God is Relational

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity 2021

Let me start in treacherous territory. It’s already mind-boggling attempting to understand the concept of the Trinity, One God in three persons, what more explain it. If you are not already familiar with this, there is also the concept or belief in the three goddesses in neo-pagan religions like Wicca, often depicted as the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone, or the Hag. Each of these characters are said to be non-distinct aspects of one divine reality and they basically correspond to three life stages of a female. In other words, the Maiden is the Mother and the Crone, except, in three different stages of her life as she ages.

The point I’m trying to make here is not to suggest that the Christian belief in the Most Holy Trinity is not an original idea or even a cultural appropriation of some pre-Christian religious tradition, but quite the opposite. The dogma of the Most Holy Trinity is distinctly unique. It proposes not just a schizophrenic God with multiple personality disorder or different forms or modes of one Being, or one who likes to play different characters to make life more colourful, but that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, though not three gods but one, are each distinctively unique, which is why we use the word “persons” to refer to each of them.

This is what a relationship is fundamentally about, a connexion made between “persons,” at least two are needed. I’m not trying to diminish the fact that some people do describe themselves as having a relationship with a myriad of things or objects. For example, I know that many enjoy indulging in mental conversations with themselves, provided that they are aware that the voice in their head is actually they thinking aloud and not some distinct imaginary person. Likewise, there are those who have meaningful conversations with their pets, or their favourite plant or furniture. As much as one could try to stretch the meaning of the word “relationship” to cover all these, as woke culture is so fond of doing, we have to face the reality that nothing can come close to an authentic relationship between real persons.

The fact that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are persons, tells us that they are authentically relational. God is not just an impersonal principle like a force in nature. The fact that our God is a personal God means that He is a relational God; first in Himself, possessing and capable of a dynamic relationship between the three distinct persons of the Most Holy Trinity, as well as with the rest of His creation, with us in particular because man (and woman) are made in His image and likeness, are the only creatures apart from the angels, who possess distinct personhood which makes each of us unique, irreplaceable, and relatable.

The fact that they are three distinct Persons, not being identical in personality, like clones, nor are they merely phases in the development of man’s understanding of God, nor are they God putting on different masks at different times to appear more relatable to us at a particular moment in time, is a fundamental truth to our faith. The Church has unequivocally rejected any of these alternative explanations and labelled them heresies. No. Though there is only one God, and the Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God, the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father. The fact that there are 3 distinct persons in the Trinity, is a key foundational truth. And yet we profess and believe that there is only one God. That too is another foundational truth.

So, we see the uniqueness of the Christian faith. We defer from strict monotheistic religions which reject any differentiation of persons in the one God. We also reject the premise adopted by polytheistic religions which argue that there are more than one God. And of course, our belief stands against those religions which have a modalistic view of God, that the one God appears in different forms or different modes, but each mode is fundamentally just another form of the same God.

They are not only 3 distinct persons, but each person of the Godhead is intimately involved with the Christian!  The dogma of the Most Holy Trinity is not just some lofty philosophical concept or irrelevant dogma but one which goes to the very heart of our identity as persons, made in God’s image and likeness, made to love, to care and to relate with others.

This is what we see in the second reading which is taken from Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans. He does not provide us with a theological explanation of how the Father, the Son and the Spirit are related to each other but a statement about how they work together in unison and in harmony in every Christian. The Trinitarian connexion reaches out, connects and enfolds. In baptism, we share in the death of the Lord Jesus and we receive the gift of the Spirit which makes us children of God, and allows us to call God Himself, “Abba, Father”.  Saint Paul elaborates on this saying: “And if we are children we are heirs as well, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, sharing His sufferings so as to share His glory.”

So, what does this teach us about human relationships? The first thing is that people need other people. In other words, humans were made to live within community and to have meaningful love relationships with other humans. Why do we know this? Because we are made in God’s image and God has existed for eternity within a love relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God has existed within the community of the Godhead for eternity and since we are made in His image, it should not be a surprise that humans are made to need community.

The Trinity also teaches us that the diversity of roles in any relationship is good. In fact, when our uniqueness as distinct persons are erased in the name of conformity, relationships cease to have value. Members of any human community are not products of assembly lines. Therefore, it is important to preserve and promote the various roles, charisms and parts we play in any human relationship, whether it be in a friendship, a marriage, a family or even in the Church. When gender differences are removed, hierarchical structures within the family or the Church are flattened, we end up with a distorted and revisionist vision of God’s plan. We can see from the Trinity that roles in relationships do not devalue one person over the other. There are different roles in human relationships because there are different roles in the Trinity.

In the gospel passage, in this last scene of our Lord’s climatic commissioning of His Apostles to make disciples of all the nations, to baptise them in the name of the Most Holy Trinity and to teach them to observe all His commands, we are reminded that we are sent by Christ on a mission, on a journey of love, on a pilgrimage to God, the Most Holy Trinity. We do so not as individuals, but as persons called into the Mystical Body of Christ, to be part of the communion of saints, so that through our words and deeds, we can testify that the Lord is with us always, “yes, to the end of time.” And, where Christ is present, the Father and the Holy Spirit are present too, for though each is distinct, they are inseparable.

The New completes and fulfils the Old

Pentecost Sunday 2021

Everyone knows that Pentecost is a Christian festival which marks the descent of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church. But before it became a Christian festival, just like Easter, the day was celebrated as an important festival by the Jews. Pentecost or Shavuot as it was called by the Jews, was one of three important pilgrimage festivals.

When the Temple in Jerusalem was still standing, the Jews were expected to make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem three times a year. All three festivals were connected to the foundational event of the Exodus. Sukkot, or the Feast of the Booths which was also the autumn harvest festival, commemorated the forty years that Israel journeyed in the wilderness; Pesach or the Passover, commemorated Israel’s exodus from Egypt and their newfound freedom from slavery; and Shavuot, the spring harvest festival, falls fifty days after Passover and commemorates the giving of the Law to Moses at Mount Sinai.

Pentecost being one of the three pilgrimage festivals would explain the crowds which had gathered in that city on that day, and how 3,000 men were present to listen to St Peter’s sermon and be converted. The idea that so many people were drawn to the city of Jerusalem becomes a prefiguration of the pilgrimage of the Church on earth, as she makes her way to heaven. So, notice how St Luke alters the orientation and destination. The earthly Jerusalem which was the destination of this pilgrimage will instead become the launchpad for the Church’s mission. Instead of making our way to the earthly Jerusalem, as Christians we are to heed the call to take the message of Christ to “all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Although the agricultural aspect of Shavuot concerns mainly the spring harvest, it also marks the beginning of the birth of new fruits of the land, and those fruits were brought to the Temple at Shavuot. The book of Deuteronomy names these first fruits, called bikkurim in Hebrew. In Deut. 8:7–10, seven “fruits of the land” are identified as gifts from God to the people of Israel, which were promised in abundance as a reward for their settling in the land God has given them: wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates. Seven fruits? I know that your Catholic senses are tingling at the familiarity of that number.

For Christians, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, first given to Christians in baptism and strengthened in confirmation—especially, at confirmation, is to prepare the Christian to share the gospel. The Holy Spirit brings gifts and fruits. “The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord…They complete and perfect the virtues of those who receive them. They make the faithful docile in readily obeying divine inspirations. . . . The fruits of the Spirit are perfections that the Holy Spirit forms in us as the first fruits of eternal glory. The tradition of the Church lists twelve of them: charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity” (CCC 1831-1832). So, the first fruits of Shavuot are a prefiguration of the spiritual fruits and gifts which are given to us in order that we may use them in service of God.

Shavuot also commemorates the giving of the Torah to the Israelites after their exodus from Egypt. You may recall that when Moses came down from Mount Sinai into the camp of the Israelites, he had found the people in apostasy. They had given up on him and on God and had created for themselves a new god: a golden calf. God was furious and wanted to wipe them out, but Moses interceded. Moses himself was enraged and exacted punishment on the people. According to Exod. 32:25–28, Moses in his anger ordered the priestly tribe, the sons of Aaron, to massacre those who had committed this abhorrent act of idolatry. Three thousand men were slaughtered on that day. But on Pentecost, three thousand men after having listened to St Peter’s inaugural sermon were struck to the heart and chose to be baptised on that day. Coincidence? No. Providence? Yes. Three thousand were killed at the first Pentecost at Mount Sinai; at the New Pentecost, 3,000 were not only restored but in a real sense, were brought back to life.

But there is one last point where we see how the Christian Pentecost completes the Jewish Shavuot. As God gave His Law to the Israelites at Mount Sinai, at this Pentecost He would give His people His Holy Spirit; in the former event, the Law would be written on stone tablets but in the second event, the Law will now be written in the hearts of the people. Pentecost is the new Sinai; the Holy Spirit is the New Covenant. And so on this day, we see the fulfilment of the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel: “This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts” (Jer 31:33). And in the prophet Ezekiel: “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances” (Ez 36:26-27).

The New Pentecost completes and fulfils the old. Saint Augustine, the great Doctor of the Church, once observed with uncanny precision: “the New (Testament) lies hidden in the Old and the Old (Testament) is unveiled in the New.” God in His unfathomable wisdom had already prepared His Church for her birth on this special day. What the Israelites and the Jews had celebrated for centuries was merely a pale shadow of what is to come. If once a nation had been born through their experience of the Exodus, commemorated each year by feasts of the Passover, Shavuot and Sukkoth, the Church of Christ now celebrates her birth through the death and resurrection of the Lord at Easter, and the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And as Israel was called to be a sign to the nations of God’s authority and sovereignty, the Church is now called to make disciples of the Lord of all the nations. Let our revelry be translated into mission!  “Send forth your spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth.”

Consecrated to God for service

Seventh Sunday of Easter Year B

The last line of today’s passage, words uttered in prayer to the Father by our Lord at the Last Supper, contain familiar themes but spun in a uniquely new way. The fact that the Son is on the Father’s mission and we are now sent on mission by the Son is familiar to all of us, “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” The second part of this line, however, contains another familiar theme, but our Lord uses it in a new and, let’s admit, strange way. We who are sinners, certainly recognise our need to be consecrated. But what about Jesus, the All Holy One? Why would He say “I consecrate myself.”

Let’s first examine the concept of “consecration.” You may not know the exact definition of the word but from its general application, we understand it to be making something or someone “holy,” e.g. the priest consecrates the bread and wine during Mass, a religious brother or sister is consecrated to the Lord, buildings are consecrated as churches.

Pope Emeritus Benedict explains the concept of “consecration” in his Chrism Mass homily: “To consecrate something or someone means, therefore, to give that thing or person to God as his property, to take it out of the context of what is ours and to insert it in his milieu, so that it no longer belongs to our affairs, but is totally of God. Consecration is thus a taking away from the world and a giving over to the living God. The thing or person no longer belongs to us, or even to itself, but is immersed in God.” This explanation for “consecration” could easily be applied to that of a sacrifice. A sacrifice is something which we consecrate, set apart for God.

Consecration thus involves movement in two directions – firstly, away from the world, from our grasp, from our control, and then, offered towards God. We then begin to understand the preceding text of today’s passage in the light of this last line:

Jesus consecrates Himself in the sense of Him turning away from the world which has rejected Him and His returning to God. He consecrates Himself by offering His own life on the cross. His consecration is now the basis of our consecration.

And so now, because of what the Lord has done for us, we are to turn away from sin, from the world because we do not belong to the world as much as the Lord does not belong to this world. We are re-orientated - we are turned in the direction of Christ, our spiritual East - turned towards God because through our Lord’s consecration, we too have been consecrated, we have been set apart from the world for God.

This double consecration of our Lord and His followers are re-enacted in the Eucharist. The sacrifice of our Lord, where He consecrates Himself by giving up His life on the altar of the cross to God for our sake, is sacramentally present at every Mass. Our Lord identifies His flesh and blood, given on the cross, as bread and wine and now commands His disciples to eat this bread, which is the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink this wine, the sign of the new covenant. The disciples’ participation in the divine communion, made possible by our Lord’s sacrifice on the cross and deepened by the Eucharist, sustains them on their mission. It is also a reminder that true unity is not man-made; but God-made! Only the All Holy God can make us Holy, and only the Most Holy Trinity, who lives in perfect unity, can make us one.

Now all this may seem to suggest that Christians are elitist and segregationist. We seem to claim that we are better than others, in the sense of being superior to them. Such aloofness and arrogance is certainly not the purpose of consecration. Rather, as Pope Benedict pointed out once again, such consecration “is not a segregation. Rather, being given over to God means being charged to represent others.” The Pope then gives the example of a priest, a man chosen from among the people and “set apart” for God. He explains, “The priest is removed from worldly bonds and given over to God, and precisely in this way, starting with God, he must be available for others, for everyone.” So, our consecration does not place us above others but at the feet of others - in the service of others.

Consecration ultimately leads to communion rather than alienation. In fact, when we choose to get along with the world, when we choose to fit in with the world and its values in order to be accepted and approved by the world, we end up alienating ourselves from God and without God, there can be no true authentic communion with others. The false communion offered by the world comes at a heavy cost. We have to sacrifice whatever is good, true and beautiful.

The Church is wholly serious about the work of building unity because our Lord taught that unity is essential to the life of His disciples, as it is the visible manifestation of their invisible sharing in the divine communion. But the call for unity does not mean that we should be pushing the unity agenda at all costs and do “whatever it takes” to accomplish that goal. Authentic unity cannot be humanly manufactured and achieved at the expense of sacrificing the truth. There can only be true unity if one is consecrated in truth, because a unity based on a lie would be a frivolous and fragile unity. True unity must be built on the foundation of truth because there is no opposition between love and truth. Love which is the fundamental bond of unity always serves truth, and truth is always at the service of charity.

Pope Benedict ends his Chrism Mass homily with this beautiful reminder: “When we talk about being sanctified in the truth, should we forget that in Jesus Christ truth and love are one? Being immersed in Him means being immersed in His goodness, in true love. True love does not come cheap, it can also prove quite costly. It resists evil in order to bring men true good. If we become one with Christ, we learn to recognise Him precisely in the suffering, in the poor, in the little ones of this world; then we become people who serve, who recognise our brothers and sisters in Him, and in them, we encounter Him.”

He who descends ascends

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord

Most of you are familiar with that basic rule of gravity, “what goes up, must come down.” 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, unless you are an alcoholic and would be familiar with the point that only when you have hit rock-bottom, the only way left to go, is up.

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. Ascent can only be understood in the light of a descent. 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 into 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.

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 the gospel and a second account begins the Acts of the Apostles. In each passage, it is clear that 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 the profound connexion between the Incarnation and the Ascension: “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.”

But this movement 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 Apostles accompanied our Lord on His journey to Jerusalem as He instructs them on the Way. Before they can ascend with the Lord to the glory which He wishes to share with them, they must face the dark shadow of their own depravity; they must descend 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. 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.

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.” In following Christ, we must follow Him to death, not just physical death but a spiritual dying to what ultimately weighs us down, which is sin. Before we can share in His glory, we must be prepared to acknowledge our depravity and sinfulness, and die to these. Such descent calls for humility, self-emptying, and a readiness to serve, rather than be served. We must descend with Him before we can rise with Him, and follow our Lord in His ascent to glory.

On the day we commemorate the Lord’s Ascension, should our gaze be directed upwards? What do we hope to see? 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. 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.”

God is Love not Love is God

 Sixth Sunday of Easter Year B

Love must certainly be the most used, and yet most misunderstood and abused word in our vocabulary. The word 'love' is so sentimentalised in pop culture and flippantly used to apply to a myriad of things from the most trivial (like “I love ice cream”) to the most profound (“I love God”), that it has devolved into something that sounds bland or fuzzy. It doesn’t help when we attempt to unpack the word in the context of today’s readings. It would almost be like teaching a foreign language to explain what Saint John meant in his gospel and epistle. And this is precisely what we must do.

The word that Saint John uses is the Greek 'agapè': a word that has never been anglicised and from which no English word is derived. In Latin, it has been translated as “caritas” which has created its own set of problems, especially when we attempt to translate that into English - “charity” - a word which in common parlance suggests acts of mercy towards the poor. Although our English word “love” seems to encapsulate the concept of “agape,” it fails to distinguish the nuanced differences conveyed by other Greek words which could similarly be translated as “love” - eros (erotic love), philia (friendship) and storge (affection).

As much as you would have heard it explained from the pulpit that “agape” refers to the lofty selfless and sacrificial love of God, in the secular Greek of the day, the verb “agape” was used in a quite unimpressive and banal fashion: it simply meant 'to like'; almost like the clicks you get on your social media postings. The New Testament writers, Saint Paul as well as Saint John, seem to have deliberately adopted this rather neutral word. It is used, as they presumably knew, in the Greek version of the Old Testament, for the kind of love which cares for others, to the extent of being ready to make sacrifices for their sake. Paul and John take the word up to designate the new way of loving which our Lord inaugurated.

How do we make this impossible leap? How can we connect the act of liking something so banal as ice cream to loving others as God has loved us? Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in his encyclical Deus caritas est, beautifully helps us to see the link between the natural loves which mark our daily human experiences and the unique self-less love which our Lord speaks of. The Pope warns that we should not be setting the different kinds of love (towards family, a lover, things, God etc) against each other. 'Were this antithesis to be taken to extremes', the Pope writes, 'the essence of Christianity would be detached from the vital relations fundamental to human existence, and would become a world apart, admirable perhaps, but decisively cut off from the complex fabric of human life'. In other words, such detachment could make Christian love untenable and impossible, our Christian way of life would be totally cut off from everything which makes us human. The Pope insists that there is an 'intrinsic link' between 'the reality of human love' and 'the love which God mysteriously and gratuitously offers to us'.

The Pope invites us to take a more positive view of human love, even erotic love. He acknowledges that though there is nothing intrinsically wrong about erotic love or friendship, they are susceptible to distortions. And so, the only way in which these human expressions of love can be perfected and purified is to unite these human experiences of love with the higher calling, to love as our Lord did. And how did He love us - by laying down His life for us. In the words of our Lord, “A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.” We see how our Lord marries two very different concepts of love - the love between friends with the selfless love of one who is willing to sacrifice everything, including one’s life, for the other.

In other words, in obeying our Lord’s commandments to remain in His love and to take up the new standard of loving as He did, we do not need to abandon all other forms of loving - whether it be affection for another, or love between spouses and lovers, or that of friendship. A Christian does not cease to love his or her family, lover, friends, pets, and even hobbies because he chooses to love as Christ did. To love my spouse, my children, my parents, my friend or even my pet, need not be something which is in opposition to loving God, unless loving any of these persons and objects detracts from the latter. Likewise loving God would not prevent us or lessen our ability to love our spouse, our children, our parents, our friends but in fact, purifies our love and brings it to perfection. In fact, the goal of all these different expressions of human love is to find their perfection in the standard which our Lord sets: “love one another, as I have loved you.” Christ’s new standard of love does not extinguish all other forms of love, but perfects them.

Saint John not only has our Lord set out a new standard of love in the gospel, he also provides love with a new definition: “God is Love.” But it is important that we do not confuse two axioms: “God is love” and “love is God.” They are not identical nor interchangeable. To claim that “love is God” is to reduce God to some impersonal principle and in fact, sees no need for God. People who say that “love is God,” are saying that as long as I am loving, caring and compassionate to others, there is no need for God, no need for a religion, because my personal love suffices. But this is precisely what St John rejects in the second reading: “God’s love for us was revealed when God sent into the world his only Son so that we could have life through him; this is the love I mean: not our love for God, but God’s love for us when he sent his Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away.” God is not measured by our love. It is the reverse; our love is to be measured by God. God’s love is the gold standard for loving, “love one another, as I have loved you.” He loved us to the end. He loved us to the extent of laying down His life for us. He loved us to the point of pouring out His entire life for us and for our salvation, holding nothing back.

The phrase “God is love” is used one more time in 1 John 4. It puts to rest the false notion that God loves no one because He is only an impersonal concept but is the love in everyone. But Saint John asserts: “We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment….” (vv. 16–17). Modern folks tend to use the empty slogan “love wins” to argue that their inclusive, non-judgmental ways are superior to the moral standards of traditional religion. But the truth is that, love can never win when that love seeks to exclude God, seeks to exclude His commandments, seeks to exclude His standards, because the moment we choose to exclude God, we exclude love because God is Love. A Godless life ultimately descends into a loveless life.

Pruned to bear even more

 Fifth Sunday of Easter Year B

We often have the impression that St Paul’s transition, from a zealous persecutor of Christians to become the Church’s greatest missionary and preeminent theologian, founding countless churches in the process of his arduous journeys and tireless preaching, was easy and uneventful after the initial dramatic event of his conversion on the road to Damascus. The first reading taken from the Acts of the Apostles debunks this myth and gives us an entirely different picture.

The indifference, cold reception and even opposition which St Paul faced in the early Christian community and with its leadership is understandable. His motives were still unclear and his conversion still a subject of doubt and questioning by those whom he had once hunted and persecuted. Given the negative reception he received from the Christian community in the early years of his new found faith, many of us would have wondered why he chose to stay, what would have motivated him to persevere, even tolerating insults and putting up with humiliation at the hands of fellow Christians. I believe that many would have walked out for a much lesser offence. I’m sure you’ve heard a number of anecdotal stories from ex-Catholics who cite hurts, hostility and inhospitality as some of the reasons for leaving the Catholic Church.

Was there something the Church could have done to prevent their leaving? Could the Church learn how to be more hospitable and accommodating, less demanding? Now, there is nothing wrong with hospitality. Having a welcoming spirit is always welcomed. But should hospitality compromise the truth? Should this mean that we have to insulate and protect all our members and bubble wrap them and their feelings to keep them from being hurt or offended? Should we make Christianity less demanding and more accommodating?

I believe you already know the answer and it’s an unpopular one. Let us look at the person of St Paul or Saul, as he was known in our first reading. The experience of St Paul, being rejected by his own community and later subjected to all kinds of trials and hardship, was not just a natural outcome of his sudden conversion, but a necessary part of his spiritual journey. His conversion did not end on the road to Damascus; it had only begun. It is as if every branch that bore no fruit had to be cut away, every stalk that did bear fruit had to be pruned to make it “bear even more.” These experiences would eventually shape his mission and preaching. He would rather risk being unpopular and even being beaten, then to bend and soften the gospel to accommodate the sensitivities of his audience.

St Paul’s resilience could be in part, be the result of his understanding and assimilating today’s gospel into his life. Our Lord, in introducing Himself as the Vine and we the branches, explains that there are two necessary conditions if we wish to bear fruit from this relationship. The first condition is to “remain”, or in some translations “abide”, in Him. Cut off from Him, we are nothing and we “can do nothing.” Our strength, our fecundity, our effectiveness, wholly depends on Him and is derived from Him.

But there is a second condition to this Master-disciple, Vine-branch relationship. Remaining is just the first prerequisite but there is the second element of pruning. In fact, pruning and remaining corresponds with the two-fold invitation of our Lord to all potential disciples: “Repent and believe in the gospel;” and in another place, “deny yourself .... and follow me.” In the traditional description of the three stages of spiritual development, the purgative, the illuminative and the unitive, the purgative corresponds with the pruning and the remaining corresponds with the illuminative and unitive stages. But pruning is not just meant for some, for beginners on the spiritual journey. It is meant for every one and needed for every stage of our spiritual journey. Listen to what our Lord says: “Every branch in me that bears no fruit he cuts away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes to make it bear even more.”

Notice that it is not only those who are barren, who are fruitless, who would need pruning, but also those who are bearing fruit, because such pruning will allow them to “bear even more.” When the pruning stops, even when a tree starts to bear fruit, it may soon become barren unless the pruning continues. We see in this wonderful analogy, the necessity of pain and suffering in nurturing growth. Pain is to a disciple’s spiritual growth, what pruning is to the development of a fruit on a tree. Pruning is not a punishment for a Christian; it is a reward. Spiritual pruning enhances spiritual growth by removing whatever inhibits spiritual growth. As Victor Hugo wrote, “adversity makes men, prosperity makes monsters.” When children are shielded from adversity, they end up becoming spoilt entitled brats.

But isn’t freedom from pain and suffering the ultimate goal of Christian life? In fact, many Christians pursue Christian discipline precisely because they wish to be blessed by God and be preserved from trouble and danger. I believe most Christians have gotten it wrong in this area, which explains how common it is for Christians to complain that God has been unfair to them - good people seem to have it tough whereas bad people seem to flourish and do well. Such complaints betray a misconception in theology, especially in understanding the place of suffering in a Christian’s life.

Freedom from pain and suffering is a promise of a Christian’s future glorification; but pain and suffering are a part of his present sanctification. No pain no gain. In this life, the cross is a necessary part of our spiritual journey. The pain of spiritual pruning is not the result of a malicious and sadistic God who loves watching us suffer, rather such pain arises from our inordinate attachments, our inability to let go of the things which inhibit our spiritual growth. When these things which we are attached to are removed from our lives, we are enhanced, not diminished. Whenever the Lord prunes us, we lose a part of ourselves, but it’s the part we can do without - our pride, our stubbornness, our selfishness, our greed, our ambitions, our need for approval. But in doing so, our attachment to Him the Vine, becomes strengthened and because of the tightening of this bond, we are enriched in virtue and grace.

So, the next time you encounter adversity or difficulty, do not resist or run away or complain. Instead, welcome it as a blessing. Obediently and patiently submit to the pruning hand of the Vine Dresser. Don’t just settle for what is easier, more convenient, more comfortable, less demanding. Rather, give to God your best and your greatest – Deo Optimo Maximo – knowing that whatever He has pruned from your life, will not make you poorer but richer, it will not make you weaker but stronger, it will not make you smaller but greater. As how the Lord promised St Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor 12:9)

The Lord is my Shepherd

 Fourth Sunday of Easter Year B

On this fourth Sunday of Easter, which is also known as Good Shepherd Sunday and Vocation Sunday, we are invited to contemplate one of the most beautiful images of our Lord as the Good Shepherd. As earthy and endearing as the popular image that we have of our Lord cuddling a lamb in His arms, as a mother would hold her baby, this “I am statement,” is another instance of High Christology, which emphasises the divinity of our Lord, rather than accentuates His humanity by using a seemingly human metaphor. Already in the Old Testament, the figure of the shepherd was an image for God. The prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel spoke of God as the shepherd of the people of Israel. The people were referred to as the Lord’s flock. Most people, even non-Christians, are familiar with the particularly moving Psalm 23 which begins: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” And so it is significant that our Lord applies this image of a shepherd to Himself.

The gospel passage sets out three attributes of this Shepherd-God which is worth pondering.

The first is the sacrificial character of the Shepherd. This is a unique image because the sheep which He cares for is meant to be the sin-atoning sacrifice offered in the Temple and the lamb which would be slaughtered during the Preparation Day of the Passover. The lambs are supposed to “lay down” their lives for their human carers in atonement for their sins. But we see a spectacular reversal. Here it is the Shepherd “who lays down his life for his sheep.” The animal is not sacrificed to save the Master, but the master sacrifices Himself to save His sheep. The thought of this demands lasting contemplation - the wondrous exchange between the Shepherd and the Sheep, the ultimate sacrifice on the part of the Shepherd.

Yes our Lord is the “good shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep.” These words were confirmed during Christ’s passion. Our Lord laid down His life on the cross. He did so with love and He did so freely. In this Sunday’s Gospel, Our Lord says: “The Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me; I lay it down of my own free will, and as it is in my power to lay it down, so it is in my power to take it up again; and this is the command I have been given by my Father.” Our Lord offered Himself up on the cross to redeem humanity, to save every one of us, though none of us were deserving of His sacrifice. He did so willingly unlike the lamb-sacrifice which were killed against their will. But our Lord did it with love, in union with His Father’s love for us.

This begs the question: “why would a stranger do this for me?” This introduces the second attribute of our Shepherd-Lord. Though many of us either do not know Him or our knowledge of Him is too shallow, we are no strangers to Him. He tells us, “I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” This is wonderful and consoling news. Our Lord knows each of us. He knows us by name. He knows our deepest thoughts and our hidden emotions. We are not faceless anonymous objects, not just part of a multitude or crowd. We are each individually known and loved. But it doesn’t just stop there. Our Lord not only says that He knows His sheep; He also says that His sheep know Him. The knowledge is mutual. Knowledge is the basis of any authentic relationship. The more we know Christ, the more we trust Him and love Him.

Finally, our Shepherd-God spells out His mission. Unlike the national and parochial gods of other nations who seem only concerned with their own subjects, our Lord seeks out others too and He will not rest until everyone is included in His flock. “And there are other sheep I have that are not of this fold, and these I have to lead as well. They too will listen to my voice, and there will be only one flock, and one shepherd.”

This attribute is a reminder that the Church’s primary mission is evangelisation, preaching the gospel of Christ so that all may be drawn to the “one flock” led by the “one shepherd.” Evangelisation, unlike what modern critics would claim, is not an act of triumphalism or religious colonialism. It is an act of charity and hospitality. As much as it is trendy to say that the Church’s mission is to get along with others, this is not what she is called to do. The Church does not have to go along with every current and trend just to get along. Her mission is to proclaim the gospel by whatever means necessary, so that all may come to recognise the one Lord, the one Spirit, the One God and the one Shepherd. Sometimes it takes the form of respectful dialogue. Sometimes we are called to bear witness by positively living out our Christian vocation. But other times, we must be ready to give witness to Christ and His gospel, even if this means that we have to “lay down” our lives like our Shepherd.

Our Lord provides a contrast to this image of the good Shepherd by using the parable of the hireling. “The hired man, since he is not the shepherd and the sheep do not belong to him, abandons the sheep and runs away as soon as he sees a wolf coming, and then the wolf attacks and scatters the sheep; this is because he is only a hired man and has no concern for the sheep.” Here we find the antithesis of the good Shepherd. Self-serving instead of self-giving, indifferent instead of taking the trouble to know each member of the flock and finally, calculative instead of going beyond the pale and one’s job description to search out others. When the description of the hireling is unpacked in this fashion, we immediately come to realise that many of us look more like the hired man, than a good Shepherd.

As we reflect this Sunday on Jesus, the Good Shepherd, it is also good to reflect on our call to imitate the Good Shepherd. It is said that we become what we behold. We naturally think first of bishops and priests who are configured to Christ, the Good Shepherd, by ordination. We are called to shepherd our people with the heart of Christ, to know our people, to lead them, to feed them, to love them, indeed to lay down our life for them. Sometimes we fail and that is why we need your prayers, although more often than not, we deserve your criticisms.

By virtue of Baptism, every Christian is called to be “a good shepherd” in the environment where he or she lives: in the family, at work, in the community. We can think of parents and their vocation to exercise the functions of the Good Shepherd with regard to their children; those who care for the sick and the suffering; leaders in the community; those engaged in the works of mercy and compassion. And there is the mission of evangelisation: sharing the Gospel with those who do not belong to the sheepfold of the Church.

But today is a day that we should be thankful that our Lord is the Good Shepherd. Saint John Paul II reminds us: “What a blessing it is to know Christ, the Good Shepherd, to know Him as the Redeemer who laid down His life for the sheep, to know Him as the Risen Lord, the source of everlasting joy and life. What a blessing it is to know the Good Shepherd and to believe in Him. This gift of faith is the greatest blessing we could ever receive in life.”