We had been preparing for a big event at the Cathedral this week. We were anxious about the choices we made. We were fretful, coordinating all the effort. We were pretty stressed, stretched in fear hoping for all to turn out good. Worry kept returning.

We prayed and reminded ourselves the assurance, “Do not worry about tomorrow: tomorrow will take care of itself” and sang in our hearts, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and everything else will be added unto you”.  

We told ourselves we had given our best in all we could control; exhausted every idea and expended all energy. The rest is up to God. After all, this event is about his kingdom. And the worry went away.

But worry never goes away. It keeps returning in the other areas of our life. We worry for the future: anxious for our self and loved ones, stressed by our jobs and worry about money. Unlike the worry for the event, these worries do not go away. Why? Because we never fully allowed God control in these areas of our life.

Perhaps because of human nature, we do not see the “kingdom of God” in these areas. These areas are our own kingdom protectively bounded by our desires. We will not ‘let go, and let God in’ because we may not get what we want. And so worrying returns.

Worry distance us from the possibilities of the Divine; it blinds us from his intervention in our personal life. Worrying isolates us, trapping us into an imagined tomorrow that will never come. It takes us away from the real present; this very moment we breathe, this very moment we are alive. It is in this ‘here and now’ where we can find God active in our life, not in the ‘tomorrow’. So do not let the train of worry take us away.

But we have all been away because we have all at some stage in life lost the battle of not worrying. When we are away, we are too distant to make ourselves available to be like “the birds in the sky” and to be “fed by your heavenly Father”. When we depart from the “here and now”, we lose sight of the existence of God.

The event we were organising was about people, you and me, whose worries have taken us far away into the dungeon of our greatest doubt, “The Lord has abandoned me, the Lord has forgotten me”. In this darkness, we are stripped of everything leaving us clinging on only to hope.

It is for one another that we can make real this hope. Worry cannot be tackled alone. We need to accompany one another, sharing our experiences of the presence of God in our lives so as to embolden one another to trust him. To trust him and hand over control of our life; “Does a woman forget her baby at the breast, or fail to cherish the son of her womb? Yet even if these forget, I will never forget you”. 

The event celebrated this mission of people accompanying one another on our spiritual journey to trust God which has led to lives returning to faith. Through trust in him, worrying returns: it returns us into the kingdom of God.

Postcards of journeys of people where worry once brought us to discover trust in God (Landings event at the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd, Singapore)

8th Sunday in Ordinary Time

An awkward experience in a Bangkok hotel during my early days here has become a valuable lesson on my personal journey to become a better person, to “Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy”.

Upset with the service at the cafe, I launched into a verbal tirade at the server to the discomfort of my Thai guests. Such public display of annoyance is socially ungraceful and it goes totally against how these culturally gentle Thais will treat a fellow person. Refusing to lie down despite the apology from the server, I continued to bark. The manager, and then the chef, came to apologise to soothe this ego that was getting embarrassing, unknowingly then for myself. I refused their apology wanting my points to hit home. “If anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the other as well”. I was offered the other cheek and I hit it as well.

Later, unnecessarily, the general manager invited me to lunch. “And if anyone orders you to go one mile, go two miles with him”. This episode has been a valuable lesson. I have learned by being “a wicked man” and was met with the response to “love your enemies”.

Many of us want to be good, we desire to be holy. We know that our earthly life in actually the opportunity to journey towards spiritual perfection to “be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect”. But this call to turn the other cheek and to love your enemy seem foolish to the ways of the world we know. To embark on the journey to walk the extra mile is simply too difficult that we give up before we even try.

Our sight is limited by the culture of this world, our eye of wisdom closed. We cannot see beyond a mile, our vision obstructed by the clutter in our life. Yet where do we expect to encounter spiritual wisdom “because the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God”?

We are invited today to walk in the opposite direction. The journey towards perfection begins by walking the extra mile for the other person, not just one we know but everyone who we meet along the way. Often a stranger comes into our life, maybe the first impression isn’t very good, but it is in this neighbour in whom God leads us into wisdom.

It is where confrontation meet gentleness, where conflict meet peace that we will encounter God. It is in the giving of our self to the neighbour that we align ourselves to the nature of God and journey into the spirit of perfection. It is when we turn the other cheek that we come face to face with God. We are invited into this presence of God.

On the other cheek we press against the culture of God and look at wisdom. And along the extra mile, “He must learn to be a fool before he really can be wise”. Two miles we go, one an extra that will make us good and holy.

Going the Extra Mile

7th Sunday in Ordinary Time

We possess weapons of mass destruction. Social media and instant messaging tools assist us to kill the reputation of a person to a mass audience in an instant. In the past, the tongue used to be the sharpest tool but the cut still had to be inflicted by word of mouth. Today at the click of the ‘send’ button we murder the image of a person.  

The commandment say, “You must not kill”. In the letter of this law, I did not kill but in the spirit of the law I am guilty. We can live quite comfortably on the right side of the letter of the law of all the ten commandments. But today we are invited to reflect on what Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfil”. (Today’s readings) 

To fulfil the law, he came and left us a new and greatest commandment, “Love one another”. We cannot love by merely sitting on the right side of the law. Love calls for action: how much we love and are self-giving fulfils the spirit of the law. Fulfilling the law is life-giving. “Man has life and death before him; whichever a man likes better will be given to him”. We have a free choice to live by the letter or by the spirit. 

We can religiously keep holy the Sabbath day by dutifully fulfilling our Sunday obligation to come for mass. “Mass” means “Go, you are sent forth” to love with the life you live, to go and be life-giving. This is the real law: to go out to love. We cannot love merely by sitting in the pews. The choice is again ours; to keep the law with our head or to fulfil it with our heart. 

Who is a ‘lapsed’ Catholic? The one who is absent from the pews on Sunday or the one who is absent from fulfilling the law to love selflessly with the life we live? 

Faith is always lived. Love is always an experience. Keeping the law and fulfilling the law are two very different points; one a point of departure and the other a destination. Understanding the reasons behind a law will help us fulfil it but still require us to be pro-active. Coming for Sunday mass is a departure point where we are spiritually nourished and strengthen to set out into the week ahead to make a difference to lives around us. Doing so is our destination. 

Jesus saying, “I have come not to abolish the law but to fulfil it” is an invitation for us to set out on a journey to discover “the things no eye has seen and no ear has heard, things beyond the mind of man, all that God has prepared for those who love him”. Going “beyond the mind of man” is walking into the realm of experiences. We must depart from the head and journey towards our heart. 

This must be the wisdom of faith, of keeping the law and fulfilling it: ‘not killing’ does not mean ‘life-giving’. There exists a huge gap. Mind the gap.

Mind the Gap

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Khao phad poo is aroy maak! Fried rice with crab meat is a popular dish in Thailand. It tastes so good! It is inexpensive, commonly available and very much part of daily, ordinary life. Rice, eggs, and crabmeat are tossed in a wok together with garlic, spring onion, fish sauce and some lime juice. A small amount of salt is added as seasoning, vitally necessary for the overall taste.  

“You are the salt of the earth” 

We are called in life to be this difference maker, to season the lives of people around us. We have heard this call often enough but may not have thought it as a call for you and me. We are just ordinary people, the simple person on the street, trying to juggle resources between self, family and work. We appear in the pew on Sundays and hear calls to evangelise, to become a fisher of men and be “light to the world”.  

We are as ‘ordinary’ as salt. We leave the pews preoccupied with our secular life. These calls do not enter our hearts as after all, “I am just the ordinary person, not knowing enough and unqualified to evangelise”. 

But God is interested precisely in this ‘ordinary’. Ordinary people like you and I are the abundance of the world, like salt abundant in the earth. We are not the highly-valued in society, like salt not the most eye-catching ingredient in the fried rice. In the wok, the crabmeat may look to be the most significant ingredient but in truth, it is in the coming together of all ingredients that a delicious dish can be produced. The ordinary cheap salt share equal importance to the crabmeat, they each play their unique roles. 

In the wok of life, our individual lives are inter-connected in this way. We are unique, all of us different as individuals faced with different situations in life. There is no one else like our individual self in personality and situation. We are uniquely special.

And so, we are uniquely placed in this inter-connectedness with others in our ordinary, daily life. You and I are called to be salt and light to people we are connected with.  

No one else is in a better position to do this. God wants us precisely where we are now, even in our unqualified state, because it is only from precisely this unique position where He can use us to touch the lives of others connected to us. We can be the difference maker.  

A little salt makes a vast difference. The vastness of this difference comes from the inter-connectedness of unique individuals in life, much like the coming together of all ingredients. The whole is greater than the sum of all parts. This math belong to God, it is his work as the master-chef. Our role is that as salt. He will make the result vast. 

When the wok of life becomes heated with challenges, when our juggling start to fail, we will realise that it is only through relying on our inter-connectedness with each other that we will be able to get out of the hot wok. God the master chef will make sure of this. We only have to embrace our role as the salty difference maker. 

The deliciousness of the fried rice with crabmeat belongs to his glory.

Khao Phad Poo

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time