Monthly Archives: June 2016

Friday of the 10th Week in Ordinary Time
1 Kings 19:9,11-16 | Psalm 26:7-9,13-14 | Matthew 5:27-32

The Lord was not in the mountain-shattering wind, nor the earthquake, nor the great fire, but in the gentle breeze that followed all three. And Elijah was wise enough to stay safely in the depths of the mountain cave until he knew the Lord had arrived.

I too have experienced some periods of great turmoil in my life, with people yelling at me to get things fixed, or excoriating me for forgetting an important engagement, or once nearly killing myself in a horrific car crash. Each time, my thoughts ran in several directions at once, with no clarity or focus. With the blood rushing to my head in fearful response, my ears started ringing, probably about as loudly as Elijah’s through all the earthly calamities.

Then came a timely interruption by the measured basso profondo voice of my partner, or a ringing phone, or the settling of a crumpled car body. Then mental calm crept back like a quiet breeze, and I was able to think clearly again. Had I been rash enough to react beforehand, I would have only made angry people angrier, or be crushed by falling rock, or roasted alive by wildfire, or…oh sorry, wrong channel. ?

So it is with letting God in. How easy it is to simply let the most strident voice rule our actions and our lives, to spend rashly at PC shows (canny promoters), to continue in a well-paying but soul-sucking job (well-meaning elder relatives), or to abort a fetus with Down syndrome. How difficult it is to just “take five”, to retreat from the thunder of misguided righteousness, to seek the peace of Christ before making a critical decision, and to pray:

Lord, I am besieged by human noise, and I am lost. Help me to weather the storms of popular opinion, to hear and accept Your wisdom in the quiet beyond the turmoil, and to act in a manner that gives glory to Your Holy Name. Amen.

Thursday of the 10th Week in Ordinary Time (Year II)
1 Kings 18:41-46 | Psalm 64:10-13 | Matthew 5:20-26

While Ahab went back to eat and drink, Elijah climbed to the top of Carmel and bowed down to the earth, putting his face between his knees. (1 Kings 18:42)

Modern prayer often goes something like this:

<kneel> <sign of the cross>
Dear Lord, I am unworthy to ask this of you, but please do XYZ for me. Thank you, Lord.
<sign of the cross> <stand> <disappear on errand>

We usually have many demands on our time, so we tend to make our prayers quick and to the point. It’s good that we pray at all, but we barely stop to listen to what God has to tell us in return.

Last night, I found out that a friend of mine would be going into surgery in a few days to remove a brain tumour. It has been a while since I’d engaged in fervent prayer, and this was as good a reason as any to take the necessary time.

And since it was a matter of some severity, I tried to prostrate myself before the Sacred Heart of Jesus, just as Elijah prostrated himself before God on Mount Carmel. It was an interesting experience.

First, my back tensed up as I arched forward to place my face as close to my knees as possible. I had to consciously relax my back muscles to make any headway.

Then, my belly started interfering with normal breathing. There wasn’t much I could do about that, so I took shallow breaths.

Then my ankles started complaining, so I shifted my weight forward to relieve them of some load.

But it was the rush of blood to my head that surprised me. Suddenly, my hearing seemed just a little more keen, and my brain started to tingle with the awareness of just how small I’d made myself before God. I was no longer thinking about the day I’d had, or what I’d be writing in this blog; it was just God and me…in a really quite uncomfortable position.

After a minute or so, I had to admit defeat – the physical sensations was starting to overwhelm my mental focus. I now realize one pragmatic reason why priests and deacons go completely flat in prostration: it moderates the discomfort and may actually better help them focus on becoming one in mind and body with the Lord’s sufferings, rather than gasping for air or cramping up at an unfortunate moment.

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As far as I know, Catholic rubrics do not prescribe prostration for the faithful. I think it has its place, though, in the solitude of night prayer at home. Here, without the press of temporal urgency, we could occasionally spend a proper interval, not sitting comfortably erect in a chair, or kneeling upright, but prostrated in utter humility before Him.

Down on the floor, with ribs and stomach pressing against cold tile, we should remain awake long enough to thank Him for the graces and guidance of today, and open ourselves to blessed silence, out of which God may point us in the direction He wishes us to head tomorrow.

I believe it would also be a more appropriate posture for serious beseeching, like for a safe operation and a speedy recovery for a dear friend. Pleading in a comfortable chair seems just too incongruous to me.

At least, that’s the theory. I’ll be testing it out over the next few nights.

Wednesday of the 10th Week in Ordinary Time
1 Kings 18:20-39 | Psalm 15:1-2,4-5,8,11 | Matthew 5:17-19

Elijah stepped out in front of all the people. ‘How long’ he said ‘do you mean to hobble first on one leg then on the other? If Yahweh is God, follow him; if Baal, follow him.’ But the people never said a word. (1 Kings 18:21)

Probably because King Ahab was glowering down at them, so everyone was torn between declaring for God and being beheaded by his guards, or sticking with Baal and being literally thunder-struck.

And so no one knew that God’s faithful were in their midst, for as God later revealed to Elijah in 1 Kings 19:18, “I shall spare seven thousand in Israel: all the knees that have not bent before Baal, all the mouths that have not kissed him.” That figure is probably not numerically accurate; most numbers in the Bible are likely gematric in nature, so “seven thousand” should probably be understood as “a really large number”.

So we have a large crowd of believers all thinking, “God, you know I love You, but I really don’t want to die right here, right now.” That’s actually quite understandable; even true believers nowadays would have a hard time standing up to a raving jihadi with a very large knife.

But there’s a modern twist to this tale. We live in a society that’s largely tolerant of all religions, yet many people have trouble wearing their faith openly, and instead choose to display their discomfort with their beliefs instead.

As a sacrament is “an outward sign of inward grace”, so I’ve coined the somewhat clumsy term secularment to mean “an outward sign of inward turmoil”, and there are plenty of those, such as:

• getting a question about the Catholic faith that you can’t answer…and getting angry at the questioner, or
• wearing a T-shirt with a large FCUK or dancing Mardi Gras skeletons to mass (it’s awfully tempting to go up to the former and hint: “Are you secretly asking yourself, ‘FCUK! Why did I come to church today?'”), or
• deliberately arriving late for mass, leaving after receiving Holy Communion, and generally placing your arms across your chest throughout (“yeah, I really don’t want to be here!”)

I think the root cause of such secularments is largely the same as for the Israelite faithful under Ahab’s reign: FEAR. In the modern context, it’s respectively:

• fear of looking like a idiot for believing in something you don’t even understand, so that anyone can poke holes in your faith, or
• fear of being shunned by your peers who adopt that particular dress code like a tribal uniform, or
• fear of finding out too late that all the “nonsense” you were fed in catechism class was actually true (“mom said I’ll go to hell if I don’t go to church, so I’ll do the bare minimum just in case, but don’t expect me to be happy about it”).

Now, a sage figment of George Lucas’ imagination has something unintentionally Catholic to say on this subject:

Indeed, such inner turmoil generally leads to turning away from God and His graces, and towards short-term enjoyment before long-term suffering. After all, without God, what hope do we have for life after this existence?

This is something we should all be on our guard against; none of us are immune to such fears. Therefore, brothers and sisters, let us remember to:

• turn daily to God,
• ponder scripture frequently,
• grow in understanding of our shared faith,
• seek harmony between our inner faith and outward actions, and
• love both God and each other to the best of our abilities.

Amen.

Tuesday of the 10th Week in Ordinary Time
1 Kings 17:7-16 | Psalm 4:2-5,7-8 | Matthew 5:13-16

Today’s reading is the prelude to Sunday’s first reading, and reveals how Elijah came to stay with the widow of Zarephath. What strikes me is the widow’s reaction to Elijah’s request for a portion from her almost-nonexistent stores. Indeed, she was solemnly making preparations for her final meagre meal on earth with her son, when Elijah asked her to divide up what would nowadays be considered table scraps.

It reflects a running theme in the Bible about people with the fewest possessions being the most generous. It also reflects, I think, a basic truism of human nature: if we’re down to our last few resources, we stop counting the cost and start getting generous out of all proportion. After all, if I only have a scone left to fill my stomach, sharing that scone with others wouldn’t make much difference to me – I’d still starve to death in the end.

Conversely, when we’re rich as Croesus, the concept of generosity for its own sake seems almost stupid. If I gave $1,000 to a charity, there goes my iPhone upgrade for the next two cycles, so are you nuts?!?!

And no, I’m not saying that being rich is stupid, or evil, or even necessarily negative – even struggling middle-class Singaporeans are virtual millionaires, especially compared to our suffering brethren in Africa and other poor nations. I am saying that it’s good to put ourselves in the shoes and minds of the disadvantaged, to gain perspective on the gifts that God has given us, especially the one about being born into a financially-stable family in a relatively prosperous nation.

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Just this past Sunday, I was talking to a fellow choir member about my Myanmar trip in 2014. We visited several orphanages in the highlands, and helped organise a Christmas party for the children.

I could tell you too about the sea change wrought in me by mingling with people who had nothing to their name but joie de vivre, but you’re probably tired of hearing it from pretty much everyone who goes on mission trips.

So I’ll tell you instead about the end of our Christmas dinner with the orphans, when three of them grabbed my middle-aged hands, and we all ran round in a circle at LUDICROUS SPEED!

Dear God, the four of us laughed like we’d never laughed before, and when we finished, I was breath-less, but definitely not dis-spirited. Certainly not when I was being crushed by the firm hugs of three children who, not having anything else to offer, gave me all their love.

Local kids, on the other hand, would probably have retired to their computers after Christmas dinner for a session of Call of Duty or some similar hack-slash-kill-kill-killfest. Borrrring. ?

Lord, you gave us Your life in reparation for all our sins. Remind us every day of Your call to our duty as Christians, to succour, comfort and protect our fellow humans, in whom we see Your Holy Face. Amen.

St Norbert, bishop
Ezekiel 34:11-16 | Psalm 22:1-3,4-6 | Luke 14:25-33

Which of you here, intending to build a tower, would not first sit down and work out the cost to see if he had enough to complete it? Otherwise, if he laid the foundation and then found himself unable to finish the work, the onlookers would all start making fun of him and saying, “Here is a man who started to build and was unable to finish.” (Luke 14:28-30)

Have you ever counted the cost of living the Christian life?

Have you ever wondered how much more comfortable your life would be now, how much richer you’d be, if you hadn’t let Christian morals get in the way of “me first, last and always” like your colleagues?

Do you regret your decision to choose the sacred over the secular in your daily life?

Have you ever been tempted to, just once, take a page from the Devil’s playbook that every other successful person around you seems to have completely memorised?

Have you ever succumbed to that temptation?

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I think these are some of the most difficult questions to answer truthfully, both for cradle Catholics and for those who consciously sought God out in later life. Indeed, I’ve known people who really tried to put God first in the workplace, only to be back-stabbed into tears and frustration.

The business world can be a very dirty place, and it often seems to me that if your opponents think you’re a moral person, they’ll get sneaky, but if they find out you’re a Christian, they go straight for your jugular. It’s almost as if the Devil were at work (pun intended) here: “Goody-two-shoes can be seduced to the dark side, but Christians? They infect others, KILL THEM WITH FIRE!!!” I guess we should take that as a compliment, but it can be really painful to be on the receiving end.

In fact, my partner put me on the spot just a few days ago with a very simple question: “How much of our ‘secret sauce’ do we reveal on our patent filings, and disclose in our grant applications, and tell our prospective customers?” Since we’ve been friends for a very long time, I’d been expecting that question, and I also suspect he was already anticipating my answer: “The truth, and nothing but the truth. The whole truth, however, will have to wait.”

So we’ve agreed to submit only what’s necessary to get our patents filed and the money flowing, while not committing any falsehoods in the process, either real or implied. We’re working on simplifying our product to the point that most of the details our competitors and more astute customers would want to know should be “hiding in plain sight”, but the core algorithms that we’ve worked out will probably remain trade secrets even to the employees we’ll eventually hire.

And neither of us is willing to screw anyone over, for any reason. Indeed, it was he who came up with the “social enterprise” angle to our project. To my chagrin, I hadn’t even considered the part about doing this for the benefit of others. At least we’re both of one mind in this; it would be really awkward if we had to part ways later over such moral disagreements.

So yes, I’ve counted the cost of living the gospel life. In my mind, it’s not as plentiful as a life spent bowing to Beelzebub, but it’s still comfortable enough and affords me a clear conscience and a good night’s sleep – at least when I’m not busy trying to get this project off the ground. ?

In short, brothers and sisters, you really can bake an angel cake…and eat it, too.

Lord, our spirit is willing but our flesh is weak, and this world’s temptations number as the stars. Give us the courage to keep our eyes fixed on You as we navigate the treacherous waters of human deceit and greed, and the strength to think and act always in ways that give glory to Your Holy Name. Amen.