It doesn't take a miracle to forgive

Twenty Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Peter’s suggestion of forgiveness being offered seven times would have already been regarded as generous by any standard. In most of our own experiences, twice is the limit. You may recall the proverb, “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Forgiving the same offence twice only exposes my gullibility and foolishness. But then our Lord issues an answer that takes it beyond Peter’s magnanimity: “Not seven, I tell you, but seventy-seven times.”

The number seven, as many of you know, symbolises completeness. For the Jews, the seventh day was the Sabbath day when they ceased from menial work and recalled what the Lord had done for them in creation and in rescuing them from slavery. The seventh year was a special year of favour to the Lord and the seventh multiple of this period, served as the great jubilee where debts were forgiven, slaves were released and property which were taken were returned. But how about seventy times seven? Was it just merely repeating the above theme and giving it a superlative twist by multiplying it even further?

We turn to Chapter 9 in the Book of Daniel for an answer. The context of this book is the period of Babylonian captivity and exile. Daniel was studying the book of Jeremiah’s prophecies when he came upon the prophecy that Israel would be released from captivity after 70 years. The 70th year of exile was coming, and so Daniel began fasting in sackcloth and ashes, and he began confessing the sins of Israel and pleading with the Lord to hear and restore Israel. While he was praying, the angel Gabriel appeared and told him that the Lord had decreed “70 weeks.” Another period of 70 was going to follow the 70 years of exile in Babylon, and, Gabriel told Daniel, at the end of that 70-week period, that period of 70 x 7, the Lord would finally take care of sin. After 70 x 7, the Lord would “finish transgression, make an end of sin, make atonement for iniquity, bring in everlasting righteousness, seal of vision and prophecy, anoint the most holy” (v. 24). You could just imagine Daniel’s disappointment when nothing happened at the end of this period.

By the time of our Lord Jesus, this prophecy was an obsession for many Jews. From weeks, the fulfilment of the prophecy stretched on for years, and then decades and thereafter, centuries. From the time of Daniel to the Messiah, there would be 70 x 7, not weeks but years, to the Messiah was predicted to come after 490 years. The anticipation of the arrival of the Messiah was heightened by what he was expected to do - he would deal with Israel’s transgressions once and for all. At the end of the 70 x 7 period, there would be a great Jubilee, a release from debt, a manumission of slaves, a return to the land. This would be the fulfillment of the hopes of all faithful Israelites.

Forgiveness often seems … often “feels” … impossible to most of us, especially when we equate forgiveness as no longer remembering the hurt or feeling the sting of the offence. We often feel that if we still feel hurt or upset about an offence that perhaps we haven’t forgiven the offender. Or, that it is somehow unforgiving to hold the offender responsible for healing the wound they caused or fixing the damage they have done. We feel that unless we are ready to give them a free pass and choose to never bring up the issue again, we haven’t really forgiven them. But is this what real forgiveness looks like? You may be surprised to know, happily surprised, I may add, that forgiveness isn’t as hard or as impossible as you think. All of these mistaken beliefs and unreasonable expectations placed on us actually make forgiveness feel like a bigger burden than it’s meant to be.

St Augustine taught that forgiveness simply involved the willingness to surrender one’s natural right to revenge. When you stop wanting to hurt someone for having hurt you, when you choose not to strike back when you are struck or don’t want bad things to happen to them because they hurt you, you have forgiven them. That’s really all forgiveness requires. Easy right? Some of you may protest - easier said than done. Granted, sometimes, that’s hard enough. But the truth is that God doesn’t expect the impossible from us unless He chooses to give us the grace to do what is impossible. You may think that requires a miracle. The good news is that you don’t need a miracle to forgive. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “It is not in our power to not feel or to forget an offence; but the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion and purifies the memory in transforming hurt into intercession” (No. 2843).

It is possible to forgive someone — that is, to refuse to wish or inflict pain or insult on them for having hurt you — and still feel pain or anger, or a host of other feelings. It is likewise possible to forgive the offender but still need them to make things right in some way. Forgiveness is a function of love. To love someone is to work for their good. Letting people do bad things without requiring them to learn from their mistakes and heal the damage they have done is not working for their good. It is not love. It is aiding and abetting the offence, the sin. It is keeping the person locked in his or her sin.

Alright, now that you understand that forgiveness is possible, how about reconciliation? The truth is that reconciliation can only happen when there is mutual commitment on the parts of both the injured party and the offender to make things right again. Forgiveness is always possible, but reconciliation is never guaranteed. You need both hands to clap. Forgiveness allows the offended person to extend the invitation to reconciliation, but it is up to the offender whether they are willing to accept that invitation or not. Reconciliation is a gift two people give to each other by committing to the process of healing the damage that was done and for reconciliation to occur, the offender needs to be able to do three things: feel it, own it, fix it. So, even if the other person doesn’t feel your hurt, or refuses to admit his or her fault and therefore, see no obligation in fixing the issue, you can still offer forgiveness to that person which is ironically a gift to yourself because you can now move on in freedom.

Ultimately, forgiveness is not just making things right with our neighbour. It is also making things right with God. Pope Benedict XIV reminds us that “We cannot communicate with the Lord if we do not communicate with one another. If we want to present ourselves to him, we must also take a step towards meeting one another. To do this we must learn the great lesson of forgiveness: We must not let the gnawing of resentment work in our soul, but must open our hearts to the magnanimity of listening to others, open our hearts to understanding them, eventually accepting their apologies, to generously offering our own.”

Take out the trash

Second Sunday of Advent Year C

In most households, this would be the time of the year to get some major heavy-lifting stuff done. As the adults attempt to clear up their remaining leave for the year and the children get time off from their studies, and everyone’s preparing to put up the Christmas decorations, they would take this opportunity to do some Christmas shopping for gifts and new clothes, bake cookies for the upcoming festivities and do some needed spring cleaning. Although these may seem like secular or practical customs bereft of theological meaning, they may have some basis in scripture and the underlying theme for Advent, especially for this Sunday.

Take for example what the prophet Baruch tells the people of Jerusalem in the first reading: “Jerusalem, take off your dress of sorrow and distress, put on the beauty of the glory of God for ever, wrap the cloak of the integrity of God around you, put the diadem of the glory of the Eternal on your head: since God means to show your splendour to every nation under heaven.” Our custom of buying new clothes and having a cosmetic make-over may seem trivial but may actually be a reflexion of this joyful and hopeful spirit expecting God’s definitive and imminent intervention. These words of the prophet are surprising for two reasons. Baruch, who is often associated with his doomsday prophecies and mournful lamentations, departs from that tone to give us an upbeat forecast of what is to come. Secondly, the people of Jerusalem and Judah are in no mood for celebration. Their country has been invaded, the population decimated, their infrastructures destroyed and the ruling class humiliated and taking off into exile to a foreign land. Yet, the prophet sees beyond this to a future that is bright, to say the least - a future that can only be realised in the gospel.

But Baruch moves beyond the imagery of a new set of attire and accoutrements to that of physical construction work that is required to build a highway. Nothing, no obstacle, no hindrance, absolutely nothing should stand in the way of what God is about to do for His people. The massive terrain engineering work envisaged by Baruch will be taken up by St John the Baptist in his proclamation that the high mountains will be flattened and the valleys filled in to make a smooth road for the Messiah to cross the desert to Jerusalem.

St Paul in the second reading adds to the list of things to be done before the Day of the Lord arrives, the Day of His return. So, in the light of the Lord’s coming Paul prays that, “your love for each other may increase more and more and never stop improving your knowledge and deepening your perception so that you can always recognise what is best. This will help you to become pure and blameless, and prepare you for the Day of Christ, when you will reach the perfect goodness.” Our lives’ project as we look to the day of the Lord’s return is to grow in faith, hope and charity and we should never take our foot off the peddle.

And finally, we come to the gospel where John the Baptist breaks into the scene, here in what we call the holiday season, and he impudently demands that we start cleaning as though our lives depended on it. But more than just our lives, the eternal salvation of our souls depend on it. He comes among us with an inconvenient message, a challenging message, a robustly difficult message - a call to repentance, a call for a thorough, radical house cleaning, but the house is that of our souls.

Probably in all of our spiritual residences, our lives, there are rooms that are dominated by clutter. There are corners where dust, and dirt, and trash have accumulated. There are signs of ill repair, where the paint is peeling, the carpet is frayed, and the drapes have faded. Windows are grimy; they barely let in the light of the sun. Such are the conditions on the inside. The outside is no better, though it is more public. Rubbish strewn in the garden, weeds flourishing where flowers used to grow, the driveway that begs to be repaved, walls that wait for scraping and fresh paint. St John the Baptist comes along and points to all of these defects, drags his fingers through the dust, kicks the dirty soiled clothes strewn on the floor and holds his nose as he beholds the unwashed plates and utensils in the kitchen sink.

John shakes the foundations of our comfort zones by uttering a single word, passing on a message that comes from God: Repent! It’s time to clean house, he tells us. Time to sweep the floors, wash the walls, air the rooms, repair what is broken, replace what is no longer useful. It’s time to paint the house, pull up weeds in the garden and trim the hedge. John demands that we make a lot of changes, expend a great deal of energy, get down on our hands and knees to clean the corners. He insists on all this because somebody is coming. He calls us to repent because heaven’s kingdom is very near. He wants us to sweat and struggle, do thorough spring-cleaning even in December, because he knows the results will be worth it.

You may ask yourself, where do I start? That’s a good question. We start by looking at these three basic questions, which we would usually ask ourselves if we want to get rid of all the clutter in our homes:
What needs to go?
What can I give away?
What needs some love and attention?

In the case of our spiritual lives, making an inventory of what needs to go and what needs to stay is just the first step. This should lead us to make a good examination of conscience and then go for sacramental confession before a priest. Ask yourself: What can you throw away? What needs to go? Put into that waste container of the confessional, then, every odious instance of pride, hypocrisy, and impatience from your life. Put into it every instance when you have exploited others. Put into it unholy anger and sick green envy. Put into it lust for people and for things, dishonesty in everyday relationships, negligence in prayer and worship, every failure to live your faith, every refusal to take a good and holy risk. We don’t need that stuff anyway. It takes up our space. It poisons our lives. Fill the dumpster high and let our Lord Jesus through the ministry of the priest haul it away.

Advent is not a feast and yet many forget this inconvenient fact and turn it into a time of premature merry-making. Advent, rather, is the preparation for the coming Feast. This, however, is what Advent is about. This is the time for spring-cleaning. Before we get to the barn in Bethlehem, all of us have to wake up to how our own spiritual house, our own lives, are worse than any self-respecting barn, and they plead for us to clean them. So, clean the house. Not just your residences, but the house of your soul. Let us remove the clutter of sin to make room for the Lord and let us turn away from everything that separates us from Him.

The Once-and-for-all Atoning Sacrifice

Thirty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

The holiest day in the Jewish calendar was marked by a unique ceremony that had to be repeated every year, at least while the Temple was still standing. This is Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement. Although no living person in this day and age has ever witnessed this elaborate ceremony, we have the benefit of its detailed records in the Bible, in the Book of Leviticus, a book of rites and ceremonies.

The book of Leviticus says that the High Priest on this most holy day was to enter into the Holy of Holies, which is the inner sanctum of the Temple, the place where the tabernacle was kept. By the time of our Lord, the tabernacle was missing which meant that the Holy of Holies was an empty shell. But that was no excuse to stop this ceremony. The High Priest’s primary responsibility was to offer the sacrifice on Yom Kippur for the forgiveness of the sins of all the Israelites. On the Day of Atonement, the priest would be stripped of his clothes, wash his hands and his feet, and then immerse himself in water and dried off and put on white garments, similar to the white alb the priest and altar servers put on before they enter the Sanctuary. Then the High Priest would offer a bullock, a young bull for his own sin offering as our second reading reminds us, and fill the Holy of Holies with incense; thus, he would be considered purified and ready to offer the sacrifice for the people.

The people would then bring to the High Priest two goats, one goat would be offered to the Lord and the other would become the scapegoat. After the first goat was sacrificed to the Lord as a sign of propitiation (communion with God), the High Priest would take the live scapegoat and lay his hands upon the scapegoat and confess all the sins of the Israelites onto it. This goat represented the act of expiation (the purification from sin). Then a Gentile, because no Jew would want to go near the goat that had all their sins, would tie a scarlet red ribbon around its neck, lead the scapegoat out into the desert, and push it over the cliff. So, when the scapegoat would be pushed over the cliff and die, the Israelites knew all their sins were forgiven.

And here is where the scapegoat gets fascinating. The way the Israelites would know their sins were forgiven is because the High Priest would tie another crimson red ribbon on the door of the Sanctuary. According to the rabbis whose teachings are recorded in the Mishnah, the oral tradition, every year whenever the scapegoat was pushed over the cliff that crimson red ribbon tied on the door to the Sanctuary would miraculously turn white, that way all the Israelites would know their sins are forgiven. And what is even more amazing is that according to the same Jewish tradition, the miracle of the red ribbon turning white happened every year until the year 30, the time of Jesus Christ upon the earth. Though this remained a mystery among the Jews, it is clear to us Christians. We all know what happened on Good Friday – the Lamb of God took away the sins of the world on the cross.

The Cross is the final sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins of all people. Jesus Christ replaces the scapegoat that was offered by the high priest at the Holy of Holies in the Temple at Yom Kippur; He is the sacrificial lamb, who gave Himself up for our eternal life. He, who was without sin, took on the sins of world by His Passion. But He is also the other goat who is sacrificed in the Temple to bring about our complete reconciliation with God, something which all the bloody sacrifices of the Temple could never accomplish. His sacrifice both expiates and propitiates – purifies us from sin and unites us with God. Like all the Jewish High Priests, Jesus too was stripped of His clothes before He was crucified, therefore Jesus is the Great High Priest who offered Himself as the final sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins.

Now, all this alignment between the ritual of the old covenant and what took place on the cross at Calvary on Good Friday would certainly help us to understand what is written by the author of Hebrews in the second reading. But what about the story of the two widows in the first reading and the gospel? Both are certainly models of unrivalled generosity as both gave up their last resort of survival, the first for a stranger and the second for God. In a way, both widows epitomise the two-fold great commandment of love owed toward God and neighbour, which we heard last week. Both women are actually typological figures pointing to another who gave up much more - the One who sacrificed His life for us in order to atone for our sins and reconcile us to the Father. The two small coins of the second widow in our gospel story perhaps symbolises the two-fold action of our Lord’s sacrifice - expiation and propitiation.

It is through this lens that we must now consider the story of the widow’s mite. The main point of the story of the widow’s mite is not what most people have assumed. Have you ever noticed our Lord does not praise the widow for her offering? He does not even encourage us to duplicate her behaviour. He simply states what she did as a fact. The widow’s sacrificial offering points us toward the life of sacrifice Jesus modelled for us. Our Lord offered Himself willingly. He spared nothing, and it cost Him everything. Unlike the animals whose lives were taken against their will, our Lord went to His death willingly for our sake. If you think the widow’s actions as astoundingly generous, it still comes nowhere close to what the Lord has done for us. His generosity knows no bounds.

By shining a light on the unnamed widow’s generosity, our Lord reminds us that what is most important to God is not the quantity of the gift, but the generosity of the one doing the giving. The value of a gift depends not on its absolute worth, but in the love with which it is given. This woman of God gave an offering that resounded louder than the heaps of coins dropped into the treasury by others. Nothing showy. No virtue signalling. In fact, her actions may actually earn her ridicule and derision. But her love for her Lord who had given so much to her blinded her to the burning and judging gaze of others.

Many of us would be guilty of looking at what we possess and be conditioned by a mentality of scarcity, believing that it is never enough for us to share with others. In contrast, a heart of abundance, just like the two widows, looks at the One who provides what we have in our hands. As we recognise our God as the one who provides everything— life, possessions, time, energy, love, and all of who we are—we will grow in our trust of Almighty God’s abundance.

At every Mass, we are brought before the One who sacrificed everything for us, who took our sins upon Himself although He had none, who drew the ire and hatred of the world so that we may be freed from shame and guilt. But unlike the sacrifice of Yom Kippur which had to be repeated to no avail, the Holy Mass is the ‘once for all,’ perfect sacrifice of Calvary, which is presented on heaven’s altar for all eternity. It is not a ‘repeat performance.’ There is only one sacrifice; it is perpetual and eternal, and so it needs never be repeated. And it is by this once for all sacrifice that heaven is finally opened, the gates of God’s abundant graces finally poured upon us, and our reconciliation with Him is finally sealed “once and for all.”

Touch these wounds

Second Sunday of Easter Year A

Our story provides us with a paradoxical contrast - closed doors but open wounds. How we wish it was the other way around? The idea of closed doors suggests that it is a done deal, there is no longer any room for negotiation, that time has run out. In the synoptic gospels, we have the parable of the ten bridesmaids, five wise and the remaining foolish, with the latter being turned out of the party because of their folly and lack of preparation. When they returned from their shopping trip, they were confronted with the painful reality of closed doors - they were too late and judgment has already been delivered.

We can imagine a similar scenario in today’s passage. The disciples of the Lord could only live with regret - the regret of following a man who could have been the Messianic King, the regret of not following Him to the very end, the regret of turning their backs on Him, with one denying Him and the other betraying Him. The closed doors symbolised their predicament. They had closed the doors of their hearts to their master and now they deserved to have God closed His doors of mercy on them, or at least this is what they thought. Despite the doors of the Upper Room and their hearts were shut and locked, the Lord Jesus came in anyway. The stone which blocked the tomb could not keep Him in. Neither could these flimsy wooden doors keep Him out. That is the power of Divine Mercy.

Several things happened on this day. Our Lord breathed the Holy Spirit on to His disciples and offered them the gift of peace which the world cannot give. Our Lord offered them pardon and mercy for their betrayal, courage in place of their fear, peace to their troubled hearts, and the Holy Spirit, the advocate to be their “forever” companion. But there was one more thing He offered them on this day. He offered them the gift of His wounds, the one thing which would have shamed them to their core, because these were the most condemning evidence of their lack of commitment and cowardly betrayal.

Christ came to these disciples with His opened wounds. He could have concealed them under layers of clothing, He could have cauterised and healed them without leaving any trace of a scar. But He left them visible and opened. The Glorified Lord carried the marks of His passion. His resurrection did not obliterate these signs of His great act of self-sacrifice. This is because the wounds of His crucifixion are the means by which we are saved. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, “whereas he was being wounded for our rebellions, crushed because of our guilt; the punishment reconciling us fell on him, and we have been healed by his bruises” (Isaiah 53:5). We cannot know who Jesus is without seeing His wounds. We cannot understand Jesus without understanding the significance of His wounds. His identity is tied to His passion and death. His wounds are the marks by which humanity is reconciled to God. His wounds are a testimony to the mercy of God towards humanity, a mercy beyond our comprehension. You have to see it to believe it.

Those wounds on the Body of the Glorified and Risen Lord teach us several things. First, they show that this Jesus is not a ghost but a real flesh-and-blood Person. Second, they serve as powerful reminders of the great love of God for us, a love so great that in Christ God died, so that our sins might be forgiven. Third, those wounds illustrate the continuity between the earthly life and ministry of Jesus and His eternal high priesthood, by which He lives to make continual intercession for us before His Heavenly Father (cf. Heb 7:25).

It is not by accident that St Thomas comes to faith, not by simply seeing an apparition of Jesus, but only after being instructed to pay heed to those sacred wounds, which are not scars of defeat and ignominy but, as the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich puts it, noble “tokens of victory and love.” This is why medieval art will show Christ at the Last Judgment showing us once again those sacred wounds. What purpose do they serve? When we meet Christ face to face on Judgment Day, He will look just as He did during that first Easter season: We will behold Him in glory, but a glory that still teaches us the price of sin. Seeing His wounds on that day will bring us to the full awareness of what our sins have done and this will either move us to loving gratitude as expressed by all the saints in heaven or to utter shame and unrepentant guilt in the fires of hell. No one can stay neutral in the face of these wounds. We will either experience mercy and forgiveness or be condemned to despair by our shame and guilt.

But our Lord’s wounds are not confined to the visible parts of His body, His hands and feet and His side which would have necessitated the lifting of His tunic. The biggest wound is the wound to His heart. In his account of the crucifixion, St John alone among the evangelists tells us: “One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.” (Jn. 19:34) This was a pivotal moment of revelation for St John. The wound at His side was not a superficial flesh wound. The spear penetrated deep into the very core of our Lord - His heart.

What we can only imagine with our mind’s eye is now made visible in the iconic image of the Divine Mercy. The image opens a mystical door into the inner core of His being, allowing us a peek into what remains a mystery. It shows the pierced heart of the Lord from which the streams of red and white light flow, representing the blood and water which the evangelist saw. This is the grace of salvation flowing upon humanity. The piercing of the heart was the means by which the floodgates of mercy were opened upon a sinful, broken and suffering humanity. The piercing of our Lord’s heart gave us the two foundational sacraments which made the Church and makes us members of the Church - Baptism and the Eucharist.

Devotion to the holy image of the Divine Mercy as our Lord communicated to St Faustina is not just confined to His handsome and beautiful visage. It is also an invitation to gaze upon His wounds, both visible and hidden. Contemplating the wounds of Jesus can move cold and obstinate hearts. It can bring about conversion. It can open doors that are sealed shut by our obstinacy. It can heal wounds that have been opened by our sins and the sins of others.

As the Lord said to Thomas, He says to us, “Put your hands into the holes that the nails have made.” These holes are the wounds by which we are saved. These holes are the wounds by which we are healed. These holes are the means by which My Divine Mercy will be poured forth upon humanity. Don’t be afraid to touch these wounds and believe. Touch these wounds and be moved. Touch these wounds and hear our Lord’s accompanying words: “Peace be with you”, “your sins are forgiven” and “I am sending you.” Touch these wounds and like Thomas, bow in adoration while professing: “My Lord and my God... I trust in you!"

TGIF

Good Friday

Social networking, the likes of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Tik Tok, has enabled many of us, including the pathologically shy and introverted, to articulate what we would have normally kept private. We give vent to our pent-up frustrations by ‘shouting out’, expressing every emotion for the world to see. Just take a look at Twitter box or Facebook page or catch a random Tik Tok video on a Monday morning and count how many times you see a similar statement like this: “I can’t wait until the weekend,” or “When’s it going to be Friday?” And of course, the familiar initialism at the close of the week, ‘TGIF’ (or ‘Thank God It’s Friday’).

What is it about Fridays that makes them so special? Why this euphoric fascination with Friday? Here are some reasons why people think Friday is cool: We get to stay up late. It’s an opportunity to catch up on much needed sleep. It means having drinks with the guys at the local watering hole. It’s that much needed break after a tiring and often bad week (except for a priest – our busy week is just starting). Or for many, ‘Friday’ means “Party, Party, Party!”

But for us Christians, there is one supreme reason that beats all the rest. We say without hesitation, “Thank God it’s Friday” because it was on Friday that our Lord Jesus died for us. “Thank God it’s Friday” because the instrument of death, the cross, became the means of our salvation! Good Friday marks the day when wrath and mercy met at the cross. The Cross which put God to death became the Tree of Life which brought man to life.

But Good Friday seems to have lost its original value of being a celebration of paradox. Over the years, many Christians have suffered from a cultural romanticisation or sanitisation of the cross. We have separated the cross from the suffering it portrays. The cross no longer evokes horror or terror, only loving endearment and pious devotion. We regard it as a sign of blessing, and certainly not as a symbol of a curse. You see Jesus hanging there and see a wonderful example of compassion and sacrifice. You find in the death of Jesus an inspiration to forgive and be kind to others. And for others, the overriding emotion in your heart is pity.

The readings for today, especially the Passion taken from the Gospel of St John, point us to a far more profound theological truth that extends beyond our emotions of sadness and pity. Well here’s the central truth: on the cross Christ redeemed us from the curse of sin by becoming a curse for us. That Christ became a curse is what makes Good Friday good.

What did it mean to be cursed? Think of the scene in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3. God warned Adam and Eve that if they were to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they would suffer the curse of death. But our first parents refused to believe God’s warning and chose rather to rely on the words of the cunning serpent. They believed that by eating its fruits, they would no longer have to depend on God. They sought self-reliance over obedience. They imagined themselves as masters of their own destiny and be forever free of God’s interference. That mistaken belief is at the heart of every sin and serves as the perennial disease that infects man till today. Little did they know that this would be their curse, a curse inherited by the whole of humanity. After taking a bite of the forbidden fruit Adam is cursed, Eve is cursed, the serpent is cursed, and the ground is cursed. The effect of the curse is catastrophic – an impassable chasm now exist between man and God; it meant the loss of communion with God, each other, and the created universe. The curse bars us from eating of the fruit of the Tree of Life and thus man lost the gift of immortality. Death is now our curse.

But our Lord’s sacrifice on the cross has changed all that. Our wounded race could not begin to attempt such a massive task of healing the rift. Man could never lift the curse on his own. So the Father sent His Eternal Word to become man and accomplish the task in our place, to substitute for us. For the immortal, infinite God to empty Himself and unite Himself to a limited, vulnerable human nature was already a feat of unimaginable love and humility. But for redemption to be complete, the hero would have to withstand the greatest fury that hell and fallen humanity could hurl against him – the cross. If death should come from the self-reliance of man, life would come from obedience to God, even execution on the cross.

According to Deuteronomy 21:23 everyone hanged on a tree was cursed. It was punishment due for grievous crimes. Our Lord Jesus thus came under this curse. Yet, Saint Peter explains more clearly what was involved: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.” (1 Peter 2:24) Our Lord accepted the “curse” we should have received, and underwent death in our place –so that we might not die but live. What the Son of God endured for us was the depth of human depravity, ugliness and humiliation. We need to be reminded of the tremendous personal cost of love. Everyone knows the cross is about the love of God. But it is no cheap, sentimental, fuzzy kind of love. It is a costly, deep, rich, free, painful kind of love. We must never forget this to truly appreciate the significance of Good Friday and what our Lord did for us.

We can say “Thank God it’s Friday” with a sigh of relief. Whew! The week is over. Once again the end of the week came just in time before the breakdown. It’s Friday night - we can relax, unwind, and enjoy thoughts of a weekend without appointments and traffic jams. But today, we say “Thank God it’s Friday” because it’s God who’s on the Cross. Today, we finally experience the ultimate break – not just from the tedium of a tiring week, but a break from sin, from death, and from darkness. Only God could heal us—save us—from the curse of sin and all the darkness it brings into life. Good Friday is good because the Word of God in the flesh—Jesus Christ—could endure on our behalf all the suffering and death that is the consequence of human sin. All the pain, emptiness and despair from betrayal, injustice, illness, lost and lack of love is brought to the Cross by Jesus. He assumed the curse we had wrought through our disobedience, by offering himself as a sacrifice of perfect obedience. He Himself bore our sins in His body upon the cross, so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed. (1 Peter 2:24). For this reason, we say without hesitation, without the slightest regret, without any trace of doubt, “Thank God it’s Friday”!

The Bloodless and Bloody Sacrifice

Maundy Thursday

The readings provide us with a historical evolution of the Paschal Sacrifice, from the bloody sacrifice of the Lamb at the time of the Exodus, the Passover, to the bloodless sacrifice of the Mass as attested by St Paul in his letter to the Corinthians. The all important and most essential ingredient of the Passover meal, the lamb, seems to be missing from the Christian ritual. But is it? In place of the Lamb, we have Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Instead of being deficient, the Christian sacrifice of the Mass is wholly sufficient and far superior than the pale shadow of the past.

But the whole point of the lamb to be sacrificed was the shedding of its blood. Blood is valuable not for the pain it caused but for life it gave. In the Old Testament, blood represented life itself, and therefore in ancient Jewish worship, the blood of a sacrificed animal had to be poured as an offering to God, the author of that life, and it was never to be consumed by men. It would be sprinkled on the congregation as how holy water today is sprinkled on us. It was literally a blood bath! According to Leviticus 17:11, there can be no reconciliation without blood. Since blood is a cleansing and enlivening agent, renewing life, it takes away the deadness of sin.

The ceremonial use of blood is also found in the ritual associated with the first Passover. To avert the disaster of the sentence of death which hung over every first born son living in Egypt, the blood of the lamb was shed and then painted across the doors of the Israelites. The lambs served as a substitute for Israel’s first born son, their blood was the price paid so as to spare the blood of these Israelites. This ritual was repeated every year to commemorate this foundational event of the Israelites and during the time of Jesus, the Passover lambs were slaughtered at noon outside the city wall. This foreshadowed the sacrifice of Christ, the “Lamb of God,” who shed His blood and died for us on a Friday afternoon outside the city wall of Jerusalem.

But in a kind of spiritual jiu-jitsu, Christ poured out His own blood, making a perfect offering to God. Then in true generosity, He transformed blood from a thing offered by man to God into something given as a free gift from God to man. Moreover, it was made accessible in a way proper to human beings: sacramentally present in the Eucharist. No longer gruesome or taboo, it became a means of metaphysical cleansing and entry into divine life. Because Christ shed His blood for us, it is no longer necessary for blood to be shed when offering a sacrifice to God. We offer the bloodless sacrifice of bread and wine, because that is how Christ instituted the Eucharist. Today we offer the “sacrifice”, the offering of bread and wine, without shedding blood.

The author of the letter to the Hebrews noted the distinction between the Old and New covenantal sacrifice: “In fact, according to the Law, practically every purification takes place by means of blood; and if there is no shedding of blood, there is no remission. Only the copies of heavenly things are purified in this way; the heavenly things themselves have to be purified by a higher sort of sacrifice than this.” Far from being inferior, the sacrifice of Christ which is perpetuated by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the sacrifice of a “higher sort.” The Jews shed the blood of lambs which failed to take away their sins despite repeating the ceremony year in year out. But our Lord shed His own blood on the cross, once and for all, rendering the old sacrifice obsolete and inaugurating the supreme sacrifice of the Holy Mass for all times until the end of this age.

The gospel seems to add another odd ritual to the already reworked Passover meal - the washing of feet. At first glance, this second ritual seems disconnected to the first. Though not mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels, foot washing could most likely be presumed before the start of the meal, as in every meal, as the disciples marched in from the dusty streets and would at least offer the courtesy to their colleagues to ensure that their feet were relatively clean (and odourless) when positioned near their neighbour’s face (remember that they would have to be in a reclining position, with bodies and feet close to each other). But what was novel about this action and which draws our attention to this seemingly innocuous ritual is the reversal of roles - instead of the servant washing the feet of the master, it is the master who stoops down to wash the feet of his subordinates.

Our first impression of this reversal would be to conclude that Jesus is indeed extremely humble. But is this the only moral lesson which we can assign to His action? If this is so, was Jesus not guilty of partaking in some performative act of virtue signalling - “look at me and see how humble I am”? Yes, humility is certainly an important theme but actually a sub theme to two others. Our Lord’s act of foot-washing is both a symbol of His humble outpouring of love expressed by His sacrificial death on the cross and an example of how His followers should act: “I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you.”

But there is something more to this action which ties it back to the sign of the blood. The significance of this action can be fully understood in the Book of the Apocalypse 7:14. In response to a question by St John the seer, the elder provides this explanation of the multitude arrayed in white robes, holding palms in their hands and worshipping the Lamb: “These are the people who have been through the great trial; they have washed their robes white again in the blood of the Lamb.” Here lies one of the greatest paradoxical imageries in scripture, the blood of Christ, the slain but now resurrected Lamb of God, cleanses, leaving the saints spotlessly clean, not covered with the blood and gore of their martyrdom. Blood and spotless-ness can both co-exist in the sacraments of redemption, the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Sacrament of the New Passover and the Sacrament of Penance, confession.

The appointed hour has come. We have escaped the whirlwind of our lives to gather, not in the cenacle but in this Church. We are weary. Lord knows that we are weary. Weary of the discipline of Lent, the tumult of life, the empty promises of love and the sting of betrayal of friends. So many are so weary that they cannot bear to look upon the bruised, scarred and bloodied face of our Lord on the cross. It is just too painful. But if we care to look, our Lord wishes to show us how love looks like. It’s not worn as a badge or as a slogan emblazoned on our t-shirts. It’s not sweet platitudes or found in boxes of chocolates or large bouquets of roses. There is nothing warm or fuzzy, nice or sentimental about it. So, what does love look like? It looks like the cross. It looks bloody and gory but now made spotless in the purity of the Holy Eucharist. To love means to follow Christ, and this is what He did: “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Phil. 2:8)

Face of the Father's Mercy

Fourth Sunday of Lent Year C

The parable of the Prodigal Son needs no introduction. It is perhaps the most moving of the Lord’s parables. Its length helps with character development which you don’t see much in the other parables, and this is why the story is able to endear us to each of its three main characters. Although the common title of the parable seems to focus on the wayward younger son, who squanders his inheritance and finally makes his way back to his father when he has lost everything, hoping to get a second chance, the characters and sub-stories of both sons serve solely to reveal the heart of the father, the true protagonist of this parable.

If Christ often inserts Himself into most of His parables which involve people instead of objects, this is one of those rare parables where none of its characters seem to point to Him. The spotlight is on the father, a clear reference to the Heavenly Father. Nowhere else does the Lord portray the Father in heaven more vitally, more plainly.

The impressiveness of this parable is that the story begins with the fact that the father grants the son’s request and hands over to him, his portion of the inheritance without any question - no argument, no lecturing, no threat of cutting-off this son although the son’s action tantamount to him wishing his father dead. That’s when you get your inheritance - when your parents are dead. But this son can’t wait for his father’s natural death and demands that which does not belong to him while his father is still alive. We may find the younger son’s behaviour odious and disgusting but little do we realise that many of us suffer from a similar issue. Many of us have an enormous sense of entitlement, feeling that we deserve special treatment, or that we have the right to something. We fail to recognise that everything we possess, all the imaginable and unimaginable goods which we possess are actually unmerited gifts from God. We have no claim or right to them but yet God, in His loving mercy and generosity, grants it to us even though we are undeserving.

The older son is no better. He too thinks that he is entitled to something because of his hard work and loyalty. He forgets that true love is unmerited – love does not have a price tag to be bought nor can you earn it. Instead of recognising his father’s love and generosity and that everything the father possesses is already his, the elder son only has resentment in his heart, resentment born once again from a skewed sense of entitlement. Once again, the father shows mercy to the older boy as he did to the younger one. Both are undeserving of his love, and yet not a harsh word from the father for the both of them.

As I had pointed out earlier, the remarkable thing about this parable is that it says nothing about the role of Jesus. He is definitely not to be identified with either the elder son nor the younger boy. All of us can identify with either one of them or perhaps even both, at some time or another. The emphasis of the whole story is the father, who gives us a glimpse of how much our Heavenly Father loves us and seeks to reconcile sinners to Himself. But our Lord is present in a special way – He is present in the telling of the story - He is the Word that reports this reconciliation. He is the judgment which the father passes - the son who is lost is now found, the one who died is now alive again. Jesus is the Word through which God establishes His eternal reconciliation with the world.

This is what St Paul attempts to tell us in the second reading: “It was God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the work of handing on this reconciliation. In other words, God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not holding men’s faults against them, and he has entrusted to us the news that they are reconciled.” The work of reconciliation is accomplished through Christ, and never apart from Him. Not by bypassing Him, but “through Christ” and “in Christ” does the Father reconcile us to Himself. For it is Christ who came to seek the lost until they are found, and it is Christ who died for us so that we may live. As St Paul beautifully explains: “For our sake God made the sinless one into sin, so that in him we might become the goodness of God.”

We’ve heard the parable of the Prodigal Son, and we have witnessed the astounding love of the father. But how do we make sense of this? There is one verse in the Sermon on the Plain that gives clarity to this parable: “Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate” (Luke 6:36). In commenting on this verse, Pope Francis asserts that “Mercy is the very heart of God!” This is the heart of the father in the parable. He accepted both of his sons, though he did not agree with what they did. He loved them completely, showing understanding, acceptance, and most of all, a divine forgiveness. His heart was completely open.

God’s mercy always gives us a second chance to encounter His Son Jesus Christ and to believe in Him. No matter how skeptical or doubtful we may be; no matter how far we have strayed from the experience of communion with Christ, in and through His Church; and no matter how seriously we have sinned, Jesus always reaches out to us with open arms. He embraces us and invites us to experience His friendship and His forgiveness. Nothing we have ever done could keep us out of the heart of our loving and all-forgiving God. Just as how the father welcomes back the prodigal son, we see the action of our Lord Jesus mysteriously hidden within the action of the father. Our Lord Jesus is the embrace of the Heavenly Father for fallen humanity as He stretched out His hands on the cross; He is the Bridegroom who weds His bride by placing a gold ring upon her finger; He is the sandal on our feet that makes our journey light; He is the fatted calf, the Lamb of God, sacrificed for our redemption. Yes, our Lord Jesus Christ is present in this tale of forgiveness, mercy and love. He is, as Pope Francis tells us, the face of the Father’s mercy.