He has spoken to us

Christmas Mass During the Day

If there is any passage that could rival or at least mirror the beauty and profundity of the Prologue of St John’s gospel, it must be the prologue to the Letter to the Hebrews which we heard in the second reading: “At various times in the past and in various different ways, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets; but in our own time, the last days, he has spoken to us through his Son, the Son that he has appointed to inherit everything and through whom he made everything there is. He is the radiant light of God’s glory and the perfect copy of his nature …” In this prologue, just as in John’s, we find the theological reason for our celebration - the reason for the season.

Perhaps, the significance of both texts is lost on us because we often take communication for granted. But imagine arriving in a foreign country with absolutely no knowledge of the local language nor are you equipped with any phrase book or translator application or device, you would simply be lost. You can attempt to second guess what the other person is trying to convey to you with hand gestures and other forms of non-verbal communication, but there is no way of verifying your suspicions and speculations. This is why both the author of Hebrews and the evangelist St John uses the analogy of the spoken word to illustrate who God is and how He wishes to relate with us.

We are here on earth, busy living our lives, pursuing our own agendas, but deaf to God's voice. We don't hear what God is trying to say to us. God has been trying to communicate His message to us, we aren't getting it. But rather than give up in frustration, God loves us so much that He desperately wants to reveal Himself to us in ways that we can understand. So, He sends His very own Son to communicate His message in a way that we can understand. God has finally broken through the communication barrier that has separated us from knowing His will. That is the miracle of Christmas. That is the miracle of the message.

There are three points which the prologue of the letter to the Hebrews wishes to communicate to us.

The first point is that God speaks through history to reveal Himself to us. He wants us to know Him, to love Him, to worship Him. For those who complain that God often remains silent when we demand a response or an answer, are obviously ignorant of how God has chosen to reveal Himself to us. God is always speaking but were we listening?

God reveals Himself through His creation, through the sunrise and sunset, through the sun, moon and stars. God spoke to Moses in the burning bush, He spoke to the Israelites from the smoke and fire on the mountain, He spoke to Elijah in a still, small voice, to Isaiah in a vision in the temple. God has been speaking His message through visions and dreams, through angels. There is no lack of variety for God's revelation is not a monotonous activity that must always occur in the same place or in the same way. God has been speaking throughout history in a variety of places through a variety of means in order to make Himself and His will known. But God's revelations in the Old Testament were fragmentary, occasional, and progressive, because no single one of them contained the whole truth. They could not adequately capture the full picture of God's nature.

And so it was necessary to take it up another level, in fact, beyond any level which we would normally expect. God speaks through Christ. At last, God sent His Son to bring His message to us! In the Lord Jesus Christ, God revealed Himself directly to us. Jesus Christ, the living divine Son of God, did more than just proclaim God's message - He is God's message. As St John confidently declares in his prologue: “In the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” But this Word did not just remain invisible like a concept or an idea. Something happened which is at the very heart of Christmas: “The Word was made flesh, he lived among us, and we saw his glory.” The invisible Deity, whom we can never behold, became visible. Jesus came to reveal God, to make Him known to us in ways that we can understand. If you want to know what God is like, look to Jesus!

But why did this happen? Why did the Word choose to become flesh? Why did the Son of God choose to be born in Bethlehem? Why did He choose to speak to us in person? Well, the answer is found in my third point - God speaks to transform. The miracle of the message is not just in the fact that God speaks to us today through His Son, but that the message has the power to transform our lives. Christmas is the celebration of the greatest message ever proclaimed. Emmanuel - God is with us. God came near so that we could draw near to Him. Or as the Fathers of the Church were fond of claiming: God became man so that men may become gods. The miracle of the message is that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, so that we can be set free from sin's hold on our lives.

Why would He do that? Because He wanted us to know how very much He loves us. He wanted us to know that He created us for a reason - that we might know and love Him. He came to proclaim the message that we have been set free. We don't have to live as prisoners to guilt and regret.

In our time, I think, we need to recognise that this is the fundamental message of Christmas. We either recognise our need for a Saviour or we do not. We either yearn for the fulfilment of God’s will or we do not. We either accept the gift of Christ wholeheartedly or we do not. If we really don’t care about our Catholic faith, having exiled it to the periphery of our lives, storing it in a drawer somewhere only to be taken out when needed, then we have rejected this faith. Yet its acceptance—indeed, its very life within us—is the key, amid all the fluctuations and catastrophes of this world.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour King born in Bethlehem, the Son of Mary and the Son of God, the Word made flesh, “the radiant light of God’s glory and the perfect copy of His nature,” let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God. Should not all our festivities and carols be in thanksgiving for the wonder of Christmas? Was it not at Christ’s birth that the silence of the heavens were shattered, that Invisible Deity became visible, that our salvation was first made manifest? So, as we celebrate Christmas, we and all our families ought to know what we are doing, and we ought to know why, and we ought to know all that is at stake. Christmas has changed everything. We should rejoice in it only if we find that it has also changed us—or that it can change us now and continues to change us until we are able to see His glory face to face.

House of Bread

Christmas Mass During the Night

The gospel reading which we had just heard acts like a telescope. It begins by enlarging our field of vision by situating the story of Christmas within the larger story of human history featuring important luminaries, a Roman emperor and a provincial governor. Although, these may have been important figures in history, they are not the focus of our story. The telescope then contracts and becomes a microscope. A tiny place that wouldn’t have appeared on any radar or map is magnified. We are given an ‘up close and personal’ view of the most ground-breaking climatic event in human history - it is the story of how God, the Lord of Lords and King of Kings, is born in an obscure backward village at the fringes of the great and glorious Roman empire.

And then the storyline takes us from this tiny point of space and time, to the fields beyond this village and our vision is expanded once again to take in the whole host of heaven. We suddenly realise that our world and all its inhabitants, even the strongest and most powerful, are tiny specks of space dust in comparison to the immense universe, what more to the Most High God who created the stars and the heavens and who now chooses to hide in the flesh of a human child. No telescope nor microscope can detect, nor genius mind can wrap its head around this amazing phenomenon. You need another set of lenses to perceive and comprehend this. The lens of faith.

This is the mystery of Christmas - that the greatest gifts often come in small packages. Let’s be honest. Our ordinary experience of Christmas is nothing like this. Have you ever looked under the Christmas tree to inspect still-wrapped gifts and assessed the worth of their hidden treasures by size, shape and weight? As a child, I used to think, “the bigger, the better.” But over the years, I’ve discovered the wonderful reality that big things come in small packages. This couldn’t be truer as we celebrate the birth of our great King born as a tiny baby.

Our big story begins in a small place - in Bethlehem. It is understandable why Bethlehem had not appeared on the map of any geopolitical significance due to her size but she had also not been the subject of any major prophecy, with the exception of one. Micah, a contemporary of Isaiah, spoke God’s word to Israel at a time of great danger. Due to the sin of both Samaria (the northern kingdom of Israel) and Judah (the southern kingdom), the Israelites would suffer a devastating attack. Both the North and eventually the South would fall, and the ancient kingdom of Israel would be no more.

Into this dark, dangerous world Micah spoke not only words of judgment but of hope. This hope centres on this humble place: “Bethlehem Ephrathah, you are small among the clans of Judah; One will come from you to be ruler over Israel for Me. His origin is from antiquity, from eternity.” (Micah 5:2) Rather than hailing from mighty Rome, the so-called Eternal City, or Holy Jerusalem, where God’s own House - the Temple - was located, the Saviour-King would come from humble, seemingly insignificant and tiny Bethlehem.

It is in this small, ordinary village that we see the prophecy fulfilled, God’s love is manifested and His plan of salvation is revealed to us. Although, the parents of our Lord lived in Nazareth in Galilee, He was born in Bethlehem, not Nazareth, apparently according to the dictates of Roman rule. By the designs of divine providence, the empire is placed at the service of salvation. Had Jesus been born in a great city, men would have attributed his teaching or his success to his noble birth. But by being born in Bethlehem, He allows us to more easily discern that the power of God, rather than the power of men, is at work.

So, far from the corridors of power, Jesus Christ, descended from David through His adoptive father, Joseph, was born in Bethlehem. God Himself came to rule and rescue. He looked unimpressive. His birthplace was inauspicious. But this is always God’s way: through the weak and foolish message of the cross comes rescue from sin. Notice how God’s majesty and reputation are not diminished or compromised at all by introducing Jesus into the world through such a seemingly small place and inconvenient circumstances. Unlike humanity, God is never tempted to show off. Even in the simple birthplace of the eternal King of the Universe, God has allowed Himself to be approachable by all, especially the ordinary and small.

In Hebrew, Beth-lehem is two words and means “house” (Beth) and “bread” (lehem). Bethlehem literally means “house of bread.” It has this name of its location in the grain producing region of Old Testament times. Because of the fertility of its soil, which in Biblical times produced an abundance of grain and produce, the region surrounding Bethlehem was called Ephrathah. Ephrathah means “fruitful, abundant.” An appropriate birthplace for the One who, in stark contrast to emperors and kings, came to feed His people. Thus, St. Bede says, “The place he was born is rightly called ‘The House of Bread’ because he came down from heaven to earth to give us the food of heavenly life and to satisfy us with eternal sweetness.” The Bread of Life, lying in a manger, a feeding trough, in the House of Bread. It was in this town with such an evocative name that the One was born who said, “I am the bread which came down from heaven” and, “I am the bread of life.”

Our Lord’s birth in the manger of Bethlehem happened only once, but the even more powerful event of His offering of Himself in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass occurs over and over again, day in and day out, from the rising of the sun to its setting. Once, He hid in “a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” Now He hides in the form of Bread and Wine which we partake at the altar. For this child born in Bethlehem was no ordinary mortal nor even a great hero. The last part of Micah’s prophecy provides us with the clue as to His true identity: “His origin is from antiquity, from eternity.” The prophet is hinting that Jesus’ origins are not just Davidic but divine. He is God the Son, and as God, He has no beginning. He has always existed. His origin is not only from antiquity but also “from eternity.” This is what the angels announced to the shepherds in the fields: “Today in the town of David a saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord,” and with them let us praise God singing: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace to men who enjoy his favour.”

Blessed is she

Fourth Sunday of Advent Year C

If you pray the Holy Rosary regularly, you would immediately recognise that the Joyful Mystery of Mary’s Visitation to her cousin Elizabeth comes immediately after the Annunciation and before the Nativity of our Lord, Christmas. It is therefore not surprising to have the gospel for this Sunday focusing on this story of the meeting of these two women. But more importantly, it was the first meeting between the sons they were carrying within their wombs, the cousins Jesus and John the Baptist. And less the audience were to forget them as they nestled not so quietly within their mothers’ wombs, hidden and off-camera, the text throws light on them to ensure that we do not forget that the entire story would be theirs, and less of their mothers.

Elizabeth would take on a prophetic role by announcing what is really taking place behind the scene. The hand of God is at work even as mortals play out the drama of human relations and emotions. Elizabeth inspired by the Holy Spirit declares and pronounces a series of blessings - two addressed to Mary, and one to the child within her womb. This is not the Beatitude of the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew’s gospel nor the set found in the Sermon on the plain in Luke’s. Nevertheless, Elizabeth uses the Greek word which also translates into “happy” which we would find in both sets of beatitudes - makarios. Here it is translated as “blessed.”

“Makarios” was derived from two root words: “mak”, to become large, and “charis”, grace. For, one who is blessed has been enlarged, or magnified, by grace. It was, therefore, a word reserved for the elite, and then only the crème de la crème. During the classical Greek era, makarios described the status of the gods, emphasising their power and wealth. At times, it also described the state of the dead, since through death they had now arrived at the world of the gods. They were beyond the cares and worries common to the living, and now enjoyed the company of the gods. But during our Lord’s era, the word makarios was used to describe those who had everything money could buy – those who lived like the gods. They were enjoying the personal satisfaction of their achievements, the height of socio-economic status, the best political connections, and the wealth of enduring and enriching personal relationships. Makarios was the supreme blessing. It was synonymous with all the joys of the life hereafter. Thus, it was not a descriptive term thrown around lightly.

And now Elizabeth uses this very concept in various ways.

Firstly, in referring to Mary as most blessed among all women. The Old Testament mentions and even sings praises of several of these women and the gospel of St Matthew even intertwines some of their names into the patrilineal genealogy of our Lord. But Mary stands out among all these women. The next part of Elizabeth’s announcement would give the reason for Mary’s supreme blessedness.

Elizabeth now declares the child within Mary’s womb as “blessed” too but not in the way as Mary is blessed. The blessedness of Mary is ascribed to her by God as it is announced by the Angel Gabriel at the Annunciation. In both the Annunciation and here in the Visitation, Mary is declared to be the mother of the Lord, the Most High God. God is not just blessed or the source of blessedness. The only one truly blessed in Himself is God and Jesus is the incarnate makarios, worthy to receive the threefold declaration of the angels, “holy, holy, holy.”

Elizabeth would conclude her prophetic outburst with a final makarios: “blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.” It is by virtue of her faith and her obedience that Mary is hailed as blessed. The faith of Mary is a light for the whole world, and which will not be put out by night. She was and is a woman of incredible faith, who believed the prophets and trusted the angelic messengers, even when the message seemed beyond human credibility. In this, she serves as an example for us. For, she stands under the promise, even when that promise seems definitively thwarted by the forces of evil. It is under this third use of the word of “Makarios” that we can share in Mary’s blessedness. We too are blessed when we believe in the promises of God, and act upon them.

This is how we should prepare ourselves in the next few days leading up to the great feast of Christmas. We have truly been “blessed”, our grace has been enlarged, our hearts have been emboldened, our hope has been renewed, knowing that the Lord is on His way, not just to visit us but to be one with us, united with us in body and soul, sharing with us His divinity as He humbly shared in our humanity. Instead of all the bad news we may be hearing these days, let the greetings of this holy season bring such joy and peace to us so that we too may leap with joy as the Baptist did in his mother’s womb. And just as Mary believed God, and so Jesus Christ took flesh within her, at this Mass, let us not doubt that Jesus Christ is going to take flesh once more in the Blessed Sacrament and enter each one of us as He entered the body of His Blessed Mother. Let’s ask for the faith truly to believe that this is so—that through this Eucharist, Christ’s Body is united to ours. If we believe in the fulfilment of the promise made to us that He is truly really and substantially present, we are indeed blessed!

Don't Worry! Be Happy!

Third Sunday of Advent Year C

Christmas is just over a week away, and for many the air of excitement is just plain electrifying. For most of us, we can’t wait for it to happen! And yet, this season often ushers a troubling sense of melancholy. For many, they know that this should be a season of rejoicing but it doesn’t always feel this way for one reason or another. The children have left for overseas and the home feels like an empty nest. A particular loved one that had always been part of our annual Christmas celebrations is no longer here and it just doesn’t feel the same. Anxiety building up over the future - rising expenses, financial instabilities, a recently diagnosed ailment that could worsen within weeks and months. The call of today’s liturgy to “rejoice” seems to ring hollow. Is the Church calling us to excite ourselves, some form of self- delusional “syiok sendiri” (self-induced elation)?

The readings exhort, in fact, they command us to rejoice by using an entire list of synonymous verbs to express that exuberance: shout for joy, shout aloud, exult with all your heart, sing and shout for joy, give thanks to the Lord and who can forget St Paul’s “be happy!” In fact, Paul’s words in the second reading sound like that famous song by Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t worry! Be Happy!”

The Joy which the liturgy and readings speak of is not something which comes upon suddenly and instantaneously, like a shot of adrenaline or dopamine. This joy isn’t a sudden outburst. It has been building within us, the closer the Good News has drawn. This is the joy of all the ages bursting and singing forth, building up over the centuries, prophesied by the prophets, announced by St John the Baptist, knowing the Good News that is about to be bestowed upon us all. It can hardly be contained. In fact, it can’t be.

In the first reading, the prophet Zephaniah commands Jerusalem to rejoice and gives the reason for it. “The Lord has repealed your sentence; He has driven your enemies away. The Lord, the king of Israel, is in your midst; you have no more evil to fear.” Yes, we should have every reason to rejoice and celebrate because our Lord has forgiven our sins; He has removed the curse of Original Sin that laid like the Sword of Damocles over our heads; He has defeated our enemies - sin, death and the devil. But there is more. Zephaniah adds that God rejoices over us! With gladness! “The Lord your God is in your midst, a victorious warrior. He will exult with joy over you, He will renew you by His love; He will dance with shouts of joy for you as on a day of festival.” God is rejoicing over us and that should be a great reason if any for us to rejoice.

St Paul in the second reading lays down the reason why he wants us to be happy. Let’s start with the flip side of happiness which is unhappiness. What is the main cause of unhappiness? Paul tells us that it is anxiety - worries. We worry because we lack trust in God. And worry leads to unrest and the lack of peace which eventually leads to unhappiness. And that is the reason why St Paul tells us that the path to happiness is praying and placing our trust in the Lord: “There is no need to worry; but if there is anything you need, pray for it, asking God for it with prayer and thanksgiving, and that peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand, will guard your hearts and your thoughts, in Christ Jesus.” Notice that Paul doesn’t promise that we will get what we prayed for. Our true reward, the answer to our prayer is the “peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand.”

This is the reason why we can still rejoice when things do not seem to be going our way or according to our plans, when we are facing one crisis or another, when we have suffered loss and are experiencing loneliness and alienation. Because as long as we do not lose faith in God and continue to persevere in pray, the “peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand, will guard your hearts and your thoughts, in Christ Jesus.” Peace is not the absence of conflict or problems. Peace involves presence rather than absence. It comes with the acknowledgement that God is in our midst, “a victorious warrior. He will exult with joy over you, He will renew you by His love; He will dance with shouts of joy for you as on a day of festival.”

And finally, we come to the gospel and the final herald of joy, St John the Baptist. John doesn’t strike us as a Pollyanna-like optimistic figure. In fact, he strikes us as quite the opposite. Solemn, sombre and rigidly kill-joy. Unlike the other two figures we encountered in the first and the second reading, John does not burst forth in a cheer leader’s rallying cry exhorting us to rejoice. On the contrary, he provides strict moral guidance to his audience to share, to avoid greed and intimidation and then uses apocalyptic language of judgment to speak of the One who is coming, one who is superior to John and who “will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing-fan is in his hand to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his barn; but the chaff he will burn in a fire that will never go out.”

The idea of judgment - separation of the wheat from the chaff and the destruction of the latter - does not naturally inspire joy. And yet St Luke describes this message as “good news”! And it is good news because it expresses the fundamental preparatory work of John - calling his listeners to repentance, to separate themselves from the chaff of sin. And before we think of the image of fire pointing to the eternal hell fire which all damned unrepentant souls must endure for eternity, we must also remember that fire represents the Holy Spirit which we receive in Baptism and a greater outpouring at Confirmation. Fire too represents the purgative element of God’s love, refining us, purifying us, restoring us, beautifying us. The prophet Zephaniah alluded to this in the first reading when he prophesied the Lord’s coming into our midst to “renew” us by His love.

So, as the weeks of Advent draw to a close and the days and nights of December lead us closer to that solemn night where our Lord and Saviour was born in the City of David, let us not choose to wallow in self-pity or crippling worries. We are commanded today to rejoice, and we do so not by finding substitutes to Christ in the form of intoxicants or other means of entertainment. Lasting joy cannot be found in any human pursuits but in God alone. He alone gives us the joy we seek.

Take out the trash

Second Sunday of Advent Year C

In most households, this would be the time of the year to get some major heavy-lifting stuff done. As the adults attempt to clear up their remaining leave for the year and the children get time off from their studies, and everyone’s preparing to put up the Christmas decorations, they would take this opportunity to do some Christmas shopping for gifts and new clothes, bake cookies for the upcoming festivities and do some needed spring cleaning. Although these may seem like secular or practical customs bereft of theological meaning, they may have some basis in scripture and the underlying theme for Advent, especially for this Sunday.

Take for example what the prophet Baruch tells the people of Jerusalem in the first reading: “Jerusalem, take off your dress of sorrow and distress, put on the beauty of the glory of God for ever, wrap the cloak of the integrity of God around you, put the diadem of the glory of the Eternal on your head: since God means to show your splendour to every nation under heaven.” Our custom of buying new clothes and having a cosmetic make-over may seem trivial but may actually be a reflexion of this joyful and hopeful spirit expecting God’s definitive and imminent intervention. These words of the prophet are surprising for two reasons. Baruch, who is often associated with his doomsday prophecies and mournful lamentations, departs from that tone to give us an upbeat forecast of what is to come. Secondly, the people of Jerusalem and Judah are in no mood for celebration. Their country has been invaded, the population decimated, their infrastructures destroyed and the ruling class humiliated and taking off into exile to a foreign land. Yet, the prophet sees beyond this to a future that is bright, to say the least - a future that can only be realised in the gospel.

But Baruch moves beyond the imagery of a new set of attire and accoutrements to that of physical construction work that is required to build a highway. Nothing, no obstacle, no hindrance, absolutely nothing should stand in the way of what God is about to do for His people. The massive terrain engineering work envisaged by Baruch will be taken up by St John the Baptist in his proclamation that the high mountains will be flattened and the valleys filled in to make a smooth road for the Messiah to cross the desert to Jerusalem.

St Paul in the second reading adds to the list of things to be done before the Day of the Lord arrives, the Day of His return. So, in the light of the Lord’s coming Paul prays that, “your love for each other may increase more and more and never stop improving your knowledge and deepening your perception so that you can always recognise what is best. This will help you to become pure and blameless, and prepare you for the Day of Christ, when you will reach the perfect goodness.” Our lives’ project as we look to the day of the Lord’s return is to grow in faith, hope and charity and we should never take our foot off the peddle.

And finally, we come to the gospel where John the Baptist breaks into the scene, here in what we call the holiday season, and he impudently demands that we start cleaning as though our lives depended on it. But more than just our lives, the eternal salvation of our souls depend on it. He comes among us with an inconvenient message, a challenging message, a robustly difficult message - a call to repentance, a call for a thorough, radical house cleaning, but the house is that of our souls.

Probably in all of our spiritual residences, our lives, there are rooms that are dominated by clutter. There are corners where dust, and dirt, and trash have accumulated. There are signs of ill repair, where the paint is peeling, the carpet is frayed, and the drapes have faded. Windows are grimy; they barely let in the light of the sun. Such are the conditions on the inside. The outside is no better, though it is more public. Rubbish strewn in the garden, weeds flourishing where flowers used to grow, the driveway that begs to be repaved, walls that wait for scraping and fresh paint. St John the Baptist comes along and points to all of these defects, drags his fingers through the dust, kicks the dirty soiled clothes strewn on the floor and holds his nose as he beholds the unwashed plates and utensils in the kitchen sink.

John shakes the foundations of our comfort zones by uttering a single word, passing on a message that comes from God: Repent! It’s time to clean house, he tells us. Time to sweep the floors, wash the walls, air the rooms, repair what is broken, replace what is no longer useful. It’s time to paint the house, pull up weeds in the garden and trim the hedge. John demands that we make a lot of changes, expend a great deal of energy, get down on our hands and knees to clean the corners. He insists on all this because somebody is coming. He calls us to repent because heaven’s kingdom is very near. He wants us to sweat and struggle, do thorough spring-cleaning even in December, because he knows the results will be worth it.

You may ask yourself, where do I start? That’s a good question. We start by looking at these three basic questions, which we would usually ask ourselves if we want to get rid of all the clutter in our homes:
What needs to go?
What can I give away?
What needs some love and attention?

In the case of our spiritual lives, making an inventory of what needs to go and what needs to stay is just the first step. This should lead us to make a good examination of conscience and then go for sacramental confession before a priest. Ask yourself: What can you throw away? What needs to go? Put into that waste container of the confessional, then, every odious instance of pride, hypocrisy, and impatience from your life. Put into it every instance when you have exploited others. Put into it unholy anger and sick green envy. Put into it lust for people and for things, dishonesty in everyday relationships, negligence in prayer and worship, every failure to live your faith, every refusal to take a good and holy risk. We don’t need that stuff anyway. It takes up our space. It poisons our lives. Fill the dumpster high and let our Lord Jesus through the ministry of the priest haul it away.

Advent is not a feast and yet many forget this inconvenient fact and turn it into a time of premature merry-making. Advent, rather, is the preparation for the coming Feast. This, however, is what Advent is about. This is the time for spring-cleaning. Before we get to the barn in Bethlehem, all of us have to wake up to how our own spiritual house, our own lives, are worse than any self-respecting barn, and they plead for us to clean them. So, clean the house. Not just your residences, but the house of your soul. Let us remove the clutter of sin to make room for the Lord and let us turn away from everything that separates us from Him.

The Future is uncertain but the End is always near

First Sunday of Advent Year C

What would your response be if I were to tell you that we are at the cusp of the End Times, especially in view of the escalation of conflict between Ukraine and Russia, threatening to drag Europe, the United States and the whole world into a possible nuclear war?

Firstly, many of you would respond with incredulity and scoff at my announcement, thinking that I am either kidding, overreacting or out of my mind, and then proceed to live your lives business-as-usual.

Secondly, some would take advantage of the limited time still available to fulfil your life-time’s bucket list - eat, drink and be merry. Why waste the final hours, days and months of your life in idle living or useless worrying?

Thirdly, some of you would redouble your effort in putting your life and your household in order. Time to put in more effort in prayer, Mass attendance, and seek to make peace with those who have become estranged in past years.

Before proceeding any further, I would like to assure that I am deadly serious when I say that we are living in the end times. This is no bogey-man created by the Church to scare the unchurched and the nominal Catholics to return to the pews every Sunday. Neither, is this some symbolic event and its content require some form of de-mythologising. The world really will end! As the rock star lead of the Doors, Jim Morrison, assures us: “The future is uncertain but the end is always near.” The “End” did not begin today or in recent times or even in the past century. It began two thousand years ago with the first coming of our Lord. Our Lord’s death and resurrection was the beginning of the end, the sudden unveiling of God’s final purpose for His creation. We have been living in the end times since then.

The problem which many people face is that we tend to lose the momentum and urgency when the climatic conclusion of the end times seems to have been postponed. We start believing that it’s all a hoax, that the Church got it wrong, that Christ didn’t mean this when He spoke of it to His disciples. But the greater problem is that when we lose sight of the end times, we also lose sight of our ultimate purpose and destination in life. A society who has no vision of an eschatology where God would be victorious at the end, where the wicked would be punished and the innocent vindicated, where wrongs would be made right, where present sufferings would be justified, would be a society wrapped in despair and living without hope.

An incorrect eschatology can also lead to incorrect behaviour in the present times. The early Christian community, as evidenced by the writings of St Paul had similar experiences and responses to the end times announcement which they thought to be imminent - something that would take place in their own lifetime. So, some surrendered to an unbridled hedonistic lifestyle filled with “debauchery and drunkenness”, while others pursued an ascetic style of living, abandoning spouses and families whilst quitting their jobs. Both extremes were far from the ideal of Christian living which St Paul desired to instil in them.

St Paul does not suggest that Christians head for the hills, hunker down, adopt a “fortress mentality,” and start stockpiling food and weapons. As Paul sees it, end-time Christians are called to practice holiness and do good to others wherever and whenever they can. They are supposed to work the works of God “while it is day” (John 9:4). And his instructions have not grown obsolete and we would be wise to follow.

Firstly, news of the end times should not coarsen our hearts and lead us to become some stoic loveless persons. Rather, it should motivate us to increase our love for others. “May the Lord be generous in increasing your love and make you love one another and the whole human race as much as we love you.”

Secondly, our contemplation of the end times should also deepen our relationship with God as we strive to grow in holiness. St Paul prays that God may “so confirm your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless in the sight of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus Christ comes with all his saints.”

Thirdly, knowledge of the end times should not lead us to spiritual or intellectual idleness but actually motivate us to make progress in every aspect of our lives. We should always strive to improve ourselves and not settle for mediocrity, “to make more and more progress in the kind of life that you are meant to live: the life that God wants, as you learnt from us, and as you are already living it.”

As for our Lord, He speaks to His disciples about the need for vigilance and prayer as they wait for the coming of the Son of Man in glory. Though our Lord predicts a time of destruction and fear, and He acknowledges that many will be frightened by what they will be witnessing; His disciples are not to fear, but are to stand tall. Note that our Lord does not promise deliverance from anxiety or tribulations. He, however, encourages His disciples to pray for strength.

There are many reasons why it would be easy to feel overcome by the darkness of our present historical moment. At the threshold of global nuclear annihilation, with so many overwhelming unknowns, it is tempting for our waiting to turn to the apathy of despair, which waits because there is nothing else to do, nowhere to go—a kind of resignation that has stopped looking for new possibilities. What should we do and what can we do? Just as the early Christian communities did not find consolation in the promise of a utopia, nor escape through some other-worldly asceticism or hedonistic lifestyle, nor should we. Instead, we find in our Christian faith the means by which we witness to God's unfailing love for us in all circumstances. With His abundant grace, we should keep on loving, keep on living and keep on growing in holiness.

And so, we begin this holy season of Advent on a high note of hope, rather than despair. Our Lord’s predictions about the end times may sound dire, but in His person and in His message, we who hear Him can find strength and consolation. Like the first Christians, we may encounter events and circumstances that could lead us to despair. Through prayer, however, we find strength and consolation in the Lord’s words in today’s gospel: “Stay awake, praying at all times for the strength to survive all that is going to happen, and to stand with confidence before the Son of Man.”

Christ is King!

Solemnity of Christ the King Year B

The declaration that “Christ is King” seems innocent enough for us Catholics, albeit somewhat hackneyed. But this has not been the case in America’s highly polarised political climate. On the one side you have people saying this is an affirmation of the Christian faith and a desire to not give in to secular culture. On the other side, you have people saying the phrase Christ is king is antisemitic, or expresses contempt for Jewish people, as the gospels seem to lay the blame on them for killing Jesus, although the actual executioner is Pontius Pilate as we had heard in today’s gospel. And in the weeks leading up to the highly contested presidential elections in the United States, the statement has been construed by those on the left as a pro-Trump dog whistle.

It is obvious that the title has political connotations. It is for this reason that the Jewish leaders brought our Lord before the Roman authorities on charges of treason. In the Empire, only Caesar was truly sovereign and all other client puppet rulers within his domain would have to seek his mandate before they could claim any title or authority. Since the Sanhedrin, the Jewish High Council, was unable to impose capital punishment under their religious blaspheme laws, getting the Romans to adjudicate the case and pass the death penalty was the only option. So, the “crime” of Jesus had to be elevated from a religious sin into a political high crime of treason.

When our Lord was given an opportunity by Pilate to refute the charges of claiming to be “king”, He in fact confirmed the title when the question was put to Him: “Are you the king of the Jews?” And after clarifying that His “kingdom is not of this world,” our Lord proceeds to unequivocally declare: “Yes, I am a king. I was born for this, I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice.” For having affirmed the truth of His kingship instead of denying it, our Lord was condemned to die by crucifixion. He could have lied even when it was inconvenient and politically incorrect to state the truth. He could have protested that it was all a misunderstanding, but He didn’t.

So, for those who clutch their pearls whenever they hear this statement as an anti-Semitic and right-wing slogan, here are some salient truths which is bound to trigger you, rather than lower the temperature: The good news is that Jesus Christ is really king. But He’s also a Jew and in fact hailed as “King of Jews,” the very charge written on the titulus placed on the cross. So, it is an oxymoron to claim that an esteemed royal Jewish title given to a Jew would be anti-Semitic. In fact, this feast was inaugurated by Pope Pius XI as the Church’s challenge to the secularist fascist regimes which were not just anti-semites but also anti-Christian.

It is also important to remember that the “Jesus is King of the Jews” language would have been self-evidently a kind of joke, making fun of both Jesus and his fellow Jews under Roman occupation. The joke is that a king on the throne of David would not be drowning in his own blood, helplessly fixed to a Roman cross. To call him that would make a cruel point not just to any future insurrectionist but to the hopes of Jewish people generally—No one is coming to liberate us. Caesar is king and will remain king. Furthermore, the motives of Pilate’s soldiers in applying the “Christ is king” imagery was even clearer. The purple cloak and the crown of thorns were meant to be a parody—as the Roman soldiers sarcastically saluted Jesus, yelling, “Hail, king of the Jews!” (Mark 15:18). They mocked Jesus both for His alleged claim to kingship and for His Jewishness, both seen as being beneath the majesty of Roman power.

But Jesus is not making any claims to the Roman imperial throne. He has no desire to do so. Our Lord Jesus Christ is not a true and better Caesar. His kingship is something altogether different, in fact, it is not of this world. That’s because the kingdom of God is not a capstone of the aspirations and power games of this present order; it’s a repudiation of them.

If the kingdom of God were about external conformity, tribal membership, or “winning” in the sense that we define it, Jesus could have embraced all of that from the crowds around Him or would have trained His closest associates to become a more effective group of insurgents. The kingdom of God cannot be understood or articulated without seeing that the Crucifixion is not a plot obstacle on a hero’s journey. The way of the Cross is, in fact, the Way to victory and glory, while the way of Caesar leads to death and humiliation. The Cross is indeed our Lord’s true throne. Pope Pius XI taught that Christ the King “has dominion over all creatures, a dominion not seized by violence nor usurped, but His by essence and by nature.” The cross is not what robbed us of our king but in fact, gave us a king.

At a recently concluded Pax Liturgica Meeting in Rome, which went for the most part unnoticed because it was eclipsed by the hyped Synod on Synodality, Cardinal Gerhard Müller warned against bishops betraying their divine mission by relativising doctrine and failing to uphold the orthodox faith. "We must not give in to the following suggestion: If you want to reach people today and be loved by all, then, just like Pilate, leave the truth aside, then you will be spared persecution, suffering, the cross and death! Secularly speaking, the power of politics, media and banks is the safe side, while the truth defies contradiction, and promises suffering with Christ, the crucified Saviour of the world."

So, by declaring that Christ is King is not a triumphalist slogan weaponised against others but a humble acknowledgement that God comes first, above every political movement, above every economic option, above every ideological agenda, above every expression of our narcissistic world-view. To declare that Christ is King is not the symptom of a diseased mind but actually its antidote. To declare that Christ is King is not a refutation of the cross, but, the embrace of it!

Being redeemed in Christ is the antidote for toxic social dynamics. Rather than gaslighting, we have truth; in place of narcissism, there is humility; instead of manipulation, there is a guileless spirit; in place of helplessness and powerlessness, there is the armour of God; rather than oppression, there is deliverance; instead of exhaustion and exploitation, we are made new. So, let us not be abashed or ashamed of declaring with whole-hearted conviction: Christ is King!

And Now the End is Near

Thirty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

There are too many things happening simultaneously and coincidentally which may lead us to believe that we are living in the end times. We seem to be beset by one earth-shattering, history-setting crisis after another - a worldwide pandemic that brought the entire world to its knees, an economic crisis on an accelerated downward spiral, regional conflicts threatening to become another world war, hurricanes and natural calamities on an unprecedented scale and a polarised Church which seems to have as many enemies on the inside as she has on the outside. For some, the re-election of Donald Trump was the final straw – we are on the threshold of Armageddon.

Whenever some big catastrophe happens, you can be sure that someone will start talking about the “end times.” Both Catholics and Protestants do this. The difference mainly seems to be that Protestants start trying to chart out the apocalypse according to the Books of Daniel and Revelation, whereas Catholics try to chart it out based on various private revelations of the more dramatic and eschatological kind.

But what Christians today often forget is that the Church has been talking about the “end times” since the very first century, when humanity crucified the Son of God which was followed in a few decades by the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. Our Lord’s death and resurrection was the beginning of the end, the sudden unveiling of God’s final purpose for His creation. The destruction of the Temple merely confirmed their worst fears as the Temple was regarded by the Jews as the microcosm of the universe. This catastrophe coupled with civil wars fought within the Roman Empire, cataclysmic natural disasters led many to believe that this was indeed the Last Days. But the world did not disintegrate into space dust despite all signs and omens and personal speculations pointing to this.

So, are we overreacting? Have our ancestors been overreacting? Are the end times even real or have we been suffering from some eschatological post-traumatic stress disorder for decades and centuries? I wish to reassure you - Yes, the end times are real! The last things are real: death, judgment, heaven, hell. From a biblical point of view, we have been living in the end times for the last 2,000 years.

We are living in the end times but there is nothing new about this. So yes, the drama is real, but so is the salvation. We should never forget this truth: Evil is real, but so is good. In fact, the good is more real because evil is always destructive, always negative, always corrupting. Whereas the good creates, builds, grows, nurtures, comforts, enhances, heals. That is why we should never be hiding in a bunker, cowering in fear under some rock or burying our head in the sand. The good news of Jesus Christ is that evil does not triumph, cannot triumph, and so we do not have to fear. We can look in the face of evil—as so many Christian martyrs have done and do even today—and persevere in loving the good.

What our Lord tells us in today’s gospel passage is not just an ominous warning of destruction on a global and cosmic scale. Many would be so caught up with the frightening imagery that appears in the first half of our Lord’s prophecy but fail to pay attention to the second half that follows. What comes after the end of the world and the universe, is not defeat but victory. Our Lord assures us that for those who remain resilient and faithful to the end, will get to witness the “Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory; then too he will send the angels to gather his chosen from the four winds, from the ends of the world to the ends of heaven.”

As Christians, we should not be paralysed and stuck in the past, the past of failures, of blunders, of sentimental memories. If there is anything the past can teach us is the lessons which we must take into the present. Remembering the past should lead us to a profound sense of gratitude, to wisdom, to humility and to repentance. We must remember that we can never change the past and therefore, can never choose to live in a time capsule, shielding us from the troubles of the present.

The same could be said of the future. We have limited influence on the future, which in any case doesn’t yet exist. Many feel crippled and immobilised by fear and the uncertainties of the future. But we have a lot of influence on the choices we make and the actions we take, here and now. “Now” matters. It matters because all the “nows” in a lifetime add up to the kind of people we become, and the kind of world we help to heal or degrade. Our power as individuals lies in what we do now; in our willingness to speak and live the truth today, now, whatever the cost. It lies in our refusal to cooperate with a culture of distortion and deceit.

Ultimately, Christians belong to the Church Militant; a Church engaged in a nonviolent struggle for the soul of the world. Our weapons are faith, hope and charity; justice, mercy, and courage. But all those virtues are useless without the men and women to live and witness them and to soldier on . . . because people, not things, are decisive. And it is how we live our lives in the present which will determine the final outcome, with “some (going) to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting disgrace.”

The Catholic approach may not be the stuff of movies or bestsellers, but it is one filled with hope instead of instilling dread in us. While we may not know exactly what the Second Coming will look like, or when it would happen or how our current world will be reshaped or changed, we have the promises of scripture: “The learned will shine as brightly as the vault of heaven, and those who have instructed many in virtue, as bright as stars for all eternity.” That is what we should hold onto as we live our earthly lives as well as we can in love with hope for the work that is being done in our lives now and for what is being prepared for us in the future.

The Once-and-for-all Atoning Sacrifice

Thirty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

The holiest day in the Jewish calendar was marked by a unique ceremony that had to be repeated every year, at least while the Temple was still standing. This is Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement. Although no living person in this day and age has ever witnessed this elaborate ceremony, we have the benefit of its detailed records in the Bible, in the Book of Leviticus, a book of rites and ceremonies.

The book of Leviticus says that the High Priest on this most holy day was to enter into the Holy of Holies, which is the inner sanctum of the Temple, the place where the tabernacle was kept. By the time of our Lord, the tabernacle was missing which meant that the Holy of Holies was an empty shell. But that was no excuse to stop this ceremony. The High Priest’s primary responsibility was to offer the sacrifice on Yom Kippur for the forgiveness of the sins of all the Israelites. On the Day of Atonement, the priest would be stripped of his clothes, wash his hands and his feet, and then immerse himself in water and dried off and put on white garments, similar to the white alb the priest and altar servers put on before they enter the Sanctuary. Then the High Priest would offer a bullock, a young bull for his own sin offering as our second reading reminds us, and fill the Holy of Holies with incense; thus, he would be considered purified and ready to offer the sacrifice for the people.

The people would then bring to the High Priest two goats, one goat would be offered to the Lord and the other would become the scapegoat. After the first goat was sacrificed to the Lord as a sign of propitiation (communion with God), the High Priest would take the live scapegoat and lay his hands upon the scapegoat and confess all the sins of the Israelites onto it. This goat represented the act of expiation (the purification from sin). Then a Gentile, because no Jew would want to go near the goat that had all their sins, would tie a scarlet red ribbon around its neck, lead the scapegoat out into the desert, and push it over the cliff. So, when the scapegoat would be pushed over the cliff and die, the Israelites knew all their sins were forgiven.

And here is where the scapegoat gets fascinating. The way the Israelites would know their sins were forgiven is because the High Priest would tie another crimson red ribbon on the door of the Sanctuary. According to the rabbis whose teachings are recorded in the Mishnah, the oral tradition, every year whenever the scapegoat was pushed over the cliff that crimson red ribbon tied on the door to the Sanctuary would miraculously turn white, that way all the Israelites would know their sins are forgiven. And what is even more amazing is that according to the same Jewish tradition, the miracle of the red ribbon turning white happened every year until the year 30, the time of Jesus Christ upon the earth. Though this remained a mystery among the Jews, it is clear to us Christians. We all know what happened on Good Friday – the Lamb of God took away the sins of the world on the cross.

The Cross is the final sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins of all people. Jesus Christ replaces the scapegoat that was offered by the high priest at the Holy of Holies in the Temple at Yom Kippur; He is the sacrificial lamb, who gave Himself up for our eternal life. He, who was without sin, took on the sins of world by His Passion. But He is also the other goat who is sacrificed in the Temple to bring about our complete reconciliation with God, something which all the bloody sacrifices of the Temple could never accomplish. His sacrifice both expiates and propitiates – purifies us from sin and unites us with God. Like all the Jewish High Priests, Jesus too was stripped of His clothes before He was crucified, therefore Jesus is the Great High Priest who offered Himself as the final sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins.

Now, all this alignment between the ritual of the old covenant and what took place on the cross at Calvary on Good Friday would certainly help us to understand what is written by the author of Hebrews in the second reading. But what about the story of the two widows in the first reading and the gospel? Both are certainly models of unrivalled generosity as both gave up their last resort of survival, the first for a stranger and the second for God. In a way, both widows epitomise the two-fold great commandment of love owed toward God and neighbour, which we heard last week. Both women are actually typological figures pointing to another who gave up much more - the One who sacrificed His life for us in order to atone for our sins and reconcile us to the Father. The two small coins of the second widow in our gospel story perhaps symbolises the two-fold action of our Lord’s sacrifice - expiation and propitiation.

It is through this lens that we must now consider the story of the widow’s mite. The main point of the story of the widow’s mite is not what most people have assumed. Have you ever noticed our Lord does not praise the widow for her offering? He does not even encourage us to duplicate her behaviour. He simply states what she did as a fact. The widow’s sacrificial offering points us toward the life of sacrifice Jesus modelled for us. Our Lord offered Himself willingly. He spared nothing, and it cost Him everything. Unlike the animals whose lives were taken against their will, our Lord went to His death willingly for our sake. If you think the widow’s actions as astoundingly generous, it still comes nowhere close to what the Lord has done for us. His generosity knows no bounds.

By shining a light on the unnamed widow’s generosity, our Lord reminds us that what is most important to God is not the quantity of the gift, but the generosity of the one doing the giving. The value of a gift depends not on its absolute worth, but in the love with which it is given. This woman of God gave an offering that resounded louder than the heaps of coins dropped into the treasury by others. Nothing showy. No virtue signalling. In fact, her actions may actually earn her ridicule and derision. But her love for her Lord who had given so much to her blinded her to the burning and judging gaze of others.

Many of us would be guilty of looking at what we possess and be conditioned by a mentality of scarcity, believing that it is never enough for us to share with others. In contrast, a heart of abundance, just like the two widows, looks at the One who provides what we have in our hands. As we recognise our God as the one who provides everything— life, possessions, time, energy, love, and all of who we are—we will grow in our trust of Almighty God’s abundance.

At every Mass, we are brought before the One who sacrificed everything for us, who took our sins upon Himself although He had none, who drew the ire and hatred of the world so that we may be freed from shame and guilt. But unlike the sacrifice of Yom Kippur which had to be repeated to no avail, the Holy Mass is the ‘once for all,’ perfect sacrifice of Calvary, which is presented on heaven’s altar for all eternity. It is not a ‘repeat performance.’ There is only one sacrifice; it is perpetual and eternal, and so it needs never be repeated. And it is by this once for all sacrifice that heaven is finally opened, the gates of God’s abundant graces finally poured upon us, and our reconciliation with Him is finally sealed “once and for all.”

The Hope of Resurrection has dawned

Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

Most of us have a myopic view of reality, we often only see the small picture and are oblivious to the bigger one. We are often told by contemporary wisdom to live in the present and not dwell in the past nor should we be anxious about the future. This is a drastic mistake as it often translates into bad decisions, despair or at the other extreme, false optimism. The truth is that belief in the resurrection is what enables us to live in hope. Hope is the desire for eternal life, "placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our strength but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit" (CCC, #1817).

In certainly one of the most beautiful texts in the Roman Missal, we find these profound words meant to broaden our vision:

“In him the hope of blessed resurrection has dawned, that those saddened by the certainty of dying might be consoled by the promise of immortality to come. Indeed for your faithful, Lord, life is changed not ended, and, when this earthly dwelling turns to dust, an eternal dwelling is made ready for them in heaven” (Preface 1 of the Masses for the Dead).

Our Lord’s resurrection has brought about a new dawn of hope, the hope that one day we too shall share and partake in His resurrection and our bodies not be condemned to rot in the grave nor our souls dissipate into oblivion. This is certainly consoling for those who mourn over the death of their loved ones knowing that they have been promised immortality. St Paul exclaims this in his letter to the Corinthians: "This corruptible body must be clothed with incorruptibility, this mortal body with immortality" (1 Corinthians 15:53).

We struggle to find analogies to explain this reality, but the process of metamorphosis that changes a caterpillar into a butterfly comes to mind. The Greek word used to describe the Transfiguration of the Lord is precisely the word that has been used to explain this transformation from nature. Another analogy comes from St Paul in his letter to the Corinthians. To show continuity and discontinuity between this life and the next, Saint Paul turned to the seed and the plant. The seed buried in the ground has one form, and the plant that springs from the ground is in another form. The continuity between the seed and plant is accompanied by discontinuity or radical change. Paul uses this image to contrast the resurrected body with the physical body: what is sown corruptible will be raised incorruptible; what is sown dishonorable is raised glorious; the weak will be raised powerful (1 Corinthians 15:42-44).

But our vision is not just broadened by faith and hope to see what becomes of mortal bodies and immortal souls. We are also given a new vision of the Church as a “bigger tent”. As much as it is a popular jargon to declare that “we are the Church,” it would be pure hubris to declare that we the living faithful are the only members of the Church. We are only “a part” of the Church, a small part. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains how there are “three states of the Church … at the present time some of his disciples are pilgrims on earth. Others have died and are being purified, while still others are in glory, contemplating ‘in full light, God himself triune and one, exactly as he is'” (CCC 954). Traditionally, these three states have been referred to as the Church Militant, Church Suffering and Church Triumphant. Together, these three make up the Communion of Saints which we profess in the Creed.

As Catholics, it is not just incumbent for us to pray for the living, for their needs and protection and ultimately for their salvation, but we should also turn our prayers to the saints to ask for their intercessions. But let us never forget to pray for the dead, the members of the Church Penitent or Church Suffering. They seem to be the most neglected category in these times when man is unable to see beyond the veil and threshold of death and heaven, for many they remain a mere illusion and mystery. We need to remember the words in the Preface, that in death, “life is changed not ended.”

The idea of funerals and in this particular day in the year, specifically set aside for praying for the dead, is premised on the belief that not all persons who die will immediately go to heaven. In fact, for the vast majority of us, we would most likely be in Purgatory, even if we have lived a fairly good but far from perfect life. Rather than a downer and a wet blanket, this should be a cause for hope and joy, that heaven is not entirely denied to the imperfect but open to those who were on the path of perfection, unfinished products, but through God’s mercy and providence, are brought to that perfection through the fires of His blazing love. As St Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans which we heard in the Second Reading, this hope “is not deceptive, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.” It is a hope not based on human merits but the result of the sacrifice of Christ who “died for sinful men.”

It is in Christian hope that the Christian community commends the dead to the mercy and love of God for the forgiveness of their sins. The Church encourages you, therefore, to seek indulgences, pray novenas, fast, make sacrifices and have Masses said for the deceased, especially for those who have no one to pray for them. These acts of charity will increase the love of God in your heart and soul and help those who have gone before us in death. As St Ambrose reminds us, “we have loved them in life, let us not forget them in death.”

Born Loser Raised Victorious

Solemnity of All Saints

If there is one cartoon character which I most identify with, it is Charlie Brown, the main male protagonist of the Peanuts comic strip created by Charles M. Schultz. Charlie Brown reminds me so much of myself growing up and even now, as an adult.

Personality-wise, he is gentle, insecure, and lovable. Charlie Brown possesses significant determination and hope, but frequently fails because of his insecurities, outside interferences, or plain bad luck. Although liked by his friends, he is often the subject of bullying, especially at the hands of Lucy van Pelt. He’s (what I often describe myself as) “bully-able.” Charlie is the perennial victim of bullying by the stronger, the proverbial Born Loser. He is described by his creator as “the one who suffers because he’s a caricature of the average person. Most of us are much more acquainted with losing than winning. Winning is great, but it isn’t funny.”

To be a Christian today often feels like being a loser, being an easy target for bullying, which isn’t a laughing matter. Christians, especially those who choose to live and practice their faith publicly, will end up being mocked, cancelled, side-lined and even persecuted. This explains why there are fewer and even fewer practising Christians even in traditionally predominantly “Christian” countries, and our neighbours think less of us because of our strange values and ideas. We are increasingly outsiders. And how we respond to this reality may be the defining question of our time.

The good news is that Christianity has always been a religion of losers. It is not a recent phenomenon in a highly secularised world. We have been persecuted, our beliefs have been ridiculed and rejected, our values have been maligned, sometimes driving us underground to practice our faith secretly. But though we may appear to be weak, powerless, failures, and losers in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of God we are victorious and winners! In this world we will have trouble; in this world we will be bullied and even appear to lose; but take heart, Christ has overcome the world. And this is what the Saints in heaven declare in song and praise: “Victory to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” These were the same figures who appeared to be defeated by anti-Christian forces, persecuted, tortured and martyred and yet, emerged victorious holding palms as trophies of their victory.

Nowhere is this truth more evident than in the Beatitudes. One could paraphrase the list of beatitudes as this: “Happy or Blessed are the losers!” “Happy are the ‘bully-ables’.” This is what the paradoxical and counterintuitive values behind the Beatitudes seek to display. Our Lord and Saviour, just as the Beatitudes would describe, had to experience poverty, pain, suffering, loss, persecution and death for the sake of righteousness in order to gain the victory and joyful blessedness of the resurrection and the gift of eternal life for all of us. This is the core of the Christian message - death before resurrection, loss before victory, last before first, poverty before riches. For in the Christian story, ‘success and failure’ is inverted.

Although we often describe the Saints in heaven as the Church Triumphant, those who have “run the race” and are crowned with glory in Heaven, the proverbial “winners,” it often doesn’t feel this way here on earth. The biography of every saint often reads like an episode of Charlie Brown. Our earthly experiences of failure and loss make us doubt the promises of the beatitudes.

But if we take a deeper look at the promises which are proclaimed by the Beatitudes, we begin to recognise the veracity of their claims even in this life without waiting for the next. The losers can discover something about themselves that winners cannot ever appreciate – that they are loved and wanted simply because of who they are, and not because of what they achieve. Love is never earned but freely given by the Lord to all, to even those who are undeserving, especially to them. That despite it all, raw humanity is glorious and wonderful, entirely worthy of love. This is revealed precisely at the greatest point of dejection – our Lord’s death and resurrection.

The resurrection is not just a magic trick at raising a dead body to life. That’s a neat and impressive trick. But it is so much more than that. It is a revelation that love is stronger than death, grace is stronger than sin, that human worth is not indexed to worldly success, but to one’s fidelity to the path laid out by Christ. The lives of the Saints are testimony to this. On this side of heaven, they may appear to be losers. But as the vision of St John in the first reading lifts the veil, we are given a glimpse of their true worth - they are winners and victors in the Kingdom of Heaven.

A successful Christian, if you can call him or her one, called to be a saint, ought to be hated rather than feted in this world. Yes, it does seem that the modernist forces seem to be attacking the Church from every angle, that orthodox Christian beliefs and values are aggressively under assault, yet this feast reminds us that we are not alone in our experience and that this epoch in history, is not that unique as the Church has always suffered derision, rejection, humiliation, and bullying from her inception. We often forget that until our Lord returns in glory as He brings judgment upon the earth, battles and wars will remain. So, no matter how peaceful we wish our lives could be, the truth is our lives, this side of heaven, will be tainted with conflict.

But despite the onslaught she experiences, not only from earthly enemies but also demonic forces, the vision described in the Book of the Apocalypse will be the final outcome. As we stand before the throne of the Lamb, we will know that we are conquerors, not losers, in this life we may be bullied but at the Last Judgment, we will be vindicated and that failure will be redeemed by the victory won for us by the Lamb which was slain.

Listen and See

Thirty First Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

What connects the first reading to the gospel is that fundamental Jewish statement of belief which provides us with the first part of the daily prayer of every Jew. “Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.” “Listen, Israel: the Lord our God is the one Lord.” If one were to understand the two-fold commandment of love which follows this statement, one needs to unpack and grasp the width and depth of this profound and supreme testimony of the Jewish faith, and by extension, the Christian faith.

The Hebrew word “Shema” translated as “listen” or “hear” deserves our attention. It is no coincidence that the first of the Apostles, Simon Peter, takes his Hebrew name from this word – “Shimon”. That is irony for you. Although, Simon Peter responded to the call of our Lord by listening, it would appear that his listening was often selective and did not lead him beyond a superficial and shallow understanding of our Lord’s identity and his mission as a disciple. His listening would be impaired until he “saw” the Risen Lord with his own eyes. This seeing would complete his listening.

But let us go back to our original verb. Listening goes beyond exercising one’s auditory sense. Listening must lead to understanding and understanding to acceptance. For the Jews, it shaped both their culture and world-view. This is how Moses describes the supreme revelation on Mount Sinai: “Then the Lord spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice” (Dt 4:12). There was a profound difference between the two civilisations of antiquity that between them shaped the culture of the West: ancient Greece and ancient Israel. The Greeks were the supreme masters of the visual arts: art, sculpture, architecture and the theatre. Their culture focused on sight. Jews, as a matter of profound religious principle, were not. God, the sole object of worship, is invisible. He transcends nature. He created the universe and is therefore beyond the universe. He cannot be seen. In fact, it was strictly prohibited to make a visible representation of God.

The God of Israel reveals Himself only in speech. Yes, His presence was sometimes mediated by angelic beings and natural and supernatural phenomena like a pillar of cloud and fire, a flaming bush, lightning and thunder. But though these pointed to God’s power and sovereignty, they were never understood to be a visible manifestation of God, just signs of His presence. Therefore, the supreme religious act in Judaism is to listen. Ancient Greece, on the other hand, was a culture of the eye; ancient Israel a culture of the ear. The Greeks worshipped what they saw; Israel worshipped what they heard. We Christians, thankfully, are heirs of both culture and our liturgy perfectly expresses both paradigms. Both hearing and seeing mark the two pillars of our sacramental economy and the Holy Mass.

When God chooses to reveal Himself to us, He is revealing His will for us, He is giving us His Law. The primary meaning of the word Torah is the Law! It would seem to follow that a book of laws or commandments must have a verb that means “to obey”, for that is the whole purpose of an imperative. Yet there is no verb in biblical Hebrew that means to obey. The closest word to obedience is “listen.” Where there seems to be a lacunae in the Hebrew language, the word for “obedience” in Latin binds the two concepts - “obidere” means “to listen, to submit and to be responsible.”

Despite its intense focus on Divine commandments, the Jewish faith is not a faith that values blind, unthinking, unquestioning obedience. There is no true listening or authentic obedience, if we do not internalise the commandments. The God of revelation is also the God of creation and redemption. Therefore, when God commands us to do certain things and refrain from others, it is not because His will is arbitrary but because He cares for the integrity of the world as His work, and for the dignity of the human person as His image. He reveals His laws to us, He commands us to obey, because He loves us, and He wants us to make love the foundation of our entire being and way of behaving and relating.

This is how we must understand the two-fold commandment of love. It is insufficient that we hear the command to love God and neighbour and profess it with our lips and then claim to know it. Listening must lead to understanding and understanding lead to acceptance, but such acceptance must be shown forth in action. To prove ourselves to be good listeners, it must be “seen” in our actions.

That is why it is not enough that our Lord enunciates the commandment of love and commands us to listen. That is the theory. He then demonstrates the perfect fulfilment of this commandment through an example which can be seen - His own death and resurrection. On the cross, we hear His words of complete abandonment and obedience to the Father and on the cross, we saw the most powerful testimony and evidence of His love.

This is how we should treat the commandment of love as how the Jews treated the Shema. It is the greatest command and the first prayer a Jewish child was taught to say. God gave His people the Shema and instructed them to recite it daily, memorise it, meditate on it, teach it, instruct it, put it on their clothing and post it on the doorframes of their home. God wanted to remind them of loving God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength every time they woke up, put on their clothes and entered or left the home. It is the quintessential expression of the most fundamental belief of Judaism.

Likewise, for us Christians too. Love must be the quintessential expression of the most fundamental belief of Christianity. For the Jews, following the Law or the Torah was their way of expressing this fundamental commandment. But for us Christians, we fulfil this commandment by imitating Christ. Our Lord is essentially saying, “to follow Me is to love God and to love others.” In the Gospel of John, our Lord tells us, “A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples…” (John 13:34-35). The newness of this commandment is not found in its content but in its standard. Christ is the new standard. He is the Incarnation of love whom we can listen to and see. And therefore, if we wish to love God and neighbour, we should love as He did.

Broken but not Beaten

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

As much as we hope to see the Church grow in size and influence, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, made this prophecy back in 1969 which has been proven to be true, at least in the West as we have witnessed, a free fall drop in members and vocations:
“From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges (…) And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals.”

This prophecy seems to be in the vein of the doomsday prophecies so commonly uttered and recorded in the Old Testament - all fire and brimstone and destruction. On the surface, the words of Pope Benedict do little to inspire but rather can be a cause for despair. Perhaps, this is reflective of the life of the blind Bartimaeus before his chanced meeting with the Lord. Like Bartimaeus, when thinking about the terminal diagnosis given about the Church, it is easy to wallow in self-pity, to complain about our dire situation and view everything around us through the lenses of darkness. And yet the good news is that light shines brightest in the dark.

In the first reading, the Prophet Jeremiah is commanded by God to make the following announcement to the remnant population of a decimated nation: “Shout with joy for Jacob! Hail the chief of nations! Proclaim! Praise! Shout: ‘The Lord has saved his people, the remnant of Israel!’” In the midst of disaster and national tragedy, the prophet declares that God is the father to Israel, and in fact, Israel is His cherished first-born son - the sole heir to His inheritance according to the law of primogeniture. Who are these remnants? The idea of a “remnant” sounds either like the survivors of some Holocaust or a band of puritanical hold-outs who have kept themselves unsullied from the depravity of their present age. But this is not the biblical understanding of the word, even among the Jews.

According to an ancient Jewish tradition, the universe is sustained by the presence of at least thirty-six tzadikim, or “righteous ones”, in every generation. The story of Abraham’s intercession on behalf of the evil cities of Sodom and Gomorrah may have inspired this tradition. Just like any good apocalyptic prophecy which continues to maintain the suspense, no one knows the identity of those tzadikim. They are humble souls who quietly pray and perform good deeds for the benefit of the world. Just like the description given in Hebrews of the role of the High Priest, as someone who “has been taken out of mankind and is appointed to act for men in their relations with God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.” And so, it is believed that God does not judge the world on account of these saintly “remnant” souls.

If the understanding of what a remnant means is connected to the presence of this mysterious group of righteous saints, a pattern seems to emerge here which should allow us to understand the nature and mission of the remnant. The remnant is neither the victim of God’s wrath nor do they delight in it. Quite the contrary: the remnant exists to appease it. They never take advantage of their status as righteous ones in the eyes of the Lord to call fire and brimstone to rain on the sinners’ heads, but they pity the sinners and sacrifice themselves for them, even the unrepentant ones. They are not harbingers of God’s justice, rather they are the emissaries of His mercy. Through them, God’s mercy becomes manifest to all mankind.

Therefore, the mission of a remnant Church is not resignation, nor is she to wallow in self-pity nor should she grow resentful in complaining about her plight. When we do this, we are like the crowd of by-standers and disciples who try to silence the cries of those who cry out like Bartimaeus. Rather than facilitating an encounter with the Lord, we act as His greatest detractors and become obstacles to others to make progress on the path to holiness. No, this is not the mission of the “remnant Church.” Rather than withdrawing into a cocoon of self-pity and safety, we are called to be intercessors and mediators. We should go out and redouble our efforts to share the gospel message and invite others to join the faithful remnant. We are called to uphold the true teachings of the gospel and be a beacon of light in a world seen as darkened by sin and apostasy. To those cowering in fear and shrouded in darkness like Bartimaeus, let us encourage them with this exhortation: “Courage, get up, He is calling you.”

So, let us not perceive the Church’s smallness with fear or reticence, but with faith and courage. Our voice may seem small but it is amplified with the roaring power of the Holy Spirit and Christ’s sanctifying grace working in and through the Church. Salvation will come not from success and efficiency measured by the standards of the world, but from Jesus Christ alone, who has promised never to abandon His Church. We must be joyful and content, for it is only when we’re weak that we’re strong (2 Cor 12:9-10). It is only by being the grain of mustard that we, as a Church, will be able to grow into the greatest tree in the field, where the birds from heaven will be able to roost, rest and sing (Mk 4:30-32).

In an interview, our Holy Father Pope Francis summarised the prophetic vision of Pope Benedict XVI in these words: “Pope Benedict was a prophet of this Church of the future, a Church that will become smaller, lose many privileges, be more humble and authentic and find energy for what is essential. It will be a Church that is more spiritual, poorer and less political: a Church of the little ones.” Rather than bemoan the passing of her bygone glory or seek to insulate herself in bubble-wrapping, we should rejoice at the grace of being tenderly pruned at the hands of a Loving Father, for what would emerge from this “smaller”, “humbler”, “more spiritual,” “less political” church is something that will continually surprise and excite us.

In the visionary words of Pope Benedict: “But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her centre: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognise the sacraments as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.” This is our conviction of faith and hope – that when we come to our Lord with the enduring faith of Bartimaeus, we are convinced that we will see again, we will be refreshed again, our vigour and excitement will be reignited again to follow Christ once more.