Think and Feel with the Church

Fourth Sunday of Easter Year C
Good Shepherd Sunday
Pilgrimage 13 - (Anticipated Mass in Lisbon)

As we come to the end of our pilgrimage, I would like to thank all of you for being good sheep that have listened attentively and obediently to the voice of your shepherd. Some would call it blind docility. Others would call it basic survival skills. Whatever may have been the reason for your exquisite cooperation, it has been a blessing and a privilege to have guided you through this entire journey of faith and discovery. We are thankful that we have lost no one on this trip.

What has been the secret of us staying safe, staying focused, staying on the right path? Our Lord provides us with the answer: “The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice.” Listening is at the heart of the Christian life. But if we wish to listen, we should start with obeying. Obedience comes from the Latin “to listen” (obedire). Obedience, according to St Augustine, is “the mother and guardian of all other virtues.” It ensures a life of goodness because it entails hearing and following God, the source of all goodness. This obedience is not for some in the Church but for all, from the child kneeling in the pew to the Pope presiding in Rome.

God alone is this obedience owed and given, but it is given to God through the Church because God gives Himself to us through the Church. Here is where many begin to engage in hypocritical casuistry. Some would claim that they are obedient to God but not to men, like the Pope or bishops, or man-made institutions like the Church. But God places us in a Church as a part of the body where Christ is the head, and we are the parts. This is why our Lord chose not to appear to Thomas in the gospel of Divine Mercy Sunday until he was prepared to return to the community of believers, the Church. As much as the Church is maligned and judged for the failures of her shepherds and members, there is no denying that our Lord instituted the Church to be the redemptive tool of the world, to continue to shepherd His flock, with Him as the Head and the body, with all its different parts working together to bring redemption to the world.

One phrase that captures this principle of listening to the voice of the Shepherd through His Church is, “to think with the Church;” or, in St Ignatius of Loyola’s formulation, sentire cum ecclesia. “Sentire”, of course, is not simply “to think,” which in English is often meant in a cold, rational way. Other words that are used to translate sentire are sense, feel, and perceive. “Feel” is a great translation that can also carry connotations of “think” except that “feel” can also imply the lack of rational thought.

What does it really mean to “think with the Church”? For one thing, thinking with the Church means giving a unique respect to our bishops and to the Pope. A filial love for our shepherds is a necessary expression of wanting to listen intimately to the voice of the Good Shepherd. We must, however, acknowledge that sometimes shepherds speak with their own voices rather than with that of Christ and the Holy Spirit. And this is the reason why confusion, heresy and even schism can break the unity of the Church and disrupt her mission.

We must, therefore, make a distinction between what is and is not meant to think and feel with the Church. First, it might be helpful to describe what the Church is not. The lay faithful are not pawns who are to take marching orders from their priests and bishops, nor bishops from the Pope. The Church is not a secret organisation where information (or revelation) is possessed in full only at the top and then is distributed selectively and imperfectly throughout. To think with the Church does not mean “to let the Church think for you.” Discernment is required.

But discernment without a guide or standard may lead us to error, that is to substitute Christ’s teachings with our own personal opinions. This, then, is precisely why the Magisterium, the teaching authority of the Church as a guardian and servant of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, is so necessary if one desires to think with the Church. Magisterial interventions serve to guarantee the Church’s unity in the truth of the Lord. They aid her to ‘abide in the truth’ in the face of the arbitrary character of changeable opinions and are an expression of obedience to the Word of God. The Magisterium exists precisely for the purpose of ensuring that the Church can authoritatively distinguish what derives from faith and what is merely an opinion. Even Popes and bishops must submit to the Magisterium as faithful servants as much as they are the very teachers whose teaching authority flows therefrom.

Episcopal and papal authority depends on obedience to what has been revealed and handed down by means of the Holy Spirit. To be a teacher of the faith is first and foremost to be a learner of it. Though bishops and the Pope have specific teaching roles, the whole Church is a listening Church, a learning Church and so the whole Church is the teaching Church. Our mission is to conform to what has been taught so that we in turn may be true teachers of the word. A person ceases to be a teacher of the faith when he ceases to let himself be instructed by universal tradition. Our teaching must be shaped by our obedience to universal tradition and never by our own ideas, by our own standing, or by our own times. This is what it means to listen to the Good Shepherd instead of talking or shouting over Him.

During his papacy, Pope Francis proposed that we follow the synodal path of becoming a listening church. That is indeed a noble idea. But to be truly listening, we must first be ready to listen to our Lord who has spoken through scripture and Tradition through the ages. If not, we will end up listening to the spirit of the world, instead of the Spirit of Christ and be misled ourselves and in turn lead others astray. We can have a listening Church only if we have an obeying Church. Obey; listen; proclaim. God has spoken; our task is to hear that Word and speak from it. We are not to speak from our times but to our times from God’s Word. Only then, can we be assured of being partakers of eternal life and not be lost.

As we depart from Lisbon for home, continue to listen carefully to the voice of the Shepherd in whatever situation you may find yourself. You came here as pilgrims. You will leave here as missionaries bringing the good news of Jesus Christ with you to the ends of the earth. But first, let us start with our neighbourhood and parish!

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.

A Descent before an Ascent

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord
Lithuania Poland Pilgrimage
John Paul II Salt Chapel, Wieliczka Salt Mine

Most of you are familiar with that basic rule of gravity, “what goes up, must come down.” I guess that principle applies to us. Before taking off for the skies to fly home, we have decided to have our last Mass here in the depths of the earth, literally. But the gospel seems to have a different spin on this. In fact, it proclaims: “The One who came down, must now go up!” I guess that most of us would think of the Ascension as a “going up,” as the normal usage of the word would suggest. Few would see the Ascension as actually linked to a descent.

Salvation history takes a similar route. God, or more specifically, God in the flesh, had to touch and be touched by the rock-bottom experience of our human existence, before He can take the ascending path leading man to his redemption. St Paul lays out this paradox in the second reading. Having quoted Psalm 68 (or 67), St Paul then gives this explanation: “When it says, ‘he ascended’, what can it mean if not that he descended right down to the lower regions of the earth? The one who rose higher than all the heavens to fill all things is none other than the one who descended.” Christ is the victorious conqueror who ascends to His throne in heaven after defeating the spiritual forces. He wins this victory by descending to the very depths, even to plunge Himself into hell, to enter the fray of battle with sin, death and the devil, to accomplish this deed. Christ now shares the spoils of war with His followers. We, perennial losers because of our propensity to sin, have become winners, not by our own achievement but this was accomplished for us by the One who conquered sin and death and victoriously rose from the grave, and now sits at God’s right hand as our Champion.

In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that this descend-ascend V movement describes St Luke’s two volume work - his gospel and the Acts of the Apostles - which provide us with not just one, but two accounts of the Ascension. One account ends his gospel, and a second account begins the Acts of the Apostles. In each passage, the Ascension is the essential fulcrum linking the life of Jesus (the Gospels) to the life of the Church (Acts). St Luke begins his gospel with the descent of the Son of God at the Incarnation, and then concludes with His Ascension. Our Lord descended into the human realm as He was sent by the Father, in obedience to the Father’s will to save humanity and then our Lord ascends to His rightful place at the side of His Father in heaven, after having completed His mission. Venerable Fulton Sheen explains this profound connexion between these two events: “The Incarnation or the assuming of a human nature made it possible for Him to suffer and redeem. The Ascension exalted into glory that same human nature that was humbled to the death.”

This movement, however, is not just something which is undertaken by our Lord alone, but one which should be undertaken by the Apostles and all followers of the Lord too. The Collect or Opening Prayer for this Mass has this beautiful line which speaks of our common destiny: “where the Head has gone before in glory, the Body is called to follow in hope.” We must descend with Him before we can rise with Him and follow our Lord in His ascent to glory. The Apostles accompanied our Lord on His journey to Jerusalem. Before they can ascend with the Lord to the glory which He wishes to share with them, they too must descend from their high horses and acknowledge that they are part of the human dung heap of sin, cowardice, faithlessness and infidelity. This had to happen before they can be redeemed by the Lord. Just like the Lord, they needed to experience humiliation before glorification; death before Eternal Life. After the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we see a speedy recovery. They begin to ‘ascend’ to the heights of missionary zeal, preaching the gospel of the Risen and Ascended Lord, from Judaea to Samaria and then, to the ends of the earth.

On this day, as we commemorate the Lord’s Ascension, should our gaze be directed upwards? What do we hope to see? I guess the dark cavernous ceiling of this salt mine, would be the most obvious answer. Or two feet disappearing into the clouds? Well, the two men in white (presumably angels) at the end of today’s first reading from Acts provides us with the answer, in the form of a question: “Why are you … standing here looking into the sky?”

Their question seems to be a challenge to not just be focused on one direction. In fact, we are invited to look upward, downward, and the road ahead of us. Our Lord’s Ascension invites us always to look upwards, in other words, to never lose sight of the hope of heaven, especially when navigating this world with its many pitfalls mired in disappointment and despair. We are asked to strive always for what’s higher, for what’s more noble, for what stretches us and takes us upward beyond the moral and spiritual ruts, within which we habitually find ourselves. Our Lord’s Ascension reminds us that we can be more, that we can transcend the ordinary and break through the old ceilings, that have until now constituted our horizon. His Ascension tells us that when we stretch ourselves enough, we will be able to walk on water, be great saints, be enflamed with the Spirit and experience already, the deep joys of God’s Kingdom.

But our Lord’s Ascension also invites us to look downwards. We are told to make friends with the desert, the Cross, with ashes, with self-renunciation, with humiliation, with our shadow, and with death itself. We are told that we grow not just by moving upward but also by descending downward. We grow too by letting the desert work us over, by renouncing cherished dreams and accepting the Cross, by letting the humiliations that befall us deepen our character, by having the courage to face our own deep chaos, and by making peace with our mortality. Sometimes, our task is not to raise our eyes to the heavens, but to look down upon the earth, to sit in the ashes of loneliness and humiliation, to stare down the restless desert inside us and to make peace with our human limits and our fragility.

Christians are not only asked to look upward as if our heads have disappeared in the clouds, nor should we be so focused looking downward in intense introspection to the point of despair. We must look ahead at the path which we must walk, the very same path which our Lord, fully human and fully divine, had walked before us. To look ahead, is to be reminded that we have a mission to accomplish, a gospel to be preached, a witness to give to a world that has often lost sight of looking upwards or downwards but one lost in self-absorption. At the end of every pilgrimage, this is what we must do. This may be the end of our pilgrimage to Lithuania and Poland but let us not forget that we are still on a pilgrimage of life to heaven. To look ahead to the horizon who is Christ, for “where the Head has gone before in glory, the Body is called to follow in hope.”

Does God have favourites

Sixth Sunday of Easter
Lithuania-Poland Pilgrimage

Church of St Casimir, Swinice Warckie

We are in the spiritual hometown of St Faustina. It is technically not her hometown of birth as she was born and lived in the nearby village of Głogowiec. If you think this place is small, you should see Głogowiec. This is the very church in which she was baptised and where she received her first holy communion. If it were not for her, this little town would have been ignored by many world travellers and even by most people in Poland. It’s not Paris or New York, it has no fancy restaurants or buzzing night life, or must-see tourist attractions. But it has this singular honour of being the place where little Helena Kowalska was reborn, entered the church and became an adopted daughter of God. This alone would be the envy of many. Who said that God has no favourites?

Today’s readings force us to reconsider this burning question which would have troubled many: how come some people seem more privileged than others? The question actually avoids a more fundamental question which would appear to sound blasphemous if we were brave enough to ask it: Does God have favourites? Does He love some more than others.

We are assured by our Lord in His own Words, that He loves us to the same degree and manner as the Father loves Him. This is the extent of His love that He would send “His Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away.” Could we ask for more? But what is the true nature of this love? Does God’s love demand nothing from us? When we speak of God’s love as unconditional, we must understand that His love is not something which can be bought. It is not given to us as a quid pro quo, a reward for good behaviour, or payment for some devotion or sacrifice which we have made to earn that love. St John asserts that God loved us while we were still sinners. His love for us is not dependent on us being righteous or worthy. No sacrifice or price we are willing to pay would be sufficient to purchase it.

But it is not true to say that God’s love makes no demands on us. In fact, a great deal is demanded of us. And here we have it in both the second reading and the gospel that God’s love challenges us to a new way of life that makes certain demands of us.

Firstly, we are required to obey and keep His commandments. His commandments are an expression of His will and our refusal to obey those commandments (and we know that God’s commandments are always good and just) is rebellion against His will. To claim that we love God and yet oppose His will would be a lie.

Secondly, principal among God’s commandments is the commandment to love others: “love one another, as I have loved you.” This is the benchmark by which all love is to be measured. We do not just love those who have been good to us, who have treated us well, whom we are indebted to. Love extends even to those who have done nothing to deserve it, those outside our circle of friends and family, and even those whom we consider enemies. Of course, we are not commanded to “like” as “liking” or “not liking” someone is purely subjective. True love is never subjective. To love, instead, is to intend the wellbeing of the other person. And this is something which can be accomplished and measured objectively. This is why St John can argue that “Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love.”

So, back to our question: does God have favourites? In the first reading, St Peter says: “God does not have favourites, but that anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him.” On the one hand, God does not have favourites. But like any good Catholic answer, there is always a “but,” which means the second part is quite the opposite of the first proposition. God does seem to favour “anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him.” How do we understand this seeming paradox?

We know that God loves every single one of us, but does He love some more than others? If that were the case, it would mean that God has a limited amount of love, so to speak, which He has to portion out in chunks according to His preferences. 10% for you, 20% for Susan and Bob, and 50% for His favourite, Faustina! But God is infinite, and His love is infinite – no limits, no portions, no measuring sticks. God is love (1 John 4:8); His very nature is love. God loves everyone 100% which means that His love is total, absolute, unlimited for each of us.

So, God doesn’t dish out His love in different portions according to who He likes better. And yet, there is a difference involved. The difference isn’t with God, but with us. Each one of us is a unique creation, a unique person. My relationship with God will never be the same as yours, and yours will never be the same as anyone else’s. This is because we are spiritual beings, and each spiritual being is truly individual. Just as you and I can be very close friends with the same person, my friendship with that person will necessarily be different than yours, because you and I are different. God respects our individuality, and He rejoices in it (after all, that’s how He made us – unique!). And so, every person’s relationship with God will be unique. In heaven, we will all be saints, but no two saints will be just alike.

God calls each of us to follow Him, but in different ways, with different natural talents, with different gifts. As our Lord assured us of this in the gospel: “I chose you; and I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit, fruit that will last.” Notice, He chose you, all of you and not just some of you! And each of us will respond with different degrees of generosity and faithfulness, so that His grace will bear more fruit, or less fruit in our lives.

So, should we be jealous if someone seems to have greater gifts than us? Should we be envious of St Faustina for her special relationship with the Lord and her mystical visions? It is not a sin to desire complete communion with God, but it is a foolish distraction to become discouraged or envious of someone else’s progress in holiness! When we run into other people or read about saints who experience a deep, intimate relationship with God, we are faced with a choice. We can either envy them this intimacy – becoming angry and vindictive towards them because they have achieved a degree of holiness that we have not achieved. Or we can emulate them – we can acknowledge the beauty of the holiness they have achieved and use their experience as a spur to our own efforts pursuing spiritual maturity. As we travel and visit the homes of the saints in this country whose landscape is rich with saints, may we choose to imitate the saints even as we admire and honour them. Let your discouragement be driven out by hope; let your frustration be banished by faith; and, let your frown be erased by love.

Bathing in beauty we become part of it

Friday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time (Feast of St Scholastica)

We have come to the last day of our pilgrimage and we would be departing for home in a few hours. Some of you are excited at the prospect of returning home to savour your favourite Malaysian cuisine and the comfort of your homes. Others may be feeling sad, wanting to prolong the experience of this pilgrimage. I’m reminded of a commonly told story about St Scholastica near the end of her life. According to this story, St Scholastica paid an annual visit her brother, St Benedict, at a place near his abbey, and they would spend the day worshiping together and discussing sacred texts and issues. On this last visit, after a conversation over supper, St Benedict indicated it was time for him to leave. Perhaps sensing the time of her death was drawing near, Scholastica asked him to stay with her for the evening so they could continue their discussions. Not wishing to break his own Rule, Benedict refused, insisting that he needed to return to his cell. He can’t be caught out at night, even if it happens to be his own sister.

At that point, Scholastica closed her hands in prayer, and after a moment, a wild storm started outside of the guest house in which they were housed. Benedict, alarmed by the sudden squall, asked, “What have you done?” to which she replied, “I asked you and you would not listen; so I asked my God and he did listen.” Due to the heavy rains and strong winds, Benedict was unable to return to his monastery, and they spent the night in discussion. Three days later, Scholastica died. Benedict had her body brought to his monastery, where he caused it to be laid in the tomb which he had prepared for himself. The point of me telling the story is simply this: please don’t pray too hard for this trip NOT to end. Some of us want to go home and the Filipinos would not appreciate a typhoon or Hurricane Edna blowing this way just because a few Malaysian pilgrims do not wish to leave the Philippines. St Scholastica, spare us, we pray.

Today’s gospel passage makes a little geographical note that sounds illogical to anyone who understands the local terrain. Jesus was going from Tyre in the north to Galilee in the south; and he went by way of Sidon. That is to say, he started going due south by going due north! It’s like going from Kuala Lumpur to Johor Bahru by way of Penang. You have to ask Fr Simon Yong how this is done, because it all makes perfect sense to him – something about sectors and Enrich miles. But I guess it also makes sense to all us who are on this pilgrimage too – we had to come to the Philippines, to learn how to be at home as Catholics in Malaysia.

When Jesus did arrive back in the regions of Galilee, he came into the district of the Decapolis, and there they brought to him a man who was deaf and who had an impediment in his speech. I often have to tell hearing people that it is physiologically and factually inaccurate to describe Deaf persons as deaf and dumb. They are certainly not dumb as in stupid just because they do not communicate as we do. They also resent the politically correct term of “hearing impaired.” They would be quick to point out that most people who can hear are equally “signing impaired.” Neither are they mute. Most deaf persons can make sounds, and they can be exceptionally loud and noisy as they are not aware of the volume of their own voices. The scriptural note that put these two impediments together is logical, however. It was the man’s inability to hear which made his speech so imperfect.

Perhaps there is no other miracle which so beautifully shows Jesus’ respectful way of treating persons. Truly, we witness here the true ramifications of the Incarnation – the inculturation of the gospel. He took the man aside from the crowd, all by himself. Here in the tenderest considerateness, the Lord takes this deaf man away from the scrutinising and prying eyes of an insensitive crowd and spared him the embarrassment which he must already be suffering as a deaf person living among the hearing. Throughout the whole miracle, and deaf people love this part, Jesus actually begins to sign to him. He put his hands in the man’s ears and touched his tongue with spittle. Jesus communicates to this deaf man through the senses which were available to him – his sight, his taste, his touch, his smell. And then Jesus looked up to heaven as a sign of prayer to show that it was from God that help was to come. Then he spoke the Word and the man was healed, recalling the act of creation in the Book of Genesis.

Our short pilgrimage to our neighbour, the Philippines, though confined to Metro Manila, has truly been a similar experience of discovery through the opening of our senses. Our vision, our hearing, our sense of touch, taste and smell has been overhauled by a glimpse of God’s Truth, Beauty and Goodness. This experience has been for me and I believe for many of you, an Ephphata moment. As we visit the shrines and churches, and even when we encounter the poor, we are swept up into a sacred, beautiful, true, and most in-touch-with-reality point of view. In our participation we ask for the “eyes of faith” to put in sharp focus and vivid colour what God is bringing about in the world. We have become too over familiar and comfortable with our own iconoclastic and white-washed churches. We have become blind and deaf to the means by which God wishes to communicate to us.

Just like Our Lord looks up at the very final moment before the deaf man is healed, our common mundane everyday human situation is elevated into the presence of God in these moments. Beauty, justice, love, and mercy are no longer external to us but now we participate intimately with their source in the triune God. Heaven and earth overlap, time collapses. This what St. John Chrysostom attempted to describe when speaking of the poetry of the Psalms, “The sacred writer leaned out over the infinite abyss of God’s wisdom and was seized with giddiness.”

What this pilgrimage has done is to reawaken what some theologians would call the Catholic or sacramental imagination of the person. When speaking of the concept “imagination” used here is not in the sense of something fanciful or fictitious. Rather, it is used in the sense of how we image reality and so interpret the reality of God and the world. One may call it our Catholic vision of reality. American priest and sociologist Andrew Greeley is credited for popularising the concept in his book of the same name. He writes, “Catholics live in an enchanted world, a world of statues and holy water, stained glass and votive candles, saints and religious medals, rosary beads and holy pictures. But these Catholic paraphernalia are mere hints of a deeper and more pervasive religious sensibility which inclines Catholics to see the Holy lurking in creation. As Catholics, we find our houses and our world haunted by a sense that the objects, events, and persons of daily life are revelations of grace.”

What does it really mean to be Catholic? Well, the answer is simple. Catholics believe in Jesus’s promise to make himself really present to us. This is what sacramentality is all about. The Catholic Church dares to take seriously Christ’s Incarnation. Therefore, it would not be stretching it to say that Catholicism takes the world, and the things of the world, far more seriously than those who like to think of themselves as worldly. The ordinary stuff of the world, like salt, oil, water, light, buildings, is the material God uses to bring us into communion with the truly extraordinary – with God Himself. Indeed, in the sacraments and through our Sacramental imagination, heaven and earth “overlap and interlock.” We see more clearly how intimately connected they really are. C.S. Lewis, describes it this way, “We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”

In the Incarnation, the ideas of life, reality, purpose, goodness, beauty, justice, and truth, are no longer external to us. In Jesus Christ we receive and “become part of” that goodness, beauty, justice, and truth. Rather than some form of escapism of flights of fancy, the sacraments puts us in touch with the reality of God Incarnate.

Life and reality viewed through the sacraments put our most basic assumptions on trial. God is not somewhere else, too busy, or unconcerned with the created order. Instead, all of creation is “charged” with the goodness of God and every inch of it participates in the life of God sacramentally. In this way, the sacraments and sacramentals serve as a revelation of sorts, a window into what is most real, and helps us wonder more truly about what God is doing in the world. They help us to see sacredness even in the midst of human depravity, wealth in the midst of poverty, and redemption in the midst of human fallenness.

So let us earnestly pray, as St Scholastica did, to prolong the experience of this pilgrimage, not in the manner of blowing up a hurricane but in a way that when we return to our mundane everyday seemingly ordinary existence, we may continue to be “united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”

Persistence is the language of love

Thursday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

“Is that your final answer?” is a question that has become familiar to all of us who have watched the television show, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” The host gives the contestants one last shot at changing their answers in order to win the cash prize. The story from Mark talks about a woman who in essence asks Jesus that very same question, challenging him on his original answer to her request.

In this scene, Our Lord is trying to move through this foreign territory unnoticed. However, his reputation had spread to the point where it was difficult to go anywhere without attention being drawn to him. As he was trying to leave, this pagan foreign woman who had heard about him, literally threw herself at his feet and blocked his exit. She had a daughter who was possessed by a demon. She intuitively knew that this man was the answer to her problem and she was not about to let him go. Jesus first response to her was a bit “off-putting” with the response that his role in essence was to Israel and that there would be “leftovers” for the Gentiles. Without missing a beat, she with wit and faith, let Jesus know that even the “dogs under the table could eat the crumbs.” She was not asking for a full feast because she knew that even the crumbs would be enough for her. That did the trick - her persistence, her assertiveness, her faith got the attention of Jesus and her child was healed. As St Chrysostom puts it, she presses Christ prudently, convincingly, and yet modestly by His own words; and by her humble faith and reasoning conquers Him willing to be conquered by her prayer.

Often enough, when preaching on this Gospel, preachers will say something incredibly foolish like, “This Gentile woman taught Jesus that he wasn’t sent only to the house of Israel, but to all people.” In other words, it would take a foreigner, a woman at that, to open up the narrow minded conservative world view of Jesus. What more, when Jesus sounds like an ancient version of Donald Trump in today’s passage. To paraphrase him, “One has to keep Israel for Israelites in order to make Israel great.” But it is really quite absurd to think that Jesus was taught anything by anyone, with the exception the Blessed Mother and St Joseph in the “Holy Family” school of Nazareth.  How much more absurd it is to think that our Lord would not know his own mission, that he is the universal mediator of salvation for all peoples! This all-too-common spin on the Gospel passage (according to which Jesus is taught by the woman) is that it misses the essential thrust of the event: It is not that our Lord is learning from the woman, rather the good Saviour is teaching her (and us) how to pray.

One of the seminal lessons in the passage from St. Mark is the indomitable persistence of this mother. Her daughter’s soul is at stake. The power of evil has made her captive. Imagine this frantic mother – faced with the impending and painful loss of her child. Nothing can stop her in her quest to snatch her offspring from the destructive power of the prince of darkness. It was that single-mindedness, that exclusive focus that drove her to seek out the Jewish rabbi. He, perhaps, was her last and only chance. What does this mean for us? Most likely we don’t always get it right when we pray; thus Jesus’ instruction to be persistent in praying—keep asking, don’t stop searching, continue with your knocking. In fact, ultimately what is most important for us is not necessarily that we receive what we ask for or find what we search for or walk through the door we’re knocking on. No. Rather, what is ultimately most important is that we, like the frantic mother, discover an intimacy with the Lord by persisting in our prayer.

At the heart of prayer is persistence. And persistence is the characteristic mark of devotion. Our pilgrimage has allowed us to encounter the devotional faith of the Filipinos, a faith that may often appear unsophisticated to the Western world and may even be described as superstitious. There may be some truth in the over-exaggerated expressions of devotion. But these aberrations are exceptions rather than the rule. True devotion, on the other hand, leads us to a greater love and reverence for God, rather than act as a distraction or some form of idolatry. While the liturgy is “the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed” and “the font from which all her power flows,” it is not possible for us to fill up all of our day with participation in the liturgy. The spiritual life is not limited solely to participation in the liturgy, and yet St Paul reminds us that the Christian must pray without ceasing. The Benedictines, we heard yesterday from Bro Camillo, express this through the maxim of ‘ora et labor’ – prayer is work and work is prayer. But popular devotional practices also play a crucial role in helping to foster this ceaseless prayer. Devotional prayer is a means of permeating everyday life with prayer to God.

Thus, devotion and any other form of prayer can never to be dissected and analysed under a microscope using the tools of mathematical or scientific logic. Rather, it proceeds by way of a very different form of logic – the logic of love. If theology, as St Anselm would argue, is faith seeking understanding, then prayer must be love seeking understanding. This is why the Syro-Phoenician woman of our story did not take offence to the “insult” of Jesus. If she had just considered the matter through the lenses of rational logic, she would and she should. But she perceived the whole exchange through the lenses of faith and love, she would have just protested by walking away. No reasonable person would tolerate such insult and stay around to beg for more verbal abuse. But using the lenses of love, what seemed to be a rebuke to others becomes an invitation to a deeper faith and a more profound love. Likewise, popular devotion is not the product of an unhinged mind but the expression of love that moves beyond seemingly logical limitations. This leads us to the heart of the matter. Prayer is being known by and knowing that one is loved by a God who is the embodiment of Love itself. 

The story of this woman teaches us to pray with great humility. She accepts the stereotype that Jews would give to her kind. She is willing to be a “dog” if that is what it takes to get her prayers answered. Presumptuous familiarity and an inflated sense of entitlement were absent in the heart of this woman. She understood that she was undeserving of any crumbs which the Lord was willing to throw her way. But she had great confidence in the Lord. This was enough for the Lord. It was an implicit act of faith – a faith that promised to be salvific for her and her daughter.

So as we draw to the close of our pilgrimage here in Manila, with our own multitude of prayerful requests, some acute, others less important, we learn this simple but important lesson – we must persist. God is never deaf. God does not ignore his children. God would not be intimidated by our challenge, “Is that your final answer?” God answers us in His wisdom and gives us what we need, not always what we want. It is God who throws us the greater challenge, “Will you persevere in praying? Will you persevere in believing and hoping?” The important thing is that we should never give up or become discouraged. Remember the parable of the Syro-Phoenician woman – her persistence brought her into intimate union with the Christ of God. We too would be rewarded for our perseverance and persistence.