Watch!

First Sunday of Advent Year B
November 30, 2008
Isaiah 63:16-17; 64:1, 3-8; Cor 1:3-9; Mark 13:33-37

Stay Awake!
(Be watchful! Be alert!)

Introduction
Have you seen the Australian game show “The Singing Bee”? This game show is originally from America and because of its popularity it has now many international versions.

The basic rule of the game is simply to sing lyrics to songs correctly or risk being eliminated immediately. In a karaoke challenge each contestant sings the blanks in the lyrics being displayed on the screen with correct words. For every word correctly sung, the player is given a point.


The player who finishes with the least amount of points for instance in Round 1 and 2 combined is eliminated from the game.

Let's try this game. I will sing a song and you sing the missing word.

We wish you a merry _ _ _
We wish you a merry _ _ _
And a happy New Year!

You better watch out you better not cry
You better not pout I am telling you why
_ _ _ _ is coming to town!

It’s hard to believe that today we begin the first week of Advent leading us to our four weeks of preparation before Christmas. It's hard to believe we can now hearing again Christmas carols on radio, tv and in shopping malls.

Look around us, everyone is getting ready for Christmas. Too often, however, people are so busy with the material preparations that we lose sight of the real reason for Advent season: the coming birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Many times I really would like to change the lyrics of this Christmas carol.

You better watch out you better not cry
You better not pout I am telling you why
Jesus Christ is coming to town!
Jesus Christ is coming to our homes!
Jesus Christ is coming to our hearts!

Jesus – is - Christmas.
It – is – Jesus – who – is coming – this - Christmas

I am not against Santa Claus. He was in fact a Catholic bishop known for his generosity especially to the poor. We love Santa Claus because of goodness. But let us remember that Santa Claus was generous because he loved Jesus. Let us be watchful not to be misled by our consumer society that is making Santa Claus a mere symbol of consumption of material things during Christmas.

Be watchful
Be watchful. It the call of today's Gospel reading on this first week of Advent. Be watchful in preserving the spiritual focus of Christmas amidst our prevailingly secular and consumer-driven society.

The Lord teaches us in today’s Gospel reading to “wake up”, be watchful and be alert because like a master of the house who traveled abroad He will come back anytime without a warning. We must be always ready and alert for his arrival.

What it means to be watchful? To be watchful means to understand the call of Advent Season, thus the true message of Christmas. First of all we have to understand the history of salvation. Advent Liturgy celebrates beginning today the history of Israel, pointing us and leading us towards the fulfillment of the messianic prophecies - the birth of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

As for today’s readings – the First is a poem entreating God to come and save his people. It recalls God’s past goodness, and acknowledges the ingratitude and sinfulness of his people.

The Second Reading and the Gospel talk about the final coming of Christ, something that early Christians believed was imminent. For the faithful, the Lord’s coming is not something to fear, only if you are ready, watchful and more conscious of our actions – the way we treat other people, in our words, and in our thinking.

Three times in today’s Gospel Jesus urges his disciples, so us, to ‘watch!’ To 'watch' is a word we need to remember as we ready ourselves for the coming of the Lord.

How to watch?
We are watchful even in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the season, when we strive to keep Advent a season of waiting and longing, of conversion and hope, meditating often on the incredible love and humility of our God in taking on flesh of the Virgin Mary.

In our shopping, we are watchful when we remember to purchase and prepare something for the poor. We are watchful when we clean our homes, we remember to distribute some of our possessions to those who lack many necessities. While we are decking the halls of our homes, we become watchful when we don't forget to prepare a peaceful place in our hearts wherein our Savior may come to dwell.

Singing bee
Let’s imagine Christmas like The Singing Bee game show. Jesus is giving us the missing lyrics we need to know by heart, watch! Let us memorize it, keep it, learn it and practice it if we don’t want to be eliminated from this beautiful season of Advent.


photo: My friend Stacy's two friends singing at KTV in Taipei.

Kakaibang Kaharian

Christ the King 2008
Ezekiel 34:11-12, 15-17; Psalm 23:1-2, 2-3, 5-6
1 Corinthians 15:20-26, 28; Matthew 25:31-46
November 21-22, 2008

A Unique Kingdom

With the feast of Christ the King, we come to the end of the Calendar of the Church or the culmination of the Liturgical Year. Next week is the first of week of advent Season, the beginning of our four-week preparation for Christmas.

As the Church concludes today its liturgical year with the celebration of the Solemnity of Christ the King, the Gospel call us to mind the concluding moment of human history: Judgment Day. At the end of the day, Jesus Christ, our universal King, will be our universal judge who will judge us according to our good deeds on earth as the Gospel illustrates, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Judgment Day is not something to be scared rather it should be something we must look forward to because it assures us that injustice and evil will not have the last word. It is Goodness and not Evil that will prevail. Therefore, the reality of Judgment Day is a constant reminder for us to live in holiness, justice and peace so that we shall not be condemned, but rather receive salvation, and we can be those to whom Christ will say: Come, you who are blessed by Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you.


Universal Hope
Jesus Christ the King, who is our final Judge, is also our universal hope. One of the greatest challenges we face each day is hopelessness. Many people suffer hopelessness on their present situation or to their future. Our hope against hope often times leads us to depressions. We face dreadful uncertainties and hopelessness in life to name a few we worry about our own individual struggles and fears, in addition there are growing threats around us such as violence, climate change, global financial recession, and so on.

Only in Jesus Christ the King we can find hope for the salvation of our fallen and sinful humanity. Pope Benedict XVI said in his book Spes Salvi, The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life. We Christians are people of hope. We cannot be touch by any forms of depression when we hope. We cannot be deaden loneliness when there is at least a spark of hope in our hearts.

Our hope lies on the Kingdom of God. His Kingdom is not about royal castles, knights in golden armor, and grand military battles. God's Kingdom concerns not the glory, power and popularity that only enslave people and bring false hope. God's Kingdom is Kingdom of hope that doesn’t enslave people but sets them free. Jesus liberates us from sin and sets us free to be the person God intends us to be. Jesus gives us the truth about our life, about ourselves, about our future. This is the Kingdom we celebrate today.

My Kingdom does not belong to this world, says Jesus to Pilate. Its power is not from the world, but from the grace and life of the Risen Christ. Every Sacrament we celebrate points us to this Kingdom. We become royal member of God's Kingdom through Baptism. We are made faithful soldiers of His Kingdom through our Confirmation, Penance and Holy Communion. And we serve God's Kingdom through our vocation as married couple, single people, and priests or religious.

The fulfillment of God's Kingdom is where our hope rests. We end today the Church Calendar filled with hope that as we begin a new Season, we become a better person, more worthy to share God's Kingdom. As we begin very soon Advent, let us take this our fresh start to begin and to unite ourselves more deeply with Jesus our King. Let the power and peace of Christ the King remain with us, stay with us and guide us. May we all hear clearly our Lord's shepherdly love for us, so that like His good sheep, we may "hear His voice and follow Him" (Jn 10:27) until the end. Amen.



photo: Sr Beth & Sr Maria walking back to their convent in St Augustine, Baliuag, Bulacan.

To Our Departed Loved Ones

All Souls Day

Isaiah 25:6-9; Rom 5:5-11; Mt 11:25-30
November 1-2, 2008

All Saints Day
Yesterday the Church celebrated the feast of All Saints. Every year, on the first day of November, we give honor to all the saints in heaven, both canonized and not canonized, who are now sharing Christ’s Risen glory.

Canonized saints are holy people officially recognized and acknowledged by the Church to be models of holiness. On another hand, un-canonized saints are those faithful departed who are now enjoying the beatific vision or in heaven known to God alone. Some of them shed their blood or left them homeland & loved ones or denied their personal dreams for the sake of their love to Jesus.

On All Saints Day we congratulate all of them and we thank them for being exemplars of our Christian faith.

Saints were ordinary human beings like us, they were rich and poor, parents and celibates, students, professionals, scholars, there were also illiterates, but we call them “saints” because they lived extra-ordinary lives of holiness. They showed us the beauty and majesty of a life of fidelity to Christ that is not measured by publicity or by the flash and glamour but by fidelity.

The saints are not only models of Christian holiness, but because they are now in Heaven they are also our intercessors, helpers in prayer, partners, and patrons. In our parish we have St. Andrew as our patron saint. Through his intercession he is helping us to be heroic parishioners and faithful in our life whilst we ware still here in this world.

All Soul’s Day
And today we celebrate All Souls Day or the commemoration of All the Faithful Departed. It is a time in the year when we remember all our departed loved ones and all our friends who have gone before us in prayer with deep love and faith.

In this Mass we recall all those people whose lives have deeply affected us, people who have traveled a part of life’s journey with us, we also remember those people who from our childhood have assisted us in our life.
Our special prayer for them today can be a way of showing gratitude for their contribution for what we are now.

We remember our departed loved ones not as perfect beings but as human persons with limitations much like we have. If some of those who died may have failed us, they are much in need of our prayer and forgiveness. For this reason, our prayer can be an instrument of reconciliation with those from whom we had become distant or even resentful.

Today we also remember in our prayer, most especially in this Mass, all the souls unknown to us who are still on their journey to the gates of heaven. They are the souls in purgatory undergoing final purification until they become “capable of God and thus capable of unity with the whole communion of saints” in heavenly Kingdom.

Far from being morbid, far from many scary images of death, ghost and spirit we see in television every year during Halloween, All Saints Day and Souls Day are two wonderful occasions of remembering, healing and praying. It is a great day of reconciliation and spiritual reunion with out departed brothers in sisters.

Last night I had a feeling of being a little bit of nostalgic because I missed celebrating All Saints Day in the Philippines. In the Philippines All Saints Day has become a deep-rooted family tradition handed down from generation to generation. It is a national holiday to allow people go to their hometowns to visit the tomb of their loved ones to pay respects. Families spend time at to cemeteries to offer prayers and flowers and light candles at the grave of their loved ones. Many families stay until night time and that makes occasion become a bonding moments or family reunion with relatives and friends.

Praying for the Dead
The feasts of All Saints’ Day and All Souls Day have something in common, and for this reason, have been placed one after the other. Both celebrations speak to us of what's beyond.

All Souls Day invites us to a wise reflection: Death is certain. One day we shall leave this world. All Souls’ Day should remind us that we are but pilgrims, we are mortals, one day we shall leave everything in this life. We leave this world carrying nothing except the love that we shared while we were still alive.

Although death is certain, although death brings us tears, although just to think of death scares us to death, it always has a positive side. Death is the only passage leading to something entirely wonderful. Death leads us to the door of heaven, to immortality, to eternal life with the God of life.

But death can only be meaningful when we believe in Christ’s resurrection. As Jesus promised: "I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in, even if he dies, will live."

We heard from the readings today the trumpet sounds of our Christian faith calling us to mind that God is more powerful than death.

First reading: (The Lord God) will destroy death forever…he will wipe away the tears from all faces.

Responsorial Psalm: The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom should I fear? The Lord is my life’s refuge; of whom should I be afraid

Gospel: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.

Our final resting place is the hands of God. Death will always remain a mystery and will cause us pain. Yet as Christians we live in faith and hope. If we had enough faith, we would face death without fear and welcome it as a homecoming in the house of the Father. God will not let us perish for ever. In Christ we have God's promise that we will rise from the dead for glory and eternal joy.

In this hope we commend today all the dead into the hands of the living God. May they rest in peace. Amen.