Are you saved?

Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

Our Lord gives us a frightening parable of judgment in answer to the question: “Sir, will there be only a few saved?” You may think that this question is ludicrous, that it’s making a mountain out of a molehill. You may even volunteer to beat Jesus in giving the answer to this man: “of course not! Don’t you know that everyone’s going to be saved?” Although official Catholic teaching and Protestant understanding of salvation shares many points in common, this is where they defer – at least in popular imagination. Many Catholics believe that everyone is going to heaven while Protestants think that almost everyone, unless you are a true Christian believer, is going to hell.

When Protestants ask Catholics if they have been saved, the question would most likely be met with a stunned look on the part of the Catholic or an admission that he has never thought about this before. This comes as good news to the Protestant as he can now confidently proselytise the Catholic and ensure that the latter is saved by becoming a Bible believing, faith professing Protestant Christian. For many Protestants, one becomes a Christian by merely making a confession of faith in Jesus as Saviour and Lord. Baptism comes later but isn’t necessary for our salvation. I guess the reason why most Catholics are not prepared with an answer to that question is that salvation or rather, heaven, is something they often take for granted. Why worry about this moot issue when we can all get to heaven?

Perhaps, this common Catholic misunderstanding of universal salvation can be far more dangerous than the Protestant heretical position of being saved once and for all by grace alone. When you believe that salvation is guaranteed whether you’ve lived a good life or not in conformity to Christ’s teachings and God’s will, it is called the sin of presumption, which is a sin against hope. On presumption, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “There are two kinds of presumption. Either man presumes upon his own capacities, (hoping to be able to save himself without help from on high), or he presumes upon God’s almighty power or his mercy (hoping to obtain his forgiveness without conversion and glory without merit).” (CCC 2092) When people are presumptuous, they are living in denial of the truth. And because they are living in denial, they will not repent of his or her own sin.

I have often tried to explain the Catholic position on salvation to both Catholics and non-Catholics by using this analogy of being shipwrecked in the middle of an ocean. We’re like the survivors of a shipwreck in a storm out in mid-ocean. Just imagine being in this situation. The nearest shoreline is just too far for even the strongest swimmer. You won’t be able to save yourself. The only way that we can get out of this situation is that we are saved. And the good news is that we have been rescued from drowning by the Lord Jesus Himself, our Saviour, and welcomed onboard the ship we call the Church. That ship is now taking us to a safe harbour — our home in heaven with God. For Protestants, being saved is the end of the story and they don’t even believe you need a boat for this. But for Catholics, baptism, being rescued into the ship is just the first step. But we’re not home yet.

You could say, then, that we’ve been “saved” in the sense of being rescued and taken aboard a safe vessel. But we can’t really speak of being “saved” in the full sense until we reach our destination. We must humbly admit that we haven’t yet arrived at final perfection. Meanwhile, we also must recognise the sobering possibility that — God forbid — we could choose someday to jump overboard again. Salvation isn’t guaranteed just because of something we’ve done in the past. We continue to have a free will, which is part of God’s likeness in us. So we still have the ability to turn away from God again. It’s a chilling possibility. But it shouldn’t make us perpetually worried that we’ll be damned despite our best efforts to grow in grace. We can be confident that God desires our salvation, and He’s faithful to help us. And He does so by providing us with the Sacraments. If we’re tempted to forsake Him, He’ll grant us the power to resist that temptation. He will even send a lifeboat to rescue us again through the sacrament of penance. Even so, the choice is still ours.

If we can’t be certain as to the final statistics on the population of heaven and hell, there are some things we can know with certainty because our Lord has revealed this to us, leaving no room for speculation.

Firstly, Hell is real and it is everlasting. We may not hear much about hell these days and we may not even like to, but silence on the subject does not make the reality of Hell go away. Infact the denial of hell leads ultimately to the trivialising of heaven. But a healthy understanding of the pains and horrors of hell, will lead us to an authentic appreciation of the joys of heaven.

Secondly, life is a series of choices. We can either choose to take a) the difficult path that leads to the narrow gate and life, and b) the broad path which leads to the wide gate and destruction. The narrow path is the way of the Cross which our Lord undertook, and we must follow in our respective way. The second reading from Hebrews reminds us that the suffering we endure is not the result of a cruel sadistic God but because “suffering is part of your training; God is treating you as his sons.” It is a popular error of our time to believe that it does not matter which road one takes. Some believe that all roads are like spokes on a wheel, all leading to the same place—Heaven. In fact, we make choices every day that draw us closer to God or lead us farther away from Him. That’s why simply believing in Jesus isn’t enough. Friendship with God, like friendship of any kind, is more than just getting acquainted. It involves making a series of choices to love over the long term, so that a committed relationship grows. Faith is useless then, without good works. God must have our active cooperation, because both our mind and our will — the full likeness of God — must be renewed if we’re to be saved in the end.

Thirdly, there is an urgency to making the right decision. Time is of the essence. No time for procrastination or putting off what must be done today. Our Lord speaks of the time when the householder will arise, shut and lock the door. That corridor of opportunity will not always be opened and if mistaken that it is always open may lead to our destruction.

Finally, we must make our own salvation and the salvation of all those around us, our top priority in this life. As the old Catholic adage reminds us: “the salvation of souls is the supreme law!” Nothing else ranks anywhere close in importance—not health, wealth, career, popularity, possessions or acclaim by others. Know what you must do to be saved and work out that salvation in fear and trembling.

Today, let us not be guilty of the sin of presumption that Heaven is guaranteed no matter how or which way we live our lives. Truly, our Lord Jesus is the Divine Mercy. Truly, He wishes and desires for all of us to be saved. But more urgently, He wants us to understand that there can be no other way to salvation other than passing through the Narrow Door. He is that Narrow Doorway to Heaven. It is the Gospel of Christ, paid by His own blood on the cross. It is demanding. It demands that we make the ultimate sacrifice by turning our backs on all the false gods that have become the defining elements in our lives. It demands repentance on our part.

Without God, all is vanity

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

Vanity seems to be a vice that is not only confined to women but also equally plagues men. Coiffed hair, manicured nails, shiny smooth complexions that scream of repeated facials, and a wardrobe that could put Imelda Marcos’ shoe collection to shame. Vanity in this context means pride but vanity could also mean futility or the pointlessness of our actions and decisions or even life itself. The readings for today address the latter.

People often struggle with these questions, ‘What is life all about?’ ‘What is man’s purpose in this life?’ This is what the Book of Ecclesiastes seeks to address. The book is a philosophical essay attributed to Solomon, the proverbial philosopher king. The author wrote this book from the mistakes he made. He shares his own life’s search. The man had wisdom, riches, horses, armies, and women (that’s an understatement, he had lots of women). Yet, in the end Solomon declared everything to be vanity; in other word, pointless, worthless, meaningless, and purposeless. To pursue vanity is to chase after the wind. Starting with the well-known words, "Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity," and repeating them in the last chapter after having taken us through all the vanities of life, the book contains the important lesson he learns from God, in a sort of ‘roundabout’ way. The Book ends by giving us the antidote of vanity: fear of the Lord and the observance of the moral law. The secret to a purposeful life is: Without God, ‘all is vanity’. But with God, nothing is in vain.

In the gospel, we are given two examples of such earthly vanity - the greedy brother and the rich man in a parable told by the Lord. A man in the crowd puts this request to the Lord, “Master, tell my brother to give me a share of our inheritance.” The question sounds oddly familiar. I’ve seen how family battles over inheritance have set kith against kin. The law of primogeniture says (Num 27:1-11 Deut 21:15) that the first born gets a double portion. If you had two brothers, you divided the estate three ways and the oldest got two parts. So, guess which son this is. His request suggests that he’s the youngest son. Greed, envy and a sense of entitlement have blinded him to place money above kinship.

Understanding the context of the disgruntled brother sets the stage for the parable. There is a comparison and contrast going on between the two characters in the parable and two characters outside the parable. The rich man in the parable is compared to the unhappy younger brother in real life. Christ in real life acts as judge and arbiter, a role taken by God in the parable. Why is the Lord telling this parable about the rich man who had no greed to a greedy man? The Lord builds up the rich man as a good guy, a content man, someone you can easily identify with and would aspire to become. This guy is just the opposite of the disgruntled and unhappy brother. What do we learn? Both men thought that life consisted in ‘things’, that the end and purpose of their lives were the acquisition of such ‘things.’ Selfishness and self-satisfaction have blinded them to the bonds of fraternity and life’s ultimate purpose.

Both the disgruntled younger brother and the contented rich man, in their pursuit for wealth without realising that they risk losing everything in a single moment, proves the point that ‘all is vanity.’ There is a major reversal in the parable – the man who thinks himself clever is proven foolish; the rich man ends up being poor to God. Notice the poetic justice. The rich man, like the entitled brother and like so many of us, so obsessed in storing up treasures for ourselves in this place, acquiring knowledge, wealth, possessions and a list of achievements, had lost sight of the fact that our ultimate goal is our own salvation – making ourselves ‘rich in the sight of God.’ The rich man is not condemned for his wealth or even his greed. He is condemned for forgetting that the ultimate ‘end’ or purpose of his life is salvation. He had made no preparations for this. He was too busy investing in this world and that is the ultimate vanity.

This parable speaks loudly to our generation; it speaks of the purpose of life and what defines it? Have you been defining life in your career, your house, your stock portfolio, in terms of your achievements, the knowledge you possess, the popularity you’ve gained, or the assumption that you will live much longer? What is going to happen when you lose one or more of those things? What happens when you get laid off? What happens when the stock market crashes? What happens when you get some disease which takes away your physical ability? What happens when your friends leave you? What happens if another pandemic hits again? If you define life according to these things, you will be devastated. If these things have become the ‘end’ and purpose of your lives, the goals you are ultimately pursuing, the treasures you are seeking for, then the diagnosis is terminal – vanity of vanities, all is vanity!

St Thomas Aquinas teaches that the real end for which man is made is to be reunited with the goodness of God through virtuous behaviour as well as the use of reason in order to know and love God above all. In the words of St Augustine, “that is our final good, which is loved for its own sake, and all other things for the sake of it.” St Ignatius Loyola in setting out the First Principle and Foundation in his Spiritual Exercises writes, “The human person is created to praise, reverence, and serve God Our Lord, and by doing so, to save his or her soul. All other things on the face of the earth are created for human beings in order to help them pursue the end for which they are created. It follows from this that one must use other created things, in so far as they help towards one's end, and free oneself from them, in so far as they are obstacles to one's end.” Thus, the riches of this life are only potentially good. Their goodness is actualised when they serve the greater good – the glory of God and love of neighbour.

The irony we face is that many people would prefer to love the means rather than the end. Man need not just love bad things in order to be condemned to hell. As the old adage teaches us, “The road to hell is lined with good intentions.” Man can pervert his ultimate end by loving seemingly good things, which seem to bring happiness, and mistake these things for the actual, infinite source of happiness - God. Whenever we choose the lesser goods over the greater Good, whenever we convert the means into the end, whenever our vision is obscured to see beyond what lies immediately before us, then we are in trouble. Everything comes down to the choice: do we choose these things as a means to the end, or do we choose them as a substitute for the end?

Today, the readings challenge us to seek the Source of all Goodness, and not just the goods He dispenses. Desire the God of Miracles, not just hunger for the miracles of God. Long for the giver and not just the gifts. Our thoughts should be on the ultimate prize: Heaven. Things of this earth either lead us to that prize, or they may distract us from that and therefore should be placed in their proper place. When we trudge the road of happy destiny, we must remember that the road is just a means to an end and not the destination itself. Anything else is VANITY!

How have we come to salvation?

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

Whenever an anecdotal story is shared, it begs the question: “what’s the moral of the story?” Most homilies on the parable of the Good Samaritan would most likely attempt to provide the answer to this question and it would often sound like this: “do good to others, even those who are not your friends.” If it was only that simple, this would be the end of my homily. But the truth is that there is more than meets the eye in this most familiar parable of our Lord.

The context of our Lord telling this parable is that it serves as an answer given to a question posed by a lawyer, not to be confused with modern advocates and solicitors. The lawyer here is also known as a scribe, an academician or scholar, who has devoted his life to studying the Mosaic Law in order to provide a correct interpretation and application of the Law to the daily lives of fellow Jews. The question he poses is not just a valid question but one of utmost importance because it has to do with our ultimate purpose in life: “Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” That is the question that every religion and every philosophy has ever attempted to answer. Though a valid question and one which all of us should want to know the answer, the evangelist tells us that his motives are less than pure. It is said that he asked this question “to disconcert” the Lord. It was a trap. In fact, the lawyer already knows the answer to his question. But knowledge of the answer does not necessarily mean that one is living the answer, which is what the Lord wishes to expose here. He speaks eloquently of love but has no love for our Lord or even his audience. And so our Lord tells him that even though he has answered right by citing the two-fold commandments of love, there is still something missing in his answer: “do this and life is yours.”

Having been found out by the Lord and therefore, humiliated, he continues to try to “justify” himself by nit-picking: “And who is my neighbour?” In other words, the lawyer seeks to corner Jesus by forcing Him to tell who is deserving of our love. The surprising thing about the parable of the Good Samaritan is that it does not really provide a direct answer to the lawyer’s second question of defining one’s neighbour. If Jesus had been asked, “How should we treat our neighbours?” and had responded with this story, perhaps “Be like the Good Samaritan” would be an acceptable interpretation. Such a moralistic interpretation would mean that the “neighbour” in question is not the one who is deserving of our love but the one who demonstrates love. It turns the question completely around. But, the intention of the parable is more than a mere call to display altruistic behaviour to one’s neighbour. It addressed a more vital question: how have we come to salvation?

According to the Fathers of the Church, this parable is as an impressive allegory of the fall and redemption of all mankind – how we came to be saved! This is clearly depicted in a beautiful stained-glass window in the famous 12th-century cathedral in Chartres, France. This window is divided into two parts. At the upper section of the window, we see the story of Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden, at the bottom section of the window, the parable of the Good Samaritan; therefore, the narrative of the creation and fall of man is juxtaposed with that of the Good Samaritan. What does the parable of the Good Samaritan have to do with the Fall of Adam and Eve? Where did this association originate?

The roots of this allegorical interpretation reach deeply into the earliest Christian Tradition. Various Fathers of the Church saw Jesus Himself in the Good Samaritan; and in the man who fell among thieves they saw Adam, a representative of mankind, our very humanity wounded and disoriented on account of its sins. For example, Origen employed the following allegory: Jerusalem represents heaven; Jericho, the world; the robbers, the devil and his minions; the Priest represents the Law, and the Levite the Prophets; the Good Samaritan, Christ; the ass, Christ’s body carrying fallen man to the inn which becomes the Church. Even the Samaritan’s promise to return translates into Christ’s triumphant return at the Parousia.

Understanding this parable allegorically adds an eternal perspective and value to its message. It certainly takes it beyond the cliché ‘moral of the story’: ‘Be a Good Samaritan.’ Before we can become Good Samaritans to help others, we need to remember that we have been saved by the Good Samaritan – the story helps us become aware of where we have come from, how we have fallen into our present state through sin, and how Christ has come to save us, the Sacraments of grace continue to sanctify us and the Church continues to nurture and heal us. In other words, this Christological interpretation shifts the focus from man to God: from ‘justification’, how do we work out our salvation, to sanctification, how does Christ save us and continue to sanctify us. As the old patristic adage affirms: “God became Man so that men may become gods.” It moves us away from the humanistic mode of being saviours of the world to a more humble recognition that we are indeed in need of salvation ourselves - we are that fallen man by the wayside waiting for a Saviour and we have found Him in Christ!

In a rich irony, we move from being identified with the priest and the Levite who were solely concerned over their personal salvation but never perfectly love others “as ourselves,” much less our enemies, to being identified with the traveller in desperate need of salvation. The Lord intends the parable itself to leave us beaten and bloodied, lying in a ditch, like the man in the story. We are the needy, unable to do anything to help ourselves. We are the broken people, beaten up by life, robbed of hope. But then Jesus comes. Unlike the Priest and Levite, He doesn’t avoid us. He crosses the street—from heaven to earth—comes into our mess, gets His hands dirty. At great cost to Himself on the cross, He heals our wounds, covers our nakedness, and loves us with a no-strings-attached love. He carries us personally to the shelter of the Church where we find rest, where our wounds are tended and healed. He brings us to the Father and promises that His “help” is not simply a ‘one-time’ gift—rather, it’s a gift that will forever cover “the charges” we incur and will sustain us until He returns in glory.

So the parable is not just a moralistic tale of what we must do as Christians but the history of salvation in a nutshell - it tells us what Christ has done for us and continues to do for us?

The context puts the Lord’s final exhortation to “go and do the same yourself” in perspective. It puts every work of charity, gesture of kindness, expression of hospitality on our part within the greater picture of the wonderful story of salvation. The great commandment of love isn’t about some altruistic humanistic project – us saving the world. Reaching out to others, especially to those who labour under the heavy load of toil and suffering, is not just an act of goodness. It is a participation in the economy of God’s salvation – God saving the world through us and in spite of us. We can love only because we have been loved. We can only heal because we have been healed and continue to be healed by the Good Samaritan Himself, Jesus Christ. To understand what it means to love, does not mean attempting to be a ‘Good Samaritan.’ To understand what it means to love, we need to gaze upon Jesus Christ, He is the ‘Good Samaritan’ who has laid down His life and atoned for our sins. This is eternal life!

Call to Conversion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Newborn Babes

Second Sunday of Easter
Divine Mercy Sunday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Towel and the Cross

Maundy Thursday

Some people are so good at talking big but fall short in delivery. When push comes to shove, they will easily bend and break. This is what we witness in the gospel. Our first Pope whom the Lord Himself declares as a rock-hard foundation to His church, changes his position not because of some profound enlightenment but melts under pressure. One can’t help but laugh at the 180 degrees turn of St Peter, from refusing to accept the Lord’s offer to wash his feet, to clamouring for a full-body bath!

First, he starts with this: “You shall never wash my feet.” We may even suspect that his refusal was just fake shocked indignation at best, or false humility at worst. And as for the turnaround, doesn’t it seem to be some form of histrionic over-exaggeration on his part? “Not only my feet, but my hands and my head as well!” In both instances, St Peter had misunderstood our Lord’s intention and the significance of His action. And in both instances, his incomprehension and misstep had given our Lord an opportunity to make a teaching point.

Let us look at the first response given by our Lord to Peter when he refused to allow his feet to be washed: “If I do not wash you, you can have nothing in common with me.” A superficial reading of this statement may lead us to conclude that our Lord was just asking Peter and all of us to imitate His humility in serving others. This may be the message at the end of the passage, where our Lord says: “If I, then, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you should wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you.” But the words of our Lord in His response to Peter’s refusal to have his feet washed, goes further than that.

What is this thing which makes us “in common” with our Lord? In other words, what does it mean to have “fellowship” with Him? It is clear that it cannot just mean menial service, but rather the sacrifice of our Lord on the cross. This statement actually highlights the relationship between the foot-washing and the cross. The foot-washing signifies our Lord’s loving action and sacrifice on the cross. If foot-washing merely cleans the feet of the guest who has come in from the dusty streets, our Lord’s sacrifice on the cross will accomplish the cleansing of our sins which we have accumulated from our sojourn in this sin-infested world. Peter must yield to our Lord’s loving action in order to share in His life, which the cross makes possible.

The foot-washing may also be a deliberate echo of the ritual of ablutions, washing of hands and feet, done by the priests of the Old Covenant, before they performed worship and offered sacrifices in the Temple. This may explain Peter’s further request to have both his feet and head washed by the Lord. Without him knowing it, he may have inadvertently referred to his own ordination as a priest of the New Covenant. It is fitting that the washing of feet occurs while the Apostles are entrusted with the Eucharist. No priesthood, no Eucharist - it’s as simple as that.

“No one who has taken a bath needs washing, he is clean all over.” Our Lord was not just making a common-sense statement that those who are clean have no need for further cleansing, but an allusion to the Sacraments which leave an indelible mark on their recipients, two in particular - baptism (confirmation) and Holy Orders. Our Lord’s words resonate with two popular Catholic axioms: “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic” and “once a priest, always a priest.” There is no need for re-baptism or re-ordination even if the person had lapsed. What is needed is confession.

This second set of words also points to the efficacy and sufficiency of what our Lord did on the cross. Christ’s bloody sacrifice on Calvary took place once and for all, and it will never be repeated, it need not be repeated because it cannot be repeated. To repeat His sacrifice would be to imply that the original offering was defective or insufficient, like the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament that could never take away sins. Jesus’ offering was perfect, efficacious, and eternal.

The Holy Mass is a participation in this one perfect offering of Christ on the cross. It is the re-presentation of the sacrifice on the cross; here “re-presentation” does not mean a mere commemoration or a fresh new sacrifice each time the Mass is celebrated, but making “present” the one sacrifice at Calvary. The Risen Christ becomes present on the altar and offers Himself to God as a living sacrifice. Like the Mass, Christ words at the Last Supper are words of sacrifice, “This is my body . . . this is my blood . . . given up for you.” So, the Mass is not repeating the murder of Jesus, but is taking part in what never ends: the offering of Christ to the Father for our sake (Heb 7:25, 9:24). After all, if Calvary didn’t get the job done, then the Mass won’t help. It is precisely because the death of Christ was sufficient that the Mass is celebrated. It does not add to or take away, from the work of Christ—it IS the work of Christ.

When the Lord tells us: “I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you,” it is not just the ritual of foot-washing that He is asking us to imitate. Our Lord is most certainly pointing to His work of salvation on the cross which He offers to us as a gift through the Sacraments. Some people continue to resist Christ because they do not consider themselves sinful enough to require Him to wash them in Baptism or the Sacrament of Penance. Others have the opposite problem: they stay away because they are too ashamed of their lives or secret sins. To both, our Lord and Master gently but firmly speaks these words as He did to Peter: “If I do not wash you, you can have nothing in common with me.”

Every Saint has a past; every sinner a future

Fifth Sunday of Lent Year C

There is a clever quote that is often attributed to the Buddha, “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." If you do not have a pedantic nature like me, you will most likely take this as gospel truth. The problem is, it’s a fake quote. The Buddha didn’t say this. He said something similar but yet fundamentally different from what the above quote claims. In fact, the Buddha had also asked us to let go of the present - no past, no future, no present.

The Christian version of this quote may sound like this, “don’t dwell on the past, but move forward.” Unlike the above quote, this is founded on scripture, especially the readings we have just heard today.

Most of us would take the above saying as referring to not holding on to painful memories, failures, and past hurts. That is clear. Some people are trapped in the past, in a cycle of regret, resentment, un-forgiveness and despair. Past painful memories keep on re-playing in their minds like a broken record, re-igniting the sense of pain and loss as if the incident had just happened a moment ago. Any counsellor or psychologist or a good friend or relative will tell you, “Best to keep the past in the past. Move on. Learn from it. If you dwell in the past, you will get left behind.”

But our readings bring up additional lessons on why we should not dwell on the past but seek to move forward.

In the first reading, Isaiah writes to a people who are now languishing in exile, regretting their past misdeeds and wallowing in self-pity and despair. Isaiah’s message does not entirely erase the past. He reminds his people of how God had also liberated their ancestors from Egypt during the Exodus and even performed this impossible miracle of leading them through the Red Sea whilst destroying the army of a superpower in pursuit. It was important to remember this less the Jews in exile were to doubt Isaiah’s prophecy that God was going to bring them home and rebuild their nation. But it was also important that the Jews did not feel trapped in the past of their failures and miss out on what God is going to reveal and do in their lives. And so, Isaiah tells them: “No need to recall the past, no need to think about what was done before. See, I am doing a new deed, even now it comes to light; can you not see it? Yes, I am making a road in the wilderness, paths in the wilds.”

In the second reading, St Paul also expresses his gratitude of having come to know Christ and to believe in Him. This comes after years of persecuting Christians and after his conversion, years of proclaiming the gospel to faraway cities and nations. He looks back at his legacy and instead of seeing a trophy to be shown off to his audience, he regards his past exploits and achievements as “rubbish” in comparison to the treasure which he had discovered. He now writes of “the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For him I have accepted the loss of everything, and I look on everything as so much rubbish if only I can have Christ and be given a place in him.” And then he confidently declares: “All I can say is that I forget the past and I strain ahead for what is still to come; I am racing for the finish, for the prize to which God calls us upwards to receive in Christ Jesus.”

As we move to the gospel, we hear of this moving tale of how our Lord liberates this woman from her accusers but more importantly, He liberates her from her past life of sin. She epitomises this famous quote from Oscar Wilde’s play, “A Woman of No Importance.” The hedonistic character Lord Illingworth (perhaps an echo of Oscar Wilde’s own wild life of debauchery) says, “every Saint has a past and every sinner a future.” The meaning is simple and edifying: No one is so good that he hasn’t failed at some point, and no one is so bad that he cannot be saved. All have sinned, and all can be saved by God’s grace. The only distinction is between those who have already received it and those to whom it is still available. God’s grace is readily available for the taking. We just have to embrace it.

Not dwelling on the past and moving forward does not mean turning a new leaf, or a new page in your life. We can’t pretend that the past did not happen or subject ourselves to some form of selective amnesia, refusing to acknowledge what has gone before. That would be a mistake. Repentance requires that we do confront the truth of our past, not sugar coat it or attempt to erase or rewrite it. But we do not remain in the past. We must not allow our guilt ridden past to obstruct the freedom of what the Lord has promised us for our future. Sometimes, penitents walk out of the confessional having their sins forgiven and absolved and yet continue to carry the heavy burden of their sins. They are unable to let go of their past and by doing so, reject the gift of grace which our Lord has promised us through the Sacrament of Penance.

What the Lord says to this woman caught in adultery is what He says to each of us: “go away, and do not sin any more;” in other words, go away from your past and enjoy the freedom He offers you. “If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.” (John 8:36) Our Lord opens up a path ahead of us, where sin had closed the door. His grace and mercy convert our slavery to guilt into freedom from sin. Just as what God had promised to do for His people through the prophet Isaiah in the first reading, when He forgives us, He is making something new, a new path in the desert will open up, where the Lord our God will put springs of living waters for His people to drink.

All of us have sinned, some worse than others. There are many of us who labour under the crushing weight of guilt in the belief that our sins are so grave and egregious that not even God would be able to forgive us. But that is Satan’s greatest lie. Pope Francis is fond of reminding us that God never tires of forgiving us, but it is we who often grow tired of asking Him for forgiveness. So, let us not tire of asking God for forgiveness, let us learn to let go of the guilt and lift up our eyes to the Lord and see a better future, a better life ahead of us, as we journey together toward Easter and one day to Eternal Life. Remember that every saint has a past, and every sinner a future.

Loving Judgment

Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

One of the most common accusations and attacks heaped by modern folks on Christians, especially Catholics, is that we are too judgmental. What makes this accusation most stinging is that we are rebuked with the assertion that “Jesus never judged anyone.” Is this a valid accusation? How should we respond to it? For many Catholics, the only way to deflect the accusation is to remain silent or adopt a relativistic approach to morality - “there is no right or wrong” or “there is no absolute truth,” or “it depends on how you look at it.”

But perhaps the most common argument to avoid being seen as judgmental is to cite our Lord on this issue. Didn’t our Lord Himself say: “judge not, that you be not judged?” (Matthew 7:1). Or perhaps His most famous warning on the hypocrisy of blind judgmentalism which we just heard in today’s gospel: “Why do you observe the splinter in your brother’s eye and never notice the plank in your own?” It is quite convenient to take this saying out of context but if we continue reading the rest of the text, we realise that our Lord is actually proposing to us a correct way of judging rather than forbidding all forms of judgment.

The first step in making a correct judgment is honest and humble introspection. “Take the plank out of your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to take out the splinter that is in your brother’s eye.” One cannot apply two standards: “Rules for Thee but none for me.” If we wish to judge others, we must be ready to judge ourselves, to honestly recognise and call out our own prejudices, biases, hidden agendas, and sinful thoughts and actions.

The second step is that we should avoid making quick, rash and premature judgment, to avoid “judging a book by its cover.” In the first reading, Ben Sira provides us with four illustrations or examples by which we should test someone’s worth by observing their speech. But in the gospel, our Lord while still affirming that one’s speech is an indication of what is in his heart, appears to move beyond speech to other aspects of a person’s behaviour: “every tree can be told by its own fruit.”

Finally, we must make a clear distinction between judging someone’s behaviour and judging the eternal state of his soul. Although as rational beings, we are capable of doing the first and should in certain cases, the latter solely belongs to God. We cannot claim to read the thoughts nor accurately discern the intentions of others. We can draw some conclusions from their actions and behaviours but we cannot claim to be certain of their guilt or innocence purely through speculation. Even courts acknowledge that one is innocent until proven guilty. Likewise, if we have to presume, we should always try to presume the best rather than the worst. Every good Christian should be ready to give a favourable interpretation to the speech, deeds and behaviour of another than to be quick to condemn them.

It is also important for us to distinguish between making a valid moral judgment and being judgmental. It is imperative that we learn to do the former as an exercise of conscience while making sure that we avoid the latter. Pointing out the truth is not judgmental. It is not judgmental to make a moral appraisal of whether a person’s actions are sinful or whether the person is likely culpable for them. Our entire justice system is dependent on this. The refusal to make such judgment would result in the collapse of the whole system and would be a travesty of justice.

Secondly, it is not judgmental to have a negative emotional reaction to what is objectively evil. Thirdly, it is not judgmental to act with prudence when dealing with someone who has cheated us or hurt us. We should not be so gullible as to trust everyone without reservation. We must take the necessary precautions to avoid further harm to oneself or others.

If we still seem hesitant about engaging in judging or correcting others, know that Jesus did it all the time; He showed us what we must do by His own example. When the apostles were afraid that the violent storm would lead to their perishing, Jesus rebuked them, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith” (Matthew 8:26). This was a judgment. In a pointed attack on the duplicity of the religious leaders, Jesus called them a “brood of vipers” (Matthew 12:34). Another judgment. When saving the woman caught in adultery from being stoned by the religious leaders, Jesus showed her mercy yet told her to “not sin anymore” (John 8:11), recalling her past life and summoning her to a conversion of life. This, too, was a judgment.

If we can spare a soul from sadness, sorrow and despair by judging them and assisting them in converting from sin, then we have shown them great love. To not judge and to turn a blind eye to the grave sins of others is a form of false compassion and sinful neglect. True Good Samaritans take the time and effort to come to the aid of those who are suffering because of the assault of sin.

So, when faced with the immoral behaviour of others, how can we be sure to rightly judge behaviour? In our Lord’s own words, we must start by taking the plank out of our own eyes—by making sure we are doing the best we can to live lives of good example. We must also strive to form our consciences correctly, so we know sin when we see it, even in ourselves. Finally, we must not jump to conclusions about another’s culpability in sin. Take time to know all the facts while always presuming the innocence of the other until proven guilty. Doing all this will help to ensure that our admonitions are seen as the loving actions we intend them to be—meant to help our loved ones live their lives in ways that are pleasing to God. Only then can our efforts be effective in helping to take these ugly specks out of our brothers’ eyes.

Here I am, send me

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

There is a tendency among many to be drawn to certain charismatic preachers and leaders. Can people be faulted for this? Who doesn’t want to be inspired or motivated or moved to tears or action? And whether one wishes to admit it or not, who doesn’t want to be entertained by amusing anecdotes and colourful illustrations? That is why crowds would throng to a rally or a preached mission whenever a popular and dynamic preacher is in town. But the readings which we hear this Sunday provide us with an important and necessary corrective - the gospel is always greater than its greatest proclaimers. An important truth that preachers, like me, should remember and need. “For what we preach is not ourselves,” wrote St Paul to the Corinthians, “but Jesus Christ as Lord” (2 Cor. 4:5).

The prophets of old like Isaiah and the great missionary apostles like St Paul and St Peter, were anything than rockstar-like celebrities of the faith. The quest for celebrity-like fame can actually be a distraction from the work of preaching the gospel. The habit of seeking ever-larger audiences through new technologies always runs the risk of trivialising the message, fueling the culture of celebrity, and losing sight of the everyday work of evangelisation.

In all three examples that are offered by today’s readings - Isaiah in the first reading, St Paul in the second and St Peter in the gospel - there is a keen awareness of their own personal unworthiness. Isaiah protests that he is unworthy to speak God’s words because he is a man of unclean lips. Paul claims that he is the “least among the apostles” and that he “hardly deserve the name apostle.” When Simon Peter discovered the enormity of what he has just witnessed, the Lord performing a miracle before his own eyes, he pleaded, “Leave me, Lord; I am a sinful man.” None of these men stated a claim that they were entitled to the right of proclaiming the Word of God. On the contrary, all three clearly admitted their own disqualification.

Many of us would have similar sentiments and that is the reason why so many Catholics fail to undertake the work of sharing the good news with others. If you have ever felt that you were not good enough for God or the work He wishes to entrust to you, know this - you are in good company - because that’s just how Isaiah, St Paul, and St Peter felt when God called them.

Feeling inadequate before God is certainly understandable. In a way, this isn’t wrong. It’s a sign of humility to recognise our inadequacy before God. After all, God is God! He is perfectly good, perfectly righteous, and perfectly pure. We are none of those things. When we imagine ourselves before a being of such power and purity, we can’t help but feel small and unworthy by comparison. Yet, despite our unworthiness God continues to call us. Don’t take my word for it. Take God’s Word. He still chose Isaiah and Peter and Paul, despite their protestations of being unworthy. If it takes humility to recognise that we are unworthy, it takes greater humility to admit that it’s not about us! It’s all about God - the sovereignty of God and the freedom He exercises in choosing who He pleases even if the world or the person thinks nothing of it. It would be arrogance for us to question God’s choice.

This is why in our human frailty, we cannot just merely depend on our abilities and resources. We have abilities and we do have resources but we also have our limitations. But God supplements these with His abundant grace. This is what St Paul declared in the second reading: “I am the least of the apostles; in fact, since I persecuted the Church of God, I hardly deserve the name apostle; but by God’s grace that is what I am, and the grace that he gave me has not been fruitless.” Like Paul before his conversion, many of us continue to live in the delusion that we are self-made, that we have to chart our own destiny, orchestrate our own achievements, work hard to achieve our goals. But there is also grace that shapes and perfects us and as Paul so rightly noted, that it is by “God’s grace that is what I am.”

This is also what Peter experienced in the gospel. The dawn of his new life marked by the success which could only be brought on by the Lord’s miraculous assistance had to come after a long night of struggling and repeated failure. Peter would continue to experience this pattern in his own life. Whenever he depended solely on his bravado, his personal leadership skills, his speaking out of turn and jumping the gun, he would meet with failure and disappointment. Tradition tells us that this pattern continues even after the Lord had ascended and he had received the mantle of leadership and the gift of the Holy Spirit. But despite his shortcomings and failings, and in spite of it, our Lord would continue to return to him, renewing his election and commission. Peter too can declare with Paul that the Lord’s “grace that is what I am.”

Now many of us would argue that unlike Isaiah, we were not given a vision of heaven, or like Peter and Paul, called by the Lord personally to be His apostles. How does the Lord qualify us who are unqualified? The answer is simple and yet profound. The Lord continues to call and He continues to act and He continues to pour out His graces through the Church, especially through the sacraments. All of the sacraments are tangible means by which God imparts His intangible grace to us. Baptism is that first sacrament that binds us to Christ, Penance is the sacrament that restores us to union with Him when we have strayed, the Eucharist is what He chooses to sustain us with His own body and blood. That is why when people avoid the sacraments, they do not know what they are missing out. Just like the air we breathe is necessary for our survival, the grace we receive through the sacraments is necessary for our salvation. Without grace, we will perish.

But for all our dependence on grace, does it mean that we just sit back and do nothing? We are not Calvinist Protestants who hold on to the erroneous sola that only grace alone saves. St Paul was the greatest evangeliser the world has ever known, and he certainly worked hard at it. But he was only able to succeed by relying on God’s grace. This is the key: we can’t do God’s work on our own. Nor can we just sit back and be lazy Christians, relying on God to do all the work. The truth lies in the middle: we need to put forth effort, because God wants to work through us and in us, our will cooperating with His. God knows exactly what you are capable of. He knows exactly how strong you are, and how weak you are. He knows your knowledge and your ignorance. He knows your capacities and your limitations. And He says, my grace is sufficient for you (2 Cor 2:19). We just need to trust that the God who calls us will provide whatever grace is needed to answer that call. All we need to do is say, like Isaiah, “Here I am” (Is 6:8).

There is a moment that comes at every Mass, just before we receive Communion. The priest holds the consecrated host up before us and proclaims, “Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb.” At that moment, like Isaiah and St. Peter, we find ourselves in the presence of divinity. We stand before perfect goodness. And if we feel unworthy before that presence… let us pray with earnestness and complete sincerity, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” We acknowledge our sins and trust God to forgive us. We acknowledge our weakness and trust God to strengthen us. We have faith that God will accomplish His will through us and in humility we say, “Here I am; send me.”

Don't Worry! Be Happy!

Third Sunday of Advent Year C

Christmas is just over a week away, and for many the air of excitement is just plain electrifying. For most of us, we can’t wait for it to happen! And yet, this season often ushers a troubling sense of melancholy. For many, they know that this should be a season of rejoicing but it doesn’t always feel this way for one reason or another. The children have left for overseas and the home feels like an empty nest. A particular loved one that had always been part of our annual Christmas celebrations is no longer here and it just doesn’t feel the same. Anxiety building up over the future - rising expenses, financial instabilities, a recently diagnosed ailment that could worsen within weeks and months. The call of today’s liturgy to “rejoice” seems to ring hollow. Is the Church calling us to excite ourselves, some form of self- delusional “syiok sendiri” (self-induced elation)?

The readings exhort, in fact, they command us to rejoice by using an entire list of synonymous verbs to express that exuberance: shout for joy, shout aloud, exult with all your heart, sing and shout for joy, give thanks to the Lord and who can forget St Paul’s “be happy!” In fact, Paul’s words in the second reading sound like that famous song by Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t worry! Be Happy!”

The Joy which the liturgy and readings speak of is not something which comes upon suddenly and instantaneously, like a shot of adrenaline or dopamine. This joy isn’t a sudden outburst. It has been building within us, the closer the Good News has drawn. This is the joy of all the ages bursting and singing forth, building up over the centuries, prophesied by the prophets, announced by St John the Baptist, knowing the Good News that is about to be bestowed upon us all. It can hardly be contained. In fact, it can’t be.

In the first reading, the prophet Zephaniah commands Jerusalem to rejoice and gives the reason for it. “The Lord has repealed your sentence; He has driven your enemies away. The Lord, the king of Israel, is in your midst; you have no more evil to fear.” Yes, we should have every reason to rejoice and celebrate because our Lord has forgiven our sins; He has removed the curse of Original Sin that laid like the Sword of Damocles over our heads; He has defeated our enemies - sin, death and the devil. But there is more. Zephaniah adds that God rejoices over us! With gladness! “The Lord your God is in your midst, a victorious warrior. He will exult with joy over you, He will renew you by His love; He will dance with shouts of joy for you as on a day of festival.” God is rejoicing over us and that should be a great reason if any for us to rejoice.

St Paul in the second reading lays down the reason why he wants us to be happy. Let’s start with the flip side of happiness which is unhappiness. What is the main cause of unhappiness? Paul tells us that it is anxiety - worries. We worry because we lack trust in God. And worry leads to unrest and the lack of peace which eventually leads to unhappiness. And that is the reason why St Paul tells us that the path to happiness is praying and placing our trust in the Lord: “There is no need to worry; but if there is anything you need, pray for it, asking God for it with prayer and thanksgiving, and that peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand, will guard your hearts and your thoughts, in Christ Jesus.” Notice that Paul doesn’t promise that we will get what we prayed for. Our true reward, the answer to our prayer is the “peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand.”

This is the reason why we can still rejoice when things do not seem to be going our way or according to our plans, when we are facing one crisis or another, when we have suffered loss and are experiencing loneliness and alienation. Because as long as we do not lose faith in God and continue to persevere in pray, the “peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand, will guard your hearts and your thoughts, in Christ Jesus.” Peace is not the absence of conflict or problems. Peace involves presence rather than absence. It comes with the acknowledgement that God is in our midst, “a victorious warrior. He will exult with joy over you, He will renew you by His love; He will dance with shouts of joy for you as on a day of festival.”

And finally, we come to the gospel and the final herald of joy, St John the Baptist. John doesn’t strike us as a Pollyanna-like optimistic figure. In fact, he strikes us as quite the opposite. Solemn, sombre and rigidly kill-joy. Unlike the other two figures we encountered in the first and the second reading, John does not burst forth in a cheer leader’s rallying cry exhorting us to rejoice. On the contrary, he provides strict moral guidance to his audience to share, to avoid greed and intimidation and then uses apocalyptic language of judgment to speak of the One who is coming, one who is superior to John and who “will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing-fan is in his hand to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his barn; but the chaff he will burn in a fire that will never go out.”

The idea of judgment - separation of the wheat from the chaff and the destruction of the latter - does not naturally inspire joy. And yet St Luke describes this message as “good news”! And it is good news because it expresses the fundamental preparatory work of John - calling his listeners to repentance, to separate themselves from the chaff of sin. And before we think of the image of fire pointing to the eternal hell fire which all damned unrepentant souls must endure for eternity, we must also remember that fire represents the Holy Spirit which we receive in Baptism and a greater outpouring at Confirmation. Fire too represents the purgative element of God’s love, refining us, purifying us, restoring us, beautifying us. The prophet Zephaniah alluded to this in the first reading when he prophesied the Lord’s coming into our midst to “renew” us by His love.

So, as the weeks of Advent draw to a close and the days and nights of December lead us closer to that solemn night where our Lord and Saviour was born in the City of David, let us not choose to wallow in self-pity or crippling worries. We are commanded today to rejoice, and we do so not by finding substitutes to Christ in the form of intoxicants or other means of entertainment. Lasting joy cannot be found in any human pursuits but in God alone. He alone gives us the joy we seek.

The Once-and-for-all Atoning Sacrifice

Thirty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

The holiest day in the Jewish calendar was marked by a unique ceremony that had to be repeated every year, at least while the Temple was still standing. This is Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement. Although no living person in this day and age has ever witnessed this elaborate ceremony, we have the benefit of its detailed records in the Bible, in the Book of Leviticus, a book of rites and ceremonies.

The book of Leviticus says that the High Priest on this most holy day was to enter into the Holy of Holies, which is the inner sanctum of the Temple, the place where the tabernacle was kept. By the time of our Lord, the tabernacle was missing which meant that the Holy of Holies was an empty shell. But that was no excuse to stop this ceremony. The High Priest’s primary responsibility was to offer the sacrifice on Yom Kippur for the forgiveness of the sins of all the Israelites. On the Day of Atonement, the priest would be stripped of his clothes, wash his hands and his feet, and then immerse himself in water and dried off and put on white garments, similar to the white alb the priest and altar servers put on before they enter the Sanctuary. Then the High Priest would offer a bullock, a young bull for his own sin offering as our second reading reminds us, and fill the Holy of Holies with incense; thus, he would be considered purified and ready to offer the sacrifice for the people.

The people would then bring to the High Priest two goats, one goat would be offered to the Lord and the other would become the scapegoat. After the first goat was sacrificed to the Lord as a sign of propitiation (communion with God), the High Priest would take the live scapegoat and lay his hands upon the scapegoat and confess all the sins of the Israelites onto it. This goat represented the act of expiation (the purification from sin). Then a Gentile, because no Jew would want to go near the goat that had all their sins, would tie a scarlet red ribbon around its neck, lead the scapegoat out into the desert, and push it over the cliff. So, when the scapegoat would be pushed over the cliff and die, the Israelites knew all their sins were forgiven.

And here is where the scapegoat gets fascinating. The way the Israelites would know their sins were forgiven is because the High Priest would tie another crimson red ribbon on the door of the Sanctuary. According to the rabbis whose teachings are recorded in the Mishnah, the oral tradition, every year whenever the scapegoat was pushed over the cliff that crimson red ribbon tied on the door to the Sanctuary would miraculously turn white, that way all the Israelites would know their sins are forgiven. And what is even more amazing is that according to the same Jewish tradition, the miracle of the red ribbon turning white happened every year until the year 30, the time of Jesus Christ upon the earth. Though this remained a mystery among the Jews, it is clear to us Christians. We all know what happened on Good Friday – the Lamb of God took away the sins of the world on the cross.

The Cross is the final sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins of all people. Jesus Christ replaces the scapegoat that was offered by the high priest at the Holy of Holies in the Temple at Yom Kippur; He is the sacrificial lamb, who gave Himself up for our eternal life. He, who was without sin, took on the sins of world by His Passion. But He is also the other goat who is sacrificed in the Temple to bring about our complete reconciliation with God, something which all the bloody sacrifices of the Temple could never accomplish. His sacrifice both expiates and propitiates – purifies us from sin and unites us with God. Like all the Jewish High Priests, Jesus too was stripped of His clothes before He was crucified, therefore Jesus is the Great High Priest who offered Himself as the final sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins.

Now, all this alignment between the ritual of the old covenant and what took place on the cross at Calvary on Good Friday would certainly help us to understand what is written by the author of Hebrews in the second reading. But what about the story of the two widows in the first reading and the gospel? Both are certainly models of unrivalled generosity as both gave up their last resort of survival, the first for a stranger and the second for God. In a way, both widows epitomise the two-fold great commandment of love owed toward God and neighbour, which we heard last week. Both women are actually typological figures pointing to another who gave up much more - the One who sacrificed His life for us in order to atone for our sins and reconcile us to the Father. The two small coins of the second widow in our gospel story perhaps symbolises the two-fold action of our Lord’s sacrifice - expiation and propitiation.

It is through this lens that we must now consider the story of the widow’s mite. The main point of the story of the widow’s mite is not what most people have assumed. Have you ever noticed our Lord does not praise the widow for her offering? He does not even encourage us to duplicate her behaviour. He simply states what she did as a fact. The widow’s sacrificial offering points us toward the life of sacrifice Jesus modelled for us. Our Lord offered Himself willingly. He spared nothing, and it cost Him everything. Unlike the animals whose lives were taken against their will, our Lord went to His death willingly for our sake. If you think the widow’s actions as astoundingly generous, it still comes nowhere close to what the Lord has done for us. His generosity knows no bounds.

By shining a light on the unnamed widow’s generosity, our Lord reminds us that what is most important to God is not the quantity of the gift, but the generosity of the one doing the giving. The value of a gift depends not on its absolute worth, but in the love with which it is given. This woman of God gave an offering that resounded louder than the heaps of coins dropped into the treasury by others. Nothing showy. No virtue signalling. In fact, her actions may actually earn her ridicule and derision. But her love for her Lord who had given so much to her blinded her to the burning and judging gaze of others.

Many of us would be guilty of looking at what we possess and be conditioned by a mentality of scarcity, believing that it is never enough for us to share with others. In contrast, a heart of abundance, just like the two widows, looks at the One who provides what we have in our hands. As we recognise our God as the one who provides everything— life, possessions, time, energy, love, and all of who we are—we will grow in our trust of Almighty God’s abundance.

At every Mass, we are brought before the One who sacrificed everything for us, who took our sins upon Himself although He had none, who drew the ire and hatred of the world so that we may be freed from shame and guilt. But unlike the sacrifice of Yom Kippur which had to be repeated to no avail, the Holy Mass is the ‘once for all,’ perfect sacrifice of Calvary, which is presented on heaven’s altar for all eternity. It is not a ‘repeat performance.’ There is only one sacrifice; it is perpetual and eternal, and so it needs never be repeated. And it is by this once for all sacrifice that heaven is finally opened, the gates of God’s abundant graces finally poured upon us, and our reconciliation with Him is finally sealed “once and for all.”

Life in the Spirit

Pentecost Sunday Year B

The Catholic Charismatic Renewal has undoubtedly been a great gift to the Catholic Church in recent times as it has brought about a revival and renewed enthusiasm of faith among Catholics, often going against the mainstream trend of declining church attendees and vocations, cooling of devotional fervour among the faithful and over rationalisation of the clergy. Many a priestly or religious vocation and person deeply committed to lay apostolate would have attributed the seeds of their call to the renewal and the work of the Holy Spirit.

However, there is a danger of confining the work of the Holy Spirit to mere external signs in the vein of what took place at Pentecost which is recounted in the first reading - visible and tangible manifestation of the power of the Holy Spirit and the display of the charismata - the charismatic gifts of speaking in tongues and miracles. A deeper look at the work of the Holy Spirit will necessitate looking at the long-term fruits of the Spirit working in the life of a Christian. St Paul gives us this invaluable tool of discernment in the second reading. As we were reminded in a recent course on exorcism and spiritual warfare, the devil and his minions can imitate the charisms in that they can suspend and bend the laws of nature and our hunger for the spectacular, but only God and His Holy Spirit can plant the hidden fruits of spiritual grace in our lives and bring about our sanctification.

St Paul gives a full list of works of the Spirit and their opposites, the works of the flesh, that is, the works of natural, unreformed and selfish behaviour. Christ has sent His Spirit so that our behaviour may be completely changed, and so that we may live with His life. The works of the flesh are not merely the gross, ‘fleshly’ distortions of greed, avarice and sexual licence, but include also such failings as envy and quarrels. Paul’s list is a useful little checklist to apply to our own way of life. The desires of self-indulgence are always in opposition to the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are in opposition to self-indulgence: they are opposites, one against the other; that is how you are prevented from doing the things that you want to.

What is self-indulgence and why is it the greatest threat to a life in the Spirit? Self-indulgence, simply put, is desire for pleasure. If we look carefully at people today and modern society in general, we see immediately that they are dominated by the passion of love of pleasure or self-indulgence. Our age is pleasure-seeking to the highest degree. Even in spirituality, so many seek to experience an emotional high in prayer rather than do the hard work of building virtue. Human beings have a constant tendency towards this terrible passion, which destroys their whole life and deprives them of the possibility of communion with God. The passion of self-indulgence wrecks the work of salvation.

According to the Fathers of the Church, self-indulgence is one of the main causes of every abnormality in man’s spiritual and bodily organism. It is the source of all the vices and all the passions that assault both soul and body. St Theodore, Bishop of Edessa, teaches that there are three general passions which give rise to all the others: love of pleasure, love of money and love of praise. Other evil spirits originate from these three, and subsequently “from these arise a great swarm of passions and all manner of evil.” St John of Damascus makes the same point. “The roots or primary causes of all these passions are love of sensual pleasure, love of praise and love of material wealth. Every evil has its origin in these.” Since love of money and praise include the intense sensual pleasure derived from wealth and glory, we can say that self-indulgence gives birth to all the other passions.

The antidote and cure to this predilection to sin is living a vibrant life in the Spirit. St Paul assured us that “If you are guided by the Spirit you will be in no danger of yielding to self-indulgence, since self-indulgence is the opposite of the Spirit, the Spirit is totally against such a thing.” Paul does not only list down the bad fruits which come from the spirit of self-indulgence but also provides us with a list of nine fruits of the Holy Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control”. Notice how self-control is listed last instead of first even though we may assume that self-control is the clearest antidote to self-indulgence. And yet, love is listed first. The reason is that love always seeks the well-being of the other rather than oneself, and if there is no love even in the ascetic practices of our faith, we are merely empty gongs and everything we do, even if it has the appearance of a virtue, is self-serving.

St Paul understood that the early Church whom he was writing to is made up of baptised Christians, who have died and been reborn with Christ and have received the Holy Spirit who descended on the day of Pentecost and is still a battleground of spiritual warfare between the spirit of indulgence and that of the Holy Spirit. If that were not the case, he wouldn’t have warned his audience about this nor would our Lord give us the power of the Spirit to forgive sins if every member of the Church was a perfect living saint devoid of sin. It is precisely, because we continue to struggle with self-indulgence that we have to constantly allow the Spirit to fortify us and strengthen our resolve to be holy and faithful to the Lord.

When our Lord appeared to the disciples in the Upper Room after His resurrection and greeted them with the gift of peace, it did not mean that their lives would now be secured and immune from trouble, conflict or even sin. Peace is not the absence of something but rather the presence of someone, our Lord Jesus Christ, who continues to work through His Church by the power of the Holy Spirit, forgiving sins, healing wounds, regenerating persons, and redeeming them from the world and the life of sin. The Church, as the third-century theologian St Hippolytus affirmed, is “the place where the Spirit flourishes”. The Church is the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit animating and bringing to life and holiness its members through the Word and sacraments, the ministry of the ordained (our bishops, priests and deacons), the various gifts and charisms of the faithful of every rank, the varieties of religious orders and ecclesial movements that express the Spirit’s power and anointing.

Today, we remember how the Risen Lord had breathed His Spirit on the apostles and on all of us: “Receive the Holy Spirit!” The Spirit comes to each one of us as a gift but also as a challenge to the ongoing conversion of our heart and mind. As the source and giver of all holiness, we implore the Spirit to keep us in grace and remove those artificial obstacles, habits and ways of thinking that prevent us from living fully in and for Christ. As St Paul writes in the Letter to the Romans, our baptism in Christ calls us to live no longer by the flesh, by the material things or selfish desires of this world, but to live according to the Spirit (Rom 8:5).

Mercy and Peace

Second Sunday of Easter Year B
Divine Mercy Sunday

NATO has become a household acronym that almost everyone in Malaysia knows and understands. I’m not talking about the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation but the stinging indictment against so many, especially targeted at leaders: “no action, talk only.” It’s the Malaysian equivalent of the English expression “Be all talk (but no action).” The acronym NATO, however, sounds much catchier than BAT. When it comes to mercy, our theme for today, words alone do not make one a Christian. If we wish to talk about mercy, it cannot just remain at the level of words and good wishes. It must be translated into action. We must back our words with action.

We can be certain that there is One who has not and will never fall under this description of NATO! According to St. Paul, this is the One who, "emptied himself, taking the form of a slave … obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Phil 2:8). Our Lord Jesus Christ did not merely speak about love and humility. He did not merely show us mercy as He pitied us and sympathised with our plight. He was not all talk but no action. No! Our Lord, the Divine Mercy, speaks works of mercy to us. But He does not only speak. He acts. This Word became flesh - He became man. He did not merely do His Father's will. He perfected it. His WORD took ACTION - He let us nail Him to a Cross, so that He might take upon Himself the guilt of our own sins. He has the scars to show for it, even after His resurrection.

As His blood dripped down the sides of the tree from which He hung, He thought of us in our sinfulness. And from His side, flowed water and blood as the visible sign of His mercy, a mercy that would take concrete shape and form in the sacraments of the Church, especially in the form of Baptism and the Eucharist. In the Upper Room, behind the closed doors of fear and regret, He did not speak words of condemnation to His disciples who had betrayed Him, denied Him and abandoned Him, but instead, words of forgiveness “Peace be with you!” Our Lord, the Divine Mercy walked the talk and lived His words of mercy.

Divine mercy is the reason why humans can face up to their sin and accept full responsibility. Precisely because God is merciful, we can entrust ourselves wholly to Him, faults and all. We can accept whatever discipline He deems just and we can own our mistakes with the hope of redemption. Today, however, divine mercy often occasions a kind of quest to discover all the excuses humans have for not living the moral standard and to elaborate human inculpability. Divine mercy now seems to be about how humans can’t be blamed.

Today, we do live in an age where mercy is demanded but little appreciated. It is a false sort of mercy that demands nothing from the one who feels entitled to it. In other words, today many perceive mercy as a blanket approval for all manner of action, behaviour and lifestyle. Mercy is treated like a whitewash, covering up all sin and not actually changing the situation of our lives. An understanding of mercy, which allows a person to become at peace with sin, is far from the mercy shown by Jesus, because His true concern is for our true happiness.

How is His mercy connected to the peace which He offers in today’s gospel? True mercy releases us from sin and allows us to live in friendship with God. That is how mercy leads us to be at peace with God. Such peace can only be experienced when we surrender to God’s justice, turn to Him in repentance and be reconciled with Him in spirit and in truth. This is the reason why the words of the Risen Lord as we have heard in today’s gospel connect both peace and forgiveness. There can be no authentic peace if we have not been truly forgiven of our sins.

Mercy does not make sin acceptable. No, mercy seeks to free us from sin through forgiveness. It opens up a space for us to become a better version of ourselves. A false consolation that allows someone to continue in his sin whilst ignoring the guilt of his actions is not mercy at all if the person is not freed from the sinful situation. St Pope John Paul II once wrote “According to Catholic doctrine, no mercy, neither divine nor human, entails consent to the evil or tolerance of the evil. Mercy is always connected with the moment that leads from evil to good. Where there is mercy, evil surrenders. When the evil persists, there is no mercy.” Unfortunately, many today reject God’s forgiveness because they live in denial and refuse to accept the blame or acknowledge their own faults.

Divine Mercy is God’s offer to us to come close to Him. It is a real offer which invites us to a conversion of life, a definite break with sin, and a peace, of knowing and living in communion with God. This relationship is not mere lip service but a reality. God is never NATO! What God has promised, He does. When one meets the Lord’s mercy, our lives change. Our acceptance of mercy involves us trusting our lives to Jesus and our willingness to obey Him. When we pray for true mercy, we ask the Lord to forgive us our sins and weaknesses and to give us the grace to live in communion with Him in sincerity and truth.

Jesus! We trust in You!