Homily

To grasp the very gift and meaning of Christmas, I often turn to this story that is really a parable by Soren Kierkegaard. Once upon a time there lived in a great castle a king so powerful and wealthy he was adored and feared by all in his kingdom. Alas, in this kingdom, there lived a beautiful woman, a lowly maiden, with whom he was smitten. Knowing the wide gap between them, the king thought hard about what he would do to win the heart of this woman. At first, he thought of going to her as he was, as king. However, he knew that if he went to her in all his kingly power and glory, with “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men,” she would instantly be his for the taking. She would be dazzled by his wealth and power, or she would be intimidated by the horses and men. She would say “yes” out of enchantment or she would not dare say “no” out of fear. The king knew this and pondered deeply how love would ever work if love were not free or if love were driven by fear. Love that was merely enchanted was not love, and love that was afraid was also not love. And so he thought of another way. He would disguise himself as a beggar. Coming to her as a poor man, with all his kingliness hidden from her, he might be more sure of her love (if she ever came to love him back). If he pretended to be poor like her, he would know better if her love was true. Then again, he thought, if he did just that, he wouldn’t be true to her and to himself. What kind of love would thrive in deception, what love would that be if it were based on a lie? As the king agonized over what he would do, he eventually came upon the one and only way he was ever going to win her heart. And that was for him to remove every manner of pretense and divest himself of all his kingly wealth and power. The only way was to leave the comfort of his castle so he could live and share the life of his beloved. To love her and to live with her happily ever after, he decided to disarm and let go of power. Dear friends, the Christmas story is a love story. But it is more than just a fairytale ala Cinderella or some familiar telenovela. Tonight when we draw close to the Child in a manger, we glimpse our king and our God. We come to realize the radical and irreversible choice God has made to love us. May it awaken our faith to see Emmanuel, God with us, becoming vulnerable as we are, taking on our flesh, our joys and tears, our dreams and pain, even our dying. May it calm our fears to hold this Child’s hand in our hand while we walk the darkness of our world. May it warm our love to feel the heart of God beating in ours. And may it quicken our hope to catch the breath of this infant in a manger, breathing new life into us once more. Out of love, a king chooses to disarm and let go of power. As God has so loved us, so are we to love one another. Homily delivered by Fr. Jose Ramon (Jett) T. Villarin SJ during the Christmas Eve Mass at The Cenacle 24 December 2024

I remember applying to the Society of Jesus about 27 years ago and in one of the interviews, I was asked, so why are you applying? And clumsily, I sputtered out some platitudes but one statement annoyed the Jesuit priest interviewing me. I said something like, I am a sinful person, wounded, fallen, and only God is calling me to the Society to take care of me, to heal me. “What? You think the Society is a hospital, a psychiatric ward?” And I froze. But I’m sure that interviewer would be freezing now what with Pope Francis calling the Church a field hospital. Or maybe, he would have read by now Henry Nouwen writing about all of us being wounded healers. But I remember that interview because in the readings today, we are confronted by this giant of a man that is Elijah, the greatest prophet of Israel. Even John the Baptist in the new testament was just a reiteration of the fearless man of God. As characterized by the Bible, Elijah and John seem to be the standards of the faith against whom we ought to measure up. Certainly they were courageous in proclaiming the word of God; they spoke to power as we say now, Elijah against King Ahab, his powerful queen Jezebel, and the prophets of Baal; John the Baptist against Herod and the Roman empire. Listen to the words with which the Prophet Sirach from the first reading described Elijah: he was like a fire, his words were a flaming furnace, he was awesome in his wondrous deeds and his glory has no equal. Wow! Such high standard indeed. And it is Elijah and his “reincarnation” as it were, John the Baptist, who meet us during the early days of Advent and challenge us to prepare for the coming of the Lord. They can appear to be like fierce lions guarding the opening of the cave where Jesus would be born, snarling at you: “Are you really worthy to see the Lord?” Indeed, these advent figures can be daunting to us. Until we remember that Elijah fled from Queen Jezebel for fear of his life for days on end. And out of exhaustion and fear, he went into depression and even asked God to take his life already. Oh, so, the almighty prophet had feet of clay as well! He had moments of weakness and vulnerability like us. John the Baptist was human too. Languishing in jail, at Herod’s order, John heard of Jesus and began nursing doubts and apprehensions whether Jesus was the messiah or whether he was doing it correctly because rather than hurling fire and brimstones at the Jews, Jesus was wining and dining with them. These accounts of course do not subtract anything from the greatness of these prophets of God. But these make them very human like us. They too needed to be saved. They too did not just proclaim the Word but also needed to hear it and receive it as well. So when we encounter them again one of these days of Advent, before we get scared off by them and their over the top personalities, I hope we remember that they are guides, or co-pilgrims or co-seekers on our way to the crib. They too are wounded and broken and in need of the salvation that comes at Christmas. AMEN. Homily delivered by Fr. Emmanuel “Nono” Alfonso, SJ 14 December 2024 Saturday, Second Week of Advent Cenacle Retreat House

            Have you seen wedding videos of arranged marriages? There was one I saw where a young Indian groom sat alone, unsmiling & uncomfortable. His heavily veiled wife was led in to be seated beside him. Apparently, they’d never seen each other because when the bride was unveiled, the groom saw how exquisitely beautiful she was. With his huge sigh of relief came a blissful smile that erased every trace of anxiety on the groom’s face. Sadly, that was a one-off. In the rest of the videos I saw after that, brides & grooms looked like they’d rather be in Jupiter than in that wedding! In first century Israel, love didn’t have anything to do w/ marriage. For financial security of the bride, yes; peace between families & tribes, yes; keep wealth within the clan, yes. Love, no. Actually, it’s still that way in many, many cultures to this day. But in Israel back in Jesus’ day, the grooms’ families were always the wealthier. So, the privilege to file a bill of divorce was skewed towards the men. True enough, Jewish husbands divorced their wives even for the flimsiest of reasons. David Amram, noted scholar of Jewish marriage & divorce says, “This ancient right of the husband to divorce his wife at his pleasure (was) the central thought in the entire system of Jewish divorce law.” He cites rabbinic teachings that say: “(Husband) may divorce (wife) if she spoiled a dish for him… or if he found another fairer than she… or if she goes out with her hair unbound…or if she talks so loudly in the house that neighbors could hear her.” Weightier reasons were when the wife was suspected of adultery, or when she was unable to produce children. Being baog was always the woman’s fault back then. Upon divorce, women didn’t get their dowry back. Worse, they lost all financial security. This plunged her & her family into debt & poverty. Divorced women were so stigmatized that they actually died social deaths. When the Pharisees asked Jesus whether divorce was lawful or not (after all, the sacred law of Moses allowed it!) Jesus was flatly against it. Marriage involved not just a couple & their two families, but also God. It was bad enough that the Law permitting divorce privileged men but brutally prejudiced women. It was worse that love had nothing to do with marriage. Let me share something with you, sisters & brothers. There was actually a time when I was pretty sure love had nothing to do w/ my own mom & dad staying together. For a particular stretch of my life, they quarreled so much that kuya & I had to step in, esp. when their cold war dragged on for too long. We were still in high school, then, can you imagine? Already playing marriage counselors & arbiters. One time it got really bad. Our parents called for a family meeting. They announced, “We’re going on a trial separation.” Separation was precisely what kuya & I were trying to prevent by helping them reconcile each time. So, the word “trial” didn’t quite make “separation” sound better. I confess, the first thought in my head was, “What if my classmates find out? How would I live w/ the shame of being a child of separated parents, a ‘broken home’ (as it was called back then)?” Then, the even darker scenarios: “Am I losing my dad to someone else? Another family? Don’t they love us anymore?” At dahil nga bahagi na kami ni kuya ng pagsasaayos ng mga bagay-bagay tuwing nag-aaway sila, at that moment, we felt like we failed in our mission. Kuya& I were not used to failure. We were very good students in school, oh my God. But now that mom & dad decided on a “trial separation,” there was no greater failure. But this homily is not about my stand on the question: “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?” It is, nevertheless, a respectful suggestion, or an encouragement, perhaps. Just as there should be serious, compelling, & selfless reasons for couples to jump out of marriage, there should be even more serious, compelling, & selfless reasons to enter into one. I wish & hope & pray that couples think long & hard, far & wide about how they will be affecting the children in all their decisions not just as parents, but also as husbands & wives. And to do all this not just before having children, but before even getting married. In my opinion, the most serious, compelling, & selfless reason to consider should be the children. Jesuits have been in the education apostolate for a long, long time. We’ve seen it far too often to deny it, sisters & brothers. Problems of students often redound to marital problems of their parents. Not all, thank God. Not all. For there are indeed children who fall into problems even when their parents are in an exemplary marriage. Still, it has happened far too often to be denied, & happens still: there’s that higher risk of academic difficulties, disruptive behavior, & depression in children whose parents cannot & do not want to get along. Even when each parent tries to show the children parental love, the children see & feel & know that their parents no longer respect each other. Totoo pa rin ‘yung kasabihan: one of the best ways parents ever love their kids is to show them how much they love each other. Because kids know. By God’s grace, things got a little better w/ mom & dad as they grew older. It was never perfect. But stay together they did, till death parted them when mom passed. Did love for each other have anything to do with sticking together? I’m not really sure. But I will bet my last bag of Cheetos that if there was one thing that had everything to do with their having stuck it out together, it was love

To Pray on and Ponder: John 12, 24-26 “Hinay-hinay, basta kanunay” is a favorite Visayan-language quotation which I always liken to God’s grace. The dynamic movement is that of a slow, gentle drop of things, slowly, but constantly, like St. Ignatius’ image consoling grace—like water dripping on a sponge, it drips and drops, without noise, almost imperceptibly, slowly but surely. But we know that such water dripping hinay-hinay, basta kanunay would ultimately break the proverbial rock, rather than a one time, big time, noisy splash. I thought of this slow, gentle, relentless drop of things mulling over St. Thérèse, the foundress-saint we honor today. A big part of this slow and gentle drop of things in the spirit of St. Thérèse is her contemplation of the sweet and gentle goodness of God in all things. She saw goodness as though it were a golden stamp from the Creator that sealed goodness in every creature of God, even in the chair or kneeler she was using. But we see how this slow, gentle, relentless drop of things, assumes much depth when we come to know that the constant surrender to grace involved Thérèse’ gracious receiving of suffering from people around her, (some of whom are Jesuits: hmp, sorry po!). With much humility and grace, your foundress received humiliation and suffering and used these with the intention of purifying the world of sin’s hold of it. This is at the very heart of the “law of the cross” as Jesuit theologian, Bernard Lonergan describes it. That in Jesus’ loving self-sacrifice on the cross, he took upon himself the sin and violence around him and transmuted it into obedient loving surrender to his Father’s will and loving self-sacrifice for the people he loved. This cross of Christ, wherever it is lived and embraced always leaves a world closer to redemption and communion with the loving God, hinay-hinay, basta kanunay. I believe St. Thérèse learned this by suffering it and experiencing deep joy for it. She herself testifies: Oh! If people could understand beforehand the sweetness and the peace enjoyed by those who would hold nothing back from the Good God! How he communicates himself to the soul who sincerely seeks him and who knows how to surrender herself. Let them just experience it, and they will see that therein is found the true happiness which they are vainly seeking elsewhere.  (To Surrender Oneself, 1864) St. Ignatius once described the Jesuit of his dreams in similar terms: “men crucified to the world, and to whom the world itself is crucified.” That by our gentle acts in ministry, we join Jesus Christ chipping away at sin and corruption in the world, crucifying it, really; but by sheer counterflow in things, we, ourselves are crucified to the world as well, going countercurrent to the world’s desires will always invite a backlash, but we continue chipping away anyways. And it will bear fruit as the Gospel proclaims—“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. This morning, I kept marveling at how the slowness and gentleness in St. Thérèse learned her surrender to grace in the face of all the humiliation and suffering her commitment entailed, and how she ultimately experienced joy and peace as she gave her all to her Lord. And I guess the key is still the ever-growing love she kept in her heart for Jesus, and the way she ultimately contemplated the face of Jesus’ goodness in everything, hinay-hinay basta kanunay. And you know the grace of the founder sure is the grace of the daughters. I think of the Cenacle sisters close to me, and I see this slow and gentle drop of things reflected well in their lives, and I’m in awe at beholding God’s fidelity and constancy in them, in their friendship and their service. In them we see a God who always provides all of us with the grace we precisely need in our lives time and time again, with great hospitality and thoughtful gentleness and reliable strength, trully, really, hinay-hinay, basta kanunay! Homily delivered by Fr Vic Baltazar, SJ on the Feast of Saint Thèrése Couderc, Founder of the Religious of the Cenacle 26 September 2024 Cenacle Retreat House

            I had the chance to work with the deaf for 3 years. They were religion teachers who taught in 3 public schools where there were special classes for deaf children. First, they taught me sign-language. Then, when my vocabulary was decent, I helped them teach religion. One of many things that made a lasting impression on me was that our deaf sisters & brothers prefer to be called “deaf,” not “deaf-mute,” & never “deaf-&-dumb,” which they find insulting. Back in my generation, “dumb” was just another word for “deaf,” like “black” was just another word for African-American, & “gay” another word for happy. Today, dumb no longer means mute. It means stupid. So, the deaf don’t want to be called dumb or mute. Because they’re not. The only reason they can’t talk is because they can’t hear their voices. But can the deaf be taught to talk? Absolutely! Many of them already do. In fact, the slogan the Pinoy deaf community goes: “We can do anything but hear.” And it’s true. There are deaf cooks in some airline commissaries, busboys in McDonald’s, mechanics in talyers, & even deaf missionary priests!             In the Philippines, schools for the deaf require at least 1 parent or sibling to learn sign language. Unless the family meets that requirement, they don’t accept the student. For good reason, right? Most often, it’s the mother who learns to sign bec. the father needs to work. Sadly, most Pinoy fathers couldn’t be bothered to learn even the simplest signs at home. I remember asking my deaf friends: “Your father: not sign; why?” They laughed. Then, then one boy answered: (lazy). Lazy. Deaf children feel that their fathers are too lazy to learn sign. “Eh, kinakausap naman siya ng nanay niya,” the fathers usually say. But signing doesn’t just enable you to talk to your deaf child. It enables you to listen. Precisely because not everyone can sign, the deaf have less people in the world to “hear” them.             We who can hear can suffer from deafness, too; psychological deafness, especially. Never mind the political & business worlds where the psychologically deaf thrive in scores. But in religious life & church life, we can actually be psychologically deaf. There seems to be direct proportion between psychological deafness & power, clout, accomplishments, money. Priest, sister, or lay, we’re fair game to psychological deafness if we’re not self-attentive. So accustomed to having our way because we’ve been superior or president for a long time, so effective in pulling in the most benefactors, so triumphant in raising funds—our bandwidth shrinks into to picking up just two signals: (a) the sound of our own voices, & (b) the voices of people who tell us what we want to hear. Never mind the rest. We have a noble excuse, anyway. “I’m doing all this for the church, for your religious order, for our community, for the poor.” When there is push-back, though, esp. from the unheard, the psychologically deaf play the “utang na loob” card: “You owe me. Our parish, community, congregation won’t be where it is right now if not because of my work, myconnections, my money.”             There must be such deep emptiness that psychologically deaf people feel inside but are terrified of admitting. Many times, they’re not listened to very much by people who really know them, like their family, their community, their own children. This is why when we’re highly accomplished but psychologically deaf, we do gain benefactors & patrons, sure! But we lose out on family. We lose true friends. Why don’t they admonish us when we’re psychologically deaf? Because no matter how loud they scream in our faces, they know us only too well. They know we won’t listen anyway. We hate the soundbyte of admonition. Jesus walked the deaf man away from the crowd to have a one-on-one with him. That way, the first voice the man would hear was his. We need that one-on-one with the Lord. We need him to clear out our deafness & set us free, so we can hear his voice again, way over ours. By the way, God speaks not in some other-worldly voice, but in the voices of good, well-meaning people who can call out the painful truth about us, & still love us. And not just by what they actually say, but also by what they are not saying. It takes grace from God to hear what people are not saying. Hopefully, then, the slogan of the physically deaf in the Philippines does not become ours: “We can do anything but hear.”   Homily delivered by Fr. Arnel Aquino, SJ on the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Cenacle Retreat House 7 September 2024 (Anticipated Sunday Mass)

We encounter in our readings today Paul’s struggle with his own weaknesses and the rejection of Jesus in His hometown. These passages invite us to reflect on our call as modern-day prophets in an unbelieving world and the need to counter familiarity and prejudice as we live out our Christian faith. In his Letter to the Corinthians, Paul speaks of his “thorn in the flesh,” a weakness that keeps him humble. He learns that God’s grace is sufficient and that His power is made perfect in weakness. Paul’s acceptance of his limitations and reliance on God’s grace serves as a profound lesson and reminder for us as well, for it is in our weaknesses that God’s strength shines through. In the passage from Mark’s Gospel, we witness Jesus returning to His hometown, and yet, His teachings are met with skepticism and disbelief. The people struggle to overcome their preconceived notions about Jesus, the carpenter’s son. Familiar with His humble origins, they simply cannot see beyond their preconceived notions. Their lack of faith hinders them from experiencing the fullness of His power and this lack prevents them from witnessing the fullness of God’s grace in their midst.. This passage reminds us that even Jesus faced skepticism and disbelief, particularly from those who knew Him best; and worse, Jesus himself was rejected. But Jesus, in His infinite wisdom, challenges us to see beyond the familiar and recognize the divine in the ordinary. In the words of St. Ignatius, to find God in all things, even in the mundane and the ordinary. Like Jesus and Paul, we are also called to be prophets in our own time. This means speaking the truth of the Gospel, even when it is uncomfortable or unpopular; especially when it is uncomfortable and unpopular. It means standing firm in our faith, despite the challenges and rejections we may face. The world today, much like Nazareth, often struggles with familiarity and prejudice, making it difficult to recognize the divine in the ordinary. As Christians, we must actively work to counter these attitudes. We must see each person as a child of God, worthy of love and respect, regardless of their background or circumstances. This requires humility and openness, recognizing that we too can be blinded by our prejudices. We need to allow God’s grace to transform our hearts and minds, enabling us to see others through His eyes. As disciples of Christ, we are all called to be exemplars in overcoming preconceived notions and selfish pride. If we are humble and honest enough to admit it, our own pride and preconceived notions can act as barriers, preventing us from fully embracing God’s plan for our lives. Like the people in Jesus’ hometown, we may be tempted to limit the possibilities of grace by confining God to our preconceived expectations. But God’s wisdom always surpasses our understanding, and His grace can transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. And so we draw strength and inspiration from today’s sacred scriptures. Like Paul, let us embrace our weaknesses, knowing and believing that God’s grace is sufficient. Like Jesus, let us persist in our mission, in our respective vocations, even in the face of rejection. With the help and Grace of God, may we strive towards greater humility, dedication, and openness to the unexpected, allowing God’s infinite love to transform our hearts and work miracles in our lives. May we be instruments of God’s unfathomable mercy, reaching out to those in need with open hearts and minds. May we become modern-day prophets, boldly proclaiming the Gospel and breaking down barriers of familiarity and prejudice. In doing so, we allow God’s power to work through us, bringing His love and truth to an unbelieving world.   Homily delivered by Fr. Mamert Mañus, SJ  14th Sunday in Ordinary Time  2024 (Cycle B (Mark 6:1-6) Cenacle Retreat House