We tend to live our life in ‘compartments’, wearing different coats and behaving differently depending on what we are doing and who we are with. We are somewhat different as the employee in the office and the family man at home, and perhaps most conspicuously as the believer in church.

The biggest challenge most of us have is in trying not to separate our faith life from our worldly life. Most times we fail. Once a week on a Sunday, we profess our belief in God and all that the Church teaches and ask for “thy kingdom come” and promise “thy will be done”. At the end of that one holy hour, we jump out of the faith life compartment and drive away in our secular lifestyle compartment.

Today’s hour calls us “to conduct your affairs in humility” (today’s readings); to intermix our secular life with the faith quality of “humility”. It does not call us to abandon our secular life but that it should not be lived separate from our faith life. In IT jargon, our ‘faith life’ should be the operating system on which our ‘secular life’ is run, with ‘humility’ as the essential software application.

Humility is our first quality; we are born naked highlighting it. At birth, we are totally dependent on God; life given by God. So to speak, we are 100% in our faith compartment. But grow we must. As we grow and progress in the world, our faith life must grow in a directly proportionate relationship with our worldly life. However for most of us we experience an inversely proportionate growth; secular lifestyle taking us away from faith.

We are constantly reminded about how we are to live, and our end goal beyond earthly treasures. “The greater you are, the more you should behave humbly, and then you will find favour with the Lord”. As we grow in this world, we wear more and more identities covering over our base layer. The ‘greater’ among us can become so thick in wear that we can no longer feel our base layer of ‘humility’.

When we don’t feel it, we “cannot make your way to the lowest place and sit there”. Some of us are already there. These are people with one layer over their base layer: the poor, the marginalised, people at the lower rungs of society’s status ladder and those whose faith life is full.

For the more common among us, not that we are bad people, we struggle being distracted by the world and its attractions. Again, doing well in this world is actually our responsibility. Each of us are blessed by God with gifts and talent. We are damned if we just bury our talent in the ground and sit at the lowest place. We are called to use our gift and talent wisely, and in consideration for the people around us, especially those who have less than us in material and status. Humility in acknowledging that ‘all comes from God’ is key.

When we lose humility, we lose our belief in God. We forget we were born helpless. We become self-made people with thick layers of coats.

When we use our God-given talents, we are rewarded on earth but we will also find heavenly treasures. When we do well, we can afford more of life’s luxuries and life can become a party. But “when you have a party, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; they cannot pay you back means that you are fortunate, because repayment will be made to you when the virtuous rise again”.

Being humble leads us to being virtuous. Humility helps us to acknowledge God as our creator and accept his plan for humanity; that we must journey this life to allow God’s love to flow through us and impact the lives of those around us. With faith as our operating system, we are urged to incorporate mission (this flowing of love) and community (these lives around us) into the operating manual of how we live our earthly life.

It’s OK to grow in stature and have a big watch on our wrist, but let that watch remind us to give time to mission and community. It’s OK to have a big position at work but let that also lead to us to having a position in ministry. It’s OK to drive a big car or be driven in one, but let that remind us of God’s daily blessings, and that we must be driven to help Him bless others.

They say that nice, humble guys finish up last. It is true that we may not exalt ourselves to a life partying with this world’s elite, but we will be assured that we will live for eternity.

(Door of Humility – Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem – Going in on bended knees, humbly, to enter into the presence of God)

22nd Sunday of  Ordinary Time

Try telling a parent whose child is in the crucial year in a Singapore school preparing for PSLE (Primary School Leaving Examinations) that qualifying for the better secondary school is really not that important by quoting today’s gospel, “Yes, there are those now last who will be first, and those now first who will be last”. In reality, it does matter. In truth, as parents we need to guide our child and try our best to provide for a good education. It is our parental responsibility to try our best. For God has gifted a child into our care.  

The world’s a rat race and for believer or non, we are in the race. 

But the passage does not read, “The last will be first, and the first last” or “The winner is a sinner” or “To believe you must lose”. So yes, we need to race. But for which gold medal? 

Fittingly this passage has popped up during the Rio Olympics. There was a moment this week when 2 women in the 5000m race tangled, fell and got hurt. One did not race away from the other but instead said, “Come on, get up, we have to finish this race”. Encouraging each other they continued to participate in the race till they finished. That moment won the hearts of many. That moment put the spirit into today’s passage. 

They call it the “Olympic spirit”. Then, decades ago, sports was about participation and “spirit”. The world’s ways have changed quite a bit since then. Today, sports and education is about winning, or at least not losing out.  

Gold medals are won by results and not spirit. The world’s judgement is by the end-result. It chooses politically-correct words to ‘reward’ a spirited participation. But sponsors are unlikely to jump onto your bandwagon. You won’t have one anyway. 

We need to be at the race, not to win it at-all-cost, but to participate at-all-cost. We don’t have to be a rat. Our timing and position does not matter. Heavenly gold is won by how we participate, or more precisely our attitude in our participation. This is a race for eternal life. Who we are and what we do will determine if we get “to enter by the narrow door”. The difference in this race is that everyone gets gold when we get pass “the narrow door”; there is unlimited space on the winner’s rostrum.  

We can strive to be in the top secondary schools but our world cannot come to an end if we fail to qualify. Every one of us has a special purpose in life. We must continue participating, we must continue racing and in so doing give ourselves the opportunities to discover the true winners of this race are those who look at other racers as companions rather than competitors.  

In our schooling for eternal life, we must acquire wisdom that losing or winning by the requirements of this world has got nothing to do with it. This week another Olympian completed his race in 50.39 seconds and in so doing won his nation her first ever Olympic Gold. His winning moment brought this entire nation into a dimension of joy none have ever before experienced. When he finished his race, an entire nation finished with him. This role was his, and his alone but it allowed an entire nation to bask in the golden glow of his purpose. 

Each of us too have our special purpose in life, perhaps fulfilled in less glittering circumstances. We too have in us the spirit of a champion that calls us to reach out to other racers, to help as many finish the race of life and arrive at the narrow door with the ability to squeeze through. 

We must participate in life like a true champion with a golden heart, fearless to lose what we have so that others will have, as we race together towards eternal gold.

Race for Gold

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

“I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it was already blazing!” 

In moments when we are disadvantaged in society, we clamour for the world to change. In moments when we are compromised in values, we clamour for our old-fashioned Church to ‘progress with the times’; to say that what is wrong is now acceptable, and what is sin is sin no longer. We shout in frustration drowning the cries from our inner self that “change begins with me”.

There is no one person unholy, whatever values compromised or advantages siphoned from society. Even a sinner is holy.

We are holy because we are all created good. We are born holy but grow into societies and values which often bring us onto unholy ground. We are holy except only with varied degrees of ‘un-holiness’. Whoever we are, and whatever we have done cannot extinguished that holiness embedded in us when we were created; our holiness is like a fire that can never be put out.

Our challenge in this world is to reduce the degree of ‘un-holiness’ in our self. “Let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith”. Our life towards perfect faith is to fan the little flame of holiness to set the world around us on fire, the more it blazes the better. The fire to burn a difference begins with ‘me’.

We can sit and complain about our ‘old-fashioned’ Church but in truth God is the only constant in an ever-changing world. For 2000 odd years. God’s love, mercy, patience and faithfulness are all still there, a holy fire that continues blazing. A fire he wishes will consume us.

In truth too, the Church 2000 years on continues to be relevant to the times. But our vision of this is limited. We simply cannot see God’s complete picture for the human race. We are but one tiny piece of this giant, intricate jigsaw that will only be completed at the end of time. Only then will life no longer be a puzzle. Only then will we see how our little acts contributed in a large way to make the picture complete.

But we must first care for the small picture around us, the people in our lives we can impact with the burning fire of our holiness. We all are small pieces of the jigsaw and our holiness will burn us into shape to fit in with the people around us. When we are less holy, and more un-holy, others will have to be burned to shape themselves around us. This holiness in us enables us to be good to others.

It is when we are holy, when we are good that we will encounter God in our personal life. We experience his love, mercy, patience and faithfulness when we allow those to flow through us shaping ourselves and impacting others. It is in little acts that we allow our holiness to burn through.

When we encounter God, we put an experiential dimension to our faith. Each experience renews us; it makes us young. Each God-moment reminds us that we are always returning towards God; it strengthens our faith. Indeed to borrow the lyrics of a song and taking it out of the context of it and quote the words alone, “We are young, so let’s set the world on fire”.

This is a real life experience of mine. A group of friends love to sing this song on social nights out, singing it with this twist of faith. These are friends we met through our personal conversion experiences and in ministries for our parish. Through our journey to become less un-holy, we found a common identity in Jesus, perfecter of faith and were gifted the bonds of friendship. Together we serve in ministry, in mission of faith identifying ourselves as “always returning”.

Together we have shaped ourselves around each other, and together we have gone on to reach out to more and more people. We were once individual, tiny flickering flames and have now become a pocket of fire burning brightly and engulfing more people that come onto our path.

We are all young in faith, so let’s make a difference to this world. Let’s go out and set it on fire. Let’s blaze the world by who we truly are: holy.

“We are young, so let’s set the world on fire!”

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

“For where your treasure be, there will your heart be also”. Does my heart already know its treasure?  

The faith journey we undertake in life seems to suggest so. This is even so for those of us who are not fully tuned to our faith or are at-this-moment disbelievers. We sometimes stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the end goal of our journey is to attain the heavenly treasure of eternal life. “Stubborn” because we are focused on earthly treasures, a pursuit that has perhaps blinded us from the end game in which we will all participate. 

But somehow our heart seem to know. How is this possible that ‘my heart’ knows and ‘I’ don’t?

When we are caught up in the treasure hunt for all things valued in this world, we bury our true identity deeper into our inner self. When we place more importance on building barns for material wealth, the importance of our faith life falls further down our list of desires. At some point down there, God becomes unimportant. We have allowed the chase of earthly needs to bury the identity of who we truly are: life created and given by God.  

Our soul will always wander back towards its Creator. Our soul knows the treasure and the Creator himself will lead all souls back to Him. 

But our soul has a human identity. It is with this identity that we navigate the complex maze of our earthly life. As humans, we are associated with ‘human weaknesses’, chief of which is our weakness for earthly comforts to navigate the maze. So the human ‘me’ goes into a frenzy in all directions in search of these earthly comforts, while beneath the line where my true identity is found, my heart beats reminding ‘me’ that ‘I’ should pursue “a treasure no thief can reach it or no moth destroy it”. 

We are all given the freedom of choice to live in our human ways. In the race of life, we will experience joys alongside despair, broken dreams alongside growing hope. In moments of despair or hope, the ‘I’ in me will recoil into the contemplative silence of ‘my heart’. It is here in the heart that human meet divine: where ‘I’ meet my soul. In this silence, we try to make sense of what our life actually mean. We are stirred into a search and unknowingly a journey begin to take on increasing prominence in us. 

This journey is our journey towards our heaven; it manifest itself at some stage in life when we seek to know our God better, when we walk our path to walk closer to Him. This is the result of an unseen force that pulls us in. This is the gift of “Faith”. 

Our heart knows this gift although the ‘I’ in me in my intellectual, human form may not yet accept or make sense of it. Faith is given by God our Creator as a compass to lead us home. 

The readings today comes alive! It is by faith we obey the stirring call to begin searching for meaning. It is by faith ‘my heart’ set out, but the ‘I’ does not know where it is going. This is often true in our experiences of the process where someone who was been away from Church begin returning to faith life. The ‘I’ may not even know what it is searching for but by faith we will eventually discover. It is “by faith ‘I’ set out without knowing where I am going. It is by faith, I will arrive”. 

It is by faith that we go on this journey. It is by faith we will meet people along the way recognizing now the purpose of our journey: that we are “only strangers and nomads on earth”. It is by faith we will know that we seekers of a God yet unknown to us personally. By faith, we will spurn opportunities to return to our old ways. By faith, we take on a new life. “We had the opportunity to go back to it; but in fact we were longing for a better homeland, our heavenly homeland”.

But it is important how we travel our journey. By faith, ‘my heart’ and ‘I’ unite to make God more visible in our journey through the maze of life. We must participate in the game of life, not despairing in unfavourable situations, always playing on in hope. By faith we live life exchanging earthly pawns for heavenly knights, and arrive at the end game in a winning position for our treasure in heaven.

By faith we meet people along the way and form communities

(Bangkok 2016)

“Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen”

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time