15 February, Thursday — “…your parents named you well.”

Thursday after Ash Wednesday

Dt 30:15-20
Lk 9:22-25

Then to all he said: “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me.”

What does deny oneself, taking up one’s cross and follow Jesus mean?

It means to lay our “ego strength” aside. Taking up our cross means, instead, picking up those weaknesses that we so often try to run away from in life. Taking up our cross means carrying around those places where we are vulnerable, places where we are maybe even exposed to embarrassment and shame.

There are unimaginable blessings from being a Christian, and it is the right choice; yet it requires a willingness to sacrifice certain things. One can no longer follow his or her own appetites and pleasures and be a slave to sin.

Being a Christian requires denial of the sinful self. The Apostle Paul also says this when he talks about how our old self must be “crucified” so that “the body of sin might be brought to nothing” and so that we will “no longer be enslaved to sin” (Rm 6:6). Becoming a Christian makes us spiritually alive in Christ, but it also means dying to one’s old life.

Having now been in corporate life for almost 25 years, I can’t help but reflect on how I have misbehaved previously. One didn’t think twice about engaging in gossip or office politics. I remember a colleague once sharing that to survive you either “kill or get killed “.

I didn’t ruin anyone’s career (at least I hope I didn’t) but I did hurt people with insensitive behaviour and curt remarks when work wasn’t done to my expectations, or colleagues didn’t behave appropriately.

I remember one very clear experience where I disagreed with one of the traders about a trade he had done for one of my larger clients. He had made a mistake and was desperately trying to cover this up. I kept telling him that we needed to do right by the client. Yet, he tried ways and means to try and fool me that the error was not his.

As the conversation progressed, I was getting angrier and angrier. It was bad enough that there was a financial loss; now, he was attempting to make my client absorb the loss. When I finally cornered him and he had no more room to extricate himself, I said, “you know Kok XXX, your parents named you well!” and hung up the phone.

At that point, I thought I was not only able to successfully forward my client’s position but had also been witty in my closing statement to my colleague.

But for some reason, I felt lousy about what I had said. There were no apologies about making sure he had done right by my client, but did it really warrant insulting the name that his parents had named him?

It took a few days for me to muster the courage to walk over to him and apologize. To apologize for how I had handled the situation and more for insulting him. He just looked me in the face and turned away. There was no acknowledgement of my apology.

I realised that the rosary ring I wore, the small crucifix that I carried in my pocket; all meant nothing. There was nothing about my misbehaviour that allowed me to give witness as a Christian at the workplace.

I never got a chance to make things right with that colleague. It was not a victory. As a trader in that organisation, he didn’t maintain a Profit and Loss position and eventually I had to absorb the cost of the error. But I had lost the ability to engage with a colleague. I have always interacted well with my colleagues; joking and engaging in friendly banter in the course of my work – but with this one, it was strictly professional till he left for a different organisation.

In the ensuing years, I have experienced similar situations with other colleagues — where an error is made and there is this furious attempt to cover it up or push it to someone else.

I have learnt that the Christian thing to say is, “it’s ok if we have missed something and there is a mistake now. But we deal with this together – you and me. I will take responsibility for this and let’s move on”. Often, the colleague then makes an extra effort to be careful when dealing with me in future. I then deal with the mistake with management – financial or otherwise.

Do I still struggle to die to myself at work? Yes – daily!

But I try to put my hands in my pocket and hold that tiny crucifix that I carry and control my mouth. I write angry emails, save them in the Draft folder and delete them the next day; before writing a proper, professional response, having prayed before hitting the ‘Send’ button.

I still cringe when I recollect how I misbehaved with that colleague. I don’t know if I will ever have an opportunity to make proper amends with him. But I can move forward as I keep working on my endeavour to be a better version of me, daily.

(Today’s OXYGEN by Gerard Francis)

Prayer: We pray for the grace to continually die to ourselves. Not just at work but in our family life and with our social interactions.

Thanksgiving: We give thanks to Our Heavenly Father for His graces to help us discern and measure our actions to our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.