20190220
FAITH
AND CULTURE
20 FEBRUARY,
2019, Wednesday, 6th Week, Ordinary Time
Readings at Mass
Liturgical Colour:
Green.
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First reading
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Genesis 8:6-13,20-22 ©
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The dove returns
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At the end of forty days Noah opened the
porthole he had made in the ark and he sent out the raven. This went off, and
flew back and forth until the waters dried up from the earth. Then he sent out
the dove, to see whether the waters were receding from the surface of the
earth. The dove, finding nowhere to perch, returned to him in the ark, for
there was water over the whole surface of the earth; putting out his hand he
took hold of it and brought it back into the ark with him. After waiting seven
more days, again he sent out the dove from the ark. In the evening, the dove
came back to him and there it was with a new olive-branch in its beak. So Noah
realised that the waters were receding from the earth. After waiting seven more
days he sent out the dove, and now it returned to him no more.
It
was in the six hundred and first year of Noah’s life, in the first month and on
the first of the month, that the water dried up from the earth. Noah lifted
back the hatch of the ark and looked out. The surface of the ground was dry!
Noah
built an altar for the Lord, and choosing from all the clean animals and all
the clean birds he offered burnt offerings on the altar. The Lord smelt the
appeasing fragrance and said to himself, ‘Never again will I curse the earth
because of man, because his heart contrives evil from his infancy. Never again
will I strike down every living thing as I have done.
‘As long as earth lasts,
sowing and reaping,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
shall cease no more.’
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Responsorial Psalm
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Psalm
115(116):12-15,18-19 ©
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A thanksgiving sacrifice
I make to you, O Lord.
or
Alleluia!
How can I repay the Lord
for his goodness to me?
The cup of salvation I will raise;
I will call on the Lord’s
name.
A thanksgiving sacrifice
I make to you, O Lord.
or
Alleluia!
My vows to the Lord I will fulfil
before all his people.
O precious in the eyes of the Lord
is the death of his faithful.
A thanksgiving sacrifice
I make to you, O Lord.
or
Alleluia!
My vows to the Lord I will fulfil
before all his people,
in the courts of the house of the Lord,
in your midst, O Jerusalem.
A thanksgiving sacrifice
I make to you, O Lord.
or
Alleluia!
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Gospel Acclamation
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Ps118:105
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Alleluia, alleluia!
Your word is a lamp for my steps
and a light for my path.
Alleluia!
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Or:
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cf.Ep1:17,18
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Alleluia, alleluia!
May the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ
enlighten the eyes of our mind,
so that we can see what hope his call
holds for us.
Alleluia!
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Gospel
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Mark 8:22-26 ©
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The blind man was cured and could see
everything distinctly
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Jesus and his disciples came to Bethsaida,
and some people brought to him a blind man whom they begged him to touch. He
took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. Then putting
spittle on his eyes and laying his hands on him, he asked, ‘Can you see
anything?’ The man, who was beginning to see, replied, ‘I can see people; they
look like trees to me, but they are walking about.’ Then he laid his hands on
the man’s eyes again and he saw clearly; he was cured, and he could see
everything plainly and distinctly. And Jesus sent him home, saying, ‘Do not
even go into the village.’
FAITH AND
CULTURE
SCRIPTURE READINGS: [GEN 8:6-13, 20-22; MK 8:22-26 ]
Three points received my
attention in today’s gospel.
Firstly, what struck and puzzled me was Jesus’ action of taking the man outside
the village to be healed and then warned him not to return to the village after
being healed. Secondly, the healing of the blind man took place in stages
rather than in just a single action from Jesus, unlike the other healing
miracles. Thirdly, in this instance, Jesus had to use His spittle to heal
him. It was an indirect healing rather than, as in most other miracles, a
command from the Lord. What was the intent of the evangelist in
recounting such details of the healing for his audience?
Firstly, faith has a personal
dimension. That is to say, grace does not destroy nature. On
the contrary, the reception of grace is dependent on the recipient’s
openness. There is some form of synergy between God’s grace and man’s
response. More often than not, like the blind man, we do not come to
faith in a moment. Like him, faith must grow and deepen. A person
might be a priest or a theologian, but his personal faith might be lesser than
that of a simple Catholic. He might know more about his faith but his
personal faith in Christ could be shallower than that of a person who has no
training in theology. For fullness of faith, we need preparation, the
encounter with God’s grace itself, a conversion experience, growth and
deepening the faith that has begun in us. We do not come to faith all at
once. Indeed, a typical example would be that of St Paul who, after an
initial breakthrough as a result of a conversion experience, still had to grow
in faith after that encounter. He spent time in Arabia for three years
before he began to proclaim the gospel.
The implication of this personal
dimension of faith means that each must cooperate with God’s grace
if he were to grow in faith. He must make effort to consciously grow
in his personal faith besides his intellectual faith. As a community, on
the other hand, we cannot judge each other because different people have
different depths of faith according to the grace given to him and his cooperation.
It is also important to take note that in a community, we are all at different
levels and depths of faith, so as St Paul advised us, “We who are strong ought
to put up with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Each
of us must please our neighbor for the good purpose of building up the
neighbor.” (Rom 15:1f)
Secondly, faith is incarnated and
mediated through nature. Because we are made of body and spirit, we
need signs and words to awaken faith in us e.g. spittle, banners, water,
incense and the laying of hands. As human beings, we require the personal and
human touch. This explains why Jesus used spittle and laid His hands on
the blind man to heal him. The Church has always in her wisdom made full
use of signs and actions, such as sacramentals to assist the faithful to arrive
at faith, especially those who are not intellectually inclined. We cannot
underestimate the power of sacramentals in helping people to encounter God. As
human beings we need to be touched and to be heard, to hear and see the love of
God. Indeed, we all experience love through acts of kindness and love from
others. An encouraging word, an act of thoughtfulness, a hug or a little
note of assurance builds love and trust. Hence, we have a duty to help
each other experience the love of God and thereby grow in faith by our words
and actions.
Thirdly, faith has a social
dimension. The study of sociology shows that man is a product of
society, and society a product of man. The ramification of this principle
means that in the first place, our ability to grow in faith and love depends on
the community we are in, whether it is a loving community or otherwise.
If the man was taken out of the village to be healed and then warned not to
return, it was because Jesus, knowing how skeptical the villagers living in
Bethsaida were, wanted to protect the incipient and growing faith of the blind
man, and the only way to do so was by asking him to stay out of the village.
Indeed, this is true when helping
people who live in conditions that tempt them to sin to get out of their
sinfulness. Such as in marriage counseling cases. If only one
party wants to heal the marriage, no matter how much counseling and prayers we
minister to that party, not only will the marriage not be repaired but the
counselee will fall back to his or her previous self again. It is just
like being discharged from hospital after having been treated for dengue and
returning to an environment where there are plenty of Aedes mosquitoes – it is
unlikely that we can ever be restored to health. Similarly, if we are
living in a situation of sin or an environment that leads us to sin, it would
be very difficult to be faithful to our Catholic values even after
conversion. Being weak in faith, we will eventually return to our old
selves as the situation will bring out the old Adam in us.
This explains why Noah was told to
lead his loved ones and take a pair of clean animals of all types to the Ark by
God. For if they were to continue living in that sinful environment,
they would eventually lose their faith. So God in His mercy commanded
Noah to build the Ark to protect himself and then allowed the waters to destroy
the evils of society. Thus, Noah and the Flood symbolize Christian
baptism when through the sacrament of baptism, we are taken away from a sinful
environment and placed in a community of faith.
Consequently, we can appreciate why the Church
is at war with secularism and extreme secularization when God is
absent from society. The world is trying to marginalize God from our
daily lives so that God will no longer be the center of our life.
By forgetting His presence, we allow the world to influence us in our thinking
and decisions. The culture that is being promoted will influence our
ability to feel the presence of God and our will to live out the gospel
values. Thus, the Church reminds us constantly that the work of evangelization
especially of the laity is to inject the values of the gospel into the culture
of society. Otherwise, the faith of our people will be eroded by the
negative and worldly values promoted by the world.
However, whilst it is true that society
forms the individual, we must not abdicate our personal responsibility
for influencing society. We cannot exonerate ourselves from our share
of the sins of the world by blaming it on society or the community we belong
to. The truth is that the community is not an abstract reality. We,
as individuals, form the community. Consequently, we can change society
as individuals. Jesus did it and so did Noah who was faithful to
Yahweh. We can also change individuals around us and together transform
society as well.
Thus, it also behooves each one of
us to play our part in changing the culture of whichever community we
belong to. In our backyard, instead of bemoaning that the Church or our
office is so divided, we must change this divisive, competitive and hostile
situation in our family, our parish, our ministry and workplace. We can begin
by changing the ambiance of our offices and communities and even at home.
We as individuals must first make an effort to make our homes, our
communities and offices a school of communion, a home of fraternal love and
support for each other. For those of us in a Catholic institution, we
should ground our fraternal communion by being connected with the Lord in
common prayer, sharing the faith and the Word of God regularly. In this
way, we become a loving, supportive and caring community.
Written
by The Most Rev William Goh, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore © All
Rights Reserved
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