Peace! Kalilintad! Shalom!

Category: Homilies

  • PUT ON THE NEW SELF         

    PUT ON THE NEW SELF         

    September 10, 2025 – Wednesday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time

    Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091025.cfm)

    Are we really convinced and feel truly blessed when we are poor and powerless? Are we truly happy when we are indeed hungry, weeping and hurting? Do we rejoice for being hated and rejected by others because we live honestly and justly?

    It would truly be difficult to reconcile these contrasting life situations. A student once shared to me a conversation she had with her grandmother. In her innocence and directness expressed her anguish, “Lola, why are we so poor? It is so tiring to be poor. Will we ever be rich?” The Lola responded to her, “It’s okay. God loves and favors the poor.”

    To a child who does not have the perks and privileges of being born in an affluent family would surely begin to question the difficult life of being poor and underprivileged. Such response is surely difficult to understand.

    Yet, the response of her Lola is certainly the message of the Gospel. God loves and favors the poor. This is the reason why the Beatitude of Jesus begins with “Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours.” This first line of the Beatitude already set the favor of God upon those who are less fortunate such as the hungry, those who are weeping and hurting, and those who are rejected and insulted because of living the faith truly.

    From the perspective of wealth, comfort and power, God seemed to be unfair because the Lord favors the other. Yet, it is not that way. The Lord favors the poor and the weak because of what lies in the heart. Only when we are weak, poor, and powerless that the heart recognizes the need for God. The heart truly longs for God’s presence.

    However, when the heart becomes rich, powerful and comfortable, it also becomes self-contained, arrogant and indifferent. Hence, the heart does not need God and even rejects God. No wonder why Jesus’ words bring warning to those who have become rich, powerful and comfortable, “woe to you.”

    In a country plagued by plunder and corruption, dishonesty in public works and blatant abuse of power and public office, Jesus’ warning echoes to every generation. Woe to you for you will go hungry! Woe to you for you will grieve and weep!

    Yet, Paul calls us in his Letter to the Colossians, “Put to death the parts that are earthly; immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and greed…as well as anger, fury, malice, slander,
    and obscene language.    ” All of these make us separate from God and from others. What Paul calls us is to “put on a new self” in Christ and leave the old self that corrupts.

    Putting this new self in Christ, as St. Paul tells us, requires us to “seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” To seek what is above is to seek the Kingdom of God. And now we realize that the Kingdom of God rests in those hearts that embraces humility and vulnerability, in recognizing our poverty and powerlessness.

    This is how God favors the poor and the week, those weeping and hurting because the Lord is already in their hearts. This calls us to indeed “rejoice and leap for joy.” Hinaut pa.

  • WALK IN HIM, ROOTED IN HIM, BUILT UPON HIM

    WALK IN HIM, ROOTED IN HIM, BUILT UPON HIM

    September 9, 2025 – Tuesday 23rd Week in Ordinary Time

    Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090925.cfm)

    How do we make decisions? What are the things that we consider as we choose what is essential in life?

    Paul in his Letter to the Colossians, reminded the people not to be persuaded by selfish desires, “seductive philosophy” and perhaps appealing ideologies at that time. People might be tempted on impulse to choose and make decisions in their life based on what was popular and appealing to many.

    Hence, Paul said, “as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him, rooted in him and built upon him and established in the faith as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”

    To walk in him, be rooted in him and be built upon him is to make Jesus Christ at the very center of our life, of the decisions we make and the things that we do and we want to be. This is how we share in the fullness of Jesus’s humanity and divinity.

    And the Gospel today gives us the invitation on how we will be able to remain in Jesus and share in the fullness of God’s grace. This is shown himself by Jesus, and that is through the basics of prayer. As Jesus chose his closest disciples whom he also called apostles, Jesus spent a night in prayer to his Father in heaven.

    Jesus prayed. In fact, he spent the whole night in prayer as an act of communion with the Father, He listened to his Father’s voice speaking in him. This means that he did not choose the 12 just out of compulsion or feelings. Jesus chose each of them according to God’s desire. This was how Jesus also saw something in each of them, including Judas. Jesus saw something very good in Judas. Yet, Judas failed to see and recognize what the Lord had seen in him. As a result, Judas betrayed Jesus because Judas failed to recognize God in the person of Jesus.

    The Gospel also tells us that the people who were gathered around Jesus sought to touch the Lord. They realized that by mere touching him, they were healed. Power came forth from Jesus himself. And Jesus allowed them to touch him. This expressed God’s desire that indeed we are welcomed to share in the fullness of God’s grace that brings healing and gives life.

    We too are invited to touch God. Because it is in touching God that we will become grounded in whatever decision we will make. In touching the presence of Jesus in our sacraments, in the scriptures and in the lives of others that we too are able to walk with Jesus. When we become more aware of God in our life, then, the more we become sensitive to God’s desire for us and be rooted in Jesus. So, let us seek God’s desire in prayer and be built upon him. Hinaut pa.

  • SELFLESS

    SELFLESS

    September 7, 2025 – 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090725.cfm)

    A recent Facebook post catches my attention. It is about a young man named Seth Adam Smith who realized, after being married for a year and a half, and said that: “Marriage is not for me”…. Why? Because after all these months of marriage with his teenage sweetheart, he comes to understand now what his father’s advice to him before his wedding day, is becoming true and right before his very eyes.

    His dad once said to him then: “Seth, remember marriage is not for you. You don’t marry to make yourself happy. You marry to make someone else happy. More than that, marriage is not for yourself. You are marrying FOR a family and for your future children. Marriage is not for you. It is not about you. Marriage is about the persons & people you marry to.”

    Surely married couples here could relate to this realization or advice. For marriage is indeed not really for the sake of oneself but for the sake of your lifetime partner and family.

    And so eventually married couples have to learn along the way that marriage is not all about me or about I but about US. And surely such realization is a hard-lesson to learn where learning happens only through trial and error experience. To be SELFLESS, i.e. to be not selfish and self-centered then is the very challenge of committed love we called marriage.

    For love is more than just a feeling or emotion but a commitment and decision to go beyond and give up oneself for the sake of the other. In other words, in marriage – in committed love, couples are to love their own spouse as much as, and as more than they love themselves and they love one another.

    This is the very kind of love Jesus asked of us in His commandment of love when he said: “Love one another as I have loved you”. A love much and more than our kind of love, but a selfless love for the sake of the other, and a love that leads us to a life and a world that is not the same as it is, but for the better of us. A married life committed in love not for your own but for the sake of your loved ones and of loving them, and above all for our Lord Jesus Christ.

    It is indeed easy nowadays for people to say: “Not for me”. Priesthood? Not for me. Religious life? Not for me. Marriage? Not for me. And even perhaps, Christianity? Not for me. But come to think of it, priesthood, religious life, marriage – following Jesus is indeed not for Me nor for You, but for Him; not about Me or You, but about Him whom we love & follow in life as Christian. And Christians who opted for Christ is saying that their discipleship is SELFLESS – not for them but for Him whom they choose to follow in life.

    For what it is to be a Christian? What does it cost to be a disciple of Christ? To be a Christian, as Jesus taught us today is like marriage, more than just a preference but a commitment.

    To follow Christ is not just we prefer Christ in our dealings with life – that we want and like Christ to be part of our lives, but it is to commit ourselves to the Christian way of life. To commit to Christ then is to be selfless, i.e. letting go of ourselves and letting God be God in our lives.

    On one hand, selflessness involves letting go, i.e. as Jesus said: to renounce – to give up everything. And this us not easy, because usually we prefer to have, possess, acquire, and own everything.

    But Jesus reminds us that the Kingdom of God is more than what we prefer and desire (want and like) in life, but it is what God’s wants and wills what is best for our life. Like Seth who realized that “Christian Marriage is not for me…not for my sake but for the best and sake of my partner, and my own family”.

    Being His disciples then is not about being self-oriented, self-centered & inward-looking, but rather being other-oriented, other-centered & outward-looking. And the Kingdom of God is then not about You and I, not even about yours & mine. But God’s kingdom is all about We and Ours, and above all about HIM, as our Lord and we, as His disciples.

    On the other hand, selflessness requires to letting God be God, that is to submit to God’s will. Human as we are we like to be in control, to lead and to be the master. In a way we prefer to take the driver’s seat and take the steering wheels, and go where we want to go.

    But following Christ means to commit and submit to God’s will for us, and let God control, lead, guide, and form the direction of our lives. This means that we become passengers, and let Jesus takes the wheels and brings us to place and time in our life beyond our imaginings.

    Again, be reminded what Jesus is saying to us in our gospel today: to BE HIS disciple is to hate our life, carry our crosses & follow Him, and renounce all our possessions… all for the sake of and because of HIM.

    Jesus himself, by his words and examples, has shown us how to be selfless by letting go and letting God be God. In the same way, for us to fully fulfill God’s kingdom in our lives, as Christians, pray we must that we selflessly commit our lives to Christ (as Christian husband, wife, mother, father, priest, religious nuns or brothers, sons and daughters, family) by letting go and letting God be God with total commitment for Him (and, not for the sake of me, you, & ours alone) in faith & life. AMEN.

  • To embrace and be graced with what is New

    To embrace and be graced with what is New

    September 5, 2025 – Friday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time

    Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090525.cfm)

    As we mature and grow older, we develop certain routine in life. We develop habits and patterns. This is manifested in the first things that we do in the morning, then, followed by our daily activities. We take comfort with what has become familiar to us. We make things like this as our way of organizing our daily activities and our minds.

    Some would even get irritated when what has become familiar and routinary is being disturbed by something new. People who are highly organized would as much as possible, avoid changes in their routine.

    Yet, more than our daily routinary activity in life, there are also other ways which we have become routinary to the point that we could become stagnant. We discover this when we realize that we do not want to be challenged anymore in our life. We also refuse to learn new things and new ways. We reject other ways of thinking and other perspective of looking at life. Indeed, when our mind and heart have become stubborn not wanting to move forward, to change and embrace the grace of what is new.

    This is the very situation in our Gospel today. Jesus tells the Scribes and the Pharisees, “No one tears a piece from a new cloak to patch an old one. Otherwise, he will tear the new and the piece from it will not match the old cloak. Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins, and it will be spilled, and the skins will be ruined. Rather, new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins.”

    Jesus challenged them to welcome what is new and unfamiliar. He wanted them to be surprised by the challenges and the graces it brings. This is what he meant to the Scribes and Pharisees who complained about his disciples who only ate and drank with him. They wondered why Jesus disciples did not follow the customs of the Jews in fasting and offering prayers.

    However, Jesus was not making an excuse for not doing the tradition. Jesus wanted them to realize that there was greater than the old customary practices. And Jesus in the one greater. He himself is that new and surprising event in the story of human salvation.

    Jesus did not reject what was being taught and had been practiced for a long time. The Lord did not discard the familiar way of doing things, because Jesus is actually the “fulfillment of all those things.” This is what Paul also reminded us in this Letter to the Colossians, “For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him.”

    Jesus, rather, invites us now to be more welcoming of the new things that come.  Jesus calls us to realize the fullness in him. His very person and very presence is always something new and something that everyone should capture and cherish at the very moment.

    The Pharisees and Scribes refused to acknowledge the presence of God in Jesus. Their hearts and minds were to fixated with their routine. They were captured of the comforts and the familiarity that they cherished. Hopefully, our hearts may not become rigid and rejecting to what is new and is unfamiliar to us. We need to listen more and better to what the Spirit of the Lord is revealing to us in every moment of our life.

    Certainly, the Spirit of God brings freshness in us. The invitations of the Lord may also become uncomfortable for us. This is because God inspires change and renewal.

    And so we pray, that we may be able to embrace in humility and joy and be also graced with what is new as offered by the Lord in us today. Hinaut pa.

  • Being Renewed from Exhaustion and Frustrations

    Being Renewed from Exhaustion and Frustrations

    September 4, 2025 – Thursday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time

    Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090425.cfm)

    Exhausted because of many frustrations? Burnt out because of your disappointments? Felt hopeless because of failures? When things in life seemed to be so overwhelming for us, one could feel to be at the edge of surrendering. We would want to cry out loud just to express the turmoil we experience from within.

    Those who feel so lonely and alone, their nights seemed to be endless. When we too feel that no one is on our side, to listen and accompany us – it pushes us towards desperation. No wonder, one could feel so lost becoming more unaware of what is happening inside and outside of us.

    Simon who led a group of fishermen caught nothing, not even a single catch of fish. They have worked all night, yet, there was none. It wasn’t just a failure. It was more of a disaster for a fisherman like Simon and his friends. They had nothing to bring home. If this happened every night, hopeless, they will be.

    Yet, these was a turning point from such exhaustion and frustrations. Someone got into his boat. It was Jesus who got into Simon’s boat and began teaching the people. That very boat of failure and disappointment of Simon became an instrument of hope and healing for the crowd of people. Indeed, the Lord transformed that boat into something wonderful and beyond the expectation of Simon.

    Simon must have wondered at the words of Jesus, “Put out into the deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” As a fisherman himself, it was completely absurd. They had been working all night but caught nothing. Yet, Simon who must have listened to what Jesus had been teaching, trusted the words of Jesus despite his exhaustion and frustrations in life.

    Allowing Jesus to be in that boat brought changes in the life of Simon. The very presence of God became an assurance to Simon in the midst of the troubles and in his search of something good in his life.

    The invitation of Jesus was a call to faith. “To go into the deep water and to lower down the nets” was an invitation to dwell deeper into the most essentials of Simon’s life. It was an invitation to lower down his comforts and even pretensions. It was a call to leave behind at the shore his uncertainties, fears, failures, guilt and sins.

    Simon did all these and he found God’s tremendous goodness. He found love and generosity of God to him symbolized by the great catch of fish. It humbled Simon. He became more aware of himself and his unworthiness before Jesus. This realization became the opportunity for Jesus to make more wonderful things in the life Simon.

    This story of encounter with God and call to faith led to change and to mission. We realize that real encounter with God or to allow God to be with us in our boats of frustrations and guilt would strip us from our fears and anxieties. Such encounter makes us see how sinful and unworthy we are before God.

    Yet, it is in this moment of humility and honesty that we find God most merciful, loving and forgiving. Today, we are invited through these following ways.

    First, allow the Lord to be with us even in our frustrations and failures, in our guilt and shame. Let the Lord teach us. Allow the lord to remind us how much we are being loved.

    Second, allow the Lord to challenge us and to shake our pretensions for us. This will make us discover more ourselves before the presence of God.

    Third, allow God to bring change in our life and to make wonderful things even out of our messy and troubled life story. Hinaut pa.