The Prophetic Role of a Christian (Mt 18:15-20)
23rd Sunday – Year A
Faced with an enemy or an unjust aggressor, an animal has basically three options (3 F’s): Flight, Fight and Freeze. In danger, a rabbit always runs away (flight). When a snake perceives danger, its first option is to run away. When it realises that it cannot run away it attacks; it spits its venom (fight). The tortoise does not have horns or poison to attack, neither does it have speed to escape, its option is to freeze – to pull itself inward and pretend that it is dead.
Faced with an unpleasant situation we humans too have the above options. What do you do when we come across situations we don’t like in the street, or even in our parish community? Try to recall an occasion when you were at a meeting and you didn’t like the way the discussion […]
Year A
Year A Sunday Sermons
Sermon for Cycle A – 27th Sunday Homily: Spiritual Redundancy
Are you protected against Spiritual Redundancy?
27th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A
(Isaiah 5: 1-7; Psalm 79; Philippians 4: 6-9; Matthew 21: 33-43)
‘Redundancy’ is a word that you hear so often these days! More and more people are being made redundant, given the current economic environment. Since my return to theUK, this August, after being away for some months, I have heard at least three people explicitly speak to me about either they themselves or someone else in their family having been made redundant recently. They have lost their jobs.
We should not allow the profit-driven corporate institutions, or the civil services controlled by budget-cuts after years of excessive spending, to make a statement on our self-worth as individuals. Redundancy might have nothing to do with individuals’ talents and skills. Simply, the game of Monopoly that is being played by the corporate world should not make us feel that we are […]
Sermon for Cycle A – 33rd Sunday Homily: God the Gambler
God is a gambler! He takes risks with me.
33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A
(Prov 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31; 1The 5:1-6; Mt 25:14-30)
Not long ago, I was at HeathrowAirport, London, waiting to be called for boarding. With all the war against terrorism, air-travelling is becoming increasingly annoying these days. I had to throw away my cherished bottle of water at the point of security check! I needed another bottle to survive the long flight. So I went to buy it from one of those kiosks near the boarding gate. I picked up a one-litre bottle that was priced at £1.20p (one pound and twenty pence). When I went to pay at the till, the woman there told me with a smile: “We have a special offer today. If you bought The Times newspaper the water is for free. It costs £1 (one pound)!” Is it a way of forcing […]
Sermon for Cycle A – 2nd Sunday of Lent
Towards an experience of Jesus
For almost five years I was privileged to live at the foot of Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa. Every morning we looked up with a great expectation if the snow-capped peak would show itself. When it did, my day would begin by spending a few minutes just admiring its grandeur. For the Chagga people of Tanzania, who live around Kilimanjaro, this once a volcanic crater is the abode of God: ‘Kilima cha Ruah’ – as they called it! Mountains are seen as locations of God-experience in many traditional cultures, and in many of the world religions. It is not by chance then that one of the classical works of St John of the Cross is […]
Sermon for Cycle A – 4th Sunday of Lent: Light of the World
The Light of the World
4th Sunday in Lent – Cycle A
The three Sundays before the Palm Sunday in Cycle A of the liturgical year are special. The gospel passages from the Gospel of John develop three central themes relevant to our experience of Jesus:
Jesus, the Living Water (Jn 4: the Samaritan woman) – 3rd Sunday of Lent
Jesus, the Light of the World (Jn 9: the man born blind) – 4th Sunday of Lent
Jesus, the New Life (Jn 11: raising of Lazarus) – 5th Sunday of Lent
The gospel reading of this Sunday (the 2nd in the sequel) invites us to reflect on the story of the encounter between Jesus, the man born blind, and the Pharisees, so that we may experience Jesus as the Light of the World.
What does light do? It dispels darkness; it makes us recognise possibilities. In the context of the gospel of today, the light helps us […]