July 28, 2009: Medjugorje Peace Mass

It used to be that we would send a written message to a person by way letters or notes. But many of us have replaced bulk of our letter and note writing with emails and even texting. Because now we have more quantity than quality, we focus on efficiency--how can I reduce the number of words that write yet convey the same message. So in texting we use cryptic letters like, HAK. If you googled this term, you'll find that it means, "Hugs and Kisses." Even in our emails, we are becoming more terse and brief. There is one word that we typically leave out, the word, "Dear." It was a typical way for us to start a letter, acknowledging with that single word, the one to whom the message is intended for is, beloved or loved, cherished, heartfelt, and precious in one's regard. Does our omission of this word, 'Dear,' say something about us and how we convey message to another?

Our Lady who has been appearing since 1981 in a little Croatian town of Medjugorje, has not followed this modern trend. When she gives messages to the visionaries and to us, she always begins with the words, "Dear children." Her messages are meant not just for the visionaries or the people of Medjugorje. It's meant for the world. So in these two simple words, "Dear children," what is she telling us? That all of us are her children, and all of us are beloved, cherished, and precious. But how many of us earthly children realize that we are cherished and precious?

Several years ago, I was on a summer youth trip sponsored by the parish which took us 9 hours to reach by bus. I sat next to a young man who was graduating high school and thinking

about entering military. He handed me headphones to his CD player and said, "Here, I want you to here this song. It really reflects what I feel and believe." The song was called "Numb" by a rock band called 'Linkin Park.' And the lyric goes like this:

I'm tired of being what you want me to be

Feeling so faithless lost under the surface

Don't know what you're expecting of me

Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes

(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)

Every step that I take is another mistake to you

(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)

Can't you see that you're smothering me

Holding too tightly afraid to lose control

Cause everything that you thought I would be

Has fallen apart right in front of you

What feelings did you get when I read this lyric? Anger, frustration, disappointment. It's reflective of a young person who feels like rebellion, wanting to get out of the shadows of his parents and drop everything he was taught to believe, including God. To this young man, his parents and God were like strait jacket. I knew where he was coming from. When I was his age, that's what it felt like for me. As an act of rebellion, one thing that I could do at his age was to drop whatever I learned about religion. The ultimate freedom, I believed at that age, was to believe only in myself. That was the surest fact I knew. For those of you who took philosophy classes, this is reminiscent of Descartes' "I think, therefore, I am" axiom. But rugged individualism can only last so long. I quickly found out that I could not survive on my own. For one thing, I needed my parents' help to pay for college bills. I didn't like the feeling that I was dependent on someone else, yet I needed someone else. The beginning of my conversion was when God helped me to realize that He has placed my parents to take care of me from the very beginning. How much more, then, God took care of me from the beginning, I wondered.

When I arrived in Medjugorje during Thanksgiving weekend of 2001, I was already faithfully going to the church and was familiar with Blessed Mother's messages from Medjugorje. At that time I have been working for 3 years as an engineer and had a 3-year relationship that almost became an engagement. But providentially, engagement never materialized. I was again proud of being an independent adult, knowing with certainty that I would marry a devout Catholic girl and have a beautiful family.

I wondered at that time why she addressed all her messages with, "Dear children." By the time I arrived in Medjugorje, I was already calling Blessed Mother, 'Mom.' So I understood in some way that she was addressing me as her son.

But, I was an adult; why not address all of us as, "Dear all," or "Dear people"? When Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego in Mexico City in 1531, Juan Diego was already 57 years old. Yet Blessed Mother addressed him with, "Juanito," which meant 'My dear little Juan.' There is so much affection and motherly tenderness that shows in Blessed Mother saying to us, "Dear children," isn't it? We are still her little children whether we have become high and mighty in the sight of the world or have advanced in age. When we are children, we are still docile to our mama and daddy's requests. And these requests are not for our harm, but for our good.

The greatest grace I received in Medjugorje was receiving the gift to be able to be a little child. When Blessed Mother suggested priesthood to me in Medjugorje, I replied with docility of a little child, "Okay mommy." When we are little, we don't feel that our parents' requests are strait jackets like the song "Numb" sang by Linkin Park. When we are little, we respond with trust of a little child. Thus, Blessed Mother ends every message given in Medjugorje with the following words, "Thank you for having responded to my call." If we believe that through our adult eyes our efforts to Blessed Mother's call has been unsuccessful, she on the other hand believes other wise. Those of you with little children know how long it takes for them to finish a meal--forever. We encourage them when each spoonful bite has been placed in their mouth. Likewise, Blessed Mother encourages us with messages like this:

May 24, 1984 "Dear children! I have told you already that I have

chosen you in a special way, just the way you are. I, the Mother,

love you all. And in any moment that is difficult for you, do not

be afraid! Because I love you even then when you are far from me

and my Son. Please, do not let my heart weep with tears of blood

because of the souls who are lost in sin. Therefore, dear

children, pray, pray, pray! Thank you for having responded to my

call."

July 26, 2009: 17th Sunday Ordinary (B)

On Monday, I was at Schlotzsky's Deli with a priest friend of mine for lunch. We were surprised to find that there are now three different sizes for their round sandwiches--small, medium, and large. The small looks like a cookie-size, the medium fits on both palms of my hands, and the large looks like a 10" pizza. Now with the economy, we're again looking for value--more quantity per dollar. So I got the medium sandwich which fit on the both palm of my hands. We don't super-size our meals anymore because as one of our parishioner said what's 5 minute in your mouth will end up 5 years on your hips. Yet my sandwich turns out has 930 calories. I'm glad I didn't get the Deluxe large sandwich, which has 1,800 calories; that is almost equivalent to entire day's calorie requirement. So more quantity for less money is not necessarily good for us.

Later that day, I got to use two palms of my hands again. This time, instead of a deli shop, I was in a neonatal intensive care unit at a hospital. There gathered around an incubator, were the parents, young children, relatives, and hospital staff. The father of the family was holding a tiny premature baby that was about the size of two palms of my hands. He let me hold the baby for a minute. She was still breathing with best of her efforts, but the prognosis wasn't good. I said a blessing for the baby and the family. There were no dry eyes in that room.

On my way back from the hospital, I thought about how tiny that baby was. This baby did not smile or cry like a full-term baby; from the sight of the world, this baby has not tangibly contributed anything to the economy or to the society. If anything, this baby has cost the health care facility and the family a lot of money. If we were to look at this child from the worldly categories such as contribution, efficiency, and value, we won't see it. Yet, for her mom, dad, brothers, and sisters, this child was someone precious to grieve over. In order to see who this child really is, we have to go to the realm of mystery--where the worth of something is not measured by its size or statistics, but by love--which cannot be measured by modern scientific equipment.

In today's gospel, we see a small boy from a poor family in the midst of a crowd who came to hear Jesus. He brought his lunch that his mama packed for him. In his lunch sack, there were barley loaves and fish. I'm sure these barley loaves weren't any larger than two palms of his hands. When asked to give up his lunch, he did so generously. I wonder if this little boy even thought through what this gesture would cost him, unlike most of us who can calculate profit/loss or benefit/cost ratios with our spreadsheets. Yet that tiny gift of love is transformed by God to something greater than itself. This whole passage is well summed up by Mother Teresa: "It's not how much you give, but how much love you put in giving it. To God, nothing is small. The moment we decide to give, God makes it infinite."

Every Sunday we wait over an hour in this church, fighting our fidgety children and fighting our constant distracting thoughts of better things we could be doing on such a lovely Sunday. And at the height of this hour we come to the front to open our two palms of our hands, and all we get is a tiy white host. To those who see it with worldly categories they'll complain, "Is this all I get for all this effort I put in?" But to those who see through the mystery, they will see the infinite love placed in their two unworthy palms because Someone decided to give all He had.

July 19, 2009: 16th Sunday Ordinary (B)

(This weekend, Fr. Leo Tinkatumire, a missionary priest, will be making mission appeals at all the masses at Our Lady of Mercy. He will be preaching all the masses. This homily is for those of you who read my blog.)

Many of us have fallen for infomercials on TV. The other day I was watching a movie, and while flipping channels during commercial break, I saw two different channels hawking the "Sham-Wow!" How many of you purchased it? I was tempted, too. It was not the first time that I was tempted to buy something just because those folks on TV swore what that product done for them. One night I was watching TV, munching on one too many chips--I was a true couch potato. I was thinking to myself, "I'm gaining weight. I'm sluggish. I need to do something to lose weight." One channel over was an infomercial on exercise videos, P90X. I heard about it from a parishioner's son. In the infomercial, lots of fit looking people were doing some difficult exercises. And you know somewhere in your brain you say to yourself, "I need this video to look like that." So after $100 it arrived. I put one of the DVDs and worked out about 30 minutes. I felt good. Then, on day 2, the DVDs sat on top of the TV without being played. Then day 3, day 4, and now day 60 have past, and it has not been played. It's sort of like those exercise machines that become laundry hangers.

Now I'm saying to myself, "What possessed me to buy that?" You have to hand it to those folks who come up with those infomercials. They know how to get our attention, create a need that we haven't thought of before, and create an urgency to purchase NOW or we'll miss this opportunity. And they were able to convince us in less than 30 minutes that we need to pull out our plastic! The marketing folks know how to zero in on our desire to have something new, something that is better than what we have now.

So how often are we exposed to marketing folks' techniques on TV? A.C. Nielsen Co. says the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (that translates to 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube. In addition, the New York Times says the average American spends 8 hours in front of a screen--TV, computer, Blackberries and iPhones. And of that, an average American is exposed to 61 minutes of TV ads and promotions a day via TV or on-line. That's a lot of tugging and pulling of our desires in the direction of the marketing folks. And all that tugging and pulling have effects on us.

Our Responsorial Psalm today says, "The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want." So it invites us to ask, 'If I'm being led by some sort of a shepherd, is he leading me to rest or restlessness?' I would like to use the analogy here that our First Reading uses. Through the Prophet Jeremiah God says, " Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the LORD...You have scattered my sheep and driven them away. You have not cared for them..." With the tugging and pulling of our desires that we feel inside, we feel scattered and tested, especially in the areas of purity, moderation, and temperance; our brain says one thing, and our emotion pulls us to an opposite direction. What are we to do with all these conflicting desires inside?

Our Lord in the Gospel offers us a solution. "Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while." Our Lord is not saying the kind of a rest where we plop down on sofa and reach for the remote. We are already over stimulated by our computer screens, Blackberry screens, and our TVs. He is calling us to quiet prayer to listen to his voice for guidance. We need that quiet time to pull our scattered brain and heart together. Listen again to the Psalm.

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
In verdant pastures he gives me repose;
beside restful waters he leads me;
he refreshes my soul.

He guides me in right paths
for his name's sake.
Even though I walk in the dark valley
I fear no evil; for you are at my side
with your rod and your staff
that give me courage.

July 12, 2009: 15th Sunday Ordinary (B)

How can you tell a Catholic among a crowd of people? If you are a nun or a priest, it's easy to spot them. Our children in Catholic schools know immediately what nuns and priests look like. Although kids know that nuns wear veils and priests wear collar with clerical shirt, they haven't been told what exactly the veil and the collar symbolize. A priest was talking to a group of Catholic school children. He popped out the white collar tab from his shirt and asked the children, "What is this?" A child raised his hand and answered, "A flea collar!"

The children see priests celebrating mass, visiting their families, and class rooms.And many little boys probably had their share of playing priest in their room with a cup, bread, and a book. It's a more rare sight now, but children used to see nuns teaching them and helping them to learn how to pray. But being Catholic means more than being a nun or a priest, isn't it? The other day, I was asked, "When some Catholics are asked, 'Are you a Christian,' why do they reply, 'No, I'm a Catholic?" I know why some Catholics reply that way; it's because they assumed they were being asked which denomination they belonged to.

What sets us apart? St. Paul tells us in our Second Reading who we are: "[God the Father] chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him. In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ...In him we have redemption by his blood, the forgiveness of transgressions, in accord with the riches of his grace that he lavished upon us." So is it just our appearance that sets us apart? No. It's something deeper. Our inmost being has changed--through baptism we have been redeemed, forgiven, made anew, and adopted as children of the Heavenly Father.

Not only that, we have been given a mission. We are ordinary folks from all walks of life, just as Prophet Amos and the twelve Apostles that Jesus assembled. We are to spread the Good News, that the Kingdom of God is at hand, all the while being in the world but not of the world, with one feet on this earth and the other in the Heavenly realm. Some of us are out there in front of abortion clinics praying for the healing of women, some of us are out there in the poverty stricken countries helping to run humanitarian missions, some of us wear habits and veils--taking no food, no money, no sack, other than a pair of sandals and a tunic--secluded in monasteries interceding on behalf of the world through their prayers. But most of us are in the ordinary world, raising children with values not of this natural world but values of the supernatural Kingdom of Heaven, working in ordinary work places spreading a glimpse of heaven to those we work with.

The one thing that folks will notice different about us is what we do here in the church. Unlike other Christian denominations, we wait daily and weekly for what we call the "source and summit of Christian life"--the Eucharist. Few days ago, one of our staff members reminisced about when her son was only 4 years old. At the communion time his daddy was on the altar as a Eucharistic minister. Seeing his dad handing out something white, the 4-year old turned to his mama and said, "Daddy's got cookies," and was bolting out of the pews to get his cookie. Luckily his mama grabbed him just in time. For little children and those who are not Catholic, these white hosts are simply symbolic bread. But we know it is more than that. It is Jesus the Lamb of God, who "[God] set forth in him as a plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth." And hence Jesus in the Eucharist is the source and summit of our life. Jesus in the Eucharist is the one and the same with him from whom we have heard the word of truth, the gospel of our salvation...who sealed us with the promised Holy Spirit. Whether we wear a white collar, a veil, or a pair of Levis jeans, we are set apart to be holy and to be ordinary prophets to our ordinary surroundings.

July 5, 2009: 14th Sunday Ordinary (B)

These past two weeks, I was painfully aware that I was in the Tiger Country. Only minutes after Texas lost to LSU on their last baseball game, I got a text saying, "You have our condolences." And only days later right before I left the city of Independence to come to Our Lady of Mercy in Baton Rouge, I got an icing on the cake. An elderly lady hand made for me a LSU tote bag. I said to myself, "This must be a sign. A call to conversion." It was in 1992 that I entered the University of Texas at Austin for a degree in engineering. 1992 was also the year when I graduated from high school. About 10 years after high school graduation, I got a call from a company that organized high school reunions. I was told that my high school was having the10-year reunion. They asked will I be attending? No. I'm too busy with work at the plant. But I wondered the past few days what it would be like going back for a high school reunion now that I'm a priest 17 years after my high school graduation. Even my career guidance counselor at my high school didn't offer priesthood as an option.

We all have good and lame excuses for not attending our high school reunions. For example, "I gained weight, or I'm not successful enough." My excuse is, "I became a priest, and few people will have cardiac arrest if they see me in my collar." I can just see it--all those dropped jaws. And there will be murmuring, "Wasn't he the same guy who had long hair and weird clothes? Didn't he not even believe in God? How could he be a priest?" This is all reminiscent of today's Gospel.

When a native son of Nazareth showed up in hometown, people were incredulous. "He was just a son of a carpenter. Surely, he can't be performing these miracles." As a result, "he was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them. [Jesus] was amazed at their lack of faith." (Mk 6:5-6) In my case, if I were to show up at my high school reunion, on one hand there will be folks who do not believe because they will judge me by my past; they'll say, 'he must think this is a costume party.' On the other hand there will be folks whose faith will increase because they believe that God can bring enormous change to a person whom they thought would turn out weird. St. Paul faced the same predicament. In our Second Reading, St. Paul begged the Lord to remove his thorn in the flesh; we don't exactly know what that thorn was. Whatever it was, that thorn was causing St. Paul some anguish. It may have been something internal, for example, memory of his past sins. One sin that stands out is how he was directly responsible for murder of Christians. I'm sure St. Paul was reminded time and time again by Christians, "Weren't you the one who murdered our fellow brothers and sisters?" And how painful that reminder must have been.

Many of us beg Our Lord to remove the memories of our past sins, for they haunt us. St. Paul says, "That I, Paul, might not become too elated [other translations say conceited, proud], because of the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, an angel of Satan, to beat me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me..." (2 Cor 12:7-8) Yet the Lord does not simply remove our painful memories. He leaves them there and says to us, ""My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." So why does God allow us to remember our past failures and sins? It's a powerful lesson to teach us that without God's help, we are weak and prone to going astray.

Some of us go through conversion experiences like St. Paul or like "Doubting Thomas" (whose feast day we celebrated this past Friday). We know we have changed from inside, but will our spouse, family, and friends see the difference? After powerful retreat experiences, we are ready to evangelize and set afire the world with the fire of the Holy Spirit. Yet, people around us are not convinced that we are changed. Yes, they see us praying the rosary, reading the bible, and going to daily mass. Yet, that's not enough for people who know us to be convinced. People have been hurt by us before, and they want to see tangible evidence that the graces from praying the rosary, scripture reading, and daily mass are transforming us to be kinder, gentler, and more patient person. In other words, as a well known Christian hymn written by a Catholic priest in 1968 says, "They'll know we are Christians by our love." The Extreme Make-Over through conversion not only calls us to change our devotion and prayer-life toward God, it also calls us to let the Holy Spirit spread the fragrance of kindness, gentleness, and patience through the way we speak and treat those around us.