Human History and Divine Grace

Christmas Vigil Mass 2012

When most people hear the word genealogy or "family history" they immediately think, it’s an ‘old person’ thing. That’s how our Archbishop often remembers names. For years, when I was still studying in the seminary, I used to be known to him as “son of Joseph.” Eventually, he got use to calling me by my personal name and my father’s name was soon forgotten and cast into oblivion. I imagine myself as finally coming into my own and that I no longer needed to walk in my father’s shadow. Now, when the Archbishop introduces me, he often finds difficulty in remembering my name without an additional prompt (as he does with many other names). I personally feel that he should have just stuck to ‘son of Joseph’.

Today, the only people who seem to have any interest in genealogies are Mormons, members of the Church of Latter Day Saints, who keep impeccable family tree records of their members, historians, and the occasional matriarch who makes sure that she keeps all branches of the family tree connected. But the Hebrew people also shared the predilection for genealogies which prevailed among all the Semitic races. Among the Arabs, for instance, no biography is complete without a long list of the hero's ancestors. People in ancient Israel placed great importance on who their family's ancestors were. The Bible includes genealogies in order to show where certain families came from and why they were important. Genealogies were important for determining priestly and subsequently rabbinical lineage. They were important to attest territorial claims and purity of blood lines. Finally, the prophecy that the Messiah was to be born of the tribe of Judah and the house of David rendered the genealogy of this family most important. It was prophesied that from the root of Jesse a child will come who will bring God and salvation – the Gospel – to all of humankind. From the root of Jesse, in the House of David, will come our Saviour.

Our Gospel readings for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day begin with the Vigil’s mass Matthean account of the genealogy of Christ. The genealogy of Christ as recounted in Matthew 1: 1-18 is an optional reading for the Vigil Mass of Christmas Eve. Many of those presiding will no doubt opt for the shorter form of the Gospel reading, namely Matthew 1: 18-25, when perhaps a recitation of what to many may be strange tongue twisting foreign sounding names might be feared to try the patience of the congregation. This is perhaps a pity, when to hear these verses of the Bible is to contemplate Christ’s true rooting in our history and God’s plan for our salvation. This is a history of the chosen people. But more than just listing out a long and illustrious family tree with many important and famous personages to boast of, the genealogy is the story of God’s faithfulness. The story of God and the story of man intersect in this list of names. When he hear the name of Abraham, we remember his calling and the promise made to him by Abraham, that his ancestors will number like the stars of heaven. When the name of King David is mentioned, the promise made by God through the prophet Nathan emerges from the dark recesses of Israel’s collective memory that to David’s line is promised an everlasting dynasty. Thus the birth of Christ is located within the context of, and as the culmination of, the history of the children of Abraham and David. This history has not been a matter of accident; it has clear and meaningful design. All the way through history, Christ’s coming is prefigured and ever more keenly anticipated.

In the Old Testament, the genealogies were usually inserted by editors from the priestly caste, who were responsible for keeping such records. They were inserted as a form of transitional literary device which linked certain important figures in salvation history by glossing over extensive time periods, so as avoid the tedium in an otherwise exciting epic story. But more importantly the genealogies narrated how God kept his promises. God will remain faithful to his word despite the passing of generations and centuries. Genealogies provided hope for future generations who sometimes were tempted to give up hope in their long wait for the fulfillment. The genealogy kept the memory of the promise alive. It kept hope alive!

One more intriguing feature of the genealogy may take this issue further. The genealogy follows a set pattern of naming successive fathers, but the pattern is broken at five points by the mention of women. And the women mentioned are not the great heroines of faith like Sarah or Rebecca or Rachel, hut five very unusual and unorthodox women: Tamar who played prostitute and had incestuous relationship with her father-in-law Judah (Genesis 38); Rahab, heroine and prostitute who betrayed her own people to the Israelites(Joshua 2 to 6); Ruth, the foreigner who lured the grandfather of David, her employer, to her bed; the wife of Uriah, Bathsheba, who fell pregnant to David’s seduction and adultery and whose husband David murdered (2 Samuel 11); and Mary, a virgin bearing a child.

By highlighting these women, Matthew may indeed be drawing the reader to question the purity of Jesus’ lineage, something Jews were proud to boast of. To a people who kept impeccable records of their family history, lineage was everything. But as Matthew was keen to show, the lineage would not just be made up of great saints and illustrious heroes but also sinners. This highlights so much more the radical intervention of God in salvation history. Salvation comes not from man’s best, but from God’s grace. Yet, God enters into man’s sullied past and redeems it and salvages it from doom. Salvation emerges from the grace of God, but also from the ashes of man’s failure. Thus, hidden away in the genealogy Matthew has given us a statement about grace in miniature. God does not write off sinners or those whom others write off, whether sinners or not. God is one who draws even the lowliest and despised into his purpose and they take their place in his sacred history. God continues to do so in the ministry of Jesus and in the world today.

Matthew puts the genealogy first in his Gospel because it proclaims from the beginning who Jesus is. He will show that it cannot be treated as a genealogy in the strict sense. The line is broken at Joseph. Jesus traces his origins from another source, one which was obviously divine. But the genealogy is nonetheless a gospel statement giving major clues about who Jesus is and about what he does. He truly represents God’s people and fulfils their hopes for a Messiah. God has never abandoned his people and continually watches over them over the centuries. Christ is proof of this and the culmination of this story of salvation. He represents God and his promise. He will be the fulfilment of the promise found in the Book of Isaiah, that “no longer are you to be named ‘Forsaken’, nor your land ‘Abandoned’, but you shall be called ‘My Delight.’ He shows us that God never reneges on his promises and remains ever faithful even in the face of man’s infidelity. He enters into humanity’s brokenness and sinfulness and redeems man from destruction. A history of failure and sin does not define us nor determine the end; it is grace that does! Christ will be the bearer of God’s grace. Therefore, we echo once again the Introit of this Vigil mass, “Today, you will know that the Lord will come, and he will save us, and in the morning you will see his glory.”

Pax Domini, Pax Christi

Fourth Sunday of Advent Year C

The world has become “more peaceful” for the first time since 2009, according to the 2012 Global Peace Index. This assessment might seem surprising given that our media is often peppered by news of violence and conflict on both the national and international front. But I guess these figures are treated with the same incredulity as the report that our National Crime Rate has dropped. Perhaps, one can hide behind semantics as some critics would claim – it’s just a matter of definition or the result of skilful propaganda. If peace is just merely the absence of war, then the Index is correct. Two millennia ago, the Romans too boasted of having imposed a peace throughout their vast empire, which they unabashedly named Pax Romana (Latin: "Roman peace"). But the Romans regarded peace not as an absence of war, but the rare situation that existed when all opponents had been beaten down and lost the ability to resist. The Americans seem to have taken over where the Romans left off with their “Big Stick” policy – beat your enemies into submission.

But the “Big Stick” ideology has failed miserably as a solution for world peace as evidenced by the proliferation of terrorist activities and groups in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and Israel’s treatment of belligerent groups within and outside its borders. The prevalence of the enemies of peace is now more pronounced that before, though they may be less conspicuous than a conventional army. In the recent James Bond movie ‘Skyfall”, when M, the superior of the illustrious agent 007, was called to a ministerial inquiry to explain herself, she painted the bleak scenario of a post Cold War world, where one had to contend and fight with unknown enemies who hide “in the shadows.”  This is not the first time a human solution has failed. Hitler’s Final Solution, which killed millions of Jews and others too, ended in greater misery and yet no peace was in sight. Over the centuries, man has continued to invent and experiment with various options in the hope that he would finally find a solution that will ensure lasting peace. Human ideologies such as Pelagianism, Communism, National Socialism, Capitalism, Humanism, all share a common belief, that man is capable of improving the world without the interference of God. This optimism in man’s ability to shape his future lay side by side with the view that religion and God are nothing more than liabilities. None of these human experiments, however, proved successful.

So this is the paradox of peace: we realise that though the concept of peace is easy to grasp as far as we all desire it; the dilemmas of peace are more complex, and the implementation of peace even harder. It is no wonder that many have grown sceptical that peace is attainable, a mere Utopian dream. But today’s readings assert the good news that peace is within our reach. Peace is not a dream or something utopian; it is possible. It is true that we cannot manufacture peace. But God can. Peace is possible whenever we align our purpose and will with God’s. To have peace is to trust in God. If sin, through man’s disobedience, is the cause of disharmony and disorder in the world, peace is a recovery of that order, when man submits himself to the will and plan of God. Therefore, St Augustine appropriately described peace as tranquillitas ordinis, the tranquillity of order.

Therefore, it is not ideologies that save the world, but only an unconditional return to the living God, our Creator, the guarantor of our freedom, and the guarantor of what is really good and true; and who at the same time is everlasting love. And what could ever save us apart from love? Love takes delight in truth, it is the force that enables us to make a commitment to truth, to justice, to peace, because it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (cf. 1 Cor 13:1-13). True peace comes when we place our faith in Christ, because “He is our Peace.” True peace comes only when we embrace the truth that He is the author, worker, and perfecter of our faith. Choosing Christ does not guarantee success according to the criteria of today’s world, but ensures that peace and joy that only He can give. Peace comes when we acknowledge that God is in control and surrender to his charge.

One of the modern myths that have arisen from our age which lives under the tyranny of political correctness is that Truth is the enemy of peace and the cause of violence. Political correctness sells us the lie that in order to maintain peace, one needs to either suppress or relativise the Truth. Proponents of this argument are quick to cite the Crusades. Of course it is correct that Truth has been much abused in history. Intolerance and cruelty have occurred in the name of truth. But the problem lies not in Truth but in man’s sinfulness. Man refuses to acknowledge the truth concerning his own sinfulness and therefore makes Truth the scapegoat. Violence is the result of the distortion of truth and never because of its exposition. Saint Augustine once asked: “Quid enim fortius desiderat anima quam veritatem? – What does man desire more deeply than truth?” How can man truly be at peace when he is denied that which he longs above all else? And the truth is this: the world cannot know peace if it does not know God.

When addressing the International Theological Commission at the conclusion of their Plenary Assembly this month, Pope Benedict XVI reminded the members of the Commission and the whole Church that faith in God is faith in the Lord who radically rejects all forms of hatred and violence in favour of the absolute primacy of Love.  The Holy Father asserts that “it is the forgetfulness of God that immerses human societies in a form of relativism, which inevitably generates violence. When you deny the opportunity for people to refer to an objective truth, dialogue is rendered impossible and violence, whether declared or hidden, becomes the rule of law of human relationships. Without openness to the transcendent, which allows us to find answers to questions on the meaning of life and how to live a moral life, mankind becomes unable to act in accordance with justice and work for peace.”

The Holy Father has also reminded the whole Church on the occasion of the World of Day of Peace 2011, that “all Catholics in every part of the world have a duty to proclaim and embody ever more fully the ''Gospel of Peace'', and to show that acknowledgment of the full truth of God is the first, indispensable condition for consolidating the truth of peace. God is Love which saves, a loving Father who wants to see his children look upon one another as brothers and sisters, working responsibly to place their various talents at the service of the common good of the human family. God is the unfailing source of the hope which gives meaning to personal and community life. God, and God alone, brings to fulfilment every work of good and of peace. History has amply demonstrated that declaring war on God in order to eradicate him from human hearts only leads a fearful and impoverished humanity toward decisions which are ultimately futile.”

So, peace is not just the absence of conflict or war. Neither can peace just be manufactured by our human machinations and ideological formulations. Peace is a gift of God and if the world has forgotten this truth as the world has often forgotten God, how can it ever discover or recover the gift of peace? The world needs God. What the world requires today is not another Pax Romana, or Pax Americana. or Pax Communism. What world needs today is Pax Domini, Pax Christi, the Peace of the Lord, the Peace of Christ, because “He is Peace.” Jesus is indeed our peace, our justice and our reconciliation.

All Joy and No Fun

Third Sunday of Advent Year C

An article in New York Magazine from July this year contained a cover story about why a lot of parents today seem to hate parenting. The story was aptly entitled, “All Joy and No Fun.” According to the article, the author made this observation that people often think, before they have children, that having them will make them happier. Instead, they find that taking care of them can be an unbearable torture. A study by Dale Kahneman, a behavioral economist, was quoted in the article as saying that on a survey of 909 working Texas mothers, child care ranked 16th out of a list of 19 as a pleasureable activity. Housework was rated higher! This is the brutal reality about having children—Children expose the gulf between our fantasies about family and its spikier realities.

When you think of what makes you happy, you can come up with a whole list of things that will give you pleasure – having a bowl of ice-cream, watching a comedy, getting the latest iphone or ipad mini as a Christmas present, going to the hair dressers, doing retail therapy, playing football in the rain, witnessing your toddler take his first steps, being with your loved ones etc. But such small pleasures are usually short term, they never really last. In contrast to this, you may have heard that Christ offers everlasting joy. But the last thing that seems fun to do, even for Christians, is being a Christian. The idea of Christian joy seems somewhat vague and illusive. In fact, being a Christian can sometimes feel like a killjoy. The reason is that we often equate joy with pleasure or fun.

Today’s liturgy summons us to embrace Joy! In fact, it is framed as a commandment in the second reading. St Paul tells the Philippians, “I want you to be happy, always happy in the Lord; I repeat, what I want is your happiness.” But I guess for many of us, the message just doesn’t seem to make any sense, especially when we feel no excitement or exhilaration in our lives.  A lot of us believe that joy or happiness is equivalent to pleasure or having fun. After last week’s reminder that Advent is a time to apply the brakes to immediate gratification, deny ourselves of some of the pleasures of this festive season, mute our carols and dampen our excitement for the Yuletide season, it’s hard to imagine how Advent can be a season of joy. The solemnity of the season of Advent seems to have taken all the fun out of Christmas.

Our search for pleasures and fun, in fact, has often distracted us from the authentic pursuit of Christian joy. We have become a distracted people. Here’s the root of the problem: we believe that pleasure and fun leads to joy. What we fail to recognise is that one of the roots of the desire for pleasure is the feeling of emptiness and the pain of boredom following from it. Paul Tillich, one of the greatest Protestant theologians of the 20^th century noted that “of all the dangers that threaten our civilisation, this is one of the most dangerous: the escape from one’s emptiness, through fun, which makes joy impossible”. In our culture we are conditioned to consume what we want, not what we need. This is why the endless pursuit of happiness doesn’t necessarily lead to joy. Excess prevents us from being thankful with what we have. We become insatiable. We are also bombarded by attempts to manufacture desire. Much of our culture and economy is based on gratifying desires. This becomes most detrimental to cultivating joy when the cycle of manufacturing and gratifying desire becomes an endless pursuit of happiness. The endless pursuit of happiness often lead to financial burdens that create fear and anxiety. Joy is choked out by the weeds of fear and anxiety. Some of the desire that our culture tries to manufacture is the desire to feel safe. So we are sold products that are supposed to eliminate our fear and worry. But rather than eliminate fear and anxiety, this endless pursuit merely puts additional pressure on desire for gratification.

Finally, you come to realise: Life is often not the fairytale we expect. So what do we do when happiness eludes us? Where do we go when we have run out of avenues to manufacture and pursue pleasures and fun – when the effects of drugs and alcohol wears out, when the roller coaster ride ends, when the party is over? The answer is simple - We choose joy. But here lies the difficulty, how do we distinguish true joy from mere pleasure and fun? Unlike pleasure and fun which are often selfish and self-centered, joy is always directed outward. Inner joy leads to kindness, generosity, and love. St Paul wrote to his friends at Philippi an epistle of joy in spite of the fact that the Philippians were actually under a lot of pressure. In 2 Corinthians, Paul says this about those particular churches; particularly the Philippians church, “out of their severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity”. We derive pleasure and happiness from receiving. But joy is the wellspring of giving. We see generosity at the heart of the Baptist’s preaching in today’s gospel. Three groups of people ask John the Baptist what must they do. John exhorts them to share with those who are needy, be just and fair in our dealings; to refrain from intimidation and extortion to acquire what we want and finally to be satisfied with what we have. In other words, as we await the coming of Christ, we should not be selfish or greedy and think only of our own needs and wants.

Therefore it is hard to be happy and joyful when you are greedy and ambitious. When you are never satisfied with what you have, when you are always afraid of losing what you have, when you are jealous of other’s prosperity – it’s really hard to be happy. It is only the man who has discovered God as fulfilling his every heart’s desire who will be happy. Only God can fill the emptiness in our hearts. Only God can satisfy our deepest longings. Only God can be the source of everlasting joy. I think a big part of our problem is that we often have a tendency to want to create our own joy, our own happiness. I get joy through my hobbies, my relationships and my work. Nothing is wrong with that, in fact I am glad I can find happiness in so many things, it is a great gift. But here is the irony, this kind of joy doesn’t last. I get so busy manufacturing my own happiness that I fail to desire lasting Joy that comes only from God.

Joy comes from knowing that we are God's children. As the first reading reminds us, it is the joy of knowing that God has removed the judgment hanging over our heads; it is the joy of knowing that our Lord, our Mighty Saviour is in our midst and that “He will exult with joy over you, he will renew you by his love; he will dance with shouts of joy for you as on a day of festival.” It is the joy of knowing and trusting in God’s faithfulness and love. Despite all the uncertainties and pain in our lives, our God is with us. And this God, who has been good to us, will take care of all things. That joy is not found under the Christmas tree. That joy is not found in a new dress or a new bike. That joy is not found in being the most popular guy in the class. That joy is found only at the foot of the cross. Only when we come to recognise the love of God as displayed on the cross - the Son of God who has died for our sins, only then can we experience joy, lasting joy, real joy, the joy of a forgiven sinner, one who has been redeemed from sin and death, the joy of knowing that my salvation has been won by Christ on the cross and that he will return to complete what he has already begun. In the cross we come to discover that Joy is not the absence of sorrow but the presence of God. Thus the words of St Paul to the Philippians, "I want you to be happy," represents an ever-present element in the Bible. For Christians the lack of joy is a consequence of man’s separation from God, and the presence of joy is a consequence of the reunion with Him.

Thus, when we allow the God of Joy to fill our lives with his love, joy and peace, nothing can take away these things. Life need not be perfect and our problems may not be solved, but with God as the Lord and centre of our lives, nothing can take away the joy of being his beloved sons and daughters. That may not sound like fun to many pleasure seeking individuals, but for us Christians, its wonderful news to the ears; in fact, it is Pure Joy!  

Beauty Restored

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception - December 8

Although the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was only promulgated in the 19^th century, our story begins at the very beginning, in fact, in the Book of Genesis, where we hear the story of man’s origins and also the origin of sin. God had created the whole universe for the benefit of man that man may discover his primary vocation, to live his life entirely in the service of God. God placed order in his creation; He imbued it with his own personal qualities of goodness, truth and finally beauty. Thus, by contemplating the beauty of Creation, man may come to recognise the beauty of God. In the early fifth century, St Augustine of Hippo asked "Who made these beautiful changeable things, if not one who is beautiful and unchangeable?" To know God is to know beauty; to know beauty is to know God. Just as God is the source of all truth and goodness, God is also the source of all beauty. Thus, everything that is beautiful reflects God’s artistry. Indeed, God is Beauty itself.  St Hilary of Poitiers, wrote: “Surely the author of all created beauty must himself be the beauty in all beauty.”

But this wonderful story of creation, though perfect in all aspects as far as God was concerned, was damaged though not completely destroyed by the ugliness of sin – man choosing to rewrite the story of creation by removing God, the Creator, from the equation. Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God's command. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains the reality of original sin in this manner: “In that sin man preferred himself to God and by that very act scorned him. He chose himself over and against God, against the requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good. Constituted in a state of holiness, man was destined to be fully "divinised" by God in glory. Seduced by the devil, he wanted to "be like God", but "without God, before God, and not in accordance with God" (CCC #398). Ugliness entered the world through sin. It is aptly symbolised by Adam and Eve’s sudden realisation of their own nakedness, now seen as something bad and ugly which required masking. Thus, through the disobedience of our first parents, mankind became infected with the pandemic malaise of original sin. With original sin came the ugliness of every depravity, ignorance, and malice known to man. The beauty of Paradise was lost.

This earthly Paradise was never completely forgotten. But, it had been reduced to a mere dream, a flicker of hope that would sustain man’s search for the good, the true and beautiful. Man would attempt to rediscover it through works of his own creation. But the story of the Tower of Babel is lesson that man is only capable of imitating, and as long as he refused to submit to the authority of God, would continue disfiguring the works of his Creator. Thus his creativity would often be subjected to curse of narcissistic self-fulfilment. However, there were those who remain faithful to the dream. The holy men and women of ancient times were burdened by the raggedness of the sinful world. But they longed for a fresh start, for a new birth, for another Garden of beauty, freshness and promise. They realised that Man was incapable of conceiving such a reality. Only God could answer their longing. Beauty itself had to return to creation in order that the universe may be restored to its original harmony and man returned to his original state of grace. But for Beauty to enter into world disfigured by Sin, a garden preserved from the ravages of sin would have to be found, for Holiness and Sin were absolutely irreconcilable. God planted the new Garden in the womb of St. Ann. God made a new Eve, untouched by the sin of the world, to be the mother of the new Adam.

As much as secular humanism may continue to push and sell optimistic lies to the contrary, Christians recognise that we human beings cannot refresh the world. We cannot make the world clean and promising and new. In spite of our best innovations and inventions, we cannot restore the world to its original beauty. But God can. And this is the powerful message of hope contained in the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the Solemnity we commemorate in this morning’s celebration.  God can bring good out of evil. God can turn the cross, which was an instrument of inhuman torture, the symbol of mankind’s abject sinfulness —God can turn the cross of agony and death into the tree of life. God can turn the sin of Adam into the Happy Fault proclaimed at every Easter Vigil. God can give the world a new Eve, a new mother. And He did! He made the Blessed Virgin Mary.

By affirming the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, we too are restoring something fundamental that has been lost to modern man – the Truth concerning the sovereignty of God. It is not only Beauty which is restored, but also the True and the Good. By promulgating the dogma in a time when rationalism attacked the foundation of the faith, Blessed Pius IX raised the voice of the Church to defend and to glumly reaffirm the existence of the supernatural order. Against the lie posed by humanism that God does not exist or even if he did, He was indifferent to our struggles and problems, the Church proclaims this Truth – God is Real. He is very very Real and He has not forgotten us. We don’t need an image to appear on a window to tell us of this. We already have the real thing – the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Conception, the New Eve, the Beautiful Icon of the Church.

Coinciding with this feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary would be the unveiling of our sanctuary, with its beauty restored. Against the enemies of beauty who argue that beauty is useless and serves no utilitarian purpose, we must disagree and affirm together with Mary that we need beauty. Let me reiterate - to know God is to know beauty; to know beauty is to know God. Beauty attracts us, provokes adoration, and invites us to adorn ourselves with its lustre. If nothing else, we deeply feel the absence of beauty in a world disfigured by original sin. Without beauty, our faith loses its lustre – it’s very glory, its sacred aura. We must, therefore, recover the beauty of holiness, and re-experience the holiness of beauty or our religion will become nothing more than dry and dusty truth encrusted with overly-demanding morals. We recover the beauty of holiness through our love of our Blessed Mother, the love of God our Father, Jesus her Son, and the Holy Spirit who preserved her from original sin. And we express our love most perfectly when we adorn our lives with the beauty of divine holiness and the light of sacred glory, so that one day we may take our place among the saints in the heavenly Jerusalem. It is there that Beauty, now prefigured in Mary, will be perfectly restored!