Wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church

Pentecost 2017

A priest friend of mine narrated an incident that took place just a few weeks ago. He was invited to grace a multicultural event, which was showcasing the diverse cultural talents of the multi-national workforce. My friend noted, that this colourful event somehow reminded him of the local Catholic Church. During the event, there was a quiz, and a Pakistani man was asked a question pertaining to his country. “What is the capital of Pakistan?” His confident and immediate answer was, “P!” (The capital letter “P”).  Another worker, who hailed from Vietnam was asked to say something in his native language; and he proudly pronounced, “Việt Nam”.

If you found that amusing, I’m not sure if you would find the following amusing though. If someone were to ask you, “What does ‘Catholic’ mean?” Perhaps, you may give this answer, “Diversity” or “Inclusivity.” Perhaps, you may not find this funny, but theologically, it is hilarious (at least to me), because “catholicity”, “diversity” and “inclusivity” mean different things. In fact, one may say that the two popular values of modern society, “diversity” and “inclusivity” are actually polar opposites. Diversity means one size does not fit all; inclusion, on the other hand, means one size fits all. Diversity means we are allowed to shop around; inclusion means that there are no exceptions. One cannot logically support both at the same time. We have to choose. Either we believe in pluralism, which is what diversity means, or we believe in uniformity, which is what inclusion means.

There are plenty of good reasons to support diversity and inclusion within the context of any society, including the Church. But being Catholic is something quite different. Catholicity is what holds together the polarities of diversity and unity. Notice, that in our Creed, we profess that we believe in the “One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church” and not in a “diverse” or “inclusive” Church. Is there a difference? Yes, many!

What does it mean to be “Catholic”? The origin of the word is to be found in St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, “He has put all things under His feet, and made Him as He is above all things, the head of the Church; which is His Body, the fullness of Him who is filled, all in all.” (1:22-23). The catholicity of the Church here refers to her possessing the “fullness” of Christ, the church is the body of Christ in His fullness and perfection. It must be kept in mind that “catholicity” is based in Jesus Christ – and in such a way that “catholicity” is, in its deepest nature, a quality or an attribute of Christ, and the church is “catholic” insofar as it is rooted in Christ and based in Christ as its head. As St Ignatius of Antioch puts it, “wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”

St Cyril of Jerusalem, from the 4^th century, in his Mystagogical Catechesis (No. 18), dedicates an entire paragraph to explaining explicitly the meaning of the third mark of the church. According to St Cyril, catholicity means: first, the worldwide expansion of the church; secondly, the universality of the teaching: the church teaches everything that is necessary for salvation; thirdly, the correct way of venerating God, which is valid for all human beings; fourthly, the universal power to forgive sins; and fifthly, the universal work of salvation for all humanity, which is manifest in the fullness of the means of salvation. Thus he combines the geographical aspect of catholicity with the aspect of doctrinal and salvific perfection.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church summarises the various layers of nuances of the word “catholic” in these two paragraphs: “The word “catholic” means “universal,” in the sense of “according to the totality” or “in keeping with the whole.” The Church is catholic in a double sense: First, the Church is catholic because Christ is present in her. “Where there is Christ Jesus, there is the Catholic Church.” In her subsists the fullness of Christ's body united with its head; this implies that she receives from Him “the fullness of the means of salvation” which He has willed: correct and complete confession of faith, full sacramental life, and ordained ministry in apostolic succession. The Church was, in this fundamental sense, catholic on the day of Pentecost and will always be so until the day of the Parousia.” (#830) “Secondly, the Church is catholic because she has been sent out by Christ on a mission to the whole of the human race.” (#831).

Though many continue to use the concepts of diversity, inclusion and catholicity interchangeably, you may have noticed that from the above definitions of the word ‘catholic', that there is no convergence between the various notions. The concepts of diversity and inclusion focus on ‘us’. Catholicity, on the other hand, focuses on Christ and His universal mission. When we prefer the former over the latter, we risk falling into the same trap of the people who attempted to build the tower of Babel, who strived to “make a name for (themselves); (saying) otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” (Gen. 11:4), the danger of erasing God from the equation. Diversity and inclusion, being purely human projects, eventually lead to greater fragmentation and polarisation.

Catholicity, on the other hand, acknowledges that it is the work of the Holy Spirit that makes the difference, just as it is the gift of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost which reverses the Tower of Babel divisions of humanity. After that “they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). Those are marks of catholicity and remain so with us today, “correct and complete confession of faith, full sacramental life, and ordained ministry in apostolic succession” (CCC #830). These are works of the Spirit to which Scripture bears witness, and there is no true or lasting unity without them.

Our focus on catholicity needs to be restored - that even though we are different and scattered all over the world we are joined together in Christ because “there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all” (Eph 4:5). There is no need to add any other ingredient into that equation.

In the last precious moments of His Life before He was parted from His disciples to die, Our Lord Jesus Christ did not pray that they would be able to tolerate their differences while each sought his own vision of the truth and personal fulfilment. Nor did He pray that they would agree in everything. He prayed for them and “those who will believe in me through their word, that they all may be one”. But how? “As you Father, are in me and I am in you may they also be in us, that the world may believe that You have sent me.” (John 17:21). It is through our dwelling in Christ as the branches draw on the life of the vine (John 15:4,5), and His dwelling in us, that unity is given and made fruitful.. So if you wish to build unity, build up your relationship with Christ. It is this relationship with Jesus Christ, the risen Lord, that is the foundation of our life and work, without which there can be no catholic unity.

Bathing in beauty we become part of it

Friday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time (Feast of St Scholastica)

We have come to the last day of our pilgrimage and we would be departing for home in a few hours. Some of you are excited at the prospect of returning home to savour your favourite Malaysian cuisine and the comfort of your homes. Others may be feeling sad, wanting to prolong the experience of this pilgrimage. I’m reminded of a commonly told story about St Scholastica near the end of her life. According to this story, St Scholastica paid an annual visit her brother, St Benedict, at a place near his abbey, and they would spend the day worshiping together and discussing sacred texts and issues. On this last visit, after a conversation over supper, St Benedict indicated it was time for him to leave. Perhaps sensing the time of her death was drawing near, Scholastica asked him to stay with her for the evening so they could continue their discussions. Not wishing to break his own Rule, Benedict refused, insisting that he needed to return to his cell. He can’t be caught out at night, even if it happens to be his own sister.

At that point, Scholastica closed her hands in prayer, and after a moment, a wild storm started outside of the guest house in which they were housed. Benedict, alarmed by the sudden squall, asked, “What have you done?” to which she replied, “I asked you and you would not listen; so I asked my God and he did listen.” Due to the heavy rains and strong winds, Benedict was unable to return to his monastery, and they spent the night in discussion. Three days later, Scholastica died. Benedict had her body brought to his monastery, where he caused it to be laid in the tomb which he had prepared for himself. The point of me telling the story is simply this: please don’t pray too hard for this trip NOT to end. Some of us want to go home and the Filipinos would not appreciate a typhoon or Hurricane Edna blowing this way just because a few Malaysian pilgrims do not wish to leave the Philippines. St Scholastica, spare us, we pray.

Today’s gospel passage makes a little geographical note that sounds illogical to anyone who understands the local terrain. Jesus was going from Tyre in the north to Galilee in the south; and he went by way of Sidon. That is to say, he started going due south by going due north! It’s like going from Kuala Lumpur to Johor Bahru by way of Penang. You have to ask Fr Simon Yong how this is done, because it all makes perfect sense to him – something about sectors and Enrich miles. But I guess it also makes sense to all us who are on this pilgrimage too – we had to come to the Philippines, to learn how to be at home as Catholics in Malaysia.

When Jesus did arrive back in the regions of Galilee, he came into the district of the Decapolis, and there they brought to him a man who was deaf and who had an impediment in his speech. I often have to tell hearing people that it is physiologically and factually inaccurate to describe Deaf persons as deaf and dumb. They are certainly not dumb as in stupid just because they do not communicate as we do. They also resent the politically correct term of “hearing impaired.” They would be quick to point out that most people who can hear are equally “signing impaired.” Neither are they mute. Most deaf persons can make sounds, and they can be exceptionally loud and noisy as they are not aware of the volume of their own voices. The scriptural note that put these two impediments together is logical, however. It was the man’s inability to hear which made his speech so imperfect.

Perhaps there is no other miracle which so beautifully shows Jesus’ respectful way of treating persons. Truly, we witness here the true ramifications of the Incarnation – the inculturation of the gospel. He took the man aside from the crowd, all by himself. Here in the tenderest considerateness, the Lord takes this deaf man away from the scrutinising and prying eyes of an insensitive crowd and spared him the embarrassment which he must already be suffering as a deaf person living among the hearing. Throughout the whole miracle, and deaf people love this part, Jesus actually begins to sign to him. He put his hands in the man’s ears and touched his tongue with spittle. Jesus communicates to this deaf man through the senses which were available to him – his sight, his taste, his touch, his smell. And then Jesus looked up to heaven as a sign of prayer to show that it was from God that help was to come. Then he spoke the Word and the man was healed, recalling the act of creation in the Book of Genesis.

Our short pilgrimage to our neighbour, the Philippines, though confined to Metro Manila, has truly been a similar experience of discovery through the opening of our senses. Our vision, our hearing, our sense of touch, taste and smell has been overhauled by a glimpse of God’s Truth, Beauty and Goodness. This experience has been for me and I believe for many of you, an Ephphata moment. As we visit the shrines and churches, and even when we encounter the poor, we are swept up into a sacred, beautiful, true, and most in-touch-with-reality point of view. In our participation we ask for the “eyes of faith” to put in sharp focus and vivid colour what God is bringing about in the world. We have become too over familiar and comfortable with our own iconoclastic and white-washed churches. We have become blind and deaf to the means by which God wishes to communicate to us.

Just like Our Lord looks up at the very final moment before the deaf man is healed, our common mundane everyday human situation is elevated into the presence of God in these moments. Beauty, justice, love, and mercy are no longer external to us but now we participate intimately with their source in the triune God. Heaven and earth overlap, time collapses. This what St. John Chrysostom attempted to describe when speaking of the poetry of the Psalms, “The sacred writer leaned out over the infinite abyss of God’s wisdom and was seized with giddiness.”

What this pilgrimage has done is to reawaken what some theologians would call the Catholic or sacramental imagination of the person. When speaking of the concept “imagination” used here is not in the sense of something fanciful or fictitious. Rather, it is used in the sense of how we image reality and so interpret the reality of God and the world. One may call it our Catholic vision of reality. American priest and sociologist Andrew Greeley is credited for popularising the concept in his book of the same name. He writes, “Catholics live in an enchanted world, a world of statues and holy water, stained glass and votive candles, saints and religious medals, rosary beads and holy pictures. But these Catholic paraphernalia are mere hints of a deeper and more pervasive religious sensibility which inclines Catholics to see the Holy lurking in creation. As Catholics, we find our houses and our world haunted by a sense that the objects, events, and persons of daily life are revelations of grace.”

What does it really mean to be Catholic? Well, the answer is simple. Catholics believe in Jesus’s promise to make himself really present to us. This is what sacramentality is all about. The Catholic Church dares to take seriously Christ’s Incarnation. Therefore, it would not be stretching it to say that Catholicism takes the world, and the things of the world, far more seriously than those who like to think of themselves as worldly. The ordinary stuff of the world, like salt, oil, water, light, buildings, is the material God uses to bring us into communion with the truly extraordinary – with God Himself. Indeed, in the sacraments and through our Sacramental imagination, heaven and earth “overlap and interlock.” We see more clearly how intimately connected they really are. C.S. Lewis, describes it this way, “We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”

In the Incarnation, the ideas of life, reality, purpose, goodness, beauty, justice, and truth, are no longer external to us. In Jesus Christ we receive and “become part of” that goodness, beauty, justice, and truth. Rather than some form of escapism of flights of fancy, the sacraments puts us in touch with the reality of God Incarnate.

Life and reality viewed through the sacraments put our most basic assumptions on trial. God is not somewhere else, too busy, or unconcerned with the created order. Instead, all of creation is “charged” with the goodness of God and every inch of it participates in the life of God sacramentally. In this way, the sacraments and sacramentals serve as a revelation of sorts, a window into what is most real, and helps us wonder more truly about what God is doing in the world. They help us to see sacredness even in the midst of human depravity, wealth in the midst of poverty, and redemption in the midst of human fallenness.

So let us earnestly pray, as St Scholastica did, to prolong the experience of this pilgrimage, not in the manner of blowing up a hurricane but in a way that when we return to our mundane everyday seemingly ordinary existence, we may continue to be “united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”

Catholicism is not for Dummies!

Twenty Fifth Ordinary Sunday Year C

A feature article entitled “Religious People Are Less Intelligent than Atheists” appeared online on Yahoo a month ago. According to the research team from the University of Rochester, it was purportedly found in a substantial majority of case studies that there is “a reliable negative relation between intelligence and religiosity.” In layman’s terms, if you are found to be more religious, then you are likely to be less intelligent. They concluded that “intelligent people are more likely to be married and more likely to be successful in life–and this may mean they need religion less.” There you have it: the ingenious conclusion that marriage (not counting the number of divorces that follow thereafter) and success are the incontrovertible measure of intelligence! If you were to buy into any of this atheist propaganda that appears on the Internet you would have no choice but to conclude that Christians are some of the most ignorant, irrational, dishonest, deluded idiots on the planet.  

Catholics tend to receive a more severe beating than the rest of the pack. Both Protestants and atheists often accused Catholicism of being backward and the sworn enemy of science, progress and the genuine pursuit of knowledge. In short if you are a Catholic, you must be a moron. The point made is that something is seriously wrong with these Catholic idiots who believe these nonsensical fairy tales; a God who took the form of a mortal and died on a tree, a dead man rose from the dead, bread and wine changing into something gory and bloody, and finally that obnoxious belief that silly trivial acts of piety can actually shorten your incarceration in Purgatory. Based on the conclusions of the research, Rome (or Vatican City to be exact) is the virtual epicentre of moronitude, since there are so many celibates therein who are engaged in a profitless enterprise that’s doomed for failure! You get the point.

Now Catholics may have founded nearly every major university in Europe, their monasteries may have kept the very skill of literacy alive during the Black Plague and the famines, they may even have invented the press which allowed literacy to become commonplace, but none of that mattered. The general opinion is this: Catholics are stupid, period. I guess it’s not hard to understand why so many people, including Catholics, buy into this kind of stupid propaganda given what we’ve been consistently hearing in the past few weeks: the absolute demand made of disciples to abandon everything and commit themselves fully to Christ – a sort of spiritual kamikaze. Doesn’t this sound crazy? But, then one also detects a certain brilliance that arises from a different set of logical rules – the Logic of grace and Love.

As a crowning cap to this whole collection of seemingly nonsensical counsel or most profound wisdom, depending on which perspective you choose to take, we have the parable of the astute steward. This certainly takes the cake when it comes to the ludicrous. In fact, many Christians find it a source of embarrassment. In this pericope a steward seems to be commended for dishonest behaviour and made an example for Jesus' disciples. Jesus, who literally heads south, seems to have fallen off his rocker!

In this fairly simple, if somewhat unorthodox, parable from Jesus, there is a major reversal of sorts. In most of Jesus’ parables, the main protagonist is either representative of God, Christ, or some other positive character. In this parable, the characters are all wicked – the steward and the man whose possessions he manages are both unsavoury characters. This should alert us to the fact that Jesus is not exhorting us to emulate the behaviour of the characters, but is trying to expound on a larger principle. Certainly, Jesus wants His followers to be just, righteous, magnanimous, and generous, unlike the main protagonist in the parable. But what does this dishonest steward have to offer us as a point of learning? The gospel notes that Jesus commends him for his astuteness, his shrewdness.

The dishonest steward is commended not for mishandling his master's wealth, but for his shrewd provision in averting personal disaster and in securing his future livelihood. The original meaning of "astuteness" is "foresight" – the ability to see ahead and anticipate what’s in store in the future.  An astute person, therefore, is one who grasps a critical situation with resolution, foresight, and the determination to avoid serious loss or disaster. If foresight is the true measure of intelligence, a Christian must be ‘super’ intelligent since his foresight extends beyond this temporal plane, it penetrates the veil of death and catches a glimpse of the eternal vision of glory.  As the dishonest steward responded decisively to the crisis of his dismissal due to his worldly foresight, so disciples are to respond decisively in the face of their own analogous crisis with heavenly foresight. The crisis may come in the form of the brevity and uncertainty of life or the ever-present prospect of death; for others it is the eschatological crisis occasioned by the coming of the kingdom of God in the person and ministry of Jesus.

Jesus is concerned here with something more critical than a financial crisis.  His concern is that we avert spiritual crisis and personal disaster through the exercise of faith, foresight and compassion.  If Christians would only expend as much foresight and energy to spiritual matters which have eternal consequences as much as they do to earthly matters which have temporal consequences, then they would be truly better off, both in this life and in the age to come. St Ambrose provides us with a spiritual wisdom that can only be perceived through the use of heavenly foresight: “The bosoms of the poor, the houses of widows, the mouths of children are the barns which last forever.” In other words, true wealth consists not in what we keep but in what we give away. Real wisdom is acknowledging that worldly happiness and success cannot be the key indicators of a wholesome life, a self fulfilled life but rather as St Ireneaus indicates, “the glory of God is a man fully alive.” Wholesomeness is measured by the extent of how we live our lives for the glory of God, and not for ourselves or for things.

Finally, being astute means recognising that there is no contradiction between faith and reason; in fact ‘faith seeks understanding’ (fides quaerens intellectum). We should, therefore, resist the temptation of dumbing-down the message of Christ, to reduce the gospel to the level of compatibility with the values of the world. Many worldly values will always remain incompatible with that of the gospel. Catholics need to recover the courage to be deeply reflective in our theology, rooted in our catechism, and intellectual in the defence of our faith, rather than giving in to a shallow mushy version of religion and styles of preaching done in the name of that most abused concept of all, ‘pastoral reasons.’  In fact, “the greatest pastoral disaster is the dumbing down of our Catholic faith” (Fr Robert Barron).

I’m tired of hearing the excuse for pitifully shallow catecheses, because it is claimed that our lay Catholics won’t be able to grasp and understand the depth of Catholic theology and teachings, so they always need to be served bite-sized, dumb down versions of the original. I think that’s down right condescending. Often, people fail to understand not because they are obtuse but because they choose not to understand. The issue has less to do with intelligence than with sin which blinds and obscures. Let’s not give an excuse to atheist and Protestants to have another swing at us, especially for our failure to match reason to faith. In an ironic sort of a way, we need to be appreciative of critics and inquirers, and even be thankful to God for them. It is they who throw us the challenge to delve deeper into the treasury of Catholic thought. We come out the wiser.

The online article which I cited at the beginning claims that believers in God are less intelligent than non-believers. Perhaps no empirical research will be able to show this, but personal experiences of many will lay testimony to the fact that the most intelligent thing an intelligent human being can do is to turn to God, not away from him. The faith and lives of the heroes and heroines in both scriptures and the history of our Church testify to this. On the other hand, human history is full of evidence that secular humanist ideologies, socio-economic projects and other human experiments have failed to provide the ‘final solution’ to man’s troubles. Only God can do that. It is rightly said that wise men still seek Him, wiser men find Him, and the wisest come to worship Him. Yes, Catholicism is not for dummies!