Monday of the 3rd week of Advent (Year I)
Our Lady of Guadalupe
Numbers 24:2-7,15-17 | Psalm 24(25):4-6,7a-9 | Matthew 21:23-27
Jesus had gone into the Temple and was teaching, when the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him and said, ‘What authority have you for acting like this? And who gave you this authority?’ (Matthew 21:23)
Those are important questions to ask ourselves ever so often: What makes us so sure that we actually have the authority to boss everyone else around? Who gave it to us, and what happens when our bluff is called?
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Yesterday, our Archbishop celebrated the Rite of Confirmation with over 100 of our youths. During his post-communion exhortation, he bemoaned the flak he was getting from many folks about the upcoming mass ecclesial rotation. I wasn’t surprised to hear that many parishioners were complaining about the quality of their inbound priests (Singaporeans are champion complainers after all), but I was taken aback by the sheer number of people who were perturbed, nay, apoplectic about the changes they anticipated at their parish, based on hearsay accounts from Nth-hand sources of unknown veracity.
Clearly, we have a deluge of Catholics in our midst who claim authority on the running of their parish, despite only showing up for just an hour a week, and often less than that.
Then, during the ride home on a packed bus, we commuters were berated by an old man who was yelling at us folks alighting the bus near the end stages to move to the back, so as to (purportedly) streamline the flow of alighting and not impede the boarding of all the passengers waiting at each bus stop (which turned out to be less than a handful). During his five-minute tirade before alighting the bus to multiple sighs of relief, he also sarcastically informed the driver that he was doing his job for him, loudly apologized to all foreigners on board for his fellow Singaporeans’ lack of civic-mindedness, and verbally sparred with another old man who decided he’d had enough of the yelling.
Clearly, our fellow traveler was claiming authority on public transport optimization and good manners, while actually lacking in both.
And, of course, there’s no shortage of man-in-the-street experts on government policies, all of which have been professionally assessed to “make no cow-sense”, and exist only to fill the coffers of those in power. Based on their observations, I can only conclude that Singapore has been a poverty hellhole since the turn of the millennium.
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Instead of continually acting like we know what we’re talking about and everyone should listen to us, perhaps we should stop and think about what we’re asserting. I think we should always ask ourselves each time we feel like talking loud and proud:
- Do we really know what’s best for everyone, or are we only talking about our best interest?
- Do we actually know what we’re talking about, or just going by what we learned from some fictional TV drama?
- Are we holding forth in a sincere attempt to make things better, or just wanting to hear ourselves crow like strutting roosters?
This way, we can hopefully avoid having our authority gambit called out in public, the way Jesus humiliated the temple authorities.
Lord, You see and know everything. Compared to You, we know less than a newborn babe. Help us retain some humility in our daily dealings with others, and give us the courage to strive in love for the interests of the less fortunate among us. May we thus draw them to You as we ourselves have been drawn, and so gather all the faithful around the world in one continuous song of praise to the Holy Trinity. Amen.