How can sadness be a virtue to our souls? Is this a conundrum to be solved?

 Ever since I was a young child, I was given to accept that in all lives, without exception, there will be the inevitable experience of sadness and gloom, most especially when we ourselves or somebody close to us suffers a terrible affliction in life.  These afflictions are varied, and because there is no way to avoid them completely, when these happen to us, we just must accept the pain and sorrow and only when we manage to do this, we will just be absorbed and overtaken by them and sink, inescapably, into the abyss of darkness that seems endless.

 

As a priest and shepherd of souls, I have presided at many funeral Masses and have been present at so many cremations of the deceased that I have lost count of them.  At each one of them, there is always the experience of witnessing the surviving family members and loved ones of the deceased person completely wracked with anguish, grief, hopelessness and melancholy.  Do these emotions show a raw weakness of those who survive the deceased in the casket?  Should these emotions be avoided and negated no matter how difficult it can be?  The human instinct in these situations is to go up to the sorrowful person and stand steadily next to them and utter the phrase “Please don’t cry.  Be strong.  Your friends and family don’t know how to handle your copious tears.” 

 

Although these words seem to be the sensitive and correct thing to do, all it does is that it avoids the truth that at these moments of dark and inconsolable grief, that there actually is something truly beneficial and positive about grief and tears in these moments of despair.  Our weak humanity wants to run away from our moments and encounters with death, illness, sadness and any sense of loss.  Escapism is our modus operandi in the face of affliction and suffering.  We may escape from these moments of harshness and darkness, but at best, it is only a momentary escape.  The sad fact is that it will return to bother and haunt us later on in life, and because it is so raw and real, it makes repeated returns into our lives, breaking us all over, again and again.

 

One of the lovely movies that shows us how hidden the goodness of pain and tears are in our lives was so prominently revealed in a gem of a movie called The Shack.  It began as a novel written by a Canadian author named William P. Young, and it tells of how a man handled the horrendous and painful loss of his young daughter who was abducted and murdered by a serial killer and the little girl’s body was never found. 

 

Mackenzie, the father of the girl, receives and invitation to go the shack to meet “Papa”.  The long and short of it is that Mack does go to the shack alone, and it is in that shack that he encounters the manifestation of the three persons of the Holy Trinity, where Papa is an African-American woman, God the Son is a Middle Eastern carpenter, and the Holy Spirit reveals himself as an Asian woman named Sarayu.

 

 

There are several one-to-one encounters of Mack and each of them, and the one that is most beautiful and mind-opening is one where Sarayu sees Mack crying when he talks about his murdered daughter.  This is where Sarayu uses a small glass vial and collects the tears streaming from Mack’s eyes.  Mack is puzzled and asks why Sarayu does this.  Her explanation is this – Mack, God does not let these tears of grief and sadness go to waste.  God collects them and uses them in a positive way.  However, most people do not allow themselves to cry, and that is a waste. 

 

It is later in the story, that Mack discovers the body of his daughter, and very sadly carries the dead body to be tenderly buried in the ground, and after the body is covered with earth, Sarayu takes out the vial of Mack’s collected tears and sprinkles the tears all over the burial spot.  It is when the tears get absorbed by the soil that beautiful flowers and a majestic tree sprouts immediately over the grave site, and the flowers that bloom from the plants and the tree fills the entire place with so much life and loveliness. 

 

It doesn’t take a philosopher to understand that this is a precious lesson that there is so much positivity that come from the painful process of tears, sorrow and lamentation.  Jesus himself was so aware of this because in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before he was crucified, he cried out to his Father, saying “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”  At that point of great sorrow and distress, Jesus had a very clear knowledge that something truly good will come out of the passion that he was to undergo that would culminate in his shameful death on the cross of Calvary.  The flowers and fruit that will come out of his passion is the undeserved grace of divine mercy that extends to every single one of his followers and disciples, and right up to this very moment, we the baptized in Christ, are the living and breathing fruit and flowers of the empty tomb of Jesus. 

 

Beautiful and poignant this truth is it is also truly challenging to impart this to members of the flock of the Church.  It remains the task and endeavor of every ordained priest worth his ordination to try in various ways to break this truth to the people he ministers to in his parish.  We need to go against our human intuition to escape from our sufferings and failures, to bring life to those who surround us in life.  We owe it to them, and we owe it to ourselves.

 

We need to begin with the hard task of identifying the ways that we are so prone to run away from our pains and sorrows in life.  Once we do that, it is half the battle won.  The other half is to courageously admit of our foolish ways, seek God’s divine mercy for our shallow ways, and cry those tears we may have been withholding for so many years. 

 

And once we do that, we will be providing the Holy Spirit with so much to fill those vials so that He can use them to copiously water the parched and lifeless soils of so many lives and allow thousands to live resurrected lives. 

The unseen and innocently ignored message of true Christianity

Many people, Christian and otherwise, know about the message and teaching of Christmas.  Yes, it is well known and accepted that love is the message of the newborn baby in a manger in faraway Bethlehem, and this message has been preached, acted out, and sung about in numerous countries and civilisations throughout the world.  Somehow, it is perhaps due to this message spoken of and written about ad nauseam, it also does have a negative effect - it has also ignored and sidestepped the crucial message of the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ.  I am referring to the importance of being welcoming to the stranger.

In the Old Testament, there were so many prophets who spoke emphatically about how imperative it was to welcome the stranger or the foreigner.  After all, the Israelites were a displaced people, and they themselves were always seeking a home for their people.  They were so familiar with the experience of being a stranger or a foreigner, and in his own life, Jesus stood side by side with the prophets from of old.  

For Jesus, God not only had a preferential option for the poor.  In Jesus, God was in the poor!  And his message to both his disciples and his followers was to always have a space in their hearts and lives for orphans, widows, lepers and strangers.  This was such an affront to the Pharisees who were only keen to keep the strict laws of Moses.  They confronted Jesus numerous times for dining with public sinners and even tax collectors.  To the Pharisees, this would inevitably sully and stain the very being of a righteous Jew.  Jesus’ well-quoted retort to them was that the healthy do not need the attention and care of a doctor, but it is the sick who do.  All of humanity was sick in their souls due to the sin of Adam, also called original sin.  Jesus came as a doctor of the soul to assuage this malignancy through his willingness to die on the cross of Calvary in the most shameful and despicable way.  

It is so telling that in the 25th chapter of St Matthew’s gospel, Jesus teaches his disciples about the last judgment, and how the people will be like either sheep or goats.  What Jesus will judge is the way we either gave food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, or how we welcomed strangers who came to us while we were alive.

Those that will be sent into the eternal fire will be those that failed to give food to the hungry, provide water to the parched, and those who gave no welcome and those who did not visit those who were in prison.  The clincher is at the end, when Jesus reveals “what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.”  

Knowing this can be very disconcerting for those who hail Jesus as Lord, King, Saviour and Messiah.  How real Jesus was to us will be judged if we have indeed seen him in the sick, the poor, the marginalised, and the despised.  This Jubilee Year is one where the late Pope Francis calls us to give not just hope, but ‘spes nonconfundit.’   In our common parlance, it means ‘hope does not disappoint.’  

We need to train our eyes and hearts to be able to see and perceive Christ who is very much present in those we naturally tend to avoid and side-step in life.  Our baptism needs to be seen as a day when our eyes were opened in a new way to see life anew.  

There are many people in the world who are either refugees or facing immigrant issues.  Many are facing humongous humanitarian crises, and as Christians, we cannot be too quick to turn away from their needs and not see their need.  

Undoubtedly, facing these rejects of society is a highly sensitive and it would be naive to think that these are not complex issues to deal with.  Of course, dealing with them will impact us politically, socially, economically and will have an effect on our security issues too.  But what is so important is that there is no way we can justify our lack of positive response on Christian grounds.  Yes, Jesus had a divine heart to love all sinners so as to die on Calvary for us.  We need to pray for a change of heart, so that like Jesus, we too can, on our own cross on Calvary, be able to say - “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”  

Seeing familiar things in new ways so that we see the unfamiliar.

Back in 1991, a gentleman named Tom Baccei published a book that featured pages and pages of apparently weird and puzzling pictures in multicolor and titled the book “Your Eyesight Gets Better & Better in a Very Short Rate of Time:  Magic Eye”.  Within a few weeks, this Japanese book became a best seller, and he then published a second book soon after that.

 

The ‘magic’ thing about these prints is that at first glance, you only see a random composite of colors and tend not to make much of it.  But only when you look at these pictures at length, and shift your gaze and focal point to allow the colored dots be rearranged, do we shift the focus and allow ourselves to be moved into the picture, we will be able to see a whole new dimension of the composite of dots and shapes, and a totally new image appears as if out of magic and it astounds the viewer.  I remember being captivated by these images when I was in my early secondary school days, going to the MPH bookstore in Armenian Street, just a short walk from SJI where I was studying, and loved viewing the prints of those magic eye posters.

 

In my scripture and theology studies in the seminary, I learnt how important it is to allow the numerous stories in the bible to reveal deeper levels of importance and beauty.  It is only when we take the time and effort to sit with the stories and let the images speak to us in deeper ways will we uncover the depths and gems that await those who take the time to appreciate the beauty that exists inside of those images and stories.

 

Many things in life need to be handled with same endurance and patience as well.  In our Christian tradition, we have the language of scripture, we have creeds, and most definitely, we have our dogmas, and so many of us struggle to not just understand them, but to explain them to others.  In order to get to its crux and depth, we need to sit with these for a time, and let them speak to us in ways that only they can.  And when we do that, then just like looking at the magic eye prints, their depth and beauty becomes not just real but also compelling and enchanting to us.

 

People who have lost friends or relatives in death ought to do a lot of this as well.  At funeral wakes, it will be not just sentimental but wise to take a chair and sit alone in front of the casket of the deceased, and ruminate about how that person was so alive and live-giving to you when their hearts were healthy and pumping blood through their veins.  When we do that, the power of their lives will become more real and beautiful to us, and that is because we allowed our magic eye to be opened in a new way.  Sometimes, the dead speak much louder and clearer to us than when they were alive. 

Patience is a virtue, and we must never forget this.  Your patience in reading this blog entry required patience, and I hope it has paid off richly.  God bless you as you cultivate the virtue of patience in your life, and may your magic eye see the wonders that God promises us we will see when we enter through the gates of heaven. 

 

Are we only useful when we can physically do something in life?

 There is a common misconception about how we as human beings define usefulness and helpfulness in life.  Many, if not all of us, think that it is only when we can actually do something positive in our actions, or say something brilliant and good, that we are contributing to the goodness in the life of others, or to the world at large.

 

While this may be true in many ways, it makes us almost useless and even a bother in so many different situations in life.  We want to be seen as effective and clever by others, but isn’t it true that so often, when things go awry in the lives of so many people, we fall so far short of brilliance, usefulness and helpful.  Take the example of the demise of someone we know and love.  In the face of the pain and agony of their family and loved ones, there really is nothing we can say to them that can assuage the gaping hole of loss and torment that fills their hearts at that moment.  We put so much emphasis on our activity to present to others our elan and compassion, and we hardly think anything positive in our passivity.  But this is because we do not think that passivity has anything good in itself. 

 

We just have to look at the way that Jesus Christ lived his life during his three years of active ministry as a human being two thousand years ago.  True, while he was alive and in active ministry, he preached both by word and by example.  He healed the sick, exorcised those possessed by evil spirits, multiplied loaves and fish to feed thousands, and raised the dead to life.  St John is clear when he said that if every detail and teachings of Jesus were written down, the world could not contain the books that would be written.  This is found in John 21:25.

 

St John wasn’t just exaggerating something.  He was saying something so true, but so many do not grasp the essence of his words.  St John was really saying that there is an amazing positivity not just in Jesus’ activity, but also in his passivity. 

 

In my experience of a shepherd of souls in my priestly ministry, there are times when I find myself unable to say or do anything to positively show my parishioners that I care for them and their wellbeing.  So many times, I have been physically present at the death bed of the relative of my parishioners, and as they were literally at death’s doorstep, with the ECG machine hardly registering signs of a healthily beating heart, all I could do at that moment was just stand there and sometimes, reach out and hold their weak and cold hands in silence.  I wished I could do more, but at that moment, it was all that I could do.  Was I just being so passive in my silence?  Could I have done more?

 

The most powerful and life-contributing parts of Jesus’ life in Jerusalem was not only when he was talking and moving, and manifesting powerful and amazing miracles in front of his disciples and followers.  The last three days of Jesus’ life was when he was silent, arrested, tortured, handcuffed, put on trial, scourged and finally crucified.  There was no physical activity that was seen in Jesus.  Yet, all that was done to Jesus on those three days leading up to his gruesome death on Calvary were a manifestation of his passivity, and it was this passivity that finally brings the greatest power to the world mired in sin and selfishness – it was the power of life over the seeming unsurmountable power of death.

 

A married couple’s love for each other is beautifully conveyed when love letters are written, or when they say sweet and heartwarming words to one another.  While that is good, there is also the misunderstood power of mere presence to one another, with no words coming out from their mouths.  In times of great torment and agony in life, sometimes words just cannot convey what our hearts are emoting.  These are the times when our silent presence communicates that we care and love the people that we stand before.  Just showing up conveys so much.

 

In those times, it takes tremendous courage to just show up.  The courage of Jesus to show up at the trial and torment of the agony of the road up to Calvary is astounding.  It is to our detriment that we downplay so much in the power of our passivity in life.  We put too much emphasis on the activity of our lives, and when we do this, we miss the power and strength that comes from our passivity too. 

 

I listen to various genres of music, and sometimes, it is the depth of the simple words that strike me as both true and beautiful as well.  One of the songs that does this is the song written and made popular by Ronan Keating, entitled When You Say Nothing at All.  Summarized, the contents of the lyrics convey that there are times in life when we convey our deepest and heartfelt emotions and sentiments when we say nothing at all.  The opening lines are a great revelation of our passivity.  Ronan sings “It’s amazing how you can speak right to my heart.  Without saying a word, you can light up the dark.”

 

It’s a nice precis of what this blog entry is trying to say.  We think that it is only by our activity that shows how powerful we are.  But sometimes, the opposite is true.  And in those times, we too say it best, when we say nothing at all. 

Our languages divide us on so many levels. What then, can unite us?

 The Church celebrated one of the greatest solemnities this past Sunday, on that is as great and solemn as the solemnities of Easter, Christmas and the Ascension of the Lord.  We celebrated the solemnity of Pentecost, and it can be said that it is also the real birthday of the Church.  Yet, in many ways, this truth is hardly appreciated, nor is it commonly preached in many Catholic churches in the world, and this is indeed a travesty. 

 

One of the common links of all the solemnities of the Church is that they are the celebrations of the great and important gifts given to us by God himself.  Christmas celebrates the gift of the Son of God given to humanity in the truly human form of Jesus Christ himself.  No Christmas gift that can be procured from anywhere can rival or match the immense magnitude of this gift from the greatest giver ever existed.  Comparable to that is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the tomb after three days from his gruesome and tragic death on Good Friday, which shows that it is by God’s grace and divine love, that life’s seeming great insurmountable obstacle of death can be overcome!  Easter shows us that death may seem like an end, it is really surmounted and overcome by God himself.  And that gift is not just for Jesus, but for anyone who believes and accepts Jesus as the Son of God, and adheres to the teachings that Jesus came to proclaim to the world.  The gift of eternal life is for all believers in the Catholic Church. 

 

Pentecost is regarded so highly by the Church because it is also the celebration of a great gift given by God to all of humanity.  It is the gift of God himself, and this is God in the Holy Spirit, who is one person of the Trinitarian God himself, composed of God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ), and God the Holy Spirit. 

 

In dramatic form, on that first Pentecost day in Jerusalem, the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples (who were locked in a room for fear of the Jews), and the other believers gathered in the city.  Coming first in the form of a powerful wind, the Holy Spirit manifested itself in tongues of fire that rested upon the heads of the disciples in that locked room.  This gift of the Holy Spirit gave the disciples the hitherto unseen ability to speak to that gathering of the believers in the city who came from the different parts of the world in their own languages, about the Jesus, his death, resurrection and exaltation as the Messiah of the world.  The listeners were bewildered that all of them could hear and understand the disciples in their own languages, and it was a miracle that so many of the believers witnessed and partook in.

 

The Holy Bible is a revelation of the creation of the world, and one of the stories that it tells in chapter 11 of Genesis that the people of the world united in building a massive tower that would reach the heavens, and in constructing this tower, the people would make a name for themselves and also it would help to prevent the people from being scattered.  But God disrupted the construction of this tower by confusing the language of the workers such that they no longer understood one another.  The result was that this tower never reached completion, and the people were dispersed over the face of the earth, each speaking their own language.

 

Bible stories reveal not just an isolated event of the past, but also tells us of the reality of our own situation in life.  There is a rich prevalence of social media in our world today.  It has helped so many people to connect with their family members who live in different parts of the world, and that is a good thing.  But it has also led to a very fragmented world because social media has brought along with it different and diverse sets of values and truths, making real and deep conversations and understanding not just challenging, but also virtually impossible.  So, what gives?  Was the Pentecost event two thousand years ago just an isolated miracle, or is it trying to show that it really needs to happen in our world today?

 

One of the challenges facing any preacher of the Good News is that he is facing a world where there is a great fragmentation of truths because each of us has our own different sources of the truth that we adhere to.  

 

At that Pentecost event, everyone at that gathering understood everyone else in their own language.  In effect, all became on language. 

 

It was a manifestation of the truth that Jesus came to proclaim, and that Jesus spoke the language of charity, peace, forgiveness, humility, love, long-suffering, fidelity, faith and chastity.  Jesus came to show that it is only when we speak the language of all those truths that we will begin to understand each other.

 

If Jesus came to speak that language of God to save all of sinful humanity, may all of us believers also do the same, and through it, see the world slowly change and transform, and in that way, build an effective new tower of Babel that will eventually allow us to reach God and love and worship Him face to face. 

 

Happy and blessed Pentecost to everyone!

Should we pray only when we feel like praying?

There is a common but sad truth about prayer in so many people throughout the world.  Many people do not have the urge to pray, and unless they have some struggle in life that they are experiencing, they will not be regular in their prayer life.  It’s much like healthcare given by a doctor in a clinic.  Yes, they are astute and skilled in their jobs, and patients will only go to them if they are in some need of medical care or if they have some medically concerned problems.  Otherwise, the existence of the clinics are just there, but for the most part, they are there only for the few needy people.  No one goes to the doctor just to pop in their heads and say “hello doctor!”. 

 

I use this clinic experience to emphasize the point that for many people, unless there is a pressing spiritual problem that only God can help, they will not be praying with any regularity.  For many of the faithful, prayer is generally based on feelings or sentiments.  If I feel close to God, it will be good and rightful for me to pray.  Otherwise, I will be wasting my time and God’s time as well.  So, in this sense, many are saying that prayer has a utilitarian aspect.

 

This is only true if prayer is looked at with one main utilitarian purpose.  Prayer is man’s way of manifesting our love for God.  Our prayer demonstrates to God that we love him, and this love is one that has to be unconditional.  If we are happy and contented with life, we love God.  And if our lives are filled with anxieties and afflictions of all sorts, our love for God is not negatively affected.  And this is because God’s love for us in unconditional and unwavering.  Jesus Christ became man to show this in the most astounding way through His life, death and resurrection. 

 

Of course, our lives are not going to be great and wonderful every single day.  Inevitably, we will encounter things that will affect our peace and our contentment.  Our sustained prayer needs to be consistent and regular, because our love for God too, has to be consistent and regular.

 

When we understand this, then our prayer and its regularity will not be wavering and dependent on feelings or sentiments.  It has to be based on a decision to love.  And if this is true for God and our love for Him, it also has to be true for a married couple’s love for each other in the realm of married love.  A spouse’s love for the partner in marriage has to be a decision, and not something that is dependent of feelings, sentiments or emotions.  And it is because marital love is often based and dependent of feelings and sentiments, they begin to fall out of love for each other the moment those romantic feelings of courtship days become just a figment of one’s memory. 

 

And this is one of the reasons why the Catholic Church has a mandatory Mass attendance every Sunday.  Not all Catholics feel so holy and pious every Sunday that they bring themselves to Mass. 

 

Just showing up is our way of conveying our love and devotion to God.  If God wills it, he will shower His grace upon us when we are at the Eucharistic celebration on Sunday.  But even if He doesn’t, our faithful turning up at Mass on Sunday is itself a testimony of our unwavering love for Him. 

 

So, when it comes to prayer, let it not be dependent on our feelings and pious sentiments.  Just showing up regularly speaks for itself.

Why is the Mass called a celebration?

We human beings always celebrate when we have something to honour and remember with fondness.  Birthdays, graduations, weddings, baptisms and New Year’s Day are all events that we commonly celebrate.  They are occasions, and we gather.  There is joy in the air and a sense of festivity stems from our hearts. 

 

But in the Catholic Church, we celebrate the Eucharist every day, and every Sunday is a mandatory communal celebration of the Mass.  Missing one Mass on Sunday with no good reason is deemed not just a sin, but a mortal one, causing one to lose one’s state of grace, and requiring that catholic to head straight to the confessional, confess his sin, and be absolved of his error by the priest confessor, so that with his soul restored to the pristine state of grace, he can go up to the sanctuary at the next Mass, and receive the wonderful gift of Holy Communion.  Otherwise, if he still receives the Eucharist without the needed absolution of the priest, he will be adding yet another mortal sin to his soul.

 

But I am quite certain that the majority of Catholics have either forgotten this important catechesis, or have chosen to ignore this teaching of the Church, and this is indeed a travesty.  Each time I instruct the penitent about this in the confessional, I get a stunned look from the penitent, as if I am talking about some nonsense or fabrication that I made up.  And one of the reasons why children of catholic parents do not make confession a regular practice in their lives is principally because they hardly see their own parents making it sedulously in their faith life. 

 

Each time the Eucharist is celebrated, in the presence of the community is the gathering of the society of the baptized.  The Eucharist is a family meal, a time of bonding, much like the family dinner table, where each member of the family sits and enjoys the meal where each person sits shoulder to shoulder and it is a reminder that where one family is absent from the table, the family is lacking in its unity. 

 

 Before making Eve from the rib of Adam, God had in inkling that it was not good for man to be alone.  In the realm of nature, there is no singular aloneness in existence.  Down to the smallest molecule or atom, there is a relationship in everything.  Even a man or a woman is never alone.  Each human being is a composite make up of so many cells and organs.  Everything is meant to be in relationship, and the Eucharist is no different.

 

Look at the way families gather on a regular basis.  Whether there is an occasion or not, whether they are in a good or a bad mood, families will come together regularly and put aside their own individual preferences or tedium.  They recognize that family togetherness is about sharing, and their physical presence resets the mind to the fact that their bonding as a family is what makes like meaningful and beautiful.  If that is true for family life, it is also just as true for the Eucharist.

 

I wonder if it is because there is little emphasis on the word “celebration” by preachers at the ambo, that this sense of the importance of the weekly gathering is hardly appreciated by the congregation.  There needs to be a dynamic reinstallation of the deep meaning of celebration so that we as a congregation never lose the importance of a regular and weekly coming together in the church for the Mass. 

 

It is my hope that every person who reads this reflection will have a fresh appreciation for every Eucharistic celebration from now on. 

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.