Preserving the fire of Tradition

Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

Gustav Mahler, one of the leading composers at the turn of the 20th century, who recognised the tension between tradition and innovation and who attempted to bridge the gap between classical and modern genres of music, once wrote: “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” What he meant by this quote is that, tradition is not remembering the glory of the obsolete good old days in a sentimental way but the passing of our culture, heritage and values, as living and organic things, to the next generation.

Today, our Lord confronts the scribes and Pharisees on the issue of the “traditions of the elders” which our Lord describes in a derogatory way as “human regulations” and “human traditions”. Critics of Catholic Tradition and promoters of theological innovation have often cited the above text to show that our Lord Himself had also condemned traditions as man-made. They accuse promoters and defenders of Catholic Tradition as being sentimentally attached to the past and practising an illogical “worship of the ashes.” But this crass and condescendingly shallow judgment is based on a simplistic reading of the text and their own prejudices. In fact, it is those who promote progressive innovation who are most often enamoured by an unthinking sentimentalism (sola affectibus - “feelings alone matters”) and who are actually the ones guilty of creating human regulations and human tradition through their innovation.

Let’s first consider the context of our Lord’s teaching in today’s passage. What were these so-called “traditions of the elders”? Like any law, the Law of Moses requires interpretation: how, when, for whom and in what circumstances are these regulations to be applied. Over the centuries, an oral tradition of legal interpretations had developed and handed down by generations of leading rabbis.

Originally, the interpretations were just meant to be interpretations of the Law but soon they took on the weight of the Law as well. For the Pharisees, the oral tradition was just as binding as the written Torah. It prescribed numerous and detailed rules of conduct for daily life, so much so, that you needed the special class of scribes who were living depositories of such rules to provide guidance and consultation. This is why the carrying out of these rules had become a burden that sometimes obscured the purpose of the Law. If our modern day ever-evolving SOPs can be a constant cause of befuddlement and fatigue in modern times, can you imagine the pressure and stress it would have given the people of our Lord’s time who had no access to search engines or social media platforms to ensure that they were not in breach of any rules?

The specific point of contention in this passage were the rules regarding ablutions to be performed before eating one’s meal. The scribes and Pharisees complained to the Lord that His disciples were eating with unclean and unwashed hands. In the chapter prior to this (Mark 6:35-44), we had the miracle of the feeding of the multitudes. Perhaps it was our Lord’s miraculous provision of bread in the wilderness (where there was no source of water for people to at least wash their hands) that occasioned this supposed controversy. The pettiness of the Pharisees can be seen in them missing the forest for the trees! The requirement of ritual purity in the Torah, was originally only applicable to the priestly class serving at the altar of the Temple, but the oral tradition developed by the Pharisees had extended this rule to govern the behaviour of all Jews at meals - making every meal a religious act, on par with the Temple sacrifice. Those who failed to observe these additional meticulous rules would be despised by the Pharisees and labelled as accursed and ignorant.

Rather than falling into the trap of validating their terms of reference, our Lord levels a counter charge, challenging the entire shaky edifice of Pharisaic legalism. He accuses them of being hypocrites (literally “stage actors”), people who only pay lip service to their devotion to God - their outward conduct does not correspond with the true state of their hearts. Obsessed with external ritual purity, their hearts and intentions were anything but pure.

Having quoted from the Septuagint version of Isaiah 29:13, our Lord delivers the punchline, which He repeats in two other verses to show emphasis: “You put aside the commandment of God to cling to human traditions.” It is a scathing indictment of His accusers’ whole approach to religion, in which the key contrast is between “God’s” and “man’s.” The will of God is supplanted by the agenda of man.

And this is what Sacred Tradition seeks to guard against – to prevent God’s revelation from being twisted by human machinations seeking to make it more palatable. And this is what innovation actually does – it puts aside the commandment of God to cling to human traditions.  At the end of the day, theological innovation seeks to undo the deposit of faith handed down by our Lord Jesus to the Apostles, to us. To reject Sacred Tradition is to reject Christ’s teaching. Innovation shows up man’s arrogance. When we innovate and attempt to alter the teachings of Christ in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, we are actually claiming to be smarter than the wisdom of God; that God’s revelation and guidance is inadequate for our salvation, and needs to be augmented and completed by our addition, subtraction or amendment.

Although heresies over the centuries can occupy any part of a spectrum of ideas and they may often disagree with each other, there is a consistent theme or action found in each and every one of them. Tertullian puts it this way, “In the Church, the rule of Faith is unalterable, and never to be reformed.” This is because Sacred Tradition is not just something the Church “makes up.” It comes from Christ. It is the full, living gift of Christ to the Apostles, faithfully handed down through each generation. To attempt to change Sacred Tradition would be as ridiculous as attempting to alter Christ. This is what the letter to the Hebrews wishes to caution us: “Remember your leaders, who preached the word of God to you, and as you reflect on the outcome of their lives, imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same today as he was yesterday and as he will be for ever. Do not let yourselves be led astray by all sorts of strange doctrines” (Hebrews 13: 7-9). Heretics, according to Tertullian, “vary in their rules; namely, in their confessions of faith. Every one of them thinks he has a right to change and model what he has received according to his own fancy, as the author of the sect composed it according to his own fancy.”

As Christians, what is required of us is fidelity, not novelty. It is ultimately God who makes all things new, we can be assured of this. He does this not by making new things but by making all things new through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is why Sacred Tradition is not just obsolete customs or fossilised teachings, but living and dynamic. Pope Emeritus Benedict reminds us precisely of this, “Tradition is the living river that unites us to the origins, the living river in which the origins are always present, the great river that leads us to the port of eternity. In this living river, the word of the Lord…: “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age”, is fulfilled again (Matthew 28:20).” It is the fire of this living river of Tradition that must be preserved.

We will serve the Lord

Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

A pivotal moment in my discernment to the priesthood took place during the 30 days Ignatian retreat I had to undergo before my final year of formation. Prior to this, my entire seminary formation had been marked by hesitancy, uncertainty and fear, with this question constantly troubling me: am I really called to be a priest? Although I knew I had the answer given to me on many occasions, though not in the manner of a “St Paul on the Road to Damascus” moment, I still had my doubts especially when I thought of my parents and their future well-being and the enormity of the task and responsibilities set out before me.

Back to the story of my 30 days retreat experience. To state that it was life-changing and foundational to my final decision is an understatement. On one particular dark night near the end of the retreat, not a physical description but a spiritual reference to the condition of my soul, I was assailed once again by a flurry of emotions, deeply troubling doubts and fears. After battling with my inner demons and imagined scenarios of the future, I decided that very night to return home the next morning and proceed straight from the airport to Bukit Nenas to meet the Archbishop and tell him of my decision to leave the seminary, give up the priesthood and return home. I finally went to sleep, exhausted. But in the morning, as I woke up, there was no trace of the heaviness that I had experienced the night before. In fact, my resolve became so much clearer and stronger. I was convinced: whatever the challenges, “I will serve the Lord!”

I believe that many would share a similar faith-story - it is often about having to make a decision to go forward, or backward. This too is the theme of our first reading and the gospel today.

In the first reading, Joshua, the successor of Moses, gathered all the tribes together at Shechem. He had led them in a campaign of conquest, and had divided up the land among the different tribes. These were the same tribes of Israel who had been recalcitrant and complaining a lot during their sojourn in the wilderness as Moses led them forth from Egypt. At this juncture, Joshua did not wish to assume that he had their undivided allegiance. This was the moment to test their mettle, the moment of decision and he wasn’t going to force their hand.

The challenge was: were they going to move into the future with the God who had brought them out of Egypt and into the promised land, or were they going to choose the old gods of their ancestors or maybe the local gods of the land they had conquered?  Joshua was not going to presume that he knew their answer and so he laid out this choice before them. If they were willing to follow the Lord, they would need to renew the covenantal promises with the Lord, the covenant which was entered into with their ancestors. Such renewal was necessary because their ancestors had shown themselves to be a rebellious people, breaking covenant with God on many occasions during the Exodus. As he waited for the people’s response, Joshua unhesitatingly declares: “as for me and my house (family), we will serve the Lord.”

This scene at Shechem is put in parallel to today’s gospel reading because Joshua challenged the Israelites to make up their minds whether or not they intended to remain loyal to the Lord, in the same way our Lord Jesus challenges the disciples, at the end of the Bread of Life discourse, to see if they would accept His teachings and continue to follow Him. Once again, we are witnessing a tense moment of decision. Many decided to walk away but St Peter and others remained, declaring: “Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the Holy One of God.”

The similarity between the two stories does not only highlight a challenge to loyalty, but specifically to covenant loyalty, since the Eucharist is the new and everlasting covenant which our Lord sealed at the Last Supper and by His death on the cross. As the people of Israel were given the choice to accept or reject the old covenant, our Lord is providing His disciples with the choice of accepting His Eucharistic teaching or rejecting it, if they find it intolerable.

This is what our Lord had said in the discourse on the Bread of Life and which is what the Church teaches about the Eucharist, and this is what we must accept as truth before we can worthily participate in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and receive Holy Communion:

Jesus is the Bread of Life that has come down from heaven;

No one who comes to Him will ever hunger; no one who believes in Him will ever thirst.

The bread that He shall give is His flesh, for the life of the world.

If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.

Anyone who does eat His flesh and drink His blood has eternal life, and He shall raise that person up on the last day.

For His flesh is real food and His blood is real drink.

Whoever eats His flesh and drinks His blood lives in Him and He lives in that person.

This is why we answer “Amen” at Holy Communion, just before we receive it. “Amen” is often translated as “so be it,” an assent to the statement which precedes it. So, when we say “Amen” in response to the words uttered by the priest or extraordinary minister of holy communion, “the Body of Christ,” we are practically saying that we agree - we believe this to be true – the host that we are about to consume is truly, really, and substantially the Body and Blood of Christ, soul and divinity.

But the assent is not just an assent of faith but a commitment to action. Tertullian, a 3rd century North African theologian, applied the Latin term sacramentum to the rites of baptism and Eucharist. Sacramentum referred to the oath of allegiance that soldiers made to the Roman emperor to serve him, even with their life. At this time in the Church’s history, persecutions were common enough to make baptism into Christ a commitment that could mean dying for the faith. Thus, saying “Amen” to the sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ serves as a Catholic pledge of allegiance to follow Christ. It is literally saying, “Yes, I will serve the Lord! Yes, I will die for this truth!”

So, saying “Amen,” means you assent to your faith, with your head and heart and will. Not only are you saying that you believe in the real presence but that you are also committing yourselves to living and acting as Jesus did, and you continue to do. Make no mistake, do not receive holy communion lightly and take it as a harmless ritual. Whenever, you stand at the threshold of receiving holy communion, you are asked to renew your commitment to believe in the Lord and His teachings, to love Him and serve Him with your entire being because He is “the Holy One of God” who offers us “the message of eternal life” and “the Bread of Life that has come down from heaven.” 

A Blessed Life

Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

It will be no surprise that those for whom the bible is paramount, for whom nothing can be said without clear biblical justification, the doctrine of the Assumption is not something they are easy with. We use the gospel reading on the Visitation, because there is nothing in the gospels that describes the Assumption in the way that the Visitation is described. Elsewhere, Psalm 132, where the Blessed Virgin is interpreted as the “Ark of God” that is taken into heaven, is cited. Along with similar interpretations of Genesis 3:15, 1 Corinthians 15:54, and Revelation 12:1-2, this hardly amounts to an explicit expression of the dogma of the Assumption; on their own, they are not a ringing endorsement. So, why is this gospel passage selected for today? How do we draw a trajectory from the Visitation to that of the Assumption?

In today’s account of the Visitation of our Lady to her cousin St Elizabeth, we see the exploding synergy which takes place during the meeting of these two women and the unborn children within their wombs. St Luke was determined to let us know that Mary “went as quickly as she could”, spurred on by a double motivation; to share the joy of Elizabeth’s good fortune in having conceived a son when well beyond the age of childbearing, and secondly, to share her own heavenly secret that she was to be the mother of the Messiah.

But apart from the excitement, the energy and the joy displayed by the various characters in today’s gospel including the unborn St John the Baptist, in the womb of St Elizabeth who leapt for joy as he heard Mary’s greeting, we see a remarkable theme being weaved through the entire narrative from beginning to end - it is the blessed life. Mary is living the blessed life.

In today's gospel, we have a description of the blessed life of the Virgin Mary. St Elizabeth honours her with this praise that she is the “most blessed” among all women; that the child within her womb is “blessed,” and Mary breaks into song acknowledging this blessedness: “all generations will call me blessed.” She acknowledges the source of that blessedness - it is God, “holy is His name.”

As some people are fond of saying that they are “living the dream,” which is to say that they have achieved their lives’ goals and their ideals and dreams have become reality, Mary is living the blessed life, not some unfulfilled dream in the future but a present reality.

What does it mean to live a blessed life? The simplest answer is that, it means to live in God’s presence. This is captured so beautifully in the first paragraph of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

“God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know Him, to love Him with all His strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent His Son as Redeemer and Saviour. In his Son and through Him, He invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, His adopted children and thus heirs of His blessed life.”

This is why we call the Saints blessed, because they are heirs of God’s blessed life - having reached Heaven, they stand in God’s presence enjoying beatific vision—seeing God face to face. The Blessed Virgin Mary, though counted among the company of Saints, is uniquely privileged. She did not need to wait for death, as in the case of the other Saints, to experience this grace-filled moment of sanctification. Our Church holds this belief, based on scripture and tradition, that she was preserved from original sin from the moment of conception in her mother St Anne’s womb, and she alone among all mortals, was free from personal sin throughout her entire life.

The Blessed Virgin Mary shows us the manner in which we can live the blessed life in the here and now. By her dedication to God, she was open to doing His will. She opened her heart so that the Holy Spirit was able to dwell in her and the Word of God, the second person of the Most Holy Trinity, could take flesh in her womb. Mary wasn’t just some incidental insignificant supporting character in the story of salvation, nor a mere hollow receptacle of the Divine Being. It is from her flesh that God took on human flesh to become man. God became man through her and not in spite of her. God now shares in our humanity because of her.

The Blessed Virgin Mary is without a doubt the epitome of the blessed life to which the Assumption is an appropriate end, and perhaps the only logical conclusion. It makes sense, that she should be assumed into heaven, as a representative of humanity. Our Lady was born without sin, and was perfect in virtue. It is only proper then, that at the end of her earthly life, that she should be raised to heaven, to share in her Son's victory: an assumption that is on offer to the entire human race. Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us that He has gone to prepare a place for us. Surely, it is right to believe that the Blessed Virgin already enjoys a privilege spot in that place.

We too are invited to have a share in this blessed life, for God has promised that He will “exalt the lowly.” If we imitate our Blessed Mother in her humility, we will also share in the privilege accorded to her in glory. As our Lord welcomed His own mother into His eternal presence, He too beckons us, waving us over, inviting us to take our place at the table of the heavenly banquet which He has prepared for us, and where our Lady sits on His right as she whispers this piece of maternal advice into our ears: “do what ever He tells you to do,” and continues to intercede for us that “we may merit to be exalted by (Christ) on high.”

Provision for the Journey

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

The first reading gives us this poignant story of an angel of the Lord providing strength and encouragement in the form of a meal to the prophet Elijah, who is languishing in despair and on the verge of suicide. Think of it as a spiritual “Happy Meal.” This physical sustenance, which is also spiritual in nature, prefigures the Eucharist. The story of Elijah’s bread is also reminiscent of one of the wondrous items found in the fantabulous stories of J.R. Tolkien. Fans of Tolkien may know that he was a devout Catholic and that his writings made no secret of his Catholic faith. Of all the Catholic parallels in his writings, lembas, the Elven way bread, is perhaps the strongest as it bears a striking resemblance to the Eucharist.

The attributes of this Elvish bread and instructions on how to eat it are described in Tolkien’s book, “Eat a little at a time, and only at need. For these things are given to serve you when all else fails… One will keep a traveler on his feet for a day of long labour.” Yes, this bread is strength for the weary and food for the journey!

This is how we describe Holy Communion for someone near to, or in danger of dying - Viaticum, a Latin word which literally means “provision (or food) for the journey”. Just as the characters of Tolkien’s universe received renewed strength and purpose to complete their mission, the Eucharist received as Viaticum, gives renewed strength in body and spirit to those who are sick and dying, and in fact to all of us who trod through the “shadow of the valley of death.” Tolkien was most certainly aware of this connexion when he wrote to his son with these words, “"The only cure for sagging or fainting faith is Communion.”

The allusion to food for the journey is similarly found in today’s gospel - the second instalment to the Bread of Life Discourse. The gospel begins with a controversy: the crowds found it disturbing that our Lord should describe Himself as the Bread that comes down from heaven. They were scandalised not because of His use of this metaphor nor because they thought that He was speaking literally instead of figuratively. He had yet to associate that bread with His flesh. The real reason is that they found it arrogant on His part to even claim that He was on par with both Moses and the manna, which Moses made to fall from heaven.

Last Sunday’s passage gives us the context for today. The crowds had asked the Lord for a sign as proof that He had come from God, and they cited the manna as an example of the kind of sign they’re looking for. In response, our Lord tells them that the manna foreshadowed the “true bread from heaven” that God would give His people, and then He unabashedly announces that He Himself (and ultimately his body and blood in the Eucharist) is the “bread which came down from heaven”. If you understand that the Exodus is the defining event of their identity and covenantal relationship with God, you would understand His audience’s outrage. No one would dare to claim that there is something greater than the event of the Exodus and its hero, Moses. But here comes our Lord Jesus claiming exactly that.

When our Lord says that His flesh is given “for the life of the world”, He means that His flesh is the new manna, the “true bread from heaven” that is intended to sustain all of us on our journey to our heavenly homeland, just as the manna in the Old Testament fed the Israelites on their journey to the Promised Land. But this is no mere equivalence. Our Lord makes this stark distinction: “Your fathers ate the manna in the desert and they are dead; but this is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that a man may eat it and not die.” Although the manna sustained the Israelites on their journey to the Promised Land just as lembas did for the hobbits, neither form of sustenance could guarantee them immortality. Where these foods failed, the Eucharist succeeds in providing us with the antidote to death and the elixir immortality.

The Eucharist quite literally sustains our spiritual lives. Without it, as the Lord says, we “have no life” in us. In other words, it helps to sustain the life of grace within us, the grace that we receive at baptism and that we believe will flower into the life of heaven once we die, just as earthly food sustains our physical lives. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, the Eucharist “preserves, increases, and renews the life of grace,” “separates us from sin,” and “preserves us from future mortal sins” (CCC 1392-1393, 1395). The Eucharist is food for our journey home, food that helps us to survive the hostile desert of this world and to arrive safely at our heavenly homeland.

As we witness how this pandemic continues to claim new victims despite severe lockdown measures and without any hint of an end to this suffering, I can assure you of this, just when you feel like giving up and resigning yourself to despair, our Lord will send help from heaven, as Elijah discovered in the first reading.  Like Elijah’s bread, which took him from black despair to strength of purpose and clarity of mission, the Eucharist can take us from the darkness of the moment and empower us for the voyage ahead. For now, you cannot receive our Lord in Holy Communion in a physical way, but only do so spiritually. But do not lose sight of your purpose and God’s sovereignty over our situation. He will not let us be tested beyond our endurance but will continue to feed us with the spiritual food of His invisible grace until He can feed us with the true bread from heaven, the Eucharist, when you return to church.

In a letter to his son, Michael, Tolkien gives the following advice, an advice which is most certainly meant for us all, especially today,

“Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament… There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste—or foretaste—of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man’s heart desires.”