Requiescat in Pace

Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

As macabre as it sounds, those consoling words of our Lord that we had just heard in the gospel is visualised in our cemeteries. On tombstones throughout the Christian world, carved in stone or etched in metal, we so often find those three solemn words: Requiescat in Pace — “May he (or she) rest in peace.” We see them in Latin, or in their familiar abbreviation, R.I.P. They are spoken softly at the graveside, whispered in the quiet of our hearts, and prayed at every funeral vigil and Requiem Mass. Yet how easily we can reduce them to a polite formula, a conventional closing to a life that has ended.

The abbreviation has been commonly and badly translated into English as “Rest in Peace.” As a statement of fact, it may sound quite presumptuous, underlying a popular belief that our departed loved ones are already in heaven, fully resting in peace. But note that the more accurate translation of the Latin is in the form of an invocation, a prayer: “MAY they rest in peace.” We can only pray and hope that our loved ones have found rest. It is not something which we can presume automatically as if our live decisions have no bearing to what happens to us after death. That is why at every funeral we should pray that the Lord shows His mercy to the deceased by pouring out His forgiveness on a sinner, which may sound insensitive to the modern ear, rather than canonise him or her with a moving eulogy that elevates them to the status of a saint. The Feast of All Saints is what we celebrated yesterday. But today we remember the dead, especially those among us who may have died without fully experiencing the perfection and freedom from sin that is required of divine beatitude and yet remain beneficiaries of our Lord’s mercy shown through the process we call purgatory.

Today the Church invites us to look deeper into these words. Requiescat in Pace is not merely a wish for the body to lie undisturbed in the earth. It is a prayer for the soul’s journey — that long, purifying pilgrimage from the incompleteness of this life into the fullness of eternal rest in God. Let’s be honest, deadly honest - We live, most of the time, with a myopic view of reality. We see only the small picture: the grief of separation, the silence of the grave, the ache of absence. We forget the larger truth proclaimed so beautifully in the Preface of the Masses for the Dead: “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.”

“Life is changed, not ended”. How many of us have missed this piece of simple but profound truth? Perhaps, we are too blinded by our grief to pay attention to what Mother Church speaks to us at this very hour of our need. The soul does not cease its journey when the body returns to dust. For the great majority of the faithful departed — those who have died in God’s grace and friendship, yet still imperfectly purified — there remains a final stage of the pilgrimage. The Church calls it Purgatory. It is not a midway point between heaven and hell, nor a temporary hell. It is the place, or rather the process, where souls already destined for heaven are prepared for the Beatific Vision. It is where the work of God, begun in their earthly lives, is brought to completion. It is the hospital where the last infections of self-love are burned away by the fire of divine love, so that the soul may love as God loves.

This is why we pray for the dead. If our loved ones were already in the full glory of heaven, they would have no need of our prayers. If they were lost forever, no prayer of ours could reach them. But because they are still on the way — still being purified, still journeying toward the eternal rest for which they were made — our prayers, our Masses, our sacrifices, our acts of charity offered on their behalf truly help them. As the Second Book of Maccabees reminds us, “It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they might be loosed from their sins.”

Requiescat in Pace, then, is not a passive hope. It is an active intercession. When we speak those words, we are joining our voices to the prayer of the whole Church — the Church Militant on earth, the Church Suffering in purification, and the Church Triumphant in glory — all bound together in the Communion of Saints. We are asking that the soul may complete its journey, that every remaining attachment to sin and self may be purified, that the last obstacles to perfect union with God may be removed, and that the soul may at last enter into the Sabbath rest of heaven.

And what of us who still walk this earth? The same journey awaits us. We too are pilgrims. We too carry the unfinished business of our lives — the habits of sin not yet fully uprooted, the loves still disordered, the hearts still only partially converted. We too are looking for rest. God knows how weary and tired we are and how much we desire relief. He hears us and He answers us: “Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest.” Every Mass we offer for the dead, every prayer we say, every sacrifice we make on their behalf is also a preparation for our own journey. In helping them toward their eternal rest, we ourselves are being drawn more deeply into the same mercy. Our Lord is teaching us that the path to truly finding rest for our souls is when we diligently shoulder His yoke, learn from Him, imitate Him and finally follow Him on the path to salvation. We won’t find rest when we turn our backs on Him. If Christ is absent from our lives and our hearts, we would only find “unrest.” Only in Him, can we truly find rest as St Augustine once prayed: “Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.”

So today, let us not merely remember. Let us pray. Let us offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for those who have no one to pray for them, for our parents and grandparents, for spouses and children, for friends and benefactors, for the forgotten and the abandoned. Let us visit their graves not only to place flowers, but to place our hearts in intercession. And as we do so, may we hear again those ancient words, not as a farewell, but as a prayer of hope:

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.
May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God,
rest in peace.

Amen.

Dies Natalis

Solemnity of All Saints

Today the Church’s calendar does something rather beautiful and rare. All Saints falls on a Sunday. The Lord’s Day and the feast of all the holy ones of God coincide. All Saints and every Sunday ranks as a solemnity, a first class feast in rank. When both days converge, we could call it a double solemnity! A First First! This is no mere coincidence of dates. It is a quiet homily from the liturgy itself.

Sunday is the Day of the Lord—the day of His death and, more decisively, of His Resurrection. Every Sunday we stand again at the empty tomb and proclaim that death does not have the final word. The early Christians called the day of a martyr’s death his or her dies natalis— his day of birth - his birthday into eternal life. What the world saw as an ending, the Church recognised as a beginning: the day a Christian is reborn into heaven. So, when All Saints falls on a Sunday, the liturgy holds two birthdays together: the Resurrection of the Lord and the heavenly birthday of every saint, known and unknown. Our own death, if we die in the Lord, will one day be our dies natalis too.

Most of us can only imagine the day of our death, the exact moment of our expiration. Would we go out with a big bang, or with our loved ones surrounding our deathbed, or would we die an ignoble or lonely death on a hospital bed or home for the aged? No crystal ball or horoscope or Tarot card reading will be able to give us an exact account of how it would all end. But scripture does assure us that it would not be as frightening as we would imagine. St John in his epistle which we heard in the second reading tells us: “what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed; all we know is, that when it is revealed we shall be like him because we shall see him as he really is.”

The readings today lift the veil. In the vision of John in the Book of the Apocalypse, which we heard in the first reading, we see the great multitude that no one can count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, washed in His blood, holding palm branches of victory. These are the ones who have already celebrated their dies natalis. They have passed through the great tribulation and now live in the unending Sunday of heaven.

How did they get there? The mystery of or the secret to their sainthood is found in them living out the gospel values which we had just heard. The Gospel places before us the Beatitudes—the very template of that sanctity.

“Happy are the poor in spirit… the gentle… those who mourn… those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… the merciful… the pure in heart… the peacemakers… those who are persecuted…”

These are not simply nice spiritual attitudes. They are the shape of a life that has already begun to die with Christ so that it may rise with Him. Sainthood is not a sudden overnight success story. It is gain incrementally, a little step at a time, a little dying to our ourselves here and there, and finally bearing fruit in a life of fidelity following Christ. The Beatitudes are the very programme of the dies natalis. They describe people who have learned to lose in the world’s eyes so that they may win in God’s. For example, poverty of spirit is the death of self-sufficiency. Meekness is the death of the need to dominate. Mourning is the death of false consolations. Hunger for righteousness is the death of indifference. Mercy is the death of the score-keeping heart. Purity of heart is the death of divided loves. Peacemaking is the death of the ego that thrives on conflict. Persecution is the final, public death of the self that still seeks worldly approval. Each beatitude promises an aspect of eternal life but demands a willingness to die to some inordinate attachment.

Contrary to popular opinion, the saints are not those who never stumbled. In fact, some have taken a mighty deep tumble in their lives. They, however, are those who allowed the grace of the Cross to turn every fall into a deeper surrender. A saint is simply a Christian who has taken the Sunday mystery—death and resurrection of Christ—and lived it daily until the final Sunday of his or her dies natalis. The Beatitudes are the ordinary path by which that daily dying and rising happens. They are not reserved for the extraordinary. They are the template for every baptised person who wants heaven to be more than a pious hope.

Today we celebrate the unnamed as much as the named. The grandmothers who prayed the rosary through decades of quiet fidelity. The fathers who carried the Cross of family responsibility without applause. The young people who chose purity when the world offered everything else. The worker who chooses integrity over politics or corruption. The sick who offered their suffering in union with Christ. The martyrs whose blood still cries out. All of them have already kept their dies natalis. And they cheer us on from the other side of the veil, because they know the secret: the same Lord who rose on the first day of the week is the One who will raise us on the last.

So, when this Sunday of All Saints comes round, let us hear the double invitation. Live the Lord’s Day every day, the Easter joy that never ends —die a little more to self, rise a little more into the life of grace. Let the Beatitudes shape your ordinary choices. Then, when your own dies natalis arrives, it will not be a strange or fearful day. It will simply be the final Sunday, the Easter that never ends, the definitive birthday into the kingdom where every tear is wiped away and the Lamb is the light forever. May the great cloud of witnesses who already celebrate their heavenly birthday intercede for us, so that one day this feast will be our feast too. Amen.

Something is Missing!

Easter Sunday

Those of you who are avid followers of TikTok trends would know that there is a new trend trending on an Easter theme this year. Nothing religious. In fact, one could say that it is highly irreligious. It’s called "Your Chocolate Easter Bunny Is Missing Something.” The trend revolves around the idea that traditional chocolate bunnies are "missing something" (like a creamy filling), leading to funny or ironic reactions. The whole point of the meme is that it’s pointless, nobody cares, one should not even be bothered. And yet this obnoxiously trivial matter has been shared and reshared to oblivion making it another viral sensation.

Who could even imagine that something as mundane as a missing item may have such a massive effect that it could go viral. But that’s exactly what we celebrate today. The story of Easter is about a missing body. But the finding of this missing item is so much more exciting and surprising than when it first went missing. This may be the reason why Catholics experience a great sense of loss whenever something familiar in their faith goes missing.

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

Today, we have a missing body from the tomb. But instead of leaving us to languish in despair at what has been taken away, it is good news to us Christians. A corpse may be missing, but the Risen Saviour and Lord is not. Most of us grief over the loss of missing things – whether it is a missing loved one, a missing valuable treasure, or a missed opportunity. But an empty tomb and a missing corpse is always good news!

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

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

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

Do not be afraid!

Easter Vigil of the Holy Night

“Do not be afraid!” The message of the angel and our Lord to the women witnesses of the resurrection was simply this: “There is no need for you to be afraid” and “Do not be afraid!” This seems to be a strange message to these women unless it was meant to assure the women and the other disciples that the resurrected Lord was not a ghost, but fully alive in the flesh. I guess that’s what you would say if you came back to visit your family after you’re dead.

But these words could very well speak to all of us in our current situation - fear of failure, fear of aging, fear of separation, fear of losing control of our lives, fear of another economic recession or fear of the conflict in the Middle East and Europe ballooning into another World War. Or are we trapped in the trinity of fears which our neighbours in Singapore famously acknowledge - fear of losing, fear of death and fear of wives? But if we were to make a deep analysis of our fears, we would soon realise that they ultimately culminate in the fear of death, the fear of our final extinction. Our greatest fear is that when we die, we become nothing.

Let’s be honest, all of us fear dying. We seem to make a show of bravery by joking about it to our friends. But beneath the veneer of courage lies the fear of our inevitable mortality. One day all of us will die, sooner or later, for one reason or another. I am afraid of dying. I’m afraid of leaving behind a mess which others would have to clean up and perhaps suffer from their constant griping and complaining about my past mistakes. I’m afraid that I may be the last to go as I watch all my friends and family die before me, without anyone to mourn my passing. I fear the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, because I know I’m nowhere near as ready as I ought to be. Do we fear death? Should we? It’s comforting to know that Pope St John Paul II when asked during his transfer to the hospital for an operation to deal with colon cancer whether he was afraid, answered simply and clearly – and courageously, in my view: Yes!

Doctors will tell you that there are various ways of confirming before declaring that someone is dead. You look for the absence of certain vital signs. But the Catholic Church does not define it in a purely physical or physiological way. The Church’s definition is somewhat spiritual. Death is at the moment the soul is separated from the body. This is not something which can be determined empirically but rather can be explained theologically. Our soul, is created by God, comes to be at its union with the body. A body is simply dead without a soul, and a soul is “out of place” without a body.

I recalled accompanying my former Parish Priest, Fr Andre Volle, to pay respects and pray at the wake of his good friend and fellow French missionary, Fr Bernard Binet. As he filed pass the coffin of the corpse of his friend together with other well-wishers, he declared in a booming voice, a final funny jibe at his friend, “Oh Binet, this is not you!” Some would take the comment as inappropriate while others would assume that the ever-humorous Fr Volle was in form. But I understood that Fr Volle was theologically correct. Fr Binet’s body in the coffin was no longer Fr Binet. A body is simply dead without a soul, and a soul is “out of place” without a body.

That is why the resurrection is not merely the resuscitation of a body or a soul materialising for others to see but rather a person who truly died, his soul and body having separated, is made whole again - the body and soul are united again. This is truly amazing. It defies scientific and medical explanation. But it is crucial, it is central to our Christian belief! Why is the resurrection of the Lord such good news for us? Because the resurrection of Christ is a signal to us, an irrefutable proof to us that death is just a straw man, a toothless tiger. Though death may separate our souls from our bodies and may seem to sever our relationships with our loved ones, it does not have the final word. Christ has the final word.

Christ by His obedience conquered death and won resurrection and salvation for mankind. For those who live in Christ through Baptism, death is still painful and repugnant, but it is no longer a living reminder of sin but rather a precious opportunity to co-redeem with Christ, through mortification and dedication to others. St Paul assures us by declaring, “If we die with Christ, we shall also live with Him” (2 Tim 1:11). Hence, thanks to Christ, Christian death has a positive meaning. The enigma of death can only be understood in the light of Christ’s resurrection and our resurrection in Him.

Our Lord does not promise Christians complete success on this earth, for our earthly life is always marked by the Cross. He did not promise us an ageless and deathless existence, one free from pain, suffering and tribulations, for all must suffer and die. He promised us something far greater - eternal life, the life of the resurrection. The women who came to the tomb that first Easter morning were filled with grief and fear. But they left with something more – joy! Joy is not the absence of fear. Who says that one cannot be joyful even though we can be fearful of so many things, especially an uncertain future? Fr Paul Scalia, the son of the famous Catholic member of the US Supreme Court bench, Anthony Scalia, tells us that “only when that fear is present can joy arise. Easter joy is not something manufactured or created by us. It comes from the Resurrection or not at all, precisely and only when we surrender control and allow the risen Lord to intrude on our gatherings and activities just as surely as He appeared on the road, in the upper room, and on the seashore. If we want Him on our own terms – and thus without fear – then it is not the risen Lord we want, but a caricature,” a figment of our imagination.

So, my dear brothers and sisters, my dear catechumen, as some of you step forward to be baptised and others renew your baptismal promises, do so knowing that the Lord has conquered death and sin, the Lord has shown Himself victorious by rising from the dead, and the Lord will return one day in glory to call you forth from your graves, not just your souls but also with a new spiritually refined body. So, “do not be afraid!”

It's a Good Day!

Good Friday

Today is the day we remember how our Lord, innocent though He was, was put to death by His enemies. Today is the day our Saviour is nailed to the cross because those whom He had come to save rejected Him. Today is the day when His thousands of followers and even His most intimate friends abandoned Him and leaving just four women and a man to accompany Him during this horrible ordeal. Today, the Word of God is silenced on the cross - no farewell speech to encourage or inspire His followers. And yet we Christians call this day “Good Friday” and our Eastern brethren have an even more audacious sounding name for it - the Great Friday.

Why on earth would Christians refer to this Friday as “good”?

It’s called Good Friday because even while powerful men were conspiring to kill the Son of God, God Himself was acting to save the world from itself, once and for all. Even while the world’s authorities were conspiring to perpetrate history’s greatest evil, God was working overtime to bring about history’s greatest good.

Yes, we Christians have not made a great blunder in naming today as Good Friday. It isn’t a misnomer. Far from a mistake, our Lord’s death and sacrifice on the cross is God’s greatest achievement, His most prized trophy.

Today is good because on the cross, our Lord suffered so that we would not have to suffer eternally. Yes, we are not saying that Christians are insulated from suffering because of what Christ did. Christians are no strangers to suffering. It’s part of our DNA. In fact, to be a Christian means to deny ourselves and take up our crosses in imitation of our Lord. But all suffering in this life, no matter how unbearable it may seem, is only temporary. Suffering has a shelf life because of what our Lord did today.

What Christ did is that He “traded places” with us. He lived the sinless life that we should live and died the death that we deserve to die. He took our guilty record, died for it, and offers us His perfect record in return. That is why Saint Paul declared that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1).

Today is also not just a good day but a great day because by His death on the cross, our Lord Jesus reconciled us to the Father. Long before social distancing became the norm, man had already socially distanced himself from God by our sins. It is not God who had distanced Himself from us; it is not God who had abandoned us. It is we who have abandoned Him through sin. Because of our sins, we have alienated ourselves from God and others, but Jesus saves us from our sins in order to mend those relationships. The reconciling powers of Christ will cause all relational barriers to be torn down, including the barriers of ethnicity and nationality (Rev 5:9-10).

Finally, because of the cross and the resurrection we have hope for the future. As you all know, Good Friday is not a stand-alone feast. The story doesn’t just climax and end with Jesus dying on the cross on Good Friday. The real ending is found on Easter when Jesus will burst forth from the tomb, break the shackles and prison of death and rise again so that now we may have new life. With every darkening which seems to come with Good Friday, there is the new dawn of Easter.

Though Christ’s death has defeated the powers of death, suffering and evil, we must still wait for the day when He will return to put all these enemies under His feet. Until then, we must hope and believe that the victory is already His, that death is not the end, that suffering will not have the final say. Mission accomplished. A pandemic or any other calamity, natural or otherwise will have no hold over us. The work of Christ is complete. From the cross, He assures us, “It is accomplished.”

It does seem odd to refer to anybody’s death as “good.” Yet, God’s good plan is often counterintuitive: As Jesus says, “He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it”; “the first shall be the last and the last shall be first” (Mark 10:31). And yes, through the “good” death of God’s Son, humanity can receive new life, abundant life. He has given us eternal life that will never be defeated by any infection, calamity or even death.

So, my dear brothers and sisters, have a “good day”! In fact, have a “great day!” You deserve it because Christ has earned it for you!

Even stones will rise again

Fifth Sunday of Lent Year A

Buried dead men and even ruined stones cannot rise again. That’s the firm conviction and belief of the materialist communists, who reject any belief in God and dismiss anything religious and spiritual as pure superstition. In the year 1966, a platoon of Red Guards was ordered to destroy all remnants of the past including Christian cemeteries and tombs on the grounds of the Zhalan Catholic cemetery in Beijing. Most significant was the tomb of the famous Jesuit missionary, known by locals as the erudite Mr Li. He was Father Matteo Ricci SJ, the first Catholic priest permitted entry into the Forbidden City, where he spent the last nine years of his tireless and fruitful life and was honoured by the emperor himself with a tomb fit for a Mandarin.

Other memorials had been reduced to rubble, and the stones given to peasants to build with. The remains of the dead were simply scattered. Priests and nuns were forcefully conscripted for this laborious work of desecration, and they had to destroy the tombs with their own hands. But there was a shrewd lover of history at the Institute which trained communist officials. He didn’t want the relics to be ruined, not because he believed but was motivated by sentimental reasons. He came up with a brilliant proposal which was a subterfuge to save these stones. “Why don’t you just bury the stones,” he suggested, “and then order them not to rise again?”

After some time, when the horrible Cultural Revolution had passed and most people had forgotten the history of those buried stones, it was decided that they dig up these stones with little ceremony and fanfare to avoid unnecessary attention. So they did, and that’s why we still have Ricci’s tomb, dug out of the ground later on when the Communists changed their minds. Despite the order that they should remain buried, the stones of this tomb and that of two other Jesuits did “rise again”.

If dead stones can rise again from the rubble of destruction, so can men too. This is what we witness in today’s gospel. Martha and Mary had sent a message to the Lord by coming immediately to save their brother who was terminally ill. The Grim Reaper would not wait another day, but our Lord did. He waited another two days. In a seemingly nonchalant manner, our Lord declared that this illness is not unto death, but for the glory of God and His Son. Perhaps, these words would have been misunderstood by the sisters that Lazarus would recover from his illness and be saved from the brink of death. Can you imagine their disappointment with the Lord and His prophecy when Lazarus did succumb to his illness and die?

When our Lord finally arrived after deliberately delaying His departure by two days, He found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. One could argue that if the Lord had departed immediately upon receiving the news, it would have made little difference to the outcome. He would still have come too late. Martha, true to form, ran out to meet Jesus, while Mary, true to form, remained in the house.

Martha declares that if the Lord had been present, her brother would not have died, but that whatever Jesus asks of God, God will give it. The Lord, in response, declares to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. If anyone believes in me, even though he dies he will live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (Jn 11:25-26) Here’s Martha’s moment of glory. John’s Gospel does not narrate Peter’s proclamation of faith: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Martha now has the honour of echoing Peter’s declaration: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God.”

If Martha displayed such brazen faith in the Lord despite her personal tragedy, Mary’s response seems more human and therefore, would resonate with most of us. She appears to question the Lord for His lateness. If only He had been there, this tragedy could have been evaded: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” It is a human thing to grieve. It is quite natural of us to ask God or rather demand an answer from Him in the face of tragedy. Rather than being annoyed or angry at her seeming lack of faith in comparison to her sister’s, our Lord is moved by her response - her tears of grief and perhaps even anger.

Our Lord knew that in the end, life would reign, joy would outweigh the sorrow, and yet He grieved before performing that great miracle of miracles. He grieved for His beloved friend decaying in the tomb. And He grieved for us, I'd like to think, for all of humanity who must endure great trials, loss, abuse, injustice, as a result of our free will and fallenness - for us who, while on this earth, must fight hard and ceaselessly to believe in what cannot be seen, in a divine compassion we cannot fathom. He is grieving for the destruction that has been wrought by sin, death itself, which is not part of God’s original plan. Save for sin, death has no place in our universe. The wages of sin is death as St Paul points out.

Some people console us by trying to make us accept death as a natural part of human life. Others argue that death is merely a portal to eternity. But our Lord saw death as the enemy. His Father had never intended for us to experience it. In fact, He forbade Adam and Eve only one thing – a fruit that would make them subject to it. Death came into the world through the envy of the devil and the disobedience of man, not through the plan of God. So, in the presence of those wounded by death’s sting, our Lord weeps.

I guess it is always so irresistibly easier to surrender to the power of despair and thus be authors of our own spiritual and psychological death. Despair is the most lethal weapon at the hands of the enemies of Christianity. The Communists who ordered the destruction of the Christian graves and commandeered the religious leaders to undertake this heinous task with their own hands thought that they could bury the faith of the people as they did with the stones from the tombs of their heroes. But just as the stones did not remain buried, the faith of the Catholics continues to endure and indeed have grown despite years of persecution, oppression and governmental control.

When you're exhausted, from day after day battling doubts, struggling against the current, resisting the urge to lie down and allow the fear, resentment, selfishness, hatred to bury you alive, it is good to remember the story of Lazarus and the tomb of Matteo Ricci. The story of Lazarus reinforces our hope – a hope which does not lie in finding an answer to the mystery of our suffering, a hope that is not grounded in a final solution to life’s troubles, but a shining hope in the life of the resurrection – a rebirth – of how even the dead, the seemingly lost can be called forth, they can be liberated from the bindings of sin, desperation and grief, and be finally set free to live not just a dream, but the reality of immortality, never to suffer pain or death again. If the communists could not keep the tomb stones and the faith of the Chinese Catholics buried, if tombs could not keep Lazarus and Jesus dead, we too profess with firm conviction “in the resurrection of the body,” that God will ensure that not only our immortal souls will live on after death, but that even our "mortal body" will “rise again”.

Our Duty to Pray for the Dead

Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

The first reading is taken from a book of the Old Testament that is missing from the Protestant Bible. Its omission is understandable as it shows how the people of the Old Testament prayed for the deceased, a practice which is considered futile and superstitious and thus rejected by the Protestants.

The two books of Maccabees speak of a time when the Jewish homeland was ruled by the Greeks who sought every means to destroy both the local culture and suppress the people’s religion. The desecration of the holy Temple of God was the last straw when the Greeks sought to turn it into a temple rededicated to their chief pagan deity, Zeus. The Jewish nationalists rose in revolt. It was not merely a nationalistic insurrection but first and foremost, a religious war. The Jewish rebels would invoke God’s assistance to defend them and to destroy their enemies. But here in chapter 12 of the second book of Maccabees, we see the Jews offering up a different form of prayer - this time not for blood of their enemies but for reconciliation of the dead.

Although Judas won this battle, many of his soldiers were killed. When their companions went to bury them, they found that each dead soldier was wearing pagan amulets under his tunic. In the minds of the Jews, it was clear why their compatriots died despite God’s protection. But instead of abandoning their souls to perdition, Judas took a collection up among his soldiers and sent an offering to Jerusalem so that sacrifices and prayers might be offered up for his men who had sinned and fallen. All is not lost even in death and when one dies a sinner. It is here that we read an important verse for us on this day, “For if (Judas) had not expected the fallen to rise again it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead, whereas if he had in view the splendid recompense reserved for those who make a pious end, the thought was holy and devout. This was why he had this atonement sacrifice offered for the dead, so that they might be released from their sin.”

Within this most positive assessment of Judas’ deed of offering prayers and sacrifices for the dead, we have the powerful justification for two important aspects of our Catholic faith - the dogma concerning purgatory and the efficacy of praying for the dead - both, unfortunately, seem to have grown out of fashion due to a subtle transformation of the Requiem or funeral Mass into a mere memorial service where the deceased are eulogised.

In our efforts to eulogise the dead, we have forgotten that funerals are meant for sinners and not perfected saints. We celebrate feast days for saints. But the truth is that we are all imperfect and most of us die imperfect, in spite of our efforts to be better. This is the reason for believing in Purgatory. Purgatory is not a midway point between heaven and hell. Purgatory is intended for those destined for heaven. Purgatory is where souls are prepared for heaven, it is where the work of God which had begun in their lives would be completed. It is the “processing centre” where exiles wandering lost in the valley of sin and death are prepared for their final homecoming to their eternal home in heaven.

Most people believe that heaven is guaranteed, it is a done deal once they’re baptised and if they live relatively good lives. For this reason, many choose to not go for confession, seeing no need for it. But we need healing from the results of our sins, even if these sins are forgiven in confession. The results of sin do not just go away because the sin is forgiven. For example, a man might leave his wife and family and move in with another woman. His wife might be near a nervous breakdown. His children in turmoil. If ten years later, he seeks forgiveness for his actions, he can be forgiven not just by God but also by his wife. But the results of his sins remain. The children grew up devastated. Their father was not there when they needed him. His wife is still suffering the traumatic results of the end of their marriage. The sin is forgiven, but the effects of the sin remains. Reparation is required, and we are not talking about the monetary kind.

During our lives we approach the Lord seeking the healing for the results of our sins. That is why the Church promotes the gaining of indulgences which supplements the necessary practice of frequent confession. Indulgences deal with the effects of sin, the temporal punishment due to us, while confession absolves us of the guilt and the eternal punishment due to sin. When our lives on earth have ended, we depend on the prayers of those still living here to continue to ask God to heal the results of sin in our lives. And so, we do a disservice to our dead by canonising them prematurely, by deciding that no matter what their lives may have been like, they must be in heaven right now. It is a disservice because the faithful departed need our prayers. They need us to offer the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross for them–to have Masses said for them. They need us to pray the rosary asking Mary to speak to her Son for our loved ones. They need us to visit their graves, which are visible reminders of our duty to pray for them and that we continue to remain united to them in the Communion of Saints.

On this day when we commemorate all the faithful departed whom we had lost over the years, we do so not with broken hearts nor in hopeless despair. We live as a people of hope because we believe that humanity’s exile to this sin-scarred planet of crime, cruelty, injustice, and death will one day come to an end. Just as how our Lord commanded the dead son of the widow to rise up, it is our hope and prayer, that our Lord will command all the faithful departed who have died in His peace, to rise and have a share in His glory won for us on the cross.

The Books of Maccabees tell us that it is a good thing to pray for the dead. But it is more than just a recommended “good thing,” it is our duty! Our duty is to continue to pray for the dead, for the souls in Purgatory, and we do this, because this is what the Holy Spirit has taught us to do. It is a gift of God, to allow us to share in His work in bringing His people to perfection. God wills that we should share in this work through our prayers. And by praying for them, we are attesting to the truth, “life is changed, not ended” at death.

And so we pray this ancient prayer which our ancestors prayed, and we hope that our descendants would continue to do so for us:

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

Memento Mori

Third Sunday of Lent Year C

As much as you believe that the government is out to get your money by using any pretext whatsoever, they do sincerely go out of their way to issue ample warnings to discourage you from engaging in any activity that could get you taxed or penalised. Take for example, the repeated large signs displayed on highways and major thoroughfares reminding you of speed limits and of the impeding speed cameras just up ahead. If the first sign doesn’t get your attention, there’s always two more to follow. I’ve been advised (poorly advised I must say), that you can still get to “speed” until you see the third sign. This is certainly not a piece of advice that any one of you should follow. But should you decide to press down on your accelerator despite three consecutive warnings, be ready for a hefty fine. You deserve it. You’ve been warned. You can’t use ignorance as an excuse to wrangle your way out of this.

Disasters and tragedies are meant to do that. Serve as signposts, warnings, that we must take evasive action before it is too late. Unfortunately, a good tragedy is wasted on so many. Some attempt to benefit from the tragedy suffered by others. Many look at these as fodder for news, rumour-mongering and endless speculations. Still others look at tragedies as evidence of a pernicious and malicious God, or a God who is indifferent to our concerns and suffering or even as proof of the non-existence of God. But what about us Christians. Our Lord provides us with the answer in today’s gospel.

When tragedy strikes, don’t look back and try to discern the reason. Sometimes a postmortem may be necessary to determine the truth and avoid further recurrences but often people are trapped in the past, in a cycle of regret and resentment and not prepared to move forward. Neither should we look around us for someone to blame. Again, assigning responsibility may be needed to hold persons accountable but this may be a futile exercise that only leads to a frustrating dead-end, leaving us with more questions than answers. Our Lord challenges us, however, to look inwards, to make an honest introspection of ourselves, to make an assessment of where we are going and where are we heading if we continue to stay on this course.

Three possible lessons could be derived from this self-examination.

Tragedies and unexpected events serve as “memento mori” - they remind us of our mortality and the brevity of life. Tempus Fugit, Memento Mori – time flies, remember death!

Rather than shaking the foundation of our faith in God, such events should lead us to trust more in God rather than in ourselves and our devices. Only God alone can stave off an impending disaster or provide us with the strength and grace to push through and come out stronger.

Finally, such tragedies serve as a call to repent. In today’s gospel, our Lord refutes all speculations that the people who suffered tragedy deserved it by redirecting the attention of His audience to themselves: “unless you repent you will all perish as they did.” If we were to examine the concept of repentance in their original biblical languages, we would realise that repentance is more than just turning away from our sin but actually a turning to God, a radical reorientation of our lives to God. This is what happened to Moses in the first reading.

The story of Moses juxtaposes two possible paths which we can take when faced with tragedy or a crisis. The first path seems to be the easier and more logical choice because it arises from our basic instinct for survival. Moses fled Egypt after having killed someone and sought refuge in a life of anonymity far from civilisation. But God did not abandon him to his devices. He comes in search of the one who will not shepherd animals but His people and lead them out of slavery to freedom.

Thus, God intervenes in the life of Moses, disrupts his relative peace and creates a crisis in order to shake Moses out of his preferred retirement. For a man who sought to escape a crisis, God now introduces a crisis to redirect Moses in the path which God has chosen for him. We see the obvious tension between Moses’ preferred path and that of God’s in the series of questions and answers we hear in the first reading. Moses attempts to give excuses to evade the call but God would have none of it. Moses cannot plead ignorance. God answers every single objection he raises.

Just in case, that we too may attempt at deflecting whatever barbs the Lord may throw at us by arguing that the experience of Moses has nothing to do with our current modern experiences, St Paul in the second reading brings us up to speed by reminding us that what happened to the Israelites in the Old Testament should also be an important warning given to present day Christians. Less, modern day Christians should imagine themselves insulated from the judgment which God had issued upon their ancestors, St Paul tells us, “All this happened to them as a warning, and it was written down to be a lesson for us who are living at the end of the age. The man who thinks he is safe must be careful that he does not fall.”

When God gives us warnings it’s meant to help us take remedial action and evade our own personal disaster. They are not meant to be threats to scare us into docile submission, but opportunities accorded to us to avert danger because He loves us and doesn’t want us to come into harm’s way, especially when the harm may result in our eternal separation from Him.

That is why our Lord concludes His teachings with the parable of the fig tree in the vineyard. It would seem strange to find a fig tree in the middle of a vineyard instead of a fig tree orchard. What more the vinedresser’s main task is to care for the vines rather than a fig tree, and yet he is tasked to go beyond his job description and entrusted to nurture this tree, a work which seems pointless since the fig tree is barren. But at the behest of the vinedresser who pleads on behalf of the fig tree, the tree is given a respite of another year before it is cut down. Notice that we are not told what happens after that one year. Did it finally bear fruit? We are not sure. This parable is deliberately open-ended – the listener supplies the conclusion in his own life. We have been shown mercy by God, a mercy which we do not deserve. We have been warned but have we heeded the warning or persisted in stubborn old ways?

So, my dear friends, do not be sighing in relief that disaster came to others and you were spared. Neither should you be busy speculating as to who is to be blamed for the tragedy and mishap. Watch out for the “signs,” for God issues many warnings ahead of the danger. Only one thing matters: That disaster – that accident – that unexpected event – it could be you next time – why take a chance . . . no more waiting . . . settle with God today.

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.”

Love is stronger than Death

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

In the collective imagination of the Anglosphere, Robin Hood is second only to King Arthur in the hold he has on the public mind. The idea of the Merry Men living in self-constructed freedom “all under the merry greenwood tree” in Sherwood Forest – robbing the rich and helping the poor and staying loyal to King Richard the Lionheart during the regency of his brother – has been embraced by countless generations.

Robin Hood and his merry band of thieves have often been portrayed in a heroic light, as those who sided with the poor and stood against the despotic tyranny of the rich and powerful, symbolised in the person of the Sheriff of Nottingham, ironically, a medieval representation of the “blue”, the law enforcement agencies. Robin’s actions were not only regarded as justified but lauded as virtuous because he “stole from the rich to give to the poor!” There seems to be a resurgence of this spirit in many of the liberal ruled cities in America, where criminals are often vindicated as deserving of the spoils of theft and looting due to their disadvantaged social economic status. In fact, stealing is now regarded as a kind of reparation for what many would claim had been stolen from them. Ironically, the law enforcement officers, men who wear the “blue”, are regarded as the “bad guys”, very much like the wicked and conniving Sheriff of Nottingham.

In the second reading, we see St Paul writing to the wealthy church in Corinth and requesting them to send aid to the impoverished mother church in Jerusalem. He begins his appeal by first commending them on their spiritual wealth - “You always have the most of everything – of faith, of eloquence, of understanding, of keenness for any cause, and the biggest share of our affection – so we expect you to put the most into this work of mercy too.” Paul is trying to explain that this act of charity is not merely an act of generosity but also a work of mercy - another spiritual good. In other words, the more they give, the wealthier they become spiritually. Then he sets out the standard and model of such generosity - it is none other than Christ Himself: “Remember how generous the Lord Jesus was: he was rich, but he became poor for your sake, to make you rich out of his poverty.”

Of course, St Paul was not himself resorting to a Robin Hood mentality by taking from the rich to give to the poor. He was making it clear that any such giving should be done from a cheerful and willing heart, rather than grudgingly. Furthermore, he was not insisting that the Corinthians should impoverish themselves by enriching the folks in Jerusalem. He proposes a pragmatic rule to giving: “This does not mean that to give relief to others you ought to make things difficult for yourselves: it is a question of balancing what happens to be your surplus now against their present need, and one day they may have something to spare that will supply your own need. That is how we strike a balance …”

This is the reason why the vow of poverty which is taken by a religious is not meant to be pure renunciation of material goods, but rather a commitment to share everything in common. An interior spiritual poverty is required for communal living. A lack of it rings a death knell to the community, especially when every member is only looking out for his own interest and security, whilst failing to be concerned with the welfare of his brothers and sisters.

We see in the gospel the true hero worthy of our praise and emulation - it is not the fictional Robin Hood but the very real Jesus of Nazareth. Our Lord shows us how God’s generosity and providence can be given and is given to all, without depriving one whilst blessing the other. In the longer version of the gospel, we see both the adult and the child being recipients of our Lord’s mercy and healing powers - the woman who had suffered from internal bleeding for many years and the young girl whom our Lord brought back from the brink of death. It is arguable as to who was in the more dire situation. The focus seems to be on defeating death in the girl. Our Lord returning life to the dead girl confirms what is written in the Book of Wisdom that “death was not God’s doing,” and that God had made “man imperishable, He made him in the image of His own nature; it was the devil’s envy that brought death into the world …”

So, it is death and devil that seem to have robbed us of our immortality and they have done so without enriching anyone but impoverishing all of us. But our Lord comes to the rescue. He robs the devil and death of their booty and final victory. Death may be strong, in fact, it may be the strongest thing that anyone of us knows of - no medicine, no elixir, no insurance or guarantee, no fortress or bunker, no “Iron Dome” can keep us safe from its clutches. But there is one who is stronger, so strong that nothing can stand in His way - not the cross which took His life, not the stone rolled over the mouth of the tomb, not the gates of Hades could keep Him imprisoned. It is Christ our Lord and Saviour. He has plundered the fortress of death and the devil and restored our inheritance to us - life, eternal life.

And this is what St Baldwin of Canterbury declared in the 12th century, a truth that has not grown old nor will ever be obsolete:

“Death is strong: it has the power to deprive us of the gift of life. Love is strong: it has the power to restore us to the exercise of a better life.

Death is strong, strong enough to despoil us of this body of ours. Love is strong, strong enough to rob death of its spoils and restore them to us.

Death is strong; for no man can resist it. Love is strong; for it can triumph over death, can blunt its sting, counter its onslaught and overturn its victory. A time will come when death will be trampled underfoot; when it will be said: ‘Death, where is your sting? Death, where is your attack?’

‘Love is strong as death,’ since Christ’s love is the death of death. For this reason he says: ‘Death, I shall be your death; hell, I shall grip you fast.’ The love, too, with which Christ is loved by us is itself strong as death, since it is a kind of death, being the extinction of our old life, the abolition of vice, and the putting aside of dead works.”

We leave no one behind

Easter Sunday

“We leave no one behind!” Does this expression sound familiar? It should – you’ve heard it before from the lips of the stereotypical mud encrusted, battle worn, biceps bulging, tobacco chewing sergeant or commandant, who rallies his troops to make one last almost suicidal ditch to rescue captured fellow comrades or to recover the bodies of fallen heroes. The words seem almost magical and powerful in being able to pierce, invigorate and inspire even the most faint-hearted and exhausted of troops and fill them with a new fighting spirit.

On Easter Sunday, the Sunday of all Sundays, we celebrate not just the power of rhetoric, we celebrate a reality, a truth – it is this, starting with Jesus Christ, God affirms that He leaves no one behind! God has not abandoned His only begotten Son to death. In fact, Christ is actually on a secret mission of the Father. He accomplishes the mission of God, a mission once considered vastly more difficult than the worst Mission Impossible assignment you can imagine. That mission is to vanquish the old enemy of humanity – sin, and its most powerful minion, its prison warden, death – and rescue man from its clutches. And the only way to do it, was to be thrown into the same prison.

The empty tomb is God’s smoking gun – it is the definitive sign of Jesus breaking free from the prison of Hades, Death, He tramples down the gates and the walls that have kept generations incarcerated, and He has triumphantly set us free! The significance of Easter is that Jesus is announcing not just to Christians, but to the whole world, and not just to this generation but to all generations – “We leave no one behind!”

We affirm this truth whenever we recite that ancient baptismal creed, the Apostles Creed, “He descended into hell.” The word ‘hell’ here of course did not refer to the state of final damnation but was rather a reference to the realm of the dead (the Greeks called it “Hades” and the Jews “Sheol”) or what has been traditionally called “the limbo of the fathers”. The Limbo of the Fathers is where the righteous awaited the resurrection of Jesus, after which they could enter Heaven. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "By the expression 'He descended into Hell', the Apostles' Creed confesses that Jesus did really die and through his death for us conquered death and the devil 'who has the power of death' (Hebrews 2:14). In his human soul united to his divine person, the dead Christ went down to the realm of the dead. He opened Heaven's gates for the just who had gone before him."

This descent should not be seen as just the natural result of His human death. It is more. Christ willingly died for a purpose; and his descent to the dead is part of that purpose. Christ goes to Hades on a mission. He goes, tradition has it, to the Limbo of the Fathers, where the souls of the just slept in death, waiting for the gates of heaven to be re-opened on the day of salvation. In other words, Christ goes to the realm of the dead to announce to them that their salvation has come and that heaven has been opened to them at last and leads them forth. Christ’s mission is one of liberation, from the jaws of death; and the dead heard the good news before the living. In early Christian iconography, Jesus is depicted as storming Hell, the gates of this prison lies trampled beneath His feet, and He begins the salvation or the freeing of all its inmates beginning with Adam and Eve. But Adam does not merely represent himself. He stands for all humanity. In Christ no one is overlooked or left behind.

An ancient homily for Holy Saturday, whose author is unknown, celebrates this in vivid terms. While on earth there is silence, under the earth (as it were) Christ is emptying Hades with solemnity. The new Adam goes to rescue the first Adam, his father in the flesh, with the command, “awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead”. Adam and his progeny can now rise from the dead because Christ’s human death transforms death for all the children of Adam. For just as what happened in Adam (sin) happened for us all, so too what happened in Christ’s human flesh happened for us all: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). Or as the ancient homilist has Christ put it, “Rise, let us go hence; for you in me and I in you, together we are one undivided person”. Death had, as it were, led humanity into a walled-off, dead-end street; Christ now breaks through that barrier so that death might now launch humankind onto the highway to heaven. For it was for heaven, not for Hades, that God through Christ made us: “I have not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld”. In Christ no one is overlooked or left behind. Alleluia! He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!

Deep within them I will plant my Law

Fifth Sunday of Lent Year B

In the traditional calendar, today would be the first Sunday of Passiontide, a more intense period of preparation for Holy Week. It is no wonder that we would be treated to a preview of an essential theme of the holiest week of the year. On Maundy Thursday, on the night when our Lord Jesus gathered with His disciples in the upper room to celebrate the inaugural Eucharist, He declared that through His blood, shed for His disciples, there would come into existence a “New” covenant. What is this “New” covenant which He is speaking of? If this is a “New” covenant, how about the “Old”? We can find the answer in the first reading.

The prophet Jeremiah speaks of the time when God will make a “new covenant with the House of Israel (and the House of Judah)”, a covenant that would be unlike the covenants of old which had been broken due to Israel’s disobedience.

What was wrong with the old covenant that necessitated a new one? Well, the old covenant was fundamentally good - an unprecedented blessing for the people of Israel. It assured them of God’s commitment to them. It gave them an identity - they were God’s Chosen People! It provided them with laws to govern their behaviour. It promised them spiritual and material and even military blessings if they obeyed that law and remained true to the covenant. God even instituted the office of high priest so that the people would have someone to offer sacrifices on their behalf and represent them in the presence of God. But it was flawed in three ways.

First, although there was a high priest who would regularly offer an animal sacrifice for their sins, such sacrifices could never fully and finally secure their forgiveness. “For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Heb 10:4).

Second, the law of the Old Covenant that came through Moses was unable to supply the power that people needed to fulfill and obey it. The Law of Moses was very clear in stating, “You shall not” or “Do this and live” or “Be holy.” The Law of Moses told the people of Israel what they should and should not do but it was never capable of supplying them with the spiritual power to obey. It provided them the “means” but not the “grace.”

Third, the Old or Mosaic Covenant was temporary and limited. It was designed by God with a shelf life. God never intended it to last forever nor to be the final revelation of His will for mankind. It was also limited to Israel and its descendants and not meant to encompass all nations whom God had promised to bless through Abraham. In Hebrew 8:5, we are told that everything Moses did in constructing the Old Covenant tabernacle, together with its rituals and sacrifices, was only “a copy and shadow of the heavenly things.” But God always intended to establish a new covenant with every single person - “the least no less than the greatest.”

What the old covenant lacked, our Lord Jesus supplies and perfects in His “new covenant”. He seals it not with the blood of bulls and goats, but His own blood shed on the cross for our atonement. He did not only show us the way to sanctification and salvation but provided us the means to attain it by pouring out grace upon grace through the sacraments which He instituted. As we heard in the second reading, “He became for all who obey Him the source of eternal salvation.” He not only gave us a covenant that was temporary and limited but one that is eternal and universal. We see evidence of this in the gospel when the Greeks come in search of Him.

Unlike the covenants which had been written in stone, this new covenant would be written in the hearts of the people and therefore accessible to all peoples: “Deep within them I will plant my Law, writing it on their hearts. Then I will be their God and they shall be my people.” It is interesting to note that the first set of commandments were written by God Himself by His own hand, but these were physically shattered by Moses when he broke them in rage after having discovered Israel’s apostasy (the incident of the golden calf). Moses, thereafter, was commanded by God to inscribe a second set which was kept in the ark of the covenant, which eventually went missing after the sack of Jerusalem and the exile of the Judaeans to Babylon.

So, this new covenant would no longer be inscribed into something breakable and as flimsy as stone. The idea of God planting the covenant deep in the hearts of His people meant that this new covenant would no longer be an external set of laws requiring superficial observance but one which demanded true and radical repentance. We must literally die in order to live these commandments in our lives. “Unless a wheat grain falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest”. It would be anchored to the very core of our being and not just tied to the foreheads or wrapped around the hands like the external phylacteries worn by the Jews.

In the old covenant, man struggled to offer something worthy to God but in the new covenant, it is our Lord Jesus Christ, who offers Himself as the perfect sacrifice, the only worthy sacrifice, through His own death. There is no hint of agony or humiliation when our Lord speaks of His death. In fact, He tells us that this is the Hour of His glory because when He is lifted up on the cross, He will draw all men to Himself. God’s glory will be shown not in a covenant written in stone but in the living, suffering and dying of His Son. But that’s not the end of the story. God’s glory is in the raising of our Lord Jesus to new life, the final triumph of love over death.

But before that new life can be born and bear fruit, the old life, like the grain of wheat, like the old covenant, has to die. So it is, with us. We have a choice. We can cling on to our old lives and all the broken promises we’ve made to God, afraid of what might happen if we say yes to God’s invitation to new life. Or we can begin again to let our old lives go as we renew our acceptance and commitment to the new Eternal Life found in the Risen Christ. This Passiontide, let’s enter fully into the mystery of the suffering of Jesus, let us renew our commitment to the new covenant which He has established with His death, so that we can also enter fully in the joy of His resurrection. “A pure heart create in me O God” and plant your Law deeply in our hearts.

God will provide

Second Sunday of Lent Year B

The faith of the protagonist in the first reading is legendary, so much so that his faith has been used as a model for Christians in the New Testament. Abraham’s walk with God began when God found him living in a pagan land and called him to leave his home and family to go to the place God would show him. After decades of walking with God, Abraham’s small faith grew through each high and low. He learned to trust God with his dreams and with his disappointments, with his gains and with his losses, with his successes and with his flops. In each stage, God proved faithful and Abraham’s faith took roots. And when his faith was firmly rooted in the Lord, God tested Abraham’s faith by asking him to make the greatest sacrifice of all - his son Isaac.

This is where we find ourselves in the story of Abraham. In the first reading, we have the moving account of God asking Abraham to offer his only son Isaac as a sacrifice. Abraham had waited decades for this miracle child. Right from the very start of his faith journey, God had promised to bless Abraham and to make his name great and blessed through his descendants. Now, how is this going to happen if God is going to take his only male heir? Abraham had been asking that same question for years when he and his wife Sarah remained childless until their old age. Yet, God has never disappointed in that first instance by giving him a child. So, now Abraham trusted that God will not disappoint him again.

At first glance, the story of Abraham and Isaac seems disturbing. Why would a loving God ask Abraham to sacrifice his only son in a manner similar to his pagan neighbours? Was He bringing unnecessary torment to a man who had already waited so long for a child? Upon closer inspection, it’s clear that God’s request to sacrifice Isaac was not unloving or capricious. Instead, it is a beautiful picture of Abraham’s faithfulness and God’s provision. In the past, Abraham had doubted God. He had tried to have children in his own way instead of waiting on God. By asking him to sacrifice Isaac, God was testing Abraham to see if he trusted Him. And he did: Abraham’s faith in God was so great that he was willing to give Him his only son, trusting that God could bring him back from the dead.

As God describes Isaac to Abraham, we hear Him describe His only Son, Jesus. The story of Isaac is both a picture of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his only son and a foreshadowing of God’s willingness to sacrifice His only Son for us. This was the Son that truly died and was brought back from the dead. The story of Abraham’s sacrifice, like no other, gives us a glimpse into what it cost the heart of God to sacrifice His only Son for us. Abraham’s story of the sacrifice of Isaac parallels Jesus in many ways. Both were well loved sons; both carried wood to the place of the sacrifice; both were promised that a lamb would be sacrificed, only for Jesus there was no ram in the thicket to take His place. He is the Lamb of God that would be sacrificed, the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world.

As we turn to the gospel, we see another set of parallels. This time, it is the disciples of the Lord who are being prepared for their greatest test - the passion and death of our Lord. The great reason for this transfiguration was to remove the scandal of the cross from the hearts of His disciples, that they will not lose faith and hope when they witness our Lord’s death. Unlike Abraham, their faith will falter. Unlike Abraham, they will flee the scene instead of accompanying our Lord to His great sacrifice. But because of the transfiguration and the resurrection, they will return.

As far back as our liturgical sources take us, we find the Church beginning Lent with the Gospels of Jesus’ Temptation in the desert and His Transfiguration on the mountain. Hence Christians’ Lenten experience replicates the God-guided experience of the people of Israel: their forty years of journeying in the desert, which tested their fidelity, and the community-founding theophany at Sinai which endowed them with the Torah of grace.

But there is also deliberate and stark parallelism between the story of the Transfiguration and our Lord’s Passion. The same three named disciples are handpicked by our Lord to be with Him and to witness both events, and on both occasions they remained confused. Our Lord was transfigured on one mountain and crucified on another. On both occasions, there is a revelation of our Lord’s identity as the Son of God. At the Transfiguration, it is God who speaks: “This is my Son.” But in the crucifixion, we find this idea finally taking hold and being repeated at last by a person. And what’s really remarkable, it’s not one of the disciples. It’s not even a Jew. He’s a Roman soldier. The enemy! The person, we least suspect. Declaring it at the point we least suspect. This Gentile centurion shows greater faith than even the disciples, because he alone witnessed the Lord’s death unlike His disciples.

If you have ever doubted God’s wisdom or questioned your faith because of some crises, do not lose faith but continue to trust in the Lord. Abraham did and he was rewarded. Beyond the scandal of the cross is the glory of the resurrection. We are assured as Abraham was, that God always provides. Like Abraham, we should have confidence in God, trusting Him with everything and being willing to sacrifice our best to Him. St Paul reassured us with the rhetorical question: “With God on our side who can be against us?” And the answer is no one and nothing! God not sparing His own Son for our sake is the pledge of His fidelity and love for us.

Though we may not fully understand His plans, God in His providence, supplies all our needs. We should never lose faith in His promises and Providence. Abraham says, “God will provide the sacrifice.” Not only did God provide a ram as a sacrifice for Abraham, but He provided a lasting sacrifice through His Son — for Abraham, and for all of us. All our Lord asks is that we have a trusting heart and be willing to “listen to Him.”

Our duty is to pray

Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

News from the battle front of the Israeli-Hamas conflict has brought to the fore something which most people would rather choose to avoid or hide. Death. Where death often hides its ugly visage behind the secure walls of hospitals and retirement homes, where cadavers in coffins are dressed up to make corpses look as if they are still very much alive albeit asleep, it takes a war to show that death is more than statistics and a distant isolated reality. As family and friends grieve, others swear vengeance and retribution, and spectators look on with shock and disbelief, many have asked these question: what has become of these casualties of war and violence, some of them mere babies and children? Is there more to life after their deaths?

If there is no life after death, then all that we can do for the dead is to eulogise them in obituaries, celebrate their lives in memorial services, immortalise them by building monuments in their name or fight wars to seek justice for what has been done to them. But that is not the case. We Catholics do not merely believe that there is life after death but that the soul is immortal. Though our physical bodies experience decay in the grave, the immortal souls continue to live on until they are given new spiritual and glorified bodies at the resurrection of the dead.

That is why today’s commemoration is not just meant to be a memorial of the dead. On the contrary, today is a day when we are reminded of our primary duty to the dead. We pray for the dead, and we do this, not because they need our prayers but because this is what the Holy Spirit has taught us to do. It is a gift of God, to allow us to share in His work in bringing His people to perfection. It is a special gift of hope from God, a great divine courtesy, but it is also a great responsibility on our part.

The earliest Scriptural reference to prayers for the dead comes in the second book of Maccabees. Since Protestants reject the idea of praying for the dead, this book is not included in their canon (collection of books in the Bible). The second book of Maccabees tells how Judas Maccabee, the Jewish leader, led his troops into battle in 163 B.C. When the battle ended he directed that the bodies of those Jews who had died be buried. As soldiers prepared their slain comrades for burial, they discovered that each was wearing an amulet taken as booty from a pagan Temple. This violated the law of Deuteronomy and so Judas and his soldiers prayed that God would forgive the sin these men had committed (II Maccabees 12:39-45).

Who are the dead that we are speaking of? The Church certainly cannot be speaking of the Saints in heaven who have no need of our prayers but whose prayers we are most certainly in need of. Likewise, we cannot be praying for the souls who are suffering the eternal separation of hell. If that separation is permanent and eternal, they can never benefit from our prayers. No amount of prayers can free a soul from hell. Rather, it is the souls in purgatory whom we should be praying for. Purgatory is not a place where bad people become good people, but where good people become perfected in love. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “all who die in God’s grace, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.” (CCC 1030)

We need to pray for the dead, for the souls in Purgatory, because this is a task put into our hands. Purgatory is not a remand centre where its occupants are awaiting judgment - whether some would be set free to join the denizens of heaven or sentenced to share the lot of the souls in hell. No, purgatory is where souls are prepared for heaven, it is where the work of God begun in their lives would be completed. God wills that we should share in this work through our prayers.

Purgatory is the process after death where these attachments, the umbilical cord which binds people to the old world, are cut so that people can be free to enter into the life to come. It is the hospital where the infection of sin is eliminated. It is the incubator where heart, lungs, and vision is made ready for a much larger life. Purgatory is not a kind of temporary hell. Hell is eternal separation from God, but purgatory facilitates our eternal union with Him. That is why when we speak of the Last Things, purgatory is not included in the traditional list of four (death, judgment, heaven and hell).

The dead are blessed, and their life is a blessing for us, because they have no life but the life of God, and He is the God of the living, not of the dead. Christ died and rose again that he might become the Lord of the living and the dead, as St Paul tells us (Romans 14:9). In praying for the dead, we are not merely witnessing to the Resurrection, we are instruments of the Resurrection. And by praying for them, we are attesting to the truth, “life is changed, not ended” at death.

So, today there is no point seething over the horrifying massacres of innocents nor try to figure out the culpability of who is responsible for their deaths. Instead of being glued to the daily news of war and retribution fuelled by anger, hatred and prejudice, let us instead pause to pray. In times of war, we often pray for the living, for the survivors, for a cessation to the killing. We forget that one of the most important things that we must do is to pray for the fallen and all the dead. We can’t know for sure where the dead or our beloved deceased are, unless they happen to be canonised saints. So when in doubt, we pray for them. There is no harm, in fact, there is great benefit, to pray for them.