Homily

In graduate studies, we were a big community of 8 houses. One day, a Mexican Jesuit ran back to our house & said, “The American scholastics are going from house to house, removing non-metal vessels from the chapels.” We were an international community. From their native cultures, Jesuits brought back chalices, ciboria, patens made of ceramic, clay, stone, wood, all exquisitely crafted & sublimely designed. For some strange reason, the American scholastics went on this zealous purge of non-metal vessels one fine day, leaving only the usual silver & gold. The Roman Missal instructions do say that metal vessels are preferred. But they allow vessels of other materials, so long as they don’t easily corrupt. Either the zealous scholastics read past the rules they didn’t like, or, they didn’t do their homework. I had asked myself, if Jesus were physically there that day, how would he have countenanced this purge & his person & message & ministry? The recent proposal to forbid you, mass goers, from doing the orans (praying) posture in the Ama Namin bewildered me. Biblically & theologically, the Our Father is a prayer of petition from start to finish. In its entirety, it expresses our desperate dependence on God for everything. I love that we Filipinos physicalize this dependence, if only w/ our hands, & if only in one part of the mass. After all, nothing in Scripture, Tradition, & Magisterium forbids us from assuming such harmless, sinless, yet sincere, & very human posture…of begging. So, I had asked myself, if Jesus were physically there that day, how relevant was this proposal to his person & message & ministry? In the Transfiguration, God showed in no uncertain terms that his Son was the fulfillment of the Law & the Prophets represented by Moses & Elijah. See, sisters & brothers, the phrase “the Law & the Prophets,” that was the catch-all term for Israel’s entire religious tradition based on hundreds of rules pursuant to the 10 Commandments. These rules governed a Jew right from when one got up at sunrise to one’s last wakeful moment after sunset: what to pray, how to wash, whom to avoid, what to not touch, what sacrifices to burn, how often to show up at synagogue, etc., etc. But in the Transfiguration, God showed that the Law & the Prophets were not just rules inked on sacred parchment. The Law & the Prophets was a Person, w/ a beating heart, w/ hands that touched, held, & healed, w/ breath that gave life, w/ a body that blended in esp. with the poor. So, from here forward, whatever law you obeyed, whatever prophecy you were told, all of it must mirror how God’s beloved Son obeyed them. Contrary to popular thinking, Jesus did not violate an iota of the Law & the Prophets. He fulfilled them the way God meant them fulfilled. How? With utmost care, attention, & priority to the human persons & their desperate need for a better life & their longing for God No wonder God promptly said, “This is my beloved son. Listen to him.” Meaning: “My son shows you how I want the Law & the Prophets obeyed.” Listen to him daw, sisters & brothers; to his Son. Alam na alam kasi ng Diyos that when we make ourselves the norm of the law, we tend to listen only to ourselves. The next thing we know—we’ve become harsh on others, & yet, lenient on ourselves. We impose the letter of the law on others, & yet, we invoke the spirit of the law as an alibi when we violate it. Worst, when we presume to be the norm of God’s law, we become quite exclusivistic, bigoted, holier-than-thou, & dismissive of the poor, na para bang sinosolo natin ang Diyos. Exactly what became of the Pharisees & the Sadducees. What did they do? They set themselves as the norm for how people must obey the Law. You could almost hear them say, “Become like us! Transfigure yourselves!” To Jesus’ eyes, though, they really disfigured the image of God into a ritualistic, legalistic, formalistic, moralistic deity. Ever the karpintero, Jesus went about fixing what the hierarchs disfigured. So, he told eye-opening parables about God. He extended God’s touch in all his healings. He connected people to God & with each other by teaching them to call God, “Father.” He forgave sins. So, in a miracle filled with light, God showed Peter, James, & John his face…in the face of his Son. “This is my beloved Son who pleases me. Listen to him. For he is the norm, the image & likeness of how I want you to understand, to interpret, & to operationalize…ME.” Sisters & brothers, never mind non-metal chalices, or whether the lay should or shouldn’t assume the orans along w/ the priest during Ama Namin, or whether we should receive communion w/ our hands or w/ our mouths. Our Church has more compelling issues that need our study, our discernment, our decision-making, & our constant praying. Artificial Intelligence, gender diversity, Evangelical & Pentecostal church expansion, Mother Earth’s moan & groan…these & so much more…they demand new eyes & ears, new hearts & mindsets from us Catholics. For us to see Jesus’ countenance & hear Jesus’ voice through all of these bewildering realities, we must be Transfigured, anew, afresh, & unafraid.   Homily delivered by Fr. Arnel Aquino, SJ 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time Cenacle Retreat House

The parables, finding the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price, have three distinct moments: finding, then selling and then buying. In both parables, something very very precious is found, something so important, so valuable is found. And so much so that sometimes by accident like the guy who finds a treasure in a field but sometimes after a longer searching like a merchant looking for pearls. Finding that these are so valuable, in joy, both go and sell everything they have in order to buy the field and the pearl of great price. Like us religious especially at one point in our lives we discovered that the value of the Lord was the most important and most valuable thing in our lives and so in joy, I think, we went and sold everything — we gave up our families, we gave up family life, we gave up our careers and we “bought” religious life. We committed ourselves to religious life.  The more I think about it, the real challenge is what at one point seemed so important, sometimes we find it less important or see it less important. At least that’s what I’ve seen. I’m reading a very good book by Miraslov Volf. The title of the book is called, “Life Worth Living”. It’s based on a course he and others give to undergraduates to help them discover what matters most in life. It’s a course that helps people discover what makes a human life worth living, what makes a life truly human,  what matters most. Because you can succeed professionally and still be a failure as a human being. Early in the book there was an example about Albert Speer, the architect of Hitler who ended up building concentration camps and the gas chambers. He wanted really to be a great architect and in the end he became a great architect but he was a failure as a human being. But at the end of the book, Volf says that for most of us the problem is not that we’re going to live evil lives, that’s still a possibility. It’s a possibility that we choose wrongly; we betray our humanity by living evil lives. But what struck me most was, for most of us, the problem is, the temptation is to live trivial ives. We may have seen what mattered most at one point and then there are forces in our culture that made us forget what matters most and to start living trivially not exactly betray our humanity but to give up on our potential as human beings. And he said that there are two temptations to trivial lives. First is what we see all around us — advertising, the media — everything dresses up unimportant things that they conceal much more important ones. So we might say, “I really want to serve God and my neighbors but when I look at my time and where I spent my money on, I discover that my priority might not be that. I might see that appearance is more important or entertainment is more important, or fame is more important, or titles and positions.” Our culture dresses up all these things that make them seem so important so we can get distracted to run after those things and at the end we find the life we live is hollow. The other temptation to triviality is to think of our lives as trivial. We say, “The world is so big, how do I count? What I do, what I decide, what does it do to many? Who am I? I can’t do anything.” And so the temptation is to believe that our lives are really not that important. Maybe we’re not a separate greatness, maybe we’re not the most important in this world but we count. The way we live our lives, the decisions we make, the way we treat others, make a difference maybe not for the whole world but for the people we live with, the people who are entrusted to us.  I think the invitation of the Gospel is to not allow ourselves to be tempted to live trivial lives and to try to focus on what matters most — the treasure in the field, the pearl of great price. Whatever that is to us. There are moments when we see so clearly what matters most often during retreats. I just finished my retreat in Baguio last week and I realized so many of the things I am concerned about — my appearance, aging, health, achievements, comparing myself with others, titles, positions — all of those are unimportant. But there was a moment that God made it clear to me that what matters most to me, especially at this stage of my life, is to live as a beloved child of God and to live the example of Jesus. It was so clear to me…then I went down the mountain… 😉 Let me just end by reading a section from the book which I found very helpful: “𝘾𝙤𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙤 𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙖𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙞𝙨 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚 𝙪𝙣𝙘𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖 𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙘𝙞𝙤𝙪𝙨, 𝙛𝙧𝙖𝙜𝙞𝙡𝙚 𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙚 𝙗𝙪𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙙 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙙𝙚𝙨𝙚𝙧𝙩. 𝙐𝙣𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙠 𝙞𝙩 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙨𝙝𝙞𝙚𝙡𝙙 𝙞𝙩 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙞𝙣𝙙, 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙡𝙞𝙛𝙚 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙗𝙡𝙤𝙬 𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙩𝙤𝙥 𝙤𝙛 𝙞𝙩 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙨𝙬𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙤𝙬 𝙞𝙩 𝙗𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝙪𝙥. 𝙐𝙣𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙚𝙭𝙘𝙖𝙫𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙞𝙩 𝙘𝙖𝙧𝙚𝙛𝙪𝙡𝙡𝙮, 𝙞𝙩 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙗𝙚 𝙡𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧.  𝙎𝙤 𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙠 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙞𝙩. 𝘾𝙖𝙧𝙫𝙚 𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙢𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙩𝙤 𝙧𝙚𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙣 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙌𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣. 𝙀𝙖𝙧𝙡𝙮 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜, 𝙗𝙚𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙣𝙤𝙞𝙨𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙙𝙖𝙮 𝙗𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙣𝙨. 𝙇𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜, 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙡𝙖𝙢𝙤𝙧 𝙝𝙖𝙨 𝙗𝙚𝙜𝙪𝙣 𝙩𝙤 𝙙𝙞𝙚 𝙙𝙤𝙬𝙣. 𝙍𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙞𝙙𝙙𝙡𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙠𝙙𝙖𝙮, 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙣 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙘𝙖𝙣 𝙬𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙩 𝙖 𝙛𝙚𝙬 𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙪𝙩𝙚𝙨 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙡𝙞𝙛𝙚’𝙨 𝙩𝙖𝙨𝙠𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙙𝙚𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙨. 𝙒𝙝𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙝𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙘𝙖𝙣, 𝙢𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙨𝙥𝙖𝙘𝙚 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙌𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣. 𝘿𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙢𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙞𝙩 𝙖 𝙩𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙘 𝙤𝙛 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙚𝙤𝙥𝙡𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙫𝙖𝙡𝙪𝙚 𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩.” “𝙄𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙛𝙚𝙚𝙡 𝙮𝙤𝙪’𝙫𝙚 𝙛𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙙 𝙖 𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙚, 𝙧𝙚𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙣 𝙩𝙤 𝙞𝙩 𝙖𝙜𝙖𝙞𝙣 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙖𝙜𝙖𝙞𝙣—𝙩𝙤 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩. 𝙀𝙭𝙘𝙖𝙫𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙞𝙩.

After the great feasts of Easter, Ascension and Pentecost, which with Holy Week highlight the key mysteries of our salvation, we had three complementary feasts to round out our sense of the saving God: Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi and the Sacred Heart. They express the mystery and wonder of God beyond our comprehension, who is still close to us and bound to us in love. Today’s readings continue that theme: a God who is utterly concerned and seeking what works for our good. The Old Testament passage from Exodus is put in terms of Israel’s covenant with God, a somewhat legal sounding relationship where God tells his  people to stay close to him — much as a mother or father would tell a child to hold my hand while we cross the street.” I don’t want harm to come to you.” But even if expressed in legal terms of “listening to my voice and keeping my covenant,” there is God’s reaching out to Israel. They will be “dearer to me that all other people, … a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.” There’s a closeness and valuing. And not simply to leave non-Israelites out. Remember that Israel was ultimately intended to be ‘light of the nations,’ priest-mediators through whom God would reach out to everyone, a vocation that would, by many, be squandered except for Jesus and his Jewish disciples. Romans pushes even more deeply how much God reaches out to us. Beginning with how “the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us,” there follows today’s reading which spells out how not even our sinfulness and unworthiness can get in the way of God’s desire to give us life. “Greater love no one has,” Jesus tells us, “than to lay down his life for friends . . . and you are my friends.” But Romans fills out the picture: sinful friends, whom nobody would die for except a loving Lord, who saves us by his death and life, his cross and resurrection. So we can now boast of this God who through Christ brings us back to himself. The gospel too points in the same direction. Jesus goes about curing every disease and illness, Matthew says, and then today’s reading: “because his heart was moved with pity for them, because they were troubled and abandoned like sheep without a shepherd.” Then he reminds us what ministry in the Church is meant to be: not privilege or power, but labor to let all share God’s harvest. Ordinary people like Peter, James, John, etc., are called to embody God’s concern and care for people starting with Israel (since God remains faithful to his promises to them), but ultimately to “all nations.” Certainly, a theme that Pope Francis has urged over and over- inclusiveness, leaving nobody out of the picture. So let us give thanks that this is the way God is constantly inviting us to share grace upon grace, concerned about us, not casting us off when we go astray but reaching out more lovingly to bring us home. And as we “boast” in this Lord, we want to be reminded of our vocations to be extensions of God’s love and kindness wherever we find ourselves. “Without cost you have received,” Jesus tells his apostles; “without cost you are to give.” Let us continue to be very much aware of what we have received, and ever more ready to be givers and sharers of that same love and concern that the Lord extends to us.   Homily delivered by Fr. William (Bill) Abbott, SJ 17 June 2023 Anticipated Sunday Mass Cenacle Retreat House

There is a line in the acts of the apostles in Pentecost about the devout Jews. “Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem.” – Acts 2:5 The Greek word for “devout” (eulabḗs) refers to a person who clings to the good once it is known, and as it is known. It suggests a certain being circumspect or cautious of what is in the world because not everything is good. But once the good is known, that person will take hold of that good carefully and surely. That is what devout means: a person who is a searcher of the good and who clings to the good, redefines one’s life totally according to the call and demand of the good. In yesterday’s homily on the Feast of the Cenacle, Fr Roger Champoux spoke about entering the realm of the sacred, of sanctification, and of consecration; of allowing oneself to be possessed by and oriented towards the loving and tender embrace of the Good, and the good God. Here, we find an echo on this in the Jews gathered in Jerusalem who are described as “devout.” They are those who are already predisposed towards the good, and have oriented their entire lives towards the good God. Devotedness is this inner predisposition by which the Spirit can more fully enter into us further bless us. In the narrative of Pentecost in Acts 2, there is ambiguity and ambivalence in that not everyone heard the message of the apostles in their own language. Others heard only drunken speech. Why this then disparity and difference in Pentecost? I believe that it was only to the devout Jews coming from all parts of the lived world of that time that the gift of interpretation was also given by the Spirit. Their being devout open up the way for them to also receive the Spirit’s gift of interpretation by which the devout Jews were enabled to accurately and intelligibly hear and understand in their own native tongue what was otherwise heard as drunken speech by the non-devout crowd in Jerusalem. In the New Testament, the Greek word for “interpret” (dierméneuó) means to explain things thoroughly, completely or fully, and accurately: it is the same word used to describe what the risen Jesus did in explaining the Scriptures to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. It is this gift of interpretation, this further gift of the Spirit to the already devout Jews of that time, that also helps us today to discern truth amid the ambivalence, ambiguity and confusion of a noisy world. The gift of interpretation renders clear and intelligible the matter of discernment to devout persons who sincerely seek and fundamentally orient their lives towards goodness in whatever form it is discovered and encountered in the world. With the Spirit’s gift of interpretation, confusion is transformed into clarity. Devout that we are, let us more proactively await and pray for this grace of interpreting the signs of the times and the movement of the Spirit that may be initially heard as the noise of the world. Let us pray for this gift of interpretation so that we can understand more clearly what the Spirit is saying to us and to churches. May the Spirit further guide us, unfold for us, and translate for us God’s unique message for us and for the world today. Finally, the Gospel today says that “Jesus breathed on them” (John 20:22). The Greek word for the breathing action used here (emphysáō) occurs only once throughout the New Testament, and it is the same word also used in the Greek Old Testament in the creation story when God breathed life into the human being. This word correlates to another Greek word for breath (pneuma): “Receive the Holy Spirit” (pneuma). “Spirit” means “breath”. Our invitation today is simply to stand before the Lord our Creator and allow ourselves to receive the breath of Christ which is the Spirit. This relates to what Fr Roger in yesterday’s homily said about the foundress’ (Thérèse Couderc’s) spirituality of “se livrer”: that is, to deliver or entrust oneself totally to the Lord, to allow one’s life to be totally defined, shaped and oriented anew by the breath of Christ, that is the Holy Spirit, the Holy Breath. In a way, it is difficult because it involves a radical dying to self when we define our lives according to our own terms, or in conformity to the standards of the world. Pentecost calls us to simply let go and simply stand before the Lord and open ourselves widely to the coming of Spirit. To simply stand and be open: that is why the foundress also says that “se livre” is the easiest thing to do. To simply stand and be open to God’s work in us, to be most docile and malleable to the freedom of the Spirit in shaping our lives and directions in life, to allow ourselves to be completely redefined and reshaped by the Spirit: Ikaw bahala, Lord. Se livre. And so in this mass on the Solemnity of Pentecost, let us pray for the three graces of the Spirit: the gift of devotedness; the gift of interpretation; and the gift of “se livrer” Homily delivered by Fr. Oliver Dy, SJ 28 May 2023 | Solemnity of Pentecost Cenacle Retreat House    

“It is I. Do not be afraid.” They say that the phrase “do not be afraid” occurs 365 times in the Bible. Fear and relief are important emotions in our lives. As I read this, I remembered a moment when I was terrified. The fear I felt at the time was the fear of meaninglessness. I live, study and strive to live a better life. There are many things we need to work on. To make friends, have relationships, take tests, and learn, and we succeed and fail. I experienced joy, frustration, and failure. But basically I didn’t know why I was living. I thought at the time, “If I knew why I live, I would be happy even though if have to die after five minutes. On the contrary, if I live without knowing why I live, even if I lived 60 or 70, my life would be no different than that of dogs and cats.” I pleaded an unbelieving God, and he came to visit me. You may ask, how do you know if the experience is God’s experience or a fantasy done by yourself in your imagination? There is no explanation or proof of that. But I know. I believe that He was God. I hoped to be lifelong friends with Jesus, who came to me in a moment of fear. I believed that one day I would find the answer if I continue the friendship with Jesus. So I decided to become a Christian. Fears, crises, and difficulties are situations and emotions that we want to avoid. It throws us into darkness and separates us from everything. It’s an emotion we want to avoid. But it is also a blessed time to meet the invisible God, as in today’s Gospel (John 6:16-21) and in my experience of God. Perhaps the moment God chooses to reveal Himself may be felt as fear, crisis, and darkness to us. The question is whether we close our eyes and turn away from it, or whether we call upon God who awaits us beyond. In other words, what kind of faith we have in such darkness determines our lives. May we continue to seek God today, no matter what the circumstances may be. “It is I. Do not be afraid.”   Homily delivered by Fr John Chong, SJ 22 April 2023 | Saturday in the 2nd week of Easter Cenacle Retreat House