Preach the Complete Truth

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

This passage has often been cited as a model for preachers to keep their sermons short and sweet. If you had paid attention to the last line of the passage, many have claimed that this is indeed the shortest sermon ever delivered: “This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen.” But such a claim is grossly inaccurate and in fact, quite mischievous. It is clear that when we read the rest of the text in this pericope, our Lord has much more to say. And it would be stretching it to see how our Lord won the approval of the audience and caused them to be “astonished by the gracious words that came from His lips,” with just this one liner. The “gracious words” here, would obviously point to other things which our Lord said, as evidenced by our Lord’s use of two Old Testament illustrations if you read the rest of the following verses, which are not included in our lectionary selection.

Pope Francis has often reiterated his preference for brevity in preaching, which in his opinion, should not exceed 10 minutes. By the number of likes and retweets we see in social media whenever the pontiff’s advice on succinct preaching is reported, we get the impression that many Catholics are certainly in support of this guidance and show us how little our well-thought-out homilies are appreciated by the masses.

But should our homilies be solely measured by their length? It is good to note that our Lord was not known for the brevity of His Sermons. We have both the Sermon on the Mount (St Matthew’s Gospel), which stretches across three chapters, and the parallel albeit shorter Sermon on the Plain (St Luke’s version), as proof that our Lord did deliver lengthy sermons when necessary. His lengthy discourses in the Fourth Gospel are further evidence of this point.

In short, it is always much more effective if you can say things in a far more efficient way with less verbosity, but brevity can never be the sole or the most important criterion. In fact, I dare say that our generation suffers more from a lack of hearing the Word than it does from over-hearing it. Our problem is not “too much” of the Word of God” but rather “too little.” Our generation can sit through a two-hour or sometimes three-hour movie, a student can endure an hour-long lecture involving complex ideas, a young person can be totally engrossed in his gaming for hours on end without requiring any break, and yet, find a ten to fifteen minutes homily something beyond endurance.

A good homily is never to be measured by its brevity or entertainment quality but by how it corresponds with God’s agenda as in the case of our Lord’s preaching in today’s passage. Our Lord was not just spewing nice platitudes and entertaining anecdotes. He was setting out not His own agenda but God’s programme for His ministry which He faithfully desired to adhere to. So how long should a sermon or homily take? As long as it is necessary to convey what God wishes to say to His people, and no clock is going to put a cap on that.

Returning to our gospel passage and our Lord’s supposed short 10 seconds sermon, it is good to remember who Jesus is, which no one else can claim to be. It would seem from the brevity of our Lord’s sermon that the words of the prophet Isaiah which our Lord had just read were sufficient and our Lord only needed to declare that if His congregation wished to understand its meaning, they only had to look at Him. Our Lord, the Word Enfleshed, is the living fulfilment of that message. So, our Lord has the sole privilege of delivering the shortest 10 seconds homily, only because He is the Word. The rest of us poor preachers need more time to get the message across, precisely because we are not the Word, merely its servants.

The homily provides an unmatched opportunity for us priests to remind or inform our congregation what exactly we believe, and why. It is said that St Dominic often reminded his confreres in the Order of Preachers that they only had two tasks – to speak with God or to speak about God. Notice what’s missing from this formula? The homily is not meant for the priest to speak about himself. It is not meant to entertain, to provide practical self-help or adapt to your comfort level. It is a chance for us to provide a clear, unafraid, proclamation of the fullness of the Truths taught by the Scriptures and the Church which guards the deposit of faith. We may or may not need 30 minutes to achieve that, but we do need to make sure that what is said is distinctively and challengingly Catholic.

Just before Christmas last year, Elon Musk tweeted a photo of two piles of documents which were meant to be passed by the US Congress to ensure that their government did not shut down. One was a voluminous bill with thousands of pages and the second was just a thin tiny fraction of the former with just over one hundred pages. The message of the juxtaposition was clear and simple. Smaller, thinner, less is better. A Catholic apologist affixed his own commentary to the picture. The thicker pile represented the deposit of faith of the Catholic Church while the vastly thinner pile represented the Protestant watered down version. When it comes to matters of faith, the Word of God, more is always far superior than lesser.

On this Sunday of the Word of God, let us make it our resolution to be read more, immerse ourselves deeper, and listen more attentively to the Word of God. Lesser isn’t better. In fact, we may spiritually die from being impoverished in reading and hearing the Word of God being proclaimed and preached. Instead of demanding for shortcuts and soundbites, let us be hungry for the full and complete Truth. God intended to give us solid food, let’s not settle for baby’s mushy gruel. He wants to reveal to us the complete Truth, let’s not be satisfied with partial truths. There will always be depths of God’s revelation that needs to be plunged, mysteries that need to be explored, theological understanding that could be better expounded. Likewise, in sharing the Catholic faith with others, we should always resist the temptation of dumbing-down the message of Christ. People are hungering for the complete Truth, don’t give them sound bites. It’s either the complete thing that we must demand for or it’s a fake.

God is the Author, man isn't

Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

Being a priest, I must admit that it’s not hard to know what I must do. If I want to know what I must do, I am simply guided by sacred scripture and sacred tradition, the teachings and disciplines of the Church found in canon law, the liturgical rubrics and pastoral directories governing church discipline, structures and practices. The hard part is doing it anyway despite it being unpopular. It’s funny that whenever I do what is required of me, I’m always accused of being “rigid”! Yes, the Church’s laws, rules and rubrics provide clear unambiguous guidance and direction, but they also make room for discernment and exception-making whenever necessary. The hard part is always trying to reinvent the wheel based on personal preferences and feelings, mine as well as others. This is when the point of reference is no longer Christ or the Church, but me. If I should “follow my heart” or that of others, without any reference to Christ or the Church, I would simply be guilty of what the Lord is accusing the Pharisees in today’s gospel: “You put aside the commandment of God to cling to human traditions.”

Too many these days, including many well-intentioned pastors, feel that the teachings of the Church fall into the category of “grey area” and “ambiguity,” thus the teachings of faith and morals are relative to individuals and their respective unique situations. They have problems with doctrinal teachings on contraception, purgatory, and indulgences (just to name a few), all of which are covered and explained clearly in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. And if we should decide to defend these teachings and the laws which flow from them, we are immediately labelled as “rigid” and “seeing everything in black and white,” refusing to acknowledge that people change over the years and so the Church must learn to adapt accordingly. The final argument and last insult would be to insist that Church laws are mere “human regulations” which justifies departing from them. And since they are supposedly “man-made rules,” you can and should dispense with them as how Christ dispensed with the man-made rules and traditions of the scribes and Pharisees in today’s gospel passage. Interesting argument but seriously flawed.

Yes, it is correct to state that many of these rules are man-made, Christ made them and Christ was fully human. It was Christ Himself who instituted the Eucharist: “Do this in memory of Me”, He said at the Last Supper. “Go therefore and baptise”, He said, and it was He who included the Trinitarian baptismal formula in the rite. It was He who taught if someone should divorce his or her spouse and marry another, it would be adultery. Our Lord was the master of creating traditions! But let us not forget this little, often ignored, seldom stressed point – Christ was also fully divine – He was fully God. So, no, though there are man-made rules in the Church just like any human organisation and society, and these rules can technically be changed and have changed over the centuries, there are fundamentally certain rules set in stone, on an unbreakable and indissoluble “stone”, which is to say that they are “immutable,” they remain binding in every age and place and under any circumstances, precisely because God is the author, and man isn’t.

Alright, given the fact that divine laws can’t be changed except by God, how about all the disciplines, canon law, rules and liturgical rubrics of the Church? Aren’t these man-made? Well, just because they are “man-made” doesn’t necessarily empty them of value. Traffic laws, statutory laws, municipal by-laws, school regulations, association rules would equally fall under the same category of being “man-made.” Can you imagine a society or a world that totally departs from any law or regulation and everyone is allowed to make decisions, behave, and act upon their own whims and fancies? If you’ve ever watched one of those apocalyptic movies of a dystopian world in the not-too-distant future, you will have your answer. We will soon descend into a society of anarchy, lawlessness, violence, where justice is merely an illusion and “might is right.” The reason for this is because none of us are as sinless as the Son of God or His immaculately conceived Mother. Laws are not meant to curtail and restrict our freedom. They are meant to ensure that our rights as well as the rights of others are protected so that true freedom may be enjoyed. The Law of Christ as expounded by the Church frees us - it frees from our selfish, self-referential, sin-encrusted egos.

A more careful examination of Christ’s words in today’s passage indicate that He was not condemning human tradition, but those who place human traditions, laws, or demands before true worship of God and His will expressed in the commandments. The problem wasn’t “human traditions” but specifically “human traditions” that obscure the priority of worship and God. Man was made to worship God; it's in our very nature to do so. Every other human activity should either flow from this or should rank second to this. This is what liturgical rubrics hope to achieve. Detailed instructions for both the priest and the congregation are intended to ensure that God is ultimately worshipped and glorified in the liturgy, and not man who is to be entertained. In other words, all these “man-made” rules of the Church which, to some of us, doesn’t seem to be what Christ taught, actually flow from the heart of Christ's teaching. Christ gave us the Church to teach and to guide us; she does so, in part, by teaching us to know God, to love Him and serve Him and through all these, be united with Him in Paradise forever. But when we substitute our own will for this most basic aspect of our humanity, we don't simply fail to do what we ought; we take a step backward and obscure the image of God.

It is often very convenient to denounce Catholic tradition as “man-made” or “human tradition” just because we don’t like it. The hypocrisy of such an accusation is often lost on those who supplant the Church’s tradition, rules and rubrics, with their own interpretation and version. Clericalism, real clericalism and not just the dressed-up version of it (those who wear black cassocks or lacy albs), is the result of choosing to depart from those rules, disciplines and teachings. When we ignore or reject the rules of the Church, we are merely replacing them with our own rules, our so-called “human traditions.” In fact, we are putting “aside the commandment of God to cling to human traditions.” It is not those who keep the rules but those who flagrantly break the rules that are the modern-day Pharisees.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that Sacred Tradition, rather than a set of “man-made rules” or “human traditions” is “the living memorial of God’s Word.” Pope Benedict XVI explains that Sacred Tradition “is not the transmission of things or words, an assortment of lifeless objects; (but) it is the living stream that links us to the origins, the living stream in which those origins are ever present.” Therefore, we should be putting aside our own arrogant personal preferences and opinions, rather than God’s commandments, and come to acknowledge that it is not stupidity but humility to listen to the voice of the Church because as St Ambrose reminds us, “the Church shines not with her own light, but with the light of Christ. Her light is drawn from the Sun of Justice, so that she can exclaim: ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’ (Gal 2:20)”.

Are you listening?

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

For those who complain that God isn’t speaking to them - and I’m not referring to the delusional types who hear voices inside their heads - this Sunday’s readings remind us that God is always speaking, but the real issue is this - are we really listening? God’s Word is contained in sacred scripture and sacred tradition. How many of us take the trouble to put aside some time every day to study it, to meditate upon it and to apply its message to our lives? And I don’t mean to shame you to take out your Bible or your Catechism and read a few paragraphs today. I will be happy if you could do it every day.

More often, if we don’t hear what someone is saying, it’s because we don’t want to hear it. It’s called selective hearing. Whether it’s ignoring emails, screening phone calls and texts, staring at the screens of our devices while someone else is talking, or simply putting headphones in and cutting ourselves off from the world – we all practice selective hearing, even when we know we shouldn’t.

And it’s not a new phenomenon – Israel, in Samuel’s time, had a severe case of hearing deficit. It wasn’t that God wasn’t speaking; they still had the Law given to Moses to provide them with guidance, but neither those tasked with preaching it nor those tasked with listening were doing their job. Take for example the sons of Eli, Hophni and Phineas, who were all anointed priests of the Lord. Instead of preaching and teaching God’s Word to the people of Israel – as they were called to do – his sons were notorious for stealing from the portion of sacrificial offerings offered to God and for sleeping with the women who served at the tabernacle. But the most egregious sin was their refusal to listen to anyone who tried to correct their sinful ways.

As a result of the obstinacy of the religious leadership, God decided to give them the silent treatment. Since Israel had stopped listening, so God stopped speaking. That’s what it means when it says, in those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions. God wanted to speak to His people, to lead them, discipline them, forgive them, comfort them but because they refused to listen to Him, God refused to speak. It was the worst judgment possible.

And so enters Samuel, who is apprenticing with Eli his mentor. God calls Samuel to replace these hopeless ministers who have stopped listening to His Word. There is only one simple criteria – he must be willing to LISTEN, put it into practice and communicate it faithfully.

We turn to the gospel as we see the Word Incarnate finally emerging and the various peoples responding to His Word by learning to listen. We have the Baptist’s disciples listening to their master as he identifies Jesus as the Lamb of God and then they decide to follow up with their own investigation. They heard and heeded our Lord’s invitation to “Come and See” and was transformed by that encounter. Now having heard and encountered the Word personally, and not just come to know of Him by hearsay, they began to share the Word with others. We see this ripple effect finally reaching Simon Peter. His brother Andrew comes and shares his experience and thereafter took Peter to meet the Lord. Peter’s name serves as an apt conclusion to this whole episode. Simon (Shimon) in Hebrew means hearing or listening. Though the name was a real name and not just a symbolic one, St John the Evangelist weaves it beautifully into his narrative to summarise the process and dynamics of discipleship - the disciple is one who listens and puts into practice what he has heard.

So, God continues to speak to us through His Word. And His Word is not just found in a book, but in a living breathing person, our Lord Jesus Christ. We should have no excuse to not listen. And yet, we can find a load of excuses not to listen. I guess that busyness is easily the number one excuse for not hearing, not meditating, not praying, not taking time to study God’s Word. But busyness is just a cover for the real reasons. One common reason is pride. Pride that wants to say, “Listen up, Lord, I’m speaking” rather than “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.” Others don’t listen because they are angry with God, and so we choose to give Him the silent treatment. Or maybe our problem is just sheer laziness. Bibles, study guides, online formations – and more – are all easily accessible, but we’re just too lazy to make use of them.

And yet, God in His grace, continues to speak. God is more persistent than we can ever imagine. He hasn’t taken His Word from our lives – in fact, just the opposite, He speaks to us in more places and ways than ever before. In spite of our selective listening, and in spite of our sinfulness, God continues to speak to us for only one reason: Love. God’s Word has the power to do what none of the other voices in the world can do: He transforms us so that we not only want to listen, but we are emboldened to obey. St Paul reminds the Corinthians in the second reading that after having heard the Word, they can no longer go back to their previous depraved lives. Living such a life might not always make sense. But it is God’s Word – the only voice we can trust in this noisy world, and which can set us on the right and straight path to holiness.

Finally, all this begs the question: What does it mean to listen to God?

The first step is to stop talking. It is amazing how God can speak to us when we shut up. Fr Bona has been reminding me to this ever since I was discharged from the hospital. If you want to heal quicker, learn to be quiet. Shut up! If you want to be more attentive to God’s word, learn to be quiet.

We can also listen to God intently through scripture. There is a time for studying the Word to have a better grasp and understanding of the text. But the Word of God is also meant to be prayed. As much as we admire the Protestant’s proficiency in quoting scriptural texts, our Catholic exposition and appreciation of the bible cannot be done in isolation and apart from our liturgy, as our liturgy is deeply scriptural and our scripture is profoundly liturgical. We listen and comprehend the Word of God most deeply when we do so in prayer and worship.

Finally, listening to God also requires patience. Patience teaches us humility and docility - humility to recognise that God sets the pace, not us; and docility to submit in obedience to the Word. The Latin root for the word “obedience”, “obedire”, simply means “to listen” as the Apostle James reminds us: “you must DO what the Word tells you and not just listen to it and deceive yourselves.” (James 1:22) Listen! Do! Believe and Live!

Ignorance of Scriptures is Ignorance of Christ

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Today, the Church celebrates a relatively new feast which was instituted by Pope Francis in 2019. It is a feast dedicated to the Word of God and is celebrated each year on the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time. The gospel readings for all three lectionary cycles focus on the beginning of the public ministry of Christ and we see how this very ministry is firmly rooted in the Word of God.

First, our Lord is revealed as the One who fulfils the prophecies in the Old Testament. In fact, the Fourth Gospel tells us that Jesus is not just a preacher of the Word, He is the Word of God enfleshed. Second, He begins His ministry by preaching repentance and calling His disciples to believe in the gospel. Third, He calls His first disciples who will be His close collaborators in the mission of evangelisation, in proclaiming the Word of God. So, Jesus is the Word of God. He calls people to repent and believe in Him, the Living Word of God, and then He commissions them to share Him who is the Word made flesh with others. This is why St Jerome, doctor of the Church who translated the scriptures from the original languages into Latin and who wrote volumes of biblical commentary made this strong equivalence: “ignorance of scriptures is ignorance of Christ.”

Just looking at this short description by the evangelist St Matthew of the beginning of the Lord’s public ministry, we may draw these conclusions about the benefit of studying and reading the Word of God.

First, the Word of God enlightens. To enlighten the world, God sent to us His Word as the sun of truth and justice shining upon mankind. The people who lived before the time of Christ lived in spiritual and moral darkness. But with the coming of Christ and His gospel, they have now “seen a great light.” This is because “the word of the Lord is a lamp unto our feet and a light to our path” (Psalm 119:105).

Next, the Word of God calls us to conversion and repentance. No one who has read and studied the word with faith, will be untouched or unmoved. The Word of God is not just informative, it is deeply transformative. The Word of God stirs our hearts and moves us to change alliances and orientations. It compels us to turn away from the world and all its allures so that we may turn to God in loving submission.

Third, the Word of God calls us to discipleship, to be followers of Christ. The Word of God steers us in the direction of Christ, it inspires us to grow in our relationship with Him - to go where He goes, to do what He does, to be where He is.

And finally the Word of God calls us to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God. The Word of God is not meant to be kept as some kind of esoteric secret by the few elite disciples of Christ. It is meant to be shared with others because by sharing the Word, we make more disciples.

And that is why mature Christians must know the Bible through both prayer and study, because ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. To recognise the Risen Lord in His incomparable gift of the Most Holy Eucharist, to recognise Him in the distressing disguise of the poor, and to recognise Him in the fellowship of other Christians gathered to sing the praises of God, it is first necessary to recognise Him in the pages of Sacred Scripture, to hear and heed the Word of God in the Bible because “all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Tim 3:16-17)

If you aren’t familiar with your Bible, even if you’re a faithful, Mass-attending Catholic, let me encourage you to start reading it. If you do not know where to begin, start by using the Sunday and daily lectionary readings as your reading guide. Read scripture as how the Church reads it by weaving it into the liturgical seasons as we journey with Christ from His birth to His death and resurrection and as we await His return in glory. When we read scriptures with the Church as our guide, we will see how the Old Testament is to be read through the lenses of the New Testament, by seeing how the prophecies and figures in the Old Testament are perfectly fulfilled and explained in the gospel and in the New Testament, by using the Book of Psalms as our personal and liturgical book of prayer.

There simply is no substitute for one’s own direct and personal knowledge of Holy Scripture acquired over many years of study and prayer, and the more deeply one understands the Bible, the more deeply one can know and love the Lord Jesus Christ because “ignorance of scriptures is ignorance of Christ.”

In the beginning

Christmas Mass During the Day 2022

The great Feast and Solemnity of the Nativity of Christ is the second most important feast in the Church’s Liturgical Calendar after the Great Pasch, the Feast of Easter. Its importance is attested by the liturgy in the three masses celebrated on Christmas Day proper – the Midnight Mass, the Dawn Mass and presently, what we are celebrating now, the Mass during the day. Because the feast of Christmas is so great, the Church does not stop rejoicing after one or even two special Masses. She continues her worship with a third, the Mass of the Day. And so after a marathon of masses, just when you thought you’ve exhausted everything that needs to be said about Christmas, we find ourselves right back at the beginning. Not just to the beginning of the Christmas story that took place two millennia ago in Bethlehem, but to the very beginning, before God embarked on the great enterprise of creation, before the beginning of the history of man and the universe.

“In the beginning…” that’s how the Prologue of St John’s gospel begins. St John does not start the story of Jesus in the usual way as in the case of Ss Matthew and Luke who provide two different versions of His infancy narratives. He says nothing about the way Jesus was born. Rather, he takes us back in time to "the beginning” and his opening line is deliberately chosen because everyone knows that’s how the entire bible and first book of the Bible (Genesis 1:1) begins: “In the beginning.” In Hebrew - be’ resh’ it. If in the book of Genesis, we hear how everything began with God’s creative act, in John’s prologue we will see the One who was behind that act and who is responsible for our salvation.

In the beginning, John says, was "the Word" or ‘logos’ in Greek. To the uninitiated, the "Word" here may seem ambiguous, but it becomes clear in verse 14 that John is talking about a person: "The Word was made flesh, He lived among us." The Word is not just an impersonal concept but a person. The Word became a human being, a Jew by the name of Jesus. But the Word was also at the beginning, the Word was with God and then John makes this audacious claim, “the Word was God!” Jesus Christ, the child born in the humble stable of Bethlehem and laid in a manger is no ordinary child. He is the Divine Creator-Word, He is the Son of God; He is God.

By using the word ‘Word’ or ‘Logos’, St John was using a term that had rich meaning to Greek and Jewish philosophers. They also believed that God had created everything through His word, or His wisdom. Since God was a rational being, He always had a word with Him. The "word" was His power to think — His rationality, His creativity. According to Plato, the world of ideas was more perfect than the material world, which could only provide a poor copy of the former. John takes this idea and gives it a radical twist: The Word became flesh. Something in the realm of the perfect and the eternal became part of the imperfect and decaying world. That was a preposterous idea, people might have said. It is no wonder that John tells us that when the Word came into the world, “the world did not know him. He came to his own domain and his own people did not accept him.”

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI gives us a beautiful reflexion. He says that this rejection by His own people, “refers first and foremost to Bethlehem, the Son of David comes to his own city, but has to be born in a stable, because there is no room for him at the inn. Then it refers to Israel: the one who is sent comes among his own, but they do not want him. And truly, it refers to all mankind: He through whom the world was made, the primordial Creator-Word, enters into the world, but he is not listened to, he is not received. These words refer ultimately to us, to each individual and to society as a whole. Do we have time for our neighbour who is in need of a word from us, from me, or in need of my affection? Do we have time and space for God? Can he enter into our lives? Does he find room in us, or have we occupied all the available space in our thoughts, our actions our lives for ourselves?” These are questions we must constantly ask ourselves.

Jesus did not just bring a message about God — He Himself was the message. He showed us in the flesh what God is like. We are more than just people of the Book, as Muslims would claim. We are people of the Word of God, the Word who is, who was and will ever be God. We are not just called to be acquainted with the words in our Bible or in the Catechism of the Church. We are called to encounter the Word Himself, Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Saviour – the true light that enlightens all men – a light that shines even in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower.

Our celebration today is testimony to the immense beauty of encountering the word of God in the communion of the Church. In listening to the word, may we become one with the Word. But it is also the Word that became flesh. So, as Catholics we are called not only to be in communion with God and with each other through the words of scripture but more perfectly through Holy Communion. Christmas is a call to conversion, to be renewed in our “personal and communal encounter with Christ, the word of life made visible, and to become his heralds, so that the gift of divine life – communion – can spread ever more fully throughout the world. Indeed, sharing in the life of God, a Trinity of love, is complete joy (cf. 1 Jn 1:4). And it is the Church’s gift and inescapable duty to communicate that joy, born of an encounter with the person of Christ, the Word of God in our midst. In a world which often feels that God is superfluous or extraneous, we confess with Peter that he alone has “the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68). There is no greater priority than this: to enable the people of our time once more to encounter God, the God who speaks to us and shares his love so that we might have life in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10).” (Verbum Domini, # 2)

The Greatest Miracle

Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

The readings for this feast are interesting. Our story of the Eucharist reaches back in time to the earliest point in Salvation History, bearing historical and spiritual resonance with Christ.

The first reading introduces us to an enigmatic figure, whose background and role in the storyline of Genesis remain obscure but who is mentioned again, but this time with greater elaboration, in the New Testament letter to the Hebrews. Although Melchizedek may not be a major figure in Scripture, he’s an important one, so important that he would fuel the imagination of the author of Hebrews and inspire him to make this connexion with Jesus. Hebrews, more than any other book in the bible, tells us that Melchizedek is a key forerunner to Jesus, and his story in Genesis helps us to understand what our Lord was doing when He instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper.

After Abram (later renamed “Abraham”) had rescued his nephew Lot from a bloody battle with pagan kings, Melchizedek immediately showed up in the story, seemingly out of nowhere. His name, as we are rightly told by the author of Hebrews, means King of Righteousness. He is also described as the King of Salem (many scholars take this to be an ancient name of Jerusalem), the King of Peace. Both titles could easily be ascribed to Jesus, thus reinforcing the link. But perhaps, the most significant connexion with Christ is not to be seen in these titles nor in Melchizedek’s mysterious origins, but in the action of this Old Testament figure.

Melchizedek, after he is summarily introduced, brings out bread and wine. Why did he bring out bread and wine? Was he just being hospitable to his guest, Abram? Was he planning a picnic? The text doesn’t explicitly tell us, but it does give us a clue. Right after it mentions the bread and wine, the text tells us that Melchizedek was a priest. This is very telling. He is the first person in the Bible, to be referred to as a priest. It suggests that the bread and wine were somehow linked to his priesthood, so he did not bring them out just because he thought Abram might have been hungry. Rather, he brought them out because he was a priest, and since priests are by definition people who offer sacrifice, he must have offered them to God as a sacrifice. This interpretation is supported by his next action as a priest - he offers a benediction to Abram.

In response, Abram gives Melchizedek a tithe, a tenth of all the spoils of war, a practice that would be continued by all the tribes of Israel, as they paid an annual tithe to the tribe of Levi, the priestly tribe, as compensation for their full-time priestly services. The author of Hebrew even makes this audacious claim that Levi paid these tithes through Abraham, indicating the superiority of the priesthood of Melchizedek over that of Levi’s. This mysterious figure then disappears, after having appeared mysteriously as a brief interlude to Abram’s story. He or at least his name, reappears again in the only other passage in the Old Testament, a key verse from the Psalms (which appears as an antiphon which is sung immediately after a priest has been ordained): “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” (Psalm 110:4) In its original context, this Psalm referred to the royal descendants of King David who ruled over the Israelites, but the New Testament applies it to Jesus (Hebrews 7:17).

We can already see the strong Eucharistic overtones in this passage, the offering of bread and wine being only the most obvious. But all of this was merely a shadowy anticipation of what Christ would accomplish. It was only a partial picture. God is not done in history until He is with us, until He is one of us, until the true King and Priest “after the order of Melchizedek” arrives to offer sacrifice, not just ordinary bread and wine, for us, the true children of Abraham.

Next, let us consider today’s Gospel - the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fishes. Only one miracle of Jesus is recorded in all four Gospels and it is this. We might find it strange that on the Feast of Corpus Christi, instead of giving us an account of the Last Supper where the Eucharist was instituted, the Gospel focuses on this miracle. Despite modern popular explanations given to this story, it must be reiterated that this is a miracle of multiplication and not a “miracle” of sharing. Modernists want always to reduce the supernatural to the natural. Hence, they say that this event was really about how people spontaneously started to share the food they had, but hadn’t told anyone about.

But no matter how spectacular this miracle is, it is merely another foreshadowing of a greater miracle – it looks forward to another miraculous feeding at the Last Supper – the Eucharist. Although, the Gospel does not give us one of the narratives of the Last Supper, the second reading does – it is St Paul accounting the tradition that had been passed down to him, which he attributes directly to the Lord: “this is what I received from the Lord, and in turn passed on to you.” Note the manner in which he describes this event, as having received it first-hand, even though we all know that he was not present in the Upper Room during the Last Supper. Consider the parallels. Both events were proximate to Passover. It was evening. Those present all reclined. Christ took, blessed and broke the bread. He gave thanks (from the Greek root – eucharisteo) and gave it to the disciples.

Starting from the distant past of Melchizedek’s offering, we move through the manna of the Exodus to the new miraculously multiplied bread to the true bread from heaven, the bread transformed into Christ’s own Body and Blood, which is Itself a foretaste of the new creation and the world to come. One miracle points to a greater one. Instead of being fed bread that can satisfy the body, we are given bread from heaven that will last forever! The Eucharist may seem less spectacular than the miracle of multiplication, but it is in no way inferior. In fact, the miracle of the Eucharist is God’s greatest miracle, and because it is not something which can be recognised by our senses, it is one that calls for greater faith. God deigns to give us, under the guise of mere bread, His very Self. The Eucharist, the Bread of Life, the food of angels, sustains our pilgrimage on this side of eternity. The Body of Christ is broken and given to the multitudes during the Mass.

The beauty of the miracle occurring at each Mass—that Jesus becomes really, truly and substantially present under the forms of mere bread and wine—grounds our faith and reflects the words our Lord spoke: “I am the Bread of Life. He who feeds on my Flesh and drinks my Blood has life eternal, and I will raise him up on the last day.” (Jn 6:35, 54-56) This is no small matter—what an incredible gift from God! We must, therefore, never forget that when we participate at Mass, we witness a miracle, and we participate in this very miracle through the reception of Holy Communion, we share in the Divine Life of our Saviour. Let our petition echo the words of the Sequence: “Come then, good shepherd, bread divine, still show to us thy mercy sign; Oh, feed us still, still keep us thine; So may we see thy glories shine in fields of immortality.”

Handing down the faith

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

A good story or message deserves more than a single telling. St Luke recognises that others have beaten him to write “accounts of the events that have taken place,” specifically accounts surrounding the life and ministry of the Lord and that of the Church and her early mission. But these other accounts have not deterred him from writing a fresh account, not a fictional make-believe story, but one based on real events and real persons, stories and sayings handed down “by those who from the outset were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word.” He specifically addresses this account to Theophilus for an expressed reason, so that Theophilus “may learn how well founded the teaching is that [he has] received.” Some people may find it strange and even offensive that we are reading a private message from one person to another. But Theophilus, which means “lover of God,” could be a pseudonym addressed to every Christian. For is not every Christian meant to be a “lover of God”?

It is interesting that St Luke uses the Greek word “paredosan,” which comes from the root “paradosis” which is translated here as “handed down.” This is essentially what “tradition” is about - the handing down of the sayings and deeds of the Lord through the witness of the Apostles. Though hand-me-downs are often considered a humiliating badge of poverty, for Catholics the Sacred Tradition that has been faithfully handed down from the Apostles to our present age, are anything but a sign of our impoverishment. In fact, Sacred Tradition together with Sacred Scripture are the greatest treasures of our Church, treasures to be valued, flaunted and displayed for the world to see.

Again, another Greek word that is lost in translation when rendered in English is a word familiar to many of us - “Katechetes” - translated here simply as “teaching.” Sounds familiar? It should – we have the English word “catechesis.” And immediately the gospel takes a leap from the first chapter to the fourth chapter and presents our Lord as the Teacher par excellence. And what is interesting is that the example cited by St Luke is not some innovative new teaching, but our Lord reading from the scroll of the Book of Isaiah. Many would find it ironic that the Eternal Logos, the Word made Flesh, could have chosen to speak on any topic, and teaching something fresh, but instead He delves into the depths of the Old Testament and shows us that His revelation is in continuation to what has already been revealed to, and through the prophets. At the end of the reading, the Lord tells His audience that the text is being fulfilled even as they are listening to Him because He is the One whom the prophecy is pointing to.

For this reason, the first and most important thing that we must remember about handing on the faith is this: everything begins and ends with Jesus Christ. He is the source, the fulfilment and the ultimate climax of revelation, and by extension, of all catecheses. For us Catholics, the Word of God is not just a book to be kept on the shelf nor a text to be merely studied. The Word of God is first and foremost a person - Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. Pope Francis said, “Christian doctrine is . . . living, is able to unsettle, is able to enliven. It has a face that is supple, a body that moves and develops, flesh that is tender: Christian doctrine is called Jesus Christ.”

For this reason, we cannot and we should not claim to be People of the Book but People of the Living Word of God. We do not worship a book. We worship the One who is the source of divine revelation, the record of which is found in a book we call the Bible but also preserved in the oral tradition of the Church. No one can really claim that they understand the nature of catechesis without realising that its form, its content, and its ultimate goal is Jesus Christ.

The word catechesis, in Greek—katékhéo—comes from the two words kata-ekheo. But kata-ekheo means to “echo down” or, you might say, to “echo precisely.” St. Paul and St. Luke used this word (see, e.g., Lk 1:4 and 1 Cor 14:19) to explain what we are doing when we teach the Christian faith. They are telling us that a catechist and his teaching are supposed to be an echo, a precise echo, of what has been given for instruction. If we are only an echo, then the original voice is someone else’s. The voice of the Master is supposed to resound in our teaching.

This is so humbling for a teacher of the faith. I constantly have to tell myself, “I’m not the real teacher here. Jesus is,” and I have to let the words of John the Baptist be a mantra on my lips: “He must increase. I must decrease” (Jn 3:30). Some of the great thinkers of the patristic era, like Augustine, took this so seriously that they claimed we could not learn anything, except through the illumination of our minds by the light of Christ. But what we can say for sure is that, in catechesis, we are attempting to communicate something that surpasses what the human mind could know by its own efforts. And, if that is the case, then we should take Jesus seriously when He says, “You have One Teacher,” (Mt 23:8), and we should make His words our own when He claims, “My teaching is not mine but his who sent me” (Jn 7:16).

In the 4th century, St John Chrysostom, reflected upon this echoing nature of teaching the faith, wrote that this teaching is not just an echo of the Master, but this teaching is supposed to resound within the heart of our hearers, so much so, that you can see it bear fruit in their lives. St. John Paul II, puts it like this: “Catechesis takes the seed of faith sown by evangelisation and nourishes it so that the “whole of a person’s humanity is impregnated by that word”; it continues to nourish that seed until Christ is born again in that person’s flesh, that he or she might learn to “think like Him, to judge like Him, to act in conformity with His commandments”.” So, my dear parents, catechists and RCIA facilitators, always remember that your job is to echo our Lord. Our Catholic faith is one of imitation, not of innovation - we are called to imitate the Lord in word and deed, not to replace Him with our own ideas, words or deeds. Let Him be the Teacher, the content, and the end of your labours. Catechesis will always begin and end with Him, and He will be the entire way through.

Finally, catechesis is impossible without the Church, without the community. The second reading tells us that though there may be a variety of gifts and ministries, there is only one Body. That is why in today’s Mass we celebrate the commissioning of our catechists - parents, Sunday School teachers and RCIA facilitators - within the context of the Church - the Church carrying on the mission of Christ, sends out disciples who seek to make disciples of others.

Think of this: the task of a catechist is an impossible one, when left to our own powers. We are powerless to convert hearts, and to make the Word of God grow inside of people. We can only plant and water, but He must give the increase (1 Cor 3:6). Conversion is the work of the Holy Spirit. Unless we are anointed and commissioned by the Lord through His Church, our work will be in vain. This should drive us to constantly come back to the only place where we can find refuge and solace for such an arduous task: Holy Mother Church and her bridegroom, the Blessed Lord Jesus Christ.

Preserving the fire of Tradition

Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

Gustav Mahler, one of the leading composers at the turn of the 20th century, who recognised the tension between tradition and innovation and who attempted to bridge the gap between classical and modern genres of music, once wrote: “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” What he meant by this quote is that, tradition is not remembering the glory of the obsolete good old days in a sentimental way but the passing of our culture, heritage and values, as living and organic things, to the next generation.

Today, our Lord confronts the scribes and Pharisees on the issue of the “traditions of the elders” which our Lord describes in a derogatory way as “human regulations” and “human traditions”. Critics of Catholic Tradition and promoters of theological innovation have often cited the above text to show that our Lord Himself had also condemned traditions as man-made. They accuse promoters and defenders of Catholic Tradition as being sentimentally attached to the past and practising an illogical “worship of the ashes.” But this crass and condescendingly shallow judgment is based on a simplistic reading of the text and their own prejudices. In fact, it is those who promote progressive innovation who are most often enamoured by an unthinking sentimentalism (sola affectibus - “feelings alone matters”) and who are actually the ones guilty of creating human regulations and human tradition through their innovation.

Let’s first consider the context of our Lord’s teaching in today’s passage. What were these so-called “traditions of the elders”? Like any law, the Law of Moses requires interpretation: how, when, for whom and in what circumstances are these regulations to be applied. Over the centuries, an oral tradition of legal interpretations had developed and handed down by generations of leading rabbis.

Originally, the interpretations were just meant to be interpretations of the Law but soon they took on the weight of the Law as well. For the Pharisees, the oral tradition was just as binding as the written Torah. It prescribed numerous and detailed rules of conduct for daily life, so much so, that you needed the special class of scribes who were living depositories of such rules to provide guidance and consultation. This is why the carrying out of these rules had become a burden that sometimes obscured the purpose of the Law. If our modern day ever-evolving SOPs can be a constant cause of befuddlement and fatigue in modern times, can you imagine the pressure and stress it would have given the people of our Lord’s time who had no access to search engines or social media platforms to ensure that they were not in breach of any rules?

The specific point of contention in this passage were the rules regarding ablutions to be performed before eating one’s meal. The scribes and Pharisees complained to the Lord that His disciples were eating with unclean and unwashed hands. In the chapter prior to this (Mark 6:35-44), we had the miracle of the feeding of the multitudes. Perhaps it was our Lord’s miraculous provision of bread in the wilderness (where there was no source of water for people to at least wash their hands) that occasioned this supposed controversy. The pettiness of the Pharisees can be seen in them missing the forest for the trees! The requirement of ritual purity in the Torah, was originally only applicable to the priestly class serving at the altar of the Temple, but the oral tradition developed by the Pharisees had extended this rule to govern the behaviour of all Jews at meals - making every meal a religious act, on par with the Temple sacrifice. Those who failed to observe these additional meticulous rules would be despised by the Pharisees and labelled as accursed and ignorant.

Rather than falling into the trap of validating their terms of reference, our Lord levels a counter charge, challenging the entire shaky edifice of Pharisaic legalism. He accuses them of being hypocrites (literally “stage actors”), people who only pay lip service to their devotion to God - their outward conduct does not correspond with the true state of their hearts. Obsessed with external ritual purity, their hearts and intentions were anything but pure.

Having quoted from the Septuagint version of Isaiah 29:13, our Lord delivers the punchline, which He repeats in two other verses to show emphasis: “You put aside the commandment of God to cling to human traditions.” It is a scathing indictment of His accusers’ whole approach to religion, in which the key contrast is between “God’s” and “man’s.” The will of God is supplanted by the agenda of man.

And this is what Sacred Tradition seeks to guard against – to prevent God’s revelation from being twisted by human machinations seeking to make it more palatable. And this is what innovation actually does – it puts aside the commandment of God to cling to human traditions.  At the end of the day, theological innovation seeks to undo the deposit of faith handed down by our Lord Jesus to the Apostles, to us. To reject Sacred Tradition is to reject Christ’s teaching. Innovation shows up man’s arrogance. When we innovate and attempt to alter the teachings of Christ in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, we are actually claiming to be smarter than the wisdom of God; that God’s revelation and guidance is inadequate for our salvation, and needs to be augmented and completed by our addition, subtraction or amendment.

Although heresies over the centuries can occupy any part of a spectrum of ideas and they may often disagree with each other, there is a consistent theme or action found in each and every one of them. Tertullian puts it this way, “In the Church, the rule of Faith is unalterable, and never to be reformed.” This is because Sacred Tradition is not just something the Church “makes up.” It comes from Christ. It is the full, living gift of Christ to the Apostles, faithfully handed down through each generation. To attempt to change Sacred Tradition would be as ridiculous as attempting to alter Christ. This is what the letter to the Hebrews wishes to caution us: “Remember your leaders, who preached the word of God to you, and as you reflect on the outcome of their lives, imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same today as he was yesterday and as he will be for ever. Do not let yourselves be led astray by all sorts of strange doctrines” (Hebrews 13: 7-9). Heretics, according to Tertullian, “vary in their rules; namely, in their confessions of faith. Every one of them thinks he has a right to change and model what he has received according to his own fancy, as the author of the sect composed it according to his own fancy.”

As Christians, what is required of us is fidelity, not novelty. It is ultimately God who makes all things new, we can be assured of this. He does this not by making new things but by making all things new through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is why Sacred Tradition is not just obsolete customs or fossilised teachings, but living and dynamic. Pope Emeritus Benedict reminds us precisely of this, “Tradition is the living river that unites us to the origins, the living river in which the origins are always present, the great river that leads us to the port of eternity. In this living river, the word of the Lord…: “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age”, is fulfilled again (Matthew 28:20).” It is the fire of this living river of Tradition that must be preserved.

God is speaking but are you listening?

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

For those who complain that God isn’t speaking to them - and I’m not referring to the delusional types who hear voices inside their heads - this Sunday’s readings remind us that God is always speaking, but the real issue is this - are we really listening? God’s Word is contained in sacred scripture and sacred tradition. How many of us take the trouble to put aside some time every day to study it, to meditate upon it and to apply its message to our lives? And I don’t mean to shame you to take out your Bible or your Catechism and read a few paragraphs today. I will be happy if you could do it every day.

Since technology has given us more ways to communicate than ever before, social media which makes information (and disinformation) readily available, state-of-the-art equipment to amplify sound and to listen to our favourite music or podcast, there are very few excuses for us to be “disconnected” or “out of touch.” More often, if we don’t hear what someone is saying, it’s because we don’t want to hear it. It’s called selective hearing. Whether it’s ignoring emails, screening phone calls and texts, staring at the screens of our devices while someone else is talking, or simply putting headphones in and cutting ourselves off from the world – we all practice selective hearing, even when we know we shouldn’t.

And it’s not a new phenomenon – Israel, in Samuel’s time, had a severe case of hearing deficit. It wasn’t that God wasn’t speaking; they still had the Law given to Moses to provide them with guidance, but neither those tasked with preaching it nor those tasked with listening were doing their job. Take for example the sons of Eli, Hophni and Phineas, who were all anointed priests of the Lord. Instead of preaching and teaching God’s Word to the people of Israel – as they were called to do – his sons were notorious for stealing from the portion of sacrificial offerings offered to God and for sleeping with the women who served at the tabernacle. But the most egregious sin was their refusal to listen to anyone who tried to correct their sinful ways.

As a result of the obstinacy of the religious leadership, God decided to give them the silent treatment. Since Israel had stopped listening, so God stopped speaking. That’s what it means when it says, in those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions. God wanted to speak to His people, to lead them, discipline them, forgive them, comfort them but because they refused to listen to Him, God refused to speak. It was the worst judgment possible.

And so enters Samuel, who is apprenticing with Eli his mentor. God calls Samuel to replace these hopeless ministers who have stopped listening to His Word. There is only one simple criteria – he must be willing to LISTEN, put it into practice and communicate it faithfully.

We turn to the gospel as we see the Word Incarnate finally emerging and the various peoples responding to His Word by learning to listen. We have the Baptist’s disciples listening to their master as he identifies Jesus as the Lamb of God and then they decide to follow up with their own investigation. They heard and heeded our Lord’s invitation to “Come and See” and was transformed by that encounter. Now having heard and encountered the Word personally, and not just come to know of Him by hearsay, they began to share the Word with others. We see this ripple effect finally reaching Simon Peter. His brother Andrew comes and shares his experience and thereafter took Peter to meet the Lord. Peter’s name serves as an apt conclusion to this whole episode. Simon (Shimon) in Hebrew means hearing or listening. Though the name was a real name and not just a symbolic one, St John the Evangelist weaves it beautifully into his narrative to summarise the process and dynamics of discipleship - the disciple is one who listens and puts into practice what he has heard.

So, God continues to speak to us through His Word. And His Word is not just found in a book, but in a living breathing person, Our Lord Jesus Christ. We should have no excuse to not listen. And yet, we can find a load of excuses not to listen. I guess that busyness is easily the number one excuse for not hearing, not meditating, not praying, not taking time to study God’s Word. But busyness is just a cover for the real reasons. One common reason is pride. Pride that wants to say “Listen up, Lord, I’m speaking” rather than “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.”  Others don’t listen because they are angry with God, and so we choose to give Him the silent treatment. Or maybe our problem is just sheer laziness. Bibles, study guides, online formations – and more – are all easily accessible, but we’re just too lazy to make use of them.

 And yet, God in His grace, continues to speak. God is more persistent than we can ever imagine. He hasn’t taken His Word from our lives – in fact, just the opposite, He speaks to us in more places and ways than ever before. In spite of our selective listening, and in spite of our sinfulness, God continues to speak to us, for only one reason: Love. God is Love and He continues to love us in spite of our obstinacy. He speaks to us day after day, year after year, in order to break through our obstinacy. God never gives up even if we are hard of hearing. Remember Samuel?

God’s Word has the power to do what none of the other voices in the world can do: He transforms us so that we not only want to listen, but we are emboldened to obey. St Paul reminds the Corinthians in the second reading that after having heard the Word, they can no longer go back to their previous depraved lives. Living such a life might not always make sense. It won’t always be popular or be politically correct. But it is God’s Word – the only voice we can trust in this noisy world and which can set us on the right and straight path to holiness.

Finally, all this begs the question: What does it mean to listen to God?

The first step is to stop talking. It is amazing how God can speak to us when we shut up.

We can also listen to God intently through scripture.  There is a time for studying the Word to have a better grasp and understanding of the text. But the Word of God is also meant to be prayed. For centuries, the Word of God has been best explained and understood in the context of our Catholic liturgy. Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition are meant to go together because they both come from a common source. As much as we admire the Protestant’s proficiency in quoting scriptural texts, our Catholic exposition and appreciation of the bible cannot be done in isolation and apart from our liturgy, as our liturgy is deeply scriptural and our scripture is profoundly liturgical.

Finally, listening to God also requires patience.  Patience teaches us humility and docility - humility to recognise that God sets the pace, not us; and, docility to submit in obedience to the Word. The Latin root for the word “obedience”, “obedire”, simply means “to listen.” Ultimately, to truly listen to God’s Word demands obedience, as opposed to simply receiving information. For as the Apostle James reminds us: “you must DO what the Word tells you and not just listen to it and deceive yourselves.” (James 1:22) Listen! Do! Believe and Live!

The Sower sows Himself

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Today, many preachers may choose to skip the homily. The congregation has already been treated to a lengthy gospel passage and our Lord seems to have done an excellent job in unpacking His own teaching, which leaves little room, for us mortal preachers to expand upon it. Furthermore, it’s the familiar parable of the Sower. We would be hard pressed to find someone in the audience who has never heard of this parable or who is unfamiliar with its meaning. Here are the essential elements – the sower, the seeds and the four types of soil.

The problem with our text and most other translations is that, the word “seed” does not appear anywhere in the original Greek version. It is simply added in by the translators. In the Greek version, Jesus simply says that a sower went out to sow, and “some” fell to the ground. In other words, Jesus is saying the sower is definitely sowing, but what exactly he is sowing is left vague. Translators only assume that it is seed, since that is what you would typically expect sowers to sow. That isn’t an illogical assumption. By filling in the blanks, the translators do not allow the reader the luxury of figuring out exactly what mysterious thing the sower is doing.

So, what is this “some” or “seed”? In verse 19, our Lord reveals that the seed is the “word of the kingdom.” It is the “Logos.” Remember that the “word” or the “Logos” is not a thing. It is a person - Jesus Christ is the Word Incarnate. If the “Sower” is Christ, and the seed-word is Christ, then the “Sower” is sowing Himself.

Pope Benedict said that this parable is a sort of autobiography of Jesus; it was how He was already living out His mission and ministry. Christ gives Himself freely and abundantly to all, even in the face of rejection and indifference. He is the seed that falls into the ground and dies. Rejected by so many, He finally emerges victorious over death and His enemies, and His victory bears fruit aplenty in the Church. And the amazing thing is that He accomplished all of this whilst respecting the freedom of His audience. The parable is a story of Jesus!

Pope Benedict writes, "God does not force us to believe in Him, but draws us to Himself through the truth and goodness of His incarnate Son. Love, in fact, always respects freedom." Freedom is the basis of our relationship with God. Freedom allows us to make a response to the gift of the Word, to choose between accepting the Word or rejecting it. Human freedom helps us to understand the different kinds of responses to Christ and His message. This is what we see in the parable. We have the well-trodden path of the hardened heart; the rocky ground of those who look for instant gratification but are weak in making commitments; then, there's the thorny ground where the heart is overtaken by too many other distractions. All of these are definite blocks to the reception of the gospel and yet, the sower is not daunted and he continues to sow without hesitation or regret.

In the parable, the sower is throwing seed everywhere, even in places where the seed has little chance to grow. The good news is that the Word, Jesus Christ Himself, is offered to all and sundry, the good and the bad, the excited and the indifferent, the pious and the impious. It’s a beautiful reminder that Christ never tires and He never gives up sowing in our lives even though He has to contend with the garden of our hearts overgrown with debris, weeds, thorns and rocks. He patiently waits for our response.

How can we respond? How can we make a deeper commitment to His Word so that it can yield a good harvest? “Seeing” Christ in His sacraments and “hearing” His Word are important. But we can’t, and we shouldn’t stop here. So many see but do not perceive, and others listen but do not hear. Seeing and hearing Christ are truly laudable but they are not enough to guarantee lasting happiness. Seeing and hearing must lead to following. This is because the Word is not just a text to be studied, but a person to be imitated and followed. Christians are not People of the Book, as Muslims would call us, or as Protestants would profess. We are People of the Living, Dynamic Word who became flesh, and dwelt among us and left us a lasting sign and memorial of His presence, in the Blessed Sacrament. For only a heartfelt response to this Living Word, to allow His message to take root and transform us, can ultimately yield a bountiful harvest.

The Bridge between the Old and the New

Third Sunday of Advent Year A

If you have ever stepped into an Eastern Orthodox Church, one of the things that will strike you is that the view of the sanctuary where the altar is located is concealed by a screen decorated by a multitude of icons, the iconostasis. For the Eastern Christians, the iconostasis does not serve as a barrier that separates the nave from the sanctuary but is actually a doorway into the sanctuary, into the Holy of Holies. For the iconostasis symbolises the barrier that divides Heaven and Earth which has been torn. A permanent feature of the iconostasis is the icon of the Theotokos, who stands on the left of the Royal Door, and an icon of Christ the Pantokrator, who stands to the right. And then immediately to the right of the icon of Christ stands St John the Baptist, the Forerunner of Christ. The Forerunner prepares the Way for Christ’s first coming, and Christ and the Church honours the Forerunner in perpetuity.

Just as the iconostasis act as a bridge between Heaven and Earth, St John the Baptist stands as a bridge of continuity between the Old and New Testament. The Old Testament prophets all looked forward to the time of John and spoke of the Messiah who was then to appear. The Old Testament closes with this prophecy of the coming of Elijah (Mal. 4:5, 6) and the New Testament opens with a record of a fulfillment of that prophecy (Matt. 3:1–3 3). The prophetic office of the Old Testament times, reached a climax in John when the old reached its hopes and gave way to the new. This is the reason why in today’s gospel, our Lord pays the highest tribute to St John. John is languishing in prison because he had the courage to call Herod to repentance for marrying his brother’s wife. Soon he would be beheaded for the stand he took.

As he approaches his own death, St John the Baptist must now be certain that his mission is complete, that the One, whose Way he had been preparing, had actually arrived. So having heard reports of Jesus’ exploits, John sends his disciples to question our Lord, “Are you the one who is to come, or have we got to wait for someone else?” Many Christians are perturbed by John’s question; isn’t he the cousin of our Lord? Didn’t he baptise our Lord at the river Jordan and announce Him to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world? Some commentators have tried to understand this by arguing that it was John’s disciples who had doubts, and therefore, John had sent them to our Lord for the purpose of clearing their doubts and with the hope that they will now follow Him. Others would explain John’s actions by saying that he expected a powerful Messiah that would baptise with Spirit and fire, and now there appears this gentle one who “will not quench a smoldering wick” (Isaiah 42:3).

Whether it was John or his disciples or both who harboured doubts, Our Lord calms their disquiet by showing him that the prophecy is being fulfilled in himself, “Go back and tell John what you hear and see; the blind see again, and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised to life and the Good News is proclaimed to the poor; and happy is the man who does not lose faith in me.” Our Lord is alluding to the prophecies of the Prophet Isaiah. He is telling John’s disciples that He is indeed the fulfillment of the prophecies.

But Our Lord adds this beatitude at the end, “Happy (or Blessed) is the man who does not lose faith in me.” Of course, the beatitude can be taken to apply to everyone, to all Christians who do “not lose faith” in Christ. But this is spoken to the Baptist in the first instance. It must have come as a powerful assurance to John, for John is indeed the one who did “not lose faith” in Christ. These words were meant as an encouragement to John, despite his seemingly bleak condition and uncertainty, to continue to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, and not lose or falter in his faith. These words still have great relevance for us Christians today. Many of us go through seasons in our Christian life where we struggle with doubts and faith in God, in Christ and in His Church, especially now when we are confronted with the darkness of unbelief, the enveloping darkness of sin, the scandal of sexual abuse, the confusing reports we receive about the happenings and controversies within the Church. In such dark times, it is easy to doubt and to lose heart. But our Lord assures us again, “happy is the man who does not lose faith in me.”

Like St John the Baptist, we are invited to look at our Lord and all His works in this chaotic world of ours. In the midst of darkness, there is the light of His grace; in the midst of confusion, there is clarity of His teachings; in the midst of hopelessness, there is His promise of salvation. In different ways, we too are called to give witness to this faith as St John the Baptist did.  As St Paul tells us, “you too have to be patient, do not lose heart, because the Lord’s coming is soon.”

Then comes the part where our Lord states that John the Baptist is a true “witness” to His mission and ministry. The Greek word for witness is “matyron” from where we derive the word “martyr.” Some have questioned whether St John the Baptist could be accurately described as a martyr for Christ, since he preceded Christ and his imprisonment and execution appears to have been occasioned by his outspoken opposition to Herod. Well, the Venerable St Bede had this answer, “There is no doubt that blessed John suffered imprisonment and chains as a witness to our Redeemer, whose forerunner he was, and gave his life for him. His persecutor had demanded not that he should deny Christ, but only that he should keep silent about the truth. Nevertheless, he died for Christ. Does Christ not say: I am the truth? Therefore, because John shed his blood for the truth, he surely died for Christ.” John was indeed a martyr for Christ. He was not a “reed swaying in the breeze,” his conviction did not falter and his faith did not stumble in the face of death.  He would not be moved. He would not change his message when the religious big shots showed up. And finally, it was his uncompromising stand for Truth that got him thrown in prison and finally beheaded.

So, our Lord was right when He made this pronouncement, “of all the children born of women, a greater than John the Baptist has never been seen.” Having paid such a great tribute to this man, our Lord adds this cryptic verse, “yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he is.” Who is our Lord referring to? After Our Lord Jesus died and rose again, everything that the Old Testament prophets and St John the Baptist looked forward to, we Christians know and have. Everything they had hoped for, we understand. All that they believed would come, we know has come. John could never truly preach the gospel, because the gospel is all about the death and resurrection of Christ, but we can, we who have been baptised into Christ’s death and have risen with Him in baptism. St John the Baptist never experienced the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, but we have at our baptism and confirmation. Yes, we are the ones our Lord was referring to “the least in the kingdom of heaven.”  This is because as our Lord tells us in Luke’s gospel (10:23-24), “Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see, for I say to you, that many prophets and kings wished to see the things which you see, and did not see them, and to hear the things which you hear, and did not hear them.” Well, we have seen and heard what St John the Baptist longed to hear and see.

Our Lord gave this glowing tribute to John. And my brothers and sisters, as hard as it is to believe, one day if you are faithful to Him unto death, if you are not a “reed swaying in the breeze”, if you patiently wait and not lose heart, He will give you a glowing tribute before everyone who has ever lived. Live with this conviction. Deny yourself as St John did and live unto Christ. Don’t live for the approval of man, but for the approval of God. And on that final day, you too will receive praise from the very lips of Jesus Christ. What higher goal could we possibly live for?