life. Does our life really answer Jesus' question? Or do we become a question to the question?
So as we look at St Peter and St Paul today, we remember, they do not need to speak today to evangelize, but by looking deeper into their lives, we will realize that they gave us an answer to Jesus' question: Who do you say that I am?
Have a blessed Sunday everyone. And if you feel blessed by this Sunday homily, please continue to share to your friends and don't forget to subscribe for a weekly update. May God bless you and your loved ones, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today we are already on the 12 Sunday in the Ordinary Time. The theme that I would like to dwell on for this Sunday's reflection is about overcoming fears. I think this is very timely when all of us seem to be afraid of the new normal. I think it's high time that we need to have an inventory of all the things that we are afraid about.
When I say inventory it means we need to write down or to name these fears so that we can have power over them. When we cannot name our fear, it will continue to harass us, to bother us, to annoy us. But when we name them, we can easily make them stop. The power of naming. I think this is also very biblical. When Jesus tried to exorcise someone, the first thing that he did was to know the name. "What is your name?" And then Jesus made them silent. "Go out!" Do we really know what we are afraid of? If you have your cellphone with you, write them down. And when you can name it, you will weaken its power over you. In the first reading Jeremiah named what he feared about and the LORD empowered him.
You know, we are all sinners. And I guess everyone of us is afraid of our sin exposed to the world. That's why the Sacrament of Reconciliation or confession of sins can be very challenging to go through. But this is also the thing. But after the confession, we also feel the sense of liberation, of freedom, of joy. For me, as a priest I always perceive the difficulty of the penitents to name the sin. When we cannot name the sin that we committed, it will continue to have its power in us. Yes we are afraid of our sins being exposed, but we have to remember Jesus does not only carry the weight of our sins, but he already paid the price to save us. So when we name our sins, it's not for the priests or for the LORD to hear it, but for us to identify the wounds caused by our sinfulness so that the LORD can begin the healing process.
Jesus in the Gospel today tells us: Do not be afraid those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. God knows us better. We might have committed sins we could not imagine. But the LORD never forgets the value of each one of us. In fact he will always call us by our name, not by our sins. When the LORD makes an inventory, he will look at the marks on his body, and our names are written there. Have a blessed everyone. And if you feel blessed by this Sunday homily, please continue to share to your friends and don't forget to subscribe for a weekly update. May God bless you and your loved ones, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today we celebrate Corpus Christi Sunday or the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, wherein we highlight the centrality of the Holy Eucharist. And what does this mean to us? I will just give three important points in this Sunday reflection.
First, the body and blood of Christ that we partake during the celebration of the Holy Eucharist makes us remember the presence of God in our lives. You know, when we receive the communion and yet the people around us cannot see God in us, that's very problematic. Remember, we become what we eat. Upon the reception of the Holy Communion, we become God's tabernacle. We allow God to be truly present in us.
Second, the celebration of Corpus Christi is a participation in the body of Christ. We also become Jesus' body. Remember what St Paul said, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me." This is the consequence of our partaking of his body and blood. When Jesus ascended into heaven, he wanted us to become his body so that everyone may be able to experience God in us. So if we proclaim ourselves Christian, we have the responsibility to make Jesus visible through our own body just like what St Paul is telling us.
Third, the Solemnity of Corpus Christi is a memorial of Jesus' gift of himself. One cannot give himself fully without loving unconditionally. Jesus' love is immeasurable. Jesus made himself a payment for all the sins of the world. We remember St Paul in his letter to the Romans when he said, "God showed how much he loved us by having Christ die for us, even though we were sinful." God hates sin but remember he died because of them.
So today we remember that our Christian life is very Eucharistic. When we receive the body and blood of Jesus we remember the presence of Jesus in our lives and that we also, by consequence, become his body for Jesus truly gave himself for all of us.
Have a blessed Trinity Sunday everyone! You know I wanted to skip this Sunday reflection because Trinity is one of the most difficult doctrines of the Catholic faith.
But I realized that Jesus revealed the Trinity not because he wanted to confuse us, or to burden us in understanding it, just our professors in theology. But Jesus revealed the Trinity as God's self-communication to humanity. Jesus revealed God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to make us understand who God really is. We cannot understand the Trinity, or even Jesus himself, by isolation of persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), but we can only understand it by relation of persons. You cannot understand a wife without a husband. You cannot understand a child without his or her parents. So we can only understand someone in terms of his relation to someone else. This is true with Jesus also. We cannot understand him unless we relate him to the Father and to the Holy Spirit.
The liturgical readings that we have today centers on one significant type of relationship. And the Gospel tells us, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son..." Here we can discern one thing. God communicated himself only through love, nothing else. All that Jesus said and did is always about a God who loves us until the end. And how did Jesus demonstrate this love? By giving of himself even to the point of death. I will lay down my life for you so that you may live.
God understands us that he is willing to give himself to all of us. He wants to be in a relationship because he does not want us to be put in isolation. Many people may isolate us, but God never gets tired of finding ways to relate with us.
God is already in a relationship. In fact God does not need us. And only those who can love that much who can understand the meaning of giving of himself.
So we can understand now the ministry of Jesus is always geared towards the inclusion of those persons in isolations: sinners, widows, the poor in the peripheries, those who feel themselves persecuted, accused for the sake of the Gospel, those who feel themselves isolated.
I hope that this Sunday, the Trinity Sunday, we may be able to love totally so that we may understand God in its entirety. God loves us all. Remain in love. Remain in God. God bless and have a blessed and fruitful Sunday! God bless and see you next week. Tchau!
Today we commemorate Pentecost Sunday, or the coming down of the Holy Spirit to the disciples, to strengthen them to proclaim the Good News that comes from Jesus.
Our liturgical readings are very clear about the image of the Holy Spirit. In the First Reading, the Holy Spirit "makes noise." We can say that sometimes the Holy Spirit can be disturbing. Isn't it? But what the Holy Spirit does to the disciples is to compel them to proclaim the Good News. And what is interesting in the narration of the First Reading is that the Holy Spirit gifted the disciples a tongue to speak in different languages. Which is very true in our Christian faith. We cannot talk about Jesus without the Holy Spirit moving us to faith.
This is what St Paul is talking about in the Second Reading. No one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit. We have to remember that the Holy Spirit will never alter, modify, or add anything to what Jesus said and did. But rather the Holy Spirit will fulfill in us and through us what Jesus began in us. We may recognize many gifts from a Christian community, but this gift, according to St Paul, must be used for the edification of the building of communities. When you do not use your gift for the community, the Holy Spirit will disturb you.
In the Gospel, Jesus is bestowing peace to his disciples. When we are doing something for the LORD, we will always be peaceful. I realize just now that life is uncertain. When we are uncertain about something, we are restless. During this coronavirus pandemic, all of us are afraid to die. And you know I met someone who asked me a very disturbing question: Why are you afraid to die? Are you afraid to meet the LORD? Although he asked me jokingly about this I realized maybe, I am still thinking of the many things that I need to do.
One time before I slept, there was this question I asked myself that probably can change the way I look at my life everyday: Do you regret anything that happened today? If there is one thing that you will need to do tomorrow so that you will not regret your life, what would it be? And these questions become a daily prayer for me, to remind me of the important things that I will need to do to fulfill what Jesus began in me.
And so today we ask the Holy Spirit to disturb us when we are not doing the right thing that we need to do so that at the end of the day we will not regret anything that Jesus entrusted to us. Amen
In the Gospel, Jesus would send his disciples, "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
What is Jesus telling us today is to tell our story of our personal experience. How many of us really are willing to recount our stories of faith, our experience of Jesus to those who are with us? And how many of us are willing to listen to the stories of others? Remember this, our Christian faith begins with storytelling. When the disciples began to spread the story of their faith in Jesus, many people believed in Jesus. So we need to also check ourselves: What kind of stories are we telling our friends, our loved ones?
Pope Francis in his message during the World Communication Sunday would say: In an age when falsification is increasingly sophisticated, reaching exponential levels (as in deepfake), we need wisdom to be able to welcome and create beautiful, true and good stories. We need courage to reject false and evil stories. We need patience and discernment to rediscover stories that help us not to lose the thread amid today’s many troubles. We need stories that reveal who we truly are, also in the untold heroism of everyday life.
And Pope Francis continues: So it is not a matter of simply telling stories as such, or of advertising ourselves, but rather of remembering who and what we are in God’s eyes, bearing witness to what the Spirit writes in our hearts and revealing to everyone that his or her story contains marvellous things.
You know I attended one Life Coaching session where we are taught to ask questions, questions that can activate a process for personal healing and self-reconciliation. I realized that everyone of us deserves to be listened to, that everyone of us has a story within a specific context. And if we understand the context within the story of the person, we will be able to see as Jesus sees.
And Pope Francis can be right: No human stories are insignificant or paltry. Since God became a story, every human story is, in a certain sense, a divine story. In the history of every person, the Father sees again the story of his Son who came down to earth. Every human story has an irrepressible dignity. Consequently, humanity deserves stories that are worthy of it, worthy of that dizzying and fascinating height to which Jesus elevated it.
And Pope Francis continued: The Holy Spirit, the love of God, writes within us. And as he writes within us, he establishes goodness in us and constantly reminds us of it. Indeed, to “re-mind” means to bring to mind, to “write” on the heart. By the power of the Holy Spirit, every story, even the most forgotten one, even the one that seems to be written with the most crooked lines, can become inspired, can be reborn as a masterpiece, and become an appendix to the Gospel.
God would love to hear our stories. Pope Francis says: Telling God our story is never useless: even if the record of events remains the same, the meaning and perspective are always changing. To tell our story to the Lord is to enter into his gaze of compassionate love for us and for others.
Today we are grateful because Jesus our LORD is giving us the most special and important gift for our faith, the gift of the Holy Spirit. In the Profession of Faith, we proclaim and believe in the Holy Spirit, the LORD and the giver of life.
But for today allow me to speak with you only one reason why we need the Holy Spirit. You know here today in our Gospel, Jesus is very specific about the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised: I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows him. But you know him, because he remains with you, and will be in you.
Jesus is sure about what he is going to give to all of us, an advocate, which comes from the Latin word advocatus, someone beside us or someone we can call on to. To understand simply, the Holy Spirit is actually our lawyer, our defender.
When we lose our faith in God, the Holy Spirit will come to our rescue. Faith is oftentimes tested by an experience of darkness, the point when we can no longer understand everything that is happening to us from the point of view of reason. I think it's hard to believe in God especially when we feel something is very, very wrong with our life. When this time comes, the Holy Spirit will be there as our defender.
We lose our hope when life does not make sense anymore, right? When life itself becomes a question rather than an answer. Probably there are many of us who have many questions for God which unfortunately are not answered. But we have to remember in the Gospel of Luke 12: 11-12: Do not worry about how or what your defense will be or about what you are to say. For the holy Spirit will teach you at that moment what you should say.
And most of all the Holy Spirit teaches us to love. I remember one of the General Audiences where Pope Francis describes the involvement of the Holy Spirit in teaching us that God loves us with certainty. Pope Francis: It is easy to say: God loves us. We all say it. But think a bit. Each one of us is able to ask: Am I sure that God loves me? It is not so easy to say it. But it is true. This is a good exercise, to say to oneself: God loves me. This is the root of our certainty, the root of hope. The Lord has abundantly poured into our hearts the Spirit—which is the love of God—as artisan, as guarantor, precisely so that he may nourish the faith within us and keep this hope alive. This is a certainty: God loves me. “But in this difficult moment?”—God loves me. “I, who have done this bad and cruel thing?”—God loves me. No one can take this certainty away. We must repeat it as a prayer: God loves me. I am sure that God loves me. I am sure that God loves me.
The promise of Jesus to give us another advocate, the Holy Spirit, yes, whom the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows him. But we know him, because he remains with us, and will be in us. Have a great day! God bless!
I hope and pray for your perseverance in the faith. May God continue to grant your heart's desire through Jesus, who saves us, redeems us, and loves us tirelessly until the end.
Today we are already on the Fifth Sunday of Easter. And what I'll share with you today is about going home. I think this Sunday is very much related to Good Shepherd Sunday. So if you haven't listened to that yet, you can go back to the previous Podcast through Spotify and Anchor FM.
You know, staying home is getting hard each passing day, right? I realized this after a month and a half of strict observance of the lockdown due to the increasing threat of coronavirus pandemic. But I think, this is what probably Jesus wants to tell us today, "I want you to be home."
In the Gospel we heard Jesus making a concrete promise to all his disciples of today, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be." What a time for this promise to come to us who are getting tired of staying home.
The question of Thomas today is significant: “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” It seems that Thomas is asking for the address of Jesus. When we say home it does not mean structural, material, spatial house, but it is finding yourself in someone's heart. When you know someone loves you, you will always feel home? There are many people who live in the same house, under the same roof, but still cannot feel home? Do not mistake home as something physical or spatial, a space just like what Thomas was trying to think.
Probably Thomas might be stuck to the mentality of the Jews. You know, when you look at the people of Israel in the Old Testament theology, you always see that Israel is always on the journey, on a pilgrimage, thinking of the destination. Remember the journey to the Promised Land for example. And after that journey, God gave them through Moses the Ten Commandments. And, for them, the only way they can reach God is by following the commandments. The Ten Commandments stand like a roadmap to God's home address.
In the New Testament, particularly here in the Gospel of John, Jesus is seen as the Word made flesh, verbum incarnatum. The Word of God is embodied by Jesus. It's like God takes a bodily form in Jesus, that is, when we see Jesus, we see also God himself.
For the Old Testament, the commandment is the point of arrival. That is why we can understand now, Israel thought that they already arrived in God's address by solely following the Law. But the New Testament, Jesus is the point of departure. Only through Jesus that we can arrive in God's home address. To put it simply, Jesus would say: I am God's home address himself. You cannot get to God but through me. And when our earthly pilgrimage ends, God might have only one question for us: How did you get here? And the right answer is Jesus. So stay with Jesus and you will be home. Amen.
We are already on the Fourth Sunday of Easter. And this Sunday is also called the Good Shepherd Sunday. You know, the image of the Good Shepherd is special to my heart. And so I will dwell on this image for today's Sunday reflection.
You know we can all appreciate the Good Shepherd when we know very well the characteristics of the sheep. And I am focusing on the three characteristics of the sheep which can help us see better and appreciate the Good Shepherd, Jesus himself.
The first characteristic of the sheep is that the sheep is short-sighted, and in fact, they cannot see their peripheries. Now we will understand why the sheep can easily get lost. You know the sense of sight of the sheep is by hearing, by listening. In order to see, the sheep must listen to the voice of the shepherd.
It happens also to us. Sometimes Like a sheep, we cannot see clearly. That is why when we feel so lost, we seek advice. We think that the only way we can see is to listen to someone. Our sense of hearing is very alert when we feel so wrong about ourselves. We just hope that we are hearing other voices. Because the only way we can hear and see Jesus clearly is through prayer. How is your prayer life today?
The second characteristic of the sheep is its incapability to defend itself. The sheep does not have a defense mechanism not like other animals. So that is why they need the Shepherd against any threat or physical attack.
I think we can understand why Jesus would say: I will lay down my life for my sheep. Try to think of it: on our own we cannot defend ourselves. We need Jesus. He is the only one who can defend us against sin and betrayal.
Jesus does not only defend us but he also saves us. He is happy to find one lost sheep. It could be probably you or me. So if we need a lawyer against sin or against any temptation that Satan will lay down on us, we have to call on Jesus. I remember a priest telling me: You know, Father, If Satan calls us by our sins; God calls by our name. If you are bothered by your sins, take them to Jesus and he will defend you.
The third characteristic of the sheep is that the sheep is a picky eater. The sheep chooses his food. The sheep does not eat anything you put in front of them. I remember Psalm 23. The LORD is my Shepherd there is nothing I shall want. In verdant pastures he gives me repose. Beside restful waters he leads me. You spread the table before me in the sight of my foes. Only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life. Wow. I imagine, God wants the best for all of us. He looks for the verdant, the best pasture where he can give us repose, a rest.
All of us are like a sheep. We tend to become short-sighted at times. We are defenseless. We are picky eaters. But come on we have Jesus, a Good Shepherd, who will always lay down. He actually paid the price of our sins, so that we may live. Amen.
We are already on the Third Sunday of Easter. In today’s Gospel we are given a simple image of two disciples of Jesus crossing to the other side of Jerusalem, Emaus. And I will be using this image of crossing to the other side as my paradigm in today’s Sunday reflection.
In the first reading, we see St Peter, together with the eleven, who is declaring his faith in Jesus. If we try to think of it: What makes Peter courageous and ardent about his proclamation of Jesus? Remember, at the death of Jesus, they were running away. They were hiding. They were cowards. Here we can see a symbolism of crossing to the other side. Peter and the rest of Jesus' disciples crossed to the other side, running away from death. But when Jesus rose from the dead, the disciples understood what it meant to follow Jesus. If they want to follow Jesus, they need to cross the Cross of Jesus. And Jesus assured them by his Resurrection that they will live. And so here in the first reading, Peter declared his faith in Jesus. Faith is also about crossing. And we will see the connection of the first reading to the second reading which also came from the First Letter of Peter:
He was known before the foundation of the world
but revealed in the final time for you,
who through him believe in God
who raised him from the dead and gave him glory,
so that your faith and hope are in God.
In the Gospel today, we see the two disciples of Jesus on the way to Emaus. And Luke mentioned the distance of Emaus from Jerusalem which is about 11 kilometers. It’s quite a long journey. Here we will be able to witness that these two disciples might have lost their faith, so they also cross to the other side, the side of unbelief and disappointment. And upon crossing, they met Jesus and Jesus walked with them, perhaps very slowly because remember they were sad, their faces on the ground.
Luke is very attentive to give us the details of the breaking of the Word and the breaking of the bread. This is very eucharistic. And the disciples understood when Jesus breaks the bread. And Jesus disappeared. They crossed from disbelief and frustration to faith and joy. And realizing it, they went back to Jerusalem.
This Sunday is truly an invitation of Jesus, the invitation to cross. This coronavirus pandemic invites us to stay put. But if we try to realize it maybe the LORD is teaching to go back to our own Jerusalem. Perhaps we might have been crossing to our many Emauses that we already forgot our true Jerusalem. Let us therefore ask Jesus to journey with us in this moment of uncertainty and frustrations and allow him to break the Word and the bread for us. Amen.
Today we are already on the Second Sunday of Easter and we are thankful because the Church calls this the Divine Mercy Sunday. Indeed when we look at Easter, it would always be about the mercy of God. And it reveals who really God is for us. No matter how sinful humanity is, the response of God would always be mercy. And that is how God insults us. By being merciful to us, he makes us realize that we are sinful.
Last week as I listened to the daily liturgical readings, there was this image that I found useful in understanding this mercy of God. The stone that the builders rejected has become the corner stone. This symbolism of stone is powerful in itself, and it is an imposing image that we can find in Easter. When Jesus was buried, we saw that a large stone was rolled against the entrance of the tomb. And the same stone would be rolled away at Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.
These two opposing images of rolling the stone against and rolling of stone away from the tomb tells us of our response in the face of death. All our life we are struggling to surpass death, to overcome death and so we rolled the stone against it, but the stone does not fit. It still finds its way out to rule over us, to conquer us.
But the rolling away of large stone in Jesus’ tomb is the casing point where death runs away in defeat. Death cannot overcome Jesus' light. This rolling away of stone reveals the mercy of God to his people.
God in Jesus embraces us in our dark night so that we will come out with him in the light. God embraces our darkness so that we may have the light. That is mercy. God rolled away the stone of sin and death away from us. Jesus is the stone put by God to keep the darkness away from us. But most often than not, we rejected the stone, and rolled it against us. The stone which we rejected is supposed to be the cornerstone.
In the Gospel today we see the prominent character of Thomas. He was not there the first time Jesus revealed himself. Today in the Gospel, it is worthy to note that the disciples locked the door probably because of fear and doubt. And yet Jesus passed through it. And Thomas was there. He was privileged to touch Jesus' pierced side. That was also mercy. The stone which he rejected has now become the cornerstone of his faith.
God sent Jesus to be our cornerstone. Jesus is not a quick-fix God offered to humanity. Jesus is the keystone which would open all the locked doors and set us free from running and hiding from God. Amen.
Easter fulfills everything that Jesus said and did. By resurrection, all the questions that we had on Good Friday are answered by Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead. Jesus fulfills his promise.
What can Easter do to us at this point in time?
If we try to recall what happened last Friday, within which we commemorated the Exaltation of the Cross, what we heard was bad news. But Easter makes that bad news a Good News especially to those who believe in Jesus. Easter Sunday corrects what was wrong on Good Friday.
For those who have questions for God, God may be silent...we may question God when we also experience Good Friday in our life. When Good Friday strikes us, we also feel the silence of God. We feel the prayer that Jesus uttered, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” God is silent on our Good Friday. I was reflecting on this but I realized that you know, when we experience pain, we cannot absorb, we cannot take answers.
One time I went to a funeral, and one of the members of the grieving family asked me a question. “Why did it happen to her? She was a good person? We need her. Why?” I tried to formulate my answer but you know, no matter how logical, intelligent the answer may sound, he still questioned my answer. I realized, no answer is acceptable to a person who experienced pain. The silence of God on Good Friday does not mean he is absent. He is present. We refuse to see the good when bad things happen to us. And so by Easter Sunday, Jesus promised that our life does not end in death. And that is Good News.
There are two stories we can find in the Paschal Mystery of Jesus—the story of God and the story of humanity. These two stories go together in one direction, just like to parallel lines, but they never meet. There is only one point that both of these stories, the story of God and the story of humanity, converged for the first time in human history. When we look at the cross, we see both of these stories. We discern the story of God who is merciful and the story of humanity who is always sinful.
When the Easter event happened, the story of the cross changed. It is the first and the final moment when God met humanity in its lowest moment. It is the definitive when the story of death changed. Easter changes the ending of our story. It is no longer death, but a promise of eternal life in God with Jesus. And so it's right and just to sing. Alleluia.
As the liturgy of the Holy Week develops, we see God continues to make a bet. When you are betting, you are not sure if you will win. God bets the life of his Son, hoping that we will find God in Jesus. He does not have that enough assurance he will win. But he did anyway.
And so it happened. Jesus still becomes an option. He is not the choice.
When Pilate tries to ask the crowd about their choice, “Which one do you want me to release to you, Barabbas, or Jesus called Christ?” The crowd choose Barabbas.
When God becomes an option, this is what happens. But we look at Jesus, we never hear a word from him. His silence makes us realize what we lose. If God is not our choice, God does not lose, we are. We become losers.
In this podcast, I will share with you my take on the Fifth Sunday of Lent. We know there is no good news in death; it’s always bad news. Every time we hear someone died, you will always see it as bad news… But there is only one whose death becomes Good News. It’s Jesus. Jesus died, but true to his promise, he rose from the dead. When Jesus rose from the dead, he mocked the smile of death: Where death is your victory, where death is your sting? Jesus won over death and he fulfills his promise. Death does not have the final say.
In this podcast, I will share with you an insight about the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the LORD to Mary, Mother of Jesus and its relevance to us as we try to cope with our questions about coronavirus. I think the framework story of the Annunciation in the Gospel of Luke can help awaken our hope and our faith just like Mary, who when she encountered Angel Gabriel, was caught unprepared and was overwhelmed by the message of angel Gabriel. At the beginning of the encounter Mary might have her sets of questions for God, but what is interesting in this story is that God never abandoned Mary until she got the answer right.