Rejoice! The King is Coming! The first reading is a song of praise for the coming of the Kingdom of God. The King is victorious; he is triumphant. He comes to us in humility by riding on a donkey. In ancient times, a king would ride on a donkey to signify that he is coming in peace. He rides a [...]
In Genesis 31: 34-35, “Meanwhile Rachel had taken the household images, put them inside the camel’s saddlebag, and seated herself upon them. When Laban had rummaged through her whole tent without finding them, she said to her father, “Do not let my lord be angry that I cannot rise in your presence; I am having my period.” So, despite his [...]
This Sunday’s readings are a reminder of the paradox of the cross that in order to live one must die. Dying to oneself is something that is avoided because it is uncomfortable. Familiarity is comforting and choosing situations which make one feel comfortable is natural. Even in church, worshippers often find themselves sitting at the same spot during Eucharistic celebrations, [...]
40 years. The number sounds familiar? Well, that was also me ignoring the Holy Spirit. In my 20s and 30s, the only times I made the sign of the cross – Father, Son & Holy Spirit, was when I entered the church. It was not until I attended Life in the Spirit Seminar in my 40s, that my eyes were [...]
The First Reading and the Responsorial Psalms contain tones of restlessness and complain. The prophet Jeremiah in the First Reading was experiencing such tumult as he fought futilely against the onslaught of despair, sorrow, and terror. As a prophet of God, he was afraid for his life, so much so that he scolded God for beguiling him with a [...]
My family keeps a pet hamster, well technically it belongs to my sister, but we take turns taking care of it when she goes away on holiday. Recently, this pet hamster passed on. It was 2 and a half years old – considered very old in hamster age, and when it died, it had been struggling with hamster cancer in [...]
Singapore’s population is aging, and households are having fewer children too. We are facing an unprecedented decline in vocations to the priestly and religious vocations. Following the results from a Catholic News 2008 survey, which then recorded the average age of priests in Singapore as 55 years old, the statistical results from the recent Catholic Conversation (Catholic.sg, 2021) show that [...]
In my younger days, I tried keeping pets with some disastrous and hilarious results. My Betta fighting fish lost the brilliant blue colour it had to turn a dull brown, and my goldfish spent their time trying to jump out of the receptacle they were held in. I did keep terrapins for a longer duration, but eventually released them into [...]
The Solemnity of Corpus Christi is celebrated in the Latin Church on the Thursday after Holy Trinity Sunday. It is transferred to the subsequent Sunday in some dioceses. Celebrating the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, this feast (all solemnities are feasts) honours Jesus as our Eucharistic Lord and proclaims the truth that Jesus is truly, really, substantially, and [...]
As we celebrate the Solemnity of the Holy Body and Blood of Christ, we are called to remember that the Catechism of the Catholic Church, states that, the Eucharist is “the source and summit” of the Christian life. This an echo of the document Sacrosanctum Concilium promulgated in 1963. The Eucharist is the summit of our Christian life, a sacrament [...]
