There are many other priorities in life which we find ourselves easily placing above the call of a God centred life. “The desires of self-indulgence is always in opposition to the Spirit” (today’s readings in italics). Our ‘other priorities’ arise from these desires and they can distanced us from relying on God. But many of these ‘other priorities’ are indeed necessary for us to fulfil our vocations in this earthly life. Today’s readings invite us to focus on God as we plough our fields.

 A God-centred life does not mean ignoring the needs of a crying child or our assignments at work. It is not exactly a call to literally put God first in everything as in to ignore a sick child to attend a weekly community meeting. It is a call “not to use your freedom as an opening for self-indulgence, but be servants to one another in love”. A God-centred life puts the intention of love into everything we do. It is a self-giving as opposed to a self-indulgent life. 

We are called to follow him. We are called into a life of giving; to allow love to flow through us to touch the lives of others. This is our mission: “your duty is to go and spread the news of the kingdom of God” with the life we live. This is the field we are summoned to enter with our ploughs. As we enter we receive the instruction, “Once the hand is laid on the plough, no one who looks back is fit for the kingdom of God”. 

We are urged to ‘focus’: to look straight, to be single-minded and free of ‘other priorities’. We are urged not to look back. Not because he wants us to “be fastened again to the yoke of slavery” but precisely “to be set free, so that we should remain free”. On this field, He gives us work. On this plough, we discover that this work is indeed the true meaning of our earthly journey. In today’s psalm, “You teach me the path of life, unbounded joy in your presence”.  

Our path of life is not a lonely path of suffering. On the field of mission, ‘I’ am not the lone worker, the only one with a plough. Every one of us is given a plough; given an equal opportunity to discover this true meaning of life. We are called not only to work individually but to work collectively. We are housed in a community of disciples. But as individuals we are advised not to look back and cling to our past for we have been “set free”. Forget the regrets, they have been forgiven and look ahead and in a straight line we will experience a new life of unprecedented joy and fulfilment. Give the best we can and allow the Spirit to add up the sum of our individual ploughs. 

In our collective ploughing as one community, we were blessed to unearth a gentleman who had been away from Church for 45 years. We were privileged instruments of the Spirit; for through us he found the mercy of God waiting, discovering that despite 45 long years, the Father had “unbelievingly” stood by waiting for him to return. That experience of faith was enough for him to grab his plough firmly, letting go of ‘other priorities’ and focus on his new path ahead. Touched by Love, he has centred his life on God, and in mission he has found the true meaning of his life, tearfully declaring in a public sharing of his return journey that from hereon there is, “No more turning back”.

He had been away from Church for 25 years. He encountered Landings and celebrated a joyful return. A little over a year later he remarked, “Since coming back to Church, life actually became tougher for me”.

The reality is that our daily life is littered with crosses, regardless whether we are a practising Catholic or someone who has lost belief in God. Crosses appear regularly in our life not because God is testing our faith by giving us a bigger cross each day, but because much of our sufferings are a direct consequence of the choices and action of ours or people in our life. Some of these people randomly appeared and we hardly know them.

Life will make a nasty turn into physical challenges if we are hit by a car as a result of the driver’s miscalculations or a moment of carelessness. We remain emotionally hurt when the reconciliation we seek with a loved one is not found because the other person refuses to forgive. These consequences are not because of God but of people’s free choice. We suffer the consequences of each other’s action or inaction. In this way our journey in life is always littered with crosses.

We have almost no control of what may happen to us; we cannot select the crosses that come our way. But quite often it will be through a tough episode in our life that we hear the invitation of Christ to return or to come closer to him. Weighed down by the heaviest of crosses, our hopes of earthly treasures crushed, we desperately look about for salvation. With nothing left on our battlefield but crosses everywhere, there is one that stands out. Some stirring deep in our brokenness turn our gaze onto one particular cross and our eyes fixed “on the one whom they pierced”, the person of Jesus.

There is a way out of this madness and the only way is the Way of the Cross. Beyond the piercing, beyond the death by suffering is the resurrection, the conquest of all sufferings and the new life of perpetual happiness. The “one whom they pierced” showed us this Way. If we want to go that way, we have to follow him. And he said “he must deny himself and take up his cross daily”.

When we “take” our daily cross, we ‘embrace’ it; we accept that we are not in control. We humbly surrender and put all our trust in God. We say we give away our ‘self’ to be dependent on God. We deny self, deny all our own ways and follow his way.

We have power and choices, bad enough to be crosses for people in our lives. People will suffer the consequences of our action or inaction. We can choose to weigh a tonne on the other or we can choose to “deny self”, live our life prioritising others before ourselves. We are called not to give up this power but rather to use it to transform lives around us.

As we renew our faith, we gingerly take the first step towards embracing our daily cross, we also gingerly follow the call of self-denial. Accepting our cross is not climbing onto a cross to be crucified. We can start small, by conceding our opinions and ‘winning’ less arguments, to back off and give space to another. We can climb down from the stand of self-importance and not crucify others for mistakes and imperfections. We can share what we have been blessed with to lighten the burden on others who have nought. We can reduce time to do well for self and increase time in service for others. After all, the time we have is actually the life we have. When our time expires, life expires. When we give time, we give life.

If we want to follow him then we want to be Christian. To be Christian is not about simply believing with our mind but also about living the belief with our hearts. Essentially we need to become doers of the Word. When we “do” we give up something from our “self”; we “deny self” and give life.

So “who do you say I am?” To the one mentioned in the opening paragraph, “You are the Christ who walks with me daily on my life journey. You saw the big crosses ahead of me and so you took me back into your Church to give me shelter. It was because you knew that life would be tougher. You introduced me to people on my walk with me, people who I initially thought was just randomly placed on my path. Looking back to how I weathered my storms I realised that they were all acting in your name. After all, they were just like you, denying themselves, giving time and making effort to welcome me home”.

(12^th Sunday in Ordinary Time Zec 12:10-11;13:1, Ps 63, Gal 3:26-29, Gospel Luke 9:18-24)

When we are away from Church, or perhaps just lukewarm in faith, we tend to compromise between good and bad, right from wrong, and being selfless and self-centred. The distractions and attractions of the secular world, or the weighty challenges of life add a magnetic spin to our moral compass causing it to go awry. Slowly we amass a catalogue of misdeeds, a litany of sins that will further cut us adrift. 

Castaway, somewhat like floating alone without control on the rough seas, tossed up and down by the turbulence of our life, we are filled with a disbelief; disbelieving that we can ever be forgiven. Once I had the privileged of meeting a Catholic wanting to return to Church after years away. His opening line was, “I have done so much wrong and bad that I don’t think God will ever forgive me. In fact, I don’t even think he remembers me”. 

But what compass brought him to our meeting? On the stormy seas, there was a call for calm. In this pocket of calm, we hear in the whispering wind an invitation to come home and be reconciled. Deep down in our heart, our compass reset. The work of the Holy Spirit starts. For us Catholics who have been away or lukewarm, we are almost never aware of this stage (then) when our journey towards forgiveness and reconciliation began.  

Forgiveness is freely given but needs to be accepted for reconciliation to happen. Sometimes we are hindered to accept, and often it is because we cannot forgive ourselves. 

When we return after years of being unfaithful, we will soon enough find out that God had remained faithful despite all these years. When we are welcomed back, received in a non-judgmental way and affirmed as a child of God, we feel rehabilitated. This “feel” is an experience. This “experience” is from God’s forgiveness freely given. This is an experience of our faith; “feeling” the love of God. 

For many, this is the first time we are “experiencing” faith; perhaps the first time we are departing intellectual justification for heart experience. When we come home or emerge from the shadows of the Sunday pews, we come with a lot of accumulated baggage, some ‘embarrassingly’ large. But we will quickly realize size does not matter. He takes it away all the same.  

But maybe size does matter? Reflecting on today’s Gospel, we are able to appreciate “the one with the larger debt” will love him more. When we reach the extreme point where we are not confident that God even remembers us, we must have a pretty sizeable debt. This experience of love and mercy awaits us. It is available to anyone who till now lived life disconnected from God assuming that we will never be forgiven, or thinking that we can never be closer to him. We only have to accept his invitation to re-connect and our hearts will be filled with the “feeling and experience” of Love.  

When our hearts are pumped up with the experience of God’s unconditional love, it propels us into gratitude and allows the Holy Spirit to continue the work of our rehabilitation. He opens up more channels for love to flow and gives us the opportunity to embrace a “new life”. We ourselves have been witnesses of this when we encounter people with a deep passion to express God’s love in all they do. It may surprise us to learn of their personal history; when we learn of their years being away or just being lukewarm, and reading their catalogue of misdeeds.  

We can learn what the Pharisee Simon was taught in the gospel. Forgiveness is freely given; freely to us and we must freely give it to others and to ourselves. We use it to welcome those who are away and bring others closer to God. We walk together on our life journey as God draws us closer to him; closer and closer to enter into a dominion where we experience and live his love and mercy freely given.  

A priest waits – Forgiveness freely available

(Today is Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary 2 Sm 12:7-10,13 Ps 32:1-2, 5, 7, 11 Gal 2:16, 19-21 Lk 7:36 – 8:3)

The theme of life and death, of dying and rising, runs throughout the readings today. It is also a theme that runs throughout our life’s journey when failures weigh us down and success raises us, when challenges overwhelm us to leave us hopeless and a turn in fortune lifts us to leave us hopeful, or when we are distanced from God gradually finding ourselves shrouded in darkness and we re-encounter him in the close confines of our personal life leading us to burst into the brightness of new life. This is the rhythm of life, of falling and rising. This is the beat on the path we walk, of backtracking and moving forward.

And we share also in the common direction of this journey. Wherever we are along the path, at whichever stage we find our faith at, we are united in the walk towards our Creator. It is only when we reach God, through the passage of death, can we say that we are returned. Coming back for Sunday mass after years staying away is coming home. However, entering the church doors is not crossing the finish line. Yes, we are on the rise, and a significant one for a returning Catholic but it does not mean we would not fall again. Our human nature, inherently weak, will ensure that.

The path of faith is filled with ups and downs, of moving forward and of back sliding. But at each hump, each turn, we learn, we grow, and we gain strength to progress on. Returning to Church, growing in faith is this process.

We grow distant to God. We do not suddenly become distant. Especially these days, the secular world takes us gradually away from the spiritual world. We will hardly notice it. The initial stages are always from the fun-filled, ‘feel good’ distractions and trappings of our social life. We hunt for self-gratification. We sometimes compromise on values for that extra boost. We enjoy a trouble-free life with no need to embrace a troublesome faith that calls on the need to die to self. Gradually, layer by layer of wall form that will eventually entomb us. When it gets darker, the naughtier things in life take over and we are deeper entombed. We realised we have fallen down.

This realisation can only be sparked by the Holy Spirit. Entombed, the voice of the Shepherd is a faint call. “O Lord, you have brought me up from the nether world; you preserved me from amongst those going down into the pit. I will praise you Lord for you have rescued me”. (Ps 29)

We begin to search the darkness for light. We retraced our footsteps for clues as to how we have fallen this far. When our eyes begin to open, when we begin to look, we find that God has placed angels in the form of the people we know on our paths to walk with us this road home. Along the way, we pass milestones in our life and when we carefully look, we see that God had been present. Gradually we begin to feel that “God is personal to me because He has been present in the personal events of my life”. Step by step, courage and strength builds, and as we climb the steps of our tomb, we peel away the layers of wall that has entrapped our spiritual life. Somewhere along the dark ceiling we will find the handle to a door. Pulling it, the door opens into the light. We are on the rise.

This is the rhythm of faith, the beat on our journey towards our Creator. We fall in and out of grace. We come in and out of Church. We are returning, and are always returning.

But at each dying and each rising, we grow stronger through an experience of a merciful and loving God, and make progress on our journeys. In this way, we are all equal. In the mission of Landings, it is never them and us, goat and sheep but an appreciation that this is a journey we must all walk together as we are all “always returning”.

(Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 1 Kgs 17:17-24, Ps 29;2-13, Gal 1:11-19, Luke 7:11-17)