One can get too jaded and ‘churchy’

This morning homily by Father Fabian is another one of those that makes me go, “OMG, Father, you been reading my mind or what!!??!!”

I had a very hassled morning and I was thinking of skipping church because my son just crashed the car last night and hubby and I needed to think of what to do next. Buy a new car as our third car while the one is in repair, rent one for a week since school holidays is coming, buy a second hand car which we can get pronto and etc. I could have spent the morning car hunting.

But I decided not to skip church and choir practice. I had wanted to go for choir practice so much and today is the first Sunday that I am finally free from my weekend course. I know the car problem will solve on its own. Why worry? God comes first. My level headed hubby and son will know what to do next.

So, the homily is about being inside, outside, here, there. It was a very long homily and I totally cannot repeat what Father Fabian said. However, the reading from St. Paul is very comforting to me. “If God is with you, who can be against you’ or something like that. However, Father Fabian’s homily is to remind us that we can sometimes be good, sometimes be bad.

It was exactly what was running in my mind. I was feeling so stressed out, running out of the house with only half my breakfast as I didn’t have time to eat the whole bowl of noodle nor make myself a cup of coffee. It being a Sunday, I know there are lots of ‘well wishers, kind intention’ people who will be there to give me all sort of comments like, “you look sleepy, you put on weight, you woke up late and didn’t have time to make-up” etc etc etc.

I put on my jeans, my baggy t-shirt and I didn’t have time to apply lipstick. Once, I wore something similar and another one of the ‘well wisher’ told me it is a disrespect to the Lord that I didn’t bother to put on better clothes and ‘honour’ the Lord in His supper. *roll eyes* Of course, since I am such a ‘nice Catholic’, I went to change my clothes obediently.

I got to church on time but I cannot find any parking in the compound. I dislike the idea of parking outside because of the rampant snatch thefs. I cursed in my mind. Those ‘batch of people’ who had their mass earlier haven’t left the church so there was no parking. So, I was grumbling to myself, “Want to have fellowship, go to kopitiam lah. Finish mass, leave the church and let us have the space in the car park lah’ Don’t sembang sembang somemore oi, we want your car park.

I think it is good that we admit that we can sometimes be too jaded in our Christian life. We can get too goodie-goodie and forget that others may not have the same life as us. Like if you are a retiree with plenty of time, you are too jaded to remember that I am a busy mom with many kids. Or if I am an adult, I forget what’s life as a teen and expect them to have the same enthusiasm with boring homilies etc etc.

Sometimes, we get too ‘churchy’ and we expect others to be as churchy as us. Or we have become so lapse in our Christian life, we failed to see why others need to go and worship God like they have nothing more interesting things to do. We are all from different extremes and I believe no one is at fault. What we can do is to continue to strive to stick close to our Christian faith, take a little time to learn and understand better. Allow ourselves to be guided by the Lord instead of trying to manage everything on our own. Let others live their lives instead of pounding our rights and wrongs on them.

Many times, we did things to get that ‘mountain top high’ and yet, we failed to see that it is for our own intended purpose and not for what we are actually doing. This ‘getting a personal high’ (in the name of doing charity) is a dangerous thing and when we get too jaded and churchie, we tend to search for an all-time high at the expenses of others.