17th Sunday in ordinary Time Year A 2020

We are down to the last three parables of Matthew 13. The Kingdom is described as a hidden treasure in the field, a merchant searching for fine pearls and the net cast into the sea bringing in a haul of all kinds. For Matthew, the focus of these parables addresses a coming future. It is a horizon which also allows us to prioritise what is important for what is coming.

Without overview, we may lose track of where we are heading. It is like travelling in a bullet train staring out the window at the passing countryside but not recognising the landscape which whizzes by. Actually, one will soon develop a headache if one merely concentrates on the foreground. Only when one looks into the distance that one recovers a sense of perspective—that one might be moving, yes but not without a direction. This stability is important especially in a fast-changing world.

Solomon in the first reading, prayed for this wisdom of foresight. Amidst all the wonders that the world can afford, he asked for wisdom. Right after God granted his request, we hear Solomon exercising that wisdom in adjudicating between two woman who each claim that a baby is hers. From this episode, we can say wisdom is firstly teleological. It aims to for is right and good. Secondly, it is inherently tied to making choices in that direction. The image of wisdom as in a sage sitting down on top of a mountain doing nothing is a caricature because wisdom has a desire or a goal, that is teleological, as expressed by St Augustine: “O Lord, my heart is restless until it rests in You”. To be wise is to recognise that we have been made for God and that we ought to move in that direction, that is, to make the correct and proper choices in order to attain that goal.

But it is not easy.

It is extremely difficult considering that we are faced with countless choices. In this muddling myriad of available options, we mistakenly conflate freedom with choosing. For many of us, the notion of freedom means to be able to choose as I want, when I want, how I want. It may be true that freedom has a whimsical hint or notion to it. A good illustration is the family dynamic choosing a place and what to eat for a Sunday lunch. “Where do you want to eat? Anywhere. What would you like to eat? Anything”. Even though the choosing may be fickle or chancy, still, it highlights that by nature, to choose is to delimit. The minute we exercise the faculty to choose, the number of choices available would decrease. Marry this person, the others are no longer options. Live here, elsewhere does not come into play.

The difficulty of choosing is compounded because we are constantly led to believe that the freedom to choose is absolute with no other reference except to the person who makes the choice. You may have heard this chant: “My body my choice”. The irony of this absolute freedom is that a woman can choose to abort her baby in the womb but the baby is not afforded the same freedom to choose. Unqualified choice may sound like the ultimate expression of freedom but note that the treasure we desire is not always the treasure we get.

The suggestion that one simply selects does not highlight the sacrifice that is involved when one decides.

We have been rated as having the highest cases of obesity amongst adults in South East Asia. Let me stop here. I am not interested in fat-shaming. Our expanding waistlines are possibly a result of forgetting that there is constraint in choosing. I like ice-cream. I like chocolates. I like our fattening hawker food. I like to eat. I cannot possibly diet whilst at the same time eat as much as I like without bearing any consequences. Choosing one necessarily implies letting go of others. When you marry, you sacrifice all the other girls or guys with the desirable qualities you do not see in your present spouse. Accepting this limitation can be excruciating. This is just one example of the painful paradox of choices. Stay in an expensive hotel with 250 channels of movies or stay in a cheap hotel with 1 channel of movies to watch. The posh hotel is definitely more stressful because of the fear that you may not have chosen the best movie or as in the previous case, the best spouse.

Choosing the “best” movie itself is indicative of that the human heart instinctively acknowledges that it is infinitely restless because it is not made for the finite. Putting aside the natural contempt or distaste for someone labelled as rapacious or avaricious, like Rosmah or her Bossku, we can discern that greed is truly a function of this, albeit, misdirected longing for the eternal. Apple or Samsung and every consumer-oriented manufacturer have monetised or commercialised our desire by substituting it with the latest model which we buy and in a few months’ time would have left us dissatisfied and yearning for a “newer and better” model. The human heart yearns for so much of what the world cannot give, because what it aches for, only God can satisfy.

The Saints provide the best examples of this hunger for the infinite. St Ignatius of Loyola was described as man whose heart was made to contain the universe. His motto of “Ad maiorem, Dei gloriam”, that is, for the greater glory of God approximates this sempiternity. He was a man fired by a vision of God’s greater glory, not content with settling for the mediocre. His treasure was always to seek that which gives God greater glory.

God greater glory is described in the 2nd Reading as a kind of “conformation”—a process whereby we are conformed into the image of the Risen Christ. That is our goal and hence we should beg for the wisdom to know how we can move in that direction. Many of us are like cars with engines not fully optimised. The Sacrament of Confession is akin to sending our car (soul) for servicing because to be Christ-like requires the grace for us to choose wisely. Our sins symbolise being lost in choosing wrongly. In the many choices available we must not forget that everything created for us should serve one purpose and one purpose only. At all times, everything on earth is to help us to return to God and if anything does not, we have to let it go. This involves grace and entails sacrifice. Only God can give us that grace and only we can make the renunciation.

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

The Parable of the Talents is set in the context of the end-time because it is grouped together with the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins before it and the Account of the Last Judgement after it. However, a slight difference is that Matthew stands in contrast to Paul who believes, in the 2nd reading, that the Parousia or the end of time is imminent. It is in the context of the “delayed” end-time that the Parable spells out the necessity of being prepared for whenever the end of time catches up with us.

The keyword is to be prepared regardless of whether or not the time has come. How are we to be prepared? The Parable suggests a reflexion on what God has given us and to provide an account of how we have used God’s gifts or talents. The usual measure for our preparation is that much more will be expected of them who have been given more.

It is true that more will be expected of us if we were given more. Unfortunately, this sort of reflexion tends to focus on what God has given us. Paul wrote elsewhere in 1 Cor 4: 7, “What do you have that was not given to you”? People in the community of Corinth were boasting and so in posing that question, Paul pointed out that boasting did not really make any sense since all they had had first been given them. If everything is from God, then the question of talents or gifts is more or less redundant.

It is taken for granted that whatever we have is from God and so, what is relevant is not what God has given to us but what we can give to God. It is not a measure of quantity for if it were, then we would be reduced to measuring how much and comparing with one another what we have. And we know that measurement and comparison may lead to jealousy. Two examples would help. First, when we count what we have, often others will have more. And so, keeping up with the Jones is a result of envious comparison. Second, crab mentality is a reaction to what we do not have. When others have more, the same envy drives us to pull or put down the others.

What we give to God is not quantity but is rather qualified by the attitude of giving God the best. It actually follows the famous Kennedy quote, “Ask not what the country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country?”. Thus, in the context of the “talents” that we have, giving God the best is as demanding on an idiot as it is on a savant, as demanding on the CEO who has 800 people under him as it is on a daughter preparing dinner for an invalid mother. It does not matter whether we have more or less because the attitude remains the same. If everything is from God, then the only appropriate response is to give God the very best.

This attitude to give God the best is a spirit which no money can buy. That is why it is more than “talents” the way we understand a talent to be an ability to do something. It is not about an ability to do something because clearly there will be limitations to our abilities. It is best described as an attitude that tries to exhaust all possibilities before saying “No”. And this attitude makes all the difference and we instinctively recognise this. In the service industry, how often is it that we encounter a professional whose vision is limited by the impossible? [1] Let’s take the example of the University Hospital. What if you encounter a surgeon who tells you the limit of what can be done and is content to leave it as it is and another one who tells you the same thing but tries to see other alternatives in such way so that no stone is left unturned? In the 2nd surgeon, you know you’ve met someone whose attitude is to give the best—one whose vision is not limited by colour, creed or financial standing of the patient. When our attitude is to give God the best, then our physical, socio-cultural or political limitations are not excuses but rather opportunities, obstacles to be surmounted and when we do that, we are not affected or threatened by what others can do or achieve.

And guess what? This attitude accords with who we are. We are all created to be like that. The human spirit flourishes wherever there is a reaching upwards, a striving for the best and this actually captures the divine restlessness of St Augustine: “O God, my heart is restless until it rests in you”. The human heart instinctively yearns to give the best. People trapped in a particular sin are there because their hearts have mistaken that particular sin to be the best option to place their hearts in. Alternatively, when we find ourselves languishing, being neither here nor there, then it is probably because our hearts have settled upon mediocrity. The human spirit also perishes in mediocrity.

In the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius, at the end of a meditation on sin, the retreatant contemplates Christ hanging on the Cross and he asks these questions: What have I done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ? What ought I to do for Christ? These three questions are the basis for the Ignatian Magis, the more, the greater glory of God. In this context, it means that being prepared is more than just "passively" waiting for the Lord to come. It is an active embrace of giving the best to God because the way to the fullness of our humanity is to give God our very best. In a way, I am so glad that for us Catholics, the Cross has a “corpus”, a body, a figure hanging there for us to contemplate the possibility of offering Christ our very best. St Irenæus says: the glory of God is Man fully alive and Man becomes fully alive when he gives God the very best.

FOOTNOTE:
[1] In general, our civil service is circumscribed with the impossible. In fact, this country is crippled by the “impossibilities” of race and religion. It seems that we cannot give the best because our vision is limited by colour and creed.

24th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

The context of the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin may help us understand better the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The Pharisees and the Scribes were complaining that Jesus consorted with tax collectors and sinners. Their complaint was actually a commentary on the social structure of their time. The parable of the Prodigal Son is set within the context of social exclusion. Jesus used for his central characters, a shepherd and a woman—two persons who belong to the category of the “excluded”. The basis of social exclusion is best measured by the phrase “not like us”. And being not like them has nothing to do with “action” or behaviour because the shepherd or the woman could never be like the Pharisees and scribes. In this context of social exclusion, no matter what the shepherd does or woman does, they can never be saved. In summary, it is not really what is done which determines salvation because there are people who [no matter how good they are or what they do] are clearly beyond the boundary of salvation. Thus, for Jesus, God is one who reaches beyond the saved to redeem the unsaved. We have this confirmed in the first reading where we hear of how God reached out to the stubborn Israelites. And also in the second reading, Paul was clearly beyond salvation for his role in the persecution of the Christians and yet God reached out to him.

The parable of the Prodigal Son, as told within the context of social exclusion is a commentary on God’s behaviour. What is thus left for us is to understand the conducts of the two brothers.
Both their behaviours may help to shed light on how we ought to respond to the God who is big-hearted in his desire to save. Their behaviours can be examined from the perspective of the control of one’s destiny or even the lack of. Both of them were calculative.

The younger son asked for his share of the wealth. In effect, he was wishing that his father had died.[1] He was under the illusion that his ultimate happiness and freedom lie in his autonomy from his father. As much as the parable chronicles the younger son’s journey of conversion it is also a record of his desire to be in control. He asked for his wealth, he recklessly squandered his share of the wealth. Even when he was down and out, he still wanted to be in control because he said, “I know what I’ll do… I’ll go and offer my service as a servant. In that way my father will take me back”. What is that but an exercise of trying to be in control?

The problem with his need to be in control was that he also began to limit his father’s love. He believed that his father, after his financial debacle, could only henceforth love him as much as a servant. It was actually a repudiation of the ability of a father to love beyond the “calculative”. He could not believe that his father’s love was beyond measure.

This is how we may relate with God too. Like this prodigal son, we measure God’s love for us by the size of our sins. A sense of unworthiness is a natural reaction to our sinfulness. But sometimes, instead of helping us to rely on God’s mercy, we begin to limit God’s love for us. Surely God cannot love me since I am that unworthy. This lack of trust of the Prodigal Son in God’s love is quite pervasive.

The elder brother, on the other hand, did not ask for his share of the father’s estate. But that was not because he was virtuous. He was also limiting the Father’s love in some way. “I have slaved for you”. He measured himself to a slave. Not quite different from his younger brother, was he? Furthermore, he complained that his father hadn’t even offered him a kid to celebrate with his friends. Again, the father’s response was rather telling. “All I have is yours. Use whatever you want. Enjoy my wealth because I have not stopped you. You have stopped yourself”. The sad truth was that the eldest son did not dare presume upon the love of the Father. In short, he also could not believe that his father could love him that much. He was dutiful but he was also cold-hearted. That was why he became jealous of his father’s treatment of his younger brother.

We too can be like the elder brother in our relationship with God. We dare not enjoy God’s love for us. We dare not believe that we may enjoy God’s favour. The Pharisees and the Scribes were like that. They believed that God only loved them because they kept the law dutifully. There is a big difference between, on the one hand: knowing that God loves you which then gives you the reason to keep his laws and on the other hand: keeping the laws so that God can love you. It is like trying to control God’s love by being obedient and dutiful. When we try that, out of the fear that we might lose God’s love, we will begin to limit ourselves because we project our limitation or fear onto God and at the same time we begin to put a limit on others too. Many a times, people are jealous because they have stopped living and thus, they do not want others to enjoy life.

The parables wonderfully describe a God who dares to love us and as such they challenge us not to limit God’s love either by behaving like the younger son or elder brother. As younger son we do not believe that God can love us beyond our sin. As the elder brother when we dare not enjoy God’s favour we will see to it that no one else does.

FOOTNOTE:
Imagine your dad sitting in a wheelchair and you ask your dad to divide his wealth. You are actually saying, “Dad, you might as well be dead”.