Monthly Archives: July 2016

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)
Ecclesiastes 1:2,2:21-23 | Psalm 89:3-6,12-14,17 | Colossians 3:1-5,9-11 | Luke 12:13-21

Vanity of vanities, Qoheleth says.
Vanity of vanities. All is vanity! (Ecclesiastes 1:2)

Even this blog. ?

To be sure, “vanity” in the context of Ecclesiastes connotes a sense of fleetingness rather than excessive pride in oneself. In today’s first reading, we are therefore reminded that everything in our lives, all our cherished possessions and pleasures, will be lost to us when we pass on. The secular saying “you can’t take it with you” has much truth in it.

So as we spend our days chasing after something more than three square meals and a roof over our heads, let us also set aside some time with the Lord who awaits us at our end of days – if we choose to prepare ourselves in this life. In the words of the old communion hymn:

Work for the food that’s lasting
Work not for food that spoils
Work for the bread from heaven
And gain eternal life

So if my daily blogging ever distracts me from learning to love God and others more fully and freely, I’ll quietly stop and walk in a more appropriate direction. If it distracts others, I’ll strongly consider burning this blog to the ground.

Lord, our daily cares often overwhelm Your quiet plea for attention. Help us to carve out some daily silence in our lives, so that we may commune with You and learn from You and love You more each day, and that we may be reunited with You in the fullness of time and the all-encompassing light of Your glory. Amen.

Saturday of Week 17 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
Jeremiah 26:11-16,24 | Psalm 68:15-16,30-31,33-34 | Matthew 14:1-12

In today’s Gospel, Herod gets himself into a sticky wicket by making an inadvisable oath to give his step-daughter anything she asked for, and ends up having to behead John the Baptist.

That’s the trouble with oaths: the oath-taker often doesn’t truly appreciate the gravity and/or scope of said oath. In particular, I’m quite sure no couple in history ever really understood what their wedding vows truly encompassed – the trials of figuring out how to live with each other’s quirks and irritations, the stresses of child-rearing, the wandering eyes and other body parts.

Over time, we learn by getting burned, and so we start protecting ourselves with pre-nuptial agreements, with waivers and disclaimers, or even by hiding our crossed fingers behind our backs. Small wonder that Jesus says quite clearly: “do not sweat at all.” (Matthew 5:34)

Yet God Himself has made an oath, a statement of fact that couldn’t be simpler:

I love you.

No hesitations, deviations or prevarications, just a simple, definitive and unconditional declaration.

I love you.

He sealed that oath by sending Jesus to sacrifice Himself in atonement for all our sins.

I love you.

As Christians, we are called to promise our unconditional love in return, both to Him and to everyone around us, in whose faces we see Him looking back at us.

Will we do so?

St. Martha
1 John 4:7-16 | Psalm 33:2-11 | John 11:19-27

Yesterday, I received a WhatsApp message from a friend.

It starts with ANOTHER SIGN THAT THE END IS NEAR, which immediately raised my suspicions – no one who’s begun their spiel with “The End Is Nigh” has ever been proven right.

It goes on to describe a baby girl in Nigeria who was born last weekend in a general hospital with hands joined together in a praying fashion. When her hands were separated during surgery, the words JESUS IS COMING BACK! were found written on them.

You may have received a copy yourself, and you may not be surprised to hear that I’ve found at least one other edition of this story…with the girl born almost a decade ago, in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Everything else is the same, and there are probably other almost identical respins of the same story out there on the Internet.

More significantly, despite the fact that all these births were said to have taken place in public hospitals, not a single news report on these miraculous events can be found anywhere. The only mentions are sharings on Facebook, evangelical websites and personal websites.

This message has HOAX written all over it…which is doubly sad, because we really do believe that Jesus will come again in glory. We didn’t have to cook up a story about it!

✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞

Now, I’m sure the original author had the best of intentions, and subsequent retellings and embellishments meant no harm, but I firmly believe that such untruths actually do great harm to the cause of Christian evangelism, precisely because they’re lies.

If we claim Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life, yet find ourselves concocting and spreading fanciful stories of Godly miracles, what does that say about our belief in what we proclaim? “Eh, you really believe, or just say-say only?”

And in this technological age, the people we’re trying to proselytize can trivially poke holes in our stories with judicious Google searches. When we’re caught looking gullible at best, and deceitful at worst, why would anyone trust the Word of God that we share with them? “Eh, people bluff you also you don’t know, how you know you never kena bluff about God hah?”

Worse, when these people convert in the expectation of miraculous happenings that never materialize, how will they sustain their faith? “Eh, you tell me God is great, how come He can’t cure my cancer?”

Indeed, might we not also inadvertently delude ourselves into secret and shameful disbelief in our God? “Oh yah hor, I still have my cancer!”

Talk about shooting ourselves in both feet!

✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞

In today’s Gospel, Martha saw no need to embellish the truth: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.” Likewise, we should not need to embellish our faith with tall tales of improbable happenings that can be disproved with a little research.

Instead, we are called to bear witness to what God has done in our lives, not the lives of some faceless and probably apocryphal unfortunates halfway around the world. If we can’t find anything to say about God on the home front, that just means we haven’t examined ourselves deeply enough.

Brothers and sisters, we believe God is great, not because He does a SHAZAM! for someone out there, but because He touches our lives in small but significant ways every single day. If our incurable condition suddenly disappears one day, that’s a bonus; our entitlement is the daily peace of mind that our faith in Christ brings, and the quiet guidance that the Holy Spirit provides to steer us from harmful words and actions – if we pay attention.

So let’s spend less time talking about the-Almighty-as-David-Copperfield, and more time revealing His magic wrought in our daily existence.

Amen.

Thursday of Week 17 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
Jeremiah 18:1-6 | Psalm 145:2-6 | Matthew 13:47-53

In today’s reading, Jeremiah gets an object lesson in God-as-potter, forming and reforming the House of Israel through the years.

Indeed, God is a mighty potter, and I have felt His hand at work in my life. Specifically, when this “pot” started sagging to one side through sin and neglect of spiritual life, God “smushed” me through a horrific accident and began forming me anew.

But even the finest raw pot is soft and moist, and can still be mangled by undesirable influences. That’s why pottery needs to be fired in a kiln to dry, harden, and set its shape permanently.

Similarly, until I accepted the “firing” of the Holy Spirit, everything I’d learned about Catholicism was just book knowledge, and I was without conviction and strength of faith. All that changed when I wrote my first reflection on this blog before Holy Week began, a dare to myself to write something, anything about what I believed. Slowly, I unconsciously let the Holy Spirit “raise my core temperature”, writing a few more entries during Holy Week, then began a daily blogging run that continues to this day.

You could say that I’m now on fire with the Holy Spirit, and taking the time to do the 3 R’s (Read, Research, Reflect) on the daily Word of God has at least “hardened” my faith to the point that I will not turn away from any opportunity to discuss it with well-intentioned inquirers. If it is God’s will, I’ll continue this journey till the day I’m no longer physically or mentally able, at which point I fervently hope that the heart of me, on fire with the Holy Spirit, will still quietly sing God’s praises to my dying day.

It would be a fitting end for this lump of clay.

Amen.

Wednesday of Week 17 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
Jeremiah 15:10,16-21 | Psalm 58:2-5,10-11,17-18 | Matthew 13:44-46

As I write this, the latest craze sweeping the world is Pokémon Go, a mobile game that has mobs of unhinged players running en masse towards claimed sightings of rare critters, and therefore ripe for pranking:

If today’s Gospel were framed in a similar fashion, we’d see Jesus yelling “ETERNAL LIFE! ETERNAL LIFE!” and getting no reaction whatsoever – or worse, “don’t bluff lah!” ?

Sadly, that’s exactly the response we’ve come to expect from many Catholics:

Behold the Lamb of God. – Ah, OK, let me just receive communion first, then I need to run to send my daughter off for ballet class. Sorry, no time for final blessing, gotta run! Oi, who’s the ******* idiot who blocked my car?!?!

Penitential service next Monday, morning and night, come at your convenience. – Sorry, no time. Anyway, God already knows all my sins, and I’m very cheong hei (long-winded), so don’t want to keep others waiting in line.

Jesus Christ is risen! – Meh.

The heavenly treasures, the pearls of eternal life, have been revealed to us as an intrinsic part of our faith in Jesus Christ. Shouldn’t we be putting all our efforts into securing those riches that will never fade? Shouldn’t we be willing to sacrifice our mundane pleasures and pursuit of worldly possessions in favour of service to God in the guise of the least of our brethren?

Shouldn’t we be at least as excited as when sighting a Charizard?

Lord Jesus Christ, in the trials and tribulations of earthly life, we often forget just how precious Your sacrificial gift, how priceless the rewards of eternal life, how wonderful the future with our heavenly Father. Send the Holy Spirit to inflame our hearts, to make us burst with excitement and direct our will toward claiming that inheritance, so that we can be one with You and with the Father, forever and ever. Amen.