« September 2010 | Main | May 2012 »
A happy Reformation Day to all celebrating it.
Now having returned to the Catholic Church, I always say to those who ask, "It is not for me to answer 'Why Catholic?', but for you to answer 'Why Protestant?'"
For it should never be taken that the Protestant communities constituted the default Christianity from the time of Christ.
Salvation has, once again, come to my household this day. My three-week-old son, Chastan, was baptised at the Anticipatory (Sunset) Mass this evening at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Johor Bahru.
It was an extremely historic moment in the life of my family. It was in this very parish that I first witnessed the Liturgy of the Catholic Church in 1993, this being my first ever exposure to the public worship of the Catholic Church which was largely unknown to me then. And today, in this place, my offspring was baptised into this One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church with his grandparents being his godparents (sponsors).
Watching my boy immersed into the transparent tub filled with warm clear water, I'm unsure if it was my role as a father that drove me into a deeply mystical reawakening towards my own baptismal promises, or if I would have felt the same way if it had been anyone else's child. But I think many people present were touched in the same way, to once again participate in the saving act of Christ in the sacrament of baptism.
Salvation has come to my household. Not because we deserved it. But because Christ has acted, called and gathered us unto himself. And at each communal act of baptism, what we see taking place before our eyes beckons us once again to renew that which we had promised when Christ first saved us.
Many people choose names of greatness for themselves; names of apostles, popes, bishops and kings. My wife and I have chosen the name of Saint Chastan for our son, partially because he was born on the Feast of Saints Imbert and Chastan. But more so, we decided to give him this noble name because Saint Chastan was a simple, humble priest who obeyed his bishop to his death for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Nothing more.
And that's our hope for this little infant, that he will be the simple, humble man who would say a simple and sincere "yes" in his lifetime at the bidding of his Maker. He need not be a great man; but his Saviour must be great in his life.
Here is a paper I wrote towards the end of last year (2009), which was presented at the Second Symposium on Consecrated Life of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC) and has now been published by the East Asian Pastoral Review:
The Call to Consecration: Renewing Discipleship in the Church in Modern Asia
by Sherman Kuek sfo
The great cultural tradition of the faith is home to a presence of immense power. What in museums is only a monument from the past, an occasion for mere nostalgic admiration, is constantly made present in the liturgy in all its freshness. But the present day, too, is not condemned to silence where the faith is concerned. Anyone who looks carefully will see that, even in our own time, important works of art, inspired by faith, have been produced and are being produced—in visual art as well as in music (and indeed literature). Today, too, joy in the Lord and contact with his presence in the liturgy has an inexhaustible power of inspiration. The artists who take this task upon themselves need not regard themselves as the rearguard of culture. They are weary of the empty freedom from which they have emerged. Humble submission to what goes before us releases authentic freedom and leads us to the true summit of our vocation as human beings.[Spirit of the Liturgy (SF, CA: Ignatius, 2000), p. 155]
Commentary: The point made by the Holy Father on artistic freedom is precisely the same one he has time and again made, in general, about freedom in truth. True freedom is never about operating in the absence of margins and prescribed limitations; it is about being free of error, of the clutches of humanistic conceit, and of narcissistic and unrestrained expression.
Using the same rhyme and reason, Pope Benedict XVI speaks of authentic artistic freedom. He is not, and neither should any liturgist be, saying that the composition of good sacred music has been brought to completion and should therefore cease as if it was an issue of public revelation. Mother Church continues to encourage her faithful to express themselves in jubilant praise through the writing of sacred music, even in this modern day.
However, to contend that the writing of modern sacred music should follow the spirit of the age is to manifest a kind of spiritual thoughtlessness and lack of discernment on the very clear division made by the Church between the sacred and the non-sacred. Even that which is composed in the present must find itself to be a faithful extension of that which was in the past, so that the ageless worship of the saints of the past finds participation in the worship of the saints of today. Only in such faithfulness can the glorious mysteries of the Church be so adequately expressed in the worship of her peoples.
In fact, it probably has never been as critical before as it is now to for writers of sacred music to operate so antithetically to the wider culture of the world. In a world that promotes sensuality of human expression through intoxicating music, one would be guilty of liturgical denigration if such music was used as if it was in conformity to the Church's sacred worship. It would require one's senses to be utterly dulled to commit such an indecent indiscretion.
Write if we must, and write we must. But write in faithful obedience to the beckoning of the Church and the voices past. Only then can we say that our worship in the present finds its timeless harmony in an ageless orchestration of all saints past and present.
If liturgical inculturation means ignorance, or worse still, defiance of the spirit of the liturgy, it then preaches an artistic freedom that is counterfeit, to say the least. True inculturation would give rise to an artistic freedom that is authentic, both relevant in the present and timeless in its essence.
