Energizer Bunny - Going on and on...

"You should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds" - Eph 4:22-23

"Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God's upward calling, in Christ Jesus" - Phil 3:13-14

At yesterday's Holy Hour, while I was reflecting on these 2 passages, somehow I thought of the Energizer Bunny Advertisement, where the Bunny powered by Energizer batteries goes on and on and on... And I was just thinking of how wonderful that promise of Christ to give us that living water that we will not thirst again, bread that we will not hunger. For us when we allow the Spirit to work within us, to change and transform us, we too would be able to go on and on...

So I was quite surprised to see that today's Gospel was just about that, Christ giving us His Body and Blood.

""Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him." - Jn 6:53-54,56

The wonderful gift that our Lord Jesus Christ gave us, His own Body and Blood, that we may receive Him in such a physical and tangible way. Moreover today's challenge for me is to give thanks to Him during mass, to be aware that when I eat His Body and drink His Blood, I have His promise of eternal life. Not my former way of life, but as in the Eph quote above, I may be renewed in the spirit of my mind. That I can go on and on, straining forward to the prize of God's calling, because I am being nourished and energized by His Body, Blood and Spirit.

Darkness & Light, Imprisoned & Free

In today's reading and Gospel, I realised a similarity of the duality of darkness and light, imprisonment and freedom. The Sadducees did not like the apostles going around telling the truth, and tried to control it by having them imprisoned. But God sent His angel to set them free, and we see them teaching early the next morning, in the light of day, in contrast to the darkness of the night in prison.

One thing for me in this retreat, is to look back at the darknesses in my life. Things which I may have been unaware of, or intentionally hidden or pushed aside. To bring to my awareness the broken areas of my life, even things that I might have intellectually justified but have truly distanced myself away from God.

The next thing after the awareness, would be to surrender all these brokeness and sins to the Lord, to set me free from the imprisonment. To acknowledge that the Lord has the power to set me free from our entrapments and that He wants to free me, and to embrace His light. As I shared previously, it is a scary experience, and I think the Gospel verse describes it very well.

"For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. - Jn 3:20"

Sometimes God has already opened the prison door, but it is we ourselves who rather stay in the dark prison. Its like how after watching 2 hours of movie in the cinema, and then coming out to the bright sunlight really hurts our eyes. The thing is that we have to trust God, that He does what is best for us, and if we have to go through that pain, to burn away all our impurities, so that we can be transformed by Him, that is where faith comes in. Faith in the good times, more so in the bad times, and to see the goodness that comes out from the bad times.

My last reflection was whether I can accept that God is setting others free from their prisons. Do I still go to those prisons to look for them, do I still see them as prisoners. So often my prejudices, my first impressions, my images of what others are, prevent me from seeing the light in them, or even worst still, I might prevent them from growing, from being set free. So abstract yet so real. If I am a butterfly, and when I see a caterpillar, and I tell it, you are just a worm, I have forgotten that I was once that "worm", but through metamorphosis, or the Christian term Metanoia, I have transformed. And I must remember what the angel of the Lord told the apostles when they were set free:

"Go and take your place in the temple area, and tell the people everything about this life." - Acts 5:20

Joke - Confession

Now for some light-hearted religious humour ;Þ

Penitent : "Bless me Father for I have sinned, I had dirty thoughts."
Confessor : "Did you entertain the dirty thoughts?"
Penitent : "No Father, the dirty thoughts entertained me."

Retreat - The Dark Night

Retreat has started, and it has certainly been fruitful. Especially since it is continuing along the same line as what I've been sharing in my last few posts - the doubts that I had been having. One thing that I realise I forgot to blog about was the cause of my current state. After reading the book When The Well Runs Dry, I started to question myself.

Which stage of my prayer life am I in?

Is my dryness in prayer due to slackness?

Or is God testing me?

Or is He trying to teach me that consolation is not by my own effort?

Must I really go through the dark night?

Is it the only way?

Do I really love God that much?

Do I really desire to grow closer to Him?

Can't I just keep drawing water from the well?

Like I shared previously of the period of time where I doubted God's existence, did not feel His presence in my life. It was not a feeling that I would want to go through again. And now to tell me that it is waiting for me again, and even worst this time. The first analogy that came to mind was a girl telling the boyfriend, I think we need some time apart, so that our love can deepen. It doesn't make sense. But after thinking about it, that's a bad analogy, because the dark night makes sense in terms of purifying our love and relationship with God, and deepening our faith, but that doesn't make it easier or something to be desired.

So this retreat looks like its going to be good, because in the first talk, our retreat master covered topics like the dark night, our human concept of God and His love differing from Jesus' understanding. How we have to lose God to find God. In one example, he used the story of Nicodemus, how he could not understand what Jesus was saying about being born again of the Spirit. And then we have the example of our Mother Mary, when the angel appeared to her, telling her that she was to conceive, she replied, "How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?". But after that through faith in God, she believed and accepted, and through the Holy Spirit, God was made flesh.

The reason why I say the retreat has been fruitful, is because it is almost spot on with what I'm struggling with. And the retreat master in his sharing of his own life experience, has kinda motivated me to press on, to trust that the Lord will lead me to the dark night, to purify me.

These are recorded so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing this you may have life through his name. - Jn 20:31

Finally, the above verse struck me, the last line from Sunday's Gospel. And this is the purpose for this blog, so that when I do go through that dark night, I hope that I can look back and draw strength from it, and persevere on this lifetime journey.

When The Well Runs Dry

This was supposed to be with the next post, but it became too long, so decided to seperate it.

I recently finished the book When The Well Runs Dry by Thomas Green. It is the follow up of the previous Thomas Green book I posted about - Opening to God. This book is about prayer beyond the beginning. In that post I quoted his example of the father and the baby, and how it is frustrating to crawl again after being carried. Well this book goes on to provide a "map" to what can be expected as a pray-er's prayer life grows.

The first part of the book uses an example from St Teresa of Avila's writings, about us being the gardener watering the garden. The water we use symbolises the joy of our prayer, and the flowers are the virtues in our lives. In the beginning, we draw water from the well with a simple rope and bucket. This is us in the beginning of our prayer life, where prayer is a tiring process and we don't get much water/joy for our efforts. Then as we progress, we are given a pump, which means less effort on our part and more water. The 3rd and 4th stages are water from a stream, and rain. Basically, as we grow in our prayer life and relationship with God. The effort and "labour" on our side decreases, and the joys and consolations increases.

All this is wonderful, and a wonderful motivation for me to continue in my prayer life, knowing that it will be easier and more fruitful as develop my "spiritual muscles". But as the title of the book hints, it does not end there. Thomas Green, calls that stage, moving from Knowing God, to Loving God. The next stage is to move towards Truly Loving God. And this is the part that provided me with much food for thought, leading to much doubt.

In the next stage, the joys we get from prayer are interspersed with times of dryness or desolation. And as we go on, the periods of dryness will get longer, until it becomes the norm. He uses the example of human courtship to parallel this process, we have the initial period, where we Discover more about each other, then the Loving and spending more time together, and then after committing to each other in marriage, comes the Truly Loving, through good times and bad, sickness and health... and living life together, no longer about the thrills and excitement, but just really two becoming one.

Thus this next stage is where our love is purified. The reason why this is necessary is that, our human minds and intellect cannot fully comprehend the love of God, and because of that we limit God and His love in our lives. And it will challenge us to lose our concepts of God and we would doubt His presence by our side. This is the dark night of the senses and soul that St John of the Cross talks about.

This will definitely be a trying time, and he uses very illustrative examples of the potter and the clay, and that of the small child who does not understand the necessity of the pain of surgery to save his life. And it is only when we truly embrace that dark night, and trust in God that our whole being can be transformed.

Lastly, he uses the example of floating to differentiate the different approaches to prayer that we take. While we are so used to being active in our prayer, judging our progress by our own efforts, as a swimmer, we still try to control the direction and the destination. But what we are called to do, is to float, and allow the Lord to guide and bring us to the destination that he chooses. To do nothing gracefully, totally surrendering our will to Him.

I Also Don't Believe

The readings of saturday and sunday keep bringing to mind the theme of unbelief. In Saturday's reading we see the priests, scribes, leaders who despite being amazed at Peter and John, and having no answer for the miracle performed on the crippled man, could not believe in the testimony of Peter and John. Saturday's Gospel strikes even harder, because this time, it is the eleven disciples who do not believe. First when Mary Magdalene said that the Lord was alive and she had seen him. Then the testimony of the two disciples on their way to Emmaus. And we see in Sunday's Gospel, Thomas, in the event which would make him forever associated with "Doubting".

I questioned myself, why am I caught up with the disbelief instead of focusing on the more positive aspects of the resurrection, the wonder of God's power in the healing of the crippled, or the peace and commission given by Jesus to the disciples. And I found the answer in my reflection on thursdays Gospel.

"Why are you so agitated, and why are these doubts rising in your heart?" Lk 24:38

Looking at my previous post put link here, I suddenly realise that there is a pattern. There is a questioning of my faith, my growth, or even my lack of questioning in my life now. Initiated by God, through inspiration by His Word. And I thank Him for that. Even this awareness of myself, I have to be grateful for his soft prompting and Spirit working in me.

Suddenly I recall the last time I went through this process, of doubt, and then of his being by side. On the night of 10 Aug 2002, while in KL, when I was in my "I don't believe that God exists" state. The irritating nagging of my Youthworks friends. Not allowing me to sleep until I talk and express it out. I still thank God for being there for me that night, acting thru them sacrificing their sleep. Thanks guys, really see God acting in you all that night. Of course that is viewed retrospectively, but definitely a big part of my salvation history. Love you all.

Anyway, just reflecting and typing our that last paragraph, has given me strength to carry on. Of course I also draw strength from the scriptures, where if the disciples who also doubted that much, and yet were the same ones who performed that miracle for the cripple, I trust that the Lord is still by my side, and that he will bring me through this, with an increase in my faith.

Talking about doubt and the scriptures, another topic would be the latest buzz around: The Gospel of Judas. It's not that big a thing here in the seminary, maybe because our foundation is so strong here that it is not shaking our faith ;Þ, or more likely it is because we don't have cable here, so did not watch the National Geographic documentary. What we can gather is from the newspapers, and from our scripture professor, but of cos he gives us the Catholic point of view. But what I really want to know is what the people out there are thinking, doubting, questioning on this topic. So if there are any questions that you have or your friends are asking, drop me a comment or email. Also if you know how I can watch the documentary please tell me. Thanks.

P.S. This post and the next few are going to be post-dated, mostly my reflections or things that struck me during the retreat. Hopefully I have time to do them. Now that retreat is over, means that back to studying...Greek and Latin await...

RSS Feeds

Kenneth posted about RSS before, but I recently discovered how it is making my life easier.

Firstly, with RSS, I have been able to keep updated with the different blogs. But I was only able to do this once a week, because we have no internet access in our rooms, and unlike some of the other brothers with laptop, mine is a desktop, so can't just bring it to the internet room to logon. So I check my feed updates during the off days when I go back home. This is a bit troublesome, and also means I read slightly out of date stuff.

But recently, I found out about bloglines from Kenneth, and its just amazing. An online RSS reader, where I can just put in all my feeds, and check it daily like my email. Warning, if you are planning to use it, some knowledge of what feeds are would be useful. The site does help make it easier to add feeds from popular blogsites like blogspot and easyjournal. But for other sites, you need to know the feed URL to add. Or the easiest way is if the blog you are interested in has a link, clicking on it will automatically add it to your bloglines list of feeds. My feed links are at the bottom right.

And my last great discovery, is this website : tapestrycomic.com. It provides feeds to so many comics. I can now get my daily dose of laughter from my favourite comics.