Let your hearts be broken

Ash Wednesday

“Let your hearts be broken not your garments torn, turn to the Lord your God again.” These are the beautiful words of the Prophet Joel in the first reading, and indeed they are the inaugural words of Scripture for this Mass, the first words the church offers us this Lent. As such, they are the foundation for the message God wishes to communicate to us this Lent and in fact, at every Lent. Here and throughout this prophetic book, the Prophet Joel is doing what prophets do best. He is calling the people to conversion by making them aware of their sins and pointing them to ideal action, “let your hearts be broken, not your garments torn!”

Traditionally, the people of Israel would rip or rend their clothing to signify mourning. The Scriptures mention this expression of grief several times, including Jacob mourning his youngest son Joseph, when he thought he was dead, or King David rending his garments at hearing that Saul had died. Even today, some Jews specifically rip their clothes over their hearts (which is known as “keriah”) if the deceased is one of their parents. But Joel is calling the people to not just ritually acknowledge their sins, but to mourn their sins—to grieve for their broken relationship with God—in not simply through outward ways, but inwardly as well. To encourage the people’s conversion, the prophet Joel is not calling them to strengthen their resolve through rituals of penance, he’s telling them to take these penitential rituals straight to their hearts, to the very core of their beings. They are not told to demonstrate repentance on the outside, but in their hearts and souls.

In the New Testament, the rending of garment seems to be an outward expression of indignation at sacrilege and blasphemy. For example, in Acts of the Apostles, Saints Paul and Barnabas rent their garments when the people of Lystra began to worship them. But in the gospels, the High Priest, Caiaphas, rent his garments when Jesus affirmed that He was the Christ, the Son of the Living God. There is profound irony here as in the rest of the gospel; instead of Jesus committing blasphemy, it is the High Priest who expresses blasphemy against Him. Furthermore, Caiaphas had violated the Levitical prohibition against a high priest rending his garments. This is in sharp contrast to the seamless simple garment of our Lord that was left intact at the moment of His crucifixion. St Bede the Venerable would recognise the symbolism in this action. In the Old Testament priesthood was to be rent on account of the wickedness of the priests themselves. But the solid strength of the Church, which is often called the garment of her Redeemer, can never be torn asunder.

There was one more “rending” that occurred during the Passion. This was the rending of the veil in the temple that separated the holy place from the holy of holies when our Lord died on the Cross. That curtain which veiled God’s presence in the temple might be called His garment. God Himself rent His own garment, as if weeping the death of His Son. Yet that most holy death was also the sacrifice pleasing to the Father. In union with the Crucified One, we too should rend our own hearts in preparation to receive the gift of Eternal Life.

Keeping in mind the command to break our hearts instead of merely tearing our garments, let us now turn to the gospel. Our Lord here gives us pointers as to how to conduct ourselves when we do acts of piety or righteousness, namely, giving alms, fasting and praying. When we do these acts, our Lord is asking us to do them without fanfare. He places the emphasis on our motivation: “Be careful not to parade your good deeds before men to attract their notice; by doing this you will lose all reward from your Father in heaven.” Rather, our actions must be done in “secret, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.” He reminds us that the intended audience is not men, but God. Our actions are meant to please God, not seek favour in the eyes of men. Such outward actions without interior conversion would be pointless. Therefore, these acts must spring from the heart and go hand in hand with our interior motivation. Pope Francis tells us in one of his homilies on this day “that conversion is not a matter reducible to outward forms or vague intentions, but engages and transforms one’s entire existence from the centre of the person, from the conscience.”

These practices are never goals in and of themselves, but instead are tools, working like ice picks to crack open our frozen icy hearts, levers to pry them open, so that we can look inside ourselves and see our deepest longings and fears for what they really are. Each Lenten ascetic practice—denying oneself meat, or luxury, or treats—helps us to put our lifestyles and desires into perspective and creates a space for God to enter. Having created a space, we must allow God to come into our lives and into our hearts: here is where Lenten practices of daily prayer and reading scripture are important. Take some time each day to pray, deny yourself of a favourite dish or a full meal; put aside your saved funds for the poor or some worthy cause; and by doing so, break open the monotony of the everyday to let God in to your life.

Finally, let this also be a season of loving. Very often, making sacrifices and performing penances can put us in a bad mood. Rather, than purifying us and helping us to grow in virtue, we end up becoming grouchy, irritable and even judgmental of others whom we believe are not as holy as we are. The way of loving requires an openness and vulnerability, a letting in of the stranger and the unknown, and a giving away parts of ourselves that we may rather keep. In short, to love as Christ loves, we must be willing to love to the extent of allowing our hearts to be broken. And becoming like Christ is not a one-time event, it is being constantly remade in Christ in our daily lives and in all aspects of our lives. The penitential season of Lent is not about slow progress to a singular moment of conversion; rather, it is a process of constant conversion, constant rending, and constant breaking. The rituals of Lent, such as giving something up or marking our foreheads with ashes, do not in and of themselves, mark our conversion moment. Instead, they are habits of ongoing conversion: allowing us to break open our hearts and give them over to God. When shall we begin? The answer is now! As St Paul reminds us in the second reading, “Now is the favourable time; this is the day of salvation!” “Let your hearts be broken not your garments torn, turn to the Lord your God again.”

Never settle for less

Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Today, many well intentioned Catholics and even leaders would opined that the traditional path to sanctity, to become a saint, is too demanding and may even be toxic by today’s standards. We often hear this complaint that the Church and her teachings are demanding the humanly impossible from her flock; that she shouldn’t “push so hard” or people will break and leave. And so instead of demanding excellence, we settle for mediocrity. Instead of pushing up the standards with the sky (or heaven) being the limit, we demand that the Church lowers the bar to accommodate all and sundry, even those who do not make the most basic and fundamental mark - for example observing the five precepts of the Church. When communion is guaranteed despite whether one is properly disposed or not or living in sin, when sacraments are dispensed like freebies at the supermarket, thrown in as consumer’s bait, when moral and liturgical laws are flagrantly violated in the name of pastoral inclusivity, you know you’ve hit rock bottom, or perhaps worst - we’ve bottomed out.

Today, we see the rise of mediocrity in every sphere. In fact, many celebrate their mediocrity by announcing, “this is who I am, take it or leave it!” When mediocrity has become the norm, when our imperfections and limitations are applauded or even hung up like trophies, when the status quo is accepted without question, there is no longer any impetus to improve ourselves, to grow or advance in sanctity. Mediocrity today poses as democratisation, inclusiveness, populism, condescension, tolerance, broad-mindedness, optimism and even charity. Mediocrity provides the anaesthesia our society needs to shield it from the sting of suffering and sacrifice.

In other words, mediocrity presents the promise of salvation without a cross, charity without needing to sacrifice. We try to make religion easier and more accessible in order to stem the steady decline in followers. But mediocrity is settling for cheap; it is selling a lie, and eventually most people will catch on to a lie, which explains why we continue to haemorrhage numbers. Easy come easy go!

The call to holiness, ultimately, is a call to perfection. Being average or just good when it comes to holiness just doesn’t make it! As Christians, we hear Christ’s rallying cry to walk the extra mile, to go out into the deep end, to make the greater sacrifice for faith. We are all called to be saints! You will hear Jesus constantly prodding you, “Why do less when you can do more?” He came to raise the bar, not lower it. “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.”

The truth that we must embrace is that religion is supposed to be hard, like anything else worth doing particularly since it concerns eternal life. The way forward is up, not downwards. We should reach for the stars instead of being contented with mere pebbles of star dust. To a secular mind, saints are shockingly unreasonable. But can one love God too much? Can one be too humble or too charitable or too holy? Scriptures tells us that this can never be. Even our Lord Himself would demand nothing less than perfection: “You must therefore be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” And no good Christian can ever accuse our Lord of being too extreme or unreasonable.

What our Lord is proposing to us today is that we Christians should never just settle for being good or be contented with just being average. The call to perfection is the challenge that Christ throws to everyone who would follow Him, that is to reach the unreachable; to leap beyond the practical, the ordinary and the routine; to fulfil the basic and minimum requirements and then to look eagerly for more ways to give, care, and love. That is why devotion to the saints is such a necessary antidote to the poison of mediocrity in modern times. The saints remind us that perfection in terms of holiness is possible and attainable, even though it may take a lifetime of surrendering to God’s grace as we progress in discipleship. We are made to be saints, being “half-baked” just doesn’t cut it. To quote one of Pope Francis’ favourite theologians, León Bloy, when all is said and done, “the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.”

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, you are meant to live a heroic faith, not a mediocre forgettable one. You are meant to shine like stars in the heavens, not just appear to be a shiny bling on some counterfeit Versace outfit. If you feel that this is overwhelming and you don’t have what it takes to be a saint, know this: It doesn’t take your strength but your surrender. It will cost you everything but gain you so much more. There is a life you’re meant to live, and Christ can help you get there. Make it your aim to live higher in your faith each day, instead of dragging your feet in the mud of mediocrity. In whatever you’re going through, it is meant to take you higher. The Apostle James assured us that “when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing” (James 1:2-4)

Let your light shine

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

One of the most condescending put-downs is when you tell someone, “Don’t try to be so holy!” I guess it would be far too generous to accord any value to these words. But in all fairness, what the person may have wanted to say is that we shouldn’t be flaunting our piety in public. Did not the Lord Himself caution us to not parade our good deeds among men? Although, the ‘good deed’ may always be a good thing, showing off or virtue signalling, is always a bad thing. The former springs from charity, the second is a form of boasting which springs from pride. Nonetheless, the danger is that the advice risked reinforcing modern culture’s penchant for relegating faith to the private sphere. In a world, where the “coming out” of the closet of every sordid lifestyle is celebrated, it is ironic that many would insist that faith should remain locked up in the darkest dungeons.

Detrich Bonheoffer in The Cost of Discipleship writes about this idea of the privatisation of faith when he says that flight into the invisible is a denial of the call. In other words, when Christians think they can conceal their faith and just sort of fade into the background, when the Church ceases to be a prophetic sign confronting the evils of every era with her life-giving message, when we buy into the idea that conforming to the values of the mainstream will ensure our survival or at least buy us more time, we have literally denied what it means to be followers of Christ. Pope Francis, in his first encyclical, Lumen Fidei, reminds us that our Christian faith is unabashedly and unapologetically public. To privatise faith or to hide it is to make a travesty of it. The Church is no secret society. We are meant to be the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world.”

These metaphors are meant to stir things up. We are meant to make a difference in the world around us rather than simply conform to the values of the culture that surrounds us. Jesus tells us, “Your light must shine in the sight of men, so that, seeing your good works, they may give praise to your Father in heaven.” To paraphrase, “Christians must come out of their closets!”

In the gospel of St John, Jesus tells us, that “He” is the light of the world. It’s good to remember this. You cannot make yourself the light of the world. You are the light of the world only because of your relationship with Him. It is the light of Christ that shines in us, not some self-created light. To shine the light of Christ is Christian witnessing. To shine our own light is narcissism.

If we are of the light, why would so many choose to remain in the darkness? The answer lies in the effect the light has on us. Many choose to remain in the shadows and in the darkness because the light can be repulsive – it exposes filth and scars. It was this very quality of light that our Lord so vividly described in John 3:19-20, “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.” Yet, this very light can affect us in a different manner. Light reveals truth, the beauty of truth. It reveals truth about ourselves. We never see ourselves truly until we see ourselves in the context of Christ. In His light, we come to recognise that we are sinners in need of a Saviour. He is “the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,”; He is “the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

But today, so many Catholics have the tendency to dull the light. Instead of standing out, we choose to blend in, to hide our distinctiveness, to be discretely Christian. Eventually, we confine our faith to the private and personal sphere. I believe many Catholics today suffer from a certain moral bi-polarity. We behave ‘churchy’ in the church setting and ‘worldly’ when we are out there in the world. We don't seek to demonstrate the contrast between the light of our faith and the world’s darkness because we don’t see the necessity. We simply resign ourselves to an amphibious existence. We eventually learn to blend in with the surrounding darkness rather than shine as we should.

This, of course, is the exact opposite of the truth. The truth is that we let our light shine the brightest when the contrast is the greatest. In order for light to be noticed, it must shine in darkness. Remember the caution of our Lord, “No one lights a lamp to put it under a tub; they put it on the lampstand where it shines for everyone in the house.” None of you may have the opportunity to preach a stirring sermon from the pulpit, but, you get to do it every day in the ordinary circumstances of life. The marketplace, your workplace, your school or college, on social media, your neighbourhood, and every social or public engagement provide you the greatest opportunities to shine, that is, to demonstrate the difference it makes in having Christ in your lives.

Being “salt of the earth” and “light of the world” is not easy. It’s not meant for wussies. In fact, you would have to face derision, rejection, humiliation and sometimes even death. But to die for Christ is always worth it. Pandering to a lie for the sake of mere survival and social acceptance, is not.

Being “salt of the earth” and “light of the world” can happen in so many simple and varied ways.
When we respond in kindness to our enemies, our salt gives taste and light shines.
When we give a person who has erred another chance when the world wouldn't, our salt gives taste and our light shines.
When we tell others that the most important thing in our lives is Jesus Christ and not success, and then live so they can see that it’s true, our salt gives taste and our light shines.
When we risk looking the fool for Christ where others dare not, our salt gives taste and light shines.
When we stand up for the Truth even though deception and silence seem so much more profitable, our salt gives taste and our light shines.

Our contemporary world continues to work towards dulling the taste and dimming the lights of religious expression. Our Holy Father Pope Francis is convinced that “there is an urgent need, then, to see once again that faith is a light, for once the flame of faith dies out, all other lights begin to dim.” (Lumen Fidei No. 4) So we live like Jesus, we fight the battles with darkness. We bring truth to the blind and ignorant. We bring hope to those burdened by sin. We bring acceptance to the forgotten and unloved. To those confused about life, we bring God’s word. To the sad, we bring joy. To the impatient, we bring a reason to be calm. To the morally confused, we bring the certainty of revelation. Bring taste to a morally bland world! Let your light shine! Not that you enjoy the spotlight. No, shine so that Christ may be better known. When we imitate Christ’s love, mercy and generosity, the world will be a brighter place and seeing our good works, all peoples will glorify our Heavenly Father.

May they all be One

Seventh Sunday of Easter Year C

I’m often asked if I have a KPI for my leaders, and my answer is “Yes. He or she has to be a unifier.” It would be good if I could have a skilful, talented and super-efficient leader who can multi-task, but I would rather live with mediocrity and even incompetency, than to have someone who ticks all the boxes but has a penchant for sowing discord in the community. If I had a second criterion for my leaders, what would it be? And my answer is “integrity.” A unifier without integrity would be an oxymoron. You can’t have unity at the price of forgoing truth and honesty; and you can’t truly speak of Truth, without wanting to deepen the bonds of unity.

William Wallace, the leading character in the movie “Braveheart” chastised his fellow Scots for allowing minor issues, internal strife, and power struggles to stand in the way of their fight for independence from the English. “We have beaten the English, but they’re back because you won’t stand together.” I feel that is what is happening far too often in the church.

Since last year, our Holy Father Pope Francis has been calling all of us to get on board his initiative of moving the Catholic Church on the path of Synodality. If you still haven’t heard of this, you must have been living in a bomb shelter or a Soviet era gulag in Siberia for the past year. The word “Synod” comes from two Greek root words which mean “common path” or more popularly translated as “journeying together.” This should be good news. We should be starting to see how unity within the Church is being strengthened by leaps and bounds with such a focused project and theme. And yet, sadly, it is quite the opposite.

What we witness today, is not a single global Catholic Church with all one billion of her members happily and willingly “journeying together,” but quite the opposite. Nobody can turn a blind eye to the fact that divisions you normally witness in secular political discourse, have now become staple within the Church. Catholics within the same sheepfold often demonise others across the ideological divide. The teachings of Vatican II are being denied and subverted in open contradiction to Vatican II by many Catholics, not only by ultra-traditionalists but also by those who hide behind the banner of being hard-line defenders of Vatican II.

And despite all the apparent enthusiasm proponents of Vatican II express for Pope Francis, they flatly deny the authority conferred on him by Christ, as the successor of Peter. They just agree with him because it is convenient to do so: they think he agrees with them. Call it theological projection: you see what you want to see when you are enclosed in an echo chamber. The moment the Pope takes a different position, they are most ready to throw him under the bus. On all fronts, there seems to be so many factors which are tearing at the Church’s fabric of unity and threatening permanent rupture.

Could our Lord have foreseen all these when He first composed this prayer to the Father? “Holy Father, I pray not only for these, but for those also who through their words will believe in me. May they all be one. Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me.” In Jesus' last words in the Gospel of John, in His dying wish expressed in His Priestly Prayer to the Father, He asks that we may all be ONE as the Holy Trinity is ONE. The unity of the Church should reflect the unity of the Father and the Son. Our unity is our most evident proof of the Truth about the Lord’s identity and mission.

When the Church is divided by conflict, we not only hurt our witness in the world, but we also cast doubts on the Lord’s identity and mission. If many continue to reject that our Lord is the only begotten Son of the Father, sent into the world to save us by His death, we have only our poor witness to blame. Our internal fights and disagreements make our words and testimony weak and unbelievable. Our disunity is doing the work and mission of Christ a disservice.

Our Lord must have understood that disagreements are very much part of the fabric of relationships and community living. That is why He prayed for unity just before His own death and why when He returned to His disciples after His Resurrection, the first gift He conferred upon this community is the Holy Spirit tied with the authority to forgive sins. This is at the heart of the Sacrament of Penance.

It is clear that unity within the Church is not just conformity or affability among her members. To be one is not the absence of opinions. Opinions are healthy. But since we can hold differing opinions, our unity must go beyond just mere good intentions and platitudes. Unity in the Church consists in the visible incorporation into the body of Christ (Creed, Code and Cult - doctrinal, sacramental, ecclesiastical-hierarchical communion) as well as in the union of the heart, i.e. in the Holy Spirit. Without these visible and invisible bonds, any man-made unity remains tenuous and susceptible to fraction. This is the reason why this visible communion with the Church (that we are in agreement with the teachings, the disciplines and liturgical tradition of the Church) must be a prerequisite for us receiving Holy Communion. We RECEIVE Communion only because we are IN Communion.

Finally, truth, not the threat of violence, holds our Lord’s sheepfold together. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” (Jn. 14:6) Living His truth does not enslave, it liberates: “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” (Jn. 8:32) The freedom of love does not come with mere compliance. It comes with the realisation that truth, liberty, and God’s commandments are inseparable: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (Jn. 14:15) Because of its foundation in truth, Christian Unity is not populism. Unity cannot be manufactured by our efforts to accommodate, to compromise, to get along and fit in—and then, feel good about it. We cannot put unity above truth because it seems more comfortable to do that.

Unity is not just a public-relations exercise for public consumption. It is a call to conversion and repentance. If sin, whether in the form of envy, selfishness, pride, hostility, prejudice, resentment, is what divides us, then only repentance and conversion can lead us back to authentic unity. In a world which is fractured and polarised along ideological, sectarian and ethnic lines, the Church provides us with a radical model of community, which transcends such distinctions and divisions. So, let us not just pay lip service to unity. Let us constantly and fervently pray for it, work at it and allow ourselves to be transformed, so that we may be fruits of our Lord’s dying wish and prayer: “May they all be one.”

Love demands judgement

Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

Fr Bonaventure and I take frequent jibes at each other, with criticisms ranging from external appearances to annoying personal quirks. I guess it’s the price we pay for staying together and it keeps Brother Jonathan entertained with our daily Laurel-and-Hardy antics. Married couples would know what I am talking about. At close proximity, every wrinkle would look like a ridge of the Grand Canyon, a blemish like a black wormhole in deep space and a mole like the planet Jupiter. Of course, this is all hyperbole.

We often protest at how others are being judgmental. We hate being judged. But the truth is that, everyone expresses some form of judgmentalism. Accusing someone else of being judgmental merely exposes our own judgmentalism. Aren’t we judging the other when we accuse them of being judgmental? Of course, many of us are fond of excusing ourselves. It’s always “Rules for Thee, but not for me!” But the bigger question should be: “Can we judge without being judgmental?” And the answer is “we most certainly can and we should”.

Firstly, we make judgments all the time. It’s part of being human. If I see water falling from the sky, I make a judgment, “It’s raining.” If I see an attractive girl, I make a judgment, “Wow! She’s really beautiful!” When we choose which outfit to wear for the day, we are making a judgment. All this is stating the obvious, of course. But we also make judgments with regards to what we consider “good” or “bad” for us or even for others. I don’t smoke because I know it’s bad for my health. That’s a judgment. When you see your young child run into the street, you will stop her for fear that she may get run over by a car. That’s making a judgment. But let’s take this a step further. If I see my friend’s husband sleeping around with other women (provided that I have clear proof and not just making a conjecture), can I make a judgment that this is not good for his marriage and family, and that it is not morally good for him too? Can adultery ever be a good thing or is it neutral? And if it is always a bad thing, wouldn’t that be making a judgment?

It is clear from these few examples, that making a judgment is something necessary and is essentially what makes us human. However, though we may make judgments about things, situations and a person’s actions and words, we are in no position to judge their motive or the interior of a person, the heart. Only God can make that judgment. Our Holy Father, Pope Francis gives us an important reminder, “Each person’s situation before God and their life in grace are mysteries which no one can fully know from without.”

Today, we live in a culture that promotes and preaches non-judgmentalism, by which they mean one can never impose one’s own set of morality on another. We would agree that we should not be judgmental, if this means not judging someone’s intention or soul, as we were privy to this. But to choose to suspend all judgment is simply wrong. Judgment is necessary especially when love demands it. And this is love: to will the good of another. Being free of sin and on the road to salvation is the ultimate “good” for the other. Sitting back and saying nothing, however, is not the loving thing to do. Indifference does not equal love. We can be nice and polite to people who make bad choices. We may even tolerate their decisions. But do we really “love” them? In the end, such a mentality of “tolerance” encourages us to be unconcerned about the people around us and neglect our responsibilities toward them.

But that’s not how our Lord lived. Our Lord was anything but indifferent to others. He didn’t say, “who am I to judge? … whatever works for them … different strokes for different folks!” Saying that our Lord never came to judge is one of the most grievous but popular false caricatures of Him. In a way, we are choosing to make Jesus in our image and likeness so that we may justify our actions and make ourselves feel better about our behaviour and lifestyle.

On the contrary, our Lord shows us the two essential sides of love, a soft side of mercy, compassion, and acceptance, and a firm side that constantly calls us to conversion. Truth is not the antithesis of Love or vice versa. Charity seeks truth and truth serves charity. On the one hand, our Lord loved everyone, even in their weaknesses – He came for sinners. On the other hand, our Lord persistently challenged people to repent from evil. And He did this because He loved them and knew they would be happiest when they live according to God’s plan. And that is why admonishing the sinner is a spiritual act of mercy, and not meanness.

At the end of last week’s Gospel, our Lord challenged us: “Be compassionate as your Father in Heaven is compassionate!” True compassion must always be at the heart of judging. That is why it is so important that we recognise and address the plank in our own eye before taking issue with the splinter in our brother’s eye. Our Lord is not asking us to disqualify ourselves from making any judgment, since no one is perfect. Our Lord is setting out a vision of the integrity between what we are and what we say. Being judgmental is actually being inconsistent. We claim the right to judge others but we refuse to be judged. If we face the truth about ourselves (the so-called “plank” in the eye) and acknowledge our own daily struggles with sin, we are less likely to set ourselves up in judgment over others in a “judgmental” sort of a way. If we recognise how much we need God’s mercy, then our hearts will be much more compassionate when we encounter other people’s faults. St Bernard tells us that, “if you have eyes for the shortcomings of your neighbour and not for your own, no feeling of mercy will arise in you but rather indignation. You will be more ready to judge than to help, to crush in the spirit of anger than to instruct in the spirit of gentleness.”

We are called to be judges, but all too often we are unfit to judge. But nevertheless, we must judge between good and evil; we cannot shirk our duties to correct error and to rebuke sin in others. In fact, our Lord gave us an important cue with regards to making judgments – “every tree can be told by its own fruit” which repeats a theme found in the first reading. We can and we should judge, but if we are to judge, we do so based on the actions and words of the other rather than presume that we can read minds and hearts. If we are to judge, let us first judge ourselves. And just as we are called to correct, we must also be open to correction ourselves. Above all, if we are to judge, let us do so with compassion and love, “in the spirit of gentleness”, knowing that all of us would have to meet our Lord on the Last Day, who sits in judgment over both the living and the dead, and He will judge us by using the same measure which we have applied to others.

On our knees

Twenty Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

The rich young man comes before our Lord as a student seeking direction from a teacher, hoping to be enlightened as to how he can inherit eternal life. But as he comes before the Lord, he falls on his knees and addresses the Lord as “Good Master,” without realising that his words and action are revealing more than what he is willing to admit. Our Lord then says to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” Our Lord is not repudiating the attribute of good for Himself in some act of humility, but inviting the man to reflect more deeply on what he had just said and the premise of his potential relationship with the Lord.

Yes, our Lord is not just a good teacher. He is the source and foundation of all goodness. He is God! Pope Francis reminds us that those who wish to understand the mystery of God must first get down on their "knees", in an act of humility, otherwise "they will not understand anything." If we should seek knowledge and wisdom from Him, we should do so on our knees, which is to say that it must be done in prayer, with a heart open to conversion, and with a willingness to grow in faith, and not just in knowledge.

Where there is no relationship with God, there can be no true understanding of Christ or His teachings. Christ is not a puzzle to be solved in a merely intellectual way, nor a textbook to be studied from cover to cover to comprehend His ways. One may have vast encyclopaedic knowledge of the Lord, one may accomplish great deeds of kindness and charity in His name, but without true conversion that leads to assimilating the life of Christ into oneself, our relationship with Christ remains superficial and spiritually barren. Faith, conversion, and holiness, then, all go hand-in-hand with one another. A faith without conversion is a dead faith, a shell of its true form, and is incapable of attaining its proper end of sanctification and divine life, which begins even now here on earth in Baptism and the life of sanctifying grace.

Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI, wrote: ““The person who prays begins to see; praying and seeing go together because – as Richard of St. Victor says – ‘Love is the faculty of seeing’. . . All real progress in theological understanding has its origin in the eye of love and in its faculty of beholding.” There can be no genuine understanding of the faith without the love of God and faithful adherence to His Word.

This was the issue with the rich young man. He sought the secret to eternal life as an intellectual pursuit but lacked the love for the Lord, to see and grasp the meaning of His words. This man seemed to have the knowledge and he may even be “doing” the right thing by practising what he believed, but he lacked the love for Christ to allow him to make the ultimate sacrifice which our Lord had challenged him to do: “There is one thing you lack. Go and sell everything you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” Once again, we see the irony of this man’s actions. The one thing he “lacks,” is that he lacks nothing; the one thing which is holding him back from spiritual progress is the thing that he possesses, or rather the things which “possess” him. If Christ, the source of eternal life, was wholly sufficient for this man, there was no need for him to cling to any other material possessions or earthly securities. Walking away tells us that there were far more important things than eternal life.

But where the man lacks the love for the Lord, which is required for him to move forward, our Lord does not cease in loving Him. The evangelist tells us that the Lord “looked steadily at him and loved him.” It is this gaze of divine love that would have captivated the man’s heart and moved him to surrender all his earthly attachments - if he had seen it. But sadly, preoccupied with his own thoughts, he seems to not have noticed our Lord’s loving gaze. He had eyes only for his possessions, his ambitions and what he risked losing.

Our Lord’s disciples were no better. They condescendingly regard themselves as superior to this rich young man by boasting that they had given up everything, unlike this man who had been unwilling to part with his possessions. They failed to see that they are as equally mistaken as this sincere seeker of truth. The pursuit of eternal life can never be done on the basis of one’s own efforts, rather it is a gift given to those who acknowledge their own neediness. If you recall, our Lord had used the example of children to illustrate this point. And here, our Lord addresses His disciples once again as “children.” Children have no accomplishments with which to earn God’s favour, no status that makes them worthy. In their dependency, they exemplify the only disposition that makes entrance into the Kingdom possible: simply to receive it as a pure, unmerited gift. That is why the possessions of the rich young man and the sacrifices made by the Lord’s disciples are incapable of buying them a place in heaven.

The short parable of the camel and the eye of a needle can be understood in this phrase, “how hard it is…,” which our Lord uses twice. The way of following Christ would always appear hard and even impossible when we place more trust in our own status, knowledge, wealth and abilities as substitutes for trust in God alone. But remember: “For men ….it is impossible, but not for God: because everything is possible for God.” The Kingdom of God, the gift of eternal life, is something utterly beyond human achievement. It cannot be earned, it cannot be claimed as a right, it cannot be bought or bartered for a price, it does not come as a reward for good behaviour. It depends solely on the goodness of God, who freely offers it as a gift. Nothing we are capable of giving up or enduring for the Lord’s sake or “for the sake of the gospel” is worthy of comparison with the eternal life that we will gain in the end. So, there is no need to congratulate yourself if you think that you’ve put in more prayer, more donations, more service than the average person. Never keep a record of what you have done for God. But always remember what He has done for you, something which you can never hope of repaying.

Thus, what is required of us is not just being ambitious of acquiring knowledge or special graces, as if these were brownie points to be accumulated, nor do we need to prove our sincerity by the largesse of our sacrifices and contributions. Rather, what is needed is the humble child-like faith of a disciple who understands that he can only fall at the feet of the One who is the source of all goodness, on whom he depends for everything, including his or her salvation. We are called to come before the Lord “on our knees”, to gaze upon Him in loving adoration, knowing that He loves us back in such a degree that we could never hope to grasp or comprehend or repay.

Love is sacrificial

Twenty Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

Today’s gospel proclaims three eternal truths which do not sit well with modern sensibilities. In fact, they may even seem archaic, regressive and inhumane. But the fact that it is our Lord Jesus Christ Himself who speaks it, assures us of their revelatory and eternally relevant character. So rather than suppress or sanitise these truths for fear that they may offend someone or another, it is good to remember this saying which has been commonly but falsely, attributed to St Augustine: “truth is like a lion. You don’t have to defend it. Let it loose. It will defend itself.”

These three simple truths are as follows:

God made humanity male and female.

God intended marriage to be a permanent commitment for life.

God is the author of life and He is unapologetically pro-life.

Having explained that Moses’ permission for couples to divorce was a mere concession due to the unteachability of the people, our Lord then declares that “from the beginning of creation God made them male and female.” This statement should be so obvious, that it shouldn’t require restating or explaining, and yet, in today’s modern gender-bending society, making such a statement could get you “cancelled” for being intolerant and disrespectful to an entire spectrum of make-believe sexual identities.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church boldly teaches: “Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity. Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out.” (No. 2333) God is the only One who has the power and authority to define us, and He did so at creation by making us into His “image and likeness”, and it would be arrogance to think that we can redefine ourselves by changing our pronouns or performing mutilating surgery on ourselves so that we can make ourselves into our own skewed image and likeness.

The second truth which our Lord pronounces speaks of the permanence and indissolubility of marriage: “what God has united, man must not divide.” Many modern people believe that such a demand is both harsh and inhumane. Why force two persons, who no longer have feelings for each other, to remain bonded for life? Isn’t this cruel? Would this be condemning them to a life-sentence of misery? The permanence of marriage would seem cruel if we merely view marriage through the lenses of a human contract. With the recognition of human frailty and the unpredictability of future events, all contracts contain exit clauses allowing the parties to part ways. But not marriage!

The bond of marriage is a divinely instituted reality (“what God has united”), not a matter of human convention, and when that bond is created in the life of two Christians, it simply cannot be broken. This bond, is intended by God to symbolise the love of Christ for His Church. Pope Emeritus Benedict wrote: “Marriage is not simply about the relationship of two people to God, it is also a reality of the Church, a sacrament, and it is not for the individuals concerned to decide on its validity, but rather for the Church, into which the individuals are incorporated by faith and baptism.” If we understand anything about the relationship between Christ and His Church, we would understand that it cannot be broken by any power in the universe…A spouse can no more become an ex-spouse than a father can become an ex-father.

The third truth naturally flows from the first two truths: if marriage is a union between a man and a woman and their bond is marked by indissoluble permanence, having children and starting a family would not just be a theological but a logical conclusion. And so, our Lord declares, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” When God gave man and woman the ability to have sexual intercourse, He tied it with the ability to procreate. This is the reason why same-sex “marriages” cannot be real marriages and why the Church teaches against the use of contraception. Contraception not only breaks the ties between the sexual act and procreation, but also impedes our share in God’s creative love.  Cut off from God, man can never experience true lasting joy.

Love, real love, is sacrificial. If love entails sacrifice, then children would always be regarded as a blessing, the fruit of that love. But this is not what the world tells us. Our culture often teaches us that children are more of a burden than a gift—that families impede our freedom and diminish our finances.  We live in a world where large families are the objects of spectacle and derision, instead of the ordinary consequence of a loving marriage entrusted to God’s providence. Although it may seem, to selfish immature parents, that children bring to an end the romantic phase of their marriage and their personal autonomy, children are actually the gift needed to allow the couple’s love to grow and flourish, to embrace others beyond the two.

Today, the world has no qualms celebrating marriages, civil unions and what they claim to be same-sex marriages. Couples, families spend a life-time’s savings, even prepared to take up loans to fund extravagant celebrations. But the openness to children is rarely celebrated, rarely understood, and rarely supported.  To many, the Church’s teachings on life seem oppressive or old-fashioned.  Many believe that the Church asks too great a sacrifice. But sacrifice is at the heart of love. Love which is not willing to make sacrifices is counterfeit.

Many Catholics today complain and demand that the Catholic Church should change in order that they may feel “more welcomed,” and it is unfortunate, that many well-intentioned pastors also believe that the only way they can be compassionate and pastoral is by affirming their delusions. But Pope Francis warned of those he called “alternativists,” those who, in the Pope’s words, say to themselves, “I’ll enter the Church, but with this idea, with this ideology.” They propose conditions “and their membership in the Church is thereby partial.” They too “have one foot outside the Church; they’re renting the Church” but don’t really experience it… They seek an alternative, because they don’t share the common experience of the Church.”

So, what is needed is not for the Church to change her teachings. She cannot change them. She has no authority to do so because it is our Lord’s teachings. Rather, it is we, who need to change, to die to ourselves, our selfish, self-centred and self-absorbed ways, so that we may conform ourselves more and more to Christ, who shows us the true meaning of love by dying on the cross for us. We are called to continue to proclaim the truth, beauty and goodness of the complementarity of sexes, fidelity of marriage and sanctity of life in a culture which eagerly confuses genders, promotes divorce and engenders a culture of death by promoting abortion.

To all married couples and those who are planning to get married or start a family, do not let fear, anxiety or worry get in the way of you loving each other sacrificially and being open to the children you may receive from God. Do not put a cap on what He wishes to give you. Let Him be the judge of that. Entrust yourselves to the Lord who will provide for all your needs.

All Lives Matter

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

Recently, we were warned by the public health authorities that the current spike of new infections has placed an unprecedented enormous toll on health facilities and personnel that may be pushing our doctors to make the most painful decision - Sophie’s Choice - deciding who gets the treatment and who doesn’t - which ultimately translates into choosing who gets to live and who has to die. So, what sort of criteria is being used? Would the decision be made on a first-come, first-served basis? Should we prioritise the severely ill over the less serious patients? Should we reserve our resources for those who have a better chance to live? None of us want to be in the shoes of the person who has to make these choices. None of us would want to play God. And every one of us would want to be the person who is given a second chance.

Our Lord seems to have been placed in a similar difficult spot, when He is forced to choose between the young twelve-year old girl who is dying and the older woman who had been suffering for twelve years. These little details are deliberately mentioned to show that these two stories are mirror images of each other. If you were given a choice to attend to the needs of only one of them, who would you choose? The younger woman who is in a more life-threatening situation and has a longer life ahead of her, or the older woman who had suffered pain, humiliation and alienation for twelve years, and it would be unbearably cruel to allow her to suffer a second longer? But being the Lord, He chooses both and He chooses life over death.

This lengthy passage forms what scholars sometimes call a ‘sandwich’: St Mark is particularly keen on putting one story inside another; as today, the story of the woman with the haemorrhage is the filling and the story of the raising of the official’s daughter, the bread. The two are juxtaposed in order to help interpret one another. What the two stories have in common, over and above being examples of the divine power at work in Jesus, is that not only some lives matter but both lives matter, in fact all lives matter in the eyes of God. One life is not more important, nor more valuable, than the other.

The story does not merely show that our Lord was concerned with all lives, young or old, a foetus in the womb or a fully grown adult, sick or healthy, Jew or Gentile, man or woman, Saint or sinner, but He had come not just to address our physical ailments and restore us to health but He was keener in giving us life in abundance, an antidote to death. What He did for the little girl was a prelude to what He was planning to do for all of us - the resurrection of the body. As the first reading reminds us, “death was not God’s doing. He takes no pleasure in the extinction of the living.” Neither does our Lord take pleasure in our suffering or death.

Indeed, death connects the interlocking stories of Jairus’ daughter and the woman. Both supplicants know they face the immediacy of death. Yet, their encounter with our Lord culminates in victory over death. The woman suffering the chronic illness, an illness that would probably have led to her death, is healed. The resuscitation of Jairus’ daughter also proves that the Lord does not only have power over sickness that may lead to death, He also has the power to overcome death and wrest its victims back from the grave.

For Christians, though, it's not always easy to encourage life around us. We live in a culture that doesn't foster life but anti-life. St John Paul II, in his writings and preaching, have constantly placed a spotlight on what he calls the culture of death - it is a culture where choices once unanimously considered criminal and rejected by the common moral sense (like abortion or euthanasia) are gradually becoming socially acceptable.

On the one hand, we fear life. Children are seen as a burden. They get in the way of our careers, our ambitions. They make a mess of our bodies, our homes, and our lives. People with disabilities scare us because we don't want them to put pressure on our resources. On the other hand, we also fear death just as much as we fear life. The thought of visiting a terminally ill or an ageing person paralyses us. Mercy killing is a euphemism created by modern society to soften the reality of what it is in reality – murder. We claim that it is an act of mercy, that we are putting someone out of his misery and not wishing to prolong his suffering, but the truth is that, it is another convenient way to unload another burden. We can’t bare the inconvenience and pain of supporting another person who is in pain, and so we choose to remove them from our sight. If Pope St John Paul II was renowned for highlighting the danger of the culture of death, Pope Francis frequently speaks about a “throwaway culture” in which unwanted items and unwanted people, such as the unborn, the elderly, and the poor, are discarded as waste.

This is the reason why it is incumbent on all Catholics to promote and foster a culture of life, that all life should be considered sacred from the moment of its conception till death, that a person is to be valued as a person for who he or she is, a creature of God, and not by what he or she owns, does or can produce. To transform our culture into one which respects and defends human life, it is necessary to speak of a deeper and a greater truth: All human life is sacred. God is its author. We do not own it.

Each of us has gifts to bring to this challenge. Each of us has a responsibility to help bring about a culture of life. No one is exempt. We are asked to teach persuasively on behalf of unborn children and the elderly, and defend their rights because this is where today's struggle is most costly in human lives. Being indifferent, walking past and refusing to stop, ignoring the pleas of desperation are never options. Although we cannot save every person from the ravages of sickness or death, we can save every soul by leading them to Christ who alone can save them, body and soul. In the Nicene Creed, God the Holy Spirit is referred to as “The Lord and Giver of Life.” Only He is able to truly create the miracle of life. Only God can restore us not just to health but to the resurrected life. But we can share with Him as He works, affirming it in others and fighting for life where we see death and decay in our hearts and in our world, because “all lives matter”, and not just whenever it is convenient.

Mercy covers Justice

Fourth Sunday of Lent Year B

The readings for this Sunday help us to reconcile two aspects of God’s nature - He is a God of mercy who wants to save us and He is also a God of Justice who will hold us accountable for our deeds. On the face of it, these two aspects of God may seem to be on diametrically opposite ends of a spectrum. When you show mercy, are you not excusing someone from the dictates of justice, and when you demand justice, are you not withholding mercy?

Scripture reminds us that God is rich in mercy (Eph 2: 4). Modern man has no issue with this. This is the preferred face of God. Who would like a harsh and demanding parent, what more a God who metes out justice without batting an eye? But what is mercy? Just like many other terms and concepts, the concept of mercy has often suffered distortion under the hands of those who live under the woke banner of “diversity, equity and inclusion.” Mercy has become another synonym of these fundamental values of modern society.

But true mercy is the face of God’s love turned toward sinners, searching them out, and offering them pardon and salvation. This is what the Lord declares in the gospel, perhaps one of the most quoted verses of the bible, “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life. For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved.” That’s it - the ultimate goal of mercy is our salvation.

When we reflect on mercy the question naturally arises about the relationship of mercy to justice. God is not merciful at the expense of His justice. Mercy does not exclude His justice, nor is it opposed to it. God’s justice entails that He takes sin seriously. God does not gloss over sin nor does He pull blinkers over His own eyes pretending as if sin does not exist. And because God takes sin seriously, He is willing to pay the greatest price in order to be rid of it - He sent His only Son to save us by dying for us. Jesus Christ’s finished work is the full and sufficient cause of our salvation. He has undergone the cross because of our sins, redeeming us from them, healing us from the deep wound of original sin and its effects and reconciling us to the Father. So, when we ignore the gravity of sin in the name of false mercy, we are actually diminishing and trivialising what our Lord did for us on the cross. When God’s justice is obscured, His mercy is reduced to something insignificant.

The gospel wishes to highlight that although the Father has given the Son the authority to judge the world, the Son has chosen not to do so. Rather, people are judged by their own reaction to the Son. Throughout the gospel of St John, we encounter individuals who are judged by their peers and society but as they come to the Lord, they receive no judgment. Instead, if they are judged, it is because of their response to the light of truth which our Lord brings. They are either drawn to the light and are transformed and saved, or they shun the light and condemn themselves to remain in the darkness. In other words, if hell does exist, and it does, it is not part of God’s creation or sentence. Hell is the product of man’s free choice- his choice to reject the light, to reject God and the One whom God had sent into the world to save us.

It is clear that justice and mercy are not opposites because both have their origin in God’s holy love. These two, says Saint John Paul II, “spring completely from love: from the love of the Father and of the Son, and completely bears fruit in love”. Pope Francis explains that “[justice and mercy] are not two contradictory realities, but two dimensions of a single reality that unfolds progressively until it culminates in the fullness of love” (Misericordiae Vultus §20).

In sum, the cross takes our sins away because it is the act of God’s gracious judgment on Christ for our benefit. In layman’s language, Christ takes the fall for us, He takes the punch for us. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). Why would He do that? The answer is simple: He loves us.  “Yes, God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life.” (Jn 3:16)

Today, we encounter the God of Mercy and Justice in the sacrament of penance - in confession. Many people are afraid to confess their sins to a priest for fear of judgment. Others believe that God is so merciful that He would not demand that we subject ourselves to such awkwardness and humiliation by exposing our most sordid secrets to a priest. And yet, we see the truth of what takes place in this sacrament. We are invited to come before the fountain of love, for both mercy and justice springs forth from the same source. We must take our sins seriously, as seriously as our Lord did by dying on the cross to atone for our sins. We must also be confident that the Lord will embrace us in mercy, if we come before Him with penitent hearts. For the sacrament of penance is a rehearsal of the Final Judgment. To the unrepentant sinner, there is reason to be afraid as he will be condemned by his sins. But to the repentant sinner, he should stand before God’s judgment without fear, because “there is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love” (1 Jn 4:17-18).

Scripture does not reveal a God of justice in opposition to a God of mercy. Instead, Scripture discloses a just and long-suffering God, who intervenes in history to mercifully restore our dignity defaced by sin, precisely by leading us towards a renewed righteousness and justice. At the end, mercy triumphs over judgment. I enjoy teaching servers and little children that when they clasp their hands in prayer, with the right thumb (which symbolises mercy) placed over the left thumb (which symbolises justice) in the shape of a cross, it signifies this eternal truth – at the end and on the cross, mercy covers over justice.

Be Happy at All Times

Third Sunday of Advent Year B

We’ve been constantly reminded that Advent is a season of conversion, of penance, of subdued celebration and finally, of reigning in our impatience. Yes, it’s Advent and not Christmas, well at least not for now. This, however, does not mean that you should rush to take down your Christmas tree or store away your Christmas decorations in anticipation of the Parish Priest’s unannounced home visit cum spot-check. Don’t worry the CMCO has taken care of that. Home visits have been cancelled this year. But Advent being an entirely Grinch-like experience is a gross mischaracterisation of the season. Today, the Church wishes to give us a foretaste of the joy of Christmas that is now at hand. In fact, Advent is indeed a time of joy, whilst remaining a time of sober preparation. This is because looking forward to a person’s arrival is always a cause of joy and Advent is the quintessential season of expectant waiting for the coming of our Lord. This joyful dimension is present in the readings of this Sunday.

The First Reading is an insistent invitation to rejoice. There is a verse therein which seems to be an early echo of the song of Mary, the Magnificat, “I exult for joy in the Lord, my soul rejoices in my God.” This joyful exclamation follows the words of prophecy of Isaiah that will be uttered by our Lord at the beginning of His public ministry in Nazareth: “The spirit of the Lord has been given to me for the Lord has anointed me...” The passage continues with a description of the ministry of the Messiah (the Anointed One) - He will heal, liberate, bring good news and declare a great Jubilee year. Thus, the joy with which we Christians speak of, springs not from a happy situation, a resolution of difficulty, a remedy to some affliction but like Mary, from the knowledge that the Messiah is coming and in fact, has already come.

According to Isaiah, God has given us a gift - the garment of salvation. If nakedness symbolised man’s sinfulness and depravity, being clothed reminds us of God’s precious gift of Grace. One of St Paul’s favourite leitmotifs is that of being clothed in Christ. The image also reflects a Christmas theme. We are immediately reminded of a mother tenderly wrapping her child up in swaddling clothes. The child, who is truly God, is now adorned with the flesh of humanity.

Of course, the joy that is promised in the prophetic text of Isaiah will find its fulfilment in Jesus. Indeed, in coming into the world He gives us His joy, just as He Himself confides to His disciples: “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete” (Jn 15:11). Our Lord brings new sight to the blind, liberation to the captives but more importantly, He brought His people salvation, a new relationship with God that overcomes evil and death.

In the Second Reading, we heard how St Paul invited the Thessalonians to make joy, prayer and gratitude a permanent feature of their lives. “Be happy at all times; pray constantly; and for all things give thanks to God.” What is the reason for this “permanent” disposition? St Paul explains that it is “because this is what God expects you to do in Christ Jesus.” Such exhilarating and lasting joy is not the product of some intoxicant nor is it the result of a hedonistic lifestyle, pursuing one fleeting pleasure after another. In fact, St Paul calls for Christians to be rational in their decision-making and be steadfast in doing good and avoiding evil. So, joy is not something momentary. It is a lasting joy that demands commitment. And our commitment is merely the proper response to God’s commitment – His faithfulness which is enduring: He “has called you and He will not fail you,” as St Paul tells us.

After the first two readings, let us come to the Gospel. While the theme of joy seems clearly evident in both the first and the second readings, it may require a little effort on our part to discern the message of joy that seems hidden beneath the stark veneer and seriousness of St John the Baptist in the gospel. One would not readily associate the austere figure of John with the characteristic of joy. John, for all purposes, comes across as your proverbial kill-joy. Nevertheless, the gospel does not depart from the central theme of this Sunday. How so?

John shows us that the secret of Christian joy is found in our fundamental vocation to be a witness for Christ. Pope Francis is fond of reminding us that joy is at the heart of the announcement of the gospel – we must be joyful witnesses of Christ. Dour, sour-faced Christians make bad witnesses of the gospel. St John the Baptist provides us with a clear example of what it means to be a witness for Christ. St John was happy to tell his audience that he isn’t the main protagonist of the story but another is. John humbly admits that he isn’t the Light which the people had been waiting for; he is merely a witness of the Light. When they questioned him, John says that he is not the Christ, not Elijah, nor the prophet. Most pointedly, he declares, “I am not”. This is the gospel, which again and again has Jesus say, “I am”. “I am” is how God introduces Himself in the Old Testament. John’s denials, his saying who he is not, is ultimately pointing to who Jesus is. Jesus is God, the great “I am.” The gospel is the gospel of Jesus and not of John’s or Michael’s or Elaine’s. As Christian witnesses, we must consistently reject any attempt to make ourselves the focus of our message. We must refuse to take the credit for what ultimately belongs to God.  In fact, credit must be given where it is due - Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Advent is surely the time for Isaiah, St Paul and the Baptist to be heard inviting us to focus on the One who can drape us with the garment of salvation, the One who is the source of all Light, the One whom we are unworthy to untie the straps of His sandals, and to respond to Him with joyful hope and fervent faith. As Christians, we rejoice in His coming. This is not a time to be gloomy-looking, or to put on a forced artificial entertainment. This is a time to express a real joy in our Lord’s victory over sin as He comes to live among us. He comes to give us the fullness of life; to give us a bounce in our step, a flutter to our heart-beat and a boost to our waning strength. And so, we must be ready to be His convincing witnesses to the world. How do we do that? “Be happy at all times; pray constantly; and for all things give thanks to God.”

Choose Salvation and not just Safety

Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

I will not lie to you. I will not paint a rosy picture of what’s in store for every Christian who desires to live up to his or her name. The truth is simply this: being a Christian is really hard. So much easier to go with the flow, to fit in, to accommodate and follow how the world thinks, and does things. Try to go against the flow, and you would most likely get hit or be thrown under the bus. It is Venerable Fulton Sheen who tells us, “Today the current is against us. And today the mood of the world is, ‘Go with the world, go with the spirit.’” But the good bishop reminds us that “dead bodies float downstream. Only live bodies resist the current.”

This is the dilemma faced by St Peter in the gospel. To choose safety over risking losing everything. To either flee from the cross or embrace it. Peter chose safety over risk, flight over fight, and he will repeat this mistake at the very end of the gospel story when his Master gets arrested. What made his cowardice more pronounced in today’s passage is that he is trying to convince the Lord to do the same.

Just last week, Peter identified Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God; and the Lord announced that God had revealed this truth to him. On that basis, our Lord called Peter a “rock”, and promised to use him as a foundation to build His Church. Jesus even conferred the keys of the kingdom, a symbol of His authority on Peter. But this week, the mood changes. Peter’s rock melts and becomes jelly. What happened? Our Lord predicts and discloses to His disciples that He must suffer greatly, be rejected by the religious authorities, and be killed before rising from the dead. There is no glory without the cross. It’s confounding and downright frightening.

Peter then takes our Lord aside and tries to remonstrate with Him. We would imagine that Peter is being respectful and does not wish to challenge the Lord in front of the others. But the phrase “taking Him aside” has a more profound nuance. The phrase is more accurately translated “took possession,” as in the case of a demoniac possession, taking control of a person’s will and rendering him powerless. This is the action of the diabolical. This is what Satan attempted to do at the beginning of the gospel when he took our Lord aside and tempted Him with various paths that will lead our Lord away from His mission and the Cross. Peter now stands in the place of Satan and does the same. Peter is an obstacle to our Lord’s mission and tries to convince Him to abandon the means by which our Lord will achieve His mission by proposing a safer way, one which requires little sacrifice, one which has nothing to do with the cross.

But our Lord clarifies, “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.” It’s the cross which will define the disciple, not just the ability to do good deeds or spout correct doctrinal statements about Christ or God.

This is the lesson the apostles and all followers of Jesus would have to learn. When we cling tightly to life and comfort in this world, when we prioritise safety over salvation, we risk losing out on the real life God desires to give us. Peter, out of misguided love, proposed exactly that. Jesus had to correct him, out of true love, and call him back to allegiance to God’s way. As the apostles would soon learn, the path to glory, for Jesus and for us, must pass through Calvary, it cannot avoid the Cross. To avoid the cross would be to stand in the way of Jesus. Our place as His disciples, is to follow Him from behind, not stand in His way. And the crosses that we carry are not proof of God’s absence or powerlessness, but where God’s power can be found.

Real Christians embrace the cross. They don’t flee from it, give excuses for it, or find softer substitutes for it. Renouncing oneself and taking up one’s cross is more than giving up something. It’s not like your little Friday or Lenten sacrifice where you deny yourself chocolate or alcohol or sugar or coffee – basically anything that makes life pleasurable. Denying yourself isn’t an invitation to a private spirituality. It isn’t a form of spiritual masochism. No. It’s a call to live in God’s way, even at the cost of death. As our Holy Father, Pope Francis, reminds us, “There is no negotiating with the cross: one either embraces it or rejects it.”

Being a Christian is hard, but it has its rewards. In fact, the reward for being aligned to God’s ways instead of man’s ways, is far more precious and valuable than anything we can hope to possess and achieve in this life. When our Lord gives us a promise, better believe in it, especially when the going gets tough, when you feel all alone and alienated in your struggle to be faithful, when you are hit on all sides by those who will try to convince you that you are wrong. And this is what He promises, “For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of his Father with his angels, and, when he does, he will reward each one according to his behaviour.”

Give them something to eat yourselves

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

After an exhausting day of public ministry, our Lord decides to withdraw and retire to a deserted place, hoping to escape the fawning crowds, recover from the fatigue and have time to commune with His Father. But instead of prayerful rest, He is confronted once again by the crowds who continue to trail Him and who refuse to leave Him alone. Instead of annoyance, Saint Matthew tells us that the Lord took pity on them. Saint Matthew’s words describe the tenderness and love that characterises a true Shepherd’s heart. We may sometimes sound tiresome even to our loved ones, especially when they have to put up with our whining, complaining and demands, but here’s the good news: God never tires of us. Here our Lord understood the hunger of the crowds and instead of just turning them away, He acts and He invites His disciples to do the same.

But there is a problem - a problem of limited resources and colossal needs, the perennial problem which plagues humanity. The Lord’s disciples point out this conundrum to the Lord and suggests this solution, ‘This is a lonely place, and the time has slipped by; so send the people away, and they can go to the villages to buy themselves some food.’ Logical and practical. But our Lord is adamant and counter proposes, ‘There is no need for them to go: give them something to eat yourselves.’ What a challenge? It would have been so much easier to just say, “This isn’t my problem”; “I can’t be the saviour of the world; I can’t solve every problem”; “People just have to learn how to take care of themselves.” But the Lord would not have any of these excuses. Instead, He enlists His disciples in the work of feeding the multitude. Our Lord, being God, could have done this on His own without their help but He chose not to. Instead, He deliberately chooses to involve them in His miraculous feeding.

They then retort with this reality check - they only have five loaves and two fish, to be shared among 5,000 men (not counting the women and the children). The feat, as noble as it sounds, is simply impossible! This problem would certainly resonate with those who are responsible for assigning seats for Mass every Sunday. They have to crack their heads in order to find solutions to accommodate the thousands who want to come to Church every week and to match this figure with the limited number of seats.

The juxtaposition of our Lord’s response and the disciples’ reaction presents us with two very different visions – a human and a spiritual one. The human vision recognises the problem, but assesses it based on these considerations – one’s ability and capacity to help and the availability of sufficient resources. There is nothing wrong with this. All good planning involves looking at what we possess before we commit to a project.

But our Lord provides us with another vision. A vision where He is fundamentally present and in charge. And when He is present, everything changes. Remember, that the Lord Jesus Christ is God, who is capable of not only performing miracles but there is nothing which He cannot accomplish or do. If disciples could not see beyond their inadequacies, our Lord is not limited in His vision. He sees the hunger of His people. He sees beyond the physical and material needs of persons. These things are important and necessary but man’s greatest need is spiritual. Our Lord can heal our bodies and fill our stomachs, but that is only a stopgap measure. What mankind needs more than a miracle worker or a philanthropist is a Saviour, because our greatest problem is not poverty, hunger or war, it is sin. And the Saviour chooses to enlist us in this grand work of salvation.

But what kind of people does He use? You would imagine that He would zoom in on the gifted, the resourceful or the rich. But He doesn’t. Instead, He takes anyone who is willing to risk sharing and trusting. In other words, any of us could be candidates of this grand scheme of His. How do we enlist? By yielding our littleness to the Master to use as He pleases. Our Lord tells us, “Bring them here to Me!” That’s the key! Give your inadequate resources and abilities to the Lord. The insufficient becomes more than sufficient when surrendered to Christ! We may think that we have nothing to offer, but the truth is that, all of us have something to offer – it’s just that it is inadequate. Jesus doesn’t ask you to give Him what you don’t have. He asks you to give Him what you do have. What Jesus did with this meagre supply of bread and fish is what He will do with us, warts, limitations, brokenness and all. If He can feed a multitude with that meagre ration, imagine what He could do with us.

So, the next time you receive an invitation to give something of yourself, do not just look at what you do not possess, look rather to what you do possess, humble and insignificant as it may seem to you. That is enough. Pope Francis reminds us: “the Lord makes us walk on his road, that of service, of sharing, of giving; and if it is shared, the little we have, the little we are, becomes riches; for the power of God—which is the power of love—comes down into our poverty to transform it. So let us ask ourselves this evening, in adoring Christ who is really present in the Eucharist: do I let myself be transformed by him? Do I let the Lord, who gives himself to me, guide me to going out ever more from my little enclosure, in order to give, to share, to love him and others?”