How faith and politics intertwined

I don’t see how one can lives a life of faith without politics.  Even if you are  hermit who lives high up on the mountains, one day you may even need to get involve in political issues. For example, what if there is a war going down below and the people are fleeing to crowd with you?  Or how about people polluting the air, you suffocate due to toxic gas?

So, it is impossible for the faithfuls to claim to be not involve in matters related to politics because we are part of the society and community and when we are part of it, we have our roles to play.  Sure, there are lots of people who can smugly say they are praying hard for peace and etc but what good is pray when they don’t go out and do something.  Of course, there are those who may not have the chances to actually do something probably due to being invalid but other than that, I am sure God has given us the necessary instruments to  deal with the challenges.

I went to church today, very reluctantly.  However, for the past few weeks, I have duties and going to church when on duty is more of a ‘work’ rather than time with God.  So, I forced myself to go because I need that time alone to reflect if I have been too vocal sometimes.

But I guess things don’t  always go the way I expect.  They need someone to take care of the OHP so I volunteered.  We have a new priest who is going to be stationed at our cathedral.

New priest, new system and being the clumsy person that I am, I do panic sometimes when the priest skips here and there.  The Powerpoint slides were there but it means I must coordinate the lyrics of the hymn, the timing and where to jump next.  Thank God, everything went fine.

That’s when something Father Fabian said struck me.  He reminded us of the “God qualifies the ones He called and not call the ones who is qualified.”  I think if there is anybody who is the least qualified, it has to be me because until today, I still have problem memorising the order of the mass.  I still cannot remember which prayer is which, what is memorial acclamation and etc etc.  But the weirdest thing is the commentator praised me.  Then, I realised that the greenhorn me have somehow eased into my duty now.

For that, I must thank God that I always have the ‘not scared of anything’ attitude.  I took up things that I know nothing off but through my perseverances, determination and thick skin, I have learnt a lot.  I have come a long way from the time I was baptised.  This is the same person who lined up for Holy Communion the first time she went to church.  Oh boy, I still can laugh at how dumb and ignorant I was back then.  I thought every one gets a free biscuit.  LOL.  Lucky, the communion minister know I am not a Catholic and shooed me away.  I suppose others would have fled from the church forever but I went on to attend RCIA.

Back to today’s homily, one other thing that I must remind myself is ’sin by omission’.  Keeping quiet, not doing anything, not wanting to get involve, hoping to get perfect ‘A’s all the time by shying away from doing something is  sin too.

And I like Father Fabian already.  I like when priests have guts and dare to bring us the realities of the world we are living in and how we can live  as   good Christians inspite of the amount of  things that challenge us. I hope more people will be aware of the situation and not just living in their secured,  little blameless  supposedly ’sinless’ world.

Tags: malaysia, politics