... for the year, that is.

This has been a pivotal year, to say the least. It was characterised by drastic changes in almost every sphere of my life. It brought along with it changes in relationships, daily routines, vocation, work description, and living conditions, among others.

This was 2008 for me in a glance:

• In March, I was received into full communion with the Roman Pontiff and the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil. The rite was called the Rite of Reception into the Full Communion of the Catholic Church.

  
  

• In April, I moved to another rented house a distance away from my previous rented house. This house is bigger and has more space for our utility.

  
  

• In June, I accepted responsibility as a member of the editorial board of Catholic Asian News (CANews) for whom I have written about eight articles to date. CANews is a monthly periodical which discusses contemporary issues confronting the Church, especially in Malaysia.

  
  

• In July, I officially assumed responsibility as Pastoral Associate at my local parish in Seremban.

  
  

• In August, I assumed responsibility as a Resident Researcher at the Kuala Lumpur Archdiocesan Ministry of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs (AMEIA).

  
  

• In August, I was informed that my doctoral dissertation had been passed for the Doctor of Theology degree, marking the fruition of five years of academic research.

  
  

• In December, I made my Temporary Profession into the Ordo Franciscanus Saecularis, an 800 year-old Franciscan Order approved and recognised by the Holy See, which consists of laity and diocesan clergy.

  
  

• I made two nearby overseas trips this year (excluding Singapore). I went to the Quezon City (the Philippines) in August and to Cipanas (West Java, Indonesia) in October.
  

As it is with every year-end, I haven’t the foggiest idea what the new year intends to bring my way. But this year, there has been a very important lesson I have learned which keeps me from being anxious about the future.

It is this: that I am God’s beloved. That no matter what happens, no matter where life takes you, and no matter what complications in life confound you, God sets His eyes on you and never loses sight of your life. In all that happens, good and seemingly bad, He hasn't lost control.

And no matter what resolutions and aspirations you carry with you into the new year, there is nothing you can do to make God love you more than He already does. Beyond all your aspirations for performance and dreams you seek to attain, you are God’s beloved, and that’s all that matters.

Here’s wishing you a traditional Gaelic blessing as you step into the year 2009:

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

(Note: To keep track of my 2009 schedule, refer here.)

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I saw the following sign outside a public toilet at a foodcourt in Melaka:

And oh yes, a Belated Merry Christmas to All!

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Our understanding of the nature of theology will affect our understanding of the nature of dialogue. And our understanding of the nature of dialogue will affect the manner in which we choose to dialogue with other religions / worldviews / value systems.

I think Liberation Theology must go back to examine its understanding of the nature of theology before it realises it has gone too far in its dialogue with other religions / worldviews / value systems. Dialogue should not be about negotiating compromises. When one’s faith distinctives have to be compromised in the course of dialogue, then the act of dialogue itself is rendered redundant.

Liberation Theology also needs to understand that just because people do not agree with its brand of liberation does not mean that people have no concern for the oppressed and the marginalised.

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This is as close as I'll ever get to looking like Harry Potter.

Mum, I've just won the Quick-Ditch Cup!

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Christian Identification with Immigrants


Sherman Kuek, SFO
Published in Catholic Asian News
(December 2008 / January 2009 Issue)

“...[F]or you yourselves were once aliens in Egypt” (Leviticus 19.34).

This was God’s justification to Israel for why they were obligated to accord alien residents in their midst with dignity equal to their own (Leviticus 19.33-34). For they, like the current alien residents living in their midst, were once aliens in somebody else’s land.

But now that they had been delivered from the horrors of several hundred years of sojourn in Egypt, God knew that they could all too easily forget the centuries of torment and oppression they had suffered under the hands of the Egyptians. Israel was, after all, a rather forgetful people. And if they had forgotten that they too were once aliens – pendatang – they would eventually forget to treat aliens in their midst in the way they themselves had desired to be treated in the land of Egypt.

For this reason, when God was educating these previously enslaved people on how they were to live as a free people in the wilderness under His divine tutelage, He also reminded them to be utterly kind to the aliens in their midst, “for you yourselves were once aliens in Egypt”. More than just being superficially kind to them, Israel was required to treat aliens in their midst as though they were one of them, “native-born”, equally loved as the Israelites themselves.

A FAITH OF IMMIGRANTS
These instructions from God were more than just a brief reminder to His people. Much more than that, it had formed the entire locus of Israel’s relationship with God upon their deliverance from Egypt. Their obedience towards Him and His commands were premised upon His having been their Deliverer. Even for religious Jews today, these words – “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt” – constitute the very first of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20.2-17; Deuteronomy 5.6-21). All the subsequent commandments derive their significance from this first commandment to remember where they came from.

This faith of the Israelites formed the roots from whence came the Christian faith. And hence, just as they were called to remember, so are we. We are required to call to mind the historical realities of our identity as a People of God that our faith is a faith of immigrants. It is a faith of a delivered people.

If God had not delivered us from our sins, we would not have become a people properly belonging to Him. But just as this deliverance would have been extremely difficult for later generations of Israelites to remember, let alone identify with, it is also something difficult for many second-, third-, and fourth-generation Christians to remember. And without this remembrance, obedience to God’s commands may appear “senseless” at some point.

So we are told to remember that the Christian faith – salvation history – is one that is fraught with various events of immigrations; some forced, others voluntary, and yet others divinely instructed. These immigrations very often took place with the Israelites as refugees fleeing either famine, enslavement, or slaughter. And because our faith is a faith of immigrants, God deems it fit that we should know how to treat aliens in our midst. All aliens are to be treated not as pendatang (aliens), but as orang asal (native-born); because we too come from a religious lineage of pendatang, but were delivered by a God who had saved us and given us birth-rights equivalent to that of the orang asal.

But there is another sense in which we are still called to be aliens. We are told in the New Testament that we still have not arrived at where we truly belong, that we are still “aliens and strangers” in this foreign land that we call the world (1 Peter 2.11).

Of course, some of us are so rooted in the scheme of life in this world that our way of life does not even remotely resemble the life of “aliens”. We look just like any other resident of the world, other than that we are regular participants at the weekly Masses in our parishes. Once again, we are asked to call to mind our real identities – we came from a spiritual lineage of immigrants, and we are still asked to live our lives in this present world order as immigrants because we do not belong here.

It is such a struggle having to live as spiritual immigrants, isn’t it?

IDENTIFYING WITH IMMIGRANTS
If at all anyone is able to identify with the plight of the immigrants in our midst, it should be the Christians. The reason for this, as has been explained, is that we have come from a spiritual lineage of immigrants and are ourselves also called to be immigrants in this present scheme of things.

Just as we struggle to preserve our Christian identities in a world which threatens to erode every fabric of our faith, we are called to identify with the painful struggles of immigrants who endeavour to sustain their identities in a society which threatens to obliterate their unique ethnicities by failing to honour their uniqueness. Just as we strive to uphold Christian values in a world that jeopardises our morality, we are called to identify with their intense battles to secure their traditional values in an unfamiliar environment that seems to propagate otherwise.

As people of an immigrant faith, sojourners and aliens in the world, we are reminded to look forward to a future “destination” where we can one day exist in full union with God. Similarly, the immigrants around us have a vision of a desired future “destination” (strangely, many have seemed to indicate that this future destination is called “America”, the land of opportunities!) Even if we may hold that this notion is misperceived, there is a point at which we can identify with their aspirations for a better future. The sense of being on a dynamic journey towards a desired future is something we can connect with.

But just as we are prone to forgetting our imminent future because of routinal distractions, the aliens in our midst too are prone to forgetting their future aspirations, especially when they have been rooted in their interim countries for too long. If we were to hang around these immigrant communities often enough, especially those of the refugees, we would probably hear them reminding one another frequently to not get overly comfortable with the way things were because there was a better future towards which they should press on. But essentially, both they and we struggle with the sense of inertia when bogged down by certain regular routines.

The Christian obligation to identify with and provide care for the aliens in our midst – in full awareness of its accompanying risks – does not stem from a notion of exhibiting a simplistic “Christian niceness”. This obligation is rooted in the reality of God’s love for all humanity, even (or rather, especially) for the outcasts, aliens and strangers. For this reason, a serious assessment of Scriptural evidence regarding aliens and strangers consistently points to the need for a compassionate response from the Christian community.

If we were to take the time to reflect further on this issue, we would certainly discover more points of convergence between the Christian experience of sojourning in this world as “strangers and aliens” and the immigrant experience of subsisting in foreign land. And that would perhaps help us to recover God’s call for us to “treat resident aliens as though they were native-born and love them as [ourselves]” (Leviticus 19.34).

For at the heart of the matter, as we should have come to realise by now, we ourselves are not very much different after all.

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The Church's Teaching on Human Dignity


Sherman Kuek, SFO
Published in Catholic Asian News
(December 2008 / January 2009 Issue)

The dignity of the human person forms the most basic premise of the Church’s social teaching. It is the key which unlocks what has come to be known as the Church’s “best kept secret” or “buried treasure”.

The Church, having a moral vision for society, has deemed it fit to begin her teaching with an affirmation of the sanctity of human life and the dignity of the human person. The human person is invariably the concentration point of the Church’s social vision.

HUMAN DIGNITY IN SCRIPTURES
Scriptures point to the fact that every human being is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26), who carries something of God’s divine nature in himself. This means that a human person is the clearest reflection of God among the order of the created.

Accordingly, therefore, human persons are endowed with an inherent dignity which entails certain basic rights and responsibilities to be exercised within a social framework. Every person possesses a fundamental dignity that comes from God, not from any human quality or accomplishment, not from race or gender, age or economic status.

The “link of being” between God and humanity was rendered even more pronounced when God became flesh by entering the human race in the person of Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man. The God-Man - the Christ - challenges us to see His presence in all humanity. More than that, he confronts humanity with the need to see His presence in our neighbours, especially those who suffer or who lack the things that are crucial to their human development.

Identifying with the sufferings of our fellow neighbours and endeavouring to relieve their sufferings and to meet their needs, in Jesus’ own assessment, tantamount to serving Him (Matthew 25:34-40). For the Christian, there is no more honourable privilege and duty.

HUMAN DIGNITY IN CHURCH DOCUMENTS
Beyond Scriptures, the Church has had a tradition - spanning more than 40 years - of social teaching in the forms of various concilliar documents, papal statements, and other forms of documentation which reflect the Church’s ordinary magisterium. These are some vital excerpts:

Any human society, if it is to be well-ordered and productive, must lay down as a foundation this principle, namely, that every human being is a person, that is, his nature is endowed with intelligence and free will. Indeed, precisely because he is a person he has rights and obligations flowing directly and simultaneously from his very nature. (Pacem In Terris, 1963, #9)

... there is a growing awareness of the exalted dignity proper to the human person, since he stands above all things, and his rights and duties are universal and inviolable. Therefore, there must be made available to all men everything necessary for leading a life truly human, such as food, clothing, and shelter; the right to choose a state of life freely and to found a family, the right to education, to employment, to a good reputation, to respect, to appropriate information, to activity in accord with the upright norm of one's own conscience, to protection of privacy and rightful freedom, even in matters religious. (Gaudium et Spes, 1965, #26)

... this Council lays stress on reverence for the human person; everyone must consider one's every neighbour without exception as another self, taking into account first of all life and the means necessary to living it with dignity, so as not to imitate the rich man who had no concern for the poor man Lazarus. (Gaudium et Spes, 1965, #27)

... Whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practise them than those who suffer from the injury. (Gaudium et Spes, 1965, #27)

At the centre of all Catholic social teaching are the transcendence of God and the dignity of the human person. The human person is the clearest reflection of God's presence in the world; all of the Church's work in pursuit of both justice and peace is designed to protect and promote the dignity of every person. For each person not only reflects God, but is the expression of God's creative work and the meaning of Christ's redemptive ministry. (The Challenge of Peace, 1983, #15)

Every perspective on economic life that is human, moral, and Christian must be shaped by three questions: What does the economy do for people? What does it do to people? And how do people participate in it? (Economic Justice for All, 1986, #1)

The basis for all that the Church believes about the moral dimensions of economic life is its vision of the transcendent worth - the sacredness - of human beings. The dignity of the human person, realised in community with others, is the criterion against which all aspects of economic life must be measured. All human beings, therefore, are ends to be served by the institutions that make up the economy, not means to be exploited for more narrowly defined goals. Human personhood must be respected with a reverence that is religious. When we deal with each other, we should do so with the sense of awe that arises in the presence of something holy and sacred. For that is what human beings are: we are created in the image of God. (Economic Justice for All, 1986, #28)

Human persons are willed by God; they are imprinted with God's image. Their dignity does not come from the work they do, but from the persons they are. (Centesimus Annus, 1991, #11)

The dignity of the human person is rooted in his creation in the image and likeness of God... (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1992, #1700)

Christ is "the image of the invisible God" in whose image humanity is created. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1992, #1701)

MIGRANTS AND REFUGEES: OUR NEIGHBOURSIn our readings of the Scriptures and the excerpts from various Church documents, it is apparent that what the Church truly promotes beyond the highly politicised notion of “human rights” is, perhaps, simply the right to be human.

The Australian Catholic Migrant and Refugee Office notes that “the tragic plight of refugees, while not new, has reached unprecedented levels in recent times as massive political and social upheavals, wars and internal conflicts continue around the world, forcing people to migrate and to seek asylum in countries other than their own”. This apt observation implies that the numbers of migrants and refugees in our midst will only increase in time to come. Compounding this problem is the reality that many of these will be present in our countries with no legal status and therefore no entitlements.

In our assessment of social policies pertaining to such migrants and refugees, among other policies, the test of every institution or enactment lies in its priority of human dignity, namely, whether it enhances or threatens human dignity and human life itself. Policies which consider people no more than mere economic units, or those which reduce people to a passive state of dependency on welfare, do not do justice to the dignity of the human person.

This teaching rests on one basic principle: individual human beings are the foundation, the cause and the end of every social institution. That is necessarily so, for men are by nature social beings. (Mater et Magistra, 1961, #219)

How all these considerations are translated into tangible endeavours on the parts of the Church and society in upholding and sustaining the dignity of the migrants and refugees in our midst remains a work in progress.

One immediate issue plaguing the migrants and refugees is, of course, that of work and subsistence. It has always been taught in the Christian Tradition that one’s vocation is fundamental to what it means to be human. And if this is indeed so, then perhaps active efforts for the provision of vocational training is necessary in collaboration with non-governmental agencies in order to promote their dignity by way of vocational equipment.

Together with that, their rights to be treated human by employers is another major factor to be addressed, especially in situations where no legislative enforcements assure the wellbeing of migrant workers. Such would include adequate medical attention, reasonable living conditions, and humane working hours.

Inasmuch as the teaching of the Church in issues of human dignity is comprehensive, the translation of her teaching into tangible solutions for the predicament of migrants and refugees is also a substantially comprehensive plan which requires long-term strategies and collaborative planning. Where the latter does not happen, the teachings of the Church might continue remaining etched in ecclesial documents as the Church’s best kept secret.

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Here are some pictures taken at the occasion of my Profession into the Ordo Franciscanus Saecularis on 02 December 2008 before the Blessed Sacrament at the sanctuary of the Church of the Visitation Seremban. It was a very modest but meaningful event.

This is Br Deva, the Regional Minister, placing the tau cross over my head. This tau cross would be my "habit" as a Secular Franciscan, to be worn everywhere I go as a witness to the world of the way of life I have chosen in response to God's call.

Making my profession before Sr Gertrude D'Costa, Minister of the local fraternity, who then accepted me into the fraternity in the name of the Church and of the Order. In the background is Fr Michael Teng, OFM Cap., Regional Spiritual Assistant of the Secular Franciscan Order.

These are all the Franciscans who were present at the occasion, although there were many other guests who were not Franciscans. This group of Franciscans comprises the OFM Capuchins and Secular Franciscans. The two Franciscan Friars from the OFM Cap. were Fr Paul Cheong (from Penang) and Fr Michael Teng (from Johor).

If the picture before this is the Franciscan family, this picture (just above) is the family of the Franciscan.

These are some very special guests who graced the little occasion - the beautiful sisters from the Daughters of St Paul. On the far left is Sr Elizabeth, FSP, and on the far right is Sr Bibianah, SFP. The man beside me is Br Paul Chin who works closely with the Daughters of St Paul.

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I'm officially a difficult person. But I've just found a list of advice for people, teaching them how to deal with me:

1. Be willing to back up your statements with facts - or at least some pretty sound reasoning.

2. Don't expect them to respect you or your viewpoints just because you say so. INTJ respect must be earned.

3. Be willing to concede when you are wrong. The average INTJ respects the truth over being "right". Withdraw your erroneous comment and admit your mistake and they will see you as a very reasonable person. Stick to erroneous comments and they will think you are an irrational idiot and treat everything you say as being questionable.

4. Try not to be repetitive. It annoys them.

5. Do not feed them a line of bull.

6. Expect debate. INTJs like to tear ideas apart and prove their worthiness. They will even argue a point they don't actually support for the sake of argument.

7. Do not mistake the strength of your conviction with the strength of your argument. INTJs do not need to believe in a position to argue it or argue it well. Therefore, it will take more than fervor to sway them.

8. Do not be surprised at sarcasm.

9. Remember that INTJs believe in workable solutions. They are extremely open-minded to possibilities, but they will quickly discard any idea that is unfeasible. INTJ open-mindedness means that they are willing to have a go at an idea by trying to pull it apart. This horrifies people who expect oohs and ahhs and reverence. The ultimate INTJ insult to an idea is to ignore it, because that means it's not even interesting enough to deconstruct.

This also means that they will not just accept any viewpoint that is presented to them. The bottom line is "Does it work?" - end discussion.

10. Do not expect INTJs to actually care about how you view them. They already know that they are arrogant bastards with a morbid sense of humour. Telling them the obvious accomplishes nothing.

Sigh... I'm a difficult boy... a very difficult boy...

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