The Hour of Glory

Good Friday 2022

From the beginning of the Gospel, our Lord’s earthly life has been moving toward this moment, His “hour”: the divinely appointed time when He will pre-eminently reveal the Father’s love and accomplish His work of salvation, and the Father will reveal the Son in His glory. Every teaching or discourse of His, every “I am” statement which He has made, every sign-miracle which He has done, will find its ultimate meaning in what our Lord does today. Our Lenten preparation has been anticipating this “hour” too and today, it has finally arrived.

The “hour” of our Lord’s passion is the great showdown between light and darkness, death and life, God and Satan. It is for this reason the Passion begins with the only mention that the cohort and the guards that came to arrest Jesus were carrying “lanterns and torches” apart from weapons. John the Evangelist, artfully uses this detail in spinning a tale of irony. The darkness does not always seem dark. Satan is far more subtle. He produces counterfeit light in contrast to the true Light of the World, which is Jesus. That is why this scene takes place in the cover of night. Our Lord Himself and His motley band of disciples have no need for artificial lighting or torches because He is the Light of the World. The enemies of our Lord, on the other hand, have to carry “lanterns and torches” because they have no light of their own.

John’s Passion Narrative, while in many ways similar to the Synoptic accounts, has several theological emphases.

First, the kingship of Jesus is prominent. This is what He announced to Pilate: “I am a king. I was born for this, I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice.” But, His is “not a kingdom of this world.” Yes, Jesus is the sovereign Lord, who is in complete control over the events of His Passion, since “the Father had put everything into His power” (John 13:3). Because He is in full control, the events of His Passion happen only because He allows them to happen. In answer to Pilate’s claim that he has the power to release Him or crucify Him, our Lord responds: “You would have no power over me if it had not been given you from above” (John 19:11).

Second, the emphasis on our Lord’s kingly sovereignty and power, underscores the freedom with which He goes to the cross. Our Lord was not caught by surprise by the arresting party but as the Evangelist tells us, “knowing everything that was going to happen to him” (John 18:4), He willingly submitted to His Passion. Our Lord had earlier said, “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again” (John 10:18). By freely going to the cross, our Lord offers His life as a perfect gift of love, given to the Father for the world’s salvation. Love is never accidental or forced. Our Lord is the unblemished Victim, the perfect sin Holocaust, who doesn’t play victim. That’s the irony of His victimhood. In today’s culture, where so many like to play victim to solicit pity and sympathy whilst being unwilling to make sacrifices for others, our Lord’s example is truly counter-cultural. He shows us what true sacrifice means.

Third, by freely laying down His life in obedience to the Father, our Lord reveals the infinite depths of the Father’s love and mercy toward sinners. Love is not just defined by passionate feelings or nice platitudes. Love is costly but not in the way that most of us would understand. Most people show the depth of their love in the form of expensive gifts. God shows His love by sacrificing the life of His only Son, a sacrifice which the Son makes freely because of His love for the Father.

Perceiving the revelation of divine love in the cross where our Lord Jesus died, requires faith, and John invites us to view the Passion with the eyes of faith through his use of irony. On the spiritual level, the situation is exactly the opposite of what it is on the natural level. On the surface our Lord’s death on the cross seems to be defeat and humiliation, but in fact, it is God’s victory and triumph. Through the cross, God takes on and overcomes sin and death with His infinitely greater merciful love.

Here then, is the paradox of faith. Christ, as He dies, brings life to us, who are already dead. Sin has placed a death sentence over our heads. But as the world watches the apparent defeat of Christ, we are actually seeing a greater victory. The very thing that carries the stench of death, our Lord’s crucifixion, is the source of new life. As Christ dies, our sins are lifted from us. Our separation from God is removed forever. Our failures are replaced by His victory. Our weakness is replaced by His strength. Our dead lives are reborn and given new life again, through His dying. But remember that “our victory,” is never ours to boast about, it is His victory given to us. We have failed but He has not. We are weak but He is strong. We have often been overcome by evil; He has not. This is the reason why we must pause here on Good Friday and stand beneath that Cross. This is the “hour” where all will be revealed!” It is here that we must make our final stand!

In common with the Lord

Maundy Thursday 2022

One can’t help but laugh at the 180 degrees turn of St Peter, from refusing to accept the Lord’s offer to wash his feet, to clamouring for a full-body bath! First, he starts with this: “You shall never wash my feet.” We may even suspect that his refusal was just fake shocked indignation at best, or false humility at worst. And as for the turnaround, doesn’t it seem to be some form of histrionic over-exaggeration on his part? “Not only my feet, but my hands and my head as well!” In both instances, St Peter had misunderstood our Lord’s intention and the significance of His action. And in both instances, his incomprehension and misstep had given our Lord an opportunity to make a teaching point.

Let us look at the first response given by our Lord to Peter when he refused to allow his feet to be washed: “If I do not wash you, you can have nothing in common with me.” A superficial reading of this statement may lead us to conclude that our Lord was just asking Peter and all of us to imitate His humility in serving others. This may be the message at the end of the passage, where our Lord says: “If I, then, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you should wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you.” But the words of our Lord in His response to Peter’s refusal to have his feet washed, goes further than that. This text is more than just a call to emulate our Lord’s example.

What is this thing which makes us “in common” with our Lord? In other words, what does it mean to have “fellowship” with Him? It is clear that it cannot just mean menial service, but rather the sacrifice of our Lord on the cross. This statement actually highlights the relationship between the foot-washing and the cross. The foot-washing signifies our Lord’s loving action and sacrifice on the cross. If foot-washing merely cleans the feet of the guest who has come in from the dusty streets, our Lord’s sacrifice on the cross will accomplish the cleansing of our sins which we have accumulated from our sojourn in this sin-infested world. Peter must yield to our Lord’s loving action in order to share in His life, which the cross makes possible.

The foot-washing may also be a deliberate echo of the ritual of ablutions, washing of hands and feet, done by the priests of the Old Covenant, before they performed worship and offered sacrifices in the Temple. This may explain Peter’s further request to have both his feet and head washed by the Lord. Without him knowing, he may have inadvertently referred to his own ordination as a priest of the New Covenant. It is fitting that the washing of feet occurs while the Apostles are entrusted with the Eucharist.

While Peter finally agrees to let the Lord wash his feet after our Lord had framed His answer in this way, Peter again misunderstands because he thinks that the Lord is talking about the literal washing of different body parts. Again, well-intentioned but not understanding, Peter suggests that the Lord wash more of his body - why stop with his feet when he could also have his hands and head washed too? The naïveté of Peter is amazing. The point is not how much of the body the Lord physically washes, but what the humble gesture of foot-washing signifies: the sacrifice on the cross. Our Lord’s action on the cross suffices to make us “clean all over.”

Viewing this through sacramental lenses, we may then understand the second set of response to Peter’s request to have a full body wash: “No one who has taken a bath needs washing, he is clean all over.” Our Lord was not just making a common-sense statement that those who are clean have no need for further cleansing, but an allusion to the sacraments which leave an indelible mark on their recipients, two in particular - baptism (confirmation) and Holy Orders. Our Lord’s words resonate with two popular Catholic axioms: “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic” and “once a priest, always a priest.” There is no need for re-baptism or re-ordination even if the person had lapsed. What is needed is confession.

This second set of words also points to the efficacy and sufficiency of what our Lord did on the cross. Christ’s bloody sacrifice on Calvary took place once, and it will never be repeated, it need not be repeated because it cannot be repeated. To repeat His sacrifice would be to imply that the original offering was defective or insufficient, like the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament that could never take away sins. Jesus’ offering was perfect, efficacious, and eternal.

But how about the Holy Mass? Isn’t this “repeating” the sacrifice of Christ on the cross? This is what Protestants falsely accuse us Catholics of doing with little understanding of the theology of the Mass. The Holy Mass is a participation in this one perfect offering of Christ on the cross. It is the re-presentation of the sacrifice on the cross; here “re-presentation” does not mean a mere commemoration or a fresh new sacrifice each time the Mass is celebrated, but making “present” the one sacrifice at Calvary. The Risen Christ becomes present on the altar and offers Himself to God as a living sacrifice. Like the Mass, Christ words at the Last Supper are words of sacrifice, “This is my body . . . this is my blood . . . given up for you.” So, the Mass is not repeating the murder of Jesus, but is taking part in what never ends: the offering of Christ to the Father for our sake (Heb 7:25, 9:24). After all, if Calvary didn’t get the job done, then the Mass won’t help. It is precisely because the death of Christ was sufficient that the Mass is celebrated. It does not add to or take away, from the work of Christ—it IS the work of Christ.

Baptism is not just some initiation ritual that has been handed down to us through the centuries and neither is the Eucharist a mere historical event that happened two thousand years ago and is now being memorialised and re-enacted by the community. St Thomas Aquinas teaches: “The sacraments of the Church derive their power specially from Christ’s Passion.” The Risen Jesus acts in the Church’s Sacraments to communicate the saving power of His passion. Peter could not understand all this at the Last Supper and that is why the Lord tells Him: “At the moment you do not know what I am doing, but later you will understand.” He had to wait for the Lord’s resurrection before He came to understand the actions of our Lord and their significance. We are more privileged. We have the witness of the Church who has seen the Risen Lord in the flesh.

When the Lord tells us: “I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you,” it is not just the ritual of foot-washing that He is asking us to emulate. Our Lord is most certainly pointing to His work of salvation on the cross which He offers to us as a gift. The right response we must make is to receive this gift and yield to His actions in our lives, to say ‘yes’ to Him and the transforming power of His graces which is channeled to us through the Sacraments. Some people continue to resist Christ because they do not consider themselves sinful enough to require Him to wash them in Baptism or the Sacrament of Penance. Others have the opposite problem: they stay away because they are too ashamed of their lives or secret sins. To both, our Lord and Master gently but firmly speaks these words as He did to Peter: “If I do not wash you, you can have nothing in common with me.”

Glory and Blood

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord

The most visible accoutrement for this Sunday is the palm branch, and for good reason. The palm branch was a symbol of triumph and of victory in the ancient world, and in Jewish tradition. But having paid closer attention to the first Gospel taken from Luke, it is at least a little ironic to refer to this Sunday as “Palm Sunday.” Actually, only John (12:13) mentions “palm branches.” Matthew mentions “branches from the trees”, while Mark describes them as “leafy branches.” Luke mentions nothing about any foliage. So, if you didn’t manage to get your hands on a nice leafy palm, don’t complain.

Be that as it may, why “palms?” It was a common custom in many lands in the ancient Near East to cover the path of someone thought worthy of the highest honour. The Hebrew Bible reports that Joshua was treated this way. The Gospels of Mark, Matthew and John report that people gave our Lord this form of honour. In Matthew/ Mark they are reported as laying their garments and cut branches on the street, whereas John more specifically mentions palm fronds. Luke mentions only garments being spread on the road as a kind of ancient red-carpet reception to our Lord whom the people feted as their Messianic King.

As mentioned earlier, the palm as a symbol of victory predates both Jewish and Christian tradition. But in Christian iconography, the palm has taken on a radically new meaning of being a symbol of martyrdom. This association may have arisen from the natural habitat of palm trees. To travellers in the arid desert, palm trees were beacons of hope because of their association with oases and life. Where you find a palm tree in a desert, you are bound to find a water source. But it is not just the water that sustains the traveller but the fruits or dates from the palm tree. It was thought, that at the time the palm tree produced its fruits it died, hence it was meant as a sacrifice, as well as a symbol of the resurrection.

So, there is no contradiction between the earlier symbol of victory with the later Christian symbolism for martyrdom. For isn’t martyrdom victory of the spirit over the earthly and the flesh, as well as a symbol of rebirth and of immortality, which is victory over death? And isn’t this the paradoxical lens in which we must view the Lord in today’s liturgy? Although the Son of God appeared to be the least among men, He was born to be a king in the most admirable way. Though He was feted as an earthly king as He entered Jerusalem, it would only be from the throne of the cross where He will be revealed as King of the Universe in all His glory.

If Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem had been the peak and culmination of our faith story, would we be Catholic, would we even be here, would we have the crucifix on the walls of this church and our homes, would we prayerfully process to partake of His body and His blood, would the name of Jesus even be remembered after 2000 years? And the answer is simply ‘no’. Today, is not the climax of the story. We had an early teaser of the climax in our lengthy Passion Gospel reading but even then, the death of our Lord would be the anti-climax. What we experienced today, is but a pale shadow of what will happen next week, although today’s celebration seems openly public, God chose to have the resurrection of Christ at Easter experienced in mystery and in secret, only to be made known through the testimonies of those who have seen and touched the Risen Lord in the flesh.

But the Palms that you received remain a vital and meaningful part of our lives, and this is not just confined to Palm Sunday. They are more than ‘those Catholic things’ that we twist or braid and hang on the wall or behind a special picture and forget about. These palms are part of both our entry Gospel as well as the great account of our Lord’s Passion. But they are also a part of our story – yours and mine.

Two months ago, you were invited to bring the palms you received last year back to church. Six weeks ago, those palms were burnt outside this church. The resulting ashes were then further pulverised to prepare them for use on Ash Wednesday. Those ashes, made of palms we had with us for a year, reminded us of our mortality, our sinfulness and our need for reconciliation, conversion, and prayer. They remind us of the vanity and fragility of human glory. One day you are a hero in the eyes of others. Another day, you can descend into zero.

Today we begin again with new palms. These new palms should lead us to the question of how we have changed since we had ashes from those triumphal palms sprinkled on the crown of our heads. What have we learned since Ash Wednesday? How are we different, are we better people because of the efforts we put into this Lenten season?

Lent is bracketed, bookended, by palms; the loss, burning and destruction of them at its onset and then, the new green leaves this day, near the end. Ultimately that is what this sacred season is about, burning away, clearing out, purifying and cultivating something new.

Take the palm branches with you today; let them be a reminder that we are entering the holiest week of the year. The week that begins with the false triumphal entry into Jerusalem, ends with the true triumph over death at the cross. These palms challenge us to remember our role in our Lord’s Passion – that those great sufferings endured by our Lord were endured for each of us. They are our badge of honour, not trophies of success in human terms, but a reminder that we are called to share in the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. We are indeed called to be “martyrs,” “witnesses” as the Greek root “martyron” suggests.

Five weeks ago, we heard: Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Those ashes on our heads have washed off, but these palms can stay with us, offering mute testimony and calling us to not forget who we are – sinners in need of our Lord’s grace, and what we can be – sinners who have placed our lives in the hands of our loving God. Reminders that it is in humility that we will find true glory, in death can we discover eternal life. Please take these palms with you today. Because in a sense, just like those palms, each of us this day also holds our future in our hands. Will we only choose to walk the path of human glory or follow our Lord faithfully on the way to the Cross?

Engraved in Love and Mercy

Fifth Sunday of Lent Year C

Familiarity with this story has made most of us inattentive to gaping holes in the narrative.

First, this famous incident took place within the precinct of the Temple, and this is no insignificant detail. Why would this woman be brought into the precinct of the Temple, even if this took place in the outer Court of Women? Shouldn’t the scribes and Pharisees who were most careful about matters concerning ritual purity know that to have a public sinner dragged into the compound of the House of God would be a great affront to God Himself?

Second, who was this unnamed woman? Is she the same woman in Luke 7:47-49 who entered the house of Simon the Pharisee and bathed the Lord’s feet with her tears? And to think that this woman was forgiven once and now caught in another compromising situation? Shouldn’t she deserve a more severe punishment for this repeat offence?

Thirdly, and this may seem oddest of all - the Lord’s parting words to this woman are, “go away, and do not sin anymore.” Curiously, Saint John does not report any penitential resolve on the part of the woman. Although the Lord also does not condemn her, neither does He absolve her of her sin.

But the fourth mystery of this story is one which has puzzled most scholars and commentators, and given rise to many speculations - what was our Lord writing on the ground? One common answer was that He was writing the names of the men, many of whom were standing in the crowd accusing this woman, guilty of having committed the act of adultery or fornication with this woman. This is a plausible answer as no one can commit adultery or fornication alone by himself or herself - it takes two to tango. This may be reminiscent of the prophet Jeremiah’s scribbling the sins of the Israelites.

But there is also another possibility offered by St Thomas Aquinas. He sees in this woman a symbol and representative of sinful humanity, and like fallen humanity, she is in need of mercy, even though her accusers demand justice. There seems no way out. According to St John Paul II, her accusers “intend to show that (Christ’s) teaching on God’s merciful love contradicts the Law, which punished the sin of adultery with stoning.” How can God be just and yet merciful toward our fallen human race? But then something wonderful happens. Jesus bends down and begins to write in the earth. And this is all done in silence. What does this mean?

St Thomas Aquinas, with the keenness of his mystical insight, says that this action signifies that God in His mercy is stooping down to assist sinful humanity. In fact, he says, that whenever Jesus stoops down, this signifies an act of God’s mercy, and that whenever He stands up straight, this signifies an act of God’s justice. For the Greek word for justice literally means, “uprightness.” It is the same word in the Greek for what Jesus is doing by standing upright. But what does the writing in the earth signify? The Greek word there is katagraphein. It is a hapax legomenon, which is to say that it is a unique word which appears only once in the New Testament, and that is here. It doesn’t exactly mean “write”—that would be graphein—but katagraphein means “to engrave.”

What was our Lord “engraving”? We return to the Old Testament to see how God engraves the commandments with His finger in the tablets of stone. So the Fathers of the Church say that the Lord is here writing the commandments into the earth. But according to St Thomas, this act also signifies the mystery of the Incarnation—when by the finger of God, the Holy Spirit, the eternal Word was written into our human nature, as Isaiah the prophet once wrote: “Let the heavens rain down the Just One and the earth bring forth a Saviour” (Isa 45:8). The earth is a fit symbol for human nature since God had shaped the first man from the earth. And all this is done in silence to signify the ineffability of this mystery. It is as if Jesus is saying to the scribes and Pharisees: “Yes, according to Moses she ought to be condemned and stoned to death, but now through the Incarnation, mercy has been made available to her. Therefore, there is now hope for sinners.” Jesus is the perfect sin offering, the Lamb of God, who truly takes away the sins of the world.

But the scribes and Pharisees do not understand the mystery, and they break the reverent silence with a cacophony of cries: they want justice, they want blood. And as they continued to ask Him, our Lord stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” By straightening up, our Lord is now signifying that He is dispensing justice by passing judgment. They have asked for justice and justice they will receive, but now it is they who also stand accused. Our Lord does not pass judgment on this woman but on her accusers. But let us be clear that the Lord does not make excuses for the sins of this woman. He does not deny that she deserves death, but He adds to this that so do these scribes and Pharisees. Mercy is never given to the deserving. It is always offered to the undeserving, if it is to be mercy.

But what happens next? Our Lord stoops down again, as if to offer mercy to the newly accused. And this time He begins to write again, but the word now is graphein. He is not engraving but simply writing lightly in the earth, and as you all know, that whatever is written in sand, is malleable and can be easily erased. And the Fathers of the Church tell us that now He is writing their sins, but lightly as if to indicate that these can be easily wiped away, if only they will accept that they too need God’s mercy. How often do we fail to grasp this? How often have we etched and engraved the sins of others in our hearts as we refuse to forgive them but we forget that our sins are so quickly and easily absolved by God, as would writings in the sand be simply erased with a sweep of the hand?

Then what happens last of all? Our Lord stands up again to render His judgment, a judgment both just and merciful: Our Lord looked up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And she is right - all her accusers have fled the scene in shame - they who deserve God’s judgment had been reminded by the Lord that they too have been recipients of His mercy. How could they demand a different standard for this woman? The woman now stands upright because she has been justified by the mercy of Christ, not because she was justified by her own merits. Hence, she hears the sentence: And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you … go away, and do not sin anymore.”

St John Paul II provides us a perfect conclusion to this story: “This Gospel passage clearly teaches that Christian forgiveness is not synonymous with mere tolerance, but implies something more demanding. It does not mean overlooking evil, or even worse, denying it. God does not forgive evil but the individual, and He teaches us to distinguish the evil act, which as such must be condemned, from the person who has committed it, to whom He offers the possibility of changing. While man tends to identify the sinner with his sin, closing every escape, the heavenly Father instead has sent His Son into the world to offer everyone a way to salvation… On Calvary, by the supreme sacrifice of his life, the Messiah will seal for every man and woman the infinite gift of God's pardon and mercy.”

Face of the Father's Mercy

Fourth Sunday of Lent Year C

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Memento Mori

Third Sunday of Lent Year C

We all suffer from delusions of immortality, invincibility and impregnability, constantly assuring ourselves, “it will never happen to me!” Yes, we see our friends’ parents get divorced, we empathise with them but then we console ourselves, “Thank God, my parents are fine. What happened to his parents will not happen to mine.” We get news that the house down the road was burgled and count ourselves fortunate that we have been spared. We hear stories of our colleagues at work or at church getting tested positive for COVID-19 but then, I continue to cheat on all those annoying public health recommendations because nothing has happened to me. “It’s been two years and I’ve not gotten infected. Nothing to worry about. It will never happen to me.” And then there is death. We know we will die one day, just 'not now'. Many often think that if they don’t talk about it or think about it, they can live to see another day.

Our minds are generally not tuned to abstract risk assessment. We feel invincible, immune from tragedy, until tragedy hits too close to home and then all of sudden, our measure of risks changes, our value system takes on a radical overhaul, and we begin to see our priorities in a different light. But most of the time, tragedy doesn’t have a feel of urgency - it seems too distant, perhaps only appearing as headlines in our newspapers but hardly a tiny blip on my radar of cognisance.

Today, a group of people came to report to the Lord about a tragedy, not a natural one but a bloody slaughter by the Roman prefect, Pilate, and what makes this story more egregious is that the massacre took place while these Galileans were offering sacrifice at the Temple. For those who reported this news to our Lord, were perhaps hoping to elicit some response and statement from Him. This was news that hit close to home - the ones who died were their fellow countrymen, perhaps some were even people whom they knew - friends or relatives. They could never imagine anything like this happening to them, what more to these people who had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices.

And our Lord did give them a response, but perhaps not the response they were expecting. When bad things happen, it is so easy to lay the blame on something or someone. So, our Lord cited once again the example of Pilate’s bloody murder but also added a natural tragedy in the form of the tower of Siloam collapsing and killing some people. It’s easy to find a culprit in the first instance, but how about the second? If no human person is to be faulted, would God be guilty of this second tragedy? Or perhaps, it would be easier to postulate that all the victims were actually guilty of sin and were therefore receiving their just punishment?

Instead of placing the blame on someone or something, the Lord immediately makes this a moment of calling His audience to a deeper introspection. The issue isn’t about the guilt of Pilate or those victims but rather, the response each of us makes when we witness tragedy and experience the fragility of human life. “unless you repent you will all perish as they did.”

The words of our Lord serve as a “memento mori.” Roughly translated, the Latin phrase means “remember death.” The Church and our ancestors were most familiar with the wisdom of this advice since death was an everyday reality that marked every aspect of life and no one was spared, young or old, rich or poor, healthy or sick. The call to remember death was surely easier for past generations to embrace than for us. They had visible reminders of death’s grip all around them, whereas many of us can avoid the subject for most of our lives if we choose to.

Yes, we live in a very different world today where life expectancy has risen and infant mortality has dropped, where deaths today occur in medical facilities cordoned off from where we live, and our undertakers have perfected the art of embalming to make the dead look so alive. And where the reality of death fades to the background of our consciousness, other joy-stealing problems are quick to rise up and fill the void. When death is pushed out of our thinking, it isn’t replaced by warmth and peace and happiness. It’s replaced by death’s many other faces. We fixate instead on the comparatively trivial symptoms of our deeper problem. We’re still anxious, still defensive, still insecure, still angry, still despairing. We may detach ourselves from death so we can spend our time and energy chasing happiness. But that detachment won’t change the fact of our mortality, and it won’t ultimately make us happier.

Therefore, the words of our Lord, “unless you repent you will all perish as they did,” still matters today, more than ever. We should remember our mortality, our fragility, our vulnerability and that all of us will die one day; we should remember for these reasons.

First, death puts things in perspective. Without an awareness of death, we may get caught up in pursuing and fearing the most trifling of things. But death changes all of that. What we often fret about will be nullified by death. At death, the only thing which matters is our salvation.

Secondly, death brings the power of God into focus. Recognising the relevance of death every day is how we recognise the relevance of God every day, too. When we are in control, when life seems peaceful and uneventful, most people would never see any need for God.

Thirdly, death can bring back sinners to the path of righteousness. The thief on the cross did it in the last minutes of his life, and our Lord assured him that he would be with Him in paradise. Meditating on death is a call to repentance.

On Ash Wednesday, as the congregation files up silently like in a death march, to receive blessed Ashes, the priest will sprinkle these on the head of the person while speaking one of several formulas, including this: “Meménto, homo, quia pulvis es, et in púlverem revertéris;” “Remember, man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”

One day, we will die, just not now. And thus we confidently step in the plane or cross the street and for some of you, decide it’s time to return to Church after the long break of lockdowns and personal isolation during this pandemic. Watch left and right and hope there is no plane crashing into the place you are walking into or a COVID infected person coming close to you. A greater awareness of our vulnerability is positive, if it leaves cracks in our delusional bubble of impregnability. We come to realise that when we are afraid to look at death, we are a poorer people because of it. No matter how long science can prolong life, no matter how much embalming fluid is pumped into a corpse, nature will have her way. This is the hideous Truth. But for us Christians, we can rest in the knowledge that the ultimate Victor is Christ, Our Lord, who walked out of His tomb 2,000 years ago and offers resurrection to us. It is the same Christ who issues us with this warning everyday, reminding us: “unless you repent you will all perish as they did.”

Heaven doesn't require our imagination

Second Sunday of Lent Year C

God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell: these used to be the common themes found in almost everything ranging from cartoons to fiction novels, artistic masterpieces to the Sunday pulpit, as if these two themes are ingrained in the fabric of society. Nearly every human being holds some sort of belief system regarding heaven, hell, or both – you either believe in it, are ambivalent to it or scoff at it. A scathing judgment came from Stephen Hawking who argued that a belief that heaven or an afterlife awaits us, is a "fairy story" for people afraid of death. Perhaps you can recall these words from John Lennon’s song “Imagine”: “Imagine there’s no heaven; it’s easy if you try. No hell below us–above us only sky.” The song argues that if you can imagine away these unpleasant realities, we could create utopia on earth.

So, what happened to heaven and hell? In generations past it seemed the message of salvation could not be preached without the poignant illustrations of the glory of heaven promised to those who remained faithful to Jesus Christ, their Lord and Saviour, whereas the lake of fire is reserved for those who refuse to accept Him. But heaven’s gotten a bad press lately. We don’t believe in it like we used to. We don’t think about it very much nowadays. We’re all too busy making a living to worry about what happens after we die. We live, interact, work, and fall in love without any second thought of whether we will eventually end up in heaven or hell. Both heaven and hell are now used as metaphors to describe our present state, rather than two states after our death. Someone once put it this way, ‘For the unbeliever, this life is the only heaven they will ever know. For the believer, this life is the only hell we will ever know.’ Belief in heaven has taken a plunge because we are caught up with a utopian dream of establishing an earthly paradise. Salvation is no longer the desired goal. It has been replaced by therapeutic earth-bound substitutes – inner peace, happiness in the present life, longevity, health, wealth, wholeness of being, and solutions to our problems.

Are the likes of Stephen Hawkings and John Lennons of this world right, in disbelieving that there is life after death? Is heaven a mere delusion of those who cannot face death or the horror of this present life? Or is the belief in heaven rooted in reality and if it is, what has it to do with our present lives? Our readings today seem to say so. They partly lift aside the veil that separates earth from heaven and in so doing, they reveal the glory of the world as God created it. In the first reading, the ancient Abram who had lost all hope of producing a progeny who will ensure the continuation of his name, is provided a glimpse of heaven. In the stars, he is shown the promise of God that his descendants would be beyond his present imagining. In the second reading Paul exhorts the community in Philippi to “not give way but remain faithful in the Lord,” by reminding them that their “homeland is in heaven” and that Christ will “transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of his glorious body.”

Finally, we have in the Gospel, Luke’s account of the transfiguration. The transfiguration occurs in a context where the Lord had just revealed to His disciples that He would be put to death in Jerusalem. His prediction of His imminent death was met with denial and even anger. They were shaken by the thought that their Master, the awaited Messiah, would meet such a horrific fate. This is why the Lord took them up to the mountain where, "he was transfigured before them." This experience of the transfiguration was, therefore, God’s way of delivering the disciples from a crisis of faith by providing them with a glimpse into the glory of heaven. When we have sight of the finishing line, the rigours of the race become less demanding and we gain a second wind.

The cause of a crisis of faith often arises from the way in which we see people and things around us. Death, suffering, separation seem to be defining moments in our lives. The disciples needed a vision from God’s point of view, to see that in spite of the death sentence hanging over the head of Jesus, God was still with Him, God was still in control of events, God would see to it that in the end, He would be victorious over His foes, even over death. In the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John saw that there was more to Jesus than what they could see and hear and touch; they got a glimpse of the future glory of the Lord’s resurrection. His death would not be the end; it would only inaugurate the beginning of Eternal Life. It would open the gates of heaven.

An important truth shines forth from the centre of this mystery. Glimpses of this transfigured world are not only good for our mental health but are essential for our salvation. They help us see through the illusions cast by the devil who constantly tempts us with his greatest weapon, which is despair. We are tempted to store up treasures in this world and to place our hopes in projects which can only disappoint us. Our dreams of an earthly utopia, where we will be shielded from all pain, trouble, and disappointment is merely delusional. Christians disagree with Hawking’s conclusion – heaven is not “a fairy-tale”, it’s the Utopian ideal that proves to be real. Heaven makes the journey worth travelling. Heaven provides the strength to bear the weight of our tribulations. Heaven keeps us on course, away from the distractions that tie us to this earthly life and its lies. Heaven must exist, or our present suffering will lose its meaning. Heaven must exist, if we are to persevere and keep running till we reach the finishing line.

Unlike John Lennon or other Hollywood celebrities who need to “imagine” how our world would look like without heaven or hell, we Christians have no need for flighty imagination. We have the Eucharist, a glimpse and a taste of heaven. The Eucharist is real. Jesus, truly and substantially present in the Eucharist, is real. To see this requires faith, not imagination. As St John Paul II once wrote: “Today, the Eucharist which we are preparing to celebrate takes us in spirit to Mount Tabor together with the Apostles Peter, James and John, to admire in rapture the splendour of the transfigured Lord… We, pilgrims on earth, are granted to rejoice in the company of the transfigured Lord when we immerse ourselves in the things of above through prayer and the celebration of the divine mysteries. But, like the disciples, we too must descend from Tabor into daily life where human events challenge our faith. On the mountain we saw; on the paths of life we are asked tirelessly to proclaim the Gospel which illuminates the steps of believers.”