Many reflections on today’s readings tell me that all prayers are answered. Really? Of course, that is provided what we ask is for our good “for which Father would give a son a scorpion when he ask for an egg”. Add on the caveat: God will answer prayers only “in his time” and, plus, if our desires coincide with the will of the Father. For me, an ordinary guy in the pew, I have too often found “a stone, a snake and a scorpion”. I have experienced many unanswered prayers. 

We have asked, seek and knocked for many intentions that were noble such as lessening suffering or to heal the sick. We have in turn, experienced raw disappointment. I myself prayed desperately on 3 occasions in my life to keep my job but on each occasion I lost them. But there was something hidden in unanswered prayers that were to later reveal itself further along my path of life. 

Unanswered prayers are like closed doors; you bang hard on them but they remain shut. You stand outside them weighed down heavily by your own desire, unable to move but circumstances come along to nudge you towards another door which is open. Your walk through that and find a new path and the direction of your life changes.  

My path through life has been littered with many unanswered prayers. But each new door I was forced through led me into a new pasture; some things I never thought of or planned for, but ultimately better for me as a person. Sure, they were not easy times but they led me onto a path where my faith grew. In these new pastures, I gradually experienced God in my personal life, “thy kingdom come”. Looking back at my life journey, I will not trade off any hardship I experienced to open those doors that I had wanted to open.  

They had remained necessarily closed for my own good. Through the new, open doors, I eventually “in his time” found bread, fish and egg instead of the stone, snake and scorpion.  

Hindsight is a wonderful tool especially when powered by the Holy Spirit. When we retrace the steps that led us to where we are today, we uncover the major crossroads of our life. By the generosity of the Holy Spirit we can return to those junctions and re-look at the ‘circumstances’ that led us to where we now are. By hindsight, we may be thankful that certain doors remained closed despite our persistent knocking. Then, at those junctions, it was God’s hand using the ‘circumstances’ to nudge us along through the doors he had opened for us. 

We find his guiding presence, his then unseen involvement, in our personal life. The Father was not behind the closed door but beside us as we knocked.  

This is the assurance today’s readings gives us that through prayer we uncover this relationship the Father desires to have with us. It is actually he who knocks more often and more persistently on our door. He is seeking a personal relationship with us. He is asking to be “Our Father”. 

The path through life is a long one. It calls us as children towards a Father. Along the way we pick up needs and desires. Alone we cannot fulfil them. We turn to Our Father and pray, “Give us today our daily bread”. When we look back at our life particularly at prayers unanswered, we find calm and peace to know that only the Father knows what is “bread” to us. And he won’t instead be giving us a stone. 

Today many of us still stand knocking on the door, desires unfulfilled, prayers unanswered but we must stand knowing that it is not prayers answered or unanswered, but it is prayer that leads us to the Answer.

(At the Pater Noster in Jerusalem where the disciples were taught the ‘Our Father’)

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

The idea of today’s readings is for us to be aware that Christ is present in our daily life and that we should focus on Him in all that we do in our daily routine. “It is Christ among you; your hope of glory”. (Today’s readings) However, inevitably, our daily demands cause us “to worry and fret about so many things”.  

‘I’ feel troubled. Inside me, I don’t seem able to be at peace. I seem tired with life. But honestly I can’t figure out the exact reason why I am feeling ‘lost’. I confide in a friend. His quick response was “Don’t worry, just pray about it and let the Spirit lead”, and left me hanging at that. I was asked to be a ‘Mary’ but I needed a ‘Martha’. I needed to be worried about and fret over because at that particular stage of my faith journey I couldn’t yet focus on Christ. 

So we ask the thought provoking question of our self, “who do we resemble more, Mary or Martha?” And feel inadequate with either choice; we don’t want to ‘sit’ and not ‘do’ although that seem to be the ‘holier’ choice. ‘Sit’ or ‘Do’, are both equally essential as we navigate our daily life in search of the path of life that will help us find peace. Being ‘Mary’ or ‘Martha’ are actually two tracks on the one path; the path that will lead us into his kingdom. In everything we “worry and fret over”, we must learn to embrace Christ who is among us, who walks with us to claim the reason why we live; the glory of eternal life.

Mother Teresa was one of the greatest model of a ‘do-er’ as she gave till it was painful in helping the needy, but she did so with great strength coming from her mornings and evenings when she ‘sat’ with Christ. It enabled her to “listen to him speaking” so that her days are not “distracted” as she went about “serving”. In her doing, she made real this presence of “Christ among us” to the people around her.

When we ‘do’, we become the “hands and feet of Jesus”. We open channels for the Holy Spirit to work through. We allow God’s love to flow through us to touch the lives of others. We bring a heart to our belief; we turn our faith into an experience. As we journey through our often turbulent life, we feel the Risen Christ walking alongside. ‘Doing’ makes our faith come alive.  

But we can easily be carried away by our “doing” and allow it to settle into a set pattern, a ritual of methods, a train of tradition and a perfection of formula without understanding the ‘why’ we do; we lose focus on Christ and begin to be distracted by the need of results. We lose the element of the heart; our ‘doing; is cold and calculated and love and mercy stop flowing. 

So we need to constantly ‘sit’. We need to unpack, to discern below our worrying and our fretting to check if Christ is still there is all we do. When we ‘sit’, we do not get a new task list, we ‘sit’ to be renewed. Christ wants us to see the fruits of our ‘doing’. He wants to say “thank you”. Affirmation is a powerful tool and by ‘sitting’ each day in between our ‘doing’ we received affirmation and gratitude to continue our growth journey down this path. We grow into his likeness. 

When we do our best, Christ will take care of the rest. When our focus is on him, Christ will pick up whatever we knocked over due to our human inabilities. He only ask for our best effort, however limited we are individually. Abraham did his best in the presence of God in today’s first reading. Christ looks to qualify our ‘doing’.

This wisdom of having two tracks on one path must also be viewed from a broader perspective. These dual tracks can be seen as ‘mission and community’. We are all missioned to bring the Good News; to make real that the kingdom of God is near. ‘Mission’ is our call to ‘do’ and ‘community’ is our time to ‘sit’ together to discern and be affirmed. For any Christian community to remain vibrant and alive, it must embody a mission; to be ‘Mary and Martha’, to sit with, and do for Christ.

 

 

(16^th Sunday – Gen 18:1-10, Ps 15:2-5, Col 1:24-28, Luke 10:38-42)

Who am ‘I’? I am a cradle Catholic whose idea of faith life is simply to fulfil my obligation to attend Sunday mass. I was fed with a lot of Catholic teachings through catechism classes and from the pulpit. As I entered adulthood, I focused on career and I prioritized ‘self’. I searched for happiness in the many things the world has on offer and was distracted by the neon lights of the entertainment world. I was young and full of vitality, do I have a need for God? I was labelled a “Sunday Catholic”. I had become lukewarm in faith.

Responsibilities at work grew, work-life became more demanding and it sapped away at my vitality. I entered into relationships and endured pain when they broke. I had a few health issues that signaled that I was no longer young. Family demands became financial demands. People around me were just like me; I only cared for myself. That happiness I was searching for became more elusive. Meanwhile I still attended Sunday masses but the preaching became increasingly irrelevant. Something seems to be missing in life. I grew disillusioned. I became disconnected from God.

And so it is ‘I’ who lies half-dead at the side of the road. Challenges, failures, broken relationships, illness and stress had combined to beat me up. I am stripped of my hope for a happy life. I search for meaning of all these. I looked at my life and wonder where God is. Maybe he has forgotten me but anyway I am too unworthy now. I feel guilty for leaving him in my younger days. I am confused. I am not at peace. I am lost. I am too weak in my faith to make a comeback on my own. I need help.

Who are ‘You’? You are a stranger to me but unlike the many other people in my life, you stopped for me. You are interested in my life. You patiently listened and seem to understand. This compassionate action was like a bandage to my wounds. But I remained low on hope, my unworthiness and guilt continue to block out any thoughts of God.

You seem to know what is missing in my life and persisted to be with me even though I was too disillusioned. You put me on your mount; you were willing to go the extra mile just for me. Each of your action surprised me; for who am I to you?

You brought me to a safe place where I could recuperate; into a community where I met more people just like you. It is through you and your community that I first experience being loved unconditionally; it is through your doing that my faith flickered back to life. It is through this real, personal experience of faith that I re-encountered God. You are a good neighbour to me.

Who are ‘we’? We are travelers just like all the characters in the parable. We are all journeying towards eternal life regardless of whether we believe in God or not. Along our path in life we meet many others and today we are told that it is in each other and through one another that we will find the right path to eternal life. There is no other path and to stay on it, we are called “to go and do the same” to one another.

We know many people in life; each carefully placed by God on our path. We are opportunities for one another to see and experience God in action; to know and feel that He is real; not someone I have to reach up to the heavens or cross the seas for. He is in our hearts and manifested in the “good neighbour” we are urged to become.

Faith is ultimately an experience; a journey from head to heart. Without making them come alive in deeds and examples, all we learn through catechism is dead. ‘We’ are the “Good Samaritan”. If we are not then one day we will find ourselves wounded by the roadside.

 

(15^th Sunday in Ordinary Time Deuteronomy 30:10-14, Ps 69, Colossians 1:15-20, Luke 10:25-37)

 

We have been “appointed” (from today’s readings) to work in a rather large mission field: to re-propose the Gospel to those who once upon a time decided that they no longer want to be Catholic but are perhaps now at this time, experiencing a re-think. This is the particular mission field that we are sent into; sent to reach ‘away’ Catholics contemplating a return to Church. We are sent ahead to prepare their hearts for an encounter with the Lord.

The call for an ‘away’ Catholic to return often begins with a stirring deep in the heart. Life’s circumstances is often the catalyst. The challenges in life can leave us beaten, weary and wondering. Our path in life brings us into a cul-de-sac. Lost in the vastness of life, the Lord’s call to ‘return’ echoes in the emptiness of life. Is there more meaning to this?

In the Landings* mission, we are sent ahead to meet returning Catholics in cafes and bars, in homes and malls; to introduce our returning process to them, and to prepare them for a personal encounter with the Lord. We arrive two by two with a message of “peace”, a hand extended in welcome and a mind without judgment. We aim to set them at peace; this first meeting has to be an experience of love, of God and his Church joyfully embracing the lost who is found. It has to be a heartfelt experience responding lovingly to the call who is stirring in their hearts. They must be left warmed, feeling that “the kingdom of God is near”.

The first encounter with a returning Catholic is not the time for catechesis, not a time for teaching and preaching. Returning Catholics search for the relevance of a faith life amidst the emptiness of their secular life. They are searching to fill a void. They appear with troubled emotions looking for consolation, or an unsettled spirit wandering for meaning. We are sent as labourers to meet this search, in the spirit of the father as he ran towards his returning, prodigal son hugging him with an embrace that consoled and restored hope to life.

Hence it is important that we go without our “haversack”, stuffed with manuals of Church laws and teachings, ourselves filled with prejudice and judgment. We go without “purse or money”, without an attitude of value that we have returned and you have not, for we are equal, all ‘always returning’. We go without “sandals” because we must put on humility. We are appointed as labourers to touch hearts, and to prepare their hearts for the visit of the Lord.

We go powered by gratitude for once upon a time we too were there, lost and empty, on our journey in faith. But along the way, we too were met by messengers who led us into a heart-warming encounter with the Lord. Our life transformed, and grew with milestone after milestone of personal encounters. We go with nothing, only with our personal testimonies, real proof of a real existence. From today’s psalm, “Come and listen, all who fear God, while I tell what he has done for me. Blessed be God who has not turned away my prayer, nor his own faithful love from me”.

This is our challenge today as messengers of Peace. The New Evangelization identifies secularism as the biggest challenge to our faith. It is a provocative call to use new methods and new expressions to express the same constant: that God is Love; a God still caring and present in our daily life. Many Catholics have left the Church distracted by the lifestyles and promises of happiness in the secular world. Catholics leave because faith in God has not kept up with the times. Into this field we are sent like “lambs among wolves”. In this field we have to adopt new methods with new ardour.

But it is in this same secular world where they will hear the call to return. When their city of happiness crumble in unfulfilled expectations and stress due to challenges, we must be present and ready to help pick up the pieces and point them to Christ: standing and waiting faithfully for their return. He will be there in the debris of our disappointments. Often no one else will be.

It is a mission field full of Catholics who have left the Church. We stand ready to console; and when they are stirred to reach out to return, we are here, present to make “the kingdom of God very near” to them. Today’s call is a call to all of us. Indeed “the harvest is rich but the labourers are few”. Our Lord is waiting for us to go ahead as his messengers; he has a large backlog of ‘away’ Catholics to welcome home.

 

 

*Landings is a 10-week process for a person contemplating a return to the Catholic Church. In a welcoming and non-judgmental environment, the participants explore the presence of God in their personal lives.

 (14^th Sunday of Ordinary Time. Isaiah 66:10-14, Psalm 65, Galatians 6:14-18, Luke 10:1-12, 17-20)

 

There are many other priorities in life which we find ourselves easily placing above the call of a God centred life. “The desires of self-indulgence is always in opposition to the Spirit” (today’s readings in italics). Our ‘other priorities’ arise from these desires and they can distanced us from relying on God. But many of these ‘other priorities’ are indeed necessary for us to fulfil our vocations in this earthly life. Today’s readings invite us to focus on God as we plough our fields.

 A God-centred life does not mean ignoring the needs of a crying child or our assignments at work. It is not exactly a call to literally put God first in everything as in to ignore a sick child to attend a weekly community meeting. It is a call “not to use your freedom as an opening for self-indulgence, but be servants to one another in love”. A God-centred life puts the intention of love into everything we do. It is a self-giving as opposed to a self-indulgent life. 

We are called to follow him. We are called into a life of giving; to allow love to flow through us to touch the lives of others. This is our mission: “your duty is to go and spread the news of the kingdom of God” with the life we live. This is the field we are summoned to enter with our ploughs. As we enter we receive the instruction, “Once the hand is laid on the plough, no one who looks back is fit for the kingdom of God”. 

We are urged to ‘focus’: to look straight, to be single-minded and free of ‘other priorities’. We are urged not to look back. Not because he wants us to “be fastened again to the yoke of slavery” but precisely “to be set free, so that we should remain free”. On this field, He gives us work. On this plough, we discover that this work is indeed the true meaning of our earthly journey. In today’s psalm, “You teach me the path of life, unbounded joy in your presence”.  

Our path of life is not a lonely path of suffering. On the field of mission, ‘I’ am not the lone worker, the only one with a plough. Every one of us is given a plough; given an equal opportunity to discover this true meaning of life. We are called not only to work individually but to work collectively. We are housed in a community of disciples. But as individuals we are advised not to look back and cling to our past for we have been “set free”. Forget the regrets, they have been forgiven and look ahead and in a straight line we will experience a new life of unprecedented joy and fulfilment. Give the best we can and allow the Spirit to add up the sum of our individual ploughs. 

In our collective ploughing as one community, we were blessed to unearth a gentleman who had been away from Church for 45 years. We were privileged instruments of the Spirit; for through us he found the mercy of God waiting, discovering that despite 45 long years, the Father had “unbelievingly” stood by waiting for him to return. That experience of faith was enough for him to grab his plough firmly, letting go of ‘other priorities’ and focus on his new path ahead. Touched by Love, he has centred his life on God, and in mission he has found the true meaning of his life, tearfully declaring in a public sharing of his return journey that from hereon there is, “No more turning back”.

 

He had been away from Church for 25 years. He encountered Landings and celebrated a joyful return. A little over a year later he remarked, “Since coming back to Church, life actually became tougher for me”.

The reality is that our daily life is littered with crosses, regardless whether we are a practising Catholic or someone who has lost belief in God. Crosses appear regularly in our life not because God is testing our faith by giving us a bigger cross each day, but because much of our sufferings are a direct consequence of the choices and action of ours or people in our life. Some of these people randomly appeared and we hardly know them.

Life will make a nasty turn into physical challenges if we are hit by a car as a result of the driver’s miscalculations or a moment of carelessness. We remain emotionally hurt when the reconciliation we seek with a loved one is not found because the other person refuses to forgive. These consequences are not because of God but of people’s free choice. We suffer the consequences of each other’s action or inaction. In this way our journey in life is always littered with crosses.

We have almost no control of what may happen to us; we cannot select the crosses that come our way. But quite often it will be through a tough episode in our life that we hear the invitation of Christ to return or to come closer to him. Weighed down by the heaviest of crosses, our hopes of earthly treasures crushed, we desperately look about for salvation. With nothing left on our battlefield but crosses everywhere, there is one that stands out. Some stirring deep in our brokenness turn our gaze onto one particular cross and our eyes fixed “on the one whom they pierced”, the person of Jesus.

There is a way out of this madness and the only way is the Way of the Cross. Beyond the piercing, beyond the death by suffering is the resurrection, the conquest of all sufferings and the new life of perpetual happiness. The “one whom they pierced” showed us this Way. If we want to go that way, we have to follow him. And he said “he must deny himself and take up his cross daily”.

When we “take” our daily cross, we ‘embrace’ it; we accept that we are not in control. We humbly surrender and put all our trust in God. We say we give away our ‘self’ to be dependent on God. We deny self, deny all our own ways and follow his way.

We have power and choices, bad enough to be crosses for people in our lives. People will suffer the consequences of our action or inaction. We can choose to weigh a tonne on the other or we can choose to “deny self”, live our life prioritising others before ourselves. We are called not to give up this power but rather to use it to transform lives around us.

As we renew our faith, we gingerly take the first step towards embracing our daily cross, we also gingerly follow the call of self-denial. Accepting our cross is not climbing onto a cross to be crucified. We can start small, by conceding our opinions and ‘winning’ less arguments, to back off and give space to another. We can climb down from the stand of self-importance and not crucify others for mistakes and imperfections. We can share what we have been blessed with to lighten the burden on others who have nought. We can reduce time to do well for self and increase time in service for others. After all, the time we have is actually the life we have. When our time expires, life expires. When we give time, we give life.

If we want to follow him then we want to be Christian. To be Christian is not about simply believing with our mind but also about living the belief with our hearts. Essentially we need to become doers of the Word. When we “do” we give up something from our “self”; we “deny self” and give life.

So “who do you say I am?” To the one mentioned in the opening paragraph, “You are the Christ who walks with me daily on my life journey. You saw the big crosses ahead of me and so you took me back into your Church to give me shelter. It was because you knew that life would be tougher. You introduced me to people on my walk with me, people who I initially thought was just randomly placed on my path. Looking back to how I weathered my storms I realised that they were all acting in your name. After all, they were just like you, denying themselves, giving time and making effort to welcome me home”.

(12^th Sunday in Ordinary Time Zec 12:10-11;13:1, Ps 63, Gal 3:26-29, Gospel Luke 9:18-24)

When we are away from Church, or perhaps just lukewarm in faith, we tend to compromise between good and bad, right from wrong, and being selfless and self-centred. The distractions and attractions of the secular world, or the weighty challenges of life add a magnetic spin to our moral compass causing it to go awry. Slowly we amass a catalogue of misdeeds, a litany of sins that will further cut us adrift. 

Castaway, somewhat like floating alone without control on the rough seas, tossed up and down by the turbulence of our life, we are filled with a disbelief; disbelieving that we can ever be forgiven. Once I had the privileged of meeting a Catholic wanting to return to Church after years away. His opening line was, “I have done so much wrong and bad that I don’t think God will ever forgive me. In fact, I don’t even think he remembers me”. 

But what compass brought him to our meeting? On the stormy seas, there was a call for calm. In this pocket of calm, we hear in the whispering wind an invitation to come home and be reconciled. Deep down in our heart, our compass reset. The work of the Holy Spirit starts. For us Catholics who have been away or lukewarm, we are almost never aware of this stage (then) when our journey towards forgiveness and reconciliation began.  

Forgiveness is freely given but needs to be accepted for reconciliation to happen. Sometimes we are hindered to accept, and often it is because we cannot forgive ourselves. 

When we return after years of being unfaithful, we will soon enough find out that God had remained faithful despite all these years. When we are welcomed back, received in a non-judgmental way and affirmed as a child of God, we feel rehabilitated. This “feel” is an experience. This “experience” is from God’s forgiveness freely given. This is an experience of our faith; “feeling” the love of God. 

For many, this is the first time we are “experiencing” faith; perhaps the first time we are departing intellectual justification for heart experience. When we come home or emerge from the shadows of the Sunday pews, we come with a lot of accumulated baggage, some ‘embarrassingly’ large. But we will quickly realize size does not matter. He takes it away all the same.  

But maybe size does matter? Reflecting on today’s Gospel, we are able to appreciate “the one with the larger debt” will love him more. When we reach the extreme point where we are not confident that God even remembers us, we must have a pretty sizeable debt. This experience of love and mercy awaits us. It is available to anyone who till now lived life disconnected from God assuming that we will never be forgiven, or thinking that we can never be closer to him. We only have to accept his invitation to re-connect and our hearts will be filled with the “feeling and experience” of Love.  

When our hearts are pumped up with the experience of God’s unconditional love, it propels us into gratitude and allows the Holy Spirit to continue the work of our rehabilitation. He opens up more channels for love to flow and gives us the opportunity to embrace a “new life”. We ourselves have been witnesses of this when we encounter people with a deep passion to express God’s love in all they do. It may surprise us to learn of their personal history; when we learn of their years being away or just being lukewarm, and reading their catalogue of misdeeds.  

We can learn what the Pharisee Simon was taught in the gospel. Forgiveness is freely given; freely to us and we must freely give it to others and to ourselves. We use it to welcome those who are away and bring others closer to God. We walk together on our life journey as God draws us closer to him; closer and closer to enter into a dominion where we experience and live his love and mercy freely given.  

(Today is Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary 2 Sm 12:7-10,13 Ps 32:1-2, 5, 7, 11 Gal 2:16, 19-21 Lk 7:36 – 8:3)

The theme of life and death, of dying and rising, runs throughout the readings today. It is also a theme that runs throughout our life’s journey when failures weigh us down and success raises us, when challenges overwhelm us to leave us hopeless and a turn in fortune lifts us to leave us hopeful, or when we are distanced from God gradually finding ourselves shrouded in darkness and we re-encounter him in the close confines of our personal life leading us to burst into the brightness of new life. This is the rhythm of life, of falling and rising. This is the beat on the path we walk, of backtracking and moving forward.

And we share also in the common direction of this journey. Wherever we are along the path, at whichever stage we find our faith at, we are united in the walk towards our Creator. It is only when we reach God, through the passage of death, can we say that we are returned. Coming back for Sunday mass after years staying away is coming home. However, entering the church doors is not crossing the finish line. Yes, we are on the rise, and a significant one for a returning Catholic but it does not mean we would not fall again. Our human nature, inherently weak, will ensure that.

The path of faith is filled with ups and downs, of moving forward and of back sliding. But at each hump, each turn, we learn, we grow, and we gain strength to progress on. Returning to Church, growing in faith is this process.

We grow distant to God. We do not suddenly become distant. Especially these days, the secular world takes us gradually away from the spiritual world. We will hardly notice it. The initial stages are always from the fun-filled, ‘feel good’ distractions and trappings of our social life. We hunt for self-gratification. We sometimes compromise on values for that extra boost. We enjoy a trouble-free life with no need to embrace a troublesome faith that calls on the need to die to self. Gradually, layer by layer of wall form that will eventually entomb us. When it gets darker, the naughtier things in life take over and we are deeper entombed. We realised we have fallen down.

This realisation can only be sparked by the Holy Spirit. Entombed, the voice of the Shepherd is a faint call. “O Lord, you have brought me up from the nether world; you preserved me from amongst those going down into the pit. I will praise you Lord for you have rescued me”. (Ps 29)

We begin to search the darkness for light. We retraced our footsteps for clues as to how we have fallen this far. When our eyes begin to open, when we begin to look, we find that God has placed angels in the form of the people we know on our paths to walk with us this road home. Along the way, we pass milestones in our life and when we carefully look, we see that God had been present. Gradually we begin to feel that “God is personal to me because He has been present in the personal events of my life”. Step by step, courage and strength builds, and as we climb the steps of our tomb, we peel away the layers of wall that has entrapped our spiritual life. Somewhere along the dark ceiling we will find the handle to a door. Pulling it, the door opens into the light. We are on the rise.

This is the rhythm of faith, the beat on our journey towards our Creator. We fall in and out of grace. We come in and out of Church. We are returning, and are always returning.

But at each dying and each rising, we grow stronger through an experience of a merciful and loving God, and make progress on our journeys. In this way, we are all equal. In the mission of Landings, it is never them and us, goat and sheep but an appreciation that this is a journey we must all walk together as we are all “always returning”.

(Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 1 Kgs 17:17-24, Ps 29;2-13, Gal 1:11-19, Luke 7:11-17)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Corpus Christi celebrates the True Presence yet Christ cannot be truly present in our lives if we allow him to remain in the tabernacle. We were, fortunately or unfortunately, not present at the crucifixion where we gave his physical body and blood so that we may all live.

At every mass, we “do this as a memorial of me”, in which we believe that Christ is truly present in the form of bread and wine. Consecrated, we become truly present at the foot of the cross at every mass when Christ gives his body and blood to us just as he did on Calvary.

There was a point along my journey in life that I was caught rooted at the foot of the cross. Being Catholic equated to a life of suffering and that then did not fit into my grand scheme of things. My secular lifestyle, my unholy desires and my earthly priorities blinded any sight of Christ, truly Risen. The secular world took me away from my spiritual world. Gradually unworthiness crept along and I stopped taking and eating the Holy Eucharist. The presence of the Risen Christ disappeared from my life.

The homilist today shared that “we are what we eat”. Indeed.

When we received the Holy Eucharist, we have the opportunity to be like Christ. Through us, in us, he is truly present. But in turn, we cannot just be like a tabernacle containing him. We must give ourselves to others so that they in turn, will not be rooted at the foot of the cross.

Each of us have in our possession, 5 loaves and 2 fish. But our loaves and fish are all different from each other’s. Our gifts are varied. In 1 Peter we find, “Each one of you has received a special grace, so, like good stewards responsible for all these varied graces of God, put it at the service of others”. Every loaf counts, every fish is called.

The true presence of Christ in us can only be fully expressed when we offer our 5 loaves and 2 fish for him to use. In fact, who we truly are: this wonderful child of God, chosen to allow his love to flow through us can only be beautifully expressed when we are fully extended, fully given. When we do so, the multiplier effect of God’s varied graces becomes immense.

We will see him truly present in our lives, along the miles on our journey.

(Solemnity of Corpus Christi, The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, reflecting on 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, Luke 9:11-17)

As a cradle Catholic, I grew up struggling to understand the “mystery” of The Holy Trinity. In and out of catechism classes, I hear that it is “impossible” to grasp a full ‘logical’ explanation. I never ever managed to get an intellectual grasp on it, and I suspect I never will.

But I grew in wisdom of The Holy Trinity as I grew in my service in RCIA and now in Landings. When I first returned to an active faith life, maybe 16 years ago, I joined the RCIA believing that our faith is passed on only through intellectual knowledge. I had no concept of a ‘personal experience of God’. I did not then have the wisdom that faith is experiential and that we could transmit it through one another through the power of the Holy Spirit by what we do for each other.

When I first reappeared in a ministry, I only received. I was welcomed, attended to, encouraged and supported. Through these little actions of others, I began to experienced “feeling loved”. Inside me, a light stirring made me feel like “I want to belong”.

Soon, as I received, I learned to give. As I gave to others, I began to grow and felt even more of everything. This was the initial, faint call to become a gift to others. This was my first conscious experience of the fulfilment of being a “giver”.

As I entered into this cycle of receiving and giving, I gained wisdom of The Holy Trinity. The more we selflessly give to one another, the closer we are to be the perfect union that The Holy Trinity desires us to be. The more we give to another, the more equal we become to each other. The more equal, the more alike.

The Holy Trinity is this endless flow of love given and received. And the more we commit ourselves into this cycle of selfless love, the more perfect our union with God and one another will be. We will experience communion.

Sure, The Holy Trinity is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the 3 Persons in one God. Evaluating the ‘logic’ to break the ‘mystery’ of The Holy Trinity only has fruitful value if it leads us to live our life as an instrument for God’s love to flow through us to bring others into a community to experience a common union with God and one another.

Challenging his disciples’ curiosity Jesus said, “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, The Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all the truth”. (Today’s Gospel John 16:12-15. The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity)