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!

Hope will not disappoint

Second Sunday of Lent Year C

The word “hope” is thrown around a lot. “I hope I win the lottery!” “I hope that I do well in my exams!” “I hope that I get a raise.” “I hope Father’s homily will be short!” As you know from experience, most of the time you don’t get what you “hope” for. So, keep hoping!

For most people, optimism and hope are interchangeable, but are they really? The objects of both concepts are worlds apart. Optimism focuses on making this life and this world a better place. Nothing wrong with that, unfortunately the future and the outcomes of our actions are never truly within our control. We want things to be better. We want our problems to be resolved. We want crises to end. We want the best possible future for ourselves and our loved ones. But the best we can accomplish is to have strong aspirations. We can never guarantee their final outcome. The truth is that life is not a genie released from a bottle who can guarantee the fulfilment of all or any of our wishes.

On the other hand, Christian hope is different. It’s not wishing for good things with this life as our goal. The ultimate object of Hope like the other theological virtues of faith and charity, is God. As St Paul assures us in his letter to the Romans, “Hope will not disappoint” (Rom 5:5), precisely because God will not disappoint. Hope does not spring from a person’s mind; it is not snatched out of mid-air. It results from the promises of God. It is grounded in God, the God who does not break His promises, the God who remains faithful to His covenants, the God who surprises us with something greater than we can ever conceive or perceive, the God who will certainly and irrefutably never disappoint. This is what we see in the readings we have heard this week.

In the first reading, we have God promising to give Abram something which seemed humanly impossible to this old and childless man. God uses the stars to birth faith in Abram. Throughout Abram (who was later renamed Abraham) and his wife Sarah’s lives, God brought them into situations that stretched their faith and required the continued exercise of hope and trust in God. Abram had left everything he knew—his extended family, an assurance of wealth and stability in a well-established homeland —to follow a voice that called him by name into the unknown. Like a blindfolded trust-walk, Abram took step by step in the wilderness, moving forward in God’s plan for his life. When he started to question the journey, he simply needed to glance up to the stars to remember the One who showed him the expanse of the heavens and all the stars therein and then promised to make Abram’s descendants into a great nation as numerous as those incalculable stars. St Paul reflecting on this act of faith and hope wrote: “Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations” (Rom 4:18).

Abraham’s faith and hope did not require a denial of reality, nor would such a denial have been healthy. False optimism, on the other hand, does that. How many of us have been miserably disappointed because we have held on to some false optimism that eventually turned out to be a lie or a delusion? But here Abraham acknowledged his own personal and natural limitations (old age and barrenness) without weakening in faith. In some circles, the power of positive thinking and speech receives such an emphasis that people feel they cannot speak honestly about their circumstances. Positive thinking merely denies reality, it cannot reshape it nor create it. That isn’t walking in hope. Hope acknowledges the facts and then looks beyond them to the truth of what Scripture reveals about God, His power, and His ability to fulfill His word.

In the second reading, St Paul reminds us that our true homeland is heaven. Many have forgotten this. Too often today when people talk about “heaven” they mean a purely spiritual destination where spirits float around with God in the clouds. That’s a non-Christian hope. That “heaven” is not what we look forward to. In place of a heaven which means perfect communion with God, man has tried to replace it with surrogates, always looking for the elusive utopia, the earthly paradise of our own making. But any “earthly paradise” which excludes God from its definition, is a false paradise, and eventually would turn out to be a living hell. We need only look towards the “paradise” which both the Nazis and communist regimes attempted to create on earth. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1817).

Finally, we have the gospel passage which is St Luke’s account of the Transfiguration. This story appears in all the synoptic gospels and each version is always read on the Second Sunday of Lent. This event takes place as our Lord is proceeding to Jerusalem with His disciples to meet His fate - His atoning death on the cross which will lead to His saving resurrection. The Lord was transfigured so that “the scandal of the Cross might be removed from the hearts of his disciples” (Roman Missal, Preface for the Feast of the Transfiguration), to help them bear the dark moments of His Passion. The Cross and glory are closely united.

The transfiguration was meant to instil hope and strengthen their faith in the face of the Lord’s impending suffering and death. Even witnessing Jesus' tragic death, they were not to lose faith, knowing that suffering and death do not have the final say. That is why the message of the Lord’s transfiguration is so important. It offers us a glimpse into a different world - eternal life, the life of the resurrection, heaven itself. In the presence of suffering, we see our Lord’s glory, we see Moses and Elijah who were deemed dead or at least removed from our human existence, alive in God and we hope that one day we will be with them. This vision offers us hope as we journey through life, knowing that something beautiful awaits us after the trials of this world.

As the ups and downs of life continue, hope remains an important virtue for all of us. Hope can sustain us amidst the difficulties of life. There are times when the enormity of our pains and trials leads us to despair, questioning whether God sees our suffering and what His purpose is in it. But imagine someone showing you a glimpse of your future life beyond this world – a life in the presence of God, reunited with loved ones, free from suffering. Such a vision, however fleeting, can make a profound difference in how you view your earthly life and the manner in which you choose to live it. When our eyes are fixed on the light at the end of the long dark tunnel, even though that light may seem faint and tiny at times, the going gets easier and our strength to press on is renewed. As the Catechism says, hope keeps us from discouragement, sustains us when abandoned, and opens our hearts in expectation of heaven (CCC 1818).

The Hope of Resurrection has dawned

Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love is stronger than Death

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Illuminated by the Faith of Easter

Third Sunday of Easter Year B

Most people are familiar with the post resurrection story of how our Lord appears to the two disciples who are making their way home to the village of Emmaus. Unbeknownst to them, it is the One whom they believe had abandoned them by getting Himself killed who walks along with them; it is the Living Word who now explains the meaning of the written Word to them; it is the One who is the Way, the Truth and the Life who confronts their ignorance and despondency by showing them the Way, revealing to them the Truth that will ultimately lead to Eternal Life.

The two would have taken hours to reach their destination and when they had arrived, it was already dark. The Lord having broken bread with them - a clear allusion to the Eucharist - the scales from the eyes of these two disciples fall away and they finally recognise the One who had walked along with them and spoken to them as none other as the Lord, the One who died and is now Risen. Without waiting for dawn, they speedily returned to Jerusalem where they had come from. Imagine that … walking in the dark of night, without fear of brigands or risking a treacherous path in the dark. That was because their path was now illuminated by the new faith of Easter burning within their hearts, showing them the Way home.

This is where we find ourselves in today’s gospel. The two disciples were back with the community of disciples from whom they had abandoned, excited to share news of their amazing encounter with the Risen Lord. But our Lord’s sudden appearance would take the surprise out of their story telling. The disciples would not only have to rely on the second-hand account of these two but get a direct experience of the Risen Lord in the flesh.

And the first words of our Lord are simply these: “Peace be with you!” These words may sound consoling. But they were actually meant as a trigger, to shake the disciples out of their cocoon of despair, fear and anxiety. Our Lord was confronting their current experience. And what was their experience at that moment? It was a volatile cocktail of emotions and experiences. The days surrounding Jesus’ resurrection were anxious times for His followers. For them, His life had ended on that first Good Friday. They were afraid that because of association with Him their lives would soon end too. Further, they were dealing with the anxiety that comes with crushed dreams and uncertainty about the future. They were afraid – for their lives and their future. They were anxious – they had no idea what to expect next. Their stomachs were in knots, their hope was gone, and their blood pressure was up. Amid it all, our Lord challenges them with this common but seemingly inappropriate greeting: “peace be with you”.

This is where we find a common underlying theme which unites all three readings. Our Lord’s greeting and gift of peace is by no way just a means of “keeping the peace,” that is maintaining good relationships with His disciples at the expense of the truth. Any relationship, to be authentic and deep, has to be based on the truth rather than a lie. Falsehood, error, and sin must be confronted and resisted. The problem is that most of us often believe that it is un-Christian to confront our brother or sister when they are in error. Confrontation is often viewed as a negative action that seeks to embarrass or humiliate the other person. But this is where we get it entirely wrong.

In the first reading taken from the Acts of the Apostles, St Peter lays down a list of accusations against the Jews whom he refers to using their ancient name, “Israelites.” They are guilty of handing over, disowning, falsely accusing and killing the very One who was chosen and glorified by the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our ancestors.” And it is no excuse nor defence for them to plead that they were ignorant of their actions. Peter lays the blame entirely on them, even though he argues that it was just as scripture had foretold. And the only remedy is this: they “must repent and turn to God, so that (their) sins may be wiped out.” Without such confrontation, St Peter understood, his fellow Jews would remain and perhaps die in their guilt.

Likewise, in the second reading, St John explained why he had confronted his audience - it is to stop them from sinning. But confrontation would not be enough if it is not accompanied by the support offered to help them amend their ways. And so, John tells them that we have an Advocate in Jesus Christ whose sacrifice had taken away our sins. John also reminds his audience that there must be integrity with our profession of faith and the manner in which we live our lives which must be in conformity to God’s commandments. Anyone who claims that they have a relationship with God but continues sinning is living a lie. Ultimately, only the truth can set us free.

Again and again, we find ourselves in the position of facing an evil — sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle — and not quite knowing what to do about it. Of all the works of mercy, probably the most thankless and despised is admonishing the sinner, and yet it is the most needed. Nobody wants to do it, and nobody wants it done to them. But admonishing the sinner, however, is not an act of Pharisaic pride, but of true charity. If we truly love someone and wish the best for the person, we must be ready to correct their mistake and error, even at the detriment of ruining our relationship with the person. True peace can only come by fully embracing the truth about ourselves, and our relationship with God and with others. Living a life of sin would be a clear contradiction of our claims that we are Christians.

Yes, admittedly it is unpopular and difficult to admonish the sinner, to confront delusional thinking, or to correct the error. But remember - Christ did it, and it got Him nailed to a cross. For admonition means looking somebody in the eye, and speaking truth in love to him rather than tiptoe around the subject and pretend that everything is hunky dory. It means addressing a fellow human being as a person, rather than an object of derision or gossip. It means speaking about things that are awkward and uncomfortable. And in our post-truth world, it means having some unalterable values and convictions even if we risk losing friends, family, job, and reputation. Ultimately, to confront the sinner is to call him to cast off the mask of sin and to become who he really is, a child of God in the image of Christ. Admonishing the sinner is to bring light into his life, so that his path may be illuminated by the new faith of Easter burning within his heart, showing him the Way home.

We leave no one behind

Easter Sunday

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the Night!

Easter Vigil of the Holy Night

The events of Easter takes place in the darkness of the night, hidden even from the eyes of those who were the most intimate friends of our Lord. But the reality and magnitude of the resurrection would only be felt at dawn, at the breaking of the first rays of sunlight to illuminate the new day. St Mark situates the scene of the discovery of the empty tomb by the women at this very moment: “And very early in the morning on the first day of the week they went to the tomb, just as the sun was rising.”

But our liturgy tonight does not wait for Dawn to arrive. It is too important, too urgent. Even in the darkness that surrounds this very church tonight, the light is breaking through in the candles we held as a visible sign of our faith in the Risen Lord, symbolised by the Paschal Candle, whose flames “dispels wickedness, washes faults away, restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to mourners, drives out hatred, fosters concord, and brings down the mighty.” For this reason, as the Exsultet exclaims, the entire earth which is still enveloped in the night of sin now rejoices because it is “ablaze with light from her eternal King, let all corners of the earth be glad, knowing an end to gloom and darkness.”

There is no need to cower in the darkness and wait for the night to pass with the first rays of the rising sun. This is no ordinary night. One iconic phrase recurs five times in the Exsultet: “This is the night.” In English, the difference between “night” and “light” is a single letter. The paradox rings even in the ear. This night, unlike any other, is pure light. It recalls Psalm 139:12, which considers the impossibility of hiding from God in the dark: “even darkness is not dark to you, the night shall be as bright as day, and darkness the same as the light” When Christians stare into the darkness of this night, we see light. In fact, as the Easter Proclamation declares, this “night shall be as bright as day, dazzling is the night for me, and full of gladness.” Why do we rejoice as we have never rejoiced before?

At the heart of our celebration is this simple truth that remains hidden from the eyes who have not been enlightened by light of faith: “This is the night, when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld”. Yes, on this night, when Christians stare at death, we see life! When our Lord gave up His spirit on the cross and died, and His lifeless body was taken down and placed in a tomb with its entrance rolled over by a heavy stone, everything was cut off from the light. In that place of darkness and decay, where order was once again plunged into chaos just like the moment before God began His work of creation, God now begins His greatest work of rescue and redemption which far supersedes His first work. If light was the first gift of God to the world, a victory over darkness of chaos; now God plunges His Son, the Light of the World, into the very heart of the darkness of this night to free us from the bondage of sin and death.

Yes, it is a truly blessed night, when heaven and earth has reconciled their long time enmity, and God has chosen to restore His image back in man. This is the long awaited night of rebirth, the night of re-creation. The Lamb once slain and laid in the tomb of waste has risen in glory. The incorruptible has conquered the corruptible, for death could not hold Him captive. Alleluia, great light is rising from the grave. The dark night of sin has been dispelled, Alleluia!

All too often we run from our darkness, we fear it, we are ashamed of it or simply live in denial of it. But today, the light of the Paschal Mystery shines brightly into the darkest abyss of our heart and soul. The Paschal Mystery, the Mystery which Good Friday and Easter reveals, demands that we learn to recognise that hidden within that darkness, in every mistake, every human error, every shortcoming, every failure and even in the greatest of falls is the seed of the resurrection – where every sin can be transformed by a single moment of grace. Indeed, rather than cast aside His fallen creation, God reaches into the failure and tragedy of human sinfulness to redeem us. This is why the Easter Proclamation declares that the sin of Adam which separated us from the life of grace and God, could be described as a “Happy Fault” because it had “earned so great, so glorious a redeemer!” If Adam had not fallen, Christ would not have risen, “and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor 15:14).

This is the reason for this night. Christ is risen today. We have every reason to rejoice. This message is coming at a time in history when we are living in the darkness of chaos, confusion and a future fraught with uncertainty. The message of this night is that though darkness has enjoyed the upper hand for long time but Our Light has arisen. The fasting of Lent is over! The Feasting of New Life has begun. The silence of this night has been broken by our victory song: Alleluia! Let us not hesitate to sing it. It will burst the tomb of our problems and restore our hope. Let our world rise again in its glory! Let our families rise again in splendour! Let everything in us rise, for Christ our Paschal Lamb has truly risen. Alleluia! He has risen! Indeed, He is risen! Alleluia!

The New Temple

Third Sunday of Lent Year B

For many Catholics, fund raising can sound like a dirty word. This aversion and resistance to fund raising activities is often justified by the following assumptions:

First, religion should stay clear of money matters and should be solely concerned with the spiritual welfare of its members.

Second, the Church already possesses a fortune evidenced by the size of the church and its many facilities. Somehow, the church has stashed away in some secret corner, a magical goose that can endlessly lay golden eggs.

Third, Jesus shows us a perfect example of how we Christians should abhor the commercialising of religion by His action of turning out all the merchants and traders from the Temple precinct and then accuses them of turning His Father’s house into a market.

Our gospel story is often interpreted as testimony against materialism in religious practice. Religion is to remain radically pure in regard to the corruptions of commerce. Christianity is solely about faith. Money plays no role whatsoever. So, was our Lord’s action in today’s gospel passage a call to keep things simple and cheap, that the Church should avoid any effort to raise funds for its maintenance and activities? You will be surprised with the answer.

In case you may have noticed, the Gospel of John states that Jesus cleansed the temple early in His ministry, but the other gospels place the temple-cleansing near the end of His ministry. Only in John’s gospel do we have the Jews confront our Lord with this question: “What sign can you show us to justify what you have done?” And it is this question which opens the discussion on the significance of our Lord’s action in pointing to His own death and resurrection.

The Temple was the focal point of every aspect of Jewish life and identity. From a theological and liturgical perspective, for a first-century Jew, the Temple was at least four things: (1) the dwelling-place of God on earth; (2) a microcosm of heaven and earth; (3) the sole place of sacrificial worship; (4) and where there is ritual sacrifice, you would also need the priesthood. Therefore, sacrifices offered to God could only be made at the Temple and never elsewhere. This is also the reason why there were traders selling animals in the Temple because these animals were meant for the Temple rituals, offering and sacrifices. The moneychangers also served a similar role of exchanging the profane Roman currency, which was considered idolatrous and unclean with Temple coinage, the only currency accepted in the Temple.

But the temple was also a barometer of sorts for the health of the covenantal relationship between God and the people. Many of the prophets warned that a failure to uphold the Law and live the covenant would result in the destruction of the temple. In 587 B.C., the temple was destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, marking the start of The Exile. Following the exile, the temple was rebuilt, then damaged, and rebuilt again. But even this second temple would be destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. Was it in this context that we can understand the words of our Lord, “Destroy this sanctuary, and in three days I will raise it up”? St John gives us the answer: “But He was speaking of the sanctuary that was His body, and when Jesus rose from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this …”

Our Lord Jesus saw that all four aspects of the Temple were being fulfilled in Himself and in the community of His disciples. (1) His body is the dwelling place of God on earth - the meeting place between heaven and earth; (2) He is the foundation stone that would be the beginning of a new Temple and a new creation - the new heaven and earth; (3) He would offer Himself as the perfect sacrifice that will accomplish what previous animal blood sacrifices were unable to achieve - atonement for sin and communion with God; (4) and finally, Jesus is the High Priest of the new eschatological priesthood that could serve as the perfect mediator between God and man. Because of this, the old temple was destined to pass away, to be replaced by the new Temple “not made with human hands,” and the old priesthood with the new.

Was Jesus, in cleansing the temple, attacking the temple itself, and by extension, an attack on God as well? No. And did Jesus, in making His remark, say He would destroy the temple? No. But, paradoxically, the love of the Son for His Father and His Father’s house did point toward the demise of the temple. “This is a prophecy of the Cross,” wrote Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI, “He shows that the destruction of His earthly body will be at the same time the end of the Temple.”

So, the new and everlasting Temple was established by the death and resurrection of the Son of God. Through our Lord’s death and resurrection, the place for encountering God will no longer be the temple but the risen and glorified Body of Jesus in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, where all mankind is united. With His Resurrection the new Temple will begin: the living body of Jesus Christ, which will now stand in the sight of God and be the place of all worship. Into this Body He incorporates men. This is what the Catechism tells us: “Christ is the true temple of God, ‘the place where his glory dwells’; by the grace of God, Christians also become temples of the Holy Spirit, living stones out of which the Church is built” (CCC 1197). Through baptism we become joined to the one Body of Christ, and that Body, the Church, is the “one temple of the Holy Spirit” (CCC, 776).

Finally, this story of the cleansing of the Temple also points to an important aspect of our spiritual lives, an element so relevant during this season of Lent - spiritual purification. Christ has come not only to “cleanse the Temple of Jerusalem,” but the temple of our own bodies, our lives. Our Lord’s purification of the Temple reminds us today of the need to purify our faith, to once again ground our lives on the God who shows us His power and infinite love on the Cross, the source of our salvation. Only by passing through the Cross will we reach the glory and joy of the Resurrection. The Lord Jesus comes into your life expecting to find a place ordered to the worship of the one true God, but what He finds is “a marketplace,” a heart that is divided by competing values and allegiances. Instead of a heart that is solely dedicated to God, Christ finds a place where things other than God have become primary. What rivals to the one true God have you allowed to invade the sacred space of your soul? Entertainment, leisure, material wealth, obsessions and addictions? How are these things enshrined in the sanctuary of your own heart leaving no room for God? During this Lent, let us reorientate our lives, consecrate our hearts solely to God and rid the temple of our own bodies of the idols to which we have foolishly given power and pride of place.

Uncovering Beauty

Feast of the Transfiguration

At the end of a tour of the Vatican Museum, tourists and pilgrims would be treated to one of the great wonders of the Catholic Church, the Sistine Chapel, with its most stunning and exquisite wall to ceiling murals painted by some of the greatest Renaissance artists that had ever lived. It is quite frustrating that what should take at least an entire day to appreciate and admire is often crammed into a 10 to 15 minutes experience during the peak hours of the visit. It is just impossible to take in everything and to focus on any particular scene for more than a quick cursory glance.

If I choose to highlight at least one scene due to the brevity of time, it would be indisputably Michelangelo’s Last Judgment which occupies the entire altar wall of the Chapel. It is a depiction of the Second Coming of Christ and the final and eternal judgment by God of all humanity. Due to the monumental scale of the work, it took four years to complete. After the death of Michelangelo in 1564, and as a consequence of the Council of Trent condemning nudity in religious art, the genitalia in the fresco, referred to as 'objectionable,' were painted over with drapery. For centuries, the original work of art remained hidden under layers of soot, dirt, grime and the censor’s concealing paint until the commencement of restoration works in the 20th century. After the cleanup, both the restorers and the world were surprised by the discoveries of what lay beneath. To the close minded, it could be described as medieval pornography. But to the enlightened, the original work of art could only be described as divine. The metamorphosis (the Greek word for Transfiguration) of this work of art, now unveiled its true beauty to an admiring world.

Likewise, the great event of the Transfiguration seeks to peel away at the mystery of the Passion of Christ. On the Mount of Transfiguration, we have a glimpse of the true glorious nature of the scene that took place on another hill, Calvary. It’s hard to make out the innate beauty and true nature of the crucifixion, especially when it is covered by all the blood, gore and horror of the event. The Transfiguration, however, allows us to see what really took place. The gospels attempt to do this by making striking similarities between the account of the transfiguration and the story of the cross: Both these scenes would have constituted an extraordinarily powerful diptych representing the high and low points of Jesus' life.

Our Lord takes Peter, James and John, His inner circle, with Him up the Mount of Transfiguration. On the evening of Holy Thursday, He will lead the same threesome to Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives to witness His passion. History repeats itself - the three disciples fall asleep on the Mount of Transfiguration as they did in the Garden of Gethsemane. Our Lord is transfigured on a mountain and crucified on another. Just as Jesus is flanked by His heavenly courtiers, Moses and Elijah, at the Transfiguration, He is placed between two thieves at His crucifixion. Although the disciples were enveloped with light on the Mount of Transfiguration, the whole land was covered in darkness at the Crucifixion. It is as if glory and suffering somehow belong together, two sides of the same coin. In the context of the deepest humiliation, pain and suffering, the true glory of Christ is revealed. It is as if human suffering is somehow itself transfigured by the God who came to redeem it; that somehow, the destiny of the Son of God fulfils the destiny of the human race; only through the suffering of death can we enter into glory.

How could Jesus’ ascent to the cross, a symbol of humiliation, be seen as a moment of glory? The answer lies in the scene of the Transfiguration. What is hidden to the eyes of those who witnessed the scene of the crucifixion is now revealed to the three Apostles and to all of us in the Transfiguration. The Transfiguration helps us to understand the Cross and Calvary would not be Jesus’ Alamo, the event commemorating His great defeat. The Transfiguration reveals to us what really happened on Calvary. Lifted up on a mountain, lifted up on a cross, lifted up as universal Saviour, Jesus truly ascended His throne of glory. The Transfiguration indeed reveals the true divine glory of Christ. Its purpose is to reveal to His disciples who Jesus is, and so to prepare them for the cross.

The Lord’s prophetic words that He would be tortured and killed in Jerusalem would have deeply troubled His disciples. A vision of the crucifixion might have evoked the feeling of despair in His disciples. It would have shaken their faith to the core. The mystery of redemption could have appeared to them as a defeat and the Messiah powerless. At a time of despondency and doubt, the three apostles’ witness to the Transfiguration was to strengthen the faith of the other disciples. And so, we finally come to the heart of this deliberate juxtaposition of the two scenes. No amount of intellectual explanation would have sufficed to explain the scandal of the cross and the suffering of Christ. God had to demonstrate it.

And this is what constitutes the mystery of Christianity - It attracts people not so much by its delicate and sophisticated intellectualism, nor by the brilliant oratory of its preachers, nor yet by the beauty of its rites. Christianity revealed to the human soul a new world, an eternal world, a world of divine light – that which not a single religion or philosophical system could give. It reveals to the world the beauty and sweetness of the divine mystery of its Saviour albeit hidden in human flesh and adorned with the tattered flesh of broken humanity. Here then is the greatest paradox of all - the glory of God revealed in Jesus, and especially in that which seems to be most inglorious. To the outward eye this was the uttermost in degradation, the death of a criminal. To the eye of faith, it was (and still is) the supreme glory.

We need to have before us the Transfiguration so that we may have a glimpse of the end of the story, the dawning glory of Easter, in order to be sustained in the midst of the darkness, pain and isolation that we must endure throughout our walk through the valley of the shadow of death. In the Transfiguration we taste the sweetness often hidden in the bitterness of failure, suffering and pain. In the Transfiguration we behold the beauty and glory often covered beneath layers of soot and the grime, concealed by the awful and scandalous experience of humanity’s suffering! In the Transfiguration, we finally receive the answer to the inexplicable mysteries concealed by death, an answer that can only be found in the Resurrection!

As the First Preface for Dead recited by the priest at a funeral Mass, we acclaim: “In Him who rose from the dead, our hope of resurrection dawned. The sadness of death gives way to the bright promise of immortality. Lord, for your faithful people, life is changed, not ended.” And though none of us have witnessed the resurrection of the body, we acknowledge and confess this to be true because of what the Apostles had witnessed at the Transfiguration.

The Road which leads to the Eucharist

Third Sunday of Easter Year A

Today’s gospel reading is a bit of an anomaly, a departure from what we would have expected. In Cycle A of the lectionary, the gospel selections are normally taken from the Gospel of St Matthew and in the season of Lent and Easter, we are also treated to passages from the Fourth Gospel, that of St John’s. But today, we are given this famous passage taken from the Gospel of St Luke. It’s the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Their faith had died along with the man whom they had trusted and followed. At the beginning of the story, the two are weighed down by the heavy spectre of death, like an albatross hung around their necks … the power of the resurrection had yet to touch them.

This story, therefore, connects our Lord’s story with ours. His resurrection is not just a one-off event exclusively experienced by Him alone. The resurrection is often viewed primarily as the awesome miracle that validates the teachings of Christ and vindicates Him against His accusers. But it is more than such crowning evidence – much more. Through faith, His resurrection can become ours - and we see this amazing phenomena in the story of the road to Emmaus.

These two disciples, like so many of Jesus’ followers, were trying to make sense of their pain and loss. Their walk to Emmaus must have felt like a walk in the desert, in the darkness of death, where hope had been abandoned. The reason why this story resonates with so many of us is because we have been there in that dark place, walking, trudging along as we drag our feet through the valley of death and tears. That is the condition of humankind unable to find hope when they have not encountered the Risen Christ. There is no need for me to remind you that life is full of contradictions, pain, and a lack of answers. There is unimaginable darkness in this world, and we often seem to have to face it alone.

The death of Jesus on the cross was the epitome of all the contradictions and evil, for if there was going to be a solution and an end to our despair, it would be in the hands of the Saviour that God had sent to us. But as far as the disciples are concerned, He is dead. If our Saviour is dead, then there is no hope.

And so on this path of darkness, our Lord appears to them and accompanies them. He recounts the whole story again, but this time invites them to enter into that story and walk with Him, as He walks along with them. He helps them see that the entire fabric of scripture is focused on Him, finds fulfillment in Him and can only be understood in Him. Here we see the amazing Spirit inspired gift of story-telling – a story of contrast – as these disciples walk home, the evening draws near and it gets darker. But in terms of their faith, as the Lord begins to expound on the scriptures and open their minds to the secrets therein, their faith becomes brighter.

But the moment of recognition will not come at the end of this long biblical exposition. It must have been an exceedingly long sermon because it would have been preached from morning till late evening. Most of you would not have been able to sit quietly through a 10 minute homily by the priest each Sunday - perhaps the solution is not found in making the homily shorter, but longer! The Word of God must ultimately lead to the Sacrament. It is in the Eucharist that the Word becomes flesh. And so, St Luke is using the very same words which he had used in Chapter 22 to describe the Eucharistic meal. At the table, He took the bread, and blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.

It is in the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ that He gives Himself fully to them. It is in the communion of this broken Body, that they can truly meet the Risen Christ. The opening of the Scriptures was necessary, but it was not sufficient. The Word must lead to the Sacrament because we can only find the Risen Lord fully and be in full communion with Him in the meal of the kingdom, the bread of life, the manna from heaven, the medicine of immortality. The Word of God did not become a book of dead words. The Word became flesh, dwelt among us and now feeds us with His flesh and blood in the Eucharist. By faith, we eat and drink Christ so that eternal life is given to us.

It is here in the Eucharist that we find comfort and renewal from the despair of death, darkness and hopelessness – because in the Mass we are taken to heaven and heaven is brought to us. Heaven and earth meet together in the very Body and Blood of our Risen Lord. If we fully grasp this truth, we can then understand the great tragedy of many Catholics who have chosen not to return to church or who consistently miss Masses on Sundays. They are not just denied the sustenance of a sacred meal. In fact, they deny themselves the only food that can bring them to heaven. Here and at every Mass, we find light in darkness, life in the midst of death, victory in the brokenness, and the sure hope of our resurrection, because we have partaken in the very flesh of the One who was put to death but now, is alive again. May we always recognise Him in the breaking of bread and the sharing of His Body and Blood.

Touch these wounds

Second Sunday of Easter Year A

Our story provides us with a paradoxical contrast - closed doors but open wounds. How we wish it was the other way around? The idea of closed doors suggests that it is a done deal, there is no longer any room for negotiation, that time has run out. In the synoptic gospels, we have the parable of the ten bridesmaids, five wise and the remaining foolish, with the latter being turned out of the party because of their folly and lack of preparation. When they returned from their shopping trip, they were confronted with the painful reality of closed doors - they were too late and judgment has already been delivered.

We can imagine a similar scenario in today’s passage. The disciples of the Lord could only live with regret - the regret of following a man who could have been the Messianic King, the regret of not following Him to the very end, the regret of turning their backs on Him, with one denying Him and the other betraying Him. The closed doors symbolised their predicament. They had closed the doors of their hearts to their master and now they deserved to have God closed His doors of mercy on them, or at least this is what they thought. Despite the doors of the Upper Room and their hearts were shut and locked, the Lord Jesus came in anyway. The stone which blocked the tomb could not keep Him in. Neither could these flimsy wooden doors keep Him out. That is the power of Divine Mercy.

Several things happened on this day. Our Lord breathed the Holy Spirit on to His disciples and offered them the gift of peace which the world cannot give. Our Lord offered them pardon and mercy for their betrayal, courage in place of their fear, peace to their troubled hearts, and the Holy Spirit, the advocate to be their “forever” companion. But there was one more thing He offered them on this day. He offered them the gift of His wounds, the one thing which would have shamed them to their core, because these were the most condemning evidence of their lack of commitment and cowardly betrayal.

Christ came to these disciples with His opened wounds. He could have concealed them under layers of clothing, He could have cauterised and healed them without leaving any trace of a scar. But He left them visible and opened. The Glorified Lord carried the marks of His passion. His resurrection did not obliterate these signs of His great act of self-sacrifice. This is because the wounds of His crucifixion are the means by which we are saved. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, “whereas he was being wounded for our rebellions, crushed because of our guilt; the punishment reconciling us fell on him, and we have been healed by his bruises” (Isaiah 53:5). We cannot know who Jesus is without seeing His wounds. We cannot understand Jesus without understanding the significance of His wounds. His identity is tied to His passion and death. His wounds are the marks by which humanity is reconciled to God. His wounds are a testimony to the mercy of God towards humanity, a mercy beyond our comprehension. You have to see it to believe it.

Those wounds on the Body of the Glorified and Risen Lord teach us several things. First, they show that this Jesus is not a ghost but a real flesh-and-blood Person. Second, they serve as powerful reminders of the great love of God for us, a love so great that in Christ God died, so that our sins might be forgiven. Third, those wounds illustrate the continuity between the earthly life and ministry of Jesus and His eternal high priesthood, by which He lives to make continual intercession for us before His Heavenly Father (cf. Heb 7:25).

It is not by accident that St Thomas comes to faith, not by simply seeing an apparition of Jesus, but only after being instructed to pay heed to those sacred wounds, which are not scars of defeat and ignominy but, as the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich puts it, noble “tokens of victory and love.” This is why medieval art will show Christ at the Last Judgment showing us once again those sacred wounds. What purpose do they serve? When we meet Christ face to face on Judgment Day, He will look just as He did during that first Easter season: We will behold Him in glory, but a glory that still teaches us the price of sin. Seeing His wounds on that day will bring us to the full awareness of what our sins have done and this will either move us to loving gratitude as expressed by all the saints in heaven or to utter shame and unrepentant guilt in the fires of hell. No one can stay neutral in the face of these wounds. We will either experience mercy and forgiveness or be condemned to despair by our shame and guilt.

But our Lord’s wounds are not confined to the visible parts of His body, His hands and feet and His side which would have necessitated the lifting of His tunic. The biggest wound is the wound to His heart. In his account of the crucifixion, St John alone among the evangelists tells us: “One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.” (Jn. 19:34) This was a pivotal moment of revelation for St John. The wound at His side was not a superficial flesh wound. The spear penetrated deep into the very core of our Lord - His heart.

What we can only imagine with our mind’s eye is now made visible in the iconic image of the Divine Mercy. The image opens a mystical door into the inner core of His being, allowing us a peek into what remains a mystery. It shows the pierced heart of the Lord from which the streams of red and white light flow, representing the blood and water which the evangelist saw. This is the grace of salvation flowing upon humanity. The piercing of the heart was the means by which the floodgates of mercy were opened upon a sinful, broken and suffering humanity. The piercing of our Lord’s heart gave us the two foundational sacraments which made the Church and makes us members of the Church - Baptism and the Eucharist.

Devotion to the holy image of the Divine Mercy as our Lord communicated to St Faustina is not just confined to His handsome and beautiful visage. It is also an invitation to gaze upon His wounds, both visible and hidden. Contemplating the wounds of Jesus can move cold and obstinate hearts. It can bring about conversion. It can open doors that are sealed shut by our obstinacy. It can heal wounds that have been opened by our sins and the sins of others.

As the Lord said to Thomas, He says to us, “Put your hands into the holes that the nails have made.” These holes are the wounds by which we are saved. These holes are the wounds by which we are healed. These holes are the means by which My Divine Mercy will be poured forth upon humanity. Don’t be afraid to touch these wounds and believe. Touch these wounds and be moved. Touch these wounds and hear our Lord’s accompanying words: “Peace be with you”, “your sins are forgiven” and “I am sending you.” Touch these wounds and like Thomas, bow in adoration while professing: “My Lord and my God... I trust in you!"

Christos Anesti! Alithos Anesti!

Easter Sunday 

Alleluia! He is Risen!
Indeed He is Risen!

This is the antiphonal Paschal Greeting which Christians had for centuries used to greet each other on Easter Day and during the Easter season. The first part was the greeting, to which the recipient will reply with the second part. Though it is no longer practised among Catholics these days, this continues to be a widely practised custom by our Eastern brethren: "Christos Anesti! Alithos Anesti!". The greeting is imbued with the Easter excitement and joy that the Lord is risen, that He has conquered death, that all His promises made to His disciples are validated and that life, not death, has the final word.

But for many, the excitement and joy of Easter seem absolutely foreign. Anxiety seems to be the great problem of our age, both individually and collectively. Fortunes are made selling medications and providing therapies to help people overcome their fears, anxieties, phobias, and neuroses.

If ours is an age of anxiety, it is because it is an age in which the Lord Jesus is either not known or not believed. He may be talked about—dozens of books may be written about Him and hours upon hours of television and radio programming may be devoted to Him, but in practical terms, how Jesus lived and died, and what He taught about how to live and die, have negligible impact on the course of world events. In a recent podcast interview, the grandfather of the podcast movement, Adam Curry, was explaining to the atheist Joe Rogan on the latter’s show how he had embraced Christianity. Joe had found the topic interesting enough to feature it on his show, but like so many folks of modern times, could not make the connexion between faith and reality. He could not understand the former’s “leap of faith.”

Why are Christian beliefs considered alien to many? Why is Easter still a mystery, only to be reduced to popular cultural symbols of bunnies and eggs? St Paul gives us this answer: “How can they believe in Him of whom they have not heard?” (Romans 10:14) Christians claim to believe in Jesus, but don’t believe Him or take Him at His word, the living Christ has become all but invisible to the world. Because Christians continue to try to be the guardians of their own existences, instead of being the extension in time and space of the body of the Crucified One, the God who wants to protect them has become unknown to the rest of humanity, which consequently continues to look for a saviour - Another wonder drug? Another technology? Another political ideology or economic theory? Another political leader or commercial whiz-kid billionaire? Another messiah?

We have experimented with so many ideas, things and persons but none of them is able to deliver ultimate human fulfillment or ultimate security against death. What the world is in particular need of today is the credible witness of people enlightened in mind and heart by the word of the Lord, touched by the power of the resurrection, who have seen the empty tomb and recognised its meaning and are capable of opening the hearts and minds of many to the desire for God and for true life, life without end.

When we sing our great paschal anthem, “Christ is risen,” we note that Jesus “has given life,” not survival, “to those in the tombs.” For the past three years, we have been taught and we have learnt that survival – our own individual survival and that of our loved ones and even of the human race is paramount and is dependent on a prescription of masking, social distancing and vaccinations. We were even willing to forgo and sacrifice our religious obligations, that which guaranteed eternal life, for a few more years of surviving this earthly existence. But, many of us have forgotten that it is Eternal Life, not survival, that our Lord teaches. It is life, real life, true life, Eternal Life that only God can give, that enables us to live in joy and to experience the “peace that surpasses all understanding,” and which can take us beyond this “valley of tears.” Nothing can substitute for it, and it can only be accessed by faith.

Recently, a tragic shooting in a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, by a crazed transgender individual, had shocked Americans from both sides of the political aisle, though both had divergent views on the cause of this tragedy and the remedy which would prevent such future madness. Three adults and three 9 year old children, including the daughter of the pastor whose church ran the school, were killed. The one line statement of the father sums up the faith of Christians: “Through tears we trust that she is in the arms of Jesus who will raise her to life once again.” Christians are not immune to tragedy and loss, even for a father who is a Christian pastor. But Christians possess something which others do not. Christians possess an Easter faith that doesn’t take away the pain but gives us the ability to handle the pain; a faith that doesn’t always take you out of the storm, but calms you in the midst of the storm.

Yes, the life we celebrate today, the life which Christ has won for us through His death and resurrection, is more than just survival, or a life free of troubles, pain, ailments or failures. It is everlasting life. This is the life worth living and worth dying for. This is our hope and it is this which gives us the courage to face the uncertainties of the future and the dark shadows of the past.

Every nation has an anthem, a song to sing to inspire its followers and keep their hearts afloat in difficult times. Our Church too, has an anthem, the anthem of our resistance to evil, death and despair. It is an anthem so short, but so powerful, that it can be, and indeed is, repeated many, many times as we observe what Christ has done for us:

Alleluia! He is Risen! 

Indeed He is Risen!

O Happy Fault O Necessary Sin of Adam

Easter Vigil of the Holy Night

O truly necessary sin of Adam,
Destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
O happy fault that earned so great,
So glorious a Redeemer

Do you recognise this line? You should. It is found in the Exsúltet (the Easter Proclamation) sung at the beginning of this Vigil service. Perhaps, most people would have missed it unless you caught the oxymoronic contradiction found in two expressions: “necessary sin” and “happy fault”. If we consider sin as abhorrent to God and something which separates us from Him, what ‘sin’ could be considered ‘necessary’? How could any ‘fault’ or mistake be considered happy? Why, then, does the Church use these strange expressions?

The Latin expression felix culpa (happy fault) is derived from the writings of St Augustine, whose personal life was testimony to the truth of this maxim. In order for St Augustine to have been one of the greatest converts to Christianity, one of its greatest theologians and pastor, he had to start off being a great sinner. This was obviously the case: here was a man who had been schooled by his own father to frequent brothels since adolescence. As an adult, he would keep a woman in concubinage, what we would describe as a ‘sex slave’ in modern terms. Then he delved into and experimented with various philosophies and religions where he sought to make himself feel better about himself despite his lifestyle. St Augustine was truly a great sinner. But then grace touched him, moved him and finally transformed him into one of the Church’s greatest saints. In speaking about the source of original sin, Augustine writes, “For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.”

What St Augustine meant here was that the Fall of Adam was from one point of view, fortunate, since without it humankind could not have experienced the unsurpassable joy of the redemption. How did he make this leap from sin to grace? If Adam and Eve never fell, Christ would never have needed to come. And so God allowed the loss of perfect human bliss through the original sin of Adam and Eve in order to bring about a greater, divine bliss for humanity (cf. 2 Peter 1:4)! From Adam’s sin came the glory of Jesus Christ. The remedy dished out by God goes far beyond restoring us to that Edenic state! God never goes backwards. He's not taking us back to Eden. He’s making light-years leap forward!

If you are not convinced at this argument, the whole of scripture stands as irrefutable evidence. By eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve are now prohibited from tasting the fruit of the Tree of Life which would have guaranteed them immortality. But here comes the ‘felix culpa’ bit – If man had not been denied immortality at this stage, he would still have to suffer an eternity of sin, an eternity of the effects of sin – alienation, suffering, pain, etc. In popular culture, vampires view their deathlessness as a curse, not as a blessing. Death would be the welcomed relief to a never ending existence of pain, misery and lovelessness.

Still not convinced? Well let’s look at other events in the Bible. If humanity had not sin by attempting to build the Tower of Babel, we would not be blessed with the myriad of cultures, civilisations, languages that have emerged throughout our human history. If Joseph had not been betrayed by his brothers and sold off to slavery, he would not have been their saviour, when the land was struck by famine. If Moses had not run away from Egypt as an act of cowardice, he would not have been chosen by God to lead his people to freedom. If David had not committed a transgression and adultery with Uriah’s wife, Solomon would not have been born. If the Temple had not been destroyed, the Church, the Body of Christ, who is the New and Perfect Temple, would have remained a dream. If Judas had not betrayed Jesus, Christ would not have been able to redeem the world through His sacrifice on the Cross.

While God never actively wills sin and disobedience, He made the option possible in order that we could freely choose to love Him instead. Adam and Eve's decision was never unknown to God, nor was the outcome. From all eternity God knew that His rational creatures would choose to rebel against Him, and His divine plan incorporated Adam's sin from the very foundations of the world. Eden was not Plan A and the Incarnation was not Plan B. God becoming Man so that we could participate in the divine life of God through grace was the idea all along! The Incarnation and the death and resurrection of Christ was always Plan A! Through, Baptism we are inserted into this great plan, this great mystery of redemption. We will “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4). This vastly exceeds what God would have done for unfallen man. The beauty and perfection of Eden pales against the beauty and perfection of heaven.

All too often we run from our mistakes, reject them or simply live in denial of them. The failed work is quickly set aside. And worse, all too often initial mistakes, initial failures discourage us and prevent us from moving forward. The Paschal Mystery, the Mystery which Good Friday and Easter reveals, demands that we learn to recognise that hidden within every mistake, every human error, every shortcoming, every failure and even in the greatest of falls is the seed of the resurrection – where even sin can be transformed by a single moment of grace. Indeed, rather than cast aside His fallen creation, God reaches into the failure and tragedy of human sinfulness to redeem us. This is the Mystery which claims us in Christ and the power of this same Mystery is what heals us in the sacraments. “O Happy Fault”; “O truly necessary sin of Adam” …. “that earned so great, so glorious a redeemer!”