Venite Adoremus

Solemnity of the Epiphany 2018

In 11th century, a special type of sacramental painting or iconography developed in the largest church in Christendom, the Hagia Sophia, the Church of the Holy Wisdom, a title referring to Christ. The icons displayed Christ or Virgin Mary sitting on a throne flanked by emperors and the empresses, as if they were equals or even best buddies. An ancient wefie (group selfie) at best, or celebrity photobomb at worst. There is one rare exception that most visitors would not miss. Strategically located on the tympanum above the main entrance, the Imperial Gate, we see the depiction of Christ sitting on His throne. On His left is a strange figure not sitting but kneeling, or literally prostrating himself before Christ. Who could this figure be?

Historians have identified him as Leo VI or widely known as Leo the Wise. Though popularly lauded as a relatively wise ruler, Leo was hardly a virtuous one. He had incurred the wrath of the Patriarch and the Church when he got married a fourth time which was prohibited by Church law, the first three wives died under strange and mysterious circumstances and coincidentally, none of them could produce a legitimate heir for him. His unique posture at the feet of the Lord, however, raises a myriad of  theories. Some would see it as a penitential posture: Leo is placating the Lord and seeking pardon for his past crimes. But when compared to the other mosaics within this grand church, this icon may be a reminder to all future emperors as they pass beneath it that no one is worthy (not even an emperor) to sit on the left or the right of the King of Kings. True authority and wisdom is not found in such seats of honour but only at the feet of Our Lord, Holy Wisdom, in humble submission and obedience.

Today’s Feast also gives us a tale of wise men, who could also be kings, and who fell at the feet of Jesus to pay Him homage. Perhaps if St Luke had included additional information in his Christmas account, we might have had precise details. But St Matthew’s account is vague, shrouded in mystery: “After Jesus had been born in Bethlehem in Judaea during the reign of King Herod, some wise men came to Jerusalem from the east.” Intrigue swirls around these festooned foreigners. Where did they come from? With a wink St Matthew writes, “the East.” Indeed, his description is so utterly non-specific that church traditions in dozens of countries claim to be their country of origin. And who were they? Technically speaking, St Matthew, using the Greek term, calls them magi—but what are magi? Are they kings? Wise men?

Christians have been trying to nail down their identity for millennia. St Matthew’s story demonstrates that the Magi were astrologers and interpreters of omens—following a star and dreaming dreams. As early as the second century A.D., Tertullian was laying out arguments that the Magi, while astrologers by trade, were considered kings. He argued that their visit fulfilled Solomon’s prayer in Psalm 72—“May the kings of Sheba and Seba present him gifts.” Despite disagreements about their true identity and origin, here are a few facts. The word magus is of Persian origin; however, Basil indicated that they were not confined to a specific empire but “scattered all over the country,” which subsequently gave rise to the medieval tradition that they represented three different continents, Asia, Africa and Europe (the Americas were yet to be discovered). As a result of the three gifts offered to the infant King, gold, frankincense and myrrh, their unspecified numbers were eventually narrowed down to the three.

Call them Magi. Call them wise men. You can even call them kings if you’d like! Each label shines a light on a different facet of the story. Whatever you choose to call them, these men are the first in the canonical New Testament to bow and worship the Lord Jesus. We would do well to follow their example.

Pope Emeritus Benedict describes the Magi as men of hope and seekers after truth who, in every generation, have been on the look-out for the true star of salvation. There is a restlessness at the heart of our humanity that is always searching for fulfilment. It is a restlessness that drives our lives and can bring our lives to the only One who can bring rest to our restless souls. In following the star, the Wise Men pursued that universal longing of the heart, refusing to be led astray until they came to Jerusalem. When they finally found the child, their excitement could not be contained. “The sight of the star filled them with delight, and going into the house they saw the child with his mother Mary, and falling to their knees they did him homage.” The search for wisdom, the search for Truth finally led them to kneel before the Christ-child.

This is the key to understand their story. These wise men or kings had come to worship the King of Kings. They understood who He was and what their place was. They did not come to hang out with Jesus. They did not arrogantly arrogate to themselves the right to sit on his left or right as equals. Their proper posture was to kneel in humble submission at the feet of the Lord. These wise men knew that they were not His buddies, bros’ or BFF’s. They came to worship Him. This is a point that is so often ignored in the confusion generated by the dumbing down of theology and liturgy, the latest church fads and even within what passes for music these days. There is a purposeful blurring of the lines between whom we are and who God is. Contemptuous familiarity, in the form of casual dressing and postures, seems to be the norm of the day when coming to church. There is little or no serious sacrifice on our part. It implies a kind of friendship without any serious commitment. That explains the demand and the push for lighter, shorter, less painful and uncomfortable, more fun, more exciting, more creative, and definitely more entertaining masses.

But today’s Solemnity of the Epiphany offers us a realignment of our orientation. The magi offer us the supreme goal of our lives – it is to encounter Christ our Lord and offer Him our worship and adoration. We were born to worship God, not to be His buddy. Unlike other astrologers who were busy studying constellations that could guarantee good fortune and ward off bad luck, unlike King Herod, the Jewish priests and ruling elite who were concerned with self-preservation, the magi were able to transcend their own selfish goals and ambitions to discover their salvation in the Christ-child. In this sense, the Mass is a kind of epiphany, a manifestation of Christ in person, body and blood, soul and divinity, calling us to transcend our self-absorption. Epiphany is an invitation to restore the sense of the sacred, to return Christ to His rightful place as the real star of the celebration, and to give priority to worship in our encounter with Him. Pope Emeritus Benedict once taught that “the liturgy is not a kind of ‘self-manifestation’ of a community,” in other words, it is not an Epiphany of man. Rather, it should always be an Epiphany of God – Christ who manifests himself not only as man but under the form of bread and wine. He noted too that when priests or parishioners reflect on how to make the liturgy “attractive, interesting and beautiful,” they can “risk forgetting the essential: That is the liturgy is celebrated for God and not for ourselves.”

The story of the Magi has been celebrated in song and Christmas pageants and their images have adorned our beautiful crèches.  But, their story holds so much power for us in our lives if we could only learn from them. It is a reminder that our search for what is good, what is beautiful, what is true can only find its ultimate fulfilment in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Kings and that true wisdom can only be found when we are prepared to kneel at His feet. Let us not come with empty and grasping hands but with everything that is of value to worship the true King and Saviour of the world. Venite Adoremus! Come let us adore Him!

Not Flattery but Theology

Solemnity of Mary Mother of God 2018

Today is the culmination of the Octave of Christmas, the eight-days celebration of the feast that started on Christmas Eve. We keep this Octave Day as the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. What a beginning to the year it is, to begin with Mary as mother. In other words, we don't let Christmas end without looking explicitly at the role of Mary, the indispensable part she played in the Incarnation and thus in our whole religion. 

Holy Mary, Mother of God': we say this whenever we say the Hail Mary. We say it so often that we can easily forget what a strong, startling, even shocking, phrase it is. How can Mary, or any mortal woman for that matter, be literally the Mother of God? Well, both Protestants and Muslims would vehemently object to this, albeit for different reasons. It is not just preposterous as it is incredulous, but also downright blasphemous. God has no beginning, or as the Muslims put it, “God has not begotten and is not begotten.” As far as they are concerned, it is impossible for a human woman to be Mother of God. And even if Protestants agree that Jesus is indeed the son of Mary as well as being the son of God, they would refuse to accord to her that august title that seems to place her above God Himself. It sounds more pagan than Christian.

But no: it is the Christian and Catholic faith that Mary is Mother of God; so it is necessary to understand it properly. Our Eastern brethren prefers the Greek term theotokos to that of Mother God, which means: ‘God-bearer’, because the one she bears is God. This title had been given her in popular devotion from the second century onwards, and it was confirmed by the Council of Ephesus in AD 431 as a sure way of asserting the full divinity of her Son.

When we say ‘Mother of God’, therefore, we are not saying that Mary is the origin of the Godhead. God has no beginning. In this sense, it is true that God does not have parents.  But when we use the title ‘Mother of God,’ we are saying that the one whom Mary bore is God: God-made-man, the eternal Word of the Father uniting Himself to our life so that we can share in His. We believe that the One she conceived as man by the Holy Spirit, who truly became her Son according to the flesh, was none other than the Father’s eternal Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity. The title is first saying something about the Son, rather than about the Mother. It affirms the Divinity of Christ. It compresses into one word all that is spelt out in the Nativity stories we hear, in the carols we sing and the cribs where we worship, in all that we ponder and contemplate, during the Christmas season.

At the same time ‘Mother of God’ is also saying something about Mary. It is from her that Jesus received His humanity, just as we all do from our mothers. No other human being could be so close to God as she, for no other human being could claim such intimate connexion to the level of biology and physiology. Therefore, our veneration of Mary is not misplaced because Mary lies at the heart of the Christian mystery, especially at the heart of the two fundamental mysteries of our salvation – His Incarnation and His death and resurrection. If Our Lord did not receive His humanity from her, then Christmas would be a lie and the resurrection would be a fairy tale. And like all true human mothers, her relationship with her Son is permanent. Our mothers never cease to be our mothers even though we may have emerged from under their nurturing care, and they do not cease to be our mothers even when they have passed on. Likewise, Mary, the Holy Theotokos, is eternally the mother of the Man who died and rose again, who now rests in the bosom of the Father, and draws us to Himself in His Body.

In these matters, our words often falter, but art can still be far more eloquent. The many depictions of the Madonna and child and of the Holy Theotokos in the East, leads to a visual contemplation of what we had been considering with mere theological concepts. These visual depictions of Our Lady demonstrate to us that we do not have to turn away from Jesus in order to see his Mother. The woman and the child forms a composite picture. One would not be complete without the other. The Mother always points us back to her Son. The way of Mary is the way to Jesus Christ. Mary is contemplating Jesus, perhaps, or indicating Him with her hand – as in the kind of Greek icon which is called hodegitria: literally ‘pointing the way’ or in the West, Our Lady of the Way. In St John's Gospel, our Lord calls Himself ‘The Way’, so there is an interesting and deliberate ambiguity here. Mary points the way by pointing to the Way that is Jesus Himself, who is our Way to the Father and also our Way of life.  Far from being a distracting alternative to Christ, devotion to Mary attaches us more firmly to Her Son.

But when we contemplate these forms of art of the Madonna and the child, it is also suggested to us that Mary encircles in her arms not just her own Son Jesus, but all those who are destined to have life in Him, the whole human race. As the New Eve she is truly Mother of all the Living, and so, is Mother of each one of us. Small wonder that she is also called ‘Mother of the Church’ by Venerable Pope Paul VI. The affinity between this Mother and her Child will lead to an extraordinary commerce between them. Between Mary and Jesus an exchange is taking place so deep that its significance is endless.  As Blessed Isaac of Stella once said in a sermon, “In the inspired scriptures, what is said in a universal sense of the virgin mother, the Church, is understood in an individual sense of the Virgin Mary, and what is said in a particular sense of the virgin mother Mary is rightly understood in a general sense of the virgin mother, the Church. When either is spoken of, the meaning can be understood of both, almost without qualification.”

At the human, biological level Mary is our precious link to the incarnate Son of God. In the order of grace, something our biological nature could not give us of itself, she is our mother. Christians have found many ways of saying this, beginning of course with meditating and experiencing the words said by Jesus while on the cross. St John provides us with this poignant picture of Jesus from the cross saying to His mother, ‘Woman, this is your son’ and then to the beloved disciple, as in completing this exchange and connexion, ‘This is your mother’. Mary is given as our mother to reverse the consequences of what happened through our primordial mother, Eve, or in Latin, ‘Eva.’ One delightful word-play in Latin thought of ‘Ave’ as in ‘Ave Maria’, the angelic greeting to Mary, is precisely the reversal of the name ‘Eva’.

And so today, we celebrate the fact that Mary is Mother of God. This title is not simply an honorific, a piece of flattery; but one of our most profound confession of faith – the child born of Mary is God, and so she who bore Him is truly deserving, through no personal merit on her part, to the most esteemed title ever granted to one of our race, ‘Mother of God.’ The honour paid to her is an honour paid to all of us. This truth is at once so outrageous, and yet so essential to our faith and to our salvation, that to deny it would be to render our faith bottomless and without foundation. And because of His mother, God saved us in Jesus as one of us: God came to share our human nature so that through His flesh and blood we might share His divine life, and He shared our human nature by entering into our human world through a human mother.  May this truth shine forth as a beacon to carry us into this New Year and into every year, until we meet our Lord face to face. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.”

As real as it can get

Solemnity of the Holy Family 2017

Christmas, like the Lunar Chinese New Year for the Chinese, seems to be a popular time when people like to get together in a spirit of festivity. It’s a chance for families to gather from far and wide to catch up on the latest. But whether people come together to celebrate the birth of our Lord, or simply get together to see each other and exchange gifts, Christmas can be a mixed time for many. When people get together, in can be as much an occasion of difficulty as joy. Old rivalries and tensions may resurface, and arguments flare up as the Christmas wine loosens the shackles of politeness and self-control. Painful memories long buried tend to emerge when you come face to face with family members which you have deliberately sought to avoid. And for others, there is the pain of loneliness arising from family breakup, the isolation brought about by mental or physical sickness. No wonder suicide rates go up. Smiling faces of people around the family dinner table and peals of laughter can seem a world away from reality.

It doesn’t help when the Feast of the Holy Family follows immediately after Christmas and the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph is set up as the benchmark for family life. How could we ever match up to this impossibly perfect standard? In fact, the family group of Jesus, Mary and Joseph can appear too good to be true, not relevant to us in the kind of world we have to live in. They seem to belong to a naive world of unreal, cut-out religious figures, so unlike the conflict and tension, deep-seated resentment and un-forgiveness that so many of us experience in our own families. So many of us would walk away with a sense of guilt that our own family lives are too messy. The painful truth is that not one of us comes from or is perfectly replicating a family that includes the Word made flesh, the Virgin conceived without sin, and the most just Joseph. Our family histories are marked by a Trinity of destruction: sin, violence and disorder.

Nowadays, we are acutely aware of the strains and stresses on family life, we know the statistics about the average time-span of recent marriages and the general decline in the birth-rate. We are alerted to marital infidelities and all kinds of violence within families. All this knowledge can make ideals seem less plausible. Perhaps the media gives realism and importance chiefly to moral weakness or sin, while showing virtue as flimsy and difficult to believe in. We are made suspicious of goodness or it is presented as boring. The goody-goody type of person is smugly and obtrusively virtuous. As for holiness, that can look glib, uninspiring and certainly of not much use in getting on with complicated lives and relationships. It doesn’t help when we have a picture of the Holy Family looking down on us with a judging smug expression and we feel like shouting back, “Come on! Get real!”

But is the Holy Family unreal? I think the Christmas story provides us with a picture that is far from our idealised perception of the Holy Family. The Holy Family, as scripture tells us, is a truly human family, a truly real family, and their story would have made a perfect script for any modern popular reality television show. Perhaps one of the most striking messages of the story of Christmas then, is that family life doesn’t always run smoothly even for this most special of families. Right from the very beginning, there is struggle, hardship, and the need for extraordinary courage and endurance in the face of these difficulties.

It is important for us to remember that the Holy Family’s life was thrown into a crisis even before the birth of Our Lord. Mary was deeply disturbed by the words of the angel Gabriel that she would bear a son though still remaining a virgin. Joseph grappled with the discovery that Mary was with child, and not his child. Shame, betrayal, and the prospect of divorce was very real. The circumstances of the birth of Jesus were not the easiest nor the healthiest. Simeon, in the Temple at Jerusalem, had baffling things to say about the child's future, and predicted that a sword would pierce Mary's soul. And he turned out to be right, when Mary stood beneath the cross of her Son. Soon after that, the peace and stillness of the manger scene is brought to an abrupt end with the news that Herod is in search of Jesus, and plans to kill Him. Joseph takes Mary and Jesus by night on a journey to safety in Egypt. They become refugees, dwelling in a strange land. Many years later, his relatives had to set out to take charge of Jesus, it being said that he was out of his mind. The Holy Family is as real as a family can get.

Therefore, the Feast of the Holy Family is not intended to make us deny the humanity of our family but to acknowledge it and even celebrate it. This is what we celebrate at Christmas: in Jesus, God unites Himself to an entire human nature.  He fully enters into human experience, with all its peaks and valleys.  And a part of that human experience, with more than its share of peaks and valleys, is family. Family life is exceedingly difficult and not even the Holy Family was spared its challenges.

For this reason, the feast of the Holy Family is not intended to make us feel bad that our families fall short of the measure of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Rather, it presents to us the fact that even the messiness of family life is part of our salvation. And our family life like that of the Holy Family is not absolute peace and perfection. The Holy Family exists in a world in which the innocents are slaughtered, in which they become migrants in Egypt, in which they lose their Son in the Temple, in which they gather around Joseph at his death, in which Mary watches her Son die upon a Cross at the hands of the Roman Empire. Even in this mess, salvation does unfold.

So, the Holy Family isn’t a postcard picture perfect family of grinning members. No, that’s not how scripture describes them. The Holy Family keeps its sustaining power and attractiveness, not least because its members and their goodness are for real. For the members of the Holy Family, there were human lives to be lived, always real and at times demanding even for Joseph, a saint, for Mary without sin, and for the incarnate Son of God. The goodness of the Holy Family was tried and tested, and is therefore true and reliable.

Yes, the Feast of the Holy Family completes the Feast of Christmas. The Church understands this because she understands that we all need to hear that the Word became flesh, forever transforming what it means to be in relationship with one another. We all need to hear that God loved us so much that God entered into the messiness of history, not as an idea but embodied in a family. We all need to hear that our salvation is inseparable from those very real obligations that we enter into as members of the human family as a whole—obligations that become gifts. We become holy not by becoming less real but that holiness is what makes us truly real.  So even in the midst of families that have been torn apart by divorce, by abuse, by sin, even in this messiness, the Word has become flesh and lived among us. This truly is the feast worth celebrating. This is the Feast of the Holy Family.