Choose God and not His works

Fourth Sunday of Easter Year A

Good Shepherd Sunday

This year, I had found it exceptionally hard to preach on Good Shepherd Sunday, the day we pray for more vocations to the priestly ministry. It’s difficult because I feel profoundly ashamed. A priest is supposed to be a shepherd (Latin - pastor). But we find ourselves in a situation where we have been physically cut off from our sheep and our sheep have been separated from their shepherds.

Of course, we remain connected in the virtual world. But virtual is just not the same as reality. Our congregation now watches us celebrate the masses on their screens, perhaps sometimes drawn by the very same thing which draws people to certain celebrities and performances. As for the priests, we are often measured by the quality of our preaching because when it comes to the celebration of the mass, one streamed mass looks quite like the next, unless the celebrant chooses to imbue it with his personal showmanship and pizzazz.

But the reality is this: the mass is not a performance and we priests are not celebrities. Priests are meant to be shepherds and shepherds are meant to be with their sheep. I told Fr Dominic the other day (in jest), “in this world of virtual reality and streamed masses, people don’t need more priestly vocations. One or two will do. They, however, need more talented priests with stage presence.”

As I struggled to make sense of this time of physical social distancing and the digitalising of our ministry, I recalled the ministry of another pastor who was separated from his flock for 13 years. Who would have imagined that we would find ourselves in a similar situation, cut off from our flock, albeit for two months (or perhaps even longer). Today I would like to share his story, a story of immense hope and inspiration not just for us priests but also for all of you, as you continue to struggle with the spiritual hunger of being cut off from the sacraments and your shepherds.

The shepherd I’m speaking of is the late Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuân. Shortly after he was made coadjutor archbishop of Saigon in 1975, he was arrested and imprisoned by the Communist because of his Catholic faith. He never got to exercise his ministry as archbishop. After 13 years of imprisonment, nine of which were spent in solitary confinement, he was finally released on the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lady in the year 1988 and sent into exile.

During his time in prison, he used his limited resources creatively in order to fulfill his duties as shepherd to the faithful. As he could not physically be present to his people, he had to find a way to reach out to them, so he solicited the help of a young boy to bring him old calendars. I am thankful that I have the internet, social media, and online video conferencing applications. I cannot imagine myself writing on the reverse side of our unused bulletins (which Fr Dom does) and replicating these for public consumption.

The Cardinal wrote simple, sincere messages of hope on the calendars and had the young boy copy and distribute them among the faithful. He was practically a human xerox machine. The Church should canonise him just for this. The Cardinal’s profound letters to the Catholic community strengthened them in their faith and helped them to persevere. These short-written messages reminded the people that their beloved archbishop, though not physically present, was present with them through prayer and in spirit.

The Cardinal, manifesting innovative fidelity, also used his scanty means to celebrate Mass in prison. He knew that celebrating Mass was his most important duty, but he had no church, no altar, and no tabernacle. How, then, could he fulfill his duty as bishop? He turned the concentration camp into a cathedral and the palm of his hand into an altar. He turned his shirt pocket into a tabernacle and turned the darkness of the sleeping quarters into a dwelling place for Light Himself.  Fr Dominic and I are grateful that we still have our little chapel.

Because of his ingenuity, many prisoners regained the fervour of their faith. The prisoners were reminded to embrace suffering and to use their current circumstances to grow in faith. His example and teachings remind us that Christian faith entails an active surrender to the Lord. It means seeking the best way to proclaim Christ’s love in every moment, every circumstance, and every action, even when all the odds seem stacked against us.

What was the secret of his resilience? He shared this in his memoirs:

“Alone in my prison cell, I continued to be tormented by the fact that I was forty-eight years old, in the prime of my life, that I had worked for eight years as a bishop and gained so much pastoral experience and there I was, isolated, inactive and far from my people.”

One night, from the depths of my heart, I could hear a voice advising me: "Why torment yourself? You must discern between God and the works of God - everything you have done and desire to continue to do, pastoral visits, training seminarians, sisters and members of religious orders, building schools, evangelising non-Christians. All of that is excellent work, the work of God but it is not God! If God wants you to give it all up and put the work into his hands, do it and trust him. God will do the work infinitely better than you; he will entrust the work to others who are more able than you. You have only to choose God and not the works of God!"

As I reread the story of this saintly bishop, I decided that I should stop whining and stop feeling sorry for myself. Neither should I be overly anxious for my flock because they are in good hands. My congregation is not without a shepherd, they have the Good Shepherd, who can do a far greater job than I.  “Michael, if God wants you to give it all up and put the work into His hands, do it and trust Him. God will do the work infinitely better than you.” Those words of Cardinal Van Thuân will be my guide as I entrust my ministry and the care of my people to the Good Shepherd, who will never desert His flock and will always protect them against “thieves and brigands”. He is the One who laid down His life for me and for you so that we may have life and have it to the full. You only have to choose Him, always.

We will recognise Him in the Breaking of Bread

Third Sunday of Easter Year A

St Luke, in the last chapter of his gospel, beautifully paints this life-changing encounter with the Risen Lord. Without missing a beat, he incisively describes how the disciples had completely lost their bearings and sense of spiritual direction in the overwhelming aftermath of Jesus’ death: “They stopped short, their faces downcast”. So caught up in their own pain, they were unable to recognise the One who stood before them, the One who bore our pain and suffering on the cross so that we may not have to bear them for eternity.

The Road to Emmaus, which originally started as a walk of shame and a retreat after a massive defeat, was transformed into a march of restoration and growth. On that road, there was a re-learning on the part of the disciples. They had most likely heard these scriptures many times before. The stories were familiar but now they needed to be told once again. This was necessary in order for them to really grasp the significance of the Cross. Who better to teach them these things than the very One who sent the prophets and gave them words?

But this dialogue would not be the high point of the story. All this merely leads to the climax which takes place at the end of the story - the breaking of bread. The Word of God leads to the Sacrament of God. We say that the Scriptures are light for our path, and that path leads to the Eucharist.

Some commentators have suggested that the disciples finally recognised Jesus simply because of a familiar gesture on His part. But this understates how Luke purposefully uses words which he had used in his account of the Last Supper (Lk 22:19-20). Yes, the disciples certainly recognised that gesture, but the recognition was a gift of grace - it was the very celebration of the Eucharist that helped them recognise the Lord.

The Church recognises that Christ is present in the congregation, the priest and the Word of God. But there is something unique about His presence in the Eucharist. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1374) teaches that this Eucharistic presence “is called 'real' - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be 'real' too, but because, it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present."

Although Jesus has now returned to the Father, and no longer appears in risen glory amongst us, in the Eucharist He comes to us less dramatically, but just as “real”, as He did to the first disciples after the resurrection. Each time we celebrate the Eucharist we meet the risen Lord, not just symbolically or as a memorial, but in person, in the flesh, although He hides under the guise of bread and wine.

Each time our Lord celebrates the Eucharist for us, He invites us to recognise Him. He does not compel us to do so, through spectacular miracles. Instead, He gently invites us. It is because He comes so quietly, so respectful of our freedom to respond in faith, that we can miss Him in the Eucharist. Too often we yearn for the spectacular religious experience, and miss the lifegiving encounter so repeatedly offered in the Mass. And yet in this quiet, repetitive celebration, we find life, abundant life.

The effect of recognising Him "in the breaking of the Bread" is action. The disciples did not linger at Emmaus. They hurried back to Jerusalem to proclaim that they had seen the Lord. Likewise, the Christian is not expected to linger at the Eucharist. It is an encounter with Jesus, in Word and Sacrament, which sends the Christian out to witness. We come to Mass so that we may go back into the life of discipleship, renewed by the encounter with our risen Saviour, and made ready for action in His service.

Just like the two disciples who dragged their feet in shame and grief back to Emmaus, our faith can sometimes become stale just like our experience of the Eucharist. Routine can deaden our spiritual senses. The flame of faith that had been instilled in us can become dimmed to the point of being extinguished. During this long separation from the Eucharist, many, including the most fervent, may fall prey to this dilemma. Our road to return to normalcy, to return to our churches, to return to the Eucharist, may be far longer than the return road to Emmaus and so many would be tempted to give up along the way.

But this is not the time to despair, our Lord continues to come to meet us on our personal road to Emmaus. This is because our faith needs constant refreshing by the experience of an encounter with the risen Lord. That opportunity is open to us every time we celebrate the Eucharist. You may not be able to do so now but we have other opportunities where you can encounter the Risen Lord. You can encounter Him in the encouragement given by a friend or a family member. You can encounter Him in your daily meditation of scriptures. You can encounter Him in a life of personal prayer. And within all these encounters, there is always an opportunity for our hearts to burn once again with new fervour and excitement, and opportunity to look back at all the pitfalls, difficulties and losses we’ve experienced, and recognise that He was not far away. And finally, an opportunity to recognise Him again in the breaking of bread when we gather once again in our churches to celebrate the Sacrament of His sacrificial love on the cross.

See His Wounds, See God

Second Sunday of Easter - Divine Mercy Sunday

The Paschal candle blessed and lit during the Easter Vigil liturgy represents Christ, the Light of the World, down to the smallest detail. The pure beeswax of the candle represents the sinless Christ who was formed in the womb of His Mother (the Queen bee was also believed to have been a virgin queen). The wick signifies His humanity, the flame, His Divine Nature. Etchings are made on it to remind us that He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Lord of time and history.

But then the priest does something incredible to the candle. He wounds it with five grains of incense. The grains of incense are inserted into the candle, nailed into the flesh of the candle, in the form of a cross, to recall the aromatic spices with which His Sacred Body was prepared for the tomb, but also to remind us of the five wounds in His hands, feet, and side. So, as we look upon this symbol of Christ, we will be forever reminded that our Lord bore these wounds for us on the cross, but continued to display these wounds after His resurrection.

Those wounds are an integral part of His identity. It is as if the Church is giving us a clue - You will recognise Him by His wounds. Christ would appear incomplete without those scars. A Jesus without wounds is a Jesus without a cross and a Jesus without a cross, would be a Jesus that did not rise on Easter Sunday.

The scars were the main way our Lord confirmed to His disciples that it was truly Him, in the same body, now risen and transformed. St John draws our attention today to His scars. St Thomas did not just insist on seeing Jesus with his own eyes, to see what the others claimed to have seen. That is not what he requested. He asked for something quite different, something quite specific and odd. He says, “I want to see the wounds of Jesus. I want to touch those wounds.”

It is only in the Gospel of St John, in this particular passage, that we come to realise that Jesus was affixed to the cross by nails and it is only in the Fourth Gospel, do we have the story of the piercing of His side with a lance. The other gospels have not one single word about piercing nails or thrusting spear or even physical and visible wounds on the body of the resurrected Lord.

If St John didn’t tell us about the scars, we likely would assume that a glorified, resurrected body wouldn’t have any. At first thought, scars seem like a surprising feature of a perfected new-world and a perfected humanity. Isn’t the resurrection by definition a glorification, a perfection, a total healing? Shouldn’t the resurrection remove every trace of old weakness, every hint of prior vulnerability?

Our world does not tolerate scars and defects and people are willing to spend thousands and even millions on surgery and cosmetics just to hide them. Would we not expect that the body of the Risen Lord be an upgrade — from a perishable body designed for this world to an imperishable body designed for the next. Having scars just doesn’t fit the picture.

To add further intrigue to the story, Our Lord offers Thomas precisely what he desires, without any rebuke. At that point, Thomas utters his confession, “My Lord and my God.” Pay special attention to this high point, perhaps the climax of the entire gospel. The wounds of Christ would be the very reason for this confession of faith. Thomas sees the wounds and he sees God.

We might assume the Father would have chosen to remove the scars from His Son’s eternal glorified flesh, but scars were God’s idea to begin with. Remember how God brought forth Eve from the wound in Adam’s side? Or how He chose Jacob as the father of His new people after having broken Jacob’s hip in a physical tussle. Some of our scars carry little meaning, but some have a lot to say. But in the case of our Lord Jesus Christ, they are not a defect nor scars of shame but His trophy of glory. What do His wounds tell us?

First, our Lord’s scars tell us that He knows our pain. He became fully human, “made like [us] in every respect” (Heb 2:17 ), that, as one of us, He could suffer with us, and for us, as He carried our human sins to die in our place. This is why the suffering and death of the Son of God is unique in the world’s religions because in it, we see the ultimate answer to suffering. God does not give us a ten-point explanation on suffering. God does not stand aloof, watching, as the world suffers. In the Lord Jesus Christ, God enters the world and experiences suffering with us and for us. His scars tell us of His love, and that of His Father’s. St Paul assures us, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8).

But it is also important to note that our Lord’s scars are not wet open sores but healed wounds. They point not only to the pain which He suffered but to the victory which He has won. Every person who has undergone a surgery leaves the hospital with scars. The scars are evidence that the doctors and surgeons have successfully addressed the issue- they have won the battle. The patient is now healed. Likewise, our Lord’s wounds forever tell us of our final victory in Him. “By His stripes (wounds) we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

When Thomas sees Jesus and believes, he sees the wounds. He looks at the wounds. He does not see the evidence of man’s depraved cruelty but rather, he sees beauty, the beauty of the self-sacrificial love of the One who willingly chose to die for us. He sees the face of God’s mercy.

We too need to see them to believe. We will worship Him forever with the beauty of His scars in view. They are not a defect to the eyes of the redeemed but a glory for saved sinners beyond compare. We must let it sink in and remember that Christ did this for us. The wounds that mar Christ are the wounds that mar us all, transferred from us to Him. In His death, every needless death is absorbed. Every sorrow is seen in His sorrow. Every tear of mourning and loss is understood by Him. Our wounded God has redeemed every wound. Our murdered God has redeemed death. Our broken God has redeemed every broken heart and body. Our bereft God has redeemed every mourning. And should anyone ask us, “How can we recognise your God?” Just reply, “by His wounds you will recognise Him.”

Something missing as it should be

Easter Sunday

It doesn’t need restating but I’m still going to say it- our celebration of Holy Week this year has been unprecedented. Although priests have been faithfully celebrating the Holy Week liturgy, they have done so without the assistance and attendance of a congregation. The faithful, instead of flocking to our churches in droves, would have to be contented with watching these liturgical celebrations on the screens of their devices, computers and television. This week we witnessed a Palm Sunday without a procession and palms; a Holy Thursday without oils being blessed, feet being washed, and communion being received; a Good Friday without the traditional veneration of the cross; a Holy Saturday vigil without baptisms. There is something surreal about this. When so much is missing it is not hard to imagine how easy it would be to question the very foundation of our faith.

The reason for this sentiment is that Catholic piety is deeply rooted in objective realities. A leaf, water, candles, a crucifix, bread and wine are not just mere objects to be used, they come alive through our celebrations - they make our faith real and visible. They help us touch, see and taste the very invisible mysteries which are celebrating. Our faith is not a faith built on ideas. It is faith that it firmly grounded on the sensible and the tangible, because the Word of God did not just remain the Word of God. The Word of God became flesh, dwelt among us and was swept up in the events which we commemorate every Holy Week, where He suffered His passion, died on the cross for us and finally rose from the grave.

Today, adds to the list of missing items from Holy Week. We have a missing body from the tomb. But instead of leaving us to languish in despair at what has been taken away, it is good news to us Christians. A corpse may be missing, but the Risen Saviour and Lord is not. It may be sad news to hear that we are not having our palms blessed, feet washed, crosses kissed this year. But an empty tomb and a missing corpse is always good news!

The empty tomb is a necessary condition for the Resurrection, but atheists are right in stating that it's not sufficient. The Apostles needed to see in the flesh that the Lord was alive again in His body, but in a transformed and glorified state. And this they did, and so did many others who witnessed the resurrected Lord in the flesh, not just in their dreams or imagination. Even as Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire, the Resurrection was one of the stumbling blocks for its spread. Christians were mocked for their belief. It's impossible; even ancient people knew that dead people stayed dead. And yet, we witness the rise of the Church in spite of all these unfavourable odds.

The resurrection of Christ is and must always be the foundation of our Christian faith. The resurrection gives reality to our faith. It proves salvation is real for millions and millions of believers down the age from all over the world and also millions who have gone to be with the Lord hoping to be resurrected someday. “The Resurrection above all constitutes the confirmation of all Christ’s works and teachings.  All truths, even those most inaccessible to human reason, find their justification if Christ by His Resurrection has given proof of His divine authority, which he had promised” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 651). St Paul reminds us, “if there is no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen. And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain” (1 Cor. 15: 14-15).

Today, in the face of a global pandemic, war, famine, dispossession, injustice, the darkness of sin, the loss and death of our loved ones, we cry out to God to act quickly and decisively to destroy what remains of death’s powers. But God waits patiently, offering every opportunity for our enemies and us to come to our senses and embrace the ways of His kingdom. And we must wait too; but not passively. By our words and actions we boldly announce God’s Easter victory over death – light has triumphed over darkness, truth over falsehood, love over hate, grace over sin. In God’s new order, distress, sickness, death, displacement, sin and violence will no longer hold sway. They will be replaced by joy, peace, hope, truth and love. This is not wishful thinking. This is real because Christ has Risen! Indeed He has risen, Alleluia!