Telling His story in our stories

Today’s Gospel passage is from Luke and it is about two disheartened disciples of Christ, post-crucifixion, walking to Emmaus, who are joined by a Christ they did not recognize. He teases out their stories from them before He proceeds to recount the history of God’s salvific love from the very beginning to the coming of the Messiah and what part suffering would play in the fruition of God’s glory. 

The disciples recognize Jesus only at the breaking of bread and when Jesus disappears from their sight do they finally see the truth of the Risen Christ. With renewed vigour in their hearts, they set out to be with their fellow disciples and to share a new Easter story of encountering the resurrected Christ. 

There are so many lessons to draw from this passage but what Archbishop William Goh shared about how history is a living thing, a integral part of where we come from and who we will become resonated with me.

My story closely woven into the fabric of His story gives my story deeper meaning, especially when I encounter hardship, suffering and loss and see all the bad with the eyes of a disciple who listens to the Teacher tell it like it is: salvation is not without pain, blood must be spilled, death must occur, a willing sacrifice made, and yet, because it is the story of God’s love, there is hope and the birth of a new story, a story of new life, a celebration of eternal glory, not just when we return to Him, but in the here and now. Today, we can rejoice, even in the midst of sorrow or great difficulty. 

The Archie encourages us to use this period of grace as we are forced to stay home, to tell our stories to each other and experience healing. In sharing and making sense of our tears of struggle and pain, we can begin to integrate our experiences into our own life story and the overarching story of salvation, weaving in a rich counterpoint of faith brought to life in real and concrete ways. It is here we can bless others. By being Christ to each other as we offer up our own stories in an ocean of compassionate and connected humanity, we blend our stories harmoniously in an eternal symphony of God’s boundless, merciful and unconditional love. 

So we turn our hearts and faces towards Jesus, listen carefully to His words of wisdom and allow Him to ignite our imaginations and passions so that we will always see Him clearly enough to follow Him with joy in every step.  And we can thus tell His story in our stories.

Hoping in Divine Mercy

It was shortly after my mother has finished her treatment for breast cancer that my parents went on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, Fatima and Medjugorje in 2000, and my father came home transformed. He kept going on about the Divine Mercy devotion and he wanted all of us to pray it. He even wanted to start a prayer group in our parish dedicated to the Divine Mercy. Being a nominal Catholic at the time, and not a fan of devotional prayer, I completely ignored my father. 

In the same year my parents had gone on their pilgrimage, Pope John Paul II instituted the Feast of the Divine Mercy into the liturgical calendar, making the first Sunday after Easter Divine Mercy Sunday. That April, he also canonized Sister Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun who had first received the message to pray for God’s Divine Mercy for the whole world through the chaplet given her at 3am and/or 3pm daily. 

Some 15 years later, when I had a better understanding of what the devotion to the Divine Mercy was, and even prayed the chaplet from time to time (it was shorter than the rosary which made it more attractive to me), I still had not a full appreciation of what God’s Divine Mercy meant in my life. I only began to understand the true depth of Divine Mercy when I met P, my husband. 

It was on Divine Mercy Sunday we had our first date and my conviction began growing exponentially from then that indeed, God’s love and mercy for all humanity, for me personally, is truly boundless. Time and time again, mercy has been shown to me, to us as a couple through courtship into marriage, and through the early days of our marriage till the present time. How else can we, two old fogeys set in our ways, make it work?

We began praying the chaplet daily when we decided to pray the Novena of the Divine Mercy on a Good Friday not long after marriage. Do I believe that prayer can move mountains? Yes, I do. Not only do I believe that praying the chaplet can bring about conversions, save souls, and ease the passage for the dying back to the Father, I believe that praying the chaplet makes me more self-aware, and therefore kinder, more forgiving and a more generous person. Jesus reveals to me whenever I fall short and what I need to do to rectify my selfish behaviour. 

Having had the source and summit of my Christian life (CCC 1324), the Eucharist, taken from me, I am left with my faith intact due in no small part to my disciplines of prayer, especially my devotional prayers of the rosary and the Divine Mercy chaplet. It hasn’t been easy going from daily mass to just spiritual communion but I trust that the Father sees the desires of my heart, all my despair and my sorrow, and helps me transform my deep sense of loss into something unimaginably beautiful. 

I can still evangelize in my cloistered life of the Community Circuit Breaker which began on April 7. My prayer can still change the world; it can still protect loved ones and connect me to others. I can still spread the ‘contagion of hope’ that Pope Francis talked about in his Easter Sunday Urbi Er Orbi message. “Christ, my hope, is risen!” and I have a responsibility to transmit this hope from ‘heart to heart’ as long as I remember what Il Papa said:

Christ’s resurrection is not a “magic formula that makes problems vanish...“it is the victory of love over the root of evil”. This victory “does not ‘by-pass’ suffering and death, but passes through them, opening a path in the abyss, transforming evil into good”. 

A blessed Divine Mercy Sunday, all.

Entering Holy Week

It has been a very different Lenten season in that it is set within a global pandemic that has seen nation after nation locking down entire countries due to the horrendous numbers of people infected with the coronavirus. Healthcare systems are severely overburdened, the number of people dying globally is now over 80,000. 

We are all practising physical distancing and mostly working from home. Life, as we knew it, a scant four months ago, has changed completely and I am not even sure when we can return to what it was or will it ever be the same? I suspect not, for life is meant to change no matter what season of life we are in. Certainly not as drastic as this all the time, one hopes, but well, adapt we must.

I have to say I have struggled with all that has been happening, just seeing so much loss and suffering on a global level: reading about how doctors are forced to triage and let patients die because ICU resources are limited, of bodies littering corridors and streets because there is no more room in hospitals, and the sheer numbers of deaths. Then there is the financial and the social impact this pandemic has had: livelihoods threatened or lost, businesses going bust, domestic violence on the increase... it is just all round bad news, day after day. 

While I could never pretend to understand the depths of despair and the suffering that is being experienced, I have been grieving the losses in a very real way. Oftentimes I just block out the world in order not to feel overwhelmed, especially since there is very little that I can do save praying for the situation, which seems so futile, so hopeless. 

So this has been my biggest challenge over this particular Lenten season, how do I continue to live out my faith, to be life-giving, to bring light into a world filled with such darkness? How do I return to Him, the centre of my universe, and draw on His strength and courage in order to walk forward with hope and joy, and do the little things, live my little life (which has shrunk so dramatically) in meaningful ways? How do I make a difference every day?

I have come to realize that it is still possible to love intentionally, to do His will in all things, to act in His Spirit of generosity and compassion. Despite the great loss of receiving the Eucharist on my tongue, I can still be in spiritual communion and be in a rich, intimate and fulfilling relationship with Jesus as before. In fact, learning new ways of worshipping Him has probably heightened my sense of reverence for the Creator. It requires adaptation and great discipline to be faithful, but it is not impossible. As Saint Paul wrote to the Romans in chapter 8, verse 35: Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. 

Journeying this Holy Week at home may be odd, but I know I can still walk with Him to Calvary, and stand at the foot of the cross, offering up my personal grief and losses, even as I stand in awe, and gratitude, at the ultimate sacrifice He made, the gift of His life, for all humanity out of sheer love.

I will keep praying, I will keep fasting, and I will keep giving alms. Renew my heart, O Lord, let me return to you in new ways so that I may continue to glorify you each day, especially in this Holy Week.