How much do we really compete with one another every day? How conscious are we of our actions in trying to be better than the other person? Indeed there are big, tangible rewards for being better. This world somewhat out of necessity adopted such a grading system. But is there a better way to live?

“They had been arguing which of them was the greatest. So he said, ‘If anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all and servant of all.’” (Today’s Gospel)

The disciples were arguing with words but no doubt would have been justifying their argument by quoting their deeds, capacities and abilities. Today have we become more hypocritical in trying to be the better? Do we plot more in our hearts and use words to camouflage our true intention?

“Where do these wars and battles between yourselves first start? Isn’t it precisely in the desires fighting inside your own selves? You want something and you haven’t got it; so you are prepared to kill.” (Today’s second reading)

We are called to make our ‘self’ last. This does not mean that we hypocritically engineer ourselves to be last through a polite refusal to perform according to our capabilities. Rather it calls for us to wholeheartedly volunteer ourselves to care first for the people around. Every person is blessed uniquely with a set of gifts and talents. By this world’s standard of measurement the obvious inequality is unfair to begin with.

But our Creator justifies this with a plan and purpose for each person. This ‘unfairness’ according to our grading system will be equalized through an honest use of the gifts we are blessed with. The honesty of this use includes the sharing of its rewards. The Creator planned for a communal world. We begin life with seeds of unique capabilities. We plant them, work with maximum effort nurturing them and as we grow into the world we harvest its rewards and share them with this communal world.

Through our unique gifts, some will end up with material wealth, status, influence and power. Up to this point these are meant to happen. It is what we do with these harvests that causes arguments. Our gifts given and used are converted into tools of influence. With wealth and status we can contribute and build the communal world that God created. It is at this point that “fighting inside your own selves” begin. Our desire to want to be first actually break both systems down.

“Wherever you find jealousy and ambition, you find disharmony, and wicked things of every kind being done; whereas the wisdom that comes down from above is essentially something pure; it also makes for peace, and is kindly and considerate; it is full of compassion and shows itself by doing good; nor is there any trace of partiality or hypocrisy in it.” (Second Reading)

At the end it is about which grading system we choose to believe in: a wise world with God or a world living without his purpose for us. Long ago this choice was put to a bet between Elijah and the Baal prophets. God won, so it’s better to be last.

At Muhraka: Elijah had a bet with the Baal prophets: God as He is or the god of worldly desires

25th Sunday Ordinary Time

We sometimes live in a mathematical world of probabilities and calculations. We juggle time, and place it like an investment for a better gain. We throw ‘good works’ into the equation to seek for a better balanced life. We select people we want to associate with, often the factor of choice being how much beneficial influence they will have on our lives. We sub consciously calculate the probability of some returns according to who we help and what we need to do.

We will probably be more ‘willing’ to do something for the boss at work, and perhaps hesitate towards helping someone “who is in need of clothes and has not enough to live on” (second reading). Everyone will be somewhat guilty of this behavior but in the law of human nature set in the realities of this world, this is unavoidable because of our human instinct to survive. But this is purely our human self.

Faith invites us to look at our spiritual self. Faith states that life is eternal. Eternal life is the biggest reward of human life and this beneficial reward can either be won or lost. Faith states that human life is a sub set of spiritual life. Our logic must embrace both. In every permutation to make our human life better, the factor of a spiritual life must be present. And here is the formula.

“If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” (Today’s Gospel)

We need to re-calibrate. This is a leap into faith: we need to re-assess the cost to ‘self’ in all that we do. In the pureness of this faith formula, ‘self’ has to be set at ‘zero worth’ for self to eventually be worth the big reward of eternal life. Renounce ‘self’ and substitute with “take up the cross”.

The example of this faith formula has already been given. He is the Christ who gave everything of him ‘self’ as an act of pure love for the other. He emptied him ‘self’ to the point of accepting death, even death on a cross. Christ demonstrated the method to live our human life with faith. Faith must be evidenced by good works. “Faith is like that: if good works do not go with it, it is quite dead.” (Second reading)

Pure good works, in simple description, is going the extra mile for the other person. Good works are done without calculation and expectation of gains. They are not done out of obligations. We give without counting costs. In our mind, there is no ulterior motive. In the pureness of good works, we simply do because it needs doing. In the other person we recognize human life that need preserving for eternity. Faith is a gift to give to preserve life. And this faith is only tangible and visible through good works.

In this extra mile we will experience the reality of Christ in the realities of our human world. Good works is the common denominator in the mathematics of faith. It equalizes our human instincts to survive by fueling growth in our spiritual life. Good works is intentional discipleship “to be a follower of mine”.

Going the extra mile for the other person. Good works are done without calculation and expectation of gains. They are not done out of obligations. We give without counting costs.

24th Sunday in Ordinary Time

“See no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil”. In tradition, these 3 wise monkeys mean to tell us to be of good mind, speech and action. Interestingly over time it became ‘turning a blind eye’ to the action of others doing things that were not quite right. Well, our thinking and values are further evolving, actually quicker in this rich technological age. But as people, have we become richer or poorer?

Lifestyles today gravitate a lot towards ‘self’. More and more we are exercising ‘personal rights’. ‘Self’ is winning the race to come first before community. When we look at the 3 monkeys, they too seem to have lost some wisdom. Maybe today’s monkeys are saying, “I don’t want to know, I don’t want to listen and I really don’t care”.

In the race to become rich according to the world, we sometimes embrace a culture of selfishness and allow the hands of the world to cover our eyes, ears and mouth to the promptings of a God who seem to be interfering with our desires with his conservative and traditional ways. We are richer today in self-dependence so much so that we think poorer to leave God behind.

Today’s second reading speaks of the rich “beautifully dressed and with a gold finger on” and the poor “in shabby clothes”. When we read it carefully, it is not a damning verdict on the materially rich but a warning against the discrimination of the poor. This particular rich man did not leave God behind otherwise he wouldn’t be appearing at the synagogue.

The poverty of the poor is obvious. They are shabby according to the world, materially poor in money and possessions. We must not be deceived into judgement and to discriminate against the poor. These days, we must also carefully watch our righteous self not to discriminate against the materially rich. For poverty according to God is the poverty of the spirit.

Beneath every rich person’s beautiful clothing are also pockets of poverty. Every person, rich and poor alike, struggle with the challenges of daily life. We will experience poverty in love, happiness, fulfilment; poverty in losses, relationships and health. This is inevitable in our human world. It is in these pockets of poverty where God come to call. Those “who are poor according to the world that God chose, to be rich in faith and to be the heirs to the kingdom which he promised to those who love him”.

It is through challenges in life where we become richer in faith. We are called to go into the world of spiritual poverty to unclasp the hands of the material world that cover our eyes, ears and mouth taking away our dependence on God. We must not be afraid of losing what we have but to use whatever material richness to address this poverty of the spirit. When we race only for ‘self’, there will be no winners, rich or poor. We must not choose the way of the modern day monkey, “I don’t want to see, listen, do or care”.

“‘Courage! Do not be afraid. Look, your God is coming, he is coming to save you.’ Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unsealed, then the lame shall leap like a deer and the tongues of the dumb sing for joy”.

As people we must become richer. Christ want us to have this richness to live life through being poor in spirit. “Ephphatha, be opened”.

23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time

What is the catalyst for a person to stop believing in God? More likely it is because of the laws of the Church and less likely it is because of believers being good to them by loving them unconditionally. When a person leaves the Church, it is often in disillusionment over the acts of self-righteous believers. Rarely will one run away from being truly loved.

Believers are not all the time wrong. In fact they is a lot to admire and learn from their passion and conviction in believing. Non-believers and people who have left the Church are also not wrong. We need to be compassionate and understand the extenuating circumstance or environment they are in for them to respond in disbelief. We are after all human. It is precisely because we are human that we need laws, but not to rule us but to guide and protect.

There is actually only one law given and needed, and observing it immediately guide and protect every person. This commandment is to love one another with no buts. “It is all that is good, everything that is perfect, which is given us from above; it comes down from the Father of all light; with him there is no such thing as alteration, no shadow of a change.” (Second Reading).

But there is also no such thing for our human nature not to alter. It is tough to remain uncontaminated by the world. We ring fence ourselves with self-love and this is a change that cast long shadows obscuring the spirit of this law. From the Father of all light, he sent his Son into the weakness of human nature not to abolish the law but to fulfil it.

When we go out in search of the lost and the drifted, we are called not to preach the law with words but to fulfil it with action. It always degenerate into an endless argument of self-values between believer and disbeliever when only words and doctrines are used. When we do not address the heart, we argue without God in the equation. Action balances the emotional heart with the thinking intellect. Action fulfils the law: it allows love to flow, and to touch. It turns words into convincing experience, laws into the spirit of it.

When we find the lost and the drifted, the first restorative action is be compassionate. When a person is searching for God, the person want to be found. And when a person left because of Pharisee-like behavior pertaining to the law, this person will hide from being found if they feel judged or condemned as sinful. The fulfilment of the law of love excludes this.

When we go out to find and restore, we will go with the wisdom that the extenuating circumstance or environment that led them away have now mired them in a more desperate situation where they are now willing to seek God. The believer must bring God’s restorative action to them. They must see the compassionate face of God in the believer and not the face of a Pharisee. Otherwise they will be disappointed and disillusioned all over again.

“Pure, un-spoilt religion, in the eyes of God our Father is this: coming to the help of orphans and widows (the broken of this world) when they need it, and keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world.”

Searching for the lost and drifted: Finding and Restoring

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time