Good catechesis provides us with a good father tongue.

In an article which appeared in The Conversation, a website that carries analysis by academics and researchers in Australia and Britain, it was reported that memorization and rote learning are important classroom strategies which all teachers should be familiar with.  Apparently, seventy teachers from Britain studied the teaching ways of Chinese students (in China) and made comparative studies against the teaching methods which Britain had been veering away from for the past 40 years, emphasizing instead inquiry or discovery learning, as opposed to direct instruction.  The latter is known in academic circles as the “chalk and talk” approach, which includes the need to memorise things like multiplication tables and poems and ballads, enabling the child to recall them automatically and easily. 

I was rather intrigued by this article, which was reprinted in our daily local paper, because I couldn’t help but make this comparison to the ways in which the Catechism is taught to our children.  Walk into any Catechism class these days in any parish, and one would find not one way of teaching, but such a smorgasbord of methods intending to impart the topic of the day.  Affected and influenced by the current trends of education which encourage ‘experiential’ learning, where the result should be that the student studies less but learns more, the Catechist appears to need to be creative enough to use tools that will entice and hold the attention of the minds of their charges which seem to be as fleeting as ephemeral and transient as steam rising from the spout of a boiling kettle of water.

One of the drawbacks of such ‘creative’ teaching, especially for things as fundamental and basic as the tenets of our faith, is that we can sometimes be so creative and veer so far from the teaching point that the student ends up appreciating the analogy or method, leaving the main topic at hand behind in the classroom.  The result is that the foundations of the faith, which are fundamental, are only implicitly known in some amorphous or dim way, resulting in a sad inability for many to say off-hand anything succinct, sharp and precise about our faith.  Perhaps this is the reason why so many now fight shy about direct evangelization. 

In the days of the penny or Baltimore catechism, the three branches of the faith were imparted in a very systematic way.  Firstly, one was taught The Creed and its tenets.  This then paved the way for the teaching of the Commandments.  Thirdly, one was given the means to attain the aims of the spiritual life, which is mainly through prayer and the Sacraments. 

To be sure, there will probably be a strong disdain for such systematic teaching, as it also seems to imply that all students have (more or less) the same levels of intelligence, and that this “one size fits all” seems to ignore or put aside the fact that all children have their own unique learning styles.  The truth that education is about curiosity and innovation also seems to be put aside in favour of a rote and stiff learning.  I can almost hear the chorus of the lament that rote learning of any kind is “boring”.  The multiplication tables were hardly exciting by any means, but look at where it has led us.

In truth, education is indeed a very complex thing.  But there is no mistaking that we all came from some sort of rote learning as a foundation in our basic education.  Which child has never benefitted from memorizing the multiplication tables?  The result is that we can now without much thought about the fundamentals, endeavor to handle the more complex and difficult math problems.  Till this day, I can attribute my deep appreciation of the English language through the rote memorization of stanzas of poems like Robert Southey’s “Inchcape Rock” and certain sonnets and soliloquies of Shakespeare.  I don’t think we liked doing this at the time, but those drills certainly served us well.

I’m afraid that by the dispensing of the rote learning of our catechism and its basic fundaments, we may have spared the rod and spoiled the child.  Many cannot say with confidence why God made us, what grace is, the difference between sanctifying and actual grace, and what the marks of the Church are.  Not that these need to be rehashed to anyone when sharing of our faith, but when these are firmly set in our hearts, perhaps like the multiplication tables, it gives us a grounding to be as creative as we can to cull from our own experiences of these truths.  Without these well set in us, the result is often that we will waver and hem and haw and resort to the very toxic phrase “but this is how I feel” or “this is for me” or even the very commonly heard “this is how I see it” when it comes to talking about God.  Without disrespect to anyone, the Church and the truths of our faith does not depend on how we personally “feel” about truth. 

It is said of people with no feelings for anything that it is not that they are devoid of feelings, but that they are inept and handicapped when talking about their feelings, and have not been armed with the right vocabulary.  In a way, I am wondering if this also applies to God, spirituality and theology.  When we have the right vocabulary for God, based on good and sound theology, our later experiences in life become the canvas of life on which our portrait of God and life is depicted.  We take the paints made up of the well-grounded principle colours of a solid catechism which we had in our formative years and slowly paint the portrait of God working in and through our lives.  But if our basic palette of this is instead an inchoate admixture that is not lucid and coherent but instead something that is made up of a hodge-podge of vague allusions and implicit hints of a deeper reality, we can very well end up being invalid and even incapacitated later in life when we need to speak in words that convey our God experiences that confirm our faith, giving the impression that our faith is something vapid, trite, insipid and worst of all, subjective.  How can we then speak rationally and objectively when confronted by a world that is fast becoming allergic and oftentimes truculent when the topic of God or religion is brought up?

Perhaps I am a bit more passionate about this than the next man because I was on my way to becoming a lecturer in theology but got waylaid by my illness.  But because I had a firm grounding of my faith, was I able to enter into the more challenging ways of thinking about my faith later on in life, enabling me to wade through the different crises that I had to face in the landscape of my life.  It gave me a much needed vocabulary to articulate my experiences.

How much is our God-talk influenced by being familiar with our mother tongue, or in this case, a father tongue? 

The challenge of living in obscurity.

One of the things that many of us struggle with is to live contentedly in a state of being unknown and hidden.  Somehow, the ego that is often weak and insecure strives for that proverbial fifteen seconds of fame and erroneously thinks that once that is achieved, that we can live with more satisfaction, with the knowledge that we are no longer unknown and nobodies. 

Yet, we also do know that scripture is replete with examples of people who were nobodies and lived rather hidden and even obscure lives, and it was precisely because their lives were lived this way, that God was able to use them for the unfolding of his kingdom.  The Israelite people’s 40 year exodus in the wilderness saw them being nobodies for one generation.  The power of the widow’s mite tells of how much hidden power there is in the humble act of one’s total giving, despite the seeming inconsequential amount that was given.  That Jonah was hidden away for three days in the belly of the fish is highly symbolic that goodness does gestate in the state of darkness and an acceptance of a certain unknowing before one gets tossed out to land on unfamiliar shores which provide a new platform for the unfolding of God’s often unfathomable plans.  The genealogy of Christ even includes so many people who weren’t ‘famous’ but were in fact very usable by God to attain his final purposes.  And what about the way that the encounter of two unseen and gestating babies lying silent and hidden from plain view in the wombs of Mary and Elizabeth were able to communicate their joy before they could even see the light of day, making that significant moment of encounter so powerful that it made it into the written word of Scripture and one of the mysteries of the Holy Rosary?  Indeed, there is a silent, and strangely hidden power that lies in obscurity and silence that makes of those hidden so usable in God’s eyes.  This had to be something that St Theresa of Liseux knew innately when she was so joyful in seeing herself as the smallest of flowers in God’s immense garden, and was totally contented in being so, something which gave rise to her much loved name of ‘the little flower’.

Perhaps we need to ponder anew the hidden power of obscurity whenever we feel the need to promote ourselves and to satisfy the false self.  Ronald Rolheiser once wrote about how a truly contented person is one who doesn’t find cause for sadness if he finds himself staying home on a Saturday night.  This simple statement speaks volumes about how the young or even the not-so-young mind tries so hard to not stay home on Saturday nights because doing so seems to conjure up images of being unpopular, uninvited, and thus, unliked and alone.  But the spiritually mature person is one who sees through the vapidity of such thoughts, and dares to enter willingly into the darkness of a deliberate choice to be alone perhaps because in that holy darkness, one allows God to speak to one’s deepest self.

Hopefully, this is something that speaks to my fellow brothers and sisters who are infirm and find themselves surrounded quite often not by crowds of gaiety and cacophony, but perhaps more often by the silence of hospital wards and constantly beeping medicine pumps and the discomfiting breathing sounds of their fellow room mates.  There can be a redemptive value in our seeming obscurity, but only if we are willing to offer this up as a kind of spiritual ‘raw material’ that God can use for the unfolding of his Kingdom. 

Allowing healing to begin when illness and brokenness are embraced.

There’s something in the whole experience of being ill in a serious way that augments and enlarges one’s world beyond expectations.  No one realistically wants to be ill.  The body naturally wants to be whole and healthy, yet it is almost a universal truth that this body that we have breaks down and is in a constant fight within against free radicals which do battle against the healthy cells of the body.  Complications arise when our own immune systems get weakened and the free radicals grow in an abnormal and destructive way.

It is easy to take for granted the victories that our own bodies win over these often unseen and unfelt battles.  Even right now as you are reading this reflection, our own bodies are in a certain ‘fight’.  It is often only when something goes awry in this battle that these free radicals become highly reactive, giving them the potential to cause damage leading to things like cancers.  When things have reached this stage, one begins the onset of actually dealing with the issue of cancer and illness and a body that is broken in some way. 

On the medical side of things, the doctors have all sorts of armory to deal with these issues and to stem the illness.  But it is on the spiritual side that there is also a silent but necessary struggle with how one should face this ongoing tussle between life as we have known it all along, and what life is going to become, now that one has an illness to live with and a brokenness that is clearly on the horizon of life. 

I have come to see in a rather painful way (literal and allegorical) that denial comes in different forms. In my naiveté, I had thought that denial simply meant that one didn’t acknowledge (or at least had a great difficulty with acknowledging) the existence of one’s illness or condition.  Denial has in fact many facets and faces, and in my very slow process of recovery, which is a real test for someone who has a predilection for busying oneself with work and a dedicated sense of purpose in life, I have come to see that denial can in fact be a resistance to facing the fact that life is going to be very different.  I have tried hard to want to bounce back and to condition my body to its former physical level of fitness and stamina, but it does seem that it is really going to be an uphill task.  I might never even get to where I once was, when I was at my peak.  I am often torn between accepting the permanent changes, and striving to achieve what so many people who have survived cancer purport as a returning to normal life. 

The pain of cancer is not just something that is experienced in a physical way.  Some cancers are rather pain-free.  But in truth, there is another pain dimension that we have to deal with, and that is the pain of the realization that things would change in the future.  That kind of pain doesn’t seem to have painkillers that doctors can easily prescribe medication for.  That kind of pain is something that only the divine doctor can help us deal with.  Cancer patients like myself may want to come back to life as we have known it with a vigour and vengeance, but perhaps what we also need to know and accept is that embracing the illness is when another kind of healing is allowed to take place – a healing that is beyond the physical. 

The Christian response to illness and suffering has this dimension that easily escapes many of us faced with illness and suffering.  Perhaps this is because the world’s response often calls for a fighting back, and to be stronger (mentally, physically and sometimes socially) than the illness.  The way that many are told at funerals to ‘be strong and not cry’ has to find its roots in this kind of pseudo strength.  But the real Christian response of one who is a disciple of Christ is found when we look at how Christ embraced the Cross in that salvific act of redemption and salvation as an indication of where and how real healing can actually come about.  Only when we ponder deeply about this can the phrase “take up your cross and follow me” make spiritual sense.

The mystery of suffering has to include then the struggle between acknowledging our incapacity to make things happen ourselves, and the handing over of our suffering or even our deaths to the power of God.  This creates a tension that often stymies us at our roots.  We want the clarity of knowing that it is healthy to fight, versus the wisdom of letting go and to surrender with a peace and serenity that Christ had when he ‘gave up the spirit’ on the Cross.  For Christ, it was a struggle that lasted about six hours.  Ours is one which is often much more prolonged. 

When we learn to slowly embrace this mystery, I believe something happens to us within.  We begin to embrace also the fact that we are not as whole and well as we should be, and where we are is how God speaks to us loudest.  I will always remember what Catholic priest and poet Daniel Berrigan once said when asked where spirituality lies, and whether it dwells in the head or in the heart.  His reply is classic in so many ways.  He said it’s neither in the head nor in the heart.  It’s in the ass.  This meant that God speaks to us loudest where our ass is at – where we find ourselves seated in in life, be it in a state of flux, a state of contentment or even in a state of anger, denial or suffering in whatever form it may take. In the stillness of prayer, where we simply allow ourselves to be before God and behold his fullness of life and fullness of love, and become present with a full acknowledgement of our own limitations, imperfections, illnesses and yes, even our sinfulness, where we can truly seek God’s mercy and accept that divine embrace without any demands made on our side.  That Jesus did not ask that things be immediately made better on that Cross teaches us something about the power of humility and docility in the face of human suffering. 

Even as I write this, I am clearly aware that what I am writing about is entering into the area of mystery, and that words can be more of a stumbling block than the conveying of an inner truth.  Yet, it is my hope that there is someone who is suffering with faith, and finding it a constant struggle that this truth, mystical as it is, does have a redemptive value.  It is until and unless we have dared to embrace our sufferings, our illnesses and our brokenness that these become our doorways to holiness that leads to a redemption and salvation.  It is not that our sufferings and pains become lessened.  Often it doesn’t.  We just receive, sometimes even if just momentarily, that connection with the divine.

This is why prayer is so important, especially when we face the unexplainable sufferings that we go through in life.  Without it, I am sure that I will become easily frustrated, angry and impatient.  But with prayer and a confidence in God’s ever loving presence, I am given the strength to embrace everything that I face in life, making it possible to thank God even for the crosses that land on my shoulders. 

But these shoulders aren’t just mine.  The cross also seems to land on divine shoulders as well as we can trust in Jesus’ words that his yoke is easy, and his burden light.

The great hope that biblical imagery gives us.

As I was sitting in the sanctuary at Sunday’s liturgy yesterday, listening intently to the wonderfully detailed description of the river of life as described in the first reading from the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, I relished in the detail that was unfolding before us, and really hoped that the listening congregation would pay active (as opposed to passive) attention to the great hope that lay in this portrayal of divine intervention leading to a renewal beyond imagination.

This water that passed from under the Temple flowed, as we are told, into the eastern district down upon the Arabah, making it fresh.  This simple statement would make little impression on anyone if there were not first a basic lesson of geography, which exposes something miraculous taking place in this biblical passage.  The Arabah is a section of the Jordan rift valley with one end being the Sea of Galilee in the north (an inland large lake, actually) and the Dead Sea at the other southern end.   A well known fact is that the Dead Sea is thus named simply because it is a salt saturated lake in which no living being can live, let alone sink.  Anyone having the wonderful opportunity to visit the area and blessed with the chance of physically entering the Dead Sea should take advantage of this if only to test out the claims that one’s buoyancy become greatly enhanced in a body of water that is extremely dense due to its salinity.  I have always had trouble with floating naturally in the swimming pool, and have envied people who could just fall asleep lying on their backs in the water.  But when I had the opportunity to enter the waters of the Dead Sea, I found myself floating on my back without any trouble, save that of being sedulous that not a drop of that saturated saline water should enter my eyes.  Woe to you should you have the slightest broken skin if you enter these waters.  The sting is almost unbearable.

It is with this very vivid experience that anyone encountering the text from Ezekiel would be amazed and awed at the promise of hope and a great reversal of what is found in the physical geography of the region.  That the waters that emerge from the temple should be so life-giving that it makes these waters of the Arabah not only teem with life, but that these waters themselves should become something which give growth to the surrounding flora, making their leaves medicinal.  There is no sign of life in these parts of the land.  To hold firmly to the hope that scripture brings not only to the land, but more significantly, to the parched and lifeless hearts that many of us have is the hope that God gives those who dare to trust in him despite what befalls us in life.

There are far more lifeless deserts within us than there are in the Arabah.  Those areas in our lives where we have seen relationships dry up and shrivel due to our unwillingness to forgive and bury hatchets are only a small but real example.  We may have been so unwilling to give up past hurts with the false pretext that keeping these wounds alive gives us a sense of superiority.  But if we are to live in the promise of new life that Our Lord gives us in his incarnation and good news of salvation, we should be able to wait with great anticipation for that stream of fresh waters that flow out from him into the Arabahs of our hearts. 

And once these waters renew our hitherto lifeless deserts within us, we can become sources of life for those around us where our fruit will be good to eat, and the plants around our hearts, medicinal.