I remember growing up as a child. We live in a rented flat and our door was always open. So was our neighbour’s. The children used to run into both flats, into kitchens and bedrooms. There was no restricted access. There was no need to preach about ‘being in community’, it came about quite naturally.

Today all doors are closed, securely locked. As we achieved progress and modernise, we became insecure. Perhaps we now have things to lose. We jealously guard them. Fear of not having the best make us competitive with one another. And plus, we need our privacy too.

What goes on behind closed doors? Family lifestyles would have surely changed in the last 30 to 40 years. We needed to. We could not have stood still in time. But perhaps in the excitement of embracing everything new, we became unguarded about protecting our family values and our part among other families around us. When we closed our door, did we also close out relationships and love for those around us? Did we turn neighbours into strangers?

We all want to do the best for our families. There is nothing wrong with this; in fact it is one of our major vocation in life. But often we get confused by wanting the best for our families. The danger is that we start to hide behind the noble intention for family and our every action is solely dedicated to our family, even at the expense of our spiritual values. We become competitive because we understand that ‘to be first and to have’ is for the good of our family.

Who is the family unit? If this is just an extension of ‘self’ in the sense that we only care for our family, then would that not be an extension of selfishness? Of still only caring for ‘self’ but with family members included in the definition of ‘self’?

The family unit is where we first encounter love. It is where we first experience being loved and taught to love. As a grandparent there is no greater fulfilment of life than to see the children loving their children. This is the way true love will flow. One receive to give. From parent to child, from Father to Son. The more we give, the more we receive. Love grows us all.

Behind those closed doors, we must rethink our family lifestyles and their spiritual values. When we close the family door to others apart from our own family members, we may think that we doing good by keeping maximum love for our family. When love does not flow, love dies. Darnels grow on fertile ground alongside wheat. We must be careful not to allow the darnel of selfishness to grow alongside the wheat of family love.

The nature of love cannot be harboured but must flow on. Often we are asked to serve in church ministries and often our replies suggest that we are too busy with family. We are engrossed in our career because we want the best for family. Perhaps a better reply may simply be to open the family door. A family who are capable to love beyond themselves is a holy family.

Have a happy and holy 2018!

A family who are capable to love beyond themselves is a holy family.

The Holy Family

“Every Christmas is different” shared a homilist this week. Each year we arrive at Christmas in the midst of an evolving but different set of realities. Our Christmas experience can be very different as the realities of our personal life impact how we experience what each Christmas promises; love, joy, hope and peace.

Christmas is difficult to celebrate alone. The season is festive. It is a time of get-togethers especially with loved ones, family members and close friends. It is an occasion for reunions. At parties we celebrate friendships and feel grateful for one another. In the hangover of the morning after, we reflect on love and perhaps on how far we have come in life this Christmas.

But Christmas can also be lonely. We could have arrived at Christmas having gone through a tough year. We could be facing the realities of unemployment or the challenges of ill health. It could also be that a loved one is no longer around. Christmas can also be very different if in reality our relationships with family or friends are estranged. When relationships are broken, we are isolated and disconnected from the spirit of Christmas.

But at every Christmas, in any corner of the world there will many joyful get-togethers among family and friends once estranged from each other. There will gratitude for a better life having overcome the many uncertainties. There will be people celebrating a re-discovery of their faith life and renewed relationship with God in communities where love freely flows. Christmas always open doors to reconciliation.

The spirit of Christmas is generous. We all can help make Christmas better.

The spirit of Christmas is always at work. These gatherings of joy are made possible because people acted on the call of reconciliation. Each of us are called to be a catalyst to mend estranged relationships, especially if we are part of it. The other party might just be waiting to embrace the offering of peace.

At Christmas we are called to be like Mary to change lives. Our ‘yes to be the handmaid of the Lord’ will change the lives of those around us and make a different and better Christmas for them and us. Christmas is the birth of the Child Jesus into the reality of our personal life. Changed lives are a fulfilment of the Christmas promise of love, joy, hope and peace.

Wishing you a holy and blessed Christmas!

Each Christmas is Different

4th Sunday of Advent

This Christmas we should change our gifts to each other and give the gift of change. Advent is a time reminding us to draw closer to God, a time to take stock and renew our faith life. The second reading says, “Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks”. But for many of us, our Advent, our preparations for Christmas is party without ceasing.

Advent is a good time to reflect on how lukewarm we are in our faith. Prayer versus party. Are we rejoicing for the right reason for the season? Yet Advent is not a time of judgement even if we party more than we pray. It is a season of reminders. Above all it is a time of welcome when we are invited to come closer into the presence of our Lord, to be re-connected to God so that our lives can be for the better.

Many of us remain lukewarm simply because there is nothing much happening spiritually in our average life. God is somewhere there and there is no need to be that close to Him. Until perhaps a crisis occurs and we suddenly feel a need to be in a relationship with Him. And then we discover that we simply cannot connect.

Advent is a period of opportunity. Many lukewarm in faith will appear in the many events we are invited to. For some, Christmas is the only mass they will attend in the year. Advent becomes an opportunity for mission to bring the gift of Jesus into the lives of many who so lukewarm that they are lost and are spiritually disconnected.

All of us can give this gift of Jesus which is a gift that will change the life of others. As we wrote last week, this is the gift of our faith story, a testimony of our real life experiences of Jesus.

There is no teaching and we should not preach. There should be no hint of condemnation. Our sharing and discussion with them should not be judgmental. We must welcome them in their doubt and gently lead them, step by step, to see the hand of God in their life, and the shadow of a faithful God ever present despite them not knowing how to acknowledge and appreciate His presence. The only book that we can refer to are from the chapters of our own life story. We must dig deep and be vulnerable, share our hurts and our subsequent healing. Our honest testimony an effective way to clear their doubts.

Our faith story will help make God more relevant in the lives of many who are lukewarm. Our stories will encourage them to go back into the history of their life and begin tracing their own footsteps through the personal events of their life; small and big. These events altered the course of their life and hopefully they see in them the silent, guiding hand of God. When they do we have given them the gift of Emmanuel, ‘God is with us’.

When we manage to clear up a bit of their doubts and create a clearing for them to find a path out of the lukewarm state, we continue the work of John the Baptist, “I am a voice that cries in the wilderness: Make a straight way for the Lord”.

And so this is our gift of change, our own personal story that changed us. We “bring good news to the poor, to bind hearts that are broken: to proclaim liberty to captives, freedom to those in prison”. Our faith story can do exactly this: to bring Jesus to those in poverty in their faith life, those broken and in need of healing, and those entrapped by their unbelief.

We can go to as many parties as we want but we must remember that first and foremost we are there because we are party to this mission.

Will Jesus be present in the many parties we will attend this Christmas?

3rd Sunday of Advent

You and I may never be canonized as saints. Our life may just be a bit too wild for that but it does not mean that we cannot do saintly things. No one person is all bad. Even if we feel more bad than good, more distanced from God, there is something inside that keeps tugging at us towards being good. “A voice cries out in the wilderness”. And surprisingly, a lot of spiritual value can be tapped from our wild side. There is good in everything, even in bad.

Christmas is coming. How so? Advent is the waiting and the preparation. For the many of us not saintly perfect, Advent is the time to make the small corrections, to try to come out from the wilderness and return a bit closer to God to a more meaningful faith life.

As part of our preparation, it would be good to reflect on where we are in our faith life. Speak to family and friends and we will discover people at different points in their faith life. Some will be in the wonder of an oasis while others are wandering in the desert. What will be common though is that everyone would have at some point experience their faith life in the wilderness, a period of time distanced from God.

People today seek God but lose him when they cannot find him relevant to their life. Information alone is no longer enough to convince. People now relate better to real life experiences. There is great value in our life stories especially if we were once distanced from God but have since moved closer to him. Our journey out of our own spiritual wilderness is a powerful tool to impact the life of others. Often it shows real tangible proof of God’s hand in the many happenings in our life.

For many of us lost in the spiritual wilderness, we cannot see the hand of God on our own. But we can relate and be fuller on hope when we hear from someone who had been down the exact same path and ended up with a richer and more meaningful faith life. For many of us, it is in the desert where we re-discover our God and come away stronger for that experience.

This is where spiritual value can be tapped from our wild side. Here, the sharing of our stories is a simple act with gigantic, saintly proportion. When we share the reality of our vulnerabilities and how we re-discovered God in our brokenness, we share God in the reality of our life actively tugging us closer to him especially so when we were lost in the wilderness. We share a God relevant to life.

By simply sharing we effectively, “Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight”. Our stories open up this path for many to return to a closer relationship with God; to see God very relevant in daily life. This is the saintly thing we can do, to be a ‘John the Baptist” to someone we know.

There is no teaching involved. By sharing our faith life, however rich or poor it may be, we allow the Spirit of Christmas to work, to make Christ be born again in the lives of those who are in the wilderness. It is true that you and I are “not fit to kneel down and undo the strap of his sandals” but you and I can make straight for each other the path to return to know Christ in this earthly life. Let us be that instrument tugging at others. You and I can be as saintly as John the Baptist this Advent simply by telling our faith story.

A diet of locusts and wild honey can do wonders to our faith life

2nd Sunday of Advent

We will inevitable fail to stay awake when we focus all our attention to only keep awake but do nothing else to preoccupy ourselves. And it becomes impossible to stay awake in this way waiting for an event when we do not know when this event will occur. As we enter the first day of Advent in preparation for Christmas we are told precisely this, “Stay awake!”

Christmas celebrates the coming of Christ into the world. It is an historical fact. Through our baptism we have open the door to allow Christ to be born in our hearts. For those of us baptized, that too is an historical fact.

We celebrate Christmas to remind ourselves that Christ has come once and he will come again. And our life in fact is in between these two comings. Our waiting is not for Christmas Day but for his second coming into our life. We are called to prepare for this. “So stay awake, because you do not know when the master of the house is coming, evening, midnight, cockcrow, dawn; if he comes unexpectedly, he must not find you asleep.”

Trying to stay awake by doing nothing will quickly result in us falling asleep while waiting. Even doing something but doing it routinely will also result in us falling asleep. We may just have to ask ourselves how many times we have gone for Sunday mass obediently fulfilling our Sunday obligation for years but find ourselves physically present but spiritually asleep.

“Stay awake!” is not about being Christian in name and status. It is a pro-active stance. If we do nothing about our faith life, if we do not lift a finger to help those around us in need especially when we have the gifts to do so, even if we do not do bad things, we are still falling asleep in the presence of Christ. We have left him outside as he knocks on the door of our heart.

In between the two comings, life often take us away from Christ. We can be too pre-occupied by our desires of this world. We must be careful not to be complacent in our spiritual life. Calling ourselves “Christian” and going to Church every Sunday will not be enough if Christ is left outside our heart. “Stay awake!” is a pro-active effort to make sure that Christ is always in the centre of our heart and the compass of our desires.

To “stay awake” is the constant search and check for the presence of Christ in our desires, priorities and in all we do. Not all of us can maintain this presence constantly in everything we do. For most of us, spiritual life is a pendulum swing between good and bad. To “stay awake” is to be aware of the swing towards bad and to actively re-direct ourselves toward good. To “stay awake” is to be aware of our need to constantly return to God. The first reading laments, “Why, Lord, leave us to stray from your ways and harden our hearts against fearing you?”

“Stay awake!” is to be aware of God’s generosity. He has made himself available not only for one day in the year but in every moment marked by our every breath. To be aware and to try to return to him each moment is stay awake while waiting.

As we enter the first day of Advent in preparation for Christmas we are told precisely this, “Stay awake!”

1st Sunday in Advent