Monthly Archives: July 2016

Wednesday of Week 14 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
Hosea 10:1-3,7-8,12 | Psalm 104:2-7 | Matthew 10:1-7

Sow integrity for yourselves, reap a harvest of kindness, break up your fallow ground: it is time to go seeking the Lord until he comes to rain salvation on you. (Hosea 10:12)

I think we all have “fallow ground” in our lives, areas which we’ve given little to no thought on whether we exemplify true Christian living by our actions (or lack thereof). Perhaps it’s in our mindless daily routine, or the conduct of our work affairs, or in the dismissive way we treat the service personnel around us.

Wherever it might be, the prophet Hosea is calling on us to plow that fallow ground, to examine it thoroughly for the boulders of obstinance and the hard soil of unkindness, and move or break them up to allow the seeds of love to be sown and receive the life-giving rain of the Lord.

Last night, I found some fallow ground of my own.

✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞

Embedded in the crush of commuters at Bishan station and engrossed in a tech podcast, I paid scant attention to a gentlemen seated on the ground near an escalator, with one leg stretched out and another man by his side. I remember nothing else about him, not his face, not the clothes he wore. Instead, like everyone else, I flowed around him and went on my way to catch a connecting train. I was speeding away from the station when it finally dawned on me that he was probably in physical distress.

Brother, I am truly sorry for not stopping to help in your hour of need. I pray that you have received the help you needed, and I promise, with the healing grace of Almighty God, to be more responsive in future.

It’s time for me to get plowing…

Holy Spirit, till the fallow ground of our spirit, replenish our depleted faith and break our hearts of stone, that the seeds of mercy may flourish in us and through us, so all around us may come to know and love our Eternal Father. Amen.

Tuesday of Week 14 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
Hosea 8:4-7,11-13 | Psalm 113B:3-10 | Matthew 9:32-37

The harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest. (Matthew 9:37)

As our priests go on retreat this week, it’s a good time to recall just how much they do for us, how few their number…and how much of their daily burden we can lift off their shoulders through ministry involvement. I’ve written previously on lay “diakonia” and its relevance to modern church vitality, but it bears repeating: Our priests alone can only do so much, so all of us need to step up and help out as co-labourers in the harvest of faith.

Amen.

Monday of Week 14 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
Hosea 2:16,17-18,21-22 | Psalm 144:2-9 | Matthew 9:18-26

Today’s gospel speaks of two familiar miracles: the raising of Jairus’ daughter and the healing of the haemorrhaging woman from a touch of Jesus’ cloak. Mark’s telling of the same (Mark 5:21-43), paints a very dramatic, almost superheroic portrait of the events: of power drained from Jesus, a rapid healing factor and “WHO TOUCHED ME?!?!”

Matthew instead takes a drier, more matter-of-fact approach: People in dire straits, Jesus cures them, all in a day’s work, move along, nothing to see here. If anyone could turn miracles into meh, Matthew is certainly a front-running candidate.

And yet, from Jesus’ perspective, it really was all in a day’s work. It was precisely what He came to do: heal the sick, raise the dead, convert the living. While Mark accurately conveys the wonder of the bystanders in Jesus’ time, Matthew’s writing conforms better to our modern Christian point of view: We know Jesus is the Son of God, so we know such miracles are well within His abilities.

So when we ask for healing of ourselves and our loved ones, or for protection against the Evil One (as Fr. Simon Pereira depicted so vividly in his sermon at Church of the Holy Spirit yesterday), there’s no reason to be tentative.

Lord Jesus Christ, You are true God and true man. You have known our pains, our weaknesses, our failings. Cast your healing shadow upon us and make us whole again, in body, mind and spirit. To the Holy Trinity be all glory, honour and praise, now and forever. Amen.

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)
Isaiah 66:10-14 | Psalm 65:1-7,16,20 | Galatians 6:14-18 | Luke 10:1-12,17-20

The only thing I can boast about is the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world. (Galatians 6:14)

Such an odd turn of phrase, but packed with meaning. St. Paul is really saying that the world is dead to him, and he to the world. All the kings, sages, persons and things that others idolise are viewed with contempt by him. While others pursue wealth, status, sex and other worldly dalliances, St. Paul ignores such pursuits in a single-minded focus on He who died for all mankind.

Such zeal would be quite out of place today, but we Catholics are still called to something similar. Our baptism was to be a dying to our old selves and rising to new life, but have we truly left our promiscuous and excessive selves behind?

Do we still participate in rampant consumerism, always chasing the latest gadgets and tossing the older but serviceable ones aside, always eating more than our bodies truly need?

Do we still lust after the trappings of success, the fancy luxury car to ferry us where public transport serves adequately, the curvaceous model-girlfriend to turn heads green with envy?

Do we secretly or blatantly fawn over those who “have it made”, the Zuckerbergs and Musks that have all the wealth and adulation a man could want?

Or do we tell ourselves, “Self, I have more than enough, let’s see how I can share my good fortune with others as God intended?”

Do we see our belongings and truly understand their purpose in our lives, as tools to spread the Gospel message rather than trophies of our mortal greed?

Do we carve out time in our daily schedule to commune with our Creator, who loved us so much that he gave His only Son to be the final sacrifice for all our iniquities?

Lord Jesus Christ, You died so that we might understand just how little of this secular world is fit in the Father’s eyes. Remind us always to ponder Your suffering on the cross, that we may die to our sins and fit ourselves for the coming kingdom. Amen.

Saturday of Week 13 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
Amos 9:11-15 | Psalm 84(85):9,11-14 | Matthew 9:14-17

No one puts a piece of unshrunken cloth on to an old cloak, because the patch pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse. Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; if they do, the skins burst, the wine runs out, and the skins are lost. No; they put new wine into fresh skins and both are preserved. (Matthew 9:16-17)

As a cradle Catholic, I was not steeped in the superstitions and practices of local cultures, but of course I couldn’t avoid them either. The Chinese zodiac and Western horoscopes were always lurking in the background while growing up, and I slipped off a step and broke my foot 6 months ago while wondering why OCBC Centre was the only building in the Raffles Place area that was almost all curves. (You may have already guessed the answer: feng shui.)

I’m sure most converts face this tug-of-war between the old ways and the new faith, and today’s Gospel uses the metaphor of cloaks and wineskins to remind us that, even back in Jesus’ time, the new covenant He embodied required a break with the Jewish past. No longer were sacrifices mandated; Christ Himself would be the final sacrifice for all mankind, and blind adherence to Mosaic law had to give way to a conscious compulsion to mercy toward others.

So it is too in modern times, and we are fortunate to be living in a fairly tolerant society, where we can exercise our obligation to break from our superstitious past without much trouble. At a Taoist wake, I can now say a quiet prayer to God, asking Him to look kindly upon the deceased, without causing a scene or offending the bereaved. It wasn’t that long ago when doing so would’ve triggered at least a few stares and murmured imprecations.

But we still need to guard against the old superstitions in Catholic form, of treating rosaries and scapulars as talismans and good-luck charms, of drinking holy water daily to prevent illness,1A lady once approached a hospitality minister and me in the sacristy one Sunday, asking for a drink of holy water. She claimed that her parish supported this practice, but the container of holy water in the sacristy was clearly labeled “not potable”. She left disappointed, and we were left nonplussed. of hanging crucifixes in every room to ward off evil…and be blithely ignored thereafter. Instead, we should appreciate them for what they are: reminders of our status and responsibilities as God’s children, and tools to grow ever closer to Him.

✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞

St. Paul generally has some words for almost every situation, and in this case, the appropriate passage happens to be one that everyone should already be familiar with:

When I was a child, I used to talk like a child, and think like a child, and argue like a child, but now I am a man, all childish ways are put behind me. (1 Corinthians 13:11)

Amen.