Rooted in and Branching out

5th Sunday of Easter (Year B)
Acts 9:26-31; Ps 118; 1 Jn 3:18-24; Jn 15:1-8

Photosynthesis can be defined as being a system of biological processes that most plants carry out that convert light into energy and other things necessary for the plant to live. I do have a point to starting with what seems like a science lesson because the Lord also uses real life biological examples to help us to understand what life in him could actually mean. The image of the vine and branches, in my view, can be enhanced as we look a little deeper into the parts and processes that go into the relationship between the vine, branches and leaves.

Image by Flor Saurina (Unsplash)

With the Lord as the vine and us as the branches, we see the very strong connection that exists among us all, that we’re all part of the same vine, nourished by the Lord who is at the centre. This image also allows us to realise that grace is a two-way street in that the grace that we receive from the Lord (the vine) allows us the branches to grow but that’s not the end of the story. As branches, we hold out the leaves that are integral in the process of photosynthesis, creating energy and sharing this grace with the rest of the branches in the process. We’re all one in the Lord and the picture of us as a healthy vine presents us with a wonderful image of how we can remain or abide with him.

We heard the word remain (or abide) 6 times in the Gospel reading today, an indication that it’s something important for us. The root word is μένω (meno) and indicates being with or remaining with, an assurance of the Lord’s presence that’s also a reminder for us to be close with him too. The image of the vine helps in this because the roots of the vine not only anchor it to the ground but absorb nutrients that are shared by the whole plant. We’re called to be firmly rooted in the Lord’s grace, knowing that our strength comes from him and seeking to bring his presence into our lives. This is the rootedness that allowed St Paul (1^st Reading) to surmount all the obstacles and prejudices and preach fearlessly about the Lord.

The other part of the image is that of us the branches and how our reception of the Lord’s grace is an invitation be people branching out, living the love that we’re given and reaching out to spread the reality of God’s grace. Being rooted is one thing but we as branches need to spread out and help other branches to catch the sun and support each other as we grow in the Lord’s love. We heard St John telling us in the 2^nd Reading ‘our love is not to be just words or mere talk, but something real and active’, indicating that we’re called to live the grace we’re rooted in by recognising that we’re all branches in need of each other’s help.

And help each other we must to keep the vine healthy and growing in love. A final image to complete our biological look at the Gospel. The sun plays a crucial role in photosynthesis just as God’s presence plays a crucial role in our lives. Plants tend towards the sun always and we too are invited to be branches that reach out to the light of Christ. So we pray for the grace always to be rooted in God’s love, as we branch out to spread this love and grace to each other, moving always into the light of God’s grace.

Close to the Shepherd

4th Sunday of Easter (Year B)
Vocation Sunday
Acts 4:8-12; Ps 118; 1 Jn 3:1-2; Jn 10:11-18

I’m sure we’ve seen tour groups at airports or tourist attractions, where despite the mess of crowds, the travellers find their tour guides and get to where they need to get. This is probably due to the varied instruments that the guides use to show their position to others – flags, umbrellas, ribbons or even walking sticks. This is often a funny sight but it is effective because it shows how simple visual cues can help to organise messy situations or groups. Groups of sheep are often similarly messy or disorganised but their shepherd knows them well enough to be able to lead them through similarly simple gestures and actions.

Image by Daniel Burka (Unsplash)

Maybe that’s the simplicity of how the Lord calls us – and how Vocation Sunday celebrates the simple ways in which we see the Lord in our lives. We heard in the Gospel how the Shepherd knows his sheep and how the sheep listen to his voice. This does not come immediately but because the sheep grow to trust the shepherd as they see how he cares for them. As that happens, the sheep not only get used to the voice of the shepherd but I feel that they would look forward to the sound of his voice, moving towards him every time he calls (vocare) them to him. Closeness is the first step of us hearing the call of the Lord.

The next step that emerges as we become closer with the Lord is a growing sense of familiarity. As Peter told the elders in the 1^st Reading, the healing of the crippled man was done through the name of Jesus. The name of Jesus is held as a name above all other names and is the name through which we are saved – this can be difficult to understand without the closeness and familiarity that the sheep have with the shepherd. The Lord calls us to him by name as a sign of closeness and we call upon his name for his help because of our familiarity with him. Just as the umbrellas and flags lead are simple ways of ensuring the tourists don’t get lost, so is the name of the Lord in our hearts and lips a simple way for us to remember to follow our shepherd.

So far, we’ve been looking at the external following of the Lord and I’d like to call our attention to another sense of how the Lord is a shepherd to us. Sometimes, what happens inside us, our emotions, thoughts, intentions can feel like unruly sheep in need of a shepherd. Maybe what we need to do is to allow the Good Shepherd into our lives and hearts, to call on his name so that he can begin to tame the wayward sheep in our hearts, to lead them to him our thoughts and emotions listen to his voice. As our hearts grow to hear the voice of the Lord more, then our own lives would gradually move closer in following the one who calls.

I feel that vocation is not about large gestures or big movements but about simple cues and whispers that remind us of the Lord in our lives. Jesus is not far away but is close by, calling us and leading us towards him. We want to grow in closeness and familiarity with him and allow him to tame our unruly hearts so that we hear and follow him. We ask for the grace to be able to hear his voice, to call on his name and to live in his love always.

The Reality of the Risen Lord

3rd Sunday of Easter (Year B)
Acts 3:13-15,17-19; Ps 4; 1 Jn 2:1-5; Lk 24:35-48

In a world where truth seems to be at a premium, I feel that we spend quite a bit of energy trying to see if things are real or not. We ask if things are real, we make investigations into how true (or false) claims are, we speak with people to know more about their views of things. In all this, what we realise is that the burden of determining the reality of things often lies with us, that we have to make the effort to find out the truth of things. This can be tiring and sometimes discouraging, as we can sometimes feel like we’re faced with a string of things to verify or prove to ourselves.

Image by Ioana Cristiana (Unsplash)

One thing that we realise as we continue to celebrate Easter is the reality of the resurrection and how, unlike many things in our lives, the burden of proof of this reality does not lie with us. We heard how the Lord came to the disciples as they gathered, taking the initiative to be with them while also making the effort to prove beyond doubt that he is real. He spoke with them, allowing them to hear his voice, he offered his hands and side for them to see and touch, and he ate a piece of fish in their presence, a final incontrovertible piece of evidence that the man before them was real. The Lord comes to us, reveals the reality of his resurrection to us in more than mere words and then invites us to bring this good news to others.

I feel that this is the beauty of the Lord’s relationship with us – a relationship that’s grounded in his presence as felt through the incarnation and his promise of continued presence through the Holy Spirit, but also a relationship that’s as real (even more so, some say) as us munching on a piece of grilled fish. It is this reality that enabled Peter and John in both the readings to speak and write so confidently about the forgiveness of sins. This is not a mere intellectual understanding of how Jesus takes away our sins through the cross but a visceral, heart-felt knowledge that our acknowledgment of the risen Lord enables us to lead lives that move us away from sin.

The reality of the resurrection and of our salvation that is revealed to us by the Lord begs a response from us. We cannot just sit and wait for this good news to be brought to others just as we cannot expect our relationship with the Lord to be solely one-sided. Even though we don’t need to prove the reality of the Lord in our lives, it is up to us to continue to nurture his presence through prayer, reflection and conversation with the Lord himself. And as the disciples did, we too are invited to live good lives, to keep the commandments so as to bring more people closer to the Lord through our lives. The Lord is real and risen, let’s not keep that to ourselves.

And so we ask for the grace to be able to receive the good news of the risen Lord with open hearts so that we can be instruments of his peace and reconciliation in the world.

Bespoke Mercy, Tailored Love

2nd Sunday of Easter (Year B)
Acts 4:32-35; Ps 118; 1 Jn 5:1-6; Jn 20:19-31

Many years ago, I went to the tailor to have a suit made in preparation for a number of formal events that I had to attend. While I tried to avoid wearing the suit jacket as much as I could because it was generally too hot, the trousers were quite a revelation. Never before did trousers fit so well and it was amazing how much more comfortable they were over the other off-the-rack trousers that I had. Things that are tailored to us are made specifically for us, either a result of careful measuring like that of a tailor or from a deep knowledge of who we are. The result of this is greater comfort and possibly even a sense of joy as we wear or use things that are perfectly suited to us.

^{Image by Salvador Godoy (Unsplash)}

On Divine Mercy Sunday, I feel it’s quite apt for us to celebrate how the Lord’s mercy is given to us not like a gardener watering the garden with a large hose but tailored to us individually and given to us exactly a we need it. This is also the Sunday where I defend the apostle Thomas who has unfortunately and unjustly received the label ‘doubting.’ While we would acknowledge that there are elements of doubt in Thomas’s reaction to the other disciples report of meeting the Lord, we might also want to consider why the Lord visited the others while Thomas was not around. Could it be that the Lord knew that Thomas needed a more personal encounter with him to bolster his faith and to renew his commitment to the Lord.

The Lord isn’t just present but is present to us individually. He knew that Thomas would want some confirmation and so went to him showing his hands and side. There’s a wonderful tenderness in this episode that shows how well the Lord knows Thomas and how much he wants Thomas to strengthen his faith. There’s a similar meeting earlier this chapter where the Lord met Mary Magdalene and called out her name, recognising her faithfulness and grief. This is another instance of meeting the individual exactly where and how they need to be met. This is but one example of the Divine Mercy that the Lord shows us, but it’s an important aspect for us to realise and to receive.

This is the beauty of how the Lord is with us – coming to each of us individually, where we need it most so that we can in turn bring this strengthened faith to the community, united heart and soul as the disciples were in the 1^st Reading. This individualised relationship that we have with the Lord is not something that comes out of the blue or that is automatic. We work on keeping the commandments and spreading the love that we receive from the Lord, overcoming the difficulties of the world with our faith, as we heard in the 2^nd Reading, a faith that is heightened every time we encounter the risen Lord.

Our celebration of God’s Divine Mercy is a celebration of love that is given individually to each and every one of us. This is love that’s freely given but we need to be willing to receive it and not give excuses, get distracted or worse, reject this great gift. Thomas almost did but recognised the mercy when he received it. So let us ask for the grace to always be open to receive the love and mercy that’s given to us as we need it and when we need it, and to live this mercy with faith and love always.

Easter Encounters

Easter Sunday
Acts 10:34,37-43; Ps 118; Col 3:1-4; Jn 20:1-9

There are some who call the Arrival Hall in the airport (or train or bus station) as among the happiest places around. It’s the place where people wait with anxious joy to be reunited with their loved ones. The delight that can be seen and felt in such places is wonderful to behold and is a testament to our human need for relationship and communion. It’s also a visible sign of what it means when we say ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ as we witness how the separation of loved ones makes their reunion all the sweeter. I feel that these joyful encounters can help us in our celebration of Easter joy.

^{Image by Yuval Zukerman (Unsplash)}

We see a shift of mood in the Gospel as the disciples began with worry and fear, thinking that the Lord’s body was stolen from the tomb which gradually shifts to a deep sense of belief that the Lord had indeed risen from the dead. What’s significant in this whole episode is the conspicuous absence of the Lord – his not being there being the catalyst not just of the flurry of activity that brought Peter and the other disciple to the tomb but opened their eyes to the reality of the Lord’s earlier teaching. This bodily absence and growing belief in the Lord’s resurrection would have given rise to a great sense of anticipation among the disciples as they must have thought, ‘Where’s the Lord? Will we get to meet him again?’

And this leads me to my question to all of us – what would be our personal reaction or response to the Lord when we meet him after the resurrection? I ask this question because Easter is celebrated liturgically and communally as a Church but there should also be a personal element to it. We sing about the Lord rising from the dead, destroying death and giving us life – what would we want to say to him as we see him today? What goes on in our minds and hearts as we consider the reality of the risen Lord in our lives? How have the past days of the Triduum helped to build up the anticipation in encountering him today? These are all questions that can help us to make Easter a celebration of our own salvation that comes through the Lord’s resurrection.

This personal celebration of what Easter means to each one of us is by no means a selfish hoarding of the Lord’s grace. We embrace the effects of this encounter with the risen Lord and seek to bring these graces to others. We see the account in the 1^st Reading, of how Peter spoke with great conviction about eating and drinking with the Lord, witnessing to the resurrection and convincing others of this fact through his faith. St Ignatius of Loyola wrote of how the Lord comes to us as a consoler, taking our sadness away along with our sins. I feel we’re invited to do the same – to share our conviction that comes with our encounter with the risen Lord as we seek to bring this consolation to others.

So we’re called to go, bring this joy to others while keeping our thoughts on heavenly things (2^nd Reading) knowing that Christ our life will reveal his glory through us, through our living of our life in him. Let us open ourselves to the Lord’s encounter with us, rejoicing in his presence, building our relationship as we seek to bring this truth and joy to those around.

Accomplishing Salvation

Good Friday
Is 52:13-53:12; Ps 31; Heb 4:14-16,5:7-9; Jn 18:1-19:42

The last words that Jesus spoke from the cross in John’s gospel are, ‘It is accomplished.’ It can be tempting to interpret this with a modern success-oriented mindset, meaning that after all the suffering that was endured, the death on the cross meant that Jesus’s mission was accomplished and all is well. While it is true that his death on the cross is the necessary event that leads us to eternal life, it would be a mistake to see this as a mere accomplishment or worse, to think that since Jesus did this, there’s nothing else for us to do but to enjoy the fruits of his labour. Jesus saying ‘It is accomplished’ meant that his earthly work was done, that the way to salvation is assured but the end of one story means the start of another.

Image by Henrique Jacob (Unsplash)

We commemorate the death of the Lord on the cross at Calvary today and it’s important to note that it’s a commemoration, a time to remember that pivotal event in the relationship between God and people. This is something that we remember at every Eucharist (We proclaim your death O Lord…) and this memory should be woven into the very fabric of our lives as we continue the story of the Lord in our lives. I say all this because our salvation is not just accomplished by an event but is a process that unfolds as we lead our lives, as we grow closer to God who is with us.

What does it mean when we say that our salvation is a process? We’re a pilgrim church, moving towards God as a community and we’re a pilgrim people, on a journey with the Lord to his kingdom. We’re on the move and that means we’re always changing, moving towards the Lord. We don’t rest on our laurels or get too caught up with our own accomplishments because we know that it’s in God that we find rest. St Paul spoke of working out our salvation with fear and trembling, indicating that our salvation comes as we work on it in our lives with reverence (fear) and awe (trembling), knowing who God is in our lives and remembering God as we go through our daily routines.

In today’s 2^nd Reading, we heard how the Lord became for all who obey him the source of eternal salvation, and in the Psalm, we sought to commend our spirits into the hands of the Father. Working out our salvation requires our obedience to the ways of the Lord while trusting that the Lord is always there for us. Us being present to the Lord at the Holy Triduum is a wonderful step in experiencing what this salvation means to us and this in turn strengthens us in our journey as we hear his words, feel with him as we seek to be his love in the world.

We turn to the Lord on the cross as we ask for the grace of strength and love as we continue our journey of salvation, growing in faith and reverence for him always.

Which Passion of the Lord?

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion (Year B)
Mk 11:1-10; Is 50:4-7; Ps 22; Phil 2:6-11; Mk 14:1-15:47

Did you hear about the man who got hit in a head with a canned drink? He was lucky it was a soft drink! And did you hear about the guests in a hotel that were always stealing the towels, soap and shampoo from the rooms and service carts? What dirty thieves they were!

These puns are funny because they take advantage of the multiple meanings of the words or phrases, creating a strange but funny situation that makes us laugh. On the flip side, some may use these similar meanings of words to equivocate or to confuse but that’s definitely not what I’m up to today. Sometimes, a look at the multiple meanings of words can bring us to greater understanding or deeper insights into the truths that we’re already familiar with.

Image by Alessandro Bellone (Unsplash)

Palm Sunday marks the start of Holy Week with the triumphant entrance of the Lord into Jerusalem that quickly descends into the passion, death and culminates in the glory of the resurrection. It’s easy to get caught up in the drama of it all or to just let the whole week pass without it moving us so maybe it’s apt just to look at all this through the lens of a single word that has two different meanings, which I hope can help us deepen our experience of Holy Week.

Passion as we understand it today refers to a strong emotion or a powerful desire for someone or something. We talk about having a passion for others, being passionate about learning or various activities. On the other hand, the full name of today’s celebration is Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion, referring to an older meaning of passion that refers to the Lord’s suffering on the cross and which in turn comes from an older Latin word pati that means ‘to suffer, endure or experience.’ Passion as strong emotion or desire on one hand, passion as suffering and enduring on the other. Can this help us make sense of this week?

Through the lens of the 2^nd Reading, we hear how Jesus, though divine, humbled himself to accept the indignity and suffering of the cross, living this passion so that we can live through him. This passion, this suffering is echoed in the 1^st Reading as the prophet Isaiah wrote of one who offered no resistance to those who would strike and torment one who is obedient to God. Suffering in itself is bad but in some cases, suffering for a cause can be transformative. The Lord’s suffering was not for its own sake because it had a clear intention and purpose – the purpose was for the salvation of the world and in intention was born out of love, an intense passionate love for all of humankind. As we hear in the Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation: ‘we once were lost and could not approach you, you loved us with the greatest love.’

The passion or suffering of the Lord makes sense because of the passion or intense love of the Lord for all of us. In other words, the point of the passion (suffering) is the passion (love) of God. This reality allows us to accept what we hear in John’s Gospel, ‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,’ to recognise that our sufferings can parallel that of the Lord and can be transformative if these sufferings are borne in love. In this way, the Lord’s passion can be ours as well, as we grow in love with him, grow to love those around us more as we continue to carry the crosses in life, confident of his passion for us always.

Living His Glory

5th Sunday of Lent (Year B)
Jer 31:31-34; Ps 51; Heb 5:7-9; Jn 12:20-33

By their fruits you will know, the proof is in the pudding, the true test is in the trying. There are myriad ways of saying that we can only judge the validity or truth of something by experiencing it and I feel that this is very true about many things, including our faith lives. We need to experience God’s love in real ways so that we can show this to others. As we grow closer to Holy Week, I feel that we’re invited to consider what the Lord is going to do at Calvary and what that actually means to us.

Image by Yannick Pulver (Unsplash)

The Greek word that is usually translated as ‘glory’ in the New Testament is δόξα (doxa), a word which is often also translated as ‘to seem’ or ‘to appear.’ With this in mind, we grow to understand that John the Evangelist was referring to glory as being the splendour of God that’s manifested to people rather than thinking about glory as greatness or grandeur. This broader understanding of ‘glory’ is deepened when we recognise that for John, glory also points to the cross, to Jesus’s passion and resurrection. God’s glory has to be experienced and the surest way to experience it is to follow the Lord along the road to Calvary, to be transformed through our repentance and acceptance of the salvation that happened during that first Holy Week.

The glory, the manifestation of God’s splendour, is transformative. Just like the seed that transforms radically to become a tree, our experiences of God should affect us enough to turn us back to God, to convert and seek to walk closer to the Lord who calls us. As the prophet Jeremiah said, ‘Learn to know the Lord,’ a reminder that the Lord who writes the law in our hearts also wants us to grow to know him better so that we can follow him more closely.

Our experience of God’s glory is but the first step. We cannot be content just with enjoying the glory of the Lord without acting on it. We’re all invited to be transformed through our contact with God’s glory and to live this life of conversion by spreading this good news to others through our words and deeds. This is the good news that should not be hidden, the glory that should be shared, the Lord’s presence that should be made known to all.

We ask for the grace to behold the glory of the Lord, to experience it fully and to be able to live this glory in our lives while bringing it to others.

Stop and smell the Roses

4th Sunday of Lent (Year B)
2 Chr 36:14-16,19-23; Ps 137; Eph 2:4-10; Jn 3:14-21

For those who are on strict diets or training regimes, they sometimes schedule what’s called a ‘cheat day’ to relax the rules of these diets or training programmes, to be able eat what they want as a break or rest from the constraints of what they follow. Similarly, in long spiritual retreats, we often have ‘days of repose’ where retreatants have a lighter schedule of prayer and silence to rest so that they can continue with the retreat with renewed vigour. In the wisdom of the church, Laetare Sunday is a time for us to step back from the rigours and discipline of Lent to reflect on what really matters during this time. So the question is, what is it that we’re stepping back to see?

^{Image by Ilona Kovalkova (Unsplash)}

Just as strict training regimes or diets can become so onerous that we lose sight of what we’re training for, our Lenten disciplines or penances should not become things that we try to muscle through for their own sake, without having the Lord as our final objective. Today’s Gospel reminds us of what we’re looking towards and how we should get there. John 3:16 is one of the most quoted Bible verses and it describes God’s desire for us and the mission of Jesus while also showing what our response to the Lord should look like.

Sometimes understanding Scripture can be as simple as looking at the verbs used. ‘God loved the world and gave his Son.’ This part reveals the nature of God as being ever-generous and all giving, who loves us so unconditionally that Jesus, Son of God, was given to us for the sake of our salvation. This is the objective but can be our response? ‘Everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.’ Our response should be that of faith (or belief) which would allow us to receive this greatest of gifts with open arms, not resisting the graces that God always wants to give us.

This is all well and good but humans being humans tend to forget this generosity and grace and have a tendency to turn away from God, as we heard in the 1^st Reading. How easily we forget this and turn away for a variety of reasons. Yet despite this, God continues to be willing to be merciful, to the extent having foreigners like Cyrus the king of Persia to help rebuild the Temple. St Paul reiterates this as he told of how God ‘loved us with so much love that he was generous with his mercy.’ The constant pull and push of our desire for God and the distractions of the world mean that we need to find some way of turning back to God.

That’s where our Lenten practices come in as the discipline helps to remind us of our humanity and the need for humility. The more we feel this and feel the need for God, the more we are able to receive God’s love with joy. Through this, we also need some reflection and repose (I prefer this to ‘cheat’ for obvious reasons) to connect with the moments of grace and joy, to remember how God loves us so that we can actively receive it. To take the time to smell the roses (or at least see the rose vestments this weekend!) amidst the challenges of life, opening ourselves to the generosity and love of God.

We ask for the grace to see God for who God is – loving and generous and to always have the faith to receive this grace and love always.

Living God’s gifts, using tools well

3rd Sunday of Lent (Year B)
Ex 20:1-17; Ps 19; 1 Cor 1:22-25; Jn 2:13-25

For many of us, we would think that a knife is a knife and as long as it cuts, it’s good. However, if we look at the knives in professional kitchens, we see an array of different shapes and sizes, each one shaped for a specific purpose. Those working in the kitchen would have to learn how to use each and every one of them, using them for the purpose that they’re made for and not anything else, partly also because the misuse of these instruments may lead to them being damaged and unusable. The Lord gives us many tools to get close to him and to further his kingdom on earth and we need to ensure that we use them appropriately and well.

^{Image by Danilo Rios (Unsplash)}

There are two major means to get to the Lord in today’s readings – the Law and the Temple, both of which are hugely important but can easily be misinterpreted and misused which can lead to us going astray. The strong words and actions that the Lord used in chasing out the vendors and money-changers showed that the people were misusing a place that was a privileged space of encounter with God. Instead of worshipping God, many were using the temple to make a quick penny or worse, to cheat unsuspecting pilgrims who come from far and wide to pray to God at the temple. The same goes for the Law that is given to us – it is a set of instructions on how to live well and should not be used to oppress or as a means of judging others. The Law of the Lord is indeed perfect and is there to revive the soul. But what does this mean?

The message that the Lord gave to the people in the Temple applies to us also as we need to know what it is that the Lord gives us, what is the purpose of these great gifts and how we can use them well. Just as we don’t use a knife to hammer in a nail or use a spoon to lay cement, we need to know why God gave us the gifts so as to make use of them well. We come to church just as the people of Israel went to the temple to worship, recognising that it’s a special place to encounter God. For us, gathering around the table of the Lord, we celebrate and remember the Last Supper and the sacrifice of Calvary that wrought our salvation, an act of remembrance and communion that strengthens us. That makes the church sacred, set apart and thus worthy of our respect and adoration.

In a similar way, we need to understand what God’s law is all about and why God gave it to us. It’s a law that leads to freedom, not restriction, a law that allows us to flourish as children of God as we grow to love and follow it. It may seem foolish to think that a law can lead us to freedom but that’s what God’s wisdom is (2^nd Reading) – laws that keep us focused on the Lord and each other. Such a law can lessen our uncertainties and selfishness if it is used well, in our growth and not in judging others.

The Lord already gives us the tools to get closer to him and we are invited to use them in deepening our relationship with them. The invitation is to use them well – to cherish our sacred spaces and to live faithfully as God calls us to, recognising the message of eternal life and living that to the full.