God is the Author, man isn't

Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Handing down the faith

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Preserving the fire of Tradition

Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God is speaking but are you listening?

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eternally Begotten of the Father

Christmas Mass of the Day

We celebrate birthdays because it recalls the beginning of human life. Well, that isn’t exactly true. Life begins from the moment of conception but the pro-choicers, of course, will argue that this is a disputed fact.

But is this the reason why we celebrate this day with such great fanfare - for isn’t this the day of our Lord’s birth? Yes, but Christmas does not mark the beginning of the life of Christ. The glory of Christmas is that it is not the beginning of Christ. Most people would be familiar with the Christmas story told at the Christmas Mass during the night. Few remember the larger story which is told this morning, a story which is as essential to Christmas as the story of the birth in Bethlehem.

Long before that first Christmas, our Lord’s story had begun — not just in various prophecies, but in a divine person. Christmas may be the opening of the climactic chapter, but it is not the commencement of Christ. Christmas does indeed mark a conception and a birth. We rehearse the tale of Mary giving birth in the Bethlehem stable, and the shepherds’ visit to pay homage to her new-born son, and read she “treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart”. For mere humans, no doubt, such is the stuff of our origins, memories to be treasured and cherished. Prior to earthly beginnings, we simply did not exist.

But it is not so with the Son of God. His “coming forth is from of old, from ancient days” (Micah 5:2). Unlike every other human birth, Christmas is not a beginning, but a becoming. Christmas isn’t His start, but His commission. He was not created; He came. No other human in the history of the world shares in this peculiar glory. As remarkable as His virgin birth is, His pre-existence sets Him apart even more distinctively, even as He is fully human, He is also fully divine.

This is what we profess in the Creed. Christ, the Word made flesh, is eternally begotten of the Father. He was not “made,” He was not “created.” Unlike us who are created from nothing, there wasn’t a time when He was not! He was “begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.” This eternal generation from the Father happens outside of time, in the mystery of eternity. Yes, we acknowledge that through the Virgin Mary, He was born in the flesh, He was born in time. But being God, He existed before His human mother. In fact, it was Him who created His own mother, something none of us can claim.

Christmas is far more than the celebration of a great man’s birth. God Himself, in the second person of the Godhead, entered into our space, and into our frail humanity, surrounded by our sin, to rescue us. He came. He became one of us. God sent God. The Father gave His own Son for us and for our salvation.

The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem is the birth given most attention at Christmas. But if you don’t see this birth in connexion with the eternal birth of the Word from the Father, then you miss what is essential. Then all that is left is a warm fuzzy story: a sweet child who for a few moments may touch your heart, but who is really not allowed to seize your heart. You may have another tale of the birth of a great hero, but not a saviour which this world really needs.

God’s Incarnation is the greatest mystery in Christianity, the most incomprehensible and unfathomable. How can the great God make Himself so little? How can this vulnerable, crying baby be “my Lord and my God”? It is precisely this mystery that is the great stumbling block for non-Christians; but is the very same mystery which defines us as “Christians.”

If you believe this truth, you have the solution to all the riddles and difficulties in the world. Then you can no longer doubt that God loves His creation. That the Almighty God has become a little child, for our sake, is a definitive proof of the definitive victory of His love. To doubt that you are loved by God is only possible if you forget the manger. And if you do not wish to forget the manger, never forget that this Child is eternally begotten of the Father before all ages. Jesus is the Son of Mary but He is also the Son of God. Gloria in excelsis Deo!

Sacred Tradition is not man made

Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

I’ve often heard this accusation, “The Catholic Church is full of man-made rules.” “Where in the Bible does it say that the Sabbath should be moved to Sunday, that we can’t eat meat on Fridays, that abortion is wrong, that two men can't get married (to each other), that I have to confess my sins to a priest, that we must go to Mass every Sunday, that a woman can't be a priest? Didn't the Catholic Church just make all of this stuff up? That's the problem with the Catholic Church: It's too concerned with man-made rules, and not with what Christ actually taught.” The surprising thing is that this is often expressed not by Catholic-bashing Protestants, but strangely (or perhaps, not so strangely) by Catholics themselves. The corollary to this is that if these are “man-made rules”, then there is no need to follow them. You can dispense with them as how Christ dispensed with the man-made rules and traditions of the Scribes and Pharisees in today’s gospel passage. Interesting argument but seriously flawed.

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

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

In fact, man-made traditions, mark our daily lives. Every morning, it’s the same ritual for millions of people: have a shower, get dressed, pour a cup of coffee, eat breakfast, brush teeth, etc. Human life is marked by all sorts of  “traditions”, whether it is setting up a Christmas tree, giving out red packets on Chinese New Year, having a cake and blowing out the candles, or celebrating with a meal. Ritualism, whether it’s pagan or religious, seems to mark the life of human activity in every culture, whether it is that of neighbourhood families, or that of the Church. Why? Because symbols are a language unto themselves; they carry a meaning that conveys something deeper, whether it is love, danger, memory, or mystery.

That is why it is often surprising to hear both Catholics and non-Catholics condemn Catholic traditions, claiming these are merely “human traditions” that Christ Himself condemned. But did He? Well, frankly, He does seem to say so in today’s gospel passage as He condemned the practices of the Pharisees: “The worship they offer me is worthless, the doctrines they teach are only human regulations. You put aside the commandment of God to cling to human traditions.”  For the detractors of the Church’s man-made traditions, it doesn’t get any clearer than this! But a more careful examination of Christ’s words indicate that He was not condemning human tradition, but those who place human traditions, laws, or demands before true worship of God and His will expressed in the commandments. The problem wasn’t “human traditions” but specifically “human traditions” that obscure the priority of worship and God.

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

Church rules are not just plucked out of thin air by “a bunch of celibate old men wearing dresses at the Vatican”, they are not just arbitrary as if these joyless old men wanted to kill spontaneity or make life miserable for the rest of us. And just because some of these celibate old men have been guilty of departing from those rules, does not absolve the rest of us from following those rules. These rules are given to us because the Church is our parent, she is both Mother and Teacher, guided, as Christ said she would be, by the Holy Spirit—not simply for her own good, but for ours. And so, like any mother, she tells us what to do. We may resent this as condescending. We may refuse to accept whatever reasoning the Church gives us. But at the end of the day, she guides us through these rules, disciplines and teachings because She truly cares and loves us and wishes us to arrive at the safe harbor of Paradise.

It is often very convenient to denounce Catholic tradition as “man-made” or “human tradition” just because we don’t like it. The hypocrisy of such an accusation is often lost on those who supplant the Church’s tradition, rules and rubrics, with their own interpretation and version. The sexual abuse controversy raging in the Church is the result of choosing to depart from those rules, disciplines and teachings. By covering up the abuse, bishops and heads of seminaries have substituted worldly standards of non-judgmental tolerance for Christ’s “hard” teachings about sexual morality.This is the real truth. When we ignore or reject the rules of the Church, we are merely replacing them with our own “human traditions.”  In fact, we are putting “aside the commandment of God to cling to human traditions.” It is not those who keep the rules but those who flagrantly break the rules that are the modern day Pharisees condemned by the Lord in today’s gospel.

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

Old and New

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

For the past two Sundays we have been reading from the 13th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, which contains several of Jesus’ parables. Today, we come to the final set of parables and the lectionary surprises us with a bonus. We get three additional parables with a fourth one thrown in at the end. This Sunday, I would like to skip the first three and turn your attention to the bonus parable, or the often forgotten eighth parable. It is often said that there are seven parables in the 13^th chapter.  Only a few scholars would treat this one-liner as a parable. This is the parable of the householder-scribe-like disciple. What a strange metaphor? It serves as an apt summary of all the other parables. It begins with a question posed by the Lord to His disciples, in reference to all the parables that He had just shared with them, “Have you understood all this?”   When I stand here, I am tempted to end each and every one of my homilies with this same question, but on second thought,  I better not, in case I only see blank faces staring back at me.

However, in response to the Lord’s question, the disciples gave a resounding ‘Yes,’ which is an overestimation of their insight since the disciples have no clue about the nature of the kingdom and the suffering it entails. For example, Peter will object to the Lord’s crucifixion and all the disciples flee upon Christ’s arrest in Gethsemane. These and many other such examples merely indicate that their comprehension was partial. It is at this point, that we are introduced to this cryptic saying cum parable, “every scribe who becomes a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out from his storeroom things both new and old.” What is unique about this parabolic saying is the combination of three different persons into a single metaphor – a scribe, a disciple, and a householder. They make strange bed-fellows.

First, let us consider the scribe. Among the Jews in the first century, a scribe was a technical position of one who had been educated formerly in the Law and Jewish tradition. We might think of him as a scholar, a serious student. He spent his life studying the Law, and stood before the people as a teacher. His primary duty was to expound and explain the Law to the common folks. A disciple of the Kingdom is entrusted with the same responsibility: to teach, to instruct, to catechise. It’s never to do so with one’s own ideas or opinions but only that which they had learnt from the Lord. At the end of Matthew’s gospel, Our Lord commissions His disciples in this manner, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” This commission is directed not just at the bishops, priests, deacons and religious but given to every baptised person. Parents are often reminded that they are the primary catechists of their children and that they have been entrusted with the responsibility of handing on the faith that they have received from the Apostles.

Perhaps, the reason why many within the Church suffer from a crisis of faith is because there is a lack of adequate catechesis. And the reason why there is poor catechesis is because so many of us are poor scribes, poor teachers. And if we were to connect the dots in the chain of causation, we could easily conclude that poor students make poor teachers. The Lord used a word in His saying to describe the scribe’s training – it was the verb form of “disciple.” The scribe had to be “disciple.” He had to be mentored, he had to become an apprentice of a teacher. Before he could become a teacher, he had to be a student. It was not enough to have an armchair book knowledge of the faith. A disciple-scribe is one who must study the truth, live it and he does so by imitating the Master. The disciple’s life is to be a mixture of both learning and living. He should never cease learning if he wishes to continue teaching.

The final image that is used in this parabolic statement is that of a householder, who is charged with the care of the treasures of the household. It is here, we finally see the role of the scribe-disciple-householder. He is entrusted not just with the task of safe-guarding the treasures but also dispensing them. What would these treasures look like? We are told that he must bring “out from his storeroom things both new and old.”

In an age of modernity and post-modernity, where the past and ‘old’ things are often scorned and discarded, the saying makes an essential point about the role of disciples. We cannot be selective about the teachings of the Church, about what we wish to adopt or discard at will. But rather we all have a duty, together with the Magisterium (the Teaching authority of the Church, i.e. the Pope and the bishops) to safeguard, preserve, defend and expound both “the old and the new.” In the context of Jesus’ days, He had already assured His listeners that He had not come to abolish the Old Law but rather to fulfil it, to bring it to perfection with the New Law. His teachings are revolutionary but they are also traditional. The old covenant is not abolished, it is judiciously integrated into the new.  Likewise, disciples are not to spurn the old for the sake of the new. Rather, they are to understand the new insights gleaned from Jesus’ parables in light of the old truths, and vice versa.  

As for the Christian, the ultimate question is not personal preferences of style, or whether something is old or avant garde.  Rather, it is whether or not it fits into the Kingdom of God, whether or not it is true. The remarkable thing about truth is that it has the quality of being both old and new at the same time. On the one hand, truth is not something that was invented yesterday. It is old because it has always existed. But if it were only old, then it cannot be truth. On the other hand, it is always new because the truth never ceases to be truth, no matter what time in history you live. It requires no updating.  But if it were only new, it wouldn't be truth because truth cannot be something that has just been discovered as if centuries of human beings before us were oblivious to it. It has always been the truth. Truth is eternal. The truth of God does not change. It can never go out of fashion. This is because God is Truth Himself. In the words of St Augustine, God is “Beauty ever Ancient ever New.” As a corollary, something false cannot become true just because it has now become fashionable. As the wise G.K. Chesterton once said, “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”

The Christian, who is a prudent scribe is neither a conservative prude, teaching what is old just because it is traditional or because he has sentimental attachments to it; nor is he a progressive revolutionary, throwing away all traditions and only teaching what is new. But the prudent scribe, the authentic Christian must teach, he must defend, and be even prepared to lay down his life for whatever the Church proposes in the deposit faith and which is found in both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, not because it is traditional  or novel but because it is the revealed Truth. He does so even though this may earn him ridicule and hatred in the eyes of the world. He cannot substitute the infallible divinely revealed Truths with his own fallible opinions. As the Catechism appropriately reminds us, “What moves us to believe is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason: we believe ‘because of the authority of God Himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived,” (CCC 156) because these truths are “guaranteed by God, who is Truth itself” (CCC 144). When these truths are accepted with love and fidelity, what seems old, will always appear new, because Christ can never be out of fashion! He makes all things NEW!