A New Year Reflection

     “Mary, Mother of God”—Now that's a title that Christians had officially given Mary, mother of Jesus, in the 5th century as a result of the Council of Ephesus which dealt with the Nestorian heresy. More than a millennium later, years after the Western Schism that was called the Protestant Reformation, some Christians accuse the Catholic Church of deifying Mary, a mere creature of God.

     The Catholic Church dedicates the last day of the Christmas Octave to Mary with the title of “Mother of God” not because we have deified her but because we want to glorify God, who has graced her with the role of being the mother to His Son.  The title actually protects the integrity of the personality of Jesus the Christ. The Council of Ephesus affirmed that Jesus is only one person with two Natures.   A woman gives birth to a person, not to a nature.   Nestorius had claimed that Mary was "Mother of Christ" and not "Mother of God".  This, in effect, splits Jesus into two persons.  Jesus does not have a split personality.  Thus Mary cannot be said to be only mother of Jesus the Man and not Jesus, the second person of the Holy Trinity.

     I have started a reflection on today's feast and have digressed to give a brief account of one of the Christological doctrines.  (I think Mr. Tim Staples does a better explanation than me here.)  Let me get back to the reflection.

     We celebrate this feast because we want to glorify God for showing us His willingness to fill His creatures with grace. Although we hear that Mary is highly favoured in the Gospel, God does not have favorites. (Please see Luke 1:28.  Being highly favoured and being a favorite are two different things.)  He wants all of us to be saved. That is why he announced the birth of Jesus to the shepherds and the shepherds, in their turn, told others.  In the Gospel today, we notice that people came to know about this significant birth.  Mary, who has been given a significant mention by the angels, did not become arrogant or proud. Instead, she quietly kept all that had happened in her heart, pondering over them (Luke 2:19).

     I believe that God wants us to look at the gifts and graces He has given us.  We must be grateful for them and humbly accept them. The good news is that He is ever willing to grace us. Every gift we have had is not something that we deserved.  Rather, they have been given us because God loves us unconditionally.

Can we not, like the shepherds that night, start the habit to tell others about the generosity of God that we have experienced? 

Who Do You Say I Am?

This week’s Gospel is from the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew. It is the well-known part in which makes his confession that Jesus is the Son of God.

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesare'a Philip'pi, he asked his disciples, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?”

And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Eli'jah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”

Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.

It is from these passages that Catholics believe that the ministry of the Pope came about. There are many homilies that would focus on the question, “Who do you say I am?” The congregation would be asked to reflect on what their answer would be if Jesus posed the question to them. I believe that my homily this weekend would go along the same lines. However, in my preparation, I discover another insight. Before we answer Jesus' question, we would need to answer another question, “Who does Jesus say I am?”

To the answer, “A child of God,” I ask myself if I had really lived with a childlike trust towards God.

To the answer, “a Catholic priest,” I ask myself if I had truly helped God’s people eople to connect to Him.

To the answer, “A Christian,” I ask myself if I have allowed myself to see Christ in others and others to see Christ in me.

Just a short reflection ...

I guess it's Newsworthy

I have had some people sending me text messages through my phone. I guess I do have to address this. The small snippet of news would probably be in the print edition if it has come out in the online edition.

At the end of last year, the Traffic Police sent me a summons to appear in court. In Oct 2009, I was involved in an accident. I was stressed, got distracted and failed to notice the red light in time. I went into the junction and a car who had the right of way collided with my car. I was in the wrong. This morning, I pleaded guilty to inconsiderate driving and was fined $800. Some parishioners, whom I would consider friends, sent text messages asking if I was okay. Going to court is not really a pleasant experience but I did commit a traffic offence and I accept the consequences.

Some of you might realise that I had also stopped posting at the beginning of this year. My posts and reflections are usually based on current happenings in my life and the observations I make around the time I make my reflections. I must confess that I had stopped because I did not want to say something I shouldn’t because of what I had seen in court or regarding my anxieties regarding my offence. I used to tell my father, “You’d never know …”

So, I am off to my retreat next Monday, or rather, more accurately, I am entering into my retreat on Monday. Hopefully, I will have a good retreat and emerge recharged to start posting this blog again. Yet — “You’d never know …” I am still quite sensitive regarding the accident and the court proceedings. All it takes is one insensitive person to make the wrong remark and the wrong time and I may end up depressed and effectively negating the retreat. “You’d never know …” I hear you tell me, the Lord might help my brother priests to be merciful to me and not comment about it. In any case, I believe the Lord would be there to see me through the retreat.

Alla prossimo

Trying a new method of Blogging.

Call me backward or old but I recently found that there was another way of making posts on my blog. Here I am trying to make my first post using my handphone on email. Perhaps, I will be able to make more (but shorter) posts on this blog. Thoughts that come to me when I am in a pensive mood but away from the computer usually gets lost. I hope I will be able to share my thoughts more frequently thus.

Request from 3 weeks ago

I was asked to explain this:

that God doesn't give you what you want, God gives you according to who you are. Change who you are to change your life.

By itself, there are so many contexts in which this can be said. I would attempt to answer this in more general terms.

I hope that no one subscribes to the idea that God created us as a totally empty slate. Physically, we are genetically predisposed. Whether we have a tendency to be plump or svelte, tall or short, more easily become diabetic or less likely to develop cancerous cells are all written in our genetic code. There are some studies that show that the genes also predispose individuals. It would seem that our genes can tell us whether we tend to be extroverted or introverted. Our spiritual life is not determined by genes, although we could say that certain psychological tendencies are present because of our genetic makeup. God has a plan for all of us. In spiritual terms we use the word “vocation”. God calls us into existence. As a species, he has a destiny for all of us:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

who has blessed us in Christ

with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,

even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world,

that we should be holy and blameless before him.

He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ,

according to the purpose of his will,

to the praise of his glorious grace

which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

(Eph 1:3-6)

This part of one of my favourite Christological canticles by Paul. Before the foundation of the world. God has chose us as His sons; in other words, heirs. Heirs to? Heirs to His divine life. As individuals, he has specific plans when he made us. He made sure that we were equipped according to the plans he has for us. In this way he gives us according to who we are. We are all called to be his children. He would make sure that what we have would be that which would make us his children. I am going to use an analogy here. A good mother would give her six year old son a kitchen knife only when she is sure that he is able to use it properly. She must have taught him to use it in the proper way. Usually, mothers, even if they have that confidence, would be present when the boy is using the knife, to make sure that he uses it properly. No mother who truly cares, would give a knife to her eight or ten year old son unsupervised, when he is not trained. Do you think that God, who loves us perfectly, would give us something that might be harmful to us, or withhold something that we truly need?

When we ask something from God and we do not receive a favourable reply, it is usually because it would do us harm or that it was something unnecessary in His plan for us. We can argue and give reasons for what we want, but for those of us who have truly understood who we are, we can understand why God has yet to answer our prayers for the moment. It would be very fruitful to reflect in prayer the things we ask for. Were they really necessary to help us to be children of God in the way God has called us to be?

If we are frustrated with God, the usual reason is that we have not really understood who we are as God cildren. For some of us, this can be a great struggle. We usually want something that falls outside what God has in plan for us. Are we the eight year old who sees a six year old using a knife and wants to use the knife because we think it is cool, but did not consider the real necessity of using a knife?

The second statement is something that I would not use as a priest unless I have discerned together with the person concerned. This is because that statement, “Change to who you are to change your life” is loaded with so many variables and possibilities for misunderstanding.  First, it has no appeal to the grace of God.  It implies that we are in total control of every element in our lives. That is so pelagian! Second, it implies that there is a need to change ourselves to “who we are”; as if we could determine who we are easily enough and that a change in that direction would truly be a change of our lives. That is so atheistic! Can we discover who we are without appealing to the person who created us in the first place?

I would rather say something like, “Discover who you are in God’s eyes through prayer, and you will realise what you really need to ask God for.”  In prayer, we should begin to see how we are nothing as creatures when compared to the creator.  Humility is the first fruit.  Then we see the great dignity God has placed on us when he made us his children through Jesus Christ.  Because He has bestowed on us this dignity, we would be asking for a humble heart so that we could submit ourselves to His will.  After that, what else could we ask for?

A Long Hiatus

Someone once made a remark to me, “How can you say that you are very busy and pressed for time when you have the time to blog?” That remark contributed to my lack of posting. Blogging had to take a back seat as ministry and people take up my time. I am making this short post just to say that I am still alive and well. Obedience to my bishop necessarily meant that I take up responsibilities that I had little interest in. I have written in my journal some reflections regarding this and when the time is opportune, I might share those thoughts with the rest of the world one day. Right now, I am quite hopeful that I would be able to get back to the blog by bringing selected homilies that I have preached during the weekend.

God Bless!

Simple vs. Easy

The seminarians had suggested that we celebrate the Memoria of St. John Mary Vianney (Jean Marie, if one is inclined to use the French spelling). Taking up the suggestion of Serra Club, we joined them in preparing for this Memoria by doing the “potato fast” at dinner for the nine days leading up to the Memoria; in other words, a novena. There is a prayer and meditation before we embark on eating our one potato. One could say that this was a simple novena to make because it was so straightforward: pray, then eat. However, I would not like to venture to call this easy.

We often use the two words “simple” and “easy” interchangeably. Perhaps there are many simple things that are easy as well but the two words are not synonyms. To say that something is simple merely tells us that it is “not complex” or “not complicated”. We might even say that something simple had few parts. Something being “easy” has to do with the skill of a person. Whether something is simple or difficult depends on the competence of the person. We tend to be able to something “easy” after a few tries, if not in one. Let's take a look at an example. The process of threading a needle is simple. One just has to put one end of the thread through the eye of the needle. Yet, if I had bad eyesight, which I do now that I am entering middle age, I may not be able to do it in one try. If I was nervous and my hands were shaky, it would definitely not be “easy” for me to do it.

We could say that following the will of God is simple. We just need to do what He desires of us. Yet we are not really competent to do just that because of sin in our lives. Sin affects our ability to listen carefully to what God says. Sin affects our response as well. This is not to say that we are all doomed. As St. Paul said in Rom 7:25, Jesus Christ has saved us. We are able to follow the law of love despite still being affected by the law of sin. So let us not be too hasty to say we are not able to follow God’s will because through Christ, we have been given a simple way. Let us not be too arrogant to say that we are perfectly able to follow Him because despite being simple, it is not easy at all, considering that we are not yet perfect. When can we be perfect? When we concretely encounter Christ at our earthly death or His second coming. St. John suggests this in the third chapter of his first epistle. Let's spend some time reading I John 3.