Life can now be an unending stream of selfies. We can document each moment and share it through social media. All is good as we invite others into our lives. After all, we are all parts of one body.

“Just as a human body, though it is made up of many parts, is a single unit because all these parts, though many, make one body, so it is with Christ.” (Today’s second reading)

We are the world. We are different parts of one body, we are differently gifted to live in this world. Each has a role to contribute, together we must do so to make the world a better place. This passage is not only about Christians. It is about how all our lives are interlinked, with people we know as well as with strangers, prefer it or not.

“In the one Spirit we were all baptised, Jews as well as Greeks, slaves as well as citizens, and one Spirit was given to us all to drink.”

The truth here is that what one part does affect all other parts. It will make the whole body sick if one part does something that is not correct. We are consequences of other people’s actions. Consequently, what we do affect others too.

“and that there may not be disagreements inside the body, but that each part may be equally concerned for all the others. If one part is hurt, all parts are hurt with it.”

In daily life we either enjoy or suffer the decisions of people around us. Sometimes they have life changing consequences for example like the loss of a job or a broken relationship. Often it is too complex to address the source of such decisions for often it has come about through a series of consequences. Is it your fault or is it mine?

Technology has gifted us this world of selfies. Spiritually we may be too slow to keep apace with these changes that are affecting all of us. We do not yet know the full consequences of how selfies and social media will impact the whole body, us as people. But there is one basic in this complex equation that has the greatest influence: our ‘self’.

There is a virus in social media. It thrives on self-promotion which leads to self-importance and self-gratification. If we are not careful, it goes into a maze of everything-for-self. With technology’s speed and slowness of spiritual awareness we may find ourselves held captive by the preoccupation of ‘self’.

There comes a time when we heed a certain call for the world to come together as one. Today’s Gospel urge us to live as one body and attend to its weaker parts.

“He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and to the blind new sight, to set the downtrodden free”.

We cannot start doing so unless we start to free and liberate ourselves from this captivation of ‘self’.

Our mobile phone has now become part of our one body. We must be aware what it can do to our ‘self’

3rd Ordinary Sunday

We enjoy many choices in life with full freedom to choose. Many things happen to us in ordinary life, some crafted some not, some good some bad. We have choice of vision, choice of thought. We can choose to see God in everything or to dismiss our thoughts into disbelief.

Today we recall the wedding at Cana where Jesus performed his first miracle of turning water into wine. It is so hard to believe that we jest about it. It is hard because our mind tells us so. But our minds were created to guide us only in our humanity. Belief in God is beyond mind. It comes from our being.

When we each look at our life, we can find that many things have come together in unexplained ways. For the many good things, we are fortunate and lucky. For the many bad things, our minds try to disprove the existence of God. We may not actually blame God (we can’t if we don’t believe in the first place) but our minds push the thought of God further down into our being.

Our created being will always search for its Creator, with or without the mind. We were each made like choice wine. Why not if he chooses to dwell in each of us? Our Creator made a one way covenant with each of us to love us unconditionally and promise to forgive us every time we make a poor choice. He is faithful, never abandoning us and is present in every moment of our personal life.

Our being need wisdom. Wisdom is to find, see and experience God in ordinary life. Wisdom is to know and feel that it is God who put the coincidence together. Wisdom is found in the things that happen to us in our ordinary life. Coincidences do not happen on their own. Wisdom is also to experience peace amidst troubling times. Not easy but possible simply because wisdom is lovingly real.

We start to look for wisdom by looking for the first miracle in our life. We need to go deep into our being to release ourselves from the boundaries of impossibility that our mind has drawn around our being.

To connect wisdom to the reality defined by our mind we must start looking not for the biggest miracle but for the smallest blessings in our life. Ordinary life is full of blessings simply because God is with us in everyday life. But it is our choice to want to see them as blessings. It is then, through blessings, where we experience God.

In our world today we are used to demanding instant results, yes or no. Wisdom is coupled with patience. Like choice wines, God uses time to develop our vintage. As beings we must choose to search for this wisdom in ordinary life, otherwise we the wine will just become water.

Choice wines are a blessing too!

2nd Ordinary Sunday

There is much debate about the Catholic practice of baptizing infants. One of the main deliberation point is that the child must be allowed to grow up to decide. Today the Catholic Church celebrates The Baptism of our Lord. I am no scholar of the Church, ill-equipped to present our case on an intellectual platform. I will struggle to explain sacramental grace but perhaps it is this grace that allows me to share my belief in the ordinariness of life.

My parents baptized me when I was only 6 days old. I am now on the downslope of my life passed the mid-point of mortality and hoping to head gracefully into retirement. On this side of the hill, I have started to minimize my belongings and begin to stare at the question of eternal life. I reminisce the path of life I travelled and am thankful to my parents for the gift of baptism.

My Catholic faith with all its accompanying commandments has turned out to be the silent unseen background operating system that had been driving my life. Every instance I am confronted with a juicy temptation, a pop-up thought would immediately be activated, “I am a Catholic. I cannot do this”.

As a young boy growing up I only knew “can or cannot, good or bad, right or wrong”. The lines were clear. Being baptized as an infant and growing up in a practicing Catholic family set my moral compass. It also became an anchor when “can or cannot” became “do you want to? It is your personal right to choose”.

I have failed many times when I was running up the hill of life. Young, energetic, adventurous and in good health, my focus was to accumulate belongings and enjoy experiences. Each time I failed, a warning flashed in my being. Infant baptism also open the doors to two other sacraments: Reconciliation and Confirmation. All three conferred before we become adults to equip us to navigate through our ordinary life.

I am thankful to be given my faith through my baptism as a 6-day old infant. As a child I had no maturity to choose and decide, and no ability to provide for myself. Like I am thankful for my parents when they chose my food, my clothes and my school. They chose and did all this simply out of love. What is good for my child? What makes faith different from the necessities of ordinary life? If we truly totally believe then faith is not a luxury. It cannot afford choice.

If I were growing up today I would be confronted by even more choices. Technology has infinitely swollen the field of information. If I do not have a moral compass and an anchor, this field becomes a chancy mine field to decide in. I am thankful that we have similarly given our two children the gift of infant baptism.

Infant baptism did not guarantee for me that I did not stray in life. I did so many times and for prolonged periods I abandoned God. But perhaps it is this difficult-to-explain sacramental grace that keeps pulling me back. Now picking up speed on the downslope of life, this grace tells me “that I your God will not abandon you despite your many trials when you abandoned me in life”.

“But when the kindness and love of God our saviour for mankind were revealed, it was not because he was concerned with any righteous actions we might have done ourselves; it was for no reason except his own compassion that he saved us, by means of the cleansing water of rebirth and by renewing us with the Holy Spirit which he has so generously poured over us through Jesus Christ our saviour. He did this so that we should be justified by his grace, to become heirs looking forward to inheriting eternal life.” (Today’s second reading)

The baptismal font in the Cathedral of the Assumption in Bangkok. John the Baptist baptizing Jesus. 

The Baptism of our Lord

Christmas is an occasion celebrated by many people including non-Christians. It is the religious event that is most celebrated, and celebrated by the most number of non-believers. It is a fact that many merrily celebrate the day without observing the true reason.

“That the Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body, and copartners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” (Today’s second reading)

Today is the Ephiphany of our Lord. Three wise men journeyed from the East to pay homage to the Christ Child. It signified that Christ is born not only for the chosen people but for the Gentiles as well. It signifies that Christ is good not only for believers but non-believers too.

Christ was born to dwell amongst all Man. He is very much in the lives of non-believers too. When we want to look for him we journey like the three wise men except that we journey internally into our being where he already dwells.

We journey along our life paths, taking a closer look at things that had happened to us. Some were painful, some were joyful. We look again at the people we have met, and who are part of our lives. Together they have shaped us and led us like a journey to where we are in life today. But where is the God who dwells in us?

The journey of life is full of ups and down. The bumps cause us to hurt. We do not remain always happy. Retribution or revenge are the wrong balms. To bounce back into happiness we must look deeper into forgiveness and reconciliation and apply them. It is in them where we find God.

Every time we forgive and reconcile we take a step in life’s journey to find healing and peace. As we close this Christmas season, let us journey into our past and unlock those hidden hurts and start on the journey of forgiveness. It is the promised path to true happiness. Cross it and see the Christ Child.

Love is sourced from God. Love is humble, freely and unconditionally given. She does not demand homage, even when we celebrate Christmas without wanting to recognise the Christ Child. He generously dwells in us all the same.

He indulges everyone, non-believers too, in the merriment of the season and patiently wait for us to have our personal epiphany. Yes love, she is patient too.

Celebrating with the team from Church of the Assumption in Petaling Jaya. They are launching the Landings programme ready to enter the lives of others to point to them the Star of Bethlehem.

Epiphany of the Lord