The Joy of Life

A columnist for the Catholic Times wonders where is  his standard of judgement. How much does his Catholic belief affect his life? He suspects that the values of the world have an inordinate influence on his life: the desire for peace and security.

He reviews the many different ways we wish each other well. We often say: good health to you, become rich, meet a great partner and marry, hope you get a good job soon, study hard and get the school you want, and so on.

Shouldn't we as Christians, he asks, have a different set of greetings? Shouldn't we be saying: Follow God's will, be faithful in your life of faith, I will pray for you, be true to the Scriptures, I will pray that you be filled with grace and  peace, and so on. 

Most of our worries and troubles come, the columnist says, from our judging according to a worldly value system, from not seeing from a Godly viewpoint but seeing from our own self-interest and personal desires. This is true even though we believe that everything moves according to God's providence. Many fail to turn their worries and problems over to God but work as if everything depends on them, becoming lost and facing life with difficulty.  It is when one turns everything over to God that peace and joy can come into our life.

As a baby grows daily we also in our faith life should grow in maturity in a healthy way. In the same way as we expend our efforts and passions  on our dreams and hopes, shouldn't we, as believers, be expending the same kind of effort in having a mature faith life?

Our earthly life is short, the columnist reminds us, and it will soon disappear. As a believer we have values that go beyond this life; shouldn't they also deserve our efforts and passion? This transitory life, he points out, can be faced in many ways. The hedonist says "since I will die, I will eat drink and be merry." The nihilist says "life is empty," and the existentialist says "life has no substance and our plans are useless." The columnist asks what is the proper disposition of a person of faith facing an unknown future?  Human confidence on our continual health and possessions can lead to pride: We don't need God; we can do it alone. For the Christian, this is not one of our options. We want to live doing the will of  God.

When we look at our faith life, we can see many reasons for thanks. This gives us joy; we have maturity and a grace-filled life. This joy results not from giving thanks for the joy of life, but rather it is the thanks that gives joy to life. When I can truly give thanks for what I have received, then joy will enter my life and the desire to respond joyfully will be there.

Many Faces of Poverty

'Rich with assets and yet poor.' In the past this assertion would be difficult to comprehend, but it's no longer the case. The concepts of rich and poor have become more abstract and confused.  Our complicated financial arrangements  and present realities have led to a confused understanding of the words.

We have those in society who have a house but are called 'house poor.'  Their house is often an obstacle in receiving financial help; despite the house, which is often a financial burden, they may need more help to live well but are  prevented from receiving this help because of the house they have. And then there are the 'retired poor' who have to take care of the education of their children and are not able to prepare for their own retirement, thus becoming the 'living poor.'

We also have the 'job poor' who in order to find a job spend a great deal of money getting  accreditation, preparing for exams for different licenses, and acquiring the qualifications for landing a skilled job; it's a serious problem in our society.

The 'baby poor' are those who have difficulty in raising their children. This poverty will also affect the next generation. This is the poverty that young couples face in our society. And there are the 'working poor' that the Free Trade Act helps to exacerbate. They are working but faced with a diminished income. The young, especially, have to work for lower wages.

The many faces of poverty today are seen everywhere, and the word 'poverty' itself is losing the meaning it once had.  

Compared to this secular meaning of the word, the Church tells us of a spiritual poverty, which can be understood in two ways:  God is the owner of all we possess. We are only stewards, managers, of the abundance we enjoy. The second meaning is to use what we have wisely, sharing with others. To use what we have only for ourselves, not seeing what is happening around us, is to misuse, the bishop says, what has been given.

Writing in the Catholic Times, he presents us with these many faces of poverty, and asks, which one are we wearing? What kind of poverty am I living?

In Search of our Dream

In Korea like many other countries the daily papers have horoscopes that are a must-see for many. The four pillars: year, month, day, and hour of birth are the foundations for the zodiacal house that determines, it is said, our future.
 
In the mission station bulletin, the writer tells his readers that the pillars do not make a house. There are many other parts that are necessary to have a house to live in. The future is not determined by one of the parts, he stresses, but by the efforts we make in life to prepare for the future.

Whether the four pillars say something good or bad, it is of little importance. It is all in the eyes of the beholder, he says, and the attitude one has in seeing life.

We can't retrieve what has passed. We can't practice for the future but we can prepare for it. We should not live like the mayfly that has no understanding of the morrow or the cicada that doesn't understand what will occur next year.

Jesus gave us an example of what it means to live by following his way. The writer, using the words of an ancient Chinese philosopher to corroborate the teachings of Jesus, outlines ten ways to live without regret.
 
1) If we don't respect our parents after they are dead, we will have regret. 

2) If we are not kind to our relations when near them, when separated we will have regret. 

3) If we don't learn when we are young, when old we will have regret.

4) If we don't think of failure when all is going well, we will have regret.

5) If we don't save when we can, when poor we will have regret. 

6) If we don't plant in the spring, in the fall, we will have regret.    

7) If we don't fix the lock on the front gate, when the thief comes we will have regret.  

8) If we don't take care of the body when healthy, when sick we will have regret.   

  
9) When we drink to excess and say something stupid, when sober we will have regret.

10) If we  are not hospitable to guests, when they leave we will have regret

Water that doesn't flow putrefies, air that doesn't circulate suffocates; there is no aroma from an old tree and dry earth doesn't produce flowers. We are more concerned for today than yesterday, and for tomorrow than today. The thoughts of most  are not in the here and now but on dreaming a new and better tomorrow. What is my situation  today? My fate is not determined by the stars nor determined, as some would have us believe, by our genes. Where should we turn, the writer asks, to realize our dream? We should turn to God  and  go in search of the  dream.                                                                           

Is it the Head or the Heart?

On the opinion page of the Catholic Times, the columnist recounts a meeting with his son, a diocesan priest, and his  wife's brother who is a religious brother. They met at his house and were discussing the spiritual life. The columnist decided to be the 'dignified on-looker," but that was not to be the case.

Since he had made the 30-day Ignatian Retreat, he joined the conversation by saying that during the exercises he had a new appreciation of the power of the imagination in reflecting on the activities of our Lord. The religious brother did not accept the columnist's idea that the imagination could serve as an approach to God. He didn't pay attention to what the brother was saying and maintained his contrary opinion.

The columnist acknowledged the difficulty they both had in accepting each other's opinion.  Since the columnist was a poet, refuting the power of the imagination seemed an impossibility, while yet understanding the brother's difficulty.  He explained briefly what he meant by using Catholic philosophy and Jacques Maritain as support for his opinion.

The brother said that the only way we can approach God is by intuition. Because the columnist got involved in an exchange of  pros and cons, it made for an awkward situation. The meeting with his son the priest, and his wife's brother, ended on this note, and they left.  Without  any decision, the curtain came down on this particular event. This is life.  Most of  life goes on without many of us agreeing to most things, except, perhaps, agreeing to disagree.

The priest later gave his father an understanding of what happened that evening. The mainstream of Catholic thinking goes along with Thomas Aquinas and St. Ignatius of Loyola. They both acknowledge the intellect and the imagination but the Franciscan school: St. Francis, St. Bonaventure, St. John of the Cross, and others, see the way to God by the intuition and distrust the other ways. This  made the relationship with the Church a delicate one.

 
When the columnist later went to a restaurant and ordered a blow fish, he saw the discussion in a different light. The blow fish, he says, as we all know, has a poison that can kill, but once controlled the fish is a delicacy.  There are  those who stay  away from the fish because of the dire possibilities; they want to play safe.

The way of the imagination is a place of splendor but can be the devil's playground when indulged in to the point of aestheticism. Writers such as Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe, and Oscar Wilde would be of this school.  Just hearing the names of these geniuses we know what is meant. Like the blow fish, poison is lurking in their writings.

...Yes, not to eat the blow fish is the safest way but, the columnist tells us, he is accustomed to its taste.

Church Always Reforming

"To live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often." These words of Blessed Cardinal Newman are heard often;  a priest historian writing  in the Kyeongyang magazine introduces us to  St. Bridget of Sweden who pointed out a similar message to the Christians of her time: change and reform.

The priest wants Korean Catholics to become more familiar with St. Bridget. He tells us that the pope who canonized her only 18 years after her death asked, when first hearing about the Saint, can anything good come from the North (referring to Sweden).  She is not only the patron of Sweden but also one of Europe's patron saints.

Bridget was born in 1302 and married at 14. She had eight children, one of them also becoming a canonized Saint. A Saint begetting a Saint: Catharine of Sweden. After 28 years of marriage and the death of her husband, she devoted the rest of her life to the spiritual life, founding a community. She traveled within the world of that time to all the pilgrimage sites and saw the world of Catholicism first hand, using what she saw and the revelations of the Lord to speak about the conditions of the Church.

Europe of the 14th century had been devastated by many tragedies: earthquakes, contagious  diseases, hunger  and war. The Black Death killed 80 percent of those with the disease. It was a great tragedy for Europe and the Church. Part of the Church of that time became very worldly. There were those who overcame this temptation but many were the object of criticism. Many intellectuals of that time were clerics in search of pleasure and comfort; the problem was that the Church accepted the situation, which had a great deal to do with money, excommunications for non-religious reasons, and selling of religious offices--all these abuses were the object of criticism. Abuses among the clerics and the lay people were wide spread.

It was during the life of Bridget that the Church went through a period of 70 years, known as the Avignon Captivity, in which the papacy was in France. This was not only a period where the papacy moved but a period where the leadership in the Church was more concerned with their own comfort and well-being than with spirituality and the poor. It was not able to function as Church. St. Bridget began the work of  changing the secular concerns of the popes to taking more care of the needs of the Church, a work that was continued by St. Catherine of Siena.

She scolded the priests and bishops for their way of life. A prime example was the bishop of Milan, Giovanni Visconti, but it was all the popes, bishops and priests who were not  leading the life as a  follower of Jesus that met with her words of disapproval.

Our writer returns to the days in which he studied Church History and remembers vividly the constant refrain: "Church always reforming". It is not the comfortable life.  This is not becoming conformed to the world but the way of Jesus. When we are not conformed to the ways of Jesus, it is a problem of great consequence.  Every day has to be a renewal  of our life. He quotes the words of a famous Chinese saying: "if you want  renewal, then everyday must be renewed, day after day renewed and again renewed."

To Live is to Pray

Prayer is considered by some as useless and yet by others as the most important activity of the day. Writing in Bible in Life a priest recalls his impressions of a discussion he had with a priest friend who spent a great deal of time in its practice. An experience of meeting with Jesus.

Hearing his friend talk about prayer made him envious. He was talking about meeting Jesus in prayer. It was a personal encounter with Jesus. It was, we would say, like meeting Jesus in a dream. However, not everybody has that kind of experience. It is the kind of gift given to those who prepare for it.

The writer asks himself why is he not adept in the practice of prayer. A requisite is  to know what prayer is, and he uses Henri Nouwen's words to explain prayer. "To live is to pray. To love is to pray and loving  is  serving." Another theologian explained, "Prayer is not like an emergency fund which you draw from in need. Prayer is the soul's place of rest, the soul's house. All living things have a place of repose. Birds have nests; foxes have dens; bees have hives. Prayer is our place of rest. The soul without this place of rest, wanders."

Prayer is like water to a fish, and air to us. Without prayer, we are living without a most important ingredient for life. Many of us believe that prayer is difficult when it is not. When we invite God to be with us, we have a prayer. When we have love within us, we are praying. When we meditate on the Gospel, and it moves into our life that is prayer. And when we want good things for others and the world, that is prayer.

In prayer, there is also great joy. It is being together with the beloved. Isn't that what heaven is? It is being enraptured with God's love. When the antenna and frequency are correct, we experience God with the whole body. Those without the taste for prayer will find it more like hell.  One has to know what prayer is, have a taste for it and enjoy it.

He concludes the article by telling us there is no royal road to prayer. Without effort, prayer comes rarely. We should go to those who are 'elders in prayer' for help. There are no persons with this gift from birth, he says; it's something acquired and he recommends that we make the effort to achieve prayer by starting with a period of 10 minutes a day.

Facing Problems Head On

We often  hear as parting words: 'don't over do it.'  Writing for the Seoul Diocesan bulletin a novelist introduces his article with these words that his doctor uses with him. He is being treated for cancer and reflects on his situation. His response to the doctor was: "Are you telling me to lay down and live the role of a sick person. If I do that I will be dead; if I do the opposite I will be living."

He tried to follow the doctor's advice: lying down, sleeping, reading, watching TV but found that he became more listless and depressed. He felt more like an invalid. So he decided to keep on moving as long as he could.

In front of his apartment, he walked the corridor which was about 100 steps. In the beginning, he had no desire to do this, but he came to a point where he could walk 10,000 steps. Any free moment he would go to the corridor and walk. In the beginning, it was with great difficulty, accompanied by dizziness and weakness but things changed;  he even left the apartment and started climbing a nearby mountain, resting often,

He tells us the story of a wise man  who was asked how does one escape from the cold and heat. Go to a place without cold and heat was his answer. Where in the world can I find such a place? the person asked. Why are you so uncomprehending? the wise man retorted. When you're cold you find a place that will make you colder, and when warm go to a place that will make you warmer.
 
When we go to a place that is warm to escape the cold, we are temporarily avoiding the cold. We are not getting rid of the cold. This is true also when we have pain and worries. We try to get rid of them by drink or by other means, but find that we are not able to do so. As the wise man said, to get rid of the pain and worries, or anything that is bothering us, we must face them head on.


A person wanting to learn archery was told first to learn how not to blink. A famous Korean general was known to have said that in order to live you have to die--words similar to the words used by our Lord.

He finishes the article with the words of the angels to the shepherds. "You have nothing to fear! I come to proclaim good news to you--tidings of great joy to be shared by the whole people." Even though it is more than we can bear, let us stand up, the writer says. Although difficult, if possible let us crawl. If we can walk let us walk; if we can run let us run--like the shepherds to the crib of our Lord.