In the One we are one

Seventh Sunday of Easter Year C

Not even an hour had passed after his election as the supreme Roman Pontiff, and when his name was announced from the central loggia of the Basilica of St Peter, both Catholics and non-Catholics began trawling the internet to gather as much background information as possible on this dark horse candidate which no one seems to have predicted or mooted. Despite delving into past social media postings, quotations from recent speeches and homilies, reading perhaps too much into his words and papal attire, Pope Leo XIV remains an enigma. We can only speculate as to the future of his pontificate from what he had said or done in the past, but there should be humility in admitting that the jury is still out as to how he is going to steer the Church, the barque of St Peter. I am in agreement with one commentator that we should just let “Leo be Leo” instead of trying to shape his pontificate in “our image and likeness.”

A clue that can throw light on his fundamental theological and pastoral position is his motto: “in Illo uno unum,” which translates as “in the One we are one.” The phrase is paradoxically both simple and profound. It is taken from Saint Augustine's Exposition on Psalm 127, where the great doctor of the Church explains that “although we Christians are many, in the one Christ we are one.” Being an Augustinian priest before his elevation to the episcopacy, it is natural that this self-styled “son of Augustine” should adopt his motto from the Augustinian tradition.

The Rule of St Augustine to which Augustinians live under and are guided by, is really big about discovering God in community. Augustine believed that shared love of something always generated love of one another. Shared affinity sparks synergy which leads to unity. And that’s the meaning of Pope Leo XIV's motto: “in illo Uno unum” - in the One we are one. We're made one by loving the One. Someone noted: “Fans of the same team like each other. Music lovers normally get along well. And Christians should love Christ passionately enough that it translates into loving each other.” The members of the Church are supposed to get along because of the One we love in common. We all stand and fight under one big banner that flies above us as a standard and identity marker of who we are and what we stand for.

Perhaps, this is a most necessary corrective in an age where the Catholic Church seems threatened by factionalism, where we witness members who are fiercely individualistic and tribalistic, where Catholics most often than not identify themselves with commonly used political labels, whether on the left or the right or in the middle, rather than in the foundation of our common bond as Catholics.

Just in case you think that this is exclusively an Augustinian thing, our Lord reminds us in today’s gospel that this is fundamentally a Christian thing, indeed a most Catholic thing: “May they all be one. Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me.” We are one because our Lord wills it and because He and the Father (and the Holy Spirit) are one. The Church, the Christian communion, has a fundamentally Trinitarian structure and foundation. And the truth of the Most Holy Trinity, Unity in Diversity, is most evident when expressed in authentic community living.

In today’s Gospel, taken from the High Priestly prayer of Jesus at the Last Supper, our Lord prays for the whole world, asking that the love with which the Father had lavished upon Him might also be ours, and that through us the Father’s love might be evident to the world. That is what He died for. This prayer is not just empty rhetoric. The prayer puts into words the very mission of Jesus, the project of Jesus, that is to bring about the community of humanity in communion with the Most Holy Trinity. “Holy Father, I pray not only for these, but for those also who through their words will believe in me. May they all be one.” The Lord’s death on the cross, the gift of Himself to us, was the embodiment of these intercessions; and His resurrection embodied the Father’s answer to that prayer.

And so, the prayer of our great High Priest, that “all be one,” transcends time and space. This unity is not meant to be sustained by a long history of human endeavour. In fact, just like in the past, human endeavour to preserve unity had often proven inadequate and the weak members of the Body of Christ had been responsible for causing great divisions and injury to the unity intended by Christ. We are not the primary agents of the Church’s unity. No, the bonds of unity among the disciples of Christ must be built on a much stronger and studier foundation. The unity of God’s people can never be fabricated by man. It must be generated by the Spirit of God. True authentic unity in the Church is never achieved by sharing an ideology or personality. Our unity, our communion, can only be found in our love for God. In Him we are one. Christians are drawn to one another because they are drawn to a common centre, Jesus Christ Himself. For that is the source of the power of that unity. As long as we remain separated from Him or His will through wilful sin, as long as we insist on our way of doing things or our opinions are the only correct ones, we will never be able to arrive at that unity.

As we await Pentecost and the return of the Holy Spirit, let us as members of the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, call upon the Bridegroom to come, for we wish to be united with Him and through Him, with each other. At the Mass of the Initiation of his Petrine Ministry, Pope Leo XIV made an impassioned call to unity, but it is a unity not built on sharing one ideology or another, but on Christ. Let us continue to pray for him and the Church whom he leads as we heed his words: “Look to Christ! Come closer to him! Welcome His word that enlightens and consoles! Listen to His offer of love and become His one family: in the one Christ, we are one.”

Obedience frees us to love

Sixth Sunday of Easter Year C

When I was a lay person gradually re-discovering my faith beyond the pages of catechism text books, experimenting with new ideas which I gleaned from the writings of Protestants and progressive theologians, I used to question what I thought was an unjust monopoly by the hierarchy over doctrines of faith and its more practical applications in canon law and the liturgy. I used to wonder why I had no say in the matter. In my hubris, I would imagine myself revising and outright reversing some of the doctrines, disciplines and rubrics if given the chance. The Church had to listen to me, not me listening to the Church.

As I look back at those years and the theological framework (more like ideological framework) which drove my moral compass and directed my actions, I never for once thought that I was being “disobedient” to the Church when I chose to depart from what I knew was normative. It was just that I didn’t take my obedience as some sort of blind docility. I finally found a name in my peculiar position when my close Jesuit friend told me that in his society, it’s called “creative fidelity,” and he cheekily explained that it is “being obedient without really being obedient.” That’s kind of an oxymoron. Such fidelity is creative, because it calls on the individual's freedom and resourcefulness. But in all honesty, the only person we are obedient to is ourselves, our ideals, our agenda, even though we claim and protest that we are still being obedient to God and His Church, it’s just that God and the Church haven’t “got it” yet like us. We can only hope that one day they will finally come around to realise that “I” was right.

Our Lord makes it clear in today’s gospel that if we truly love Him then we will show it by obeying His commands. To obey God is to love Him. Obedience is His love language and that is how He receives love. We may think of “obey” as a cold, dutiful verb, preferring “love” which feels more liberating and authentic. Recently, there had been many celebrities who proudly and publicly declared that they were finally free to love themselves and to break free of social norms. We can even hear the resounding finale of the musical “Wicked,” above their protests: “And nobody … is ever gonna bring me down!” One commentator exposes the hypocrisy of the statement: “this is not love, it’s called selfishness.” The world seems to believe that if we wish to be happy and to authentically love oneself, it means choosing not to love others or be accountable to them.

In contrast to this mantra of unfettered autonomy and disobedience, our Lord tells us, “If anyone loves me he will keep my word.” In fact, in an earlier verse He declares, “If you love me, keep my commands” (John 14:15). This simply sets the record straight - there is no contradiction between love and obedience. To love God is to obey Him. To obey Him is to love Him. To honour Him, serve Him, and please Him is the deepest cry of our hearts. That is what it means to be authentically “me.”

We are mistaken that obedience compromises our freedom to love God because it seems to compel. On the contrary, obedience is what makes us truly free to love. St Thomas Aquinas explains that by obedience we slay our own will by humbly giving way to another’s voice. He means it in that our wrong desires are done away with and that we only desire God’s will for us whatever it entails. It is a freeing of our own wills to desire what is good and to acknowledge that we do not always know what is best. As long as we are not obedient to God’s will, our true motivation, whether we are willing to admit it or not, is selfishness. Our supposed “love” would only be a disguise, a cover for our self-serving attitude.

But obedience does not only free us to love; love makes it possible for us to obey without compulsion. Love and obedience possess a symbiotic relationship. It will be easy to keep and obey God’s commands if I love Him. Now, it must be clear that the depth of my love isn’t dependent upon my obedience. My obedience however, is rooted in my love. The more I love God with all that I am, the more I want to obey Him, serve Him, and honour Him. It is the desire to love that drives me to obey.

It should be clear by now that obedience doesn’t always lead to love and desire for God, but love and desire for God always lead to obedience. Sometimes, we obey out of fear of being punished by God. Sometimes we express obedience as a kind of virtue signalling - it is performative, thinking that we can earn God’s love and other people’s admiration. But the truth is that God loved us while we were still sinners, undeserving of His love, and yet He shows His unconditional love by offering us the life of His Son. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). God’s love for us is transformative if we are willing to accept it. True love reshapes our inner being, reorientates our lives away from self to the other. Obedience is the outward result of an inwardly transformed heart. In a way, it is sacramental. When we obey God out of love, His commands are not burdensome, “For His yoke is easy and His burden is light.”

Obedience is a virtue that we are all called to have as Christians. Disobedience to God was part of the first sin of the human race; obedience, therefore, is its antidote. God wants us to obey Him and His commandments but also obey Him through other people who have authority over us. It is easy to say that we obey God, but the proof of such obedience is to be seen in our obedience to those who exercise legitimate authority as long as that authority is not in violation of God’s express will. We cannot choose to be obedient only when it is convenient to do so, when the decision of the one in authority aligns with my own personal ideas.

The reason obedience is so important is because obedience is the proof of love. Many people say they love God, but their lives don’t reflect it. It is hard for our human eye to measure just how much someone’s heart loves God, but we can measure it by their actions. God cannot be deceived. To say you love God and no one can judge your relationship with Him based on your actions is a deception. Just like you can tell when a young man is madly in love with a maiden by the way he swoons over her, he talks about her, and his grand romantic gestures towards her, so it is with a heart in love with God. Likewise, if you truly love God, your life will reflect it.

So, let us pray that the Lord will refine us from the inside out. May we only have one desire: To love the Lord with all that is in us. And that means, submitting our will to His. That my friends would be truly “defying gravity”, the gravity of my selfishness and self-centredness dragging me down, so that I may soar and reach the heavens.

Faith, Hope and Love

Fifth Sunday of Easter Year C

One of the greatest malaise of our times and our present generation is that we seem to be totally demotivated. In fact, our generation has been described as Generation D - the generation which is highly demotivated, disillusioned and most easily disappointed. Most people have lost fervour, direction or purpose in doing anything. From the student to the worker, from the person serving in a church ministry to the priest himself. We seem to have run out of fuel or new ways. And so, we have motivational speakers raking up millions just to give us shallow talking points to make us feel sufficiently good enough to carry on another day without having to drag our feet through the mud or just sit down and wallow in it.

Many of you may be hoping that a homily you hear from the priest on a Sunday would serve the same purpose, with perhaps less hype and without much injury to your wallet. Looking at our Sunday collections, I honestly wonder whether we priests have met up with even your lowest expectations.

But guess what? Today’s readings provide you with a treat. Scripture, the Church, offers you not just one but three essential points on how to reignite the fire in your life and keep you going. Nothing novel here but sometimes the best piece of advice would be the perennial truths we have forgotten but need the most. The three readings provide us with the remedy to our triple D problems - they are the three theological virtues - faith, hope and charity.

What is a virtue? The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that “a virtue is a habitual and firm disposition to do the good. It allows the person not only to perform good acts but to give the best of himself.” As you can see, virtue is not just a lack of doing what is evil. To refrain from looting, burning, and name-calling does not make us virtuous. The CCC (1804) says “The virtuous man is he who freely practices the good.” Personal virtue is the key to improving the world, finding happiness, and helping other people to be good and happy too; yet the ultimate end of virtue is even greater than these great goals: “the goal of a virtuous life is to become like God”. (CCC 1803)

Virtues can be categorised into basically two large categories. The Cardinal human virtues are four: temperance, fortitude, justice, and prudence. They are acquired through human effort, like how one builds up one’s muscles to regular and appropriate exercise. But today, we wish to focus on three theological virtues which are infused in each person at baptism: faith, hope and charity. According to the CCC (1813), “They inform and give life to all the moral virtues. They are infused by God into the souls of the faithful to make them capable of acting as his children and of meriting eternal life.” All these three theological virtues relate directly to God and are necessary for a relationship with Him. With faith, we believe in God and all He has revealed to us. With hope, we recognise that God is our fulfillment. We trust in the promises of God and desire His kingdom and eternal life with Him. Through charity “we love God above all things for his own sake and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God” (CCC 1822).

In the first reading taken from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear of the exploits of St Paul and St Barnabas, the earliest missionaries of the Church. Their mission was to strengthen faith for those who already believed but were now facing hardships in the form of opposition and persecution, and also to plant the seeds of faith among those who had not heard the gospel of Christ. To ensure that faith continued to flourish, it was essential that they established stable community of Christians under the leadership of persons whom they have appointed. Though faith is a theological virtue that is given by God, it must be planted with preaching and witnessing of the gospel, and then nourished, tended and strengthened. This is an important reminder to us that we too are called to share in Christ’s mission to witness the gospel and thereafter to mentor and accompany others as we grow together in faith.

In the second reading, we have a powerful glimpse at the New Jerusalem which awaits the faithful after their long and arduous sojourn on this earth. “Here God lives among men. He will make His home among them … He will wipe away all tears from their eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness.” Such a spectacular vision is necessary because the gift of eternal life promised by Christ can be so easily obscured and forgotten in the midst of the troubles, suffering and hardships we have to endure on earth. When faced with obstacles which drag us down, where do we find the energy to press on, the second wind to finish the race? The answer lies in the virtue of hope. Hope is the strongest source of courage and strength. If you trust God’s promises of the incomparable happiness of Heaven, you can give up any earthly good or endure any earthly trial for that.

In the Gospel, we hear our Lord present to us His disciples the new commandment of love, to love one another as Christ loved us. Since the world brandishes the word love indiscriminately, we often get confused with the concept of love in its many expressions and incarnations. It is clear that the love which our Lord references here is more than just “being nice”, or “tolerant”, or “affectionate. Now there’s nothing wrong with tolerance, or affection or basic decency. But these, in themselves, are not the love that our Lord taught, the love He lived. His love transcends mere feelings of affection, and it’s exponentially harder than simple kindness or even basic tolerance. People don’t get crucified for being nice.

So, what is this love that the Lord says is the be-all and end-all of human living? This is a kind of love, in the words of Pope Benedict, that “seeks the good of the beloved…ready, and even willing, for sacrifice.” Love is giving one’s very self freely to and for the other, even when it hurts the giver. This is the love the Lord taught. This is the love He lived, all the way to the cross. Make no mistake: there’s nothing wishy-washy or mushy about this love.

What the world believes in today is not a faith in God but in science and in man’s resources. What the world promotes today is optimism, a false substitute for hope. What the world calls love today, is a counterfeit of love - it is self-preservation rather than self-giving. What passes as faith, hope and love today, is another excuse for sin. But the truth is that sin has nothing to do with faith, hope and love. In fact, sin is the exact opposite of authentic faith, hope and love. Sin obscures faith, drags us into despair and distorts and destroys love.

So, we must be like the missionaries St Paul and St Barnabas in the first reading – we must never tire of putting “fresh heart into the disciples, encouraging them to persevere in the faith.” If the road seems long and the work seems dreary, keep your eyes on the finishing line - the new heavens and the new earth, where every tear will be wiped away, death and mourning will be no more. But until that day, let us do everything with love. Love compels us Christians to preach the Good News in and out of season, even when it is unpopular to do so. Seems simple enough but you and I know how challenging it is to live out the demands of love, which call us to not only pay lip service but sacrifice for one whom we profess to love. Faith, hope and love are what motivate us to move forward even when the odds are against us, when the challenges seem impossible and when all seems lost and hopeless.

Think and Feel with the Church

Fourth Sunday of Easter Year C
Good Shepherd Sunday
Pilgrimage 13 - (Anticipated Mass in Lisbon)

As we come to the end of our pilgrimage, I would like to thank all of you for being good sheep that have listened attentively and obediently to the voice of your shepherd. Some would call it blind docility. Others would call it basic survival skills. Whatever may have been the reason for your exquisite cooperation, it has been a blessing and a privilege to have guided you through this entire journey of faith and discovery. We are thankful that we have lost no one on this trip.

What has been the secret of us staying safe, staying focused, staying on the right path? Our Lord provides us with the answer: “The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice.” Listening is at the heart of the Christian life. But if we wish to listen, we should start with obeying. Obedience comes from the Latin “to listen” (obedire). Obedience, according to St Augustine, is “the mother and guardian of all other virtues.” It ensures a life of goodness because it entails hearing and following God, the source of all goodness. This obedience is not for some in the Church but for all, from the child kneeling in the pew to the Pope presiding in Rome.

God alone is this obedience owed and given, but it is given to God through the Church because God gives Himself to us through the Church. Here is where many begin to engage in hypocritical casuistry. Some would claim that they are obedient to God but not to men, like the Pope or bishops, or man-made institutions like the Church. But God places us in a Church as a part of the body where Christ is the head, and we are the parts. This is why our Lord chose not to appear to Thomas in the gospel of Divine Mercy Sunday until he was prepared to return to the community of believers, the Church. As much as the Church is maligned and judged for the failures of her shepherds and members, there is no denying that our Lord instituted the Church to be the redemptive tool of the world, to continue to shepherd His flock, with Him as the Head and the body, with all its different parts working together to bring redemption to the world.

One phrase that captures this principle of listening to the voice of the Shepherd through His Church is, “to think with the Church;” or, in St Ignatius of Loyola’s formulation, sentire cum ecclesia. “Sentire”, of course, is not simply “to think,” which in English is often meant in a cold, rational way. Other words that are used to translate sentire are sense, feel, and perceive. “Feel” is a great translation that can also carry connotations of “think” except that “feel” can also imply the lack of rational thought.

What does it really mean to “think with the Church”? For one thing, thinking with the Church means giving a unique respect to our bishops and to the Pope. A filial love for our shepherds is a necessary expression of wanting to listen intimately to the voice of the Good Shepherd. We must, however, acknowledge that sometimes shepherds speak with their own voices rather than with that of Christ and the Holy Spirit. And this is the reason why confusion, heresy and even schism can break the unity of the Church and disrupt her mission.

We must, therefore, make a distinction between what is and is not meant to think and feel with the Church. First, it might be helpful to describe what the Church is not. The lay faithful are not pawns who are to take marching orders from their priests and bishops, nor bishops from the Pope. The Church is not a secret organisation where information (or revelation) is possessed in full only at the top and then is distributed selectively and imperfectly throughout. To think with the Church does not mean “to let the Church think for you.” Discernment is required.

But discernment without a guide or standard may lead us to error, that is to substitute Christ’s teachings with our own personal opinions. This, then, is precisely why the Magisterium, the teaching authority of the Church as a guardian and servant of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, is so necessary if one desires to think with the Church. Magisterial interventions serve to guarantee the Church’s unity in the truth of the Lord. They aid her to ‘abide in the truth’ in the face of the arbitrary character of changeable opinions and are an expression of obedience to the Word of God. The Magisterium exists precisely for the purpose of ensuring that the Church can authoritatively distinguish what derives from faith and what is merely an opinion. Even Popes and bishops must submit to the Magisterium as faithful servants as much as they are the very teachers whose teaching authority flows therefrom.

Episcopal and papal authority depends on obedience to what has been revealed and handed down by means of the Holy Spirit. To be a teacher of the faith is first and foremost to be a learner of it. Though bishops and the Pope have specific teaching roles, the whole Church is a listening Church, a learning Church and so the whole Church is the teaching Church. Our mission is to conform to what has been taught so that we in turn may be true teachers of the word. A person ceases to be a teacher of the faith when he ceases to let himself be instructed by universal tradition. Our teaching must be shaped by our obedience to universal tradition and never by our own ideas, by our own standing, or by our own times. This is what it means to listen to the Good Shepherd instead of talking or shouting over Him.

During his papacy, Pope Francis proposed that we follow the synodal path of becoming a listening church. That is indeed a noble idea. But to be truly listening, we must first be ready to listen to our Lord who has spoken through scripture and Tradition through the ages. If not, we will end up listening to the spirit of the world, instead of the Spirit of Christ and be misled ourselves and in turn lead others astray. We can have a listening Church only if we have an obeying Church. Obey; listen; proclaim. God has spoken; our task is to hear that Word and speak from it. We are not to speak from our times but to our times from God’s Word. Only then, can we be assured of being partakers of eternal life and not be lost.

As we depart from Lisbon for home, continue to listen carefully to the voice of the Shepherd in whatever situation you may find yourself. You came here as pilgrims. You will leave here as missionaries bringing the good news of Jesus Christ with you to the ends of the earth. But first, let us start with our neighbourhood and parish!

Call to Conversion

Third Sunday of Easter Year C
Pilgrimage Day 7 - Basilica of St Ignatius (Chapel of Conversion)

The theme of conversion rings within these walls. An attic was converted into a hospital room, a tormented fallen soldier is converted into a saint, or at least the beginning of one. Dreams of valour were converted into a new zeal for Christ. A mercenary soldier was converted into a missionary and charismatic reformer of the Church.

In this room, with its dark wooden beams and leaden windows, Ignatius of Loyola recovered from his grisly wounds received at the battle of Pamplona. Spirit beaten, body shattered, leg broken and mended horribly, leaving him crippled for the rest of his life, Ignatius of Loyola hovered near death for months, crying out against the cruel fate that saw his dreams of glory and honour at court all-but-extinguished. Sitting in the musty silence, the occasional creak of the centuries-old floor the only accompaniment, you can almost hear his anguished screams of pain and despair, the hushed footsteps of doctors and attendants rushing about to save his life, a life that he no longer recognised. His life would have been quite different if his body and pride had not been broken. Perhaps strength doesn't reside in having never been broken, but in the courage required to grow strong in the broken places. As surgeons would tell you, that where a bone is broken and heals, it becomes the strongest part of the bone.

Our gospel for this Sunday, also provides us with another living testimony of this truth - that we do grow stronger in grace in places where we have been broken by sin. The gospel provides us with the post end-credits of the Gospel of John, where we see a disillusioned Peter, who has abandoned his mission and vocation to return to his earlier profession, being brought to life once again by the Risen Lord. Our Lord could have gone in search of fresh candidates to continue His mission of building and tending His Church but instead chooses to return to the one who had denied Him, abandoned Him and who even now leads others astray by guiding them to return to the work of being fishers of fish rather than of men.

Both stories, that of Peter’s and Ignatius’, provide us with some important insights into the process and anatomy of conversion.

Firstly, conversion is an invitation given by our Lord to all. It’s much easier for us to think that conversion is for some, but not us. The sinner, the unbeliever, the lapsed Catholic, the one who has betrayed and hurt us - they need conversion. But not us. Heaven forbid. But conversion is a constant ever-developing process of us growing closer to the Lord. It is a call to repentance, because everyone of us are sinners. It is a call to sanctification because none of us are finished products, just work in progress. In this chapel, Ignatius experienced a conversion but it wasn’t his last experience, just the first. Likewise, though Peter seemed to have been “resurrected” and restored to his mission and vocation, scripture and tradition tells us of other instances where he would falter again, needing a wake-up call to return to his original vocation.

Secondly, the reason why the Lord calls us to conversion is because He loves us. So often we have bought into the lie that to call someone to conversion is being judgmental and unloving. In the West, conversion therapy, that is helping someone deal with delusions as regard to their sexuality, is considered a form of hate crime. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. It is precisely God’s terrific love for us that leads to the call to change, to conversion, to metanoia. God does not love us because we are already so good. Instead, He loves us in order to make us good, to bring us back to the goodness that was originally meant for us but that we have lost.

Thirdly, there is no conversion without a crisis. The Chinese term for crisis is made up of two characters – one character means danger or risk and the other, opportunity. Every crisis, therefore, is an opportunity for good, for transformative change, for strengthening of our resolve and character. So, rather than regard a crisis as a cruel curse imposed on us by a capricious God, we should view every crisis as a signpost sent by God to help us make the proper correction before it is too late. It could be as dramatic as a crisis which ends a career or a dream as in the case of Ignatius, or death of a mentor as in the case of Peter. When crisis hits, we have a choice. We can choose the path of resentment or we can choose the path of renewal.

We have passed the midway point of our pilgrimage but have we seen the change, transformation and conversion needed to complete the rest of the journey and beyond? Just like Peter, many of us may have lost sight of our calling, our initial fervour. Peter had lost sight of what Christ had originally spoken over him; that on him, the Rock, the Lord would build His church. We have lost sight of what happened at our baptism, we became living stones which are to be built into a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Failure, disillusionment and forgetfulness comes to us all. But our Lord shows us that in the resurrection, and because of the resurrection, restoration is possible. The resurrection reminds us that faith can emerge from the ashes of doubt, as life breaks forth from the prison of death. This is the foundation of our Christian hope.

The problem with many of us is that we seem to express greater faith in the severity of our brokenness than in the grace of God to restore us to wholeness. Many are afraid to look into the piercing eyes of our Lord, for fear that they may see judgment. Others believe that there is no getting up from the royal tumble down the ladder of perfection and the only option would be to stay down, stay safe, instead of getting up and risk being hit by the bullets of criticism and ridicule. But the story of Ignatius’ conversion and Peter’s restoration remind us that failure need not be the ending written for life’s script. Perhaps, if we have the courage, the hope and the faith to peer into those tender eyes of our Merciful Lord, we would catch sight of something quite different, something that would surprise us – an invitation to surrender all to Him, our heavy baggage, our burdened conscience and our broken and wounded past.

Above the altar, on one of the great beams is an inscription, both in Basque and Spanish, which translates as: “Here, Ignatius of Loyola surrendered to God”. Truly, it is surrender that this room demands. As we enter this room we too are asked - just as was Ignatius - to be prepared to surrender: to be converted, to let expectations fall away and see not just ourselves and our own needs, but the needs of the Church. Centuries ago, this room was the place where a broken, despondent St Ignatius answered God’s call to set the world on fire. And centuries before that on the shores of the lake of Galilee, our first Pope gazed into the charcoal fire and received a challenge from the Lord to rekindle the fire of mission in his heart. Their conversion led to the conversion of many in the world. Today, from this room let us go forth to keep that fire burning so that the Church and the world may be set ablaze with God’s love.

As Newborn Babes

Second Sunday of Easter
Divine Mercy Sunday

It can be a real challenge to wrap your head around the fact that this Sunday goes by many names. Some would argue – way too many. Today is the Second Sunday of Easter but it is also known as the Sunday within the Octave of Easter. In the extraordinary form and in the pre-1969 calendar, it was also called Low Sunday (in relation to last Sunday, Easter). And since the pontificate of St John Paul II, it has received this eponymous title - Divine Mercy Sunday. As we continue to pray for Pope Francis of happy memory, we too remember how mercy had been one of the major lietmotifs of his pontificate. 

But my favourite name for this Sunday is derived from the incipit of the entrance antiphon for this Sunday. Quasimodo Sunday. It is taken from 1 Peter 2:2 and in Latin, it begins with these words: “quasi modo geniti infantes” or in English, “like newborn infants.” This is the full text of the antiphon: “As newborn babes, desire the rational milk without guile, that thereby you may grow unto salvation: If so, be you have tasted that the Lord is sweet.”

The name Quasimodo Sunday may not be familiar to many of you, but the name is not unfamiliar. Sounds like an oxymoron, right? Well, if you recall Victor Hugo’s novel, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” (or the Disney animated version) you will remember that the main protagonist’s name is Quasimodo, the eponymous Hunchback of the story. For those not familiar with the storyline, this tale of love, chivalry and strange beauty is about this unlikely hero, the severely deformed hunchback, with a pristinely beautiful and innocent heart and soul, who lived in the rafters of Paris’ famous Cathedral of Notre Dame.

In Hugo’s novel, Quasimodo, rejected by his parents for his deformities, is abandoned inside Notre Dame Cathedral, at a place where orphans and unwanted children were dropped off. Monseigneur Claude Frollo, the Archdeacon, finds the child on “Quasimodo Sunday” and “called him Quasimodo; whether it was that he chose thereby to commemorate the day when he had found him, or that he meant to mark by that name how incomplete and imperfectly moulded the poor little creature was,” Hugo wrote.

In a strange way, the character Quasimodo, who risked his own life to save another whom he loves, is a type of Christ. And like Quasimodo, Christ also appears before His disciples today, arrayed not in gold and resplendent garments, but carrying the trophies of His victory on the cross - His wounds, His deformities. But unlike Quasimodo, our Lord was not born with these deformities, for He is the unblemished Paschal Lamb. These are the scars of the torture He endured for our sake. Instead of an unscarred and unblemished appearance, He chooses to retain His ugly wounds as a sign, not of His failure, but of His victory over sin and death. His wounds are supremely beautiful because they are visible marks of His love for us, the receipt for the price He had paid for us, the booty of a cosmic battle which He had fought and won for us.

Yes, in a way, all of us are incomplete and imperfectly moulded. We desire and hunger for the sacramental milk which only our Mother, the Church, can give. We have been deformed by sin, poor orphans abandoned and languishing in this Valley of Tears, waiting to be picked up by our Heavenly Father and to be adopted by Him. In His mercy, He has given us His only begotten Son, the Divine Mercy, not only to be our companion but to exchange places with us. Our Lord Jesus, the sinless and perfect Son of God, Beauty ever ancient ever new, chose to take our ugliness upon Himself in order to confer upon us the beauty of sanctifying grace. He took our sentence of death, in order to grant us the repeal of life. He has done this through the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, symbolised by the water and blood which flowed out through His wounded side, the source being His Most Sacred Heart beating in love for us.

But St Faustina also saw in that gushing spring of water and blood something else - grace and mercy. This is what she wrote: “All grace flows from mercy, and the last hour abounds with mercy for us. Let no one doubt concerning the goodness of God; even if a person’s sins were as dark as night, God’s mercy is stronger than our misery.” (Diary of St. Faustina, number 1507) Even the ugliest Quasimodos in this world can be potentially the most beautiful beings seen through the lenses of grace and mercy because “God’s mercy is stronger than misery!”

In Victor Hugo’s novel, as a group of old women hunkered over to examine the little monstrosity that had been left near the vestibule of the Cathedral, one of them remarked, “I'm not learned in the matter of children ...but it must be a sin to look at this one." Could this remark be referring to us too? This is who we were, inheritors of Original Sin, prisoners and victims of our own sinful misdeeds, deformed by our iniquities, that it would be a sin for anyone to look at us. But then, God looked upon us, not with vile disgust or hatred but with love and mercy, and His “mercy is stronger than misery.” God offered us atonement and pardon for our sins. God offered us His incalculable mercy by offering us His son to take our place on the cross. As Saint Paul assures us, “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). We have seen this God, we have tasted Him, we have been redeemed and saved through His grace and mercy, and we can proudly acclaim that we have tasted the Lord and can testify that He is sweet!

Start all over, make a new beginning

Easter Sunday

Some folks are simply morning people. They go to bed early and wake up in the wee hours of the morning while everyone else is still tucked snugly into their beds counting sheep. I’m not one of those folks. I follow a diametrically opposite regime - late nights and waking up just in time for morning rituals and Mass. I’ve often admired the members of our morning Mass animating team who get up early every morning to prepare our chapel for daily Mass and still have time to spare for morning devotions and Lauds before Mass. I guess they too would have been the first to discover the good news of what had happened on that first Easter morning, while the rest of us are still shaking off the slumber of the previous night.

Well, Mary Magdala in today’s gospel was indeed rewarded with her early morning ritual on this very day over two thousand years ago: “It was very early on the first day of the week and still dark, when Mary of Magdala came to the tomb.” Only in John’s account is Mary pictured alone. She is accompanied by other women in the other gospel accounts of the resurrection. It would make more sense for a gaggle of women, for strength lies in numbers, to make their way to this place, to a cemetery, what more a place guarded by soldiers. But St John the Evangelist is content to state that Mary made this journey alone. Perhaps, it was too early for the others or they had stayed away due to fear for their own safety. The male disciples were no where to be seen. They must be drowning in sorrow, grieving over the death of the Lord or perhaps were still held captive by fear.

Mary was there because of unfinished business. On Good Friday, we heard at the end of the long Passion reading, how our Lord was hurriedly prepared for burial, wrapped in a shroud filled with spices, “a mixture of myrrh and aloes.” In the other gospels, it was noted that it was done in such a hurry because the sabbath, which prohibited such rituals, was about to begin and there was no time to complete what needed to be done. Whatever may have been the circumstances, Mary was there because she had unfinished business. Firstly, to complete in a more thorough manner the dictates of Jewish burial customs and secondly, to bring some closure to her own profoundly deep sense of loss.

Mary was there early in the morning just as we are here this morning because it is insufficient to close an episode of our lives after the death of a loved one with his or her funeral. Sometimes we believe that if the person who hurt us passes away, like a parent or spouse, their death will bring peace to our lives. However, in reality it usually brings more sorrow and regret because it leaves us with a sense of things being left unfinished. Funerals can be beautifully consoling experiences, bringing solace to the grieving, camaraderie among the survivors, healing to scars opened by the barb of loss, but it can never truly bring a closure to the wounds we experience both emotionally and psychologically.

If funerals are the last thing we can do for the one we have lost, there is much unfinished business that needs attention and further resolution. Our commemoration of the Lord’s life cannot end with Good Friday. It must find fulfilment and completion on Easter Sunday. And that is why Good Friday is leavened with the promise of Easter. Easter is when our Lord completes His work of redemption. On Easter, our Lord completes the unfinished business often left hanging in our lives.

There’s a song from one of my favourite artists from the 80s and 90s, Tracy Chapman, that has a stanza in it that goes like this:

“The whole world’s broke, it ain’t worth fixing
It’s time to start all over, make a new beginning
There’s too much pain, too much suffering
Let’s resolve to start all over, make a new beginning.”

Easter means the “making right” of things that have gone wrong: the forgiveness of sins; the reversal of death; the repair of broken relationships with God, each other and creation. This is not just an elusive ideal but a reality. Christ’s resurrection has made this certain. This is the powerful message of Easter that continues to unravel its mysteries over the course of our lives. This is what we look forward to, a new creation. A transformation. We will not merely be going back to normal, we will be going forward to something different, something new. It’s an illusion to think that we’re going to return to the way life was before. There is no going back. The past is an empty tomb. Our Lord is Risen, He is not there!

What unfinished business is waiting for us? Is it a conversation we’ve been afraid to have with someone? Is it a decision we’ve been putting off? Is it a relationship with someone that needs mending? Today’s message is really that none of these questions need receive a silent answer nor lead us to a dead end. We are challenged once again to engage the unfinished business before us and live the resurrection—through the actions we can take, attitudes we can adopt, ready to allow the Lord to write the next chapter in our own gospel. And also, ready to discover how the risen Jesus is present NOW, in our time and place. As St Paul assures us, be “confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil 1:6). Christ IS risen. He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

The Ultimate Reboot

Easter Vigil of the Holy Night

Some of you may know that I had just completed a cataract operation on both eyes. When the new multi-focal lens was inserted, I had issues adjusting to the darkened environment. I jokingly informed Fr Bonaventure that I’ve seen my last Easter Vigil Mass which begins in the dark and he happily quipped, “Yeah! I now have a chance to do the English Masses!” He was kidding as you can tell. The most unnerving part of the operation was to be told that a machine used for the procedure had to be rebooted. In fact, as my right eye was kept opened by a speculum whilst glaring into a blinding bright light above me, the only thing I could hear was my doctor telling the nurse and the technician to reboot the machine, not just once but several times until it finally restarted again. I’ve rebooted many devices in my life, my desktop computer, my laptop, my tablet and even my phone. Nothing comes close to this experience.

But after the agony of waiting for the machine to reboot, all the anxiety and discomfort and fears simply dissipated. With my cataracts removed, I now see with new eyes! That’s what Easter feels like - after a hard reset, the whole system gets rebooted, the whole fallen creation gets rebooted, the story of humanity which ends in failure gets rebooted. You need to end the cycle of sin and destruction before you can begin a new cycle of redemption and reconciliation.

Today we conclude this shortest and yet most intense and sacred time in our Church’s liturgical calendar - the Paschal Triduum. And though it may seem to be an ending, it is actually a beginning of many things. The Paschal Triduum is that hard reset and reboot which history and creation most needed. This should not surprise us as we had affirmed at the start of tonight’s liturgy, that Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and end of all things. Beginnings and endings are not two realities but one in Christ. As T. S. Eliot poignantly writes: “And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time” (The Four Quartets, “Little Gidding”).

Everything about this vigil’s liturgy, “the mother of all vigils,” speaks of beginnings and endings, which takes us on a journey from birth to rebirth, from creation to re-creation, from darkness to light, from death to life. From the blessing and procession of the Paschal Candle, the singing of the Easter proclamation to our marathon set of readings, we are pulled into this journey of transformation, not as mere spectators but as participants. Our Gospel begins with these words: “on the first day of the week, at the first sign of dawn…” This is an extraordinary text – so subtle and sophisticated. But it begs the question: what does it mean? The answer is found at the beginning, in the first reading.

The first day of the week mentioned in the Gospel, corresponds to the first day of creation in Genesis; and the lighting of the Paschal Candle in the midst of darkness matches the first act of creation, where God created light out of darkness. St Luke’s recapitulation of the creation narrative goes on. In Genesis, God creates the first human being, the first man, but at Easter, our Lord Jesus emerges from the womb of the tomb to be the firstborn of the new creation. God created all things, including man, and when He was finished, He looked at all He had made, and declared that it was “very good.” His original creation, however, was sullied and damaged. Once Adam chose to go against God’s Will, sin entered God’s created world, and sickness, decay, and death were introduced to humanity. God’s creation has suffered sin’s effects ever since.

Fast-forward to the time of Jesus’ life on earth. God the Son, the Word of God, entered humanity as a child born of Mary. He was fully God and fully man. His mission was to defeat the sin and death which had entered humanity through Adam. This second Adam lived a sinless life, was condemned and executed as a criminal, and was buried in a tomb. Three days later, He rose from the dead! He was resurrected! His resurrection was the first phase of God’s new creation, God’s cosmic reboot! God created a new kind of human existence—a human body which was raised from the dead and transformed by the power of God into a body that is no longer affected by death, decay, and corruption. Pope Emeritus Benedict described the resurrection of Christ as “something akin to a radical evolutionary leap, in which a new dimension of life emerges, a new dimension of human existence. Indeed, matter itself is remoulded into a new type of reality. The man Jesus, complete with His body, now belongs totally to the sphere of the divine and eternal.”

But then, there is the second phase in God’s plan of recreation. As Christians and as part of God’s new creation through our baptism, we can look forward to the time when, upon Christ’s return, He will raise our bodies from the dead! We will receive resurrected bodies like His. In these resurrected bodies, we will clearly see humanity as God intended it to be.

God’s new creation will not end with the resurrection of our bodies but goes beyond that. The third phase will involve all of creation being renewed as well. When Adam sinned, God cursed the ground. The world was no longer the sublime place God made it to be. Sin changed that. But because of Christ’s death and resurrection, His victory over sin and death, God will renew the entire world - He will remake it into “a new heaven and a new earth.”

The new creation which we speak of, is not just some static and unchanging reality. As part of the new creation, God’s Spirit is regularly renewing us, changing us, helping us to put on the mind of Christ. Dear Catechumens, today is not the end of your journey. It is not graduation day. It is an ending of a period of preparation, but this is only a beginning. Today is the day you will experience a hard reboot of your lives. What is fallen, will be redeemed. What is disfigured by sin would be beautified by grace. Vision clouded by the spiritual cataract of sin, can be renewed. As you allow the Holy Spirit to guide you, you will continually grow and mature in your spiritual lives in order that you may be renewed and become more Christlike.

Each year, we recapitulate this Easter story and each year it recreates us. It returns us to the ground of our being. We are asked to die to ourselves so that we may be reborn in Christ. We are given the chance to start over. Every Easter, we are reminded that we can bring all that befalls us to be reintegrated, redeemed, and recreated as we bring it back to our living source: Christ yesterday and today, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega; All time belongs to Him and all the ages, to Him be glory and power, through every age and for ever. Amen.

Inwards to Outwards, Downwards to Upwards

First Sunday of Lent Year C

People have often noted that our society has become increasingly Godless or more atheistic. Is this true? There are countless of studies done in the West that seems to support this proposition. When surveyed, the majority of individuals state that they don’t identify with any religion. As Chesterton said, “He who does not believe in God will believe in anything.” Just recently, Lady Gaga when receiving her Grammy award, proudly declared: “music is love,” perhaps a deliberate spin on St John’s declaration that “God is love.”

We may be tempted (forgive the obvious pun) to focus merely on the temptations of Christ on this First Sunday of Lent, but the readings actually take us along another path of reflexion - what do we really believe in - the faith which we profess. You will notice that during the season of Lent and Easter, it is strongly recommended that the longer Nicene Creed is substituted with the shorter Apostles’ Creed. The reason for this substitution is not due to the brevity of the latter since our liturgies of Lent are typically lengthened by the Rites associated with the RCIA. The real reason is that the Apostles’ Creed is the creed used at baptism and the focus of both Lent and Easter is the Sacrament of Initiation, which begins with Baptism.

That is the reason why we have two ancient examples of professions of faith in today’s readings, the first predating Christianity, while the second is one of the earliest Christian creeds.

In the first reading, we have the ancient profession of faith which focuses on what God has done for the Israelites during the Exodus. Moses instructs the people that this creed is to be said by the priests when making an offering on behalf of the people, reminding them of the reason why the sacrifice is made. They should never forget that God is the very reason for their existence, their survival, and their freedom.

In the second reading, St Paul explains that the Christian profession of faith should focus on our belief in Jesus as Lord and what God has done by raising Him from the dead: “If your lips confess that Jesus is Lord and if you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you will be saved. By believing from the heart you are made righteous; by confessing with your lips you are saved.”

Finally, in the gospel we come to realise that creeds are not just meant to be propositional (mere statements of belief) but are meant to be practical (to be lived out). Here we have the three temptations posed by Satan to the Lord. St Luke’s ordering of the temptations is slightly different from Matthew’s version (the second temptation is switched with the third). On the face of it, these three temptations appear to have nothing to do with our profession of faith but are in fact an inversion, a parody of our fundamental faith. Satan, the adversary of God and man, is attempting to lure our Lord into making a mockery of faith by professing a faith which places trust in His own resources and even in the devil, as opposed to placing our trust and faith in God. Before we affirm our faith in God, we must renounce our dependence on Satan.

This is the reason why during the rite of Baptism and the renewal of baptismal promises made at Easter and before one receives the Sacrament of Confirmation, the renunciation of sin is a necessary prelude to the profession of faith and both precedes the administering of the sacrament of baptism and confirmation. Because of the renunciation of sin and profession of faith, which forms one rite, the elect would not be baptised merely passively but will receive this great sacrament with the active resolve to renounce error and hold fast to God.

As I had mentioned earlier, St Luke’s ordering of the temptations differ from that of St Matthew’s. Unlike St Matthew, Luke concludes the list of temptations with the temptation that takes place within the Temple precinct and not on a mountaintop. Here, we witness the audacity of the devil to challenge God’s sovereignty, the ultimate basis of all temptations. These temptations are not merely luring Christ or each of us to place our trust in the cravings of the flesh or the material things of the world. Sin ultimately turns us away from God. The devil is actually selling us this lie - trust in your own desires, trust in your own power, trust in your own strength - because trusting in God is wholly insufficient! It is never enough!

The gospels in setting out these three temptations are trying to juxtapose to the experience of the Israelites in the wilderness with our Lord Jesus’ own experience. The three temptations of Jesus recall the three failures of the Israelites in the desert. Where the devil tempts the Lord to turn stones into bread, we see how the Israelites complained about the lack of food in the desert. Where the devil places our Lord on a mountain and promises Him lordship over the world if only He would bow and worship him, the Israelites questioned the lordship of God and instead worshipped an idol, a bronze calf. Where the devil tempts our Lord to test God, the devil had succeeded in getting the Israelites to test God while they were in the desert.

Satan was tempting Jesus to recapitulate the Israelites' lack of trust in God. Jesus would have nothing of it. In one of the most beautiful lines in Sacred Scripture, the letter to the Hebrews tells us, "We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet never sinned" (Heb 4:15). The story ends with our Lord’s victory. Temptation does not necessarily lead to sin. If we hold fast to the Lord, and rely on His grace and strength, we will be victorious. Lent is the season when we are called to recapitulate our Lord’s victory over sin rather than the Israelites’ failure. The Church aids us in the battle by recommending the three practices of Lent – fasting, almsgiving and prayer. The practices of Lent are the remedy to the temptations of the Evil One.

At the end of this Lenten season, we will celebrate and profess the mystery of faith - the death and the resurrection of the Lord. At Easter, the priest will invite you to renew your baptismal promises with these words: “Dear brethren, through the Paschal Mystery we have been buried with Christ in Baptism, that we may walk with him in newness of life. And so, let us renew the promises of Holy Baptism, which we once renounced Satan and his works and promised to serve God in the holy Catholic Church.” We turn away from being ‘inwards and downwards’ to being ‘outwards and upwards.’ Having rejected Satan and all his works and empty promises, let us with firm conviction profess our faith publicly in God the Father and His works, in God the Son, Jesus Christ, and His works, and in God the Holy Spirit and His works. Those works, which the Lord has begun in us, will continue in us throughout this season of Lent and beyond until the Lord completes it when we go forth to meet Him as He returns in glory.

The Second Pascha

Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Today, Roman Catholics throughout the world celebrate the great Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Our brothers and sisters from the Eastern Christian tradition, on the other hand, celebrate the event as the Dormition, or falling-asleep, of the Holy Theotokos, the Mother of God. From ancient times, this event has been regarded by Orthodox Christians in the light of a second Pascha, or a second Easter. Thus, the Assumption finds its true glorious meaning in the revealing radiance of the Easter dawning sun.

The Resurrection of Christ, the Holy Pascha, is THE pivotal turning point in the story of humanity’s salvation. With His resurrection, Jesus Christ trampled upon the gates of Hades, released its prisoners from the clutches of death and the devil, and opened for us the gates of paradise, which was originally intended for man - the crown of all creation, and which became closed to us because of the sin of pride and disobedience to God on the part of our ancestors. What man lost through Adam, he has regained through the second Adam. God Himself chose to come down to earth, became incarnate in the form of man, and once again opened to us the gates of paradise, having manifested - instead of pride - the greatest humility, instead of disobedience - complete obedience even unto death on the cross, and instead of sin, He - the most pure and absolutely sinless - took upon Himself the burden of all the sins of the world. With these three qualities - humility, obedience and purity of nature - the Lord showed us the highest example of what man can be like, of what he should be like, and of what the Creator intended him to be.

However, we may well be tempted to think that only God incarnate could be such an ideal man, while a mere mortal could never attain such perfection. But to show us the error of such thinking, we have before us the Mother of God, who is the highest example of the attainment of such perfection, and who teaches us with her entire life, her death and her Assumption that man can attain perfection precisely by means of these three qualities - humility, obedience to the will of God, and moral purity. Her Assumption is evidence and proof of such a life. Mary is indeed the first fruit of the new humanity, the creature in whom the mystery of Christ – His Incarnation, death, Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven – has already fully taken effect, redeeming her from death and conveying her, body and soul, to the Kingdom of immortal life. In the Assumption of Our Lady, it is these three qualities of hers which are commemorated - humility, obedience and purity, - which have elevated her, a mere mortal, above all earthly creatures and above the entire heavenly host.

As in all other feasts of Mary, we do less to honour her but in reality worship the Sovereign Lord who fulfilled His plan of salvation through His humble maid, the most supremely perfect among His creatures. In this area, the Fathers of the Church have often used the method of scriptural typology to speak of Mary’s relation to Christ. Typology is a special kind of symbolism. When we say that someone is a type of Christ, we are saying that a person in the Old Testament behaves in a way that corresponds to Jesus’ character or actions in the New Testament. For example, in the second reading, Paul describes Adam as a type of Christ. Though death entered this world through the first Adam’s disobedience, eternal life was made accessible again through the obedience of the second Adam, Jesus Christ himself.

If Adam is a type of Christ, Eve is a type of Mary. The Fathers of the Church often spoke of Mary as the new Eve. St John Chrysostom, the great Doctor of the East spoke of how the garden of Eden was closed forever to our parents through the disobedience of Adam and Eve, but now the gates of Paradise, Heaven has been opened to the one who showed perfect obedience, Mary, the Mother of God and Our Beloved Mother. Where Eve listened to the deceptive voice of the serpent, a fallen angel, which caused humanity’s fall, Mary listened to the revealing and liberating Word of God, communicated through an angel of God, and became the instrument of bringing man’s cause of salvation into the world, her son our Lord Jesus. As a result of the fall, the serpent would constantly strike at the heel of the children of Eve but the ancient serpent, now a dragon in the Book of Apocalypse, will be deprived of victory over the Lady who defeats the foe of the Church. Death and pain became the fate of our first mother because of the folly of sin, eternal life would be the prize won for our Blessed Mother because of her faithfulness to the will of God.

One may be tempted to ask: Isn’t the story of the Paschal Mystery, Christ’s death and resurrection sufficient? The answer is ‘Yes.’ But as the story of Adam is incomplete without the mention of Eve, the story of the new Adam would be similarly incomplete without speaking of His new counterpart. If Jesus, the new Adam, is the primary cause of humanity’s salvation, then Mary, the new Eve, is the primary representative of redeemed humanity in displaying the effect of Jesus’ redemptive work. If the old Eve followed the old Adam into exile after the Fall, the new Eve followed the new Adam in suffering, in the Passion, and so too in definitive joy of the resurrection. Christ is the first fruits but His risen flesh is inseparable from that of His earthly Mother, Mary. In Mary all humanity is involved in the Assumption to God, and together with her all creation, whose groans and sufferings, St Paul tells us, are the birth-pangs of the new humanity.

Mary’s Assumption shows the Way – it is Christ who has saved her from the moment of her conception in her mother’s womb and it is Christ whose redemption has preserved her body from corruption and now leads her to heaven. The Mother leads us to her Son, the Second Pascha casts further light on the first, the fidelity, humility and purity of the New Eve reflects the perfect model of the New Adam. Mary shows us the way to heaven through her Assumption.

Today, as we raise our eyes above and through our imagination try to behold the splendour of this wondrous event of our Blessed Mother being assumed body and soul into heaven into the welcoming arms of the Holy Trinity in the presence of the angelic hosts and saintly choir, our vision looks beyond the person of Mary. The Assumption provides us with a glimpse of our future glory, our final home, the holy beatitude of heaven. Pope Benedict speaks to us of the power of this feast as one which “impels us to lift our gaze to Heaven; not to a heaven consisting of abstract ideas or even an imaginary heaven created by art, but the Heaven of true reality which is God himself. God is Heaven. He is our destination, the destination and the eternal dwelling place from which we come and for which we are striving.”

Put our faith in God's love

Seventh Sunday of Easter Year B

Suspicion always surrounds someone who comes late to the game. There is even an expression coined for this person: “Johnny come lately.” His success and speed in getting promoted is often envied and resented by others who have been longer and more experienced in the game. His ability to lead and perform is doubted by those placed under his care. He lacks the respect of those who should have confidence in his ability.

Today, we hear how a Johnny-come-lately candidate in the person of Matthias was elected to join the ranks of the Twelve Apostles after the defection and the suicide of Judas Iscariot. It’s always a challenge to fill the shoes of a towering great man. I would imagine that it is so much more difficult to fill the shoes of a scoundrel, a great failure, he will always be compared to the man who betrayed the Lord and be subjected to constant scrutiny so as to not repeat the same “mistake” as the earlier candidate. The early Christian community could not risk another disastrous pick. The first time it happened, it cost the life of the Master. If there should be a second time, God forbid, it would cost them the future of the Church.

It was important that the Twelve chosen by Jesus should remain at Twelve, even after the defection of Judas, for this is the number of the tribes of Israel, and the Church is the new Israel, the new People of God. What criteria should be required of Judas’ replacement? It would certainly not be impeccability, as all the Twelve had fallen and made mistakes, and not just Judas. St Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, set out one simple criterion for the candidate to fill the vacancy: “We must therefore choose someone who has been with us the whole time that the Lord Jesus was travelling round with us … and he can act with us as a witness to his resurrection.”

So, this was the sole criterion for choosing Matthias to fill the vacancy left by Judas’ exit. But there was also another candidate who fulfilled the criterion - Barsabbas. Before they drew lots to pick the candidate, the group prayed for guidance, proclaimed their trust in God and went on to cast lots and the lot fell on Matthias who became one of the Apostles. Despite, the commendation to God in prayer, it is important to note that the method of choice of the twelfth member is itself significantly deficient - drawing lots does appear to leave everything to chance just as one would seek direction from God by flipping the pages of the Bible and allowing your eyes to fall on the first words of the text that is presented to you. This has less to do with faith than it is to believing in some form of divination. We need to remember that the Holy Spirit has not yet come upon the members of the community at Pentecost to fill their minds and hearts and so enable them to select the twelfth member in a way that is both human and inspired.

Now, does this mean that after Pentecost the election of a bishop or even a Pope, who are successors of the Apostles, is always a candidate chosen directly by the Holy Spirit? This is a common question asked by many especially when they have doubts over the choice of the successful candidate. The answer, of course, is that the Holy Spirit was doing what He is always doing, prompting all involved to cast their votes for the good of the Church. But the Holy Spirit does not choose the pope; that is left to the vagaries of men, and the vagaries of their response to grace. Sometimes His grace is accepted and sometimes it is rejected. God does not impose His will on our freedom to choose.

What does this mean? The Holy Spirit does not arrange the votes so that the best possible candidate is elected. In other words, it is not divinely rigged! The Holy Spirit does not guarantee that the best candidate would be elected bishop or pope. To believe that there is such a guarantee is simply naive and chooses to ignore factual history that we’ve had many deficient candidates and scandalously bad bishops and popes. Although there is no guarantee whatsoever that the choice will reflect God’s active will, the choice of a particular man as pope obviously fits within God’s permissive will.

Happily, the Catholic Church enjoys some Divine guarantees. Christ promised to be with the Church to the end of time, and that the gates of hell would not prevail against her. This means essentially that the Holy Spirit will not permit the Church’s Divine constitution to be lost, that the fullness of all the means of salvation will always be available in the Church, that the Church’s sacraments will always be powerful sources of grace, that the Church’s Magisterial teachings will be free from error, and that the Church will remain the mystical body of Christ under the headship of our Lord Himself, as represented by His Vicar, Peter’s successor.

In the gospel, we see our Lord interceding on behalf of His disciples and the Church, praying that her members will remain united, that they will remain true to God’s name which is His will, that they would be consecrated to the truth, and none be lost. Though our Lord assures us and guarantees that He would be interceding on our behalf as the perfect High Priest, there is no guarantee that what He prayed for would always be realised because of man’s free will. Our rebellion against His divine will is evidenced by centuries of schism, apostasy and heresy, where many including Church leaders have worked against the unity of the Church and distorted her teachings by substituting it with erroneous interpretations.

With Pope Francis’ recent revelation that there were human machinations and lobbying among the cardinals during the conclave which elected his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, where does that leave us? Scandalised or disillusioned? Has the Holy Spirit taken a backseat? Never. We must remember and believe that the Holy Spirit is continuously active and certainly knows what He is doing—even when His graces are refused and His plans thwarted by ambitious sinful men. We must humbly acknowledge that none of us can see the future or the whole picture but God can, and God does! We must be assured and find consolation in knowing that the Holy Spirit does not tire, nor does Christian hope disappoint. Our job is to pray, work and trust in Divine Providence!

Although we may sometimes doubt the wisdom of our leaders and why they were chosen, we must never ever doubt God’s wisdom in allowing these men to be elected and chosen. As St John in the second reading exhorts us, let us “put our faith in God’s love towards ourselves. God is love and anyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him.” (1 John 15-16)

A Descent before an Ascent

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord
Lithuania Poland Pilgrimage
John Paul II Salt Chapel, Wieliczka Salt Mine

Most of you are familiar with that basic rule of gravity, “what goes up, must come down.” I guess that principle applies to us. Before taking off for the skies to fly home, we have decided to have our last Mass here in the depths of the earth, literally. But the gospel seems to have a different spin on this. In fact, it proclaims: “The One who came down, must now go up!” I guess that most of us would think of the Ascension as a “going up,” as the normal usage of the word would suggest. Few would see the Ascension as actually linked to a descent.

Salvation history takes a similar route. God, or more specifically, God in the flesh, had to touch and be touched by the rock-bottom experience of our human existence, before He can take the ascending path leading man to his redemption. St Paul lays out this paradox in the second reading. Having quoted Psalm 68 (or 67), St Paul then gives this explanation: “When it says, ‘he ascended’, what can it mean if not that he descended right down to the lower regions of the earth? The one who rose higher than all the heavens to fill all things is none other than the one who descended.” Christ is the victorious conqueror who ascends to His throne in heaven after defeating the spiritual forces. He wins this victory by descending to the very depths, even to plunge Himself into hell, to enter the fray of battle with sin, death and the devil, to accomplish this deed. Christ now shares the spoils of war with His followers. We, perennial losers because of our propensity to sin, have become winners, not by our own achievement but this was accomplished for us by the One who conquered sin and death and victoriously rose from the grave, and now sits at God’s right hand as our Champion.

In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that this descend-ascend V movement describes St Luke’s two volume work - his gospel and the Acts of the Apostles - which provide us with not just one, but two accounts of the Ascension. One account ends his gospel, and a second account begins the Acts of the Apostles. In each passage, the Ascension is the essential fulcrum linking the life of Jesus (the Gospels) to the life of the Church (Acts). St Luke begins his gospel with the descent of the Son of God at the Incarnation, and then concludes with His Ascension. Our Lord descended into the human realm as He was sent by the Father, in obedience to the Father’s will to save humanity and then our Lord ascends to His rightful place at the side of His Father in heaven, after having completed His mission. Venerable Fulton Sheen explains this profound connexion between these two events: “The Incarnation or the assuming of a human nature made it possible for Him to suffer and redeem. The Ascension exalted into glory that same human nature that was humbled to the death.”

This movement, however, is not just something which is undertaken by our Lord alone, but one which should be undertaken by the Apostles and all followers of the Lord too. The Collect or Opening Prayer for this Mass has this beautiful line which speaks of our common destiny: “where the Head has gone before in glory, the Body is called to follow in hope.” We must descend with Him before we can rise with Him and follow our Lord in His ascent to glory. The Apostles accompanied our Lord on His journey to Jerusalem. Before they can ascend with the Lord to the glory which He wishes to share with them, they too must descend from their high horses and acknowledge that they are part of the human dung heap of sin, cowardice, faithlessness and infidelity. This had to happen before they can be redeemed by the Lord. Just like the Lord, they needed to experience humiliation before glorification; death before Eternal Life. After the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we see a speedy recovery. They begin to ‘ascend’ to the heights of missionary zeal, preaching the gospel of the Risen and Ascended Lord, from Judaea to Samaria and then, to the ends of the earth.

On this day, as we commemorate the Lord’s Ascension, should our gaze be directed upwards? What do we hope to see? I guess the dark cavernous ceiling of this salt mine, would be the most obvious answer. Or two feet disappearing into the clouds? Well, the two men in white (presumably angels) at the end of today’s first reading from Acts provides us with the answer, in the form of a question: “Why are you … standing here looking into the sky?”

Their question seems to be a challenge to not just be focused on one direction. In fact, we are invited to look upward, downward, and the road ahead of us. Our Lord’s Ascension invites us always to look upwards, in other words, to never lose sight of the hope of heaven, especially when navigating this world with its many pitfalls mired in disappointment and despair. We are asked to strive always for what’s higher, for what’s more noble, for what stretches us and takes us upward beyond the moral and spiritual ruts, within which we habitually find ourselves. Our Lord’s Ascension reminds us that we can be more, that we can transcend the ordinary and break through the old ceilings, that have until now constituted our horizon. His Ascension tells us that when we stretch ourselves enough, we will be able to walk on water, be great saints, be enflamed with the Spirit and experience already, the deep joys of God’s Kingdom.

But our Lord’s Ascension also invites us to look downwards. We are told to make friends with the desert, the Cross, with ashes, with self-renunciation, with humiliation, with our shadow, and with death itself. We are told that we grow not just by moving upward but also by descending downward. We grow too by letting the desert work us over, by renouncing cherished dreams and accepting the Cross, by letting the humiliations that befall us deepen our character, by having the courage to face our own deep chaos, and by making peace with our mortality. Sometimes, our task is not to raise our eyes to the heavens, but to look down upon the earth, to sit in the ashes of loneliness and humiliation, to stare down the restless desert inside us and to make peace with our human limits and our fragility.

Christians are not only asked to look upward as if our heads have disappeared in the clouds, nor should we be so focused looking downward in intense introspection to the point of despair. We must look ahead at the path which we must walk, the very same path which our Lord, fully human and fully divine, had walked before us. To look ahead, is to be reminded that we have a mission to accomplish, a gospel to be preached, a witness to give to a world that has often lost sight of looking upwards or downwards but one lost in self-absorption. At the end of every pilgrimage, this is what we must do. This may be the end of our pilgrimage to Lithuania and Poland but let us not forget that we are still on a pilgrimage of life to heaven. To look ahead to the horizon who is Christ, for “where the Head has gone before in glory, the Body is called to follow in hope.”

Does God have favourites

Sixth Sunday of Easter
Lithuania-Poland Pilgrimage

Church of St Casimir, Swinice Warckie

We are in the spiritual hometown of St Faustina. It is technically not her hometown of birth as she was born and lived in the nearby village of Głogowiec. If you think this place is small, you should see Głogowiec. This is the very church in which she was baptised and where she received her first holy communion. If it were not for her, this little town would have been ignored by many world travellers and even by most people in Poland. It’s not Paris or New York, it has no fancy restaurants or buzzing night life, or must-see tourist attractions. But it has this singular honour of being the place where little Helena Kowalska was reborn, entered the church and became an adopted daughter of God. This alone would be the envy of many. Who said that God has no favourites?

Today’s readings force us to reconsider this burning question which would have troubled many: how come some people seem more privileged than others? The question actually avoids a more fundamental question which would appear to sound blasphemous if we were brave enough to ask it: Does God have favourites? Does He love some more than others.

We are assured by our Lord in His own Words, that He loves us to the same degree and manner as the Father loves Him. This is the extent of His love that He would send “His Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away.” Could we ask for more? But what is the true nature of this love? Does God’s love demand nothing from us? When we speak of God’s love as unconditional, we must understand that His love is not something which can be bought. It is not given to us as a quid pro quo, a reward for good behaviour, or payment for some devotion or sacrifice which we have made to earn that love. St John asserts that God loved us while we were still sinners. His love for us is not dependent on us being righteous or worthy. No sacrifice or price we are willing to pay would be sufficient to purchase it.

But it is not true to say that God’s love makes no demands on us. In fact, a great deal is demanded of us. And here we have it in both the second reading and the gospel that God’s love challenges us to a new way of life that makes certain demands of us.

Firstly, we are required to obey and keep His commandments. His commandments are an expression of His will and our refusal to obey those commandments (and we know that God’s commandments are always good and just) is rebellion against His will. To claim that we love God and yet oppose His will would be a lie.

Secondly, principal among God’s commandments is the commandment to love others: “love one another, as I have loved you.” This is the benchmark by which all love is to be measured. We do not just love those who have been good to us, who have treated us well, whom we are indebted to. Love extends even to those who have done nothing to deserve it, those outside our circle of friends and family, and even those whom we consider enemies. Of course, we are not commanded to “like” as “liking” or “not liking” someone is purely subjective. True love is never subjective. To love, instead, is to intend the wellbeing of the other person. And this is something which can be accomplished and measured objectively. This is why St John can argue that “Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love.”

So, back to our question: does God have favourites? In the first reading, St Peter says: “God does not have favourites, but that anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him.” On the one hand, God does not have favourites. But like any good Catholic answer, there is always a “but,” which means the second part is quite the opposite of the first proposition. God does seem to favour “anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him.” How do we understand this seeming paradox?

We know that God loves every single one of us, but does He love some more than others? If that were the case, it would mean that God has a limited amount of love, so to speak, which He has to portion out in chunks according to His preferences. 10% for you, 20% for Susan and Bob, and 50% for His favourite, Faustina! But God is infinite, and His love is infinite – no limits, no portions, no measuring sticks. God is love (1 John 4:8); His very nature is love. God loves everyone 100% which means that His love is total, absolute, unlimited for each of us.

So, God doesn’t dish out His love in different portions according to who He likes better. And yet, there is a difference involved. The difference isn’t with God, but with us. Each one of us is a unique creation, a unique person. My relationship with God will never be the same as yours, and yours will never be the same as anyone else’s. This is because we are spiritual beings, and each spiritual being is truly individual. Just as you and I can be very close friends with the same person, my friendship with that person will necessarily be different than yours, because you and I are different. God respects our individuality, and He rejoices in it (after all, that’s how He made us – unique!). And so, every person’s relationship with God will be unique. In heaven, we will all be saints, but no two saints will be just alike.

God calls each of us to follow Him, but in different ways, with different natural talents, with different gifts. As our Lord assured us of this in the gospel: “I chose you; and I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit, fruit that will last.” Notice, He chose you, all of you and not just some of you! And each of us will respond with different degrees of generosity and faithfulness, so that His grace will bear more fruit, or less fruit in our lives.

So, should we be jealous if someone seems to have greater gifts than us? Should we be envious of St Faustina for her special relationship with the Lord and her mystical visions? It is not a sin to desire complete communion with God, but it is a foolish distraction to become discouraged or envious of someone else’s progress in holiness! When we run into other people or read about saints who experience a deep, intimate relationship with God, we are faced with a choice. We can either envy them this intimacy – becoming angry and vindictive towards them because they have achieved a degree of holiness that we have not achieved. Or we can emulate them – we can acknowledge the beauty of the holiness they have achieved and use their experience as a spur to our own efforts pursuing spiritual maturity. As we travel and visit the homes of the saints in this country whose landscape is rich with saints, may we choose to imitate the saints even as we admire and honour them. Let your discouragement be driven out by hope; let your frustration be banished by faith; and, let your frown be erased by love.