Surprising Grace

A few weeks ago, the day after Christmas, one of my friends was telling me about her celebrations and ended off saying, “My heart is full!” I smiled on hearing that. What a lovely way to describe the overflowing blessings of a grateful heart! I’m sure the end of the last year brought similar sentiments to many people. I always enjoy our FCJ community’s celebration of Christmas here in Manila as it gives us many opportunities to share joy and special moments with people around us. This year, there was plenty of joy to be had in the smiling faces, cheerful sounds and delicious smells of the season, but what touched me most was several encounters we had that revealed a little of the wonder and vulnerability of humanity. One of these encounters took place when our community went carolling in a hospital with some of the young people with whom we work. Our objective was to bring some joy and sympathy to those patients and their families who had to spend the Christmas season in hospita...

The “Paschal Mystery” is one of the central concepts of the Christian faith. The phrase is used to describe what Christians understand as the suffering, death and eventual resurrection to new life of Jesus Christ. In this way, it also describes the movement from suffering and death to resurrection and new life that we experience in our lives and in our world. In this reflection, our guest writer Leonard Mah S.J. reflects on this movement in his own life. ******** What has the Paschal Mystery got to do with our daily lives? We too are also called to experience and participate in the Paschal Mystery of Christ in our own personal way in our daily lives! It is said that we need to go through our own personal Paschal Mystery before some true quality change and conversion can take place in us. How does this happen? Like Jesus, we too are called to experience and share in his sufferings. Most of us may be tempted to only want the Easter experience: sharing only in the good thing...

Last Advent, I prayed through a lovely retreat offered online by Jan Richardson for Women’s Christmas, titled “The Path We Make By Dreaming” . It was the first time I came to know of Jan’s work, and would highly recommend it (you can access her website here ). One of her paintings in this retreat was particularly significant for me. The title was what struck me first: “honest about the darkness, perceptive of the light”. ©   Jan Richardson I first saw this a day after trying to counsel someone I care very much about over the phone. As it became clear that what she was hoping was not easy to achieve and the path ahead was uncertain and full of obstacles, she got more and more discouraged. Even on the phone I could feel her slowly slipping away even as I was trying my best to console and give hope. Knowing that she had a tendency towards depression, I was very anxious even after I had put down the phone, and kept wondering what else I could have said or done that could have ...

In 2014, I moved to the Philippines, where I lived for little over a year. That wasn't the first time I had lived out of my native Singapore, but it was the first time I had done so in a country with a language and culture so different from my own. I couldn't have anticipated how much of a shock it would be for me to leave all that was familiar and find myself in strange territory. Someone explained to me then that what I was experiencing was a loss of power: the power I had had in my own country that came from being able to communicate in my own language, knowing how to get around, being plugged into networks of shared meaning, having a good job and the self-respect that came from it, the support of loved ones, etc. ... For a while I wondered, as I tried to pick up the pieces, what was left of me when all of that had been stripped away. I knew in theory that I was deeply loved for who I was and not for what I could do... But it was a long time before I started to really un...