27th Saturday in Ordinary Time (II)
Traversing the Untraversable?

Readings: Galatians 3:22-29; Psalm 105:2-3, 4-5, 6-7; Luke 11:27-28

I’m reading a novel by Marilynne Robinson entitled Gilead. She writes so beautifully and so insightfully. Today I was especially struck by this nugget:

Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable – which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us (p. 224f.).

To coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us… Not an easy thing to do if the state of the world, our families and our communities is anything to go by. And yet, we do desire to traverse the untraversable. Perhaps we desire it too deeply, even inordinately. So much so that, in desperation, we resort to violence of one form or another. The wars and armed conflicts between and within nations come quickly to mind. But aren’t there also the petty disagreements, and the more subtle forms of violence and passive aggression by which we try forcefully to bridge the spaces between us and our parents and children, our neighbors and friends?

For Christians there is but one Way through this morass. Neither national nor ethnic ties, neither religious nor familial bonds, are sufficient to bring us what we seek. Not even the womb that bore, nor the breasts that suckled are privileged in this way. Only by hearing the word of God and keeping it – only in Christ Jesus – can we fruitfully negotiate the distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female. And in seeking to do this might we not be led first to pay careful, respectful, even reverential attention to the vast spaces between us before we seek to bridge them? For is it not likely that it is precisely here, in the inviolable and untraversable, that we might glimpse a new vision of the Christ in whom we are all made one?

27th Thursday in Ordinary Time (II)
Getting Ahead

Readings: Galatians 3:1-5; Luke 1:69-70, 71-72, 73-75; Luke 11:5-13

There’s probably at least one thing that’s part of almost every Singaporean’s psyche: the sense that nothing’s for free in this world, that no one owes us a living. Our particular historical and geographical background has made it necessary for us to cultivate this kind of work-hard-in-order-to-survive attitude. And, in itself, it’s not such a bad thing, unless of course people try to take illegal shortcuts to get ahead. We take justifiable pride in knowing that we have defied the odds and done well for ourselves over the years.

However, tensions arise when we spontaneously carry this disposition over into our spiritual life. Consciously or otherwise, do we not sometimes tend to think and act as though we could – and, indeed, have to – earn our own salvation? And are there not some of us who look out for and are attracted to various devotions, prayers and religious movements as shortcuts for us to get ahead in the spiritual life?

This tendency is not much different from the one that Paul is so worked up about in the first reading today. He does not mince his words. Are you people in Galatia mad? Paul’s complaint is against those who think that Christians must follow all the requirements of the Jewish Law, including circumcision, in order to be saved. By doing so, Paul insists, these people are forgetting that salvation is a gracious and unmerited gift from God. To have access to it, we need only to believe and to open our hearts to receive. There is really nothing we can do to earn it. Of course, receiving the gift then entails that we act in ways appropriate to people who are saved. But these actions come after the fact. We do not win our own salvation.

If it were otherwise, Jesus’ teaching on the need for persistence in prayer would mean little. Why would we need to keep shamelessly begging God for what we need if we could simply work hard and earn it ourselves?

No, if there’s a secret shortcut to getting ahead in the spiritual life, it is the need to realize two truths: our profound poverty and God’s boundless generosity. To be blessed with this realization is also to live the reality of the first Beatitude: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven (Mt 5:3).

What difference might such a realization make in our lives today?

27th Wednesday in Ordinary Time (II)
Vertical and Horizontal

Readings: Galatians 2:1-2,7-14; Psalms 117:1-2; Luke 11:1-4

There’s a characteristic of the spiritual life that’s probably as crucial as it’s easy to forget and difficult to negotiate. And that is the close connection between our relationships with God and with others. We know well that when Jesus was asked for the first and greatest commandment, he gave a two-in-one answer: love God and your neighbour. The vertical and horizontal aspects of the spiritual life are inseparable.

Our readings illustrate this truth very clearly today. What prompts Paul to go to Jerusalem after having preached the gospel for fourteen years? I went there as a result of a revelation, he says. God prompted him to go. And the outcome was the sealing of a partnership: we were to go to the pagans and they to the circumcised. Paul’s relationship with his Lord and Master led him not only to spread the gospel, but also to do it in collaboration with others.

There’s more. We also notice that the vertical and horizontal beams of the spiritual life are crucial in another sense. They inevitably come together in the shape of a cross. In the first reading Paul’s allegiance to the Lord leads him not only into partnership but also into conflict with Peter, whom he opposed… to his face, since he was manifestly in the wrong.

Is it any wonder that we may sometimes find it tempting to overemphasize one aspect of the spiritual life – the vertical or the horizontal – at the expense of the other?

During these times of temptation, we might revisit and make our own the prayer that Jesus shares in the gospel today. As we know so well, it contains both the vertical and the horizontal: Father, may your name be held holy, your kingdom come… forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive each one who is in debt to us…

Where and how do the vertical and horizontal come together in our lives today?

27th Tuesday in Ordinary Time (II)
Attentiveness

Readings: Galatians 1:13-24; Psalm 139:1b-3, 13-14ab, 14c-15; Luke 10:38-42

Some have observed that contemporary popular culture is breeding succeeding generations with ever shorter attention spans. Consider the advertisements on TV. Usually any one scene seldom lasts for more than a split second. That’s how products are sold. Otherwise people will simply switch to another channel. We’re getting ever more used to constantly shifting our attention from one thing to the next. It’s the only way to get things done, especially if we consider the many things that the average person has to do in any given day. The problem is that we can then only give very superficial attention to the people and events that come our way. We get distracted easily. It’s always on to the next thing and the next. What we gain in breadth we sacrifice in depth.

This seems to be Martha’s experience in the gospel story today. It’s a story we know well. But whatever we may have heard, the point of the story is not that we should all become contemplatives or hermits. Who’ll put food on the table and bring up the kids if we did? Still, we’ve probably experienced Martha’s problem: she was distracted with all the serving. There were just so many things to do that she was beginning to lose her focus. It was becoming difficult for her to remember why and for whom she was doing what she was doing. Hence the irritation and the complaint: my sister is leaving me to do the serving all by myself.

Jesus’ response is instructive. You worry and fret about so many things, and yet few are needed, indeed only one. Jesus isn’t necessarily saying that Martha’s work should be abandoned. He’s telling her that attention to Him should take priority over all else, because it alone is capable of giving meaning to everything that she does. First focus your attention to me, he seems to be saying.

Isn’t this the kind of attention that Paul describes after his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus? Notice the urgency with which Paul drops everything and heads off to Arabia. He retreats to learn to focus attention on the one who called him. But we know also that his life is filled with activity. Unlike, Martha, however, Paul’s activity is very focused. Paul remains attentive to the one who called him.

How does one come to be so attentive to the Lord? How does one learn to be so centered as to continually seek and find God in all that one does? Obviously certain habits need to be cultivated. Time needs to be set aside to attend to God in personal and communal prayer so that we might learn to recognize God in the busyness of our daily routines.

And when we do this we begin to realize that it is really God who first attends to us. Indeed, with Paul, we realize that God has specially chosen me while I was still in my mother’s womb. And to attend to God is also to allow Him to lead me… in the path of life eternal.

27th Monday in Ordinary Time (II)
Receiving Good News

Readings: Galations 1:6-12; Psalm 111:1b-2, 7-8, 9 and 10c; Luke 10:25-37

Go, and do the same yourself. How do we hear these words of Jesus in the gospel today? We know the story well. We know it challenges us to imitate the compassion and self-sacrificing love of the Good Samaritan. But how do we feel when we hear this? Does it really feel like the Good News of Christ that Paul speaks about in the first reading? We probably know what it’s like to receive good news. It feels great! There’s joy, relief, consolation, a lifting of burdens, a loosening of tensions. We live for good news! Does hearing Jesus’ words evoke this same feeling in us? Or do we experience the opposite reaction instead? Do we instead experience the heart-sinking feeling of being imposed upon, of being asked to do something beyond us? Much depends upon how we hear.

We might, for example, hear Jesus’ words the way a child hears the words of her parents when she obtains results that are above average but not quite the best. The parents might respond by singing the praises of the one who came in first and telling the child, Go, and do the same yourself. Is the child likely to hear these words as good news? If we were to think of the Samaritan in much the same way as the child might think of the one who came in first, and if we were to think of Jesus’ words as pushing us to imitate the Samaritan’s good example, are we likely to feel like we are receiving good news?

Thankfully, there is another way of hearing this story. It begins not so much by asking, what must I do, but by first identifying with the one who fell into the hands of brigands. I am that person left for dead. I'm weak and helpless. In spite of my considerable capabilities and talents, I lie on the road of life powerless to save myself from a vain existence. And along comes the Samaritan who is Christ the Lord. He goes out of his way to help me, even at great cost to himself. Is this not good news? And will hearing the parable in this way not also influence the way in which I then hear Jesus’ words, Go, and do the same yourself? The words are the same. But the feeling is different. And the difference is crucial.

Indeed it’s not always easy to receive good news. And this is especially so with the Good News of Christ. What is not easy is for us to acknowledge and embrace the poverty of our human condition, our need for the Good Samaritan’s help, our total dependence on the Lord who keeps his covenant ever in mind.

How are we being invited to hear the Good News of Christ today?