“And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.” (Mt 18:5) Today’s gospel fits with the Singaporean debate on how to have more children. Nick Chui proposed recently in The Straits Times to change the law of abortion so that more children, who otherwise would be aborted, could be saved and see the light of day. That would certainly help.

Unwanted children through contraception and abortion is certainly the root cause of the problem. But a further question should be asked. Why do today’s couples seem to feel very reluctant towards procreation? I believe that at the root lies what is obvious and everybody seems to see clearly, the cost of raising a child, but also what is hardly visible to the plain citizen but did not escape the prophetic eye of John Paul II– a distorted idea of freedom.

A freedom that is understood as a mere capacity to choose what I want, as long as I do not interfere in other’s freedom, makes of us mutual enemies. Jean Paul Sartre, a very different John Paul, preached that “Hell is the other” which is very much consistent with a vision of freedom that is threatened by “the other.”

In fact, children are seen as the end of matrimonial bliss and the beginning of marriage chaos. Children are the cause of the couple needing to tighten their belts, preventing them from travelling, enjoying nights out, etc. Children are seen as a threat to freedom, and therefore an obstacle to happiness.

Only a mind-set shift of the understanding of freedom, not so much as the capacity to choose, but the capacity to become someone greater, can really bring about a practical solution. Children, the church believes, help in the sanctification of their parents. If this is true, and sanctification is the real purpose in life, then having children is not an obstacle but is the most important way to achieve it.

On the other side, we have the economic problem. Our econmic system is an anti-child system. The church believes that a fair wage is the wage that is sufficient to sustain a family. Our economic system is built in such a way that one’s wage is not enough to sustain a family. When labour is also subject to the laws of supply and demand, couples who are eager to sacrifice family in the name of two wages, push the supply-demand curve to a point in which average wages are indeed not enough.

However, everyone takes for granted that both parents need to work and nothing is done about pushing the curve to more family-friendly levels.

In that context, it is really hard to hear Jesus saying, ‘whoever receives one child… receives me”

The dawn of the XIII c. surprised St. Dominic at about 30 years old, in the South of France in the company of bishop Diego de Acebedo. The church was shaken by heretics who were becoming more and more popular. The same Pope who had forbidden Dominic and his bishop go to the missionary territories to evangelize the pagans, was now trying to counterattack the heretics by sending Papal legates to preach. He chose among others, a Ciertercian Abbot and two of his monks. Dominic and his bishop met these legates and engaged in a conversation that will affect the life of the church ever since. This is the dialogue that ensued,

“After leaving the court and reaching Motpellier, Diego met the venerable Arnold, abbot of Citeaux, and Brother Ralph and Borther Peter of CAstelnau, Cistercian monks from Fontfroide who were legates of the Apostolic See. All three had decided to resign from their posts, because so much had been demanded of them that they were dscouraged. jThey had made scarcely any progress in their preaching against the heretics. Whenever they spoke out, the bad lives of the clergy were dragged into the argument in opposition. Yet if they dared to attack clerical slackness, they would be prevented from preaching altogether”

The bishop advised the legates not to give up but to persevere in preaching with more zeal and in the manner that reflected true fidelity, with humility, in poverty, barefoot, without gold or silver, in the manner of the Apostles.

The legates replied that if somwone was willing to go ahaed and put the scheme into operation, they would certainly follow him. Bishop Diego offered himself. From that moment, Bishop Diego, Dominic and two of the legates formed a team of new preachers with a different style.

The chronicles tell us that they “preached and dispute in public without any ostentation, making no use of their authority but relying solely on the persuasive power of plain truth to give weight to their words. At the same time they put their preaching to the test of sincerity. This was indeed an unusual sight: papal legates, a bishop and a canon daring to assume contemptible garments in order to speak to despised men, after the example of Christ the poor man.”

Like the heretics and the apostles, and unlike the other legates, they preached in poverty; like the legates and unlike the heretics, they preached the genuine gospel of Christ. Fighting fire with fire was the solution to the problem. “The people were deeply stirred by the preachers, and sometimes whole villages, declaring themselves for Diego and dominc, turned out and followed them for miles.”

The harvest was plentiful, but the workers were few. Unfortunately, three men of the group died suddenly and Dominic was the only survivor of the team. But this survivor planned to continue with the project. What followed later is called the Order of Preachers, with St. Dominic as its founder.

It is official, the world is a global village. We are all closer to each other. How close? 6 degrees maximum exactly. That is what studies on SMS have shown.

A degree is the unit that equals a direct relationship between two persons. For example, the distance between two friends is one degree. The friend of my friend is two degrees away from me and so on.

Well, experts claim that the maximum distance between two strangers in the world today is six degrees. That roughly would mean that if a Kalahari bushman meets a stranger from Laponia, he should be able to know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone… and this six times, who knows the stranger.

Should we believe the experts, I find it quite strange that strangers are not so strange. The Church believes that all persons should live like a family and it seems that we are very much irremediably heading for that.

Of course that is only half the job. Family members are only one degree close to each other but some are miles away in terms of acceptance and understanding. Still, to become aware that the whole human family is shortening her ties to six degrees means that the Spirit is working, even through SMS.

Should we allow people to die for a principle? This is how the issue of Organ Trade is more likely to crawl into people’s conscience. What is heavier in the ethical scale, organ trade or human lives?

The Church has stubbornly maintained that “the human person” should be at the centre of all ethical decisions. Doesn’t this imply that the morality of organ trade depends on how many human persons may benefit from it?

Some think that legalizing the organ trade will resolve the problem of the shortage of kidneys and save the lives of kidney patients waiting for a transplant. An ethical and controlled kidney market will also wipe out the unethical black market that already exists.

Others disagree. They think the poor, (who are more likely to be the sellers), will be exploited by the rich, (who are more likely to be the buyers). The organ trade will also increase the demand for kidneys, since those who sell their kidneys will be more likely to need a kidney themselves, when, in their old age, their only kidney may start to fail. Furthermore, organ trade will discourage possible donors to donate when they see that others are getting paid for what they would give freely.

These two opposite conclusions are however both based on considering only the consequences of legalizing organ trade. If legalizing organ market brings about more benefits than harm, then it should be pursued.

This kind of pragmatic thinking was “invented” by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), is known as utilitarianism and has become the way ethical issues are decided in our culture. Utilitarians claim that if a Nobel Prize and a beggar share a waterlogged raft that could only support one person, the laureate could ethically push the beggar off since he would be more useful to society. In other words, killing is neither right nor wrong; it all depends on the beneficial consequences of each particular act of killing. Thus, it does not really matter what you are doing but what happens as a consequence of your action.

This system forgets that human actions are moral or immoral because they make the person moral or immoral, independently on what happens after their decision is made.

Socrates believed that it was better to suffer injustice than to cause it. There is nothing practical about that, but it is sublimely ethical. Jesus said, the man “who looks at a woman lustfully, has already commited adultery in his heart” (Mt 5:28 ) independently on whether the physical adultery is committed or not. What we choose to do certainly affects the world around us, but it also affects us. By deciding to commit murder, we have changed ourselves into persons capable of murdering, even if we later fail to carry out the actual murder.

Then the main ethical question is not, “How useful would this policy be?” “but “What do people do to themselves when they sell their organs?”

John Paul II in his address to the Organ Transplant Society (August 29, 2000, # 3) claimed

…”every organ transplant has its source in a decision of great ethical value: ‘the decision to offer without reward a part of one’s own body for the health and well-being of another person. Here precisely lies the nobility of the gesture, a gesture which is a genuine act of love. It is not just a matter of giving away something that belongs to us but of giving something of ourselves, for ‘by virtue of its substantial union with a spiritual soul, the human body cannot be considered as a mere complex of tissues, organs and functions . . . rather it is a constitutive part of the person who manifests and expresses himself through it’.”

In today’s Cartesian mentality, the body is something the “person” uses; not something the person is. If that if the case, we certainly may sell our organs as we could sell our cars, but, we might similarly charge for sexual intercourse since sexual activities are also one of the possible uses of the body. The new cultural understanding of sexual freedom has the same cultural background: we own our bodies and we may use them as we want to as long as no harmful consequence is derived.

It took the Church more than 600 years and 6 ecumenical councils, from Nicea (325) to Constantinople (681) to understand that Jesus Christ was truly God, truly human, with one divine nature, a divine will and a human will. This understanding did not fall from the sky. It took centuries of pondering, debating and defining before the church reached these conclusions.

We should not be surprised if after thousands of years, we are still grappling with the issue of how to relate to our bodies. Are we only material beings like animals? Are we spirits temporarily wearing and using material bodies? Or are we as much spirited bodies as we are embodied souls? Which one of these three understandings is true? Is our body something we have, or someone we are?

Putting a price to motherhood or to friendship simply corrupts them. Putting a price to the intimate sexual act deprives it of any personal meaning or intimacy. Putting a price to human organs makes the human body a merchandize.

Organ donation, unlike organ trade, is not just the disposal of a body part, but the gift of oneself, an act of true charity. Organ donors are heroes; organ sellers sell themselves.

Kidney patients are not dying because of a principle. If not enough kidneys are available, kidney patients will die because their kidneys failed, because our bodies will inevitably fail sooner or later, no matter how much medicine advances. What matters most is not how soon we die but how ethically we live.

Moral principles are not a luxury of a few philanthropists. A right life and a good heart are the only things worth living for and the only luggage we are allowed to carry with us beyond the grave. That’s not a luxury, it is the minimum bare necessities.

There are two things the debate about organ trade is teaching us. First, we are barking at the wrong tree of decision-making. It is not only the consequences of the act that matter, but the morality of the acts in themselves that matter most in morality. The second is that we are now still understanding who we really are and what our bodies mean to us.

Some time ago, before we, the Dominicans friars, discovered that we could cater food for the friary, each one of us used to take turns to cook for the whole community until the days when we started to show the first signs of malnutrition. Monday was my turn. I have to admit that I had never enjoyed punishing the brothers with my culinary experiments. Neither did they it.

One Monday, I was on my way to the market, when I saw a Pizza place. Suddenly my mind saw the light. Two pizzas could solve my second course problem in a matter of minutes. I entered the place full of confidence, happy to have found a fast and cheap way to solve my Monday crisis. I took a look at my favourite pizzas and saw the price. All my hopes were shattered. Two pizzas would have cost more than twice the usual budget for Monday dinner. I turned back and headed for FairPrice Supermarket to look for anything edible that could be cooked in ten minutes.

Now, why on earth were those pizzas so expensive? I admit it. I don’t like to pay. But I think I am not alone in this dislike. If not, why then that futile effort in luring customers under persuasive slogans: “Buy now, pay later,” “Buy three, pay one,” “Pay comfortably in installments?” How can anyone pay comfortably? Why then, that compulsive obsession in writing that “20 % off!” and “Free!” with the biggest fonts they can find in the printing press? I think somehow, someone told them the truth: we don’t like to pay.
Perhaps that’s the reason why I find the words of Isaiah most appealing.

“Buy corn without money, and eat at not cost, wine and milk. Oh, come to the water all you who are thirsty: though you have no money.”

These words don’t come by easily these days. Isaiah wrote this words when the people of God were in exile. They were homesick, discouraged and dejected. The best thing God did to encourage them was to invite them to a banquet, a free one. I think God also knows we don’t like to pay.

Today’s gospel also talks about food and about buying. The disciples told Jesus to send the crowd away to buy themselves something to eat. Jesus thinks like God. It was better to give them something for free. But the disciples didn’t have enough, hence, Jesus entered the picture and satisfied everyone for free, and still, the leftovers could have fed another crowd. Jesus knows we don’t like to pay.

Some are impressed by the miracle of the multiplication. I think the miracle is not the multiplication but the division. Today’s world can do just as much. We could produce enough food to feed the entire planet twice. They make soil produce several harvests. They make trees double their production. They make chickens without feathers so that they grow faster and produce more meat at a lesser cost. Today we make bio-technological miracles, yet millions still cannot afford food. We have learnt to multiply. We still need to learn to divide fairly.

Like the disciples, we fail to satisfy the dispirited crowd. We still believe that good things are expensive things. And, the more expensive it is, the better that something is. However if we reflect for a while about really important matters… How much does a kilo of friendship cost? How much does a mother charge for her motherhood? How can you buy someone’s care?

Really important things are priceless for a reason. In fact, the moment you assign a monetary price to them they become cheap. If a mother would charge for motherhood, wouldn’t her motherhood have become less than real motherhood? If a friend charges us for his friendship, wouldn’t his friendship become cheap, even if he wants to charge millions?

Personal matters stop being personal the moment we tagged them with a number of dollars. Most people see prostituion as something wrong because it puts a price to the most intimate and personal act. Today in Singapore people are still asking whether kidneys should have a price.

Initially, theologians were reluctant to admit that one could licitly mutilate oneself and thus were reluctant to see organ donation as something ethical. After some years, it started to be clear that donating an organ was not direct mutilation, as in an act of lack of self respect, but in fact, it could be an act of charity, an act of self-donation, and therefore, not only permissible, but highly charitable or even heroic.

As Singapore starts to contemplate to pay heroes, it is good to realize that they will be heroes no more. That the heroic personal act of charity degrades into selling oneself the very moment they put a price to the organ they are giving away.

When it comes to human organs, there is a huge difference between donors and sellers. Donors are heroes, sellers are self-mercenaries. Donors engage in admirable personal acts. Sellers put price to their body parts, implying that their bodies have a price, which is tantamount to selling themselves.

Unfortunately in today’s dualistic culture, where the body has become something we have, rather than something we are, it is extremely easy to get confused. In fact, there is hardly a divisory line between something we have, and something we may sell.

The body can replace its own blood supply, but cannot generate another kidney. Irreplaceable body parts  are integral parts of our bodies. The body is not something we can dispose of, it is simply not ours– it is us. Selling it amounts to selling something personal. And personal things stop being personal the moment we transform them into merchandize.

Today’s version of Isaiah’s hopeful statement would be: “

“Get organs with no money, and live at not cost. Oh, come to health all you who are sick though you have no money.”

The issue of organ trade is now splashing all over the news in Singapore. Three things strike me about it: the timing, the way it is being reasoned and the grounds on which it is being argued.

Let us begin on the timing. Few months ago, Singapore showed its will to become a leading nation in biotechnology and concretely in Stem cell research, more particularly, embryonic stem cell research. We have reasons to believe that because in the short span of few weeks, it called the public to react on two medical procedures that were being proposed: compensating women for donating eggs and creating cybrids. Both proposals had the same purpose: the artificial fabrication of human embryos for the purpose of research.

The only available human eggs or embryos are those left behind by the IVF industry. When women don’t want the spare embryos to be implanted, they have the choice of “donating” them for research. However, this supply is way too short for any meaningful research.

Activating cow’s eggs with human DNA is one option (cybrids) to solve this problem; the other is increasing the pool of donated eggs. The first presents serious ethical problems while the second, a very practical one. Women won’t simply volunteer to undergo a surgical procedure, however minor, just for the sake of science. How to increase women’s altruism? Simple. Offer money for their eggs. Problem? It is illegal in Singapore. Solution? Change the law so that it is no longer illegal and Singapore has already shown its clear will to walk this path.

The reason why the selling of human eggs is illegal in Singapore and many other countries is because there is a firm intuition that the selling of part of one’s own body amounts to “commodifying” the body. What does this mean? It simply means that the body, which is not a commodity, becomes treated as a commodity the moment we put a price on it.

By changing the law so that the selling of human eggs is allowed, warrants a licit question : Do we change the law because we no longer believe that selling parts of our body is commodifying the body or because we believe that this commodification is worth being pursued for the sake of a higher good? To my knowledge, that question still remains to be answered. To say that it is not commodifying the body, would imply that we believed the wrong belief in the past. To say that we can commodify the body for a higher good, raises the question of what good could we be talking about that makes commodifying the body worth pursuing. Would scientific research be that good? Very arguable.

Months has past, and a timely episode has occured. Some were caught buying kidneys to be transplanted. Buying kidneys, just like selling eggs, is illegal for the same reason. But kidneys are not eggs. Kidneys may save the life of a patient whose only hope is a kidney transplant. Now the ethical issue has changed its disguise.

Now it has taken on a human face. Now it is not about cold scientist in white gawns and ethicist waving abstract principles of commodification. Now it is about Peter, about my neighbour or about my family member.

Now the ethical problem takes on a new formulation: Should we allow people to die because of a principle? If we maintain the principle, people might die as a result of cadaveric kidney shortage; if we kill the principle, however, we might be ready to go down the slippery slope of admitting that body parts may be assigned a price. And if this works for human kidneys, it may also work for human eggs.

Perhaps what Singapore is saying is, “I let you buy kidneys, you let me buy eggs.” Or perhaps it is all just a timely coincidence.

I have just finished preaching about today’s gospel, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 10:39). Basically, I compared life with money. If you save it, it devaluates. If you invest it, it increases in value. So we need to be very careful and choose what is really worth investing in our lives.

After reading the good news of the gospel, I have the habit of reading the “other news”, the newspaper. In the article “Marry now? It’s quite contrary.”, Tessa Wong ponders on how the median age of marriage has been raised in the past few years. Should someone marry early, like they used to do, or just delay the big date for better seasons?

Her answer is a reaction to a young mother who married early. To this lady, motherhood has changed her life drastically. Now her blog has “tediously boring updates about picking up kids from school and cooking dinners for six.” According to the writer, “that happens when you have kids before you turn 30.”

In other words, according to the wise advice of our author, if you have boring entries in your blog, your life is worthless. But did she ask this “boring” mother, whether it is all worthy? Is an apparently monotonous life the criteria to determine what is world pursuing, what gives true meaning to our lives?

I truly hope that the young journalist’s blog is excillarating and that one day, when she looks back at her life, she truly thinks that having being entertained was worth her life-time. I think that the young mother of boring blog-entries finds more fulfilment in her life, devoted to real loved ones in the apparent monotony of a daily life, than if she spent her days writing juicy blog entries to satisfy someone else’s thirst for entertainment.

Perhaps, deep meaning, daily commitment, fidelity and constancy, do not make impressive blog entries, but do feed human life with true meaning. Perhaps, Jesus is right, if you lose your life and invest it in others, you will find it!

After 5 intensive months of daily postings, much uncertainty and a great deal of learning, we will take our home leave. Hopefully, a time of reflection is also good to try to think of ways of improving this weblog.

God bless!

fr david

“Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’23 Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’” (Mt 7:22-23)

Few texts of the Scripture sound so intimidating. One can spend one’s life doing what Christians are supposed to do, only to find that God does not even know him. How can that happen? Are these the words of a merciful God or the words of a strict slave-driver? Where is God’s mercy in these words? How does one pass from driving out demons in God’s name to “evildoers” that the Lord does not even know? If good activity does not define the good follower, what does?

We can only understand these words if we continue reading the passage of founding our lives on a “rock”. Both sections are the two sides of the same coin. It is easy to accept that listening and not doing is not enough. It is indeed like building a house on sand. We cannot found our lives on mere ideals or a simple doctrine. A view of life, no matter how true, does not become fully true until it takes up flesh and history in our lives.

God did not allow Himself that luxury either. His Word was not only ideas and teachings, it took flesh in our Lord. And His love took flesh in His deeds. In the same vein, we need to walk to talk, lest we leave the talk unfinished.

But alternatively, we may fall into the opposite error: Doing and not listening. We may assist in all the religious activities and engage in the deepest social commitment, but if it does not spring from a attitude of listening, it is not even weak, it is empty. One does not even need faith to do what Christians are supposed to do. But that is not really doing, it would be just imitating or acting.

Listening and not doing is not really listening. Doing and not listening is not really listening. Contemplation without action is mere discipline. Action without contemplation is mere human activity.

St. Paul says something similar, “For we consider that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” (Rm 3:28). At the end of the day, it is not the works, the activities, no matter how frenetic and stressful they might be, that have enough power to justify our existence. Only God gives true meaning to our activities. Only God’s grace justifies. Only God’s friendship makes us more just.

The verb “to know” closes both the gospel and the first reading. In the first reading idolatrers are said to follow gods they don’t know, “a curse if you (…) follow other gods, whom you have not known.” (Dt 11:28). . In the gospel, God does not know the “activitists” nor the devout prayerful people who spend their lives in the unilateral prayer, “Lord, Lord”.

A friend in need is a friend in deed; but the first task of a friend is to listen. Friendship needs both the listening and the actual commitment. A friend who does not listen, even if he does what he thinks his friend needs, is not a real friend. He is just someone who projects his needs and solutions onto others. Doing favours can also be a way of avoiding taking the person seriously.

To be friends of God, to enjoy His favor, we have to be make ourselves known to Him, by truly listening. That is how grace works. Christian living is not a bunch of activities we have to fulfill. It is a relationship we need to establish. A relationship that becomes flesh in our relationships with others.

We include this episode of the visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth among the mysteries of the Holy Rosary. And indeed there is something mysterious about the way Elizabeth interpreted her baby’s leap in her womb. Most pregnant women experience their babies jumping in their wombs. Not all of them understand why.

This first encounter of Jesus and John while still in the wombs of their mothers symbolizes the continuity between the Old and the New Testaments. The last of the Old Testament and the first of the New recognize each other and rejoice in each other’s presence. The promises and the prophecies of old are already fulfilled. This is the core of the joy of this event. The four protagonists acknowledge it. John the Baptist leaps for joy. Elizabeth understands this joy and salutes Mary, and Mary exalts God and understands that all generations will call her blessed.

Promises are not only matters of the Old Testament. Every hope we harbor in our hearts appears to us in a way like a promise. We hope that this and that will be fulfilled. Our journey through life is marked by the frustrations and the fulfilment of these hopes.

We know that only God will fulfill the right hopes while clinging to our false hopes will lead to disappointments. Purifying our hopes is learning from Elizabeth and Mary, who recognized and rejoiced at the fulfilment of her right hopes.