Giving Meaning to Life

The Catholic Peace Weekly has an article by a priest with a doctorate in pastoral counseling and now presently working as a counseling psychologist. He is devoted to presenting a holistic life direction in which daily life and religious life are not separated but integrated. 

An old couple came to visit him. The wife said that her husband has been depressed and irritable lately and that she would like him to give him some help.  Mr. Lee looked like he had been dragged along reluctantly. It wasn't a big problem, he said, but he scolded his wife for making a fuss and bothering the busy priest. However, as if he could not resist his wife's persuasion, he soon confessed his concerns.

"Father, I don’t have a smile these days. I had a prostate cancer procedure 4 years ago, and although the procedure went well, I am worried because my PSA (prostate cancer tumor marker) has not returned to normal. The doctor who operated on me said that there is nothing to worry about because prostate cancer is a good cancer and if left untreated, you can live for another 10 to 20 years. They say that if  I die during that time, I will not die from this disease but from a different disease, so there is no reason to be anxious.

"But I'm so depressed right now. No matter how beautiful the scenery is, I can't feel any joy in the thought. 'Those mountains and plants will still be alive even after 10 or 100 years, but I will soon be leaving this world.' So, I've been working out at the gym for 4 or 5 hours these days, but this depression doesn't go away. I even tried dancing at a club where the elderly gather but it was no use.

"I have worked hard up until now, raised all my children well, and now have enough to live well, so I feel so wronged and resentful that I have contracted this disease. I don't know why I want to live like this. I have lived 70 years of my life, so I have lived enough.”

Obsession and desire for life are natural to us humans. How can anxiety and fear for the rest of life be the only emotion felt by Mr. Lee? How would my life change if I was told by a doctor that I had only a few months or weeks to live? Can we truly prepare for death by feeling the preciousness of the present and being grateful for the rest of our lives? Or will we live in pain and helplessness, feeling fear and fear for the short time we have left in our lives? Although we will not die right away like Mr.Lee, just anticipating death can make our lives depressing and helpless. I wonder where the power to transcend death and live happily ever after comes from.

We already know that death anxiety can be overcome with meaning in life. However, only a few people can say with confidence what meaning their life actually has. What anyone can say with confidence is that, at least, I have raised a normal family, had children, raised them well, and have done my best to make a living. 

However, it seems that the great meaning of life was not felt. Could it be that he thought that his life had to be plausible to have some meaning? It is not that I have made a great contribution to the world, nor have I lived a life of great service and love for others.

The meaning of life may not be as grand as others think. Just living each day with joy and gratitude in God and practicing small acts of love is of great significance to believers. Mother Teresa once said, “We cannot have great love, but we can make small loves great.” The meaning of the nun's life was a small life of love that God viewed as great even though it seemed insignificant in human terms.

He concludes with the words that if Mr. Lee who has worked hard to serve God could discover the meaning of ordinary love in his life, he would be able to recover more joy in everyday life. He thinks that perhaps the feelings of anxiety and depression we feel in the face of death are a spiritual message from God that we should live the rest of our lives loving on a deeper level.

 

Word of God Sunday

This year's 'Word of God Sunday', which will be celebrated in St Peter’s Basilica in the presence of Pope Francis on Sunday 21 January 2024, the motto chosen is taken from the Gospel of St John: "Remain in my Word" (John 8,31).

‘Open Their Hearts’ is the title of Pope Francis’s motu proprio establishing Word of God Sunday. Let us savor the scene where Jesus appeared to his disciples, opened their hearts, and helped them understand the Bible. In commemoration of Word of God Sunday, the Pope hopes that you will once again open the Bible anew and open your heart to the image of Jesus within it. 

A journalist for the Catholic Times in its recent issue  gives us some thoughts on the Word of God Sunday. 

She often meets believers living a religious life by diligently engaging with the Word through reading or copying the Bible. A person who has read the entire Bible more than 100 times including transcription, a person who participated in a reading group and heard the entire Bible from others despite being visually impaired, a person who worked as a volunteer at a Bible club as a couple and said that they only talked about the Bible at the dinner table, etc. … .

 

What impressed her the most was the elderly man who said he had read the Bible over 100 times. He, who had a cheerful personality and was good at telling stories, said: "If you just open the Bible, Jesus says ‘love’ and ‘loving,’ so how can you hate people?" What they all had in common was the inner power that the Word has when it seeps into their lives.

 

In celebration of Word of God Sunday, we looked into the life of Saint Jerome, who left us the Vulgate Bible. A saint who can be called a ‘man of the Bible’ emphasizes the importance of the Word in living as a Christian. We encourage them to ‘never let the Bible fall from their hands’ and to ‘read the Bible often and learn everything they can while doing their best.’ He accepted the Bible as the Word of God. 

The interpretation is that the enormous amount of translations, research on the Bible text, and writing of many Bible commentaries came from such confidence and faith in the Bible.

One-third of the world's population is familiar with the Bible and believes that it is the Word of God we have many others that know about the Bible and some times do a better job in doing what it teaches.

 

A Clean Green Environment

A religious sister in the Catholic Times View from the Ark column wants all of us to direct our attention to a clean, green environment. 

As she welcomes in the new year of 2024, she remembers New Year's morning at the senior welfare facility where she worked a few years ago. It was established on a small hill surrounded by forests, a small comfort zone in a small town with a predominantly elderly population. 

One New Year's morning, the moment she opened the front door of the convent to go to the nursing home, wow! The entire world was covered with a white blanket of snow. She picked up a broom because she needed to make a path to the nursing home, but hesitated for a moment because it felt like she was damaging the New Year's gift that God had given her.

She brought up the subject in a group meeting— "The environment and the Earth are getting hotter, so shouldn’t we save Mother Earth?" The moment she boldly expressed her opinion, many participants sympathized and did not hesitate to support her. Then the discussion began and the results were reached. The opinions of "We should do something, let’s do it, reduce its use, and the like were overwhelming, but there was no concrete  resolve on what to do." Although the results were not as good as expected, the disappointment was alleviated by the fact that the awareness of ‘environmental protection’ was planted in people’s minds.

The natural environment that God gave to mankind cannot be maintained by enjoying it to our heart's content, as we received it for free out of love for people. However, there is still a lack of action on how to use and preserve it well.

Although we have raised our voices to reduce disposable containers, disposable cups, plates, and cutlery, they are piled up in homes, parishes, various stores, and even at national events. This is because it is convenient with their use and inconvenient and difficult without their use. We are conflicted between convenience and inconvenience. Perhaps a bigger reason is that you don't feel like you're destroying the environment by using disposable utensils, and you don't immediately see changes in the environment if you don't use them. Sometimes it feels like the efforts of countless environmental defenders, environmental activists, and zero waste practitioners, as well as the efforts of the movement to protect our common home through activities at the parish, are meaningless.

"I brought you into this fertile land to eat its fruit and its good things. But you have come in here and defiled my land and made my inheritance an abomination" (Jer 2:7).

It was as if God's wrath was digging into his heart. You have told us to take good care of the creations you have given us, but we must deeply reflect on whether we, the people, are just being seduced by convenience and less effort and are trying to ignore our duty to protect and care for the environment. When we look ahead to the future in the next few years, it is bleak. She is afraid because she cannot let go of the thought that the day will inevitably come when we pass on a miserable environment to generations to come.

The demands of market consumers and multinational companies for renewable energy have now become a global trend, but it cannot be denied that our society is not yet keeping up with the demands. Even if policies to deal with climate change are left to the government, we must continue to make small efforts to protect our common home through environmental preservation campaigns. Together, we must once again strive to create a ‘clean, green society’ where life and joy coexist in a sustainable and eco-friendly manner even in cramped urban spaces.

Living With Less and Lacking Nothing

 

The Catholic Peace Weekly in its Faith Platform Column, reminds the readers of another time in Korea not that many years ago, experienced by a child now a housewife.

She mentions the days when her parents were poor and were entertaining guests at the noon meal the guests would leave food in their bowls for the hosts who they knew were not eating. The starving hosts were giving up their food for the guests. When she tells her child these stories about a time when food was rare, he frowns and says: “Why?”

She recently raised a family of three at her parents' home. Her parents, who had precious memories and were thrifty and didn't know how to throw away things, had every corner of their house filled with memorable items. For three generations to live together in one space, we had to throw away a lot, and every time we tried to throw it away, there was friction with her parents.

My mother, who has experienced poverty and abundance, is still thrifty. She recycles bags of coffee mix to store salt. We always recycle disposables, fold leaflets into pot holders, and make wallets out of stretched socks. Shopping bags are stuck in every crevice of the furniture, waiting to be used again. Sometimes you are creative, and sometimes desperate.

“Today, the school told me to throw away my textbooks, so I threw them away.” 

“Hey, that’s strange, why are you throwing away your textbooks?”

“I’ve learned everything now.”

As she writes this, she recalls the conversation between her daughter and grandfather. Who said he didn't have money to buy books, and wonders why they throw away good textbooks when the children haven't even graduated yet.

We live in an age where convenience is greatly esteemed. When she sees advertisements for quick delivery of online services, or to buy goods at prices much lower than the market price, she is living a life where she can consume more, more quickly, and throw it away more easily. She worries that she'll get used to this way of living. This is because the more widespread the perception that ‘it’s cheap, use it, and if you don’t like it,  return it, the more the earth will inevitably suffer. These days, as irresponsible consumption and disposal become easier the Earth will suffer. We need to learn to wisely coexist with the Earth.

She thinks we need to creatively incorporate the frugality that is ingrained in us from our parents, a lifestyle to which we were not attracted. It's best to carefully consider whether you really need it and whether it's durable and well-made before purchasing it, using it for a long time, and passing it on to someone who needs it rather than throwing it away or returning it.

“In the old days, everything would have been considered a treasure.” My father said something while looking at the gorgeous gift-wrapping paper. I think he’s saying: ‘If it were me, I wouldn’t throw it away, but since you guys want to live a clean life, you’ll throw it away.’ As the person in charge of throwing things away in my house, I also wonder, ‘Would it be harmful to convey my feelings if I reuse these precious packaging boxes when giving them as gifts instead of throwing them away?’

Nowadays, we have long passed the days when we looked at a guest's leftover bowl of rice and thanked him for it. Nowadays, we exchange gifts in recycled packaging, consume carefully, share and reuse items, and show our gratitude to the earth that we generously share. We have lived without serious shortcomings thanks to the Earth, so now she hopes we can live using less and lacking nothing, a way of living in which we can all come to see its charm for the sake of the Earth.

An Invitation to Desire

In the recent Catholic Kyeongyang Magazine, a professor in the Spirituality
Department of the Incheon Seminary wants the readers to reflect on the invitation to desire.

Our invitation to Desire—

Most of humanity interiorly, and concretely, lives with unfulfilled desires. Our time is spent in their search and realization. Desire gives direction to our lives, and whether they are well-selected or rashly acquired it gives us the energy to face the future.

Many persons without desires live without vitality and the number is not small.

The professor at a counseling center of a university has met students who face an uncertain future without strength with a feeling of helplessness and complain about the emptiness of their lives. They have no idea how to fit into the society in which they exist. They have been pushed aside in competition. They have worked hard to achieve what others have presented to them and paid no attention to their own desires. The vision that was given to them of wealth, and success, is no longer a possibility and the reason for the emptiness.

The world tells young people what they need to desire before they even become familiar with their own deepest desires. A situation that is forced on them.

The young people are given an external standard to follow and with which they are to compare and be judged which alienates them from themselves. The biggest cause of anxiety is the fear of being rejected or abandoned by others and being left alone when the desires of others are not followed. 

Relationship of Desire—

The temporary satisfaction of pleasure only causes more thirst and creates a feeling of emptiness. By longing for and obsessing over certain actions, objects, or people, we are changed from a loving person to slaves of the object we long for. Paradoxically this state of obsession begins with a self-centered desire to own the object.

The reward given to those who seek temporary and immediate pleasure is a confused and scattered sense of self in a state of slavery.

Our human longing is for the whole person: the body, the mental, and the spiritual. It is experienced on all levels.

The longing is experienced by the body in its sexual dimension, and with psychological and spiritual attractions. No desire is divided between the head and the heart, it is experienced by the whole person. Clearly, human longing has a relational aspect towards an object. It may be an attraction or aversion. The human desire is a human process that enables a  capacity to begin a relationship.

From birth, we are surrounded by all kinds of desires, longings, and cravings. They give us life energy.

The instinctive attitude of wanting to satisfy a deficiency is a part of our makeup. The sexual desire to love someone, the longing that we experience as energy is a powerful force that guides our lives. This is experienced in all our desires and is the motive power of much of life. So taking a look at our desires gives us a chance to see what makes us tick.

Desire goes in two directions. One is to a deeper level to be more complete, and the other is to find instant gratification for the moment. Our choice will be for our harmonious growth in our relationship with self and with others or despondency and chaos.

St. Ignatius of Loyola has explained that when this attachment is to disorder and chaos, hope is lost. What we see in present society: scorn, sarcasm,  lethargy, loss of meaning, anger, and hopelessness is the opposite of what comes from spiritual consolation. 

Spiritual consolation from desire is an internal joy that one experiences. From a superficial way of living to a deep appreciation of the way God is leading us.

Towards Transcendence—

Our desire is God. Because human longing is limitless, no object can satisfy us other than a relationship with an infinite being.

The creation of humans was God's act of love who is infinite love, longing for greater love. In the love he showed in creation and the love between the Father and the Son is an invitation to more love. In and thru Christ we share love with God.  We have a longing to share this love with God and others. It is a longing for an intimacy with God. We see our life's journey as one of getting to know ourselves and accepting all, be it with difficulty.

When we are grasped with a longing for God then all the temporary and indiscreet desires are forgotten. These are the little deaths that we experience in life.

When the longings that we have become clear in our minds, the anxiety and fear that can't endure uncertainty will gradually fade.

When we fall in love we give up everything for the one we love. We become completely open and transcend ourselves. We experience anxiety due to failure, weakness, poverty, illness, etc. We need to see what is causing the feeling, deep within ourselves. When God's love grasps us then we experience a change and we begin living the resurrected life a new life right here and now.

Korea a Multiracial, Multcultural Country

In the Catholic Peace Weekly Eyes of the Clergy column, a priest gives us a look at the change in Korea from a monoethnic to a multiethnic country.

In 2024, the proportion of foreigners in the country will exceed 5% of the population for the first time. Korea is considered a ‘multi-racial and multicultural’ country according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This is much faster than Japan, which accepted foreign workers first. Entering a ‘multiracial and multicultural country’ means that the country is changing into a country where at least 1 in 20 residents is a foreigner, second-generation immigrant, or naturalized person. Representative multiracial and multicultural countries include Australia and Canada.

We can already easily encounter ‘Korean foreigners’. You can meet Jonathan and his younger sister Patricia, who are called the Princes of the Congo and speak the rich Jeolla dialect, as well as Daniel from Germany, Alberto from Italy, and Julian from Belgium on various broadcasts. American Tyler's Korean skills are amazing. Last year, Chairman Ihn Yo-han served as the chairman of the People Power Party’s innovation committee. Chairman Ihn is a Korean who was born and raised in Korea and became a naturalized Korean. Foreigners who appeared on holiday special programs and entertained people with their proficient Korean language skills are no longer a ‘special feature’.

International marriage is no longer an unfamiliar sight. The story of a foreign wife marrying a rural bachelor is a thing of the past. One out of 10 married couples is a multicultural couple. Foreigners of various nationalities are having international marriages in Korea, moving away from international marriages centered on Southeast Asian nationalities. Videos showing the daily lives of such international couples abound on YouTube. As we enter a multiracial and multicultural country, the government is preparing to establish an ‘Immigration Office’ under the Ministry of Justice.

With the entry into a ‘multiracial and multicultural nation’, the myth of our society as a ‘single race’ (homogeneous) was broken. Only those who deny this reality have the same bloodline and speak the same language band together to exclude immigrants. The story of discrimination experienced by mixed-race singer Insooni (Cecilia) is a story of violence committed by our community based on the myth of a ‘single race’. In 2007, the term ‘single race’ was completely removed from textbooks. Teenagers, the future of our community, are already more familiar with ‘Korean foreigners’ than with ‘single ethnic groups.’

It must change now. We need to expand our community's neighbors further. Until now, the main framework of our country’s multicultural policy has been ‘assimilationism.’ Immigrants adapt to and change in our country’s culture. If life in ‘our country’ is uncomfortable, then ‘you’ should change and adapt. However, in the future, there must be a change to ‘coexistence’ where immigrants and Koreans exchange help with each other. Korea's unique culture and foreigners' unique culture must be respected.

Symbiosis, accepting foreigners as our neighbors, can prevent ‘xenophobia’. The abuse and hatred directed at McDonald’s model Jenny Park, using ‘women’ and ‘black people’ as links, is a litmus test for fascism in our community. Hatred is based on prejudice and fear, regardless of faction. Internet comments are filled with endless hatred and prejudice against weak countries.

More than anything, I am worried about religious hatred. The hatred of Muslims shown through the construction of the Daegu Islamic Mosque showed the scale of our society's heart. The appearance of some sects trying to use hatred of Muslims as well as hatred of homophobia as a driving force has made us know what kind of attitude we Catholics should have. As a global religion, Catholicism can do well in embracing foreigners. There is a need for pastoral care that takes careful consideration of foreigners, centered around the Migrant Pastoral Committee.

 In hindsight, the Korean Catholic Church may already be living in a ‘multi-racial and multi-cultural’ world. In the word ‘Catholic’, we can read the church’s will to work together with others through tolerance and solidarity, not hatred and discrimination. The new year has arrived. In the new year, he prays that Catholicism will become the center of ‘multiracial and multiculturalism'.

 

Gender Roles in the Church

 

The Catholic Times in its column View from the Ark gives the readers some thoughts on equality in the Church from a professor in research on women's issues.

She begins by mentioning a man who was proud that his wife was such a good cook. He is a hard-working middle-aged man who supports his family. He loves his children and tries to spend time with his family. However, he felt burdened by the situation because he did not know how to cook anything besides noodles when his wife was visiting her parents' home and he had to take responsibility for the children's meals. So he ate out or ordered food. She advised him to learn how to cook, and she emphasized that she was not saying that he should be a great cook, but needed survival skills through simple dishes such as rice and soup. He didn't mind cleaning the house but he didn't want to cook. Since he supported his family, he seemed to think that he did not need to learn how to cook.

She hasn't seen him in years. When she saw him again recently he told her that his family had been going out to eat on the weekends lately because his wife didn't want to cook. He thought his wife's food was the best, but he felt uncomfortable when his wife didn't want to cook. But he never thought about learning how to cook. Since food delivery has increased and become more common since the pandemic, he may not necessarily need to learn how to cook.

Although women's higher education and economic participation rates are increasing, women are still the cooks in the home.  If the reason men want to get married is because they have a fantasy of eating the food prepared by their wives, this may not be so easily achieved in the future. And some men think that because their wives are good at cooking, they don't need to cook.

For a while, male chefs appeared on entertainment programs and gained popularity. Although men are respected as experts, women cook at home as part of their gender role. Women cook for their families even when they don't feel like eating or cooking. Women do this out of love for their families. However, when sick and not able to give the family the help they were accustomed to they are fortunate that they can buy packaged food and porridge for the family.  

Chizuko Ueno, a Japanese sociologist and feminist scholar, discusses the old age of single men in "A Single Afternoon" (2014, Real Culture). The reasons why men become single in old age are diverse, including non-marriage, divorce, and widowhood. She says that unmarried men know how to take care of themselves and run a household, so it's not that much of a problem. However, she says that men who are divorced or widowed find it difficult to live independently, so they express discomfort and difficulties after divorce or widowhood and want to remarry. Local governments in Korea are holding cooking classes for retired men. Men learn cooking as a hobby and survival skills.

She can give gifts if she wants and not give them if she doesn’t. Also, the reason for giving gifts is to make the person receiving the gift happy. But the role of the wife as a cook is not like that. It is a duty that she has to perform regardless of her will, and if she does it well, she gets what she deserves, and if not done well may be criticized. 

The gender division of labor imposed gender roles on men to earn money for their families and on women to take care of their families. However, due to gender roles, women had to reduce or give up work to take care of their families and had difficulty achieving economic independence. These roles are not a fair division of labor. A clear example of this is women who are dual-income couples devote more time and energy to housework and care.

Similar to society's gender role expectations, female believers perform gender roles during church events.  We all participate actively in the communion service which helps with communication and bonding. But, "Come for a meal after mass." She cannot respond with joy to the district leader’s invitation. In most cases, it is only the women who work in the preparation of the meal.

She hopes that the parish will become a space where gender roles are more flexible, with male believers also participating in meal preparation for the community.