A recent discussion with a friend in Brisbane offered an interesting perception on how we choose to live our faith. He shared the thoughts of his Padre from a recent homily on how we should not be confused with being united with the cross and actually, intentionally taking it up.

The Gospel on that particular week was about “carrying our cross” and the homilist shared that personal suffering such as from illness, grief, broken relationships or joblessness isn’t exactly “carrying the cross”. We can unite these to the cross, but it isn’t exactly carrying. To carry is about standing up for Christ, to be Christian and about service to others.

If God is God, why does he allow suffering? This question won’t go away. For some when this question is not answered to their satisfaction, they make a deliberate decision to wander into “the behaviour of the world”. For the rest of us, a large chunk of our personal sufferings are consequences of our own and others’ actions. But some sufferings may remain a mystery that we attribute to God’s will. “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine”; I will allow God to be God and I humbly remain his creature. This humble acceptance is a deliberated action to “take up my cross and follow him”. Let God be God.

Following Christ and taking up our cross does not lead us into a hell of sufferings. Today’s Gospel provides a vision beyond death “for anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it”. This is the promise of eternal life. Embracing this promise and altering our behaviour is to consciously take up the cross and follow him.

The cross will start to feel heavy because to take up the cross is to change our lifestyle into one of service and mission. We adopt this new lifestyle “by offering your living bodies as a holy sacrifice, truly pleasing to God”. We take up the cross of self-sacrifice where we put others before self. We start with family then friends then colleagues and then strangers which is when we feel our body as a sacrifice and the cross that we took begins to weigh us down.

This cross that we intentionally take up becomes particularly heavy when we realise we need to let go of the things of this world that is precious to us; possessions, desires and even opinions. At the same moment the cross becomes lighter when we yearn for eternal glory beyond death. Let go of our earthly desires and exchange it for the cross that will lead us into the heaven of eternal joy.

There is a greater challenge in today’s disbelieving world. The words of the prophet Jeremiah echoes when we take up a cross that seemingly embrace sufferings, “I am a daily laughing-stock, everybody’s butt….The word of the Lord has meant for me insult, derision, all day long”. To be different against popular opinion is also to intentionally take up the cross. We must dare to be different.

The first cross we take up is the belief that our journey does not end with death. But we cannot lounge around and be camouflaged by the trending behaviours of the world. Instead, we must breakout for our faith, move the boundaries of our giving, lose our life for the sake of the other and take up the cross… intentionally!

“If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Photo: St Nikolaus Church, Pattaya, Thailand)

22nd Sunday in Ordinary time

When I first got involved in church retreats I was always self-conscious that I must give the right answers. Everything was about knowing your catechism. When today’s question by Jesus came around, “Who do YOU say I am?”, I would look around sheepishly and search the floor for an answer. The little consolation to this was that I would have felt like the first disciples on a hot day in Caesarea Philippi when Jesus asked this question of them.

Like them, we need the right answer for the teacher. Unlike them, we have the answer in our books. The difference, and a life-changing difference this can be, is that we search the pages, while the disciples searched their real-life experiences. Then nothing had yet been written for them while today we are taught extensively from volumes of books. We too can give the right answer but the method of our arriving at the answer can be wrong.

“Then Simon Peter spoke up, ‘You are the Christ,’ he said, ‘the Son of the living God.’”

With the wrong process, getting the right answer in this case means naught. It does not bring out the value of what Peter’s declaration mean to our life on earth. Peter’s declaration came about through his personal experience of Jesus. He was further convinced when he witnessed the personal encounters of the disciples around him. Through these experiences and encounters, Peter enjoyed a personal relationship with Jesus.

To answer the question “Who do YOU say I am?”, we must close our books and open our hearts. It is not tough to see Jesus’ presence in our midst when we open the eyes of our heart. We have to respond to all he taught us, to change knowledge into experiences. We must live a life of love. It is in serving, giving and loving where we will encounter and experience him in the people around us and in ourselves. It is only when we allow love to flow through us that we establish a personal relationship with Jesus.

When we allow love to flow through us by loving freely and without prejudice, we hold the keys to unlock the faith life of people around us. By our actions we build the church. By allowing others to experience us, we bring Jesus into their midst. Through good actions, Jesus will be encountered every day in our lives. This is the simple truth when knowledge becomes faith and when religion becomes a lived experience.

Our faith must be hewn out of our daily experiences with Jesus. Through experiences, our personal relationship with Jesus will be rock solid “and the gates of the underworld can never hold out against it”. 

The next time we are asked the question, we open only the book of wisdom. This book of wisdom is in our heart and etched by Jesus himself where each encounter with him is life-giving and life-changing. Through these pages we arrive at the declaration, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”. Right answer, right method.

Part of the giant rock at Caesarea Philippi – where Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do YOU say I am?” 

21st Sunday Ordinary Time

In my childhood decades ago I used to walk to school along the mud track through the kampong. Along the path I came across the creeping ‘touch-me-not’ weed growing in abundance. For the fun of it I would touch it to see its leaves shrivel and close. Decades on, mud tracks have given way to highways and I see much less of this plant. Modernity and progress have also afforded us manicured gardens. We choose what we plant.

Like the gardens around us, we too have grown to be different. Modernity have afforded us abundant choices to be who we want to be. We can choose to weed out what we don’t fancy in life. We can choose from the numerous highways to achieve happiness. Unfortunately for some of us we leave the path of faith.

The ‘touch-me-not’ plant has many nicknames. It is called the ‘shy, bashful, sensitive plant’. It is called ‘sleeping plant’ and ‘prayerful plant’. It is also known as the ‘shame plant’. Today’s gospel touching on the Canaanite woman and Jesus seemingly refusing to help her provoked this reflection about faith in today’s world. And many of us are perhaps like this plant.

The bait of worldly riches has led us down many different paths. We have also grown to become more guarded as individuals. The ‘open door kampong spirit’ has shriveled to be the ‘closed door my-privacy-please’ lifestyle. Our manicured lifestyle has had a great impact on our faith life. We have strayed far into “disobedience of God” where we cannot anymore feel connected or touched by faith.

Try telling someone that the God of the universe, our almighty God is in fact a God who is very personal to us and very involved in our daily life. Try telling that Jesus wants to touch our life every day. Chances are people in this over-informed age will find that incredulous. Until we encounter road-blocks on our highways and find ourselves in desperate situations, will we then only turn to look for God.

One of the biggest obstacle to return along the path of faith is the feeling of unworthiness. Like the ‘touch-me-not’ weed, we shrivel and curl up in shame. When life arrive at the point when we need to be re-connected with God, we don’t have to close up in shyness. For the absolute truth is that our God is a faithful God who waits patiently for our return to the path of faith. There is no penalty, no toll fee to pay.

Today’s second reading, “Just as you changed from being disobedient to God, and now enjoy mercy because of their disobedience, so those who are disobedient now – and only because of the mercy shown to you – will also enjoy mercy eventually. God has imprisoned all men in their own disobedience only to show mercy to all mankind”.

Jesus never refuses mercy and is present every day wanting to touch us. We must not say “touch me not” but instead let our guard down and allow him to. We must re-plant the seed of faith. Faith can only grow when we wake from our sleep, put aside our shame, sensitivities and shyness, open up and prayerfully say, “Touch Me”.

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

We sometimes feel like we can walk on water. We have enjoyed moments when everything in life clicked into place. ‘Happiness’ hormones flow when effort, hope and desire are rewarded with top results. Sporting results can thrill and leave us euphoric. Outstanding achievements delight and exhilarate us. In the ecstasy of glory we feel so positive we can walk on water.

Enjoy the moment while it lasts. As the hormones ebb, we sink quickly back into the reality of life. Glory and disappointment co-exist; walking and sinking are its simplistic dynamics. And in unsympathetic reality we seem to sink more than we walk. But this imbalance need not be and we can haul ourselves out of the water more often when we trust in God and embrace a faith life.

There is a balance to life’s journey. Faith is a counter force to the gravity of life’s issues that drown us. Without belief, faith and trust we journey alone in the strong currents of fear. With belief we know we have God. But we need to turn this belief into faith and trust in order that the currents of life’s challenges do not suck us under. When we have a faith life many difficulties will flow under our feet as our trust in God buoys us.

Belief need to become faith. A faith life is a lived experience. Trust in born out of experience. Trusting in God comes out of a personal experience of God. A vibrant faith life is coloured by numerous such experiences. When we actively seek out such experiences we grow our trust in God; we allow a lot more water to flow beneath us and we walk our journey knowing we will not drown.

Prayer is the beginning of active seeking. A priest in Bangkok shared this week about the three types of prayer in today’s passage. Jesus “went up into the hills by himself to pray” and so must we spend time to pray so as to develop a personal relationship with God and to listen to him. When the disciple “took fright and began to sink”, we must be like Peter when we are troubled to cry and pray, “Lord! Save me!” “And as they got into the boat the wind dropped. The men in the boat bowed down before him and said, ‘Truly, you are the Son of God.’” When in ecstasy, let us bow in thanksgiving and pray to acknowledge his presence in our daily life.

The prayer we know best is the prayer when we cry out in desperation and fear. And Jesus knows that all too well as he “put out his hand at once and held him”. He knows about the undertow in our life. He understands the hurt when we fail to achieve and when we end last in bitter disappointment because more often this is the unsympathetic reality of our earthly life. But he wants to be there for us to comfort and console in the shattering moments of life. Through this prayer for help we will experience him.

Be quiet. Be still. Be trusting. Be grateful. Be thankful. He comes to us not in a mighty wind or in an earthquake or in a fire. He comes in a gentle wind. He comes to redress the balance of life, to counter its negative forces. Physically and humanly, we cannot but spiritually and in the gentleness of a faith life we can calmly walk on water.

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

I used to stay hidden in my faith life or more correctly I use to hide from my faith. There was very little chance of me going on a church retreat. Simply it was not on the list of things I want to do or think I need to. There was so little to connect my daily life to church. And I was happy to keep the distance. Going for a retreat was perhaps as tough as climbing a mountain. The idea would not even enter my head.

“Suddenly a bright cloud covered them with shadow, and from the cloud there came a voice which said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; he enjoys my favour. Listen to him.’” 

I never knew what being spiritually high was about. Actually we do? Or think we do? Reading the words that describe it or hearing about it from a friend, is not knowing at all. To know it, we need to experience it. We need to live the experience because the high can only come about when we are touched deep in our hearts. Only then can we be like Peter to declare, “Lord, it is wonderful for us to be here”. 

The Transfiguration of Jesus had been something I found difficult to relate to. To be in the presence of God, let alone to be in a personal relationship with almighty Him was an idea I couldn’t get my head around to. Until I experienced being spiritually high that opened my heart to search for more.

This Transfiguration of Jesus can occur in our lives daily. It will occur only when our hearts are open to it. Jesus is transfigured into our daily life for us to live in Him. He is transfigured to fit into our daily schedule. He is there at the corner even when we choose to ignore him. He is there to touch us when our own decisions fail us. When we realise this and accept Him, his transfiguration becomes for us a transformation of our life.

The clouds above us want to open up to declare, “This is my Son, the Beloved”, but we must first get into the position of ‘being under the clouds’. We must choose and make a decision to open our heart to “Listen to Him”. It actually only require a sincere “yes” from us, however weak and small our “yes” is to allow Jesus to take us with him up to a high mountain to be alone so that we know who he truly is.

The path up the mountain is made visible by his bright presence in the events of our daily life. But we must first make the choice to want to see him. And the easier way to light up our path is to live with gratitude. When we live all the little moments of our day acknowledging and giving thanks to him, we open our eyes and our heart to see him transfigured in our life. When this sense of his presence become more acute, we can scale up the mountain to reach our spiritual highs. Gratitude can be a start to get us under the clouds.

We must continue to find opportunities to expose ourselves to faith, to narrow the gap and come closer. We must scale mountains for the fresh air of faith. Retreats will help us but daily life is lived down from the mountains. “As they came down from the mountain Jesus gave them this order, ‘Tell no one about the vision until the Son of Man has risen from the dead.’” Holy Communion is the Risen Jesus transfigured in a special way to be with us when we come down from the mountain to live our daily life.

Every day there are moments of opportunity to connect, to be in relationship, and to come under the clouds. But it is up to us if we want to.

In the Church of the Transfiguration on Mt Tabor where divinity met humanity.

The Transfiguration of the Lord

I once bought the car I desired on a balloon scheme. This scheme allowed me an affordable, much smaller monthly instalment until the final month of the loan term when I had to pay a hefty lump sum. Distracted by the prize, I postponed the worry about the price. I gleefully drove off in a brand new car.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field which someone has found; he hides it again, goes off happy, sells everything he owns and buys the field”.

There are a few people, too few, who fulfil this. They generously give up a life for themselves to take up a life in service for God. These are our priests and religious who have sold everything to buy the field. For the rest of us we remain outside the monastery walls very likely not even wanting to look in until we have some sort of a conversion experience.

The difference about this treasure hidden in the field is that God really want us to find it. The Holy Spirit works constantly and tirelessly in our lives to bring us an experience of God in our personal lives. He look to deliver a boost, to bring about that convincing moment in our heart when wisdom crystallise for us to want to trade our life for a new life in Christ. When we have a conversion experience, we are willing to sell everything to buy the field.

The reality of life is that this isn’t quite so easy to transact. A lot of what we have to sell is entangled in our vocation and relationships. We are not quite ready to drop our nets while our children are still at school or when we need income to care for our aging parents. Responsibilities, not greed at all, dictate that we must continue to trade outside the monastery walls, in the market place of the secular world. Much as we like to, we cannot immediately buy the field. And so we think.

Spiritual conversion takes place in our heart. It is in the heart where the transaction to sell everything to buy the field takes place. We will all continue with our life vocation as parent and child but a conversion in the heart simply mean to place God in the centre of the field with our life revolving and evolving around him.

Life will begin to spiritually evolve when our desires for earthly things are lessened. The Spirit will work to loosen our hands gripping fearfully on the wheel of a new car thinking that it will bring us happiness. Like the balloon scheme we are asked to convert our lives little by little in small instalments until we are ready to pay a bigger lump sum to live a new and fuller life in faith. This is God’s patience and generosity for us.

We have time for “the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet cast into the sea that brings in a haul of all kinds. When it is full, the fishermen haul it ashore; then, sitting down, they collect the good ones in a basket and throw away those that are no use. This is how it will be at the end of time”. But we really do not know how much time we have. Sell, and buy the field before the balloon burst.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field which someone has found; he hides it again, goes off happy, sells everything he owns and buys the field”.

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Good and bad. Wheat and weed. Life sustaining and life destroying. They co-exist until the end of our earthly life when the harvest arrives. “The harvest is the end of the world”, or the end of our time here. Then a permanent divide will separate for eternity, good from bad. Which side will we end up?

Along the way of our earthly journey, the sower who sowed us in his field will nurture our growth and protect us from harm. He will guard his wheat from the weeds. “There is no God other than you who cares for everything”. In other words, however complicated things get in life for us, we must know and believe that God is in everything, even the tiniest, seemingly most insignificant event of our day.

So bad things can, and will, happen to us in life. This is not God’s doing but the consequence of the weeds in our life. God only allowed co-existence and that day will come when he doesn’t. If that day is today, will all of us make it to the good side? So, he has “remained mild in judgement and govern us with great lenience”. And has kindly given us a lifetime to make sure we get onto the good side.

We are never left alone each day in our lifetime. Little seeds fall into our life every day. Most of them so small, they are unnoticed. Often they appear in small gestures of kindness or comforting and encouraging words from people around us. Often too the details are so tiny that we cannot yet see any link to what is happening and our limited human mind brush them away as ‘coincidences’.

The good news is that there are no coincidences in life. God cares for everything. He works every day, actually every moment, to untangle us wheat from the choking effect of the darnel. He is ahead of us on our earthly journey and somewhere further up the road, we will find repairs to our hurt and ‘coincidences’ as the work of the Divine; tiny little patterns, intricate in details sewed together in the Sower’s time into a beautiful tapestry that is our personal life on earth.

In the words of a friend, who encountered a little act of kindness this week from a stranger, shared, “Hold on to the little things with mustard seed faith, take heart that the smallest gestures can also move mountains”.

Seeds become wheat which become flour. Mustard seeds become big trees of shelter. The journey of our earthly life is this process. We are good seeds sown by the Sower into this world to become good people. First we make sure that we remain as wheat and then collectively as a wheat field fight off the harming effect of the darnel to become flour to make bread.

The world is a wheat field, its produce is life sustaining bread. A little bit of yeast will help three measures of flour rise to become the bread of life. We are sharers of this bread. Little gestures from strangers are like yeast to our faith life. We are called to be this stranger to others, to be the yeast in their loaf. Yes, please!

The best yeast: “how the virtuous man must be kindly to his fellow men”.

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

The mind receives, the heart gives. The Word of God comes to us in the form of teachings and doctrines. It falls like a seed into us. This seed must make its journey from the head to the heart. Because it is from the heart and not the mind that love flows. Teachings and doctrines must not remain merely as head knowledge but must be made to come alive through our actions.

“As the rain and the snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth, making it yield and giving growth to provide seed for the sower and bread for the eating, so the word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do.”

We are meant to be sowers of love. As the rain waters the earth to make it rich, knowledge nourishes us with understanding. As rain water seeps its way into the earth to find life, the Word of God must make its way into our heart to give life.

But this journey for the seed is a challenging one. Within us, our experiences in life have shaped our emotions, feelings, thoughts, decisions and actions. These have made us who we are. They have formed the landscape along the path from our head to our heart.

Perhaps we relate best to the seed that fell among thorns for we care too much for our worldly needs, choking and distancing us from a life of faith. Part of this path are also like patches of rock when experiences have led us into cynicism or bitterness and un-forgiveness preventing the Word of God from taking root in us.

However, knowledge is a double edged sword. It can also make us proud and arrogant. “When anyone hears the word of the kingdom without understanding, the evil comes and carries off what was sown in his heart.” This “understanding” is this necessity for this knowledge to be coupled with action. We cannot teach or preach when our actions do not testify of this love. Without actions of love, it will only be our pride speaking and often the contraction cuts like a sword.

We live in an over-informed time. Obedience to faith was easy in the yesteryears when life was less complicated and our minds less crowded. Today, overcoming our challenges to faith cannot only be an intellectual battle. Debating on knowledge alone will only leave us in a stalemate.

We are called to sow in this battlefield. Catechism alone will be like roots that quickly dry up in the scorching sun if we fail to bring alive this knowledge through love. And love is action that originate from our heart. Our heart is rich soil, and the seed of love must reach it. Only then can our life “yield a harvest that produces now a hundredfold”.

As love rain down from heaven into our life, watering it and making it grow, our life will yield a harvest, so when our journey is complete we return to our Maker, not empty, but succeeding in carrying out what our life was sent to do: Sow Love.

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

We cannot rest and we can’t find that rest. Life today has an uncontrollable momentum. We are in pursuit, chasing happiness and contentment. We want more of what we already have, and we persistently try to up our living standards. Occasionally riding on the crest of success, we find gratification. Then soon enough we realise we are not at rest. We rev up again.

Life has gone onto the bully fast track especially in more affluent cities. We are held at ransom for even our basic needs. If we are not up to speed to join the chase, it is conceivable that we are without a job, the currency needed to fund our earthly existence. Joining the race is not an option, the world has bullied us into it.

It is an arduous race. God knows that this earthly journey of ours will leave us laboured and overburdened. He does not say to quit the race but instead offer to accompany us running it.

“Come”. In the madness of this world He is there. In our frenetic daily life, God is too slow for us. Things need to be done and His ways are either irrelevant or will peg us back. When we rest, we drink the juice of self-gratification. But we eventually find that we cannot quench our thirst. Yet he says, “Come”.

Bread will turn into stone. Our enthusiastic eager pursuit of worldly happiness will turn laborious and become a burden. We will eventually discover that the rest we gained is no rest at all. Not for who we are.

We are created beings. Created by the one God, and of that spiritual nature the readings says, “Your interests are not in the unspiritual, since the Spirit of God has made his home in you … so then … there is no necessity for us to obey our unspiritual selves or to live unspiritual lives”.

To try to live in this world and to do our best in it is in itself not unspiritual. We only become unspiritual when we choose to cut out the way of God and adopt the way of the world as our only way. Both ways exist but the way of the world must be within the way of God.

He is present in the frenzy of daily life. He is there in every setback we encounter beckoning us to “come”. Even if we have drifted so far away, his call to “come” echoes in the emptiness of our faith life. Actually he already knows that we are quite far away otherwise why does he need to beckon us to “come”?

The world will cruelly make us an underdog. But he is humble and meek. While we pedal in meekness in the fast and powerful lanes of life we find solace in his invitation today. “Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest”. The rest he wants to give is true rest; peace that only he can give, one which the world cannot as it continues to zoom by. So come … deposit your burden and “you will find rest for your souls”.

While we pedal in meekness in the fast and powerful lanes of life we find solace in his invitation today. “Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest”.

14th Sunday Ordinary Time

This is real conflict. There is this constant, nagging call to serve God and to give more time to the Church. Often we turn a deaf ear. Because there is so much that needs achieving in career and family life. Young adults are conflicted if they should give the best years of their life away instead of travelling the world, building up on material comforts and tasting the sweetness of this worldly life.

What is life’s end game? What is our belief? Is happiness found in a barn full of accumulated wealth? Or do we accept today’s second reading that “when we were baptized in Christ Jesus we were baptized in his death, so we too might live a new life”. For most of us we would inquire about the possibility of having both and this becomes a simmering tension of our everyday life.

With God there isn’t a conflict. He wants true happiness for every one of us. Yes even happiness of this world, happiness in daily life. He shows us the way, “Anyone who does not take up his cross and follow my footsteps is not worthy of me”. Oh, quite the opposite of what I desire.

Taking up our cross is not always choosing the worst option in daily life. It is about making every decision with God in the equation, and ultimately if the decision follows the law of love. This is the mind-set that put us on the path to serving God that will eventually see us shift our desires to place God in the centre of life.

We are conflicted when we want to buy a new car because the fervent community tells us it is better to give the money to the needy. We feel guilty when we pursue the best schools for our children and when we participate in the rat race. This is good mental tension because for starters we are mindful to the presence of God and we are trying to focus on Him as well.

We must be like the old couple in today’s reading; eagerly welcoming the presence of God in our life. “Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me; and those who welcome me welcomes the one who sent me”. Everything we do in this life must firstly be for his sake, yes even in our pursuit of career and family. But we must start by welcoming God into all the compartments of our life so that gradually our lives will transform as we find ourselves “taking up the cross” more often to serve him.

I can drive a new car and come from the best school but it is not the possession nor the status but how I can use them to serve God amongst the people I encounter daily. Gradually with God’s growing presence we will find ourselves taking up the cross more often and we will be shaped and transformed as we follow his footsteps. Slowly but surely the desires of what is worldly gives way to what is Godly. When our experience of God’s glory increases, our desire for self-gratification decreases. A new car will eventually become less important.

This is part of the dynamics of our faith journey. We will fall in love with this cross we carry because it gives so much back to us by allowing us to experience what joy and true happiness really are. It takes time and we must not turn a deaf ear but instead begin to welcome God and put him in the centre of our decisions. Conflicts and tensions will evaporate when we are graced to this wisdom, “Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Conflict – Do I buy a new car or carry the cross?

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time