Spiritus Sanctus

22nd Ordinary Sunday (Year C)
Ecclesiasticus 3:19-21,30-31 | Psalm 67(68):4-7,10-11 | Hebrews 12:18-19,22-24 | Luke 14:1,7-14

Today’s readings focus on humility, and there’s been cause lately to examine my own role as a music leader under that lens.

It began two years ago, when I was forced to step down as a choir head during a parish-wide ministry renewal process. Truth be told, I was getting a little tired of the role, and I wasn’t all that good at it, so it was something of a relief. Anyway, I was still conductor, so I could focus my efforts on that role.

Then came a series of interactions with the newer members of my choir, in which I glimpsed the latent talent just waiting to burst forth.

But most of those voices went quiet after a while, and I never thought to ask why.

It escalated with an article in the latest Catholic News (originally posted here), wherein Archbishop William Goh reminded us all that true leaders need to consciously prepare their successors for a smooth and orderly transition.

And it culminated in my suddenly coming awake in the early hours of this morning with a sobering realization: I’m casting a very long shadow, and that’s not a good thing at all.

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Experience is a boon in most situations. It lubricates existing operations, and helps everyone avoid the potholes that have been run over before, or the ones you know are lurking over there in that deceptively-smooth road, though no one else has seen them yet.

But experience also casts a deep and dark shadow. It helps point out a safe way to navigate unknown territory, but it can also ossify into “this is the Way, now and forever, amen”. It shields others from the harsh spotlight of criticism and doubt, but it can also block out the gentle life-giving sunlight that fosters growth and exploration, and quash with fear and uncertainty the tiny young voices that would speak of a newer and better way.

Alas, after almost thirty years at the music helm, I’ve become Odin Borson, All-Father and King of Asgard, literally thundering corrections and exhortations in equal measure, and casting a shadow so long that only a few of the newer choristers dared to speak up, and sometimes not in a good way.

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But God always provides.

In this instance, He’s arranged for me and my fellow long-standing conductor to be away for an extended period, leaving us no choice but to have one of our younger members stand in during the coming weeks. (I’m sure everyone would also welcome a respite from the weekly thunder.)

He’s also caused me to work closely with a newer member in the tricky process of hymn selection. That she has chosen hymns that I knew myself, but never thought to pick, is a very encouraging sign, and kindles hope that there’s still much talent waiting for the opportunity to spread wings and fly.

So it’s also a good time for us to begin the process of grooming the next generation of music leaders, to step down from our rostrums, to shorten the shadows we cast, letting the light of Christ pour over the newcomers and giving them the time and space to blossom into a new creation, a new way.

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When I first began pondering today’s scripture, I misread the source of the First Reading as being from Ecclesiastes. I don’t think that was happenstance, as Ecclesiastes 3 (rather than Ecclesiasticus 3) begins with one of my favorite Bible passages:

There is a season for everything, a time for every occupation under heaven

Ecclesiastes 3:1

It’s the growing season now, and it’s time for this old farmer to step sideways out of the sun, and nurture fresh apprentices. Time to move to the lowest place, lifting a new generation up with fraternal guidance and correction.

Because, in the end, my way must be Christ’s Way, now and forever, amen.

Today, we laid our dear friend to rest, all of us companions on a journey of laughter and sorrow, of soaring highs and aching lows.

And as we sang through silent tears the hymns she so loved, I was reminded of another voice from the past: a bright, energetic lilt belting out old tunes and show tunes alike as our coach rumbled down endless highways, with half of us wondering “are we there yet?” and the other half “where’s the nearest toilet? I can’t hold it in any more!”

As with most people, she’d have her favorite songs, one of which was that famous little ditty from Annie. You know, the one that just sounds like her:

The sun’ll come out tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow
There’ll be sun!

Just thinkin’ about tomorrow
Clears away the cobwebs and the sorrow
‘Til there’s none.

And like most people, she’d sometimes forget her lines, and stumble to a sheepish halt.

But once in a while, she’d just make up new lyrics and soldier on. I suspect that on at least some of those occasions, she was just playing the fool.

If she were with us today, I daresay she would’ve cooked up something like this, with a cheeky grin:

When I’m stuck with a day that’s gray and lonely
I just stick out my chin and grin and say….LORD!

The sun’ll come out tomorrow
So you gotta pray on till tomorrow
Come what may

Tomorrow! Tomorrow!
God loves ya tomorrow
As much as He does today!

Truth in a song, bittersweet from our loss.

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One of the last things she showed us all was how to prepare for the end. Her funeral mass was planned months before, but not micromanaged: She chose her favourite readings and hymns, and entrusted everything else to us.

I’m sure her earthly affairs were similarly cataloged, sorted and prepared as much as humanly possible. She never wanted to be a burden to anyone, and in her daily work at a local hospital, she must have been keenly aware of how an unexpected departure could derail the lives of the remaining family members. As the Book of Wisdom tells us:

their going looked like a disaster, their leaving us, like annihilation

Wisdom 3:2-3

Perhaps it’s time for us all to take a page from her own book of wisdom:

• to record what we have…and rid ourselves of what we don’t need,
• to focus more on enduring relationships…and less on unending strife,
• to plan for our departure…and let go of unnecessary secular attachments.

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Dear friend, parting is such sweet sorrow, but I think I speak for everyone in your life when I promise you this:

We’ll remember how you loved us all each day, right up to your death.

We’ll celebrate your memory, the last essence of you, for in that way, you’ll still be with us here.

We’ll believe that we will see you on our last day, as a “welcoming party” of one…one with the saints in glory.

We’ll remember.
We’ll celebrate.
We’ll believe.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

My dear friend has returned to the Lord.

That simple statement conceals the depth of my rude awakening this morning, the sucking emptiness that gnawed at my heart while my mind tried to wrap itself around this pronouncement. Then followed communication upon miscommunication, striving to come to a coordinated set of actions with everyone else involved with her funeral.

For the first time ever, I prayed the Office of the Dead in the morning, but it was as if someone else was chanting the words, while Real-Me floated in a numb haze.

Then I went for her wake, ran into so many familiar faces from my yearly travels…and was yanked back to earth with a thump.

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Ten years ago, my friend organized a pilgrimage to Lourdes, Fatima, and Rome. We enjoyed ourselves so much, and received so many spiritual benefits, that she organized another one to the Holy Land the next year, and then to Eastern Europe the next year, and then…

I’ve been traveling with her for eight straight years, roaming thousands of kilometres and overnighting for four months in foreign lands. Have you heard the saying, “To truly know someone, journey with them as long as you can?” I learned that my friend’s love knew no bounds, and my traveling buddies felt the same. When many of us were weary after ten days on the road, her bubbly personality was still in full view, and she didn’t hold back from helping whoever needed a hand.

Which was why, when I ran into so many of those companions tonight, some whom I haven’t seen in years, others with whom I’d just journeyed last year, I was both deeply touched and completely unsurprised. Everyone she travelled with remembered her. Everyone.

Her maid was also at the wake, sobbing uncontrollably. That didn’t surprise me either; I’d seen hundreds of interactions between the two women over the years, and she was always treated more like a daughter or friend than a slave. The proof, as they say, was in the lontong…and it was very good lontong, spiced with love in return for love.

And in her final days, when the burning pain became a constant companion, I’m very sure that she quietly offered her suffering to our heavenly Father, as a redemption for the sufferings and sins of everyone around her.

My friend’s focus was on loving others as Christ loved her…and she was very, very good at it.

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Last Sunday, Fr. Jovita’s homily struck a chord with me, when he mentioned that God had a personal itinerary for each of us during our lives. I imagine my friend’s “travel plan” was a convoluted route that smacked into and ran alongside many others’ for a while, before veering off towards another one’s route, shedding joy and light all the way.

I believe this to be true, because on every day of all our trips together, we’d sing a simple prayer that echoes in my heart till this day:

Lord, you called us graciously to live your life and go your way.
Believing in your love, we follow you without reserve all the way.

Dear friend, thank you for letting me journey with you for so long. Rest now from your earthly labours, and I’ll see you in the fullness of time.

We are companions on the journey,
breaking bread and sharing life;
and in the love we bear is the hope we share
for we believe in the love of our God,
we believe in the love of our God.

“Companions on the Journey”, Carey Landry

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If you’re wondering why I haven’t mentioned her name in any of my posts, it’s because she was an intensely private person, and what she did in her life is far more important, as an examplar that we all should emulate: Love one another as Christ loves us.

Jesus said to him, “Go, and do the same yourself.”

Luke 10:37

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)
1 Kings 19:16,19-21 | Psalm 15(16):1-2,5,7-11 | Galatians 5:1,13-18 | Luke 9:51-62

Another to whom he said, ‘Follow me’, replied, ‘Let me go and bury my father first.’ But he answered, ‘Leave the dead to bury their dead; your duty is to go and spread the news of the kingdom of God.’

Luke 9:59-60

Over the years, I’d always assumed that the disciple-to-be was waiting for his father to pass, then he’d offer a quick funeral and then join Jesus. Either that, or he was about to send his father off, and needed a day’s “leave”.

Then I read Burial Practices in First Century Palestine, and my understanding changed completely. Now, I see a man grieving his just-departed father, telling Jesus that he needed to wait years for his father’s body to decompose, so that he can remove the bones from the family tomb and inter them in an ossuary. (We Singaporeans do much the same thing, just sped up with fire.) Jesus in turn tells him to delegate the hideously-long process to someone else, and follow Him NOW.

This Bible passage is now much more relatable. If anyone accepts a position, but asks their employer to wait for a few years before actually starting work…well, they’d be out of a job right there and then. “Thick-skinned” is probably the mildest reaction one could expect.

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All this flashed through my mind as I held the hand of a dear friend, now spending her days in a hospice. I remembered all the years she spent spreading joy to the many people she met, starting each day in communion with the God we both love. In a very real way, she embodied the New Commandment that Jesus Himself gave us: Love one another as I have loved you. The crowds of visitors she receives each day testifies to the love that she shared, “rebounding” back on her.

And it became very clear what today’s Gospel message is: Follow Me NOW, for you have no say on when, where and how your life will end. God will call us home on His schedule, not ours. It’s pure folly to defer our Christian duty to love and proclaim the Good News, till our retirement or some other convenient time of our choosing. If we “have no time” now, we may well end up suddenly dying in an accident or other calamity, meeting our Creator with nothing to show for the faith we claim.

Even if our lives didn’t come to an abrupt end, it’s also silly to assume that we’d have the faculties to do our Christian duty in the little time left to us. I’ve seen too many people whose minds went early (stroke patients), and though I always pray that God will grant me the continued ability to literally sing His praises till my dying day, I know that this isn’t my decision to make.

Dear friends, when we “signed on” as Catholics, our duties started right there and then. Putting them off for years on end, so that we can do life My Way, is exactly like telling your boss, “wait hor, I’ll get around to it in a few decades…maybe”.

Even if we have the purest of intentions, and are simply delaying our apostolizing to a more comfortable point in time, we may well find ourselves the subject of Dylan Thomas’ most famous poem, mere shells of human beings desperately clinging to our mortal existence because we still have so much to make up for:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

That’s just…sad.

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I’m sure, though, that my friend has no such fears. She didn’t wait to share the Gospel message in word and deed, and continued to do so even as she fought the illness that has now laid her very low. Even today, when her bouts of consciousness are few and far between, she’ll still briefly smile a greeting when she sees a familiar face, before dozing off again.

The concluding benediction of the Divine Office’s Compline (night) prayer is a perfect summary of her current position:

The Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end. Amen.

If we too seek a peaceful passage to eternal life, we should start doing NOW what we promised in faith, and not put it off any longer.