We belong to God

Twenty Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Most people these days seem obsessed with image, that is, how they appear to others and are perceived by the public. Politicians craft carefully curated images. Social media is a gallery of self-portraits, filtered and perfected. We let people see facets of our lives but only those parts which are favourable to us or serve our purpose. Church leaders wish to be perceived as holy and upright. Currency itself bears the face of power. And yet today’s readings confront us with a far more profound question of image and belonging: Whose image do we bear, and to whom do we ultimately belong?

In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah presents us with a startling figure: Cyrus, the pagan emperor of Persia. God addresses him as His “chosen,” literally His “anointed,” His messiah. “It is for the sake of my servant Jacob, of Israel my chosen one, that I have called you by your name, conferring a title though you do not know me.” Cyrus is chosen, not because of his faith, not because he worshipped the God of Israel, in fact, as the prophet noted, Cyrus did not even know the God of Israel. He was chosen purely for the sake of God’s people. He is an instrument in the divine hand, used for a purpose far greater than his own ambitions. He conquers, he opens doors, he restores the exiles—yet he remains largely unaware of the One who grasps his right hand. He seems to be the most powerful figure in the ancient world and yet there is another power far greater than his who is pulling the strings. This is what it means to be chosen by God. We take no credit in us being called and chosen. We did not earn it, we are not deserving of it, we have no achievements to show. And yet, God chooses us, just because He can!

Contrast this with Caesar in the Gospel. The Pharisees and Herodians approach our Lord with flattery and a trap: “Master, we know that you are an honest man and teach the way of God in an honest way, and that you are not afraid of anyone, because a man’s rank means nothing to you. Tell us your opinion, then. Is it permissible to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Our Lord was not distracted by the seeming flattery and was not naive enough to fall into their trap. Instead, He asks for the coin. “Whose head is this? Whose name?” “Caesar’s,” they reply. Then comes the masterful answer: “Very well, give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar – and to God what belongs to God.” In some translations it is seen as a debt “repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar …”

Caesar’s image is stamped on the coin. His claim is political, economic, and, in the imperial cult, quasi-divine. Where local deities used to adorn the coinage of ancient civilisation, Caesar had the audacity to put his own image on the coin. That’s really making a loud statement - Caesar is claiming to be God. He not only demands tribute as a sign of allegiance but also a state-imposed cult that worships him. Yet our Lord quietly demotes him. Our Lord’s actions are clearly treasonous which is one of the objectives of His enemies, to either set Him up for the high crime of treason or place Him with the pagans as an idolater. The words of our Lord are not meant to be construed as a political reasoning that justifies the separation between the power of the State and that of religion or the Church. Rather it is placing Caesar’s authority under that of God’s, the fount of all power and authority. Caesar may have rights over the things that bear his image, but those rights are limited. There is a higher claim, a more fundamental belonging, and even Caesar and all rulers must be subject to that.

Here’s the irony behind these historical figures. Cyrus is the unwitting instrument who does not know the God who chooses him. Caesar is the pretender who claims what does not ultimately belong to him. One is used by God without knowing Him; the other is reminded that even imperial power is subordinate to the God who alone is Lord.

And here the readings turn toward us. St Paul writes to the Thessalonians: “We always mention you in our prayers and thank God for you all … (because) God loves you and that you have been chosen.” We too are the chosen. Not by accident of birth or political fortune, but by the free and loving election of God. And the deepest reason for that choosing is written into our very being: we are made in the image and likeness of God, as we read in the Book of Genesis. This is the clue to unpacking the teaching of our Lord in the gospel. The coin bears Caesar’s image; therefore it belongs to Caesar. We bear God’s image; therefore we belong to God. Everything we are—our intellect, our freedom, our capacity to love, our very existence—is stamped with the divine likeness. To “give to God what belongs to God” is not merely to offer a portion of our time or resources. It is to surrender the entire self - mind, heart, soul and being.

Being chosen is not a privilege that excuses us from responsibility. It is a vocation that calls us to live differently. The chosen are summoned to a life of gratitude and joy. This life of gratitude and joy is sustained and expressed through the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity. This is what St Paul tells us in the second reading.

In our current political climate where so many Malaysians have grown disillusioned and disheartened with our political leaders, with our Caesars, it is good to know that we have these three virtues that will provide us with the correct lens to view our future.

Faith is the recognition that God is God, and there is no other. Faith allows us to see beyond the surface of political power and to trust the hidden hand of Providence that can use even unlikely instruments for His purposes.

Hope keeps us from despair when the world seems dominated by Caesars of every kind. Hope remembers that history is not finally in the hands of the powerful, but in the hands of the God who once grasped the right hand of a pagan king for the sake of His people. Hope looks toward the definitive reign of Christ, when every image that competes with God’s will be revealed as temporary.

And finally, Charity—love—completes the triad. Because we bear God’s image, we are called to love as God loves: freely, generously, without calculation. It is the joyful response of those who know they have first been loved and chosen. Cyrus was chosen without knowing the Chooser. Caesar claimed what was not his. We, by contrast, have been given the grace to know the One who has chosen us. We know whose image we bear. And imitating our Creator, we must love as He does.

Therefore we can give to Caesar what is due—respect for legitimate authority, civic responsibility, the ordinary duties of citizenship—without ever surrendering what belongs exclusively to God: our hearts, our conscience, our ultimate allegiance, our very selves. Never forget that when you were created in your mother’s womb, you received the indelible image of the living God. At baptism, you received the indelible mark of Christ, the One who shows us what God’s image looks like. You are chosen. Live, then, in gratitude. Live in joy. Live by faith, hope, and charity. Give to God what belongs to God—and discover that in so doing, you lose nothing but instead, you receive everything.

Eat and Live

Twenty Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

There is an old proverb that still cuts close to the bone: “Eat to live, not live to eat.” It used to be the signature response of the late Fr Anthony Chan whenever asked the reason for his choice of a bowl of plain porridge when a sumptuous array of delectable food choices was placed before him. In his signature Kwangtung accent, he will readily chirp: “Eat to live, not live to eat.”

Although most Malaysians would scoff at the wisdom of the saying, many would secretly nod in agreement when we hear it. We may not like it, but you don’t need to like something for it to be true. We know the difference between taking food so that the body can keep going and turning every meal into the purpose of existence. Yet how easily we reverse the order. We live for the next satisfaction, the next comfort, the next distraction, as though the banquet of this world were the final destination rather than a provisional provision for the journey.

Today’s readings refuse to let us settle for mere survival. Our vision should not be so myopic. Our goals should be set higher. The first reading in particular open before us a vision of a feast that is not about filling the stomach but about filling the soul with life that death cannot touch. Isaiah paints the scene with almost embarrassing abundance: on this mountain the Lord of hosts will prepare for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines—juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines. He will destroy the veil that covers all peoples, the web woven over all nations; he will destroy death forever. The Lord God will wipe away the tears from every face. This is not a meal to keep us alive for another day. This is the meal that ends death itself. Salvation here is not the clever management of scarcity or the clever avoidance of suffering. It is the definitive overthrow of everything that reduces us to survivors.

The psalmist sings the same truth in quieter tones: “You have prepared a banquet for me in the sight of my foes… In the Lord’s own house shall I dwell for ever and ever.” Just imagine that: even in the dark valley of death, the table is set. The point is not that we never go hungry or never walk through shadow. The psalmist has actually experienced the depths of walking in that valley of the shadow of death. The point he is making is that the Shepherd’s provision is greater than the threat. We do not merely survive the valley; we are led through it to the house where we are meant to dwell forever.

Saint Paul, writing from a place of real deprivation and real abundance, has learned the secret: “I know how to be poor and I know how to be rich too. I have been through my initiation and now I am ready for anything anywhere: full stomach or empty stomach, poverty or plenty. There is nothing I cannot master with the help of the One who gives me strength.” Notice what he does not say. He does not claim that God will always keep the larder full or the bank account healthy. He claims that the One who strengthens him is enough, whether the plate is full or empty. Survival is not the goal. Communion with Christ is. And that communion supplies whatever is truly needed because “my God will fulfil all your needs, in Christ Jesus, as lavishly as only God can.”

Then comes the parable which our Lord tells in the gospel. A king prepares a wedding feast for his son. The original guests treat the invitation as optional, almost trivial. One goes to his farm, another to his business. It is clear where their priorities lie. Survival is far more important than bearing the risk of offending the king. Call it being presumptuous. This is where they make the greatest mistakes of their lives. In wanting survival above all else, they write their own death warrant and script for destruction. The king’s response is severe, yet the feast is not cancelled. The invitation is thrown wide open: go out into the streets and invite everyone you find, bad and good alike. The hall fills. But one man is found without a wedding garment and is cast out into the darkness. How do we make sense of this strange ending?

The answer is found in understanding the very purpose of the telling of this parable. The parable is not primarily about etiquette. It is about the difference between showing up and belonging. Many are invited; few are chosen. The wedding garment is not a fashion statement. It is the disposition of a heart that has accepted the invitation on the King’s terms, not its own. It is the recognition that this feast is not one more social obligation or one more opportunity for self-indulgence. It is the banquet of the Son, the feast of salvation where we “eat to live,” the place where death is destroyed and tears are wiped away.

Here the proverb “eat to live and not live to eat” finds its Christian depth. We are invited to eat so that we may live—not the thin life of biological survival, nor to feed our hedonistic urge for binging, not even the slightly thicker life of moral respectability, but the life that is communion with the Bridegroom. The Eucharist is the weekly rehearsal of that final banquet. Here we put into practice what we profess with mere words: “we eat to live!” The food we receive is not calories for another week of striving. It is the Body of the One who has already conquered death. To approach the altar merely to “get something out of Mass,” or to treat the invitation as one more item on a crowded schedule, is to live to eat. To come hungry for the life that only Christ can give, willing to put on the garment of conversion, is to eat in order to live—and to live forever.

The tragedy of the first guests was not that they were busy. It was that they judged the feast less important than their farms and businesses. The tragedy of the man without the garment was not that he was imperfect, but that he presumed the invitation required nothing of him - it exacted no cost, made no demands, and so “easy come easy go.” Both attitudes reduce the banquet to something manageable, something that fits around our survival strategies. Both of these scenarios serve as warnings to those of us who give excuses when we choose to skip Mass or come spiritually and physically unprepared, just waiting for Mass to end. Some don’t even wait. They are out the door once communion has been received.

So, the question returns to us with quiet force: do we eat to live, or do we live to eat? Do we treat the Lord’s invitation as one more demand on our limited energy, or as the one necessary thing that makes every other effort possible? The table is already set. Not calves and fattened cattle, but the Son of God Himself who has been immolated for our sake on the altar of the cross. Everything is ready. The only question left is whether we will come—and whether we will come clothed in the readiness that the King himself provides. Come to the feast. Not to keep sane or healthy for another day, not doing so grudgingly, but willingly and happily, because you know you are about to receive the life that death cannot touch. Eat, and live.

Take down those walls

Twenty Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Before we take a look at the parable of the vineyard in the first reading and our Lord’s version in gospel, we are going to take a little detour into the literary world. Some of you may be familiar with Oscar Wilde’s parable of the Selfish Giant who had this exceptionally beautiful garden. While the Giant was away visiting a Cornish ogre for seven long years, the local children slipped in and played among the peach trees and the soft green grass. The birds sang, the flowers bloomed, and the children sang with delight. Then the Giant returned and the was incensed by what he saw. He roared in rage and drove these little intruders out. He built a high wall around the garden to secure his property. The garden was his, and his alone.

The children were not the only ones whom the wall kept out. From that moment, Spring forgot the Giant’s garden. The trees refused to blossom. The birds would not sing. Snow, Frost, North Wind and Hail made themselves at home. The Giant sat at his window and wondered why the Spring was so late in coming. He did not understand that it was his own selfishness that had locked the seasons out. Only when he finally tore down the wall, helped a little child into a tree, and opened the garden once more did Spring return—and with it, something far greater.

Wilde’s fairy tale is more than a children’s story. It is a mirror held up to the human heart, and it prepares us perfectly for the parable our Lord tells today.

A landowner plants a vineyard. Unlike the selfish giant, this landowner is generous beyond any measure. He digs a winepress, builds a tower, and leases it to tenants. Notice that it is not the tenants but the landlord who did all the hard work. He does not begrudge them the credit which is obviously due to him and him alone. When the time of harvest comes, he sends his servants to collect the produce. The tenants beat one, kill another, stone a third. He sends more servants. Same treatment. The patience of the landowner is staggering. Finally, he sends his son, thinking, “They will respect my son.” But the tenants, who clearly recognises that this last emissary is the landlord’s own heir and not any ordinary servant, and despite this knowledge, proceed intentionally to commit murder, a crime which no court would exonerate.

What were the crimes of these tenants beyond the final most egregious act of murder? They were not just simply selfishly guarding their property like Wilde’s eponymous giant. They had in fact taken the landlord’s generosity for granted and abused his hospitality and patience: The tenants did not simply refuse to pay the rent. They decided that the vineyard belonged to them. They looked at the fruit and said, “This is mine.” They looked at the son and said, “If we remove him, everything is ours.” Their selfishness was not mere greed; it was a declaration of independence from the one who had planted, protected and provided for the vineyard in the first place. They had committed the first sin of Adam and Eve who envied God and wanted to be like him which is the reason why they believed the lie of the serpent and ate the forbidden fruit. In that tale too, God had planted the Garden of Eden and handed it to our first parents without expecting any payment and they too abuse His hospitality and graciousness by wishing to usurp His power and authority. The greatest act of betrayal.

Isaiah sings the same song centuries earlier. The Lord planted a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He cleared the stones, built a watchtower, hewed out a winepress. He expected grapes—justice and righteousness—but it yielded only wild grapes, sour grapes: bloodshed and the cry of the oppressed. So the hedge is removed, the wall broken down, and the vineyard is trampled. The problem was never the soil or the climate. The problem was the heart that refused to acknowledge the Owner.

We are those tenants. We are that Giant. How easily we build walls around the gifts God has given us—our time, our talents, our relationships, our parish, even our faith—and put up the notice-board: Trespassers will be prosecuted. We treat the vineyard of the world or our little corner of it or our parish or ministry or BEC as private property. We resent the Owner’s claim. We grow envious when others seem to receive more of His attention or favour. And slowly, almost without noticing, we exclude God from the very garden He planted.

The tragedy of the Selfish Giant is not merely that the children were locked out. It is that Spring itself was locked out. The Giant’s selfishness created a permanent winter in the very place that was meant to be a paradise. So too with us. When we exclude God—when we reject others, when we silence the inconvenient word of Scripture, when we push the Son out of the centre of our lives—our hearts grow cold. The fruit of the Spirit withers. Justice becomes injustice. Love becomes self-interest. Peace becomes anxiety.

And yet the parable does not end in pure destruction. Our Lord says the vineyard will be given to other tenants who will produce its fruit. There is always the possibility of a new beginning. The wall can still come down. Ironically, it is the stone that is rejected which will become the corner stone, the foundation of a new beginning for us. If we are ready to welcome Christ into our hearts, like how the selfish Giant welcomed the little child into his garden, we will see the garden of our hearts bloom once again and the cold winter of sin, selfishness, ambition and envy will be cast out. St Paul, writing to the Philippians, shows us the way out of that winter. Prayer opens the gate. Gratitude dismantles the wall. Focusing on what is true and good invites the Spring back in.

The Christian imagery in Oscar Wilde’s parable is not just subtle. It becomes obvious at the pivotal point of the story. The little child whom the Giant lifted into the tree bore the marks of nails in his hands and feet. Seeing these wounds, the Giant flies into a rage threatening to destroy whoever did this to a little child. But what were these wounds? Or rather whose were they. “These are the wounds of Love,” the child said. It becomes clear to the Christian, this child is Christ. And it is He who invites the Giant into His own garden—Paradise – at the end of the story. That too, we pray, will be the ending of our story. If we recognise the One who was wounded for our sake and open the gardens of our hearts to Him, we will have a share of rich treasures of the Heavenly Garden which He has prepared for us for eternity.

Brothers and sisters, the wall does not have to stay up. The notice-board, with the warning “Do Not Trespass!,” can be taken down. The garden can bloom again. All it takes is the decision to stop being the Selfish Giant— and to let the Owner back in. Our possessions, our talents, our families, and all the opportunities we have received ultimately do not belong to us. They belong to the Divine Landlord, the Divine Gardener, who lovingly and gratuitously shares them with us. Let us render to Him what belongs to Him and we will witness a hundredfold harvest of blessings in our lives.

Mercy and Justice

Twenty Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Many of you will know Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. An embittered ex-convict, Jean Valjean, is imprisoned for the “piddling” crime of stealing bread for his starving family. After his release he steals again—this time from a bishop—yet is met not with condemnation but with extraordinary forgiveness. In fact, the bishop generously adds to the loot which Jean Valjean had just stolen from him. One immediately sees the vast difference in the way the civil authorities and the Church mete out justice. The bishop’s mercy transforms this man, hardened by the harsh penitentiary system of the state. Jean Valjean spends the rest of his life serving God and neighbour, demonstrating extraordinary mercy where he had been shown the same by the kindly bishop. Arrayed against him is Inspector Javert, the relentless embodiment of rigid justice, who pursues Valjean without rest, unable to conceive that a man once condemned might ever be more than his crime.

The dramatic tension in the tale is clear: mercy versus justice. Bishop Myriel (and later Valjean) personifies a mercy ready to give second chances, to treat persons according to their concrete situations rather than abstract rules. Javert, on the other hand, personifies a justice that is inflexible, harsh, and blind to conversion. Justice, in Javert’s hands, becomes something that looks distinctly less just. One looks to a future of possibilities, what a person can become with repentance and conversion, while the other only looks to the past, incapable of seeing a path out of an irredeemable situation. It is not Jean Valjean who is trapped in his past, the past littered with mistakes, but it is Inspector Javert who is the one who is truly trapped in his inability to forgive and see beyond his prejudices.

Today’s familiar parable of the labourers in the vineyard evokes a similar tension and the same mixed reactions. To those who identify with the latecomers it is pure good news: God’s mercy is so boundless that even those who respond at the eleventh hour are not excluded from the reward of the Kingdom. But I don’t think our Lord was giving permission to those of you who come late for Mass and excusing such behaviour.

Yet the full-day workers feel the sting of injustice. They have borne the heat of the day, put in the greater effort and time, and still receive the same denarius as those who arrived almost at the close of business. From their perspective the landowner—God—appears neither generous nor just, but a capricious taskmaster who fails to honour merit. So, the question arises, as it does in Les Misérables: Is God unjust in seeming to favour the undeserving? Or is this simply mercy at work? How can we speak of a God who is both just and merciful?

The apparent incompatibility dissolves once we clarify what “justice” means. To do justice is to give a person at least what is due. That is precisely what the landowner does. Every worker had agreed to a denarius for the day’s labour. Those hired first received exactly what was promised; they were not short-changed. Justice is satisfied. Mercy, however, goes further: it gives more than is strictly due. The landowner’s generosity to the latecomers does not violate justice; it exceeds it. As St Thomas Aquinas observes, “God acts mercifully, not indeed by going against His justice, but by doing something more than justice; thus a man who pays another two hundred pieces of money, though owing him only one hundred, does nothing against justice, but acts liberally or mercifully… Hence it is clear that mercy does not destroy justice, but in a sense is the fullness thereof” (Summa Theologiae I, q. 21, a. 3). The Apostle James also reminds us that “Mercy exalts itself above judgment” (Jas 2:13).

What most unsettles us is that the parable seems to contradict a hallmark of human justice: impartiality. “Justice is blind,” we say. We cannot play favourites. Our sense of unfairness arises not from any breach of contract between the landowner and the early workers, but from the comparison we ourselves make between the pay and the hours worked. We assume, with the arrogance of our limited perspective, that remuneration must be based on merit, that it should be strictly proportional to effort, and that God must conform to our measures of fairness. We forget that the landowner is free to do what he wills with what is His.

We mortals in our hubris often forget that God is not bound by our human limitations. His justice and His charity coincide. There is no just action that is not also merciful, and no merciful action that is not perfectly just. He is not a detached, blind judge. He is a Father personally invested in each of His children. Love is not blind; love is bound. He gives not merely what we deserve, but what we need. So, the parable should not be interpreted as an indictment of God’s unfairness but rather of us in being envious. We can’t stand it to see others being better off, more successful, experiencing good fortune. The problem is not God’s partiality but rather our jealousy.

As long as we equate fairness with strict equality of outcome, God’s generosity will never make sense. We must move beyond the reflex that interprets another’s gain as our loss. The plain truth is that none of us—early or late, Valjean or Javert—can earn God’s love or salvation by our own efforts. We would be fools to presume that we come anywhere near deserving the generous payment of eternal life offered by the Eternal Landowner. Can we fault Him for lovingly, freely, and mercifully offering the gift of salvation which none of us deserved?

That should be good news rather than an occasion for envy or complaint. The next time we feel God has been unfair or has overlooked us, let us look to the saints who lived the principle that the last shall be first. They were too gratefully occupied in the vineyard to waste energy calculating who received how much for what. They lived for only one purpose: to love and serve God by loving and serving others. Put others ahead of yourself. Rejoice in their good fortune. Give thanks for the abundant generosity and mercy of God, who continues to invite both the Valjeans—and yes, even the Javerts—into His Kingdom, awaiting only our repentance and conversion of heart.

House of Prayer for All the Peoples

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

The modern impression is that our world has become more multicultural and less tribal which would demand new ways of looking at politics, economics, education and even religion. This, however, is pure hubris and a myth. Globalism in our modern age has led to greater conformity rather than a respecter of differences and diversity. In fact, people who hold different views and positions from the mainstream are often ostracised and even persecuted. The ancients, despite our misgivings of their milieu, were more accepting of pluralistic ideas. Perhaps, the reason for this was that of survival. Harmony among peoples of different cultures, tribes and religions ensured that society for the most part could live in peace and conflict avoided.

It was during this milieu that Christianity emerged, a religion that defied strict categorisations. The two major religious world views of this time was universalism and particularism. By and large, the religious practices of the Roman-Greco world leaned towards universalism, that is the belief that all religions were substantially valid paths to enlightenment and salvation. This would explain the inherent syncretism that could take in the religious beliefs of various cultures and nations and mould them into a potpourri of religious beliefs and values which were mutually complementary. The worship of one god or other did not pose any offence as they were all mutually acceptable. It was basically a matter of personal choice.

On the other hand, Judaism posed a threat to this ancient liberal world view by insisting on a particularistic position that the God whom they worship was the only one true God, which meant that all other so-called “gods” were false, figments of popular imagination, or even worse, demons. It is no wonder that the exclusiveness of the Jews evoked hostility and resentment towards them.

Christianity was born out of a particularistic Judaism amidst the aforementioned diversities of a universalistic pagan world. It was initially viewed as one of the sects of Judaism which contributed to it being the target of hostility, opposition and persecution. But the broad divisions between Jews and Gentiles became dissolved with the proclamation of the universal gospel of Gospel. In such a situation, how did Christianity advocate universalism, yet maintained its particularism inherited from Judaism? How did it present itself as an all-encompassing, yet not a polytheistic or pantheistic religion? How did Christianity break down the proverbial high walls which the Jews insulated themselves from contamination by the surrounding pagan unclean world? We can see that this was not merely a radical Christian innovation but a long thread of God’s plan of salvation for His people. God’s invitation often surprises us by reaching beyond our expected circle of familiars.

Today’s readings invite us to ponder this expansive mercy of God, especially as we reflect on the tension between particularism and universalism in Catholic teaching.

The First Reading from Isaiah 56:1, 6-7 proclaims a bold vision: “for my house will be called a house of prayer for ALL the peoples.” The prophet speaks of foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, keeping the Sabbath and holding fast to the covenant. God promises to bring them to His holy mountain and make them joyful in His house. This is no mere tolerance; it is joyful inclusion. Israel, God’s chosen people exists not for itself alone but as a light to the nations. The particular vocation of Israel did not mean exclusion but was the foundation for a greater universal call. What was prophesied of Israel is now fulfilled in the Church, the new Israel. The Church was established as “lumen gentium” (light to the nations).

In the Second Reading taken from Paul’s letter to the Romans, the apostle had to defend the gospel of Christ which was intended for both Jews and Gentiles from the attacks of Judaisers, a group of early “Christian” teachers who insisted that the Gentiles had to become Jews (receive circumcision, observe the Mosaic law) before they could be lawfully admitted into the Christian family of the New Covenant of Christ. Paul, however, fundamentally disagreed with them. He, the Apostle to the Gentiles, speaks of his ministry to the nations to provoke his fellow Jews to jealousy and ultimately to their salvation. “God never takes back his gifts or revokes his choice.” God’s fidelity to Israel remains, yet His mercy extends to all, including those once considered outsiders. This is the Catholic balance: God works through particular means—the election of Israel, the Incarnation in a specific people and time—yet His saving will is universal.

The Gospel story dramatically brings this tension to life. A Canaanite woman, a Gentile from the region long associated with Israel’s enemies, approaches the Lord. “Sir, Son of David, take pity on me. My daughter is tormented by a devil.” At first, the Lord seems to embody uncompromising particularism: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” Yet, this woman persists with humility and faith and argues: “even house-dogs can eat the scraps that fall from their master’s table.” Our Lord marvels, “Woman, you have great faith. Let your wish be granted.” And her daughter is healed instantly.

What are we to make of this? In Catholic theology, we reject both extreme universalism and narrow particularism. Extreme universalism—that all will be saved regardless of response to grace—undermines human freedom and the seriousness of sin and conversion. It is true that God bestows things on us without measure. It is true that He wishes the salvation of all. It is certainly the gospel truth that Christ died not just for a few but for all. But it is not true, that we can presume that such salvation is guaranteed without any effort on our part, without any true conversion of the heart, without any transformation, conversion and sacrifice that comes from the core of our being. God bestows the grace of salvation and offers it to all of us, but now we must be willing to give ourselves entirely to him, without calculating, without stinginess.

Even if we believe that God wishes save all mankind and not just a few selected elites, the Church affirms that salvation comes through Christ alone, and we are called to proclaim Him explicitly. The analogy that all rivers flow to the sea cannot be applied to a pluralistic view of religion, that all religions, all paths, ultimately lead to salvation. Only Christ is the one path that can lead to salvation whether we acknowledge this or not for He is “the Way, the Truth and the Life.” Yet we also affirm the universal salvific will of God (cf. 1 Tim 2:4). How do we reconcile this? The Catechism quoting the Second Vatican Council teaches that “every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved” through the grace of Christ working in mysterious ways. These are “extraordinary” means only known to God alone. It is always safer to take the known “ordinary” path which is the Church and baptism is the doorway that leads to salvation. This is the reason why we must evangelise, not because we do so from a position of arrogant superiority but from authentic pastoral charity.

Particularism reminds us that God chooses specific instruments: the Jewish people, the Catholic Church as the ordinary means of salvation, the sacraments, and personal faith. These are not barriers but bridges. The Canaanite woman shows us that great faith can cross boundaries. Our Lord did not lower the standard; He recognised authentic faith expressed in humility and persistence. Her “crumbs” became a feast of grace.

In our times, this has profound implications. We live in a world of divisions—ethnic, ideological, religious. Some Christians retreat into a defensive particularism, fearing dilution of truth. Others embrace a vague universalism that treats all paths as equally valid, ignoring the uniqueness of Christ. The Catholic position holds the tension: We are particular in our fidelity to the fullness of revelation in the Church, yet universal in our hope and outreach. The Church is not a club for the righteous but a hospital for sinners, a house of prayer for all peoples.

The Church has indeed become “a house of prayer for ALL the peoples.” Where the Temple of Jerusalem failed in attaining this ideal, the Church has succeeded. If we are beneficiaries of the mercy of God which we did not merit; we must also become its heralds. May the Lord, who heard the Canaanite woman’s plea, grant us the grace of persistent faith that remains steadfastly rooted in Christ and a love that is expansive enough to welcome all to our Father’s house. May His house truly be a house of prayer for all peoples, beginning with me, with each of us.

He will raise up the lowly

Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

In most action movies, from Avengers Endgame to X-Men Apocalypse where Jean Grey unleashes the full extent of her godlike powers, there is a common use of a storytelling tool known as Deus ex Machina, which literally meant, the god from the machine. In Greek theatre, actors who play gods would be introduced to the stage and play by either being lowered from a crane like device or raised from a hidden platform below the stage, making a sudden, almost miraculous, appearance. The introduction of this figure is intended to turn the tide and change the inevitable outcome of the story line. A seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly or abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence. This functions to resolve an otherwise irresolvable plot situation, to surprise the audience, to bring the tale to a happy ending. Some have accused this as a form of lazy storytelling, but for us Christians, the story of salvation in Scripture is precisely all about how God intervenes at the very last moment to transform the outcome from an otherwise certain defeat to undisputable victory.

The first reading taken from the last book of the Bible repeats this theme that undergirds every significant turning point in the bible. Just when all seemed lost and evil seemed to have triumphed over good without any chance of a “remontada”, God enters the scene and amazingly rewrites the final outcome of the story. The woman in labour, in her most vulnerable moment, is rescued from the clutches of the towering gargantuan planet swallowing dragon. The enemies of the people of God would cry foul and even accuse God of cheating, but the truth is that our sovereign all-powerful, all-knowing and all-Merciful God has already willed this ending right from the start. Don’t take my word for it. Just read Genesis 3: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” Both the conflict and the ending have both been written. We often believe that any good player would keep his deck of cards to himself without revealing his trump card. But God has made no secret of His plans. He has revealed this through history and through the prophets. It is just us mortal who often doubt that He has the winning hand, often trusting in our own senses and resources rather than in His mighty power.

In the gospel, we have Mary singing her beautiful song of praise where she redirects all praise to God, famously stating that God “has looked upon His lowly handmaid.” In the Magnificat, she redirects all glory to God, acknowledging her "lowly" state while magnifying His power. By recognising that her greatness stems entirely from God's grace, she models for all of us a perfect, faithful surrender. Her song is an ode to the theme of Deus ex Machina - She sings of a total reversal of how we would expect the story to end if history was allowed to just run its natural course, but instead we have a God who scatters the proud and exalts the humble, filling the hungry while bringing down the mighty. Just like a writer bringing in a powerful outside force to save a story, God intervened in human history through Mary. It is a song about God stepping into human affairs to radically change the world's order and the tale of its ending.

For those who have grown used to seeing the world as it is instead of seeing it as should be, to those of us whose eyes have not been adjusted, the light which Mary’s song casts is blinding and disorienting. It moves the earth under our feet, it causes us to stumble from our prideful heights. Our eyes are still fixed on the way of power, success, wealth, and brutal self-exertion and self-magnification. Our feet are still planted on the sand of our own glory. But Mary’s little way sees clearly in this dawn of light, and deftly turns our attention heavenward. We look up not because we can’t imagine ourselves taking our eyes off her but we are looking in the direction which she is pointing us to. Think of her person, her humble existence, her glorious assumption, as a sign pointing to our final destination which is God. That even in death, at the end of our earthly pilgrimage which feels like a cul de sac, death is not a dead end but a radical transformation of life, as the priest prays during Masses for the dead, that at death “life is changed, not ended.”

But we get to witness this wondrous mystery even now. We don’t have to wait till we are dead before we get to see the wonder of how God intervenes in our lives. Think of the world in a story as being trapped in a hopeless, unsolvable situation. This "unsolvable problem" is human sin and death. Every one of your stories holds scars. Every life collects chapters we wish we could erase — moments when shame screamed louder than faith, when we questioned our worth, or when the future felt permanently closed. Yet grace has always whispered a different ending: “You’re not finished.” Society says, “If you mess up, you start over from zero.” But God says, “If you mess up, I’ll meet you at zero and start something new.” When we lose our way, God writes around our detours. When we fail, He folds failure into the fabric of redemption. When we give up, His pen doesn’t pause. It just turns the page.

If you believe that all of this is impossible, remember that the Assumption of our Lady is the ultimate example of how all this is possible. It shows God rescuing Mary from the normal rules of human death and decay by a direct, divine act. In a sense, it is the ultimate "divine intervention" and the climax of Mary's life story. No Marvel hero is going to turn up to save the day because there is none. But God will. Lord willing, the rest of us will receive our full triumph - and the full effect of Christ's victory over death - when our own souls are reunited with our glorified bodies at the end of time.

Courage! It is I!

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Does God continue to manifest Himself to us? I guess many of you would agree that He does but you would also personally desire for an opportunity to witness this with your own eyes rather than rely on second-hand hearsay information. This explains why shrines associated with apparitions or any rumours thereof are often the most popular crowd pullers. We Catholics want a faith that is tangible, sensible and visible. It’s part of our human nature as sensible beings rather than purely spiritual beings like the angels.

Today’s readings provide us with glimpses into the way God communicates with us. In the first reading, we see the prophet Elijah witnessing a theophany of God which seems to be anticlimactic. After the dramatic phenomena of a strong wind, an earthquake followed by a fire, God reveals Himself in “the sound of a gentle breeze,” literally “the sound of silence”. Notice the venue. Mount Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai where Moses and the Israelites who had just escaped slavery in Egypt encountered God in this terrifying theophany of dark clouds, lightning, fire and earthquake. The two figures encountering God in two different ways is meant to be a stark contrast. God would not be confined to any form or expectation of ours. He is indeed the God of surprises, who deliberately reveals Himself to us in the most unexpected ways - sometimes in extraordinary ways but more often than not in the ordinary experiences of life. It is no wonder that both figures, Elijah and Moses would appear again at the scene of the Transfiguration - the manifestation of God not in the wind, nor earthquake, nor fire, nor even a gentle breeze, but in the person of Jesus Christ, the Beloved Son of God.

In the gospel, the scene of our Lord walking on water is another theophany, a visible manifestation of God, and not just a demonstration of Jesus’ miraculous powers. In fact, it is no exaggeration that the theophany experienced by the disciples was far greater than any recorded in the Old Testament, and even such a theophany would be surpassed by the Transfiguration of our Lord whose feast we will celebrate in just a few weeks.

The story uses two powerful signs to show Jesus is God.

Firstly, our Lord’s striding on the waves is an allusion to how God is described anthropomorphically as walking on the stormy sea (Job 9:8). But it also reminds us of how God imposes His creative will on the waters of chaos in Genesis Chapter 1, setting boundaries and bringing order to this destructive and unpredictable force of nature. But the Lord who created the heavens and earth is also the Lord who saves His people during the Exodus. In the first exodus, God walked through the sea, leading His people to safety and freedom. Our Lord in this gospel scene is the divine Saviour who brings the long-anticipated salvation of a new exodus. This chapter looks back on the first exodus as the precedent for a new, future exodus when the Lord would climactically redeem His people. Now, He leads us through the waters of baptism to a new life of grace and the Holy Spirit.

But the second and most important theme is that the story dispels any doubt about our Lord’s identity. To assuage the fear and panic of His disciples, the Lord announces: “Courage! It is I! Do not be afraid.” The original Greek phrase for "It is I" is literally "I AM". This is the holy name of God that He revealed to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14). This is at the heart of every revelation from God, it is not just merely the communication of some information but rather an invitation to enter into communion with Him. For how could we possibly come to love someone whom we do not know? That is why the answer to the second question of the penny catechism follows a logical progression from knowledge to union. To the question, “why did God make us?”, comes the answer, “to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him and be with Him in paradise forever.”

How about us today? Wanting to experience manifestations from the divine is understandable. We live in a world filled with noise, always seeking the next breaking news alert or dramatic sign. There is an existential human desire perennially looking for answers. This is why for people of faith, it is natural to want a direct, personal sign from God to prove He is listening. And this desire often draws us to private revelations—prophecies, visions, and apparitions.

It is here that we need to make a distinction between public and private revelation. For us Catholics, public revelation which is contained in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition ended with the death of the last Apostle. God has already spoken completely and sufficiently, providing us with whatever is necessary for our salvation. Jesus Christ is the ultimate, final Word of the Father. As the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, "In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways... but in these last days, he spoke to us through a son." And because public revelation is complete, no new visionary, message, or private revelation can ever add to, change, or correct the Deposit of Faith left by Christ and the Apostles.

So, what should we make of private revelations, especially those approved by the Church like our Lady’s apparitions and messages in Lourdes and Fatima and elsewhere? Are we to just dismiss these as unnecessary? Although belief in these messages is not necessary for our salvation, they are meant to augment and excite our faith and so motivate us to have a greater determination to follow Christ and His teachings. It is a help which is offered, but which one is not obliged to use. “Private revelations” do not add to or complete God’s definitive revelation in Christ but are meant to help believers live more fully by the Gospel. The criterion for judging the truth of a private revelation, therefore, is precisely its orientation to Christ Himself. If it leads us away from Him, then it certainly does not come from the Holy Spirit, who guides us more deeply into the Gospel, and not away from it. A word of caution - we must get our priorities right. It is not spiritually good to centre one's life around private revelations. They are good when approved, and may be used, but the core is in public revelation.

So, the next time you read or hear about some new private revelation whether it is in the form of some vision or apparition or miracle, do not be so quick to forget that you already have the true treasure which is Christ found in Sacred Scriptures and Sacred Tradition. Don’t let yourself be distracted and misled to place these extraordinary occurrences above what our Lord now communicates to us in ordinary ways, when we listen to the Word of God, read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and participate in the sacraments, especially in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood. Remember, God is not only to be found in the extraordinary circumstances like the wind, an earthquake, a raging fire or a vision, nor is He only to be found striding across the waters as He once did, but He often manifests Himself most intimately when He sits quietly invisibly in the boat, the Church, by your side, as you weather the storms of life. And in the hull of the boat, the bosom of the Church, you will hear Him speak again: “Courage! It is I! Do not be afraid.”

Not enough becomes more than enough

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

The second reading is worth a second, a third, perhaps repeated looks as it is one of the most beautiful and powerful assurances of God’s abundant love. St Paul first gives seven hardships and trials which cannot cut us off and then adds another seven hostile powers which are powerless against the love of God. The list is certainly not exhaustive. You can throw in anything imaginable and unimaginable into the list and it would stick. The number seven is clearly symbolic to represent completeness and perfection. The message is clear and couldn’t be stated better: there isn’t anything, absolutely nothing, that can separate us from the love of God.

We can sometimes point to things outside of ourselves and claim that they are pulling us away from God, or that He is pulling Himself away from us, neither of which is true. He never stops offering His love to us and nothing that happens to us can break that bond. It is important to note, however, that there actually is one thing that can ever separate us from the love of Christ – ourselves. Our unwillingness to accept His love by turning away from Him and freely choosing to sin pushes us away from His love, and in the case of mortal sin, we separate ourselves completely from His love.

In the gospel, we have the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish followed by the feeding of the multitudes. Except for the Resurrection, the multiplication of loaves is the only miracle told in all four Gospels. Before our Lord works this amazing miracle, we see two obstacles coming between the Lord and the people who are seeking Him out like those thirsting for life giving water in Isaiah’s prophecy. They are hungry and thirsty for His teachings. They are hungry for His healing power. They are hungry for His presence. They refused to leave Him alone and would readily make the long track on foot to ambush His retinue as they set foot on shore. But the Lord also knows that they are physically hungry for food. Man does not live on bread alone, but neither will he survive on fresh air and sunshine alone. And so, our Lord “took pity” on them and took immediate action without dismissing the hungry crowd by hiding behind the most common excuse, “It’s none of my business. I can’t solve every problem. I can’t save the whole world.” But the truth is that Jesus did come for this purpose. His mission is to save the world.

The first obstacle, which is actually a most common excuse for indifference, is limited resources. Here we witness the clash of two economic models - one of scarcity versus one of abundance. The disciples view this issue from the lenses of scarcity and their diagnosis and prognosis seem logical and understandable. In traditional economics, scarcity is the main problem. We have limited resources to meet unlimited wants. It leads to competition, high prices, and prioritisation. Since there isn’t enough to go around, the disciples concluded that Jesus and His cohort should be the first to be fed. They leave the crumbs, if any, for others.

But our Lord’s starting point is the economics of abundance because this is how God always acts. This may seem disingenuous. How can you give what you do not possess? Well, this is true if we are still using the economic model of scarcity. In a scarcity mindset, a pie is a fixed size. If someone takes a big slice, you get less. In an abundance mindset, you bake more pies or share a recipe so everyone can eat. This is what our Lord did in today’s gospel, which only God alone can do. So, the miracle of Jesus is not so much just a sign of Christ’s preferential option for the poor and His use of economic justice to ensure that everyone has an equitable slice of the cake but a sign of Christ’s sacramental economy and the multiplication of grace. He gives gratuitously without demanding for any payment or compensation. This is how He invites the thirsty and hungry to come to Him in the first reading, without expecting any payment or charging any cost. Graces and blessings can’t be bought. He will not deny anyone who comes to Him hungering and thirsting for the life of grace.

But the second obstacle appears to be a harder one to surmount. His disciples are acting like a barrier, goal keepers, to Him sharing His graces with the people. They attempt to push the responsibility of being fed back to the multitude, abdicating theirs, and also preventing our Lord from further ministering to them. Instead of seeing the crowds as a hungry flock waiting to be fed, both spiritually and physically, they saw the latter as a burden. Here we see once again the tentacles of sin at work - sin which attempts to separate us from the love of Christ.

The disciples have forgotten - and we should be careful never to forget - that they are meant to be stepping stones to heaven rather than stumbling blocks for others. A true disciple’s job is to act as a bridge, not a barrier. They are meant to guide people toward a closer relationship with Jesus. Yes, it is true that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, but the disciples were doing a pretty good job at attempting to separate the crowds from their Master. They thought they were doing Him a favour, but they were not. He had come to seek out the lost, feed the hungry and thirsty, liberate those who are imprisoned by their disordered passions, and pour out His abundant life on those who desire it more than life itself.

We may not have the benefit of witnessing the miracle of the multiplication of loaves but the Lord continues to feed us spiritually through the Eucharist. I know many of you can recall how painful it was to be excluded from Masses and Holy Communion during the Covid 19 pandemic -how separated you felt from the Church and the sacraments. Yet, so many have chosen to separate themselves from the Eucharist every Sunday even when there are no longer any restrictions preventing them from coming. It is no longer a matter of safety or a situation of emergency but rather now, a personal choice. They have chosen to separate themselves from the Eucharist and from the Eucharistic Lord, without any good reason.

The Eucharist has much to teach us about living a life imbued with abundance rather than complaining about the scarcity. How can something so little, so insignificant, contain all the power of creation? How can the finite contain the infinite? For this is how God works. It is how Christ shows His life in us. We have to learn, as the disciples had to learn, to see abundance rather than scarcity, plenty rather than lack, promise and hope rather than despair. In our consumer culture, this is a hard lesson. There is never enough time, never enough money, never enough energy. We can quickly get bogged down in all the “more” that we know we want: more happiness, more money, more stuff.

But in the hands of Jesus, not enough becomes more than enough. That is the way that our Lord wishes us to live: in generosity, in hope, and in trust, not in our resources or our own strength, but in His. Let us be stepping stones for each other and for others so that they may find their fulfilment in Christ and not in some cheap fake substitute which the world promises. And should you too suffer from sickness, failure, persecution, or rejection, never forget, never doubt for a second, that “neither death nor life, no angel, no prince, nothing that exists, nothing still to come, not any power, or height or depth, nor any created thing, can ever come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

A Call to Action

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord Year A

It’s Ascension Thursday and we would expect to hear the account of the Ascension in the gospel. But this account is missing from St Matthew’s gospel which ends with our Lord summoning His disciples to an unnamed mountain in Galilee where He commissions them to “make disciples of all the nations; baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands” He had given them. Both content and location defer sharply from Luke’s account of the Ascension which takes place on the Mount of Olives, just outside Jerusalem. This seeming discrepancy has less to do with a contradiction or an error than it must possibly do with two different events. The Great Commission, as many would call the episode described in today’s passage, would have taken place on a hill (or borrowing scriptural language of embellishment, a “mountain”) in Galilee, whereas the Ascension as described in the gospel of St Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, took place outside Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives.

Scholars and theologians suggest several reasons why Matthew chose to end his gospel this way instead of referring to the Ascension as do St Luke and the longer ending of St Mark’s gospel.

Firstly, in Matthew’s Gospel, the evangelist begins with Jesus being called "Emmanuel" (God with us) and the gospel then ends with the Lord’s promise "I am with you always" which form a pair of literary bookends (an inclusio and conclusio), emphasising that the Lord remains spiritually present with His Church despite His physical departure. The Ascension marks the completion of the Lord’s earthly mission. He came to teach, to heal, to suffer, die and rise again. After His resurrection, His final act was to return to the Father. This signals that His saving work was done. Mission accomplished! Yes and no. Although His work of salvation is complete and He is no longer present with us physically until His return in glory at the end of the ages, He continues to remain with us sacramentally through the Eucharist and continues to act in and through His Church, His Mystical Body on earth - teaching us, guiding us, and sanctifying us.

A second reason for St Matthew’s omission of the account of the Ascension is that his gospel is primarily written for a Jewish audience and so Matthew emphasises Jesus as the prophesied and long-awaited Messiah and Davidic King. So, the titles of “Messiah,” “the Christ Anointed) of God” and “Son of David” are recurring leitmotifs in the storyline as a gradual revelation of His identity. The ending establishes His universal authority over all nations rather than focusing on the mechanics of His departure. We are invited to not only look upwards in the direction which He has ascended but to look around to the full expanse of His earthly domain where He has made us His stewards and emissaries with a specific duty of making disciples and Christians: “Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations; baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you.” The Feast of the Ascension, therefore, speaks of two missions, the completion of our Lord’s earthly mission and ministry but now also the beginning of the Church, our own mission to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth.

In Eastern iconography, we witness this twofold dynamics. The icon of the Ascension is divided into three sections. In the upper part, we have the ascending or ascended Lord in all His divine glory and below we have the disciples with Mary in their midst. The apostles are shown below in various states of confusion, motion, and conversation, indicating their transition from spectators to missionaries, only Mary remains peacefully calm and poised in a position of prayer. But between these two obvious focal points, we have two angels. The gestures of their hands tell a grand story. The angels point toward Christ while also addressing the disciples, “Why are you men from Galilee standing here looking into the sky?” (Acts 1:11). This gesture acts as a call to action—directing the disciples to stop simply gawking and to start walking, to cease from gazing into an empty sky because the Lord has already departed and to begin the mission to spread His gospel to the ends of the earth as He had instructed.

So, the Ascension by no means concludes the story of salvation as how the curtain falls or the end credits to a movie marks its end. When the story ends, the audience departs in silence or whispers their reviews of what they had witnessed. Not so in the case of the Ascension. In fact, today reminds us that we have been swept into the storyline of our Lord, a story that does not end until He returns in glory. There’s work to be done. Hearts to be touched. Wounds to be bandaged. Souls to be saved. We are our Lord’s proxies. We are His ambassadors. We are His hands and His feet. When people see us, they should see the Risen Lord, despite all our foibles and limitations. We are what we claim to be - “Christians” - a little Christ. That is why even though He is ascended, He is not absent. In fact, His presence has become all the more pervading through us, the Church and the Sacraments.

Finally, today’s feast is not just about a recollection of the story of how the Lord ascended to heaven, which is a nice thing to know, nor that we have been entrusted with a mission, which is something challenging if we truly grasped it. Today’s feast also provides us with the ultimate reason for our hope. Through our Lord’s Ascension, we know for certain that the gates of heaven are opened and He awaits to welcome us to stand before His seat of glory, where He is seated at the right hand of the Father. But His exaltation is also “our exaltation” (collect for the Vigil Mass). As the Preface for the Feast tells us, His Ascension “is not to distance Himself from our lowly state but, that we, His members, might be confident of following where He, our Head and Founder, has gone before.”

Jesus is the Answer

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.

It's a Good Day!

Good Friday

Today is the day we remember how our Lord, innocent though He was, was put to death by His enemies. Today is the day our Saviour is nailed to the cross because those whom He had come to save rejected Him. Today is the day when His thousands of followers and even His most intimate friends abandoned Him and leaving just four women and a man to accompany Him during this horrible ordeal. Today, the Word of God is silenced on the cross - no farewell speech to encourage or inspire His followers. And yet we Christians call this day “Good Friday” and our Eastern brethren have an even more audacious sounding name for it - the Great Friday.

Why on earth would Christians refer to this Friday as “good”?

It’s called Good Friday because even while powerful men were conspiring to kill the Son of God, God Himself was acting to save the world from itself, once and for all. Even while the world’s authorities were conspiring to perpetrate history’s greatest evil, God was working overtime to bring about history’s greatest good.

Yes, we Christians have not made a great blunder in naming today as Good Friday. It isn’t a misnomer. Far from a mistake, our Lord’s death and sacrifice on the cross is God’s greatest achievement, His most prized trophy.

Today is good because on the cross, our Lord suffered so that we would not have to suffer eternally. Yes, we are not saying that Christians are insulated from suffering because of what Christ did. Christians are no strangers to suffering. It’s part of our DNA. In fact, to be a Christian means to deny ourselves and take up our crosses in imitation of our Lord. But all suffering in this life, no matter how unbearable it may seem, is only temporary. Suffering has a shelf life because of what our Lord did today.

What Christ did is that He “traded places” with us. He lived the sinless life that we should live and died the death that we deserve to die. He took our guilty record, died for it, and offers us His perfect record in return. That is why Saint Paul declared that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1).

Today is also not just a good day but a great day because by His death on the cross, our Lord Jesus reconciled us to the Father. Long before social distancing became the norm, man had already socially distanced himself from God by our sins. It is not God who had distanced Himself from us; it is not God who had abandoned us. It is we who have abandoned Him through sin. Because of our sins, we have alienated ourselves from God and others, but Jesus saves us from our sins in order to mend those relationships. The reconciling powers of Christ will cause all relational barriers to be torn down, including the barriers of ethnicity and nationality (Rev 5:9-10).

Finally, because of the cross and the resurrection we have hope for the future. As you all know, Good Friday is not a stand-alone feast. The story doesn’t just climax and end with Jesus dying on the cross on Good Friday. The real ending is found on Easter when Jesus will burst forth from the tomb, break the shackles and prison of death and rise again so that now we may have new life. With every darkening which seems to come with Good Friday, there is the new dawn of Easter.

Though Christ’s death has defeated the powers of death, suffering and evil, we must still wait for the day when He will return to put all these enemies under His feet. Until then, we must hope and believe that the victory is already His, that death is not the end, that suffering will not have the final say. Mission accomplished. A pandemic or any other calamity, natural or otherwise will have no hold over us. The work of Christ is complete. From the cross, He assures us, “It is accomplished.”

It does seem odd to refer to anybody’s death as “good.” Yet, God’s good plan is often counterintuitive: As Jesus says, “He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it”; “the first shall be the last and the last shall be first” (Mark 10:31). And yes, through the “good” death of God’s Son, humanity can receive new life, abundant life. He has given us eternal life that will never be defeated by any infection, calamity or even death.

So, my dear brothers and sisters, have a “good day”! In fact, have a “great day!” You deserve it because Christ has earned it for you!

An Ass and a Colt

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Word broke His Silence

Christmas Mass during the Day

Some of you may be familiar with that poem known as “A Visit from St Nicholas” more popularly known as “the Night before Christmas,” because it begins with this famous opening line: “Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse ….” The imagery of silence is heightened by another idiomatic expression: “as quiet as a mouse.” In this case, you can’t even hear the squeak or the scurrying of a mouse. Yes, that Christmas night is indeed a Silent Night, a Holy Night!

But the silence of that first Christmas night would have been broken by a new born baby’s crying and that cry did not just pierce the night air but resounded throughout the world and throughout history - past, present and future. As much as we appreciate some quiet alone time after all the partying and carolling last night and the preceding weeks, we must open our ears and hearts to hear the noise of this child, who is no ordinary Child. This morning’s gospel declares Him to be the pre-existing Word. The Word was made flesh, born to break the chaos of silence, to bring order out of nothing. There had to be a birth of the Word at the beginning of time, there had to be a birth at Christmas time, there had to be a birth on Pentecost.

Some would naively argue that the concept of the “Logos,” translated as “the Word” in St John’s lyrical prologue, was something radically new, an appropriation of a Greek philosophical concept. But in the Book of Wisdom in the Old Testament, we find not just a subtle and distant hint but a blaring proclamation of the movement of the Eternal Word:

“For while all things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her course, Thy almighty Word leapt down from Heaven from Thy royal throne, as a fierce conqueror into the midst of the land of destruction” (Wisdom 18:15).

As with most holidays, Christmas generally tends to be a noisy feast filled with strong, joyful carols proclaiming: “For Unto Us A Child Is Born,” “Joy to the World,” “Angels We Have Heard On High,” “Go Tell It On The Mountain,” etc. And this is all true, and very good, and very beautiful. But there is also a silence to be contemplated, a silence that is often missed and dismissed. The great things that God works within His creatures naturally happen in silence, in a divine movement that suppressed all speech. For what could we say? When God speaks, all voices must remain silent. Thus, God’s heavenly secret is kept under the seal of silence unless He Himself opens the lips and makes the words come forth. And this is what happened as the Book of Wisdom said it would happen: “For while all things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her course, Thy almighty Word leapt down from Heaven from Thy royal throne.”

The Word Himself, God, the desire of all nations, “leapt down from heaven” in “quiet silence,” physically took on silence, becoming a new born human, an infant. And in the wonderful silence in the stable, Mary and Joseph looked at Jesus for the first time and contemplated the mystery of His birth in silence. Today, in the midst of our revelry and celebration, we are called to adopt an atmosphere of silence if we wish to grasp the mystery of His Incarnation and hear His gentle whispering.

Although the Incarnation took place in silence and the divine movement often takes place in silence, there is also silence which is imposed by force and violence – a silence which seeks to silence God’s Word. St John tells us that “He (the Word made flesh) came to his own domain and his own people did not accept him.” It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Christmas, a reminder of the birth of the Son of God, must be removed from the public square and its message silenced because the message of Christmas, one of life, threatens the prevalent culture of death.

The human race has always known violence to the innocent, evidenced by the actions of Pharaoh and Herod and in the last century, Hitler and Stalin. Today, we have the new enemies of truth, the globalists governments and media that seek to police speech and silence persons who dare to challenge the official version of the truth, their truth. While adults can make their voices heard in protest, the unborn, the sick and the elderly, are easy targets because of their natural silence, if no one speaks for them and on behalf of them. Today, that struggle manifests itself in new and frightening ways - with the proliferation of abortion mills and passing of legislation which legalises the murder of innocents, the sick and the elderly and which seeks to silence dissenting voices. The violence has become customary, normalised, more imaginative and terrifying.

But our Lord shows us that life is ultimately victorious. Life conquers through its ability to empty itself out. The power of the Christian faith manifests itself most especially in being what the world is not. To arrogance it counters with humility. To cynicism it reacts with innocence. To deception it responds with truth. To glamour it demonstrates with simplicity. To death it responds with life. To a cacophony of noise, it offers silence. Christian faith is simply the opposite of everything that the world would expect and want. It offers “mud,” when the world would want “gold and silver.” This is what Christmas is all about. Christmas bears a dangerous message which threatens our world and yet, it carries with it the only message which can save the world.

But there is great irony in the liturgy of the Church. In celebrating a humble birth, we offer our best - we offer our “gold and silver”. To the silent entry of the Word into our world, we offer our voices in songs of praise and wonderment. We enrich the liturgy with the best that we have to offer because the accoutrements of the rituals manifest the beauty of a world that is not ours and thrusts us forward and upward into an unimaginable beauty, a sign of a world to come.

Today, we come to the manger offering our best only because we have acknowledged the worst in us: the noise we make in competition with God’s sublime Word; the “mud” we have covered ourselves in - our sins, our weaknesses and shortcomings. Instead of plugging our ears, we should gladly open them to welcome the Word. We take courage also in knowing that the Word broke His silence and entered into the noisy madness of our world as He stepped into the “mud” of our fallen existence. Yes, the Eternal Word which leapt down from heaven from His royal throne, has stepped into the filthy “mud” in which we are mired. We were once formed from dust, but now our Lord gives us new life by remoulding the “mud” of our being into a new creation. There is every reason for us to break our silence today, to make a joyful noise and announce: “Indeed, from His fullness we have, all of us, received – yes, grace in return for grace.”