Gospel for the Day: Have Faith

As Jesus passed by, two blind men followed him, crying out,
"Son of David, have pity on us!" 
When he entered the house,
the blind men approached him and Jesus said to them,
"Do you believe that I can do this?" 
"Yes, Lord," they said to him. 
Then he touched their eyes and said,
"Let it be done for you according to your faith." 
And their eyes were opened. 

Matthew 9: 27-30

(What follows was first posted elsewhere on July 21, 2008)

My mom likes to tell us, her children, to "Have Faith". This coming from a person who is allergic to all sorts of medicine except paracetamol. Her body overreacts to any medication. So imagine what it was like when she was diagnosed with Stage III (or was it stage IV?) colon cancer almost 20 years ago (in Thailand at that). After surgery, she overreacted to everything so eventually, they had to stop chemotherapy. But she's now 74 and still alive*.

She attributes her longetivity despite her condition to prayer. She gave birth to all her children without epidural (except me. I came out by caesarian. I don't think she ever forgave me for that :-). Not even anaesthesia after (if that's at all possible) She sang her way through delivery with religious songs.

She says she got through cancer and all her other illnesses through prayer.

Whenever I needed someone to pray for me, I'd tell my mom. When my wife went into premature delivery and wasn't allowed to move for about a week. When Sinta was born and there were so many complications. When Sinta gets sick and us parents are worried sick. Always that text to mommy.

Until recently, when Sinta got hospitalized last December and we were in the hospital for more than 20 days. She would pray. She would say "Have Faith" like she always does. But I noticed something different. She was scared.

I told my brothers and sisters about it and they said mommy has always been like that. When someone in the family is seriously ill, mommy panics. My brother, who is a doctor, says that mommy is not good company in a hospital because she panics and takes out her panic on doctors and nurses.

All along she was like that and being the youngest, I never knew (my brothers and sisters sheltered me, allowing me to believe in many things). I would text her everytime Sinta gets sick, and she would say "Have Faith", not knowing that she was as worried as us and even more so. Now that I know, I stop telling her when Sinta is sick. Somehow, I feel, that in my mid-thirties, I am a little bit more grown-up.

I think that by and large I took her words, "Have Faith" to heart and never knew that the person who gave me that advice was the person who needed to hear it most. But maybe, it is true that the advice we give others most often is the advice we ourselves need the most.

* Mommy died in 2010, but not because of cancer. 

Gospel for the Day: Rock

The Gospel for today about the wise man who built his house on rock instead of sand is very familiar. What I learned tonight was that the passage comes at the very end of the Sermon on the Mount.

Which makes sense because Jesus had just given some pretty tough instructions on various subjects such as anger, adultery, retaliation, enemies, and money. And at the very end of it all, he tells everyone that not only should they listen to what he said, they should also act on them. And those who act on his words are like the man who built his house on rock.

And those who act on his words will face the same level of difficulty as those who build on rock. Building on rock must have even more difficult during Jesus' time when they didn't have the kind of drills we have today. So at the very end Jesus recognized that what he was asking us to do was not easy but still absolutely necessary.