Homily: August 30, 2025, Saturday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time (Work Hard)

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 “Aspire to live a tranquil life, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your own hands, as we instructed you.” 

This is exactly what I desire for my own life, a tranquil, serene, peaceful life. And I believe many of us long for the same too. St. Paul repeatedly encourages the Christian community to live in peace, to engage in meaningful work, and to live in harmony with one another, respecting a healthy privacy and space for others.

One common misunderstanding among the early Christians was about the Second Coming of Christ. Many believed that Christ’s return was imminent, so close that it would happen within their lifetime. Because of this anticipation, some thought that working to upkeep livelihood or planning for their children’s future were pointless.

And in some sense, it is practical. If you knew that everything you are working for would soon be useless, that your life would be totally transformed and all your property would be valueless, would you still work? Work for the sake of meeting material need would seem logically unnecessary, wouldn’t it?

At that time, the theology about the end of time was still developing. No one truly understood what Jesus really meant and many people took His words literally and expected His return to be immediate.

More than two thousand years later, we read Scripture with a broader perspective, and Bible scholars have now put everything Jesus taught in totality. We therefore now know that the end of time will not happen, Jesus will not return yet, until the Gospel has been preached to all nations.

So, what do we do while waiting? Do we then go ahead to enjoy life’s pleasures since it might be a long time away before end time?

No. Paul’s advice is still largely relevant to us today: “Aspire to live a tranquil life, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your own hands.”

To live a life which is not disturbed by temptations to forget God, to work with our own hands and not expect others to work for our benefit, and work not for worldly gains, but to make effort at preaching the Gospel to where it has not been preached, so that we can participate in the mission of Christ, to speed up His coming again, and to all enter the Kingdom of God when the time is here.

Jesus said in John 9:4: “We have to do the works of the One who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work.”

We are given another day, another chance. Let us aspire a tranquil life, rooted in God’s peace, while working hard for His Kingdom.

Amen.


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Homily: February 22, 2025 Feast of the chair of St. Peter.

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 “Then desire conceives and brings forth sin, and when sin reaches maturity, it gives birth to death.” St. James gives us an important teaching today. Desire, he says, can conceive and thereafter give birth to sin. If allowed to grow, it can reach a point of maturity, with the ability to take control and set direction, leading to death. The consequence of sin is death. Are all desires sinful or evil? 2,500 years ago, Buddha taught that desire is the cause of suffering. Because people almost always desire what they do not yet have. To be able to achieve the object of our desire, will sometimes bring us satisfaction, but when unable to achieve what we desire, will cause a sense of failure, a feeling dissatisfaction, the beginning of suffering. Many Buddhists today desire freedom and justice, in places which do not have freedom and justice. The desire stems from a real need, and that is nothing bad or wrong. What could go wrong is the way such a desire is pursued. To desire is a norma...
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 “Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.” Every one of our Christian journey begins with a very simple thing: “Yes”. At baptism, the priest asks the parents or the candidates three questions: Do you renounce Satan? Do you reject sin? Do you reject all that leads you away from God? If the answer is Yes, Yes and Yes, then he asks three more questions to confirm our belief, the profession of our faith in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Yes, Yes and Yes. And from that moment, we belong to God totally. Our new relationship with God, our new life as a Christian begins. Do we then live happily ever after? Realistically, this is where the struggle also begins. Growing up, I have said many “Yes’s” to God. Often, I have also said “No” to Him. But more often, My Yes’s were compromised, unaccomplished, unreliable. Often, they were conditional “Yes’s”. I negotiated and bargained with God, I procrastinated and made excuses. They would so...
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 “For you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. And let perseverance be perfect, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” When I read this passage from St. James, one thought came to my mind: faith that gets tested is invaluable, and so necessary for our journey towards holiness. St. James reminds us that trials are not meant to destroy us. They are not even meant to weaken us. Instead, they strengthen us. They produce in us the persevering spirit. Without testing, we are happy being complacent, we take for granted our faith, and other gifts. But when tested, we guard our gifts, we check our faith, and we want to defend it. That helps me keep focused on growing our faith. Repeat that, and we develop a maturity that can handle anything and everything in life. At the end of this reading, something else struck, which warned of the consequence of not being tested, of being in comfort and complacency: the one who works only for riches will vanis...
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