The Wounds are His Trophies

Second Sunday of Easter Year B

During the Middle Ages popular piety focused with increased intensity on the Passion of Christ and therefore held in special honour the wounds inflicted upon Him in His suffering.  Although some say that there were as many as over 5,000 wounds, medieval popular piety focused upon the five wounds associated directly with Christ's crucifixion, i.e., the nail wounds on His hands and feet as well as the lance wound which pierced His side (the five wounds of Christ corresponds to, and heals the five wounds inflicted by Original Sin). In our modern sanitised, anaesthetised, panacea craving society, a devotion to and meditation on the five wounds of Christ “may sound a bit medieval,” but according to our Holy Father, Pope Francis, “anyone who recognises he or she is wounded will find mercy and healing in the passion of Christ.”

For those of us who have an aversion to blood, gore and open wounds, the action of Christ displaying His more-than-just superficial scars would indeed be disturbing. Why would He choose to do so? The answer is actually quite simple. It was to establish his identity, that He was the very same Jesus whom they had followed, whom at last they had deserted, whom they had beheld afar off crucified and slain, and whom they had carried to the tomb in the gloom of the evening; it was the very same Christ who was now before them, and they might know it, for there was the seal of his sufferings upon Him. The same Christ who died on the cross is the same Christ now truly risen. He was the same person. He was not a phantom or a spectra. It was truly Christ’s same body but it was also a glorified body: He could appear and disappear at will, walk through closed doors, be somewhere at one moment and elsewhere the next.

Christ wears these scars in His body in heaven not as evidence of His failure but as His ornaments. The wounds of Christ are His glories, they are His jewels and His precious things. Nor are these wounds only the ornaments of Christ: they are His trophies—the trophies of His love. Have you never seen a soldier with a gash across his forehead or in his cheek? Why every battle-scarred soldier will tell you that the wound in battle is no disfigurement—it is his honour. Now, Jesus Christ has scars of honour in His flesh but He has other trophies. He has divided the spoil with us, the Church: He has taken the captive away from our ancient enemies, Death and the Devil; He has redeemed for himself a host that no man can number. We are all the trophies of His victories: but these scars, these are the memorials of the fight, too. Likewise, as Christ shows us that wearing these wounds of suffering is an honourable thing, to suffer for Him is glory. The Christian religion teaches us that it is not humiliation but glorious to be trodden, to be crushed, to suffer for our faith. The highest honour that God can confer upon His children is the blood-red crown of martyrdom.

Just like photographs, certificates and trophies which serve as reminders, the wounds of Christ too serve to remind us of the price that was paid for our freedom. They are reminders of the extent of God’s love. If the wounds had been removed we might have forgotten that there was a sacrifice; and, mayhap, next we might have forgotten that there was a priest. But the wounds are there: then there is a sacrifice, and there is a priest also, for He who is wounded is both Himself, the sacrifice and the priest.

There is another terrifying reason why Christ wears His wounds still. It is this. Christ is coming to judge the world. As the whole of humanity, every generation in every age, are arraigned before Him, His own wounds are His witnesses and proof of our guilt. “Habeas corpus.” “Show us the body.” But this is no dead corpse of a pitiable victim of injustice. This is a body of the first born from the dead, once truly dead but now risen. This is the body of the one who will judge “the living and the dead.” At the Last Judgment our Lord displays these wounds so that it might be apparent to all, even to the damned, how just their condemnation really is, in that they spurned so great a redemption. A crucified Christ with His wounds still open will be a terrible sight for an assembled universe because His death was wrought by the hand of mankind, of all and entire humanity, present company included. Others did it for you, and though you gave no consent verbally, yet you do assent in your heart every day. As long as you hate Christ and everything which is holy you give an assent to His death. As long as you reject His sacrifice, and despise His love, you give evidence in your hearts that you would have crucified the Lord of glory had you been there. As long as you desire to usurp the authority of God, you hammer another nail into His hands and feet. As long as you hate and mistreat your neighbour, you crucify Him afresh and put Him to an open shame.

But there may be another reason why our Lord sports His wounds. It is the Incarnation, “the becoming flesh”, the divine condescension which allows God, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity to enter into our frail, fractured and broken human condition. In becoming one of us, our Lord understands that He cannot be immune from the scars and wounds we bear in our daily lives. Christ in showing us His wounds also means for us to learn that suffering is absolutely necessary. We all suffer wounds of one sort or another, some physical, some mental, some spiritual. Some are self-inflicted; some are not. Some of us carry them with us through life. The vulnerability of Christ’s wounded flesh confirms that it is indeed human flesh, just like all human flesh which is prone to suffer injuries. At the same time, the dreadful paradox of that which reminds us of His humanity, is also a revelation of His divinity. Witness the reaction of St Thomas at the moment when Jesus invites him to touch His wounds. We hear the most profound confession of faith: “My Lord and my God!” The wounds offer sight – a sight which may be hidden from our physical eyes. As a result of our Lord’s offer, Thomas moves from doubt to belief: from question mark to exclamation mark.

Today, as we contemplate the great mercy of our Divine Lord, we come to realise this impossibly consoling truth: poor, weak, and wounded though I am, He has not and will not discard me. His wounds are healed wounds, note that they are not running sores; and so, though we be the wounded parts of Christ, we shall be healed; though we shall seem to ourselves in looking back upon what we were, as only parts of a wounded body, still we shall rejoice that He has healed those wounds, and that He has not cast us away. Precious truth! The whole Body, His Body, He will present before His Father’s face, and wounded though He be, He shall not cast His own wounds away. Let us take comfort, then, in this; let us rejoice therein. We shall be presented at last, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. Christ's wounds are no spots to Him, no wrinkles, but they are ornaments; and even those parts of His church on earth that despair of themselves, thinking themselves to be as wounds shall be no spots, no wrinkles in the complete and perfect Church above, the new and eternal Jerusalem, which receives its light directly from the glory of Christ.

The wounds of Christ are a dignity not a deformity, a sign of love not of loss, an indication of obedience not of waywardness. Let us now look up by faith and see our Lord, the Wounded Jesus, sitting on His throne. Through His wounds the Lord says to us, “Here is what the world did to me, and yet I live. Here is the cost of your redemption and the lavishness of my love.” And we reply without hesitation or doubt, “My Lord and my God!”

Not Fools for Believing

Easter Sunday

Ever since it became public knowledge that Easter Sunday this year would coincide with April Fool’s Day, memes have been circulating over social media drawing parallels between the Christian belief in the resurrection of a dead man with what could possibly have been an April Fool’s Day prank. Few people are aware that the first of April is also Atheist Day. What turned out to be a hoax was eventually accepted as fact. Atheists have claimed the day for their own as well. Perhaps this year, they will take greater delight in pointing out to their Christian friends that the whole Easter story was actually a hoax, an April Fool’s Day prank.

So, is Easter a hoax and are we Christians “fools” for believing? Well, atheists would claim this to be so. They would assert that the bible is irrefutable proof that no one saw the corpse of Jesus reanimate. What the disciples actually saw was an empty tomb and an empty tomb, they argue, is not sufficient to prove that the resurrection happened. There are countless empty tombs in the world today, but none of them prove a resurrection had happened. Likewise, subsequent ‘appearances’ of Jesus could be explained away as either mass hallucinations of His followers who desperately wanted to see Him or perhaps stories generated by the followers to further their cause.  Thus, for a certified atheists, a Christian’s belief in the resurrection is simply ludicrous and blind.

But is their charge tenable? Certainly not if we were to consider the story of Easter once again. Faith, despite what the atheists claim, is not blind. On the contrary, unbelief is blind. Faith sees a reality beyond what eyes can see, a reality that God reveals to us which is more important more real, than what we can see with our physical eyes. In fact, eyesight was never a guarantee that people really “saw” Jesus. Judas was the greatest example to this tragic truth. On the other hand, the beloved disciple saw an empty tomb but did not see the body, and came to belief.

For Christians, the resurrection was more than just talking about life after death in general, the immortality of the soul or claiming that Jesus’ soul went to heaven. They’re saying something radically happened to Jesus. More fundamentally, the resurrected life is life in God, life with God, life in God after death.  It is this “in God” and this “with God” which characterises the risen life far more than the ‘after death’ aspect.” That's the essential story of the Resurrection.

The empty tomb is a necessary condition for the Resurrection, but atheists are right in stating that it's not sufficient. The Apostles needed to see in the flesh that the Lord was alive again in His body, but in a transformed and glorified state. And this they did, and so did many others who witnessed the resurrected Lord in the flesh, not just in their dreams or imagination. According to St Paul, Christ's resurrection is attested by more than 500 eyewitnesses whose experience, simplicity, and uprightness of life rendered them incapable of inventing such a fable. They had nothing in this life to gain, but everything to lose by their testimony, exhibited in their apostolic life and martyrdom. Even as Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire, the Resurrection was one of the stumbling blocks. Christians were mocked for their belief. It's impossible; even ancient people knew that dead people stayed dead. And yet, we witness the rise of the Church in spite of all these unfavourable odds.

St. Thomas Aquinas notes that while there is nothing strange that a man should die, but that God should die is incomprehensible. This thought led Tertullian to exclaim, “It must be true, because it is impossible!” Similarly, that a man should rise from the dead is problematic -- did not the Athenians laugh Paul to scorn, when he proposed this idea to them? -- and can only be resolved by a divine intervention of the highest order. This is why the Resurrection is the proof for the Divinity of Christ, for only God could so corroborate His divine claim.

Popular culture now holds up many Christ figures. If you watch the superhero movies, they make liberal use of Christian themes, death and resurrection, but they also seem interchangeable with Greek, Roman and Nordic mythology, as if all have equal cultural value. A lot of people actually treat the story of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ as just one more myth. But the real difference about Jesus and superheroes is that the resurrection of Christ is not something that happened on top of Mount Olympus before time, but God broke into time. All the episodes with the risen Lord confirm that the post-resurrection experiences with Christ were real, visible, and accessible through the bodily senses. This makes the resurrection a firm reality, established on verifiable data, on plenty of eyewitnesses and therefore not a myth.

The atheist’s denial flies in the face of much evidence to the contrary. Both the rejection of God and that of the resurrection is anything but scientific, though they might quote from science to bolster their position. The real reason is moral. When man chooses to live a life autonomous of any higher order, he ultimately must rid himself of the source of that order – God must die for man to be set free. This is what the psalmist means when he says, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” (Psalm 14:1 and Psalm 53:1). He is not saying that unintelligent people do not believe in God. Rather, the text is saying that sinful people do not wish to believe in God. Therefore the rejection of God is due to a desire to live free of the moral constraints God requires and to escape the guilt that accompanies the violation of those constraints. When that person begins to embrace a man-made cause, and in the process, do what is right in his own eyes, he begins to justify abominable and evil things. As St Paul so rightly puts it, “they exchanged the truth about God for a lie” (Romans 1:18–25).

The resurrection of Christ is and must always be the foundation of our Christian faith. The resurrection gives credence, authenticity and reality to our faith. It is the cause of our salvation. It proves salvation is real for millions and millions of believers down the age from all over the world and also millions who have gone to be with the Lord hoping to be resurrected someday. “The Resurrection above all constitutes the confirmation of all Christ’s works and teachings.  All truths, even those most inaccessible to human reason, find their justification if Christ by His Resurrection has given proof of His divine authority, which he had promised” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 651). Many have gone to their deaths knowing that their faith has not been in vain, as St Paul reminds us, “if there is no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen. And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain” (1 Cor. 15: 14-15).

So Easter falling on April Fool’s day this year may not be an incongruity after all. Christians are called to be “fools for Christ,” which does not in any way imply that we are stupid and lack common sense and judgment. But rather, that we will share the lot of the One who died for us and rose again on the third day. It is those who reject the idea of the resurrection, who reject the idea of a Saviour, who reject the idea of a God who loves us so much that He would sacrifice His only Begotten Son so that we may have life, who are the real fools. For indeed, it is only the fool who is capable of saying in his heart, ‘there is no God’. To such a fool, there is no hope beyond this transient impermanent material world, there is no consolation from having to endure suffering in this life, death would truly be the end of the road, a dead end. This is the significance of the resurrection. For without it, there is no salvation, no victory over sin and no eternal life.

It's a Brand New Day

Easter Vigil

It’s no secret that eight is a lucky number for the Chinese and many other Malaysians too. Non-Cantonese dialect speakers would however protest and point out the fact that this only applies to the numeral when spoken in Cantonese – the number 8 or "Fatt", sounds like another Cantonese word for prosperity. The Hokkiens have made a big come back in recent years by insisting on using “Huat Huat Huat,” their word for prosperity, which sounds nothing like the number 8 in their dialect.

But you may be interested to know that the number eight is also a big thing for us Christians too. Immediately, most people would associate the number eight with the Beatitudes, eight beatitudes if you follow the order from the Gospel of St Matthew. But there is another important association with the number eight. The Eight Day refers to Sunday, and more importantly, it refers to the first Sunday of Easter. Tomorrow, we Christians celebrate our eighth day.

For Jews the number eight symbolised salvation, rebirth and regeneration: eight members of Noah's family were saved in the time of the Great Flood and it was on the eighth day of his life that a male child was circumcised, signifying his entrance into the covenant family of Israel, the chosen people of God.  But for early Christians the eighth day  came to be associated with the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the formation of the New Covenant.  Jesus was raised on the day after the seventh day, which was the Sabbath, making Jesus’ Resurrection on the eighth day. Therefore, Sunday, the first day of the week, is also the day of the New Creation just as the old Creation also began on what is the first day of the week.  St Augustine called Sunday, “the Day of the Lord,” as “an everlasting eighth day.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church 349 teaches: “The eighth day.  But for us a new day has dawned: the day of Christ's Resurrection.  The seventh day completes the first creation.  The eight day begins the new creation.  Thus, the work of creation culminates in the greater work of redemption.  The first creation finds its meaning and its summit in the new creation in Christ, the splendour of which surpasses that of the first creation.”

Indeed for us, a new day has dawned – the day of Christ’s Resurrection. Therefore, everything about this Vigil points to the fact that Easter is the feast of the new creation. God’s new creation has begun. Jesus is risen and dies no more. He has opened the door to a new life, one that no longer experiences illness and death. He has taken mankind up into communion with God himself. And that is precisely why the Church starts the liturgy on this day in darkness, and beginning with the lighting of the new Paschal Candle, all of us in the Church are soon swimming in a sea of lights. It is as if we hear the word of God, spoken once again on the first day of creation, “Let there be Light! And there was Light!”

After the darkness of Good Friday, we now witness the light of this new creation. At Easter, on the morning of the first day of the week, God said once again: “Let there be light”. The night in the Garden of Gethsemane, the solar eclipse of Jesus’ passion and death, the night of the grave had all passed. Now it is the first day once again — creation is beginning anew. “Let there be light”, says God, “and there was light”: Jesus rises from the grave. Life is stronger than death. Good is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Truth is stronger than lies. The darkness of the previous days is driven away the moment Jesus rises from the grave and Himself becomes God’s pure light. Now Jesus draws all of us after Him into the new light of the resurrection and He conquers all darkness.

But the resurrection of Christ has not only brought about a new day with its new light. We too have become a new creation. How did this come about? Through the sacrament of baptism and the profession of faith, the Lord has built a bridge across to us, through which the new day reaches us. The Lord says to the newly-baptised: Fiat lux — let there be light. God’s new day — the day of indestructible life, comes also to us. Christ takes you by the hand. From now on you are held by Him and walk with Him into the light, into real life.

Baptism is more than becoming part of a community. Baptism is also more than a simple washing. It is a new birth. A new beginning in life. It is a new creation! It is truly death and resurrection, rebirth, transformation to a new life. Therefore, in baptism we experience what St Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me!” St Paul can say this with so much conviction because in Baptism we give ourselves over to Christ — He takes us unto Himself, so that we no longer live for ourselves, but through Him, with Him and in Him; so that we live with Him and thus for others.

Baptism, then, makes us new creatures, it bestows on us the blessings promised to Abraham, it releases us from the slavery of sin and brings us into new life, it brings us into the new wedding covenant between God and His people redeemed in Christ, it quenches our spiritual thirst for God, it gives the wisdom that enlightens our path to God, it purifies us and gives us a new heart and a new spirit, it crucifies our old self and our sinful body and raises us up from the dead, and, finally, it is our share in Christ’s death, in His victory over death and in His resurrection.

This is the joy of the Easter Vigil: we are reminded that in baptism, we have become a new creation, freed from all the deficiencies and limitations that have marred the old creation. In the Resurrection of Jesus, we witness the triumph of the new over the old. We witness how love has been shown to be stronger than death, stronger than evil. Love made Christ descend, and love is also the power by which He ascends; the power by which He brings us with him.

On this night, as we enter into the Eight Day, the Day of the New Creation, the Day of the Resurrection, it is time to rejoice once again over Christ’s victory over death and sin and our sharing in the graces of the resurrection.  It is a time for some of us to be baptised, and for the rest of us to “renew our Baptismal Promises.” But for all of us, let today be a reminder of what we once were – trapped in sin and darkness, what we now are – new creatures and adopted sons and daughters of God, and what we shall yet one day be – co-sharers in eternal glory of the saints in heaven. Today, is a day of new beginnings, not just for those who will be baptised, but for all of us. That which is “new” will always remain “new” until the very end. Alleluia.