Homily: July 26, 2022, Memorial of Saints Joachim and Anne, Parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary

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 Grandma warned little John, “Be a good boy. At the end of the world, all disobedient and bad people will be cast into fiery hell where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.” John listened intently and asked with a worried look, “Grandma, you always quarrel with others, and you don’t have any teeth, how will you grind your teeth when you go to hell?” Grandma was annoyed and said “Teeth will be provided in hell!”

In today’s Gospel, we heard that “(Jesus’) disciples approached him and said; explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field”.

His disciples asked and so He explained. It is so clearly explained that I don’t have to preach about it.

What I want to focus on is the inquisitive and learning attitude of the disciples. This is what we should do daily. To read the word of God and whenever we fail to understand, we should approach Jesus and ask Him to explain it to us.

He will not just give us answers but He will show us how to understand the world and its problems. He will impart His wisdom to us.

I have a friend whom I seek counsel with whenever I am troubled, and almost always I get told, “Go to Jesus, empty your mind completely and listen to what Jesus says.” This works most of the time and even when I don’t hear Jesus well, I get peace and calm because of the emptying.

Let us always go to Jesus with an open heart and mind. All of us who have ears ought to hear. Amen.


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Homily: September 15, 2025, Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows (Entrustment)

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 “Woman, behold, your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” This arrangement, spoken from the Cross, may look like a simple and practical arrangement for the care of His surviving mother, but truly, it carries a deeper and profound truth. It is one of the ‘seven last words of Jesus’. Quite naturally and obviously, He entrusted the care of His beloved Mother to someone reliable and obedient. He gave her to John. And at the same time, He also entrusted the continued nurturing of John, His beloved disciple, to His Mother. Jesus had no earthly possessions which will wither and end to leave behind. What He left, as a lasting forever legacy to His disciples and as a gift of eternity to all believers to come, was the institution of the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper. Now from the Cross, He is giving to the whole of humanity something personal: His own Mother,  whom He took His human flesh and blood from when she carried Him in her womb. Why John the beloved ap...
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 “I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man, but I have been mercifully treated because I acted out of ignorance in my unbelief.” St. Paul, after his conversion, admitted that all the persecution and executions he carried out before he knew Christ, were done out of ignorance and unbelief. He thought Jesus Christ and His followers were a threat to the Jewish community, he thought Jesus was a fake, and so for the good of the Jewish people, he sought to eliminate them. Paul persecuted Christians because of he did not believe that Jesus was truly the Christ, the Messiah. Jesus Himself was unjustly accused, tortured, and killed although He was spreading His Father’s love to the world because the authorities misunderstood Him and saw Him as a threat to their society and community. Thousands of early Christians were martyred for similar reasons. They held on to their faith, they did not budge when told to deny the Lord, they did not water down the Lord’s teachings under...
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Homily: September 13, 2025, Satuday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time (Foundation)

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“That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when the flood came, the river burst against that house but could not shake it, because it had been well built.” I love the song “Christ is my firm foundation.” Not only the music, but also the words are so powerful. Christian life is nothing less than a life rooted in Christ. We are not simply following a set of principles or moral laws. We are following a person, the living Christ who died for us, who rose for us, and who calls us to walk in His footsteps. A life rooted in Christ means we live as He lived, and we die as He died, for love. We imitate His sacrificial love by carrying our own crosses every day. And when our life is built on this solid foundation, nothing can shake us. No temptation, no worldly lies, no passing ideology promising an “easier” way of peace can destroy us. We live in a world full of confusion. Sadly, even some Christians today follow worldly ideologies and then try to ...
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Homily: September 8, 2025, Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Geneology)

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 “Abraham became the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers.” And so on. The list of Jesus’ ancestors goes on. When I looked at today’s Gospel, I initially thought of skipping the genealogy of Jesus and use the shorter option. But I thought again, and I decided on the long version, proclaiming fully the genealogy of Jesus. Why? Back in March, one of my nieces turned 15. As an uncle, I would always ask my nieces and nephews what they would like for their birthdays, so I asked her. She replied, “Uncle, pay $125 for me to do an ancestry test. My dad’s family says his ancestors came from Persia, and I want to know if it’s true.” I agreed. That’s an interesting birthday gift. When the results came back, it showed she was about 3% Persian. A few weeks later, she asked me for another favor. “Uncle, I need you to do the test too, so I can see the picture of my family from mom’s side.” She was so serious about it and kept reminding me every da...
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Homily: September 10, 2025, Wednesday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time

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Holy Family school Mass Homily   “Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.” Have you ever heard: “You are what you eat”? So be careful what you are always eating… Now have you also heard: “What you think, that you become.” I think there is a lot of truth in this. If you are always thinking about the same things, you will one become more and more like it, or you would behave more and more like the thought. There is a story about Napoleon Bonaparte. Once, he went to a palm reader and asked him to read his hand. The reader told him the usual things, what had happened to his life and so on. But Napoleon interrupted: “Do you see any possibility that I could become a king?” The palm reader replied, “No. Every king has a special line on his hand, but you don’t have it.” And you know what Napoleon did? He immediately took a knife, sliced on his palm, and cut out that special line himself. The palm reader then said, “Yes, you will become an emperor.” Napoleon always dreamed of ...
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Homily: September 9, 2025, Tuesday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time (Pray)

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“Jesus departed to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God.” What a perfect example for us to follow! Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, prayed. He who is God the Son, prayed to God the Father. He spent the whole night in prayer before choosing His disciples. In His divinity, Jesus already knew the Father’s will. Yet in His humanity, He is just like us. He needed to spend time with His Father, to pray and to discern to be aligned with God’s will. Jesus shows us a powerful example: we too must pray before making important decisions, to ask God what His will is for us. Sometimes, when we act without consulting Him, we may find ourselves going against His will or going a wrong long way before reaching which lead us through unnecessary suffering or other unbearable consequences. So bring your plans to Jesus, tell Him your hopes, your preferences, your wishes, and He will bless you with the wisdom to choose wise and right. But what if we prayed, heard, followed a...
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Homily: March 6, 2022, Monday of the second Sunday in Lent (Be Merciful).

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 “Be merciful, as your Father is merciful.” ‘Misericordia’ the Latin word for ‘mercy’. It is made up of  ‘miseriae’ which means ‘misery’ and ‘cordis’ which means ‘heart’. God's mercy for us is His loving heart extended towards our misery. He understands, empathizes and embraces our misery in His heart. What is humanity’s greatest misery? That we are weak and prone to sin. And what is God’s response to this misery of humanity? Mercy. We do not deserve His forgiveness but He gives it willingly. This is mercy. We heard in the first reading, Daniel admitting that “we have rebelled and departed from your commandments and your laws”. Humanity is always going against God. But God remains compassionate. “But yours, O Lord, our God, are compassion and forgiveness!” He never gives up on us, He is always merciful to us. So what must we do? Jesus tells us in the Gospel, “be merciful.” This world is full of sin and wrong-doings, not just against God but against one another. And people are ...
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Homily: May 10. 2025, fourth Sunday of Easter (Good Shepherd)

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 “The disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.”  This line always impacts me greatly. Imagine being filled with both joy and the Holy Spirit, especially while facing intense rejection and persecution. That’s not something ordinary. That’s something supernatural - something that comes only from God. I have five sisters. One of my sisters will start singing without a care in the world and won’t stop – when she drinks just a glass of wine! Another sister becomes the queen of jokes, jokes one after another, creating a funny scene – simply after having a glass or two. What about me? I just have a good sleep when I get more drinks. The point is, they’re not normally like that. Normally they are too shy to sing or too dull to say anything funny. But wine or alcohol seem to melt away their mental or social blocks making them mentally high and socially carefree. In the Acts of the Apostles, we see Peter and the other apostles giving their first big preaching, and people thou...
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Homily: January 18, 2022, Tuesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time.

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 Readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/011822.cfm “Take no notice of his appearance or his height for I have rejected him; God does not see as man sees; man looks at appearances but the Lord looks at the heart.” These words of God are so assuring. If God were to choose based on appearances and height, I would never have made it to priesthood. But the world chooses differently. When I was doing my seminary studies in Rome, I used to go to Germany for summer jobs. I was poor and my home diocese could not afford to give seminarians who studied overseas any allowances, so I worked during the vacation to earn pocket money for my daily expenses. During my first vacation stint, I got a job with a car factory in Munich which produced the BMW cars. Our job was to do summer cleaning of the factory. On the first day of work, they lined up all student workers according to our heights and weights. I was so skinny at that time, so I was almost last in line. Then the work was assi...
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Homily: February 6, 2023, Monday of the fifth week in Ordinary time.

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 How many of you looked at the sky last night? Did you see a full, big and bright moon? I did. It was so beautiful and mesmerising. Last November, when I was doing my silent retreat in Oklahoma, I had a lot of time to enjoy nature. One evening after dinner, I went out for a walk and looked up into the sky. I saw millions of flickering stars! I took my time to enjoy that beautiful scene. We don’t get to see many stars in towns and cities because the city lights drown out the brightness of the stars. In my childhood days, I used to enjoy looking at the stars. In the tropical climate of India, the sky was always very clear and in villages where electrical lights were weak, the stars were more visible. If you have ever seen the night sky filled with flickering stars, you will probably be awed by God’s creation, like I do. These two weeks our first readings are taken from the book of Genesis, beginning with the creation story. As I read the first reading of today, I praised and thanked ...
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