Category Archives: UK 2016

Thursday of Week 27 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
Galatians 3:1-5 | Luke 1:69-75 | Luke 11:5-13

So I say to you: Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. (Luke 11:9)

I couldn’t resist the invitation to talk about my recent trip to the Knock Shrine in Ireland. In short, it was one of the high points of my UK tour.

My smartphone camera had been working splendidly all through the tour, but the very first photo I took in Knock, of the cross that marked Pope John Paul II’s visit to the shrine in 1979, knocked it out of commission.

This plaque has major smartphone powers.

Or the cross to which it was attached. Or both.

It took a good five minutes for it to recover, and it hasn’t locked up since. Perhaps it was a reminder to be still and know the presence of the Almighty.

And while the apparition itself was silent…

L to R: St. Joseph, Mother Mary, St. John the Evangelist, Agnus Dei, adoring angels

…the people who beheld it back in 1879 were not, reciting the Rosary over and over for two hours. That’s the sort of devotion that Our Lady has always asked of us.

And they aren’t shy about reminding you.

The entire shrine reminded me of Fátima, another shrine that I have a lot of love for. There’s the same sense of sprawling silence, plenty of space to just sit and experience God in the whisper of the plentiful winds. Quite unlike the crowded and often noisy Lourdes, these are excellent places for quiet contemplation of the divine.

No physical or spiritual crowding here, for sure.

Just beautiful time and space.

Speaking of divine, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the flowers. Oh, the flowers!

Tell me God didn’t have a hand in this.

I dare ya.

Wait, I double-dare ya.

But in the end, it’s the spiritual communion with my fellow travellers and others from around the world that matters most.

Lest we forget why we came.

Amen.

Wednesday of Week 27 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
Galatians 2:1-2,7-14 | Psalm 116:1-2 | Luke 11:1-4

When I saw they were not respecting the true meaning of the Good News, I said to Cephas in front of everyone, ‘In spite of being a Jew, you live like the pagans and not like the Jews, so you have no right to make the pagans copy Jewish ways.’ (Galatians 2:14)

I deal with several Catholic folks on a liturgical and personal basis, who can be deliberately and painfully blunt to the point of being rude and hurtful. When I ask them why they behave this way, their reply is invariably, “This is what I am, I can’t change.”

It’s awfully tempting to swat them like St. Paul rebuked St. Peter for his hypocrisy, but their targets tend to shrug off such behaviour, and their rudeness seems to be tied to familiarity; they’ve invariably polite with strangers, but with their friends, it’s “hey, idiot!”

More distressingly, I’ve caught myself doing the same thing with a friend of my best friend. We’ve found that she seems to be forever planning what to say next without actually listening to what we’re trying to tell her, so we end up having to rephrase the same message several times until it sinks in, and when she restates what she thinks we said, it often exactly opposes our original message. Achieving a common understanding is usually a vexing exercise, and we’ve lost our temper with her quite often.

It’s the same story with some of my clients, with whom I usually communicate in my less-than-fluent Mandarin. Quite often, I end up struggling to think of the needed phrases, and then I get rather loud when the ones I come up with don’t quite get my point across. Worse, I tend to speed up my words for some reason, which just exacerbates the communications problem.

I’m sure all of us have areas in our lives where we do what actually opposes our conscience, out of a sense of conformity (“better not stick out, otherwise everything will think I’m being holier-than-thou”) or insecurity (“better play ball, boss is looking to fire people”). Perhaps today, we can start looking at one area in our lives that needs some Christian fine-tuning, and make a small but sustainable adjustment, instead of a zealous about-face that we may not be able to keep up in the long term.

After all, as my travelling spiritual director Fr. Paul Staes reminded me in his October 1st homily, “the saints too had their earthly faults, but it didn’t stop them from striving to be better each day.”

In my case, I’ll be looking at breathing more deeply and often when speaking with my clients, in an effort to reduce my heart rate and frustration level. Perhaps I should also try to draw diagrams to better get my point across.

Beyond that…well, let’s take it one day at a time.

Lord, you know we are imperfect beings. Give us the hope that we can be better each day, the determination to work on our holiness, and the patience to take one sustainable step at a time. Amen.

Friday of Week 26 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
Saint Jerome, Priest, Doctor
Job 38:1,12-21,40:3-5 | Psalm 138:1-3,7-10,13-14 | Luke 10:13-16

My words have been frivolous: what can I reply?
I had better lay my finger on my lips.
I have spoken once… I will not speak again;
more than once… I will add nothing.
(Job 40:4-5)

We Singaporeans are champion complainers. While Satan gave Job a Really Hard Time, we tend to grouse at trivial things, from the lack of power outlets in our hotel rooms to our colleagues’ offensive body odour. Even when the subject of our displeasure is trivially addressed (unplugging an unneeded appliance, or a quiet word with “Stinky Sullivan”), we prefer to vent our grievances to others, in the expectation that the appropriate people would overhear and take any necessary actions.

Strangely, there seems to be an inverse relationship between the severity of our discomfort and the volume of our discontent. The people who have the most right to vent loud and long, like our previous coach captain David who has to take care of an intellectually-disabled son till his dying day, are usually the quietest. Perhaps it’s because they need to focus all their energy on the task at hand; in any case, they almost always choose to bear their back-breaking burdens in silence.

When we find out about such persons, we do what comes naturally: cluck in sympathy, praise them for their fortitude, then go back to lambasting our flavourless coffee.

Perhaps we can instead take inspiration from these suffering Samsons, and focus on what I call MALT: More Action, Less Talk. I think fixing our own problems, and helping others fix theirs, would go a lot further towards making a better world than dropping acid remarks about minor inconveniences.

Lord, give us:
the serenity to accept the things we cannot change,
the courage to change the things we can,
the wisdom to know the difference,
and duct tape to silence our negative natterings.
Amen.

Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, Archangels
Daniel 7:9-10,13-14 | Psalm 137:1-5 | John 1:47-51

I’ve written about today’s Gospel passage before, but I now have good reason to revisit my words. You see, I committed an act of religious prejudice yesterday, and even though it was in the silence of my heart, I’m compelled to write it down, so as to remind myself about this dark corner that I really should try very hard not to visit again.

We’d just switched over to a different coach captain, so that our beloved David, whom I wrote about the day before, could spend a few days with his family before heading out on another job. This man goes by the name Kurunamoorthy (Kuruna for short, and I’m not even sure I spelled that correctly), and while he seems like a remarkably jolly chap from Sri Lanka, I immediately pegged him as a Hindu, despite not seeing any outward signs in any religious direction.

Then at dinner, Fr. Paul Staes began our communal prayer of grace before meals, and I noticed Kuruna praying and making the sign of the cross just like everyone else.

Shame on me, indeed, especially since I’d just written last month:

Perhaps, by discounting the colour of others’ skin and their ancestry, we might also influence them by our love to turn to the same God we do, and isn’t that our mission on this earth?

Lord, I still have a long way to go, before I can truly call all brothers and sisters. Help me remember always to take people as they are, to learn about them before painting my own portrait atop their visages. Amen.

Tuesday of Week 26 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
St. Vincent de Paul, Priest
Job 3:1-3,11-17,20-23 | Psalm 87:2-8 | Luke 9:51-56

In today’s reading, Job finally snaps. It’s easy for us to claim the perspective of hindsight, knowing how Job’s story ends, but it’s quite another thing to put ourselves in Job’s place, and try to understand the depth of his suffering.

I’ve met someone who’s tasted some of Job’s pain in his own life. Our current coach captain, a jolly Irishman named David, just shared his life story with our group of traveling pilgrims, and it’s a doozy.

Imagine meeting the love of your life, having two children with her, and watch helplessly as your only son contracts meningitis at just a year old, destroying his capacity for rational thought and bodily control.

Imagine being away from your family for long periods, driving tourists around to earn a living while your wife is the sole caregiver at home.

Imagine calling home while on the road, and listening to your 24-year-old paralyzed son scream his joy down the phone, because it’s the only sound he knows to make.

Imagine being not-yet-50, looking forward to feeding and wiping your son clean for the rest of your lives, being startled awake by screams of joy in the middle of each night, and worrying what would happen to him when both of you are called back to God.

Imagine going through what most would consider hell on earth, yet still keeping faith with God, still caring for someone whom most would have abandoned early on, still showing great love for your passengers…because your daughter has given you four beautiful grandchildren with funny names.

As Jesus told St. Thomas, “Doubt no longer, but believe.” (John 20:27)

Lord, grant all caregivers the strength and loving fortitude to continue their appointed mission. Open our hearts to see You in them, and to share our love in turn in whatever way we can. Amen.