Breaking the Word: Singing of Home

Sunday, June 08, 2025

Singing of Home

Pentecost Sunday (C)

Readings: Acts 2: 1-11; Psalm 103 (104): 1, 24, 29-31, 34; Romans 8:8-17; Jn 14:15-16, 23-26

Picture: By Josh Appel on Unsplash

It’s still a little early to ask, but do you have a favourite National Day song? How about the one written by Dick Lee, and sung by Kit Chan? The one that goes, This is home, truly, where I know I must be… Many of us like that one, right? Songs like this have the power to move us, regardless of our race, language or religion. And we allow ourselves to be moved, even though we realise that such songs actually paint an ideal picture of our country, and that the reality isn’t quite as rosy. In a sense, the place described in the song doesn’t actually exist. Not yet, not fully. But somehow, mysteriously, we still can’t help liking the song. It tugs at our heartstrings. Brings us together. Makes us feel a common yearning for home. Not only that, the song also moves us to celebrate the accomplishments of our forebears, as well as commit ourselves to continue their work. To do our part to help bring the reality ever closer to the ideal… Common yearning, celebrating accomplishments, and commitment to do our part. Three salutary effects of a simple song. Could the Holy Spirit be doing something similar in our scriptures today?

How does it happen…? This is what the people in the first reading want to know. Those gathered and amazed by the incredible sights and sounds accompanying the Spirit’s arrival at Pentecost… Rushing wind and tongues of flame. Effortless communication across language barriers... How does it happen? Actually, this question can be answered quite easily today, right? For we live in a time of CGI and AI-powered Google Translate. But they didn’t have such things back then. So we need another explanation. One that’s more low-tech, but also more spiritual and deeply human. Something like how a simple song can unite people of diverse backgrounds, reminding us of our common yearning for home.

Except that, in our scriptures, home goes beyond any merely geographical location. Beyond the many places listed in the reading. No, here home isn’t just a particular country or locality, but a relationship, a communion. It’s what Jesus talks about in the gospel, when he says, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our home with him… It’s also what St Paul talks about in the second reading, when he says, Your interests… are not in the unspiritual, but in the spiritual, since the Spirit of God has made his home in you… Somehow, through the mysterious power of the Spirit, the disciples are able to cross language barriers, and tap into their listeners’ common hunger for God, their common yearning for home.

And it’s no accident that the disciples proceed to tell their listeners about the marvels of God, chiefly the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ. For this is how home has been made accessible to us all. The disciples are celebrating the accomplishments of God in Christ. And isn’t this the same Mystery we ourselves have spent all of the forty days of Lent, and the fifty days of Easter preparing for and pondering, contemplating and savouring? Like the disciples, we too have been celebrating the Lord’s great accomplishment. How he has prepared for us all a spiritual home in God.

But it’s important for us to realise that, by referring to this home as spiritual, we’re not saying that it’s purely interior or heavenly. Something to be found only by engaging in deep prayer in a remote monastery. Helpful though this may be. For the psalmist reminds us that the Spirit sent by God renews not just human hearts, but the whole face of the earth. Isn’t this also what we believe Jesus has accomplished through his Dying and Rising? Nothing less than what we pray for every time we recite the Lord’s Prayer. The coming of God’s kingdom on earth, as… in heaven.

Even so, we have only to look around at the current state of our world, and perhaps even our own lives and relationships, to realise that the kingdom is not quite here yet. At least not in its fullness. Which is why Pentecost isn’t just a celebration of a something already accomplished. It’s also a call to share in a mission that’s still ongoing. As the second reading reminds us, the Spirit moves us not just to cry out Abba, Father!, but also to play our part as coheirs with Christ to God’s kingdom, sharing his sufferings so as to share his glory. In addition to reminding us of our common yearning for home, and moving us to celebrate Christ’s accomplishments, the Spirit is also calling us to commit ourselves to sharing in the Lord’s ongoing mission.

Common yearning, celebrating accomplishments, and commitment to do our part… This is home, truly, where we know we must be… Sisters and brothers, how is the Spirit moving us to join in this song, not just with our voices, and not just here in church, but also with our lives, out there in our hungry and waiting world today?

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Breaking News: Ordinary Time

Apart from those seasons having their own distinctive character, thirty-three or thirty-four weeks remain in the yearly cycle that do not celebrate a specific aspect of the mystery of Christ. Rather, especially on the Sundays, they are devoted to the mystery of Christ in all its aspects. This period is known as Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time begins on Monday after the Sunday following 6 January and continues until Tuesday before Ash Wednesday inclusive. It begins again on Monday after Pentecost and ends before Evening Prayer I of the First Sunday of Advent. ~ General Norms for the Liturgical Year & Calendar, nn 43-44

From 36th Jesuit General Congregation

It is our union with one another in Christ that testifies to the Good News more powerfully than our competences and abilities.... In our individualistic and competitive age, we should remember that the community plays a very special role since it is a privileged place of apostolic discernment.... The Jesuit community is a concrete space in which we live as friends in the Lord. This life together is always at the service of mission, but because these fraternal bonds proclaim the Gospel, it is itself a mission. –Companions in a Mission of Reconciliation and Justice (CMRJ), nn. 7-9.

With the poor, we can learn what hope and courage mean.... In our communities and apostolates, we hear the call to rediscover hospitality to strangers, to the young, to the poor, and to those who are persecuted. Christ himself teaches us this hospitality. –CMRJ, nn. 15-16.

At the heart of Ignatian spirituality is the transforming encounter with the mercy of God in Christ that moves us to a generous personal response. The experience of the merciful gaze of God on our weakness and sinfulness humbles us and fills us with gratitude, helping us to become compassionate ministers to all.... For us Jesuits, compassion is action, an action discerned together. Yet we know that there is no authentic familiarity with God if we do not allow ourselves to be moved to compassion and action by an encounter with the Christ who is revealed in the suffering, vulnerable faces of people, indeed in the suffering of creation. –CMRJ, nn. 19-20.

(T)he Society must respond more decisively to the Church’s call for a new evangelization, giving special emphasis to ministry to and with the young and with families.... A special gift Jesuits and the Ignatian family have to offer to the Church and her mission of evangelization is Ignatian spirituality, which facilitates the experience of God and can therefore greatly help the process of personal and communal conversion. –CMRJ, nn. 22-23.

In many societies, there is an increased level of conflict and polarization, which often gives rise to violence that is all the more appalling because it is motivated and justified by distorted religious convictions. In such situations, Jesuits, along with all who seek the common good, are called to contribute from their religious-spiritual traditions towards the building of peace, on local and global levels. –CMRJ, n. 28.

Pope Francis has emphasized the fundamental connection between the environmental crisis and the social crisis in which we live today. Poverty, social exclusion, and marginalization are linked with environmental degradation. These are not separate crises but one crisis that is a symptom of something much deeper: the flawed way societies and economies are organised. The current economic system with its predatory orientation discards natural resources as well as people. For this reason, Pope Francis insists that the only adequate solution must be a radical one. The direction of development must be altered if it is to be sustainable. We Jesuits are called to help heal a broken world, promoting a new way of producing and consuming, which puts God’s creation at the center.... The multifaceted challenge of caring for our common home calls for a multifaceted response from the Society. We begin by changing our personal and community lifestyles, adopting behaviour coherent with our desire for reconciliation with creation. – CMRJ, nn. 29-30

From 35th Jesuit General Congregation

From General Congregation 35

By sending us to 'those physical and spiritual places which others do not or have difficulty reaching,' the Pope entrusts to us the task to 'build bridges of understanding and dialogue,' according to the best tradition of the Society, in the diversity of its ministries.
- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 6

To be missioned to this work 'at the New Frontiers of our times' always requires that one also be rooted at the very heart of the Church. This tension, specific to the Ignatian charism, opens the way to true creative fidelity.
- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 13

In every mission that we carry out, we seek only to be where (Christ) sends us. The grace we receive as Jesuits is to be and to go with him, looking on the world with his eyes, loving it with his heart and entering into its depths with his unending compassion.
- Decree on Identity, n. 15

For ultimately, there is no reality that is only profane for those who know how to look. We must communicate this look and provide a pedagogy inspired by the Spiritual Exercises, that carries people - especially the young - into it.
- Decree on Identity, n. 10

Our ministries of proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the Life of Christ in the sacraments continue to be fundamental for our mission and our lives together as Jesuits.
- Decree on Mission, n. 19

The complexity of the problems we face and the richness of the opportunities offered demand that we engage in building bridges between rich and poor and establishing advocacy links of mutual support between those who hold political power and those who find it difficult to voice their interests. Our intellectual apostolate provides an inestimable help in setting up these bridges, offering us new ways of understanding in depth the mechanism and links among our present problems.
- Decree on Mission, n. 28

Jesuit community is not just for mission, it is itself mission.
- Decree on Mission, n. 41

In this global context it is important to highlight the extraordinary potential represented by our character as an international and multicultural body. Acting consistently with this character can not only enhance the apostolic effectiveness of our work but in a fragmented and divided world it can witness to the reconciliation in solidarity of all the children of God.
- Decree on Mission, n. 43

Faith in Jesus Christ teaches us that self-realization comes from self-giving and that freedom is not so much the power to choose as the power to order our choices toward love. At the same time, love for Jesus Christ and the desire to follow him call us to trusting commitment. Commitment to the Word Incarnate cannot be separated from commitment to the concrete manifestations of the Word that are at the center of our lives, the Church and the Society which exists to serve the Church.
- Decree on Obedience, n. 19

Sunday, June 08, 2025

Singing of Home

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