Call to Conversion

Third Sunday of Easter Year C
Pilgrimage Day 7 - Basilica of St Ignatius (Chapel of Conversion)

The theme of conversion rings within these walls. An attic was converted into a hospital room, a tormented fallen soldier is converted into a saint, or at least the beginning of one. Dreams of valour were converted into a new zeal for Christ. A mercenary soldier was converted into a missionary and charismatic reformer of the Church.

In this room, with its dark wooden beams and leaden windows, Ignatius of Loyola recovered from his grisly wounds received at the battle of Pamplona. Spirit beaten, body shattered, leg broken and mended horribly, leaving him crippled for the rest of his life, Ignatius of Loyola hovered near death for months, crying out against the cruel fate that saw his dreams of glory and honour at court all-but-extinguished. Sitting in the musty silence, the occasional creak of the centuries-old floor the only accompaniment, you can almost hear his anguished screams of pain and despair, the hushed footsteps of doctors and attendants rushing about to save his life, a life that he no longer recognised. His life would have been quite different if his body and pride had not been broken. Perhaps strength doesn't reside in having never been broken, but in the courage required to grow strong in the broken places. As surgeons would tell you, that where a bone is broken and heals, it becomes the strongest part of the bone.

Our gospel for this Sunday, also provides us with another living testimony of this truth - that we do grow stronger in grace in places where we have been broken by sin. The gospel provides us with the post end-credits of the Gospel of John, where we see a disillusioned Peter, who has abandoned his mission and vocation to return to his earlier profession, being brought to life once again by the Risen Lord. Our Lord could have gone in search of fresh candidates to continue His mission of building and tending His Church but instead chooses to return to the one who had denied Him, abandoned Him and who even now leads others astray by guiding them to return to the work of being fishers of fish rather than of men.

Both stories, that of Peter’s and Ignatius’, provide us with some important insights into the process and anatomy of conversion.

Firstly, conversion is an invitation given by our Lord to all. It’s much easier for us to think that conversion is for some, but not us. The sinner, the unbeliever, the lapsed Catholic, the one who has betrayed and hurt us - they need conversion. But not us. Heaven forbid. But conversion is a constant ever-developing process of us growing closer to the Lord. It is a call to repentance, because everyone of us are sinners. It is a call to sanctification because none of us are finished products, just work in progress. In this chapel, Ignatius experienced a conversion but it wasn’t his last experience, just the first. Likewise, though Peter seemed to have been “resurrected” and restored to his mission and vocation, scripture and tradition tells us of other instances where he would falter again, needing a wake-up call to return to his original vocation.

Secondly, the reason why the Lord calls us to conversion is because He loves us. So often we have bought into the lie that to call someone to conversion is being judgmental and unloving. In the West, conversion therapy, that is helping someone deal with delusions as regard to their sexuality, is considered a form of hate crime. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. It is precisely God’s terrific love for us that leads to the call to change, to conversion, to metanoia. God does not love us because we are already so good. Instead, He loves us in order to make us good, to bring us back to the goodness that was originally meant for us but that we have lost.

Thirdly, there is no conversion without a crisis. The Chinese term for crisis is made up of two characters – one character means danger or risk and the other, opportunity. Every crisis, therefore, is an opportunity for good, for transformative change, for strengthening of our resolve and character. So, rather than regard a crisis as a cruel curse imposed on us by a capricious God, we should view every crisis as a signpost sent by God to help us make the proper correction before it is too late. It could be as dramatic as a crisis which ends a career or a dream as in the case of Ignatius, or death of a mentor as in the case of Peter. When crisis hits, we have a choice. We can choose the path of resentment or we can choose the path of renewal.

We have passed the midway point of our pilgrimage but have we seen the change, transformation and conversion needed to complete the rest of the journey and beyond? Just like Peter, many of us may have lost sight of our calling, our initial fervour. Peter had lost sight of what Christ had originally spoken over him; that on him, the Rock, the Lord would build His church. We have lost sight of what happened at our baptism, we became living stones which are to be built into a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Failure, disillusionment and forgetfulness comes to us all. But our Lord shows us that in the resurrection, and because of the resurrection, restoration is possible. The resurrection reminds us that faith can emerge from the ashes of doubt, as life breaks forth from the prison of death. This is the foundation of our Christian hope.

The problem with many of us is that we seem to express greater faith in the severity of our brokenness than in the grace of God to restore us to wholeness. Many are afraid to look into the piercing eyes of our Lord, for fear that they may see judgment. Others believe that there is no getting up from the royal tumble down the ladder of perfection and the only option would be to stay down, stay safe, instead of getting up and risk being hit by the bullets of criticism and ridicule. But the story of Ignatius’ conversion and Peter’s restoration remind us that failure need not be the ending written for life’s script. Perhaps, if we have the courage, the hope and the faith to peer into those tender eyes of our Merciful Lord, we would catch sight of something quite different, something that would surprise us – an invitation to surrender all to Him, our heavy baggage, our burdened conscience and our broken and wounded past.

Above the altar, on one of the great beams is an inscription, both in Basque and Spanish, which translates as: “Here, Ignatius of Loyola surrendered to God”. Truly, it is surrender that this room demands. As we enter this room we too are asked - just as was Ignatius - to be prepared to surrender: to be converted, to let expectations fall away and see not just ourselves and our own needs, but the needs of the Church. Centuries ago, this room was the place where a broken, despondent St Ignatius answered God’s call to set the world on fire. And centuries before that on the shores of the lake of Galilee, our first Pope gazed into the charcoal fire and received a challenge from the Lord to rekindle the fire of mission in his heart. Their conversion led to the conversion of many in the world. Today, from this room let us go forth to keep that fire burning so that the Church and the world may be set ablaze with God’s love.

As Newborn Babes

Second Sunday of Easter
Divine Mercy Sunday

It can be a real challenge to wrap your head around the fact that this Sunday goes by many names. Some would argue – way too many. Today is the Second Sunday of Easter but it is also known as the Sunday within the Octave of Easter. In the extraordinary form and in the pre-1969 calendar, it was also called Low Sunday (in relation to last Sunday, Easter). And since the pontificate of St John Paul II, it has received this eponymous title - Divine Mercy Sunday. As we continue to pray for Pope Francis of happy memory, we too remember how mercy had been one of the major lietmotifs of his pontificate. 

But my favourite name for this Sunday is derived from the incipit of the entrance antiphon for this Sunday. Quasimodo Sunday. It is taken from 1 Peter 2:2 and in Latin, it begins with these words: “quasi modo geniti infantes” or in English, “like newborn infants.” This is the full text of the antiphon: “As newborn babes, desire the rational milk without guile, that thereby you may grow unto salvation: If so, be you have tasted that the Lord is sweet.”

The name Quasimodo Sunday may not be familiar to many of you, but the name is not unfamiliar. Sounds like an oxymoron, right? Well, if you recall Victor Hugo’s novel, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” (or the Disney animated version) you will remember that the main protagonist’s name is Quasimodo, the eponymous Hunchback of the story. For those not familiar with the storyline, this tale of love, chivalry and strange beauty is about this unlikely hero, the severely deformed hunchback, with a pristinely beautiful and innocent heart and soul, who lived in the rafters of Paris’ famous Cathedral of Notre Dame.

In Hugo’s novel, Quasimodo, rejected by his parents for his deformities, is abandoned inside Notre Dame Cathedral, at a place where orphans and unwanted children were dropped off. Monseigneur Claude Frollo, the Archdeacon, finds the child on “Quasimodo Sunday” and “called him Quasimodo; whether it was that he chose thereby to commemorate the day when he had found him, or that he meant to mark by that name how incomplete and imperfectly moulded the poor little creature was,” Hugo wrote.

In a strange way, the character Quasimodo, who risked his own life to save another whom he loves, is a type of Christ. And like Quasimodo, Christ also appears before His disciples today, arrayed not in gold and resplendent garments, but carrying the trophies of His victory on the cross - His wounds, His deformities. But unlike Quasimodo, our Lord was not born with these deformities, for He is the unblemished Paschal Lamb. These are the scars of the torture He endured for our sake. Instead of an unscarred and unblemished appearance, He chooses to retain His ugly wounds as a sign, not of His failure, but of His victory over sin and death. His wounds are supremely beautiful because they are visible marks of His love for us, the receipt for the price He had paid for us, the booty of a cosmic battle which He had fought and won for us.

Yes, in a way, all of us are incomplete and imperfectly moulded. We desire and hunger for the sacramental milk which only our Mother, the Church, can give. We have been deformed by sin, poor orphans abandoned and languishing in this Valley of Tears, waiting to be picked up by our Heavenly Father and to be adopted by Him. In His mercy, He has given us His only begotten Son, the Divine Mercy, not only to be our companion but to exchange places with us. Our Lord Jesus, the sinless and perfect Son of God, Beauty ever ancient ever new, chose to take our ugliness upon Himself in order to confer upon us the beauty of sanctifying grace. He took our sentence of death, in order to grant us the repeal of life. He has done this through the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, symbolised by the water and blood which flowed out through His wounded side, the source being His Most Sacred Heart beating in love for us.

But St Faustina also saw in that gushing spring of water and blood something else - grace and mercy. This is what she wrote: “All grace flows from mercy, and the last hour abounds with mercy for us. Let no one doubt concerning the goodness of God; even if a person’s sins were as dark as night, God’s mercy is stronger than our misery.” (Diary of St. Faustina, number 1507) Even the ugliest Quasimodos in this world can be potentially the most beautiful beings seen through the lenses of grace and mercy because “God’s mercy is stronger than misery!”

In Victor Hugo’s novel, as a group of old women hunkered over to examine the little monstrosity that had been left near the vestibule of the Cathedral, one of them remarked, “I'm not learned in the matter of children ...but it must be a sin to look at this one." Could this remark be referring to us too? This is who we were, inheritors of Original Sin, prisoners and victims of our own sinful misdeeds, deformed by our iniquities, that it would be a sin for anyone to look at us. But then, God looked upon us, not with vile disgust or hatred but with love and mercy, and His “mercy is stronger than misery.” God offered us atonement and pardon for our sins. God offered us His incalculable mercy by offering us His son to take our place on the cross. As Saint Paul assures us, “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). We have seen this God, we have tasted Him, we have been redeemed and saved through His grace and mercy, and we can proudly acclaim that we have tasted the Lord and can testify that He is sweet!

Start all over, make a new beginning

Easter Sunday

Some folks are simply morning people. They go to bed early and wake up in the wee hours of the morning while everyone else is still tucked snugly into their beds counting sheep. I’m not one of those folks. I follow a diametrically opposite regime - late nights and waking up just in time for morning rituals and Mass. I’ve often admired the members of our morning Mass animating team who get up early every morning to prepare our chapel for daily Mass and still have time to spare for morning devotions and Lauds before Mass. I guess they too would have been the first to discover the good news of what had happened on that first Easter morning, while the rest of us are still shaking off the slumber of the previous night.

Well, Mary Magdala in today’s gospel was indeed rewarded with her early morning ritual on this very day over two thousand years ago: “It was very early on the first day of the week and still dark, when Mary of Magdala came to the tomb.” Only in John’s account is Mary pictured alone. She is accompanied by other women in the other gospel accounts of the resurrection. It would make more sense for a gaggle of women, for strength lies in numbers, to make their way to this place, to a cemetery, what more a place guarded by soldiers. But St John the Evangelist is content to state that Mary made this journey alone. Perhaps, it was too early for the others or they had stayed away due to fear for their own safety. The male disciples were no where to be seen. They must be drowning in sorrow, grieving over the death of the Lord or perhaps were still held captive by fear.

Mary was there because of unfinished business. On Good Friday, we heard at the end of the long Passion reading, how our Lord was hurriedly prepared for burial, wrapped in a shroud filled with spices, “a mixture of myrrh and aloes.” In the other gospels, it was noted that it was done in such a hurry because the sabbath, which prohibited such rituals, was about to begin and there was no time to complete what needed to be done. Whatever may have been the circumstances, Mary was there because she had unfinished business. Firstly, to complete in a more thorough manner the dictates of Jewish burial customs and secondly, to bring some closure to her own profoundly deep sense of loss.

Mary was there early in the morning just as we are here this morning because it is insufficient to close an episode of our lives after the death of a loved one with his or her funeral. Sometimes we believe that if the person who hurt us passes away, like a parent or spouse, their death will bring peace to our lives. However, in reality it usually brings more sorrow and regret because it leaves us with a sense of things being left unfinished. Funerals can be beautifully consoling experiences, bringing solace to the grieving, camaraderie among the survivors, healing to scars opened by the barb of loss, but it can never truly bring a closure to the wounds we experience both emotionally and psychologically.

If funerals are the last thing we can do for the one we have lost, there is much unfinished business that needs attention and further resolution. Our commemoration of the Lord’s life cannot end with Good Friday. It must find fulfilment and completion on Easter Sunday. And that is why Good Friday is leavened with the promise of Easter. Easter is when our Lord completes His work of redemption. On Easter, our Lord completes the unfinished business often left hanging in our lives.

There’s a song from one of my favourite artists from the 80s and 90s, Tracy Chapman, that has a stanza in it that goes like this:

“The whole world’s broke, it ain’t worth fixing
It’s time to start all over, make a new beginning
There’s too much pain, too much suffering
Let’s resolve to start all over, make a new beginning.”

Easter means the “making right” of things that have gone wrong: the forgiveness of sins; the reversal of death; the repair of broken relationships with God, each other and creation. This is not just an elusive ideal but a reality. Christ’s resurrection has made this certain. This is the powerful message of Easter that continues to unravel its mysteries over the course of our lives. This is what we look forward to, a new creation. A transformation. We will not merely be going back to normal, we will be going forward to something different, something new. It’s an illusion to think that we’re going to return to the way life was before. There is no going back. The past is an empty tomb. Our Lord is Risen, He is not there!

What unfinished business is waiting for us? Is it a conversation we’ve been afraid to have with someone? Is it a decision we’ve been putting off? Is it a relationship with someone that needs mending? Today’s message is really that none of these questions need receive a silent answer nor lead us to a dead end. We are challenged once again to engage the unfinished business before us and live the resurrection—through the actions we can take, attitudes we can adopt, ready to allow the Lord to write the next chapter in our own gospel. And also, ready to discover how the risen Jesus is present NOW, in our time and place. As St Paul assures us, be “confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil 1:6). Christ IS risen. He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

The Ultimate Reboot

Easter Vigil of the Holy Night

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Drama of our Salvation

Good Friday

Why are many folks, who do not understand a single word of Korean, glued to every episode of a Korean drama and would even skip meals, family time and church, so as not to miss the next intriguing episode? The short and simple answer is the drama - the drama that sucks the viewer into the very scene, the emotions of the characters, the perplexity, twist and turn of the plot playing out on the screen.

Today’s passion reading is like that. We are sucked into the drama of the narrative as we even assume the role and the voices of the blood thirsty crowd in a kind of liturgical flash mob. Perhaps, with greater intensity because it is based on “true events” and the protagonist is not some actor playing a role but the Son of God Himself, in the flesh. Like every well-written drama, within the Passion account, we find every kind of human emotion expressed. There is jealousy, betrayal, anger, fear, hypocrisy, falsification of truth, perjury, failure or denial of justice, abandonment, torture, death – and within this, a Love of an impossible kind, a love that binds and unites.

But unlike the actors who are merely acting on the silver screen for our entertainment, all the characters of the Passion story are real. Every word, every action, every accusation, every spit, every slap, every nail, every scourge, every drop of blood or opened wound was real - no one was play acting and none of these were mere props. Our Lord was not acting. He truly suffered the violence inflicted on Him by His enemies, the betrayal directed against Him by His own disciples, and the death which was imposed on Him by the Roman authorities at the behest of the Jewish religious leadership. If it was all just acting, we would just have sighed with relief and praised the actors for a starling performance. But because it was all real, we have reason to be thankful for our sins have really been forgiven, the guilt we have incurred has really been lifted and Death which pursues every man and woman has really been defeated.

The passion narrative of Good Friday is full of movement and action - sitting, fleeing, sleeping, standing. But it is the standing which takes the cake. Many of you may have felt the pressure on your legs building up as you stood throughout the passion gospel reading. In my younger days as a priest, I used to issue a preliminary instruction that doesn’t appear in the rubrics to ask everyone who couldn’t stand that long, to remain seated. I used to think it was plain mindless superstition that no one took that instruction seriously and kept standing, both old and young. It was my hubris disguised as compassion that saw them in this light. Today, a bit wiser and humbled by a tad bit more experience, I have come to realise that it is not stubborn foolishness but loving devotion that kept people standing as they heard and participated in the drama of the passion narrative. Unlike the disciples who fled in fear, you have decided to stand with Jesus, and to stand for Him, as did a few women and St John, the Beloved Disciple.

We hear in the text, and only here in the Gospel of St John, “Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala … and the disciple he loved standing near her.” Not standing at a distance like in St Mark’s account, but here beside the cross, up close and personal. So close that they were within hearing range of the last words of Christ and that John could later write that he was an eyewitness of the events and did not come to this knowledge through hearsay. They were so close that they were within range of the insults, ridicule and rage hurled at our Lord and perhaps subjecting themselves too to the risk of being arrested and similarly sentenced. It took courage. But more importantly, it took love. Perfect love casts out all fear!

I take this position of standing, as the highlight and climax of our participation in the drama of Good Friday. It is no wonder that the primary devotion for Lent is the Way of the Cross, where we pause (or at least done by the priest and servers) and stand before each Station of the Cross. The word “station” comes from the Latin “statio.” And the word statio derives from the Latin verb sto, “to stand” and signified how early Christians gathered and “stood with” the local clergy, bishop, patriarch or the pope himself in prayer. Statio also was a Roman military term meaning “military post.” Like soldiers we stand. Wasn’t it Moses who instructed the Israelites with these words when they were pursued by the Egyptian army: “Stand firm, and you will see what the Lord will do to save you today …The Lord will do the fighting for you: you have only to keep still’? Statio, therefore, also means a vigilant commitment to conversion and to prayer.

So, on this day as we commemorate the Passion and Death of our Lord, as we reenact the whole drama of salvation, let us imitate Mary, the Beloved Disciple and the other women as they stood by the cross. Though the story of our Lord’s passion is filled with betrayal, jealousy and false accusations, patterns we recognise in our own lives, behaviours which destroy and rip apart relationships, the last act of our Lord on the cross is to bring reconciliation and union. Despite the barbs that had been hurled at Him, wounds which would have hardened the hearts of the strongest men to become resentful and loveless, He pours out His last act of love on these two individuals representing His Church and brought them together in an inseparable bond of fraternity and maternity. “Woman, this is your son.” “This is your mother.”

Today we DON’T celebrate death, we celebrate the life we receive through the cross. We celebrate that Jesus waits high on His cross to take away our death, whether it be physical, moral, or mental. The Church has endured much drama. Each of us who are members of the Body of Christ have endured much drama - betrayal, envy, false accusations and loss. And yet, the story does not end in failure, defeat and resentment. If we choose to stand with our Lord to the very end because we have not decided to flee out of fear or self-preservation, or walked away out of boredom, or decided to leave early because we think the story is over, we will see the amazing ending of the story. The story ends with reconciliation, not disintegration. But even that is not the real ending.

If you do not return tomorrow and the day after, you would have missed the most important post-credits that really define the whole story and unravel the mystery of what you’ve witnessed today. While you may be currently struggling with some crisis or other, in your prayerfulness, in your life, turn over everything to the Lord. Your pain, your hurts, your loss, your addiction, your crisis - turn all that “drama,” turn everything over to the Lord. In these uncertain times: Remember, Death is defeated. Only Jesus has the power. Only His love is stronger than death. Don’t take my word for it. Come back tomorrow night or on Sunday and see for yourself.

The Towel and the Cross

Maundy Thursday

Some people are so good at talking big but fall short in delivery. When push comes to shove, they will easily bend and break. This is what we witness in the gospel. Our first Pope whom the Lord Himself declares as a rock-hard foundation to His church, changes his position not because of some profound enlightenment but melts under pressure. One can’t help but laugh at the 180 degrees turn of St Peter, from refusing to accept the Lord’s offer to wash his feet, to clamouring for a full-body bath!

First, he starts with this: “You shall never wash my feet.” We may even suspect that his refusal was just fake shocked indignation at best, or false humility at worst. And as for the turnaround, doesn’t it seem to be some form of histrionic over-exaggeration on his part? “Not only my feet, but my hands and my head as well!” In both instances, St Peter had misunderstood our Lord’s intention and the significance of His action. And in both instances, his incomprehension and misstep had given our Lord an opportunity to make a teaching point.

Let us look at the first response given by our Lord to Peter when he refused to allow his feet to be washed: “If I do not wash you, you can have nothing in common with me.” A superficial reading of this statement may lead us to conclude that our Lord was just asking Peter and all of us to imitate His humility in serving others. This may be the message at the end of the passage, where our Lord says: “If I, then, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you should wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you.” But the words of our Lord in His response to Peter’s refusal to have his feet washed, goes further than that.

What is this thing which makes us “in common” with our Lord? In other words, what does it mean to have “fellowship” with Him? It is clear that it cannot just mean menial service, but rather the sacrifice of our Lord on the cross. This statement actually highlights the relationship between the foot-washing and the cross. The foot-washing signifies our Lord’s loving action and sacrifice on the cross. If foot-washing merely cleans the feet of the guest who has come in from the dusty streets, our Lord’s sacrifice on the cross will accomplish the cleansing of our sins which we have accumulated from our sojourn in this sin-infested world. Peter must yield to our Lord’s loving action in order to share in His life, which the cross makes possible.

The foot-washing may also be a deliberate echo of the ritual of ablutions, washing of hands and feet, done by the priests of the Old Covenant, before they performed worship and offered sacrifices in the Temple. This may explain Peter’s further request to have both his feet and head washed by the Lord. Without him knowing it, he may have inadvertently referred to his own ordination as a priest of the New Covenant. It is fitting that the washing of feet occurs while the Apostles are entrusted with the Eucharist. No priesthood, no Eucharist - it’s as simple as that.

“No one who has taken a bath needs washing, he is clean all over.” Our Lord was not just making a common-sense statement that those who are clean have no need for further cleansing, but an allusion to the Sacraments which leave an indelible mark on their recipients, two in particular - baptism (confirmation) and Holy Orders. Our Lord’s words resonate with two popular Catholic axioms: “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic” and “once a priest, always a priest.” There is no need for re-baptism or re-ordination even if the person had lapsed. What is needed is confession.

This second set of words also points to the efficacy and sufficiency of what our Lord did on the cross. Christ’s bloody sacrifice on Calvary took place once and for all, and it will never be repeated, it need not be repeated because it cannot be repeated. To repeat His sacrifice would be to imply that the original offering was defective or insufficient, like the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament that could never take away sins. Jesus’ offering was perfect, efficacious, and eternal.

The Holy Mass is a participation in this one perfect offering of Christ on the cross. It is the re-presentation of the sacrifice on the cross; here “re-presentation” does not mean a mere commemoration or a fresh new sacrifice each time the Mass is celebrated, but making “present” the one sacrifice at Calvary. The Risen Christ becomes present on the altar and offers Himself to God as a living sacrifice. Like the Mass, Christ words at the Last Supper are words of sacrifice, “This is my body . . . this is my blood . . . given up for you.” So, the Mass is not repeating the murder of Jesus, but is taking part in what never ends: the offering of Christ to the Father for our sake (Heb 7:25, 9:24). After all, if Calvary didn’t get the job done, then the Mass won’t help. It is precisely because the death of Christ was sufficient that the Mass is celebrated. It does not add to or take away, from the work of Christ—it IS the work of Christ.

When the Lord tells us: “I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you,” it is not just the ritual of foot-washing that He is asking us to imitate. Our Lord is most certainly pointing to His work of salvation on the cross which He offers to us as a gift through the Sacraments. Some people continue to resist Christ because they do not consider themselves sinful enough to require Him to wash them in Baptism or the Sacrament of Penance. Others have the opposite problem: they stay away because they are too ashamed of their lives or secret sins. To both, our Lord and Master gently but firmly speaks these words as He did to Peter: “If I do not wash you, you can have nothing in common with me.”

A Time to Keep Silent, A Time to Speak Out

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord

One of the most important pieces of advice someone would give us is “make your voice be heard.” Whether it is to express your opinion at a meeting, or speaking up in class, or starting a podcast to air your views or participating in a demonstration in support of some political cause, making your voice heard seems to be a reasonably good piece of advice.

On this first day of Holy Week, we Christians are reminded of our fundamental duty to make our voices heard, not in the sense of self-promotion or drawing attention to oneself, nor in seeking to influence others and win them over to our side, but that we may proclaim the wonders of God’s work.

In the first gospel reading we heard before the entrance procession, the Pharisees were complaining that the disciples and crowd who were welcoming our Lord to Jerusalem were making a ruckus by shouting and singing. They told the Lord: “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” In other words, they were asking our Lord to tell them: “be quiet.” This noisy behaviour, in their own estimation, was not the behaviour of pious disciples of a holy rabbi but sounded more like a gang of loud drunken sailors. Our Lord, instead of bending to pressure, doubles down and defends His disciples by commending them: “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah declares that the Lord Himself had given him “a disciple’s tongue.” It is not a glib tongue that will earn him fans or popular support. In fact, what he says at the behest of God would prove so unpopular that he would be the subject of rejection, ridicule and persecution. The image of the Suffering Servant who remains faithful to his mission in the face of adversity becomes an apt figure for the future Messiah. Our Lord’s own passion would be the fulfilment of the words of Isaiah: “I offered my back to those who struck me, my cheeks to those who tore at my beard; I did not cover my face against insult and spittle.” Despite such taunting, torture and opposition, the servant remains steadfast in mission to “speak out” on behalf of the Lord because he knows that with the Lord’s help, no insult would hurt him.

The theme of speaking out is contrasted with its counterpart of remaining silent. St Paul in the second reading paints this beautiful picture of the One who is God humbling Himself to such an extent of assuming the lowly state of a slave. His humility would go so far as to accept the penalty of death even though He is the Deathless God. The Word of God whom chaos could not silence at the beginning of creation chooses to mute Himself out of love and obedience to the Father’s will. What should our response be in knowing this truth, the truth that God’s greatest act in history would be in becoming small? Our silence is not an option. St Paul tells us that “every tongue should acclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” His decision to become human has not compromised His divinity. On the contrary, His humiliation in death is the very reason we acknowledge His glory as Lord and God.

In the lengthy passion gospel reading that we just heard, we notice our Lord’s response to those around Him. From the scene of the Last Supper to His lifeless body being taken down from the cross, we see a man who is very much in charge though others assume that they have taken charge of Him. Sometimes He speaks and sometimes He chooses to remain silent. As the narrative progresses, notice that our Lord eventually chooses to remain silent especially when He is accused, ridiculed and mocked. But our Lord does not cease speaking directly to His Heavenly Father. The Father, however, remains silent throughout this soliloquy. The one exception to our Lord’s silence is when He promises salvation to the good thief who was crucified with Him. As His life expired on the cross, His final words summed up His entire life and mission. Once again, addressed solely to the Heavenly Father: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” At the end, instead of ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ as we would hear in Mark’s Passion, Luke’s Jesus Himself tranquilly yields His life into the Father’s hands, obediently completing His Father’s will.

How different our Lord’s response at His trials and crucifixion is from ordinary human nature. Even when we have done something wrong and know we are wrong, still the first words that tend to form in our mouths are words of excuses and self-defence. And what about when we are right but are blamed for being wrong? Most of us would be quick to speak up and protest our innocence. It’s just human nature to want to speak up and justify ourselves. But our Lord met His accusers with silence, as had the prophet Isaiah written seven hundred years ago, “He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opens not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). He held back any words that would have relieved Him from the shame and blame of sin. He was not a sinner, but He took fully the sinner’s place. Thank God that Jesus was willing to be counted a sinner before men, that we might be counted as righteous before God! Thank God, He chose to speak up on our behalf, even though His own disciples chose to remain silent in His hour of need.

Our Lord reveals the truth behind this paradox first announced by the philosopher king: “A time to keep silence, And a time to speak” (Eccles 3:7-8). Our Lord provides us with a model to follow and imitate. There is a time to remain silent and a time to speak up. We need to seek wisdom from the Holy Spirit as to when it’s time for each response. When it comes to ourselves, do remember that we do not need to have the last word or pursue any argument to vindicate ourselves. God is our vindicator if indeed we were unfairly maligned. But when you are given the opportunity to testify to who Jesus is and your faith in Him, don’t hesitate to honour Him with your words and your testimony. Even if you’re treated in a similar manner to the treatment He endured, honour Him with your lips, your lifestyle, and the lasting impression you leave upon those you interact with in this world. 

Hosanna! “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!”