Everyone has a story. Realizing this changes so much for us.

 I just returned from a short vacation that I was blessed to have, and it was to a place halfway across the world from tiny Singapore.  I went to Seattle in North America, and the journey there had me endure a grueling passage of 14.5 hours in a stable and well provided for aircraft.  Of course, I was not the only passenger in the plane.  Together with me were about 350 other people. 

 

As I sat in my seat and gazed at the other passengers who were en route to Seattle with me, I came to realize that every single one of those passengers had their own reason why they were making this trip.  None of us was there just by chance.  It came to me that not just on a plane, but in every place, we find ourselves in, the people around us all have their story.  Sometimes, when we aren’t conscious of this fact, we can end up dismissing or writing off the strangers around us as unimportant or trivial.  The truth is that God who knows and sees everything is aware of the state of the lives of each individual that stand, sit or walk before our very eyes. 

 

If we view the lives of others as unimportant or trivial, it cannot be that it is only our own lives is important and significant.  In the same way that the lives of others around us is as important to God as our own lives, we then ought to show the proper and adequate respect, reverence and esteem to them, not just for their sakes, but for our own sake. 

 

None of us deserves to have strangers we do not know to sit us down and give us a detailed and particular explanation of their lives and how they came to be at the time and place that we see them.  That would be too much for anyone. 

 

Yesterday afternoon, after having had lunch with my family at my brother’s home, I was driving back to my residence at the seminary when at a traffic junction, I saw in front of me an elderly man, almost bent double, very slowly pushing a loaded cart of things across the road, and a young and more spritely man walked slowly next to him and helped him to push the cart as the elderly man slowly made his way across the road with his mincing gait.  I told myself that this man must have a story about why he was so physically challenged with his body so physically challenged and why he was pushing a cartload of things across a busy road on a hot and sunny Sunday afternoon all by himself.  I peered outside of my window and tried to see whether the other drivers in the other cars at the traffic junction looked at the man with the same quizzical concern, but apparently, I was the only one who was looking at the poor man with concern. 

 

All of us need to have an awakening of this sort to truly be ready for the second coming of Jesus Christ.  It’s not just self-awareness that is so crucial, it is the awareness of the lives of others in the world that makes us truly ready and worthy to welcome the second coming of Jesus at the second judgment. 

 

It’s the same at every line waiting for their turn to enter the confessional at a church.  The line of penitents has the same phenomenon.  Each penitent has their own individual sins that he or she is struggling with in life.  In my experience as a confessor priest, I have never at one time heard the same sins from my penitents.  The fact is that they are so varied and individual.  Each one had a reason to be in that confession line at that day.  I am sure that it was this kind of awareness that struck the Cure of Ars that caused him to devote so many hours each day to be a patient and loving confessor to the many who turned up each day to have their sins heard and given the precious and life-saving absolution for their sins.  I think the real problem so many priests are loathe to sit for long periods of time in the confessional is because we may be thinking only of ourselves and our inconvenience, than the need and ache in the penitents to have their sins forgiven after an honest and heart-rending confession. 

 

The truth is that we are all connected in a very hidden and varied way.  God knows this, and I am sure that he would want us to realize this as well, and it is this knowledge and awareness that will make the world a smaller and more peaceable place. 

 

May God lift the veil that covers so much of our sight, and may we then all be truly ready for the second coming of Christ. 

We cannot just base our love on feelings or sentiments if we want it to last.

 One of the least appreciated and understood aspects of love is that when it is true and persistent, it cannot be simply based on our feelings and emotions.  Instead, it has to be based on a decision to love, and not on the emotions or feelings of romance and bliss. 

 

And one of the downsides of this very unappreciated definition of love is that for many, if not most people, once they no longer feel the sentiments and emotions of romance anymore, they stop loving altogether.  Rather, they hope and pray for the return of those feelings that led them to make the decision to marry in Church, before a minister ordained to receive their wedding vows in the presence of their friends and relatives on the day that they got married. 

 

This is one of the most fundamental things about true and life-giving love that I try my hardest to impart in preparing couples for their marriage before me in the church.  I don’t ‘diss’ or ignore the fact that in their pre-marriage courtship, that they are experiencing the stirrings and uplifting moments of romance and being ‘in-love’.  What needs to be reminded is that these experiences are not the kernel and essence of what is life-giving.  These may be nice and exhilarating to experience, but for most people truly in love, just to live for these moments is akin to living in a dream-like existence. 

 

As some spiritual gurus have written and maintained, our hearts and minds are complex and promiscuous, quite like wild horses frolicking to their own tunes, with love frequently not on their agenda.  I am certain that imparting this to people who are madly and dizzyingly in love, can be quite disturbing and even an affront to them.  But I need to find new and creative ways to impart this truth to them so that they will be prepared to face it well when the time comes in their married life, to hang on to the dream they have of living their marriage in the best way possible.

 

It’s the same for our prayer life.  It can’t be that I was unfortunate to have bad or insufficiently prepared catechists in my days of spiritual formation in my pre-confirmation days of my teens.  And if it was implied by my catechists, it was most probably done with such speed and little emphasis that we were not caught off-guard and given the opportunity to seriously think about what was being implied.  What do we do about our prayer lives when we no longer feel like praying?  After all, most, if not all of us are often tired, bored, no longer wanting to pray, and are just jaded with prayer.  If I am in the ministry of catechesis, I would want to focus a large part of my syllabus to teach my students what real prayer is, and how to handle it when we no longer feel any desire to pray. 

 

Just like love, prayer too, is a decision.  It’s not a mere emotion or sentiment.  If love is just an emotion, one will find one’s world turned upside down when there are no longer any familiar emotions or sentiments in one’s love relationship.  But if one is well taught and catechized, one will appreciate that it’s ok if the familiar stirrings of the heart are no longer there.  And that’s because one has learned to base one’s love on the decision to love, and not just on the fleeting feelings or sentiments of love. 

 

When our prayer life is based on the decision to pray, one will not find oneself shaken and lost when those familiar feelings are no longer there. 

 

God, who is love itself, is a being whose love is a decision.  That makes God’s love ever present and real, because God’s love is not emotion-based.  We only need to look seriously at a crucifix to realize this.  On the cross of Calvary, Jesus didn’t base his being crucified so cruelly and inhumanely on his emotions.  He willingly allowed his hands and feet to be nailed because of his decision to love all of sinful humanity.  Just looking at a cross without a corpus on it doesn’t give us the all-important lesson of this.  A plain cross with no body on it doesn’t impart that love is not a feeling, and that real love is rather a decision.

 

The monks in a monastery have something that is taught and imparted using something as simple as a bell or a gong.  The striking of this gong about seven times a day helps the monks to sustain their prayer not just on feelings and sentiments.  Monks in these monasteries pray together ritually each time the bell rings or the gong is struck.  They ritually pray their offices and celebrate Mass together.  Monks are not robots.  They are humans, and the founders or their order or society have wisely chosen to teach the monks that a faithful and regular prayer life is not one that is just based on enthusiasm or sentiments.  Throughout the monastery, whether the monk is on the library or the kitchen, when they hear to bell ring, everything stops and their Divine Office books are opened and their will is being reminded to pray. 

 

As Fr Rolheiser has said it so well, this regularity reminds each monk that time is not their time, but God’s time.  And if their time is God’s time, then their lives are God’s life as well. 

 

My being posted to the Office of Catechesis has something that is similar to the discipline of the monasteries.  Every day, at the precise moment of 12pm, every person in the building of the Catholic Archdiocese Education Centre come out of our offices and gather at the parapet of the building overlooking the ground floor and we pray the Angelus together, ending with a blessing bestowed by any priest who is there at that time.  It’s not because we feel like doing it.  It’s a reminder that prayer, like divine love, is something that is based on a decision.  The purer that decision is, the purer the love will be.

 

May we all learn from Michael Leach, who has taught that falling in love is the easy part; learning to love is the hard part, and living in love is the best part.  If this is true of love, it is so true for prayer as well. 

 

 

 

 

Do we really want to die a happy death? Is this ever on our must-do list in life?

 Ever since I was a seminarian, aspiring to be an ordained priest in the Holy Catholic Church, I was given to be yearning to die a happy death at the end of my earthly existence.  Though we were never really formally instructed what it was to die a happy death, it was something that we nurtured in our hearts as we prepared, albeit sedulously, for the ordination to the priesthood that awaited us as we lived through the seemingly endless days in the 7 years of seminary formation. 

 

This was something that was brought so clearly to my consciousness when I was given the confirmation that I was suffering from the debilitating cancer of leukemia, and that of a very rare form, which was acute lymphocytic leukemia, which if not treated, would probably be fatal within a few months.

 

Of course, this news couldn’t be given to me at a worse time.  I was at that time in the beginning stages of studying for my License in Dogmatic Theology at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington DC.  This meant that I had to stop my pursuit of the degree because I had to focus squarely on my search for a suitable bone marrow donor whose HLA (human leukocyte antigen) typing matches mine. 

 

I will never forget how I reacted when my doctor revealed to me that I was now a patient suffering from a very serious form of cancer.  I smiled quietly, and whispered a prayer of grateful thanks to God for having given me this cross to carry.  I was never angry or resentful for the leukemia, and took full-on the arduous search for a matching HLA donor for my bone marrow transplant. 

 

I would surmise that at that point in my spiritual life, I was completely ready for death.  Of course, thoughts of how my family and loved ones would take the news of my imminent death came to mind, but they did not dampen my positive attitude toward my death.

 

In many of my spiritual readings from renown spiritual authors, I was always aware of the fact that we should never live our lives in ways that will make us die a sad or tragic death.  To be able to die a truly happy death, we need to be striving always to be in a state of grace, and not subject ourselves to unhealthy habits or addictions, and not to live in morally unscrupulous or illicit ways.  Like St Francis of Assisi, we ought to be able to see death as a sister, and welcome her when she made her presence known to us. 

 

To be ready for Sister Death is not to be overly remorse and downcast in life.  In short, it means that we are cognizant that this earthly life is not the be all and end all for everyone.  It’s just a transient stage before we reach our final everlasting state, which for all souls, ought to be in the full embrace of our Heavenly Father in eternity.  This makes us not put too much emphasis in our quest for happiness in this life, which for many, will include having large stores of wealth and a name known and loved by as many people as we can.  It’s the lifelong quest for fame, fortune and reputation. 

 

To be truthful, this is not the reason I went into the seminary to study for the priesthood.  No priest would want to be a priest in order to become rich and famous.  But as the years of the seminary formation passed, as we edged towards the coveted ordination date, we became clearer and clearer that the joys of the priesthood had to free us from the quest for riches, wealth and fame.  That is why at our ordination Mass, we transient deacons would be seen lying prostrate on the floor before the Bishop, signifying that we are ready to die to ourselves, and do be the servants of the Bishop who was going to ordain us in a few moments. 

 

Dying to the self includes us not pursuing things only that will thrill us or bring us some high repute in the eyes of those looking at us.  It frees us from only wanting things that will make us momentarily happy and contented.  It grounds us well and keeps us stable when things in life begin to fall apart.

 

I can’t keep preaching this, because there will be a time when the laity we preach to get tired of hearing us, if we keep droning on about this.  So, I write blogs like this one just so that when readers of my blog page happen to read it, they will get their conscience poked and prodded, and ask themselves the all-important question of whether they are ready to die a happy death.

 

Things that bring a smile to our faces are manifold and plenty, but some of them only bring temporary and transient joys to our lives.  But it is only when we pursue the godly and holy joys that will make us endure the trials and afflictions that are long-term and can even cause our deaths. 

 

May all of us be truly ready to die a happy death when Sister Death comes a-visiting.

When the unexpected happens to us in life, it really isn't as bad as many may think.

 

*  THIS IS NOT A NEW POST.  IT'S AN OLD POST WHICH I NEVER GOT TO POST, AND FOR SOME REASON WAS LOCKED OUT OF MY BLOG PAGE.  I FINALLY FOUND ACCESS TO THE BLOG, AND AM POSTING THIS OLD REFLECTION WHICH NEVER GOT TO BE POSTED.  BUT THE MESSAGE STILL HOLDS TRUE, AND THIS IS WHY I AM POSTING THIS REFLECTION.  PLEASE NOTE THAT I AM NOT ABOUT TO GO INTO SURGERY.  

I know that many parishioners who personally know me through my serving them as a priest have been praying for me as the days progress toward my planned surgery to replace the empty parts of my skull with two KEEP plates that are coming in from Switzerland.  This was arranged for me by the dexterous surgeons who in the last part of May 2021 performed the surgery to remove the two parts of my skull as they realized that they were bleeding from the accident that occurred to me while I was exercising early on 24 May.  I have no recollection of that accident having happened.  All I can recall is that one day I woke up after the surgery that took place in Tan Tock Seng Hospital. 

 

And I am profoundly grateful to my parishioners who have been praying almost incessantly for the success of the second operation, after which I will slowly recover and get back into parish life to serve them as one of their priests in the Immaculate Heart of Mary parish in Singapore.  Knowing that there are many who are praying for the intervention of the Holy Spirit as the surgery progresses gives me a tremendous amount of confidence.  The original date of the surgery was slated to be Thursday 24 September, and it is also the feast day of St Padre Pio, whom many are praying to for his intercession for me. 

 

I had set my heart on undergoing that complex surgery on 24 September but I had also been nursing a coughing bout that was accompanied by the expectoration of thick phlegm.  On Friday, 17 September, I had an appointment to see the surgeon at the hospital for a pre-surgery interview where I was analyzed for my suitability and readiness for the 24 September surgery.  It was there that the anesthesiologist had a one to one with me and my brother, and patiently explained to me that with the state of cough that my body is going through, it is unwise to carry on with the surgery on 24 September.  There are complications that can result if what is infecting my lungs with this bout of flu affects my recovering process post-surgery, and suggested (with consultation with his senior surgeons) that the surgery now be moved to a later date instead.  It will now most probably happen sometime in October to keep my post-surgery condition controllable and not be complicated due to me infecting the process of recovery. 

 

I will admit that it sounded like a very positive thing that the surgeon is making such an arrangement.  Understandably, when I informed some friends of the movement of the date, they were visibly disturbed and showed great concern for me.  I kept assuring them that this was most probably moved in order for me, the patient, to benefit in a better way post surgery. 

 

There will often be moments in life when the things we have either been planned for us or the things that we have planned for, get affected by a change of date.  It is tempting to blame anyone, including God, when such things happen to our plans in life, but this would be a dangerous thing to do.  God is ultimately in charge of what happens to us, and if the dates and time table changes, it is best to believe that God has allowed it to happen.  Blaming God with disdain impacts negatively our faith life, and ultimately our relationship with God. 

 

There are many feast days that the church celebrates and observes in the month of October, and one of them is 18 October, which is the feast of my patron saint, St Luke the evangelist.  I would have no qualms if the surgery is moved to that date.  I would be submitting myself to the patronage of my own patron saint who has walked with me through the ups and downs of my personal life.

 

Other notable feasts in October are 2 October of the memorial of the Holy Guardian Angels, October 4 the memorial of St Francis of Assisi, and 7 October, which is the memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary. 

 

The hope of the surgeon is that as my coughing fit heals and I recover from it, there should be about a 14-day period where my body isn’t plagued with the flu bug and they can carry on the planned surgery without the danger of my causing infection to my healing due to the surgery.  I even had to undergo a chest X-Ray at the hospital just to be ensured that my lungs are clear within.  I will only know the new date as the results of the tests that were done to my body and blood emerge.  Right now, the date of the surgery is still not confirmed.

 

Do I hope that my parishioners and friends will still continue to pray for the success of the surgery?  I certainly hope so.  Nothing gives a patient who is undergoing an extensive surgery more than the confidence that those who know him are praying earnestly for his recovery and the deft surgery skills of his surgeon.

 

Now, each day that progresses, I am constant in taking the medications that were administered to me by the doctor I went to see when my coughing started.  I am also praying daily for the help of both Mother Mary and the Holy Spirit to help me in my path out of the coughing and the fullness of the phlegm in my lungs. 

 

If you who are reading this blog are one of my friends who are assisting me in prayer, thank you so much, and may God give you the grace to continue in your prayer for me and the success of the upcoming surgery to my skull.  Till I see you again after recovering from the work of the surgeon’s hands, I want to wish you the choicest blessings of God.