The Trinity is Love Loving

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity 

John 3:16 is undoubtedly one of the most popular and memorable verses in scripture. It is so popular that even we Catholics, who are notorious for our short-term memory when it comes to memorising bible verses, are able to recognise this verse, with some even able to spew verse and chapter at will. “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life.” 

The verse has sometimes been described by evangelical Christians as “the Gospel in a nutshell” because it provides a stunningly succinct summary of the Christian faith. We Catholics and they can agree that there is perhaps no other single verse that so powerfully captures God’s heart for His creation and love for us in sending Jesus. He could have sent His Son to judge us, to punish us for our waywardness, to condemn us for our sins, but this would not be the motivation for the Son’s mission. Instead, Jesus revealed this Truth, a truth which only He alone knew to be true before this, “For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved.” 

It is clear that this verse is an unending, unyielding, unchanging proclamation of the utmost form of love—a message of hope from God to us. It concretely sets apart our God from the many other gods worshipped in this world, if such gods were to even exist. Other gods demand fear from their devotees but ours invite us into a relationship unlike any other we could ever experience. It is at its core the very essence of our faith. But how could this revelation be connected to the solemnity we celebrate today? Yes, the passage speaks of the Father and the Son, but no where is the Holy Spirit mentioned in here, unlike St Paul who concludes his Second letter to the Corinthians with this Trinitarian blessing: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” 

So what does it mean for God to be love? It doesn’t necessarily mean God is simply loving. Judaism and Islam and Mormonism proclaim a God who loves. But when Christians teach that God is Himself love, they’re saying that real love itself has its origin and essence in God. And this cannot be true unless God is a Trinity. At the heart of this equation that God is Love is a summary of what the Most Holy Trinity means. God cannot be love unless there is something for Him to love. Think about it: A solitary god cannot be love. A God with no one to love means either God who is desperate or loveless. Neither qualifies as a true God of love. He would be a pitiable god but not worthy of our worship and devotion. God who is love can neither be loveless nor needy. Real love requires relationship. 

In the doctrine of the Trinity we finally see how love is part of the fabric of creation. Creation was not the condition of God’s love but the consequence of it. God did not need His creation in order to have something to love, because if that were true, He could not be complete without it. If that something whom He loves were not part of Himself, He would not be perfect. In other words, St Augustine reasoned that God must be love inside Himself. Before creation came to be, God was already in a relationship from all eternity. The Father is the One who loves, the Son is the One who is loved and who loves the Father in return, and the Holy Spirit is the love that flows between them and binds them together. 

So, the Trinity isn’t some weird religious invention Christians have stupidly clung to. It’s the answer to the deepest longing of the human heart. Now, we understand the perennial riddle of why we choose to love and seek to be loved. The Trinity answers the question. It makes us go deeper than sentimental notions and ethereal feelings and elusive emotions. It puts us on solid ground with all this love stuff we’ve been chasing forever. The convoluted, complicated, and incomprehensible doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity is swallowed up into the simplest concept of all – Love. In fact, the doctrine of the Trinity comes to life by swallowing us up into the love God has enjoyed since before time began. The Trinity is real because love is real and it is only so because the Trinity is the source and foundation of all reality. 

Therefore, to speak of love and the Most Holy Trinity would not be speaking of two different and unrelated concepts. Just as the Trinity is the most profound mystery of God, love is the most profound mystery of man, made in the image and likeness of God. The Trinity is the revelation that God is Love. The Trinity is Love Loving – dynamic, unfathomable, inexhaustible, eternally complete and creative. Yet, here is the great wonder. We only know this because the Father gives Himself to be known in His Son and the Son gathers us into this eternal self-giving through and in the Spirit. In other words, the fact that we can speak at all about God as Trinity is already a sign that we are beginning to participate in God’s Triune life: we know and experience that the Trinity is Love Loving us. 

The Trinitarian Life of God is our school of Love and we can never fully grasp and practice true love unless we are absorbed into the mystery of the Three Persons in One God. And this is what we mean when the priest chants the doxology at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer and we respond with the great Amen: “Through Him, with Him, In Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, All Glory and honour is yours Almighty Father. Forever and ever, Amen."

They heard ... They saw ... They spoke

Solemnity of Pentecost

Although the descent and gift of the Holy Spirit is commonly associated with today’s feast, which takes place 50 days after the feast of the Passover, St John in today’s gospel reading provides us with another version of the story. In John 20, the gift of the Holy Spirit takes place earlier, on the evening of Easter Sunday. The Risen Lord invites His disciples to carry on the mission given Him by His Heavenly Father and empowers them to do so by breathing upon them and saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

St Luke’s version of the first Pentecost, which we heard in the first reading, is the biblical account that has most captured the Christian imagination. Fifty days after Easter, the disciples of Jesus gather for prayer in Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit comes upon them in dramatic fashion, with a strong wind and “tongues of fire.” They begin to speak in different languages, and miraculously their proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is heard and understood by Jewish pilgrims from different countries of the diaspora in their own native languages.

The revelation of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles on Pentecost took place in a series of sensible experiences: they heard… they saw … they spoke. First, they heard. They heard a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind. This sound was so vast it filled the whole house. A sound that could only come from heaven. Next, they saw. They saw tongues as of fire, one sat on each of them. The fire of God’s presence was revealed. Finally, they spoke. As a result of the outpouring of God’s Spirit, His presence in such a distinctive way on each individual, they began to speak in languages known to those gathered outside.

These three movements could also be seen at the time of the Exodus when the Israelites were gathered at Mount Sinai and Moses received the Law directly from God. The account of this event is found in the first reading of the Vigil Mass. In fact, Pentecost or in Hebrew, Shavuot or the Feast of Weeks, commemorated this event. On this mountain, the Israelites heard the rumbling of thunder and saw the clouds covering the top of this holy mountain. Then God spoke His law which is embodied in the tablets of the commandments. But instead of hearing thunder, and seeing a cloudy theophany or hearing God speak His law, the apostles and first Christians heard, saw and spoke what was clearly the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, whose law is now written on the hearts of believers instead of stone.

But the correlation between the Jewish significance of this feast and its Christian counterpart goes back further, in fact to the beginning of the Bible. God breathed His Spirit into earthly clay, like how Jewish mystics would attempt to do in the legend of the Golem, and brought it to life. Likewise, God now breathes His Spirit upon this motley group of believers and brought the Church to life. Jesus, risen and ascended into Heaven, sent His Spirit to the Church so that every Christian might participate in his own divine life and become His valid witness in the world. The Holy Spirit, breaking into history, defeats aridity, opens hearts to hope, stimulates and fosters in us an interior maturity in our relationship with God and with our neighbour.

But there remains one final connexion between the Pentecost of the New Testament and another event in the Old Testament. The miracle of Pentecost reverses the episode of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. In that story of the tower, in response to human arrogance, God “confused” the languages of humankind and scattered them over the face of the earth. Instead, of hearing, seeing and speaking God’s Word present through His Spirit, the builders of the Tower of Babel were planning to have their own voices heard, their monumental feat seen and finally spoke in the languages which no longer could be understood nor did they communicate God’s Word. After Pentecost, the division of Babel wrought by man’s pride will be undone and the Good News of Jesus Christ is the language that unites all these different peoples.

The building of the first Babel was an act of pride. Like Adam and Eve, the builders didn’t want to receive from God; they wanted to obtain things on their own. They sought to construct a tower “with its top in the heavens” and to make a name for themselves, lest they be “scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” They desired to raise themselves to God’s level – to be self-sufficient – and to establish unity on their own terms. The lesson of Babel is clear: it is human pride that has produced confusion and division in the world. God’s act in confusing their language and means of communication was not an act of vengeance and punishment. In fact, it was an act of mercy that would set them on a long journey to discover the true source of sanctification and unification - the work of the Holy Spirit.

According to Fr Paul Scalia, “we are witnessing the construction of a new Babel. Ours is a post-Christian society, an anti-culture that has rejected the Word of God. In our pride, we want on our own terms and by our own accomplishments what creatures can only receive from God. We have thrown off His reality – about gender, sex, life, etc. – and tried to construct our own. As a result, our language is increasingly disconnected from truth, our words unintelligible, and our ability to communicate crippled.”

The crippling of language divides us. We can easily witness this in our own country and parish situation, where language no longer unites but divides. Once language is no longer a vehicle for truth, for building communities and set apart for worship, it becomes an instrument for control and domination. That is why we can recognise that Pentecost is the undoing of Babel. The Apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit, speak in a way that all hearers can understand. Redeemed by the Word, man can now speak intelligibly about God and about himself. And because he can communicate the truth to others, this intelligibility leads to unity.

The memory of Jesus has been kept alive, and the movement He began has been carried on by the Church, who has preached the gospel to all nations and cultures through various languages. Nevertheless, Pentecost challenges the Church today to find even more effective ways of communicating the Gospel to peoples in every land on earth. The challenge, that faced the first Christians gathered in Jerusalem at the birth of the Church, still faces the Church today. Would culture and language be an obstacle to the gospel or would it be the vehicle by which the gospel is heard, seen and spoken? Would pride get in the way once again or docility to the Spirit bring about authentic conversion? For this reason, we need the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit. And so, on this Pentecost we must pray, “Come, Holy Spirit, come!”

Wait and Pray

Seventh Sunday of Easter Year A

The first reading situates us within this week that lies between the Ascension of the Lord and the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Nine days of waiting. Nine days of continuous prayer - the first novena of the Church (the word “novena” is actually derived from the Latin root which simply means nine). After the rigours of the Lenten fast and penance and the feasting of Easter, these nine days seem to be a most welcomed respite from all the liturgical hustle and bustle for those who have been engaged but it can also be annoying for those who feel an itch for more activity and hate the idleness which they associate with prayer and all things churchy. For the latter, prayer doesn’t seem to count as a fruitful activity. Real Christians should be out on the streets working, not confined to their rooms like cowards praying.

But is prayer a cop out for those who shirk their social responsibilities? Is it idle activity for those who are unable or unwilling to take responsibility to resolve their own issues? Why would our Lord ask these disciples to wait and pray? Let’s go back to that first novena between our Lord’s Ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Put yourself in the middle of this frightened and confused band of apostles and disciples. They had seen the Lord suffer and die, but then He rose and appeared to them, demonstrating His power. He commissioned them to carry the message of eternal and abundant life before ascending into heaven, leaving them with marching orders. Icons of this scene show the disciples with their feet and bodies facing outwards, ready to take the gospel beyond the borders of Judea, to Samaria and even to the ends of the earth. But then the Lord also told them to take pause, to not “leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for what the Father had promised.” If some of you may think that novenas are superstitious activities for the simple-minded who still believe in tooth fairies and Santa Claus, remember that the first novena was ordered and instituted by none other than the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. That first novena would be the prototype for all other novenas.

What would have happened if they had given up and left? We can only speculate. If they had left, they would never have been present to experience the Pentecost. And without the Pentecost, the gospel would not have been carried to the ends of the earth. In fact, the entire New Testament may never have been written and the Church would not exist today. Imagine that! But, the persistence of Christ’s followers and His mother to wait for the promise, ended in fulfilment. On the Feast of Pentecost, tongues of fire appeared on each of their heads declaring the coming of the Holy Spirit and the Church was born.

The lesson learnt from the first novena instituted by the Lord is that prayer is about waiting. Prayer requires faith; faith requires patience; and patience requires waiting upon the Lord. To wait patiently for God is to trust in God’s unfailing love for us. To wait upon the Lord is to recognise that He is our Lord and Master. How God does His will is up to Him. We cannot control God or tell Him how to accomplish His plan. He will do His will in His way. Prayer is not a sign of weakness. Prayer is a conscious choice of admitting that we can’t do it alone. It is an act of vulnerability that connects us to God and others. It puts us in a position of strength, not weakness. One of the greatest and most damaging lie we can believe is that we can do it on our own. Prayer dispels that lie and frees us to lean on someone else when it seems unbearable or impossible.

But waiting on God can be the most difficult, and perhaps the most confusing part of the prayer process. We live in a world of instant everything. We value speed. This is true not only in our culture at large, but in our spirituality and prayer. We rush through our prayers because we have other more urgent matters to attend to. We look for the shortest masses. The quicker, the better. Many rush off immediately after communion or before the final blessing and announcements. Yes, waiting in prayer is not an easy kind of prayer to practice. When we pray, we want to see results; and we want to see them now! And if that answer doesn’t seem to be forthcoming, we begin to wonder if God has abandoned us or if He really cares about us at all. We fail to recognise that when you treat prayer as if you have the right to tell God how to do His work, you will be disappointed. God does not take instructions. We wait, He doesn’t. But when you realise that God’s ways are not your ways, that His ways are superior to your ways, you will not be thrown off balance when circumstances seem to be leading you away from God’s will rather than toward it.

Something happens to us in this kind of waiting. There is purpose in waiting. Waiting on God forces us to look to Him. We are brought to attention. The prayer of waiting draws us into a place of stillness and quietness before God where we open our hearts to listen and receive the good gifts of guidance, wisdom and blessing. Waiting in prayer expands our hearts to accept God’s will instead of pushing for our own agenda. When we wait with hope it is like sitting in the dark of night before the first rays of dawn appear. We know that dawn will come, yet we cannot hurry it. We can watch and wait with hope to receive the first lights with joy.

Waiting gives God the opportunity to redefine our desires and align our purposes and vision with His. What appears from the earth-perspective to be a delay on God’s part is really the time when God is working behind the scene, beyond our senses. During the waiting time, we are operating by faith. Trials cause us to persevere by deepening our knowledge of God and relying on Him more intentionally. That is why in the midst of our daily frenzied activities, our Christian life needs to include times of contemplation and prayer to simply be with God in the stillness and to wait upon Him in loving anticipation of what He would do with us.

Waiting as an essential element of prayer, helps us not to treat novenas and other special prayers as quick fixes. As Jesus told His disciples, we must pray constantly and never give up (Luke 18:1). Sometimes we have to pray for a long period before we see any results. Why? We don’t know. As much as we grow impatient, we need to recognise that His timing is an astounding thing. What we do know is that Jesus always has our back and He knows what’s best. We mustn’t become disheartened or give up saying novenas because we don’t immediately see the fruits of our labour. The Blessed Virgin Mary and the apostles obeyed the Lord’s instruction to wait and pray, and scripture tells us that their fidelity and vigilance finally paid off.

May our waiting and our praying make us more open to receiving the Holy Spirit and more capable of showing the grace of God in all that we are and all that we do.

Authority - Mission - Presence

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord Year A

The gospel passage that I’ve just read comes at the end of the Gospel of St Matthew and unlike the Gospel of St Luke and its appendix, the Acts of the Apostles, it does not mention the event of the ascension of our Lord. We have the first reading from Acts to provide us the details of this event. St Matthew ends his gospel by focusing on the action of our Lord commissioning His disciples and records His words in this regard. This passage is popularly known among Protestants (and Catholics, who have also gotten use to the name) as the Great Commission. Though there is nothing essentially wrong with this term, it would appear that its use comes quite late in Christian history, even among the Protestants.

Rather than be distracted by the debate over its proper name, I think it is far more important to look at our lectionary selection for today. The readings for this feast can be summarised in three words - authority, mission and presence.

Authority is one of those words that usually creates an instant emotional reaction—in some folks, fear and distrust, in others safety and order. While the Lord Jesus was the image of love and gentleness, today He claims that “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to” Him. The mention of “heaven and earth” is a short hand which means “everything”, “all.” So, when our Lord told His disciples this, He was claiming something that no other mortal, even the greatest emperor or king, could claim. His authority is absolute.

But our Lord’s claim was not just that He possessed an authority and could exercise a power that was above and beyond every human authority and sovereignty but it was also a divine claim. Authority is attributed to God the Father; it is His very nature. Authority alludes to the Deity’s right to command and enforce obedience. It is God who can rightfully and exclusively claim that He possesses “all authority in heaven and on earth.” Throughout His earthly life and public ministry, our Lord showed that He had authority over demons, sickness, death and the wild forces of nature. But one could question the limits of His authority when He was arrested, sentenced and executed. His authority seemed to have stopped here. But the resurrection proved that even here our Lord’s authority was not circumscribed by human authority.

Today, there is a tension and battle raging between human authority and divine authority. If human authority is subject to divine authority and obeys the dictates of the latter, there is no issue because there is no conflict. For to obey human authority in such an instance would be to obey divine authority. But the problem arises when there is a conflict between human authority and that of God’s - that is when governments, associations, leaders, parents command us to disobey God, which is in essence ordering us to sin - then we must echo the words of St Peter: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). God’s authority must always take priority even if it means we would have to disobey civil and human authority, including going against our own wishes.

The authority which the Lord exercises is the basis of what follows. He has given us a mission: “Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations; baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you.” There are three parts to this commission and each part is essential to the mission of the Church and every Christian. These are non-negotiable. We are called to “make disciples of all nations,” in other words, that we have a duty to lead others to Christ and make them His followers. The simplicity of the words betrays their gravity. In today’s multicultural world, many of us ignore or shy away from this commission for fear that we would be regarded as intolerant or even militant in terms of religious convictions. Political correctness demands that we respect others by not imposing our views on them. But the call to evangelise is not one which is coercive. We are not asked to point a gun to the head of the person and force them to believe what we believe. Rather, evangelisation is a call to be attractive, or to be more accurate, to make our faith more attractive. For our faith to be attractive, our public witness of the faith must be consistent with our actions, our words must be credible, and our practice of the faith must be filled with joy and enthusiasm.

But evangelisation does not stop with just preaching the gospel in words and deeds. It must also lead to conversion and baptism, insertion into the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church. Baptism is the only first step after evangelisation. What follows must be catechesis: we will need to “teach them to observe all the commands” the Lord has given us, and this is a life-time’s project and not just confined to Sunday School for children and teenagers.

Finally, our Lord Jesus ends the “Great Commission” by assuring the disciples that He will be with them every step of the way as they embark on this journey of declaring and discipling. This is the great paradox of this event. Our Lord’s physical and bodily departure would result in His return in sacramental form - He will continue to be present in, through, and to His Church. Not in a purely symbolic way but in a manner which is true, real and substantial, especially in the Sacraments.

Matthew concludes his gospel in much the same way as he began, by reminding us that God has drawn near to us through Jesus. The child called Immanuel (“God with us,” Matt 1:23) is now the Risen Saviour who has promised that He will never leave or forsake His followers. His Ascension is not a departure where He distances Himself from us, but rather an insertion of His real presence in the Church where He continues to accompany us, lead us, guide us and feed us with His own Body and Blood. And with His Ascension, He inaugurates the next part of His grand plan which involves the Holy Spirit. Through His promised Spirit dwelling in them, they would be filled with both the presence and the power of Christ as they spread the gospel message from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. We’ve been given the sacred privilege of joining Christ in His work of spreading His name and making His disciples all over the world, and because He sends us out in the authority of His Father and in the fellowship of His Spirit, we have all we need to obey Him wherever He leads.

Glass ceiling shattered

Sixth Sunday of Easter Year A

A glass ceiling is a common metaphor used to describe how certain invisible barriers are in place due to cultural norms and prejudices which would prevent a certain class of people from advancing upwards in the hierarchy of society. In the past, the metaphor was exclusively used for women who entered fields which were traditionally dominated by men. Today, (and here’s the irony) the expression is most often used to refer to transwomen (biological men who believe they are women) breaking new records in women sports. In other words, when men beat women in women sports, a new glass ceiling is broken. Try to wrap your head around this!

Today, we are getting ahead of the scene of the Ascension of the Lord, which we will celebrate this coming Thursday. The readings provide us with a demonstration of what will take place as a consequence of the Ascension and Pentecost and also an explanation by none other than the Lord Himself who will be the prime mover of this phenomenal thrust forward by the Church, which will shatter “glass ceilings” and even concrete ones, like never imagined before.

Immediately, in the aftermath of the Ascension, the angelic messengers provided the apostles with a series of deliberate instructions. The apostles were to wait for the Holy Spirit to come, for they would be immersed in power. They were not to set their hearts on times, timing, dates, but to know that when empowered by the promised Holy Spirit, they would be witnesses of God’s Kingdom, locally, nationally, and to the ends of the earth. In fact, the movement of the Holy Spirit will have a ripple effect - crossing boundaries, making new precedents and shattering glass ceilings: “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

In the first reading, we witness the breaking of the first cultural, religious and social barrier - the evangelisation of the Samaritans by the deacon Philip. The Samaritans’ long split from the Jews had lasted for centuries and there didn’t seem to be any hope that the riff would ever be healed since there was so much historical as well as religious-cultural baggage that prevented the two closely related communities and yet socially distant communities from reuniting. There was an expression among the Jews that if a Jew were to come across a leper and a Samaritan, the former was to be preferred over the latter. And yet, the message of the gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit was able to break this seemingly insurmountable barrier and bring together not just the Jews and the Samaritans but communities spread throughout “the ends of the earth.” It is interesting to note that at the end of the first reading, we have the first instance of the Sacrament of Confirmation where the apostles would come to lay hands, confer the Holy Spirit and confirm the initial conversion of these Samaritans.

In the second reading, we see Peter’s exhortation to a church facing persecution. One could regard the Christian way as distinctively unique from other religions of that time. There were certain religious adherents, for example the militant Jewish zealots, who took a military response to threats from the civil authorities and which were eventually annihilated by the latter when they rose in rebellion. There were still others who adopted a philosophy of accommodation and assimilation, adapting their teachings and practices in order to fit in with the dominant mainstream. There were still others, basically the mystery Gnostic religions, who adopted a secretive approach, hiding their practices and concealing their teachings behind a veneer of mystery. Christianity adopted none of these approaches.

The fact that Christianity was an evangelising religion that sought to publicly spread its teachings and expand its members, led to it being persecuted. But St Peter reminded Christians that their response to such persecution should not be violent or one where they should retreat into a secretive shell of safety but done by finding opportunities to expound and explain one’s faith, “always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have. But give it with courtesy and respect and with a clear conscience …” None of the other religions which adopted self-preserving methods have survived. Most of them eventually became extinct in the years and centuries which followed. Yet, Christianity not only survived but thrived in the midst of persecution, due to the fact that this is a movement not based on human innovation but on the Holy Spirit’s inspiration.

Finally, we come to the gospel and what our Lord wishes to tell us about the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth and promises that He “will be with you forever.” Our Lord Jesus was prophetic in telling His disciples that “the world can never receive (the Spirit) since it neither sees nor knows him.” You may have heard that we are currently living in a post-truth age, where objective truth is often vilified and subjective truth in the form of “lived experience” is made sacrosanct and inviolable. In other words, no one can question a man if one day he chooses to identify as a woman because no one can deny his “lived experiences” or preferred pronouns, even though it may be objectively delusional. Blaise Pascal once said: “Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.”

More than ever, we need the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, as we stand against a bulwark of the enemies of truth. Just as God is immutable, so is truth. There is no such thing as new truth. All truth finds its source in God and is eternal—never changing. What is true today will remain true tomorrow—regardless of how our culture seeks to personalise truth or mould it according to its latest agenda. Ultimately, the Church must stand firm and remain a pillar and buttress of truth in an age of darkness and confusion.

Truth is under assault and many Christians do not appear to be ready for battle. The good news is that Christians are not on their own as they search for truth and seek to find ways to have answers “for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have”. Rather, you will be “guided into all truth” by the Spirit of God. And this is a wonderful comfort as we walk through the world, knowing that Jesus says: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32) and prays for those who follow Him: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17). Through His power, “speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Ephesians 4:15). Stand firm, knowing that you have the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth as your Advocate. With His power and inspiration, we will not only break “glass ceilings” but pass through humanly insurmountable barriers.

He is the Way, the Truth and the Life

Fifth Sunday of Easter Year A

Many modern day gurus of semi-religious motivational content will assure you that the journey of life is more important than the destination. Basically, this is implying that it doesn’t matter where you are heading as long as you are moving and making progress. As clever or profound as this may sound, it is pure hogwash. What’s the point of making a journey when it takes you nowhere or takes us in different directions where we will never get to meet? Even the yellow brick road led Dorothy of Kansas and her motley companions to the fabled Emerald City, and we all know that the Emerald City wasn’t her final destination. The truth is that getting to our destination and knowing which route we must take to get there are both equally important. We cannot discount one while elevating the other.

Unfortunately, this is what many modern folks have bought into and we have a name for it - “relativism.” It is basically arguing that everyone has chosen or should be given the freedom to choose their own path and way - that every idea, opinion or thought is as good as another. In this way, by not enforcing “one way,” we can avoid friction or conflict and maintain harmony. These cliched statements are some of the popular taglines we hear: “there is no right or wrong answer, it’s how you look at it,” or “let’s agree to disagree.” As innocent sounding and pragmatic as these statements appear to be, they actually violate the basic foundation of logic - the principle of non-contradiction: a thing cannot be both right or wrong at the same time. Either one is right, the other has to be wrong. And when we sacrifice this basic logical principle at the altar of niceties, we are actually rejecting Truth or claiming that truth is malleable and can be reshaped to fit our agenda or whenever it is convenient. Without a firm anchor in objective truth, modern man finds himself constantly toss by the waves of one opinion or idea after another. Without truth, everything would be a lie.

Relativism does not only obscure our destination but makes us regard our origins as irrelevant. Otto von Habsburg, the head of that imperial dynasty who died in 2011, rightly noted that “those who don’t know where they come from do not know where they are heading—because they don’t know where they stand.” Most people today would never acknowledge that they are God’s creature and that human life begins in the womb. Well, the first may require a faith confession, but the second should simply be an observable phenomenon from science. Yet, both are called into question these days because they do not fit within the larger secular humanistic narrative which promotes abortion.

Can Catholics accept relativism as a viable belief? Well, the gospel gives us this answer. Jesus, without mincing His words, says it as it is: “No one can come to the Father except through me.” This is an absolute claim that does not admit exceptions. “No one!” Our Lord tells us in no uncertain terms: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” Not just any way, or one among many equally valid ways. No! He is the Way, the Truth and the Life! If you find this troubling, well, be assured that non-Christians for centuries had found this equally troubling and many Christians were persecuted with some going to their graves defending this truth with their lives, unrelenting to the end. This is why persecution is the hallmark of Christianity because our beliefs are unpopular and fly against the mainstream penchant for relativistic ideas.

Christ is not just the Way, but as St Thomas Aquinas tells us, He is both the goal and the way - He is both the destination and the way to get to that destination. St Thomas Aquinas explains it this way: “In His human nature He is the way, and in His divine nature He is the goal. Therefore, speaking as man He says: I am the way; and speaking as God He adds: the truth and the life. These two words are an apt description of this goal.”

Other paths may seem more delightful, more attractive by appearance, easier to trod, less challenging, but there is only one Way that leads to the Father. It is Jesus who is both the Way and our goal because He and the Father are one. This is why the Church must proclaim and continues to proclaim that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. It is a subversive claim. It is a scandalous claim but it is a true claim, and for this reason, it is the only claim which can assure us of Eternal Life. Of course, the Church also recognises that those who do not know Christ or His Church through no fault of their own, will not be penalised. They too may be saved if they follow the dictates of their conscience as prompted by the Holy Spirit. But their salvation too comes from Christ and never apart from Him.

Though the world may appear to be a free market place of ideas, opinions, theologies and ideologies, we Christians have already made our choice. And so we turn to the great Angelic Doctor, St Thomas Aquinas, for his timeless words of advice: “Therefore hold fast to Christ if you wish to be safe. You will not be able to go astray, because He is the way. He who remains with Him does not wander in trackless places; he is on the right way. Moreover he cannot be deceived, because He is the truth, and He teaches every truth. And He says: ‘For this I was born and for this I have come, to bear witness to the truth.’ Nor can He be disturbed, because He is both life and the giver of life. For He says: ‘I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly’ (John 10:10).”