1. Year A / Lent  / Week 4 / Sunday
    Readings: 1 Samuel 16.1b, 6-7, 10-13a / Psalm 23.1-3a, 3b-4, 5-6  (R/v 1) / Ephesians 5.8-14 / John 9.1-41

    This week our JC1 and 2 footballers will compete for the first time in the A Division Football competition. They are a young and inexperienced team, but they have enthusiasm, passion and determination. They have trained long and hard to get here. This is why I have every confidence that they will play well to win for St Joseph's Institution.

    At the end of their first half of their first game, I imagine Coach Kadir addressing them in this way: “That’s it. The first half is over. Time to regroup gentlemen.” It will be a welcomed halftime. The team have the opportunity to gather themselves again. They can rethink their strategies and refocus their efforts. Their actions will be about re-creating themselves as a stronger, more spirited team for the second half, especially, if they are down a goal or two.

    I’d like to suggest that re-creation is a theme in today’s readings. Our Eucharistic Preface echoes this theme when it prays for our regeneration as God’s adopted children.

    Our First Reading tells of God choosing David to be the new king for Israel. Through the prophet Samuel’s anointing, God re-creates David: he is no longer shepherd boy but king. Our Gospel Reading tells of Jesus healing the man born blind. Through Jesus’ healing, God re-creates this man: he is no longer a blind man and an unbeliever but a believer and a follower of Jesus as Lord.

    God re-created David and the blind man to witness to God’s saving action in their lives. What about us? Are we letting God re-create us on our Lenten journey? Why would God want to do this?

    Our Psalm helps us understand that God wants to re-create us so that we can be with him eternally. Here is God the Good Shepherd who wants to walk with us through our darkness and to free us from all that oppress us. Here God who wants to set us on right paths that lead to no other place than to his table where we will feast together. And in a remarkable sign of God’s love, here is God who wants to anoint our heads, fill us with all that is good and kind, and let us stay with him all the days of our lives.

    This vision of eternal life with God is not a future event we await. Neither is it a reward for us rigidly obeying the Church’s rules and regulations. Rather, it is God’s unmerited gift given us already. Paul assures us that this is so in our second reading. God has given us this gift through Jesus’ death and resurrection. God has done this to save us from sin and death, and to bring us into eternal friendship with Godself. God’s action has indeed re-created us as God’s own. This is why Christians are indeed children of light, Paul writes; we are to live in God’s light and to be God’s light for one another.

    No other reason explains this action of God than love—God’s prodigious love for us, a love without limit or bias, a love that is freely given and unreservedly outpoured for all, no matter how much we struggle with sinfulness and fail.

    Today, we are at the mid-point of Lent. Throughout Lent, God has been reaching out to share with us his merciful and saving love. God does not just reach out to us in our sinfulness; he reaches out because we are his re-created children that Jesus has already saved. Have we welcomed God’s love into our lives in the first half of Lent? Or, do we have to adjust our lives even more to let God better re-create and perfect us as God’s own in these remaining Lenten days?

    Only when we dare to grapple with these questions will we appreciate what God is offering us today: the grace of halftime. 

    Halftime is important in every soccer and rugby, basketball and hockey game played. Halftime provides a short rest to refresh and to recharge. Halftime permits us to look at what worked well in the first half, and to stay the course if all is going as planned. Or, if we’ve played the first half badly, halftime is about taking stock, evaluating, confessing what went wrong and planning anew to finish the game well. Halftime is the opportunity to regroup and review, reconsider and reposition ourselves to return to the game with greater focus and clarity, and with renewed energy for this next half.

    God is inviting us to do the same at this halftime mark in our Lenten journey. To do this, we need to be truthful about our Lenten life, open to the need for change and keen to cooperate with God to change.

    How much our Lenten journey will re-create us more and more into bearing Jesus’ image and likeness depends on our sincerity and enthusiasm to make this year’s Lent different from last year. To accomplish this, we need to change the way we do Lent. If we do this responsibly and honestly, we might discover how we are sometimes blind to God this Lent, and to what God is offering us in Jesus—merciful love that saves and re-creates us anew.

    There might be several reasons why each of us might be blind. We may have become too familiar with what Lent is, and so we do not bother enough with practising the Lenten discipline. We may be too apathetic or lazy to make the needed changes. We may be too careless with our "take-it-for-granted" attitude that God will always forgive, so this year's Lent is just like every other year before. I know the blindness I have this year and that I need to work on. What about you?

    If we chose to remain blind to God's desire to re-create us this Lent, we pay a costly price: God can’t perfect us in his saving love. Such a choice makes us like the real blind men in today’s gospel, the Pharisees. They could see but they chose not see who Jesus is, the Christ, and what Jesus offered, eternal life. Their refusal lost them the graced opportunity to be re-created for life with God. In contrast, the blind man’s openness to Jesus, and to believing in Jesus as the Christ, saved his sight and his soul.

    For Pope Francis, Lent is a journey towards becoming a new person whose destination is to remain in the love of Jesus Christ forever. Throughout Lent thus far, you and me have been striving to become such persons so as to better reach the Christian destination—home with Jesus and sharing God’s life. This is the resurrected life Easter joy gives us a foretaste of.

    It is timely then for us to reflect on God and God’s saving love for us, but, more so, on how we are responding, at this halftime in Lent. For all that we have lived well and helped us change for the better, let’s give thanks and stay the course. For all that we have not been doing right thus far to let God perfect us, let us be honest and make those necessary actions now so that we can finish our Lenten journey well.

    The good news is that there is still time to let God work in our lives to turn us around, if we but let God do so.

    So, let us make full use of this halftime opportunity. Let us embrace it with the kind of hope that Lent calls us to believe in—that with Jesus, in Jesus and through Jesus, we will die to our sinfulness to arise with him to the fullness of life. In that moment, we will know the true joy of Easter.

    In fact, I believe that if we listen to Jesus as the coach of our life and faith on our Lenten journey we might hear him echo this hope-filled joy in this way: “the first half is gone, everyone; there’s only the second half now. So, go out there, do better and make good the next half! All is not lost. The best is yet to be!”



    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore

    Photo: jesseswanson.com, 2010
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  2. Year A / Lent / Week 3/Sunday
    Readings: Exodus 17.3-7 /Psalm 94.1-2, 6-7, 8-9 (R/v 8) / Romans 5.1-2,5-8 / John 4.5-42


    “If you only knew”. If you only knew the importance of Chinese Language for this job, you would have taken your Mother Tongue lessons more seriously. If you only knew his obsessive-compulsive side, you might have not rushed into marriage. If you only knew the value of self-care in managing your demanding work expectations, you would not be suffering from high blood pressure.

    “If you only knew”. We often hear these words after we have made poor decisions, entered into hasty actions and realized our failings. Others will say them to us, and we will feel regret.

    Today we hear Jesus say these same words to the Samaritan woman in our gospel reading. “If only you knew”: “If only you knew” the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink, ‘you would have asked him instead and he would have given you living water.” Jesus says these words however as part of a conversation with her.

    Lent is as much about encountering and conversing with Jesus, as it is about listening to Jesus and following him better. Our Lenten prayer, alms-giving and fast should draw us to know Jesus more intimately so that we can follow him more closely and love him more faithfully. In fact, these are the necessary spiritual acts that enable us to journey with Jesus to his passion and death on Good Friday and through his Resurrection at Easter. Practising them over Lent helps us to die to our sinfulness so that we can be raised anew as God’s redeemed.

    I would like to suggest that thirst—specifically, thirst for God—makes us want to deepen our encounter with Jesus for the Lenten journey. In particular, we thirst for God’s mercy because we know we sin repeatedly and we need God’s life-giving forgiveness, again and again. In our thirst, we cry out to God as Moses and the Israelites did in the desert in the first reading: “Is the Lord in our midst or not”. Times may have changed but our need for God, like their need for God, has not. Neither does God change; God hears our cry for salvation: as he gave water for their parched throats, so he gives us Jesus for our spiritual thirst.

    Yes, God knows our every need. But as with every relationship, it is always good to hear what another honestly wants of us. So it is with God: God wants us to speak our needs so that God can respond wholeheartedly to meet them. Lent is especially the favourable time for us to have such conversation with God. Indeed we see this grace at work in the conversation Jesus and the Samaritan have: it is not just humankind conversing about ourselves and our thirst and our need for God, as it is also Jesus conversing with us about God’s certain desire to save us. Indeed, conversation is one way we can experience God’s real presence and care in our lives. Too often we complain God is absent, but have we given God enough chances to speak with us?

    “If only you knew”. The Samaritan woman hears Jesus say these words. How achingly beautiful and somewhat disorienting they must be for her to hear. “Is God present before me? What is this promise gift of eternal life?” she might be asking herself.  After all, she only came to the well to draw water for drinking; now, Jesus is offering her eternal life.

    For the theologian Sandra Schneiders, Jesus and the Samaritan are having a lively and real exchange. Theirs is authentic conversation. In listening to and talking with each other, they come to know one another more honestly: the woman gradually experiences Jesus’ self-revelation as the face of God’s mercy, even as she reveals herself to him, and he tells her the truth about herself.* 

    Isn’t such truth what we really want in our relationship with Jesus? True knowledge of God and of ourselves, and of God redeeming us in Jesus? I believe we all thirst for this truth. We might not always admit we need God, but we know that God’s truth will set us free. We try to be free and happy in countless ways, but they are limited and limiting. Lent timely focuses us on the only truth that matters—God’s mercy in Jesus redeems us. That we are here again, that we practice the Lenten disciplines intentionally, that we go to confession readily in Lent, are sure signs to ourselves and to others that we want God’s truth that liberates and saves us.

    Jesus proclaims this truth to the Samaritan woman at the well. "If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." His words invite them into deeper conversation where God’s mercy meets human sin in order that divine compassion can uplift the sinner. Isn’t Jesus also reaching out to us through the conversation—we the less powerful, like this woman, we the different, like the Samaritan she is, we the sinful, like she is her promiscuity? If our answer is “yes”, then what other response can we have but to repeat her plea: “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water”?

    The Jews would have considered their meeting inappropriate: Jesus is Jewish and a rabbi; she is a Samaritan and a sinner. Sometimes we act like them: we ignore the Samaritan-like we meet because we are close-minded and biased. Today Jesus’ action insists that there is no other way to be Christian than to share God’s mercy for us with others. The Lenten practices challenge us to selflessly engage, love and care for them, not us, as Jesus did. Backing away is not the Christian option.

    Jesus wants us to live the truth of God’s mercy fully by reaching out to others through authentic conversations. However, we must first practice such conversations with God ourselves. Then, we will know how God’s truth redeems. This is how the Samaritan woman experiences the truth in Jesus: she hears about her sin and, more so, about God’s mercy to forgive her sin and redeem her. Her experience sets her free to put aside everything and to live as Jesus’ disciple. The water jar she leaves behind to proclaim Jesus to her townsfolk symbolises this. In encountering Jesus, “she has been understood, she has heard the truth, experienced God’s freedom and loving regard and she believes. She has been brought home to herself, to God, to her community”.** She knows God has come to save her in Jesus. When we ourselves experience what she does in Jesus, we too will know that God’s truth does truly set us free. Then, we will know how to do likewise for others.

    Lent calls us to detach ourselves from worldly preoccupations so that we are more readily disposed to receive God’s gift of eternal life. Everyone struggles to practise detachment well. The Samaritan woman’s openness to encounter Jesus and to listen to the truth he announces show us how to protect ourselves from hardening our hearts to God. To close ourselves from Jesus is to lose our access by faith to God.

    Let us then follow the Samaritan woman and open ourselves to truly converse with Jesus this Lent. It will be a mutual, marvellous exchange that will surprise us with the joyful truth that God’s mercy is ours not because we deserve it, but because this is God’s unmerited way to love and save God’s creation that we are, not to condemn and lose us ever. Yes, we will hear Jesus say that he is our refreshment and life. More remarkable will be hearing him say what he will cry out from the Cross on Good Friday, “I thirst”—yes, he thirsts for no other than us and our redemption.

    Indeed, how can we not assess the quality of our Lenten journey thus far, knowing as we now do that Jesus also thirsts for us?





    * Sandra Schneiders, Written That You May Believe.
    ** The Trappist monks of Spencer Abbey.


    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    Photo: www.manchester.ac.uk
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  3. Year A / Lent / Week 2 /Sunday
    Readings: Genesis 12.1-4a /Psalm 32.4-5,19-19, 20, 22 (R/v 22) / 2 Timothy 1.8b-10 / Matthew 17.1-9


    “Shh, listen”. We say this when we want to keep others quiet so that we can hear something important. We do this when the noise is too loud and hearing is difficult. We utter this when we need to get another’s attention to listen and understand what we need to say.

    I do this a fair bit as I accompany young men to hear God’s voice and to discover God’s will in their lives. For some, it will be to marriage or the single life; for others, it will be to religious life or the priesthood. Our conversations revolve around God’s call in their lives. Is God calling you? Why is God calling you? Where is God calling you to? How is God calling you?

    However God’s call comes, they tell me that the sense of being called they experience is a powerful thing. It is a call to something worthwhile, even something of God; and this buoys them up with hope through times of doubt, difficulty, and indecision.

    As we continue to our Lenten journey, I wonder how many of us really embrace the Lenten invitation to renew our lives. I wonder about this because the Lenten call is to especially live our Christian vocation better. This is our primary vocation, even before we discern to marry, remain single, join religious life or be ordained a priest. I wonder about this because Lenten grace challenges us to examine the quality of how we are living our primary Christian vocation to be holy.

    Our readings today can help us do this. They call us to reflect on how we listen and follow God. Vocation comes from the Latin word “vocare”, to call. We cannot know and live our vocation in God’s ways unless we hear and understand God’s call.

    We might find God calling Abram to leave everything and to go where God wants in today’s first reading difficult to hear. “Go!” says God to Abram. “Go from your house and your kindred and your Father’s house to the land that I will show you”. To Abram, God’s call must have been surprising, confusing, even shocking, for it is a command to go somewhere he did not know.
      
    Isn’t this difficult, even frightening, for us to hear Abram's story when we acknowledge that God's radical challenge to Abram is ours too this Lent: God calling us to go into a space we do not usually want to enter? To go into the interior of our lives, that dessert space, where we know we must the demons of our pride and righteousness, our riches and selfishness, our craving for honours and greed, and there, in honesty, confess that we really need God’s mercy to save us, and God’s compassion to perfect us as Christians.

    Do we hear God’s call, like Abram heard? Will we go where God calls us to, as Abram did? Are we daring enough to let go of our fears and inhibitions, our control and self-determination to let God lead us through Lent as he led Abram to the promised land?

    God’s call is also part of the Transfiguration story in today’s gospel. Our familiarity with this story often focuses us on Jesus’ transfiguration to the point that I think we overlook that Peter gets transfigured as well, or at least, that this is where Peter's transformation into a disciple really begins, on this mountain with Jesus.

    If we are present at this scene and watch it unfold, we might first be in awe of Jesus’ transfiguration. Then, we might see how hilarious Peter is in declaring that he would do something, build three tents, and God’s voice suddenly and literally interrupting him. “Would you stop talking, and learn to just listen to Jesus!” God says to him. This moment is not funny however; it terrifies Peter who falls to the ground, probably covering his ears and shutting his eyes tight. Then it is over: no voice, no light, no prophets of old. Nothing is left except Jesus, who is reaching out to Peter, James and John. He tells them, “Stand up; do not be afraid”. Don’t you and I want to hear Jesus say these words to us daily, and especially when we sin? Aren’t Jesus’ words the foundation upon which we examine our lives and seek conversion in Lent? Don’t we pray to hear Jesus’ assurance when we make our Lenten confessions?

    Over time, Christianity has interpreted Peter’s “moment” of becoming the apostle when he confesses that Jesus is the Christ and Jesus calls him “the rock”. This happens six days after the Transfiguration. But could it possibly be that Peter understood his true identity when God’s voice interrupted him, his plots and plans, to announce that Jesus is his beloved son and Peter’s real vocation is to listen to him? I’d like to think that this is the moment Peter first began to know his vocation as Jesus’ disciple. It began when he heard God’s voice.

    Lent invites us to remember when we first heard God’s call to listen to Jesus and be his disciple. Like Peter, we want to listen to Jesus and to follow him. Like Peter, our human condition makes us prone to failing and falling in our discipleship repeatedly. Jesus will however keep reaching out to us, like he did to Peter who fell onto the ground at the Transfiguration and who failed Jesus by betraying him finally. We have all experienced Jesus reaching out to us again and again in mercy so as to raise us to fullness of life.

    What allows us to stand up and be raised? The experience of remembering that God’s words transfigure us. I like to think that whenever Peter fell down and got up again after Jesus’ Ascension, he would recall God’s words, "Just listen to him!" This is the moment when Peter's transfiguration began—for he heard in God’s assuring voice that above and beyond everything else, beyond failing and falling, that his vocation is to first listen to Jesus in whom God does not condemn humankind to sin and death but promises to raise us up to the joy of new life.

    Whatever our doubts and insecurities, can we see ourselves in the Transfiguration story? Isn’t this story about Peter and Jesus our story too? Aren’t we also called both to "listen to Jesus" and to "be raised by him"?

    Peter’s experience of being interrupted by God who demands that we listen to Jesus is in fact the pattern of transfiguration that God uses to shape each of our lives as Christians. Like Peter, we, too, try our best to live as Christians. Sometimes we succeed well; other times, we fail miserably. We have moments of insight and moments of denial. And yes, we fall down in sin and fear but God raises us up repeatedly to continue living in confident hope. The task of Christian living is to listen—to really listen and to discern God’s way for us through this world, to really listen and to partner God in living it fully. Yes, Christianity call us to really to listen to God and to be transformed and transfigured.

    Transfiguration. I believe this is the promise Lent offers you and me, and Easter makes real and alive in us. Today we hear again that promise, as well as a mission. God makes a promise to Abram at the end of the first reading: “I will bless you so that you can be a blessing.” Indeed, to remember and to celebrate our vocation today is also to listen and hear Jesus’ command that we follow him by doing like he did for others. Our Lenten practices are meant to edify and inspire others, even as they are to help us to go deeper in our vocation to be holy.  

    Let me therefore suggest two questions for our ongoing Lenten conversion: “Can I hear God’s call this Lent to I live my vocation to be holy more fully?” and “Am I living my Lent in ways that help others to become holy too?”

    I believe that we will find our answers in prayerful silence with God. Lent is therefore the favourable time, the graced moment to indeed “shh” ourselves and others so that we all can truly listen to God’s voice in our lives.




    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    Photo: fotolia.com
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  4. Year A / Lent / Week 1 /Sunday
    Readings: Genesis 2.7-9, 3.1-7 /Psalm 50.3-4, 5-6a, 12-13, 14, 17 (R/v cf 3a) / Romans 5.12-19 / Matthew 4.1-11

     We use frames to display paintings or photographs on our walls and desks. Frames help us to better see and appreciate them. They highlight what they encompass. They also lend perspective to it. For example, a thick, heavy frame makes the painting look smaller while a thin frame opens it up, giving it a sense of expansiveness. 

     We use some kind of a frame to make sense of life and faith, as we also do to approach Lent and make it meaningful for us. For some, Lent is about entering into a dry, barren dessert to find ourselves again like we hear Jesus enters into in today’s gospel. For others, it is like entering the lush, green, fertile garden God created for Adam and Eve in the first reading to be rejuvenated. Many of us are probably straddling both frames. Whatever our frame is, Lent invites us to enter more deeply into God’s presence so as to live more fully in God’s ways.

     Entering into God’s presence more deeply is Jesus’ experience in today’s gospel reading. He does this by fasting for God and by staying faithful to God when tempted by the devil. It is interesting that Matthew begins his story of Jesus’ ministry with fasting and temptation. It is a strange beginning. Perhaps, it must be so because Matthew wants us to focus on the interior life of Jesus—on how he knew, inwardly, that he had arrived at a significant moment in his life and that this involved change. May be this is why our gospel passage focuses on Jesus doing what he must in the face of another voice, a tempting voice, the devil’s voice that called him to live in more alluring, self-centered and ungodly ways.

     We are like Jesus: we enter into Lent—this space apart—so that we can delve more deeply into God’s presence. We know Lent calls us to change, to turn our lives around, to begin anew. We want this renewal of ourselves with God and with others. This is why we are here and why we take our Lenten practices seriously. Yet, aren’t there other voices calling out to us, distracting us, drawing us away from God? Who or what are these tempting voices? Where are they luring us to?

     Today’s readings can help us to listen more clearly to God’s voice in Lent because they offer us a picture with a frame—a clearer picture of the kind of the listener we must be in order to listen to God better, and a defined frame to appreciate how God truly helps the listener listen.

     Let us consider both the picture of the listener and the frame to listen by first looking at the story of Adam and Eve’s fall. They fall because the fail to listen to God. They miss the mark of who they are to God. They struggle with knowing and loving themselves as God knows and loves them. Isn’t this our struggle too? 

     God gave Adam and Eve enough knowledge for them to know themselves. But they wanted more—they wanted to have the knowledge God had. Their envy deafened them to God’s voice; God was not enough. They heard and followed another’s voice. Isn’t this how we sometimes fail too?

     For some, Adam and Eve’s fall must be the lens to see ourselves in Lent: we are like Adam and Eve because we rebel against God through acts of envy, pride and disobedience. This is a picture of humankind failing and fallen. We tend to frame this picture in terms of sin. It is no surprise then that amending for our sins is all about winning God’s forgiveness and salvation. This frame is faulty: it blinds us to the truth of God’s redeeming grace already at work when we sin.

     The Easter Vigil rite proclaims this truth. “O happy fault” it calls Adam’s sin. Happy because his sin moved God to want to redeem humankind. God’s continuing love for the sinner is the real focus in the story of Adam and Eve’s fall. This surely changes the picture of humankind: we are not fallen and unworthy of God, but beloved and cherished by God, however much we disappoint God.

     Paul continues to refocus the picture and the frame for us with the second reading. He acknowledges that sin entered the world through Adam but sin cannot be the defining picture of humankind. For Paul, the Christian picture of humankind is really about how valuable we are to God who loves us and finds us worthy to be redeemed, even when we are sinful. Jesus is God’s assurance that we are his beloved because in him God’s love outweighs the gravity of human sin and saves. The proper frame for this clearer picture must therefore be God’s constant and saving love for humankind, however much we fail and fall.

     Matthew sharpens this refocusing of the picture and the frame with today’s gospel. He gives depth and breadth to the picture of humankind: we are valuable to God because Jesus’ action in today’s gospel show us the way to live as God’s beloved. Jesus is the New Adam God births into our midst to be with us and to save us. Unlike Adam who refused to listen to God in Eden, Jesus listens to God by tuning out the other voice that tempts. Unlike Adam, Jesus stays tuned in to God to know who he is to God—beloved creation—and who God is to him—loving Creator. 

     Staying tuned in to God is how Jesus overcomes the temptations to define himself by hedonism to satisfy hunger, egoism to exert might and materialism to become rich. Jesus can stay tuned in to God because he knows he is God’s beloved; he heard God say this at his baptism and he remembers it. Many a time we too hear that we are God’s beloved. Do we stay tuned in to this good news daily, letting it shape our ways of listening to God?

     In Jesus then we find our model to listen to God, especially in Lent. God’s love is therefore the correct frame for this picture—this picture of humankind able to listen to a saving God because we are secure in the knowledge that we are God’s beloved. 

     Here we are at the beginning of Lent. We want to practice the Lenten exercises of fasting, praying and alms-giving to better journey with Jesus through Lent to his death and to his resurrection so that we will rise with him in Easter joy, with the abundance of Easter life. But so many other desires are calling out to us: these voices distract us from completing this journey with Jesus. They are quite mixed up most of the time, not always clear even to ourselves. 

     Today Jesus proclaims by example that we can begin to distinguish these desires and separate those that are helpful, creative, and wholesome, and that lead us to God, from those that are negative, destructive and selfish, and that lead us away from God. To do this well, we need to stay tuned into God.

     Can we do this? Yes, we can for when we seriously tune in to God we will hear God saying, clearly, tenderly and with great love to you and me, “You are mine”. 




    Inspired by Larry Gallick, SJ

    Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
    Photo: from the Internet (www.luisatanno.com)
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"Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute way final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything."

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