February 25, 2024
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My Dear Parishioners,
An essential image from nature emerges from the Gospel of this First Sunday of Lent. In it we find the key for living the next six weeks fruitfully. It is that of the desert. After Jesus was baptized, but before he began his years of public ministry, St Mark tells us in today's Gospel that the Spirit "drove Jesus out into the desert," where he experienced temptation. Throughout the Bible, the desert is often referred to a place of testing, where we experience our weakness and dependence on God. Water and food are hard to come by there, and the temperatures and emptiness are oppressive to both the body and the mind. The desert is a place where our illusions of self-sufficiency and comfort fade away. When we are in the desert, either literally or figuratively, we quickly realize that we need God. In other words, the desert is the opposite of the Garden of Eden. It is the place of suffering and hardship that sin has led us to. Both original sin and also our own personal sins have interfered with God's plan for our lives and for our world; they have put us in need of salvation. Sins pushed mankind out of the beautiful garden into the desolate desert! Sin is the reason why life has become a desert for me: my sins lead me to desire Christ's loving sacrifice that is my salvation.
Forty-three years ago I and another 22 fellow boat people landed on the island Pulau Bidong, a refugee camp under the aegis of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and run by the Malaysian police. The capacity of the camp was said to be 4,500, but by January 1979, there were 40,000 Vietnamese on the island. Bidong was said to be the most densely populated place on earth with about 40,000 refugees crowded into a flat area hardly larger than a football field. The passage from Vietnam was extremely dangerous and risky and the refugee boats were small, overloaded, and often attacked by pirates. Thousands of refugees died at sea; rape and abduction of refugee women was common. Once they had survived the sea voyage what utter disappointment was waiting for them on the island – the first stop of the free world! Conditions on Bidong extremely difficult. One visitor, Leo Cherne, Chairman of President Reagan’s Intelligence Advisory Board, visited Bidong and called it "Hell Isle." Refugees crowded onto the island "lived in makeshift huts two and three stories high made of salvaged timbers from wrecked boats, plastic sheets, tin cans, and corrugated iron sheets." Latrines and wells were inadequate; tropical rainstorms sent rivers of filthy water through the camp; all food and clean water had to be imported from the mainland. Water was rationed at one gallon per day per person. Doctors were abundant, but medicine was in short supply. Sanitation was nearly non-existent and hepatitis was rampant.
There was nothing to do in this refugee camp except to gather around the jetty and watch the supply boats come in twice a day bring rations and waters. A lush island to begin with, surrounded by the ocean, it could have been a luxury vacation destination. Instead, it became a desert of a refugee camp housing thousands and thousands of boatpeople who passed their days in worries, anxiety and dread. The one thing that kept the refugee population alive was the hope to be able to be accepted by the US delegation and to be allowed to be re-settled in America. People walked around at all hours thinking, dreaming, and hallucinating about coming to America – because there was absolutely nothing to do Hell Isle! But soon enough some entrepreneurial spirits began illegal trading activities on one of the more secluded beaches and with the police having been bribed, a flourishing black market came into existence. Some of the refugee families actually became wealthy! And prosperity in that little corner of the world on that little refugee island blinded them to the fact that they had started their journey not to end up trading goods and making money in this tiny godforsaken land. These poor souls were so impressed with the profits they had in front of them they began to slacken off their efforts in pursuing the foreign delegations on the island for resettlement in a third country – having forgotten that the camp would be closed someday, and they would have nowhere to go to spend all their money! If they had left everything and risked even their own lives on the ocean, it was never about Pulau Bidong, but about their dreamed destiny in America! Overwhelmed by a few dollars they had made in the black market they had completely forgotten the purpose of their passage to freedom and were willing to let their desire for freedom wither away in exchange for a few extra bucks!
This modern-day parable reminds me why I need Lent as long as I am alive, lest I begin to feel at home in this world and forfeit my chance at heaven! Yes, I am nothing but dust and ashes, but the kind of dust and ashes loved by God because made in the image and likeness of God. Yes, I must remember that I am nothing but dust and ashes and to dust and ashes I must return. But my ultimate destination, my ultimate destiny is heaven with God! Cats and dogs and elephants and dinosaurs are destined to this world and this world only. I and all of you and the rest of humanity are only pilgrims passing through this place on the way to our final destination. Lent helps me to be mindful of this so that I would not act as if I am a permanent resident here, so that I may learn again to know my God, to serve Him, to love Him, so as to be with Him forever in the next!
