In Its Time

The World Cup euphoria is slowly dissipating and life returns to normal and wives get to get back their husbands (though for some, I wonder if they really want to... ;-))

As the dust settles, I face the prospect of the usual mundane and ordinariness begin to rear its head again. Not that this is bad or something to avoid. It simply indicates that after all that dreaming and desiring of wanting to be someone or in acquiring something we want most, reality says otherwise and the fact of the matter is we are human, having our inadequacies and mortality to grapple with and that we may need to find our true self in this ordinariness.

As I was sitting on the presider's chair during Mass this evening, with the sunlight slicing through the window that landed on my face, I saw my reflection on the marble support of the altar facing me. It was a strange image of light and shadow. Half of my face was in shadows while the other half was discernible and the rest of my body with the chasuble was obscured into the shadows, blending with the darker colours of the altar making me look like some poor haunted being lost in between heaven and hell. As I look at it a while, I was reminded of my frailties and that for all the ordination implies, there is no guarantee as it requires my own decision to cooperate fully in all this.

This mortality and fragility were further underscored when I had to celebrate the memorial mass, after this same evening Mass later, of a parishioner who died suddenly in another country. The suddenness of his death leaving behind his wife and a young daughter makes all this rather tragic and wasteful. To question 'why? ' seems rather pointless even, because there is no answer to it all. I don't even know if what I had shared during the homily had made any sense or soothed the pain that is acutely present.

You would think that after three years in this ministry that can claim to have seen all kinds and experience all extremes, I will be sufficiently formed or train to be in tuned with all these. Far from it! Usually, I am left always feeling like a haunted being between heaven and hell... :P

Times like this, I can certainly understand fully what Corrine May means when she says:

To find an answer,

To get through it all

I just fall on my knees and I try to pray

In the silence I can hear Him say

The river runs and the river hides

Out to the ocean and under the sky

I promise you, the answer will come

Hold on to patience and watch for the sign

Everything in its time

(Everything With Its Time, Safe In A Crazy World album)