BEIRON'S WAY: THE WAIT WATCHER

Then fixing his eyes on his disciples he said: “How blessed are you who are poor: the kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are hungry now: you shall have your fill.” Luke 6:20-21 In Luke’s gospel, Jesus spoke these when he approached a level ground where many people had gathered, to hear him and to be cured. Because of its similarity to the familiar words we know as Matthew’s Beatitudes, which were taught by Jesus on a mountain when he saw the crowds (Matthew 5:1), we tend to read one text over the other. But the subtleties in difference between the text are sufficient for us to take a look at Luke’s version of events, and see if he intends to inform his readers of something else. We know he wrote in beautiful Greek, and therefore this makes it unlikely that the variance was an accident, even if he had the same source (which in French is Quelle , a reference to the missing “Q” gospel from which all the synoptics share a commonality). Jesus according to Luke goes on to immediat...

Saturday, 25 March 2006 Today, the universal church celebrates the Annunciation to the blessed Virgin Mary, an event which in the Gospel of Luke heralds the coming of the Messiah for the Jewish nation. In the Quran, it is also an epic event, in which the Prophetic Traditions explain that God's Word created the nabii Isa (prophet Jesus, to the Muslims), in a miracle birth which marks the immaculate conception. To Christians, it is not merely the miraculous nature of the event, where God has sent one of his own angelic messengers named Gabriel, to announce the birth of one to come. This has happened before, where angels took human form to mingle among the Children of Israel, and make specific revelations. To Abram, as visitors from the heat of the desert, who enjoyed his hospitality and promised the birth of his son; and in another instance, the story of Gideon, who was to lead the Israelites. Yet in none of these instances, did the angelic messenger seek the willing participation a...

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 ...

Composed, Monday, 13 February 2006 Modern, western civilisation as we know it today, with all its flaws or weaknesses, apogee of freedoms or summit of liberalism, is the development of at least 2000 years of prolonged thought and enquiry. We know this, because as the Hellenist school of philosophy faded as the Roman Empire waxed and waned, it was ultimately the springtime of Christian thought which as it grew through conciliar debate and defense, and holding out against the ancient philosophies, formed the foundation of Western civil law and society. Enlightened historians today are willing to attribute to the Catholic Church much of the basis for this development in western thought. In the same way, the biased, popular view that the Inquisition was vast and cruel, or that Galileo was unfairly tried, should be examined with the true facts. The mythologies of conspiracy theories that the church sought to keep a great deal of matters secret to protect its teachings, or adulterate records...

I meditate on these now: "The secret of my identity lies in the mercy and love of God." - Thomas Merton and "The mind of God is forgiveness." - John Paul II The mystery of who I am, and how I become, is part of the dynamic chemistry that relies on the action of Divine mercy and love. What I am, as spirit and flesh, is the resultant manifestation of God's on-going mercy to let me exercise my free choice, even where I am less than perfect and prodigal with opportunity. And, of God's generousity, which allows me to know and be, alive, in the fragile life. But what makes God do this, and why. Because he is ever, always, ready to forgive. But I must approach the throne of Grace. Forgiveness requires repentence. "Turn away from your sin," so the Divine Physician of our souls say. And the Psalmist: "And if you should hear his voice, harden not your hearts...!"

In the last two thousand years since the early Roman Empire brought civil law and Hellenistic philosophy into world civilisation, there have been several "enlightenments". Before this era, we have some idea of the great impact Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had, and through Alexander the Great, how much of these ideas pervaded the ancient world. With the Roman empire, we have some idea of the rule of law, and inspite of the deitification of the Roman emperors and the impact of this on developing thought, we have some reason to thank them for propagating fundamental beliefs in the rights of citizens, fidelity to the state, etc. For a while in the fifth century when Latin began to replace Greek as the language of commerce and thought, we saw the first semblence of the growth of new ideas and philosophies. During the monastic period with Bernard of Clairvaux, Christian doctrines saw some development, which since the time of the first councils convoked by Constantine, we began to ...

St. Aelred of Rievaulx, born 1110 in Northumbria. His biographer, Walter Daniel describes him thus: “He did not attain to great knowledge of the liberal arts at school, but by his own efforts and the exercise of the keen and subtle mind he had, he became more cultured than many who are steeped in secular learning… He was moreover a man of the highest integrity, wise in the ways of the world, witty, eloquent, a pleasant companion, generous and discreet. At the same time no prelate of his day was as gentle and patient as he, or sympathised so deeply with the physical and moral infirmities of others.” Here is the extract from Aelred of Rievaulx’s De spirituali amicitia : “First we must set this spiritual love on a firm foundation in which its beginnings must be anchored, and the greatest care must be exercised, when soaring to the heights of friendship, to keep within the established limits. This foundation is the love of God, to which all things should be referred – whatever love or affe...

my motto motive motivation for the new year: "DO AS NO ONE DOES, AND THE WORLD MARVELS" From St. Bernard Of Clairvaux (Twelve century founder of the Cistercian Order of monks) The Cistercian order has a literary heritage of Christian contemplative and instructional writings which should be re-discovered by today's 3rd Millenium Men. The treatise by Aelred on Friendship, "De Spirituali Amicitia", for instance, is a wonderful work on the nature of neoplatonism, not as St. Augustine proposes - that friendship among men is separate from the friendship of God (John 15:15) - but as the relationship between men with Christ as the third and centre of that friendship, around which persons relate and their relations revolve (John 15:13). In addition, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, whose friendship and affection for others have inspired many writings and reflections, taught explicitly on the wisdom of proper conduct for the Christian disciple. Much is based on the work of St. B...

In the old covenant, under Mosiac Law, the dietary laws ( kashrut ) are well chronicled. Thus Professor Menachem Marc Kellner has referred to Judaism as “a religion of pots and pans in the eyes of those who derogate its concern with actions”. It is in Leviticus (chapter 11) and Deuteronomy (chapter 14) that the Israelites are instructed by Yahweh what they can consume. Oddly, despite the centrality of the paschal meal as the Eucharistic offering by Jesus in the catholic Christian faith, the spirituality of diet is simply “missing”. Faced with the growing health challenges brought about by illness, disease and human technology, interest groups have developed trends that borrow from the mysticism of the Orient to offer organic, biotic diets. The naturalness of these diets are safe and sound, without any extreme. But when cancer is as great a threat to life, then what does the spirituality of a Christian diet suggest? Too much protein, fat, diary, eggs are just as mucous-causing as does t...