Homily: February 16, 2026 Monday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time (Tested -Faith)

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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 vanish like a flower scorched by the sun. Comfort, convenience, complacency – these weaken us and make us brittle.

When I was a teenager, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was the President of India. He was deeply respected and loved, especially by young people. He visited schools and colleges constantly. After his death, when his personal assets were listed publicly, people were shocked - not by how much he owned, but by how little he had. He left behind about 2,500 books, a veena, a laptop, 6 pants, 3 shirts and 3 suits. No house to his name, no car of his own, no valuable assets to show. Throughout his life, he was donating almost all of his income to education and to charity. He was a brilliant scientist, yet he kept an unbelievably simple life, even as a President of a huge nation.

Beneath it all, he was a man of prayer and fasting. His faith persevered over the test of status, power, comfort and wealth. All of which were within easy reach in his position.

Another person from India who lived even more simply, to the level of poverty, was Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She owned only three sarees as her entire closet, a rosary, and a crucifix, nothing else belonged to her personally. Yet decades after her death, to this day, the world still remembers and reveres her. We know that her life was totally dedicated to the mission Christ gave her.

Her faith persevered beyond the basic worldly standard for human living.

Every day our faith gets tested in this affluent and advanced society, where personal well-being, individualism, self-directed and un-restricted living is promoted and celebrated.

Can our faith in God’s providence, in the rewards of eternal life not earthly life, persevere over these tests and temptations?

In less than 48 hours, we begin the season of Lent. As Church, people who follow Christ, we are reminded that our life is not about worldly enjoyment, personal fulfillment or self-preservation. But our life is prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

Persevere. Amen.


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Homily: December 7, 2025, Second Sunday of Advent (Fruitfulness )

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Homily: February 10, 2025 Monday of the Fifth week in Ordinary time (Good)

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 "God Saw How Good It Was." I love to read the story of creation, to visualize how it all started, the see our origin, the source of our being. God, in His infinite love, created the world to express His goodness, and made humanity the crown of His creation, to reflect His perfection. His expression was good. His reflection was good. Everything He created was good because each of His creation had a purpose for existence, a place in the world, a special relationship with Him. There was unique beauty in each, and harmony as a whole. His grace was in everything. He could see it. It was truly good. We know that as the story continued, the beauty and perfection were shattered soon after, by the sin of man, God’s masterpiece of all His created beings. Superficially, we see that God’s creation was destroyed. However, if we look around the world today, we can still see glimpses of the original goodness. A newborn baby. A full bloom flower. A bright rising sun. We can see how good it ...
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Homily: May 20, 2024, Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church.

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“The man called his wife Eve because she became the mother of all the living.” According to the book of Genesis, we are all children of Eve, the first woman. This first woman fell easily into temptation and became disobedient to God. Looking at ourselves, aren’t we the same? We are generally easily tempted and fall into sin. We seem to contain deep rebellion in us and so we tend to be disobedient. We see the same trend of disobedience through all the biblical stories. We are just like our first mother of the earth. God, the creator of the first man and woman, has a plan of redemption. In the fullness of time, He got ready the second Eve, to prepare for the second Adam’s coming. Mary, is like Eve in every way including being born without original sin. She was subject to temptations the same, but the difference is Mary overcame all temptations and remained consistently obedient to God, even all the way along the painful road to Calvary right till at the foot of the cross.  God’s seco...
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Homily: December 12, 2025, Feast of the Our Lady of Guadalupe

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 “Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah.” Today we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Patroness of the Americas, the Mother who draws near to her children with tenderness and mercy. In the Gospel, we see Mary going in haste to the hill country to help Elizabeth. That was 2,000 years ago. Yet 500 years ago, Mary again traveled to a hill the hill of Tepeyac, to meet a poor, humble indigenous man, Juan Diego, and to entrust him with a mission that seemed completely impossible: “Build me a church here.” Juan Diego was a recent convert, just learning the faith. How could he possibly accomplish such a task? But this is how Mary works. She always chooses the lowly, the simple, the overlooked because she knows that when we say “yes” with humility, God does the rest. Her words to Juan Diego are among the most comforting Mary has ever spoken. Here are just a few: • “My son, I love you. I desire you to know who I am. I am the ever-Virgin Ma...
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Homily: August 15, 2024, Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

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 “For he has looked with favor on his lowly servant. From this day all generations will call me blessed.” Indeed, two thousand years since then, over a billion Catholics and millions of Orthodox Christians continue to call her blessed. Blessed is she who said yes to God to be the mother of God’s Son, blessed is she who conceived and birthed the Savior into the world, blessed is she who cared for and raised the Messiah for all of us, blessed is she who watched in pain and stayed with her son as He died on the cross, blessed is she who accepted to be the mother of the church. Today, the whole Catholic church, every diocese in the world, is celebrating the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We celebrate this feast every year, and we already know it is to commemorate the belief that Mary was taken straight up to heaven, body and soul, because she lived and died sinless. What makes Mary so important to the Church? The Church honors her with many titles, because she ...
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Homily: February 13, 2022, Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

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 In the first reading we heard, “Thus says the LORD: Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the LORD.” And then it continued with, “Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose hope is the LORD.” It is very clear, isn’t it? That those who turns away from God will be cursed and those who trusts in God will be blessed. The gospel reading today is known as the beatitudes, in which our Lord Jesus also spelled out the curses and the blessings. But it seems much harder to accept what Jesus is teaching here. I too struggle with this. Let us try to understand it together. We have been told that we came from God, and after this life, we will go back to God. For a long time, I questioned the rationale. Why create me to throw me into this difficult life just to bring me back to Him again? Why not just keep me with Him from the beginning and save me the trouble of going through this life? This earthly life is not easy. I w...
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