28th Thursday in Ordinary Time (II)
Salvation in Christ

Readings: Ephesians 1:1-10; Psalm 98:1, 2-3ab, 3cd-4, 5-6; Luke 11:47-54

There is a certain understanding of and approach to the faith that sees it primarily as providing answers to life’s questions. There is truth in this approach, of course. Our faith would be highly suspect if it didn’t give us guidance on how to live our lives in the here and now. But there is danger when this view is taken to the extreme.

Why, for example, is Jesus so critical of the lawyers in the gospel today? You… have taken away the key of knowledge! he says, You have not gone in yourselves, and have prevented others going in who wanted to. What is it about the lawyers that attracts Jesus’ strong rebuke? Is it not their presumption in presenting themselves as masters and interpreters of a very detailed and unchanging code of conduct that apparently contains all the answers to life’s questions? They are the professionals, the experts. People can only be saved by coming to them for help. But the kind of knowledge that they offer is not the kind that Jesus values. On the contrary, Jesus says they have taken away the key of knowledge. Why?

Consider what is written in the first reading from the letter to the Ephesians. The Lord has shown his salvation not in any unchanging legal code, nor in any purely human formulation of model answers. No, God has blessed us with all the spiritual blessings of heaven in Christ…. He chose us in Christ…. He has let us know the mystery of his purpose… in Christ… For us who are Christian, the salvation that we seek, the answers to life’s questions for which we crave, are found only in Christ. And Christ is a person not a code. Christ is a mystery to be lived not a problem to be solved. What we need is not so much for an expert to tell us the way it is but to be led into an ever deepening relationship and communication with Christ – who meets us both within our hearts and in our interactions with others. And we help one another less by providing answers than by somehow helping to mediate such an intimate dialogue with Christ.

How is the Lord making known his salvation to us and in us today?

Feast of St. Luke, Evangelist
Evangelists

Readings: 2 Timothy 4:10-17b; Psalm 145:10-11, 12-13, 17-18; Luke 10:1-9

As we celebrate the feast of this great saint today, we might reflect a little on what it means to be an evangelist. As applied to St. Luke, the word is used in its narrow meaning to refer to any one of the four people after whom the gospels are named: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. But the word has a broader meaning. As we probably already know, it comes from the Greek euangelion meaning good news. An evangelist is thus one who preaches the good news. But what exactly does that mean? Perhaps, when we hear of preaching, the image of a pastor or priest at a pulpit or in a church immediately comes to mind. But is that all there is to being an evangelist?

The response to the psalm today provides us with a useful summary and starting point for our reflection: Your friends, O Lord, shall make known the glorious splendour of your reign. What is an evangelist? It would seem that before and above all else, the evangelist is a friend of the Lord. We probably know what it is to be and have a friend. But there is one quality of friendship that stands out today: a friend is one who keeps you company, even (especially?) when the going gets tough. Isn’t this what Paul found in Luke in the first reading? Only Luke is with me… And isn’t this what the evangelist, like Paul and the psalmist, finds in the Lord? The Lord stood by me and gave me power... He is close to all who call him, who call on him from their hearts.
This intimate experience of friendship is also an experience of God’s rule (which) lasts from age to age. It provides a basis from which the evangelist makes known the glorious splendour of God’s reign; and in so doing continues to keep company with the divine friend. More than any abstract knowledge, the evangelist makes known what s/he has first experienced, the Lord’s reign in his/her life and heart. Isn’t this the experience of the seventy-two in the gospel today? What is the peace that they are sent to proclaim if not God’s intimate friendship and Lordship in Christ Jesus? And it is out of this experience that they are then empowered to make known and to make real God’s everlasting kingdom over those corners of the earth in which they find themselves.

The Home section of today’s Straits Times carries a half-page article about Ms Mary Matthews, the former executive director of the Samaritans of Singapore, who died on Sunday of lung cancer. The article carries many tributes from various people who benefited from her counseling work. I’m not sure if Ms Matthews actually spoke the name of Jesus to those she helped. But reading the tributes, one gets a distinct sense that here is a true friend of the Lord who, through word, deed and life, made known the glorious splendour of God’s reign.

Indeed the harvest is rich but the labourers are few. How are we being called to be evangelists today?

28th Tuesday in Ordinary Time (II)
Memorial of St. Ignatius of Antioch
Slavery, Freedom & the Look of Love

Readings: Galatians 5:1-6; Psalm 119:41, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48; Luke 11:37-41


In the movie The Shawshank Redemption, a convict is finally released after spending almost a life-time in prison. But life on the outside is hard. In the words of a fellow-convict, he’s been institutionalized. He’s gotten so used to incarceration that try as he might he simply can’t seem to function as a free person. Tragically, he gives in to despair and he hangs himself.

It’s only a movie, but we might wonder if it is indeed possible to get so used to a life in prison that one prefers even death to freedom. In the first reading, Paul seems to be struggling against a similar tendency as he continues to exhort the Galatians not to submit again to the yoke of slavery. When Christ freed us, he reminds them, he meant us to remain free.

What has all this to do with us? We are probably neither convicts nor great fans of circumcision. And yet, in our own lives, might there not also be prison bars of a different sort – bars that we’ve perhaps gotten so used to as to forget that they are there? Whether it be drink or work, sex or shopping, or the need to control and manipulate, isn’t each of these as capable of enslaving as a prison or blind subservience to the Law?

If this is true, we need to consider, respectively, what slavery and freedom look and feel like. The gospel helps by offering a contrast between Jesus and the Pharisees. We know the freedom that Jesus enjoyed: he ate and drank with tax collectors and sinners, he healed on the Sabbath, he walked to Jerusalem and thence to Calvary… And we know also that Christians through the ages have followed in his steps. In particular, we are reminded today of Igntius of Antioch, who journeyed willingly to martyrdom. On the other hand, of course, we also know all about the Pharisees…

But it’s perhaps not primarily in what they do that Jesus and the Pharisees differ. What they do is only the result of how they see. When Jesus comes into the Pharisee’s house and sits down at table the Pharisee sees only one thing. He notices neither the honor that is being accorded him by Jesus nor the joy and fellowship that is theirs to enjoy. All he sees is an infringement of the Law. Jesus had not first washed before the meal. How different from the compassion with which Jesus looks at people, especially the sick and the sinner. Could this be what Jesus is teaching the Pharisees when he advises them to give alms? Rather than simply giving them another legal requirement to fulfill, by inviting them to attend to the needy, Jesus is helping them to look with eyes of compassion and love instead of self-righteous judgment.

How do we look at ourselves and at others? How might we allow the enslaved Pharisee within us to decrease, so that we might grow in the compassion and freedom of Christ?

Note: Apologies for the rather long silence. What started out as a break turned into a forced silence when the blog was locked by Blogger on suspicion of being spam. Below are some past reflections that were saved as drafts while we were still under suspicion. Hope everyone's keeping well... :)

28th Monday in Ordinary Time (II)
From the Dungheap

Readings: Galatians 4:22-24, 26-27, 31–5:1; Psalms 113:1b-2, 3-4, 5a and 6-7; Luke 11:29-32

As we continue to listen to Paul scold the Galatians for their insistence on observing the Jewish Law, we might wonder why the latter are so eager to submit to the yoke of slavery when they have already been baptized into Christ, who meant us to remain free. What is it about the slavery of the Law – especially a Law that requires circumcision – that makes it so attractive, more attractive even than a life of Christian freedom?

We might ask the same question of the wicked generation that Jesus reproves in the gospel. Why do they stubbornly continue to insist on asking for a sign? What is it that keeps them from believing in Christ? What is it that keeps them from the repentance that leads to life?

Puzzling as they seem, the experiences of the Galatians and those in the gospel are perhaps not too far from our own. Are there not also times when we may succumb to the same stubbornness – times when we find it difficult to choose the obviously better option, the more reasonable and wiser alternative? In our heart of hearts, we probably have some idea of what is the right and proper thing to do. But something just seems to prevent us from taking that step. Like the prodigal son in the parable of Luke 15, we sometimes seem to prefer the swill of swine to feasting in the Father’s house. Again, we might wonder what it is that makes us act in this way.

Our responsorial psalm guides us to a possible answer to our question and a way out of our predicament. The psalmist praises God for doing one thing in particular: the Lord stoops down from the heights to look down… From the dust he lifts up the lowly, from the dungheap he raises the poor. It is God who rescues us. But first, we must be willing to see and acknowledge where we are. Like the prodigal son, we need to come to our senses. We need to recognize our poverty, our place on the dungheap, so that we might allow God to lift us up.

Where, if any, are the dungheaps in our life? And how is God reaching down to lift us up?