How deep does our courage for suffering go?

 In my 23 years as an ordained Catholic priest, I have had many opportunities to minister to Catholic parishioners who had been ill, and many of them were hospitalized for their illness. 

 

The ordained priest tends to the sick in several ways.  In the sacramental way, the priest can anoint the sick, and if the infirmed are conscious and are able and willing, their confession can be heard, giving them the inner peace that all of us sinners need throughout our lives.  Together with the sacrament of the sick, we can also bring Holy Communion to them so that they receive Jesus, who is truly present in the Eucharistic Host. 

 

But at the heart of illness and all forms of afflictions that the body can experience, is the awareness of the virtue of offering up our sufferings for the souls in purgatory.  This awareness isn’t something that happens overnight, but is like every virtue that we want to attain in life.  No virtue is instilled in an instant.  The virtue for chastity, obedience, humility and generosity is a journey that is slow and somehow meandering path. 

 

I just came to know of someone who was a godfather to a few young children, and he had a tragic accident when he climbed a ladder to fix a ceiling fan and fell from it, fracturing his skull and spine, and went into a coma.  In my conversation with the mother of one of his godchildren, I said that in cases like these, I hope the afflicted one knows that he has the ability to offer up his sufferings for souls in purgatory.  The mother of the godchild replied that a patient who is comatose would not know or be conscious of offering up anything.  This is when I tried to explain to her that in truth, it is only when one has striven in his lifetime to offer up pains and afflictions for souls in purgatory, would he in this comatose state, be desiring to offer up what he cannot overcome.  If he has never heard of such a virtue, there is little chance that he would now do it when he is comatose. 

 

I give a personal testimony to this.  When I was suffering from the many fevers while I was studying in Washington DC for a license in Dogmatic Theology, I consciously offered up my pains and physical torments for the souls in purgatory.  They didn’t make the suffering less, but a lot more meaningful.  I wouldn’t have done that if I had not beforehand read the many spiritual books on suffering as a virtue.  It was already hitherto a part of my spirituality, instilled into my system.  By then, it was already a flowering and fruiting plant that was started as a tiny insipid seed that was planted into the soil of my heart.  If no seed had been planted, I would not have suddenly known that I want to offer my sufferings for the benefit of souls in purgatory. 

 

And this went on to serve me well when I came back from DC to get my fevers diagnosed, and after seeing three doctors, it was confirmed that I was afflicted by Leukemia, and of a very serious and rare type.  When I was told by the hematologist that I was suffering from biphenotypic acute leukemia, was smiled broadly, and this was very alarming to the doctor.  He said that never in his experience of informing patients that they were afflicted with leukemia, there was joy on their faces.  Why I smiled was because I knew from that point on, that my suffering and affliction would be beneficial to the souls in purgatory.  I my heart, there and then, I was thanking God for this gift of suffering in my life.

 

If I hadn’t nurtured in my heart and soul that there is a meaning in suffering in life, I would not have taken the news so well.  I could see God’s magnificent hand in this, and he also paved the way for me to be saved by a stem cell transplant from a generous and kind donor who was half the world away in Chicago, Illinois.  My deep gratitude to Peter Mui for his generosity and kindness grows more and more each day, because due to his generosity, I have an underserved gift of each day of life.

 

I do realize that among the majority of Catholics, only a small number take their sufferings and afflictions in life so positively.  And they know this is true only when their sufferings in life take them by surprise.  I hope that by writing about this truth, I am encouraging my readers, especially the Catholic ones, to truly start to sow that seed of positivity and begin to take the afflictions in life seriously.  Just don’t start too late, because like all things that are difficult, doing well in it is a long journey.  There are no quick fixes in wanting to handle suffering well in life.

 

We are courageous in many things in life, but the one thing that is outstanding is when one has the courage to go through afflictions and suffering well. 

 

And do remember that crosses in life are not meant to be something that we carry alone.  Jesus helps us to carry them well, and let’s start familiarizing ourselves with Jesus, the savior of humankind.

How do we live out our prophetic calling in life?

 Our Catechism teaches and reminds us that by virtue of our baptism, we are all priests, prophets and kings.  We live out our priestly life by being ministers to the world around us, serving and being humble through our reaching out to the community around us.  Certainly, not all of us are ordained ministers, but the priest without the capital P, is not an ordained being who serves in the sanctuary of the Church. 

 

The term ‘minister’ comes from the Middle English, deriving from the Old French word ministre, originally minister in Latin, meaning “servant, attendant”, which was derived from the word ‘minus’ meaning “less”.

 

In the political realm, this aspect of minister is often, sadly, missing and even ignored.  In many countries, being a minister in the government brings with it a whole lot of privilege and profundity, honor, and are often paid a rather handsome salary.  Many ministers in governments are given the secure protection of police and even secret service.  They are often seen as high-ranking beings and are invited to host important events surrounded by press and paparazzi.  There is very little emphasis on the role of a servant or attendant in many ministers in governments. 

 

Yet, this doesn’t change the fact that our Catechism teaches us that each baptized person is a priest, prophet and king.  We are to live out our baptism in humble service of the community that we are in, and to understand that we have a royal dimension in being the children of God our creator and shepherd of souls.  This helps us not to be too disturbed and perplexed when we are not persons of status and rank in society.  It is not what our fellow human beings see in us, but more importantly, what our Divine Lord sees in each of us. 

 

The Church teaches us that the prophetic mission of the baptized has to be rooted in the example of Jesus Christ.  He came to proclaim the Good News of salvation and to liberate and free people who were subjected to sin and death.  This was the primary mission of Jesus Christ, but it was not limited to Jesus’ own ministry, but extended with love to his followers as well.  We the baptized are his followers.  Just as the 12 apostles continued Jesus’ work of preaching the Gospel and healing the sick, liberating them from enslavement to sin, this task is also ours to continue.  The moment we do our bit in proclaiming Jesus Christ with our words and in our work, we become prophets.

 

We live as prophets when we first listen to God’s voice speaking to our hearts.  The prophets in the Old Testament were able to convincingly communicate God’s message to the people, because they heard and responded to God’s voice.  Isaiah gives us an example of doing this when he responded to God’s question of “Whom shall I send?  And who will go for us?”  Isaiah courageously responded “Here am I.  Send me!”  (Is 6:8).  This shows a brave willingness to answer God’s call, despite the fact that it would lead him out of his comfort zone, and this is at the heart of what it means to be a prophet.

 

Living out our prophetic calling in life is never going to be a bed of roses.  Actually, it is, when the bed of roses includes the thorns as well as the flowers.  The phrase isn’t a “bed of rose petals”. 

 

Speaking the truth doesn’t come without its challenges.  It is also a call to be able to confront the evils of the world.  When we speak out against the sinfulness and wanting to transform society, it will in most cases, have us meet with unpopularity and being uncomfortable.  Effective prophets do not fear resistance, opposition and even hostility.  We need to be mindful that Jesus warned his disciples that they would be like “lambs in the midst of wolves” (Lk 10:3).  The true Christian prophet may not be spared suffering, but Jesus assures his disciples that they will be given every necessary grace and strength to be able to carry out the mission God gives them.  Sts Peter and Paul are stalwart examples of lives that can be plagued with sufferings and afflictions when being prophetic in their roles as disciples of Jesus.

 

 Many Catholics have not heard the emphasis on the prophetic role of a baptized person.  It isn’t hard to imagine how badly this will affect the numbers of babies baptized after birth if it were.  And because it hasn’t been emphasized, there are very few Catholics who live out their prophetic roles sedulously and courageously. 

 

There are, I am sure, many parents of baptized children who do read my blog on this website.  I am always grateful for this.  My hope is that after reading this, you will try to teach your children about this side-stepped role of the baptized person in the Church, helping to propagate the Good News of God’s great and saving love for the world.

Do our lives get affected by the presence of guardian angels?

 There are many things that our catechism teaches us about God and life.  The book of Genesis makes no qualms about creation and its origins, and that it was God who made them and gives them life to thrive and reproduce.  Of course, the apex of his creation happened when out of soil he made Adam, and from his side, Eve. 

 

The compendium called Catechism of the Catholic Church specifically mentions angels in the life of the Church, stating that the whole life of the Church benefits from the mysterious and powerful help of angels.  We are also taught that the angels, and that we celebrate the memory of certain angels more particularly, especially St Michael, St Gabriel, St Raphael, and the guardian angels.

 

It also teaches us that beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life.  So, this means that from the moment of our birth or baptism, God dispatches a particular angel to guard us on our journey as we live our lives to glorify God.

 

Our belief in angels guarding us in life can be understood by some as God’s real presence in our life.  Do I have personal experiences of angels who have helped me in my dark and dreary moments?  I am blessed to be able to say that I do, and am proud of those moments as they have strengthened my spiritual life in ways beyond my reckoning.

 

I was enlisted to serve my National Service after my ‘A’ levels, and started out like all recruits, with Basic Military Training, otherwise known as BMT.  One goes through all kinds of physical exercises in the first three months of NS, and one of them is the SOC or Standard Obstacles Course.  One of the exercises in this SOC is where we have to climb up a balance beam and at the end of it, jump off the beam and land on our feet, squatting.  It was at this landing part where I found that I couldn’t stand up, and had to sent by speed boat to the main land so that I could go to the hospital to get treated by a doctor.  There were all sorts of tests I had to go through, and after several months, it was ascertained that I suffered from Spondylolisthesis, which is a condition involving spine instability, where the vertebrae move more than they should.  Finally, because of this incident, my fitness grading was immediately moved from A down to E permanently, and I had to undergo physiotherapy and be supported by wearing a brace, much like a corset beneath my army fatigue. 

 

Then, as most of my readers would know, in 2013, I was diagnosed with a very severe cancer of the blood, called leukemia.  It was life-threatening, and the only way I could find some hope was to be able to get a donor of stem cells from someone who matched my human leukocyte antigen, otherwise known as HLA.  The search had to go out to the world, as no matching donor was found locally.  The journey was arduous, and after about 7 tries, one was finally found, and Peter Mui, a truly kind and generous donor, turned out to be from of all places, half the world away in Chicago, Illinois.  Without a matching donor’s providence of his precious stem cells, I would not have had the chance of remission.  Needless to say, the donation worked wonders, and I am now in remission from a very rare strain of leukemia, and I am daily so grateful to Peter for his selfless act of reaching out to save a total stranger in Singapore.  And the most interesting thing about him is that the day that he signed up to be a bone marrow donor was the day right after I was ordained a priest here in Singapore.  To show my gratitude to Peter, I gave him a watch that my grandfather gave me, and asked an engraver to etch some words at the back of the watch face.  It reads “Time given for the gift of time.”  Peter wears this watch daily now.

 

Lastly, most of you will know that in May 2021, I was exercising outside of the parish in the early hours of the morning when I was hit by a van, and it sent me careening onto the road, and my head was injured, leaving a cracked skull, needing a prosthesis to cover my brain.  The recovery from that accident was arduous, and I am still suffering some degree of weakness as I cannot now go for long runs. 

 

In all of these three moments of being close to death, I was never fearful, but full of hope.  I was glad to be suffering from leukemia, so that I can now tell cancer patients receiving chemotherapy that I know what they are going through because I have had a similar experience myself.  In those moments of afflictions, I was always cognizant of God’s presence in my life, and that I was guarded by his Divine presence. 

 

Angels do not leave us in our lives.  We may not be able to detect their presence, but that doesn’t mean that they are absent from us.  Angels help us to live our lives in ways that glorify our Beloved Creator, God.  We should show our gratitude to these angels by constantly thanking God for them in our lives, that we have them as our guiding lights to show us to path that leads us to our heavenly home after our time on this earth ends. 

 

As Ronald Rolheiser once said, God is closer to us that we are to ourselves, and God’s solicitous love, guidance and protection are with us always.  God is indeed omnipresent.    Praise be to God.

Do we choose our vocation, or does our vocation choose us?

 I do believe, as some spiritual writers have written, that God gives each of us a vocation to live out.  In Roman Catholic spirituality, Fr Ronald Rolheiser says that we were put on this earth with a divine plan for us.  In that light, one question would be “how do we see vocation in this light?”  Well, in discerning our vocation, we need to see it as something that we give ourselves over to, and in very many cases, that comes at a price, and the price is that of having to renounce our own dreams and passions.  We need to be free to accept it or not, but each choice has its consequences.  The last thing we would ever want is to be accused of having to make the choice to live a misdirected and misguided life.

 

I have this thought of my vocation largely because a couple of weeks back, on 20 June, I celebrated my 23^rd sacerdotal anniversary, because it was on 20 June 2001 that I was ordained a Catholic priest at my ordination to the priesthood in the parish of St Anne’s. 

 

Anniversaries tend to give us reason to ponder and appreciate in a new way how we are living our lives.  I am certain that married couples would annually think seriously about how they have lived out their marital vows, bringing back to mind the ways they have made the effort to vow to love each other, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, till death separates them for good. 

 

It should not surprise anyone that in our present world, there is a culture that permeates everywhere, that there is a belief that personal freedom is the aspiration of everyone.  I recall fondly how my own father responded to me when I asked him if it was alright with him if I entered the seminary to pursue my desire to become a priest.  He asked me why I wanted to do this, and I said that deep inside of me, I believe that God is calling me to become a priest and going to the seminary will help me to find out if this is truly God’s calling.  This was what dad told me:  “Well, it’s better that you go into the seminary to find this out for sure, because if you don’t, you may live to the age of 50 or 60, and find yourself asking the same question, and by then, it would be too late for you to do anything about it.”.  And he closed his response by assuring me:  “Remember – if you find out that this is not for you, just pack up and come home.  The door is always open to you, and you will always be welcome home.”

 

Each year on the anniversary of my sacerdotal ordination, I always fondly recall those reassuring words from my father, who has already passed away.  And I find myself smiling to myself, that I had the courage to ask for the blessing of my parents to enter the seminary. 

 

Of course, the training of the seminary years was not a walk in the park.  Okay, sometimes it did seem like a park – Jurassic Park.  But I will say that I truly enjoyed the discipline of the seminary system and the way that each day was planned out for us.  Examinations were a regular part of the life of a seminarian, and I once calculated that in our 7 years of seminary training, we went through a gamut of around 70 different examinations, ending with a mammoth examination for the Baccalaureate of Theology, taken in the seminary in Penang, West Malaysia.

 

It was James Hollis, a Jungian therapist, who said that vocation is a summons of the soul.  He also says that it is as if we were sent to a land with a royal assignment, and if we dithered or forgotten the task, then we would have violated our reason for being where we are in life.  Painful as it sounds, there is deep truth in that. 

 

What I am certain of is this – at the end of our lives, when we stand before our divine judge, we will hear Jesus say whether we have lived out our God-given vocation.  At that moment, we will know for certain if we have given the best of our lives to what God had planned for us from the moment of our creation. 

 

Heaven and the eternity that will be lived out in heaven will be a time to celebrate the mercy and love that only God, the giver of life, can give a soul.  There will be an endless experience of joy and peace in our hearts when we know that we had fulfilled what God willed for us in life. 

 

Ultimately, it’s not so much that we choose our vocations, but that because our vocations have chosen us, the two choices merged and harmonized in our lives. 

 

It will be a sad experience to know at the end of our lives that we had wasted our lives because we chose only what our hearts desired, all because we prized our freedom more than anything else. 

 

May God be with all of you who are discerning your vocation now, and for those who have already made their choice of vocation in life, may you find the joy and happiness that only God can give.