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!

The Ultimate Reboot

Easter Vigil of the Holy Night

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You complete me

Twenty Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

For those who had lived through the 90s, Jerry Maguire must have been one of the most iconic romantic movies of all times. I know that most Gen Z’s would be scratching their heads, “Jerry Who?” It starred Tom Cruise, most famous for his looks than his acting skills, next to an almost unknown actress. The most famous tagline of the movie became one of the most popular “pick-up” lines used to express one’s undying love and desperate need for the other - “You complete me!” It sounds so awesomely romantic to literally be unable to live without someone because a part of you is missing. I mean, you can’t get more Romeo-and-Juliet than that, right? Like, let me drink poison if we can’t be together so I won’t ever have to live without you and I would literally rather die than live without you because You… Complete…Me.

The tagline may not have been that original as it draws inspiration from the Jewish mystical tradition, that each person possesses half a soul and it is only when they have found the other half of their soul in a person whom they will spend their entire lives with, will the two halves be reunited and made whole, thus the man and the woman “complete” each other. That’s a beautiful way of describing the complementarity of husband and wife but it is far from our Christian understanding of marriage and the person. A man does not complete a woman nor a woman a man in marriage. If this were so, then they can also choose to end this union as quickly and simply as they had sealed it. Rather, it is as our Lord reminds us, “what God has united, man must not divide.” We are, in fact, full persons, created in the image of God in need of no one but Jesus Christ. It is He who completes us!

Jerry Maguire might be right about one thing—Yes, we are incomplete people. But it’s not because we’re unmarried or that we have yet to find the other half of our soul. It’s because God has “put eternity in the heart of man” (Ecclesiastes 3:11) and that “His invisible attributes…have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world” (Romans 1:19-20). Without Him, we are incomplete, lacking something, missing a critical part of our soul. Notice that when God is absent in our lives, we will always try to fill that bottomless hole and make up for that inexhaustible absence with other things - things which can provide temporary relief but continue to remind us of what is perennially missing and which can only be satiated by God and God alone. And until He is the one to fill that hole, you’ll be incomplete. If there is one line which can utterly beat the Jerry Maguire line it should be this famous quote from St Augustine: “(O God) you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

One of the ways our Lord completes someone is by giving him a “helpmate.” In response to Adam’s lonely plight, God created for him an “ezer” translated as “helpmate.” The English translation is inadequate and, in our day, we may use the word “helper” in the sense of a maid, a domestic helper. But that is far from the meaning of the Hebrew word used to describe the first woman in the first reading. This is not the only occasion where the Hebrew word appears. In fact, it appears 21 times in total in the Old Testament. In two cases it refers to the first woman, Eve. Three times it refers to powerful nations Israel called on for help when besieged. In the sixteen remaining cases the word refers to God as our help. He is the one who comes alongside us in our helplessness.

This last reference of the noun “ezer” provides us with the context of how to understand the other instances when the word is used. It does not suggest 'helper' as in 'servant,' but help, saviour, rescuer, protector as in 'God is our help.' In no other occurrence in the Old Testament does this refer to an inferior, but always to a superior or an equal...'help' expresses that the woman is a help/strength who rescues or saves man. The woman was not created to serve the man, but to serve WITH the man. Without the woman, the man was only half the story. She was not an afterthought or an optional adjunct to an independent, self-sufficient man. God said in Genesis 2:18 that without her, the man's condition was "not good." God's intention in creating the woman for the man was for the two to be partners in stewarding God's creation.

Therefore, all of you are to be a helpmate to each other for so much more than mere intimate friendship and companionship. The old penny Catechism reminds us that we are created solely for God and for heaven – to know God, to love Him, to serve Him and be with Him in Paradise forever. If this is life’s main purpose, and it is truly a tall order, then we seriously are in need of help. The good news is that God gives us that help, but He also provides help, for most people, through a spouse, a friend, a community member, or a priest. God has created each of us not as lone travellers but ‘indispensable companions’ in our journey to heaven. The purpose of that helpmate must be to help us achieve the main purpose of our lives NOT to accomplish our own selfish, self-centred and myopic agendas. We are to help each other worship, obey, love God and be with Him in Paradise forever. We are to help each other get to heaven. In the case of a marriage, if this doesn’t become a couple’s life project, they may actually end up dragging each other to hell.

Finding a lifelong friend or being married, doesn’t mean that you’ve exorcised loneliness into the furthest regions of the universe. The spectre of loneliness trails many good couples and plagues even the best of marriages and friendships. And loneliness may often tempt us to find false substitutes in adulterous relationships, pornography, addictions and workaholism. Where does such loneliness come from? Well, we return to the story in Genesis. In the beginning, it was a literal paradise of fulfilling relationships as God in an unhindered way walked with Adam and Eve in the garden and they enjoyed the fullest experience of intimacy with each other. But how did the demon of loneliness infect their hearts? Well, the simple answer is sin – disobedience to God’s will and purpose. Sin is refusing to allow God to “complete” us. Notice how Adam and Eve hid from God out of fear of getting caught, and Adam blamed Eve for his disobedience, which clearly drove a wedge into their flawless intimacy. And the deep fellowship on every satisfying level is now replaced by alienation, blame, distrust, and shame.

The lesson here is huge. Living a God-less life ultimately leads us to a love-less life. Living for what’s “best for me,” while ignoring the needs, wishes, and interests of others always brings alienation and aloneness. Thank God that He has made a way for us to restore relationships and to recapture a portion of the intimacy of Eden. When we follow the way of Jesus and live to love and serve others, aloneness gives way to intimacy and our self-serving acts of alienation dissolve into a profound bonding that reflects the complete and perfect harmony of the Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity. Between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit there exists no conflict of will, no battle for dominance, no petty struggle to be identified or appreciated independently of the other. There exists only the perfect communion of love, and a blessed oneness of purpose and intent and action. Without Him, we will continue to be restless and listless, for only God can complete us, you and me.

The Trinity is Love Loving

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity 

John 3:16 is undoubtedly one of the most popular and memorable verses in scripture. It is so popular that even we Catholics, who are notorious for our short-term memory when it comes to memorising bible verses, are able to recognise this verse, with some even able to spew verse and chapter at will. “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life.” 

The verse has sometimes been described by evangelical Christians as “the Gospel in a nutshell” because it provides a stunningly succinct summary of the Christian faith. We Catholics and they can agree that there is perhaps no other single verse that so powerfully captures God’s heart for His creation and love for us in sending Jesus. He could have sent His Son to judge us, to punish us for our waywardness, to condemn us for our sins, but this would not be the motivation for the Son’s mission. Instead, Jesus revealed this Truth, a truth which only He alone knew to be true before this, “For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved.” 

It is clear that this verse is an unending, unyielding, unchanging proclamation of the utmost form of love—a message of hope from God to us. It concretely sets apart our God from the many other gods worshipped in this world, if such gods were to even exist. Other gods demand fear from their devotees but ours invite us into a relationship unlike any other we could ever experience. It is at its core the very essence of our faith. But how could this revelation be connected to the solemnity we celebrate today? Yes, the passage speaks of the Father and the Son, but no where is the Holy Spirit mentioned in here, unlike St Paul who concludes his Second letter to the Corinthians with this Trinitarian blessing: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” 

So what does it mean for God to be love? It doesn’t necessarily mean God is simply loving. Judaism and Islam and Mormonism proclaim a God who loves. But when Christians teach that God is Himself love, they’re saying that real love itself has its origin and essence in God. And this cannot be true unless God is a Trinity. At the heart of this equation that God is Love is a summary of what the Most Holy Trinity means. God cannot be love unless there is something for Him to love. Think about it: A solitary god cannot be love. A God with no one to love means either God who is desperate or loveless. Neither qualifies as a true God of love. He would be a pitiable god but not worthy of our worship and devotion. God who is love can neither be loveless nor needy. Real love requires relationship. 

In the doctrine of the Trinity we finally see how love is part of the fabric of creation. Creation was not the condition of God’s love but the consequence of it. God did not need His creation in order to have something to love, because if that were true, He could not be complete without it. If that something whom He loves were not part of Himself, He would not be perfect. In other words, St Augustine reasoned that God must be love inside Himself. Before creation came to be, God was already in a relationship from all eternity. The Father is the One who loves, the Son is the One who is loved and who loves the Father in return, and the Holy Spirit is the love that flows between them and binds them together. 

So, the Trinity isn’t some weird religious invention Christians have stupidly clung to. It’s the answer to the deepest longing of the human heart. Now, we understand the perennial riddle of why we choose to love and seek to be loved. The Trinity answers the question. It makes us go deeper than sentimental notions and ethereal feelings and elusive emotions. It puts us on solid ground with all this love stuff we’ve been chasing forever. The convoluted, complicated, and incomprehensible doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity is swallowed up into the simplest concept of all – Love. In fact, the doctrine of the Trinity comes to life by swallowing us up into the love God has enjoyed since before time began. The Trinity is real because love is real and it is only so because the Trinity is the source and foundation of all reality. 

Therefore, to speak of love and the Most Holy Trinity would not be speaking of two different and unrelated concepts. Just as the Trinity is the most profound mystery of God, love is the most profound mystery of man, made in the image and likeness of God. The Trinity is the revelation that God is Love. The Trinity is Love Loving – dynamic, unfathomable, inexhaustible, eternally complete and creative. Yet, here is the great wonder. We only know this because the Father gives Himself to be known in His Son and the Son gathers us into this eternal self-giving through and in the Spirit. In other words, the fact that we can speak at all about God as Trinity is already a sign that we are beginning to participate in God’s Triune life: we know and experience that the Trinity is Love Loving us. 

The Trinitarian Life of God is our school of Love and we can never fully grasp and practice true love unless we are absorbed into the mystery of the Three Persons in One God. And this is what we mean when the priest chants the doxology at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer and we respond with the great Amen: “Through Him, with Him, In Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, All Glory and honour is yours Almighty Father. Forever and ever, Amen."

Earth Wind Fire Water

Pentecost Sunday

The Holy Spirit, the Third person of the Most Holy Trinity, being pure spirit, would be the hardest member to picture in our mind’s eye since He, unlike the Second Person, was never incarnated in human form, or like the First Person, the Heavenly Father, has no equivalence in our human experience. Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, would, therefore, write, that we “cannot reveal the Spirit directly, so all we can do is try, by means of images, to lead toward what is meant.”

The most common symbolic depiction of the Holy Spirit would be that of a dove, since it has a strong scriptural basis in the event of the Lord’s Baptism. But the first reading, which gives us the sole account of the event of the Pentecost, provides us with four elemental symbols: earth, wind, fire and water. Fans of the eponymous soul funk band of the 70s would be thrilled to know this. If you are from a different era, ignore my digression.

Earth. Wind. Fire. Water. The four classical elements of the universe were originally conceived by the ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles, five hundred years before Christ, and popularised by Aristotle. Of course, we are not going to dispute the error and the naïveté of the ancients in postulating this simplistic explanation that the entire universe is made up of these basic building blocks. We are not going to split hairs, or to be more precise, split atoms to refute this ancient science. On this feast of Pentecost, we are invited to consider them as entry points into the story of divine love and presence, that encompasses all creation.

The association of these four material elementals with the ephemeral Spirit, points to something foundational to our Catholic perception of the universe - we speak of the Sacraments as outward signs of inward grace; the invisible spiritual realm hidden within and being expressed through the visible and material realm.

The first element is earth. At first appearance, this seems to be the furthest idea from the Spirit since earth is the most solid of the four elementals. But earth is the first element the Creator used as He conjoined Himself with His creation to produce His greatest masterpiece - man. The word “human” comes from the Latin word “humus,” and is a direct reference of how God formed man from the earth, and breathed life and His Spirit into this lifeless clay, to create man. Each of us, members of the human race, earthy beings and yet privileged creatures because we are endowed with an immortal soul, are indeed fitting temples of the Holy Spirit. Just as God breathed life into earth to make man; at Pentecost, God breathes His Spirit into the earthen hearts of the disciples, infusing them with new life and making them into His new creation.

The element of earth also reminds us that the Jewish festival of Pentecost or Weeks (since it is made up of seven weeks, a sabbath of a sabbath) predates our Christian celebration. The three great pilgrimage festivals were all harvest festivals and Pentecost was the thanksgiving for the grain harvest. The feast also commemorated the giving of the Law or Ten Commandments to Moses at Sinai. But now, instead of the gift of Law, God has given us a far greater gift, that of the Holy Spirit who writes His law, not on tablets of stone (earth) but in our fleshy hearts. Instead of thanksgiving for a harvest of grains, today is a day of thanksgiving for a harvest of souls incorporated into the Body of Christ, the Church.

The next element is wind. There is nothing subtler than the wind, which manages to penetrate everywhere, even to reach inanimate bodies and give them a life of their own, as we see in the vision of the valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37). In Hebrew, the word for Spirit, Ruach, could also be translated as breath and wind. The first mention of Ruach in the Bible is in the very first chapter of Genesis (1:2): “And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit (Ruach) of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.” In the theophanies of God, reference is often made to wind - either as in the form of a storm, a strong gale or even a gentle breeze. Our Lord in speaking to Nicodemus about the Spirit tells him: “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). And then “when Pentecost day came round, they had all met in one room, when suddenly they heard what sounded like a powerful wind from heaven …”

After the wind, came the fire, produced by the confluence of matter and energy: “something appeared to them that seemed like tongues of fire; these separated and came to rest on the head of each of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak foreign languages as the Spirit gave them the gift of speech.” The liturgical colour for Pentecost is red, the colour of fire and blood and the symbol of love. This is also reflected in the traditional prayer to the Holy Spirit, “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of thy Faithful; and enkindle in them the fire of Thy love…” It is a dangerous prayer, if we stop to think of it, because the Spirit’s fire is pure energy that melts the alloyed heart and purifies it for love.

The final element is water. Water holds such rich symbolic meaning and purpose for us. It strikes the balance in life like nothing else—too little is parched desolation, too much is drowned destruction, but in its fullness, water offers a life-force. In the Gospel for today’s Vigil Mass, our Lord says “Rivers of Living Water shall flow from within him” who believes in me. After they were filled with the Holy Spirit, the disciples left the Upper Room and began to proclaim the Gospel. And on hearing their words, 3000 were baptised that day. From the very day of Pentecost, the Church has celebrated and administered holy Baptism. Indeed St. Peter declares to the crowd astounded by his preaching: “Repent and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” With every baptism comes the reminder of the first Pentecost.

The Spirit comes to us today as wind, fire, and water, seeking to shape the earth that we are, into a new creation which we became at our baptism. But our earthen hearts are dry due to sin, resistant to God’s re-shaping, and need a little erosion through the water of the Spirit. Too often, we are consumed by a life that is not of the Spirit. We are fleshly creatures possessing a fleshly mind, meditating on the things of this world while attempting to justify our disordered love for them. Rather than hardening ourselves, trying to become what we want to be, we must remain pliable, open, and responsive to the creative activity of God: we must learn to ‘relax in the hands of God, to let God be the creator. For as we yield to God and allow the Spirit to wash over our muddied self with His divine wind, fire, and water, we will be shocked to find that the deeper He works to erode us, the stronger the rivers of living water will flow through us.

Earth, wind, fire, water. Four elements to ground and inspire and transform and mediate the grace of God for the people of God. For the gift of new life on this feast of Pentecost, for the gift of creation and our participation in it, for the gift of connexion as with one another, and with God who suffuses the whole of creation and community with the divine spirit of Love, for these gifts, may God’s holy name be praised. Come Holy Spirit, Come!

Firstborn of the New Creation

Easter Vigil in the Holy Night 2022

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

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

The first day of the week mentioned in the Gospel, corresponds to the first day of creation in Genesis; and the rays of the dawning sun matches the first act of creation, where God created light out of darkness. Tonight’s liturgy, which began in darkness is also shattered by the light of the Paschal candle.

John’s recapitulation of the creation narrative goes on. In Genesis, God creates the first human being, the first man, but at Easter, our Lord Jesus emerges from the womb of the tomb to be the firstborn of the new creation.

God created all things, including man, and when He was finished, He looked at all He had made, and declared that it was “very good.” His original creation, however, was sullied and damaged. Once Adam chose to go against God’s Will, sin entered God’s created world, and sickness, decay, and death were introduced to humanity. God’s creation has suffered sin’s effects ever since.

Fast-forward to the time of Jesus’ life on earth. God the Son, the Word of God, entered humanity as a child born of Mary, without a human father. He was fully God and fully man. His mission was to defeat the sin and death which had entered humanity through Adam. This second Adam lived a sinless life, was condemned and executed as a criminal, and was buried in a tomb. Three days later, He rose from the dead! He was resurrected! His resurrection was the first phase of God’s new creation. God created a new kind of human existence—a human body which was raised from the dead and transformed by the power of God into a body that is no longer affected by death, decay, and corruption. Pope Emeritus Benedict described the resurrection of Christ as “something akin to a radical evolutionary leap, in which a new dimension of life emerges, a new dimension of human existence. Indeed, matter itself is remoulded into a new type of reality. The man Jesus, complete with His body, now belongs totally to the sphere of the divine and eternal.”

But then, there is the second phase in God’s plan of recreation. As Christians and as part of God’s new creation through our baptism, we can look forward to the time when, upon Christ’s return, He will raise our bodies from the dead! We will receive resurrected bodies like His. Our bodies will not have the weaknesses they have now but will have the full power the human body was meant to have. In these resurrected bodies, we will clearly see humanity as God intended it to be.

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

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

Each year, we recapitulate this Easter story and each year it recreates us. It returns us to the ground of our being. We are asked to die to ourselves so that we may be reborn in Christ. And though we may sometimes feel as if we are caught up in a maelstrom with our world spinning out of control, remember this: the forces of chaos and death did not triumph over Jesus and His community. On the contrary, it is Christ who emerged the clear victor. And because of this, we are given the chance to start over. Every Easter, we are reminded that we can bring all that befalls us to be reintegrated, redeemed, and recreated as we bring it back to our living source: Christ yesterday and today, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega; All time belongs to Him and all the ages, to Him be glory and power, through every age and for ever. Amen.