Homily: December 2, 2025, Tuesday of the First Week of Advent (Knowledge)

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“There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the LORD, as water covers the sea.”

How beautiful this promise is, the entire earth filled with the knowledge of the Lord as water covers the sea. Imagine a world where every heart, every home, every nation is filled with the knowledge of God. What a different world that would be.

Knowledge is one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. But this knowledge does not simply mean information it means truly knowing God: knowing His heart, His will, His love, His commandments.

This is the very purpose of human life. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1721 teaches: God placed us in the world to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him, and so to come to Paradise.

And notice the order: Know> Love> Serve. We cannot love someone we do not know, and we cannot serve someone we do not love.

So how do we know God? The Psalm tells us: “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). To know God, we need stillness a peaceful and quiet heart.

In the noise of the world, with distractions from every corner, we may hear many voices but not the voice of God.

We must choose moments of silence, prayer, and reflection.

It is only in that stillness that the Holy Spirit can fill our minds with the knowledge of God.

When people truly know God, they begin to love Him. And when they love Him, they begin to serve Him. And then the world becomes a better place.

The first reading gives us a picture of such a world, where even creation is transformed: no hatred, no violence, no fear between animals or between humans and animals. Harmony. Peace. Unity. This is what the world looks like when the knowledge of the Lord fills it.

Let us pray that every heart knows God and come to the full knowledge of him. 




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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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 “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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 “You have been going up to Jerusalem long enough. Here is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.” Today’s first reading takes us back to the time of King Jeroboam. He was afraid that his people would keep going to Jerusalem and finally lose their loyalty to him, thus he made two golden calves and told the people: “Here is your god.” Jeroboam committed two serious sins. First, he created false gods. Second, he led others into sin, to worship what was lifeless and false, and to believe that this false god brought them out of Egypt. Are those two golden calves evil? If you go to parts of North India, you will see random cows roaming freely on the roads. Any car driving near must stop and give way to these cows, even if it meant waiting some time for them to slowly move out of the way. Causing harm or injury to a cow will lead to serious legal consequences. In fact, if you slaughter a cow, you might end up in prison. because cows are considered sacred in the Hi...
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Homily: October 21,2024, Monday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time (Greed).

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 He asked himself, ‘What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?’ The rich man in Jesus’ parable had a wonderful problem. His harvest is so abundant that his existing storehouse was not big enough for it. It was time for expansion! He will get wealthier! Thus, he thought to himself, “…you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!”’ Isn’t that what most of us plan for ourselves? To earn as much as possible as soon as possible, so that we can retire early and enjoy the rest of our lives. Many people believe that having enough wealth will bring them happiness, so they focus on accumulating and protecting their possessions and wealth. The problem with this rich man is not his wealth, nor about the abundant harvest he was having, but about what was dominating his life. The problem was not what he possessed, but what was possessing him. Greed possessed him, and determined his decisions, plans and actions. There was no room for thanksg...
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Homily: April 30, 2025, Wednesday of the second week of Lent (God's power)

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Holy Family School Mass Homily   “The men whom you put in prison are in the temple area and are teaching the people.” Wow, what happened? The apostles of Christ were supposed to be locked up in prison, how did they appear in the temple area preaching and teaching the people? Well, blessed and happy Easter to all of you! I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend and a restful spring break! Jesus died, and have risen from the dead, and continued to walk around earth, spending time with His disciples for 50 days, that is why we are still in the Easter season. Thereafter, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to His followers, empowering them with many spiritual gifts and that changed everything! Before that, the apostles were all afraid and were hiding from their enemies. But once the Holy Spirit came upon them, they became super courageous. They began to go around preaching boldly and confidently about Jesus, even to the very people who had put Jesus to death. They were no longer afrai...
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Homily: December 28, 2025, Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph (Dreams)

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 “The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you.’” As a young man, Joseph must have had beautiful dreams about his future family. He could have imagined a helpful and capable wife, children playing around the house and growing up to be well respected people in the community, a vision of a stable and peaceful life. When he got engaged to Mary, it seemed like his dreams would become reality soon. Many of us, married or not, can identify with the dreams that Joseph could have had. Yet like Joseph, the realities of our lives would have unfolded quite differently from how we have dreamt it. Joseph’s family life turned out totally unlike his own dreams, yet he continued to dream, now with God’s will revealed and God’s plan unfolding in the reality of his life. The hardship he went through in Bethlehem, with the birth of Jesus, did not end there. Today’s Gospel shows another unexpected cha...
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