Homily: June 5, 2024 Wednesday of the ninth week in Ordinary time (Stir into Flame)

 “For this reason, I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands.”

‘Stirring into flame’ was one of my daily tasks when I was a young boy.

In my family, every meal was cooked with firewood. There was no electricity, no gas. To heat up our kitchen stove, we had to keep the firewood burning, my mother would always ask me to blow through a small steel pipe to stir up the flames of the firewood. That was my job every day when mommy cooked. Mommy’s cooking took hours.

Then there was the local blacksmith who sharpened our spades, sickles and axes. Whenever I brought our farm tools to him for sharpening, I would also have to help him keep the heat up for the sharpening process. I had to keep swinging the handle of a pump to force air into the fire to keep it burning for as long as the sharpening was on-going.

Based on my childhood experiences, to “stir into flame” is hard work. My cheeks and mouth were always tired and painful from the kitchen work, and at the blacksmith’s, my arms would ache and sore.

My nieces and nephews would probably never get to experience what I did just as I would never know how my parents and grandparents went through daily life before my time. Yes, with modernization, the use of information technology, and artificial intelligence, many traditional ways of doing things and living are left in the past. Despite now being an improvement from the past, we still consider those as “the good old days”.

My parents may not have left behind a lot of valuables for us, but one thing they made sure we inherited from them was the Catholic faith. I am always grateful to them and my grandparents for not only planting the seeds but also for stirring into flame the gift of faith in me, through their lives. They lived a good example of faith and devotion.

Everyone of us here today is blessed. Our faith now is the result of someone or something which stirred up the flames of our being and led us to embrace this faith.

We too can do the same to pay it forward. We live in a world very disconnected from God, and each of us carry the responsibility to keep the faith alive in our families, in our communities, and in our society.

Stirring up the gift of faith by being a good example is tough job most times, but like every well-cooked meal, the hard work will surely feed well too. So let us keep the fire burning! Amen.