The lament of the First Reading sets the tone for our reflexion. It is taken from the period known as the Second or Deutro-Isaiah. The people are in exile and it appears that God has abandoned them. In their cry of desperation, God gives them an answer that has echoed through the centuries: Even if a mother should forget you, I will never forget you.God’s promise never to forget can be a key to unlock the Gospel. Christ urges His disciples to place their trust in God by way of reminding them that they cannot serve two masters. They can trust God for if God can take care of insignificant creatures, how much more will God take care of them. Finally, St Paul, in the second reading, canonised this trust in God when he surrendered his destiny into God’s hand.
All three readings are united by a common theme that God can be trusted.
And, this is where we wade into complicated waters. Many of us know that God can be trusted. Unfortunately, it is a knowledge that resides at the head level. We know that God can be trusted as we know that fresh water at sea level will boil at 100°C. It is a knowledge which we easily rattle off but when a situation is dire, it comes across as platitudes. Try telling it to someone who has been retrenched and whose 70 job applications have not been responded to or to parents who have lost their only child. To say “Trust in God” would sound hollow. It might even be countered with a “How can a good God allow such a thing to happen?”.
To know that God can be trusted requires an affective familiarity. In a nutshell, it means we “know” that God can be trusted but we “feel” that He cannot be trusted. It is a head-heart divide. Unfortunately, it is increasingly difficult to gain the affective experience of God’s trustworthiness because the language to describe trust in God is written with the vocabulary of self-help.
To trust someone is to give oneself over to the other person. It means one relinquishes control over one’s destiny. This is not always easy to because the vocabulary of self-self is decidedly self-reliant.
Firstly, we are who we are only in as much as what we can make of ourselves. It has been drummed into us that self-definition is the only way to define oneself. If you do not help yourself, no one would. [1]
Secondly, when those entrusted or empowered to take care of us are derelict in their duties, where else do we turn to, if not to ourselves. The police [part of the executive], politicians [part of the legislative), judges/lawyers [part of the judiciary], the bishops/priests [part of hierarchy], anyone and everyone who has the duty to lead, to serve, to protect and to worship, all have been tried and found wanting. And this is not helped because we keep reminding ourselves that nobody can be trusted. How? It is necessary to acknowledge the good intention but to realise the result is an increasing fear, despondency and despair. The never ending circulation of emails detailing rapes and robberies might be good warning but the mushrooming enclaves of gated communities are symptoms of this enforced self-reliance—a retreat from the “civitas”—from where we get words like city, civic or civilisation. [2]
Thirdly, trusting the other is usually reduced to trusting with what can be lost, what can be dispensed with. Our trust is risk calculated and taken.
When we are self-reliant, that is, when we depend on ourselves, we will only turn to God when everything has failed. And we wonder why God keeps silent. Our idea of God is basically “I pray and you obey”. Trust in God means that even before we begin any enterprise, God must already be present. It requires a letting go which we are not used to but it is necessary in order to arrive at the affective experience. It means a letting go of kiasu, kiasi, kiakwi or kiabo—for those not conversant in colloquial Hokkien, it is letting go the fear of losing (kiasu), fear of death (kiasi), fear of the devil (kiakwi) and fear of the wife (kiabo). OK, the last one does not count!!
St Paul in the 2nd Reading showed us how. He faced many difficulties in his ministry to the Lord [3] and to the early Church and even though the natural instinct was to be defensive, still, he abandoned himself to God. That abandonment was not despair nor was it hopeless. It was handing over his life to God. But, be warned that to trust in God is not a panacea for all ills. It does not mean that we will not suffer. Just because we pray, it does not mean that God will shield us from pains. On the contrary, be prepared.
We sometimes hear that this country is going down the road of a failed state—nothing is really secure and we are sliding down the slope to stagnation. When the economy falters, with the exception of a few, everyone will suffer. So, when everything fails, when we have done all within our power and still fail, what do we do?
The Church turns to the saints for inspiration and this you will never be in short supply. Time and time again, they give themselves over to God. Pressed around and yet they never give up because they believe that in the end God can be trusted. Robert Bolt who wrote “A Man For All Seasons” gives us a glimpse of this trust in God. At the end, when beheading was the inevitable consequence of unflinching loyalty to the Apostolic Faith, Margaret, the daughter of St Thomas More pleaded with her father: "Father, haven't you done as much as God can reasonably want?" In other words, “Use your head. You have done all you reasonably can and expected of you. Why not now give in to the demands of the King so that your life would be spared?”. St Thomas More looked at her and said, “Margaret, all of life, mine and yours is not just a matter of reason, it is a matter of trust in God". It is not just a matter of the head. It is also a matter of the heart.
To trust in God is to allow our lives to become prayer. When that happens, nothing can ever be that big that we lose the confidence that we have been carved securely into the hand of the God would never forget us. It is a freedom from fear or unnecessary anxiety that no currency can ever procure and no money can ever buy.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] To be fair, it is not as individualistic as it sounds. To be self-reliant could be a part of the process of trying to individuate, to be “me”. This need for individuation partially explains why people sometimes need to dress inappropriately. It is not so much as looking for recognition as it is a cry to stand out, “I am me”. But, consider why the only way to be “me” has to be shocking, disgusting or outrageous.
[2] Earlier I mentioned something about outrageous dressing etc. Driven from the “civitas”—the individual can only shout in order to be heard. A self-reliant world is a lonely place to be.
[3] In his ministry to the Lord, St Paul always felt the burden of his unworthiness. He was afflicted by this so-called “thorn” in his side until the Lord Himself assured him of His strength.
