Feast of Feasts

 

Easter Vigil

While it has always been understood, theologically, that Easter—the Resurrection of the Lord—is the greatest feast of the Church, more attention has actually been given to Christmas. Christmas seems to have been made for children. Let’s be honest, most of us grownups love it too! Eventually the discovery by the child as he grows up, that Christmas was not the feast-of-feasts comes as a shock, and met with disbelief; but it is true nevertheless. I guess this is more shocking than discovering that the gifts you received every Christmas wasn’t brought by Santa.

Saint Paul tells us that “if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Cor 15:16-17). Strong words but Saint Paul’s statement is undoubtedly true. Without our faith built on the solid foundation of the Resurrection, it would merely be a house of cards, tittering on the brink of collapse and destruction. For who needs another religion with good ideas and concrete advice for moral living. Any self-help book from your local bookstore can do the job.

But our Lord’s Resurrection is the sine qua non of Christianity, it is absolutely necessary. A Christianity without belief in the Resurrection would no longer be Christian. Essentially, if it were not for the resurrection, all the other things that our Lord did and said, including His birth, would not be efficacious for our salvation. Hence, all events lead up to, all our beliefs revolves around, and all things can be traced back to His rising from the dead.

The same could be said about tonight’s liturgy which is described as the Mother of all Vigils. What we celebrate and how we celebrate tonight’s liturgy has great bearing on our faith and vice versa. The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that belief and liturgy are tied up together: “When the Church celebrates the sacraments, (and, here, the Easter liturgy is particularly important) she confesses the faith received from the apostles—whence the ancient saying: lex orandi, lex credendi. The law of prayer is the law of faith: the Church believes as she prays. Liturgy is a constitutive element of the holy and living Tradition” (Catechism of the Catholic Church §1124). This teaching is forcibly illustrated in the liturgy of the Easter Vigil, the climax of the Paschal Triduum, the Christian Passover. Tonight, we witness how our Christian faith is beautifully mirrored and expounded in our liturgy.

But first the context. The Passover was so central to the religion of the Jews because it represented the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, as well as the beginning of their formation into the People of God. Now, because of the resurrection, we Christians through our baptism which is a sharing in our Lord’s death and resurrection, are formed into the people of God’s Son. This resurrection is the true Paschal festival, at once, final and forever. We are now delivered from a much greater evil than Egyptian slavery. At least the slave’s suffering comes to an end in the death of the slave. But we are now enslaved to something far worse than the Egyptians - we are enslaved to sin, and unless it is compensated for, and then repented of, would lead to a slavery that would last forever, even after death!

But the good news that rings out through every part of tonight’s liturgy is what Saint Paul declares in the second reading and this is what we will witness at the baptism of the candidates arrayed before us: “When we were baptised in Christ Jesus we were baptised in his death; in other words, when we were baptised we went into the tomb with him and joined him in death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life.” Saint Paul is saying that our Lord’s resurrection is not just an event which solely affected Him but one which has affected the entire Church and her members, those of us who are baptised in His name.

Tonight we reaffirm our ancient faith, the faith proclaimed by Saint Paul in his epistle: “If in union with Christ we have imitated his death, we shall also imitate him in his resurrection.” Christ has robbed death of its ultimate sting. Though none of us are immune to death, none of us can stay and hold back the ravages of time and ageing, none of us can completely insulate or vaccinate ourselves from every disease or pandemic, we know this to be true: Death has no power over us anymore, because when a person dies to sin in his baptism, “his life now is life with God; and in that way, you too must consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive for God in Christ Jesus.” And this is what Saint Paul is trying to tell us. How could someone fear death, if he is already dead?  But when you die in Christ, it also means that you are “alive for God in Christ Jesus,” and since God is deathless, we too share in His immortality.

This is what we see in the story of Israel set out in the readings of the Old Testament heard today. God brings light out of darkness, freedom out of slavery, posterity out of barrenness, quenching satisfying water out of thirst. The New Testament adds this crowning couplet to the list - God brings life out of death. In the Exultet, the solemn Easter proclamation the deacon or priest intones at the start of our Vigil, the Church shows us how God turned every seeming sin, failure, mistake and disaster in our favour. The resurrection, one gets the feeling from the way the Exultet is worded and sung, was so great, it overcame all the past.

Yes, we all love Christmas, no denying this. But today, we affirm that Easter is bigger than Christmas. As the Catechism teaches: “Therefore Easter is not simply one feast among others, but the ‘Feast of feasts,’ the ‘Solemnity of solemnities,’ just as the Eucharist is the ‘Sacrament of sacraments’ (the Great Sacrament). St. Athanasius calls Easter ‘the Great Sunday’ and the Eastern Churches call Holy Week ‘the Great Week.’ The mystery of the Resurrection, in which Christ crushed death, permeates with its powerful energy our old time, until all is subjected to him.” (CCC 1169)

It was at Christmas that our Saviour was born to us. It was on Good Friday that He died for us. But it is at Easter, that He broke the chains of death and rose victorious and we know that our faith is not in vain, our good works and attempts to grow in holiness is not futile, that we would not have to remain perpetual slaves to sin and victims of death. And for this reason we can acclaim at the top of our voices: “Alleluia! The Lord is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!”

Stat crux dum volvitur orbis

 Good Friday

At the height of last year’s pandemic and on the eve of Holy Week, our Holy Father, Pope Francis drew the world’s attention as he gave a special Urbi et Orbi blessing to the world. The scene was surreal. In the darkened and empty plaza in front of the Basilica of St Peter, the solitary figure of this pope walking up the steps leading to the basilica and pausing to pray before the miraculous crucifix of the Church of St Marcellus that had been specially brought there for this occasion. Many were moved and touched by the words of the Pope as he addressed his flock and the world, with words of faith and hope in a time of unprecedented turbulence. But perhaps what spoke loudest was the powerful image of the Holy Father standing before the crucifix. As the entire world seem to spin in the maelstrom of this pandemic, with no remedy or solution in sight, our Pope holds on to the one thing that remains steady, unmoving and firmly grounded – the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. One commentator noted this scene with this penetrating and insightful phrase, “the cross stands while the world turns.”

‘Stat crux dum volvitur orbis,’ ‘The cross stands while the world turns’, is the English translation to the Latin motto of one of the strictest religious orders in the Church - the Carthusians. It is often said that the Carthusians are the only religious order in the Catholic Church that can boast of having never been reformed because it has never been deformed. Perhaps, this is the clearest testimony to the veracity of their motto: “the cross stands while the world turns and revolves.” The world changes but the Carthusians remain steadfast to their original spirit and vision.

Yes, the cross stands, unmovable, strong, solid, firmly grounded like a peg that holds the tent from being blown away by the wind or an anchor that keeps the ship from going adrift. Everyone understands the need for stability, even in a world that promotes rapid change. If nothing remains constant in the midst of change, everything descends into chaos. The cross is like a single coordinate point in the map of life, while other things are moving, shifting and changing, this point remains fixed, providing us with the needed reference point to guide our orientation and chart our direction. The cross stands erect, unshaken even in the midst of the tumultuous storms of life and the crisis which trails every moment of transition and change.

Rather than seeing the cross as an object to be feared or to be avoided at all cost, the cross is perhaps the most consoling symbol of our Christian faith. Of course, the cross alone provides us with little to no consolation. In fact, it should invoke horror and derision. But because of what our Lord did today, Good Friday, we will never be able to look at the cross in the same way again. As the priest unveils and shows the cross, he intones the chant: “behold the wood of the cross, on which hung the salvation of the world.” We are asked to behold not an empty cross. Our gaze and attention is drawn to the One who hangs on the cross, the One who is the “Salvation of the World”! Christ is our Rock, Christ is our Anchor, Christ is the axis of the World, He stands steady and unmoving even as the world revolves and turns.

In one of the most poignant scenes in the movie Captain America- Civil War, where our hero is at the funeral of his old beau, sitting beside him in the church is the niece of his former girlfriend. The niece reminisces and shares a quote from her auntie Maggie, a quote that would help our hero come to the enormously difficult decision that would end in alienating his friends and setting the whole world against him:

“Compromise where you can. Where you can't, don't. Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right. Even if the whole world is telling you to move, it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye, and say 'No, you move'.”

That is what our Lord did, and that is what Christians are called to do. Good Friday is the day when our Lord took a stand and when we too are asked to take a stand with Him by the cross. If you want everyone in the world to like you, then you can’t take a stand. You will be shifting and swaying with every changing fad or fashion, you will be moving with the crowd. But the moment you take a stand, the moment you have principles and are prepared to defend them, be ready to be hated. That is the cost to pay for standing up for the truth and for what is good.

But we know that we are not alone. We have an anchor that holds us firm and solid through any storm. It doesn’t mean that the storm will pass quickly, or that we won’t suffer from it. What it means is that we have a firm and sure foundation, and the One to whom we hold tight has gone before us and prepares a place for those who trust in Him. We know that though the wind is raging all around and even though the waves may rise to the point of sinking our ship, there’s a place of stillness in the storm. And you can find it in the One who hangs from the cross. Yes, the cross stands steady, while the world spins and shifts and revolves.

On the cross, it appeared that God had been vanquished. As ever so often, humanity and goodness appeared to have been crushed. Our Lord was killed, and yet the cross endures. It stands because it is sustained by what does not change.

‘The cross stands while the world turns’. The world may revolve. Fashions come and go, and public opinion rushes from one event to another. Sometimes Christianity itself falls out of favour. But we are assured that when we stand on the side of right, God stands with us. The cross is the sign of a divine fidelity to us that can never be destroyed. And that is why in the midst of suffering, confusion and turmoil, the cross is to be embraced and not avoided. This is because the cross is the necessary doorway to eternal glory – there is no other way in. There is no shortcut, there is no happy ending, in any ordinary sense. Death precedes glory, and the cross before the crown.

There is a second part to the Carthusian motto which is often omitted in popular quotes and lengthy discussions, “et mundo inconcussa supersto”, which translates “and steadfast/unshaken I stand on top of the world”. So, here’s the full saying:

 

Stat crux dum volvitur orbis

et mundo inconcussa supersto

The cross stands while the world turns

and steadfast/unshaken I stand on top of the world

Let us hold firmly to the cross, the only thing which stands steady in a changing world, in the midst of chaos, death and destruction, and we can proudly declare with our Lord, “steadfast unshaken I stand on top of the world.”

The Fools' Feast

 Maundy Thursday

I believe that none of you would need to be reminded that today is the 1st of April, April Fool’s Day. It’s a day when we traditionally pull pranks on each other, not maliciously but in jest. But sometimes pranks can test the limits of friendship. Well, I hope that what I’m going to say next would not be taken as excessive and cause you to walk out. But if you are going to take offence, blame me, don’t blame God or the Church. Okay, here goes nothing. Being in church today, in a closed, confined and congested area flies against all the public safety advisories during a pandemic. Are you crazy?!!! You must be a fool to be here. What more, on the day the Church celebrates the institution of the Holy Mass.

How the world judges our actions as foolish is exactly how the world judges Christians from the early centuries of the Church until present day. Our liturgical celebrations, though it may not seem to be so, always had a certain edge to them, like those who engage in extreme sports who court death as they experience a rush of adrenaline. You may find this unbelievable. How could the Mass, which so many find boring, be a dance with death? Perhaps, the only danger we could perceive is to die of boredom.

We often forget the context of today’s celebration. Today we commemorate the Lord’s Last Supper, a Passover Feast and tomorrow, we commemorate His death. They are not two different events but a single one, for what our Lord celebrated today at His Last Supper, He will complete on the cross. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Mass of the ages is a bloodless re-enactment, re-presentation of the gruesome bloody sacrifice of our Lord at Calvary. Risk, death and danger have always been part of the DNA of the Holy Mass from the moment of its institution.

The juxtaposition of celebration and death is a constant reminder that the Church of Christ, our Church, is indeed a Church of Eucharistic fools because Christians were willing to do the craziest things in order to receive the most precious thing that could sustain them, not just in this life but for eternity. For example, there is the amazing story of the courageous martyrs of Abitene (in modern-day Tunisia).  In 303, forty-nine Christians suffered torture and martyrdom because they defied the Roman Emperor’s order not to celebrate the Eucharist on Sunday. Despite this cruel law and the real prospect of death, this group of Christians risked everything to gather for Mass. When asked by the magistrate why they had disobeyed the emperor and put themselves at risk, one of them defiantly said, “Sine dominico non possumus” — “Without Sunday, we cannot live.” “Without the Eucharist, we cannot live.”

In fact, for nearly 2,000 years, Christians have risked their lives to participate at Holy Mass.  During the Reformation in England, priests were martyred when caught offering Holy Mass clandestinely for English Catholics. Courageous lay people who gave their homes over as places of Catholic worship, and who harboured priests, suffered torture and death. This trend continued over the centuries. In the Twentieth century, Catholics in former Communist countries like the Soviet Union or Vietnam were persecuted for practicing their faith. Today, in places such as Egypt, China, North Korea, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and countless other areas, Catholics risk their lives and travel for hours to attend Mass.

We give thanks to God that we do not have to put our lives in jeopardy to attend Mass at our local parish, except assume the risk of contracting COVID 19. Yes, we should be prudent and not recklessly put ourselves and others in harm’s way. But I suspect that sometimes we seem to have substituted the primacy of salvation for the lesser need for safety.

Perhaps this is the reason why so many have little appreciation for this Sacrament until they were deprived of it. We rejoice that, unlike those in poor areas, we do not have to walk for miles, over hills or on dirt roads to attend. The vast majority of us can make a short drive to arrive at our beloved parish. In fact, we are spoilt for choices. But the ease, convenience, and accessibility of the Mass should not cause us to ever lose sight that the Mass is so precious that many of our Catholic brothers and sisters around the world are braving great inconvenience and persecution to receive what we, by God’s love, have available near us.

In his first Holy Thursday letter to priests, Pope Saint John Paul II touchingly recalled situations of the faith triumphing over persecution from his own personal experience of living under religious oppression, at a time when the priests were rounded up and there were none left to celebrate the Eucharist: “Sometimes it happens that [the lay faithful] meet in an abandoned shrine, and place on the altar a stole which they keep, and recite all the prayers of the Eucharistic liturgy: and then, at the moment that corresponds to the transubstantiation a deep silence comes down upon them, a silence sometimes broken by a sob … so ardently do they desire to hear the words that only the lips of a priest can efficaciously utter.”

In the months of lockdown, when our churches and chapels were closed and Masses suspended, many waited for the day they could return to Church to celebrate the “source and summit” of their Christian lives. But still others lost hope in waiting and some may never return. Of course, many are still not able to return because they fall within a high risk group. But many have chosen not to return by choice. If you are watching this Mass at home, this message is for you. Please know that we miss you, we love you, and we hope you will rejoin our Catholic family for our Masses. Some of you have drifted away from the Church and have been waiting for a good time to return.  I pray that you will consider this the time to join us on our faith journey toward Heaven.  We miss you, the Church misses you, Christ misses you - come home!

I would like to close this evening with the words of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, at the 2005 World Youth Day in Cologne Germany:

“The Eucharist must become the centre of our lives. … This is because the Eucharist releases the joy that we need so much, and we must learn to grasp it ever more deeply, we must learn to love it. Let us pledge ourselves to do this – it is worth the effort! Let us discover the intimate riches of the Church’s liturgy and its true greatness: it is not we who are celebrating for ourselves, but it is the living God Himself who is preparing a banquet for us.”

In Truth, this man was the Son of God

Palm Sunday 2021

The Passion of Christ in the Gospel of St Mark does not begin with the familiar story of the Last Supper or with our Lord’s agony in the garden. It begins with the story of an unnamed woman, who is identified as Mary of Bethany in the Gospel of St John but here she remains anonymous, breaking a jar of expensive aromatic oil and pouring its contents over the head of our Lord. Whereas in St John’s account, Mary of Bethany pours the oil on the feet of our Lord and wipes it with her hair, this unnamed woman in St Mark’s version pours it over His head.

In Matthew’s, Mark’s and John’s account of this story, the onlookers are scandalised by this exorbitant act of wastage. To understand the magnitude of her act, we are told that the oil was worth “more than three hundred denarii,” the equivalent of an entire year’s wages in those days. I guess men and women would process this differently. Women would view this as proof of one’s love, no gift is ever too pricey. But the men’s reaction to the price tag couldn’t be any more different – it would be met by sheer incredulity, “what?!” For us modern folks, I suspect that we would have been more shocked by the audacity of a stranger pouring a jar of oil over the head of your guest of honour (like a pie in the face) than worry about the cost of the prank.

But our Lord did not take this as an insult but in fact, commends her action because He understood the true value of her sacrifice. We all know that the Lord Jesus is the Christ, the long-awaited Messiah. Both these titles, the former a Greek word and the latter Hebrew, literally translates as the “Anointed One,” and this woman’s action affirms this in one spectacular theological move. In the ancient Near East, the act of anointing signified selection for some special role or task. In the Old Testament, priests, prophets and kings were anointed with oil as a symbol of receiving their authority and appointment from God. It is ironic that our Lord should receive this anointing, not at the beginning of His ministry, but at the end of it. But there is no irony if we understand that the day of His crucifixion is also the day He ascends the throne of glory.

Yes, our Lord is anointed because He is the Messianic King, but this anointing is not just meant for His coronation and ascension to the throne. It is also meant to prepare Him for His burial as it was an ancient custom to anoint bodies with fragrant oils before they were embalmed and buried. In this act of the woman, we see both the coronation and the death of our King. Aren’t these the two foundational themes of today’s liturgy? A city welcomes their king on Sunday and the same crowd proceeds to crucify Him on Friday.

This anointing also tells us that our Lord is the fulfilment of the Old Testament rites and customs involving the Passover Lamb. This is the context. The Passover lamb was chosen six days before the sacrifice. On the first day, its feet and ankles were anointed with oil, as our Lord’s feet were in John 12:1–8. For five days, it would be inspected for flaws, as our Lord was when He taught and debated in the temple (Mark 11:15–12:40). Two days before the Passover, the lamb's head would be anointed, as our Lord’s head is, here. Our Lord is indeed the Paschal Lamb, “the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world.”

Why was this woman’s action so important that it would be immortalised in the centuries to come? Well, the answer is to be found in our Lord’s commendation of her action. She had affirmed what the disciples had failed to grasp or refused to accept - that the Anointed One, the new Passover Lamb, has to be killed before He can save His people.

Our Lord had been speaking of His impending death for a while, but the Twelve were having difficulty accepting this. When the Lord told Peter that “the Messiah must be rejected, suffer, and die; then he will be raised,” Peter responded with such an impassioned protest that our Lord had to rebuke him with “get behind me Satan!” In another instance, our Lord spoke ominously of His death, and the disciples responded by debating who will be the greatest in the coming kingdom. And in another episode, James and John missed the point entirely by responding to our Lord’s prediction with requests to sit at His right and left hand.

Clearly, the Twelve struggled to conceive of a kingdom that would begin with the death of the Messiah. How could a dead Messiah raise a glorious kingdom? While others would see the establishment of kingdoms by crushing one’s mortal enemies, and this was the expectation of the crowds who welcomed our Lord triumphantly into Jerusalem, our Lord’s victory would be secured in a very different and least expected manner - by Him humbly submitting to death. I suspect this is why they complained about the “waste” of money exhibited by the anointing. They imagined that their ministry with our Lord would continue for years to come. The money gained from selling this oil could be the initial capital in funding an insurrection. But instead of arguing this, they raise the issue of the poor. This is disingenuous. Those who have an issue giving the best to God, will also find difficulty in giving to the poor. The poor are merely cited here as an excuse for their stinginess and inability to sacrifice - sacrifice being the hallmark of discipleship.

And so this unnamed woman is pivotal to the story of Mark’s Passion narrative and she becomes the first of Christ’s disciples to acknowledge His impending death. If John the Baptist is the precursor of our Lord’s ministry, this woman is the precursor of His death. For this reason, our Lord praises her in unparalleled terms. “I tell you solemnly, wherever throughout all the world the Good News is proclaimed, what she has done will be told also, in remembrance of her.” What a remarkable thought— these last words spoken of her is also spoken and heard at every Eucharist, when the priest utters these words during the consecration, “do this in memory of me.” That at every Mass, this woman’s story should be on our lips, right along with Christ’s. 

As we enter Holy Week, accompanying our Lord as He enters Jerusalem, our journey eventually leads us to the foot of the cross. There can be no other detour. That is our destination because it was our Lord’s. Through the action of this woman, we realise that our Lord’s death was not accidental, He voluntarily embraces it knowing that His Father is in control. Some people are made for certain jobs, others made for each other in marriage but our Lord was sent and anointed for this - to die for us and for our salvation. And it would be at that very last moment when He breathes His last breath on the cross, we will come to recognise the truth proclaimed by the centurion, a truth which eluded His disciples just like how they were unable to accept His death, “in truth, this man was a son of God!”

 

We should like to see Jesus

 Fifth Sunday of Lent Year B

“We should like to see Jesus.” For the past few months, many Catholics had been longing and praying for this same request: “we should like to see Jesus,” not just virtually, on the screen of their television, computers or handheld devices, but to truly see our Lord in the flesh, in the tabernacle, in the church, as His body is placed on our palms or on our tongues.

So many would have sighed with relief, still others moved to tears, as they stepped into church last week. It is one thing to gaze lovingly at an image of a loved one in a picture, and an entirely different experience to meet him or her face to face. The former is just a pale shadow of the latter. But today, many would be shocked and troubled again the moment they stepped into church to behold the image of our Beloved Lord hidden behind a purple veil. Just when we had found Him after longing to see Him, His visage is hidden from our sight once again.

Coming into our churches with our crucifixes and holy images covered, evokes within us the emptiness of a world without Christ. This is not just a hypothetical scenario in a dystopian world that has forgotten God. We have experienced it most painfully in the past few months. With our churches and chapels closed, it does seem as if Christ has abandoned us to our misery and predicament. 

But it is also in the midst of such visible absence of our Lord’s presence that we come to recognise how wrong we have been. The world has always needed Jesus Christ and always will, although we have often taken that for granted. It is only when the Lord had been taken away from us, when our churches and chapels were closed, that we came to realise how much we really missed Him. In a paradoxical way, His absence helped us to appreciate His presence.

This is what our Lord did when He went to the cross. His death is an embodiment of the words He utters in today’s gospel: “unless a wheat grain falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest.” By mounting the wood of the Cross that first Good Friday, He opened the gates of heaven and the doorway of salvation to all peoples.  He united God and humanity, and humanity with each other.  On the Cross He gave every last drop of Himself as blood and water flowed from His pierced side, the same blood and water types for the Sacraments that His Mystical Body (the Church) offers for Salvation, Baptism and the Eucharist.  Because of His death, our Lord had removed the mourning veil, and tore the veil which hid the mystery of God from man’s gaze. It is ironic that the veil of our crosses reveal more than they hide. They expose the folly of our ambitions and spotlight the wisdom of God’s plan. Hidden now from our sight, the veils are a reminder that we see God clearest of all when we see Him hanging from the cross.

Just as months of fasting from sacramental communion had heightened our hunger and thirst for the Lord and for communion with Him, the fasting of our senses through this veiling of His image should deepen our longing and love for the Lord. We are confident that our hunger will be sated, our prayers will be answered, our longing will be satisfied on Good Friday when the cross will be unveiled and we will get to behold the beauty of our Lord once again. The Cross is the lens through which we are called to see Him, the world and each other; the Cross gives us our perspective and opens our eyes to reality as God sees it. From the cross we will see an end to sin and division: “And when I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all men to myself!”

Christ looks lovingly at us through pained eyes on the Cross, eyes now hidden from our sight, dare we look back at him? What is His response if we do? Judgement? Condemnation? …. No …. I can tell you with certainty that when He is looking back at you from behind the veil, it is a look of love, mercy and longing … longing that we love more perfectly in our lives by living life through the lens of the Cross. As we echo the words of the Greeks who came in search of Him in today’s gospel, “we should like to see Jesus,” He reveals to us that the only way that we are going to see Him, is to do what He tells us to do: “Anyone who loves his life loses it; anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it for the eternal life.” Like Him, we must become that wheat of grain that falls on the ground and dies in order to yield the rich harvest of eternal life.

Mercy covers Justice

Fourth Sunday of Lent Year B

The readings for this Sunday help us to reconcile two aspects of God’s nature - He is a God of mercy who wants to save us and He is also a God of Justice who will hold us accountable for our deeds. On the face of it, these two aspects of God may seem to be on diametrically opposite ends of a spectrum. When you show mercy, are you not excusing someone from the dictates of justice, and when you demand justice, are you not withholding mercy?

Scripture reminds us that God is rich in mercy (Eph 2: 4). Modern man has no issue with this. This is the preferred face of God. Who would like a harsh and demanding parent, what more a God who metes out justice without batting an eye? But what is mercy? Just like many other terms and concepts, the concept of mercy has often suffered distortion under the hands of those who live under the woke banner of “diversity, equity and inclusion.” Mercy has become another synonym of these fundamental values of modern society.

But true mercy is the face of God’s love turned toward sinners, searching them out, and offering them pardon and salvation. This is what the Lord declares in the gospel, perhaps one of the most quoted verses of the bible, “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life. For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved.” That’s it - the ultimate goal of mercy is our salvation.

When we reflect on mercy the question naturally arises about the relationship of mercy to justice. God is not merciful at the expense of His justice. Mercy does not exclude His justice, nor is it opposed to it. God’s justice entails that He takes sin seriously. God does not gloss over sin nor does He pull blinkers over His own eyes pretending as if sin does not exist. And because God takes sin seriously, He is willing to pay the greatest price in order to be rid of it - He sent His only Son to save us by dying for us. Jesus Christ’s finished work is the full and sufficient cause of our salvation. He has undergone the cross because of our sins, redeeming us from them, healing us from the deep wound of original sin and its effects and reconciling us to the Father. So, when we ignore the gravity of sin in the name of false mercy, we are actually diminishing and trivialising what our Lord did for us on the cross. When God’s justice is obscured, His mercy is reduced to something insignificant.

The gospel wishes to highlight that although the Father has given the Son the authority to judge the world, the Son has chosen not to do so. Rather, people are judged by their own reaction to the Son. Throughout the gospel of St John, we encounter individuals who are judged by their peers and society but as they come to the Lord, they receive no judgment. Instead, if they are judged, it is because of their response to the light of truth which our Lord brings. They are either drawn to the light and are transformed and saved, or they shun the light and condemn themselves to remain in the darkness. In other words, if hell does exist, and it does, it is not part of God’s creation or sentence. Hell is the product of man’s free choice- his choice to reject the light, to reject God and the One whom God had sent into the world to save us.

It is clear that justice and mercy are not opposites because both have their origin in God’s holy love. These two, says Saint John Paul II, “spring completely from love: from the love of the Father and of the Son, and completely bears fruit in love”. Pope Francis explains that “[justice and mercy] are not two contradictory realities, but two dimensions of a single reality that unfolds progressively until it culminates in the fullness of love” (Misericordiae Vultus §20).

In sum, the cross takes our sins away because it is the act of God’s gracious judgment on Christ for our benefit. In layman’s language, Christ takes the fall for us, He takes the punch for us. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). Why would He do that? The answer is simple: He loves us.  “Yes, God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life.” (Jn 3:16)

Today, we encounter the God of Mercy and Justice in the sacrament of penance - in confession. Many people are afraid to confess their sins to a priest for fear of judgment. Others believe that God is so merciful that He would not demand that we subject ourselves to such awkwardness and humiliation by exposing our most sordid secrets to a priest. And yet, we see the truth of what takes place in this sacrament. We are invited to come before the fountain of love, for both mercy and justice springs forth from the same source. We must take our sins seriously, as seriously as our Lord did by dying on the cross to atone for our sins. We must also be confident that the Lord will embrace us in mercy, if we come before Him with penitent hearts. For the sacrament of penance is a rehearsal of the Final Judgment. To the unrepentant sinner, there is reason to be afraid as he will be condemned by his sins. But to the repentant sinner, he should stand before God’s judgment without fear, because “there is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love” (1 Jn 4:17-18).

Scripture does not reveal a God of justice in opposition to a God of mercy. Instead, Scripture discloses a just and long-suffering God, who intervenes in history to mercifully restore our dignity defaced by sin, precisely by leading us towards a renewed righteousness and justice. At the end, mercy triumphs over judgment. I enjoy teaching servers and little children that when they clasp their hands in prayer, with the right thumb (which symbolises mercy) placed over the left thumb (which symbolises justice) in the shape of a cross, it signifies this eternal truth – at the end and on the cross, mercy covers over justice.

Christ, the Power of God

Third Sunday of Lent Year B

It is perhaps fair to say that most Christians do not quite realise the outrageous character of the most basic and taken-for-granted hallmarks of Christianity. Some may attribute this to years of Catholic “indoctrination” and “normalisation” of such outlandish ideas such as – that the All-powerful invisible God, a purely spiritual Being, should be en-fleshed and take on the form of a weak vulnerable baby; that this God-man would eventually die a scandalous and horrific death; that the very symbol which we Christians revere as the sign of salvation should be an ancient instrument of torture, humiliation and execution. It is no wonder why Christianity is negatively viewed by modern folks in terms of the many claims it makes.

But such opposition is nothing new. It had existed from the very beginning of nascent Christianity and even during the time of Christ Himself. Both the second reading and the gospel shows us instances where the claims of Christians and that of Christ are considered so outrageous that the very growth of Christianity should have been regarded as divinely inspired and a miracle in itself. St Paul in the second reading explains the nature of this opposition, which seems to be universal: “the Jews demand miracles and the Greeks look for wisdom.” And so, the crucified Christ which Christians are preaching would meet opposition from both groups - “to the Jews an obstacle they cannot get over, and to the pagans madness.”

But St Paul proceeds to argue that both these objections are untenable and unreasonable. If you suppose that the Jews required a sign, that sign is given: the miracles that Christ wrought upon earth were signs more than sufficiently abundant; and if the Jewish people had but the will to believe, they would have found abundant signs and reasons for believing in Christ and His apostles. And as for the Greeks who prided themselves over their sophisticated intellectual and philosophical tradition, if they would only humbly and honestly seek to investigate further, they would discover a profoundness of wisdom—a depth where the most gigantic intellect might be drowned. It is no shallow gospel, but a deep truth which we preach, for Christ is the Wisdom of God, and His gospel is the highest of all sciences. If you wish to find wisdom, you must find it in the word of revelation, for what loftier wisdom can there be but the wisdom of God Himself?

We can, therefore, understand why the Jews in the gospel demanded a sign from the Lord to authenticate His authority in having wrecked the foundation of the sacrifice system of the Temple. To a modern reader, this may seem to be a strange request as most people would think that the Lord is attacking the commercialisation of religion, for did He not say, “stop turning my Father’s House into a market”? We often think that the pedlars who were selling animals and the money changers are the ancient equivalent of those religious article pedlars who push their goods to parishioners after Mass. In truth, these “business” people actually formed the foundation of the sacrifice system in the Temple. They provided the animals which were meant for the sacrifice, the basis of Temple worship, and the money changers exchanged the civil currency which was considered unclean and idolatrous, for the kosher Temple currency.

So, the action of our Lord was not the result of outrage, targeting the commercial elements that had invaded the Temple but it was targeting the entire Temple institution itself. You see, if there are no sacrificial offerings, there is no need for the Temple because the Temple exists to make those offerings. On the one hand, the Lord’s actions were prophetic - it pointed to the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. On the other hand, the Lord was announcing that such Temple worship was obsolete because He was the new Temple, He would be the nexus between man and God, in Him God and man meets and unites, and He would render the ultimate perfect sacrifice which would abolish the need for any other sacrifices - the sacrifice of His own life on the cross. From the time of Christ’s death and resurrection, a new temple made from the Body of Christ was established for all nations. All who wanted a sign to locate the Creator’s presence, learn His wisdom, and enjoy His forgiveness can do so simply by embracing the Messiah, “Christ who is the power of God.”

All that the temple had meant for Israel for almost one thousand years, was now to be found in Israel’s Messiah. The presence of God which human beings so longed for was to be found through a personal connexion with Christ, not in a building in East Jerusalem. The hunger for Wisdom that would inspire could be satisfied, not in the courts of a glorious sanctuary, but by feeding on the words of Jesus. True “pilgrims” could henceforth declare their praises, not within the walls of one sacred building, but wherever people gathered in honour of the Messiah. And forgiveness of sins could be enjoyed through the one priestly sacrifice of Jesus, not through the ineffective sacrifices of animals. To the Jews, this may be an obstacle they cannot get over, to the pagans madness, to the modern man a mere fairy tale, but for us Christians, “Christ is the power of God.” He is the Sign by which we know we are saved, the Wisdom by which we come to know God, and the Temple by which we can worship Him.