8th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 2019

I used to live in a farm where the rental was paid for using unmilled rice—800 catties, if my memory serves me right—8 gunny sacks. We had one of those winnowing contraptions—rice is poured into a large funnel and turning the fan, the wind separates the grains into three different categories. The first is the heavy grains, the second the lighter grains and finally the husks and chaff.

We paid our rent with the second category of lighter grains. In other words, we were dishonest and we cheated. At that time, I thought it was clever because we paid the rent cunningly. It was rice with a lot more husks. Just recalling what we had done, I feel ashamed even to share this.

Today, the first reading and the Gospel touch on the area which we are familiar with—conscience or maybe the lack of it. Many of us act as if our conscience were fully formed. And we commonly identify a clear conscience with good feelings.

Our therapeutic society—where we have a pill for every ill—makes conscience a difficult subject to deal with. Why? Firstly, we just want to feel good. It explains why we turn to drugs, stimulants, alcohol, sex, food or entertainment. We are gluttons for endorphin rushes. Secondly, since feeling high is an important criterion, it follows that nobody likes to be judged. Those of us who are employers will testify to how much more sensitive our younger employees are when they are “corrected”.

From these two—feeling good and not wanting to be judged, we generally take a respectful distance so that we do not come across as judgmental. Thus, the famous “who am I to judge?” of Pope Francis.

Our so-called informed society values integrity and it frowns upon a person who preaches one thing but behaves contrary to what he affirms. In short, a person who does not walk his talk has no right to pontificate. Imagine a man who has mistresses stashed away in different condo units in the city, telling his son who is about to be married how to be a good husband to his soon to be wife. The normal response, if the son has a sense of right and wrong, would be “Yeah, right! That’s rich coming from a serial adulteror”.

In this age of accountability, this credibility gap or deficit is merely a proof, not excuse, of who we are—fallen human being. Many of us are hypocrites—Cakap tak serupa bikin. In the noble quest of endorsing integrity or trustworthiness, what we may miss out is that inauthentic behaviour does not invalidate the reality of an objective moral content for an action. For example, the adulterous father may be an unfaithful husband but his advice remains good and true. Thus, conscience is dependent on what is objectively true. Something is wrong because it is objectively wrong and not because I am virtuous and therefore I have the moral high ground to label it as wrong. Of the self-righteous Pharisees, Jesus Himself told the disciples: “Do what they tell you but do not follow what they do”. If “virtuousity” is the measure of morality, then good or bad becomes relative.

Hence, not judging does not make for good ethics and conscience. Instead, it lowers our accountability and to wait until we are “credible enough” to judge, it will not be long before we sink into the morass of immorality. In other words, when we defer due to our inauthenticity, basically, our poor moral sense has become the subjective measure for behaviour. It is a form of relativism. When nobody dares to “judge” for fear of being called a hypocrite, we have, in effect, become the hypocrites we fear to be.

One may be a hypocrite but still recognises an objective moral truth. Our so-called hypocrisy actually gets us to the heart of the matter. It is true that the blind cannot lead the blind. And for those who set themselves up as the arbitrator of good behaviour, it is crucial that they should not have skeletons in the closet. All these criteria are good but they are not even close to the heart of the matter, that is, the formation of a good conscience.

The Catechism says that our conscience must be informed and moral judgment enlightened. A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful. It formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator. The education of conscience is indispensable for human beings who are subjected to negative influences and tempted by sin to prefer their own judgment and to reject authoritative teachings. (CCC1783)

The claim that one’s conscience is clear is based on the consideration that it is well formed and also enlightened. It means diligence on our part and not just being content with “feeling good”. For example, if one were to measure conscience by “clarity”, a murderer can kill and still believes he has a clear conscience. Our immediate reaction will be “there must be something wrong with his clear conscience”. This aversion is proof that conscience is not a subjective matter but that its referent is objective and that one’s action should be measured against it.

But, sadly, at the present, the Church finds herself “defensive” in the sense that her moral credibility has been weakened by the sins and failures of her children. If anything, this failure is an opportunity for us to clarify and form our conscience, aware that the failure of the members is not the failure of the Church—for she alone, in her magisterium, has the guarantee of the Holy Spirit in the interpretation of faith and morals. As we realise, we  are really not the best interpreters of what is right and wrong. Left to ourselves, our conscience can be erroneous. But, we are not entirely lost because we can look to the saints—they are the magisterium or conscience in blood, sweat and tears. They walked the path of conscience with no hesitation. In desiring to form our conscience it helps to look to those who have succeeded. The challenge is we possibly know St Faustina (for Divine Mercy), St Francis Assisi (he is famous) or St John (because we celebrate his beheading). Ask a youth if she knows who St Simon Stylite and you probably get a blank stare. Or St Joseph Moscati? If the Church moral teachings are our theory, then the saint are our practice.

Without the saints, the only witnesses we have are Christians behaving badly. Our individual and collective failures do make a mockery of the Church’s moral teaching and without it what remains is for people to “follow their conscience” which usually translates as a freedom of or right to self-expression—in short, a justification to do what we feel or want. To be fair, the Church herself does say “follow your conscience” because she knows that if you truly listen to God in your conscience, then what you hear will be no different from what she teaches, for the Church teaches only what God has revealed to her. There is no conflict between following your conscience and following the Church.

Unfortunately, many of us buy into this notion that everyone should know the moral injunction to do good and to avoid evil. It is true that we all know because the Prophet Jeremiah tells us that God will put His law in our minds and inscribed it on our hearts. What we may fail to understand is that the human heart has been perverted by Original Sin.—a condition St Paul described as “I do what I should not and I do not do what I should”. This perversion highlights how crucial the Church is to the shaping of the human heart.

Finally, forming our conscience is not a once and for all process—that one will have a formed conscience and it is enough. Firstly, it requires an adequate and accurate understanding of what the Church teaches. Secondly, the process is life long and like a child learning how to walk, small acts of choosing good and avoiding evil become the bricks in the building up of our conscience. Do not wait until the future but begin now with small steps and soon your conscience will be your habit, a second nature in choosing good and avoiding evil.

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

There is a Frank Sinatra feel to the readings these Sundays: “And now the end is near and so we face the final curtain”. You cannot miss the apocalyptic quality to the last few Sundays in Ordinary Time. It is a time of reckoning.

What shall it be when the time comes?

St Paul is of the opinion that those alive at the time of final reckoning will have no advantage over those who have died before. If that be the case, then the Gospel warns us not to be caught unawares at the final reckoning. Therefore, be prepared.

You hear, “be prepared!” and the next question is “for what?”.

This preparation may take place in the temporal sphere but it is cosmic in its implication because one is preparing for the future coming of the bridegroom. Even though the Gospel mentions about being “awake” when the bridegroom arrives, that is not really the focus. Instead it is to have enough oil. However, there seems to be an element of selfishness here because the virgins with enough oil seemed unwilling to share the excess oil they have. Schooled in Christian charity, we might consider this unwillingness as selfish. The truth is that the oil symbolises the interior preparation of the wise virgins. It has nothing to do with the external preparation like the provision that one takes along the journey. One may share one’s food with the poor or the hungry. One may alleviate another person’s physical condition but the inability of the wise virgins to share does not fall within this category. Instead, it is akin to how one may help another person by giving directions. I can tell you how to go to a place but it is you who must make the journey to that place!! It requires discipline and so the oil is symbolic of one’s interior life nurtured by prayers, expressed in good works and nourished by the sacraments and devotions. When the bridegroom arrives, we must have enough of oil.

Secondly, discipline requires commitment. However, our commitment compass might just need some realignment. It cannot be said that we are not committed if you consider all the things we are not only subjected to but also willingly subject ourselves to them. People go to the gym and they try to keep fit. They submit themselves to health regimes etc. All these are forms of commitment. The question to ask here is what our commitments are preparing us for? Bettering ourselves is a form of preparation but are we prepared just for life or are we prepared for eternal life? Many of us are caught up with preparation of a merely temporal kind.

Whatever we do, the goal is ultimately eternal life. And it requires that we judge wisely the things of this world. However, there seems to be an exponential increase in knowledge and know-how. We know a lot more and we also appear to have a solution to every conceivable ill. As a result of this exponential increase of knowledge and know-how we confuse facts with wisdom. Knowing “factoids” does not make us wise and the best way to describe this confusion is through the analogy of a jigsaw-puzzle. More and more, knowledge is becoming so specialised that people are having all the pieces of a puzzle but they have no “master-plan” to help piece them together. [1]

Furthermore the application of know-how is not an indication of wisdom. We are quite knowledgeable but not wise. In fact, our younger generation have at their fingertips so much more technical knowledge than we can ever imagine. But they are not wiser. Thus, to gain eternal life we need the wisdom to know what is necessary for us to reach our heavenly goal and wisdom is aided by our possession of knowledge but it is not constituted solely by it.

Today, the wise virgins symbolised our preparation for eternal life. We should live our lives in such a way that at any time, when Christ the Lord appears in the horizon or is already at the door we are ready. It means we are ready to die or we are ready to give our lives for Christ. How many of us can say that at the moment of death, we are at our best. This “best” is not a reference to “perfection”. Instead, it refers to our conscience. A clear conscience is the best preparation we can make with regard to the Bridegroom’s arrival. Live as if today might just be our last day on earth. That way you will find it easier to desire a clear conscience.

FOOTNOTE:
[1] Knowledge is knowing that the tomato is a fruit but wisdom is not putting it in a salad. This is what the Greeks call paraprosdokian, that is, a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected. It is frequently used in a humorous situation. A good example of a paraprosdokian is Where there is a will, I want to be in it.

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

Leprosy, a dreaded disease features prominently in both the 1st Reading and the Gospel. That being the case, I would like to speak on three seemingly unrelated points. First, I would like to start by taking a look at the phenomenon of leprosy, our reaction towards it and what implication that reaction has for us. Second, I would like to point out how both Naaman and the cured Samaritan are reminders of our responsibility to carry the grace of the Gospel to those who are waiting. Finally, how we ought to choose gratitude as a mode of behaviour.

First, leprosy is association with ostracisation—being cast out. Being cast out of the community comes under the purview of purity laws as required by Mosaic Law. But, purity laws are not maintained for the sake of themselves. They function to keep the smooth running of a society—for its viability. Every society must set up boundaries to guarantee its survival. For example, Sg. Buloh leprosarium was an effort at self-preservation.

Thus, a boundary is also measured by the extent to which the society will defend it. For example, we know that the virtue of virginity in a Middle Eastern setting is prized very highly because a violation of the boundary of virginity carries with it no less than death by stoning. We may be shocked by the barbarity of the punishments like the cutting off of hands or the stoning to death but our reaction may also be a symptom of how much we have lost our sense of value. [1]

We know that in this country, there is a growing sense of Puritanism especially in the public arena. Puritanism is boundary defining and thus, two questions may be asked in the face of this growing rigidity of the boundaries. First, who has the right to define boundaries? Should our boundaries be defined by one religion—specifically by a particular group of people dishing out fatwas as and when they like. The answer can be tricky because we can be reduced to just using “my warped sense of interpretation of scripture” as the standard of measure for everyone. If we are to avoid using “my personal standard writ large”, then, we are brought to a second and more challenging question: what are our boundaries and where do we derive them from? For serious Catholics, we know that conscience is absolutely crucial to the discernment of the boundaries which we are to keep. However, our conscience must be formed according to the teachings of Christ and His Church. Cardinal Newman once said: “Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ” because it is the messenger of him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches us and rules us by his representatives. The experience of marginalisation or drawing of boundaries leads us to a deeper realisation of the need to form our conscience.

Secondly, there is a deeper and humbler meaning to both the readings than just curing because they both point to how two foreigners are able to recognise God. Naaman acknowledged Yahweh to be the one true God. The 10 Lepers calling out, “Jesus”! “Master”! “Take pity on us” is the beginning of the awareness of the divinity of Jesus. Finding himself cured, the Samaritan came back and threw himself at the feet of Jesus and thanked him because he acknowledges that healing can only come from God.

We can be too complacent but both Naaman and the Samaritan remind us of the heavy responsibility of bringing the Good News to those who are waiting anxiously for the grace of the Gospel. Paul confirms the seriousness of this responsibility in the 2nd Reading when he says that nobody can chain up God’s news. He also claims that on account of the Good News of Jesus Christ, he is able to bear all hardships and even to being chained like a criminal.

And this brings us to the 3rd point—of gratitude as a mode of behaviour. The stranger who came back to thank Jesus shamed those who should be the first to do so. The Jews… and now Christians should be living a life of gratitude. The Eucharist is our expression of gratitude which sometimes challenges us when we look at Sunday mass as an obligation. Gratitude is the memory of the heart. Paul who once relentlessly pursued and killed Christians and now is able to bear with grace his ill-treatment is a response of gratitude. He was a grave sinner who has now become a graced sinner. Gratitude powered Paul’s preaching.

In conclusion, the boundaries, the grace of the Gospel and gratitude are inter-related. Gratitude enables us to enter deeper into the formation of our conscience. A person with no gratitude will look at God’s laws as restriction of his or her personal freedom. Gratitude also frees us to embrace the hardship that will be involved in bringing the grace of the Gospel to people who are waiting hungrily for Christ.

Footnote:
[1] We need to be careful of how we judge communities which are, in our eyes, barbaric. The ancient world tried to protect its boundaries in order to survive. In a way, in trying to ensure the survival of the community, it also becomes systematically a ghetto. On the other hand, we would like to be inclusive. And yet, because we have lost our sense of value, what we have is not inclusiveness but rather a form of organisation in which like-minded people can gather to the exclusion of the others. In that way, we may not be better off than those “pre-modern” societies.