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Fifth Sunday of Easter Year A
You may have heard this glib cliched line: “Jesus is the answer.” Some cheekily retort, “but the answer to what? What exactly is the question?” But what I’m going to say today is going to ruffle some feathers, if not shock and scandalise many of you. Before we say that Jesus is the answer, we must recognise that Jesus is also the problem.
Jesus is the reason that the Christian faith is a problem. See what He claims in today’s gospel. “…No one can come to the Father except through Me” is the bone of contention. There is no way of getting around this declaration, unless you choose to ignore it or expunge it from the Bible for being too fundamentally exclusive. He tells us in no uncertain terms: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” Not just any way, or one among many truths or merely a path of life among other valid paths. He is The Way, The Truth, and The Life.
That Jesus is the only necessary Saviour of all is a truth that for over twenty centuries – beginning with Peter’s discourse after Pentecost – it was never felt necessity to restate. This truth is, so to speak, the minimum threshold of the faith; it is the primordial certitude, it is among believers the simple and most essential fact. In two thousand years this has never been brought into doubt, not even during the crisis of Arianism, and not even during the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation. The fact of needing to issue a reminder of this in our time tells us the extent of the gravity of the current situation.
When people claim that all religions are principally the same, with merely insignificant and superficial differences, as open-minded as they may sound, it actually betrays a certain ideological superiority and ignorance. No one could ever possibly make this claim unless he is abysmally ignorant of what the different religions of the world actually teach. Certainly, there are similarities and analogous parallels, but there are also many differences and even contradictions between truth claims. It doesn’t take a genius to tell you that there’s a world of a difference when one religion that states that there is no God and another one that asserts it, and one could obviously not sweep this inconsistency under the carpet and term it as ‘insignificant’ or ‘non-essential.’ To ignore or to collapse every single difference and contradiction into a single voluminous salad bowl of beliefs is like thinking the earth is flat.
Christianity is not a system of man's search for God but a story of God's search for man. Throughout the Bible, man-made religion fails but God continues to reach down, in spite of our failure. There is no human way up the mountain, only a divine way down. Of course, if these roads to salvation were indeed man made, it would indeed be stupid and arrogant to absolutise any one of them. But if God made the road and the path, He must indeed be a fickle and schizophrenic deity who enjoys confusing his creation by creating contradictory alternatives. But if He made only one path – One Way, One Truth and One source of Life, His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ and the Church which He has left behind as that one certain path for all humanity – then it is humility and not arrogance to accept this one road from God, and it is arrogance, not humility, to insist that all our man made roads are as good as God’s God-made one.
To the common argument that this fundamental understanding of salvation radically changed as a result of the Second Vatican Council, it is good to have a look at what the Council Fathers actually taught and not what we assume they taught. The Council taught that on the one hand there is much deep wisdom and value, or “rays of truth” in other religions and that the Christian should respect them and learn from them. But, on the other hand, the claims of Christ and His Church can never be lessened, compromised, or relativised. The Church continues to proclaim that God intends the salvation of all, and He does so through the mediation of His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, and the Church, which is His Body. And yet those who through no fault of their own do not know Christ or His Church, but who follow the dictates of their conscience as prompted by the Spirit, may also be saved. But their salvation too comes from Christ and never apart from Him. That is why the Church continues to proclaim that God intends the salvation of all, and He does so through the mediation of His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, and the Church, which is His Body.
Has this position changed in 2026 with a new pope. Without skipping a beat, Pope Leo recently reiterated this truth to a group of altar servers who had come from France: “Who will come to save us? Not only from our sufferings, from our limits and our mistakes, but even from death itself? The answer is perfectly clear and resounds in the History of 2000 years: only Jesus comes to save us, no-one else: because only he has the power to do so – He is God Almighty in person – and because he loves us. Saint Peter said it emphatically: ‘There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved’ (Acts 4:12). Never forget these words, dear friend: imprint them on your heart, and place Jesus at the centre of your lives.”
Though the world may appear to be a free marketplace of ideas, opinions, theologies and ideologies, where we are constantly tempted to come up with a recipe or salad of ideas, we Christians have already made our choice. There may be many rivers which may ultimately lead to the sea, but there is only one Way, one Truth and one Life that leads to Heaven, it is Christ, for He is both the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the Source of Life itself and its destined End.
Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C
One of the most common accusations and attacks heaped by modern folks on Christians, especially Catholics, is that we are too judgmental. What makes this accusation most stinging is that we are rebuked with the assertion that “Jesus never judged anyone.” Is this a valid accusation? How should we respond to it? For many Catholics, the only way to deflect the accusation is to remain silent or adopt a relativistic approach to morality - “there is no right or wrong” or “there is no absolute truth,” or “it depends on how you look at it.”
But perhaps the most common argument to avoid being seen as judgmental is to cite our Lord on this issue. Didn’t our Lord Himself say: “judge not, that you be not judged?” (Matthew 7:1). Or perhaps His most famous warning on the hypocrisy of blind judgmentalism which we just heard in today’s gospel: “Why do you observe the splinter in your brother’s eye and never notice the plank in your own?” It is quite convenient to take this saying out of context but if we continue reading the rest of the text, we realise that our Lord is actually proposing to us a correct way of judging rather than forbidding all forms of judgment.
The first step in making a correct judgment is honest and humble introspection. “Take the plank out of your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to take out the splinter that is in your brother’s eye.” One cannot apply two standards: “Rules for Thee but none for me.” If we wish to judge others, we must be ready to judge ourselves, to honestly recognise and call out our own prejudices, biases, hidden agendas, and sinful thoughts and actions.
The second step is that we should avoid making quick, rash and premature judgment, to avoid “judging a book by its cover.” In the first reading, Ben Sira provides us with four illustrations or examples by which we should test someone’s worth by observing their speech. But in the gospel, our Lord while still affirming that one’s speech is an indication of what is in his heart, appears to move beyond speech to other aspects of a person’s behaviour: “every tree can be told by its own fruit.”
Finally, we must make a clear distinction between judging someone’s behaviour and judging the eternal state of his soul. Although as rational beings, we are capable of doing the first and should in certain cases, the latter solely belongs to God. We cannot claim to read the thoughts nor accurately discern the intentions of others. We can draw some conclusions from their actions and behaviours but we cannot claim to be certain of their guilt or innocence purely through speculation. Even courts acknowledge that one is innocent until proven guilty. Likewise, if we have to presume, we should always try to presume the best rather than the worst. Every good Christian should be ready to give a favourable interpretation to the speech, deeds and behaviour of another than to be quick to condemn them.
It is also important for us to distinguish between making a valid moral judgment and being judgmental. It is imperative that we learn to do the former as an exercise of conscience while making sure that we avoid the latter. Pointing out the truth is not judgmental. It is not judgmental to make a moral appraisal of whether a person’s actions are sinful or whether the person is likely culpable for them. Our entire justice system is dependent on this. The refusal to make such judgment would result in the collapse of the whole system and would be a travesty of justice.
Secondly, it is not judgmental to have a negative emotional reaction to what is objectively evil. Thirdly, it is not judgmental to act with prudence when dealing with someone who has cheated us or hurt us. We should not be so gullible as to trust everyone without reservation. We must take the necessary precautions to avoid further harm to oneself or others.
If we still seem hesitant about engaging in judging or correcting others, know that Jesus did it all the time; He showed us what we must do by His own example. When the apostles were afraid that the violent storm would lead to their perishing, Jesus rebuked them, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith” (Matthew 8:26). This was a judgment. In a pointed attack on the duplicity of the religious leaders, Jesus called them a “brood of vipers” (Matthew 12:34). Another judgment. When saving the woman caught in adultery from being stoned by the religious leaders, Jesus showed her mercy yet told her to “not sin anymore” (John 8:11), recalling her past life and summoning her to a conversion of life. This, too, was a judgment.
If we can spare a soul from sadness, sorrow and despair by judging them and assisting them in converting from sin, then we have shown them great love. To not judge and to turn a blind eye to the grave sins of others is a form of false compassion and sinful neglect. True Good Samaritans take the time and effort to come to the aid of those who are suffering because of the assault of sin.
So, when faced with the immoral behaviour of others, how can we be sure to rightly judge behaviour? In our Lord’s own words, we must start by taking the plank out of our own eyes—by making sure we are doing the best we can to live lives of good example. We must also strive to form our consciences correctly, so we know sin when we see it, even in ourselves. Finally, we must not jump to conclusions about another’s culpability in sin. Take time to know all the facts while always presuming the innocence of the other until proven guilty. Doing all this will help to ensure that our admonitions are seen as the loving actions we intend them to be—meant to help our loved ones live their lives in ways that are pleasing to God. Only then can our efforts be effective in helping to take these ugly specks out of our brothers’ eyes.
Fifth Sunday of Easter Year A
Many modern day gurus of semi-religious motivational content will assure you that the journey of life is more important than the destination. Basically, this is implying that it doesn’t matter where you are heading as long as you are moving and making progress. As clever or profound as this may sound, it is pure hogwash. What’s the point of making a journey when it takes you nowhere or takes us in different directions where we will never get to meet? Even the yellow brick road led Dorothy of Kansas and her motley companions to the fabled Emerald City, and we all know that the Emerald City wasn’t her final destination. The truth is that getting to our destination and knowing which route we must take to get there are both equally important. We cannot discount one while elevating the other.
Unfortunately, this is what many modern folks have bought into and we have a name for it - “relativism.” It is basically arguing that everyone has chosen or should be given the freedom to choose their own path and way - that every idea, opinion or thought is as good as another. In this way, by not enforcing “one way,” we can avoid friction or conflict and maintain harmony. These cliched statements are some of the popular taglines we hear: “there is no right or wrong answer, it’s how you look at it,” or “let’s agree to disagree.” As innocent sounding and pragmatic as these statements appear to be, they actually violate the basic foundation of logic - the principle of non-contradiction: a thing cannot be both right or wrong at the same time. Either one is right, the other has to be wrong. And when we sacrifice this basic logical principle at the altar of niceties, we are actually rejecting Truth or claiming that truth is malleable and can be reshaped to fit our agenda or whenever it is convenient. Without a firm anchor in objective truth, modern man finds himself constantly toss by the waves of one opinion or idea after another. Without truth, everything would be a lie.
Relativism does not only obscure our destination but makes us regard our origins as irrelevant. Otto von Habsburg, the head of that imperial dynasty who died in 2011, rightly noted that “those who don’t know where they come from do not know where they are heading—because they don’t know where they stand.” Most people today would never acknowledge that they are God’s creature and that human life begins in the womb. Well, the first may require a faith confession, but the second should simply be an observable phenomenon from science. Yet, both are called into question these days because they do not fit within the larger secular humanistic narrative which promotes abortion.
Can Catholics accept relativism as a viable belief? Well, the gospel gives us this answer. Jesus, without mincing His words, says it as it is: “No one can come to the Father except through me.” This is an absolute claim that does not admit exceptions. “No one!” Our Lord tells us in no uncertain terms: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” Not just any way, or one among many equally valid ways. No! He is the Way, the Truth and the Life! If you find this troubling, well, be assured that non-Christians for centuries had found this equally troubling and many Christians were persecuted with some going to their graves defending this truth with their lives, unrelenting to the end. This is why persecution is the hallmark of Christianity because our beliefs are unpopular and fly against the mainstream penchant for relativistic ideas.
Christ is not just the Way, but as St Thomas Aquinas tells us, He is both the goal and the way - He is both the destination and the way to get to that destination. St Thomas Aquinas explains it this way: “In His human nature He is the way, and in His divine nature He is the goal. Therefore, speaking as man He says: I am the way; and speaking as God He adds: the truth and the life. These two words are an apt description of this goal.”
Other paths may seem more delightful, more attractive by appearance, easier to trod, less challenging, but there is only one Way that leads to the Father. It is Jesus who is both the Way and our goal because He and the Father are one. This is why the Church must proclaim and continues to proclaim that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. It is a subversive claim. It is a scandalous claim but it is a true claim, and for this reason, it is the only claim which can assure us of Eternal Life. Of course, the Church also recognises that those who do not know Christ or His Church through no fault of their own, will not be penalised. They too may be saved if they follow the dictates of their conscience as prompted by the Holy Spirit. But their salvation too comes from Christ and never apart from Him.
Though the world may appear to be a free market place of ideas, opinions, theologies and ideologies, we Christians have already made our choice. And so we turn to the great Angelic Doctor, St Thomas Aquinas, for his timeless words of advice: “Therefore hold fast to Christ if you wish to be safe. You will not be able to go astray, because He is the way. He who remains with Him does not wander in trackless places; he is on the right way. Moreover he cannot be deceived, because He is the truth, and He teaches every truth. And He says: ‘For this I was born and for this I have come, to bear witness to the truth.’ Nor can He be disturbed, because He is both life and the giver of life. For He says: ‘I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly’ (John 10:10).”
Fourth Sunday of Easter Year A
Good Shepherd Sunday
Preparing a homily can be a real uphill task. Not because we lack inspiration or the words of scripture are dull and uninspiring. On the contrary, there is so much fodder in scriptures to build upon. The real challenge is our audience and their receptivity or lack of it: Do I tell them what they want to hear or do I tell them the truth?
Sadly, in our culture today, these two options are often mutually exclusive. The truth is hard to hear, so we prefer to hear what we like, even if it’s not what we need. Ours is an age that flourishes in compromise, steadfastness to the truth is hardly tolerated. Thus, the pastor is often faced with tension of either preaching the uncomfortable truth of God’s Word or watering it down to make it more agreeable to the listener. As it says in 2 Timothy 4:3, “The time is sure to come when people will not accept sound teaching, but their ears will be itching for anything new and they will collect themselves a whole series of teachers according to their own tastes.” Sadly, we are living in such times!
Here’s the paradox of preaching: If I were to tell the audience what they do not wish to hear, would I risk not having my voice recognised as the sheep recognises the voice of the shepherd? Or if I choose to pander to the crowd and tell them what they want to hear, am I not robbing them of their right to receive “sound teaching”? In this sense, would I not be more a “brigand”, a robber, than a shepherd?
On this Good Shepherd Sunday, I want to set out several uncomfortable topics which are listed by the readings as sine qua non to the preacher’s arsenal of homiletic themes. As much as these topics seem unpopular and triggering, they provide the necessary nutritious sustenance to our hungering flock. To provide them with anything less or innovatively different would either be to starve them of solid spiritual food or provide them with theological indigestion.
First on the list is everyone’s favourite - Sin! Now you may think that this is stating the obvious - isn’t sin one of the essential themes of religion? It is but the truth is that in recent times, most of us attempt to skirt the topic or try to soften it by using some wish-washy euphemistic substitute. We preach consoling, encouraging and invigorating sermons but avoid making mention of sin because we fear that this would make our audience uncomfortable. We have transformed our funerals into rituals of canonisation whilst ignoring the fact that one of the main reasons for a funeral is that the deceased sinner needs us to pray FOR him and not pray TO him. We hide sin under the cover of every psychological concept or newly minted syndrome, thus taking away all culpability and liability from the individual.
So many, including many shepherds, have forgotten this simple truth - if we ignore sin, salvation is meaningless. The good news of the Lord’s death and resurrection means nothing if we don’t have a clear picture of our desperate sinful condition. Christ came to save us from our sins, not just to inspire us and make us feel good. Many of us priests have forgotten that we are called to be shepherds of souls and not just motivational speakers or counsellors. St Peter in the first reading fully understood his role as a shepherd of souls - convicting his audience of their sins, calling them to repentance, and saw his mission as participating in Christ’s mission to save his audience from this “perverse generation.” In saving souls, he knew he had to risk losing his audience’s approval and even far worse, losing his own life, which he did.
The second topic is suffering and the cross. Now, most people are keenly aware of their own sufferings and that of others. This often leads either to resentment or despair. One of the most common manifestations of narcissism is playing the victim: “poor me!” We complain that we have received a raw deal despite our attempts in following Christ and obeying His commandments. The reason for our complaints is that we expect to be rewarded. Many Protestant pastors would, therefore, choose to offer a Christianity without the cross - what is pejoratively known as the “gospel of prosperity” - and sad to say, many Catholic preachers have likewise jumped on the same bandwagon. The popularity of the prosperity gospel is understandable. Who would not wish for an alleviation of one’s pains and sufferings? The gospel which preaches the cross as inevitable is naturally unpopular.
And yet, this is what we must do, as St Peter spells out in the second reading: “The merit, in the sight of God, is in bearing punishment patiently when you are punished after doing your duty. This, in fact, is what you were called to do, because Christ suffered for you and left an example for you to follow the way he took.” The truth is that we all suffer to a greater or lesser degree, whether we like or not. But how we suffer and what we do with that suffering makes all the difference. Suffering for a Christian is a priceless opportunity to draw close to the suffering Christ, to carry His cross and consciously share in His redemptive suffering.
Third, the Good Shepherd offers us objective truth instead of just one opinion or direction or path among many. Living in an increasingly globalised and multicultural society, there is a great temptation to just succumb to the heresy of relativism - that all truths - even those which seem to contradict each other - are equally valid. Ironically, the heresy of relativism has been established as a new form of orthodoxy, and anyone who disagrees with this position would be summarily cancelled, the modern version of excommunication. The gospel provides us, however, with an important but uncomfortable truth - in a marketplace of ideas, only the Good Shepherd, the true Shepherd, can offer us saving truth “so that they may have life and have it to the full.” Beware of false teachers who pander to our “itching ears” and give us what is according to our respective “tastes.”
Now if this is what we shepherds are called to do by virtue of our vocation as pastors, shepherds, what does your vocation entail? Being described as “sheep” doesn’t sound flattering. In fact, it often invokes an image of mindless clique behaviour, having to be sorted out, constantly losing our way, and having to be minded and controlled by others. Unlike the parables involving shepherds and sheep found in the Synoptic Gospels, St John provides us with a more nuanced and mature image of the sheep. His are the sheep which recognise the voice of the shepherd and knows how to distinguish between counterfeits and the real thing. His are sheep that are so tuned in to their shepherd that they will follow him, trusting him that he will bring them to no harm. His are the sheep who understand that they will enjoy true freedom only when they submit themselves to the authority of the Shepherd. And they do so knowing that only the Good Shepherd alone can offer them “life and have it to the full.” As your priests, we too are not exempt from being sheep within the fold of Jesus the Good Shepherd. As we pray for our shepherds in the church, the bishops and priests, that they will take after the heart of the Good Shepherd, let us also pray for ourselves that we will all have the confidence and faith to place our lives in the hands of the One who alone has assured us that we will be safe.
