A Betrothal and a Wedding

Solemnity of the Annunciation

A long forgotten Catholic tradition is the rite of betrothal, a mutual promise, vocally expressed between a man and woman, pledging future marriage to one another in the Church. In a certain way, this seems to have been supplanted by modern engagement ceremonies. And yet, parties often wish to dispense with all these formalities as quickly as possible. Couples find it unbearable to undergo what they consider as lengthy marriage preparation courses or even practice sexual continence during courtship. In fact, parties can’t wait to share a bed and start living together before they have tied the knot, what more announce their plans to be married.

The event of the Annunciation speaks of both a betrothal and a wedding. It is certainly not referring to the betrothal of St Joseph to the Blessed Virgin Mary, though we are told in scriptures that they were betrothed before the Annunciation. The Hebrew concept of erusin (“betrothal”) is the first of two stages of an ancient Jewish marriage rite. Joseph and Mary are not engaged at the time of the Annunciation; they are, in fact, legally married. Although the espoused couple could not yet live together, the Mosaic Law safeguarded the marital goods of fidelity and permanence during this twelve months period: adultery was punishable by death (cf. Deut 22:23-27), and separation was possible only by means of a legal divorce. Moreover, erusin is akin to the canonical principle of a ratified marriage without consummation. Marital relations (and, hence, the good of children) were proscribed until nissuin, the second stage of the marriage, when the couple finally came to live together.

But the gospel and feast today does not focus on the betrothal of St Joseph and the Blessed Virgin Mary, but rather the betrothal and the wedding between the Holy Spirit and Mary. This may seem shocking to many of us, including Catholics, as we are conditioned to believe and even revere Mary as a perpetual virgin, and that her relationship with St Joseph was a uniquely chaste one. The pious custom of referring to the Holy Spirit as the spouse of Mary is a symbolic expression of Mary’s perpetual virginity (rather than a rejection of it) and affirms the virgin birth of Jesus. It is not meant in a literal manner but rather in terms of Mary’s singular devotion to God and unique relationship to the Trinity. It is similar to how religious sisters sometimes refer to Jesus as their spouse.

In the case of the Annunciation, the angel Gabriel acts as an intermediary, a divine matchmaker who offers God’s proposal to Mary. Just like a scene in a romantic movie, the audience waits with anticipation. Will the girl accept the offer and invitation? Will she say “Yes”? It would have turned out differently if the answer was a “No”. But thank God, this young girl did say “Yes,” and the whole story of salvation reached its climax here.

What was contained in that single “yes”? By saying "Yes", the Holy Spirit “came upon” or overshadowed Mary, reminiscent of how the glory of God came upon the portable tabernacle and later the Temple in Jerusalem. With Mary’s “Yes,” the bond between man and God was sealed as the nuptial bond of husband and wife are sealed at the moment they freely exchanged their consent with each other in marriage. God could become man, the Word became flesh and offered His life on the Cross. Because of the Incarnation, His death would be real and because His death was real, so was His resurrection. In other words, if Mary had said No, we would not have Christmas, and without Christmas, there would have been no Good Friday and without Good Friday, Easter would not have existed. One can say that our whole Christian calendar depended on what happened on this Feast.

The whole plan of salvation depended on this single moment. Mary’s “Yes” may seem insignificant but it is the most incredible and most important answer and decision ever made by a creature of God. At that very moment, heaven was wedded to earth and the rest is history. Through the fiat of the Virgin Mary, all of creation participates in this mystery and begins to be transformed.

You see Mary is not only the first Christian and most preeminent member of the Church, she is also a model of the Church, a paradigm for what God wills to accomplish, in and through the Church. Mary is the epitome of the Church, “not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing … holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:27). As type and foremost member of the Church, Mary stands as the pledge of what Christians shall become in the next life. What Mary is, so we shall be. Because of what Mary did and what God did for Mary, the future is now open to every human: to enter into the glory of heaven.

The Universality of our Faith

Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord

Many have forgotten the ideals that were encapsulated in the rallying cry of the French Revolution, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, which did not just bring down the aristocracy but also much of the Christian ethos on which Western civilisation was built upon. Today, those ideals have been reduced to ashes like the Cathedral of Notre Dame of Paris, only to have risen like a Phoenix in another form - DEI - Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Although, some would argue that DEI is just another form of the threefold motto of the French Revolution only differing in minor semantics, DEI has gone beyond what those principles had been espoused to introduce. DEI: the race-and-identity-based ideology has become a core component of corporate or cultural endeavours across the US and even the world. DEI informs how students are taught, workers are hired and governance policies are established and obeyed. DEI are the new gifts offered not at the altar of God or to His infant Son, but to the altar of man.

Long before DEI became a fad, we have the tradition of the magi, often depicted in the Nativity crèche scene as three men hailing from the three known continents of the early medieval period - Europe, Asia and Africa. They perfectly fit the bill of being DEI hires. Recently, Fr Bonaventure and I were doing some Christmas decoration shopping, and we were looking for a new nativity set for the Parish House. Our eyes set upon this beautiful porcelain set which was surprisingly cheaper than all the other synthetic stuff. Our joy was short lived when we were informed by the shop owner that the set was already sold, and the display set was the only one they had in stock. Upon enquiring as to why the price of this exquisite set was far cheaper than the rest, the shop keeper admitted that one piece was missing - “the black king.” Too much “whiteness” (and indeed unlike the other sets, all figures were porcelain white) had rendered it defective and sadly “cancelled.” Christmas was no longer DEI compliant!

Thank God, we don’t need DEI to celebrate today’s feast. Yes, we should respect diversity rather than insist on uniformity. Yes, we need to include rather than to exclude, to build bridges rather than walls. These values are entirely understandable and morally laudable. But we don’t need to force the Church into a DEI box in order to achieve this. Our celebration of Epiphany is already a celebration of diversity, equality of dignity and inclusion.

Epiphany is the celebration of the universality of the Church, the universality of our faith, the universality of salvation and the universality of Christ as Saviour, who came to save not just an elite group of individuals belonging to a particular nation, caste, or race but He came to save all humanity. This universality is manifested in the visit of the magi, these non-Jewish wise men, most likely astrologers, as they came to pay homage to the Infant King in Bethlehem. The visit of the Magi, Pope Francis teaches, shows that Jesus Christ is 'the light of the world that guides the path of all peoples.' The Son of God did not only come for the people of Israel, represented by the shepherds, but also for the whole of humanity, represented by the Magi.

The Magi remind us of the catholicity or universality of the Church. Catholic means universal! We perhaps take for granted the catholicity of the Catholic Church. It is an important “mark of the Church.” We see this universality right here in our own parish. We are blessed with a diversity of races and cultures. We believe that God calls all people to salvation and that the Gospel is meant to be spread to the nations of the whole world. The Second Vatican Council taught that this gift of universality which adorns the People of God is a gift from the Lord Himself whereby the Catholic Church ceaselessly and efficaciously seeks for the return of all humanity and all its good under Christ the Head in the unity of His Spirit (Lumen gentium 13).

That Jesus is a universal Saviour is a great source of comfort and hope to us. But the divisiveness of Jesus, and the opposition that He provokes: that too remains. Right from the very moment of His birth, we see opposition in the person of King Herod. But King Herod would only be the first in a long line of those who would oppose Christ and His followers. Though Christ’s mission was universal, it did not mean that all accepted it universally. Christ is a sign that will be opposed: we see it in the persecution faced by Christians over the centuries and in many parts of the world; we see it in that mixture of indifference and hostility which is largely the default setting of our own secular culture to the Christian faith. The universality of His message of salvation is matched by the universality of opposition and hostility to the Gospel.

But perhaps too we see it even in our own hearts. There may be a part of us that wants to follow Jesus; there may be moments when we recognise that we need a Saviour; there may be times when the illusion that we are in control is shattered, and we want to be able to trust in His rule and in His care. But then, there is also a part of us that is frightened in much the same way that Herod was frightened, a part of us that wants to maintain the illusion of control at all costs. We are unwilling to be like the Wise Men, following the light to who knows where; we are unwilling to leave everything behind, to turn our lives upside down, to take risks and to make sacrifices for the sake of Jesus. We don’t want a King; we don’t think we need a Saviour. It’s our life, we are in control, we think we already have the answers. We turn away from Jesus, or we follow Him only half-heartedly, because we fear the challenge and the loss of control.

Every one of us has felt the sting of unjust exclusion, that sense of being on the wrong side of an arbitrary social divide, not permitted to belong to the “in” crowd. Perhaps, we in Malaysia have felt this more than in any other place on this earth. That entire classes of people, indeed entire races and ethnic groups, have suffered this indignity is beyond question. But the answer is not to hold up Diversity, Equity and Inclusion as the ultimate moral compass of our society. The antidote to our division is not to be found in these values, if they are values that have been cut off from its source, our Lord Jesus Christ, the unique and universal Saviour of the world.

So today we rejoice with the Wise Men in the presence of Jesus our Saviour and King. We rejoice that His salvation and His rule is universal, that His loving redemption extends to you and to me. We pray for the spread of the Gospel in our own generation, for all who have been unable to accept the Lord’s call, for persecuted Christians around the world, and for those who persecute them. And we repent of that fear that holds us back, that fear that prevents us from wholeheartedly seeking the light of Christ, the fear that keeps us separate from others and to view them as inferior to us. Today, we as members of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church should double our efforts in reaching out to everyone, by welcoming everyone to bask in the light of Christ, our true star. But it is also important to recall what Cardinal Francis George, the former Archbishop of Chicago, once said when asked whether all are welcome in the Church. He responded, “Yes, but on Christ’s terms, not their own.”

He has spoken to us

Christmas Mass During the Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The opposite of Envy is Love

Twenty Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

One of the most destructive attitudes you will find in any family, community or even the Church is envy. Even the disciples of the Lord were not immune to its influence. This may be the reason why they were arguing over who is the greatest. Likewise, the enemies of our Lord were also envious of His popularity and growing influence. Their hostility and opposition toward the Lord were not just motivated by a desire for self-improvement or advancement. They were incensed by His success and gleefully plotted His downfall which they had actually achieved when our Lord was crucified. St James puts it perfectly in the second reading: “Wherever you find jealousy and ambition, you find disharmony, and wicked things of every kind being done…”

The Angelic Doctor, St Thomas Aquinas defines envy as “sorrow for another’s good.” Just think for a moment about how squarely malicious envy is based on this definition. In fact, just as pride is the opposite of humility, envy can be thought of as the opposite of love. Love desires the good of the other; envy is its opposite. Love says, “I’m happy when you’re happy, and I’m sad when you’re sad.” Envy says, “I’m happy when you’re sad, and I’m sad when you’re happy.” Could anything be more terrible? Envy is a sibling of hatred. Whereas covetousness is an inordinate longing for what someone else has, envy goes further, wanting the other person to lose what he has. Wherever envy exists, hatred also resides—and misery follows.

But here’s the painful irony, envious people believe that they will be happy when their rival or foe has been shamed or defeated but their victory would prove to be pyrrhic. You see envy is the constant thief of joy. Most sins have an up-front sweetness but a bitter aftertaste. Envy, meanwhile, is bitter as you do it and bitter afterward—doubly miserable. Envy can take any gift of God and make it rot; it can turn heaven into hell.

Rather than wishing the worse on our enemies we should be praying for them, encouraging them and even choosing to be in solidarity with them. Our Lord once again repeats His prophecy that He would have to suffer grievously at the hands of His enemies. Instead of showing empathy and offering to share His sorrow and burden, the disciples choose to deflect, change the topic and selfishly descend into navel gazing and self-pity. Our Lord, instead of remonstrating them for their insensitivity, begins to instruct them on the new paradigm of a disciple and how to love their neighbour as the Saviour does, even when He is personally undergoing pain and distress.

In the face of the disciples’ ambition for first places, honours and privileges so contrary to His teaching, our Lord points the way of suffering, surrender, humility and charity: “If anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all and servant of all.” While those of the world choose to ascend the ladder of success, power and prestige, Christians must take a different path and avoid the personal failings of ambition, pride and search for power and dedicate our lives in service to others. The former would foster a culture of dog-eat-dog, stepping over the corpses of others to get to where we want to go. It is fuelled by envy, where our humanity is sacrificed. The Christian’s path, on the other hand, must imitate the condescension of our Lord - humility expressed in self-giving and service to others. Like allowing soap to penetrate the deepest caverns of a dirty wound, we must allow humility to penetrate the deepest caverns of our envy. As we pursue humility—including by praying for and encouraging those we’re tempted to envy—we can be confident God will reward us with life, joy, and freedom.

The last bit of instruction is often taken as either a lesson in hospitality shown especially to the weak who cannot repay our favour or a call to emulate the innocence and simplicity of a child, the prerequisite for humility. But our Lord makes this call unique by tying the welcoming of a child to welcoming Him. Yes, this last line points to the need to show hospitality and express humility, but also provides us the standard by which these things are done. Once again, our Lord is turning the question of greatness on its head. There is no need for us to be envious of each other in that we attempt to outdo each other even in the area of Christian virtue. The standard by which we should set our eyes on is Christ Himself, and certainly no one can claim to be greater than Him. So, rather than compete in getting ahead of the other, we must constantly seek to imitate our Lord in every way, especially in His Incarnation. Christ did become a “child” who was welcomed by some but rejected by others and those who rejected Him failed to see that they had rejected the Heavenly Father who had sent Him.

In contrast to the blueprints provided by life coaches on how to be successful and getting ahead in life, this passage provides us with a blueprint for an incarnational discipleship. Firstly, we are all called to follow the example of His great humility in coming down from heaven to earth (Phil 2: 5-8). We are to be like Christ in His Incarnation in the amazing self-humbling which lies behind the Incarnation.

Secondly, we are to be like Christ in His service. We move on now from His Incarnation to His life of service; from His birth to His life, from the beginning to the end, from His birth to the Last Supper and finally, to His death on the cross.

Thirdly, we are to be like Christ in His love. Love is the wisdom from above. As St James teaches: “the wisdom that comes down from above is essentially something pure; it also makes for peace, and is kindly and considerate; it is full of compassion and shows itself by doing good; nor is there any trace of partiality or hypocrisy in it.”

So, rather than seek to be ahead of others and be envious of those who seem to do better, let us learn to be more Christ-like. But this begs the question: is it attainable? In our own strength it is clearly not attainable, but God has given us His Holy Spirit to dwell within us, to change us from within. As long as we hold on to our prideful stubbornness, it would remain humanly impossible. But if we assume the attitude of a child filled with awe and wonder, a hapless child who cannot do things for himself but rely on the strength and help of others, all things are possible with God!

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.”

He Humbled Himself

Maundy Thursday

Footwashing has becoming a fad among Christians and Catholics, especially during retreats and camps where participants are encouraged to wash each other’s feet. It’s a dirty job because our feet are that part of our bodies which are most prone to getting soiled and smelly. But the aversion to this is not just on the part of the doer but also the receiver. Most of us are too embarrassed to expose our dirty smelly feet to others. The messaging of this action, however, is clear. This ritual is meant to express our willingness to emulate the Lord’s humility and heart for service. But I can’t help but think that it has become a tool of virtue signalling, declaring to the world “see how humble I am!”, the exact opposite of what the action is meant to signify.

And most recently, it has also been used as a means of propaganda in promoting a certain ideology - woke ideology, to be precise. In a recent advertisement played to millions of Americans who watched live the National Football League playoffs, it was a means of conveying a vanilla message of non-judgmentalism and universal acceptance of traditionally problematic moral issues under the guise of Jesus “gets us.” In a highly selective montage which included scenes depicting members of the LGBT community and abortion clinics, those who paid for this multi-million dollar advertisement would have wanted to showcase and proclaim the gospel of nice and tolerance while conveniently leaving out the essential call to repentance. The message was not so subtle for us to read between the lines: Jesus “gets us” translates as Jesus accepts us for who we are and despite what we’ve done. In other words, Jesus embraces both the sinner and the sin, and makes no demands of us to repent and change.

The action of our Lord in washing the feet of His disciples certainly demonstrates humble service but it is so much more than that. It points to two significant events of His life which form the basis of His work of salvation - the Incarnation on the one hand; and His passion and death on the other. When our Lord began to lovingly wash the disciples’ feet, His actions symbolised how He became a slave for us with His Incarnation. It also reminds us of the humiliating death He was about to undergo for our redemption. Why would He do this? He did this for our sake and for our salvation - He did this to save us from our sins and not leave us in our depraved condition. For if He had just tolerated our sinfulness, there would be absolutely no reason why the Word would become flesh and for Him to choose to die on the cross. He did it to redeem us from our sins, to liberate us from our sins, to save us from our sins.

Yes, we are to imitate our Lord in living out lives of love, service, forgiveness, and humility, as we reach out to help and sacrifice for one another. But more than that, we are to live with the certain hope that He has washed away our sins with His blood. We can no longer live our old lives trapped and wallowing in the murky muddy waters of sin. He has come to give us new life, to make us a new creation. He did not come just to wash our feet as an example of humble service, and then leave the filth of sin within us untouched. For that would be virtue signalling. No, He came to wash away our sins, to defeat sin not just by pouring clean water over it but by shedding His own blood on the cross.

Our Lord truly “gets us.” He truly understands our condition and our plight. He knows and He understands that left to our own devices, we are lost; left to us wallowing in our sinful lifestyle, we are heading in the direction of our own destruction; that a life without Him means that we are ultimately lost. Our Lord “gets us” by seeking the lost, healing the wounded, pardoning the sinner. If He has done this for us, so must we imitate Him in reaching out to others to offer them the forgiveness and salvation which is our Lord’s greatest gift to us.

Yes, the action of washing feet is indeed a profound expression of humility but in order that it remains a sign of humble service, instead of virtue signalling, we must never forget that this action is tied to both the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery. This is how Pope Benedict XVI seeks to remind us:

"The greater you are, the more you humble yourself, so you will find favour in the sight of the Lord. For great is the might of the Lord" (3: 18-20) says the passage in Sirach; and in the Gospel, after the Parable of the Wedding Feast, Jesus concludes: "Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted" (Lk 14: 11). Today, this perspective mentioned in the Scriptures appears especially provocative to the culture and sensitivity of contemporary man. The humble person is perceived as someone who gives up, someone defeated, someone who has nothing to say to the world. Instead, this is the principal way, and not only because humility is a great human virtue but because, in the first place, it represents God's own way of acting. It was the way chosen by Christ, the Mediator of the New Covenant, who "being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross" (Phil 2:8).

Here, at this Mass of the Lord’s Supper, where our Lord instituted the Eucharist - the Sacrament of Love - we will witness again what our Lord did two millennia ago. He, who is Lord and Master, King of Kings, took off His Cloak of Royal Splendour and became a Servant. He washed the feet of those whom He had chosen to continue His Redemptive work. He gives Himself to us as food for the journey and went on to die on the cross. He showed us what we were chosen to do. On that night, our Lord enlisted His disciples and tonight, He enlists all of us to live lives of self-emptying Love for the world. To bear the name "Christian" is to walk humbly in this love in the midst of a broken and wounded world that is waiting to be reborn.

We Lepers

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

Leprosy? Most of us have never seen anyone with this debilitating disease. Leprosy seems to have been stamped out in our country and any trace of the colonies, where lepers were hold up, to isolate them from the rest of us healthy folks have been lost to development. But both scripture and the Church’s history refuse to let us forget. The story of St Damien of Molokai, Apostle to the Lepers, must certainly be one of the most inspired hagiographies ever written and one which reminds us of the “lepers” that continue to live among us, though often out of sight.

In 1866, to curb the spread of this virulent disease of leprosy, the Hawaiian authorities decided to consign lepers to an isolated community on the island of Molokai. Once the lepers were out of sight and no longer a threat to the general population, the government turned a blind eye to their basic needs. Where even other missionaries kept away, St Damien, a missionary priest, pleaded with the bishop of the territory to allow him to minister to the needs of these lepers. The bishop kindly accompanied Damien to the colony and introduced him to the 816 community members as “one who will be a father to you and who loves you so much that he does not hesitate to become one of you, to live and die with you”. Little did the bishop realise that his words would prove prophetic.

Damien’s superiors had given him strict advice: “Do not touch them. Do not allow them to touch you. Do not eat with them.” But Damien made the decision to transcend his fear of contagion and enter into solidarity with the Molokai lepers. Other missionaries and doctors shrank from the lepers. What surprised the lepers most was that Damien touched them. But Damien not only touched the lepers, he also embraced them, he dined with them, he put his thumb on their forehead to anoint them, and he placed the Eucharist on their tongues.

One day, while soaking his feet in extremely hot water, Damien experienced no sensation of heat or pain—a tell-tale sign that he had contracted leprosy. The disease quickly developed, causing Damien to write to his bishop with the news. Damian who had not hesitated to become one of the lepers, chose also to live and die with them.

If you find that story amazingly moving, then you should feel the same if not more for what the Lord has done for us. Our Lord approaches a leper in today’s gospel and touches him.

To truly understand the significance of our Lord’s action, we need to understand two important concepts in the mind of a Jew– leprosy and the laws of ritual purity. The idea of leprosy was more than a virulent disease to be avoided. For the Jews, it was a sacrament in reverse - outward sign of inward curse. It was a sign of separation from God. For this reason, both the diagnosis as well as the final assessment that it had been cured, was not left to any ordinary doctor. Since, leprosy was seen as the ultimate punishment from God, only a priest, a minister of God could confirm that this sin was absolved, and the punishment lifted.

How about the laws of ritual purity? Since God is considered holy, anything which is unholy is not permitted to enter into His presence. The rules of ritual purity were designed for this. In the Old Testament law, there were five main ways people became unclean (even if it’s just temporary): eating “unclean animals”; (e.g., carrion-eaters); giving birth; contracting skin diseases; genital discharges; contact with corpse. Leprosy fell under the third category. Coming into contact with an unclean person would also render one unclean. So strict rules like those given to St Damien (“Do not touch them. Do not allow them to touch you. Do not eat with them”) had to be observed to avoid contamination. Instead of doing this, our Lord “stretched out his hand and touched” the leper. In the eyes of the crowd, our Lord had been contaminated.

But instead of being contaminated Himself, He heals the leper. We are reminded that we do not only get infection through close proximity, we can also get saved by it. C.S. Lewis explains this beautifully: “Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection, if you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?”

The story of Jesus healing the leper ends happily for him but unfortunately for Jesus. At that touch, they were equals. Ironically, this man was now able to enter any town he wanted because he had been healed, but Jesus could no longer enter towns because of the news of this miracle had spread. He had become a social leper.

The healing of the leper was just a warm-up for what the Lord had prepared to do for all of us, a model of what was to come at the cross. When He died for our sins, for as many of us who have been washed in the blood, our sins died as well and Jesus was then able to be reconciled with the Father, from whom we have been separated because of our sins, our spiritual leprosy. By communion with Him, by participation in His cross, we could receive eternal life. He shared His divinity with us as we shared our humanity with Him but without Him taking away our humanity. Our humanity is thus sanctified by His divinity.

In the case of St Damien, although he entered into the most profound solidarity with the lepers by becoming one of them, he was never able to remove this disease from their bodies or the social stigma from their existence, what more his own. But in the case of our Lord Jesus, He has taken us into Himself. In exchange for our flawed and broken humanity, He has exchanged with us His sublime divinity. The Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen describes the sublime transaction of the In­carnation in which Christ said to man: "You give me your hu­manity, I will give you my divinity. You give me your time, I will give you my eternity. You give me your bonds, I will give you my omnipotence. You give me your slavery, I will give you my free­dom. You give me your death, I will give you my life. You give me your nothingness, I will give you my all.” So, let us turn to the Lord in confidence, humility and much love and ask: “Lord, if you want. You can cure me.”

In the Beginning

Christmas Mass During the Day

Catholics attending this Mass or a later mass today are often surprised by the Gospel reading. There doesn’t seem to be anything Christmasy about this Christmas Day gospel reading. There is no mention of a manger, a stable, shepherds, of Magi, of angels, of Bethlehem or, very surprisingly, of Mary and Joseph. If you came last night, you would not have been disappointed. But this morning’s Gospel starts in a manner which doesn’t seem to be in synch with the season: "In the beginning was the Word," and it continues to speak only of the Word of God. So why is this a Christmas Gospel reading?

Up until the liturgical reforms of the post-Vatican II era, the Prologue of St John’s Gospel, the text we just heard was and is still proclaimed at the very end of every Traditional Latin Mass, thereby earning for itself the misnomer ‘the Last Gospel.’ According to one source, the Last Gospel was inserted here to counter the heresy (prevalent among clergy at the time of its introduction) of denying the Incarnation, and therefore the divinity of Jesus Christ. It was to assure the congregation that the priest who had celebrated Mass was not a heretic and thus the Mass was valid. Phew! The priest by reading this passage publicly attests to the orthodoxy of his faith. Whatever may have been the original reason for its insertion, it is a beautiful paradox that the Last Gospel of the Mass takes us back to the beginning, for it opens with the words "In the beginning."

The tradition of reading the prologue on Christmas Day has survived the liturgical reform. Though the practice of reading the Last Gospel at the end of mass has been discontinued, it did serve the purpose of climaxing every celebration with the compelling and beautiful truth of the Incarnation, the dogma that speaks of the act and decision of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God, becoming man – the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The prologue situates the Christmas story outside the confines of human history. In fact, it provides for the words and works of the Incarnate Word an eternal background or origin and proceeds to proclaim His divinity and eternity. He who "became flesh" in time, is the Word Himself from all eternity. He is the only begotten Son of God "who is in the bosom of the Father." He is the Son "consubstantial with the Father," He is "God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God." He is the Word "through whom everything was made”… “and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”

This focus on the Incarnation and the Divinity of Christ reminds us that we are not celebrating the birthday of a celebrity, or a great hero, or a sagely guru, or an illustrious prophet. We are celebrating the birth into human history of the Divine and Eternal Word, the Son of God, the One from whom and in whom all things were made. "The Son of God became man", St Athanasius explains, "in order that the sons of men, the sons of Adam, might become sons of God.” With all the gift-giving, merry making, commercialisation of our feast, it is quite easy to forget this very central truth.

While our culture is very open to the likes of Superman, Thor, Spider-man and other “super-beings” who are fictional, it is ironic that man regards the Incarnation, the fact of an Omnipotent God choosing to become mortal, a strange and unbelievable idea. There has been increased hostility and opposition to the biblical doctrine of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the rejection of His divinity. In history there have been those who have sought to sacrifice either the deity of Christ (e.g. the Ebionites) or remove His humanity (e.g. the Docetists). In modern times, there has been a bold attack on the doctrine of the incarnation. The great quest of liberal theology has been to invent a Jesus who is stripped of all supernatural power, deity, and authority. They are not reinterpreting traditional Christology. They are simply abandoning it.

The doctrine of the Incarnation is central to a Christian celebration of Christmas, a truth that is currently under attack. The doctrine of the Incarnation is one which is vital to the Christian faith because other doctrines will stand or fall with it. We cease to be Christians the moment we deny that Jesus is God. Our believe that He is God sets us apart from other religions.

Perhaps the best way to underscore the importance of the doctrine of the Incarnation is to consider the price for putting it aside. Nowhere is it more beautifully and succinctly articulated than in the Catechism of the Catholic Church which lays down these various reasons for the Incarnation thus pointing to its central significance:

· The Word became flesh for us in order to save us (CCC 457).

· The Word became flesh so that thus we might know God’s love (CCC 458).

· The Word became flesh to be our model of holiness (CCC 459)

· Finally, the Word became flesh to make us ‘partakers of the divine nature.’ (2 Peter 1:4)

Can we truly celebrate Christmas and at the same time deny both the humanity and the divinity of Christ? The answer to that question must be a decisive ‘No’. Those who reject these truths empty our celebration of its essential content – Christmas is not just a celebration of the birthday of our founder, a sentimental reason for gathering as a family, an occasion for gift-giving and carolling, a cultic act to proclaim the legendary charity of Ole St Nicholas. For us Christians, Christmas must always be a celebration affirming our belief in both the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ. He is fully God and fully Man. The Incarnation does not stand alone as a doctrine that can be severed from the rest. On the contrary, it is an irreducible part of the revelation about the person and work of Jesus Christ. With it, the Gospel stands or falls.

It is often the case that we are invited to admire the humility of our Lord Jesus Christ as He chose to be born in the spartan conditions of a cave or stable in Bethlehem. But this morning’s liturgy also invites us to humbly kneel in adoration before the One who chose to kneel before His disciples to wash their feet. It’s time to rescue this Feast of Christmas from all that sentimental sugar coating. It is the Feast by which we affirm once again our belief in His divinity. Together with Pope Benedict, we affirm that our “Faith is simple and rich: we believe that God exists, that God counts; but which God? A God with a face, a human face, a God who reconciles, who overcomes hatred and gives us the power of peace that no one else can give us.”

A Hidden Christmas

Christmas Mass in the Night

When Christmas comes around every year, the child-like love for all that glitter, the glamour and the warm fuzzy feel-good exuberance of this season is reignited. It’s really hard to hide our excitement. But it often seems that the Church is constantly reminding us of the need to observe the penitential nature of Advent, to tone down our celebrations, and to reject the commercial agenda of Xmas. At times, it does seem that the Church, in a Grinch like way, sadistically enjoys taking the fun out of Christmas. Sigh …

We can’t entirely blame the commercial and secular world for having hijacked Christmas and taken Jesus Christ, the real star of this celebration, off-stage. Perhaps, the real problem lies with us being unable to uncover the real Christmas, the Hidden Christmas.

Our Christmas is indeed hidden from view. This is because the Kingdom of God, as the parable goes, is like a treasure hidden in the field, it is hidden in order that it may be found. It’s the story of how God leaves obvious and apparent clues, a bread crumb trail, in order for us to find Him. His mission is not to obscure, but to reveal. Our real but hidden Christmas, is located in a grotto (the Cave), not displayed on billboards, broadcasted on televisions or on the internet or at the malls. There is no fame or celebrity in the Nativity of Christ. There is no headline news to herald the event. It would not have trended on social media. No one would have created TikTok videos or blogged about the Christ Child. Your GPS would not have tracked the Wise Men. Neither would the astronomical department or national space agency, have paid any attention to the Bethlehem Star except as a discovery of a new constellation or the occurrence of a supernova. To the public whose vision is as blind as their faith, its real meaning lies hidden.

Our Christmas secret is that the Son of God chose to be born in obscurity. God hides in the cave of Bethlehem for a reason. For thousands of years, the mystery was kept hidden under a veil of shadows and vague dreams. But on Christmas night, God chose to reveal this secret to the world. He revealed the plan for the liberation and redemption of humanity, freedom from the oppression of sin and death, His blueprint of rescuing mankind from the clutches of Satan. But His revelation took place within the hidden recesses of a cave, in an obscure little village of Bethlehem, at a moment that went unnoticed, except to a few. Why would God choose to reveal Himself in the hidden mystery of the cave? Why shepherds? Why would God choose to make His most spectacular announcement to a group least able to comprehend its most profound meaning or suffer the lack of means to spread it?

The birth of Jesus in such stark simplicity is not an accident. Jesus chose to be born in those circumstances to show us who God is. The Christian God is not a distant much less an absent God, but a God who is present in history and who cares for and directs history. The world expects a powerful domineering God to make a showy celebrity-styled entrance. They are expecting a transcendental God who must always come from the outside. But the God of Love actually came from a different direction: God is no outsider, God is Emmanuel, He is with us, through the Incarnation, God has always been an insider. Jesus Christ was born in the secrecy of the cave to reveal the fact that the Son of God is offered as a gift – just like how all gifts are wrapped up, waiting to be opened and to surprise us - but it is a gift that can be opened only at our deepest self, where we are the poorest, the weakest and most vulnerable...where we are who we really are. That is why the lowly shepherds were able to discern His coming, and not those who consider themselves in the thick of things, those in power, those who have all the answers.

For it is only those who are at the bottom of the social ladder, the dregs of society, those beaten, defeated and termed failures, those considered mad, who would understand and appreciate the real meaning of God’s condescension in the Incarnation. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, descended from infinite transcendence into our broken-up tiny little darkness. He brought His divinity to bear upon our humanity by uniting both in His very person. In Himself He gathers up the alienated fragments of the human race, the broken pieces of ourselves; broken by our violence, our desperations, our addictions and despondencies, our hopeless biographies. In His own Person, He meticulously puts the pieces back together again. And He does this in the secret cave - the cave where no one is rich and self-sufficient, where no one is powerful, where no one is famous nor can demand privilege. It is a cave too small for the likes of kings and those who prefer more sanitary conditions, but large enough to house those who are aware of their very own littleness in the presence of the Incarnate God of Love.

Yes, it is necessary that God hides from us, so that our dependence is not built upon an experience of Him but rather, our dependence is placed strictly on Him and Him alone. The spartan poverty of the cave is a gift to us: it allows us to consolidate our brokenness, our woundedness, our failure, our insecurities and slavish fears and allow all these to be transformed into a blessing of incomprehensible value. And when we have little left of our presumptuous self-sufficiency and pretentious intelligence, then we can see the world anew. God may be hidden from the world, but for the Christian, He is apparent to behold.

We see hiding in our Christmas tree, the story of salvation unfolding from the moment of Adam and Eve’s Fall for having eaten the forbidden fruit (the baubles) after placing their trust in the words of the serpent (the curling tinsels) instead of the promises of God. But the tree is also the gibbet on which our Saviour hung and died, thus transforming the curse into a blessing. We see in it the promise of eternal life, for through the sacrifice of Christ on the branches of the cross, the tree that poisoned us and which sentenced us to death, has been transformed into the Tree of Life, which yields fruits that provide the antidote to death, and from it flows the sweet elixir of immortality. In Santa Claus, we recognise the figure of Christ, who bountifully rewards us with his blessings and the great gift of salvation and who will come at the end of time to judge us and he will know whether we’ve been naughty or nice. In the carols we belt out and hear over the radio, we hear that great Christmas proclamation resounding once again, that “a Saviour has been born to you, He is Christ the Lord!” Yes, our Christmas is hidden, but not to those with eyes of faith to see through the patterns and symbols of this season.

Let us go meet Him, you and me, and adore Him who alone is worthy of our praises. Let us be whole again. Let us be brother and sister again. Let us rejoice in the knowledge of this great and divine, splendid Secret, this Hidden Christmas and broadcast it to the world. Let us shout it from the housetops, above the darkness, above the noisy and often angry cacophony of a world gone blind and deaf, that Jesus Christ is born! “A Saviour has been born to you, He is Christ the Lord!”

There can be no Christmas without Mary

Fourth Sunday of Advent Year B

When most people are asked, when does the Church commemorate this momentous event in salvation history where the Uncreated Word became flesh, the most common answer would be: “Christmas!” Christmas is the feast of the Incarnation. But I guess most people, especially in this day and age when abortion is widely promoted in many countries, we have forgotten that life does not begin at birth but at the conception of a person. One could choose to deny this on ideological grounds because it is inconvenient and challenges our selfish motives, but this truth is irrefutable when we witness a convergence of biology and theology which affirms this truth.

So, on this last Sunday of Advent, and in fact for this year at least, the last day of Advent, before we transition into the Christmas cycle this evening, the Church’s lectionary provides us with this beautiful gospel passage which narrates the Annunciation of the Archangel Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ. The connexion between these two events - the moment of conception and the moment of birth - could not be made any clearer with the juxtaposition of these two events. The Feast of the Annunciation which the Church celebrates on the 25th of March is as much the Feast of the Incarnation as it could be said of Christmas.

A cursory reading of both the first reading and the gospel will let you see how the prophecy of Nathan to King David in the Old Testament that his house and sovereignty will always stand secure and his throne be established for ever, is being fulfilled in the story of the Annunciation, as explained by the Archangel Gabriel: “The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David; he will rule over the House of Jacob for ever and his reign will have no end.”

In Hebrew, there is no specific word for a king’s palace or the Temple of God. The palace of the king is simply described as the King’s house as the temple is God’s house. So, the idea of “house” is deliberately ambiguous when spoken in reference to David as it could refer to both the dynastic line of David or to the palace in which he lives. Furthermore, in the first reading we see an ironic reversal in that God promises to establish a house for David even as David promises to build a house for God, an offer which God declines. David, ashamed that he was now living in an opulent “house,” would not allow God to suffer the humiliation of occupying a nomad’s tent. He thought to honour God by building God a house fitting for His glory and dignity. But God reminds David that since God has provided the latter with all the essentials of accommodation, God Himself is in no need of a human dwelling. No human hands can build a house that is ultimately suitable for God save for one that is built by God Himself. Even King David acknowledges this in Psalm 127: “unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labour in vain.”

Mary is indeed the house of God, not built by human hands but shaped and created by God Himself. Our Eastern brethren pays her the greatest honour by describing her as the one “made more spacious than the heavens” or in Greek, “Playtera ton ouranon.” The Universe we know about is mind-bogglingly big. Yet, we recognise that God is far greater than that. The universe, for all its vastness, remains finite. God, on the other hand, is infinite! But here is the great mystery we celebrate today – God who could not be contained in His created universe chose to be contained in the tiny womb of this human being. Thus, we call Our Lady “more Spacious than the Heavens” because she held in her womb Him who holds the whole universe. She succeeds where the whole universe fails.

The veil which separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Temple Complex was embroidered with symbols of the cosmos, in a way indicating that the temple was a microcosm of the universe, the house of God. When the veil was torn in two on Good Friday at our Lord’s death, it was symbolically the end of the cosmos as we know it. During the time of our Lord’s birth, the temple was already an empty husk, the ark of the covenant, the throne of God, had already been lost during the Babylonian invasion and the first destruction of the Temple. Furthermore, in the mystical vision of the prophet Ezekiel, the shekinah, or God’s visible glory, had already departed. But here, we see the glory of God, the Holy Spirit and the power of the Most High will once again overshadow the “house” of God, not the Temple but Mary - she who is the ark of the new covenant, she who is more spacious than the universe.

So, on the eve of the day we commemorate how the Author and Creator of the Universe entered into our created universe as a child, it is fitting that the Church reminds us of how this happened. It was not by accident, nor is the instrument by which this occurred insignificant. Without Mary’s fiat to the Archangel Gabriel, we would not be celebrating Christmas. There is no Christmas without Mary.

Mary is indeed a cosmos to herself with Christ as its solar centre. Mary is indispensable to the story of salvation and the story of Christmas because without her, Christ’s birth could not have taken place. The pre-existent Word could not have become flesh if not for her fiat. Christ could not have been born without her free consent. The Mother of God, she who is “made more spacious than the heavens,” stands between the heavens and the earth and serves as a bridge between. Let us therefore ascend to the heavenly heights and enter into the Holy of Holies. Let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, the Heavenly Jerusalem, for Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the true House of God has already bridged what was previously impassable. Through her co-mediation, she has allowed us to approach what was previously unapproachable and to comprehend what was previously incomprehensible. Let us take her hand as she leads us to the manger and beyond to the cross.

In the beginning

Christmas Mass During the Day 2022

The great Feast and Solemnity of the Nativity of Christ is the second most important feast in the Church’s Liturgical Calendar after the Great Pasch, the Feast of Easter. Its importance is attested by the liturgy in the three masses celebrated on Christmas Day proper – the Midnight Mass, the Dawn Mass and presently, what we are celebrating now, the Mass during the day. Because the feast of Christmas is so great, the Church does not stop rejoicing after one or even two special Masses. She continues her worship with a third, the Mass of the Day. And so after a marathon of masses, just when you thought you’ve exhausted everything that needs to be said about Christmas, we find ourselves right back at the beginning. Not just to the beginning of the Christmas story that took place two millennia ago in Bethlehem, but to the very beginning, before God embarked on the great enterprise of creation, before the beginning of the history of man and the universe.

“In the beginning…” that’s how the Prologue of St John’s gospel begins. St John does not start the story of Jesus in the usual way as in the case of Ss Matthew and Luke who provide two different versions of His infancy narratives. He says nothing about the way Jesus was born. Rather, he takes us back in time to "the beginning” and his opening line is deliberately chosen because everyone knows that’s how the entire bible and first book of the Bible (Genesis 1:1) begins: “In the beginning.” In Hebrew - be’ resh’ it. If in the book of Genesis, we hear how everything began with God’s creative act, in John’s prologue we will see the One who was behind that act and who is responsible for our salvation.

In the beginning, John says, was "the Word" or ‘logos’ in Greek. To the uninitiated, the "Word" here may seem ambiguous, but it becomes clear in verse 14 that John is talking about a person: "The Word was made flesh, He lived among us." The Word is not just an impersonal concept but a person. The Word became a human being, a Jew by the name of Jesus. But the Word was also at the beginning, the Word was with God and then John makes this audacious claim, “the Word was God!” Jesus Christ, the child born in the humble stable of Bethlehem and laid in a manger is no ordinary child. He is the Divine Creator-Word, He is the Son of God; He is God.

By using the word ‘Word’ or ‘Logos’, St John was using a term that had rich meaning to Greek and Jewish philosophers. They also believed that God had created everything through His word, or His wisdom. Since God was a rational being, He always had a word with Him. The "word" was His power to think — His rationality, His creativity. According to Plato, the world of ideas was more perfect than the material world, which could only provide a poor copy of the former. John takes this idea and gives it a radical twist: The Word became flesh. Something in the realm of the perfect and the eternal became part of the imperfect and decaying world. That was a preposterous idea, people might have said. It is no wonder that John tells us that when the Word came into the world, “the world did not know him. He came to his own domain and his own people did not accept him.”

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI gives us a beautiful reflexion. He says that this rejection by His own people, “refers first and foremost to Bethlehem, the Son of David comes to his own city, but has to be born in a stable, because there is no room for him at the inn. Then it refers to Israel: the one who is sent comes among his own, but they do not want him. And truly, it refers to all mankind: He through whom the world was made, the primordial Creator-Word, enters into the world, but he is not listened to, he is not received. These words refer ultimately to us, to each individual and to society as a whole. Do we have time for our neighbour who is in need of a word from us, from me, or in need of my affection? Do we have time and space for God? Can he enter into our lives? Does he find room in us, or have we occupied all the available space in our thoughts, our actions our lives for ourselves?” These are questions we must constantly ask ourselves.

Jesus did not just bring a message about God — He Himself was the message. He showed us in the flesh what God is like. We are more than just people of the Book, as Muslims would claim. We are people of the Word of God, the Word who is, who was and will ever be God. We are not just called to be acquainted with the words in our Bible or in the Catechism of the Church. We are called to encounter the Word Himself, Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Saviour – the true light that enlightens all men – a light that shines even in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower.

Our celebration today is testimony to the immense beauty of encountering the word of God in the communion of the Church. In listening to the word, may we become one with the Word. But it is also the Word that became flesh. So, as Catholics we are called not only to be in communion with God and with each other through the words of scripture but more perfectly through Holy Communion. Christmas is a call to conversion, to be renewed in our “personal and communal encounter with Christ, the word of life made visible, and to become his heralds, so that the gift of divine life – communion – can spread ever more fully throughout the world. Indeed, sharing in the life of God, a Trinity of love, is complete joy (cf. 1 Jn 1:4). And it is the Church’s gift and inescapable duty to communicate that joy, born of an encounter with the person of Christ, the Word of God in our midst. In a world which often feels that God is superfluous or extraneous, we confess with Peter that he alone has “the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68). There is no greater priority than this: to enable the people of our time once more to encounter God, the God who speaks to us and shares his love so that we might have life in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10).” (Verbum Domini, # 2)

Incarnate Humility

Christmas Mass During the Night 2022

One of the most impactful experiences I had as a newly ordained priest was when I had the privilege of ministering to a group of Vietnamese textile workers in Nilai. They emerged at one Christmas gathering organised by the parish for migrants and asked me if I could celebrate Mass for their community at their “hotel” (of course, they meant “hostel”). When I asked them if they had space in their “hotel” large enough to host a Mass, they excitedly told me that they had a hall. I asked them how many persons the hall can accommodate and they said 50. When I asked them how many Catholics were living there, they told me “300!”

I was having trouble doing the maths, so, I asked them how a hall meant for 50 persons could accommodate 300. Their answer simply floored me: “we will take turns.” In a world where so many feel entitled and are constantly complaining about how their demands are not being met, a world where everyone is jostling for the best seats and the best slots in the Christmas Mass schedule, here was a community who revealed to me the most needed virtue of humility which today’s feast epitomises - how one can and should give up one’s place for another – a reflexion of how our Lord emptied Himself of His divinity to make room for us in heaven, even though we collectively denied Him hospitality on earth!

The beauty of Christ’s humility on this feast day reveals as much as it conceals. He demonstrates through His own birth, the meaning of humility, which is to “give up everything that does not lead to God.” This is a necessary reminder especially when humility is no longer in vogue or respected. Instead, it is held in contempt. Humility is often regarded as a sign of weakness and even stupidity, a lack of prudence in an age that demands street wise tactics and an ego the size of a football field in order to survive or be admired. Thus, humility revealed as the pathway to God is concealed to our modern senses.

The capacity to change and influence the world requires a whole list of factors missing from the Christmas story: wealth, power, a degree from a prestigious university, stage charisma, success, achievement, a proven track record, connexions with the right people, a magical public relations team and lots of media promotion. Juxtaposed against the narrator’s introduction of a seemingly all powerful Roman emperor who can move the various nations on earth as if they were his pawns, and a less powerful politician but still formidable provincial governor, the story of a child born to poor humble parents would seem too trivial for the telling. But this child would be the main protagonist of our Christmas story and not the former two.

Today, the humble often go unnoticed and are deemed insignificant. They make no impact in our lives and hardly warrant a flicker of our attention. The role models of our society are not the humble, but the selfishly ambitious, the proud, the arrogant. The people that our society looks up to – royalty, businessman, politicians, sports heroes, celebrities, actors and actresses, singers, entertainers – they all tend to have one thing in common: a very high regard for themselves, insatiable ego and ambition, and a great talent for self-promotion.

But let us now consider the humility of the Incarnation itself, the second person of the Trinity, the eternal Son of God, taking on humanity with all of its limitations, with all of its pain and sorrow and suffering. It is impossible to fathom the transformation the Lord Jesus endured to leave the glorious perfection of heaven, for a manger. The Son of God gave up His honour and glory, He let go of His position, He relinquished all of the riches of heaven, in order to become poor like us, in order to save us from our sins. He gave up that glory in order to become a human baby, a helpless little infant.

Not even a royal baby, not the son of a king; not a wealthy baby, the son of money and privilege. But instead, a peasant child born to poverty and want, raised in very humble circumstances. Surrounded not by God’s holy angels and the glory of heaven, but instead surrounded by sinful, fallen human beings (with the exception of His immaculately conceived mother) and a stinking, dirty barn. But Christ’s humility didn’t end with His birth or His childhood. It continued throughout His life.

So, how do we come before Him on this Christmas night? What can we offer to Him who created the universe and gave us everything we possess? The answer is this: we come to Him in humility, we come to Him with nothing to offer but ourselves, when we have learnt how to “give up everything that does not lead to God, and all our worldly ambitions.” Thus, the only way in which we can truly come to encounter our Lord and Saviour on this Christmas day, is to adorn the garment of humility and condescend to where He has chosen to lay His head for the night. If we want to restore Christmas to our culture, it will require more than just good intentions; it would require radical humility. We will need to give up seats on the pews or places in line. We will need to show grace, even when grace is not given. We will need to humble ourselves and follow the example set by the baby in the manger, the shepherds in the field, and Mary and Joseph as they agreed to God’s plan.

Today, anyone wishing to enter the Church of the Lord’s Nativity in Bethlehem, constructed over the site where tradition holds Jesus was born, will find that the doorway five and a half metres high, through which emperors and caliphs used to enter the building, is now largely walled up. Only a low opening of one and a half metres has remained (less than 5 feet). The intention was probably to provide the church with better protection from invaders, but above all, to prevent people from entering God’s house on horseback. Anyone wishing to enter the place of Jesus’ birth has to get off his high horse and bend down, before entering.

Pope Emeritus Benedict in reflecting over the height and size of this doorway writes: “It seems to me that a deeper truth is revealed here, which should touch our hearts on this holy night: if we want to find the God who appeared as a child, then we must dismount from the high horse of our “enlightened” reason. We must set aside our false certainties, our intellectual pride, which prevents us from recognising God’s closeness. We must follow the interior path of Saint Francis – the path leading to that ultimate outward and inward simplicity which enables the heart to see. We must bend down, spiritually we must as it were go on foot, in order to pass through the portal of faith and encounter the God who is so different from our prejudices and opinions – the God who conceals Himself in the humility of a newborn baby. In this spirit let us celebrate the liturgy of the holy night, let us strip away our fixation on what is material, on what can be measured and grasped. Let us allow ourselves to be made simple by the God who reveals himself to the simple of heart. And let us also pray especially at this hour for all who have to celebrate Christmas in poverty, in suffering, as migrants, that a ray of God’s kindness may shine upon them, that they – and we – may be touched by the kindness that God chose to bring into the world through the birth of his Son in a stable. Amen.”

Engraved in Love and Mercy

Fifth Sunday of Lent Year C

Familiarity with this story has made most of us inattentive to gaping holes in the narrative.

First, this famous incident took place within the precinct of the Temple, and this is no insignificant detail. Why would this woman be brought into the precinct of the Temple, even if this took place in the outer Court of Women? Shouldn’t the scribes and Pharisees who were most careful about matters concerning ritual purity know that to have a public sinner dragged into the compound of the House of God would be a great affront to God Himself?

Second, who was this unnamed woman? Is she the same woman in Luke 7:47-49 who entered the house of Simon the Pharisee and bathed the Lord’s feet with her tears? And to think that this woman was forgiven once and now caught in another compromising situation? Shouldn’t she deserve a more severe punishment for this repeat offence?

Thirdly, and this may seem oddest of all - the Lord’s parting words to this woman are, “go away, and do not sin anymore.” Curiously, Saint John does not report any penitential resolve on the part of the woman. Although the Lord also does not condemn her, neither does He absolve her of her sin.

But the fourth mystery of this story is one which has puzzled most scholars and commentators, and given rise to many speculations - what was our Lord writing on the ground? One common answer was that He was writing the names of the men, many of whom were standing in the crowd accusing this woman, guilty of having committed the act of adultery or fornication with this woman. This is a plausible answer as no one can commit adultery or fornication alone by himself or herself - it takes two to tango. This may be reminiscent of the prophet Jeremiah’s scribbling the sins of the Israelites.

But there is also another possibility offered by St Thomas Aquinas. He sees in this woman a symbol and representative of sinful humanity, and like fallen humanity, she is in need of mercy, even though her accusers demand justice. There seems no way out. According to St John Paul II, her accusers “intend to show that (Christ’s) teaching on God’s merciful love contradicts the Law, which punished the sin of adultery with stoning.” How can God be just and yet merciful toward our fallen human race? But then something wonderful happens. Jesus bends down and begins to write in the earth. And this is all done in silence. What does this mean?

St Thomas Aquinas, with the keenness of his mystical insight, says that this action signifies that God in His mercy is stooping down to assist sinful humanity. In fact, he says, that whenever Jesus stoops down, this signifies an act of God’s mercy, and that whenever He stands up straight, this signifies an act of God’s justice. For the Greek word for justice literally means, “uprightness.” It is the same word in the Greek for what Jesus is doing by standing upright. But what does the writing in the earth signify? The Greek word there is katagraphein. It is a hapax legomenon, which is to say that it is a unique word which appears only once in the New Testament, and that is here. It doesn’t exactly mean “write”—that would be graphein—but katagraphein means “to engrave.”

What was our Lord “engraving”? We return to the Old Testament to see how God engraves the commandments with His finger in the tablets of stone. So the Fathers of the Church say that the Lord is here writing the commandments into the earth. But according to St Thomas, this act also signifies the mystery of the Incarnation—when by the finger of God, the Holy Spirit, the eternal Word was written into our human nature, as Isaiah the prophet once wrote: “Let the heavens rain down the Just One and the earth bring forth a Saviour” (Isa 45:8). The earth is a fit symbol for human nature since God had shaped the first man from the earth. And all this is done in silence to signify the ineffability of this mystery. It is as if Jesus is saying to the scribes and Pharisees: “Yes, according to Moses she ought to be condemned and stoned to death, but now through the Incarnation, mercy has been made available to her. Therefore, there is now hope for sinners.” Jesus is the perfect sin offering, the Lamb of God, who truly takes away the sins of the world.

But the scribes and Pharisees do not understand the mystery, and they break the reverent silence with a cacophony of cries: they want justice, they want blood. And as they continued to ask Him, our Lord stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” By straightening up, our Lord is now signifying that He is dispensing justice by passing judgment. They have asked for justice and justice they will receive, but now it is they who also stand accused. Our Lord does not pass judgment on this woman but on her accusers. But let us be clear that the Lord does not make excuses for the sins of this woman. He does not deny that she deserves death, but He adds to this that so do these scribes and Pharisees. Mercy is never given to the deserving. It is always offered to the undeserving, if it is to be mercy.

But what happens next? Our Lord stoops down again, as if to offer mercy to the newly accused. And this time He begins to write again, but the word now is graphein. He is not engraving but simply writing lightly in the earth, and as you all know, that whatever is written in sand, is malleable and can be easily erased. And the Fathers of the Church tell us that now He is writing their sins, but lightly as if to indicate that these can be easily wiped away, if only they will accept that they too need God’s mercy. How often do we fail to grasp this? How often have we etched and engraved the sins of others in our hearts as we refuse to forgive them but we forget that our sins are so quickly and easily absolved by God, as would writings in the sand be simply erased with a sweep of the hand?

Then what happens last of all? Our Lord stands up again to render His judgment, a judgment both just and merciful: Our Lord looked up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And she is right - all her accusers have fled the scene in shame - they who deserve God’s judgment had been reminded by the Lord that they too have been recipients of His mercy. How could they demand a different standard for this woman? The woman now stands upright because she has been justified by the mercy of Christ, not because she was justified by her own merits. Hence, she hears the sentence: And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you … go away, and do not sin anymore.”

St John Paul II provides us a perfect conclusion to this story: “This Gospel passage clearly teaches that Christian forgiveness is not synonymous with mere tolerance, but implies something more demanding. It does not mean overlooking evil, or even worse, denying it. God does not forgive evil but the individual, and He teaches us to distinguish the evil act, which as such must be condemned, from the person who has committed it, to whom He offers the possibility of changing. While man tends to identify the sinner with his sin, closing every escape, the heavenly Father instead has sent His Son into the world to offer everyone a way to salvation… On Calvary, by the supreme sacrifice of his life, the Messiah will seal for every man and woman the infinite gift of God's pardon and mercy.”