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21st Sunday in Ordinary Time - Homily

8/23/2020

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In the First Letter to the Corinthians St Paul wrote: ‘nobody is able to say: ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.’ A person once challenged it by saying that everyone can say it, even an atheist. In a technical sense it is true. Everyone can say these words. However what St Paul wrote wasn’t about a pronunciation but it was about an attitude. What’s the point of saying something if you don’t mean it? Jesus himself never said an empty word. He was the Word who became flesh. He became a human being so that human beings could see God’s love for them. That’s why St John wrote in his First Letter: ‘We have recognised for ourselves and put our faith in the love God has for us.’ Why was St John so sure of God’s love? Because he saw Jesus. He lived with Jesus. He followed Jesus from the beginning of our Blessed Lord’s public ministry until the crucifixion, Resurrection, the Ascension and the Day of Pentecost. That’s why when the Apostles were saying: ‘Jesus is Lord’ they meant what they said. Because they meant what they said they also entrusted their very lives to Jesus, their Lord, their God.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! The Gospel passage from St Matthew, which we have just heard, shows us Peter who made a faith confession too. When Jesus asked his disciples: ‘Who do you say I am?’ the apostle answered: ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ We know that it was the correct answer. However Jesus didn’t give Peter a high distinction because it wasn’t an exam. It was about God dwelling in the midst of people. That’s why what Jesus did was introducing the group of his disciples present there and the generations of his disciples to come, we present here are among those disciples too, to the mystery which was already growing in Peter’s soul. Let’s listen to the words of Jesus again: ‘Simon son of Jonah, you are a happy man! Because it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you but my Father in heaven.’ What was happening in Peter was affecting not just his intellect but also his will and his heart. Peter had entrusted his life to Jesus. How did the Father in heaven reveal to Peter what the apostle confessed that day? There was not a big revelation event yet. The glorious day of the Transfiguration was still to come. However we can say that Peter’s confession goes back to the day when Jesus was baptised in the Jordan by John the Baptist.
            Peter says: ‘You are Christ.’ Christ means anointed. Jesus was indeed anointed at his baptism when the Holy Spirit ascended upon him.
            Peter says: ‘You are the Son of the living God.’ When Jesus was baptised the voice of the Father was heard: ‘You are my Son, the beloved, my favour rests on him.’
            How did Peter know about it? He wasn’t there when Jesus was baptised. But John the Baptist was. John the Baptised passed this onto his disciples, some of whom became the disciples of Jesus. They must have passed it onto their fellow disciples, among whom was Peter. How do we call this process of passing something on? We call it tradition. Tradition is not something old and flat. Tradition in the Christian sense is something always new and fresh, something you receive with excitement and gratitude. You are so excited and grateful for it that you don’t want it to die with you. Therefore you too pass it onto the next generation.
What we have received from the previous generation and what we want to pass onto the generation which will come after us is not academic knowledge. It is not a biography of Jesus. It is the Living Word of God. It is the Living Word of God because the Risen Lord is living. He is in our midst.
The Apostles didn’t learn about Jesus by distance learning. They learnt about Jesus because Jesus invited them to be part of his life. For us today the Church is about being part of Jesus’ life. In the Church we receive and give our faith, hope and love for Jesus. It is here, in this community of disciples, that the Father in heaven reveals to us the great mysteries of Jesus. This revelation which keeps occurring in our midst gives us grace to mean when we say: ‘Jesus is Lord.’ When we say: ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Because we mean what we say we are also graced to entrust our life to Jesus.


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20th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Homily

8/16/2020

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            Yesterday we observed the day of the Assumption of Mary. This fullness of Redemption accomplished by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in his life, death and resurrection was manifested in the empty grave of Mary as she was taken up to heaven in her body and soul. We glorified the Most Blessed Trinity for the fullness of Redemption accomplished in the Mother of Jesus, who is also our Mother. We also looked up to her as our model and guide in faith.
In the opening pages of the Gospel we hear the words of St Elizabeth who upon welcoming Mary to her home said of Mary: ‘Blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.’ Thus the first beatitude we find in the Gospel is that of faith and it refers to who believed as St John Paul II said to the pilgrims visiting Rome in 1998. As Jesus was entering this world of ours in the mystery of his Incarnation, in the mystery of God becoming flesh, he awoke faith in Mary, a young girl from Nazareth. In Mary we discover faith in its pristine form. Mary believed not in an abstract deity but in God who comes to his people, in God who makes the first move. This first move of God fills people with grace to trust him, to accept his message as the Good News. This is what we discover in Mary. That’s why we keep turning to her because we don’t want to lose what we have been given by God. We want to cherish God’s first move made towards us. We want to see his grace grow in us into faith.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! This Sunday the Holy Scriptures present us another woman. We are truly blessed with a feminine weekend this weekend. The woman whom we meet is very loud. I wish she had the strongest amplifier possible because what she says is precious. I think that the reason why Jesus appeared to be ignoring her was that he wanted her to keep saying what she was cherishing in her soul. Jesus wanted her to keep disclosing the riches filling her soul so that many more people could hear it.
The first riches is her motherly love for her daughter. The love which caused her suffer so much because of her daughter’s illness. We can understand and appreciate it. It resonates with our human experience. I believe that this is the reason why Mary is so attractive to us too. Our Blessed Mother also lived and loved in the way which was so human.
This first riches disclosed by the Canaanite woman from today’s Gospel, her deep love for her daughter was situated in the drama of the suffering experienced by the girl. We don’t know what kind of suffering it was but it must have been severe. Here the other riches of the Canaanite woman is disclosed. How often when suffering or difficulties impact us it seems to weaken our faith. My Dear fellow Christians let us pay attention to what the Canaanite woman is saying. Let us gather every single word she is saying. Let us take with us into our daily life every single word she is saying. She is a great mother indeed. She is also a ‘woman of great faith.’ This is how Jesus spoke of her at the end of the Gospel passage we have been given this Sunday.
We’ve already reflected on her motherly love. What can we say about her great faith?
She spoke of Jesus as ‘Son of David.’ This pagan woman must have definitely heard of Jesus. She might have even heard and seen him herself. As she speaks to him she acknowledges him as the one who fulfills the promises given to the People of Israel. Her pagan imagination about divine has been changed. Her image of divine is no longer about some god she must go to but it is the image of God who makes the first move, God who comes to his people because his feels compassion for them.
This pagan woman also speaks of Jesus as Lord. The Jews reserved this word for God as they out of reverence didn’t utter the Holy Name of God. The woman didn’t say it once. She didn’t say it twice. She said it thrice. Thus the way she addressed Jesus wasn’t accidental. She acknowledged in Jesus the God whom the Jews refused to recognize.
My Dear fellow Believers! If you find yourselves in a situation which makes you doubt God I invite you to turn to Our Blessed Mother. Let her calm the storm of fear and doubt in your soul. I also invite you to fill your heart and mind with the words of the Canaanite woman from today’s Gospel. In your struggle keep repeating to Jesus her words: ‘Son of David, take pity on me.’ When everything appears to suggest to you that God is not there for you keep saying: ‘Lord. Lord. Lord.’


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18th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Homily

8/2/2020

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            Imagine that the bread and fish which Jesus multiplied in the Gospel were taken to the MasterChef judges. Do you think that it would get Jesus to be among the fifty semi-finalists? I doubt. However the memory of that event which happened in a lonely place two thousand years ago, as St Matthew told us, is still remembered among us, Christian communities. Even if we didn’t taste what Jesus distributed to feed the hungry crowd, even if the twelve baskets full of scraps haven’t been preserved to inspire and support us, still the Gospel passage comes to us as fresh as the bread just baked and the fish just cooked.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! We gather today in this Church, like we do every Sunday or some of us even every day. We come here not like the MasterChef contestants and judges who have an abundance of recourses. Rather we come here like the people from the Gospel who left everything they had, at least for a day, to listen to Jesus. We know that they left everything because they didn’t have even the basics to eat. They followed Jesus to ‘a lonely place’ leaving everything behind. They followed Jesus in their poverty. We come here in our poverty too.
This church is our lonely place. It is lonely not because there is no one here. Even in the Gospel the place where people found Jesus could hardly be described lonely. After all a few thousand people gathered there. This place, our church, is lonely not in terms of the absence of people but because of the absence of recourses we have come to believe, or have been made to believe, we cannot live without. Commercials, social pressure together with our desire to have more and more have made us ‘hoarders.’ We accumulate things because in them we see life. This church, this Eucharist is God’s given a materialism detox for us. That’s why this Sunday I would like us to pay attention to the group of the disciples who were with Jesus.
I realise that in the crowd of many thousand people they can be overlooked easily. It is even easier to overlook ‘the five loaves and two fish’ the disciples had initially. I don’t want us to overlook these details. To be honest they are not details, they are crucial elements of this passage to absorb the mystery of the miracle Jesus performed there, in ‘the lonely place.’
The disciples we meet in the Gospel today had just enough to get them through another day. They took to heart what Jesus said some time earlier: ‘Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts, no bag for a journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff.’ What the disciples had was five loaves and two fish. Enough food for their small community for one day. This food wasn’t reserves for many days to come. This food was to survive one day. This food was their life. You may remember the poor widow from the Temple in Jerusalem who put two little coins into the treasury. From the perspective of the rich it was nothing. From her perspective it was life. Jesus said of her: ‘She gave all she had to live on.’ She gave more than money. She entrusted to God her life, her future.
When in today’s Gospel Jesus asked his disciples: ‘Bring them (bread and fish) here to me.’ He asked them to do what that poor widow did in the Temple: to give their life for others. And they did. The disciples put their very life at the disposal of others. Before the five loaves and two fish were multiplied a miracle happened in the hearts and minds of the disciples. Jesus performed ‘metanoia’ – conversion of their hearts and minds.
My Dear fellow Believers. The church is not a MasterChef competition. The church is the time and miracle performed by Jesus so that our hearts and minds could be transformed like the hearts and minds of the disciples in the Gospel did. Jesus is working very hard on us to transform us from ‘hoarders’ into givers. It is not just limited to what we have but it is all about giving away who we are. When we embrace the live of giving away our life we discover profound peace and joy. Is it easy? It is not. That’s why we come to church, to Mass so often because we know that it takes a long time to have our minds and hearts transformed in such a way. That’s why we keep receiving Jesus in Holy Communion because Holy Communion is all about Jesus giving himself away to us. Receiving him so many times we gradually mature to become whom we receive.


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