Acts 8:5-8, 14-17; 1 Pt 3:15-18; Jn 14:15-21 (April 27, 2008 – Fifth Sunday of Easter)

In the last few weeks, Jesus Christ has been inviting us to hope. He has been calling us to have faith in him and to remain in his love. In the face of all the pains and tribulations we go through, why should we still hope? For those who have suffered for many years, the question becomes, what is the fruit of hoping all these years? Our Christian hope is not foolish hope as some of my skeptical friends think. Our hope is not a pie in the sky as Karl Marx will think. It is not an illusion or at consequentially, a delusion as Sigmund Freud will argue. The temptation is that when we hope and hope for many years and nothing seems to change, we begin to believe that our hope is delusional.

In the last few months, there is hardly a day that goes by without using the word “hope.” For a friend who has just lost a loved one, I say “hope;” to a parishioner that has just been diagnosed of cancer, I say “hope;” to a class mate who has just been laid off because their company is moving over to Taiwan, I say “hope.” It is not uncommon to hear these people ask me, “Do you really believe that things will be better?” I do believe that things will be better. Why do I believe that things will be better? That is what I want to share with you today.

St. Peter tells us in the second reading of today that we need to have an explanation ready for anyone who asks us why we hope. My skeptical friends want to know why I will continue to hope in the Lord after letting my brother and sister die in accidents. Let me tell you, after going through traumatic or difficult circumstances in your life, it sometimes become difficult to remember why we hope. My job this morning is to remind us why we Christian people hope and to give you reasons why we should hope.

We hope because God is truth. He is always faithful to his word. He does not deceive us. Again and again throughout scriptures, he blessed those who hoped in his promises. The story of Abraham in the book of Genesis, is a story of hope. Abraham hoped that the promise which the Lord has made to him would be fulfilled. Biologically, it was impossible for him to become the Father of all nations because his wife Sarah had reached old age. He mistakenly thought that, that promise was to be fulfilled through Haggai, his slave woman. God still made it known to him that, it was Sarai that would fulfill this promise. He believed and because of his hope in the promise of the Lord, St. Paul tells us in Galatians 3:6 that he was credited of all righteousness.

We hope because we are children of Abraham. Through Jesus Christ, the singular descendant of Abraham, we too are sons and daughters of Abraham. The promises and blessings of Abraham are also rightfully ours. This promise from the Lord is of good and not of evil. In Deuteronomy 28:12-13, the Lord makes a promise to us, “The Lord will open up for you his rich treasure house of the heavens, to give your land rain in due season, blessing all your undertakings, so that you will lend to many nations and borrow from none. The Lord will make you the head, not the tail, and you will always mount higher and not decline …” It may be difficult to see how this promise would be fulfilled in your life if you are going through difficult circumstances. The promise of the Lord, is his promise, how he will fulfill it is not for us to decide. I remember what Mike Huckabee use to say in the campaign trail, “I am in the business of miracles and not Math.” Our science cannot explain how God will bring to fruition these promises. Job, the righteous man must have been wondering how God will bring about a change in his life after going through those years of tribulation in his life. His friends had all given up. He was even persuaded to curse God and die, but he stayed firm in the Lord. His response is found in Job 42:2, “I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be hindered.” As we see at the end of the story of Job, his situation was turned around. Job 42:12 tells us that, “The Lord blessed the late days of Job more than his earlier ones.”

We hope because hope does not disappoint. St. Paul in Romans 5: 4-5 says that we can now boast of our afflictions. We boast of our afflictions because they produce endurance, and endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint. It is hope that brings you here every morning, it is hope that makes you go to school, it is hope that makes you go to work. If you have no hope, you can do nothing. In Ezekiel 37, we have the prophecy of the dry bones. God asked the prophet Elijah to prophecy so that these dry bones will come back to life. He says that these dry bones are the house of Israel, their hope is lost and they have been cut off. God asked Elijah to prophecy that their graves will open and they will rise from them. He will put his spirit in them and they will live. He concludes that, “I have promised and I will do it.” We have become like dry bones without life in them. We have been buried in our problems and difficulties, but God has made a promise he will keep. He will open our graves and we will have life and live.

How is he going to give us life? He says to us in the gospel of today that, I will send you the Holy Spirit, the helper, the comforter. Help is on the way. On Friday, the President told us that the treasury department will be mailing out our stimulus checks beginning this Monday. That is help on the way. It will be foolish to sit down and hope that the checks are not coming. We know they are coming. In the same way, Jesus has told us that help is on the way, the Holy Spirit is coming to help us, it will be foolish to stop hoping and believing that help is not on the way. If we do that, we are making Jesus Christ a liar.

We hope because of what God has done in Jesus Christ. He sent him to come and set us free. What greater witness there is, for us to hope? If we believe that Jesus Christ died for us, then we have no option than to hope. His death and resurrection, guarantees everyone of us a place in his father’s kingdom, where as Revelation 21: 3-7 tells us, there is no pain and suffering. We must keep our eyes on this eternal prize. As St. Paul exhorts us in 2 Corinthians 4:16, “we are not discouraged by this momentarily light affliction … we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen, for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Let us not give away our greatest and only weapon, hope. If all fails, the one thing we must hold unto is hope. The moment you let go of hope, your life will become meaningless. It is hope that will bring us successfully to our kingdom. I live you with the words of the prophet Jeremiah in 31:17, “There is hope for the future, says the Lord.”

Sunday April 20, 2008: Acts 6:1-7; 1 Pt 2:4-9; Jn 14:1-12

In the gospel of John, Jesus Christ uses different imageries to describe himself. Last week, Jesus Christ told us in the gospel that he is the “Good shepherd” and also, that he is the “door.” In today’s gospel, he says to us, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” This revelation of Jesus to the people is important, given their pitiful situation. This revelation, assures a suffering people that they are making a right choice following him. At the very beginning of the gospel, he tells them, “Do not let your hearts be troubled, you have faith in God; have faith also in me.” These words speak to the circumstances of many people in this country today. I don’t know about you, but when I look at all that is happening, my heart is troubled. My heart is troubled because I am afraid of the economy; my heart is troubled because I am not sure if before the beginning of the summer, we will be paying $5 a gallon at the pump; my heart is troubled because people I know are losing their jobs or benefits; my heart feels troubled because our soldiers are dying every day in Iraq and we haven’t got a solution yet to the problems in Iraq and most of the middle East; my heart is troubled because the cost of health care is going up and many people cannot afford health insurance and are dying in silence. There are many things to be worried about.
The words of Jesus in the gospel, are words that bring me peace of heart. These words calm my fears. It is the same words I want to share with you today, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” When we encounter fears in our lives, there are two things we can do: we either hope or despair. There is a voice always saying to us, “things cannot be better, they can only get worst.” This voice leads us to be so worried. We worry so much that the things we could have even done properly, we do them improperly. This voice tells you that Jesus cannot help you in your situation. You begin to ask, what is the essence of prayer? This voice is not from God. This is the voice of despair. There is also another voice, the voice we heard in the gospel of today, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me.” This is the voice you need to listen to. It is the voice of hope; it is the voice of faith. Faith is what sees you through, during your times of tribulations. We listen to this voice because we can always count on God to be there for us. As St. Augustine tells us, “God is not a deceiver, that he should offer to support us, and then, when we lean upon Him, should slip away from us.” He always keeps to his promises and his promises are always of good and not of evil. Today’s gospel invites us to come and lean on Jesus with our troubled hearts. Why should we lean on him? Jesus tells us the reason in the gospel. He is “the way, the truth and the life.”

Jesus Christ is not just the one that shows us the way, he is himself “the way.” I know we men don’t like asking for directions. I must confess that I do not like asking for directions. The reason is because most times I do not trust the directions I will receive. My GPS even does not help either. Two weeks ago, I was celebrating Masses in Bluefield and Princeton, West Virginia. My navigation system was able to find the Church in Princeton on Saturday. On Sunday morning, it could neither found the church nor the street in which the church is located in Bluefield, West Virginia. It took two people giving me directions to get me to the church. I felt frustrated looking for the church that morning because I was running late. Supposing someone came to me at the time of the frustration and said to me, “you are looking for the way to the church? Don’t worry, I am that way. I will bring you right into the church.” I cannot imagine how peaceful I would have felt that morning. That is the offer Jesus Christ is giving us today. He is saying to you this morning, “ I am the way to your salvation; I am the way to your financial breakthrough in life; I am the way to your professional success; I am the way to peace in your family; I am the way to your academic success; I am the way to happiness in your life.” Don’t be afraid that he will not have resources for you. His resources are limitless. There are many mansions in his Father’s house, so there is enough for everyone.

We have a fundamental human craving for the truth. We desire to know the truth and sometimes we are afraid of hearing the truth. Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth” The Truth was standing right in front of him and he will not acknowledge it. Many of the problems we face are as a result of someone failing in his or her own duty of truthfulness. Jesus Christ was crucified for being the Truth and it will take many more crucifixions for many of our problems to be solved. We are afraid of being persecuted for the Truth, and thus we work harder to be politically correct, than being what we stand for. I see the Church being crucified every day in the media for what she teaches and we as the people of God must embody the identity of our teacher – the Truth. We need to know the Truth in order to be able to walk in the way of the Lord. The Truth is Jesus Christ. We are not speaking of an intellectual knowledge of Jesus, but a total acceptance of Him as your redeemer and savior. When you do this, you will begin to see him more present in your life and you will be able to cast freely your burdens into his care.

Jesus Christ offered his life on the Cross of Calvary for us that we might not perish but have life. This is the greatest love one can show to his friend. Yet, St. Paul tells us that when he did this for us, we were still sinners. This is the most compelling reason why our hearts should not be troubled. It is always said that, “a friend in need is a friend indeed.” Jesus Christ has shown us that he is truly a friend. When we were in need of salvation, Christ offered his life for us, how much more the challenges of our earthly life? We can always trust that he will be there for us. All that is required of us is that faith in him. We need to let go and let him do his job. He is God and we are not.

I leave you with these words for the week, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

Luke 20: 27-40 (Saturday, November 24, 2007)

The Sadducees do not believe in the resurrection and Angels. They hold as authoritative only the first five books of the bible, the Torah. Their question in today’s gospel is to disprove the teaching on the resurrection. Jesus does not attempt to respond to them using the teachings on the resurrection in Maccabees and Daniel. He knows they will not accept these authoritative. He returns to Exodus 3. When the Sadducees argue against Jesus using the example of marriage, they are looking at resurrection more or less as a resuscitation of the body. Christian resurrection as understood in the New Testament is not resuscitation. It is a transformation in which our bodies are no longer mortal or corruptible. The resurrection conquers all authority and the last enemy of the human person is death. The resurrection conquers death. Since death is conquered by the resurrection of Jesus, Christians too can hope in the resurrection. And since Christians are transformed and they would live forever with Jesus in heaven where he is the all in all, there would be no need for marriage.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus Christ, you are our resurrection and our life. Come alive in our lives that we may live as people who hope for the resurrection.

Luke 8: 16-18 (Monday, September 24, 2007)

One of the Catholic symbols of baptism is light. Parents and godparents are invited to receive the light of Christ - the light is entrusted to them to keep it burning, so that when the Lord comes, he will find them watching. The Christian life should be like a light that shines through all the world. Light is one of the symbols that Jesus Christ uses to identify himself. He says, "I am the light of the world." We all have been entrusted with this light of Christ, the question is, are we burning brightly? Sometimes we are ashamed of our faith; we feel timid talking about Jesus; we deny Jesus in the presence of non-Christians. My interest today is not how much we have failed to be the light of Christ, but how we can become the light of Christ? The past has happened and gone and there is not much we can do to change that than to seek the forgiveness of God for our failures. Christ is giving us one more opportunity today to rekindle our lights. The best way towards becoming Christ's light is by the way you live your life. Your life must radiate the Christian virtues of faith, hope, love and charity. When you live radically these values, people will come to know and believe in Jesus. As you strive to do these things, more graces will be given to you by Jesus to enable you become even the more successful in your Christian life.

Prayer:
Lord, you have called us to be your light shinning through all the world. Please help us to rekindle the light of your faith, hope, love and charity in us, that we may shine brightly your life to those we meet.