Monthly Archives: August 2016

Tuesday of Week 20 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
Ezekiel 28:1-10 | Deuteronomy 32:26-28,30,35-36 | Matthew 19:23-30

Yes, I tell you again, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 19:24)

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with money all my life.

Mostly, I’ve loved the things that money can buy, especially all those weird gadgets of the last decade or so. It was nice to have the capital to just upgrade my hardware when my needs outgrew them, instead of spending time to figure out how to do more with what I already had.

From this perspective, I can see how Jesus is warning us about our preoccupation with mundane riches, that clouds our vision of the heavenly home that should be our final destination, and especially of our heavenly Father, whom we’ve been called to love with all our heart, soul and strength. In extreme cases, with servants and underlings to do our every bidding, it’s easy to succumb to the point-of-view that today’s reading warns us about:

Being swollen with pride,
you have said: I am a god
[…] Though you are a man and not a god,
you consider yourself the equal of God. (Ezekiel 28:2)

I’ve also hated the (blessedly few) times when I had to put in long hours just to have my daily meals and a roof over my head. I’ve never know grinding poverty, but I have known the pangs of involuntary hunger, quite unlike the fasting we do every Good Friday. That memory will likely stay with me till my final day on this earth.

From this angle, it’s easy to envision the urge to claw our way back up to sufficiency, and from there to surfeit, so as to never experience poverty again. This climb might begin with the purest of motives, taking care not to cross any moral lines, but as we march towards excess, it gets progressively easier to compromise on our call to love one another as Christ loved us, as the spectre of office politics and other forms of fiscal and moral fraud beckon with their siren song.

So if riches and/or the pursuit thereof changes us in ways that make it impossible for us to enter the kingdom of God, what are we to do? I wrote about cultivating a healthy relationship with money yesterday; in short, we should use our excess resources and some of our precious time to help the less fortunate. In this way, we may hope that God will look kindly upon us, and be more predisposed to reuniting us with Him at the end of days.

Lord, nothing is impossible for You. We implore you to melt our gilded hearts with Your love, and to let our excess flow to those in need, so that all may know that You are the God of love. Amen.

Monday of Week 20 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
Ezekiel 24:15-24 | Deuteronomy 32:18-21 | Matthew 19:16-22

The encounter between Jesus and the rich young man, documented in today’s Gospel, is a familiar yet disturbing passage. In the end, the faithful young man leaves disconsolate because Jesus asked him to let go of his bountiful riches and follow Him.

I suspect many who hear it proclaimed at mass respond with the canonical “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ!” but privately think “nah, that doesn’t apply to me, surely?”

In Chinese, this would be considered 耳边风, literally “the wind past your ear”, something not meriting much attention. Honestly, we’d prefer not to think about it because we share the young man’s qualms, but there’s a way out of this dilemma…

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My friends have long known that I’m a sci-fi fan, and one series that particularly caught my teenage attention was Frank Herbert’s Dune saga. Apart from his provocative treatment of amalgamated religions that provokes thought from me even today, there have been passages from those books that randomly pop into my head, decades after last reading them. One of them actually has great bearing on the rich young man’s dilemma:

One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim.
– Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

Substitute “riches” for “power” in the above quote, and now his problem is clear…and so is the devilish relationship many of us have with money.

Life in Singapore can be really, really expensive, especially when we set our sights on something significantly above subsistence living. Add to that our desire to ensure our children’s present comfort and financial future, and the joke that “Singapore has the largest proportion of millionaires in the world” starts getting serious.

And when that wealth is threatened one day by grave illness, loss of livelihood or other significant event, we start panicking and taking ill-advised risks, and even consider things like fraud and theft that run counter to Christian values. It is then that the ugly truth emerges: we grasped money too tightly, so we were taken over by money, and thus became its victims.

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Perhaps, starting today, we can adopt a more nuanced perspective of money in our lives, as a way to directly support Christian living. Not anything as mercenary as Jesus’ depiction of the dishonest steward (Luke 16:1-13), but more along the lines of “how can I use my riches to help others?” Perhaps we could sponsor needy students in their studies, or help support a local hospice.

But let us also not forget the other part of Jesus’ request: that we follow Him in His ministry. That involves engaging with the poor and disadvantaged, taking the time to know them, to love them, and to serve them.

And not just throwing money at them, or writing cheques for our salvation. I don’t think Jesus quite had that in mind when he said:

use money, tainted as it is, to win you friends, and thus make sure that when it fails you, they will welcome you into the tents of eternity. (Luke 16:9)

Lord, we sometimes love our possessions more than we love You. Give us the courage to loosen our grip on our earthly things, so as to more firmly grasp Your outstretched hands that guide us to our eternal reward. Amen.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Apocalypse 11:19,12:1-6,10 | Psalm 44:10-12,16 | 1 Corinthians 15:20-26 | Luke 1:39-56

Today, we receive the Canticle of Mary, the magnificent Magnificat, through Luke’s recounting of the meeting between Mary and Elizabeth. It’s a familiar passage that unfortunately overshadows an simple observation by Elizabeth:

Yes, blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled. (Luke 1:45)

Indeed, blessed are we who believe that the promise of Christ will be fulfilled, that if we love God truly, and our neighbor as ourselves, we shall be reunited with Him one day.

But neither part of our obligation is as easy as it sounds, is it?

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To truly love God, we have to know Him, which means setting aside time to focus on that purpose – except we consciously strive to spend the minimum amount of time in His presence. One hour at Sunday mass is all we can spare for God, surely that should be enough?

But in that hour, we can’t even focus thanks to those distracting children around us loudly ruffling missal pages and failing to moderate their voices. Not to mention our incessant need to multitask, to mentally plan our meals over the homily, our day’s journeys during the consecration, and our shopping lists post-communion. And oh God who’s calling me in the middle of mass? Must be urgent!

Then we get stuck in the church parking lot, fingers itching to sound the horn at the inconsiderate people who blocked our vehicles. We’ve got places to go, things to do, people to meet. No time now, God. Maybe later…

As for loving our neighbor as ourselves, that ^&&*$$ idiot just left his car here and is taking his own sweet time to leave! Love him? I want to beat his head in!

For that matter, do we even think about Christ’s promise at all, or did we leave it behind as we left Sunday school?

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Mother Mary sets an example for us in this, as in many other aspects of Christian living. In her earthly lifetime, she pondered a lot about the mysteries revealed to her by God and His Son, her son. She “treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19)

She in turn calls to us to stop for a moment, to pause in our incessant rush towards earthly fulfillment and consider the life to come, the eternal life with our Father that was promised to us even before we were born. She pleads with us to commune with God regularly, even offering herself as an intercessory, a more comfortable “anchor” of universal motherhood. How can we not respond?

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.
Blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Saturday of Week 19 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
Ezekiel 18:1-10,13,30-32 | Psalm 50:12-15,18-19 | Matthew 19:13-15

Jesus said, ‘Let the little children alone, and do not stop them coming to me; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.’ (Matthew 19:14)

We adults tend to complicate everything.

“Love one another as I have loved you.” But my boss is making my life a living hell. Why does he deserve love? You mean I have to bend over and take all his crap?

What would a child’s response be? “Find another boss lah! Being angry with your boss doesn’t make you a better person.”

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Fast & abstinence on Fridays? Does lobster count as meat? All-you-can-eat salmon sashimi is OK, right? (Incidentally, this is what started me on my decades-long association with my oldest friend, and what he used to drive more than one Catholic to silent fury over their inability to explain their “pious actions”.)

Ask a child to give up something she treasures each Friday, as a show of respect and love for the Christ who gave his all for us, and you likely won’t see such agonizing and internal bargaining.

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Eucharistic adoration: who does it more, adults or kids?

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As children of God, regardless of our mortal ages, we really need to get back to basics. Let us rediscover our eagerness to be close to Christ, to love without being selective or Machiavellian about it, to deny our desires without making a big fuss about it.

Lord, in trying to be grownups, we keep pushing ourselves away from You. Remind us to look at our children with new and learning eyes, to emulate their loving acceptance of others not like them, to glorify You in the Spirit of loving freedom rather than the spirit of personal gain, to find in ourselves the urge to be with You each and every day. Amen.

Friday of Week 19 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
Ezekiel 16:1-15,60,63 | Isaiah 12 | Matthew 19:3-12

The Pharisees said to Jesus, ‘Then why did Moses command that a writ of dismissal should be given in cases of divorce?’
‘It was because you were so unteachable’ he said ‘that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but it was not like this from the beginning.’
(Matthew 19:7-8)

Today’s Gospel is a reminder of the steadfast nature of God. He bends to no one’s whim; instead, it is us weak-willed humans who roll with the latest fads and causes, trying to shape the adamant love of our Creator into something that encompasses the people and things we like, and disowns everything else.

Take the touchy subject of divorce, for instance. When we marry our spouses, we usually have certain expectations of how the ensuing years would play out, and these expectations almost always make a messy splat against the immovable wall of personal differences. “Our marriage is not working. I thought you were my soulmate, but it seems you aren’t. I want out.”

Except, of course, we vowed to be true to one another in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. Not just “when our souls align as with the stars” or some similarly mushy quote straight out of a modern romantic comedy.

My wife nursed me back on my feet after I’d broken my foot in a silly accident of my own doing, persisting even when I dared to complain that she was a tad overzealous at times. And even though we’ve fought countless times over the years, not once had I ever thought of walking away and taking up with another woman. What we call “true love” is exactly that, but it’s still a pale reflection of the infinite grace that God bestows on us all day, every day, whether we want it or not.

The Catholic Church is often accused of being a fuddy-duddy institution, so far behind the times with regards to moral issues like divorce and abortions that it might as well have been plucked from the Stone Age. But the guiding principles that form the bedrock of our faith spring from a LOVE that predates even our universe, so the irony of this accusation is rich indeed.

Darling dearest, I took you to be my wife..and I still do from the depths of my heart. I promised then, and now, to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I have loved you, and will always love you, all the days of my life.

Amen.