Find peace through His strength

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

One of Donald Trump’s defining ideologies which is the foundation of his military and foreign policies is “peace through strength.” He argues that America has often been bullied, exploited and manipulated in the past because it had demonstrated weakness instead of strength, a readiness to surrender and compromise instead of fighting to win. Sounds absolutely logical and the proof is to be found in the successes he has racked up in his administration’s foreign policies governing economic relations, internal, regional and international security. If you can’t get your enemies to like you, you could at least get them to fear and respect you. As he humorously and unabashedly declared as he walked into a room of world leaders in the recent G7 summit, “I am the Boss.”

As sound as this human doctrine appears to many of us, it has no basis in scripture, or at least, not in the sense the world understands strength and power. The notion of “peace through strength” is utterly foreign to the Bible. In fact, a quest for military strength is a sign of unbelief. Peace is the will of God for all creation and not something which could be wrought by human efforts alone, what more with a show of force and strength.

The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden expresses God’s original intention for the world. Here we find a harmonious, nonviolent existence where there is room for partnership, love and creativity but not for deadly conflict. The disruption of peace was the result of the fragmentation of right relations, first of all with God, and then, with other humans and with creation itself. The parable of the wheat and darnel demonstrates this biblical truth. God as symbolised by the farmer only sows good seeds, all that is created by Him is good, seeds that would ensure a harmonious relationship between God and men and fellow men. God is not the author of evil. It is the enemy, the devil, who sows the seeds of discord, confusion and sin. God had no hand in this. And this is what we observe in today’s world, a mixture of good and bad, of light and darkness. As much as we wish to be cleansed and purged of the undesirables in our lives, we must endure them till the very end. The good news is that we won’t have to endure the bad for eternity. There will be a time of harvesting, of separating, of accounting, where the good will be vindicated and the evil punished.

The parable also makes a stark contrast between the patience and wisdom of the owner of the field and his servants. The servants are impatient to root out the darnel and they should have been rightly commended for their quick action but instead they are reminded by the prudent owner that this may cause greater harm to the wheat whose fate are intimately intertwined with the growing darnel. This shows us the nature of God which is expressly described in the first reading - God’s strength is found in His apparent leniency - “Your justice has its source in strength, your sovereignty over all makes you lenient to all..” This seems to be a paradox, perhaps one could treat this as the ultimate paradox - that God would manifest His strength by making Himself vulnerable. But isn’t this what the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery is all about? The Creator of the Universe deliberately chose to become a fragile human being, from a baby being cared for by His human parents, to ultimately suffering the indignity of being sentenced and executed as a criminal, although He was wholly innocent.

The author of Wisdom continues by declaring: “You show your strength when your sovereign power is questioned and you expose the insolence of those who know it; but, disposing of such strength, you are mild in judgement, you govern us with great lenience, for you have only to will, and your power is there.” In a way, this is what frustrates us most about God. We measure Him by our standards as we believe Him to behave very much like we do - as if His kindness were as slight as our kindness, His forgiveness as reluctant as our forgiveness, His patience as fleeting as our patience. We would wish for Him to take out our enemies as swiftly as possible so that we would not need to tolerate their annoying and painful presence. We demand swift justice and any delay would be deemed as an injustice. If we were God in heaven, we would have grown impatient with people like us long ago. But, Thank God, we are not. The prophet Isaiah reminds us that “as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9).

The God we meet in Scripture is a relentlessly patient God. He usually accomplishes His plans along the winding path. He fulfills His promises without haste. When we demand “Now,” He replies, “Wait!” “God is patient” means not mainly that God waits a long time, that He dilly dallies, but that God shows long-suffering kindness to sinners (Romans 2:4). The master in the parable protects the wheat by delaying the uprooting. God prioritises the safety and nurturing of His people over the immediate eradication of evil. His patience allows both the "wheat" and the "darnel" to grow together, giving every opportunity for growth, maturity and conversion.

This does not mean that justice delayed is justice denied. God does not ignore evil indefinitely. He establishes a clear, definitive boundary at the final "harvest" where justice will ultimately prevail. At the end of the parable we are told, judgment would come, as the darnel are collected with the good harvest and commended to destruction in the fire. God does not destroy them immediately; He does not forsake them. Instead, He reveals His true nature: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6). So, to the question on everyone’s mind: Why does full judgment tarry and mercy beckon? Because, unlike us, God is “slow to anger.” His wrath visits the unrepentant (Exodus 34:7), but only after taking the slow path. Meanwhile, His mercy stands ready to be offered, at any time and in any place. St Peter offers us this answer in his second epistle: “Think of our Lord’s patience as your opportunity to be saved” (2 Peter 3:15).

Understanding how God thinks and acts provides us with some important rules of life for our emulation.

First, leniency and generosity, is always a sign of strength rather than of weakness, just as it is always the stronger person who apologises first and takes the initiative to make amends.

Second, we must trust the process. Growth takes time. Be patient with yourself as you are called to be patient with others. The devil’s greatest weapon is despair, making you feel that all your sacrifices and efforts are futile, so that you will be tempted to give up before you get to see the end. We must possess the “good hope that after sin you will grant repentance” and St Paul reassures us that “the Spirit comes to help us in our weakness.”

Third, we must acknowledge that we cannot see the full picture until the very end. Present struggles are temporary. All mysteries will be revealed, all things will be made clear, all answers will be provided on the Last Day, the Day of Judgement. Until then, we need to accept blurred lines that colour much of life. In life, good and bad are often deeply intertwined. Patience means accepting that we cannot always cleanly separate or fix every situation immediately. And because we have a limited vision of others and ourselves, we need to learn to let go of the need to play judge and instead, trust in God’s omniscient wisdom and ultimate schedule. You will find peace through His strength.

A Fool's Feast

Maundy Thursday

I believe that none of you would need to be reminded that yesterday, the 1st of April, was April Fool’s Day. It’s a day when we traditionally pull pranks on each other, not maliciously but in jest. If a day’s pranking was not enough, sometimes it spills over to the remainder of the week. But sometimes pranks can test the limits of friendship. People can be the best of friends before this but after having suffered a prank in bad taste, even the closest of friends can from henceforth become sworn enemies.

How the world judges our actions as foolish is exactly how the world judges Christians from the early centuries of the Church until present day. Our liturgical celebrations, though it may not seem to be so, always had a certain edge to them, like those who engage in extreme sports who court death as they experience a rush of adrenaline. You may find this unbelievable. How could the Mass, which so many find boring, be a dance with death? Perhaps, the only danger we could perceive is to die of boredom.

We often forget the context of today’s celebration. Today we commemorate the Lord’s Last Supper, a Passover Feast and tomorrow, we commemorate His death. They are not two different events but a single one, for what our Lord celebrated today at His Last Supper, He will complete on the cross. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Mass of the ages is a bloodless re-enactment, re-presentation of the gruesome bloody sacrifice of our Lord at Calvary. Risk, death and danger have always been part of the DNA of the Holy Mass from the moment of its institution.

The juxtaposition of celebration and death is a constant reminder that the Church of Christ, our Church, is indeed a Church of Eucharistic fools because Christians were willing to do the craziest things in order to receive the most precious thing that could sustain them, not just in this life but for eternity. For example, there is the amazing story of the courageous martyrs of Abitene (in modern-day Tunisia). In 303, forty-nine Christians suffered torture and martyrdom because they defied the Roman Emperor’s order not to celebrate the Eucharist on Sunday. Despite this cruel law and the real prospect of death, this group of Christians risked everything to gather for Mass. When asked by the magistrate why they had disobeyed the emperor and put themselves at risk, one of them defiantly said, “Sine dominico non possumus” — “Without Sunday, we cannot live.” “Without the Eucharist, we cannot live.”

In fact, for nearly 2,000 years, Christians have risked their lives to participate at Holy Mass. During the Reformation in England, priests were martyred when caught offering Holy Mass clandestinely for English Catholics. Courageous lay people who gave their homes over as places of Catholic worship, and who harboured priests, suffered torture and death. This trend continued over the centuries. In the Twentieth century, Catholics in former Communist countries like the Soviet Union or Vietnam were persecuted for practicing their faith. Today, in places such as Egypt, China, North Korea, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and countless other areas, Catholics risk their lives and travel for hours to attend Mass.

We rejoice that, unlike those in poor areas, we do not have to walk for miles, over hills or on dirt roads to attend. The vast majority of us can make a short drive to arrive at our beloved parish. In fact, we are spoilt for choices. But the ease, convenience, and accessibility of the Mass should not cause us to ever lose sight that the Mass is so precious that many of our Catholic brothers and sisters around the world are braving great inconvenience and persecution to receive what we, by God’s love, have available near us.

In his first Holy Thursday letter to priests, Pope Saint John Paul II touchingly recalled situations of the faith triumphing over persecution from his own personal experience of living under religious oppression, at a time when the priests were rounded up and there were none left to celebrate the Eucharist: “Sometimes it happens that [the lay faithful] meet in an abandoned shrine, and place on the altar a stole which they keep, and recite all the prayers of the Eucharistic liturgy: and then, at the moment that corresponds to the transubstantiation a deep silence comes down upon them, a silence sometimes broken by a sob … so ardently do they desire to hear the words that only the lips of a priest can efficaciously utter.”

I would like to close this evening with the words of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, at the 2005 World Youth Day in Cologne Germany:

“The Eucharist must become the centre of our lives. … This is because the Eucharist releases the joy that we need so much, and we must learn to grasp it ever more deeply, we must learn to love it. Let us pledge ourselves to do this – it is worth the effort! Let us discover the intimate riches of the Church’s liturgy and its true greatness: it is not we who are celebrating for ourselves, but it is the living God Himself who is preparing a banquet for us.”

An Ass and a Colt

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord

The gospel reading before the procession sets out the familiar scene of our Lord’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem. The lectionary provides us with slightly different versions of the same event and we are treated to St Matthew’s version this year. If you suffer from some pedantic streak like me, a connoisseur of the minutest and sometimes seemingly most insignificant details, you would notice a certain anomaly in the text. It is the mount of our Lord. It is not a single animal as mentioned in the other parallel text but two! The reason for the omission of a second beast in Mark and Luke could be due to neither quoting from the prophecy of Zechariah. Matthew, however, in fulfilment of the prophecy of Zechariah, which he quotes, and our Lord’s own prophetic instructions to His disciples, has the disciples bring an “ass and the colt.” I’m not sure about you but the thought of having two steeds instead of one strikes me as funny. Imagine our Lord straddling two animals like a circus performer.

Before we examine this seemingly strange phenomenon of having two animals, let us have a closer look at the original text in Zechariah 9:9. It is a messianic prophecy which speaks of the King (the Messiah) coming to His people in humility riding on an animal. The expression is easily explained as a common type of poetic emphasis used in Old Testament times. The Messiah sits on an animal. It is an ass. More than that, it is a colt, the foal of an ass, meaning very young. Therefore, most would take it (and this is what Mark and Luke does) to mean one animal instead of two. The language used is not a reference to an ass and a colt but rather to an ass which is also a colt, a foal of an ass. Are you still following? I hope I’ve not lost you.

But St Matthew takes the prophecy literally and so in his account, Jesus instructs His disciples to untie both the ass and the colt and to lead them to Him. Some commentators attempt to explain the reason this way. Christ first rode the ass up and down the hill and then transferred and rode the colt into the city. There is a practical reason for this. The she-ass would be stronger and more able to go up and down the terrain. Next, the colt, being more agile and light, would be able to bring Him into the city easily.

But more interesting is the spiritual sense or patristic allegorical interpretation given to these two animals. The she-ass and her colt signify the two sorts of people of which the world is made up—the Jews, accustomed to the yoke of the Mosaic law, who were represented by the ass; and the Gentiles, living up to this time without the Law of God, and who were denoted by the colt. Even though the ass had been well trained, the Jews had centuries of being familiarised with the Law of Moses, the law remained a burden to them. Likewise, just like a young colt that has not been ridden nor trained, Gentiles did not have the benefit of being trained by the Law. Christ our Lord rode both to signify that both the Jews and the Gentiles were called to be Christophoroi – Christ-bearers. That’s how we get the name of that famous saint, St Christopher.

Far from being absurd, the picture shows two things. First of all, it reveals our Lord’s control over nature and all created beings. A colt, so young that it has never been ridden and is even accompanied by its mother tags obediently along. It is fitting that Jesus, the Second Adam, should display Dr Doolittle powers lost to man after the Fall. Secondly, it emphasises the meekness and humility with which this One comes, exactly as St Paul describes Him in the second reading: “His state was divine, yet Christ Jesus did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave and became as men are; and being as all men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross.” This is no conquering king who has destroyed Israel’s enemies and is riding triumphantly into Jerusalem at the head of an army, but upon a colt hardly able to support His weight. This is the Saviour who has come to die for the sins of the world.

Choosing an ass or its colt as steed may be more than an action which merely displays our Lord’s humility. In ancient times, dignitaries would ride donkeys in civil processions, and horses in military ones. A king arriving on a donkey would indicate that the person was on a peaceful mission, not one bent on military conquest. Whatever one makes of the rabbinic ideas about the Messiah, our Lord’s coming on a donkey shows His true intentions and agenda. He has returned as an undefeated victor without a sword in His hand but with the offer of peace and reconciliation. Even though His life would be met with violence which would end in death, He “made no resistance”, nor did He “turn away,” from the blows of His enemies, as we heard in Isaiah’s prophecy of the Suffering Servant in the first reading.

Lastly, today’s liturgy and the readings also serve as a mirror which shows up our true disposition as we come before the Lord, exposing our weaknesses, our sinfulness and unworthiness to welcome such a King as He. According to Talmudic tradition, if we are worthy, the Messiah will come in the clouds (a reference to Daniel 7:13). But if we are unworthy, he will come riding on a donkey. In other rabbinic conversations, some say the Messiah will come when all Israel repents and proves their worthiness; others, when all Israel observes one Sabbath together. Until that happens, we cannot expect the Messiah. These two comings are related to the two comings of Christ that we always speak about in the season of Advent. The first coming was in humility at the Incarnation. The second coming of Christ would be at the end of this age as He returns in glory, perhaps most popularly represented as coming in the clouds. But despite our unworthiness, our Lord still comes to His people sitting on an ass and a colt, as He retakes His seat of glory - now in apparent humiliation on the throne of the cross but later, He will assume His throne of glory at the right side of the Father in heaven.

At the beginning of Holy Week, an ass and its colt carried a King in procession to retake His throne, but at the end of this week, this King, our Lord and Saviour will carry the instrument of our salvation, the cross, like a beast of burden, so that we may now enter into His kingdom. He rode on a beast of burden because He came to bear our burdens. Our Lord calls us to place our burdens upon Him every single day that we live here in this world. He willingly carries our burdens. He happily carries them, knowing that in our weakness, in Him we are strong.

A King to rule, A God to be worshipped, A Saviour to die

Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord

Epiphany is like a riddle that needs unravelling. It gets convoluted when we try to number the kings that make up the story. There is Herod the Great who is King of that time. Though he has self-styled himself with that “Great” appendage, he is a mere vassal, a puppet ruler beholden to the Romans ruling. Then we have Jesus whom the magi declare as “the infant king of the Jews,” a title that is ironically prophetic because it would appear once again under order of the Roman authorities on the plaque or titulus which hung over the head of Jesus on the cross. Finally, we have the unspecified number of wise men or magi from the East who have been immortalised as “three Kings from Orient”, who were most likely astrologers who were experts in magical divination rather than of royal lineage. Over the centuries, the Wise Men were given names–Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar - and they were venerated as saints. In fact, if you go to the Cathedral in Cologne, Germany, you will find relics alleged to be the remains of the Wise Men. How did the wise men of our story become the three kings of song and tradition? Despite what modern people would refute, there may be biblical evidence to support the tradition.

Isaiah predicted that at a time of darkness, the glory of the Lord will shine over Jerusalem. The heavenly light will be a beacon to the pagan nations and even to their kings. The prophecy of Isaiah may be one of the reasons why these Magi are often associated with kings. Despite the regular chastisement on the accuracy of this tradition from the pulpit (that there were an indeterminate number of wise men recorded in the gospel instead of the popular three kings), this has little effect on popular culture such as carols and Christmas pageant plays where children compete to be dressed in the splendorous costumes of these royal figures. As for the number of Magi which traditionally is set at three, no mention of their numbers can be found in St Matthew’s story. The three gifts which they bear may be the reason for concluding that there were three wise men or kings who visited the Christ-child. God forbid if they had to share Christmas or birthday presents.

Now that we’ve uncovered a possible reason for identifying the Magi with the three kings, it would be good to see the difference between Isaiah’s prophecy and the actual fulfilment of that prophecy in the visit of the Magi. It has to do with the number of gifts. On the matter of gifts, I often recall the gifts that were brought by the fairies to the christening of Sleeping Beauty. Each gift was a blessing save the penultimate one - the wicked and vengeful fairy who was not invited to the party, conferred on the child the gift of death. The last fairy, though she could not undo this curse entirely, blunted it by transforming the curse of death into a long sleep that could only be awakened with a prince’s kiss. Doesn’t that sound like the work of Christ in blunting death’s blow through the gift of the resurrection?

I digress. Let’s come back to our story of the gifts in the readings. Isaiah only mentions two - gold and incense - but St Matthew mentions three - gold, frankincense (which is a type of incense) and myrrh. The omission of the third gift in Isaiah’s prophecy and its inclusion in St Matthew’s list, is telling. It serves as a clue and shows that a particular aspect was missing from the Jewish expectation of the Messiah based on the Old Testament but was made clearer in the revelation of the New Testament. And the third gift is crucial to our story.

The three gifts have often been described as symbols - gold for a king and incense for a deity. This child is indeed a King but more than a king, He is God Incarnate, thus deserving not just our adulation but also our adoration. But what about the myrrh, which is mentioned in the gospel but omitted in Isaiah’s prophecy –where does that come from and what does it mean?

Myrrh, an aromatic resin, was used in preparing the dead for burial. It was used to anoint corpses to mask the stench and also served to preserve the body from immediate decay. There we have it - the missing link that completes the prophecy of the future fate of this child. Gold reveals that the babe in the manger is actually a king; frankincense tells us that He is God Incarnate; but myrrh reveals to us that this King, who is in fact our God, has come to die.

That someone would redeem God’s people through suffering and death was never part of the Jewish expectation of their Messiah. They failed to make a connexion between their expectation of a triumphant and glorious Messiah, with the Suffering Servant spoken of by Isaiah a few chapters earlier (Isaiah 53). This was the really hard thing for those living in Jesus’ time to comprehend –that the same person who fulfilled all those prophecies about a glorious new king, also fulfilled the prophecies about a mysterious figure in Isaiah’s prophecy who must suffer at the hands of His tormentors and enemies.

It would be good if we just stuck to the first two gifts. Many would have little to no objections to accept this child as their king. It may be far more difficult to acknowledge His divine nature but we can still work that into our formulae. But perhaps the most challenging aspect of this revelation is that this King, our deathless God, should choose to die. All three gifts of the Magi, however, are necessary to complete the true revelation, the true epiphany of who this child is, and what He is destined to do. We must never lose sight of this; that He is at once our King, our God, and Saviour who dies for us, for if any one of these aspects of His identity is omitted, He ceases to be who He truly is, He will not be the Saviour that we would need.

So, here as we had just heard from the Proclamation of the date of Easter and Moveable Feasts, distant rumblings of the Paschal event: the passion, death and resurrection of our Lord. Here in the gifts presented by the Magi, especially in the last gift, we see the inseparable link between Christmas, Good Friday and Easter.

Tradition gives us the names of the Magi -Caspar, Balthasar, Melchior. But the fact that Matthew gives them no names is telling. They may be kings, but in this story they are merely supporting actors. They follow the true Star, the King of Kings. Only His name is important. The Feast of the Epiphany is not about the Magi–it’s all about Jesus. And just like the Bethlehem star, their very presence and gifts reveal to us who this Child is - He is our King whom we must obey and serve, He is our Lord and God whom we must worship and finally, He is our Saviour who will die for us in expiation of our sins.

Venite Adoremus - Come let us adore Him.

Finding Power in Powerlessness

Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Power is as intoxicating as any drug we know of, perhaps even more potent than most. To those who are powerless, power promises redemption, a means to improve one’s position, to undo the injustices we face, to climb out of the rut we find ourselves trapped in. For those in power, the one thing they fear most is the loss of power. It would mean the loss of security, the loss of livelihood, the loss of public esteem or even worse, the loss of their lives. Dictators often do not fare well when they are overthrown in a coup. But today, we are confronted by the most radical inversion of how we should view power. The cross paradoxically shows us how true power is rooted in abject powerlessness.

Throughout the annals history, the cross remains a sign of contradiction – it is both an unthinkable disgrace and yet a potent source of grace. It has inspired confidence in armies to march into battle and others to sue for peace; it has been used as a palpable symbol of power as well as powerlessness. And so, it is both despised as well as coveted by one human power or another. The cross was invented by the Persians and then adopted by the Romans as one of the cruelest and most frightening instruments of torture and execution to instil fear among subjects. Constantine used it as a talisman of power in the civil war with his brother and the Persians claimed it as their greatest battle trophy over the Byzantines.

So, how is the cross a symbol of power and powerlessness? The symbolism of power hidden in the cross is often lost on us and is only revealed as a mystery of revelation. The Cross represents the Sovereign authority of God and His providence. This is certainly difficult to comprehend. Yet, what seems to us to be failure is, in God’s eyes, the victory of sacrificial love. It is on the cross, that Christ receives the highest exaltation from God, ironically, at the moment He suffered the greatest humiliation at the hands of men. As Christ was lifted up on the Cross, now by means of the Cross, He lifts up humanity, and indeed all creation. As today’s gospel reminds us, “for God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved”. The Cross possesses the power to forgive sins, the power to heal consciences and human hearts.

But paradoxically, the cross is also a symbol and an instrument of powerlessness. For a brief moment, the Son of God gave up His access to the powers of the universe and submitted Himself to the power of men so that He could die at our hands. On the wood of the cross, the most powerful being in the universe chose to be powerless. The Lutheran theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, describes the profound significance of this moment, “God allows himself to be edged out of the world and onto the cross. God is weak and powerless in the world, and that is exactly the way, the only way, in which he can be with us and help us.” So what God has done is that He took an instrument of evil, an instrument that brings death and transformed it so that it gives life, brings goodness and healing, and that’s what we hear the Lord saying about Himself, “When I am lifted up, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, then I will give life.” Just as Moses uses the symbol of Israel’s bane, the serpent, as a visible sign of God’s healing, our Lord similarly uses the cross as an instrument of healing, life and salvation.

The power and the powerlessness of the cross provide us with the necessary lens to view our own suffering, our daily crosses. St John Paul II, who prophetically wrote his first encyclical on Suffering, and would later suffer that fate in the last years of his pontificate, uses the cross to formulate his answer to man’s perennial dilemma – Why do we have to suffer. The saintly Pope stated, with piercing simplicity, that the answer has "been given by God to man in the cross of Jesus Christ." Each of us is called to "share in that suffering through which the Redemption was accomplished." Through His only begotten Son, God "has confirmed His desire to act especially through suffering, which is man's weakness and emptying of self, and He wishes to make His power known precisely in this weakness and emptying of self."

And this is the way we experience God’s power here on earth, sometimes to our great frustration, and this is the way that Jesus was deemed powerful during His lifetime. The gospels make this clear. Jesus was born powerless, and He died helpless on a cross. Yet both His birth and His death show the kind of power on which we can ultimately build our lives. The cross of Christ, therefore, teaches us that we can find power in weakness, in that which makes us vulnerable and even seemingly powerless.

Perhaps, what makes it so difficult to accept the good news of the cross, is that we are stubbornly holding on to power; we want to have a “sense of control.” Henri Nouwen writes, “What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.” Most of us fear our powerlessness in the face of illness and death. We would like to retain an element of control, even though we realise that dying often involves the very opposite: a total loss of control, over our muscles, our emotions, our minds, our bowels and our very lives, as our human framework succumbs to powerful disintegrative forces.

Even when those disintegrative forces become extreme and our suffering may seem overwhelming, however, an important spiritual journey always remains open for us. This path is a "road less traveled," a path that, unexpectedly, enables us to achieve genuine control in the face of suffering and even death. The hallmark of this path is the personal decision to accept our sufferings, actively laying down our life on behalf of others by embracing the particular kind of death God has ordained for us, patterning our choice on the choice consciously made by Jesus Christ. As no one had ever done before, Jesus charted the path of love-driven sacrifice, choosing to lay down His life for His friends. He was no mere victim in the sense of being a passive and unwilling participant in His own suffering and death. He was in control. He was powerful even in His apparent powerlessness. No one could possibly take His life from Him, unless He chose to lay it down.

To the Romans, it may have been an instrument of torture or execution, to Constantine it may have been an amulet of power, to the Persians a trophy of conquest, but to us Christians, it is the very symbol of Christ’s victory over darkness, death, sin and the devil. Therefore, as the entrance antiphon exhorts us, “We should glory in the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection, through whom we are saved and delivered.”

The Ultimate Reboot

Easter Vigil of the Holy Night

Some of you may know that I had just completed a cataract operation on both eyes. When the new multi-focal lens was inserted, I had issues adjusting to the darkened environment. I jokingly informed Fr Bonaventure that I’ve seen my last Easter Vigil Mass which begins in the dark and he happily quipped, “Yeah! I now have a chance to do the English Masses!” He was kidding as you can tell. The most unnerving part of the operation was to be told that a machine used for the procedure had to be rebooted. In fact, as my right eye was kept opened by a speculum whilst glaring into a blinding bright light above me, the only thing I could hear was my doctor telling the nurse and the technician to reboot the machine, not just once but several times until it finally restarted again. I’ve rebooted many devices in my life, my desktop computer, my laptop, my tablet and even my phone. Nothing comes close to this experience.

But after the agony of waiting for the machine to reboot, all the anxiety and discomfort and fears simply dissipated. With my cataracts removed, I now see with new eyes! That’s what Easter feels like - after a hard reset, the whole system gets rebooted, the whole fallen creation gets rebooted, the story of humanity which ends in failure gets rebooted. You need to end the cycle of sin and destruction before you can begin a new cycle of redemption and reconciliation.

Today we conclude this shortest and yet most intense and sacred time in our Church’s liturgical calendar - the Paschal Triduum. And though it may seem to be an ending, it is actually a beginning of many things. The Paschal Triduum is that hard reset and reboot which history and creation most needed. This should not surprise us as we had affirmed at the start of tonight’s liturgy, that Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and end of all things. Beginnings and endings are not two realities but one in Christ. As T. S. Eliot poignantly writes: “And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time” (The Four Quartets, “Little Gidding”).

Everything about this vigil’s liturgy, “the mother of all vigils,” speaks of beginnings and endings, which takes us on a journey from birth to rebirth, from creation to re-creation, from darkness to light, from death to life. From the blessing and procession of the Paschal Candle, the singing of the Easter proclamation to our marathon set of readings, we are pulled into this journey of transformation, not as mere spectators but as participants. Our Gospel begins with these words: “on the first day of the week, at the first sign of dawn…” This is an extraordinary text – so subtle and sophisticated. But it begs the question: what does it mean? The answer is found at the beginning, in the first reading.

The first day of the week mentioned in the Gospel, corresponds to the first day of creation in Genesis; and the lighting of the Paschal Candle in the midst of darkness matches the first act of creation, where God created light out of darkness. St Luke’s recapitulation of the creation narrative goes on. In Genesis, God creates the first human being, the first man, but at Easter, our Lord Jesus emerges from the womb of the tomb to be the firstborn of the new creation. God created all things, including man, and when He was finished, He looked at all He had made, and declared that it was “very good.” His original creation, however, was sullied and damaged. Once Adam chose to go against God’s Will, sin entered God’s created world, and sickness, decay, and death were introduced to humanity. God’s creation has suffered sin’s effects ever since.

Fast-forward to the time of Jesus’ life on earth. God the Son, the Word of God, entered humanity as a child born of Mary. He was fully God and fully man. His mission was to defeat the sin and death which had entered humanity through Adam. This second Adam lived a sinless life, was condemned and executed as a criminal, and was buried in a tomb. Three days later, He rose from the dead! He was resurrected! His resurrection was the first phase of God’s new creation, God’s cosmic reboot! God created a new kind of human existence—a human body which was raised from the dead and transformed by the power of God into a body that is no longer affected by death, decay, and corruption. Pope Emeritus Benedict described the resurrection of Christ as “something akin to a radical evolutionary leap, in which a new dimension of life emerges, a new dimension of human existence. Indeed, matter itself is remoulded into a new type of reality. The man Jesus, complete with His body, now belongs totally to the sphere of the divine and eternal.”

But then, there is the second phase in God’s plan of recreation. As Christians and as part of God’s new creation through our baptism, we can look forward to the time when, upon Christ’s return, He will raise our bodies from the dead! We will receive resurrected bodies like His. In these resurrected bodies, we will clearly see humanity as God intended it to be.

God’s new creation will not end with the resurrection of our bodies but goes beyond that. The third phase will involve all of creation being renewed as well. When Adam sinned, God cursed the ground. The world was no longer the sublime place God made it to be. Sin changed that. But because of Christ’s death and resurrection, His victory over sin and death, God will renew the entire world - He will remake it into “a new heaven and a new earth.”

The new creation which we speak of, is not just some static and unchanging reality. As part of the new creation, God’s Spirit is regularly renewing us, changing us, helping us to put on the mind of Christ. Dear Catechumens, today is not the end of your journey. It is not graduation day. It is an ending of a period of preparation, but this is only a beginning. Today is the day you will experience a hard reboot of your lives. What is fallen, will be redeemed. What is disfigured by sin would be beautified by grace. Vision clouded by the spiritual cataract of sin, can be renewed. As you allow the Holy Spirit to guide you, you will continually grow and mature in your spiritual lives in order that you may be renewed and become more Christlike.

Each year, we recapitulate this Easter story and each year it recreates us. It returns us to the ground of our being. We are asked to die to ourselves so that we may be reborn in Christ. We are given the chance to start over. Every Easter, we are reminded that we can bring all that befalls us to be reintegrated, redeemed, and recreated as we bring it back to our living source: Christ yesterday and today, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega; All time belongs to Him and all the ages, to Him be glory and power, through every age and for ever. Amen.

A Time to Keep Silent, A Time to Speak Out

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord

One of the most important pieces of advice someone would give us is “make your voice be heard.” Whether it is to express your opinion at a meeting, or speaking up in class, or starting a podcast to air your views or participating in a demonstration in support of some political cause, making your voice heard seems to be a reasonably good piece of advice.

On this first day of Holy Week, we Christians are reminded of our fundamental duty to make our voices heard, not in the sense of self-promotion or drawing attention to oneself, nor in seeking to influence others and win them over to our side, but that we may proclaim the wonders of God’s work.

In the first gospel reading we heard before the entrance procession, the Pharisees were complaining that the disciples and crowd who were welcoming our Lord to Jerusalem were making a ruckus by shouting and singing. They told the Lord: “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” In other words, they were asking our Lord to tell them: “be quiet.” This noisy behaviour, in their own estimation, was not the behaviour of pious disciples of a holy rabbi but sounded more like a gang of loud drunken sailors. Our Lord, instead of bending to pressure, doubles down and defends His disciples by commending them: “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah declares that the Lord Himself had given him “a disciple’s tongue.” It is not a glib tongue that will earn him fans or popular support. In fact, what he says at the behest of God would prove so unpopular that he would be the subject of rejection, ridicule and persecution. The image of the Suffering Servant who remains faithful to his mission in the face of adversity becomes an apt figure for the future Messiah. Our Lord’s own passion would be the fulfilment of the words of Isaiah: “I offered my back to those who struck me, my cheeks to those who tore at my beard; I did not cover my face against insult and spittle.” Despite such taunting, torture and opposition, the servant remains steadfast in mission to “speak out” on behalf of the Lord because he knows that with the Lord’s help, no insult would hurt him.

The theme of speaking out is contrasted with its counterpart of remaining silent. St Paul in the second reading paints this beautiful picture of the One who is God humbling Himself to such an extent of assuming the lowly state of a slave. His humility would go so far as to accept the penalty of death even though He is the Deathless God. The Word of God whom chaos could not silence at the beginning of creation chooses to mute Himself out of love and obedience to the Father’s will. What should our response be in knowing this truth, the truth that God’s greatest act in history would be in becoming small? Our silence is not an option. St Paul tells us that “every tongue should acclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” His decision to become human has not compromised His divinity. On the contrary, His humiliation in death is the very reason we acknowledge His glory as Lord and God.

In the lengthy passion gospel reading that we just heard, we notice our Lord’s response to those around Him. From the scene of the Last Supper to His lifeless body being taken down from the cross, we see a man who is very much in charge though others assume that they have taken charge of Him. Sometimes He speaks and sometimes He chooses to remain silent. As the narrative progresses, notice that our Lord eventually chooses to remain silent especially when He is accused, ridiculed and mocked. But our Lord does not cease speaking directly to His Heavenly Father. The Father, however, remains silent throughout this soliloquy. The one exception to our Lord’s silence is when He promises salvation to the good thief who was crucified with Him. As His life expired on the cross, His final words summed up His entire life and mission. Once again, addressed solely to the Heavenly Father: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” At the end, instead of ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ as we would hear in Mark’s Passion, Luke’s Jesus Himself tranquilly yields His life into the Father’s hands, obediently completing His Father’s will.

How different our Lord’s response at His trials and crucifixion is from ordinary human nature. Even when we have done something wrong and know we are wrong, still the first words that tend to form in our mouths are words of excuses and self-defence. And what about when we are right but are blamed for being wrong? Most of us would be quick to speak up and protest our innocence. It’s just human nature to want to speak up and justify ourselves. But our Lord met His accusers with silence, as had the prophet Isaiah written seven hundred years ago, “He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opens not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). He held back any words that would have relieved Him from the shame and blame of sin. He was not a sinner, but He took fully the sinner’s place. Thank God that Jesus was willing to be counted a sinner before men, that we might be counted as righteous before God! Thank God, He chose to speak up on our behalf, even though His own disciples chose to remain silent in His hour of need.

Our Lord reveals the truth behind this paradox first announced by the philosopher king: “A time to keep silence, And a time to speak” (Eccles 3:7-8). Our Lord provides us with a model to follow and imitate. There is a time to remain silent and a time to speak up. We need to seek wisdom from the Holy Spirit as to when it’s time for each response. When it comes to ourselves, do remember that we do not need to have the last word or pursue any argument to vindicate ourselves. God is our vindicator if indeed we were unfairly maligned. But when you are given the opportunity to testify to who Jesus is and your faith in Him, don’t hesitate to honour Him with your words and your testimony. Even if you’re treated in a similar manner to the treatment He endured, honour Him with your lips, your lifestyle, and the lasting impression you leave upon those you interact with in this world. 

Hosanna! “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!”

Christ is King!

Solemnity of Christ the King Year B

The declaration that “Christ is King” seems innocent enough for us Catholics, albeit somewhat hackneyed. But this has not been the case in America’s highly polarised political climate. On the one side you have people saying this is an affirmation of the Christian faith and a desire to not give in to secular culture. On the other side, you have people saying the phrase Christ is king is antisemitic, or expresses contempt for Jewish people, as the gospels seem to lay the blame on them for killing Jesus, although the actual executioner is Pontius Pilate as we had heard in today’s gospel. And in the weeks leading up to the highly contested presidential elections in the United States, the statement has been construed by those on the left as a pro-Trump dog whistle.

It is obvious that the title has political connotations. It is for this reason that the Jewish leaders brought our Lord before the Roman authorities on charges of treason. In the Empire, only Caesar was truly sovereign and all other client puppet rulers within his domain would have to seek his mandate before they could claim any title or authority. Since the Sanhedrin, the Jewish High Council, was unable to impose capital punishment under their religious blaspheme laws, getting the Romans to adjudicate the case and pass the death penalty was the only option. So, the “crime” of Jesus had to be elevated from a religious sin into a political high crime of treason.

When our Lord was given an opportunity by Pilate to refute the charges of claiming to be “king”, He in fact confirmed the title when the question was put to Him: “Are you the king of the Jews?” And after clarifying that His “kingdom is not of this world,” our Lord proceeds to unequivocally declare: “Yes, I am a king. I was born for this, I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice.” For having affirmed the truth of His kingship instead of denying it, our Lord was condemned to die by crucifixion. He could have lied even when it was inconvenient and politically incorrect to state the truth. He could have protested that it was all a misunderstanding, but He didn’t.

So, for those who clutch their pearls whenever they hear this statement as an anti-Semitic and right-wing slogan, here are some salient truths which is bound to trigger you, rather than lower the temperature: The good news is that Jesus Christ is really king. But He’s also a Jew and in fact hailed as “King of Jews,” the very charge written on the titulus placed on the cross. So, it is an oxymoron to claim that an esteemed royal Jewish title given to a Jew would be anti-Semitic. In fact, this feast was inaugurated by Pope Pius XI as the Church’s challenge to the secularist fascist regimes which were not just anti-semites but also anti-Christian.

It is also important to remember that the “Jesus is King of the Jews” language would have been self-evidently a kind of joke, making fun of both Jesus and his fellow Jews under Roman occupation. The joke is that a king on the throne of David would not be drowning in his own blood, helplessly fixed to a Roman cross. To call him that would make a cruel point not just to any future insurrectionist but to the hopes of Jewish people generally—No one is coming to liberate us. Caesar is king and will remain king. Furthermore, the motives of Pilate’s soldiers in applying the “Christ is king” imagery was even clearer. The purple cloak and the crown of thorns were meant to be a parody—as the Roman soldiers sarcastically saluted Jesus, yelling, “Hail, king of the Jews!” (Mark 15:18). They mocked Jesus both for His alleged claim to kingship and for His Jewishness, both seen as being beneath the majesty of Roman power.

But Jesus is not making any claims to the Roman imperial throne. He has no desire to do so. Our Lord Jesus Christ is not a true and better Caesar. His kingship is something altogether different, in fact, it is not of this world. That’s because the kingdom of God is not a capstone of the aspirations and power games of this present order; it’s a repudiation of them.

If the kingdom of God were about external conformity, tribal membership, or “winning” in the sense that we define it, Jesus could have embraced all of that from the crowds around Him or would have trained His closest associates to become a more effective group of insurgents. The kingdom of God cannot be understood or articulated without seeing that the Crucifixion is not a plot obstacle on a hero’s journey. The way of the Cross is, in fact, the Way to victory and glory, while the way of Caesar leads to death and humiliation. The Cross is indeed our Lord’s true throne. Pope Pius XI taught that Christ the King “has dominion over all creatures, a dominion not seized by violence nor usurped, but His by essence and by nature.” The cross is not what robbed us of our king but in fact, gave us a king.

At a recently concluded Pax Liturgica Meeting in Rome, which went for the most part unnoticed because it was eclipsed by the hyped Synod on Synodality, Cardinal Gerhard Müller warned against bishops betraying their divine mission by relativising doctrine and failing to uphold the orthodox faith. "We must not give in to the following suggestion: If you want to reach people today and be loved by all, then, just like Pilate, leave the truth aside, then you will be spared persecution, suffering, the cross and death! Secularly speaking, the power of politics, media and banks is the safe side, while the truth defies contradiction, and promises suffering with Christ, the crucified Saviour of the world."

So, by declaring that Christ is King is not a triumphalist slogan weaponised against others but a humble acknowledgement that God comes first, above every political movement, above every economic option, above every ideological agenda, above every expression of our narcissistic world-view. To declare that Christ is King is not the symptom of a diseased mind but actually its antidote. To declare that Christ is King is not a refutation of the cross, but, the embrace of it!

Being redeemed in Christ is the antidote for toxic social dynamics. Rather than gaslighting, we have truth; in place of narcissism, there is humility; instead of manipulation, there is a guileless spirit; in place of helplessness and powerlessness, there is the armour of God; rather than oppression, there is deliverance; instead of exhaustion and exploitation, we are made new. So, let us not be abashed or ashamed of declaring with whole-hearted conviction: Christ is King!

Born Loser Raised Victorious

Solemnity of All Saints

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Redemptive Suffering

Twenty Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

One of the most fundamental mysteries that most religions seek to grapple with is that of suffering - what is its cause and what is its antidote? The Buddhists make existential suffering as the first of their four foundational Noble Truths. The second Noble Truth is its prognosis – desires is the cause of all suffering. Others would argue that suffering is punishment from God for one’s sinfulness and waywardness. Bad people suffer while good people are blessed and rewarded. However, our experience would often throw a wrench into this simplistic association. We all know of bad people who seem to prosper while good and innocent folks seem to suffer for no obvious reason. The unfairness of the situation often leads us to question the existence of God or perhaps view Him as a capricious and sadistic deity who loves to watch us suffer while observing our plight from the sidelines.

Our modern world tells us to avoid suffering at all cost and instead seek comfort by any means necessary, such as taking a pill to alleviate pain, or seeking divorce when marriage becomes unbearable, or giving up a project when satisfaction or results do not seem immediate. The world sees instant gratification as a right and suffering as a senseless evil to be avoided at all cost. But Christianity actually proposes that suffering can have immense value for ourselves and others. Rather than focusing on identifying the root causes of suffering which are many or attempting to run away from them, Christianity invites us to view and embrace suffering as something redemptive and salvific.

We need to be clear that suffering, in and of itself, is not naturally redemptive. It is up to us to respond in a way that gives it a redemptive value in imitation of the love with which Christ suffered for our sake. Our suffering was not originally what God had intended for us. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “As long as he [Adam] remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die” (376). But Adam forfeited this gift through his disobedience. Human suffering entered the world due to the effects of original sin. God does not cause the suffering. He simply permits it to happen in our lives so that it can be used for good and not wasted.

The foundation of redemptive suffering is found in the suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ which He willingly embraced. He is the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy of the Suffering Servant which we heard in the first reading. Our Lord is the “servant” which God has pleased to crush with suffering because “by His sufferings shall my servant justify many, taking their faults on Himself.” He is the supreme High Priest described in Hebrews who had offered a sacrifice of His own flesh, a flesh united completely with our humanity. He is “one who has been tempted in every way that we are, though He is without sin.” He suffered for you and for me out of perfect divine love and catapulted the meaning of love from a warm and fuzzy feeling to an act of sacrifice, a total gift of self.

Our Lord today asked His disciples, He is asking us if we are ready to share in His redemptive suffering: “Can you drink the cup that I must drink, or be baptised with the baptism with which I must be baptised?”

So, how do we choose to make our suffering a means of redemption by uniting it with Christ. Here are some practical steps:

First, we are called to bear our suffering patiently without complaining. We can choose to be cheerful rather than be cranky, especially to those who care for us and are companions to us. The moment we grumble and complain and grow resentful, our suffering loses its redemptive value and becomes a curse.

Second, we can choose to forgive and pray for those who cause us pain instead of cursing them, or rant about them or hold a grudge against them. You can quietly offer your pain as an act of compassion for these persons, just as our Lord forgave His enemies from the cross.

Third, you can embrace the suffering and pray for endurance and perseverance. The harder it gets, the more redemptive it becomes. This was the conviction of little St Therese de Lisieux when she joined the Carmelite monastery at the young age of 15. She would later explain that her vocation was motivated by her desire to offer her suffering for others. And she did suffer grievously both physically and mentally, while offering up her suffering for the salvation of souls.

Lastly, choose the path of humility and even that which brings humiliation as our Lord exhorts in today’s gospel - to be the last instead of being first, to be the least instead of being the greatest, to be a servant instead of being a master for “the Son of Man himself did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Choose and offer these acts of sacrificial suffering for other people’s salvation as an act of love and a desire of their ultimate good, which is heaven. By uniting our suffering to Christ and offering it to God in self-sacrificial love we become like Christ, who offered His suffering in self-sacrificial love so that we might receive the reward of eternal life. In this ultimate gift, we see that suffering not only can play a role in our own salvation but also in helping others obtain salvation.

Let me end with this beautiful catechesis from the great Cure D’Ars, St Jean Marie Vianney:

“There are two ways of suffering – to suffer with love, and to suffer without love. The saints suffered everything with joy, patience, and perseverance, because they loved. As for us, we suffer with anger, vexation, and weariness, because we do not love. If we loved God, we should love crosses, we should wish for them, we should take pleasure in them… We should be happy to be able to suffer for the love of Him who lovingly suffered for us.”

The Second Pascha

Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Today, Roman Catholics throughout the world celebrate the great Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Our brothers and sisters from the Eastern Christian tradition, on the other hand, celebrate the event as the Dormition, or falling-asleep, of the Holy Theotokos, the Mother of God. From ancient times, this event has been regarded by Orthodox Christians in the light of a second Pascha, or a second Easter. Thus, the Assumption finds its true glorious meaning in the revealing radiance of the Easter dawning sun.

The Resurrection of Christ, the Holy Pascha, is THE pivotal turning point in the story of humanity’s salvation. With His resurrection, Jesus Christ trampled upon the gates of Hades, released its prisoners from the clutches of death and the devil, and opened for us the gates of paradise, which was originally intended for man - the crown of all creation, and which became closed to us because of the sin of pride and disobedience to God on the part of our ancestors. What man lost through Adam, he has regained through the second Adam. God Himself chose to come down to earth, became incarnate in the form of man, and once again opened to us the gates of paradise, having manifested - instead of pride - the greatest humility, instead of disobedience - complete obedience even unto death on the cross, and instead of sin, He - the most pure and absolutely sinless - took upon Himself the burden of all the sins of the world. With these three qualities - humility, obedience and purity of nature - the Lord showed us the highest example of what man can be like, of what he should be like, and of what the Creator intended him to be.

However, we may well be tempted to think that only God incarnate could be such an ideal man, while a mere mortal could never attain such perfection. But to show us the error of such thinking, we have before us the Mother of God, who is the highest example of the attainment of such perfection, and who teaches us with her entire life, her death and her Assumption that man can attain perfection precisely by means of these three qualities - humility, obedience to the will of God, and moral purity. Her Assumption is evidence and proof of such a life. Mary is indeed the first fruit of the new humanity, the creature in whom the mystery of Christ – His Incarnation, death, Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven – has already fully taken effect, redeeming her from death and conveying her, body and soul, to the Kingdom of immortal life. In the Assumption of Our Lady, it is these three qualities of hers which are commemorated - humility, obedience and purity, - which have elevated her, a mere mortal, above all earthly creatures and above the entire heavenly host.

As in all other feasts of Mary, we do less to honour her but in reality worship the Sovereign Lord who fulfilled His plan of salvation through His humble maid, the most supremely perfect among His creatures. In this area, the Fathers of the Church have often used the method of scriptural typology to speak of Mary’s relation to Christ. Typology is a special kind of symbolism. When we say that someone is a type of Christ, we are saying that a person in the Old Testament behaves in a way that corresponds to Jesus’ character or actions in the New Testament. For example, in the second reading, Paul describes Adam as a type of Christ. Though death entered this world through the first Adam’s disobedience, eternal life was made accessible again through the obedience of the second Adam, Jesus Christ himself.

If Adam is a type of Christ, Eve is a type of Mary. The Fathers of the Church often spoke of Mary as the new Eve. St John Chrysostom, the great Doctor of the East spoke of how the garden of Eden was closed forever to our parents through the disobedience of Adam and Eve, but now the gates of Paradise, Heaven has been opened to the one who showed perfect obedience, Mary, the Mother of God and Our Beloved Mother. Where Eve listened to the deceptive voice of the serpent, a fallen angel, which caused humanity’s fall, Mary listened to the revealing and liberating Word of God, communicated through an angel of God, and became the instrument of bringing man’s cause of salvation into the world, her son our Lord Jesus. As a result of the fall, the serpent would constantly strike at the heel of the children of Eve but the ancient serpent, now a dragon in the Book of Apocalypse, will be deprived of victory over the Lady who defeats the foe of the Church. Death and pain became the fate of our first mother because of the folly of sin, eternal life would be the prize won for our Blessed Mother because of her faithfulness to the will of God.

One may be tempted to ask: Isn’t the story of the Paschal Mystery, Christ’s death and resurrection sufficient? The answer is ‘Yes.’ But as the story of Adam is incomplete without the mention of Eve, the story of the new Adam would be similarly incomplete without speaking of His new counterpart. If Jesus, the new Adam, is the primary cause of humanity’s salvation, then Mary, the new Eve, is the primary representative of redeemed humanity in displaying the effect of Jesus’ redemptive work. If the old Eve followed the old Adam into exile after the Fall, the new Eve followed the new Adam in suffering, in the Passion, and so too in definitive joy of the resurrection. Christ is the first fruits but His risen flesh is inseparable from that of His earthly Mother, Mary. In Mary all humanity is involved in the Assumption to God, and together with her all creation, whose groans and sufferings, St Paul tells us, are the birth-pangs of the new humanity.

Mary’s Assumption shows the Way – it is Christ who has saved her from the moment of her conception in her mother’s womb and it is Christ whose redemption has preserved her body from corruption and now leads her to heaven. The Mother leads us to her Son, the Second Pascha casts further light on the first, the fidelity, humility and purity of the New Eve reflects the perfect model of the New Adam. Mary shows us the way to heaven through her Assumption.

Today, as we raise our eyes above and through our imagination try to behold the splendour of this wondrous event of our Blessed Mother being assumed body and soul into heaven into the welcoming arms of the Holy Trinity in the presence of the angelic hosts and saintly choir, our vision looks beyond the person of Mary. The Assumption provides us with a glimpse of our future glory, our final home, the holy beatitude of heaven. Pope Benedict speaks to us of the power of this feast as one which “impels us to lift our gaze to Heaven; not to a heaven consisting of abstract ideas or even an imaginary heaven created by art, but the Heaven of true reality which is God himself. God is Heaven. He is our destination, the destination and the eternal dwelling place from which we come and for which we are striving.”

Central Mystery of Faith

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity Year B

Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday. On other days in our liturgical calendar, we primarily celebrate the mystery of the life of Christ, His Incarnation, His ministry, His passion, death and resurrection and the impact this has on the Church and her members, in particular Mary and the saints. But today, we celebrate the mystery of who God is — the Most Holy Trinity. It is one of only two dogmas that actually have a feast day in the liturgical calendar. The term “mystery” is appropriate for the celebration.

I hate to do it but whenever I’m asked a question of clarification about the Most Holy Trinity, transubstantiation or the Incarnation, I would start with my standard curt reply: “it’s a mystery.” Though, this may appear to be a brilliant deflection and avoidance of answering the question directly, I can presume that it must sound awfully frustrating and condescending to the enquirer. But it is not my intention to deflect or avoid and I’m hardly trying to be condescending. I would proceed to explain what a mystery means in its theological context. It’s hardly Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew or Agatha Christie stuff which I am talking about. A mystery of faith is of a different category entirely.

When the Church refers to a teaching, a dogma, as mystery, she is not referring to something which is hidden from our knowledge - it is not some esoteric secret. In fact, mysteries of faith are part of divine revelation - their secrets have been revealed to us. But when the Church describes something as mystery, she is making the point that this truth cannot be known to us independently of such revelation from God. Our natural faculties including our intellect would not be able to arrive at this conclusion without God Himself having revealed or shown it to us.

And so it is with the dogma of the Most Holy Trinity. God is so far above us that we can never fully understand Him. We mortals would be incapable of knowing that God exists as One but in three distinct persons if this has not been revealed to us through Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. In fact, the dogma of the Most Holy Trinity is not just one example of a mystery among many. The Catechism of the Catholic Church declares: “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in Himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them” (CCC 234). It would be ironic if we wish to delve into the meaning of other mysteries of faith and yet deliberately choose to ignore the central mystery of our faith just because it is the most inexplicable and most likely to give us a major headache.

There could be two major mistakes we are prone to make when considering the Most Holy Trinity as a mystery, even though it is uniquely described as the “central mystery of Christian faith and life.”

The first is to treat the dogma as a fascinating but abstract concept, a cosmic Rubik’s Cube that challenges us to fit all the pieces into their place through elaborate, brain-twisting moves. What might begin as a sincere desire to understand better the mystery of One God in three persons can be a dry academic exercise. If we’re not careful, the Trinity can become a sort of theological artifact that is interesting to examine on occasion, but which doesn’t affect how we think, speak, and live.

The second mistake is to simply avoid thoughtful consideration of the nature and meaning of the Trinity. The end result of this flawed perspective is similar to the first, minus all the study: to throw up one’s hands in frustrated impatience, “Well, it doesn’t make any sense. I don’t see what it has to do with me and my life!” While many Christians might not consciously come to that conclusion, the way they think and live suggests that is, unfortunately, their attitude.

Far from being a distant concept remotely removed from our everyday lives, it is fundamental to our identity as Christians. In a sermon given in the early 1970s, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) wrote of how “the Church makes a man a Christian by pronouncing the name of the triune God.” This is what our Lord wishes to communicate in today’s passage as He commissions His disciples with this mission: “Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations; baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you.” The baptism that takes place is to be done in the name of the Most Holy Trinity.

Although the word “mystery” implies a certain distance, it involves an intimate encounter. A relationship would remain shallow if the parties are not willing to open themselves to the other. As some people would argue, there should be no secrets between lovers. The reason why God would unlock and reveal a mystery to us is because He loves us and wishes to engage us and wants us to enter into a relationship with Him. Through this relationship we come to know Him and by knowing Him more and more, we get to deepen our relationship with Him. This knowledge, admittedly, is not exhaustive but engaging. It draws us closer to the One who can never be fully known. It is a relationship of love. Just like the more you get to know someone you love, the more the person is revealed to be a mystery.

Now that we know His motivation is love, but why would God bother to reveal Himself to us? That we might have Eternal Life. And what is eternal life? It is actually sharing in the supernatural life of the Blessed Trinity. How can we share in a life which we have no knowledge of? Impossible. That is why, the more we come to know God, the more we wish to enter into a deeper communion with Him.

Far from being abstract or of little earthly value, the Most Holy Trinity is the source of reality and the reason our earthly lives have meaning and purpose. Because God is, we have a reason to be. Because God is love, we are able to truly love. Because God is unity, we are able to be united to Him. Because God is three Persons, we are able to have communion with Him. This is the reason why this dogma is the central mystery of faith.

St. Gregory of Nazianzus once wrote, “Above all guard for me this great deposit of faith for which I live and fight, which I want to take with me as a companion, and which makes me bear all evils and despise all pleasures: I mean the profession of faith in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” (CCC 256). We may not completely grasp the height and the depth of this great mystery but what St Paul wrote to the Corinthians helps us to embrace this mystery and relationship: “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13:12-13). May we guard our belief in the Triune God with our lives. And may we better know the Most Holy Trinity, so that “we may love Him, serve Him and be with Him in paradise forever”.

A Descent before an Ascent

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord
Lithuania Poland Pilgrimage
John Paul II Salt Chapel, Wieliczka Salt Mine

Most of you are familiar with that basic rule of gravity, “what goes up, must come down.” I guess that principle applies to us. Before taking off for the skies to fly home, we have decided to have our last Mass here in the depths of the earth, literally. But the gospel seems to have a different spin on this. In fact, it proclaims: “The One who came down, must now go up!” I guess that most of us would think of the Ascension as a “going up,” as the normal usage of the word would suggest. Few would see the Ascension as actually linked to a descent.

Salvation history takes a similar route. God, or more specifically, God in the flesh, had to touch and be touched by the rock-bottom experience of our human existence, before He can take the ascending path leading man to his redemption. St Paul lays out this paradox in the second reading. Having quoted Psalm 68 (or 67), St Paul then gives this explanation: “When it says, ‘he ascended’, what can it mean if not that he descended right down to the lower regions of the earth? The one who rose higher than all the heavens to fill all things is none other than the one who descended.” Christ is the victorious conqueror who ascends to His throne in heaven after defeating the spiritual forces. He wins this victory by descending to the very depths, even to plunge Himself into hell, to enter the fray of battle with sin, death and the devil, to accomplish this deed. Christ now shares the spoils of war with His followers. We, perennial losers because of our propensity to sin, have become winners, not by our own achievement but this was accomplished for us by the One who conquered sin and death and victoriously rose from the grave, and now sits at God’s right hand as our Champion.

In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that this descend-ascend V movement describes St Luke’s two volume work - his gospel and the Acts of the Apostles - which provide us with not just one, but two accounts of the Ascension. One account ends his gospel, and a second account begins the Acts of the Apostles. In each passage, the Ascension is the essential fulcrum linking the life of Jesus (the Gospels) to the life of the Church (Acts). St Luke begins his gospel with the descent of the Son of God at the Incarnation, and then concludes with His Ascension. Our Lord descended into the human realm as He was sent by the Father, in obedience to the Father’s will to save humanity and then our Lord ascends to His rightful place at the side of His Father in heaven, after having completed His mission. Venerable Fulton Sheen explains this profound connexion between these two events: “The Incarnation or the assuming of a human nature made it possible for Him to suffer and redeem. The Ascension exalted into glory that same human nature that was humbled to the death.”

This movement, however, is not just something which is undertaken by our Lord alone, but one which should be undertaken by the Apostles and all followers of the Lord too. The Collect or Opening Prayer for this Mass has this beautiful line which speaks of our common destiny: “where the Head has gone before in glory, the Body is called to follow in hope.” We must descend with Him before we can rise with Him and follow our Lord in His ascent to glory. The Apostles accompanied our Lord on His journey to Jerusalem. Before they can ascend with the Lord to the glory which He wishes to share with them, they too must descend from their high horses and acknowledge that they are part of the human dung heap of sin, cowardice, faithlessness and infidelity. This had to happen before they can be redeemed by the Lord. Just like the Lord, they needed to experience humiliation before glorification; death before Eternal Life. After the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we see a speedy recovery. They begin to ‘ascend’ to the heights of missionary zeal, preaching the gospel of the Risen and Ascended Lord, from Judaea to Samaria and then, to the ends of the earth.

On this day, as we commemorate the Lord’s Ascension, should our gaze be directed upwards? What do we hope to see? I guess the dark cavernous ceiling of this salt mine, would be the most obvious answer. Or two feet disappearing into the clouds? Well, the two men in white (presumably angels) at the end of today’s first reading from Acts provides us with the answer, in the form of a question: “Why are you … standing here looking into the sky?”

Their question seems to be a challenge to not just be focused on one direction. In fact, we are invited to look upward, downward, and the road ahead of us. Our Lord’s Ascension invites us always to look upwards, in other words, to never lose sight of the hope of heaven, especially when navigating this world with its many pitfalls mired in disappointment and despair. We are asked to strive always for what’s higher, for what’s more noble, for what stretches us and takes us upward beyond the moral and spiritual ruts, within which we habitually find ourselves. Our Lord’s Ascension reminds us that we can be more, that we can transcend the ordinary and break through the old ceilings, that have until now constituted our horizon. His Ascension tells us that when we stretch ourselves enough, we will be able to walk on water, be great saints, be enflamed with the Spirit and experience already, the deep joys of God’s Kingdom.

But our Lord’s Ascension also invites us to look downwards. We are told to make friends with the desert, the Cross, with ashes, with self-renunciation, with humiliation, with our shadow, and with death itself. We are told that we grow not just by moving upward but also by descending downward. We grow too by letting the desert work us over, by renouncing cherished dreams and accepting the Cross, by letting the humiliations that befall us deepen our character, by having the courage to face our own deep chaos, and by making peace with our mortality. Sometimes, our task is not to raise our eyes to the heavens, but to look down upon the earth, to sit in the ashes of loneliness and humiliation, to stare down the restless desert inside us and to make peace with our human limits and our fragility.

Christians are not only asked to look upward as if our heads have disappeared in the clouds, nor should we be so focused looking downward in intense introspection to the point of despair. We must look ahead at the path which we must walk, the very same path which our Lord, fully human and fully divine, had walked before us. To look ahead, is to be reminded that we have a mission to accomplish, a gospel to be preached, a witness to give to a world that has often lost sight of looking upwards or downwards but one lost in self-absorption. At the end of every pilgrimage, this is what we must do. This may be the end of our pilgrimage to Lithuania and Poland but let us not forget that we are still on a pilgrimage of life to heaven. To look ahead to the horizon who is Christ, for “where the Head has gone before in glory, the Body is called to follow in hope.”