Life - Death

The Devil's Sinkhole, Texas

I just read the latest post of my confrere Fr Luke on his response to the bone marrow transplant via stem cells which almost happened. It certainly was a blow that the donor Canada pulled out at the last minute  from donating her cells. Life can be frustrating indeed. He was that close to getting the needed treatment to curing his leukemia.

Life  is precious and we have people who are doing all they can to remain alive, to get that second chance of living, to seek a new lease of life. On the other extreme spectrum, we have persons who are contemplating suicide or who would actually think about ending one's life - with many and varied reasons, which only they would understand. The differences between these two situations are stark and mind-boggling and certainly cannot find any middle ground.

I struggle with these issues because I, myself, have dealt face-to-face, with persons who doesn't know how to handle the vicissitudes of life and would prefer to 'end it all'. There seems to be a great gulf which exists where reasoning and normal communication doesn't get through to them but falls into that black crevasse of emptiness. I have come to accept that there is only so much of help and assistance that can be done. The rest is up to that person.

On another note, the archdiocese has lost a priest who has returned to the Lord on 1 June, last weekend. The last Fr Alfred Chan died pecefully at the St Theresa's Nursing home at the age of 72. He served his priesthood admirably and he was instrumental in my formation in the seminary when he took me in my first year as a new semianrian, when he was the Initiation Year Director then. I have much to thank him for and for those many others whom he had taken under his wing during his stint in the Seminary, they have become priests who are themselves serving in the archdiocese and doing him proud. The funeral will be at his previous parish where he had served for almost 19 years, Church of the Holy Family. It will be on Wednesday morning, 10.30 a.m., presided by His Grace Archbishop William Goh.