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Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B
“Amen”, perhaps the most common Hebrew word apart from “Alleluia” used by Catholics. We utter it at the end of every prayer, we insert it in the comments of social media as if it is some kind of religious “like” click, and we utter it before holy communion just after the priest or the extraordinary minister of holy communion holds up the consecrated host and announces, “the Body of Christ.” Our repetition and common usage have certainly resulted in many trivialising the true significance of this simple and yet deeply profound word. Amen means “so be it.” Or another way of saying “it is true” or “I agree.”
Amen is thus an acclamation of faith and commitment, just like how Joshua insisted that the Israelites must renew and restate their commitment to the covenant. He declared openly to the people: “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,” which inspired the people to also make their own commitment and promise: “we too will serve the Lord, for He is our God.” In a way, both Joshua and the Israelites were giving their assent of “Amen” to the covenant, undertaking to serve the Lord.
The scene in the first reading is deliberately chosen as a parallel to the gospel. Just as Joshua challenged the Israelites to make up their minds whether or not they intended to remain loyal to the Lord, in the same way our Lord challenges the disciples at the end of the Bread of Life discourse to make up their minds if they wish to stick with Him regardless of the mass exodus of others bailing out when push comes to shove. The similarity is not only a challenge to loyalty, but specifically to covenant loyalty, to not only assent to what He has taught but to His very person. Can they and will they accept the truth that Jesus is indeed the Bread of Life from heaven and unless one eats His flesh and drinks His blood, they will have no part in His life? It is the final ultimatum given to them.
It is clear from today’s passage that many chose to walk away. If the Lord had just met their material needs of having a leader and an endless supply of food, they would have been happy to follow Him. But in matters of faith, unlike a democracy, we don’t get to choose our Messiah. God chooses those whom we need, very seldom not those whom we want. He’s the anointed One of God whom God calls, chooses and sends. Even as our Lord begins to describe the type of Messiah that He is, the people are not able to accept Him on these terms. They find His teachings “intolerable” and refused to accept them.
Over the years, we know of many Catholics, fellow parishioners who have chosen to walk out of church and to walk away from the Catholic faith. There is a myriad of reasons or excuses given. They have been insulted by someone; they have had their requests turned down; certain rules do not square with them; the music for the Masses and the homilies are boring and not engaging. Ultimately, any one of these things are deemed “intolerable,” and so they choose to leave.
Often, as a parish priest, I have been advised and told by others to address their concerns and accede to their requests, to somehow bend backwards, if necessary, to get them to return. Reaching out to those who are lost or who have chosen to walk away must always be a priority as we are called to seek the lost like the good shepherd after the heart of Jesus. But if this means lowering the bar of morality, bending the rules, stifling the teachings of the Church and making exceptions for the sake of friendship alone and nothing else, I too have made my decision and have taken a stand. I will not back down because Jesus did not. He didn’t pull back His challenging words, in fact, He chose to double down! Ultimately, I would work to convince these people to return for only one reason - only Christ, the Holy One of God, the one truly, really and substantially present in the Eucharist, can offer us “the message of eternal life” and “food which endures for eternity”. And if they should return and remain with the Church, that should be the only reason that matters.
You too may be considering leaving for one of many reasons. When people speak of being upset and disappointed with the Church, they are most likely expressing their disappointment and anger with members of the Body of Christ, the Church. This could mean any other person sitting in the pew, or a person serving in the parish or even the priest. But I would like to repeat one important truth which St John Paul II taught in his encyclical “Ecclesia de Eucharistia”: “The Church draws her life from the Eucharist. This truth does not simply express a daily experience of faith, but recapitulates the heart of the mystery of the Church… For the most holy Eucharist contains the Church's entire spiritual wealth: Christ himself, our Passover and living bread.” If you choose to walk away from the Church, you are walking away from Christ.
Today, our Lord is asking you and me the same question He asked Peter: “What about you, do you want to go away too?” Simon Peter answered, ‘Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the Holy One of God.’ Thank you, Simon Peter. Thank you for asking the question that matters most. And thank you for giving us the only answer which matters most.
Before we receive our Lord Jesus Christ who is truly, really and substantially present in the Eucharist, we too are given an ultimatum - we are challenged to make an assent of faith, a declaration of our commitment to our Lord and an acceptance of what He tells us as true. Our “Amen” is not a demand that Christ and the Church must comply with our every demand, whim or fancy. Saying “Amen” means that we will accept the Lord on His terms and commit ourselves to transformation just as how bread and wine is changed into the Body and Blood of Christ. “Amen” is saying “I will change!” Saying “Amen,” means we assent to our faith with our head and heart and will, that what we are about to receive is truly, really and substantially the Body of Christ. Not only do we believe in the real presence but we also commit ourselves to living and acting as Jesus did and does. St Augustine tells us: “You reply ‘Amen’ to that which you are, and by replying, you consent... Be a member of the body of Christ so that your ‘Amen’ may be true!”
Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ Year B
Many a young child’s dream and ambition of becoming a doctor had been dashed by one simple fear - they were haemophobic. Not “homophobic” but “haemophobic”, the fear of blood, wounds and injuries. So, if you happen to have this sad condition, today’s feast and its readings, if you had really listened and paid attention to every word, may make your stomach churn. What unites all three readings is the mention of blood and bodies? Today’s feast is definitely a bloody affair!
Why is blood and a corpse involved in today’s feast? It would be stating the obvious that we are speaking of the blood and body of Jesus Christ since this is the proper name of this feast. But to understand why our Lord would sacrifice both His Body and Blood, we would need to understand two concepts in the Bible, that of sacrifice and the covenant.
The idea of sacrifice arises from the first and the highest duty of man, which is to hand himself over, to surrender, to submit himself to God. This sacrifice involves two parts - first, an interior and invisible offering of ourselves to God; and second, this offering must be outwardly and sensibly signified. In other words, one cannot sacrifice by merely intending it and making a mental offering to God. This must be matched by an external sign which signifies and makes visible that internal sign. This is fundamentally the basis of our sacramental theology - outward sign of inward grace.
What the Pharisees were guilty of and which our Lord condemned was that they had confined their sacrifices to outward show but lack the interior disposition necessary to make a true offering of oneself. Virtue signalling is a modern term coined for this. Today, the tendency is reversed. Many modern Christians argue that good intentions are enough and we should disregard external rituals and practices which are considered showy and frivolous. This would explain why so many Christians have abandoned the Holy Mass and even removed the altars from their sanctuaries.
But, for the Jews, the shedding of blood and the immolation (or killing) of the animal was necessary for the atonement of one’s sins. This was not just something which man cooked up in his sadistic blood thirsty mind but was in fact commanded by God. According to Hebrews (9:22), “Without the shedding of blood there is no remission.” By the very act of offering and giving these animals over to death, men acknowledged that they themselves were deserving of death because of their sins; and in this action, they expressly admitted, that did God will to judge them as their sins deserved, He could in justice inflict death on them. These poor animals would literally be the “scape goats” that take away the sins of the world. But the sad truth, as Hebrews tells us, is that these animal sacrifices could not remove the stain of our sins, nor could they reconcile us with God. A far greater and more perfect sacrifice was necessary.
Before considering that far greater sacrifice, it is necessary to look at another purpose of such blood sacrifices. Blood and sacrifice were also needed in the sealing of covenants. Ancient peoples did not just resort to lawyers and their penmanship to enact pacts with each other. Pacts and covenants were sacred affairs and to make them lasting and their breaking almost impossible, the gods were invoked to not only stand as witnesses to these agreements between mortals but to also be a party to them.
So, from the very beginning, the patriarchs entered into covenants with God by making animal sacrifices - Noah, Abraham and Moses just to name a few. The Mosaic covenant which we heard in the first reading required that the blood of the sacrificed animals be sprinkled on the altar, the tabernacle as well as the people. Just imagine the climatic scene in Stephen King’s Firestarter, where the protagonist Carrie is drenched in pig’s blood. In fact, everything that is to be used in the ritual sacrifice had to be cleansed with blood, not water. Can you picture a more bloody scene than this and happening in the sacred Temple of all places? With the use of blood in the sealing of the covenant, God, in essence, was declaring He would give His life if His promises were broken. There could be no greater encouragement to believers, since God is eternal and can no more break an oath than He can die.
All of these things were only “copies,” or “shadows,” of the better and more perfect covenant to come. The lives of animals could never remove sin; the life of an animal is not a sufficient substitute for a human life. The blood of bulls and goats was a temporary appeasement until the final, ultimate blood covenant was made by Jesus Christ Himself – the God Man. In the second reading, the author of Hebrews tells us that “the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer are sprinkled on those who have incurred defilement and they restore the holiness of their outward lives; how much more effectively the blood of Christ, who offered himself as the perfect sacrifice to God through the eternal Spirit, can purify our inner self from dead actions so that we do our service to the living God.” Furthermore, Hebrews adds this claim: “His death took place to cancel the sins that infringed the earlier covenant. The shadows became realities in Christ, who fulfilled all of the Old Testament blood covenants with His own blood.”
We often forget that the Eucharist is the sign which signifies the new covenant of Jesus, and because it is a covenant, it also makes demands of us. Whenever we partake of this sacrifice and covenantal meal, we are declaring what Moses did in the first reading, but in a far more intense and firmer way: “We will observe all the commands that the Lord has decreed.” This becomes a real challenge to your average cafeteria Catholic, and there are many who fit this label. What is a cafeteria Catholic or using a metaphor closer to home - an economy mixed rice Catholic? A cafeteria Catholic is typically defined as one who picks and chooses what Catholic teaching he wants to believe. But the truth of the matter and a bitter pill to swallow, is that Catholics are not free to choose which teachings to obey. The faithful must give “a religious submission of the intellect and will” to the teachings of Christ and His Church. First and foremost, would be the faithful celebration of the sacraments of the Church according to their proper rubrics (rules) and not just adapt and make alterations which suit the celebrant’s preferences. It is hard to justify when claiming that one values Christ but chooses to ignore or reject what His Church teaches. Eschewing cafeteria Catholicism might satisfy our appetite temporarily, but only the full banquet prepared by the Lord can fill our souls.
Pentecost Vigil Mass
Many of you may be disappointed with the readings for this Vigil Mass. You were expecting to hear the story from the Acts of the Apostles of how the Holy Spirit descended upon them in the form of tongues of fire and how they burst out in glossolalia, speech which miraculously could be understood by pilgrims from various nations in their own mother tongue. But none of that in today’s readings. In fact, the first reading gives us an account of the theophany at Mount Sinai, which surprisingly sounds similar to our familiar story of the Pentecost.
But these two events are not entirely unconnected. To understand their close connexion, one needs to understand that Pentecost was first and foremost a Jewish Feast before it entered into the Christian calendar. Initially, Pentecost was the feast of seven weeks. Pentecost, or Shavuot in Hebrew, means fifty and is basically the sum total of seven weeks of seven days with an additional day added to the multiple of seven as how one would calculate a jubilee year. The Israelites left Egypt on the fifteenth day of the first month, the morning after the sacrifice of the Passover Lamb. They arrived at the foot of Mt. Sinai on the first day of the third month, which would have been approximately forty days. Moses then went up Mt Sinai and stayed there for several days and then brought back down the two tablets written on stone by the finger of God. This total timeline closely approximated the fifty days after Passover that the Feast of Shavuot was supposed to be held on.
Shavuot was, like the other two pilgrimage festivals of Pesach (Passover) and Sukkoth (Tabernacles or Booths), a harvest feast (cf. Ex 23:16), when the new grain was offered to God (cf. Nm 28:26; Dt 16:9). Later on, the feast acquired a new meaning: it became the feast of the Covenant God had made with His people on Sinai, when He gave Israel His law. The event which is narrated in today’s first reading. We still have one last piece of the puzzle. How is this feast significant for us Christians and why would God choose to pour out the Holy Spirit on the apostles on this day? The same day that the Jews were celebrating God’s giving of His Torah on tablets of stone, the Holy Spirit came and wrote His Torah on people’s hearts!
St Luke describes the Pentecost event as a theophany, a manifestation of God similar to the one on Mt Sinai: a roaring sound, a mighty wind, tongues of fire. But there is more. Both events occurred on a mountain (Mt. Sinai and Mt. Zion). Both events happened to a newly redeemed people. The Exodus marked the birth of the Israelite nation while the Pentecost event marked the birth of the Church.
The message is clear: Pentecost is the new Sinai; the Holy Spirit is the New Covenant; and once again there is the gift of the new Law to the Church, the New Israel. But the parallels are not just meant to be equivalent. The Christian Pentecost is meant to be the fulfilment of what was merely foreshadowed in the Old Testament - a definite upgrade. At Sinai the people were kept away from the fire on the mountain because they had not purified themselves. But at Pentecost, the fire comes into their midst through the Apostles. At Sinai, God gave the Law written by His finger on tablets of stone. At Pentecost, He gave the Law written on Tablets of the Heart. The Torah attempted to change people from the outside. The Holy Spirit changes from within.
The promise made to the prophets is thus fulfilled. We read in the prophet Jeremiah: “This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts” (Jer 31:33). And in the prophet Ezekiel: “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances” (Ez 36:26-27).
The law of Moses pointed out obligations but could not change the human heart. A new heart was needed, and that is precisely what God offers us by virtue of the redemption accomplished by Jesus. The Father removes our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh like Christ’s, enlivened by the Holy Spirit who enables us to act out of love (cf. Rom 5:5). On the basis of this gift, a new Covenant is established between God and humanity. St Thomas Aquinas says with keen insight that the Holy Spirit Himself is the New Covenant, producing love in us, the fullness of the law.
This is the last and perhaps the most important of the parallels. At Sinai, after the people receive the law of the Lord, they swear a covenant with God. A covenant is how families are created. That’s the purpose of a covenant. When God swears His covenant with us, it’s to make us His family. The whole story of the Bible is a story of covenants as God is reuniting us with His family, which Adam got kicked out of. So God makes covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and David. The Old Covenant sealed at Sinai is now replaced by the New at Pentecost. These Old Testament covenants are finally fulfilled in the New Covenant of Jesus Christ where finally the family of God isn’t only dictated by natural bloodlines, but through the blood of Jesus Christ.
The covenant of Sinai was broken by the people’s apostasy and rebellion when they demanded that Aaron make a golden calf as an object of worship, Moses ordered the Levites to slaughter the idolaters. It was said that 3,000 were killed. If you recall from the account of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles, how many were baptised and added to the Church on that day? 3,000. In other words, the 3,000 lost through the broken covenant at the foot of Sinai in the old Israel is restored to the New Israel – the Church - because of the New Covenant of Jesus Christ. This is the birth of the new people of God. What was dead has been brought back to life through the power of the Holy Spirit – through the sacraments.
So, there you have it. The backstory of Pentecost in the book of Acts is the scene at Sinai way back at the birth of Israel as the people of God. We are the new people of God. We are the New Israel, the restored and transformed kingdom of God in the New Covenant of Jesus Christ! Thanks be to God for the Holy Spirit! He brings us life. He manifests God in our presence. He continues the power of the resurrected and ascended Christ in our lives. It is the Spirit that gives life. The Holy Spirit brings Christ to us through the sacraments. He guides in the life of prayer. He draws us closer to our Lord so that we can fulfill our destiny as children of God. Don’t ever stop asking for the Holy Spirit.
Fifth Sunday of Lent Year B
In the traditional calendar, today would be the first Sunday of Passiontide, a more intense period of preparation for Holy Week. It is no wonder that we would be treated to a preview of an essential theme of the holiest week of the year. On Maundy Thursday, on the night when our Lord Jesus gathered with His disciples in the upper room to celebrate the inaugural Eucharist, He declared that through His blood, shed for His disciples, there would come into existence a “New” covenant. What is this “New” covenant which He is speaking of? If this is a “New” covenant, how about the “Old”? We can find the answer in the first reading.
The prophet Jeremiah speaks of the time when God will make a “new covenant with the House of Israel (and the House of Judah)”, a covenant that would be unlike the covenants of old which had been broken due to Israel’s disobedience.
What was wrong with the old covenant that necessitated a new one? Well, the old covenant was fundamentally good - an unprecedented blessing for the people of Israel. It assured them of God’s commitment to them. It gave them an identity - they were God’s Chosen People! It provided them with laws to govern their behaviour. It promised them spiritual and material and even military blessings if they obeyed that law and remained true to the covenant. God even instituted the office of high priest so that the people would have someone to offer sacrifices on their behalf and represent them in the presence of God. But it was flawed in three ways.
First, although there was a high priest who would regularly offer an animal sacrifice for their sins, such sacrifices could never fully and finally secure their forgiveness. “For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Heb 10:4).
Second, the law of the Old Covenant that came through Moses was unable to supply the power that people needed to fulfill and obey it. The Law of Moses was very clear in stating, “You shall not” or “Do this and live” or “Be holy.” The Law of Moses told the people of Israel what they should and should not do but it was never capable of supplying them with the spiritual power to obey. It provided them the “means” but not the “grace.”
Third, the Old or Mosaic Covenant was temporary and limited. It was designed by God with a shelf life. God never intended it to last forever nor to be the final revelation of His will for mankind. It was also limited to Israel and its descendants and not meant to encompass all nations whom God had promised to bless through Abraham. In Hebrew 8:5, we are told that everything Moses did in constructing the Old Covenant tabernacle, together with its rituals and sacrifices, was only “a copy and shadow of the heavenly things.” But God always intended to establish a new covenant with every single person - “the least no less than the greatest.”
What the old covenant lacked, our Lord Jesus supplies and perfects in His “new covenant”. He seals it not with the blood of bulls and goats, but His own blood shed on the cross for our atonement. He did not only show us the way to sanctification and salvation but provided us the means to attain it by pouring out grace upon grace through the sacraments which He instituted. As we heard in the second reading, “He became for all who obey Him the source of eternal salvation.” He not only gave us a covenant that was temporary and limited but one that is eternal and universal. We see evidence of this in the gospel when the Greeks come in search of Him.
Unlike the covenants which had been written in stone, this new covenant would be written in the hearts of the people and therefore accessible to all peoples: “Deep within them I will plant my Law, writing it on their hearts. Then I will be their God and they shall be my people.” It is interesting to note that the first set of commandments were written by God Himself by His own hand, but these were physically shattered by Moses when he broke them in rage after having discovered Israel’s apostasy (the incident of the golden calf). Moses, thereafter, was commanded by God to inscribe a second set which was kept in the ark of the covenant, which eventually went missing after the sack of Jerusalem and the exile of the Judaeans to Babylon.
So, this new covenant would no longer be inscribed into something breakable and as flimsy as stone. The idea of God planting the covenant deep in the hearts of His people meant that this new covenant would no longer be an external set of laws requiring superficial observance but one which demanded true and radical repentance. We must literally die in order to live these commandments in our lives. “Unless a wheat grain falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest”. It would be anchored to the very core of our being and not just tied to the foreheads or wrapped around the hands like the external phylacteries worn by the Jews.
In the old covenant, man struggled to offer something worthy to God but in the new covenant, it is our Lord Jesus Christ, who offers Himself as the perfect sacrifice, the only worthy sacrifice, through His own death. There is no hint of agony or humiliation when our Lord speaks of His death. In fact, He tells us that this is the Hour of His glory because when He is lifted up on the cross, He will draw all men to Himself. God’s glory will be shown not in a covenant written in stone but in the living, suffering and dying of His Son. But that’s not the end of the story. God’s glory is in the raising of our Lord Jesus to new life, the final triumph of love over death.
But before that new life can be born and bear fruit, the old life, like the grain of wheat, like the old covenant, has to die. So it is, with us. We have a choice. We can cling on to our old lives and all the broken promises we’ve made to God, afraid of what might happen if we say yes to God’s invitation to new life. Or we can begin again to let our old lives go as we renew our acceptance and commitment to the new Eternal Life found in the Risen Christ. This Passiontide, let’s enter fully into the mystery of the suffering of Jesus, let us renew our commitment to the new covenant which He has established with His death, so that we can also enter fully in the joy of His resurrection. “A pure heart create in me O God” and plant your Law deeply in our hearts.
