Menu

Features

Features, General, Homilies, Soul Food, Vocation

“Remain in my love.”

Homily delivered by Fr. Adrian Danker, SJ on Sr. Xiaowei Li, rc’s Perpetual Profession of Vows on September 10, 2022 These are words parents might say when children depart for overseas studies. They might be what lovers say when committing to each other for life. You and I know these are really Jesus’s words to you and me as lover or parent, as friend and saviour. Today, they are especially meant for you, Sr Xiaowei. Jesus expresses his love in deeds, not words. He himself is Love alive and Love in action. This is why He is God – because God is love. For you, Sr Xiaowei, Jesus expresses His love to you in the most intimate of ways. It began when he gathered you to Himself to discern and live the vowed life. Today he gives you a deeper love to profess your perpetual vows. Indeed, your years of religious formation and life have been a time of cleansing you to be his completely. He has given you a new heart and a new spirit as a religious of the Cenacle. He has removed that heart of stone and led you to the new land of religious life. He has given himself to you who he calls, “My beloved.” In turn, you learned to love Him more intimately as “my God.” We also hear these truths from the Prophet Ezekiel who reminds us that God has always loved you as his own since ancient times. At the heart of all this is God’s desire for relationship with everyone. This is also God’s desire for you. So, root yourself in His love and enflesh your trust in God. Entrust yourself completely to him as you make your perpetual vows. With these vows, you express to all of us your total self-giving to God in deeds, not words. Yes, every word of the vow you will make come together as your sacrifice of love to God. Your vows then are really your self-sacrificing deed of love; it speaks louder than all the words said. Indeed, your ‘yes’ to remaining in Jesus’s love with perpetual vows are total, faithful and free. They are made in the hope of becoming Christ to all. Your ’yes,’ Sr Xiaowei is that very selfless sacrifice of love Jesus commands us to live – to lay down our lives for your friends that include you RC sisters, your family and friends and for the many God will place into your care. This is why we gather here. We want to tell you that we will remain with you in friendship. We do to support you as you deepen your ‘yes’ to live fully this love you and God share all the days of your life as a fully professed religious of the Sisters of the Cenacle. Today we celebrate with you. However, we recognize a dying to ourselves we must make. To a lesser degree, we too are laying down our lives for you. We know we must die to our wants of hoping you will have more time for us, of you staying with us in Singapore when God may call you on mission elsewhere, of our relationship as family and friends because now God has chosen you as his beloved. Yet, we rejoice as you surrender yourself to Jesus with your vows to follow Him wherever He leads you. We rejoice because we know this is possible because you and Sisters have co- discern over many years of your formation, growing and maturing in your vocation to be ready for today. Now, your Sisters affirm you are ready. Now, we witness your readiness for God and his mission. Today, all of us want to assure you that we will pray and support you as you readily and forever surrender yourself to the Lord. These vows are not an end in themselves. A member of Courage, the ministry I work for, wrote that “love is a process, not an outcome.” So, it is too with these vows. They invite you and God to continue sharing love. This is why the Lord pours his Spirit into you. This Spirit that will continue to convert you more and more into the image of Jesus for the world. We pray we will witness how you will become more Christ-like over time, and others seeing Christ in you, will sing out loud, “See how Sr Xiaowei lives; she is indeed a Christian!” Each time this happens, we will know, as many will too, the joyful truth we sang in today’s Psalm – God indeed “sends forth his Spirit and the face of the earth is renewed.” This is the mission ahead for you. You can only give what you have. So, share God’s Spirit with all. Sr Xiaowei, today you have every right to delight and sing that song of joy, “O bless the Lord my soul, bless your name for gentle is the love of the Lord.” Make this your daily song of praise – praising God for all that has been, for all that is happening today but more so for all that will come to be. We will sing this praise too. Indeed, it is right and good that delight and praise are the feelings we have today. They must be for as St Therese Couderc, your Foundress, once wrote, “The love of God desires to delight in all of us always.” And God’s delights in you, Sr Xiaowei, because today you enflesh what Mother Therese also wrote: “that surrendering oneself to God is more than to devote oneself, more than to give oneself, it is even something more than to abandon oneself to God. In a word, to surrender oneself is to die to everything and to self, to be no longer concern with self, except to keep continually turned toward God.” Thank you for your “yes” to Jesus, Sr Xiaowei. You witness to us how the love of God leads us ultimately to love

Features, General, Homilies, Soul Food

Homily | 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time | 2022

Over dinner in Davao last week, kuya, an RTC judge, asked an interesting question. “’Nel, I’m about to rule on a separation of a married couple. I have the report from the Church tribunal. They ruled nullity of marriage. It’s persuasive. One problem, though,” he said. “The wife is schizophrenic & she needs hospitalization. But the tribunal doesn’t stipulate if she will be financially looked after. Does canon law stipulate support for the ex after annulment?” I said I didn’t remember there being such a provision. There’s provision for child support. But none ordering support for the ex who couldn’t support him/herself after separation. “Are you going to approve the separation, kuys?” I asked. “Well,” he said, “I asked the guy & his lawyer who was going to support the woman. And both of them said they didn’t know. So, until I’m sure she’ll be financially supported, I’m going to take it slow before I rule on anything.” Then kuya shook his head. “It gets really nasty, these marriage cases. Lalo na pag pinag-awayan na ang ari-arian,” he said. “Worst, when it comes to the children.” That’s why his ruling, whatever it is, he said, must benefit all who are involved, not just the petitioner.” The Sadducees were a religious sect of Jewish aristocrats. They were major movers in Israel’s socio-political life. Their most important preoccupation was maintenance of the Temple, the beating heart of it all. So, they knew the law well, esp. Levirate marriage law, from levir, husband’s brother, or brother-in-law. Per this law, if your husband died, his single brother was required to marry you. As long as it was possible, widows were not allowed to remarry outside the clan. It was quite practical. One, whatever property the dead left behind would stay within the family. Two, the widow would be looked after & cared for by the same family. But Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. So, their question about marriage “in the resurrection,” was suspect. It was really a reductio ad absurdum, reduction to absurdity. They took issue with something they didn’t believe in, then, they jostled it & pressed it towards the cliff’s edge or logic, in order to prove Jesus wrong & mock him on the side. But ever the gentleman, Jesus answered them, anyway. We Catholics believe in “till death do us part” because in the afterlife, the very presence of Jesus, the Sacrament of sacraments, already fulfills what earthly sacraments celebrate: the saving presence & mission of Christ. In matrimony, spouses make visible to each other & to community the love Christ bears for the Church. But in the afterlife, all love is fulfilled & perfected by the very presence of the Triune God. So, there’s no need to symbolize “invisible grace” through “visible realities,” which is how we often define sacrament. In the afterlife, we share in the divine life immediately & directly. So, union with God over there excels & transcends any marriage, friendship, partnership on earth—in the superabundance of grace. Based on Jesus’ whole disposition towards the Sadducees, though, I wouldn’t put it past him to have thought: “Alam n’yo, bago n’yo problemahin ‘yang issue ng kasal sa langit, atupagin muna kaya natin ang maraming issue sa buhay may-asawa dito sa lupa?” At the time, Jewish men divorced their wives for the flimsiest reasons, like, she talked too much, or didn’t cook very well, or her face had become wearisome. Plus, this whole thing about wives being merely pushers of children out into the world, to assure their husbands’ lineage. They weren’t tutored beyond the rudiments. You didn’t need much education to fire up a stove, or squeeze oil out of olives, or knead dough, or suckle a baby. So, the Sadducees’ question about marriage in the afterlife was typical of their blindness. Sitting high on their aristocratic, pious, male perch, they were sightless of the real distress & drudgery that Jewish wives had to pull themselves through every darn day. For many years, to this day, much debate swirls around marriage, still: indissolubility vs. solubility; who should get married vs. who shouldn’t; what to call a marriage (i.e., only between male & female) vs. what to not call it (i.e. between same gender); what’s within boundaries in procreation (i.e. natural contraception) vs. what’s immoral (i.e. artificial contraception), etc. Very often, we, Churchmen, are asked for our “ruling.” And we do make a ruling, but often from high on our perch, off & away from what’s really happening to married couples & their families. When in truth, marami pa kaming kailangang atupagin, kailangan aralin, saliksikin; marami pa kaming kailangang pakinggan muna, damayan, intindihin, before we make any statements or preach any morals on marriages. I guess, I could learn from kuya. Unless he’s sure that his ruling will benefit all of who are involved, not just the complainant, all—he will not let that gavel fall easily on the sounding block. In other words, rule from down on the ground, on the earth. Not from the “heavenly” perch.   Homily of Fr. Arnel Aquino, SJ on the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 5 November 2022 Cenacle Retreat House

Scroll to Top