BEIRON'S WAY: THE WAIT WATCHER

Apologia Pro Fides Sua First Sunday of Lent, 5 March 2006 With as few lines as possible, should I endeavour to express the substantive causes for my belief in relation to the friendship of faith that comes before and after Christianity. For the history, theology and philosophy of the faith I believe in, the culture of Sonship in God the Father, and all that pertains, proceeds from the Jewish religion. This culture of belief in the family of God stems from the relationship taught elegantly by Jesus, as Son of the Father, which is forcefully denied by the Jewish faith, and after the birth of Christianity, by the faith of Mohammed, Islam (which means, “submission”). To my friends who are Jewish and Muslim, I have never had the need to address my own belief, which runs so gravely contrary to their own. The common history of civilisation is riddled with too many potshots, massacres, that now makes any real cry for “peace!” to be tangibly felt, and impactful. These many problems – past and p...

Thursday after Ash Wednesay, 2 March 2006 The whole Jewish and Christian history hinges on the act of a journey. After the loss of Eden, the early patriarchs were each given journeys to take, culminating in the final exodus of the Hebrew people to the promised land. Then we find them in exile and return, with the prophets journeying to preach and act, as if their monstrations were symbolic of Israel in some way. When the Temple was established at Mount Moriah, in Jerusalem, we find the Jewish people transformed to a people of pilgrimage, seeking the Divine Presence. The difference between this shrine and virtually all the other religious shrines of that time, is that it was not oracular. The people were summoned to pray, but their prayer was one of praise and supplication. There were prophets right up to the time of the birth of Jesus, and because the biblical canon was yet to be defined, there were many “scriptures” and pious, Jewish devotional writing in circulation, some popular and...

Ash Wednesday, 1 March 2006 Do you recall your earliest memory of visiting a church? Did you think of it as a place the family went to, once a week, or when was your earliest realisation where you felt the urge to visit one because it is the sanctuary of God? I was baptised on 11 October 1964, ten days after I was born at Kadang Kerbau Hospital, just a few years before that maternity hospital in Singapore could lay claim to fame in the Guinness Book of World Records for the greatest number of maternity deliveries in a single year. I believe that record still stands, and remains the novel reason why a portion of the hospital complex is preserved as a national monument. Fortunately, the new KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital located at the adjacent road (Kampong Java Road) and by a small pond is a splendid architectural tribute and modern facility. My baptism was at the small countryside church of Our Lady of Fatima, and the presiding priest was Rev. Fr. Thomas Pasquale, MEP, after whom ...