Revisiting the Sacrament of Reconciliation this Advent

As we enter into the Liturgical season of Advent, preparing us for Christmas, those of us who are practicing our faith with some degree of regularity will also know that toward the end of Advent, here in Singapore there is also what is known as the Penitential Services in which the priests of the various districts will come together as a team to ‘hear the confessions’ of the parishioners who will gather in church at a given afternoon or evening.  For the reader who may not be familiar with Roman Catholic terminology, "Confession, Sacrament of Penance, Sacrament of Reconciliation and Penitential Service" are synonyms.  

There are many negative feelings that surround this event, and they come from both the penitents and the confessors, and I hardly think that there has ever been a place where these feelings were aired freely and honestly.  For about three years now, I have been absent from this event as I had been away on study leave, and this year, I have to remove myself from the community for health reasons.  For each of my readers of this weekly blog who do participate in this bi-annual event (the other being in Lent), this entry is meant to encourage you to approach this celebration (yes, it is one, even if it may not feel like one) with a newness – and that it will truly begin to make a change in your life, at sin, at God’s infinite mercy, and most of all, at how you will approach this Sacrament.

One of the first things that I often have heard about not just the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but also the penitential services is that many people do not like them.  Just from an ego standpoint, I can fully understand this.  No one likes to admit that they had made a stupid mistake in life.  Our ‘natural’ (read sinful) tendency has always been to justify and make all sorts of good excuses for our sins and transgressions, or to do the Eve thing – blame it on the other person.  What really happens in the confessional is a full reversal of this.  In a contrite confession where one is touched by the grace of God, one comes clean and removes all excuses and justifications, and dares to blame no one but oneself for having sinned in small or great ways.  It kills the ego, and it humbles the spirit.  Yes, it is not a good feeling, but no one who has truly done this can ever tell me that there is not a complete lifting up of a terrible burden after one has made this kind of honest confession and received an absolution thereafter.  Remember, though each Sacrament of the Church is a real encounter with Christ, it is principally NOT about feelings.  What is essential is the reality of what is happening, and what is celebrated and participated in.  If we only get caught up with our feelings, we may be worshipping ourselves rather than God.

The other gripe I have often heard about the penitential services is that many priests in their instructions before the service begins, remind penitents to be brief and to-the-point.  This is something which I think has resulted not only in a Catch-22 for the penitent, but for the celebrant as well. 

My overseas reader may not be aware that at one such penitential service, as many as 1500 people can gather for this Sacrament in one parish.  Even when all the priests of the district do turn up to ensure that there are enough confession points, there will be a ratio of about one priest to sixty to eighty penitents.  Much as we want to ensure that every penitent who turns up gets to have his or her sins forgiven, it can often take on the unfortunate flavor of a factory line.  How does one adequately ensure that there is still the element of a ‘celebration’ of renewed life and a soul that is reconciled with God?  It is a tough call.

I would like to also ask my readers for some empathy for the priests who turn up assiduously for these services.  These services last for about an entire week in the various parishes in the districts, one day after another, one parish after another.  As a penitent, you may not realize it, but it is physically quite an exhausting thing to really pay attention and give one’s whole self to the penitent for an extended period of time.  This is not at all a complaint.  I am sure that my brother priests are happy to avail of themselves in this way for the benefit of your souls and your spiritual welfare, but it is a physically exhausting activity.  Of course, if one were to only listen passively and let one’s mind wander, one could sit there for hours and not get tired.  But every priest knows that if it took so much for the penitent to get to that point to want to make his or her peace with God and one’s fellow human being, that one just cannot be passive and inattentive when one is helping one to a healing of one’s soul by the grace of God.  One has to listen with empathy, patience, love and most of all, with charity in one’s heart.  This takes energy.

I wonder if the penitent ever thanks any priest after the absolution is given.  It’s not that we want to be thanked.  That’s not the point.  A couple of blog entries back, I made an honest appeal to really pray for priests who are jaded and who may be minimalists.  There may be a reason for them to have come to this point in their ministry.  They have not had much affirmation in their lives.  So, perhaps this year, when you do turn up for this penitential service at Advent, and see a very exhausted looking priest sitting in front of you, make a special effort to really thank him for his availability and his work, or you can really surprise him by giving him a hand written note of thanks, where he can see that you truly mean the words that come from your heart.  Just make sure that you do not choose your ‘favourite’ priest to do this to.  I am certain that in the next confession that he turns up for, he will do so with a certain newness of heart.  Another thing to never ever do is to give the confessor any monetary form of thanks as payment for the Sacrament.  Sacraments must never be linked with money.  You’ll only be committing a sin right after having had your sins forgiven!

Having shared these few points, what remains are just reminders that all of us sinners should remember when approaching the mercy of God and the God of mercies in the confession.

-       Do your self-examination well.  Many of us do not benefit much from the Sacrament because we may have been superficial about our sins and transgressions.  One of the most courageous things to do before any penitential service of confession is to ask your nearest and dearest about what your sins are.  Ask your spouse or your children, and you may be surprised at what they reveal.  Those may be your real issues that need reconciliation that you have been blinded to.

-       When in a long line waiting for your turn, pray instead of getting impatient and agitated.  The person in front of you and the many in the church may harbour deep fears, nervousness and perhaps even embarrassment about what they are going to confess.  Pray for all of them.  The physical gathering of so many Catholics should be a visible sign that we are a community who not only are fallen, but also a community that strongly believes that God is merciful, loving and compassionate.  This shared belief has caused us to turn up to be reconciled with God and with one another. 

-       If this particular Rite seems to make you more impatient and irritated each time you come for it, perhaps you need to celebrate it in the ordinary way instead.  Make an appointment with a priest a few weeks before this onslaught of confessions and turn up in his office (or confessional) where he can be much more available to you, and where there will be no pressure to ‘finish the line’ of penitents behind you.  I have personally heard so many heartfelt confessions in the privacy of my office as compared to the encounters I have had in the confessional. 

-       Finally, frequency helps remove fear and changes our approach toward this encounter of love and mercy.  One of the best things that we can do for ourselves is not to just resort to these penitential services for the spiritual health of our souls.  Just going to confession twice a year is like taking a bath or washing something that gets filthy just twice a year.  But that’s negatively put.  It is also akin to meeting God at his most merciful twice a year.  How can we be witnesses to God’s mercy if we only encounter this kind of amazing grace only twice in 365 days when we sin almost daily?  How can one 'sing a new song unto the Lord' about his wondrous mercy if one only wants to joyfully encounter his forgiveness at best bi-annually?  What really happens in the Confessional is that evil and sin and the devil are trumped by goodness, mercy and God's forgiveness.  Sin has lost its foothold on us and we make small progressive steps toward the Kingdom of God and turn our backs to evil and sin.  Frequent practices of such Rites and Rituals have the purpose of leading us to that place of nakedness and vulnerability where our ego identities fall away and our explanations hardly mean anything, where superiority and rights matter no longer.  That is when God can really get through to us, and as Franciscan Richard Rohr puts it, the "Trinitarian Flow" comes alive in us and God has the best chance. Psalm 5 reminds us that God is not a God who loves evil.  By our confession to want to break from sin, we are declaring boldly that we are on the side of God.  We hardly think in these terms.  Little wonder then that we hardly share actively with our fellow pilgrims about the healing mercy of God. 

May you have a most hopeful Advent in anticipation of Christ’s coming at Christmas.  God love you.

The hiddenness of God's is ours too

I was listening passively to the radio a few days ago. The morning show was on, where most of the time the DJs talk about random topics just to ensure that there’s no ‘white noise’.  The topic of the moment was how to hide your Christmas presents from your children and loved ones.  There seems to be a need, apparently, for many people to not let the recipients of their Christmas presents know what they are going to get, and not to even let them see the actual wrapped gift.  I suppose for many people, that’s the ‘thrill’ of Christmas morning. 

I brought that thought further and somehow, it revealed something to me about the true nature of God and how he manifests himself in our lives.  Was not the first Christmas also very much a surprise?  Apart from the Holy Family and their close relatives, no one knew who or what this infant that Mary was carrying in her was going to be.  There was a hiddenness about the incredible plan of God in Jesus Christ.  The revelation of salvation in Christ was to be unfolded slowly, and it did not allow for anything hurried, rushed or premature. 

Our sinful and weak human nature, however, trends to the opposite.  The more advances we seem to make through technology and science, the shorter span of tolerance we have for patience and mystery and God’s hiddenness.  We want our things yesterday.  Just looking at the superficial way that so many Christians celebrate Christmas itself reveals an impatience and a great desire to reach the destination before the journey even starts.  It is only November and already Christmas decorations are up in full glory in the malls and streets.  People are already having Christmas parties at homes and in the office.  Granted, that is the vulgar side of commercialization, but aren’t so many Christians who are well catechized, who are aware of the period of Advent, which is a period of waiting, of preparation, of anticipation, also sucked up into this ‘dis-ease’?  Sure, it is going to be so difficult to change this, but if you are a leader of a Church group, a boss in the company, someone who is a decision-maker for such organised activities,  perhaps you can introduce a new (and proper) way to celebrate Christmas by having Christmas parties during the actually Christmas season (after Dec 25).  Would not that be an excellent moment of evangelisation where you take time to explain to a non-Christian how Advent leads to Christmas?  Perhaps we are not seizing these precious moments enough in our lives, and we find ourselves giving all sorts of justifiable excuses to refrain from speaking about our faith.  Maybe you can start by sharing your own experiences of the need to learn to wait, and one reason is because God often likes to take things slow.

 

Yes, God reveals slowly, and sometimes painfully so.  That is why the Church has Liturgical seasons to mirror life, so that we can relate this to our own lives in a very real way.  If one really thinks about it,  the celebration of the Sacraments are indeed a slow revelation of God’s plan for each one of us.  Each time we participate actively at the Eucharist, when we make that intrinsic connection with God in such a real way, he reveals a little more of his love for us.  Each time we truly enter into the mercy of God in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we touch a little more the tenderness of the one who is mercy himself.  The same goes for the when one is infirm and receives an anointing.  It’s never going to be a full and final encounter while we are still here on earth.  It’s a slow revelation because it is a revelation of love.  I am certain that married couples who are deeply in love know this.  They want to show just how deeply they love one another but they also do know that there is a limit of their ability to show this in any outward way.  So they try over and over in creative ways that hopefully say what is in their hearts and minds.  Woe be the day that they give up and take one another for granted.  The mystery is lost, and the hiddenness is given up. 

It may be easier for me to reflect and live out this hiddenness of life simply because I am physically hidden from the public in my convalescing at home for a year.  Imagine if I celebrated that I am cancer-free (for the moment) before I get news from the doctor, or before I even started that long journey through the many chemotherapy and radiation treatments!  It would have been totally premature and inappropriate, no matter how much faith I have.  

What is there to reflect and ponder at Advent for you?  Plenty.  You know you’d be fudging the truth if you say that there is nothing that you are anticipating in life, waiting for, hoping for, longing for and having some desire for.  Perhaps it is a doctor’s report, a response from a loved one, a change or conversion in either yourself or someone dear to you, a result, a job application, etc.  We can use this time of Advent to enter into that waiting as the Church waits for Christmas in the Advent period.  When we do this, our Sunday celebrations at Mass will be so much more connected with our daily living, and you will live and pray differently.

Christians who are reading this week’s reflection - perhaps you may want to really think about truly celebrating Christmas in a way that allows you to enter into that hiddenness that mirrors or imitates God’s in some way.  Observe Advent.  Fight that temptation to doll up your homes for Christmas before Christmas.  Instead of Christmas decorations, put up something purple instead, get an Advent wreath, and only begin to let Christmas come into your lives at Christmas and into the Christmas season.  Who knows?  If this is the first time you put yourself through this experience and ‘inconvenience’, you may just see a great change in the way that you and God meet at Christmas when Christmas truly arrives.

Then, at Christmas, you will not be like the millions who are already jaded of everything related to Christmas before the event itself and don't want to hear another Christmas carol, taste another Christmas cake, attend another party or rush to take down those month-old Christmas decorations on Dec 26.  This will help us to truly enter into that hiddenness that God is so familiar with, and we will truly celebrate Christmas for the Christmas season, from 25 Dec right up till the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.  

May this week be a spiritual anticipation for the holy and hopeful season of Advent for all of you. 

Post Scriptum:  I wish to thank each of my kind readers for responding so positively to writing some comment to my blog post two weeks ago as a form of thanksgiving to God for the good news my doctor brought about not having found further Leukemia cells in my body.  There were 99 such responses!  I am so grateful for all your prayers.  May your efforts be a visible sign to others about the goodness and love of God.  God love you.

A sure way to holiness - deep co-operation and seeking our deepest calling everyday in contemplation

Before you, my dear reader begin to read this blog entry, may I pray with you?  It will set the correct tone for not just a reading, but hopefully, a truly attentive and prayerful reading.  If you have not really prayed for the day, make this your offering to the Lord.

Heavenly Father, open not just my eyes but my heart that is your doorway to my soul.  Let these following few minutes spent in reading the honest reflections speak words of truth that I will hear without prejudice, without judgment and most importantly, with compassion and charity.  If I am in a place where distractions abound, allow me to still be aware that what I am doing now is a good and holy action, and always let me be aware of my deepest calling in life, which is to live fully as your child.  Amen.

Thank you.  It is without doubt that every one of us encounters many different challenges, difficulties, successes and failures almost every day of our lives.  The more we are ‘loaded’ with our targets and work, fill our days with the various important activities on hand, and do our best to fulfill the needs of the home, hearth and family, the more easily it is to forget that there is a fundamental ‘target’ that all of us baptized Christians should be constantly aiming for as we live out our lives.  That calling is that we become fulfilled as God’s living, sacramental presence in the world not only to all whom we encounter, but that we are fully aware of this great and noble calling that comes from the grace of God.

That we love God first before anything and anyone else becomes then the "Gold Standard" of correct Christian living.  Yes, even for married couples.  Their love for each other and their families will only be truly healthy if each of them loves God first before their love for one another in marriage.  What is the fruit of this kind of living in full awareness?  It is undoubtedly that we will become a sign for the world around us that there truly is another way to live – 'no dog eat dog world', no living for the ego, no selfishness, no fear (except for a great and holy fear of the Lord).  There will also be a undiminished need to stand for justice, to speak the truth and to accept the consequences of living in such a freedom that threatens the world and it’s false-hood.

Getting to live like this is always going to be a challenge unless one has the key.  The tradition of the Church has always been that giving ourselves over to deep contemplation and reflection on a regular and daily basis is that key, where we enter into a meditative space to ponder anew over and over again what our deepest calling in life is.  There, at the heart of our very selves we meet the heart of God who reminds us, shows us and gives us the courage to not only admit to our falseness, but more importantly, to repent of acknowledged false living where often our false selves had over-powered our true and authentic selves.  When we emerge from this kind of genuine prayer, slowly but surely, we will begin to live as if we were spotlights of God’s presence in the world, which is our deepest present calling in life.  Why present?  Because we aren’t dead yet, but are on the way to the life of Beatitude in Heaven.  We are all on-the-way.

To transform the world (the salvation of souls) and to show to unbelievers that God is real and that we have a Living God who loves and cares for us despite our difficulties and challenges in life.  That’s what we are all called to do as baptized Christians.  It’s also a call to make the world holy.  But as I live quietly in the confines of my convalescence in safety of my home, and go deep into daily contemplation each early morning, it came to me that not all priests and religious have the desire to co-operate with God’s grace to transform their parish to real places of holiness.  I somehow hesitate to 'share' this revelation given to me, because I know I can be misunderstood to somehow show myself as 'holier-than-thou', which is not the case.  Something mystical is happening to me in my silent healing.  

Lately, it was truly revealed to me that there are very many good administrator-priests, even good pastoral priests who do very good ‘work’, priests who have been specially chosen by the Bishop to assist him (including those in his Executive Committee) who have all very good administrative skills, in the arduous task of running the entire Archdiocese of Singapore, but there are also priests who are very lacking in awareness that their great administrative skills are actually confusing the laity, and are not leading their flock to real intimacy with the Lord, leading to a truly holy parish.  Some are so interested in a numbers game, where they pride themselves with the large numbers that show up for the Masses which they celebrate are attracting to the parish. Little do they realise that some of the policies they put into place totally confuse the parishioners.  Somehow, they have lost their hunger for true holiness for the entire parish.  Sometimes it is their ego that causes them to add unnecessary words to the Liturgy, causing another layer of confusion to the parishioners.  What is their reason for adding their own words to the Liturgy?  Apparently, for many, it is to make the Mass more 'personal'.  The Mass IS God's encounter with His people!  How more 'personal' can your own shallow little words make the Mass?  Isn't this, dear priest, one's ego talking?  How does the parish become a truly holy place then? 

I know, it looks as if I am judging my fellow priest, and that I seem to have a certain ‘advantage’ over them as I am living silently as a hermit at home for at least a year.  Yes, it is a gift from the Lord to be able to be ‘removed’ from the parish setting, but in my contemplation, it has truly been revealed to me that if every priest realizes how effective he can be to truly lead his parish to great holiness, there will be a chosen people, a royal priesthood, God’s special possession (1 Peter 2:9).  What is the laity's role in this?  Two main stumbling blocks are apparently in front of each lay person facing such challenges, and no lay person is spared.  Firstly, there is scandal.  If you, a member of the laity are scandalised and can only complain and gossip about this or that priest to your friends, you are not doing a holy deed to help that priest.  Secondly, pray for your priest if he is in any way causing you to resort to this uncharitable and unholy act.  Love him still, offer Masses for him, lift him up to the Lord often.  But do not gossip and hope that others also dislike or disdain him.  He may have lost his motivation, and he needs a grace to recover his first holy intention as a seminarian, a young and enthusiastic priest, and he must have had a true quest for holiness at one point in his life.

Not every priest gives of himself to a daily holy hour before the Blessed Sacrament, which is very much a gateway to true holiness.  No one can doubt this.  Not every priest prays the daily rosary for the souls in purgatory.  Not every priest is interested in true holiness either of himself, or his parish.  I felt so disconsolate when this was revealed to me in my contemplative hour.  But I also do know that this is a grace that was specially given to me and for this I am truly grateful to God.  It does seem that he wants me to be a certain 'conduit' but I am not certain how this is going to be worked out from my little 'corner' of my home.  God has his ways, and I am open to His grace.

So, I am praying at each Mass that I celebrate quietly on my own that more and more priests respond more and more positively to God’s deep calling to him to a life of real holiness.  There are many resistances to this, and the priest who is genuinely interested in becoming a conduit to the deep holiness of his flock will face loads of temptation and distractions.  He needs to overcome his own fragile ego, and if no one prays for him, it is going to be so easy for him to continue life ‘as is’, and there will be very little, if at all any real holiness of the parish and his flock. 

In the end, it is really about a holy co-operation, where the holy priest disregards his ego plans, and the laity truly live out their baptismal calling to the full.  This is what heaven-on-earth will look like, and we must strive for this, with God’s grace.  Where is your part as a baptised lay person?  You form the other very important part of the holiness equation where you pray for the desire to truly live the life of Grace.  It is not that you are second to the priest.  We are all priests through our Baptisms, and it is just that each of us have different roles.  No one better than the other.  No one higher or more important the the other.

Finally, apart from all that I have intimately shared in this blog, there really is nothing that is more important in life, if we are truly honest with ourselves.  All the other things that we face will simply become 'mere commentary'. Only attending to them in our lives will just mean that we are 'coasting along' in life, and have shallow, superficial earthly hope that we are just coping.  Is that kind of living truly fulfilling?  I think you know the answer.

May I ask for your continued prayers for me because I know that exposing my prayer life in this way will also mean that I will be misjudged especially by my brother priests.  I mean them no ill, no harm, I do not judge them, and only have their best at heart.  But we all know how evil works.  It must never have the upper hand in our shared quest for holiness and true transformation.

When the news the doctor brings is more than just good

When my journey into the world of cancer began sometime at December last year, I, like any other cancer patient, had no idea what this ‘adventure’ would entail.  Inevitably, it would include a suffering and what many would call a cancer-pain.  That never really caused me much worry as I knew that as a disciple of Christ, that pain and that suffering had a hidden purpose that goes beyond what is on the surface.  Carried well and with love, it can even save souls.  To be sure, there was actually very little actual pain in the first seven months of my diagnosis, and for this, I am grateful.  I haven’t really asked around, but in my own experience, perhaps for Leukemia patients, the pain is of a different kind. 

But it was only lately that the pain and suffering began to take on a new dimension.  That encounter with idiopathic pneumonia had totally weakened my entire body and my breathing for the past two months has been very labored and strained as I begin to re-train my lungs to work in their normal way.  The only way I can do this is to just to my breathing exercises each day, and this itself is such an energy sapping exercise. 

In the midst of all this that happens in the confines of my home, my doctor asked that I undergo a Bone Marrow Aspiration.  This invasive procedure was the very one that I had to undergo in February this year, where my bone marrow was cored and the sample was sent to the labs, the results showing that there were a lot of blast cells, showing the presence of a blood cancer in me.  That was when I became a cancer patient.

It had been more than 100 days since July 25, the Feast Day of St James, that I received so gratefully the stem-cells from my mystery perfect-match donor from America.  This gave the doctor reason to order the Bone Marrow Aspiration for the third time this year.  Last Wednesday, I went for the procedure and left the results to the Lord with great trust.  The very next day, the initial report came back and the kind doctor informed me that there are no longer any cancer cells in me, and I am henceforth cancer-free.

Cancer-free!  I now know the experience of truly being vindicated.  God has heard the prayer of his servant and has given him new life!  I have been truly transformed and offered life anew by my God.  No one is able to truly understand how liberating this experience is.  My faith handles this piece of news in ways that must be different from people who merely wanted to hear good news.  My experience of this causes me to truly enter into the mystery of new life, transformed life, and yes, even the resurrected life.  There is no gratitude strong enough, and thanksgiving is endless.  Easter has come early for me!

In my continuing convalescence at home, the suffering and pain still continues.  I still surprise myself at just how weakened my entire body is.  I wanted to 'celebrate' this piece of news by attempting a recipe at a simple dessert that entailed an entire packet of crushed Digestive Biscuits for its base.  I could only manage four pieces and found myself panting and unable to continue.  4 measly biscuits.  But I laughed silently to myself that if this is rock bottom, I am still in a good place.  I am still tired all the day long, just breathing.  But I know this will end and I will be slowly getting back my strength, even if it takes a whole year.  Being cancer-free gives me the confidence that I just have to discipline myself, take my time and respond to God’s daily prompting of how I can be used by him in the confines of my home to glorify his name and be useful to the Church through the silent walls of my home.

There are a plethora of places in the Psalms where the just man continues to stay faithful to the Lord somehow suffers in justice, while the sinful man seems to enjoy life, but all the while, the central message is to not give in, not give up and continue to be faithful to the Lord.  It may appear that the Lord is doing nothing, but that is only from our point of view, which is of course, a very very limited one.  My experience has been something very close to this, and Scripture has become something that is so alive for me.  The doctor's good news has become God's news.

I still offer daily Masses for the many who are still suffering in so many ways.  My prayer is often that those who are suffering never despair, never give up on loving their fellow man and woman in their pain and suffering, and most of all, that they never give up hope in life, especially if they are baptized Catholics whose greatest gift is that they have been given the Life of Christ at their baptism. 

Today’s blog is really for all of you who have been journeying with me for such a long time.  You and your prayers have become a great part of my transformation, and I am ever so grateful.  

I have a humble request from you my blog readers.  When I first broke the news to all of you in my February post that I had cancer, you literally poured out your hearts in writing very loving and heartfelt blog responses to that news, and I had a massive 81 comments, telling me that you were all going to be behind me in prayer.  This prayer has borne fruit, and one concrete way to give thanks to God in our Catholic Tradition is to write a letter of thanksgiving.  It's a common feature in Novenas to show everyone just how grateful we are for God's grace to be manifest in our lives and it is a witness to God's presence and power.  Can I request that you do this in this blog as your form of thanksgiving together with me?  And as you do this, may your heart and your lives be ever blessed, and may you continue to be effective witnesses to the glory, and the power of God.  God love you.