Those who live in this moral twilight between faith and lack of faith have rarely a clear notion of the purpose of life. Yet a person must have a goal before he or she can live. In making a journey, one must first decide the destination and then the intermediate steps; this is what the Scholastic mean by, "The first intention is the last in execution." The choice of Paris for a holiday is the first step in a long series of preparations for the trip, but Paris is the last place one reaches in the journey. People who lose sight of the purpose of living - namely, to attain perfect happiness - begin to concentrate on means.
Like the fanatic, as once defined, they "redouble their efforts after they have lost sight of their goal." Their actions become staccato, jumpy, a crazy quilt of conflicting patterns. Possibility, in the sense of a progressive development and enrichment of personality, disappears. When possibility is lost, one of two things happens to a mind: Either it immerses itself in trivialities, with an accompanying cynicism, flippancy and superficiality, or else it tries to avoid responsibility for the inanity and foolishness of its life by denying the existence of human freedom and responsibility and subscribing to determination of the Darwinian, Freudian, or Marxian variety.
But there are some men and women who admitting their sins and faults, are still unhappy. Where there is a genuine sense of guilt, release can come only from Divine Mercy confronting human misery. Unless we are ready to ask for the forgiveness of our sins by God, the examination of conscience may be only a vain form of introspection, which can make a soul worse if it ends in remorse instead of sorrow. For the two are quite distinct: Judas had remorse. Peter had sorrow.
Judas Iscariot "repented unto himself" as Sacred Scripture tells us; Simon Peter, unto the Lord Jesus Christ. As a psychic malady sometimes results from a failure to adjust self to the right environment, so a moral evil results from the failure of the soul to adjust itself to God. Despair is such a failure - Judas despaired but Peter hoped. Despair comes from unrelatedness, from the refusal of a soul to turn to God. Such a soul opposes the order of nature.
For instance; When there are seven people in a room, few ever refer to the fact that there are fourteen arms present. But if we found a detached arm lying in a corner, it would create consternation; it is a problem only because it is detached. A soul isolated from God is like that arm. Its conscience (to take another example) is like a broken anklebone; it hurts because it is not where it ought to be. The final stage of this sadness resulting from a person's unrelatedness to God is a desire to die, combined with a fear of death - for "conscience doth make cowards of us all."
But if remorse is a sense of guilt unrelated to God, it is well to consider other states of mind and conscience from this single aspect. We find that there are several classes of souls, ranged according to the degree of their relatedness to God.
There are those who killed their conscience by sin and worldliness and who have steadfastly refused to cooperate with the Divine Action on the soul in order to amend their lives, confess their sins, and do penance; there are those who have awakened from a state of sin; there are those who followed conscience and the laws of God for a time and then turned away from God; and finally, there are those who kept their baptismal innocence and never defiled their conscience.
The second and the fourth classes are very dear to God. There are thus two ways of knowing how good God is: One is by never losing Him, and the other is by losing Him and finding Him again. Souls who have strayed and returned, Our Lord Jesus Christ said, rejoice the Angels in Heaven more than the steadfastly faithful. This is not difficult to understand; a mother with ten children rejoices more in the recovery of the single sick child than in the continued possession of health by the other nine.
For the sinner to be made well, then, confession and sorrow are required. And the sorrow must have in it an appeal to God's mercy to distinguish it from remorse. Saint Paul makes the distinction in writing to the Corinthians: "For the sorrow that is according to God works penance, steadfast unto salvation; but the sorrow of the world works death." - 2 Cor. 7:10 - Remorse or "the sorrow of the world" results in worry, jealousy, envy, indignation; but sorrow related to God results in expiation and hope. Perfect sorrow comes from a sense of having offended God, Who is deserving of all our love; this sorrow or contrition, felt in confession, is never a vexing, fretful sadness that depresses, but it is a sadness from which great consolation springs. As Saint Augustine of Hippo put it, "The penitent should never grieve, and rejoice at his grief."
The experience a repentant sinner undergoes in receiving the Sacrament of pardon has been well described by Blessed Angela of Foligno. She tells us of the time when she first took cognizance of her sins.
"I resolved to make my confession to him. I confessed my sins in full. I received absolution. I did not feel love, only bitterness, shame and sorrow. Then I looked for the first time at Divine Mercy; I made the acquaintance of that Mercy which had withdrawn me from hell, which gave me grace. An illumination made me see the measure of my sins. Thereupon, I understood that in offending the Creator, I had offended all creatures... Through the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the saints, I invoked the mercy of God, and on my knees, I begged for life. Suddenly, I believed that I felt the pity of all creatures and all saints. And then I received a gift; a great fire of love and the power to pray as I had never prayed... God wrote the "Pater Noster" in my heart with such an accentuation of His Goodness and of my unworthiness that I lack words to speak of it."
It is very difficult for the world to understand.......
Page 2
Faith . Hope . Love - Welcome donation. Thank You. God bless.
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Thursday, September 15, 2016
The denial of guilt or the effort to reduce ethics to psychiatry is as unsound and unscientific as the error of denying that there are genuinely mental troubles or the reduction of psychiatry to ethics and moral theology. In actual fact, no moral theologian denies the validity and necessity of psychiatry; but since many analysts do deny the realms of the moral, the Divine, and the supernatural, it is important to continue stressing the difference between the two.
Even when a client has his or her psychoanalyst's encouragement to laugh off the possibility of moral evil or a sense of guilt as the cause of his or her worries, his or her rejection of ethical standards is still a form of escapism. In such cases, it is vain for the frustrated soul to say that he or she will work the problem out "for himself or herself." For the soul that relics upon itself is unrealistic. Cure is conditioned upon the realization of two basic facts: There is some evil in the soul; and the perfection and cure are not to be sought in the person. Just as medicine must come from outside of the body, so moral healing must come from outside of the soul. Yet many modern men and women run to the ends of the earth to escape the one source of health or recovery.
Escapists refuse to face the fact that their own lives are disordered; or else they try an "easy" way out of their misery that lands them into worse confusion. Some of the "easy" ways out are the escapism of scandal-mongering which seeks to find others who are worse than the self and thus make the self seem good by comparison; the escapism of ridicule, which makes fun of the virtuous and religious to avoid the reproach of their goodness; the escapism of noise, of drowning oneself in excitement, crowds, collective trances, so that the sweet, low voice of conscience, through which God speaks, is never heard; the escapism of atheism, an anarchical revolution by which one covers up one's own need of personal, inner, spiritual regeneration by revolutionizing everyone else.
For by pointing out the wrongs of others, the atheist avoids the need of righting himself or herself; by spreading the ideology of class conflict, he or she creates the illusion that the evil he or she hates is not within himself or herself, but in the social system. The social conscience thus dispenses many people today from any compulsion to set right their individual consciences. There is also the escapism of calling religion "escapism." This atheistic at riposte is the most wrongheaded of them all - to throw it at a distraught friend, is like telling a person whose house is on fire that he is an "escapist" if he or she calls the fire department.
The real escapists follow many different routes, but none of them are humble enough to admit that there is some evil in them; all of them are too proud to admit that they need outside help to cure their misery. By denying guilt, they show that they are cowards; by denying any perfection outside themselves, they become snobs. The last, desperate stage of escapism is religious persecution; hatred of religion is projected self-hatred. It is not easy for normal persons to understand how goodness and truth can be hated, but they are.
Truth can be hated because it implies responsibility. Goodness is hated because it is a reproach. If the Lord Jesus Christ had been tolerant and broad minded, He would never have been crucified; it was the perfection of His virtue that constituted a judgment of the wicked. But since those who persecute religion as a form of escapism must constantly think about God and His universal Church, it follows that they are often closer to conversion than the indifferent person of a Liberal Civilization, who does not trouble making up his or her mind on any ultimate question.
Escapism never succeeds. In every sinner whose frustrations and neuroses are due to a burdened conscience, there is a latent contradiction. The person is pulled in two directions. He or she is not so much at ease with sin as to be able to make it his or her definite vocation, nor, on the other hand, is he or she so much in love with God as to disavow his or her faults. The dualism arises from a desire of God, on the other hand, and a turning from God on the other. Such people have insufficient moral energy to be bad or to be good; they have not enough religion to find peace of soul, yet quite enough of it to intensify their sense of frustration after they have sinned.
Those who live.......
Page 1
Faith . Hope . Love - Welcome donation. Thank You. God bless.
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
Even when a client has his or her psychoanalyst's encouragement to laugh off the possibility of moral evil or a sense of guilt as the cause of his or her worries, his or her rejection of ethical standards is still a form of escapism. In such cases, it is vain for the frustrated soul to say that he or she will work the problem out "for himself or herself." For the soul that relics upon itself is unrealistic. Cure is conditioned upon the realization of two basic facts: There is some evil in the soul; and the perfection and cure are not to be sought in the person. Just as medicine must come from outside of the body, so moral healing must come from outside of the soul. Yet many modern men and women run to the ends of the earth to escape the one source of health or recovery.
Escapists refuse to face the fact that their own lives are disordered; or else they try an "easy" way out of their misery that lands them into worse confusion. Some of the "easy" ways out are the escapism of scandal-mongering which seeks to find others who are worse than the self and thus make the self seem good by comparison; the escapism of ridicule, which makes fun of the virtuous and religious to avoid the reproach of their goodness; the escapism of noise, of drowning oneself in excitement, crowds, collective trances, so that the sweet, low voice of conscience, through which God speaks, is never heard; the escapism of atheism, an anarchical revolution by which one covers up one's own need of personal, inner, spiritual regeneration by revolutionizing everyone else.
For by pointing out the wrongs of others, the atheist avoids the need of righting himself or herself; by spreading the ideology of class conflict, he or she creates the illusion that the evil he or she hates is not within himself or herself, but in the social system. The social conscience thus dispenses many people today from any compulsion to set right their individual consciences. There is also the escapism of calling religion "escapism." This atheistic at riposte is the most wrongheaded of them all - to throw it at a distraught friend, is like telling a person whose house is on fire that he is an "escapist" if he or she calls the fire department.
The real escapists follow many different routes, but none of them are humble enough to admit that there is some evil in them; all of them are too proud to admit that they need outside help to cure their misery. By denying guilt, they show that they are cowards; by denying any perfection outside themselves, they become snobs. The last, desperate stage of escapism is religious persecution; hatred of religion is projected self-hatred. It is not easy for normal persons to understand how goodness and truth can be hated, but they are.
Truth can be hated because it implies responsibility. Goodness is hated because it is a reproach. If the Lord Jesus Christ had been tolerant and broad minded, He would never have been crucified; it was the perfection of His virtue that constituted a judgment of the wicked. But since those who persecute religion as a form of escapism must constantly think about God and His universal Church, it follows that they are often closer to conversion than the indifferent person of a Liberal Civilization, who does not trouble making up his or her mind on any ultimate question.
Escapism never succeeds. In every sinner whose frustrations and neuroses are due to a burdened conscience, there is a latent contradiction. The person is pulled in two directions. He or she is not so much at ease with sin as to be able to make it his or her definite vocation, nor, on the other hand, is he or she so much in love with God as to disavow his or her faults. The dualism arises from a desire of God, on the other hand, and a turning from God on the other. Such people have insufficient moral energy to be bad or to be good; they have not enough religion to find peace of soul, yet quite enough of it to intensify their sense of frustration after they have sinned.
Those who live.......
Page 1
Faith . Hope . Love - Welcome donation. Thank You. God bless.
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
Friday, September 2, 2016
If only. If only people just behave. You see, I actually do not need to control my anger, everyone around me just need to avoid annoying me. Is that not how some of us feel?
Tonight we turn to yet another work of mercy which is to bear wrongs patiently and forgive offences willing.
What does it mean to say bearing wrongs patiently and how is that different from forgiving offences willingly? Let us just say that wrong is not always wrong. As a priest once said to me, left is right and right is wrong. Confusing as it sounds, that was basically an instruction given to someone whilst driving. What I am trying to say is that wrong is not always wrong. The other way of phrasing this spiritual work of mercy is to be patient with those in error. When I state that wrong is not always wrong I am saying that firstly, nobody intends to be wrong and secondly, some people are just “wrong” FOR US. The operative words are “FOR US”. Let me explain.
If you have gone to Thailand before, you would have seen T-shirts, “Same same but different”. The original phrase describes “lady-boys” who have added female features yet retaining the OEM—Original Equipment from Maker! It illustrates a subtle nuancing whereby we may like to think that we are all the same but really what appears to annoy me might not be what irks other—thus wrong is not always wrong. Think pilgrimage and as the Ringgit swims underwater, not infrequently strangers are forced to share rooms. I had one pilgrimage where a cough threatened to derail our journey.
In an uber-sensitive world, anything can upset anybody not solely because we are different but because we have developed this overwhelming sense of uniqueness that is our individuality is expressed to the extreme. And the older you are, the more set you are in your ways. For example, poor as I am as a religious, I do not like a stranger to sit beside me during a Economy flight. I like my space. The Teochews have a word for it “Kou Tuck”.
When we are set in our ways, we often like to impose on others our norm as if it is the only norm or standard there is. This is made even more pronounced when our social space is organised according to the principle of me. It is all about me.
Why me? Whenever sorrow strikes us, many a complaint will be “Why me”? Apart of the celebration of victimhood, we are basically children of our age. What gives this “why me” syndrome? A possible explanation is the shift that took place almost 400 years ago and ever since that tumultuous upheaval, the universe has gradually moved at a pace almost imperceptible that has transformed truth to meaning, from a heteronomous perspective to an autonomous worldview. Truth is no longer a question at the top of our minds, meaning is. Simply put: Heaven is not important, earth is. Salvation is not important, liberation is.
You can count the number of young people here every day. For many of them, Mass is boring because the truth of the Mass is not as important as the meaning of the Mass is to them. Meaning is premised on personal satisfaction. It does not interest me. I do not feel a thing coming here. The transformation from truth to meaning changes the question “What is it?” to “What is in it for me? When “I, me and myself” is the centre of the universe, the only result of that is an increased in irritation when the world does not conform to my expectations.
You know OCD? It does not stand for Ordo Carmelitarum Discalceatorum (or Order of Carmelites Discalced). OCD is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Do you realise that so many people are suffering from OCD? Cleanliness and Orderliness are two common expressions of OCD behaviour.
I think that OCD is a form of hungering for God. The more we make ourselves the focus and the more we banish God from the centre of the Universe, the more OCD we will witness because this desire to be “ordered” is a divine innate quality bestowed by God. When we do not know who the Author of order is, we will go out of our way to be more ordered thinking that that is what Godliness is. And for that, the world has to suffer our “disordered” orderliness, our OCD.
Look at the servers. Are they an expression of OCD? I am impressed by the deliberate and regimented steps that make them sway in unison. The first day I came, I was fascinated and I tried to sway with them but I am always out of synch. This is just one example of the way they serve. The question here is this: Is their way of serving an expression of a priest, namely your parish priest’s psychosis or OCD?
As previously stated, if order is a reflexion of God then chaos must be the product of the Devil. Order points us in the direction of God and the liturgy is musical in the sense, according to Pythagoras, as music properly composed according to mathematical principles, is one of the best measure for an ordered universe. Perhaps you can make the connexion between a beautiful rhythmic swaying of the entrance procession as an example that reflects the order of the universe.
The tricky part here is that the line between God’s order and OCD is rather thin which brings us back to Truth as a communal search. It is not just “my” search for Truth. In all that we do as Church, there has to be dialogue and conversation amongst us. But, it is not restricted to just amongst us meaning it is also not just “our” search for Truth. This dialogue or conversation must, in addition, take place between us and the Magisterium and the Tradition amongst others.
Yesterday, I mentioned about the Church in heaven, the Church in purgatory and the Church on earth. Each time Catholics speak of Tradition with a capital T, it means our communal search cannot be independent of the Church in heaven and the Church in purgatory. Perhaps you appreciate why the Church does not change her practices willy-nilly just because time has changed or just because fads have shifted.
In this search, bearing wrong or errors patiently is an expression charity as we communally search for truth. We do not possess the truth. We need to bear in mind that some people can seem more arrogant than others. Some people speak differently from others. People are definitely not copies of me. When you work together, this will come out. People are not as clever as I am. People are not as generous as I am. And my irritation grows. It is not always easy. And sometimes, I guess it takes heroic strength to bear the wrongs of another person. There were two professors—one a chemist and the other a philosopher. They are known to have called each other by name. The Chemist to the Philosopher: Navel Contemplator. The Philosopher to the Chemist: Shit Analyser. Both are priests. Both are Jesuits. Both live in the same community. Not easy right because both are headstrong. But nonetheless, they are not excused from a very important Spiritual Work of Mercy because bearing wrongs patiently is pre-requisite for the next work of mercy.
Bishop Fulton Sheen makes an interesting distinction and let me paraphrase him: “Tolerance applies to the erring, intolerance to the error meaning be kind to those who are in the wrong but be firm about the truth we want to stand with because we do not possess the truth.
This brings us to forgiving others willingly. The difference between bearing wrong patiently and forgiving other willingly lies in deliberation. Wrongs are not intentional—they are just things out of order. If you think about it, no one wakes up in the morning and the first thing he does, like Mr Burn of The Simpsons who drums his fingers and say in a most wicked quivering voice: “Let me see, today I am going to irritate my husband”. It is not malice even if sometimes we ascribe malicious intent to the offending person. In short do not flatter yourself—the wicked world does not revolve around you. (Only victims do lah).
If wrongs are not deliberate, offences are in the sense that an injury has been done to us. And for that, forgiveness is demanded of us. I have heard it mentioned that it takes a lot of strength to hang on. But it takes so much more to let go. When our sense of justice is warped by revenge then forgiveness will come across as weakness.
Unforgiveness may be emblematic of love. If we love deeply, it follows that the cut will be just a deep. And, the more we love, the greater will our struggle be to forgive. Perhaps the difficulty of letting go of hurt in order to forgive is symptomatic of our hoarding culture. One of the side effects of a consumeristic culture is the need to hoard. If we hoard things, we can also hoard resentment and unforgiveness and we can nurse them like they are our treasures.
Forgiveness does not mean that we forget totally as Dr Martin Luther King said: Certainly one can never forget, if that means erasing it totally from his mind. But when we forgive, we forget in the sense that the evil deed is no longer a mental block impeding a new relationship.
Finally, there is freedom involved in forgiving. At times, unforgiveness can constrict our vision so much so that we cannot see the truth of what our enemy is saying. If the Devil can say something which is true, what is more, our mortal enemies. Of course, the Devil cannot be trusted to be truthful but he can still say something which is true. The very people we hate or are angry with are capable of truth. So, without forgiveness, we destroy our freedom to hear the truth. Funny thing is that the very people whom we cannot forgive may just sleep well at night and the one who hurts is the one who does not know how to forgive. From bearing wrongs patiently to forgiving willingly, we know that an inability to bear with one another and a heart unwilling to forgive will definitely consume our energy and drain us of the motivation to do other more important works of mercy be they spiritual or corporal.
BY REV. FR. SIMON YONG KONG BENG S.J.
Page 1
Faith . Hope . Love - Welcome donation. Thank You. God bless.
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
Tonight we turn to yet another work of mercy which is to bear wrongs patiently and forgive offences willing.
What does it mean to say bearing wrongs patiently and how is that different from forgiving offences willingly? Let us just say that wrong is not always wrong. As a priest once said to me, left is right and right is wrong. Confusing as it sounds, that was basically an instruction given to someone whilst driving. What I am trying to say is that wrong is not always wrong. The other way of phrasing this spiritual work of mercy is to be patient with those in error. When I state that wrong is not always wrong I am saying that firstly, nobody intends to be wrong and secondly, some people are just “wrong” FOR US. The operative words are “FOR US”. Let me explain.
If you have gone to Thailand before, you would have seen T-shirts, “Same same but different”. The original phrase describes “lady-boys” who have added female features yet retaining the OEM—Original Equipment from Maker! It illustrates a subtle nuancing whereby we may like to think that we are all the same but really what appears to annoy me might not be what irks other—thus wrong is not always wrong. Think pilgrimage and as the Ringgit swims underwater, not infrequently strangers are forced to share rooms. I had one pilgrimage where a cough threatened to derail our journey.
In an uber-sensitive world, anything can upset anybody not solely because we are different but because we have developed this overwhelming sense of uniqueness that is our individuality is expressed to the extreme. And the older you are, the more set you are in your ways. For example, poor as I am as a religious, I do not like a stranger to sit beside me during a Economy flight. I like my space. The Teochews have a word for it “Kou Tuck”.
When we are set in our ways, we often like to impose on others our norm as if it is the only norm or standard there is. This is made even more pronounced when our social space is organised according to the principle of me. It is all about me.
Why me? Whenever sorrow strikes us, many a complaint will be “Why me”? Apart of the celebration of victimhood, we are basically children of our age. What gives this “why me” syndrome? A possible explanation is the shift that took place almost 400 years ago and ever since that tumultuous upheaval, the universe has gradually moved at a pace almost imperceptible that has transformed truth to meaning, from a heteronomous perspective to an autonomous worldview. Truth is no longer a question at the top of our minds, meaning is. Simply put: Heaven is not important, earth is. Salvation is not important, liberation is.
You can count the number of young people here every day. For many of them, Mass is boring because the truth of the Mass is not as important as the meaning of the Mass is to them. Meaning is premised on personal satisfaction. It does not interest me. I do not feel a thing coming here. The transformation from truth to meaning changes the question “What is it?” to “What is in it for me? When “I, me and myself” is the centre of the universe, the only result of that is an increased in irritation when the world does not conform to my expectations.
You know OCD? It does not stand for Ordo Carmelitarum Discalceatorum (or Order of Carmelites Discalced). OCD is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Do you realise that so many people are suffering from OCD? Cleanliness and Orderliness are two common expressions of OCD behaviour.
I think that OCD is a form of hungering for God. The more we make ourselves the focus and the more we banish God from the centre of the Universe, the more OCD we will witness because this desire to be “ordered” is a divine innate quality bestowed by God. When we do not know who the Author of order is, we will go out of our way to be more ordered thinking that that is what Godliness is. And for that, the world has to suffer our “disordered” orderliness, our OCD.
Look at the servers. Are they an expression of OCD? I am impressed by the deliberate and regimented steps that make them sway in unison. The first day I came, I was fascinated and I tried to sway with them but I am always out of synch. This is just one example of the way they serve. The question here is this: Is their way of serving an expression of a priest, namely your parish priest’s psychosis or OCD?
As previously stated, if order is a reflexion of God then chaos must be the product of the Devil. Order points us in the direction of God and the liturgy is musical in the sense, according to Pythagoras, as music properly composed according to mathematical principles, is one of the best measure for an ordered universe. Perhaps you can make the connexion between a beautiful rhythmic swaying of the entrance procession as an example that reflects the order of the universe.
The tricky part here is that the line between God’s order and OCD is rather thin which brings us back to Truth as a communal search. It is not just “my” search for Truth. In all that we do as Church, there has to be dialogue and conversation amongst us. But, it is not restricted to just amongst us meaning it is also not just “our” search for Truth. This dialogue or conversation must, in addition, take place between us and the Magisterium and the Tradition amongst others.
Yesterday, I mentioned about the Church in heaven, the Church in purgatory and the Church on earth. Each time Catholics speak of Tradition with a capital T, it means our communal search cannot be independent of the Church in heaven and the Church in purgatory. Perhaps you appreciate why the Church does not change her practices willy-nilly just because time has changed or just because fads have shifted.
In this search, bearing wrong or errors patiently is an expression charity as we communally search for truth. We do not possess the truth. We need to bear in mind that some people can seem more arrogant than others. Some people speak differently from others. People are definitely not copies of me. When you work together, this will come out. People are not as clever as I am. People are not as generous as I am. And my irritation grows. It is not always easy. And sometimes, I guess it takes heroic strength to bear the wrongs of another person. There were two professors—one a chemist and the other a philosopher. They are known to have called each other by name. The Chemist to the Philosopher: Navel Contemplator. The Philosopher to the Chemist: Shit Analyser. Both are priests. Both are Jesuits. Both live in the same community. Not easy right because both are headstrong. But nonetheless, they are not excused from a very important Spiritual Work of Mercy because bearing wrongs patiently is pre-requisite for the next work of mercy.
Bishop Fulton Sheen makes an interesting distinction and let me paraphrase him: “Tolerance applies to the erring, intolerance to the error meaning be kind to those who are in the wrong but be firm about the truth we want to stand with because we do not possess the truth.
This brings us to forgiving others willingly. The difference between bearing wrong patiently and forgiving other willingly lies in deliberation. Wrongs are not intentional—they are just things out of order. If you think about it, no one wakes up in the morning and the first thing he does, like Mr Burn of The Simpsons who drums his fingers and say in a most wicked quivering voice: “Let me see, today I am going to irritate my husband”. It is not malice even if sometimes we ascribe malicious intent to the offending person. In short do not flatter yourself—the wicked world does not revolve around you. (Only victims do lah).
If wrongs are not deliberate, offences are in the sense that an injury has been done to us. And for that, forgiveness is demanded of us. I have heard it mentioned that it takes a lot of strength to hang on. But it takes so much more to let go. When our sense of justice is warped by revenge then forgiveness will come across as weakness.
Unforgiveness may be emblematic of love. If we love deeply, it follows that the cut will be just a deep. And, the more we love, the greater will our struggle be to forgive. Perhaps the difficulty of letting go of hurt in order to forgive is symptomatic of our hoarding culture. One of the side effects of a consumeristic culture is the need to hoard. If we hoard things, we can also hoard resentment and unforgiveness and we can nurse them like they are our treasures.
Forgiveness does not mean that we forget totally as Dr Martin Luther King said: Certainly one can never forget, if that means erasing it totally from his mind. But when we forgive, we forget in the sense that the evil deed is no longer a mental block impeding a new relationship.
Finally, there is freedom involved in forgiving. At times, unforgiveness can constrict our vision so much so that we cannot see the truth of what our enemy is saying. If the Devil can say something which is true, what is more, our mortal enemies. Of course, the Devil cannot be trusted to be truthful but he can still say something which is true. The very people we hate or are angry with are capable of truth. So, without forgiveness, we destroy our freedom to hear the truth. Funny thing is that the very people whom we cannot forgive may just sleep well at night and the one who hurts is the one who does not know how to forgive. From bearing wrongs patiently to forgiving willingly, we know that an inability to bear with one another and a heart unwilling to forgive will definitely consume our energy and drain us of the motivation to do other more important works of mercy be they spiritual or corporal.
BY REV. FR. SIMON YONG KONG BENG S.J.
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
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