Today's Catholic is publishing with permission, the Homily delivered by Archbishop Emeritus John Ha at the Funeral Mass of the late Rev Fr Dato Lawrence Chua. Contributed and transcribed by Bede Hong, it has been proofread and verified by the Archbishop emeritus.
HOMILY By ARCHBISHOP EMERITUS DATO JOHN HA
Thursday October 28, 2021
We have lost a great man. Or have we?
My dear sisters and brothers in the Lord, anyone encountering Fr. Dato Lawrence Chua, even for the first time, even for a short while, will most likely see in him the trappings of a great leader in society.
He was always prim and proper, knowledgeable and conversant. He had good insights and foresight that assured good planning for the community. This is just touching the top of the iceberg of his talents. He seemed to be cut out for great leadership. But he forwent, he gave up all the high prospects of becoming a great and successful leader in society in favour of what he had discerned to be God’s call of him – to be a priest.
In all his 57 years of priestly ministry, he displayed greatness – greatness not by the standards of the world. He channeled all his God-given talents to serving in love, serving the people God put under his charge with great love. And therein lay his greatness – greatness by Christ’s standards: “You want to be great? Be ready to be a servant for all.” And that was Father Chua. He responded to God’s call to be a servant for all.
And how did Fr. Chua serve his people? We could be sitting here for a whole day and would not be able to touch the base of the iceberg of all the services that he rendered with his talents. Summarily, his services could be seen as encapsulated in the churches he built – the church taken in two senses of the word: in the sense of the physical building, but also in the sense of the parish community that he built. And the two parishes that come to mind are of course the Holy Trinity Church in Kenyalang and the Blessed Sacrament Church in BDC.
But before and in between these two postings to these parishes, he had had other appointments as well. For example, he was appointed to Serian, and then to Kota Padawan, where he served as assistant (rector). And then he was appointed to College General, a Major Seminary in Penang and following that, St. Francis Xavier’s Major Seminary in Singapore, where he served as a formator. And he even had a three-year missionary work in Sabah. In whatever capacity Fr. Chua was appointed to serve, his spirit of service was to the best of his ability, constant and consistent. For him, only the best was good enough for God and for His people. That spirit of Fr Chua’s was reflected in the quality of the physical churches that he had put up as well as his demands on the community in the parish. Those who had him as their rector can testify to that.
His demands were great. That’s because he wanted only the best for God and he wanted to build up a family deserving of that status: a family of God. Now in order to build up a parish community as the family of God, he wanted to form them in the faith. And to this end he put up facilities to provide the people a place to come together and to share with one another and also be built up in their faith.
And we see flanking the Blessed Sacrament Church two big blocks of meeting rooms and classrooms. Did he build those for his own name? No. It was to provide facilities for the people and the community to meet, to share their faith with one another and also to be formed in their faith.
That was his goal: the formation of the community. And it was the same goal that underpinned his whole-hearted support as well as commitment to the different forms of spirituality that these parishioners had the inclination to follow. The main ones include Charismatic spirituality, which eventually led to the formation of the Emmaus Community, the Divine Mercy Devotion, and Marian devotion, especially the Holy Rosary. Fr. Chua followed his people, his parishioners, to accompany them as they took on these different forms of spirituality.
My dear sisters and brothers in the Lord, we can go on talking about the achievements of Fr. Chua. My sense is that he is telling me, “Enough. Go and reflect on the readings selected for this [funeral] Mass.”
The first reading (Wisdom 3:1-9) gives us a very strong assurance – those who are faithful, will live with Him – that is with God – in love. This comes from the Book of Wisdom. Those who are faithful will live with God in love. Then the Gospel readings take this assurance further. And it does so with the words of Jesus. And what did Jesus tell us in the Gospel that we heard a while ago? “Whoever listens to My words and believes in the One Who sent Me has eternal life.”
Jesus here is assuring His audience, and therefore all of us, of the reality of eternal life because, as He goes on to say, His Father is the source of life, and his Father has sent Him to offer this life. Everyone, and those who believe in Him, will have this life. And Jesus further clarifies, “The hour will come. In fact it is here already and the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and all who hear it will live.”
By these words Jesus is asserting and assuring all of us that death is not the end. And that death is in fact a transition into eternal life in God’s kingdom. Jesus further assures us that while eternal life is to be possessed fully in the kingdom of God, it can be experienced here on earth already.
How do we experience it? Through obedient faith. What does this obedient faith mean? Obedient faith is faith in Jesus as the One sent by God to offer eternal life and fidelity to Him by imitating Him in obeying the Father’s will. This is obedient faith. And the second reading (Corinthians 5:1, 6-10) which was done in Chinese, reiterates this assurance by Jesus in metaphorical terms. The second reading uses the terms “tent” and “house”. It says the tent will be folded up and then the house of God is opened.
And both these terms, tent and house, refer to places of living. Therefore, they have to do with the reality of life. Of course, the tent cannot compare with the house in many respects: the tent is not as lasting, not as comfortable, not as safe as the house. But it still provides shelter, and to a certain degree, comfort and security. The tent refers to our life on earth. It will be “folded up” in death. But when it is folded up, there is an upgrading. The person then goes into the house. The tent is upgraded to become a house in God’s kingdom where a believer has eternal life.
So at death, the tent is folded up and the house built by God is opened for us. And that is the upgrading that takes place at death. Again, death is not the end. It is the folding up of the tent – the upgraded enters the house of God. That is eternal life. Once again it is presented as a transition to eternal life. For sure, every one of us wants to be upgraded.
In order to be upgraded, we need to do what is good. That’s what the first reading tells us and the Gospel highlights it. We need to do what is good. And to do what is good in the light of the Gospel is precisely to take on that obedient faith that Jesus is asking of His disciples. Obedient faith consists in believing in Jesus as the One sent by God to offer eternal life and imitating Him in being faithful to the Father’s will. If we have that obedient faith, then we will have a foretaste of eternal life on earth, albeit not fully. That will make us desire for eternal life and deepen our hope of possessing eternal life totally in heaven.
As believers and disciples of Jesus, we live in hope of the eternal that Jesus promises all his disciples and which He came into the world, sent by the Father to offer all of us. And this hope motivates us to live in fidelity to Jesus, and therefore, in fidelity to our discipleship. We want to be faithful disciples to the Lord. And faithful discipleship translates into humble service. This humble service is rendered in love following the footsteps of Jesus. You want to be great? Be servant for all. Because the Son of Man, Jesus Himself, has come, not to be served but to serve. It is in this rendering of humble service that the disciples will enjoy a foretaste of eternal life on earth and look forward to possessing that eternal life fully in heaven.
It was his faith in Jesus, it was his fidelity to God’s call to be a servant of all, it was his hope of eternal life that marked Fr. Lawrence Chua’s priestly life and pastoral ministry. If you ask what’s the legacy that Fr. Chua has left all of us, an easy tendency is to say Holy Trinity Church, the building, and Blessed Sacrament Church, the building. Because these are magnificent buildings indeed. But these buildings are not the real legacy he has left for us. They are only testimonies of the real legacy that Fr. Chua has left for all of us. The real legacy is his life of obedient faith in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, his desire to follow Jesus to his Heavenly Father in his Kingdom. And Fr. Chua allowed himself to be led by the Spirit, be empowered by the Spirit, as our Blessed Mother did when she uttered her fiat, “Let it be done unto me according to Your will.”
This (obedient faith) was, I think, Fr. Chua’s philosophy and principle of life as he responded to the call of God to be his priest. That’s the legacy that he has given us. It’s on grounds of our own faith and our own hope, as well as Fr. Chua’s legacy, that we are here now to pray together for upgrading from the tent to the house of God – the house God has built.
So back to the question – have we lost a great man?
Humanly speaking, yes, we have lost a great man. But from the point of view of faith, no, we haven’t. Because our faith fills us up with hope that Fr. Chua will hear words of Christ, which we proclaim in the acclamation before the Gospel, “Come, you who my Father has blessed. Take for your heritage, the Kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world.”
Our faith and our hope give us confidence that Fr. Chua will be in God’s Kingdom. And so humanly speaking we have lost a brother, an uncle, a friend and for us in the Archdiocese of Kuching, a priest. And a great brother, a great uncle, a great friend, a great priest – but we have gained an extra intercessor in heaven. He will surely join our Blessed Mother to intercede for all of us whom he has left behind on earth.
So it is in this spirit, in this faith that now I address Fr. Chua: “Dear Fr. Lawrence Chua, our wish and our prayer for you in this Mass is, May the Lord Jesus, whom you strove to follow so closely on earth, lead you into his Kingdom. Our request of you Fr. is this, Pray for us when you enter His Kingdom.”
Related post: TRIBUTE To REV. FR. DATO LAWRENCE CHUA
Your grace this is true and so well written It made me think so much of him because in my formative years of servanthood i learnt so much from him. All the perfection and details he expected yet in all that he was Always ever grateful for whatever we did and was close to all his parishners and he appreicated anything well done with personal thanks and time for anyone he felt had done It. I learnt from this well writen story of his life , about faithful obedience and that when we Fold our tents after this journey, we enter into the doors of our fathers eternal home of bliss and eternal happiness ! Thank you for this wonderfully written affirmation and reminder for all of us by acknowledging and giving Father Lawrence Chua all that he rightly deserved and has done for the churches especially for us ar Holy trinity Church and those in ministry during his time. The few of us that were close to him sar together to recall all the moments we shared and indeed he was a great man of God and great inspiration to all of us. May he rest in peace and enjoy eternal glory.