The First One Called

November 30 is the Feast of St. Andrew, the Apostle. For most of us Andrew is just the younger brother of St. Peter, who was born in Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee. The New Testament doesn't say much about Andrew, but there is enough there to reveal some interesting facts. In Orthodox tradition Andrew is known by another name - Prōtoklētos, or the First-called! St. Andrew was the first disciple of Jesus. To get clarification we need to read the Gospel of John Chapter 1:35-42 along with Matthew Chapter 4:18-20. St. John tells us that Andrew was originally a disciple of John the Baptist. When John pointed to Jesus and said, "Behold the Lamb of God" Andrew along with another disciple left John and followed Jesus to His house. There is no mention since about the other disciple who accompanied Andrew, so it can be concluded that he never stayed on. Andrew, however, after visiting Jesus' home went and brought his brother Simon Peter. It is believed that Andrew and Peter continued their trade as fishermen until Christ called them to a closer relationship, as we see in the Gospel of Matthew. 

Fear Not

I still remember the day when the oldest of our three kids was born. Unfortunately something still hurts in me when I think about it,unlike the birth of our other two kids. I think it is because it was the first time in my life I was scared for the life of a loved one. I remember how a room with a doctor and nurse attending my wife in labor along with myself and a relative - a room filled with happiness and anticipation of a new life - turned into a room filled doctors and nurses with intense faces, in a matter of minutes. Like many of us, I too never liked to think about death, especially of myself or one of my loved ones. Death was something that happened elsewhere - to people I didn't care much about and in places I didn't know about. Then in an instant, in that hospital room, I became aware of the ultimate danger. My daughter is now nine years old and my wife is, let's just say, nine years older - in short, everything turned out to be okay that day. But I still shudder when I think about that day.

Mother Teresa and Divine Providence

Divine Providence is a heavily disputed subject even among many of the faithful followers of Christ. So what is Divine Providence? I would say that it is what Jesus talked about when He said: "So do not worry and say'What are we to eat?' or 'What are we to drink?' or 'What are we to wear?' ...But seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides." (Matthew 6:31,33). Divine Providence is trusting in God - believing that He would provide what we need when we need it. But we no longer live in a society that depends on God for food and shelter. We are rational beings - people who know that unless we show up to work in the morning everyday, there won't be any food on the table. Even as I grow in my faith, I found it hard to believe in a God who can also be a Provider. And I know that I am not the only one to have this attitude as I find many people with strong faith who simply refuse to believe that God can provide them with everything they need as long as they are willing to follow Him with all their heart. 

Gauging My Faith

The Crucifixion of St. Peter
Caravaggio, 1600 AD

There times when I wonder how strong my faith is. This question becomes even more valid as I am getting ready to join a small group of faithful lay people in our church to form a forum with the intention of promoting faith within the community. 

Over the last year, I was blessed enough to meet many people whose faith is incomprehensible to me. I know a doctor who who uses his office to hold Bible studies in the evenings. I know an unemployed man who spends all day making rosaries to raise money for the needy. Then there are a lot of people in between these two - people who are willing to do anything without any regard of the consequences, in the love of Christ Jesus. I don't think any of them have benefitted significantly for doing what they do. If anything, their lives are filled with sacrifices - both personal and financial.  But somehow they were able to stay in their faith and grow in their faith. I often thank God for placing me in the company of people with strong faith, because I have a tendency to be proud about my achievements - whether it be faith, health or wealth. But a glimpse of these people is more than enough to me bring me back on to earth and fills me with the reality that my faith is anything but solid.

What am I thankful for?

I was never really big on Thanksgiving - I never could think of anything to be thankful about. I always looked at everything I have as fruits of my own labor. I had nobody to thank for anything - I was fully deserving of everything I had. 

But over the last year, God has given me the grace to see things differently. Looking back, I now know that I haven't done anything to deserve many of the most important things in my life. To start with, there is my wife - her name means 'God is gracious', and I wish I had known that sooner. She came into my life when I had my head up in the clouds, but somehow she walked right along with me keeping her eyes on the ground all along. Most of our married life up to this point was like a road full of humps, but she absorbed most of the shocks to make my journey smoother. I don't know what I have done to deserve the one handsome boy and two beautiful girls we have. Their love is so pure and abundant, it makes me ashamed of my selfish, self-loving ways. How could I claim any credit in having a mom and dad like I do? They have always set aside their pleasure and comfort to raise my sister and me. What can I say about my sister? I don't think there is anything I would be able to do to reciprocate the love and concern she has for me.

Total Recall

When God in His infinite mercy gave me the insight to turn away from my life as a pretender of faith, one of the things he allowed me to retain was memory of the past. If needed, I have the ability to recall things that happened in my life over the past many years - things that are both significant and insignificant. This ability actually contradicts my overall intelligence as I know that I have very poor memory - I can't remember numbers such as phone numbers, house numbers, street numbers, dates. I am also a terrible listener - I only listen to less that one third of any conversation, my mind wanders too much. So there are times when I wondered about the reason for this ability that I have about recalling my past life. Then the answer came in the form of a phone call this morning while attending the Sunday Mass, exactly when the priest was saying the Eucharistic prayers.

I have stopped taking my phone into the church. So when the phone rang this morning during the Mass, I didn't have to scramble looking for my phone. (Just to get off the subject for a minute, what is the matter with people with iPhones, don't they know that the phone comes with more than one ringtone? Almost every iPhone out there is set to the default ringtone, so when it rings you will see hordes of people reaching into their pocket. Okay, I am done.) Then I watched in utter amazement as the guy across the aisle from me picked up his phone and answered it. Now I have seen many people reaching for their phones to reject the call or to silence it, but it was the first time I saw somebody actually answering the phone on his knees. As the priest prayed to the Holy Spirit to convert the bread and wine into the precious Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, this person went onto talk on the phone for about five minutes. As he was talking on the phone, I realized that my initial reaction of amazement was gradually turning into anger. But before anger took a complete hold of me, that memory thing I talked earlier came into play and showed me excerpts of something that happened a couple of years ago: I saw a man sitting at a Church during Homily texting vigorously using his iPhone. Shame on him too I said - he is no different than the man across the aisle talking on iPhone. One was smart and did it discretely. This guy here is, well.., less sneaky and therefore chose not to hide. Then I saw the face of the man texting messages on the phone, and it was me (ah, what a shame!). 

Now I know why God has retained all those memories in me. When I use those memories of the old me in ways intended by God, it acts as anti-venom - to suppress my venomous nature of judging others. It is God's way of telling me "Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her" (John 8:7). It took me almost thirty nine years before I learned the importance of finding time for God. Some find it sooner, some find it later, then there are others whose faith is known to God alone. I have no right to judge the man who answered the phone. That being said, as a follower of Jesus Christ, I have every right to judge the action of that man - what he did was wrong, just like what I did two years ago was wrong. I didn't know the man, so I couldn't tell him. God saved me from getting angry this morning by reminding me of the old myself. Instead of fuming in anger, the Holy Spirit inspired me to pray for him - asking God to give the man wisdom to love Him and to put him in a company of friends who could talk to him about the importance of spending time with God.

In our busy life, we always find it difficult to find time for God. We spend a lot of time amassing the fortunes of this materialistic world. Then we spend even more time trying to maintain the fortune we have accumulated. And we have very little time to enjoy the all these fortunes. In between we have no time left for God anymore. The simple act of going to church for an hour once a week is tedious for us. I believe that it is not just a coincidence that we have no time for God, there has to be something more to it than that. I think there are forces at work here that works overtime to keep us busy, to keep us away from God. I know this because I used to be a busy man. Looking back at that busy life, I can also clearly see the futility behind many of the things that demanded too much of my time. I see things that I could've easily avoided to spend more time with God and also with my family. Back then, that part of my vision was blurred as I could never see the erroneous side of my actions. As I move forward, I no longer worry about wasting much of my life chasing things without any meaning. I realize that my past is a gift of God just like my present. It serves as a screen upon which I can reflect my current life - my past helps me to keep my present honest. 

If any of you find it difficult to spend a little bit of your time with God, I encourage you to reflect upon the cry of Jesus on the cross: "I thirst" (John 19:28). What was Jesus' thirst all about? The God who said "Whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst" (John 4:14), was He thirsting for water on the cross? Or, was He thirsting to draw humanity near to Him? I pray that God give you the wisdom to realize that it was not water that Jesus wanted, but He was thirsting for us to come to him to "drink from the spring of eternal life". We all have a responsibility to quench the thirst of Jesus by actively participating in Eucharist, even if it is only once a week for an hour. 

"But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in Spirit and truth" (John 4:23,24). 

Hating God

Looking back at my life away from God, I can say it with certainty that I never hated God. But I also know that there is nothing in that awareness for me to be proud about. No, I am not being humble here. The only reason I could say with certainty that I didn't hate God is because I never cared about God. So what's my point? Here it is: In order for for somebody to hate God, they need to believe in God. Not just any god, but they need to believe in an All-powerful, Almighty, Omnipresent, Omniscient God.

Atheists have no reason to hate God - how could anyone hate someone or something that doesn't exist? I can't understand the mindset of an atheist any way (I never was an atheist, I was an agnostic. Yes I know, nothing to be proud about). On one hand they go around and tell everybody that there is no such thing called an absolute truth, then on the other hand they proclaim the non-existence of God as a definite truth. They credit the existence of humans to mere chance, an accidental byproduct of time, matter and energy - something the nature failed to abort in time. It is like your parents telling you that you were conceived by accident, that they never wanted you to be born. On top of it, they are also telling you that since you are created by accident, there is no particular purpose for your existence. Just dine, dance and die. If you ask me, that is a way grim way to look at life. No wonder suicide rates are much higher in educated societies than the uneducated poor societies of the world. Atheists take hope away from life. But why would anybody want to live in this world filled with pain and sufferings, if there is nothing to hope for - either in this life or the next?

Talking about hope, I believe hope is what gets God in trouble. Of all the hardships we face in our lives, there is nothing more torturous than the simple act of waiting. Hope require waiting; God's timetable is password protected, we don't have access to it. And that is a problem. If I am out of work and my wife and kids are eating dust to survive, or if I am a widow whose husband died in an accident a year ago and just got news that my only kid is diagnosed with terminal cancer, or if I am a recovering drug addict who prays constantly for mental strength but only see an increase in tempting circumstances, then I would have a problem with that timetable that God is keeping. Because I can't think of a better time for God to intervene than now. Am I suppose to be hopeful when my wife leave me and the starving kids to have a new life with my best (ex)friend? How about watching my son dying slowly in the midst of mind numbing pain? Am I to blame for failing to resist constant temptations and getting drawn back into a life of addiction? I prayed, I believed, and I hoped. But nothing happened. People in despair hate God. People hate God when hope is shattered.

When we hope, we do it according to how we want things to turn out. This might look perfectly fine on the surface. But what we fail to recognize is that hope is not just expectation, but it is also desire of what the future should be like. When we design how our future ought to be like, unknowingly we are elevating ourselves to be gods. Hope centered on self fails to see the whole picture, instead we assume that what we see is the whole picture. When we set our mind on a certain outcome for our situation, we take God's will out of the equation and forgets, "The human heart plans the way, but the LORD directs the steps" (Proverbs 16:9). Trusting in God and having hope in Him should help us realize that the life on earth is not everything, rather it is only a small part of a life that goes on. Sufferings and pain are not God's design, instead they are the byproducts of us wandering away from God's mercy. But just like anything else, God uses and thus He allows, pain and suffering to draw us back to Him - in this life or the next one. 

"All things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). St. Thomas More knew this: Before his execution, he joked with his executioner that his beard was totally innocent of any crimes and did not deserve to be harmed during the beheading. He then positioned himself so that his beard wouldn't be cut off while they cut his head off. St. Lawrence of Rome told his executioners, "I am done on this side, now turn me over" while being grilled on a gridiron. None of us are no longer expected to be this brave to keep our hope alive. Those who hate God, if there is any sense left in you, should ask: What is going to be next? Are you going to hate Him enough to say that there is no God? But how is that going to solve anything? How is the knowledge that there is no purpose for pain and suffering going to give you comfort? Do you think about God only when things are not going well, to blame Him and to hate Him? When we direct our anger and hatred towards heaven, all we are doing is exposing our ignorance of God, His life as Jesus, and His teachings through the Bible. For beginners, just know that your free will to hate Him is also a grace of God - a gift wrapped in pure Love. 

"We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance." (Romans 8:22-25)