Homily: September 22,2025, Monday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time (Temple)

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 “The LORD, the God of heaven, has given to me, and he has also charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah.”

Somehow, priests in general have a special sub-vocation for building projects. Ezra was a priest, and he too was rebuilding the temple which was destroyed by the Babylonians; thus, this book of Ezra paid much attention to this concern.

Back in my home diocese, there was a parish priest who decided to build a new church for his parish which was in a very poor area. He knew his parishioners couldn’t give much money, so he gave each family some banana seedlings according to the size of their farms. Some got only two, some got up to fifty. And he told them: “Grow them, harvest them, sell them, and bring the money back to build the church.”

That was indeed “seed money”. When the people saw the results and how they could further contribute to building their new church, they became more involved and creative. The mothers started making mango pickles and other varieties of pickles, they sold them to neighboring parishes and collected good money. Gradually, with everyone’s effort using whatever resources they had, they managed to build a new church for themselves, not from their own wealth, but from their creativity, extra labor and community effort.

The original temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians, and the Israelites were taken to exile. When the people returned after their exile, Ezra led them to rebuild the temple. This was the very temple where Jesus preached, taught, and performed miracles. This was the temple Jesus cleansed and wept for.

The Israelites poured out their love and labor into rebuilding God’s house in memory of their past, unknowingly they were also building the temple for Jesus’ use in the future, hundreds of years later.

Our ancestors here in Des Moines similarly sacrificed their resources to build St. Ambrose and other beautiful churches. Our beautiful church was built in 1890 and been renewed through major and minor renovations across the years. While we are benefitting from the blessings passed down from the early communities, we too in turn should upkeep and sustain it well for the many years ahead, the many generations to come, and who knows what miracles or amazing works this church might hold in time to come.

For now, the greatest miracle in this church is Jesus coming to us every day. Here, His Body is broken to feed us; here, His Blood is poured out to nourish us. Here, God unites Himself with His people. Here, heaven and earth are one.

Let us cherish these gifts and praise God unceasingly for His abundant graces and blessings. Amen.


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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 r...
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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 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: August 10, 2025, Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

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 “You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” Do you like surprise visits? Some of us do. Recently, I went again to visit my sister and her family. Since the last visit, my 4-year-old nephew had been calling me almost daily and asking me to visit him again. So, this time, I told my sister to keep my trip a secret, I wanted to surprise the little boy. When he saw me finally, his eyes were wide open with disbelief, and his mouth too was wide open in surprise! I will never forget that look on his face, and the exuberant joy of the moment when I hugged and carried him. But not all of us like surprise visits, especially when the visitors come at the wrong time, and we are caught unprepared. When I was in high school, our principal, Fr. George, was very strict. He didn’t talk much, but he knew every student. Occasionally, he would walk along the school corridors, surveying every corner and if he caught any student misbehaving, he would carry ou...
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Homily: September 12, 2025, Friday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time(Ignorance)

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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 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, 2024, Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time (Immoral Christians).

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“It is widely reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of a kind not found even among pagans.”  Once, I came across this quote from Thomas Merton: “The greatest evil is found where the highest good has been corrupted.” How true! And how sad… There is probably no statistics to confirm this, but superficially, we can see how countries with majority Christians seemed to be more liberal in their views and practices which are opposing to Church teachings, while some countries with minority Christians, even with persecution of the faith, seem to be more in agreement with Church values. St. Peter warned, “Your adversary the devil walks around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.” And the devil wants to devour the believer, because the non-believer is already on his side. And if we are not careful, or are complacent or weak, we are easy targets. As I read somewhere, “the devil doesn’t come dressed in a red cape and pointy horns, he comes disguised as every...
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Homily: October 2, 2022, Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time.

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 “How long, O Lord? I cry for help but you do not listen! I cry out to you.” We see in the first reading, prophet Habakuk’s cry of desperation to God. It is also a complaint against God for ignoring Habakuk’s need. Have you cried like that to God before? Have you ever felt that God ignored you? I am sure there are moments in life when we find ourselves helpless and desperate. When I learned that my parents had terminal illness, when the treatments did not work, when it seemed my prayers were not heard, I cried in the same way. It was many years later when I look back on those difficult times, that I understood better how God was guiding me and walking with me in my desperate moments. He was using the struggles and trials I experienced to strengthen me. I didn’t fully understand at first. I failed to see Him working, I failed to trust Him, I failed to see beyond my emotions and fears. It is with hindsight, looking at where I was then and where I am now, I see how I have grown, I rea...
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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: 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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