Category: Weekday Homilies

March 26, 2020 – Thursday of the 4^th Week of Lent

Click here for the readings (http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/032620.cfm)

Homily

The Hebrew people were looking for a “god” to worship, to lean on from their desperation. They were in the desert for many years since their liberation from the Egyptians. They felt hopeless and directionless.

When Moses was nowhere to be found, they made themselves the “golden calf” and worship it instead of the TRUE GOD who brought them out of Egypt. The people had very short memory. That in times of great difficulty, they turned to a false god believing to find security in it. Indeed, the people forgot God’s promise to them and God’s faithfulness in them.

We are not also far from these people in the bible. We might have our own false gods too that offer false hopes. We may ask, who and what is our golden calf that we worship? Is it to our addiction and loneliness? Is it to ourselves or some others other than the Lord God? When we become desperate our minds and hearts may become crowded that we tend not to recognize the Lord who is at work in us.

Thus, in times of difficulties in life we may develop some forms of attachments to compensate and appease our anxieties and the emptiness that feel from within. And so, a person who felt unloved by a mother may seek affection to many women. Or a woman who is rejected by a loved one, may retreat to loneliness and depression. A child who lacks the security of love and affection at home from the parents may succumbed to drugs or alcohol addiction. A child who has been deprived of material things in the past may become a hoarder of things or worst a thief.

These are forms of unhealthy attachments that only bring us to greater and deeper despair and misery. Consequently, there is a need for us to reconnect ourselves to God who gives us true hope and freedom.

Thus, like the Hebrew people, we may doubt God’s action and intervention and reject God in the long run. This is what happened also with the Jewish leaders who continually rejected Jesus.

They have doubted the person of Jesus even though there had been many signs that he performed as invitations for them to believe. The presence of the Father at work in Jesus was already the moment of recognizing Jesus. Yet, these people were full of themselves that their eyes and ears and hearts had become closed and rigid.

They chose to be disconnected with God because they did not want God’s way and direction of life. Jesus showed to them the many discomforts and risks that they have to undergo once they accept Jesus. What they wanted was that God will act according to what they desire, to what they think and to what they only believed. They were more after of their comfort and privileges that they will enjoy as leaders. Thus, what they worship was not God but their comfort, their influence, their privileges, their very selves.

However, despite this kind of attitude God would always have a reason not to give up on us. Like what Moses did who intercede to God to forgive the people, Jesus also did that to us on the cross. Jesus wants us to recognize him because in him we find our true hope.

As we continue our Lenten journey in the midst of corona virus, let us once more claim Jesus, to accept sincerely God in our hearts that we may find our true hope. Reconnect each day with Jesus as we all face our individual burdens and problems, concerns and difficulties and the crisis that our community is facing today. Hinaut pa.

Jom Baring, CSsR

March 24, 2020 – Tuesday of the 4^th Week of Lent

Click here for the readings (http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/032420.cfm)

Homily

The reading from the Book of Ezekiel tells us about the flowing water from which life, abundance and healing spring forth. It says,

It clearly states that God created the world and everything in it and God has found them very good, as the Book of Genesis reminds us. However, in the face of the great crisis that we have now with the pandemic corona virus, it seemed that nature has turned against us. What have we done?

This calls us as individuals and as a human community to look deeper at our own lifestyle and on how such lifestyle endangers nature. This calls us to recognize our sins committed against the earth from which the poorest of the poor in our communities suffer the most.

Pope Francis has reminded that each of us is called to pro-actively protect the whole creation, our environment, and not to cause harm to the earth for the sake of the next generations after us.

This event in our history is surely a wakeup call that there is a need for conversion of both personal and social, individual and community conversion. Indeed, healing can only be possible when we begin to open ourselves for others and for God. Opening ourselves also means recognizing our sickness, our sins, of what is wrong with us

With our limited movement today because of the Community Quarantine, we have become like that sick man in the Gospel of John waiting to be healed. As of the moment, we could not yet reach the pool of the healing and cleansing water. We are lame and cannot move. Like that man who had been ill for 38 years, we too are desperate to find cure, to find healing and fullness of life.

However, the Gospel also reminds us that God is not blind and indifferent to our desperation and need for healing. Jesus sees us as he saw the man lying flat because of his illness. In the same way, Jesus asks us, “Do you want to be healed?” 

Yes, we want to healed. For us to be healed, there is also a need that we take responsibility for ourselves rather than blaming others because of our condition. This was what happened to the sick man, his response to Jesus was giving reasons of why he remained sick because no one could put him into the pool. 

In the same way, in whatever sickness we have at this moment, Jesus calls us for a personal commitment, that we respond actively to his invitation of healing. This is the reason why Jesus asked the sick man to stand up, to take his mat and walk. 

Do you want to be healed? Yes, and as we seek healing for ourselves, for our relationships, for others and for the world that is sickened with the deadly virus ,then, we need to stand up, meaning, to take courage, to have faith and to trust Jesus. We need to take our mat too, to roll up and to let go those things, attitudes, lifestyle, and even beliefs that only prevent us from walking. Just like that healed man, the mat the he had become so comfortable with has to be left behind. He had to let that go for him to walk and embrace God’s healing.

In this way, then, hopefully, we shall all experience that flowing water that gives life, abundance and healing and to experience that from the very source himself, who is Jesus, the source from which the healed man was able to experience. Hinaut pa.

Jom Baring, CSsR

March 23, 2020 – Monday 4^th Week of Lent

Click here for the readings (http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/032320.cfm)

Homily

In our desperation and great difficulties, to whom and to where do we go?

Others because of confusion for what happened in their life would go to depression or to self-pity, or guilt. This sometimes would develop into unhealthy coping mechanisms that later on would progress into habit and forms of addiction. For instance, a drinking habit or alcoholism could have started through a painful or difficult memory in the past, a death of loved one or a financial crisis. Online game addiction or too much time spent on social media could have started through boredom at home and disconnection from intimate family relationship. A gambling or drug addiction could also have been caused by a traumatic experience or broken relationships.

Yet, there are also those who in their desperation and great need went to ask help from other people whom they believed could help them.

The very Gospel story that we have today conveys to us this kind of encounter. A non-believer who was royal official went to see Jesus. He was desperate and indeed was in great difficulty because of his dying son. As an official, somebody who had power over others, he must have already sought the best doctor he could find at that time, yet, there was no remedy. His son was not healed but dying.

As a father, this Royal Official, showed to Jesus how he loved so much his son. His son must have been everything to him and this was the very reason why he sought to see Jesus and begged him to come with him in order to heal his son. 

For him, as a Royal Official, asking a Jesus to heal his son, was a humbling experience. In his desperation to seek healing for his son, he did not give up. He was hoping for a miracle even when his son was already at the point of death.

This tells us now to hope and not to give up. The encounter of this official with Jesus would tell us what kind of God we have. Through the humility of this man, Jesus saw and felt the desperation of this man. Jesus felt the love of this father to his dying son.

Jesus witnessed the life of prayer and the faith of this man despite being a non-believer himself. The official had that confidence to trust in Jesus’ words that his son will surely recover. “Go, your son lives!” – We were told in the Gospel that this man had faith in the word Jesus spoke to him.

But let us also remember, there is so much risk in believing. The royal official went home and risking everything by trusting the words of Jesus. However, it was also in that attitude that Jesus showed how his presence and words could bring healing and change life. True enough, the son was healed and the official became a believer of Jesus and all his family.

This is what is wonderful and powerful here. This is also the message for us today, for each of us who are in desperation and in great difficulty in whatever aspect that may be in our life. This is also the message for us as a community today, facing this global crisis caused by the pandemic corona virus that brought chills of fear and anxiety in us.

Thus, there are two aspects that we are particularly called for today. 

First, we are called to pray and to humbly beg for God’s mercy. Our prayer just like the official, is not just of ourselves, for our own salvation, but also for others. Yes, we are called to pray for those who are infected by the virus, for those who have died and their families, and also for the doctors, nurses and other medical staff that are ministering the sick. We also pray for the medical experts tasked to create a vaccine that through them God’s healing will be revealed. We pray for them out of our true concern and love. Certainly, Jesus shall also feel that in us. 

Second, we are called to believe. Like that official and father who believed in the presence and words of Jesus, we are also called to put our confidence completely in the Lord, meaning, to have faith in Jesus, in his presence among us and his words so that God’s wonder and healing power will also be unfolded in us.

May I invite you then now that we all stay in silence for few moments, to pray and to beg the Lord’s mercy and to believe that God will bring us healing. Let us all bow our heads and pray in silence (as you read this, please observe a 2-minute silent prayer).

Brothers and sisters, God shall protect and heal us and in faith, we will all pass this through. Hinaut pa.

Jom Baring, CSsR

March 21, 2020 – Saturday 3^rd Week of Lent

Click here for the readings (http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/032120.cfm)

Homily

Being judged because of what you have done before, or of a mistake, or failure or sin that you have committed is a devastating experience. This becomes  overwhelming too especially when we are “put in a box,” that, as if there is nothing more in us except our sins and failures.

Aside from being judged by others, each of us too can be the one who judged others because of their mistakes and failures in life. We could have played to be the righteous individuals who scrutinize people searching for their faults. We could be that mean person whose main intention is to bring other people down by shaming and gossiping their weaknesses in order to hide our own sins. This happens among our families, circle of friends and even in our workplaces.

The Gospel story that we have heard today conveys this message to us. To become self-righteous only blinds us. Thinking highly too much of ourselves will even prevent us from asking God to show his mercy upon us because we already think that we do not need God’s mercy. The righteous person actually thought of himself so highly that God is as if obliged to be good to him. In his thoughts, God has to pay him for being good and righteous. 

What happens here is a reversal of relationship. God is as if the servant of this righteous person. Although he might be after of rewards in his life for being righteous, yet, he was actually seeking to control God through his righteousness. Thus, this attitude leads us to build invisible walls that separate us from others.

We might still have that idea of condemning our brothers and sisters who were considered terrible sinners. We too might have that attitude of separating those people whom we consider as unclean for fear of being contaminated and be associated with them.

Thus, Jesus invites us now to rather look closely at ourselves and to examine better our intentions, our thoughts and actions so that it may also lead us to that recognition of our failures and sins. This realization will hopefully lead us to also join the tax collector in praying, “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” 

We are invited to be more understanding of those who failed but not in the sense of condoning such failures and sins. We are invited to be merciful rather than to be condemning.

Let us remind ourselves that to both the righteous and the sinners, God does not condemn but God rather desires healing, reconciliation and fullness of life for all.

This calls us, then, to see more in the person of our brothers and sisters, to stop our harsh judgments and condemnations, to stop our gossiping and image shaming that only destroy the image of our brother or sister.

What is its invitation now for us as we face such difficult situation amidst this deadly Covid-19. Even during this challenging times, we are called to show compassion and generosity to our brothers and sisters, particularly those who are most in need. And since we are called to “stay home” as a form of prevention of the spread of the virus, let us also not spread malicious gossips about our neighbors or friends. To stay at home is also an invitation for us to pray for each other and to show our true concern for one another. Hinaut pa.

Jom Baring, CSsR