Catholicism is not for Dummies!

Twenty Fifth Ordinary Sunday Year C

A feature article entitled “Religious People Are Less Intelligent than Atheists” appeared online on Yahoo a month ago. According to the research team from the University of Rochester, it was purportedly found in a substantial majority of case studies that there is “a reliable negative relation between intelligence and religiosity.” In layman’s terms, if you are found to be more religious, then you are likely to be less intelligent. They concluded that “intelligent people are more likely to be married and more likely to be successful in life–and this may mean they need religion less.” There you have it: the ingenious conclusion that marriage (not counting the number of divorces that follow thereafter) and success are the incontrovertible measure of intelligence! If you were to buy into any of this atheist propaganda that appears on the Internet you would have no choice but to conclude that Christians are some of the most ignorant, irrational, dishonest, deluded idiots on the planet.  

Catholics tend to receive a more severe beating than the rest of the pack. Both Protestants and atheists often accused Catholicism of being backward and the sworn enemy of science, progress and the genuine pursuit of knowledge. In short if you are a Catholic, you must be a moron. The point made is that something is seriously wrong with these Catholic idiots who believe these nonsensical fairy tales; a God who took the form of a mortal and died on a tree, a dead man rose from the dead, bread and wine changing into something gory and bloody, and finally that obnoxious belief that silly trivial acts of piety can actually shorten your incarceration in Purgatory. Based on the conclusions of the research, Rome (or Vatican City to be exact) is the virtual epicentre of moronitude, since there are so many celibates therein who are engaged in a profitless enterprise that’s doomed for failure! You get the point.

Now Catholics may have founded nearly every major university in Europe, their monasteries may have kept the very skill of literacy alive during the Black Plague and the famines, they may even have invented the press which allowed literacy to become commonplace, but none of that mattered. The general opinion is this: Catholics are stupid, period. I guess it’s not hard to understand why so many people, including Catholics, buy into this kind of stupid propaganda given what we’ve been consistently hearing in the past few weeks: the absolute demand made of disciples to abandon everything and commit themselves fully to Christ – a sort of spiritual kamikaze. Doesn’t this sound crazy? But, then one also detects a certain brilliance that arises from a different set of logical rules – the Logic of grace and Love.

As a crowning cap to this whole collection of seemingly nonsensical counsel or most profound wisdom, depending on which perspective you choose to take, we have the parable of the astute steward. This certainly takes the cake when it comes to the ludicrous. In fact, many Christians find it a source of embarrassment. In this pericope a steward seems to be commended for dishonest behaviour and made an example for Jesus' disciples. Jesus, who literally heads south, seems to have fallen off his rocker!

In this fairly simple, if somewhat unorthodox, parable from Jesus, there is a major reversal of sorts. In most of Jesus’ parables, the main protagonist is either representative of God, Christ, or some other positive character. In this parable, the characters are all wicked – the steward and the man whose possessions he manages are both unsavoury characters. This should alert us to the fact that Jesus is not exhorting us to emulate the behaviour of the characters, but is trying to expound on a larger principle. Certainly, Jesus wants His followers to be just, righteous, magnanimous, and generous, unlike the main protagonist in the parable. But what does this dishonest steward have to offer us as a point of learning? The gospel notes that Jesus commends him for his astuteness, his shrewdness.

The dishonest steward is commended not for mishandling his master's wealth, but for his shrewd provision in averting personal disaster and in securing his future livelihood. The original meaning of "astuteness" is "foresight" – the ability to see ahead and anticipate what’s in store in the future.  An astute person, therefore, is one who grasps a critical situation with resolution, foresight, and the determination to avoid serious loss or disaster. If foresight is the true measure of intelligence, a Christian must be ‘super’ intelligent since his foresight extends beyond this temporal plane, it penetrates the veil of death and catches a glimpse of the eternal vision of glory.  As the dishonest steward responded decisively to the crisis of his dismissal due to his worldly foresight, so disciples are to respond decisively in the face of their own analogous crisis with heavenly foresight. The crisis may come in the form of the brevity and uncertainty of life or the ever-present prospect of death; for others it is the eschatological crisis occasioned by the coming of the kingdom of God in the person and ministry of Jesus.

Jesus is concerned here with something more critical than a financial crisis.  His concern is that we avert spiritual crisis and personal disaster through the exercise of faith, foresight and compassion.  If Christians would only expend as much foresight and energy to spiritual matters which have eternal consequences as much as they do to earthly matters which have temporal consequences, then they would be truly better off, both in this life and in the age to come. St Ambrose provides us with a spiritual wisdom that can only be perceived through the use of heavenly foresight: “The bosoms of the poor, the houses of widows, the mouths of children are the barns which last forever.” In other words, true wealth consists not in what we keep but in what we give away. Real wisdom is acknowledging that worldly happiness and success cannot be the key indicators of a wholesome life, a self fulfilled life but rather as St Ireneaus indicates, “the glory of God is a man fully alive.” Wholesomeness is measured by the extent of how we live our lives for the glory of God, and not for ourselves or for things.

Finally, being astute means recognising that there is no contradiction between faith and reason; in fact ‘faith seeks understanding’ (fides quaerens intellectum). We should, therefore, resist the temptation of dumbing-down the message of Christ, to reduce the gospel to the level of compatibility with the values of the world. Many worldly values will always remain incompatible with that of the gospel. Catholics need to recover the courage to be deeply reflective in our theology, rooted in our catechism, and intellectual in the defence of our faith, rather than giving in to a shallow mushy version of religion and styles of preaching done in the name of that most abused concept of all, ‘pastoral reasons.’  In fact, “the greatest pastoral disaster is the dumbing down of our Catholic faith” (Fr Robert Barron).

I’m tired of hearing the excuse for pitifully shallow catecheses, because it is claimed that our lay Catholics won’t be able to grasp and understand the depth of Catholic theology and teachings, so they always need to be served bite-sized, dumb down versions of the original. I think that’s down right condescending. Often, people fail to understand not because they are obtuse but because they choose not to understand. The issue has less to do with intelligence than with sin which blinds and obscures. Let’s not give an excuse to atheist and Protestants to have another swing at us, especially for our failure to match reason to faith. In an ironic sort of a way, we need to be appreciative of critics and inquirers, and even be thankful to God for them. It is they who throw us the challenge to delve deeper into the treasury of Catholic thought. We come out the wiser.

The online article which I cited at the beginning claims that believers in God are less intelligent than non-believers. Perhaps no empirical research will be able to show this, but personal experiences of many will lay testimony to the fact that the most intelligent thing an intelligent human being can do is to turn to God, not away from him. The faith and lives of the heroes and heroines in both scriptures and the history of our Church testify to this. On the other hand, human history is full of evidence that secular humanist ideologies, socio-economic projects and other human experiments have failed to provide the ‘final solution’ to man’s troubles. Only God can do that. It is rightly said that wise men still seek Him, wiser men find Him, and the wisest come to worship Him. Yes, Catholicism is not for dummies!

So which is it?

Tenth Ordinary Sunday Year C

Albert Einstein once said, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." So which is it?

Both the first reading and the gospel provide us with putative miracle stories involving the resurrection of dead persons. ‘Why putative?’ you may ask. Is it a miracle or isn’t it? Well, at least that seems to be the conclusion of the eye-witnesses, the faith communities that passionately shared and passed on these stories, the Bible authors who meticulously collated the oral traditions and recorded the same for posterity, and the contemporary believer who reads these tales through the lenses of faith. On the other side of the fence, the modern sceptic may come to an entirely different conclusion. He comes with kid-gloves off, equipped with the reliable weapons of modern science and literary hermeneutics, ready to spar with the naively gullible. The sceptic attempts to peel away what he considers layers of filters, myth-making, primitive beliefs and provide the story with a more plausible interpretation that accords with modern sensibilities. Rather than a resurrection of a dead person, he is more likely to read the stories as accounts of the resuscitation of comatose persons. So, which is it?

Was Jesus a healer, a miracle worker, the Son of God or a practitioner of medical science? So which is it? In recent decades, strenuous efforts have been made and are still being made by many biblical scholars to represent that the miracles of Jesus Christ as myths and nothing more. Many, in their zeal have even denied that these miracles ever took place. They often state that they do this so that Jesus as a person can emerge in purity without all the myth surrounding Him. Their goal is the ‘Historical Jesus’, one free of the idealised or ‘idolised’ accretion of faith. While this may be a lofty goal, many have gone too far as we human beings are often wont to do. They have altogether thrown the child out with the bath. They often end up denying the two scriptural beliefs that form the foundation of our Christian faith, the Incarnation, the event of God becoming man, and the Resurrection, Christ rising from the dead. So, which is it? Did it really happened or didn’t it?

I think the real problem is that many people, both believers and non-believers included, are often of the opinion that religion and science are mutually exclusive; that they are incompatible. Unbelievers, atheists and sceptics often think that faith is pre-scientific nonsense and pure superstition or mythology. It is easy for them to make fun of popular religion, whether it is the simple pietism of Roman Catholics, amid the plastic holy water bottles in the shape of the Virgin at Lourdes, the masses who flock to alleged miraculous sites to gain some personal favour, to the poorly-educated happy-clappy Evangelicals and Pentecostals and the naively gullible who spend their live savings investing in holy schemes, fail-safe novenas and miraculous handkerchiefs.  According to the former, the latter have abdicated reason when it comes to faith.  It is interesting to note that both fideism (exclusive reliance on faith alone and the exclusion of reason) and rationalism (the rejection of any knowledge that cannot be supported empirically or proven scientifically) are rejected by the Church and considered erroneous and heretical positions.

For true believers, it’s never an issue of choosing between faith and reason. The question, ‘which is it’, is misplaced. The Catholic Church consistently teaches that faith is not opposed to reason. Rather, faith seeks understanding, ‘fides quarens intellectum.’ Faith is never a sacrifice of the intellect. But it also takes humility, as Einstein reminds us, to recognise that rationality and sciences has its limitations. Is it not possible that there is a faculty of understanding in human-beings which is neither rational, nor irrational, but rather 'supra-rational', beyond the reason, higher than the reason? In other words, although faith does not contradict reason, faith can go beyond the limitations of reason. Blessed John Paul II, in the  introduction to his encyclical letter entitled "Fides et Ratio” (Faith and Reason), explained it beautifully: "Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth-in a word, to know himself-so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves."

While it is important to see the gospel stories in a historically critical manner in order to get to the original intention of the biblical authors, going so far as to deny that the miracles of Jesus were real is missing the point altogether. His miracles were an essential part of His ministry. Quite aside from the obvious human angle of the relief of suffering that the miracles achieved, they were also a most important way of arousing the faith of his people. Miracles are challenges to faith. The people were meant to go beyond the miracles, beyond the spectacular and crowd pleasing firework displays, and come into contact with the saving Word of God which would change their lives. The people were aroused from their spiritual lethargy and inspired to follow the Word Incarnate, and finally to reap the ultimate gift which Jesus had intended to give them and all of us, eternal life.

Jesus’ miracles are not so much displays of power as they are signs of the presence of God’s Kingdom in the person of Jesus. Their significance in Jesus’ life and ministry is captured nicely in his own words: “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the Kingdom of God has come to you” (Lk 11:20). This saying provides the key to a proper understanding of Jesus’ miracles. During his lifetime there was little doubt about Jesus’ ability to heal and perform other types of miracles. Even his opponents acknowledged his power to do such actions. Their question concerned the origin or source of Jesus’ powers. Did his power come from God or from Satan? In response, Jesus tried to show the absurdity of their question, because his miracles were clearly signs of God’s victory over Satan and the defeat of the powers of evil. The miracles proclaim the arrival of the kingdom of God, and the era of Christ (Lk 11 : 20; Mt 11: 4-5). They were meant to give us a fore-taste of Paradise. The Catechism of the Catholic Church was quick to warn that Jesus’ primary mission was not to “abolish all evils here below, but to free men from the gravest slavery, sin, which thwarts them in their vocation as God’s sons and causes all forms of human bondage. (CCC 549)

For many, miracles have become an end in themselves. They have become obsessed in looking for sensational signs and wonders. They too miss the point. These people fail to recognise that miracles are not intended to “satisfy people’s curiosity or desire for magic” (CCC 549). They fail to recognise that this preoccupation detracts from the ultimate purpose of miracles. Miracles reveal the mystery of Christ who stands behind these signs and symbols. Miracles act as signposts and neon lights pointing to the greatest miracle of all – the salvation of humanity through the Incarnation of the one who is the life and resurrection of all believers. While the Incarnation is the root miracle of salvation, the Resurrection is the definitive and ultimate sign. If there should be any miracle that should attract our attention and earn our adulation, it should be these central mysteries of faith. Therefore, any Catholic who gives their primary attention to alleged private revelations and putative miracles at the expense of ignoring the central mysteries faith contained in Sacred Scripture, the teaching of the Church, sacramental life, prayer and fidelity to Church authority is off course.

Miracles will always have as their primary purpose the glorification of God and the calling of people to salvation. The signs worked by Jesus attest to His divine authority and invite belief in Him (cf. Catechism, no. 548). They show us that the one who cured blindness, leprosy and paralysis is the same one who provides us shelter and haven from the roaring winds and raging seas. They reveal that the one who changed water into wine, is the new Wine of the Eternal Covenant, the never drying fountain and source of living water.   The ultimate aim of the miracles of Jesus is to give us the wonderful experience of Heavenly Bliss in God's Kingdom. After His Ascension and Pentecost, Christ's disciples worked miracles in the name of Christ, thus giving the people signs of His divinity and proofs that He is who they said He is. In the same way later saints worked miracles to testify to a higher authority and that people are called to His kingdom. But miracles aren’t the main point! It is what those miracles point to and lead us to that is fundamentally important – the salvation of souls; this is the primary mission of the Church. The Church’s mission, all its prayers, rites and activities, are directed and devoted to the salvation of souls: calling people to turn from the Way of Death and to embrace the Way of Life.

Illuminating the Dark

Fourth Sunday of Lent

(Year A Gospel; With Scrutinies)

Since it is at this mass where we will be celebrating the second set of Scrutinies to prepare the Elect for the reception of the Easter Mysteries, we have used the prescribed gospel taken from the Year A set of readings, the story of the “Man Born Blind”. Perhaps, this is an excellent example of how the Church reads the bible, through the liturgical lenses and the rich symbolism of allegory. The liturgy provides us with an illuminative interpretation that would be absent to the ordinary eye of a modern exegete, who relies solely upon the material contained within the text or archaeological findings. The symbols portray a rich multi-layered spectrum of meaning that often direct explanations and words cannot adequately convey. Just like last week’s gospel reading where you heard the story of the Samaritan Woman at the well, this week’s gospel reading is rich in symbolic imagery that points to the liturgy of baptism which the Elect will receive on the night of the Easter Vigil: Light and darkness, sight and blindness, enlightenment, Baptism.

According to this allegorical interpretation, the blind man represents the human race wounded by original sin. The initial query on the cause of his blindness now makes sense. None of us can be personally faulted for the condition that has infected the whole human race. But even the fault of Adam and Eve can be an occasion of grace: the ‘happy fault’ (felix culpa) which the priest announces in the Exsultet, the Easter Proclamation. “God allowed evil to happen in order to bring greater good therefrom” (St Thomas Aquinas). By virtue of the fault of Adam, by virtue of the blindness which we suffer from original sin, God sent his only begotten Son to be our redeemer. Because of Adam’s sin we are born “blind” but in the baptismal font we are illumined by the grace of Christ.

In the story, Jesus performs a ritual much like the way we baptise: He first anoints the man’s eyes and then tells him to wash in the Pool of Siloam. Anointing, washing, enlightenment–all these are “code words” for Baptism.  John even tells us that “Siloam” means “sent.”  But baptism not only effects cleansing, incorporation, enlightenment, and regeneration of an individual; it also has cosmic significance and benefit that transcends person, place and time. Thus the use of clay recalls the moment when all creation began and foreshadows the unending moment when all creation will be transformed for, at least temporarily, the newly baptised are returned to Eden, the gates are opened, and paradise restored. Baptism joins them to Christ, the New Adam. This union promises them that they will one day share his bodily resurrection, just as he shared their physical death.

Let us consider the other characters in the story. First we have the neighbours who show surprise, scepticism and denial. They refuse even to acknowledge that a miracle has taken place. Many good people today continue to remain non-committal and refuse to believe in the existence of God and anything supernatural, by choosing to ignore the signs and ‘proofs.’ Believing would seem to demand a great paradigm shift for them and many are content to hold on fervently to the position of ignorance. Second, we have the Pharisees who at least come to accept that something phenomenal had taken place but were distracted by a hermeneutics of suspicion. They like many in our society today view the world through distorted lenses that chooses to interpret everything against its grain, to see the contemptible in the honoured, to find the bad in the good, to search out flaws in the perfect. When people are busy looking for mistakes and faults, they are blinded to the wealth of goodness that comes with God’s works. Lastly, we have the parents of the man born blind. They do believe but under the threat of excommunication, give in by compromising the truth. They allowed fear to blind them and even silence their voices to announce the wonders that God had performed in their son’s life. Although the physical sight of these three categories of persons had never been in question, their spiritual blindness is apparent. Note that when the Truth is denied, sight is denied too. They could not see nor recognise the Light which is Christ.

In the early Christian communities candidates for Baptism presented their names to the local Christian community and for forty days trained for Baptism. During that time they were joined by the local community, united in prayer and fasting. From at least the third century, candidates were introduced to three great Johannine texts: The Samaritan Woman, John. 4; The Man Born Blind, John. 9; The Raising of Lazarus, John 11. These texts hold a key to discipleship. Each is a story of faith and healing, each is an answer to the question: How do you meet Jesus? How do you respond to him? Thus the question which Jesus asks the blind man in today’s gospel is the high point of the story: “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” (Jn 9:35). The man recognises the sign worked by Jesus and he passes from the light of his eyes to the light of faith: “Lord, I believe!” (Jn 9:38). Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote that “being a Christian is the encounter with an event, a person, who gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” Thus, the deeper significance begins and ends with Jesus himself. Jesus never performed miracles just to perform miracles as if to show off his divine power. Rather, he always performed them in the midst of some great human need with the intent of leading the one who was the recipient of the miracle as well as those who were privileged to witness it to a deep and abiding faith in him.

The Gospel confronts each one of us with the question: "Do you believe in the Son of man?" "Lord, I believe!" (Jn 9:35. 38), exclaims the man born blind, giving voice to all believers. Thus, we are invited to see with new sight and insight, allowing faith to illumine the eyes of our hearts to gaze upon him who is our redemption, our salvation, our hope and our reconciliation. As St Augustine of Hippo beautifully wrote, “that which for the eyes of the body is the sun that we see, he (Christ) is for the eyes of the heart.”  

Being witnesses of the light can be hard work. Just as the gospel story unfolds, the ‘enlightened’ followers of Christ must be prepared to face incredulity, persecution, and hardship for the sake of that faith. It is one thing to have Jesus light up our lives but it is quite another thing to live that life in the same light day to day, especially in the midst of a world consumed by the darkness of sin and unbelief.  May we ever cling to the Light that banishes the darkness which is all around us. When the world, which constantly seeks to undermine, manipulate and distort the Truth, twists the meaning of the words of the man whose sight was restored and asks us, “Do you want to become his disciple, too?”… let us shout, unafraid and in loving faithfulness, “We do and we are!” At last, when in doubt as to whether we can remain faithful to task before, we find great comfort in the following words of hope delivered by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI at his last birthday celebration, words that proved prophetic:  “I find myself on the last stretch of my journey in life, and I don’t know what is awaiting me. I know, however, that the light of God exists, that he is risen, that his light is stronger than any darkness and that God’s goodness is stronger than any evil in this world, and this helps me go forward with certainty.”

Good Master, What Must we do ...?

Twenty Eighth Ordinary Sunday Year B

This weekend, parishes throughout the Archdiocese of Kuala Lumpur and many parts of the world will officially launch the Year of Faith. The Year of Faith, in the words of our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, in his letter ‘Porta Fidei,’ is a “summons to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the One Saviour of the world.” You’ve been hearing a great deal about this event but perhaps the whole thing may still appear fuzzy. The question on everyone’s mind somewhat reflects that of the rich young man in today’s gospel. “Good master, what must we do…?” You may be glad to know that the answer to this question lies in the same story, which starts off as a tale of a promising candidate for discipleship.

The story, however, ends on a sad note. We must not, however, be too quick or harsh to judge the rich young man. He was no ordinary youth lost in worldly pursuits. He seemed willing to listen and even eager to learn. He sincerely desired eternal life and wanted to know the winning formula for salvation. The young man claimed to be a good observant Jew who faithfully kept the Law. He just wasn’t too sure whether he missed anything. His persistence in pressing Jesus for an answer would eventually lead him to one that he did not bargain for. The answer would require a price too heavy to be paid; a cost he was unwilling to bear.

The failed story of the rich young men need not necessarily be ours. Our story could have an entirely different ending, provided we are prepared to learn from his mistakes. The lesson learnt gives us a blueprint on how we could make this Year of Faith a fruitful one, but not just for the year. It’s a lesson of a lifetime for  all sojourners of faith.

The first mistake of the rich young man was that he failed to recognise Jesus as Lord. The young man could only manage a title of honour at best, “Good Teacher.” Jesus, perceiving the youth’s inability to move beyond human categories, answers with another question, a question that would challenge the depths of the young man’s understanding. "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” By providing the answer to his own rhetorical question, Jesus was laying out a simple logic for the young man’s consideration - If Jesus is good, then He is God. Knowledge of the person of Jesus Christ is the foundation and objective of faith.  We must always remember that faith is not just confined to knowledge of our catechism. Although this is necessarily important, knowledge of faith should ultimately lead us into an intimate communion with Christ. The Gospel that Jesus Christ came to reveal is not information about God, but rather God himself in our midst. One of the most famous and repeated phrases of the Holy Father comes from his first encyclical, in the very first paragraph: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” Belief in Jesus Christ, then, is the way to arrive definitively at salvation. The Year of Faith is first and foremost an opportunity for Catholics to enter into a deeper relationship with Jesus. We need to move from a cognitive knowledge of Jesus to a unitive one.

The second mistake of our protagonist was settling for less when he could have achieved so much more. That too may be the frequent problem with many Catholics who often suffer from legalistic minimalism. The oft repeated question posed to the clergy by laity is ‘must’ we do this? In other words, it is obligatory? They believe that as long as they fulfilled the minimum requirements of the law, it would be deemed sufficient. This is best summed up in Yogi Bear’s famous life philosophy, ‘Why do more when you can do less.” When religion and ethical principles settle for the lowest standards to accommodate personal convenience, it will finally and quickly bottom out. Settling for less does not only take away the edge from our faith, it also condemns us to mediocrity. Today, we see the rise of mediocrity in every sphere. Mediocrity today poses as democratisation, inclusiveness, populism, condescension, tolerance, broad-mindedness, optimism and even charity. Mediocrity provides the anaesthetia our society needs to shield it from the sting of suffering. In other words, mediocrity presents the promise of salvation without a cross, charity without needing to sacrifice. We try to make religion easier and more accessible in order to stem the steady decline in followers. But mediocrity is settling for cheap; it is selling a lie. The call to holiness, ultimately, is a call to perfection. Being average or just good when it comes to holiness just doesn’t make it! In the Year of Faith, you will hear the Church’s rallying cry to walk the extra mile, to go out into the deep end, to make the greater sacrifice for faith. You will hear Jesus constantly prodding you, “Why do less when you can do more?” The law may simply set the minimum base line. But the maximum limit is literally the sky – heaven, in fact! We are all called to be saints!

The third mistake of the young man was that his deeds did not match his words when it came to faith. The young man had claimed that he had kept the Law perfectly. But the sincerity of this claim would be tested by the demand made by Jesus. The man’s sincerity was made poignantly clear by Jesus’ command to sell all and follow Him. His face fell and he went away sad because he could never part with his great wealth, not even in exchange for a greater prize, eternal life. Many fail to see the discrepancy, the dissonance between words and deeds. By claiming he had kept the Law, the man was declaring that he had obeyed the first commandment to love the Lord supremely and above all things, including wealth. He was also saying he loved his neighbour more than himself. But if he loved God and fellow-creatures more than he did his property, it would hardly be difficult and should have been quite effortless on his part to give up his wealth to the service of God and of man. But that was not the case. If the Year of Faith is going to be a year of deeper conversion, greater commitment to catechesis, relearning the fundamental basics of our faith in the light of the Second Vatican Council and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, then we need to match deeds to words. Words not matched by deeds are simply hollow and insincere.

Finally, the young man’s last mistake that proved decisive in determining his fate was that he chose to walk away. Situations arise where we may need to walk away, but then again, there are moments which calls us to stand our ground. The call of faith demands that we make such a stand. The young man walked away from the challenge of deepening his faith. He walked away from the heavy cost of discipleship but he also walked away from its reward, eternal life. Ultimately, he walked away from Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life. In choosing to walk away, he has chosen to close the door on Jesus. It is ironic and yet beautifully consoling that Jesus does not close the door on him. The Gospel of Mark records this little detail, that Jesus whilst looking at him, ‘loved him.’ The letter of the Holy Father inaugurating the Year of Faith tells us that “the “door of faith” (Acts 14:27) is always open for us, ushering us into the life of communion with God and offering entry into his Church.”  Now is the critical moment for decision: do we walk through that door or turn our back and walk away?

Having faith in Jesus and following him along the path of holiness is not going to be easy. Recognising Jesus as Lord shakes us from our complacent stupour, challenges us to match deeds to our words, and calls us to reject mediocrity in all its varied manifestations and aim high for perfection. Not only does this mean embracing a completely different style of living; but it also calls us to stand against a world that has grown indifferent to the sacred. The temptation to walk away is great, and many have done so, especially when the zeal has run out, the sentiment no longer enjoyed, the theology distant and less relevant, faith has become boring and empty and God has been reduced to an abstract concept. The Year of Faith throws us a challenge to return to the raw basics – ‘sell everything, take up your cross and follow me!’ What this means is that our faith is in need of a major overhaul or in the words of Blessed John XXII when he convened the Second Vatican Council fifty years ago, we are in need of a ‘renovatio’ – a renovation of our hearts and minds so that we may breathe and live the newness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This requires us to launch ourselves not just knee-deep but right up to the point where we are totally submerged. We must risk giving up every false security, our comfort zones, and our complacent self-satisfaction with the status quo. Will you choose to walk away like the rich young man or stand your ground and accept the challenge of the cross? This may seem to be a tall order, but remember, "For human beings it (may seem) impossible, but not for God. All things are possible for God."

The Holy Father tells us that “during this time we will need to keep our gaze fixed upon Jesus Christ, the "pioneer and perfecter of our faith" (Heb 12:2): in him, all the anguish and all the longing of the human heart finds fulfilment. The joy of love, the answer to the drama of suffering and pain, the power of forgiveness in the face of an offence received and the victory of life over the emptiness of death: all this finds fulfilment in the mystery of his Incarnation, in his becoming man, in his sharing our human weakness so as to transform it by the power of his resurrection… Faith commits every one of us to become a living sign of the presence of the Risen Lord in the world.” Let us then make this journey of faith into the wilderness of the world so that we may transform it by the message of the gospel into a place brimming once again with life, joy and hope.