Category: Homilies

August 14, 2022 – 20^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/081422.cfm)

It is confusing or even to some perhaps terrifying. We certainly want peace. We want unity. We want prosperity. Yet, Jesus asked us today, “Do you think that I have come to establish peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” He even said earlier, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!”

What Jesus actually means about this peace is the peace that the world knows. This peace is about the comfort and routine of life or of ‘business-as-usual.’ This means that we go and proceed to what we usually do in life by doing what we want and by satisfying our needs and desires, from mere complacency. This peace only knows about maintaining the status quo, that we are comfortable with and preserving an environment that will not disturb us. Yet, this peace is shallow and remains self-centered. It focuses on our ego.

However, Jesus is not bringing this kind of peace but fire and division that will disturb us. This includes disturbing our comfort, our current situation, our complacency, passivity and routine.

This is what we have also heard in the first reading from the Book of Jeremiah. Prophet Jeremiah by being true to the mission God gave him, disturbed the comfort and complacency of those in power and influence. By reminding the people of their covenant with God, “I am your God and you are my people,” they too were reminded that this covenant was bounded in fidelity and receptivity of God’s commands and of giving oneself for others. This role of the prophet includes the denouncement of the misdeeds and unfaithfulness committed especially by those in power and authority.

But then, Jeremiah’s presence in constantly calling the people to repent, became a sore and threat to those who were in power. This was the reason why they wanted to silence and eliminate him by killing him. Yet, Jeremiah was rescued by a foreigner, Ebed-melech, who realized that Jeremiah was a prophet of God.

This experience of Jeremiah must have made him realized too that indeed, it is dangerous to believe in God. Believing in God and committing to be faithful to the Lord is dangerous because we shall become a “sign of contradiction” to what is popular, to the comfortable and to the powerful.

This brings us again to what Jesus said in today’s Gospel that “he has come to set the earth on fire, that he brings not peace but division.”

Indeed, the Lord comes to disturb us when we have grown so attached with our comforts and when we are so caught up with maintaining to what is only beneficial for us.

Thus, when we become passive, we do not want to be challenged, we do not want to go beyond and become life-giving. We do not want to confront ourselves and others because it might cost us conflict and division or to sacrifice the contentment that we apparently enjoy. But, God does not want us to become a person who becomes a prisoner of his/her own selfish desires. We will become abusive and corrupt yet the most insecure of all.

Jesus does not want us also to just go with the flow and remain passive. We might find ourselves to settle to what is only easy, comfortable and beneficial by doing the same things, thinking the same thoughts and imagining the same ideas to the point that we refuse to do more and give more.

This happens to us when we are trapped in our routine and comfort. We might go to mass every day, receive communion, say our prayers, doing the same sin again, do our work and struggle with the same problems without any change in our thoughts and actions as we relate with others. Or we might just bury ourselves in the same addiction, fall into the same bad habits and then feel guilty but later do the usual things again. Or in dipping ourselves into our abusive practices in our work, business or profession in order to advance our selfish and self-serving tendencies.

It would be good, then, to ask ourselves, “What are the burdens that I am carrying? What are the sins that prevent me to go forward?”

If we are able to ask ourselves these questions, then, this will help us to be open to the presence of Jesus. This presence of Jesus will disturb us because it will make us recognize our selfish desires. He disturbs us because he challenges us to go beyond, to go forward and not to settle to what is only comfortable for us. He disturbs us so that he will be able to bring true peace in us and in our community.

The Lord wants us to find freedom. Jesus is not in favor in making ourselves passive, complacent, self-contained and self-satisfied yet stagnant. Jesus wants us to grow, to be mature and to become the person and community He wants us to be.

This means that our relationship with God is not limited with what we are doing now, by just attending this Eucharist and that’s it. This Eucharist and the presence of Jesus in this celebration is not to be taken so lightly then.

The invitation for us is to allow the Lord to touch and to disturb our complacency, passivity and routine so that we will be able to see things differently and wonderfully.

Hopefully, as we allow the Lord to disturb us, we may be able to see new perspectives in life despite its monotony, more dynamic and life-giving ways of relating with people around us, and a deeper and a life-changing encounter with God through the ordinary expressions of our faith. And remember, this calls us to become “a sign of contradiction” to what is evil, abusive and oppressive by being pro-active, honest and courageous in expressing our faith and the values that we believe as Christians. Kabay pa.

August 7, 2020 – 19^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/080722.cfm)

Who among you here have dogs at home? Are you also aware on how your dogs would react whenever you come home? Once the dogs are left at home they can be anxious without the presence of their humans. Yet, dogs display patience and attention to wait for their humans to return home. Their attentiveness allows them to be more conscious of their surroundings. And when our dogs would sense our coming and smell our presence even at a distance, they begin to get excited. Dogs would wiggle their tails as a sign of excitement. And when they finally see us, they would make terrible sounds as their expression of joy, or lick us, jump on us and run around us. This shows us how our dogs can be intimately connected with us. Moreover, the attentiveness of our dogs to our presence has something to teach us on this 19^th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

The first reading from the Book of Wisdom tells us how the people patiently waited and hoped for the coming of the Lord. They had been suffering for many years from the Egyptians. Their children were massacred, properties confiscated, and they were made slaves until their death.

We could imagine their fears and anxieties, as well as the feeling of being abandoned by God. But through the presence of Moses, the people realized God’s presence among them. God’s promise was to be fulfilled after all. As a result, we were told how the people prepared themselves for the Lord’s coming who shall free them from that suffering. As a community, they became more attentive to God’s presence.

In the same way, the second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews allows us to recall the attitude of our grandfathers in the faith particularly of Abraham. Abraham was indeed a man who put his trust and faith completely to God. Abraham left the comfort of his family and friends, to journey to a land that God promised to him.

Certainly, Abraham also felt anxiety and insecurity as he journeyed with God especially when God gave him Isaac and later demanded that Abraham should sacrifice his son. That was Abraham’s most vulnerable moment in his life. Yet, he realized too that everything he had were all from God. With that, he was grateful to God. That gratitude made his faith even stronger, despite the pain of sacrificing his son. Indeed, he allowed God to surprise him and to unfold God’s plan by completely trusting the wisdom of God.

The surprise was to receive Isaac back and to become our father in faith today. His close relationship with God allowed him to go beyond his fears and anxieties by making him more attentive to God’s presence and invitations.

This is what Jesus taught to his disciples in today’s Gospel of Luke. Jesus reminds us to grow in our attentiveness of his presence. The parable in the Gospel is an affirmation to a person who consciously makes himself/herself familiar to God’s presence. It is when we are attuned to God’s presence that we also become aware of the presence of other people around us. As a result, this makes our faith active and alive by being able to give life.

However, the parable is also a warning to those who have become mediocre, complacent and procrastinator. These are attitudes of a person who is not attentive to God’s presence and has taken advantage the gifts given by the Lord. Therefore, the person is only concerned of himself/herself. This person would become the most insecure, most anxious and at the same time can also be the most vicious and abusive to others.

Hence, a mediocre or complacent person is only contented in doing things below his/her potentials. It means that we do not really give the best in us but we settle to what is only lesser and comfortable for us.

Thus, when we become so caught up with our comforts but then we refuse to go beyond by giving ourselves for others, when we refuse to let go of our grudges and hatred, and when we refuse to actively oppose the evils and unjust systems in the community, then, we have surely grown to become mediocre and complacent. We do not want to be challenged because we do not what to make a stand. We do not want to go beyond from ourselves and to give our full potentials for God and for others. We only give what is small and minimal. However, this is a life that refuses to recognize God’s presence and invitations.

Moreover, a person who procrastinates loves to delay things like in making decisions and actions. This person does not see the need to respond because he/she is caught up with his/her own mood. Consequently, when we procrastinate in our faith, we feel bored, we feel empty, and we feel lifeless and so we see no reason at all to become life-giving.

What is common with these attitudes is the fear to take risks. Remember, trusting God and believing in Him requires risks. Faith is to take risks as what the Hebrew people showed in waiting for God to free them and for Abraham to journey outside his comforts and in sacrificing Isaac. Yet, it is in taking risks that God makes wonders through us and in us. It is in taking risks that we grow in our consciousness of God’ presence in our life. And it is also in taking risks that we grow deeper in our relationships.

Our dogs who patiently await for our coming every time we leave home, put their trust on us and so have taken the risk to trust us in providing them an emotional assurance. Hopefully, we too in our journey with God will grow in our attentiveness to God’s presence by taking the risk in believing in him and trusting God’s wisdom by avoiding from our tendency to become mediocre, complacent and procrastinator in our Christian faith. Kabay pa.