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.
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