Homily: June 14, 2023, Wednesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time (Smallest Letter)

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 Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law.

What is the smallest letter of the law?

In my home diocese in India, the church belongs to the Syro-Malabar tradition and our liturgy is celebrated differently from the Roman rite we celebrate here.

The liturgical language used is East Syriac. Syriac is very similar to Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus and His disciples. Both languages share the same alphabet, and within it, the smallest letter is the Yod (^), which resembles a small upside-down "V". One of our seminarian friends was nicknamed "Yod" because of his small physical stature. 

Despite its size, this letter holds great significance in the language. Yod is used to form all the other letters, and since the Jewish tradition holds that God uses all the letters as the building blocks of creation, Yod points to God's omnipresence. And creation is natural law.

So when Jesus says ‘the smallest letter’ of the law, He could be referring to the foundation of natural law, pointing to God’s intention for the creation of the world, love.

Until heaven and earth pass away, love will never pass.

Today, one of the biggest challenges of the Church's mission is relativism. To many people especially the young ones, everything is subjective. To them, morality is subjective, everything is relative, nothing is absolute, truth is personal. God’s law is thus disregarded.

For a nation, the supreme law of the state is its constitution. For the church, her constitution is the Gospel. A faithful citizen of the state will give utmost respect to its constitution. As faithful Catholics, do we also give utmost respect to God’s law?

Do we truly understand God’s law in matters like Euthanasia, abortion, same-sex union?

Do we live in obedience to the Gospel?

Or do we question its truth and expect it to follow the ways of the world, to keep up with modern times as some people like to say?

Which do you follow?

Everything in the Gospel is founded on love, agape self-giving, self-emptying love. Until heaven and earth pass away, love will never pass. Amen


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Homily: March 2, 2022, Ash Wednesday

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 Today begins another holy season of Lent. A time to turn away from sinful ways. To turn back to God. Ash Wednesday reminds us that we are from dust. Unto dust we shall return. God looked at dust and loved. He gave dust His breathe of life. God looks at us and loves. He gives us His body, blood and spirit. What can we give Him? “Even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart”. God doesn’t want anything from us, He wants us. Live in God. Live with God. Live for God. In God’s ways. When I first came to this country, I saw crowds packing the mega churches. Non-Catholic Christian churches. I was really fascinated. Our Catholic churches are hardly ever filled. I asked an elderly priest, “why?” He replied, “Ours is a worship and sacrifice. Theirs is a show.” People like shows, performances, excitement. The world says, “be heard, be seen, be known, and be successful.” The Gospel says, “pray but don’t be heard, fast but don’t be seen, give but don’t be known, and be faithful.”...
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Homily: March 4, 2025, Tuesday of the Eight week in Ordinary time (Empty Handed)

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 "Appear not before the LORD empty-handed, for all that you offer is in fulfillment of the precepts."  One of our parish volunteers who gives rides to refugee families to bring them for Sunday Mass shared an incident with me. One day, she arrived at a house to pick up a family as usual, but they were reluctant to go to church. When she asked them why, the children responded, “We have no money to put in the collection basket.” Oh, my heart ached to hear that. The church needs money, but God does not. Yet the refugee families in our parish, who have barely enough for themselves, would refuse to come before the Lord empty-handed. They are so eager to give. Our parish is special, our Sunday collections always receive hundreds of one-dollar bills. I presume these are small offerings given with great love. Just like the poor widow who gave two small coins, she won Jesus’ praise for giving her all. Our Lord does not count the dollars, He weighs the sincerity. The first reading tells...
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 "God Saw How Good It Was." I love to read the story of creation, to visualize how it all started, the see our origin, the source of our being. God, in His infinite love, created the world to express His goodness, and made humanity the crown of His creation, to reflect His perfection. His expression was good. His reflection was good. Everything He created was good because each of His creation had a purpose for existence, a place in the world, a special relationship with Him. There was unique beauty in each, and harmony as a whole. His grace was in everything. He could see it. It was truly good. We know that as the story continued, the beauty and perfection were shattered soon after, by the sin of man, God’s masterpiece of all His created beings. Superficially, we see that God’s creation was destroyed. However, if we look around the world today, we can still see glimpses of the original goodness. A newborn baby. A full bloom flower. A bright rising sun. We can see how good it ...
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Homily: December 28, 2024 Feast of the Holy Innocents (Suffering).

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"Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you." Just three days ago, we celebrated Christmas - a joyful commemoration of the day God came to live among us in our world, it is a when divine light entered human darkness, it is a day for rejoicing. The Christmas season continues for the Church up until the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. However, if we read and reflect on the details of Christ’s birth and events surrounding this season of joy, we see poverty, simplicity and suffering. Just before our Lord was born into this world, His earthly parents went through hardship just to find a place to rest, He was then welcomed into physical and material poverty, the day after His birth, we celebrated the death of the first martyr, St. Stephen, followed by the feast of St. John the Evangelist who suffered persecution and isolation till a ripe old age. And now today, we observe the feast of the Holy Innocents — a sorrowful event when hundreds of...
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Homily: July 15, 2024, Monay of the fifteenth week in Ordinary time (Pleasing God).

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“In the blood of calves, lambs, and goats, I find no pleasure.” Why does God find no pleasure in such blood sacrifices? What would please God? In the past, one of the parishes in my home diocese in India used to practice animal sacrifices in church. I do not know how it all started but I know how it all ended. In 1924, exactly one hundred years ago, the bishop at that time banned all animal sacrifices in our parishes. It was a huge decision and he faced strong opposition. Why? The parish church was dedicated to St. Anthony attracted many visitors from other states. People would go and offer animal sacrifices, in the hope of getting their petitions granted. The church would sell chickens outside the church, and when a devotee wanted to offer a sacrifice, they would cut the necks of the chickens, and sell it to the devotees for their sacrificial offertory. The parishioners who sold the chickens to the church made a lot of money and the church profited from the offertory as well. You can ...
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Homily: October 22, 2024, Tuesday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time (Lost).

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 “Brothers and sisters: You were at that time without Christ, alienated from the community of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world.” What does it mean to be ‘without Christ’? St. Paul says it means to be ‘alienated’, a ‘stranger’, ‘without hope and without God’. To me, that means being lost, no goal, no direction, no purpose, no reason to exist. Have you ever experienced being lost? When I was in third grade, my family went on a Marian pilgrimage to Tamil Nadu, which is quite far away from our home. Some families from our neighborhood went also. There were thousands of other pilgrims at the site, all of us on the same path were moving along, packed against one another, like a giant river of people. My parents gave strict orders to hold on to each other’s hands tight and not to let go nor stray away from each other.  I was holding on to my papa’s hand, but the crowd was pushing so much that at one point, I lost my grip and ...
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Homily: February 7, 2023, Tuesday of the Fifth week in Ordinary time.

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 “God blessed them, saying: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.” We continue our first readings from the book of Genesis. The first eleven chapters of Genesis are pre-historic, what we read are not historical facts, the events cannot be explained scientifically. But there is no doubt that every detail is divinely inspired as God wants to reveal the Truth to us. Through these chapters, God wants us know that he is the Creator, the author and owner of everything. He has a plan and purpose. The Bible is God revealing His plans to us. The world thinks that resources are limited and so we should not overpopulate. Many countries even have birth control laws. But God says ‘multiply, fill the earth’. Surely, He knows what He is saying, and His instructions are not flawed. I agree with Mahatma Gandhi who once said, “The world has enough resources for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s greed.” Yes, it is greed which limits our resources and creates hunger, pover...
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Homily: February 11, 2025, Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time (Multiply)

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 God blessed them, saying: "Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it." What do you think? Does God’s command to multiple and fill the earth with humans and more humans logical? Is the world’s resources sufficient for all to consume and enjoy? Honestly, I take pride that I come from India, it is the most populous country in the world. Its current population is four times the USA. The Western world has, in the past, often ridiculed India for its massive and growing population, considering such population a burden and its continued growth a crisis. International organizations have invested heavily in promoting products and schemes to help reduce India’s population. Government clinics and hospitals have pressured women to exercise birth control. Among indigenous and poor communities, sterilizations were often performed without the women’s consent. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has even spent millions to promote such practices, primarily targeting poorer ...
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Homily: May 22, 2023, Monday of the seventh week of Easter (Holy Spirit- Comforter- Gilead)

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"In the world, you will have trouble, but take courage; I have conquered the world." What Jesus says is true. We all face troubles in this world. Life in this world will have sorrows, conflicts, uncertainties, and many other challenges. Last night, while reading and contemplating these words, I also reflected on the events of the day. It was a remarkable Sunday as we celebrated the first communion of 42 children. More than 10 of these kids are raised by single mothers. They have experienced hardship and are still facing challenges in their lives. But they did not carry their financial burdens or brokenness on their faces. Instead, they expressed immense joy and excitement as they received Jesus for the first time. In the afternoon, I visited a young family who recently lost their beloved mother. They are still trying to recover from this painful loss, slowly but surely. They are moving on and looking towards the future with much hope. In the evening, I brought communion to an...
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Homily: August 27-2023, twenty first Sunday in ordinary time (Who do you say that I am).

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 "But who do you say that I am?" Why did Jesus ask His disciples this question? Didn’t they all know who He really is? Let us go back to look at how their discipleship began. Some of them were fishermen, Jesus called them to follow Him, they left their jobs and followed him. Did He tell them, “I am the Messiah you have been waiting for, come follow me”? No. Some of them were disciples of John the Baptist, when he pointed out Jesus to them, he told them “Behold the Lamb of God,” and they followed Jesus. Did John introduce Jesus as the Messiah? No. We assume they know that Jesus is the Son of God sent to earth as a human to die for them, because that is how we were introduced to Jesus. But Jesus was never officially presented to the disciples as the Messiah, the Son of God. Although by this time of Jesus' ministry, the disciples would have been following him daily for a couple of years. He would have taught them many things about the scriptures referring to the Messiah, the...
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