Daily Wisdom

“By humble and faithful prayer, the soul acquires, with time and perseverance, every virtue.”

St. Catherine of Siena

From Brunei

What an interesting country and an interesting church! What a small country and an even smaller church! One bishop, two priests and one deacon have to handle a church with a majority of foreigners. A melting pot of Filipinos and local Catholics celebrate and form a unique church which is facing many challenges. In the meantime, I try to do my best and enjoy the good food and beautiful scenery. Although still in Borneo, the land of orang-utans (an ape species), they don’t have orang-utans here. I will have to leave it for next time.

Daily Wisdom

“It is better to limp along the way than stride along off the way. For a man who limps along the way, even if he only makes slow progress, comes to the end of the way; but one who is off the way, the more quickly he runs, the farther away he is from his goal.”

St. Thomas Aquinas

The Conversion of St. Paul

All conversions have some element of mystery and surprise. Jesus preached to many, some were converted, some were not. Very often people pass through similar experiences that lead some to conversion, leaving others seemingly immune to that.

When Jesus spoke of the second coming, He described it in similar terms of a mysterious selection: “Two will be grinding together. One will be taken, the other left.” Why? What makes some people be converted and others not? Where does the secret to change our hearts lie? Because conversion is a mystery, in the Scripture it is approached with images. And the image that occurs most often is light.

Conversions are seldom the fruit of accusations, which are most often followed by a defensive attitude. Conversions are described in terms of “seeing clearly”, “a great light”, “eyes were opened”.

St. Paul was no exception. A great light made him a new man with a new name and opposite task. The persecutor becomes persecuted. Theology needs to be more scientific than poetic and does not speak of light, but has to speak of grace.

Conversion is not a conquest but a gift. It cannot be provoked nor invoked. It can only be begged for and accepted.

Daily Wisdom

“Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them – every day begin the task anew.”

St. Francis de Sales

St. Francis de Sales

St. Francis de Sales is the patron saint of writers and journalists. He is famous for writing the popular devotional “Introduction to the Devout Life”.

St. Francis taught that we can lead devout and spiritual lives, regardless of our position in society. For him, holiness is not reserved for monks and hermits alone. He added that “religious devotion does not destroy; it perfects”, and his spiritual counsel was dedicated to “making people more holy by making them more themselves”.

A zealous opposer to Calvinism, but as he said, “whoever wants to preach effectively must preach with love.” And so he did. It was a Calvinist minister who said “if we honoured anyone as a saint, I know of no one since the days of the Apostles more worthy of it than this man.”

Scripture Moments: Acts 4:1-32

This week we pray with the pericope of Acts 4:1-32. The early church knows how to preach and spread the good news. What was her secret? More at our Lectio Divina page

Daily Wisdom

“Let nothing trouble you. Let nothing frighten you. Everything passes. God never changes. Patience obtains all. Whoever has God wants for nothing. God alone is enough.”

St. Teresa of Avila

Defeating Goliaths: Wednesday, 2nd week

Few stories are more Hollywood-like than the story of David and Goliath. The story not only appeals to some historical facts, but mainly to a strong desire of our hearts, the desire to defeat powerful enemies.

David embodies the genuineness and innocence. Goliath incarnates the powerful, scornful evil ready to destroy. David was inexperienced, young, inspired and ingenious. Goliath was trained to kill, strong and mean. We all want to believe that this story is true because we want our own “Goliaths” to be defeated. We need to believe that victory is on the side of the innocent even if he is less powerful. That belief that ingenuity is more powerful than brute force, is also celebrated in the famous story of the Trojan horse.

However, we are used to hearing these stories from the point of view of the winners, you know, those who write history. There has been a real event that tells the same story from the “other” side. September 11 was in a way a remake of the David-Goliath story. This time also, ingenuity defeated the powerful. The forehead of Goliath was wounded by three airplanes directed to the main vital organs of the giant. The giant was not dead, but was certainly wounded. How did it feel to be on the side of the Philistines when Goliath fell on his face? Perhaps for the first time, the world has the answer.

Now that we know, the question still remains where we should aim the sling? The awakened “mighty giant” is now looking for its own Goliath. Goliath is now depicted as hiding in the desert, or lurking in the main cities’ suburbs, living with us, quietly and stealthily like a deadly virus, surfacing sneakily on the Internet, omnipresent, almost omniscient and ready to jump.

The Bible does tell how David, in turn, became a little Goliath, a kind of little emperor of his land. And that story continues to be true. Jesus was not a David nor a Goliath. The son of David had a unique way to be a king, without throne, sword and also without sling. The Goliath he tried to defeat was not a human brother, but the perennial desire of looking for Goliaths. Where is really our Goliath today?

Daily Wisdom

“I want to spend my heaven in doing good on earth.”

St. Thérèse of Lisieux

Man or the Sabbath? Tuesday, 2nd week

“The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” We have heard this so many times. But what is the gospel actually saying? Is he relativizing the law to human decisions. Does Jesus mean that laws were meant to be broken as David broke the law in the example of today’s gospel?

Anthony de Mello tells the story of a monk who used to tie his cat to a chair when he was meditating to avoid being distracted by the cat. After the monk died, the monks continued to tie a cat to a chair during meditation. Some useful customs degenerate in overburdening laws.

The Dominicans tried to avoid this and we call our laws, customs (consuetudine), with the power to incorporate or abandon them according to use and convenience to ensure they were always free to fulfill the law and not be enslaved by it.

Actually, the law of the sabbath rest was for the benefit of workers (Dt 5:14-15) and it was received as a blessing, a ‘delight’ (Is 58:13) and not a burden. Do we grasp the liberating and protecting factor of the laws we zealously fulfill?

Daily Wisdom

“The bread that you store up belongs to the hungry, the cloak that lies in your hest belongs to the naked; the gold that you have hidden in the ground belongs to the poor.”

St. Basil the Great

St. Agnes, virgin and martyr

Today we celebrate one of those ancient martyrs of whom we know more about what happened to their bones than about what happened to their lives. The reason is because they are ancient and very much venerated. Legends were mixed with facts. Today, it is difficult to draw the line clearly between story and history. But we do know that they lived in a period when they were much venerated because on top of martyrdom, they had the merit of virginity added on.

In the Old Testament, to die a virgin was something to lament about, it was as if it meant the wasting of one’s fertility, which the early church frowned upon. The reason is that virginity expresses a kind of martyrdom without death; the martyr gives up his life in a single moment; the virgin gives up her life to God, just as the spouse gives her life to the husband, totally, freely and exclusively. Both exhaust their lives for God. The martyr, in a moment that kills her; the virgin, in her whole life that consecrates her. It is only natural that the early church admired so much those few chosen Christians who were able to enjoy both privileges.

Daily Wisdom

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”

G. K. Chesterton

“Giving witness”, 2nd Sunday

While I was in China, I enjoyed a wonderful privilege. I had the opportunity to visit the Catholic places in the remote areas of Mainland China. The churches there were founded by French missionaries.

Since their expulsion by the previous regime, no priest has been living there, and only on rare occasions does a priest visit them. In some places, I was the first priest they saw in more than a year. I was very curious to see how a Catholic community was able to manage without practically everything that we usually take for granted in our churches here. Like for example, how they celebrated the Mass without a priest, and how they kept their faith and shared it with one another. I was dying to learn what kind of faith these communities had.

I knew the standard of living was painfully low. Some of them didn’t even use money, yet they still managed to survive with the scarce crops and little livestock they had raised. They shared the room of their houses with chickens and pigs. A child had to stay with his grandparents because his mother had been sold. Running water and electricity were luxuries that most could not enjoy.

That day was the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a Friday. The bell of the church was an old and rusty car tyre, but it was effective enough and soon summoned a huge crowd to pack the church. I had to stay outside for there was no place for me inside. The catechist started the Mass as usual, read the readings and preached in their dialect. I did not know what he preached about, but I did remember that one could hear a pin drop in that beautiful old European-style Church. The rest of the day passed without fanfare.

After dinner, people started to place their chairs facing one of the walls where posters of Mother Mary hung. Then, everyone knelt and the head of the household would start to sing to liveliest form of Rosary I’ve ever heard. This happened in every house, I was told. Some managed to know I was a priest and begged me with tears to visit their elders for they feared they could not pass the winter without absolution and last sacraments. That night I prayed I could have as much faith as they had.

Well, this is what I witnessed in China. Allow me now to put you through a little exercise. I would like you to reflect about what you were thinking when I was elaborating. I guess you would never have thought about my faith, or me, for that matter. You would probably admire those Chinese and the way they kept their faith. At best, you could have thought about how lucky I was to have this opportunity of witnessing their faith.

Well, this is what giving witness is all about. It is the act of disappearing behind the testimony. Rather than making people look at you, giving witness is about making people see through you. It is becoming transparent for others to see what is behind you.

This was the mission of St. John the Baptist, and he did it well. John knew that he had to grow smaller for Jesus to grow greater, and this made him the greatest of the prophets. He knew how to “disappear” for Jesus to “appear”. He knew how to give witness. And his witness was about Jesus being the “lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Those strange words refer to the prophecy of Isaiah telling about the Suffering Servant.

John identified Jesus and his suffering as a way of removing the sin of the world from our midst. For him, this was more important than himself: the solution for the sinful situation in which the world lives, was coming his way.

Now, how about us? What is our testimony? How do we give witness? To what do we give witness? Giving witness is not only about being a Christian, but about everything we think is worth witnessing. It can be a movie, a friend, something that made us happy, something that made us feel fully alive – it could be anything.

This is the type of witnessing today’s world is thirsting for, and we ought to quench that thirst. Today we are called to “disappear” for our experience of God to “appear”. We need to become transparent for God to shine through, to be the light to the nations like the first reading tells us.

A friend of mine told me that his dream was to live in a poor country working in a slum without anyone knowing about him. That struck me. I know many who want to live with the poor. But his desire was to pass unnoticed as he served others. He knew what giving witness is about. Perhaps, this should be our way of pure witnessing for our neighbours, and for our children: that they see through us the brightness of God.

Daily Wisdom

“To make good choices, I must develop a mature and prudent understanding of myself that will reveal to me my real motives and intentions.”

Thomas Merton

Saturday, 1st Week

In the past, there was a tendency to abuse the concept of sin and moral deviance, often extending it to innocent people who suffered psychological traumas.

Today, however, there is an increasing tendency to consider the criminal as a victim, a victim of social status, a victim of his genetic make up or even his psychological conditions. We are seeing more and more criminals who are more in need of treatment than in need of punishment.

So, which route shall we take?

Yes, we have heard it many times before, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” We know how doctors cure and treat patients, but what exactly did Jesus do with sinners? How did he “treat” sinners? The three gospels coincided in this point: “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Jesus did not punish them, neither did he accuse them, nor treated them as victims. Instead, Jesus “called” them.

Judging and condemning are too often not very useful to the culprit. Excusing them for lack of responsibility is both ignoring the reality of the harm of sin and denying the sinner’s freedom. Only by calling them (to repentance), do both respect their freedom and integrity, hence, changing them into better persons.

Why has the church always been incriminated of accusing and charged with being a factory of “neurotics”? Have we learnt to call as Jesus called, or have we forgotten how he did it?

Daily Wisdom

“My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth’s loveliness”

Michelangelo

Friday, 1st week

“I want to have the Playstation like other children have.” What others have becomes our standard of what we must have early in life. Sometimes parents also make use of the “like the others” argument to try to entice their children into the appropriate response: “See how other children are doing so well?”

The people of Israel had fallen into the same trend. Soon after they arrived at the promised land, they wanted to be “like the other” peoples and be governed by their own king. They were warned by the prophet that having a human king did not come without risks. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Soon these kings would start abusing their power and would take advantage of the people. Authority would soon evolve from a form of service into a kind of power to “lord over the people they were called to serve”.

Yet, the yearning to be “like the others” was a more powerful drive, and Israel demanded that God gave them a king. Within the Church we don’t lack the same kind of thinking. “The world does…”, “how long shall we wait until the Church does…” These are common murmurings of the new people of Israel. God respected this misguided freedom and gave in. The people of Israel had their king.

Sure enough, these kings did abuse their power and led Israel from disaster to disaster. God wills us to remain “under the control of our own decisions”. Mistake is the price we pay for freedom. We are awakened to truth in freedom. And that implies the risk of failing and falling. Only after the failure of many kings, a remnant of the people was ready to see in Jesus, the true king, who used his power “to serve, and not to be served.”

Jesus healed the paralytic because they thought they needed visible signs. But the true power of Jesus is invisible. It is the power to heal from sin. Because this is the power that is most needed, Jesus is the kind who is most needed. Which mistakes have awakened us into the truth lately? Which failures have helped us realize what is the right path?

Scripture Moments

“Understand now what the four stages of this ladder are, each in turn. Reading, Lesson, is busily looking on Holy Scripture with all one’s will and wit. Meditation is a studious insearching with the mind to know what was before concealed through desiring proper skill. Prayer is a devout desiring of the heart to get what is good and avoid what is evil. Contemplation is the lifting up of the heart to God tasting somewhat of the heavenly sweetness and savour. Reading seeks, meditation finds, prayer asks, contemplation feels.”

Guigo II, Letter to Br. Gervase, “The Ladder of Contemplation”