Monthly Archives: September 2016

Monday of Week 23 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
1 Corinthians 5:1-8 | Psalm 5:5-7,12 | Luke 6:6-11

---

You must know how even a small amount of yeast is enough to leaven all the dough, so get rid of all the old yeast, and make yourselves into a completely new batch of bread, unleavened as you are meant to be. (1 Corinthians 5:6-7)

Leaven is often used as an analog for sin in scripture, and it’s easy to see why. It takes just one sinner, fat from the spoils harvested through me-first-last-always trampling over others, to spiritually infect others around him, just like a tiny bit of yeast blows up a really large lump of bread dough.

But you have to wait quite a while for the yeast to do its work, and once the dough has risen too far (and is therefore “full of itself”), it gets punched down. Ouch.

Like unleavened bread, living the Christian life doesn’t require a lot of time or effort, just a commitment to be “made with love”. It also doesn’t mean you’re condemned to be dull – if you think roti prata or crepes are boring, you’re eating them wrong. ?

So let’s take a lesson from St. Paul and live the life that bears much fruit…and with a minimum of yeast. Amen.

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)
Wisdom 9:13-18 | Psalm 89:3-6,12-14,17 | Philemon 1:9-10,12-17 | Luke 14:25-33

---

[For my reflection on today’s Gospel, see Counting the Cost of Christ.]

The reasonings of mortals are unsure
and our intentions unstable;
for a perishable body presses down the soul,
and this tent of clay weighs down the teeming mind. (Wisdom 9:14-15)

Argh, alarm! What day is it?

Oh yeah, Sunday, gotta get up and go to church.

Gotta get up.

Why am I still in bed?

Despite what I wrote yesterday about the pleasures of keeping Sunday as the Day of the Lord, there are times when “the spirit is on fire, but the flesh is limp”.

It’s then that we should remember the Hebrew word for “breath”, ruach, which incidentally also means “spirit”.

Deep breath. Again. And again. Oxygenate the blood, feel the energy flowing through those torpid lumps. Now sit up.

Argh, SLOWLY! Try again.

✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞

Of course, it’s not just getting out of bed for mass that can be a Christian challenge. During our working hours, our colleagues might be startled when a mild illness (or Zika, heaven forfend) turns us from pious Catholics into raving ogres at a tiny provocation.

Often, the same act of breathing deeply and deliberately helps to banish the sudden “demonic attack”, but the damage would already be done. Sometimes, it’s so tempting to take the easy route and be selfish like everyone else.

But we chose to take up the cross of Christian demeanor as Christ asks in today’s Gospel, to be meek and humble, yet steadfast in doing right by God. We need to remember that Jesus promised us an easy yoke and a light burden (Matthew 11:30), and the Holy Spirit is always standing by to fire up our limbs and our hearts with heavenly energy and sustenance.

We just need to breathe deeply, both physically and spiritually.

O Holy Spirit, come to us,
The children thou hast made:
Inflame our hearts and rule our minds
With thine unfailing aid.

Amen.

Saturday of Week 22 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
St. Gregory the Great, Pope, Doctor
1 Corinthians 4:6-15 | Psalm 144:17-21 | Luke 6:1-5

---

Few bible passages were as deeply embedded into my childhood brain as this one:

Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. (Exodus 20:8)

So to church the family would go every Sunday, no ifs, ands or buts. Back then, of course, life was a lot less complicated, and Sundays were easily set aside for communing with God.

Now, the prevailing sentiment seems to be “thou shalt fill every day with mundane activities, especially Sunday”, so much that “anticipated” Lord’s Day celebrations on Saturday evenings became a thing. “Just one hour on Saturday evening, then my entire Sunday is free? Sweet!”

Somewhere along the line, the holiness of the sabbath got quietly trampled and kicked into a dark corner.

✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞

When I started collaborating with my oldest friend as business partners, I emphasized to him that Sundays were sacrosanct…except for “exigencies of secular service”. Bless his atheist heart, he’s always respected that, never disturbing me for weekend seminars and other scheduled events.

Even when the proverbial faeces hits the air circulator on a Sunday, when our software mysteriously failed during production runs, he’d always tried to fix things himself first, only calling me in if matters were beyond his ken. Even then, he’d try to stonewall clients, taking them out for an early lunch till I could rush over after mass.

Ironically, he’s generally shown more respect for the sabbath that I have. To him, it was an ironclad rule, but to me, it was more like an option. Indeed, for quite some time, the real reason I came to church every Sunday was the obligation I felt towards the choir I conducted. Minus that obligation, I might well have spent most Sundays just writing code or aimlessly browsing the Internet.

I think the turning point came during a business trip to Taiwan that stretched through the whole of Holy Week. Because of production requirements, we ended up working all day every day…right through the Paschal Triduum.

That weekend, I experienced a terrible unease, an itch inside me that I couldn’t scratch, a gnawing sensation that something was horribly wrong. After the feeling receded, I took a serious look at my attitude towards the Eucharistic celebration, finally realizing what my inner self reacted to days earlier: that while I was still (roughly) facing God, I’d grown distant from Him over the years, and secretly longed to close the gap.

Now, Sunday isn’t something for which I need to drag myself out of bed any longer. It’s now a day to rest in God, set aside to let go of the detritus of the week before, to just stop and listen to God’s word, to just be close to Him, and to freshen my mind for the week ahead.

But I also think Jesus is pointing out in today’s Gospel that if a pressing need makes itself known in the midst of resting in God, He will not object to us taking care of that need (food, a toilet break, an emergency trip to the hospital for a loved one), then “come back to Me with all your heart.”

Brothers and sisters, if you find yourself rushing through Saturday mass so you can cram your Sundays with recreational activities and other demands on your time, yet find yourself starting the work week in unbridled apathy, try emptying that period for quiet contemplation of your life in God instead, and how it can be made better. You may be surprised how refreshing the act of simply resting in the peace of Christ can be, and there’s no better time to discover it than the sabbath that we are commanded to keep holy.

Amen.

Friday of Week 22 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
1 Corinthians 4:1-5 | Psalm 36:3-6,27-28,39-40 | Luke 5:33-39

---

True, my conscience does not reproach me at all, but that does not prove that I am acquitted: the Lord alone is my judge. (1 Corinthians 4:4)

During my catechism classes as a child, I’d been drilled on the importance of conscience, that little voice inside me that tells right from wrong. I’d been taught to always follow that conscience, no matter how difficult it proves to be.

However, I was never told how my conscience worked, so it was fortuitous that I stumbled across this article about conscience by Deacon Douglas McManaman. It made me realize that my conscience was actually my humanly-incomplete interpretation of Divine Law, and therefore it can be wrong.

So it should not come as a surprise when I confess to one and all that my conscience had been ill-informed for a very long time. In particular, I’d spent my time daydreaming at catechism, instead of taking in the knowledge of faith that Fr. Louis Foisson was patiently (thought sometimes a little grumpily) imparting to us, so the conscience of my younger self was a rather weak and uncertain voice.

That “justifiable” sin I mentioned yesterday about pilfering office supplies for personal use? I did that 20 years ago, and I never gave it a second thought at the time. Indeed, I might have gone on to bigger larcenies, had my natural timidity not held me back from exploring the darker depths of human activity.

I think my conscience is better-informed and quite a bit louder now, thanks to my oldest friend regularly questioning my Catholic knowledge, and my new habit of nightly scriptural reflections. It’s still far from perfect, of course, so St. Paul’s honest self-appraisal serves as a timely deflation of ego.

All I can do now is to “feed” it regularly with the Church’s teachings, be unafraid to let it lead me wherever I must go and do whatever I should do in Christ’s name, and to trust in the mercy of Almighty God when my mortal existence comes to an end.

Amen.

Thursday of Week 22 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
1 Corinthians 3:18-23 | Psalm 23:1-6 | Luke 5:1-11

---

Make no mistake about it: if any one of you thinks of himself as wise, in the ordinary sense of the word, then he must learn to be a fool before he really can be wise. (1 Corinthians 3:18)

 

In my work as a freelance consultant, I usually have to start by asking questions about my clients’ operating environment, issues, expectations, etc. I often have to fight a tendency to correlate my own IT experience with theirs, as that usually ends with me making unwarranted assumptions about what’s happening in their world.

But it also means that I can look incompetent to the client, by asking questions that are deemed “stupid”. Upon further digging, though, it often turns out that they don’t actually know the answers either, which can be an embarrassing realisation when their own subordinates go “well, actually, we don’t have any such thing in place” or “um, that’s not how it works”.

Former U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld answered media queries about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction with his now-infamous “there are known knowns” response. Using his known/unknown matrix, my clients’ known knowns really aren’t. A major part of my day job is convincing them to reclassify these things as known unknowns that require further investigation, before proposing solutions to their problems.

Sometimes, though, that takes major effort. After all, everyone loves to claim that they’re humble, but no one likes to look like he just fooled himself.

✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞

Rumsfeld avoided talking about a particular quadrant in that matrix: the unknown knowns, the things we know, but convince ourselves that we don’t. Mostly inconvenient things like torture, atrocities and miscellaneous war crimes.

And “justifiable” sins, the ones we think don’t hurt anyone to any significant degree, and are therefore “inconsequential to God” – but we still don’t like to dwell on them:

• The extra office supplies we took home for personal use, because “they already budgeted for it, so they don’t lose anything”.
• The many times we enjoyed free rides on buses by “unconsciously” keeping our travel cards in our pockets, because we were too preoccupied with other things, and anyway “LTA keeps raising bus fares, cannot afford lah!”
• The queues for free stuff that we jump by “filling in that gap someone left in the middle”, otherwise “sure run out one!”
• The loading bays we park in because “yah what, I’m loading my stomach mah!”

Part of my daily reflection centers around opening the “inner eye” to the things I did earlier in the day, and whether I’m OK with them. In the process, I often have to struggle with my own pride, answering an initial “I think I handled that situation quite well” with “nope, you took way too much pleasure proving him wrong, even if you didn’t show it…much”.

Unknown knowns may be painful to recollect, but we can’t grow as Christians without acknowledging all our sins, even the secret ones in which we think no one got hurt or even knew. One person is always hurt, one person always knows: the One who suffered and died to redeem us from all our transgressions, only to watch us walk away from Him all over again.

Open my eyes, Lord, to the many ways that I hurt you each day. Show me the depth of Your pain, and help me to turn away from sin and towards You, for You are deserving of all our love and praise. Amen.