This homily was delivered at the Mass of the Holy Spirit at the Church of the Gesu.
You may have heard this riddle before…
Suppose you decided to have an intimate little birthday party. You invite exactly four guests: (a) your best friend, (b) a humble Atenean, (c) a poor La Sallite, and (d) a UP student who graduated on time.
Suddenly the lights go out and when it goes on again, your cake is missing. The million-dollar question is: “Who took your cake?”
This reflection, based on Luke 12:49-53, is a collaboration John, a childhood friend who offered to help when he found out I was down with the flu.
Have you ever gone somewhere where you had to get something done, but there was a line ahead of you and the people in-charge were moving much too slowly? Didn’t you feel like lighting a fire under them to ignite them and get them moving?
That’s how Jesus must have felt. That’s why in today’s Gospel he gives us a line that you wouldn’t exactly expect from the Lord: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!”
This reflection is based on Luke 12:35-40.
I’ve been obsessed with sleep lately.
It all started when I flunked my sleep test two years ago and was diagnosed with a common sleeping disorder called apnea, for which I needed a sleep apnea mouth guard soon after. Apparently, like a lot of people, my breathing would stop for a few seconds during my sleep–except that in my case, it happened too often. No wonder I always woke up fatigued–a strange phenomenon for a morning person like me who’s most productive in the morning and usually brain-dead by 8 pm.
This reflection is based on Luke 12:13-21 for the Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola.
What will you build in your life?
That’s the question that our simple but profound parable in today’s Gospel asks us. It’s also the perfect question on the day we honor the saint who spent his life wrestling with that question. In a sense, everything in our life boils down to this one question.
For one, we could choose to spend our lives building barns as the man in the parable does. He decides to store all his riches exclusively for himself so that he can enjoy them all for many years–to “rest, eat, drink, and be merry.” But as fate would have it, the very night he completes the last of his barns, he dies, leaving his hoard behind.
This reflection is based on Luke 11:1-13.
This Sunday’s Gospel has much to teach us about prayer, but it’s our Lord’s explanation of his parable of the desperate friend that struck me:
“Knock and the door will be opened to you…
What father among you would hand his son a snake
when he asks for a fish?
Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?
If you then, who are wicked,
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will the Father in heaven
give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”
