Pure loving act

I fell in love last Saturday. She is a cherub with an incandescent smile named Elise. There is something simply irresistible about the wide-eyed innocence and trusting naivete of a toddler.

To her the world is a fascinating place filled with people who love her. Her joy of being alive was infectious as she wandered around the hall trailing drumsticks, or as she lolled lazily on the floor gurgling unintelligibly to a song she recognized, or when she plonked herself into the lap of her mother's choir mate with seasoned aplomb.

Although she is tiny, her insouciant presence brought palpable delight and I felt incredibly blessed and privileged every time she flashed me a grin of pure joy.

This is who I am created to be - a trusting being, secure in the beauty of my God-image and -likeness, enrapt with life's gorgeousness and the abundance of love that cocoons me. So what happened?

Original sin. The primordial evil that entered the world and causes me to fear and thus to be self-centred in order to protect myself from betrayal, injustice, manipulation and envy.

It is the incapacity to give myself to God or others with an instantaneous, child-like openness until trust has been proven or earned.

It is also a disintegration stemming from my woundedness that impels me to act with less than honourable intentions and barely admirable behaviour most of the time.

Is there a way for me to go beyond my human guardedness and insularity, to love again as Elise loves? There is. Christ who is the way, the truth and the life.

In the incarnation, God fulfilled His covenant with humanity by choosing to be in relationship with us in a way that risked a vulnerability to outright rejection and active hostility.

This is the story of Christmas, the greatest love story ever told, of the birth of Immanuel (God with us) who came into the world to show us how to love to the point of sacrificing His own life out of love for us.

Because of Him, we can be fully human as He was. We can reclaim the ethical imperative of loving beyond human reasoning by forgiving unconditionally all the undeserving people and impossible situations we face in life, day in and day out.

Even though we live in paradise lost, we can re-create paradise on earth. By being a sincere gift of self, we can find meaning in our lives and we can find ourselves, and ultimately, happiness.

Jean Vanier, founder of l'Arche, an international network of homes for people with intellectual disabilities, in his book Becoming Human says:

"To be human is to accept ourselves just as we are, with our own history, and to accept others as they are...to accept history as it is and to work, without fear, towards greater openness, greater understanding, and a greater love of others."

While we may live in a world with vast abysses of distorting relativism, greedy consumerism, self-centred individualism and deadly moral decay, we can choose to be like God, to love as He loves, and to be loved as a child like Elise is loved, for the beauty of her pure being.

So Christ's exhortation to "love your enemy" is not mere obligation or some crazy Christian stricture, but an empowering movement towards being fully human and fully divine.

To be. Just like Christ. Pure being. Pure loving. Pure forgiving.

Designed for love

Last Friday evening we talked about fertility and whether the Church's stance on contraception was practical. Surely methods of contraception that prevented unwanted pregnancy and the spread of sexual disease were indisputably brilliant and therefore should be adopted.

Rather than go into statistics that show that the number of unwanted pregnancies has gone up with the proliferation of birth control pill usage, with the same upward trend when it comes to STDs, not to mention the increasing incidence of divorce and single parent families, let's, as Father David would say, dive down into the waters and look at the iceberg from below.

Go back to the fundamentals and examine human design. What is human nature?

Humans are designed to be in monogamous relationships. When we fall in love, we want exclusivity in a relationship. We want to be unique and special in the eyes of the other. We want to be able to share with this person, be intimate in a way that no one else can and we want it to last forever. (Tell me who falls in love with a view to moving onto the next relationship? We do want exclusive and forever.)

Out of this mutuality of love, we want to create life in order to enlarge the love we have for each other. It is written in our DNA for the perpetuation of the species but more than just a biological premise, humans are created to be spiritual, to develop their potentialities to the fullest, to transcend who and what they are.

Thus procreation is much more than just a mere bid at immortality but offers parents the chance to enrich their own lives and develop as persons. For humans are social animals and need other humans in order to self-actualize, whether it's physically, psychologically, intellectually, emotionally or spiritually.

Cliched as it sounds, it is the circle of life. All life has natural rhythms and seasons but it would seem that it is only the human animal that does its best to ignore this. Unique to humans is the freedom to will, but this can be a huge blessing or a curse of epic proportions.

The cultural dogmas of self-interest first, happiness forged out of freedom and the separation of mind and body have resulted in a culture of using, grasping and instant gratification.

We often forget we are subjects, equal in dignity and we are likely to use others for our own means, treating them as objects, whether it is to assuage loneliness, to combat fears or to pursue our own self-interests and build our own little kingdoms where ego-centric, hedonistic pleasures flourish.

We have lost the art of waiting, not appreciative of the fact that hunger whets the appetite; instead we'd rather dull our appetite by stuffing our faces with junk food fillers than wait for the feast.

Where we have gone very wrong is how we think and act about sex. We use our own body and our partner's body for gratuitous carnal pleasure. We treat each other and ourselves as objects to get off.

We have silenced the language of the body where the sexual act is meant to communicate and deepen an already spousal love, a love that is self-donating, unconditional, pure and faithful. Instead we abuse our bodies for cheap thrills and become slaves to addictive lust.

We even mistake lust or carnality as the pinnacle of human pleasure for we have dismissed the fact that love can be infinitely richer, satisfying and more beautiful than an orgasm per se.

However, life-giving love that invokes real happiness requires work and discipline but most of us are sold on the easy way and instant pleasure, and so we compromise.

Coming back to contraception, again, by human design, women have infertile periods each month, thus by using natural family planning (NFP which is 99% reliable if practised correctly* and needs only the one-time purchase of a thermometer), couples can choose when and how they exercise their generosity and prudence in building their families. So why is there a need for contraception?

Statistically, couples who practise NFP have a lower rate of divorce. Sure, a woman's fertility cycle may cramp the spontaneity of passion for one week, but pro-NFP couples are forced to work on other facets of their love relationship and this enhances intimacy and mutual respect which can only be a good thing for any relationship.

Just think, if you cannot restrain your libido within marriage (and marriage does not legitimize lust), what makes you think you can resist temptation when you are attracted to someone other than your spouse?

And if couples are not married and having sex, they are misusing the language of their body. The usual argument is if I am not hurting anyone and in fact, making someone happy, why not?

Like drugs, when you are a user, you lose your clear-headedness and become enslaved. Being an addict may not kill you outright but you are dead in many other ways - to common sense and decency, freedom and self-love, and the opportunity to find a love that really satisfies.

Going against our human design we blight our souls whether we know it or not in a Dorian Gray-like way where the portrait of our humanity is marred by hideous pockmarks of infidelity, broken relationships, abortion, violent sex crimes and sexual perversions such as the unspeakable horrors of child prostitution and pornography.

We lose the sense of sanctity that is inherent in our minds, bodies and spirits. We desecrate the blessing of our fertility and close ourselves to love as it should be: life-giving.

So what can we do about the spread of sexual disease? Safe sex is only the new prudishness and fails to get to the root of the issue. Lest we forget, there is no question of sex being unsafe if one is in a committed, monogamous relationship.

And for those of us who are not in a relationship, abstinence is not an impossible and harsh reality but a way for us to live out our sexuality honestly and be fulfilled.

We all value honesty in life, why not sexual honesty? We won't explode by abstaining from sex and chastity is not the worst thing in the world even though Oprah thinks it is.

And babies won't get HIV if their parents choose to live out the design of their bodies.

It is true that most people don't think of chastity or fidelity as virtues and have lost touch with the inner workings of the heart, but that doesn't mean we give up, give in and join the crowd.

An indication to me that people around the world still retain a shadow of understanding of how we are made are the K-Dramas I so enjoy and Bollywood movies like Veer Zaara (which I just caught and loved).

These shows are hits with audiences the world over for they speak of a selfless, unconsummated love that sees the lovers go through hell and back, sacrificing much for love before they finally come together in marriage.

Lovers like Veer and Zaara bring a nobility to love that leaves the audience weeping for we all want a self-sacrificing love like that: rare and precious, that goes beyond the boundaries of sexual love, meets adversity with courage and fortitude, and transcends time and social divide.

So don't settle for less. Uphold and exceed the beauty of your designed humanity. Forget about the rules and love as you were created to love.

In this personal journey you will find the true meaning of life.

* Read about studies that show a 100% success rate: http://www.physiciansforlife.org/content/view/192/36/

The Little Way

This weekend the Church of Saint Teresa celebrated the feast day of our patroness, Saint Therese of Lisieux for her feast day falls on October 1.

She is a saint after my own heart for she was well aware of her own imperfections and limitations but offered wholeheartedly to Jesus her littleness and poverty.

Saint Therese is the originator of "The Little Way" which, 138 years later, we are able to imitate and offer up whatever little we have in simplicity and love, knowing God is pleased even with the minuteness of the gift.

A young of girl of 15 who knew exactly what she wanted, she entered the cloistered Carmelite community in Lisieux, but barely before a decade was up, she died of tuberculosis at the tender age of 24, suffering greatly the last 18 months of her life.

I like that she was girly girl - over-sensitive, needy and weepy - and yet, it was her child-like love for Jesus that was her strength: she was trusting and obedient in everything she did and became known as The Little Flower of Jesus.

Despite her youth and simplicity, Saint Therese is one of 33 Doctors of the Church, and one of three woman, the other two being Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint Catherine of Siena, all recognized for having contributed significantly to theology or doctrine.

Hers is a spirituality that is easy to relate to and aspire toward: “Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.”

One of my favourite quotes of hers is: "I will spend my heaven doing good on earth." Simple yet so profound.

I used to wonder how a cloistered nun who did not live very long became the co-patron saint of missionaries (with Saint Francis Xavier) until I read that it was her desire to be a missionary but because of ill health, she was unable to do anything about it except pray for her missionary brothers and sisters in the far corners of the world.

She reminds me that the desires God plants in our hearts may not always take the conventional route, that there may be obstacles, physical limitations, but we should not give up, and instead, get creative.

Dreams become  reality only when we refuse to let them die, but at the same time, remain open to new possibilities of making them happen.

So when life gets overwhelming and you feel like you are at a dead end, ask for the courage and creativity of the young Saint Therese and imitate her Little Way.

Little by little, you will find a way.

Saving faith

Faith is a gift. But like many things we receive for free, it is not accorded the full appreciation it deserves. It is taken for granted and treated with profanity until it is subverted and sometimes even lost.

Being a cradle Catholic, I never appreciated the gift of my faith and saw it as a burden and even the abuse of my human rights: how could my parents have arranged for my baptism when I was merely 12 days old and in no position to give an opinion?

I believed in the idea of God but I didn't know Him at all. I saw organized religion as outdated and oppressive, and made no effort to go beyond the rudiments of childhood Catechism.

The sacrament of reconciliation was an invasion of my privacy for why should I tell my deepest, darkest sins to a human stranger who although a representative of God was still a man?

Prayer was an arduous duty. The Bible was filled with images of a strange, unfathomable God and a bunch of sinful losers - not a riveting read at all.

No pre-marital sex. No contraception. No divorce. Come on, we were living in the 20th century! I was a product of the 80s and believed in personal freedom as the supreme right of my humanity which ran right smack into the forbidding pillars of Scripture and Tradition.

Stories and bad personal experiences of religious who were less than holy further fuelled my cynicism and justified my belief that organized religion was a crock.

I checked out for 20 years although I dutifully went to church every Sunday for many wrong reasons save one: deep down I was desperate that God would throw me a lifeline even though I was drowning in a sea of misery, beyond redemption.

I did not reckon for the strength of purpose of the Good Shepherd and when I finally looked up and found Him (He had found me a long time ago and was just waiting for me to see Him holding out His arms to me), I knew I was home at last when I walked right into His embrace.

As Saint Augustine once said, "God who created you without you will not save you without you."

Learning to walk in my new-found faith was difficult and painful, but exhilarating and joyous at the same time.

I was constantly awed at the beauty and wisdom I found in all things RC even as I grappled with how I could incorporate the moral truths I discovered into my own life.

The "rules" were God-inspired and came alive when I tried them on for size and lived them out for an extended period of time even when I wasn't yet fully convinced of their veracity.

I was also appalled at how ignorant I was, and at how I had taken my faith so lightly for so long.

On reading Scott and Kimberly Hahn's journey to Catholicism in Rome Sweet Home I was humbled and heartened at the same time.

Humbled at the depth of their faith and heartened that God could inspire such passionate advocates.

Here were two staunch, good Christians, actively living out their faith, but because of Scott Hahn's thirst for truth, the "Bible detective" came to the realization that the Catholic Church was the one, true church and not the "whore of Babylon" he had been led to believe.

The challenged faith of this former Protestant minister saw him enrolling in a Catholic university and defending the Catholic faith against Catholics, irony of ironies, before he finally arrived home in the Catholic Church.

His and his wife's faith journey was one of copious tears, deep conflict, pain and much soul-searching. They lost friends and a promising future of their dreams. There was division in the marriage and both must have experienced great confusion amidst the increasing conviction of a new paradigm of truth.

Yet their faith never wavered and they both tirelessly and assiduously searched for the truth until it blossomed and became inscribed in their hearts.

As I continue to fertilize and water my faith, I can only wish for half their enthusiasm and diligence in cultivating a living and transforming faith.

Another hero of mine in keeping the faith and staying the course is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit who was also a man of science and a brilliant academic. He refused to abandon his faith and chose obedience to a church that condemned his writings and silenced him (his books were banned and he could not teach) during his lifetime. His was a faith beyond human understanding, just like Christ.

May I become an ardent and wise defender of the Truth as the Hahns, with the fortitude of de Chardin so as not to profane my gift of faith (ever again) and I urge all Catholics to ask for a "faith-seeking understanding" when it comes to the teachings of the Magisterium before making the decision to walk away from the goodness and beauty of Roman Catholicism.

Faith is only as powerful a redemptive blessing, deep and fruitful, as you will allow.