The Voice of the Shepherd

Fourth Sunday of Easter Year A
Good Shepherd Sunday

Preparing a homily can be a real uphill task. Not because we lack inspiration or the words of scripture are dull and uninspiring. On the contrary, there is so much fodder in scriptures to build upon. The real challenge is our audience and their receptivity or lack of it: Do I tell them what they want to hear or do I tell them the truth?

Sadly, in our culture today, these two options are often mutually exclusive. The truth is hard to hear, so we prefer to hear what we like, even if it’s not what we need. Ours is an age that flourishes in compromise, steadfastness to the truth is hardly tolerated. Thus, the pastor is often faced with tension of either preaching the uncomfortable truth of God’s Word or watering it down to make it more agreeable to the listener. As it says in 2 Timothy 4:3, “The time is sure to come when people will not accept sound teaching, but their ears will be itching for anything new and they will collect themselves a whole series of teachers according to their own tastes.” Sadly, we are living in such times!

Here’s the paradox of preaching: If I were to tell the audience what they do not wish to hear, would I risk not having my voice recognised as the sheep recognises the voice of the shepherd? Or if I choose to pander to the crowd and tell them what they want to hear, am I not robbing them of their right to receive “sound teaching”? In this sense, would I not be more a “brigand”, a robber, than a shepherd?

On this Good Shepherd Sunday, I want to set out several uncomfortable topics which are listed by the readings as sine qua non to the preacher’s arsenal of homiletic themes. As much as these topics seem unpopular and triggering, they provide the necessary nutritious sustenance to our hungering flock. To provide them with anything less or innovatively different would either be to starve them of solid spiritual food or provide them with theological indigestion.

First on the list is everyone’s favourite - Sin! Now you may think that this is stating the obvious - isn’t sin one of the essential themes of religion? It is but the truth is that in recent times, most of us attempt to skirt the topic or try to soften it by using some wish-washy euphemistic substitute. We preach consoling, encouraging and invigorating sermons but avoid making mention of sin because we fear that this would make our audience uncomfortable. We have transformed our funerals into rituals of canonisation whilst ignoring the fact that one of the main reasons for a funeral is that the deceased sinner needs us to pray FOR him and not pray TO him. We hide sin under the cover of every psychological concept or newly minted syndrome, thus taking away all culpability and liability from the individual.

So many, including many shepherds, have forgotten this simple truth - if we ignore sin, salvation is meaningless. The good news of the Lord’s death and resurrection means nothing if we don’t have a clear picture of our desperate sinful condition. Christ came to save us from our sins, not just to inspire us and make us feel good. Many of us priests have forgotten that we are called to be shepherds of souls and not just motivational speakers or counsellors. St Peter in the first reading fully understood his role as a shepherd of souls - convicting his audience of their sins, calling them to repentance, and saw his mission as participating in Christ’s mission to save his audience from this “perverse generation.” In saving souls, he knew he had to risk losing his audience’s approval and even far worse, losing his own life, which he did.

The second topic is suffering and the cross. Now, most people are keenly aware of their own sufferings and that of others. This often leads either to resentment or despair. One of the most common manifestations of narcissism is playing the victim: “poor me!” We complain that we have received a raw deal despite our attempts in following Christ and obeying His commandments. The reason for our complaints is that we expect to be rewarded. Many Protestant pastors would, therefore, choose to offer a Christianity without the cross - what is pejoratively known as the “gospel of prosperity” - and sad to say, many Catholic preachers have likewise jumped on the same bandwagon. The popularity of the prosperity gospel is understandable. Who would not wish for an alleviation of one’s pains and sufferings? The gospel which preaches the cross as inevitable is naturally unpopular.

And yet, this is what we must do, as St Peter spells out in the second reading: “The merit, in the sight of God, is in bearing punishment patiently when you are punished after doing your duty. This, in fact, is what you were called to do, because Christ suffered for you and left an example for you to follow the way he took.” The truth is that we all suffer to a greater or lesser degree, whether we like or not. But how we suffer and what we do with that suffering makes all the difference. Suffering for a Christian is a priceless opportunity to draw close to the suffering Christ, to carry His cross and consciously share in His redemptive suffering.

Third, the Good Shepherd offers us objective truth instead of just one opinion or direction or path among many. Living in an increasingly globalised and multicultural society, there is a great temptation to just succumb to the heresy of relativism - that all truths - even those which seem to contradict each other - are equally valid. Ironically, the heresy of relativism has been established as a new form of orthodoxy, and anyone who disagrees with this position would be summarily cancelled, the modern version of excommunication. The gospel provides us, however, with an important but uncomfortable truth - in a marketplace of ideas, only the Good Shepherd, the true Shepherd, can offer us saving truth “so that they may have life and have it to the full.” Beware of false teachers who pander to our “itching ears” and give us what is according to our respective “tastes.”

Now if this is what we shepherds are called to do by virtue of our vocation as pastors, shepherds, what does your vocation entail? Being described as “sheep” doesn’t sound flattering. In fact, it often invokes an image of mindless clique behaviour, having to be sorted out, constantly losing our way, and having to be minded and controlled by others. Unlike the parables involving shepherds and sheep found in the Synoptic Gospels, St John provides us with a more nuanced and mature image of the sheep. His are the sheep which recognise the voice of the shepherd and knows how to distinguish between counterfeits and the real thing. His are sheep that are so tuned in to their shepherd that they will follow him, trusting him that he will bring them to no harm. His are the sheep who understand that they will enjoy true freedom only when they submit themselves to the authority of the Shepherd. And they do so knowing that only the Good Shepherd alone can offer them “life and have it to the full.” As your priests, we too are not exempt from being sheep within the fold of Jesus the Good Shepherd. As we pray for our shepherds in the church, the bishops and priests, that they will take after the heart of the Good Shepherd, let us also pray for ourselves that we will all have the confidence and faith to place our lives in the hands of the One who alone has assured us that we will be safe.

The Road which leads to the Eucharist

Third Sunday of Easter Year A

Today’s gospel reading is a bit of an anomaly, a departure from what we would have expected. In Cycle A of the lectionary, the gospel selections are normally taken from the Gospel of St Matthew and in the season of Lent and Easter, we are also treated to passages from the Fourth Gospel, that of St John’s. But today, we are given this famous passage taken from the Gospel of St Luke. It’s the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Their faith had died along with the man whom they had trusted and followed. At the beginning of the story, the two are weighed down by the heavy spectre of death, like an albatross hung around their necks … the power of the resurrection had yet to touch them.

This story, therefore, connects our Lord’s story with ours. His resurrection is not just a one-off event exclusively experienced by Him alone. The resurrection is often viewed primarily as the awesome miracle that validates the teachings of Christ and vindicates Him against His accusers. But it is more than such crowning evidence – much more. Through faith, His resurrection can become ours - and we see this amazing phenomena in the story of the road to Emmaus.

These two disciples, like so many of Jesus’ followers, were trying to make sense of their pain and loss. Their walk to Emmaus must have felt like a walk in the desert, in the darkness of death, where hope had been abandoned. The reason why this story resonates with so many of us is because we have been there in that dark place, walking, trudging along as we drag our feet through the valley of death and tears. That is the condition of humankind unable to find hope when they have not encountered the Risen Christ. There is no need for me to remind you that life is full of contradictions, pain, and a lack of answers. There is unimaginable darkness in this world, and we often seem to have to face it alone.

The death of Jesus on the cross was the epitome of all the contradictions and evil, for if there was going to be a solution and an end to our despair, it would be in the hands of the Saviour that God had sent to us. But as far as the disciples are concerned, He is dead. If our Saviour is dead, then there is no hope.

And so on this path of darkness, our Lord appears to them and accompanies them. He recounts the whole story again, but this time invites them to enter into that story and walk with Him, as He walks along with them. He helps them see that the entire fabric of scripture is focused on Him, finds fulfillment in Him and can only be understood in Him. Here we see the amazing Spirit inspired gift of story-telling – a story of contrast – as these disciples walk home, the evening draws near and it gets darker. But in terms of their faith, as the Lord begins to expound on the scriptures and open their minds to the secrets therein, their faith becomes brighter.

But the moment of recognition will not come at the end of this long biblical exposition. It must have been an exceedingly long sermon because it would have been preached from morning till late evening. Most of you would not have been able to sit quietly through a 10 minute homily by the priest each Sunday - perhaps the solution is not found in making the homily shorter, but longer! The Word of God must ultimately lead to the Sacrament. It is in the Eucharist that the Word becomes flesh. And so, St Luke is using the very same words which he had used in Chapter 22 to describe the Eucharistic meal. At the table, He took the bread, and blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.

It is in the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ that He gives Himself fully to them. It is in the communion of this broken Body, that they can truly meet the Risen Christ. The opening of the Scriptures was necessary, but it was not sufficient. The Word must lead to the Sacrament because we can only find the Risen Lord fully and be in full communion with Him in the meal of the kingdom, the bread of life, the manna from heaven, the medicine of immortality. The Word of God did not become a book of dead words. The Word became flesh, dwelt among us and now feeds us with His flesh and blood in the Eucharist. By faith, we eat and drink Christ so that eternal life is given to us.

It is here in the Eucharist that we find comfort and renewal from the despair of death, darkness and hopelessness – because in the Mass we are taken to heaven and heaven is brought to us. Heaven and earth meet together in the very Body and Blood of our Risen Lord. If we fully grasp this truth, we can then understand the great tragedy of many Catholics who have chosen not to return to church or who consistently miss Masses on Sundays. They are not just denied the sustenance of a sacred meal. In fact, they deny themselves the only food that can bring them to heaven. Here and at every Mass, we find light in darkness, life in the midst of death, victory in the brokenness, and the sure hope of our resurrection, because we have partaken in the very flesh of the One who was put to death but now, is alive again. May we always recognise Him in the breaking of bread and the sharing of His Body and Blood.

Touch these wounds

Second Sunday of Easter Year A

Our story provides us with a paradoxical contrast - closed doors but open wounds. How we wish it was the other way around? The idea of closed doors suggests that it is a done deal, there is no longer any room for negotiation, that time has run out. In the synoptic gospels, we have the parable of the ten bridesmaids, five wise and the remaining foolish, with the latter being turned out of the party because of their folly and lack of preparation. When they returned from their shopping trip, they were confronted with the painful reality of closed doors - they were too late and judgment has already been delivered.

We can imagine a similar scenario in today’s passage. The disciples of the Lord could only live with regret - the regret of following a man who could have been the Messianic King, the regret of not following Him to the very end, the regret of turning their backs on Him, with one denying Him and the other betraying Him. The closed doors symbolised their predicament. They had closed the doors of their hearts to their master and now they deserved to have God closed His doors of mercy on them, or at least this is what they thought. Despite the doors of the Upper Room and their hearts were shut and locked, the Lord Jesus came in anyway. The stone which blocked the tomb could not keep Him in. Neither could these flimsy wooden doors keep Him out. That is the power of Divine Mercy.

Several things happened on this day. Our Lord breathed the Holy Spirit on to His disciples and offered them the gift of peace which the world cannot give. Our Lord offered them pardon and mercy for their betrayal, courage in place of their fear, peace to their troubled hearts, and the Holy Spirit, the advocate to be their “forever” companion. But there was one more thing He offered them on this day. He offered them the gift of His wounds, the one thing which would have shamed them to their core, because these were the most condemning evidence of their lack of commitment and cowardly betrayal.

Christ came to these disciples with His opened wounds. He could have concealed them under layers of clothing, He could have cauterised and healed them without leaving any trace of a scar. But He left them visible and opened. The Glorified Lord carried the marks of His passion. His resurrection did not obliterate these signs of His great act of self-sacrifice. This is because the wounds of His crucifixion are the means by which we are saved. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, “whereas he was being wounded for our rebellions, crushed because of our guilt; the punishment reconciling us fell on him, and we have been healed by his bruises” (Isaiah 53:5). We cannot know who Jesus is without seeing His wounds. We cannot understand Jesus without understanding the significance of His wounds. His identity is tied to His passion and death. His wounds are the marks by which humanity is reconciled to God. His wounds are a testimony to the mercy of God towards humanity, a mercy beyond our comprehension. You have to see it to believe it.

Those wounds on the Body of the Glorified and Risen Lord teach us several things. First, they show that this Jesus is not a ghost but a real flesh-and-blood Person. Second, they serve as powerful reminders of the great love of God for us, a love so great that in Christ God died, so that our sins might be forgiven. Third, those wounds illustrate the continuity between the earthly life and ministry of Jesus and His eternal high priesthood, by which He lives to make continual intercession for us before His Heavenly Father (cf. Heb 7:25).

It is not by accident that St Thomas comes to faith, not by simply seeing an apparition of Jesus, but only after being instructed to pay heed to those sacred wounds, which are not scars of defeat and ignominy but, as the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich puts it, noble “tokens of victory and love.” This is why medieval art will show Christ at the Last Judgment showing us once again those sacred wounds. What purpose do they serve? When we meet Christ face to face on Judgment Day, He will look just as He did during that first Easter season: We will behold Him in glory, but a glory that still teaches us the price of sin. Seeing His wounds on that day will bring us to the full awareness of what our sins have done and this will either move us to loving gratitude as expressed by all the saints in heaven or to utter shame and unrepentant guilt in the fires of hell. No one can stay neutral in the face of these wounds. We will either experience mercy and forgiveness or be condemned to despair by our shame and guilt.

But our Lord’s wounds are not confined to the visible parts of His body, His hands and feet and His side which would have necessitated the lifting of His tunic. The biggest wound is the wound to His heart. In his account of the crucifixion, St John alone among the evangelists tells us: “One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.” (Jn. 19:34) This was a pivotal moment of revelation for St John. The wound at His side was not a superficial flesh wound. The spear penetrated deep into the very core of our Lord - His heart.

What we can only imagine with our mind’s eye is now made visible in the iconic image of the Divine Mercy. The image opens a mystical door into the inner core of His being, allowing us a peek into what remains a mystery. It shows the pierced heart of the Lord from which the streams of red and white light flow, representing the blood and water which the evangelist saw. This is the grace of salvation flowing upon humanity. The piercing of the heart was the means by which the floodgates of mercy were opened upon a sinful, broken and suffering humanity. The piercing of our Lord’s heart gave us the two foundational sacraments which made the Church and makes us members of the Church - Baptism and the Eucharist.

Devotion to the holy image of the Divine Mercy as our Lord communicated to St Faustina is not just confined to His handsome and beautiful visage. It is also an invitation to gaze upon His wounds, both visible and hidden. Contemplating the wounds of Jesus can move cold and obstinate hearts. It can bring about conversion. It can open doors that are sealed shut by our obstinacy. It can heal wounds that have been opened by our sins and the sins of others.

As the Lord said to Thomas, He says to us, “Put your hands into the holes that the nails have made.” These holes are the wounds by which we are saved. These holes are the wounds by which we are healed. These holes are the means by which My Divine Mercy will be poured forth upon humanity. Don’t be afraid to touch these wounds and believe. Touch these wounds and be moved. Touch these wounds and hear our Lord’s accompanying words: “Peace be with you”, “your sins are forgiven” and “I am sending you.” Touch these wounds and like Thomas, bow in adoration while professing: “My Lord and my God... I trust in you!"

Christos Anesti! Alithos Anesti!

Easter Sunday 

Alleluia! He is Risen!
Indeed He is Risen!

This is the antiphonal Paschal Greeting which Christians had for centuries used to greet each other on Easter Day and during the Easter season. The first part was the greeting, to which the recipient will reply with the second part. Though it is no longer practised among Catholics these days, this continues to be a widely practised custom by our Eastern brethren: "Christos Anesti! Alithos Anesti!". The greeting is imbued with the Easter excitement and joy that the Lord is risen, that He has conquered death, that all His promises made to His disciples are validated and that life, not death, has the final word.

But for many, the excitement and joy of Easter seem absolutely foreign. Anxiety seems to be the great problem of our age, both individually and collectively. Fortunes are made selling medications and providing therapies to help people overcome their fears, anxieties, phobias, and neuroses.

If ours is an age of anxiety, it is because it is an age in which the Lord Jesus is either not known or not believed. He may be talked about—dozens of books may be written about Him and hours upon hours of television and radio programming may be devoted to Him, but in practical terms, how Jesus lived and died, and what He taught about how to live and die, have negligible impact on the course of world events. In a recent podcast interview, the grandfather of the podcast movement, Adam Curry, was explaining to the atheist Joe Rogan on the latter’s show how he had embraced Christianity. Joe had found the topic interesting enough to feature it on his show, but like so many folks of modern times, could not make the connexion between faith and reality. He could not understand the former’s “leap of faith.”

Why are Christian beliefs considered alien to many? Why is Easter still a mystery, only to be reduced to popular cultural symbols of bunnies and eggs? St Paul gives us this answer: “How can they believe in Him of whom they have not heard?” (Romans 10:14) Christians claim to believe in Jesus, but don’t believe Him or take Him at His word, the living Christ has become all but invisible to the world. Because Christians continue to try to be the guardians of their own existences, instead of being the extension in time and space of the body of the Crucified One, the God who wants to protect them has become unknown to the rest of humanity, which consequently continues to look for a saviour - Another wonder drug? Another technology? Another political ideology or economic theory? Another political leader or commercial whiz-kid billionaire? Another messiah?

We have experimented with so many ideas, things and persons but none of them is able to deliver ultimate human fulfillment or ultimate security against death. What the world is in particular need of today is the credible witness of people enlightened in mind and heart by the word of the Lord, touched by the power of the resurrection, who have seen the empty tomb and recognised its meaning and are capable of opening the hearts and minds of many to the desire for God and for true life, life without end.

When we sing our great paschal anthem, “Christ is risen,” we note that Jesus “has given life,” not survival, “to those in the tombs.” For the past three years, we have been taught and we have learnt that survival – our own individual survival and that of our loved ones and even of the human race is paramount and is dependent on a prescription of masking, social distancing and vaccinations. We were even willing to forgo and sacrifice our religious obligations, that which guaranteed eternal life, for a few more years of surviving this earthly existence. But, many of us have forgotten that it is Eternal Life, not survival, that our Lord teaches. It is life, real life, true life, Eternal Life that only God can give, that enables us to live in joy and to experience the “peace that surpasses all understanding,” and which can take us beyond this “valley of tears.” Nothing can substitute for it, and it can only be accessed by faith.

Recently, a tragic shooting in a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, by a crazed transgender individual, had shocked Americans from both sides of the political aisle, though both had divergent views on the cause of this tragedy and the remedy which would prevent such future madness. Three adults and three 9 year old children, including the daughter of the pastor whose church ran the school, were killed. The one line statement of the father sums up the faith of Christians: “Through tears we trust that she is in the arms of Jesus who will raise her to life once again.” Christians are not immune to tragedy and loss, even for a father who is a Christian pastor. But Christians possess something which others do not. Christians possess an Easter faith that doesn’t take away the pain but gives us the ability to handle the pain; a faith that doesn’t always take you out of the storm, but calms you in the midst of the storm.

Yes, the life we celebrate today, the life which Christ has won for us through His death and resurrection, is more than just survival, or a life free of troubles, pain, ailments or failures. It is everlasting life. This is the life worth living and worth dying for. This is our hope and it is this which gives us the courage to face the uncertainties of the future and the dark shadows of the past.

Every nation has an anthem, a song to sing to inspire its followers and keep their hearts afloat in difficult times. Our Church too, has an anthem, the anthem of our resistance to evil, death and despair. It is an anthem so short, but so powerful, that it can be, and indeed is, repeated many, many times as we observe what Christ has done for us:

Alleluia! He is Risen! 

Indeed He is Risen!

O Happy Fault O Necessary Sin of Adam

Easter Vigil of the Holy Night

O truly necessary sin of Adam,
Destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
O happy fault that earned so great,
So glorious a Redeemer

Do you recognise this line? You should. It is found in the Exsúltet (the Easter Proclamation) sung at the beginning of this Vigil service. Perhaps, most people would have missed it unless you caught the oxymoronic contradiction found in two expressions: “necessary sin” and “happy fault”. If we consider sin as abhorrent to God and something which separates us from Him, what ‘sin’ could be considered ‘necessary’? How could any ‘fault’ or mistake be considered happy? Why, then, does the Church use these strange expressions?

The Latin expression felix culpa (happy fault) is derived from the writings of St Augustine, whose personal life was testimony to the truth of this maxim. In order for St Augustine to have been one of the greatest converts to Christianity, one of its greatest theologians and pastor, he had to start off being a great sinner. This was obviously the case: here was a man who had been schooled by his own father to frequent brothels since adolescence. As an adult, he would keep a woman in concubinage, what we would describe as a ‘sex slave’ in modern terms. Then he delved into and experimented with various philosophies and religions where he sought to make himself feel better about himself despite his lifestyle. St Augustine was truly a great sinner. But then grace touched him, moved him and finally transformed him into one of the Church’s greatest saints. In speaking about the source of original sin, Augustine writes, “For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.”

What St Augustine meant here was that the Fall of Adam was from one point of view, fortunate, since without it humankind could not have experienced the unsurpassable joy of the redemption. How did he make this leap from sin to grace? If Adam and Eve never fell, Christ would never have needed to come. And so God allowed the loss of perfect human bliss through the original sin of Adam and Eve in order to bring about a greater, divine bliss for humanity (cf. 2 Peter 1:4)! From Adam’s sin came the glory of Jesus Christ. The remedy dished out by God goes far beyond restoring us to that Edenic state! God never goes backwards. He's not taking us back to Eden. He’s making light-years leap forward!

If you are not convinced at this argument, the whole of scripture stands as irrefutable evidence. By eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve are now prohibited from tasting the fruit of the Tree of Life which would have guaranteed them immortality. But here comes the ‘felix culpa’ bit – If man had not been denied immortality at this stage, he would still have to suffer an eternity of sin, an eternity of the effects of sin – alienation, suffering, pain, etc. In popular culture, vampires view their deathlessness as a curse, not as a blessing. Death would be the welcomed relief to a never ending existence of pain, misery and lovelessness.

Still not convinced? Well let’s look at other events in the Bible. If humanity had not sin by attempting to build the Tower of Babel, we would not be blessed with the myriad of cultures, civilisations, languages that have emerged throughout our human history. If Joseph had not been betrayed by his brothers and sold off to slavery, he would not have been their saviour, when the land was struck by famine. If Moses had not run away from Egypt as an act of cowardice, he would not have been chosen by God to lead his people to freedom. If David had not committed a transgression and adultery with Uriah’s wife, Solomon would not have been born. If the Temple had not been destroyed, the Church, the Body of Christ, who is the New and Perfect Temple, would have remained a dream. If Judas had not betrayed Jesus, Christ would not have been able to redeem the world through His sacrifice on the Cross.

While God never actively wills sin and disobedience, He made the option possible in order that we could freely choose to love Him instead. Adam and Eve's decision was never unknown to God, nor was the outcome. From all eternity God knew that His rational creatures would choose to rebel against Him, and His divine plan incorporated Adam's sin from the very foundations of the world. Eden was not Plan A and the Incarnation was not Plan B. God becoming Man so that we could participate in the divine life of God through grace was the idea all along! The Incarnation and the death and resurrection of Christ was always Plan A! Through, Baptism we are inserted into this great plan, this great mystery of redemption. We will “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4). This vastly exceeds what God would have done for unfallen man. The beauty and perfection of Eden pales against the beauty and perfection of heaven.

All too often we run from our mistakes, reject them or simply live in denial of them. The failed work is quickly set aside. And worse, all too often initial mistakes, initial failures discourage us and prevent us from moving forward. The Paschal Mystery, the Mystery which Good Friday and Easter reveals, demands that we learn to recognise that hidden within every mistake, every human error, every shortcoming, every failure and even in the greatest of falls is the seed of the resurrection – where even sin can be transformed by a single moment of grace. Indeed, rather than cast aside His fallen creation, God reaches into the failure and tragedy of human sinfulness to redeem us. This is the Mystery which claims us in Christ and the power of this same Mystery is what heals us in the sacraments. “O Happy Fault”; “O truly necessary sin of Adam” …. “that earned so great, so glorious a redeemer!”

TGIF

Good Friday

Social networking, the likes of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Tik Tok, has enabled many of us, including the pathologically shy and introverted, to articulate what we would have normally kept private. We give vent to our pent-up frustrations by ‘shouting out’, expressing every emotion for the world to see. Just take a look at Twitter box or Facebook page or catch a random Tik Tok video on a Monday morning and count how many times you see a similar statement like this: “I can’t wait until the weekend,” or “When’s it going to be Friday?” And of course, the familiar initialism at the close of the week, ‘TGIF’ (or ‘Thank God It’s Friday’).

What is it about Fridays that makes them so special? Why this euphoric fascination with Friday? Here are some reasons why people think Friday is cool: We get to stay up late. It’s an opportunity to catch up on much needed sleep. It means having drinks with the guys at the local watering hole. It’s that much needed break after a tiring and often bad week (except for a priest – our busy week is just starting). Or for many, ‘Friday’ means “Party, Party, Party!”

But for us Christians, there is one supreme reason that beats all the rest. We say without hesitation, “Thank God it’s Friday” because it was on Friday that our Lord Jesus died for us. “Thank God it’s Friday” because the instrument of death, the cross, became the means of our salvation! Good Friday marks the day when wrath and mercy met at the cross. The Cross which put God to death became the Tree of Life which brought man to life.

But Good Friday seems to have lost its original value of being a celebration of paradox. Over the years, many Christians have suffered from a cultural romanticisation or sanitisation of the cross. We have separated the cross from the suffering it portrays. The cross no longer evokes horror or terror, only loving endearment and pious devotion. We regard it as a sign of blessing, and certainly not as a symbol of a curse. You see Jesus hanging there and see a wonderful example of compassion and sacrifice. You find in the death of Jesus an inspiration to forgive and be kind to others. And for others, the overriding emotion in your heart is pity.

The readings for today, especially the Passion taken from the Gospel of St John, point us to a far more profound theological truth that extends beyond our emotions of sadness and pity. Well here’s the central truth: on the cross Christ redeemed us from the curse of sin by becoming a curse for us. That Christ became a curse is what makes Good Friday good.

What did it mean to be cursed? Think of the scene in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3. God warned Adam and Eve that if they were to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they would suffer the curse of death. But our first parents refused to believe God’s warning and chose rather to rely on the words of the cunning serpent. They believed that by eating its fruits, they would no longer have to depend on God. They sought self-reliance over obedience. They imagined themselves as masters of their own destiny and be forever free of God’s interference. That mistaken belief is at the heart of every sin and serves as the perennial disease that infects man till today. Little did they know that this would be their curse, a curse inherited by the whole of humanity. After taking a bite of the forbidden fruit Adam is cursed, Eve is cursed, the serpent is cursed, and the ground is cursed. The effect of the curse is catastrophic – an impassable chasm now exist between man and God; it meant the loss of communion with God, each other, and the created universe. The curse bars us from eating of the fruit of the Tree of Life and thus man lost the gift of immortality. Death is now our curse.

But our Lord’s sacrifice on the cross has changed all that. Our wounded race could not begin to attempt such a massive task of healing the rift. Man could never lift the curse on his own. So the Father sent His Eternal Word to become man and accomplish the task in our place, to substitute for us. For the immortal, infinite God to empty Himself and unite Himself to a limited, vulnerable human nature was already a feat of unimaginable love and humility. But for redemption to be complete, the hero would have to withstand the greatest fury that hell and fallen humanity could hurl against him – the cross. If death should come from the self-reliance of man, life would come from obedience to God, even execution on the cross.

According to Deuteronomy 21:23 everyone hanged on a tree was cursed. It was punishment due for grievous crimes. Our Lord Jesus thus came under this curse. Yet, Saint Peter explains more clearly what was involved: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.” (1 Peter 2:24) Our Lord accepted the “curse” we should have received, and underwent death in our place –so that we might not die but live. What the Son of God endured for us was the depth of human depravity, ugliness and humiliation. We need to be reminded of the tremendous personal cost of love. Everyone knows the cross is about the love of God. But it is no cheap, sentimental, fuzzy kind of love. It is a costly, deep, rich, free, painful kind of love. We must never forget this to truly appreciate the significance of Good Friday and what our Lord did for us.

We can say “Thank God it’s Friday” with a sigh of relief. Whew! The week is over. Once again the end of the week came just in time before the breakdown. It’s Friday night - we can relax, unwind, and enjoy thoughts of a weekend without appointments and traffic jams. But today, we say “Thank God it’s Friday” because it’s God who’s on the Cross. Today, we finally experience the ultimate break – not just from the tedium of a tiring week, but a break from sin, from death, and from darkness. Only God could heal us—save us—from the curse of sin and all the darkness it brings into life. Good Friday is good because the Word of God in the flesh—Jesus Christ—could endure on our behalf all the suffering and death that is the consequence of human sin. All the pain, emptiness and despair from betrayal, injustice, illness, lost and lack of love is brought to the Cross by Jesus. He assumed the curse we had wrought through our disobedience, by offering himself as a sacrifice of perfect obedience. He Himself bore our sins in His body upon the cross, so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed. (1 Peter 2:24). For this reason, we say without hesitation, without the slightest regret, without any trace of doubt, “Thank God it’s Friday”!

The Bloodless and Bloody Sacrifice

Maundy Thursday

The readings provide us with a historical evolution of the Paschal Sacrifice, from the bloody sacrifice of the Lamb at the time of the Exodus, the Passover, to the bloodless sacrifice of the Mass as attested by St Paul in his letter to the Corinthians. The all important and most essential ingredient of the Passover meal, the lamb, seems to be missing from the Christian ritual. But is it? In place of the Lamb, we have Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Instead of being deficient, the Christian sacrifice of the Mass is wholly sufficient and far superior than the pale shadow of the past.

But the whole point of the lamb to be sacrificed was the shedding of its blood. Blood is valuable not for the pain it caused but for life it gave. In the Old Testament, blood represented life itself, and therefore in ancient Jewish worship, the blood of a sacrificed animal had to be poured as an offering to God, the author of that life, and it was never to be consumed by men. It would be sprinkled on the congregation as how holy water today is sprinkled on us. It was literally a blood bath! According to Leviticus 17:11, there can be no reconciliation without blood. Since blood is a cleansing and enlivening agent, renewing life, it takes away the deadness of sin.

The ceremonial use of blood is also found in the ritual associated with the first Passover. To avert the disaster of the sentence of death which hung over every first born son living in Egypt, the blood of the lamb was shed and then painted across the doors of the Israelites. The lambs served as a substitute for Israel’s first born son, their blood was the price paid so as to spare the blood of these Israelites. This ritual was repeated every year to commemorate this foundational event of the Israelites and during the time of Jesus, the Passover lambs were slaughtered at noon outside the city wall. This foreshadowed the sacrifice of Christ, the “Lamb of God,” who shed His blood and died for us on a Friday afternoon outside the city wall of Jerusalem.

But in a kind of spiritual jiu-jitsu, Christ poured out His own blood, making a perfect offering to God. Then in true generosity, He transformed blood from a thing offered by man to God into something given as a free gift from God to man. Moreover, it was made accessible in a way proper to human beings: sacramentally present in the Eucharist. No longer gruesome or taboo, it became a means of metaphysical cleansing and entry into divine life. Because Christ shed His blood for us, it is no longer necessary for blood to be shed when offering a sacrifice to God. We offer the bloodless sacrifice of bread and wine, because that is how Christ instituted the Eucharist. Today we offer the “sacrifice”, the offering of bread and wine, without shedding blood.

The author of the letter to the Hebrews noted the distinction between the Old and New covenantal sacrifice: “In fact, according to the Law, practically every purification takes place by means of blood; and if there is no shedding of blood, there is no remission. Only the copies of heavenly things are purified in this way; the heavenly things themselves have to be purified by a higher sort of sacrifice than this.” Far from being inferior, the sacrifice of Christ which is perpetuated by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the sacrifice of a “higher sort.” The Jews shed the blood of lambs which failed to take away their sins despite repeating the ceremony year in year out. But our Lord shed His own blood on the cross, once and for all, rendering the old sacrifice obsolete and inaugurating the supreme sacrifice of the Holy Mass for all times until the end of this age.

The gospel seems to add another odd ritual to the already reworked Passover meal - the washing of feet. At first glance, this second ritual seems disconnected to the first. Though not mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels, foot washing could most likely be presumed before the start of the meal, as in every meal, as the disciples marched in from the dusty streets and would at least offer the courtesy to their colleagues to ensure that their feet were relatively clean (and odourless) when positioned near their neighbour’s face (remember that they would have to be in a reclining position, with bodies and feet close to each other). But what was novel about this action and which draws our attention to this seemingly innocuous ritual is the reversal of roles - instead of the servant washing the feet of the master, it is the master who stoops down to wash the feet of his subordinates.

Our first impression of this reversal would be to conclude that Jesus is indeed extremely humble. But is this the only moral lesson which we can assign to His action? If this is so, was Jesus not guilty of partaking in some performative act of virtue signalling - “look at me and see how humble I am”? Yes, humility is certainly an important theme but actually a sub theme to two others. Our Lord’s act of foot-washing is both a symbol of His humble outpouring of love expressed by His sacrificial death on the cross and an example of how His followers should act: “I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you.”

But there is something more to this action which ties it back to the sign of the blood. The significance of this action can be fully understood in the Book of the Apocalypse 7:14. In response to a question by St John the seer, the elder provides this explanation of the multitude arrayed in white robes, holding palms in their hands and worshipping the Lamb: “These are the people who have been through the great trial; they have washed their robes white again in the blood of the Lamb.” Here lies one of the greatest paradoxical imageries in scripture, the blood of Christ, the slain but now resurrected Lamb of God, cleanses, leaving the saints spotlessly clean, not covered with the blood and gore of their martyrdom. Blood and spotless-ness can both co-exist in the sacraments of redemption, the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Sacrament of the New Passover and the Sacrament of Penance, confession.

The appointed hour has come. We have escaped the whirlwind of our lives to gather, not in the cenacle but in this Church. We are weary. Lord knows that we are weary. Weary of the discipline of Lent, the tumult of life, the empty promises of love and the sting of betrayal of friends. So many are so weary that they cannot bear to look upon the bruised, scarred and bloodied face of our Lord on the cross. It is just too painful. But if we care to look, our Lord wishes to show us how love looks like. It’s not worn as a badge or as a slogan emblazoned on our t-shirts. It’s not sweet platitudes or found in boxes of chocolates or large bouquets of roses. There is nothing warm or fuzzy, nice or sentimental about it. So, what does love look like? It looks like the cross. It looks bloody and gory but now made spotless in the purity of the Holy Eucharist. To love means to follow Christ, and this is what He did: “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Phil. 2:8)