Merry Christmas!

Crop of original painting "Anbetung der Hirten" (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On this special day, I wish all readers and people of good will a blessed and holy Christmas and may God's blessings of peace and joy be unto you all!

Bless Me Father

Confession (Photo credit: Lawrence OP)

When I sit by the confessional booth, awaiting the next penitent. As with each waiting, I wonder if the penitents know the following: there is no such thing as a “bad” confession as long as you’ve come to the Sacrament with a contrite heart.

Happy Commenting!

I must be getting really old. Anyway, I am actually one year shy off half a century. So, I am halfway there!

Why this observation or this thought out loud? For a good while, since using this customized template, I was trying to figure out how to enable my comments to be used by anyone, who do not need to be a Google+ member.

I didn't realise that I just had to untick my Google+ comment setting. *shake head*

So, go ahead. Make my day and comment away (but be civil)!

(by the way, no harm being a Google+ member...)

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O dear...

English: Jesus Christ - detail from Deesis mosaic, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I looked at the calendar today and noted that it is the coundown towards Christmas and the appearance of the O Antiphons.

Today's being O Lord or O Adonai. In our Church's liturgical prayer of the Divine Office, the antiphons show themselves prior to and after the recitation of the Magnificat during the Evening Prayer (Vespers). But I wonder if the celebration of Christmas all this while really celebrates the Lordship of Christ as it really should....

I think the latest Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, can offer us a direction in this.

Time: Man of the Year 2013

Yes, still in Kajang.

I fired up the iPad and headed straight for the Zite app, a news reader. A few flipped pages and my eyes came across a pleasantly surprising news spread: Pope Francis is Time's Man of the Year.

"It's about time! (no pun intended)", I exclaimed under my breath. Some may not be agreeable with this but I believe this is one way for the Catholic Church to engage the world without at the same time compromising her stand. Perhaps it is the way, for now, to be in the world yet not of the world which our Holy Father, Pope Francis, can afford. Our Holy Father certainly did not ask for this honour but that it was given nonetheless by one of the world's leading international magazine is a feat worth paying attention since his papacy began. He follows in the footsteps of blessed Pope John Paul II who won Time's Man of the Year in 1994.

Christmas Break...

Christmas decorations (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you have been wondering what has gone on with this blog, it juts went into a rather long extended hiatus due to many distractions and other work related activities which took my main attention.

Among the many distractions were the renovation at my current that took away, for a while, all forms of communicating on the Net, i.e. phone lines and the Internet connections. We are currently displaced from our usual abode of Block A to  Blocks B and C. I am now currently residing temporarily in Block C and after a few weeks of shifting, packing and unpacking.

Christmas Greet!

Image via Wikipedia

Joyous and Blessed Christmas and compliments of the season. May your New Year be also filled with God's grace of peace and joy!


Will be back in a few days time!

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Oh, O!

Image via Wikipedia

The countdown is slowly getting us to the Christmas event and during this week it is being rung, not by silver bells, but by the O Antiphons.

If you go to the link from Wikipedia, you will get the whole description on what we are encountering here. So, since the 17th of this month, we have seen Wisdom (Sapientia), Lord (Adonai), Root of Jesse (Radix Jesse), and today, it is Key of David (Clavis David). These are excellent items you can use for your Advent reflections as we get closer towards Christmas. If you don't also already know, these antiphons are embedded in a very fitting way in a hymn which you may have already sung it at Masses during this period, or perhaps last Sunday recently: O Come, O Come Emmanuel.

Being here in Kajang, everything seems to have slowed down. Unlike in Singapore, where everything seems rushed, I can now really feel time slowing down as I savour the seconds and minutes passing by. I don't have to worry much about the next appointment or activity to be done, as there are none here now. So, for now, it is a slow burn towards Christmas with the Antiphons.

Meantime, do keep in your prayers for Deacon David Arulanatham who was recently ordained to the diaconate in his parish in Klang (Malaysia). Deacon David finished his priestly formation recently this year in the SFX Major Seminary, Singapore and will be serving the Archdiocese of Kuala Lumpur in his parish at Klang. He is among the batch of Malaysians who are studying in the Singapore seminary and has now finished and moved on towards the priestly ministry. His priesty ordination is expected to be in mid-January next year! Praise be to God!

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The Real Stuff

Image via Wikipedia

"... the best way to maintain a spirit of love is to give beyond yourself. Find a place to give a little of your money, find a place to give a little of your time. It's amazing how much Christ comes back to you when you do that."

Sarah Hart on her latest Christmas album "This Winter's Eve"

Sometimes when you come once again back to the season of Advent and then moving into Christmas, you can get this lazy and, perhaps, a little lost feeling that nothing seems to have changed and there seems no use to continue to welcome this celebration any more.

This is not surprising if we just look at all those secular activities associated with this season as thought Christmas is all only about shopping, Santa, silver bells, snow, tree, lights, Orchard Road, or even carols. When we start going down that way, then it is no wonder it could end up being the same old, same old. This is also giving in to the sentiment of secularists or even atheists who see all this as necessary fluff to feel good about something and nothing else.

The season and celebration of Christmas is much, much more than those shopping bags, presents, lights and glitter that usually crowd out the real message, which, by the way, is a radical and rallying call to claim our identity and true calling as children of God, that we belong to one another, and not slave of the material world and all the sins that ensue in our fallen nature.

"... in truth and the heavenly reality, which is so different from our reality, all is well because God has kissed the world and said 'I love you and here's My gift for you, My gift of eternal life through My son."

Sarah Hart on the song All is Well in This Winter's Eve.

The real Christmas message always continues to ring out tall and imposing because it is about our Father in heaven who came down to us to take us up to Him to see and enjoy His love that none in this world can ever hope to give or achieve. But because we always think less of ourselves we shoot for the second best or anything else, we are always finding our glasses half-filled and therefore always lacking. This is even in spite if the assurance of His son, Jesus Christ, who said, "I come to give you life, life to the fullest".

"For my husband and me, I wanted to paint that picture of . . . bringing our sacrament back to the manger year after year, turning to Christ with our brokenness in our hands and saying, 'Lord, continue to help us. Bless us and walk with us on this path of marriage. We come here to remember where love comes from. It comes from You. Please bless us with one more year of love for each other in our love for You."

Sarah Hart

One of the powerful symbols that continue to carry us into the mysterious embrace of the Incarnation, which is what Christmas is all about, would be the crib and in the Nativity scene. Its very setting is more than enough to tell us that our faith is not of this world and will never seat well with fluffy and light-headed sentiment that knows not the very presence and power of God, in the, ironically, vulnerable and lowly stable, whose occupants include an oxen and an ass.When we do find ourselves in front of a Christmas crib, we should allow the setting there tell us something about ourselves and how much we may need to amend  in order to accept the infant Christ child into our lives today, so that real transformation can take place. I pray that all married couples do take this opportunity to bring their sacrament back to the manger for their love to grow deeper, for that is what the Lord wants.

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Kajang Advent

Image by Ryekatcher via Flickr

Greetings from Kajang!

I am back with my parents and siblings in the quiet town of Kajang just outside of KL. I have also to contend with my nephews and nieces who see me once a year and always make friends more with my iPad than with me..

So far, it has been peaceful and not as hectic when I am in Singapore, which of course has a different surrounding to it all. Here, everything else is slowed down by a factor of 50, at least. That's because I don't go anywhere else nor find myself rushing for anything.

We are also on the second last leg of Advent and Christmas will soon be upon us. Before anyone knows it, another new year will begin and the cycle wil begin again. Will be the same as previous years? Have we done anything to sufficiently make us truly a newer and better person in God's eyes? Are we any closer to fulfilling our responsibility being persons who are sensitive to the presence of God in all things, in events, and in the seeming coincidences that occur in our lives and in our worlds, coincidences that point to the activities of God in our lives and in our world?

Not easy questions to answer. Yet, important ones that will certainly determine the kind of person we will turn out as we come face-to-face with the new year.

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Real Seasons Greetings...

Image via Wikipedia
Here are some more insightful articles to check up on, in our journey to get a grip on where our faith is taking us and, how, we as Catholics ought to carry ourselves:

Raging Mirth
Christmas Back in Christ
Questioning God
How Not To Fail Your Children

Those above are good meditational pieces do be done in front of the Christmas crib. Enjoy!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Blessed and Holy Christmas!

Image via Wikipedia
Some fireworks and sounds of crackers can be heard going off in the distance. It is a little after midnight

Merry Christmas everyone and do have a meaningful and fruitful celebration of it for the festivities and season ahead! After all, we have 12 days to thoroughly enjoy them all.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Like Ice Cream and Peanut Butter...

Image via Wikipedia
From Anon

------
hi fr aloy..

just my thoughts.. what do you think of our way of life in sinagpore? are we pursing recklessly? meaning excessive materialism, selfish culture, addictions of all kinds.. seems to be we are quite close but yet to this "culture of death"? than life.. look at it.. sinagpore seem to have all the ingredients of it.. high abortion rates, excessive materialism, quite high divorce rates.. etc..
While we may progress materially, our life esp morals is decaying day by day..
to me while economic growth is good.. but too much of it is bad enough yr thoughts?
blessed X'mas
tks

anonymous...

----

We are on the threshold of Christmas and tomorrow (or in the night closer to midnight) we will be celebrating the wonder of God's gift onto the world and the birthday of Our Lord and Saviour.

In the midst of the preparations and the festivities that follow, there will always be that niggling thought like anonymous above which can have us pause a little to question the very nature of our being.

Perhaps the following may give us that pause or two. This was written in the heart of 'evil' itself in the early 1940s and during the Advent season, as the writer considered the actions of man in the grip of arrogant power:

"[We] have stood on this earth in false pathos, in false security; in our spiritual insanity we really believed we could, with the power of our own hand and arm, bring the stars down from heaven and kindle flames of eternity in the world. We believed that with our own forces we could avert the dangers and banish night, switch off and halt the internal quaking of the universe. We believed we could harness everything and fit it into a final order that would stand.

Here is the message of Advent: Faced with him who is the Last, the world will begin to shake. Only when we do not cling to false securities will our eyes be able to see this Last One and get to the bottom of things. Only then will we be able to guard our life from the frights and terrors into which God the Lord has let the world sink to teach us, so that we may awaken from sleep, as Paul says, and see that it is time to repent, time to change things..." (Rev Fr Alfred Delp, s.j.)

The Jesuit Rev. Alfred Delp wrote those words from his prison cell shortly before the Third Reich executed him for resistance to Hitler's regime. His words are still very prophetic today, for even if that regime is no longer in existent today, ironically, its very ideology and attitude is now prevalent like ice-cream and peanut butter.


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Is This Too Much To Ask?

Image by Annoysius via FlickrSo, here we are onwards to Christmas and in the midst of the 4th Week in Advent.

From the comments in the previous entry, there seemed to be some varied response to the question 'All I Want For Christmas...' There were also other silent and unmentioned responses, which I am sure are still out there within the hearts and minds of those silent observers who frequent this dubious blog.

For all, here is my own take to that query.

What I want for Christmas is to regain the sense of awe and wonder to the beauty, greatness and mystery of this world that can open up all our inner senses to that glory and mystery of the divine, whom we as Christ followers call God and Father. There. I finally got that off my chest.

This is no small matter. Let me explain.

In April 19, 2005, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was elected the 265th successor of Peter, bishop of Rome and head of the universal Church. He was elected by his fellow cardinals, many of whom representing countries like Argentina, India and Nigeria, who would prefered someone more progressive who can modernize traditional Christian doctrines and to emphasize social issues, but decided in the end, to put in someone who earned a reputation for defending the traditional teachings of the Church and for emphasizing the priority of "right worship" of God as a way towards building a just human society.

Why did this happen? Here is where it gets interesting. Over the past 30 years or so, not only the cardinals who elected Ratzinger as Pope, but many Catholics and other men and women of goodwill around the world, have come to agree with Benedict that the greatest 'crisis' facing the Church and the world is the "absence of God" - a culture and way of life without any transcendent dimension, without any orientation toward eternity, toward the sacred, toward the divine. Benedict' solution to this is simple: the world needs the presence of God!

Benedict was elected by his fellow cardinals, including those from very poor countries, because they agreed with him for a need of a Pope who could preach the priority of God, and in doing so, lay the only secure foundation for a just society.

When reading his memoirs or autobiography, you will come to encounter Benedict as a man who sees the world and everyday life with a sense of wonder, as if all things are crisscrossed with hints and "traces" of God. In this attitude, is Benedict's great message: the world is a sacrament - an "outward" sign of the "inward" reality of God's love and that man would only be happy when he recognizes the primacy of God in his life and in the entire world.

That is what I am asking - reclaim our spiritual senses that will put us right back on track towards all clear understanding of the meaning of life and our ultimate destiny.

(sources from Let God's Light Shine Forth: The Spiritual Vision of Pope Benedict XVI, editor Robert Moynihan)

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Disconnected

There is always something nostalgic about heading back to places that you have been before when you were growing up. It shows up the timeline of one's history over the years and how these places have, in one way or another, shape one's life to who one is today

That is the general feeling I usually get when I get back to Malaysia during my leave to be with my kin and family. Such visits isn't always full of excitement and rah-rah fun all the time, as it can be interspersed with some amount of quiet and slow moments, even boredom too. Nonetheless, it is the very act of getting connected with my roots and the echoes of the past that always impressed upon me that I had came from somewhere and now with what I had undergone and experienced, to move towards a future to bring about something worthwhile and good to the world, whatever that may be

There is, however, a little side-effect from it all. It is the realisation that I don't really belong fully to this place anymore and will once again get disconnected whenever I get back to Singapore. That means letting go, of sorts, family and friends who are still around to carry on with their lives as I deal with what is in store for me in my life in the island state.

It's this strange feeling of carrying two different and unique countries in me...

What Beautiful?!

Image via Wikipedia

The FIFA World Cup is in full swing and despite the newly acquired Astro channels at home now, with their televising of all the games, I haven't been taken of all by the hype and excitement of the beautiful game thus far. A few have asked me earlier as to which team I would like to see win the Cup and my answer was "whomever that wins the final, lah!"

The so-called 'beautiful game' has become, for me, quite a plain and tasteless affair. There is more talk concerning the game engineered by what money can produced, rather than the pure human spirit and skills which drives the passion towards greater heights. Of course, not all teams can boast such technology and skills which money can provide, so it is really the underdogs that I really look out for. Since, they do not have that edge over the superior teams, if such an underdog do win the Cup, that would certainly be the beautiful game!

Gimme A Break!

Image via Wikipedia

Here I am now, in Kajang. I am on my 2-week leave and away from the parish and the craziness that is of parish life.

It is a different perspective altogether to be away from one's responsibilities and from the unconscious need to be in control of things and making sure that things run accordingly (as best a sone can do so). First, there is this great feeling of not having to carry any burden of responsibilities for the moment and to be free form any expectations (one's own and other people's).

I just enjoy the moment as it comes along and get in touch once again with my family members (parents, siblings, nephews, nieces, relatives) many of whom I get to see only once a year, back in Malaysia, and only during my leave such as this. The rhythm and pace may be slower and much different than in Singapore, but it does offer good breathing space to recoup one's thoughts and brings about much more opportunities for some needed recollection and consolidation of my life thus far.

In short, to quote Kenneth Grahame, "... the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working."

Last Night - Give and Take

Image via Wikipedia

Last night in Kajang...

Went for supper with my parents, my sister, her husband and and her two kids over at a HK Cafe type eatery in Kajang town. Took in a bit of the night life around the place and downed a 'Yin Yong' HK style drink which is another fancy name for a beverage mixture of tea and coffee.

Since being here at my parent's place, besides managing to enjoy the flavours of home, I have also had the chance to catch up on several movies which I have missed during my sojourn in Rome: The Andromeda Strain, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (ya, still having a bit of a child in me!), Alvin and the Chipmunks (I can't resist this funny Christmas piece), Death Race, Babylon A.D. and City of Ember, among other distractions.

While being here in this part of Malaysia, I have come to a conclusion that there is some kind of law that takes place under our noses where we don't pay much attention to. I call this the law of give-and-take.

I always feel that coming back to Malaysia sort of takes one into a jerky sort of a ride and atmosphere, where things don't usually run in an orderly fashion one is usually used to, say in Singapore. Which brings me to Singapore. It is too orderly and its ride is more of a smooth and logical manner. And I haven't even gone into the pace of work yet. Still, one doesn't necessary trumped the other. They both have their pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses. While being jerky can grate at your nerves, it also puts you up on alert for anything that may go wrong and you would be prepared for it, sort of. The smooth way tends to make you too complacent and you may forget what you are here for. In order to take those two in without going crazy come the law I mentioned earlier. Without giving and taking between the two, you will end up being all hot under the collar over nothing and stressing yourself out.

It's not a perfect law and can fall apart under more closer scrutiny. But, hey, perhaps it is only me.

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Soaking In the Holiday Mood...

Lots of durians! There were rambutans too! Home cooked food as my mum makes them! Local teh halia, and other delicacies! That is how my stay at Kajang has been thus far. :-) The whole scene and ambience here is a little different than in Singapore in that, you can still get a little of that 'cowboy-town' feeling in this place with its rather messy way of how things run around here. :-D

The whole time I was here, the need to go and do things or rushing around were practically no-existent as I soaked in the R&R of this place. This evening, I went out together with my youngest brother's family and my parents to tuck in some steamboat items. It wasn't too bad and my nephews were their usual naughty self. I got to see my niece for the first time after about a year and a half and she was shy and still trying to get use to my presence.

So far, the vacation has been very pleasant and slow moving enough that everything here seems to be on slow-motion! :-D

Faaiiilll....

Image via Wikipedia

I am off for a short break in Malaysia visiting my parents, siblings and nephews and nieces over at Kajang, while savouring the local treats there and being away from the bustle of parish work for a week. This is a needed real time-off after my return from Rome and into a more stressless situation where I can enjoy a relaxing experience akin to watching the sun set. :-)

In the meantime, during my stay here at IHM, I managed to get a new line and a handphone to go with it. I earlier had that done online through Starhub but underwent many silly and unnecessary difficulties with it that in the end, I finally drop that order and went to do it personally through the service centers over at Heartland Mall instead. But I was so disappointed with Starhub and the way things turned out that I deliberately went over to Singtel to get my line and handphone instead. Not that Singtel was the perfect telco but I felt that Starhub could do better with dealing in my online order which had me jumping through many hoops like a circus animal and not getting anything done properly in the end. Part of the problem was the information concerning registered address (on my IC) and the delivery address which I gave as at IHM.

The registered address was still at Holy Family, Katong and I did not make any changes yet since I came into IHM. My stay here is still uncertain and I was in loath to make changes to my IC for the time being. When they insisted (for security reasons), I had to go to the NPC to make the necessary changes. Due to a change in the ruling for making changes in IC, which took effect this year, I had to endure another merry-go-round before I could get things done. But, in the end, it was still all for naught. You know the end story and I am now a Singtel customer. I give the online sales system of Starhub, in this instance, an F for faiiilll.

Which brings me to this very fascinating principle of life which functions heavily in any business enterprise: I don't trust you!

If there is such trust, we would not be going around signing things on any documents, rubber stamping our lives away and seeking paper assurances that we will fulfil our part of the bargain for any product, be it an item(s) or service(s) we purchased. Furthermore in order to be efficient or productive, checks are also in place to ensure that order, and not chaos, reigns. Also, in wanting to keep customers within their grasp a little longer, the telcos always lock their customers in a phone plan that obliges them to remain in their system for at least 2 years. In business sense, these are all legitimate and natural. However, all these can also create a certain sense of obstacle or psychological barrier that puts people (like myself in this case) off in having to bear with such 'nonsense'.

This is the price we pay in being super efficient, I guess.

However, it is the trust issue that is the crux of the matter here. This would be entirely different with our relationship with God. Here we are not dealing with a thing or a service. We are dealing with our Father who delivers what He promises, albeit in His own time. He doesn't impose or forces himself upon us by locking us into any 'plan'. Instead He gives us the freedom to experience all the possibilities that life offers for us to make up our own minds about what we want to do with them.

If we usually fail to trust ourselves and each other in our lives we see unfolding before us, it would be a good time now to begin to learn how to trust in God first and from there be able to see how we can translate that to a better way of handling trust in real life.