Homily: September 20, 2025, Saturday of the Twenty-Fourth week in Ordinary Time (Commandments)

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 “Keep the commandment without stain or reproach until the appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

In this month’s Catholic Mirror, Fr. Ron Rolheiser shared a story about a couple celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. At the celebration, the husband said: “When we got married 50 years ago, we didn’t have much. But we had an unconscious trust that if we lived by the Ten Commandments and the laws of the Church, then things would turn out all right, and I think, they did.”

Fifty years of marriage is not just “all right”, many of you who are married would know, it is hard work. And truly, very often God’s grace is at work harder than the couple. So fifty years of marriage is a testimony to a life of faith and full of God’s grace. The Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses and the Israelites thousands of years ago are still relevant for us today, guiding us every step of our faith life.

The challenge is that human nature resists compliance and obedience to commands. We don’t like rules. The Ten Commandments are simple in words, but very difficult to live out fully in practice. Yet they are not optional, they are God’s blueprint for holiness.

When the rich young man asked Jesus, “What must I do to gain eternal life?” Jesus’ first response was: “Follow the commandments.” This is the foundation. If we keep the commandments faithfully, we will reach eternal life.

All it requires is our willingness, our deep acceptance of first, that God is God, the Almighty, the Judge of Life, the One to whom we must be united with, because if not God, it will be the evil one. There is no middle ground.

And second, a clear realization that ‘if not eternal life, it will be eternal death’. This too, there is no other world midway.

Following the ten commandments is our way to being in the same boat with Jesus, in the direction towards eternal life. Hop onboard and stay on course.

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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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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 “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: 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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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, June 1, 2022, Memorial of Saint Justin, Martyr

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 “And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated”. This is Jesus’ prayer for His disciples, and His prayer for us who believe in Him. What does it mean to be consecrated? It means to be set aside for holiness, to be anointed for God’s purpose, to be devoted totally to God. Jesus consecrated Himself for the disciples and for us. And by that, we too may be consecrated to God, to be set aside for God’s purpose of salvation, mercy and love. In the book of Genesis chapter 28, Jacob anointed a stone with oil, dedicated that place to God and named it Bethel. Thus, Bethel became part of salvation history. Samuel anointed David and the little shepherd boy became the king of Israel. Jesus consecrated His disciples, anointed them with the Holy Spirit and these simple fishermen became powerful fishers of men. Consecration empowers and transforms. It gives new purpose, new identity, new mission to the consecrated. Once, I attended a Cistercian ordination rite. The newly ...
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Homily: September 3, 2025, Wednesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time (Healing Hands)

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Holy Family School Mass Homily.   “At sunset, all who had people sick with various diseases brought them to him. He laid his hands on each of them and cured them.” In today’s Gospel, we hear about Jesus healing many people with different diseases. The passage begins with the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, who was very sick in bed with a very high fever. She was not merely resting, in fact her fever was so bad that she was unable to get out of bed. I am guessing it could be 103 or 104 degrees! Normally, if we get such a high fever, it would take us days to recover with strong medication. But when Jesus visited Peter’s mother-in-law, He simply stood over her, rebuked the fever, that means He scolded the fever, and it left her!  Instantly, she was well again and was able to get up and serve Jesus and His disciples. Wow! Jesus is the King of the Universe, He has power over everything in the world, if you would only believe in Him and trust Him. Even today, Jesus continues ...
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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:" May 7, 2024. Tuesday of the Sixth week of Easter (praise and worship in Prison)

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 "About midnight, while Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God…” I cannot even imagine this scene. How could they still pray and sing in such a situation? Whenever I have a slight headache, ear infection, or a little upset stomach, I would already be very disturbed. I would not even want to talk to anyone during those moments. If I had something worse, I might not even be able to pray. If you look carefully at my left eyebrow, you will notice a scar. During my seminary days in Rome, there was once when I was late for class, and I ran so fast into the classroom that I crashed into the glass door without realizing it was closed. I shattered the glass and a piece of it cut deep across my eyebrow. Thankfully it missed my eye. I was so in pain, shock and bleeding that I could not talk to anyone for a while, and I definitely was not in the mood to sing or pray. But look at Paul and Silas. They had just been attacked by a crowd, were then stripped, and beaten with rods. Aft...
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