It’s time for the season of ‘Heart Work’

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Opening our hearts to others bit by bit in Ordinary time is a small but significant step towards Heaven

Forty days have passed since we celebrated Christ’s death and resurrection. We have finally arrived at Pentecost and enter a season of 25 weeks of Ordinary Time. So, what now? What do we do? Do we move on in life and return to our daily routine of busy schedules until we are in a festive mood again during the season of Advent and Christmas? That’s six months away!

Can we expect anything new in between?

I recall a memory from a long time ago when I was a young girl.

My grandparents lived very far away from my parents’ home. One day, I decided to visit and spend some time with them because they missed me. I started out on my bicycle. On the way there, I passed by a hawker stall and whiffed the scent of my favourite dish. I couldn’t help myself and stopped to eat it.

Then, I spotted a bookstore. I was curious and went in to browse the titles they were selling. When I finally got out, I bumped into friends whom I haven’t seen for some time. We wanted to chit-chat and catch up with each other and went for a drink. By the time I reached my grandparents’ home, it’s almost the end of the day. Yet, they were so happy to see me.

They had been waiting for me to arrive since the morning and had prepared and laid out on the table so much food for me to enjoy. But I was already tired and filled up from my mindless “gallivanting”. What’s worse was that I arrived empty-handed. Because of the diversions on my way there, I completely forgot to buy them something nice.

I was disappointed with myself for having fallen short in my love for my grandparents. My passions got in the way. That happens because I gave priority to my passions over my grandparents. And by that, I had, in fact, put myself first before them. Although no sins were committed during the many things that distracted me on the way to their home, the good that I had intended, nevertheless, missed its mark.

Every single act of selflessness is a sacrifice, a martyrdom. And every martyrdom participates in Christ’s Martyrdom. It is, therefore, holy. And the good news is a selfless heart is trainable.

Life is often full of distractions like mine.

We journey on Earth as Christian pilgrims, Heaven is our destination. This is our belief and hope because Jesus says that He has gone to Heaven to prepare a place for us and will return to take us there (Jn 14: 2-3). Heaven is a place for saints, who made it there because they were holy in their earthly lives. Have we been living our lives like them to finally make it there or have we made so many detours that we have lost our way? Or been able to come to our senses and struggle to finally get there late in the evening?  Unless, of course, we die a martyr’s death?

If we make it to Heaven, Jesus, who has been waiting since the morning for our arrival will greet us with joy and sit us to a feast He has laid out on a table for us to enjoy. Just like what my grandparents did for me.

Everything boils down to one thing: our loving hits or misses the mark to a degree we love our neighbour compared to ourselves. Loving demands self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice which take us out of our comfort zones, and without which our loving would be sloppy. Pushing it further, negligence in loving, often, is the root of the sins of omission.

Being self-forgetful is difficult. To what extent do I forget myself?  For this, we can only look to Jesus whom we follow: His loving for us leads him to the cross. His self-forgetfulness is his total selflessness. His passion is not a comfort zone that causes diversions, but the focus that serves the very purpose of his loving – the expiation of our sins.

If we strive to open our hearts every day, just a little bit more than yesterday, to accommodate a neighbour (somebody we care very much, an acquaintance, somebody irksome, somebody we don’t want to know …) we will, consequently, must also let go a little bit more of ourselves in the process. We will slowly become less and less attached to our comfort zones, and more and more capable of directing our passions towards Heaven. In the process, our self-centeredness gradually diminishes, giving way to an attitude that disposes us to be more ready for bigger self-sacrifices.

This is “heart work” that demands a lot of hard work. But doable!

Many Christians tend to think that holiness is not for them because it is an endeavour that is unattainable, if not close to impossible. But holiness is nothing short of being good. Being good is being loving at the core, for what can be good if there is no love? Goodness starts from the heart, and can only come from one that is selfless.

Every single act of selflessness is a sacrifice, a martyrdom. And every martyrdom participates in Christ’s Martyrdom. It is, therefore, holy. And the good news is a selfless heart is trainable.

There! Holiness IS ATTAINABLE.

During this season of Ordinary Time when our spiritual journey is moving at “cruising speed”, this is one “heart work” that we can strive to do. Until such time when Advent arrives, and calls us to prepare our hearts to receive Jesus at Christmas, our hearts will be ready!  And as our long-term life project of getting ready for Jesus to come fetch us to His Father’s house, consider the questions that He may ask: Will it be “what sins have you committed?” or “How much have you loved?”  May Jesus find our hearts big, our loving steadfast!

“You did not choose me. Rather, I chose you. And I appointed you to go out and bear fruit, fruit that will remain, so that the Father may give you whatever you ask Him in my name. The command I give you is this: love one another.”  Jn 15:16,17

Image: Shihab Nymur, Pexels

Evangelisation: Lost in translation

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The Church exists to evangelise and this must be our mission, too

As Catholics, many of us, maybe even the majority, were never raised in a culture of evangelism. One seminarian who gave a talk at a youth ministry went as far as to boldly assert that the “Church no longer evangelises”. Growing up, I believed all religions were the same and were just different roads to God. I was a religious relativist and considered the exclusive claims of one’s religion to be offensively Protestant.

So it was a shock to my religious thinking that when I read the saints, their zeal for souls sounded more Protestant than the version of the Catholic faith I had received. St Francis Xavier, the 16th century pioneer of evangelism in Asia and patron of missions wrote:

Many, many people hereabouts are not becoming Christians for one reason only: there is nobody to make them Christians. Again and again I have thought of going round the universities of Europe, especially Paris, and everywhere crying out like a madman, riveting the attention of those with more learning than charity: What a tragedy: how many souls are being shut out of heaven and falling into hell, thanks to you!

Saint Francis Xavier

Something was out. I began to read the Bible and realised that if I thought the exclusive claims of Christianity were bigotry, then Jesus was the source. He said: “I am the Way the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). And the modern Church, in documents like Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975), Redemptoris Missio (1990), Ecclesia in Asia (1999), Dominus Iesus (2000) and Evangelii Gaudium (2013) had never changed her message nor her urgency for evangelism.

There is a HUGE chasm between the Magisterial teaching and popular Catholicism the faithful practise in the pew. To omit obeying Jesus, even to ignore his command to, “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19) needs to be called out for what it is: disobedience, even a sin.

Where did we go so wrong?

The Second Vatican Council that had convened from 1962-1965 updated the teaching of the Catholic Church in the context of the modern world. The guidance of the Holy Spirit in this Council has never been in doubt (except by the loons on the fringe). But certainly, the posture of the Catholic Church towards other religions and their followers, changed 180 degrees. Rather than excommunications, anathemas and calling out of heresies, the bishops of the world sensed the Holy Spirit calling the Church to build bridges in ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue.

This didn’t mean that the Church had changed Her teaching on the unique role of Christ and the Church. She still believes that Jesus is the only way of salvation and that there can be no salvation outside the Church. But disagreeing with the beliefs of others doesn’t mean that She has to be disagreeable.

Unfortunately, for 99% of Catholics, the nuances were lost in translation. The tension between two assertions: that Jesus is the One Mediator, and that peoples of other religions can be saved, simply meant all religions were the same and we didn’t need to evangelise anymore. Thus the period after Vatican 2 was confusing for a generation without Google Search to check what was being passed down by seminary professors and the pulpit. Swaths of Catholic missionaries began to wonder if they had wasted their lives and left the religious orders. Having lost their purpose of converting souls for Heaven, they became agents of humanitarian relief!

What then are we to do?

Catholics should not back away from building warm friendships with their Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, agnostic and atheist neighbours. Catholics should be at the forefront of pro-life family issues, serving the migrants and care for creation.

But Catholics should also be convicted that “there is no true evangelisation if the name, the teaching, the life, the promises, the kingdom and the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, are not proclaimed” (Evangelii Nuntiandi 22). In the face of the vast mission field of two billion Asian souls, the Great Commission, Jesus’ last words, must become the first priority for every Catholic: to make missionary disciples who make missionary disciples.

The missionary conversion for you and me will be nothing short of massive. If you love the Lord and want to part of this change, join us on this webpage as we unpack the issues one by one.

Image: Emmanuel Nwabufo Pexels

Is God a Divine Debbie Downer?

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Debuting in 2004, Debbie Downer was the creation of Paula Pell, a two-decade veteran writer on “Saturday Night Live” and a key force behind some of the show’s most enduring sketches, including Ms. Downer. Evolving from the character’s immense popularity, the name Debbie Downer eventually became an established slang referring to a negative person who has the tendency to bring down the mood of everyone around them.

To secular eyes, the Bible is archaic, a holdover from a time of peasant farmers and scientific illiteracy. Some atheists in fact claim that these are “legal requirements” to govern our actions, reducing the Law to a set of do’s and don’ts.

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

Do God’s Laws spoil our fun?

As I was driving the girls to dance lessons one Saturday, I took the opportunity to ask my daughters what they thought about rules governing good behaviour:

“Girls, when daddy gives you rules to follow, do you think I’m spoiling your fun?”

Yes!

“Why do you think that?”

Because it means that there are things we want to do but cannot!

“Do you remember what happened that time when you had too much candy?”

[Replying with some shame] We became very sick.

“You see, when daddy gives you rules, it is because I have the experience to know that too much of a good thing can spoil what was designed to be enjoyable. I knew you would get sick eating too much candy, I gave you rules so that you could keep enjoying candy for a long time.”

Photo by Gabe Pierce on Unsplash

The world is designed to be enjoyed

God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good – Genesis 1:31

Perhaps the lightning-rod issue that best reflects how secular society views Christian virtue as mere “stuffiness” or as uptight fun-hating wet blankets is how the Bible governs sexual behaviour: outside of sacramental marriage, it is a sin.

While it is a polarising viewpoint for non-believers, the reality is that a recent 2020 psychological study affirms that while Tinder users showed more positive attitudes towards consensual nonmonogamy and greater sociosexuality than nonusers, they also expressed increased dissatisfaction with their sex life.

In my perspective, the main issue is that ‘consensual nonmonogamy” reduces something like an amazing gift of sex to a mere physical necessity, this in turn reduces us from image bearers and reflections of the Lord to mere animals. In short, you cannot reduce a gift to mere biological necessity and expect to still feel satisfied.

“We long for happiness, but we’re made for joy.”

Father Mike Schmitz

As the word itself implies, happiness is associated with happenings, happenstance, luck, and fortune. If circumstances are favourable, you are happy; if not, then you’re unhappy. One of the greatest misunderstandings of our time is the belief that we are supposed to be happy all the time and so we have a rabbit race for sex or to a lesser degree, like immature children, we think that in order to be happy, we need all the candy we can consume.

God isn’t some Divine Debbie Downer, He made us for joy, and He knows the very things that we might chase and in the process, hurt ourselves. He gave us those rules so that we might have life and have it in the full.

Main Image: David Henry, Pexels

The way to save the unborn

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In an era of many opinions, Church Teachings help penetrate fog of confusion

We were lost! It was many years ago when I was on a National Service training trip where I got lost in the forest with three of my fellow soldiers.

In the vast wilderness of the Australian forest, we wandered aimlessly for hours. Every turn seemed to look the same in the forest. Without a map and compass to guide us, we felt anxious and helpless.

This can be similar in our lives today, in the Internet age, we are bombarded by information from every media platform, online and offline. Every media has a message to deliver to us according to their own goals.

As Catholics, we are not left to our own devices, rather we are linked and united to the universal Catholic Church. The Magisterium sets us in the right direction with regards to teachings about our faith and our moral values.

This is especially important when many are confused about topics on relationships, and sexuality, especially in what we ought to do or not do.

In my own personal journey, I too seek to find the truth. The teachings of the Church form a map for me to navigate the different issues out there while the Church and its leaders constantly point us in the right direction like a compass. With this, we are assured of God’s guidance for us and how to live in accordance with God’s plan for mankind.

I have always been interested in apologetics where we attempt to understand and address each and every aspect of our faith and beliefs. In addition, the topics concerning our moral life and building the culture of life are interesting and important to practical living in our modern society.

Among them, are fundamental teachings on how life begins at conception, the proper use of methods for birth control, end of life situations, just to name a few.

Indeed, the Catholic Church has the answers and provides us with a map and compass to navigate our life on Earth. Going forward, I will be contributing articles on pro-life topics that are in line with the teachings of the Magisterium.

A Table of Plentiful Mercy

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The symbol of unity that binds men to each other, and to God

“But now do not be distressed, and do not be angry with yourselves for having sold me here. It was really for the sake of saving lives that God sent me here ahead of you.” (Gen 50:20)

These were Joseph’s reassuring words to his brothers who, in previous chapters and several years earlier, sold him to slavery in a foreign country. An amazing act of forgiveness isn’t it?

How many of us, if in Joseph’s position, are tempted to inflict some sort of vengeance against such conniving brothers. After all, the hurt from being abandoned by your closest family members is a cut too deep to heal. But Joseph chose to recognise something else instead: God’s infinite mercy.

And, not only that, he commanded his servants to throw a feast for them! Unbelievable. But, Joseph demonstrated one clear point: God seeks the good of everyone. In the New Testament, Christ echoes this. He teaches us to forgive our enemies because this is God’s nature. He lived this out, dying for all men, not just some.

Our true enemies are not physical, but spiritual.

Joseph’s altruistic action has a link to another striking verse in the Old Testament: “I will prepare a table in the presence of your enemies.” (Ps 23:5)

This is exactly what took place with Joseph for his brothers. It wasn’t a table of vengeance, with scorpions and poison served on a platter, as you would see on Fear Factor. It was a genuine table of love and plenty.

It was a literal feast.

Feasts are connected in Scripture with tables since they are meals. The table is where we offer things to God, and where God presents things to us.

The Passover table is the most important symbol in our religion because it is the table of the Last Supper. And the Eucharist is the body of Christ.

Saint Paul stresses the importance of the Eucharistic meal in a very famous verse: “Therefore whosoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily shall answer for the Body and Blood of the Lord“ (1 Cor 11:27)

“Therefore my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that your meetings may not result in judgement.” (1 Cor 11:33-34)

What St Paul is thinking of in 1 Cor is not readily apparent to us. In our day, the Eucharist has already become stylized, ceremonialised and ritualised. In the early Church, the Christians actually did break actual loaves of bread. St Paul is dealing with a sort of desecration that would be a joke if anyone tried it today. The Corinthians were eating the bread before the ceremony began!

If we translate what St Paul says in 1 Cor 11 to modern speak, it could be like this:

“Please remember, the Bread in the Eucharist is the Body of Christ. It is not the bread at a buffet, where you can grab and chomp down. If you treat it as such, you are not worthy to receive the Sacrament.”

When St Paul mentions the phrase “discerning the body” earlier on, he isn’t merely talking about it in a moral sense, that is teaching that when eating the bread, they are eating the body of Christ, and so they shouldn’t disrespect it. Instead, he is pointing out something else that is equally important: the Eucharistic meal is a sign of the spiritual unity of the Church. It is in partaking of the Bread that we show that we are One Church.

Discerning the body refers to recognizing that all the believers together make one whole.

Given that today we have split up the bread into small hosts, that significance may be somewhat lost on us.

The most significant split in Christian unity occurred with Martin Luther’s Reformation in the 16th century. There have been other divisions in various degrees since then. In Asia, the most prominent is in China between the Communist government-controlled Patriotic Church, established in 1957, and the Underground Church, which retains allegiance to the Pope.

In this unfortunate situation, both groups are forced to exist separately. Our feeling of scandal should deepen by noting that despite the division, their worship of God is identical. In fact, no Pope has accused Catholics in the Patriotic Church as heretics.

In fact, although Pope Benedict XVI acknowledges they are under the control of the CCP, he nevertheless said:

“In China, too, the Church is called to be a witness of Christ, to look forward with hope, and – in proclaiming the Gospel – to measure up to the new challenges that the Chinese People must face.”


Pope Benedict XVI,
2007 Apostolic Letter to Catholic clergy and lay in China

The tenuous relationship between China and Christianity has little to do with the atheism of the Communist Party, as it arose from the Rites Controversy during the Ming Dynasty and the Taiping rebellion towards the end of the Qing Dynasty.

In short, the division is because of the fractious relationship between China’s communist authorities and Western countries whose clergy, they felt, when they were there in the past, exported their personal political views.

The situation in China, then, is probably more analogous to the Investiture Controversy in medieval France as opposed to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in Revolutionary France. Therein exists a defence of Pope Francis’s attempt at establishing ties with China. Without attempting to second guess his or the Holy See’s intentions, there is a case to make that it is to unite all Catholics so that they can worship openly as one.

As Christians, we need to recall the eschatological promise that in the New Jerusalem everyone will be ringing out praises to God in public. Yes, we should embrace martyrdom as a cross when we have to bear it. And we need to hail those holy men and women of China, and elsewhere who have bravely stood up for the faith with their lives.

But, it is a distortion of Church teaching to say that the aim of a Christian in life should be to seek martyrdom. Doing so would mutate God’s promise of Eternal Life into one of Eternal Death, and be a grave disrespect to the martyrs whose love of God we claim to emulate.

In the end, we all wish to be fully alive and visible at the Great Heavenly Banquet of God.

Image: Christopher Ryan, Unsplash

A Confession: My return journey home

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Christ’s love and healing powers in the Confessional turned my life around

I would have gone to Hell had I died in 2004. For over two decades, I had lived a life that was not consonant with my Catholic faith. I had ticked a few boxes that earned me a ticket there. The one that was like a millstone around my neck: adultery with a married woman from another country.

Travelling on this road to perdition, the U-turn came when she, a non-Catholic, was visiting me and bought a Rosary from the Carlo Catholic bookstore next to Saints Peter and Paul’s Church at Waterloo Street.

She asked if I could get it blessed for her. It was a weekday and I replied there should be a priest in church whom we could approach to do so. In the car park, I saw that the church door was opened and the logical first place to look for him.

My instinct was spot on.

As we walked through the door Father was indeed there. He was at the pulpit delivering the homily for the evening Mass. In referring to one of the readings that day the first words I heard him say were, “Come back to me!”

It stopped me dead in my tracks and the hairs on my back stood up. I whispered to my friend that I had to stay for Mass and took a seat in one of the pews. When Mass was over, I immediately approached Father that I urgently needed to go for Confession.

As I poured my heart out in the Confessional of what had become of me and my faith, Father listened patiently. I had expected a harsh admonishment. Instead, he gave me absolution and forgave all my sins. I can’t remember what he said after that, but it went along the lines of, “Go and sin no more and give yourself entirely to God”.

I was crying throughout my Confession, especially when Father, through the mercy of God, granted me absolution. In between sobs, I could only mutter that I would. When I got out of church, I informed her what we were doing had to stop. She agreed readily after witnessing what went on with me at and after Mass (She later reconciled with her husband and both attended RCIA and were baptised Catholic).

My parents brought my brothers and me up as good Catholics and they were hurt when they saw the life I was leading. They’d probably known about the sinful shenanigans that had enslaved their son. But they never gave up on me and it was their prayers to God that moved me to mend fences with Him through the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

That moment began my journey of reclaiming and studying diligently my Catholic faith. It is almost 20 years since that wonderful day and this journey will continue until I die. This is why I am still a work in progress.

In looking back recently on my career as a journalist, writer and editor, I realise that God had been training and forming me to use my skills for Him. What I have is never mine, but His.

But in returning home to the Catholic Church, I had gone through many twists and turns. The pivotal moment came in 2015 when I decided to leave my fulltime job as a Senior Correspondent with MediaCorp’s Today newspaper that paid very well.

With bills to pay and aged parents to look after, I arrived at a point where I was not sure where my next paycheck was going to come from. That day, after driving through the gates of MediaCorp at Caldecott Hill for the last time I headed to the Adoration Room at Catholic Spiritual Centre in Punggol.

In prayer, I told Jesus that I am giving Him through His Mother my new career, which I had no clue what it was going to be. And I said to the Mother of God, “You are the Boss of my life, and more than ever before my career!”. I have since never had to go out looking for projects to earn my keep. Instead, I had people calling to commission me for projects. Up till today!

God, in turn, has filled up the rest of my life with His work, in parish ministry and now with The Asian Fishermen. I have no illusions the Devil is all hunky-dory with what has been happening in my life. He is going to come back with a vengeance to thwart my work for God.

But with the Almighty on my side and the Immaculate Conception, radiating God’s power, keeping a close watch over me, I am not afraid of the Devil’s shenanigans.

I have faith in this divine protection because of Christ’s promise to those who accept His commission to evangelise and get everyone to Heaven, “Fear not, I am with you always till the end of time!” (Isaiah 41:10, Matthew 28:20)

GOD FORGIVES ALL SINS IN THE SACRAMENT OF RECONCILIATION (CONFESSION)

I am not the first wayward Catholic who found his way to the Confessional and cried like a baby while pouring out my grave misdeeds, which are mortal sins that kill the soul. Many are burdened with the same type of sins as mine. Some are even worse.

They need not suffer in silence because Christ is waiting for them to come home because all the sins of the world cannot prevent us from returning to Him, if we are truly repentant and seek His mercy and forgiveness.

After I stepped back inside the Church, I’ve met others who have travelled on the same road home.

Their experience of crying while confessing their sins and receiving absolution is the same. Also, the feeling that God had shattered the Devil’s heavy millstone hanging around our necks and instantly healed their wounded souls. This relief from the heavy burden of guilt is indescribable.

But there are also others I’ve known who were scared of stepping into the Confessional because they fear admitting their sins, especially of procuring an abortion or being a party to the killing of innocent life, a child, in the womb, and adultery.

There is no foundation for harbouring this fear. Christ tells us that all sins can be forgiven (1 John 1:7–9, Mark 3:28, Matt 12:31-32)

God is the ultimate healer, the Supreme Doctor who can cure all ailments, especially those that sicken a soul, which is beyond the ability of human doctors. It is no accident, therefore, that the Catholic Church is called the hospital for sinners because Christ has given Her the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession).

In the Church He founded, He empowered His apostles, their successors and the priests they ordained to administer this beautiful Sacrament of His mercy and forgiveness. They do this in His capacity (in Persona Christi or in the Person of Christ). This is why we are in the very presence of Christ in the Confessional and in receiving His love for us to wipe out all our sins, even the grave ones, we break down in tears.

So, if you are Catholic and being weighed down by the burden of sin, don’t suffer in silence. Ask any Catholic priest for the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession) and let Jesus heal you in the Confessional.

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