Exodus 22:20-26 / 1 Thess 1:5-10 / Matthew 22:34-40
There was a board-game that children used to play in the past, but that board-game doesn’t seem to be around nowadays. Maybe it became extinct with the high tech toys like Xbox and PlayStation.
That board-game is called “Snakes and Ladders”, provided for the children of the past, simple enjoyment and excitement.
It is actually a very simple game. On the game-board there are numbered and gridded squares. A number of "ladders" and "snakes" are pictured on the board, each connecting two specific board squares. The object of the game is to navigate one's game chip, according to dice rolls, from the start (bottom square) to the finish (top square), helped or hindered by ladders and snakes respectively.
So each player has a coloured chip and he moves on with the throw of a dice. If he is lucky, he will reach the end of a ladder and then he will move up many squares. But if he happens to reach a square in which there is the head of a snake, then he will slide right down to its tail end.
The game provided for the children of the past, a source of simple enjoyment and excitement. The game is a simple race contest based on sheer luck.
But the game seems to have roots in morality lessons, where a player's progression up the board represented a life journey which is complicated by virtues (ladders) and vices (snakes).
In the gospel, the Pharisees may not know about the game of “Snakes and Ladders”, but what they played was a game of “snakes and blunders”. That is because the gospel mentions about the Pharisees getting together to disconcert Jesus.
To disconcert is to upset someone, to make someone flustered so that he will make a blunder. The Pharisees wanted Jesus to make a blunder, then like snakes they will swallow him up. No wonder John the Baptist called them “you brood of vipers”.
They not only wanted to disconcert Jesus, they even wanted to trap Him in order to get rid of Him. This was obvious when on other occasions they asked Him to pronounce judgment on the adulterous woman and also about the issue of paying taxes to Caesar.
This time around, they wanted to see if Jesus knows His stuff by asking a seemingly trivial question: Which is the greatest commandment of the Law?
It was a trivial question because it is not like as if they don’t know, and so it was quite obvious that the Pharisees were trying to disconcert Jesus. And here, Jesus showed once again how He could turn an ulterior motive into something positive.
Jesus didn’t get Himself swallowed into the small details of the Law. Rather He gave the big picture of the Law; He gave the fundamental, the essence of the law.
It was so simple but yet so profound: you must love God with your whole being; and you must love your neighbour as yourself.
To a disconcerting question that was meant to disturb and unsettle Him, Jesus gave an answer, and if the Pharisees were to think about it seriously, an answer that would make them tremble.
Because attached to the law of loving God and loving neighbour, there is this word “must”. It is a serious word, an imperative, a command, and it gives us no options actually.
And so without exposing them outright, Jesus was indirectly asking the Pharisees, if what they were doing was out of love for God, and out of love for the neighbour who was standing there before them and whom they were trying to disconcert.
If the Pharisees had thought seriously about it, they would have trembled. Because they were like snakes waiting to swallow up Jesus if He fumbled.
Yet, Jesus did not play into their little snake games. Rather, He held out to them a ladder, a ladder of love, to help them climb from their ulterior motives and their evil intentions, to the level of the commandment of love.
And to us who are listening to what Jesus is saying in the gospel, He is also holding out to us a ladder of love.
Because we have also played those little snakes games, games to disconcert others, to mislead others, to discredit others, to cheat others, to use others. Oh yes, we have played all these games, and maybe still playing these games.
Especially when our security and comfort is threatened in these difficult economic times. And with the fears of insecurity, we begin to selfishly guard our survival. We become like snakes that will bite at anyone that comes our way or seems threatening to us.
So we, as the people of God, how are we going to respond to the external factors that seem to disconcert us? Are we going to let external situations make us fumble and tumble and be swallowed up by the snakes of fear and insecurity?
Well, Jesus showed us how He turned a disconcerting situation into a reminder of love and salvation. He turned the game of vice into a teaching of virtue.
There are the snakes of evil that we could succumb to and be swallowed up by the vices around us. Yet, Jesus is here to hold out to us the ladders of love. With the ladders of love, we can climb out of our fears and insecurities
So where are these ladders of love, and how are we going to climb these ladders of love. Well, this could be how:
People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives ; be kind anyway
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies ; succeed anyway
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you ; be honest and frank anyway
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; build anyway
If you find serenity and happiness, people may be jealous ; be happy anyway
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow ;
do good anyway
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough ; give the world the best you’ve got anyway
So we just have to keep climbing the ladders of love so that as we climb towards God, we too will be able to love our neighbours as Jesus has commanded us.
Loving God and loving neighbour is certainly not a game. And the gospel is the only story where the hero dies for the villain.
In other words, the Saviour died for the sinner, so that the sinner can begin to love. So let us love God and neighbour so that the gospel story will continue in our lives.
Click the links under My Blog List to get to Chinese and English weekday homilies.
Saturday, October 28, 2017
Saturday, October 21, 2017
Mission Sunday, Year A, 22.10.2017
Isaiah 2:1-5 / Ephesians 3:2-12 / Mark 16:15-20
There is one thing that we all have in common right now, and that one thing comes in pairs.
That one thing that we have in common right now is that we are wearing a pair of shoes. No one came here barefooted. Even if we have taken off our shoes a bit for whatever reason, we will still put them on again.
Shoes are not just something we put on to walk about and to protect our feet. Shoes reveal quite a bit about the person actually. And quite often we make shoe contact first before we make eye contact.
And although it is not that polite to stare, but to stare at a pair of gorgeous shoes can be quite a compliment.
For men, shoes show who they are, because shoes change the way they walk and the way they carry themselves, such that it can be said “If I ever let my head down, it will be just to admire my shoes”
For women, they will go by this saying: “You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy shoes, and that’s more or less the same thing!” So most women will say this: Roses are red, violets are blue, keep the flowers, I rather have shoes.
We can remember the fairy tale of Cinderella. Well, Cinderella is a story of how a pair of shoes can change your life.
So what do shoes have to do with Mission Sunday, which the Church is celebrating this weekend?
The gospels begins with this: Jesus showed Himself to the Eleven and said to them, “Go out to the whole world, proclaim the Good News to all creation … “
And the gospel ends with: And so the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven. There at the right hand of God, He took His place, while they, going out, preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word by the signs that accompanied it.
Jesus commanded His apostles to go out to the whole world and proclaim the Good News to all creation, and they went, preaching everywhere.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, and that would be to step into a pair of good shoes.
Shoes, no matter how gorgeous they look, the most important part of the shoe is often not visible, and that part is the sole of the shoe.
We may not realise how important it is until when the sole begins to disintegrate and leave crumbs all over the place. It often happens to those spongy running shoes or tennis shoes.
Or when the sole just separates from the shoe without much of a warning. They really become like flip-flops. No matter how good they look on the top-side, when the shoe loses its sole, that’s the end of the shoe.
In a way, the sole of the shoe is quite like the soul of a person. When the soul of a person starts to crumble or disintegrates, then the person also loses direction in life and it is the beginning of the end.
Mission Sunday reminds us that our primary task as Christians is to save souls, a term which we seldom hear of nowadays. We don’t hear much of the “salvation of souls” and hence we seldom speak about it and so after a while it is also forgotten.
So we slowly forget to pray for the salvation of the world, the salvation of souls, we slowly forget that we have mission to bring souls to heaven.
We even might forget to pray for the departed. In the past, there is this prayer invocation: “May the divine assistance remain always with us, and may the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace.” We seldom hear of it now.
Yes, we must pray for those who are in living here in this world, as well as for the souls in Purgatory.
Because heaven is for real, and Jesus wants us all to be in heaven with Him, and we have that mission of bringing souls to heaven.
But how real is heaven for us? Do we long to go there, and will we help others to go there too?
There is this book “Heaven is for Real”, which was also made into a movie with the same title.
It is about a true story (true or not it is left us to believe) of a young boy's astounding story of his trip to Heaven and back. The book documents the report of a near-death experience of the four-year-old boy Colton Burpo.
Todd Burpo is a pastor and his son Colton had a life-saving emergency surgery on March 5, 2003 at the age of four. During the months after surgery, Colton began describing events and people that seemed impossible for him to have known about. Examples include knowledge of an unborn sister miscarried by his mother in 1998 and details of a great-grandfather who had died 30 years before Colton was born. Colton also said how he met Jesus riding a rainbow-coloured horse and sat in Jesus' lap while angels sang songs to him. He also saw Mary kneeling before the throne of God and at other times standing beside Jesus.
Among the many profound and intriguing dialogues in the movie was this:
Colton: "Mommy"
Sonja: "Yes, Colton"
Colton: "Did you know I have a sister?"
Sonja: "Don’t you know that Cassie's your sister?"
Colton: "No, I have two sisters. You had a baby die in your tummy, didn't you?"
Sonja: "Honey, who told you I had a baby die in my tummy?"
Colton: "In heaven, this little girl came up to me. She told me she died in your tummy."
And then when the mother asked her son what was that little girl’s name, Colton replied: She didn’t have a name. You didn’t give her a name.
It is a good story to read and a good movie to watch. To believe the story or not is another matter.
But as the title says it “Heaven is for real”. And that’s the Good News that is proclaimed on Mission Sunday.
We must believe that Jesus wants us to be in heaven and He also wants us to help others go to heaven.
We may not have a great or dramatic story to tell but our mission is to walk with others and to even walk in their shoes so that together we walk in the paths of the Lord and journey towards heaven.
Let us share with others the good shoes of faith and walk with them that journey of a thousand miles. Let us remember that the salvation of their souls are our responsibility.
There is one thing that we all have in common right now, and that one thing comes in pairs.
That one thing that we have in common right now is that we are wearing a pair of shoes. No one came here barefooted. Even if we have taken off our shoes a bit for whatever reason, we will still put them on again.
Shoes are not just something we put on to walk about and to protect our feet. Shoes reveal quite a bit about the person actually. And quite often we make shoe contact first before we make eye contact.
And although it is not that polite to stare, but to stare at a pair of gorgeous shoes can be quite a compliment.
For men, shoes show who they are, because shoes change the way they walk and the way they carry themselves, such that it can be said “If I ever let my head down, it will be just to admire my shoes”
For women, they will go by this saying: “You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy shoes, and that’s more or less the same thing!” So most women will say this: Roses are red, violets are blue, keep the flowers, I rather have shoes.
We can remember the fairy tale of Cinderella. Well, Cinderella is a story of how a pair of shoes can change your life.
So what do shoes have to do with Mission Sunday, which the Church is celebrating this weekend?
The gospels begins with this: Jesus showed Himself to the Eleven and said to them, “Go out to the whole world, proclaim the Good News to all creation … “
And the gospel ends with: And so the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven. There at the right hand of God, He took His place, while they, going out, preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word by the signs that accompanied it.
Jesus commanded His apostles to go out to the whole world and proclaim the Good News to all creation, and they went, preaching everywhere.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, and that would be to step into a pair of good shoes.
Shoes, no matter how gorgeous they look, the most important part of the shoe is often not visible, and that part is the sole of the shoe.
We may not realise how important it is until when the sole begins to disintegrate and leave crumbs all over the place. It often happens to those spongy running shoes or tennis shoes.
Or when the sole just separates from the shoe without much of a warning. They really become like flip-flops. No matter how good they look on the top-side, when the shoe loses its sole, that’s the end of the shoe.
In a way, the sole of the shoe is quite like the soul of a person. When the soul of a person starts to crumble or disintegrates, then the person also loses direction in life and it is the beginning of the end.
Mission Sunday reminds us that our primary task as Christians is to save souls, a term which we seldom hear of nowadays. We don’t hear much of the “salvation of souls” and hence we seldom speak about it and so after a while it is also forgotten.
So we slowly forget to pray for the salvation of the world, the salvation of souls, we slowly forget that we have mission to bring souls to heaven.
We even might forget to pray for the departed. In the past, there is this prayer invocation: “May the divine assistance remain always with us, and may the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace.” We seldom hear of it now.
Yes, we must pray for those who are in living here in this world, as well as for the souls in Purgatory.
Because heaven is for real, and Jesus wants us all to be in heaven with Him, and we have that mission of bringing souls to heaven.
But how real is heaven for us? Do we long to go there, and will we help others to go there too?
There is this book “Heaven is for Real”, which was also made into a movie with the same title.
It is about a true story (true or not it is left us to believe) of a young boy's astounding story of his trip to Heaven and back. The book documents the report of a near-death experience of the four-year-old boy Colton Burpo.
Todd Burpo is a pastor and his son Colton had a life-saving emergency surgery on March 5, 2003 at the age of four. During the months after surgery, Colton began describing events and people that seemed impossible for him to have known about. Examples include knowledge of an unborn sister miscarried by his mother in 1998 and details of a great-grandfather who had died 30 years before Colton was born. Colton also said how he met Jesus riding a rainbow-coloured horse and sat in Jesus' lap while angels sang songs to him. He also saw Mary kneeling before the throne of God and at other times standing beside Jesus.
Among the many profound and intriguing dialogues in the movie was this:
Colton: "Mommy"
Sonja: "Yes, Colton"
Colton: "Did you know I have a sister?"
Sonja: "Don’t you know that Cassie's your sister?"
Colton: "No, I have two sisters. You had a baby die in your tummy, didn't you?"
Sonja: "Honey, who told you I had a baby die in my tummy?"
Colton: "In heaven, this little girl came up to me. She told me she died in your tummy."
And then when the mother asked her son what was that little girl’s name, Colton replied: She didn’t have a name. You didn’t give her a name.
It is a good story to read and a good movie to watch. To believe the story or not is another matter.
But as the title says it “Heaven is for real”. And that’s the Good News that is proclaimed on Mission Sunday.
We must believe that Jesus wants us to be in heaven and He also wants us to help others go to heaven.
We may not have a great or dramatic story to tell but our mission is to walk with others and to even walk in their shoes so that together we walk in the paths of the Lord and journey towards heaven.
Let us share with others the good shoes of faith and walk with them that journey of a thousand miles. Let us remember that the salvation of their souls are our responsibility.
Saturday, October 14, 2017
28th Ordinary Sunday, Year A, 15.10.2017
Isaiah 25:6-10 / Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20 / Matthew 22:1-14
This year is dedicated to the celebration of the centennial of the Marian apparitions at Fatima.
By now, we would know what it is all about. It has been a hundred years since Our Lady appeared to the three peasant children at an obscure village called Fatima in Portugal.
And to mark the occasion, a statue of the Pilgrim Virgin is in Singapore and it went to some parishes, schools and centres, and many people participated in the prayers, the vigils and the devotions.
But to begin with, Fatima is a rather unique and maybe odd-sounding name. It somehow doesn’t sound quite like the usual Catholic or Christian names. For all that is connected with it, Fatima is not that popular when it comes to choosing a name for baptism.
According to some sources, the town of Fatima was named after a Moorish princess who was kidnapped by a Portuguese knight, but later they fell in love and the rest of the story is just for reading pleasure. But at least we now know where the name came from.
As to why God would choose a town with such a peculiar name for Mary to make her apparitions, it can only be said that God uses jagged ways to give His messages.
And today’s gospel parable can be said as one of the jagged ways that God uses to give us a teaching, although it may leave us rather puzzled and scratching our heads.
The parable begins with a king who gave a feast for his son’s wedding. He sent his servants to all those who had been invited, but they would not come. No reason was given for their refusal.
The king invited them again, but they were not interested. One went to his farm, another to his business, and the rest seized the servants, maltreated them and even killed them. The king was furious and he sent his troops to destroy those murderers and also destroyed their town.
It is quite jarring as we hear invitation turning to destruction, and celebration turning to violence.
And then the king sent his servants to the cross-roads to invite everyone they could find to the wedding, the bad and the good alike.
At this point, the parable is already jagged enough with all that violence and contradictions. And as if that is not enough, a man without a wedding garment had to be thrown out into the dark, where there was weeping and grinding of teeth.
It is such a jagged parable that it can be quite difficult to understand. Its jaggedness disturbs us, but it calls for our attention. And that’s how God speaks to us.
Taking the parable literally does not make much sense. But when its jagged edges cut into our hearts, then we get glimpses of what Jesus is telling us in the parable.
Last Friday, 13th October, was the 100th anniversary of the last apparition of Our Lady to the three children at Fatima. 100 years ago that day, our Lady promised a sign that will prove that her messages are from heaven, messages that must be heeded for the conversion and salvation of the world.
In what is termed as the “miracle of the sun”, the storm clouds parted, revealing the sun as an immense silver disk shining with an intensity never before seen, though it was not blinding. Then the immense disk began to "dance." The sun spun rapidly like a gigantic circle of fire. Then it stopped momentarily, only to begin spinning again. Its rim became scarlet; whirling, it scattered red flames across the sky. All this lasted about 10 minutes, and witnessed by the 70,000 crowd gathered there, as well as by numerous witnesses up to twenty-five miles away from the place of the apparition.
We would think that with such a sign, there would be mass conversions and that people would believe in God and be God-fearing and lead religious lives from then on.
But it doesn't seem to be the case. From 1917 to this day, the world has seen two world wars, and many other hostilities that seem to snub those signs from heaven and snub the call to repentance.
If the gospel parable sounds jagged, the world has shown that it is like a hacksaw blade that cuts deep into the flesh of humanity and caused much bloodshed.
So the call to prayer and penance, to repentance and conversion, which is the essential message at Fatima was not heeded, even after a hundred years.
But it is not all hopelessness and jaggedness.
Last Friday, the 13th October, we had our monthly Rosary at Mary’s shrine. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the last apparition of Our Lady at Fatima, the catechists of our parish asked the parents of the children in the catechism classes to bring their children along because we wanted the children to lead the Rosary.
Well, the parents brought their children along; or is it that the children brought their parents along? Whatever it might be, the children and the youth led the Rosary with the help of their catechists.
With children leading the Rosary, it may not be that polished, there were some jagged edges here and there, but it was heart-warming to hear the chirpy voices of children reciting the Rosary, and with that it brought about a renewed hope for the future of our parish and for the Church.
Because the 1st reading mentions of this mountain, and this mountain is the Church. On this mountain (the Church)
the Lord of hosts will prepare for all peoples a banquet of rich food.
On this mountain He will remove the mourning veil covering all peoples, and the shroud enwrapping all nations, He will destroy Death for ever.
The Lord will wipe away the tears from every cheek; He will take away His people’s shame everywhere on earth,
for the Lord has said so.
So the Lord of hosts invites each of us come to His holy dwelling, to His holy mountain, to offer prayer and praise, and not to be silent like the man without the wedding garment in the gospel parable.
We bring our children along and we must teach our children to pray and to worship the Lord.
Together with their prayer, the conversion and salvation of the world is not just a possibility. It will be a reality. We have waited a hundred years. Let us wait no longer.
This year is dedicated to the celebration of the centennial of the Marian apparitions at Fatima.
By now, we would know what it is all about. It has been a hundred years since Our Lady appeared to the three peasant children at an obscure village called Fatima in Portugal.
And to mark the occasion, a statue of the Pilgrim Virgin is in Singapore and it went to some parishes, schools and centres, and many people participated in the prayers, the vigils and the devotions.
But to begin with, Fatima is a rather unique and maybe odd-sounding name. It somehow doesn’t sound quite like the usual Catholic or Christian names. For all that is connected with it, Fatima is not that popular when it comes to choosing a name for baptism.
According to some sources, the town of Fatima was named after a Moorish princess who was kidnapped by a Portuguese knight, but later they fell in love and the rest of the story is just for reading pleasure. But at least we now know where the name came from.
As to why God would choose a town with such a peculiar name for Mary to make her apparitions, it can only be said that God uses jagged ways to give His messages.
And today’s gospel parable can be said as one of the jagged ways that God uses to give us a teaching, although it may leave us rather puzzled and scratching our heads.
The parable begins with a king who gave a feast for his son’s wedding. He sent his servants to all those who had been invited, but they would not come. No reason was given for their refusal.
The king invited them again, but they were not interested. One went to his farm, another to his business, and the rest seized the servants, maltreated them and even killed them. The king was furious and he sent his troops to destroy those murderers and also destroyed their town.
It is quite jarring as we hear invitation turning to destruction, and celebration turning to violence.
And then the king sent his servants to the cross-roads to invite everyone they could find to the wedding, the bad and the good alike.
At this point, the parable is already jagged enough with all that violence and contradictions. And as if that is not enough, a man without a wedding garment had to be thrown out into the dark, where there was weeping and grinding of teeth.
It is such a jagged parable that it can be quite difficult to understand. Its jaggedness disturbs us, but it calls for our attention. And that’s how God speaks to us.
Taking the parable literally does not make much sense. But when its jagged edges cut into our hearts, then we get glimpses of what Jesus is telling us in the parable.
Last Friday, 13th October, was the 100th anniversary of the last apparition of Our Lady to the three children at Fatima. 100 years ago that day, our Lady promised a sign that will prove that her messages are from heaven, messages that must be heeded for the conversion and salvation of the world.
In what is termed as the “miracle of the sun”, the storm clouds parted, revealing the sun as an immense silver disk shining with an intensity never before seen, though it was not blinding. Then the immense disk began to "dance." The sun spun rapidly like a gigantic circle of fire. Then it stopped momentarily, only to begin spinning again. Its rim became scarlet; whirling, it scattered red flames across the sky. All this lasted about 10 minutes, and witnessed by the 70,000 crowd gathered there, as well as by numerous witnesses up to twenty-five miles away from the place of the apparition.
We would think that with such a sign, there would be mass conversions and that people would believe in God and be God-fearing and lead religious lives from then on.
But it doesn't seem to be the case. From 1917 to this day, the world has seen two world wars, and many other hostilities that seem to snub those signs from heaven and snub the call to repentance.
If the gospel parable sounds jagged, the world has shown that it is like a hacksaw blade that cuts deep into the flesh of humanity and caused much bloodshed.
So the call to prayer and penance, to repentance and conversion, which is the essential message at Fatima was not heeded, even after a hundred years.
But it is not all hopelessness and jaggedness.
Last Friday, the 13th October, we had our monthly Rosary at Mary’s shrine. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the last apparition of Our Lady at Fatima, the catechists of our parish asked the parents of the children in the catechism classes to bring their children along because we wanted the children to lead the Rosary.
Well, the parents brought their children along; or is it that the children brought their parents along? Whatever it might be, the children and the youth led the Rosary with the help of their catechists.
With children leading the Rosary, it may not be that polished, there were some jagged edges here and there, but it was heart-warming to hear the chirpy voices of children reciting the Rosary, and with that it brought about a renewed hope for the future of our parish and for the Church.
Because the 1st reading mentions of this mountain, and this mountain is the Church. On this mountain (the Church)
the Lord of hosts will prepare for all peoples a banquet of rich food.
On this mountain He will remove the mourning veil covering all peoples, and the shroud enwrapping all nations, He will destroy Death for ever.
The Lord will wipe away the tears from every cheek; He will take away His people’s shame everywhere on earth,
for the Lord has said so.
So the Lord of hosts invites each of us come to His holy dwelling, to His holy mountain, to offer prayer and praise, and not to be silent like the man without the wedding garment in the gospel parable.
We bring our children along and we must teach our children to pray and to worship the Lord.
Together with their prayer, the conversion and salvation of the world is not just a possibility. It will be a reality. We have waited a hundred years. Let us wait no longer.
Saturday, October 7, 2017
27th Ordinary Sunday, Year A, 08.10.2017
Isaiah 5:1-7 / Philippians 4:6-9 / Matthew 21:33-43
It is said that today’s children is tomorrow’s hope. There is nothing new or profound about that. We all know that the future belongs to the children and the youth of today.
For those of us who have children, what would we have to say about them? The general feedback from parents will tell us this: children can be a joy, but at times they can be a pain.
They can be a joy especially when they come back from school and they tell us what they have learnt, and then they ask us all those funny corny questions like:
- Which bird wears a wig? – the bald eagle
- What do you call a fly without wings? – a walk
- What has four wheels and flies? – a garbage truck.
And when you try to teach them something, they can come up with something else. A father was trying to teach his young son about the evils of alcohol. He put one worm in a glass of water and another worm in a glass of whiskey. The worm in the water lived, while the one in the whiskey curled up and died. So the father asked his son, “Now what does that show you?” The son replied, “It shows that if you drink whiskey, you won’t have any worms!”
And children can be a pain because with each having their own rooms, they will close the door and you don’t know if they are in or not? Even knocking on the door might not get any response. But to find out, you just have to turn off the wi-fi, and they will appear suddenly.
But that is not as painful and hurting as the song of the vineyard in the 1st reading. The prophet Isaiah sings of a song of a man’s love for his vineyard: “My friend had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug the soil, cleared it of stones and planted choice vines in it. In the middle he built a tower, he dug a press there too. He expected it to yield grapes, but sour grapes were all that it gave.”
But it is not just about a man’s love for his vineyard and the sour grapes that it produced. It calls for the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the men of Judah to look at themselves as the People of God, and what kind of fruits they were producing.
And in case they were still wondering what it all meant, the final verses of the 1st reading says it all: Yes, the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the House of Israel, and the men of Judah that chosen plant. He expected justice, but found bloodshed, integrity, but only a cry of distress.
The 1st reading reveals the pain and hurt of God over His people. If that is a sad story, then the gospel parable is a rather violent one. It is also about a vineyard but it is a blood-soaked vineyard, as the bad and evil tenants maltreated and even killed the landowner’s servants and even the landowner’s son.
Jesus told this parable to the chief priests and the elders of the people and in case they didn’t get it, Jesus tells it straight to them: ‘I tell you, then, that the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.’
In both the 1st reading and the gospel parable, God expected from His people justice and integrity, but what He got was cries of distress and bloodshed.
God demands an accountability for the blessings He bestowed on His people, and after many warnings and in the time of reckoning, when instead of finding justice and integrity, He gets cries of distress and bloodshed, then God will punish, He will turn His hand against His people, though He will not turn His heart from them.
We are God’s people, His children. He expects from us justice and integrity, He expects from us an accountability.
But that is also what we expect from our children. We expect from them justice and integrity. We expect from them an accountability of the values and principles that we have taught them.
And we must teach them and correct them when they go wrong, just as God will correct us when we go wrong.
A little boy came up to his mother in the kitchen one evening while she was preparing dinner, and he handed her a piece of paper that he had been writing on. After his mom dried her hands on an apron, she read it, and this is what it said:
For cutting the grass: $5.00
For cleaning up my room this week: $1.00
For going to the store for you: $1.50
Baby-sitting my kid brother while you went shopping: $1.25
Taking out the garbage: $1.00
For getting a good report card: $5.00
For cleaning up the porch: $2.00
Total owed: $14.75
Well, his mother looked at him standing there, and the boy could see the memories flashing through her mind. She picked up the pen, turned over the paper he'd written on, and this is what she wrote:
For the nine months I carried you while you grew inside me: No Charge.
For all the nights that I've sat up with you, doctored and prayed for you: No Charge.
For all the trying times, and all the tears that you've caused through the years: No Charge.
For all the nights that were filled with dread, and for the worries I knew were ahead: No Charge.
For the toys, food, clothes, and even wiping your nose: No Charge.
When you add it up, my son, the cost of my love is: No Charge."
When the boy finished reading what his mother had written, he hung his head down and then he looked straight up at his mother and said, "Mommy, I love you."
And then he took the pen and in great big letters he wrote: "PAID IN FULL".
Children’s Day was celebrated last Friday. And when we think about it, children are living messages we send to a time we will not see.
And so what are we teaching them? What are we telling them?
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. And since children are great imitators, then we must give them something great to imitate. Children may close their ears to advice but they open their eyes to example.
The month of October is called the Month of the Rosary and the call is to pray the rosary.
The spiritual crisis that the Church is facing is that families don’t pray the Rosary, and much less, pray at all. We have a duty to be examples of prayer and to pray the Rosary as a family at home. It is a duty that we will be held accountable for.
Our children are the Church’s most valuable resource and her best hope for the future.
We must teach them to pray and be examples of prayer for them, so that they will show the world what is justice and integrity, so as to put a stop to the distress and bloodshed we see now.
And if we think that the prayer of children doesn’t amount to much by worldly standards, then Psalm 8 has this to tell us: How great is your name, O Lord our God, through all the earth! Your majesty is praised above the heavens;
on the lips of children and of babes you have found praise to foil your enemy, to silence the foe and the rebel.
That’s the power that children have, and may they always have that power as they grow into the future. That power flows from prayer. Let us pray and they will follow.
It is said that today’s children is tomorrow’s hope. There is nothing new or profound about that. We all know that the future belongs to the children and the youth of today.
For those of us who have children, what would we have to say about them? The general feedback from parents will tell us this: children can be a joy, but at times they can be a pain.
They can be a joy especially when they come back from school and they tell us what they have learnt, and then they ask us all those funny corny questions like:
- Which bird wears a wig? – the bald eagle
- What do you call a fly without wings? – a walk
- What has four wheels and flies? – a garbage truck.
And when you try to teach them something, they can come up with something else. A father was trying to teach his young son about the evils of alcohol. He put one worm in a glass of water and another worm in a glass of whiskey. The worm in the water lived, while the one in the whiskey curled up and died. So the father asked his son, “Now what does that show you?” The son replied, “It shows that if you drink whiskey, you won’t have any worms!”
And children can be a pain because with each having their own rooms, they will close the door and you don’t know if they are in or not? Even knocking on the door might not get any response. But to find out, you just have to turn off the wi-fi, and they will appear suddenly.
But that is not as painful and hurting as the song of the vineyard in the 1st reading. The prophet Isaiah sings of a song of a man’s love for his vineyard: “My friend had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug the soil, cleared it of stones and planted choice vines in it. In the middle he built a tower, he dug a press there too. He expected it to yield grapes, but sour grapes were all that it gave.”
But it is not just about a man’s love for his vineyard and the sour grapes that it produced. It calls for the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the men of Judah to look at themselves as the People of God, and what kind of fruits they were producing.
And in case they were still wondering what it all meant, the final verses of the 1st reading says it all: Yes, the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the House of Israel, and the men of Judah that chosen plant. He expected justice, but found bloodshed, integrity, but only a cry of distress.
The 1st reading reveals the pain and hurt of God over His people. If that is a sad story, then the gospel parable is a rather violent one. It is also about a vineyard but it is a blood-soaked vineyard, as the bad and evil tenants maltreated and even killed the landowner’s servants and even the landowner’s son.
Jesus told this parable to the chief priests and the elders of the people and in case they didn’t get it, Jesus tells it straight to them: ‘I tell you, then, that the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.’
In both the 1st reading and the gospel parable, God expected from His people justice and integrity, but what He got was cries of distress and bloodshed.
God demands an accountability for the blessings He bestowed on His people, and after many warnings and in the time of reckoning, when instead of finding justice and integrity, He gets cries of distress and bloodshed, then God will punish, He will turn His hand against His people, though He will not turn His heart from them.
We are God’s people, His children. He expects from us justice and integrity, He expects from us an accountability.
But that is also what we expect from our children. We expect from them justice and integrity. We expect from them an accountability of the values and principles that we have taught them.
And we must teach them and correct them when they go wrong, just as God will correct us when we go wrong.
A little boy came up to his mother in the kitchen one evening while she was preparing dinner, and he handed her a piece of paper that he had been writing on. After his mom dried her hands on an apron, she read it, and this is what it said:
For cutting the grass: $5.00
For cleaning up my room this week: $1.00
For going to the store for you: $1.50
Baby-sitting my kid brother while you went shopping: $1.25
Taking out the garbage: $1.00
For getting a good report card: $5.00
For cleaning up the porch: $2.00
Total owed: $14.75
Well, his mother looked at him standing there, and the boy could see the memories flashing through her mind. She picked up the pen, turned over the paper he'd written on, and this is what she wrote:
For the nine months I carried you while you grew inside me: No Charge.
For all the nights that I've sat up with you, doctored and prayed for you: No Charge.
For all the trying times, and all the tears that you've caused through the years: No Charge.
For all the nights that were filled with dread, and for the worries I knew were ahead: No Charge.
For the toys, food, clothes, and even wiping your nose: No Charge.
When you add it up, my son, the cost of my love is: No Charge."
When the boy finished reading what his mother had written, he hung his head down and then he looked straight up at his mother and said, "Mommy, I love you."
And then he took the pen and in great big letters he wrote: "PAID IN FULL".
Children’s Day was celebrated last Friday. And when we think about it, children are living messages we send to a time we will not see.
And so what are we teaching them? What are we telling them?
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. And since children are great imitators, then we must give them something great to imitate. Children may close their ears to advice but they open their eyes to example.
The month of October is called the Month of the Rosary and the call is to pray the rosary.
The spiritual crisis that the Church is facing is that families don’t pray the Rosary, and much less, pray at all. We have a duty to be examples of prayer and to pray the Rosary as a family at home. It is a duty that we will be held accountable for.
Our children are the Church’s most valuable resource and her best hope for the future.
We must teach them to pray and be examples of prayer for them, so that they will show the world what is justice and integrity, so as to put a stop to the distress and bloodshed we see now.
And if we think that the prayer of children doesn’t amount to much by worldly standards, then Psalm 8 has this to tell us: How great is your name, O Lord our God, through all the earth! Your majesty is praised above the heavens;
on the lips of children and of babes you have found praise to foil your enemy, to silence the foe and the rebel.
That’s the power that children have, and may they always have that power as they grow into the future. That power flows from prayer. Let us pray and they will follow.
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