The one certainty in life is that it will end in death. We spend a whole life preparing for it, or do we not? We are supposed to be going on to a better life where there is no suffering, only everlasting joy. Yet for the majority of us there is a fear factor. It is natural, after all, we are humans.

What do we fear? When I experienced job loss, I was anxious, afraid and fearful. In moments when these emotions went unchecked, I slipped into panic. In moments of calm, I asked myself “what is it that I fear?” It wasn’t exactly that I would immediately go hungry or be without shelter. It was more a fear of losing what I have and flying into the unknown.

Fear then blinded me to what was immediately happening for me. There were the many messages of support that assured me of the many family and friends who will journey with me through that difficult period. I was blind to this same message I hear today, “Can you not buy two sparrows for a penny? And yet not one falls to the ground without your Father knowing. Why, every hair on your head has been counted. So there is no need to be afraid; you are worth more than hundreds of sparrows.”

I was blind to God’s immediate response of not allowing me to fall to the ground as He acted through family and friends. I was blind to God’s immediate response to my fears.

Fear will make a sparrow fly away from familiar grounds. But the world is so vast, and as far as the little sparrow can fly, there will always be an abundance of food to feed the hundreds of sparrows. This is the reassuring message of today of a God unconditional in his love and generosity.

Often when we look back at our misadventures in life, we realize that they were turning points that took us into new abundant fields. Today is a good day to look for God’s hand in the unfortunate events that happened to us and to trace this guiding hand as He led us into unknown territory to find a new beginning and a new life. For some, life became even better! We may casually call it a “blessing in disguise” but dwelling deep in gratitude it is an experience of God’s unconditional goodness.

The path of life to death is a rocky one. Every one of us will experience trials and tribulations, sadness and grief alongside happiness and joy, jubilations and exultations. And fear accompanies us on this path. But it is in fear that we should find no fear but this opportunity to discover that God’s unconditional love, goodness and generosity will always bless us into new fields of life.

Like a sparrow we fly unafraid. Each conquest of fear deepening our relationship with God our Creator. Each step on this rocky path prepares us for the ultimate fear of death, of having to give up all we have. Like a sparrow we must fly in life allowing God to show us his treasures of generosity beyond the perimeters we fear to go beyond.

Often all we have been praying for in life are found in those fields. Let go of fear and fly.

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time

I was not present at Calvary and neither were you. We were not there to witness the ultimate act of giving; a man giving his body and blood for the love of mankind. Yet at every Catholic mass we can be present again and again on Calvary as He gives himself, his body and his blood, to us and for us.

It is not just about the crucifixion. Perhaps if we were present at Calvary on that day it would have been. But we are a privileged people in faith. Everything have been subsequently revealed with the Resurrection.

“I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever”.

I was raised a cradle Catholic and week in, week out I fulfilled my Sunday obligation by being at mass and inevitably receiving Holy Communion. It was a ritual that became a habit. The significance of this entire life-giving event was unsurprisingly lost of me.

I have since become spiritually aware. Holy Communion is so easily available, not just weekly on Sundays but every day at daily mass. By worldly calculation common availability infers something of less value. But I have missed this point for the longest time: A God Truly Present in Holy Communion has humbly made himself so easily available is over-generous and over-indulgent in love for us.

When I now “eat the flesh and drink the blood”, I feed myself on the wisdom of love. The life and suffering, and the subsequent crucifixion and consequent resurrection was the ultimate definition of what love truly is. It is the ‘giving of self’ for the sake of the other person, and it is through the ‘dying to self’ that we find true life, “eternal life”.

Herein lies the meaning of life. We are called to be imitators of this love by allowing this love to flow through us, through our deeds for the other person. When we ‘give of our self’ to the other, however small, we give life to the other person. When the giver and receiver partake in this action of love, we embrace “that there is only one loaf, means that, though there are many of us, we form a single body because we all have a share in this one loaf”.

When I receive Holy Communion, I am now aware that I am called into this one common loaf of this world, where my every subsequent action has a consequent impact of the life of the other. We are inter-twined with one another and with Christ. I eat this wisdom, “He lives in me, and I live in him”.

When we partake in Holy Communion and live in him, we allow him to come alive in us so as to bring life and love to our neighbour. The bread of life who we receive must become the manna, the food of life for us in our spiritual wilderness. From our own little Calvary, when we give our time and our effort, we give our own body and blood, we toil and we sweat, we give away our life, so we can have life together, we become the yeast in the loaf of this world.

Two beautiful little girls celebrating their first Holy Communion at St Joseph Church, Bukit Timah – “I am the Bread of Life”

Corpus Christi

We mark ourselves with the sign of the cross, in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The perfect union of the 3 Persons in the one God we worship, and, or the mystery of the Holy Trinity, the “I in you and you in me” union. For the longest time in me, the Holy Trinity had remained a ‘mystery’, and no more than an accepted doctrine.

The world is very much an imperfect place. We think this example of a perfect union cannot exist simply because it is too perfect and we are too imperfect. Building a community where one person unconditionally love the other may exist only in theology. But the sign of the cross we make every day compels us to reflect on this perfect existence and long for it in our daily life.

We search for love to be unconditionally given to us, we look for peace in the endless differences we have with one another and we try to find the energy to do our best for each other each day. But where do we find this perfect existence?

To God every person is equal. We are all equal in His eyes despite our different abilities. To the world, every person has not been equal since the day of birth. This world grades us on our capabilities and our achievements. There lies this tension, this impossibility of co-existing in perfect communion.

This world build us into the triangle shape of a pyramid. People with more abilities and influences sit at the apex. Often the seat comes with authority and power. Leadership is a hierarchy from top to bottom. This is a common structure in daily life, in work places and also in church communities. A perfect community will never exist in this triangle.

True life chooses a circle as its shape. A perfect community places God in the centre. Each person is blessed with abilities. In this life we are all called to share. By this world’s standards our worth is measured by our capabilities, but in God’s eyes we are measured by how we use our abilities for the good of the other person so as to make the world a better place.

We are all parts of the one body of Christ but each with a different function. The shape of a circle is perfectly maintained when everyone contributes their best effort while recognising and respecting the different charisms of the other person. Equality does not mean equal in authority or in opinion, but our best effort with the purest intention to do what we do best makes us equal. Everything radiates from God in the centre and we are held in a perfect circle by the equal tension of our best effort. After we have given our best, the Holy Spirit will perfect the circle.

Perfect communion is in the flow of a circle. The world’s triangles must fit into this bigger circle, into the sphere of God’s creative wisdom. He is the Holy Trinity and He want to make us all part of His perfect communion.

The shape of the circle. We are made equal by offering our God-given abilities for the intention of doing good for God’s glory and by giving our maximum best. The Holy Spirit will do the rest.

The Holy Trinity

I have often wondered how on earth I can hear God speaking to me. Often I am told to listen to the Holy Spirit. My ears would prick up but hear nothing, my eyes enlarged is disbelieving amusement. As I grew spiritually wiser, I realised that we listen to God through our hearts and not our ears. As I grew older, my eyes would open wide again, but in awe and wonder in seeing God in the happenings of my personal life. 

The happenings in life are often pretty random. Mostly they also seem isolated and unrelated. Generally they are minor affairs, occasionally they are a major event in our personal life. On a piece of drawing paper, they appear like random dots. But when we trace these dots together, a path comes into view. This path cuts across the eventful picture of the jubilation and tribulation of our personal life. 

It is a spiritual path through our earthly life leading us back to our Creator. Little events become milestones on a spiritual journey. One milestone lead to the next, one door closing lead to another opening, one event in life leads to another. This path lengthens as we grow older, more events would have occurred but these events no longer seem isolated. Linked together, they make picture perfect sense. 

Joining these dots and linking these milestones is the work of the Holy Spirit. The events in our life is the language the Holy Spirit use to speak to us. It is God’s medium of communication. He speaks and we hear him in the happenings of our life. 

Today is Pentecost. The Holy Spirit descended onto the apostles and they emerged courageously from the Upper Room and began speaking in foreign languages. The diverse audience were amazed and astonished. Each person bewildered to hear a native language they personally understood.

This is the language of events. For each of us, this language is unique. Only ‘I’ alone can understand what God is saying to ‘me’ in the events of ‘my’ life.  But people around us are important. People lend a ‘voice’ to these events by their actions and experiences. Some people have a louder and wiser voice simply because they are ‘older’ and had passed through these events before.

Every event in life is unique but some can be hauntingly similar as though someone else’s experience is speaking directly to us. Our ears prick up as their story resonates with our senses and the sound of God’s calling echo in our hearts. For both the listener and the testifier, the receiver and the giver, there is awe and there is wonder at the remarkable ‘coincidence’ that has left us bewildered. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, the language of God’s love. 

This language is beautifully expressed; its finesse expressed through the seemingly minor, random events we least suspect would have a great impact in our later years. We must be aware to these probabilities because they will eventually prove to be milestones on our journey. 

The Holy Spirit is a wonderful experience. The personal events of our life in all its minor details is a beautiful and flowery language. When we begin to speak this language and share our personal experiences of God, we become the voice of God calling to the other. At the same time we experience the music of healing written with the notes of Love for all our past experiences that had not been so wonderful. 

These would remain dots, if not for the Holy Spirit. Joined,  they preach through the language of events about the marvels of God.

“Come, O Holy Spirit, Come”. Huddled in prayer in the Upper Room in Jerusalem.

 Pentecost Sunday