Born Loser Raised Victorious

Solemnity of All Saints

If there is one cartoon character which I most identify with, it is Charlie Brown, the main male protagonist of the Peanuts comic strip created by Charles M. Schultz. Charlie Brown reminds me so much of myself growing up and even now, as an adult.

Personality-wise, he is gentle, insecure, and lovable. Charlie Brown possesses significant determination and hope, but frequently fails because of his insecurities, outside interferences, or plain bad luck. Although liked by his friends, he is often the subject of bullying, especially at the hands of Lucy van Pelt. He’s (what I often describe myself as) “bully-able.” Charlie is the perennial victim of bullying by the stronger, the proverbial Born Loser. He is described by his creator as “the one who suffers because he’s a caricature of the average person. Most of us are much more acquainted with losing than winning. Winning is great, but it isn’t funny.”

To be a Christian today often feels like being a loser, being an easy target for bullying, which isn’t a laughing matter. Christians, especially those who choose to live and practice their faith publicly, will end up being mocked, cancelled, side-lined and even persecuted. This explains why there are fewer and even fewer practising Christians even in traditionally predominantly “Christian” countries, and our neighbours think less of us because of our strange values and ideas. We are increasingly outsiders. And how we respond to this reality may be the defining question of our time.

The good news is that Christianity has always been a religion of losers. It is not a recent phenomenon in a highly secularised world. We have been persecuted, our beliefs have been ridiculed and rejected, our values have been maligned, sometimes driving us underground to practice our faith secretly. But though we may appear to be weak, powerless, failures, and losers in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of God we are victorious and winners! In this world we will have trouble; in this world we will be bullied and even appear to lose; but take heart, Christ has overcome the world. And this is what the Saints in heaven declare in song and praise: “Victory to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” These were the same figures who appeared to be defeated by anti-Christian forces, persecuted, tortured and martyred and yet, emerged victorious holding palms as trophies of their victory.

Nowhere is this truth more evident than in the Beatitudes. One could paraphrase the list of beatitudes as this: “Happy or Blessed are the losers!” “Happy are the ‘bully-ables’.” This is what the paradoxical and counterintuitive values behind the Beatitudes seek to display. Our Lord and Saviour, just as the Beatitudes would describe, had to experience poverty, pain, suffering, loss, persecution and death for the sake of righteousness in order to gain the victory and joyful blessedness of the resurrection and the gift of eternal life for all of us. This is the core of the Christian message - death before resurrection, loss before victory, last before first, poverty before riches. For in the Christian story, ‘success and failure’ is inverted.

Although we often describe the Saints in heaven as the Church Triumphant, those who have “run the race” and are crowned with glory in Heaven, the proverbial “winners,” it often doesn’t feel this way here on earth. The biography of every saint often reads like an episode of Charlie Brown. Our earthly experiences of failure and loss make us doubt the promises of the beatitudes.

But if we take a deeper look at the promises which are proclaimed by the Beatitudes, we begin to recognise the veracity of their claims even in this life without waiting for the next. The losers can discover something about themselves that winners cannot ever appreciate – that they are loved and wanted simply because of who they are, and not because of what they achieve. Love is never earned but freely given by the Lord to all, to even those who are undeserving, especially to them. That despite it all, raw humanity is glorious and wonderful, entirely worthy of love. This is revealed precisely at the greatest point of dejection – our Lord’s death and resurrection.

The resurrection is not just a magic trick at raising a dead body to life. That’s a neat and impressive trick. But it is so much more than that. It is a revelation that love is stronger than death, grace is stronger than sin, that human worth is not indexed to worldly success, but to one’s fidelity to the path laid out by Christ. The lives of the Saints are testimony to this. On this side of heaven, they may appear to be losers. But as the vision of St John in the first reading lifts the veil, we are given a glimpse of their true worth - they are winners and victors in the Kingdom of Heaven.

A successful Christian, if you can call him or her one, called to be a saint, ought to be hated rather than feted in this world. Yes, it does seem that the modernist forces seem to be attacking the Church from every angle, that orthodox Christian beliefs and values are aggressively under assault, yet this feast reminds us that we are not alone in our experience and that this epoch in history, is not that unique as the Church has always suffered derision, rejection, humiliation, and bullying from her inception. We often forget that until our Lord returns in glory as He brings judgment upon the earth, battles and wars will remain. So, no matter how peaceful we wish our lives could be, the truth is our lives, this side of heaven, will be tainted with conflict.

But despite the onslaught she experiences, not only from earthly enemies but also demonic forces, the vision described in the Book of the Apocalypse will be the final outcome. As we stand before the throne of the Lamb, we will know that we are conquerors, not losers, in this life we may be bullied but at the Last Judgment, we will be vindicated and that failure will be redeemed by the victory won for us by the Lamb which was slain.

Blessed are the Unfortunate

Solemnity of All Saints

The gospel which is read every year on the occasion of this feast seeks to underline the paradox of being a saint. One could paraphrase the Beatitudes in this way, “Blessed or Happy are those who are unfortunate.” One who mourns, for example, would never imagine himself as being happy. But our Lord declares this to him, “Happy are those who are not happy.”

But what strange kind of good fortune is it that is suggested by the words “blessed” or “happy”? The word has two temporal dimensions: it embraces both the present and the future, and each in a different way. The present aspect consists of the fact that those who seem to be in an unfortunate situation are told that they enjoy a special closeness to God and His Kingdom. God has favourites. He favours those mentioned in the Beatitudes. It is precisely in the sphere of suffering that God with His Kingdom is particularly present to them. When someone suffers and complains, God’s heart is moved to act and draws near to the person to offer deliverance.

But the present dimension of each of the Beatitudes also includes a future: God’s ultimate victory that is still hidden will one day manifest. Hence what each beatitude is saying is this: “Do not be afraid in your distress; God is close to you here and now, and He will be your great comfort and consolation in the time to come.” Because of this future dimension, the Beatitudes provide us with the core of Christian hope. The paradox of the Beatitudes are captured so beautifully and succinctly in the words of St Paul, “We are treated as impostors and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything” (2 Cor 6:8-10). This paradox has now become the model of Christian life and existence, the roadmap to sainthood.

Pope Francis reminds us, “The Beatitudes are like a Christian’s identity card. So, if anyone asks: “What must one do to be a good Christian?”, the answer is clear. We have to do, each in our own way, what Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount. In the Beatitudes, we find a portrait of the Master, which we are called to reflect in our daily lives”

In order to grasp the true profundity of the Beatitudes, and thereby the core of Christian hope, it is important to remember that they are essentially Christological. The real subject, of the beatitudes and in fact the entire Sermon on the Mount, is Jesus. It is only on this basis that we can discover the entire meaning of Christian faith life. Pope Benedict puts it this way, “The Beatitudes are the transposition of the Cross and Resurrection into discipleship". But they apply to the disciple because they were first paradigmatically lived by Christ himself … (they) present a “sort of veiled interior biography of Jesus.”

One needs to remember that in order to study the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount, it is not enough that we study the text of the gospel. The Sermon on the Mount is not meant to be some exaggerated, abstract and unreal moral lecture that has no correlation to daily life. The best commentary of the sermon and the beatitudes is the life of Christ, and by extension the lives of the Saints. Christ stands in the middle of the text and unites it with the lives of the saints who sought to imitate Him, in life and in death. The saints saw themselves in the text of the Beatitudes because they saw Christ in the middle of it. Christ is the one who is poor in spirit. He is the one who mourns, who is meek, who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, who is merciful, who is pure in heart, who is a peacemaker and who is persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Each of the Beatitudes is flesh and blood in Him. Can there ever be a better example?

For us too, the Beatitudes are a summon to follow Jesus Christ in discipleship. He alone is “perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect.” On our own, we can never hope to be “perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect.” The saints understood this truth. They recognised the path to sainthood is simply this – to die to oneself so that more of Christ would come alive in them. The saints provide us with a kaleidoscope to view Christ. That is why when the saints are honoured, it is Christ who is honoured above all. In loving the saints, Christ is not loved any less. On the contrary, Christ is rightly loved and glorified and His commandments are observed in the veneration of the saints.

The journey from this life to the next can be long, with many twists and turns, ups and downs, and it is imperative to stay on the right road. Don’t despair when life throws you lemons, just make lemonade! How can we be certain that we will not get lost on the way? Our Lord provides us with the Beatitudes as a roadmap and the Church provides us with the saints as guides. Happy are you because you have Christ and the saints as models of how to make it on this Way! What more can we ask for?

Resurrection, the evolutionary leap

Thirty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

There is no empirical evidence to show us that there is life after death. Death seems to be the closing curtain on life, marking the end of life’s dramatic performance. Of course, popular genre and anecdotal testimonies tell us that the only way one survives beyond death, beyond the grave is if you return in the form of a ghostly spectre or you are reanimated as a zombie, a walking dead - basically a corpse which continues to have movement.

The idea of the resurrection is such a revolutionary thing, that most people dismiss it, even Christians and many Catholics. In fact, for many, reincarnation seems more plausible, since we all have flashes of déjà vu.

If many find our belief in the resurrection ludicrous, it was equally considered a farce by certain groups of Jews during our Lord’s time - the Sadducees. It was Holy Week when the Sadducees put the Lord to the test and hoped to make a mockery of the topic. Sadducees don’t believe in the resurrection because apart from the Torah, they reject the other books of the canon which contained both prophetic and wisdom literature. References to the resurrection can be found in these other books which they did not accept. So, they tried to make the belief look ridiculous by creating this hypothetical case: A woman has seven husbands, she marries one after the other as each dies. Whose wife will she be in the resurrection?

The Sadducees believed such a situation demonstrated that people will not rise from the dead. Their scenario would make one or all of the brothers guilty of adultery if all of them were living and married to her. The Sadducees would have secretly congratulated themselves that they had trapped the Lord in a theological quandary.

And yet our Lord effortlessly deflects their attack and uses this opportunity to instruct His audience on the nature of death as well as the nature of God. Unlike the Gospel of St Matthew, St Luke does not have our Lord insult His detractors by accusing them of not knowing their scriptures nor the power of God. Our Lord goes immediately into His two-part reply.

First, the Sadducees have wrongly assumed that life in the resurrection would be exactly the same as life in this present world. There will be continuity, but there will be no marriage in the resurrection. We will be like angels, who do not get married. The Sadducees cannot refute the existence of angels because they are frequently mentioned in the Torah.

More importantly, the Sadducees were wrong about the resurrection of the dead because such evidence could even be found in the five books of Moses, the only portion of the Old Testament that the Sadducees used for their theology. Our Lord pointed to the scene of Moses before the burning bush in Exodus 3, as proof for the resurrection, noting that God introduces Himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

Implicitly, our Lord argued on the basis of both the verb tense and theology - if death ended the patriarchs' existence, God would have said, "I WAS the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." God’s use of the present tense implies that they live on to worship Him. Moreover, the Lord always keeps His promises, and His promise to the patriarchs—long life in the Promised Land and descendants as numerous as the stars - can be fulfilled only if they will live forever.

God is the God of the living not only because He is the only God who is alive—the other gods being dead because they do not truly exist as gods—but also because He is the God of the living. God's relationship to His people does not end at their death, for they live on to worship Him in heaven. Because God is the God of the living, we know that all His promises to us will be kept either now, or in the world to come.

The feast of All Saints and the commemoration of All Souls which we celebrated just last week, is an affirmation of this belief. Both feasts remind us of our mortality and also immortality. We are all finite, mortal creatures and death will be our common lot. But we are also uniquely loved by God among all His creatures, and for this reason, He has endowed us with an immortal soul. Our ultimate destiny lies in God’s hands, and even death cannot separate us from His love.

Our belief in the resurrection of the dead, our resurrection, is ultimately tied to the resurrection of the Lord. Believing that the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead is essential for Christians. Merely recognising that He died for our sins is not enough; we must accept His resurrection in order to receive Eternal Life. We profess that Christ paid our debt, but His sacrifice on the cross means nothing if He possesses no power over the grave. In vanquishing evil and death, the Lord made our salvation possible. Jesus’ resurrection proved He was able to remove sin and its penalty.

Assuming Christ remained dead would mean accepting the opposite - that believers are still in sin. And the inevitable end of a sinful life is death. Consequently, a person who denies Christ’s eternal nature looks toward a void future. Bertrand Russell, a famous atheistic philosopher, offered this sad description of such hopelessness: “Brief and powerless is man’s life. On his and all his race, the slow sure doom falls, pitiless and dark.”

Instead of enjoying Christian liberty and anticipating a home in heaven, those who reject the resurrection are slaves to the present, with no real hope or meaning in life. This explains why so many are caught in the malaise of despair and hopelessness in our society today. When man no longer believes in the resurrection after death, in redemption after sin, he descends into the pit of meaninglessness. Career, family, and good works can offer brief pleasure but not the kind of joy that comes from knowing we are right with the Lord and working in His will. That is why the belief in the resurrection is not a point for theological debate. Either we believe Christ rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, or we do not. If we reject His victory over the grave, we deny ourselves a place in eternity. But if we accept the truth, Paul assures us that we will be saved.

Sainthood is within our reach

Solemnity of All Saints

One of the most common complaints I get from well-meaning Catholics who wish to see the Catholic Church become more inclusive and tolerant, a “big tent” organisation that takes in all and welcomes all, is that the Church seems to be too overly demanding and the bar which she sets is so exceedingly high, only perfect saints would make the mark. Robert Hugh Benson, the Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism, sets out this dichotomy: “one-half the world considers the Church too holy for human life, and the other half, not holy enough. We may name these critics, respectively, the Pagan and the Puritan.”

Against the pagan who accuses the Catholic Church of being over excessively demanding and against the puritan who claims that we will never be good enough for God, the Church actually teaches that though all have received the universal call to holiness at baptism, all have the potential and the means to become saints through sacramental graces, we continue to acknowledge that we are sinners, striving and struggling with temptation and the entrapments of sin, and therefore, constantly in need of redemption.

A saint is not someone who has never sinned but someone who refuses to be defeated by sin, refuses to allow sin to have the last word or plays hapless victim, because he or she believes in the power of redemption by the One who died on the cross to atone for our sins and who even now leads us on the path heavenward. A Saint understands and accepts the power of grace that “love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8) and where “sin abounds grace abounds much more” (Romans 5:20).

Saints are made, not born. Although one’s discipleship must deepen during the course of a Christian’s life through a slow process of conversion and growth in sanctity, he or she must be a thoroughly converted Christian disciple before he or she can become a saint. Acknowledging that we are “works in progress” is never in contradiction of the fact that we are called to “perfection.” The error of our modern times is that so many seek to give excuses for our mediocrity by canonising it, by making mediocrity the new benchmark of all aspects of life. We forget that we are made to be saints, being “half-baked” just doesn’t cut it. The saints remind us that perfection in terms of holiness is possible and attainable, even though it may take a life time of surrendering to God’s grace as we progress in discipleship.

In life, we often look up to certain celebrities as our heroes, idols, hoping and aspiring to become more like them. For us as well as for the saints, there is one model par excellence – it is Christ. By honouring the saints and by desiring to become more like them, we are aspiring to imitate what they hold up to us for our emulation – Christ Himself. This is what the beatitudes present to us - an image of Christ who chose to be poor, to be meek, to share our sorrow, to be a peacemaker and to suffer persecution for the sake of righteousness. And if we wish to become more Christ-like, we must then imitate Him by living out the beatitudes.

For the one who protests that holiness is beyond his reach, that holiness is for losers who seek to deny their humanity, who thinks that sanctity means virtue signalling, who believes that he is an incorrigible sinner beyond repair or redemption, he is making one of these declarations:

That redemption is a fantasy, which also means that our Lord died in vain and His mission was a failure;

That one doesn’t wish to follow Christ, for this is what becoming a saint means - becoming more Christ-like.

That this life is all there is to it, that there is no destiny prepared by God beyond a life of sin and strife; a destiny beyond our imagining - eternal life within the light and love of the Most Holy Trinity.

Acknowledging our vocation to become saints is not living in denial of our fallen nature and propensity to sin. We all fail, sometimes grievously. But, that is no reason to lower the bar of expectation. We seek forgiveness and reconciliation, and try again. Lowering the bar of spiritual and moral expectation demeans the faith and demeans us. Catholics today are capable of spiritual and moral grandeur, and indeed want to be called to that greatness. That is what Vatican II meant by the "universal call to holiness," and that is what is available to all of us in the Church, who dispenses graces through the sacraments.

Sanctity is available. And sanctity is what will transform a loser into a winner, a victim into a conqueror, a sinner into a saint. As Leon Bloy, the French Catholic novelist, so famously wrote: "The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint."

Losers and Winners

Solemnity of All Saints 2021

Some of you may have been fans of the characters of the Peanuts comic strip created by Charles M. Schultz. Without a doubt, we have grown up enjoying, laughing with, sympathising and even hating the various individual comic personalities. My most endearing character is definitely Charlie Brown, the main male protagonist. The reason for this attraction is because Charlie Brown reminds me so much of myself growing up and even now, as an adult.

Personality-wise, he is gentle, insecure, and lovable. Charlie Brown possesses significant determination and hope, but frequently fails because of his insecurities, outside interferences, or plain bad luck. Although liked by his friends, he is often the subject of bullying, especially at the hands of Lucy van Pelt. Charlie is the proverbial Born Loser. He is described by his creator as “the one who suffers because he’s a caricature of the average person. Most of us are much more acquainted with losing than winning. Winning is great, but it isn’t funny.” We may laugh at Charlie’s bumbling expense, but as far as Charlie is concerned, losing isn’t funny either.

To be a Christian today often feels like being a loser. This is true, both as a matter of demographics and regarding the influence and respectability of traditional Christian values. There are fewer Christians even in traditionally predominantly “Christian” countries, and our neighbours think less of us because of our strange values and ideas. We are increasingly outsiders. And how we respond to this reality may be the defining question of our time.

The good news is that Christianity has always been a religion of losers. We have been persecuted, our beliefs have been ridiculed and rejected, our values have been maligned, sometimes driving us underground to practice our faith secretly. But though we may appear to be weak, powerless, failures, and losers in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of God we are victorious and winners! In this world we will have trouble; in this world we will lose; but take heart, Christ has overcome the world. And this is what the Saints in heaven declare in song and praise: “Victory to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” These were the same figures who appeared to be defeated by anti-Christian forces, persecuted, tortured and martyred and yet, emerged victorious holding palms as trophies of their victory.

Nowhere is this truth more evident than in the Beatitudes. One could paraphrase the list of beatitudes as this: “Happy or Blessed are the losers!” This is what the paradoxical and counterintuitive values behind the Beatitudes seek to display. Our Lord and Saviour, just as the beatitudes would describe, had to experience poverty, pain, suffering, loss, persecution and death for the sake of righteousness in order to gain the victory and joyful blessedness of the resurrection and the gift of eternal life for all of us. This is the core of the Christian message - death before resurrection, loss before victory, last before first, poverty before riches. For in the Christian story, ‘success and failure’ is inverted.

Although we often describe the Saints in heaven as the Church Triumphant, those who have “run the race” and are crowned with glory in Heaven, it often doesn’t feel this way here on earth. Our earthly experiences of failure and loss make us doubt the promises of the beatitudes.

But if we take a deeper look at the promises which are proclaimed by the beatitudes, we begin to recognise the veracity of their claims even in this life without waiting for the next. The losers can discover something about themselves that winners cannot ever appreciate – that they are loved and wanted simply because of who they are, and not because of what they achieve. That despite it all, raw humanity is glorious and wonderful, entirely worthy of love. This is revealed precisely at the greatest point of dejection – our Lord’s death and resurrection. The resurrection is not just a magic trick at raising a dead body to life. That’s a neat and impressive trick. But it is so much more than that. It is a revelation that love is stronger than death, grace is stronger than sin, that human worth is not indexed to worldly success, but to one’s fidelity to the path laid out by Christ. The lives of the Saints are testimony to this. On this side of heaven, they may appear to be losers. But as the vision of St John in the first reading lifts the veil, we are given a glimpse of their true worth - they are winners and victors in the Kingdom of Heaven.

A successful Christian, if you can call him or her one, called to be a saint, ought to be hated rather than feted in this world. Yes, it does seem that the modernist forces seem to be attacking the Church from every angle, that orthodox Christian beliefs and values are aggressively under assault, yet this feast reminds us that we are not alone in our experience and that this epoch in history, is not that unique as the Church has always suffered derision, rejection, humiliation and condemnation from her inception. We often forget that until our Lord returns in glory as He brings judgment upon the earth, battles and wars will remain. So, no matter how peaceful we wish our lives could be, the truth is our lives, this side of heaven, will be tainted with conflict.

But despite the onslaught she experiences, not only from earthly enemies but also demonic forces, the vision described in the Book of the Apocalypse will be the final outcome. There, before the throne of the Lamb, we will know that we are conquerors, not losers and that failure will be redeemed by the victory won for us by the Lamb which was slain.

A Blessed Life

Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

It will be no surprise that those for whom the bible is paramount, for whom nothing can be said without clear biblical justification, the doctrine of the Assumption is not something they are easy with. We use the gospel reading on the Visitation, because there is nothing in the gospels that describes the Assumption in the way that the Visitation is described. Elsewhere, Psalm 132, where the Blessed Virgin is interpreted as the “Ark of God” that is taken into heaven, is cited. Along with similar interpretations of Genesis 3:15, 1 Corinthians 15:54, and Revelation 12:1-2, this hardly amounts to an explicit expression of the dogma of the Assumption; on their own, they are not a ringing endorsement. So, why is this gospel passage selected for today? How do we draw a trajectory from the Visitation to that of the Assumption?

In today’s account of the Visitation of our Lady to her cousin St Elizabeth, we see the exploding synergy which takes place during the meeting of these two women and the unborn children within their wombs. St Luke was determined to let us know that Mary “went as quickly as she could”, spurred on by a double motivation; to share the joy of Elizabeth’s good fortune in having conceived a son when well beyond the age of childbearing, and secondly, to share her own heavenly secret that she was to be the mother of the Messiah.

But apart from the excitement, the energy and the joy displayed by the various characters in today’s gospel including the unborn St John the Baptist, in the womb of St Elizabeth who leapt for joy as he heard Mary’s greeting, we see a remarkable theme being weaved through the entire narrative from beginning to end - it is the blessed life. Mary is living the blessed life.

In today's gospel, we have a description of the blessed life of the Virgin Mary. St Elizabeth honours her with this praise that she is the “most blessed” among all women; that the child within her womb is “blessed,” and Mary breaks into song acknowledging this blessedness: “all generations will call me blessed.” She acknowledges the source of that blessedness - it is God, “holy is His name.”

As some people are fond of saying that they are “living the dream,” which is to say that they have achieved their lives’ goals and their ideals and dreams have become reality, Mary is living the blessed life, not some unfulfilled dream in the future but a present reality.

What does it mean to live a blessed life? The simplest answer is that, it means to live in God’s presence. This is captured so beautifully in the first paragraph of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

“God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know Him, to love Him with all His strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent His Son as Redeemer and Saviour. In his Son and through Him, He invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, His adopted children and thus heirs of His blessed life.”

This is why we call the Saints blessed, because they are heirs of God’s blessed life - having reached Heaven, they stand in God’s presence enjoying beatific vision—seeing God face to face. The Blessed Virgin Mary, though counted among the company of Saints, is uniquely privileged. She did not need to wait for death, as in the case of the other Saints, to experience this grace-filled moment of sanctification. Our Church holds this belief, based on scripture and tradition, that she was preserved from original sin from the moment of conception in her mother St Anne’s womb, and she alone among all mortals, was free from personal sin throughout her entire life.

The Blessed Virgin Mary shows us the manner in which we can live the blessed life in the here and now. By her dedication to God, she was open to doing His will. She opened her heart so that the Holy Spirit was able to dwell in her and the Word of God, the second person of the Most Holy Trinity, could take flesh in her womb. Mary wasn’t just some incidental insignificant supporting character in the story of salvation, nor a mere hollow receptacle of the Divine Being. It is from her flesh that God took on human flesh to become man. God became man through her and not in spite of her. God now shares in our humanity because of her.

The Blessed Virgin Mary is without a doubt the epitome of the blessed life to which the Assumption is an appropriate end, and perhaps the only logical conclusion. It makes sense, that she should be assumed into heaven, as a representative of humanity. Our Lady was born without sin, and was perfect in virtue. It is only proper then, that at the end of her earthly life, that she should be raised to heaven, to share in her Son's victory: an assumption that is on offer to the entire human race. Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us that He has gone to prepare a place for us. Surely, it is right to believe that the Blessed Virgin already enjoys a privilege spot in that place.

We too are invited to have a share in this blessed life, for God has promised that He will “exalt the lowly.” If we imitate our Blessed Mother in her humility, we will also share in the privilege accorded to her in glory. As our Lord welcomed His own mother into His eternal presence, He too beckons us, waving us over, inviting us to take our place at the table of the heavenly banquet which He has prepared for us, and where our Lady sits on His right as she whispers this piece of maternal advice into our ears: “do what ever He tells you to do,” and continues to intercede for us that “we may merit to be exalted by (Christ) on high.”

The Paradox of Happiness

Solemnity of All Saints 2020

When her name first emerged over the internet, everyone thought it was a sick joke, a satire meant to poke fun at Catholic sensibilities. This already obscure saint had almost entirely been forgotten only to have her fame restored during a time when the world had to contend with a virus that shared the same name – St Corona. That’s irony for you.

Today’s feast is all-embracing and all-encompassing. It’s a feast that celebrates the memory of great saints like Augustine, Francis and Teresa, and also the obscure and forgotten saints like Corona. It is hardly ironic but certainly logical to think that the saints are often remembered and invoked during times of crises, especially now.

The gospel which is read every year on the occasion of this feast seeks to underline the paradox of being a saint. One could paraphrase the Beatitudes in this way, “Blessed or Happy are those who are unfortunate.” One who mourns, for example, would never imagine himself as being happy. But our Lord declares this to him, “Happy are those who are not happy.”

But what strange kind of good fortune is it that is suggested by the words “blessed” or “happy”? The word has two temporal dimensions: it embraces both the present and the future, and each in a different way. The present aspect consists of the fact that those who seem to be in an unfortunate situation are told that they enjoy a special closeness to God and His Kingdom. God has favourites. He favours those mentioned in the Beatitudes. It is precisely in the sphere of suffering that God with His Kingdom is particularly present to them. When someone suffers and complains, God’s heart is moved to act and draw near to the person to offer deliverance.

But the present dimension of each of the Beatitudes also includes a future: God’s ultimate victory that is still hidden will one day manifest. Hence what each beatitude is saying is this: “Do not be afraid in your distress; God is close to you here and now, and He will be your great comfort and consolation in the time to come.” Because of this future dimension, the beatitudes provide us with the core of Christian hope. The paradox of the beatitudes are captured so beautifully and succinctly in the words of St Paul, “We are treated as impostors and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything” (2 Cor 6:8-10). This paradox has now become the model of Christian life and existence, the roadmap to sainthood.

Pope Francis reminds us, “The Beatitudes are like a Christian’s identity card. So, if anyone asks: “What must one do to be a good Christian?”, the answer is clear. We have to do, each in our own way, what Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount. In the Beatitudes, we find a portrait of the Master, which we are called to reflect in our daily lives”

In order to grasp the true profundity of the Beatitudes, and thereby the core of Christian hope, it is important to remember that they are essentially Christological. The real subject, of the beatitudes and in fact the entire Sermon on the Mount, is Jesus. It is only on this basis that we can discover the entire meaning of Christian faith life. Pope Benedict puts it this way, “The Beatitudes are the transposition of the Cross and Resurrection into discipleship. But they apply to the disciple because they were first paradigmatically lived by Christ himself … (they) present a “sort of veiled interior biography of Jesus.”

One needs to remember that in order to study the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount, it is not enough that we study the text of the gospel. The Sermon on the Mount is not meant to be some exaggerated, abstract and unreal moral lecture that has no correlation to daily life. The best commentary of the sermon and the beatitudes is the life of Christ and by extension the lives of the Saints. Christ stands in the middle of the text and unites it with the lives of the saints who sought to imitate Him, in life and in death. The saints saw themselves in the text of the Beatitudes because they saw Christ in the middle of it. Christ is the one who is poor in spirit. He is the one who mourns, who is meek, who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, who is merciful, who is pure in heart, who is a peacemaker and who is persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Each of the Beatitudes is flesh and blood in Him. Can there ever be a better example?

For us too, the Beatitudes are a summon to follow Jesus Christ in discipleship. He alone is “perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect.” On our own, we can never hope to be “perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect.” The saints understood this truth. They recognised the path to sainthood is simply this – to die to oneself so that more of Christ would come alive in them. The saints provide us with a kaleidoscope to view Christ. That is why when the saints are honoured, it is Christ who is honoured above all. In loving the saints, Christ is not loved any less. On the contrary, Christ is rightly loved and glorified and His commandments are observed in the veneration of the saints.

The journey from this life to the next can be long, with many twists and turns, ups and downs, and it is imperative to stay on the right road.  How can we be certain that we will not get lost? Our Lord provides us with the Beatitudes as a roadmap and the Church provides us with the saints as guides. What more can we ask for?

Back to our little forgotten saint. Over the centuries, St. Corona was often prayed to by people seeking her help in times of trouble, be it heavy storms or livestock diseases. In these difficult times, may St Corona and all the saints of heaven, continue to give us courage and hope as we seek their intercession, that though we may still suffer poverty, experience grieving, hardship, suffering, illness and persecution in this life, Christ continues to assure those who are faithful to Him: “yours is the kingdom of heaven.”

Climb every mountain

Solemnity of All Saints

As many of you are aware, I have just returned from a pilgrimage to France. It concluded with a visit to the Alpine shrine dedicated to Our Lady of La Sallete. The beautiful, serene, cloud enshrouded mountaintops, provide every visitor with a breathtaking panorama. Despite the sanctity of this shrine and the grandeur of the scenery, the crowd was relatively small. My fellow chaplain commented, “Meet the poor cousin of Lourdes.” In terms of popularity, this shrine is a pale shadow of the other Marian shrine. Perhaps, the reason for this could be that this mountainous sanctuary is not easily accessible. The path ascending to the top was narrow and winding, the journey long and strenuous. I cannot even imagine how the early pilgrims would have made the track up the hill on their feet, and here we are complaining about our moderately turbulent bus ride.

When I first caught sight of the mountainous scenery, I almost burst into the first verse of that theme song from the 1965 film, The Sound of Music.

Climb every mountain,

Search high and low,

Follow every byway,

Every path you know.

Do you remember when the young Maria came into view over the hills with the mountains framing the background and the meadow abundant with spring flowers? As she ran forward effortlessly, filled with life and freshness, singing with a full voice and without laboured breathing, none of the debilitating effects of high altitude, mountain climbing looked like an easy goal. But we know better! I was already panting when I had to walk a few steps. Mountain climbing is hard work.

The path to sainthood, which is our pilgrimage of life, can be compared to climbing a mountain. The final goal is to reach the summit and to get there one must choose a path. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI once taught, “The goal of every pilgrimage is the city of ‘solid foundations’, whose architect and builder is ‘God’: a goal that is not of this world, but of ‘heaven’.” Every pilgrimage, therefore, has a beginning and an end and the desired end of our earthly pilgrimage is the perfection of charity or heaven, the city where the saints dwell. To arrive at our destination we must choose a path. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “The way of Christ ‘leads to life’; a contrary way ‘leads to destruction.” (CCC #1696) The Beatitudes that we’ve just read in the gospel speaks of this path – the way of Christ that leads to life.

The lives of the saints remind us that the journey to sainthood is never one which is smooth and trouble free. All would have experienced severe trials, setbacks, failures, struggles with their own limitations as they struggled to continue the upward climb. St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Augustine, lest we forget, all had colourful pasts: denying Christ, persecuting His followers, and embracing a hedonistic lifestyle. All needed to keep the summit constantly in view as the temptation to turn back and to go down the mountain is great. In our spiritual journey we all descend into the valleys and climb back up the slopes of the mountains. Sometimes we slip or fall back, get hurt, or need to re-evaluate the path we are on. These are ebbs and flows in the spiritual life which provide us with the skills that we need to progress on our journey.

Ultimately the “path” entails conversion, repeated conversion, a process of conversion. For you to grow in holiness and be a saint, you don’t need to do extraordinary things. You need only to focus on continuous conversion, the nitty-gritty practice of daily avoiding sins, growing in virtue, living out the beatitudes, being fervent in prayer, and growing in intimacy with the God who loves you. Everyone, therefore, is called to ongoing conversion in his or her own “path.” St. Bernard once said that no matter how sinful one might have been in the past, he is still called to the heights of prayer—to the depths of the riches of the spiritual life. Our process of conversion to Christ is a journey that takes place over the course of a lifetime. You can probably look back to times in your life where you can remember making great progress on your spiritual journey, and other times when you have felt like you were moving backwards. Union with God always requires a process, often painful, that must pave the way for that union. For, if a box is filled with sand, it cannot be filled with gold dust. The sand must be removed, the vessel emptied and cleaned, and then there is room for the Gold of God’s presence.

But the saints also remind us that in order to conquer the heights of that mountain of perfection, it is not only through sheer effort and determination. There is the power of grace. The beatitudes captures this beautifully. Such blessedness is not manufactured or imagined, it comes from one’s total dependence on God’s grace, goodness and providence. The situations or scenarios described in the Beatitudes places the disciple in an uncomfortable, awkward and vulnerable situation, where he is unable to rely on his own personal strength or resources. In such desperate situation, he ultimately comes to recognise that his only recourse is in God. This is what St Therese de Lisieux, the Little Flower, meant by her little “shortcut” to holiness. “We live in an age of inventions. We need no longer climb laboriously up flights of stairs; in well-to-do houses there are lifts. And I was determined to find a lift to carry me to Jesus, for I was far too small to climb the steep stairs of perfection. So I sought in Holy Scripture some idea of what this life I wanted would be, and I read these words: “Whosoever is a little one, come to me.” It is your arms, Jesus, that are the lift to carry me to heaven. And so there is no need for me to grow up: I must stay little and become less and less.”

When mountain climbers are at the base of a mountain looking up at the top, they have an experience of the mountain’s beauty, but when they actually arrive at the top and look around, the scenery spread before them is exhilarating and far beyond anything they could have imagined previously. All the trials, struggles, and difficulties of the climb are forgotten as they bask in the grandeur of what they now experience. They will go back down the mountain and when they look up again it will be with new eyes, for what they have witnessed will have changed their perspective. They will never view the mountain the same again. The saints provide us with a similar vision. Listening to their stories, having seen what they’ve seen, heard what they’ve heard, lived how they lived, life will never be the same again. The saints are a constant source of encouragement that nothing is impossible with the grace of God, even for a sinner like me. Such an experience is a foretaste of what the Lord has in store for us at the end of life’s journey. We cannot begin to even imagine what this will be.

Let us give thanks to God for the saints and turn to them in prayer to assist us on our journey as we strive to reach the perfection of charity!

Climb every mountain,

Search high and low,

Follow every byway,

Every path you know.