2nd Sunday of Lent, Year B, 28.02.2021

 Genesis 22:1-2, 9-13, 15-18 / Romans 8:31-34 / Mark 9:2-10

There is something that we all hold highly valuable in life but it is not something tangible. 

Over and above all our belongings, possessions and whatever property we have, we treasure our freedom. 

Freedom is our right and we won’t give it up so easily. In fact, we would guard it fiercely, such that it can even be said that our freedom is our life. 

And that is where the challenge in life comes in.

To obey someone and to comply to instructions and rules can be challenging and difficult for us because we see it as an infringement to our right of freedom. 

But we also cannot deny that there are instructions, or regulations, or rules that are for our good. 

In that regard, when we don’t obey or comply, then there will be problems and there can be trouble. 

For example, the wearing of face mask is for our good. When we don’t comply then we will get into trouble with the law and even putting our health at risk. 

Or the news about wild boars intruding into residential places. One of the reasons was that people were feeding the wild boars, although feeding of wild boars is prohibited. Hence the problem was not created by the wild boars but by humans. 

But there are also certain things, both in the secular and religious realms, that seemed so difficult to understand and so difficult to comply or obey. 

The story in the 1st reading is one such example, where we heard that God put Abraham to the test and called him to offer his only son, Isaac, as a burnt offering. 

In our human understanding and reasoning, we will find it difficult to comprehend what God called Abraham to do. 

We would think that if God were to put Abraham to the test, why would God demand such a sacrifice, and it was clearly a human sacrifice. 

No doubt, it was God who gave Abraham the gift of a son, and God has the right to take it back, but why take it back in such a way. 

And we are surprised, to say the least, about Abraham’s stoic and emotionless obedience to God. 

Of course, there are spiritual reasons that will help us to understand the story in the 1st reading. 

One is that it is not so much the sacrifice of Isaac, but Abraham’s sacrifice of obedience to God. 

For Abraham, and as well as in the biblical understanding, sacrifice is offered so that one can draw nearer to God, who is above all other things. 

But the story becomes clearer with the gospel account of the Transfiguration of Jesus and the voice from Heaven that said, “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.” 

God sacrificed His only Son in order to save humanity from their sin and to draw humanity back to Him. 

The letter to the Philippians tells us that Jesus did not cling to His equality with God but was obedient, even unto death, and death on the cross. 

But God raised Jesus from death and exalted Him such that in heaven and on earth and under the earth, every knee must bend at the name of Jesus. 

Jesus, by His obedience, shows us two important aspects of our lives. 

That when we obey and comply to God’s ways, God draws nearer to us and it is we who will benefit from our sacrifice of obedience to God. 

Obedience is an expression of humility, and only those who are humble will understand the mysterious and yet wonderful ways of God. 

Obedience and humility are what Jesus is teaching us if we want to have true freedom in life. 

Let us listen to what Jesus is teaching us, and that is obedience and humility. 

In obeying God’s will and humbly walking in the ways of God, we will be blessed with the joy of true freedom.

1st Sunday of Lent, Year B, 21.02.2021

Genesis 9:8-15 / 1 Peter 3:18-22 / Mark 1:12-15

Nowadays, traveling out of the country is not as easy and not as convenient as before. 

Because when we enter into the other country, we will have to be quarantined for a number of days, and it is usually around 14 days. 

Similarly, for foreigners, or when we return to Singapore, we will have to serve a Stay-Home Notice of 14 days.

We may think that those 14 days should pass by quickly and all we need to do is just eat and sleep. That sounds quite easy-going. 

But for those who had served a Stay-Home Notice, they will say otherwise. In fact, they say it is quite depressing and they felt like they were in some kind of prison. 

Well, if 14 days is hard to go by, then how about 40 days? Actually, we had gone through a bit of that last year during the “Circuit breaker” which lasted for 1 month, 3 weeks and 4 days. 

That was tough, as we had to stay indoors, we can’t go out and also there was nowhere to go. We won’t want to go through that again, certainly. 

But if we think that was tough, how about spending 40 days in a big boat, and in an ark, with 8 persons and a whole lot of animals, and it was raining non-stop and there was nowhere to land. 

Certainly, our endurance, patience and tolerance are put to a stress test, with outside being wet and cold and inside being stuffy and smelly. The ark was certainly not a luxury cruise ship. 

Well, that was the situation with Noah’s ark and we heard about it in the first and second readings. That makes the “Circuit breaker” look like quite a piece of cake. 

In the gospel it was quite another situation. Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness without food, being tempted by the devil, there were wild beasts and the only consolation was that the angels looked after Him. 

Even so, the wilderness was far from comfortable. In fact, besides being all alone, life is also stretched to the edge. 

And with the devil coming in with the temptations, then Jesus had to call upon every ounce of strength to keep focused and firm.

The gospel did not say how the devil tempted Jesus. But going by our own “Circuit breaker” experience, we can guess what it was. 

It is the favourite tool of the devil and it is called despair. Despair comes from two Latin words, “de” which means down, and “sperare” which means hope. 

So, despair means to give up hope. Because when we give up hope, then there is nothing else to look forward to, and we lose faith and the devil will then use us. 

Yes, despair is scary. We can imagine if despair sets in Noah’s ark, and they give up being patient and tolerant and they go for each other’s throats. Then they will not see any rainbows at the end of the 40 days of rain. 

With Jesus, He could have given in to despair in the harsh surroundings of the wilderness and the disturbing temptations of the devil. 

If He had given up, then there will be no Good News to proclaim. 

But having gone through the 40 days and resisted the devil’s temptations, Jesus then set off to begin His mission with these words:  Repent and believe the Good News. 

And that is the shield to resist the devil’s temptations. Repentance is the answer to despair. Believing in the Good News gives us hope.

So, in our 40 days of Lent, let us persist in prayer, in fasting and in alms-giving. 

We repent of our sinfulness and put our hope in God’s forgiveness. 

Then we will be able to see the rainbow of God’s love and be filled with the Good News of joy.

6th Ordinary Sunday, Year B, 14.02.2021

 Lev 13:1-2, 45-46 / 1 Cor 10:31 -11:1 / Mark 1:40-45

There are four words which we have been hearing over the past few days and we’ll still be hearing it for the next few days. 

Those four words are Chinese words and they are “Gong Xi Fa Cai”. The translation means congratulations and wealth or prosperity. 

That is the usual and popular Lunar New Year greeting and it also expresses our desire and longing in life. 

We desire to be wealthy, or at least to always have money, so that we will be happy and have no worry. It’s as simple as that. 

Though it may sound as simple as that, yet we all know that it is not easy to be wealthy. 

Along the way we might realize that the only way to be wealthy is through hard work, and if we desire to be wealthy, then we will have to work hard for the money. 

But it is said that we use our health to gain wealth and then later on we spend our wealth to try to regain our health. 

So, what we really desire in life is health so that we can enjoy our wealth. 

But it seems that we always lack in one or the other. 

In the gospel, the leper came to Jesus and pleaded on his knees: If you want to you can cure me. 

Although there were no details about the leper’s background and how he contracted the disease or how long he has been suffering from it, yet it is clear that he was desperate. 

He pleaded with Jesus on his knees. He has lost everything - whatever wealth, family, friends, health, and he also knew he was losing his life. 

In that plea of desperation, Jesus responded with a divine proclamation: Of course I want to! Be cured! 

As we think about the gospel account, we will come to realize the essentials of life and what we really want. 

We want to be reasonably healthy in life so that we can live life happily. We don’t need to be that wealthy in order to be happy. We should realize by now that health is wealth.

We will certainly pray that we will not be in that kind of situation like the leper - in desperation, in isolation and in desolation.

And we pray that when we are afflicted with an illness or sickness, we will believe that Jesus will cure us and we will hear those words: Of course I want to! Be cured! 

A priest was relating this particular experience he had. He received a call to visit a terminally ill patient. 

He went to the hospital and came to the single bedded room that the patient was in. He knocked on the door and went in. He saw the patient and introduced himself and said that he came to pray for the patient and to give him the Anointing. 

But the priest was taken aback when the patient said: For what? Don’t you think I’ve been praying, but nothing is happening. I don’t need any more prayers. 

The patient turned around and didn’t want to look at the priest. The priest was stumped and he didn’t know what to do next. 

Then by sheer divine inspiration, he took the cross from his hospital kit and placed it on the drawer next to the patient’s bed. 

Then he said to the patient, “I am leaving this cross on the drawer. Maybe you ask Jesus why your prayers are not answered.” 

With that he left the hospital. 

A few days later, the priest received a call from the patient’s relative to inform him that the patient has passed on. 

The relative also said that after the priest had visited the patient, he was seen clutching the cross to his heart. 

There was also a strange transformation from anger to come calmness and the patient passed on peacefully. 

What can be said from all this is that the Cross of Christ has the power to transform desolation to consolation, from desperation to salvation. 

Because on the Cross, Jesus suffered to take away the pain of our infirmities. On the Cross Jesus died so that we can have life and be fully alive with the love of God. 

In the cross we hear again the words of Jesus: Of course I want to! Be cured! 

Let us embrace the Cross. In the Cross we will find healing, peace and salvation.

5th Ordinary Sunday, Year B, 07.02.2021

  Job 7:1-4, 6-7 / 1 Cor 9:16-19, 22-23 / Mark 1:29-39

One of the favourite Singaporean pastimes, besides eating, is shopping. Especially after indulging in delicious food, the next thing to do is to have a little exercise and go window shopping at the malls or shopping centres. 

But the style of shopping has also evolved over the years especially over the past one year. 

From window shopping in the brick-and-mortar stores, we have gone to online shopping out of curiosity, but now it is online shopping out of necessity. 

With safety measures and restrictions, online shopping has become a pastime and also a new norm. 

And with that comes the rise in prominence in the profession of delivery service, or for ease of speech, we call them the “delivery man”. 

From the time we place the order for an item online, we will have to wait, expectantly and even eagerly, for the delivery man to come. 

And when he calls and arrives with our items, we will be happy that the waiting is over. And we will be even happier if what we ordered is exactly what we received, otherwise this refund and exchange hassle can be quite troublesome and time-consuming. 

Well, in the past we will go to the store and get what we want and can get it almost immediately, but now we place an order online and then we have to wait for the delivery man to come with the goods.

So we should be thankful for those delivery service providers, or also known as “delivery man” and it would be good to compliment them when we see them. 

In the gospel, we could see that Jesus had a pretty busy day. From Simon’s mother-in-law, to those who came to Him in the evening, Jesus was doing some kind of delivery, well actually, He was doing deliverance. 

Jesus came to deliver the Good News of Salvation, and for those who were longing to be delivered from illness or sicknesses, from physical or spiritual torment, they saw in Jesus the one they were waiting and longing for. 

In the gospel, besides all that wondrous healing and deliverance from evil spirits, there is also the quiet moment of prayer for Jesus. 

And when His disciples looked around for Him and found Him and told Him that everyone was looking for Him, Jesus had this to say: 

Let us go elsewhere, to the neighbouring country towns, so that I can preach there too, because that is why I came. 

That was a profound statement of His mission. Jesus came to deliver the Good News of Salvation, and that was expressed in His ministry of deliverance from physical and spiritual torment and distress. 

But we must realize that we need Jesus to be our Saviour and to deliver us from our sins, just like we need the delivery man to deliver the items to us. 

We must realize and acknowledge that we cannot save ourselves, or heal ourselves, or protect ourselves from evil and danger. 

We need Jesus to be our Saviour, our Healer and our Protector. 

What we cannot do for ourselves, Jesus will do for us because that is why He came. 

Let us end off with a prayer for deliverance from the “nots” in our lives. We must believe that what we cannot do for ourselves, Jesus will do for us.

Dear Jesus,

Please untie the knots in my mind,

my heart and my life.

Remove the have nots, the can nots, and the do nots that I have in my mind.

Erase the will nots, may nots, might nots that may find a home in my heart.

Release me from the could nots, would nots and should nots that obstruct my life.

And most of all, dear Jesus, I ask that You remove from my mind, my heart and my life all of the “am nots” that I have allowed to hold me back, especially the thought that

I am not good enough. Amen.

Yes, what we cannot do for ourselves, Jesus will do for us, because that is why He came.