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In 1925, Pope Pius XI, through the encyclical “Quas primas” instituted the Solemnity of Christ the King. This Sunday should mark its centenary anniversary. Even though it was a 100 years ago when the Pope instituted this feast, its history stretches back in time. It was not as if the Pope suddenly thought of declaring the Kingship of Christ. In fact, 1925 was the 16th centenary of the Council of Nicæa of which the Nicene Creed is recited at every solemn Mass. There we acknowledge and acclaim that “His Kingdom will have no end”.
The impetus in 1925 for this feast was to call our attention to the development of totalitarian forms of governance in the years between the two great wars. Firstly, progress of industrialisation depended on the development of science and technology. More and more the canon or the measure of knowledge had become restrictive, in the sense that, scientific knowledge is perceived to be the only knowledge. The result can only mean that religion is sidelined to private belief. When faith becomes non-essential to the organisation of life, religion becomes useless. In that way, secularism paved the path for the rise in anti-clericalism in Catholic countries like Spain, Mexico and Brazil. Secondly, Communism gained its foothold in Russia and soon enough choked the countries behind the Iron Curtain. Thirdly, Fascism reared its head in Italy, Germany, Spain, Brazil and even Japan.
The Church, through Pius XI, pushed back against this move to “privatise” religion with the consequence of rendering it irrelevant. By proclaiming Christ as King, the Pope intended to draw attention to the social Kingship of Christ. It countered the modernist errors of relegating religious expressions to the margins of society thereby restricting it to a purely private plane. In other words, religion was becoming superfluous. The crisis of the modernism was the secularising of public and private life. God is sidelined when He should be at the centre of life and civilisation. The cure was to re-establish the reign of Christ over all individuals, families and peoples.
In terms of power and its exercise, the model of Christ’s Kingship is found in the Gospel. Ours is a crucified King. Nailed to the Cross, He is straddled between two thieves. The imagery of a Man hanging on the Cross runs counter to the word that “royalty” connotes. Pomp and pageantry, tarred with the brush of extravagance and wrapped in the excesses of power and status are not what one would think of when one encounters the bruised and bloodied Body of a King.
The King in the Gospel has no earthly power. The crowd, the leaders, the soldiers and even one of the thieves did not recognise His Kingship. Ironically the signage above the crucifix read, Jesus Christ, King of the Jews. Yet, He could not even commute the punishment imposed on the repentant thief. Compared to Mark, Matthew and John’s Gospel, the Lucan Jesus manifested His power through the forgiveness of sins and the promise of paradise to the thief who desired to be saved. In this lowly King, the repentant thief found his salvation. In other words, Christ displayed His strength through the sacrifice of His life in order to ransom slaves.
Christ is King not because we declare Him or announce Him to be. In fact, the present shape or structure of society today cannot comprehend the monarchical system. Has it become irrelevant to even suggests of Christ’s Kingship?
The relevance of this title is found in both in the examples of men or women and Christ Himself. The examples shown by men or women are a plenty. Herod, was King when he murdered the Innocents. Our notion of royalty is another good example where we mistake pomp and pageantry as a nobility of spirit. The noble spirits who are clothed in pomp and pageantry are a few and far between—King Henry II the Emperor, King Edward the Confessor, Queen Elizabeth of Hungary and her namesake Queen Elizabeth of Portugal, etc. These are Kings and Queens in the image of the Prince of Peace.
These Kings and Queens are monarchs only because they live Jesus. Earthly men and woman are fallen creatures and they abuse their power. Jesus Christ did not and have never abused His authority. The saints who are Kings, Queens, Princes and Princesses are saints only because they follow Him. Some even have to sacrifice their own lives because they follow the only King who is truly a Royal Person.
The Kingship of Christ is established through His sacrifice on the Cross. His love for humanity showed that the Kingdom is not built upon this temporal world. “Mine is not a Kingdom of this world”. It is an eternal and a spiritual Kingdom as He ruled over all things created.
Thus, Christ will be King if we listen to His voice. He is the Good Shepherd who leads us through His Church. He is the Word of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. We live according to His example when we act in conformity to His will and His teachings. We exercise His Kingship by controlling our unruly senses and by reaching out to others in service of the greater good. Our morals should consist of ensuring that Christ can reign through our behaviour. Christ the King is not a title of pomposity. Instead we should not let our acclamation be empty gestures but full of the promise of Christ being alive in our lives.
I had a conversation with someone the other day. This person goes for Mass every day and receives Holy Communion. I asked the person whether regular Confession was a part of the spiritual discipline and the answer was simply “No”. We are familiar with the phenomenon of “fat-shaming” and let me assure you that this is not in any way a kind of “sacramental-shaming”. This person can be any one of us.
Next week is the ultimate Sunday of the liturgical year and we will mark it as Christ the King. The readings towards the final Sunday have been directing our attention to the end of time, that is, the “eschaton”. Characteristic of the eschaton is our reckoning or our accountability. We will be judged and to be accountable, we are urged to be faithful through our perseverance. Consistency is a mark of perseverance.
The example of regularly attending Mass but irregularly going for Confession, is a form of sacramental inconsistency. This is not an attempt at sacramental-shaming. Rather, consistency is best observed in how we bridge our belief with our behaviour. How can we make sure that our actions match our assertions. In other words, how is this worked out in our sacramental practice?
Any person who goes for daily Mass but does not go for regular Confession is simply inconsistent. Why? Presumably daily Mass is motivated by the belief that Holy Communion is necessary nourishment for eternal life. But the hesitation at Confession does not make sense. How can one Sacrament be believed to be from Christ and the other is feared?
Consistency is a hallmark of fidelity and faithfulness to Christ is expressed through a consistent manner of living. Both Confession and Communion are sacramental expressions of diligent discipleship in Christ. The question is why are we stressing on regular Confession?
As we wind down Ordinary Time, the liturgy reminds us of the end of time. I had a parent and by no means the parent is alone in this scenario. Seriously straining to get ahead materially but sadly spiritually shallow. The concern is not that the parent was tepid or lukewarm. The annoyance was that I had to control my tongue. Right at the tip, I wanted to lash out at the person but thankfully I did not. I performed the baptism as requested for a child according to the ritual.
Unfortunately what marks us as human is, sadly, inconsistency. The steady practice of the faith is central to the Sundays close to Christ the King. Noticed how the examples mentioned above do not point to a particular gender because a person or a parent can be a man or a woman. The point is any one of us can be a person who is inconsistent. The reason for the neutral description is to respect privacy. If a person chooses not to practise the faith or chooses to live inconsistent with the faith, that person who has made a choice should be respected. For example, a couple living in a irregular union wants to have a child baptised. Both the man and the woman have decided that they do not intend to live according to what their Catholic faith requires of them. Fair enough, right? But according to Canon Law, there must be reasonable hope that a child to be baptised be brought in the practice of the faith and thus, the problem arises when the couple, in insisting on baptism, wants the Church to be a part of their inconsistency.
What was at the tip of my tongue with respect to the parent who wanted a child baptised?
I wanted to tell the parent that every single sen or cent garnered or accumulated, will never be taken through the portal of death. None of what we own, possess or hoard will or can ever enter heaven. We arrived in the world naked and when we return to the dust from which we came, we bring nothing with us. We may have achieved and accumulated. We may have scaled the pinnacle of success but in the end, God will not look at any of these material accomplishments.
He will look at the heart because where the heart is, there is also the treasure. We may have forgotten this truth because the lure of materialism is simply overwhelming.
To be fair, in the Genesis’ Creation narrative, God saw the material universe that He had created as good. Here, there is no repudiation of prosperity or plenty. So it is not a rich-shaming exercise. But coincidentally the month of November is also known as the month of the dead. It is a bit like the 7th lunar month of the Hungry Ghost. This year’s All Souls Day, what was noticeable at the Catholic graveyard, short of burning cars, condos, cash, cellular phones and credit cards, was food being offered to the dead. Never mind the earthly comforts and convenience burnt, at the base of the practice of leaving food for the dead is really a materialistic philosophy.
What is more in line with the month to remember the dead is the colour black. On All Souls Day, a black chasuble was worn because it was a meaningful memento mori, a reminder that there is a world beyond the material. If anything, what is called for when we think of death are two things. Firstly, if we care for our physical well-being, we should care even more for our spiritual soul. Secondly, the focus on eternity requires that we be consistent in the way we look at the world and also live our lives.
Perhaps going for regular Confessions makes a lot more sense at this time of the year. Like Saint Paul, many of us do not do what we should. We acknowledge that sin is wrong and yet we continue to lie, cheat, hurt other people’s reputation etc. We should not be surprised by our inconsistency. We speak of untimely demise, that is, people who die before their time. The underlying assumption is that there is a normal timeline which we are entitled to. To be born, to live, to have a productive life and to die at a ripe old age. The jarring disruption of an untimely death is a kind of memento mori to remind us of our eternal destiny, to jog and to jolt us to live according to that destiny that we have been called to. Our life can be snatched away at any moment because we are not meant to live forever in this temporal world. Settle our business now while we can before it is too late. If we are receiving Holy Communion consistently, then find time to also go for Confession.
Last Sunday was All Souls. The commemoration of the dead ranks higher than an Ordinary Sunday and so it takes precedence over the 31st Sunday. Today is the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica. The official title for the Cathedral is rather mouthful. I got this off the internet. The Major Papal, Patriarchal and Roman Archbasilica, Metropolitan and Primatial Cathedral of the Most Holy Saviour and Saints John the Baptist and the Evangelist in Lateran, Mother and Head of All Churches in Rome and in the World. Once again, this feast ranks higher than an Ordinary Sunday. We are commemorating the dedication that was done in AD324 by Pope Sylvester I.
Think of a country, like Australia and the cities that pop up in the mind are Sydney, Melbourne or Perth. These are metropolis but the capital of the country is Canberra. Likewise, when we think of Catholic Church in Rome, we naturally associate it with or link it to St Peter’s Basilica as the most important Church. The truth is, the Lateran Basilica houses the “cathedra” or the ecclesiastical seat of the Bishop of Rome, who is the Roman Pontiff, the Pope. The Lateran Basilica ranks higher than St. Peter’s, and it is the only one given the title of “Archbasilica”. On its façade, there is an abbreviated Latin inscription, “Clemens XII Pont Max Anno V Christo Salvatori In Hon SS Ioan Bapt et Evang.” Translated, this means “Pope Clement XII, in the fifth year [of his Pontificate], dedicated this building to Christ the Saviour, in honour of Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist”.
Here we are to commemorate this dedication. To focus on a building sounds rather antiquated and out of date. Who cares about a building? Except for what the civil authorities might be interested in, what we now called a heritage building etc. If we were developers, renovation would be harder because of an existing heritage building whereas knocking down a building and building it up from scratch makes so much more commercial sense.
So, how can we make sense of this dedication of a building?
To appreciate the dedication, we begin with a jump back into our recent history. At Vatican Council II there was a tectonic shift in our theology with regard to our understanding of the word Church. How to describe the Church?
At Vatican II, the emphasis on the notion of Church was that it refers more to the People of God. It was a major change because now our focus is on the community rather than on a building. It corresponded to the zeitgeist or the spirit of the age. This communitarian concept is less formal and more egalitarian as it moved the emphasis onto the Church as more of a covenanted community. What it highlighted was our common call to holiness. The People of God and the common priesthood of the laity were both democratic and less hierarchical. A good example of this kind of attitude amongst the so-called “enlightened” people of that time was “Don’t call me Father. Call me by my name”.
Emphasising the experience of the community of the people of God can have a rather dampening effect on the sacramental and hierarchical character of the Church which is represented by the notion of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ. As a Divine institution, the Church has a sacramental character which in turn gives it a hierarchical structure. Implied in the notion of Christ being the Head with the Church as His Body is a ranking or a flow in terms of power.
The Church is both the Body of Christ and also the People of God. The first image comes from the New Testament and the second from the Old Testament. Both these emphases are important. The People of God highlights the Church as a movement of pilgrims in an “already but not yet” position. The Body of Christ focuses on the divine origin of the Church. If Jesus Christ is the Sacrament of the Father, then the Church is the Sacrament of Jesus Christ. As such a building is important. We know this from the definition of what a Sacrament is, that is, it is an outward sign of inward grace. Thus the church building is considered sacramental in the sense that the external structure symbolises the faithful within.
As the Church stepped into the modern world, somehow we seem to over-emphasise the notion of God’s people with the result that we also downplay the Church’s important Divine and Mystical elements. When the profane, meaning the secular world, is celebrated, it does not take much for the sacred, meaning the Church building, to be neglected. It explains plausibly why the dedication of the Basilica would be considered as an outdated celebration. We have been formed by the zeitgeist which considers the people as the primary description of what the Church is. But, the Church is not and cannot be just a sociological affiliation of people who share the same interest or even the same faith. Instead, we are incorporated into the Church through the Sacrament of Baptism. We are united by the Sacraments and bound together into the Body of Christ.
The concept Church itself is derived from two etymologies which have biblical bases and they highlight both these emphases.
The first is derived from a covenant. Ekklesia. Meaning “to called out from”. We are a people that is called from all nations to be an assembly that belongs to God. Ekklesia might sound foreign but it is not. We are familiar with it. For example, the Immaculate Conception Church is located on Jalan Gereja which is derived from Portuguese Igreha and the word is related to Ekklesia. Cognate words are like Ecclesiology or Basic Ecclesial Community. All these related words embody who we are as a people of God.
The second is derived from belonging. Kuriakemeans “of the Lord” or “belonging to the Lord”. Here again, this word is not alien to us. We refer to the penitential part of the Mass as the “Kyrie” and we sing “Kyrie eleison”, that is, “Lord have mercy”. It is the source of the English word “Church” and it came via the Germanic word “Kirche”. In Scotland, the Kirk is a reference to the Church of Scotland. More importantly, the word Church also denotes the sacred space belonging to the worship of God.
Outward sign of inward grace. The Church building is an external structure of the people within.
At times when we have renovation or church building, conversation can feel like this. “Why waste money? Why do we need this etc”? Land or space and buildings or physical structures are sacramental. To help us understand why space and structure are emotive, perhaps we should pose this scenario. The Gaza problem is right in our face. Can we not ship all those people to some desolate desert and house them there? After all, there is plenty of similar sand and stones and should that not be enough? The point is the so-called Palestinians cling to their homeland because it gives them a sense of identity.
Sometimes we hear criticisms that a country that has class and culture and yet peopled by a citizenry that is crude and coarse. Instinctively we react to the incoherence between a country which has beautiful buildings and yet it has “ugly uncivilised” people. On the contrary, a graceful nation will not erect or stomach ugly architecture.
A dirty house is usually a reflection of a troubled soul. Take a look at my office and you know what I mean. Perhaps it makes sense why the celebration of a dedication of the Basilica and a beautiful building. Christ is the Head and the Church is His Body. A majestic Church or Cathedral is therefore a sacrament of the glorified Mystical Body of Christ.
A sacred building is therefore the special image of the Church which is God’s temple built from living stones. The dedication of the Lateran Basilica reminds us to be the living stones for Christ to build His Body. A visible Church building is a visible sign and symbol of God’s Kingdom to come. It would be good for us to have a beautiful Cathedral. It would also be great for us to have noble Catholics inside this beautiful Cathedral.
We have no Gloria today because All Souls Day ranks higher than a Sunday in Ordinary Time. We have been focussing on the mercy of God and in fact that is the theme of the Readings for Year C’s 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time. In the 1st Reading, God corrects the sinner gently and waits for him or her to repent. In other words, God is slow to anger and rich in mercy.
Yet today we celebrate All Souls Day. If He is compassionate, how do we reconcile God’s mercy and the need to pray for souls.
Slogans have a way of expanding our minds and yet they are not entirely precise in their meaning. They are certainly catchy because they appeal to our sentiments and are persuasive by associating us with positive emotions. The repetition of slogans makes us feel good but sometimes they are nothing more than window dressings with no association to reality. A good example is how we frequently highlight an attribute of God by describing Him as merciful. In fact, we are lulled to believe that God is merciful to the point of a fault.
However, the liturgical language we have is a bit more sober. Yes, we celebrate the mercy of God and yet the caution is that we should never be overly familiar or presumptuous. An example comes to mind. When the bread and the wine have been prepared, the congregation is invited by the priest to: “Pray, brethren, that my sacrifice and yours MAY BE acceptable to God, the almighty Father”. Why is it that we use the words MAY BE and not ARE?
It is a prayer of supplication and it belongs to those who ask or beseech from the Lord not to be presumptuous. MAY BE suggests that God might be merciful enough to accept our oblation. In other words, God is merciful but we are not presuming that mercy because His mercy is ours only by condescension and not by right. This brings us to why All Souls Day is so important for us.
When Christ hung on the Cross, there were two thieves with Him. One on each side. The one who was repentant asked to be remembered in heaven. And Christ promised him that “today you will be with Me in paradise”. That promise is presumably premised on Christ’s forgiveness and therefore salvation was assured for him. Yet, Christ did not commute the suffering of the repentant thief.
Why? Sins have consequences.
The whole system of the Church’s indulgence is precisely to deal with the consequences of sins. An indulgence, according to Catholic teaching is a remission of the temporal punishment due for sins that have already been forgiven. In other words, forgiveness is one thing but there is still a price to pay for our sins.
In God there is always mercy but in Him there is also justice. Whilst the mercy of God forgives our sins, the justice of God requires that we make good our repentance. But the problem we may face is that our sense of mercy is coupled with “forgetfulness”. It means that when we forgive, we are meant to forget or worse still, “pretend that the past does not matter”.
Boyz to Men collaborated in a catchy duet with Mariah Carey: “And I know you shining down on me from heaven. Like so many friends we’ve lost along the way. And I know eventually we’ll be in heaven, one sweet day”. It was a hit but the context was the AIDS epidemic that was raging at the time. The point is not so much the sin but rather the presumption that heaven is assured.
Translated, it means that there are no consequences for sin because God is merciful. His justice is barely noticeable and what is assured is heaven. The Church only recently has started to push back against this presumption by avoiding the eulogisation of the dead during Mass.
A person may be virtuous and righteous and yet we must never presume. That is not because God is miserly in His mercy but rather because we, who are alive, should never believe that we are more compassionate than God is. God’s mercy desires that we be united with Him after death. But God’s justice requires that we be prepared for the reunion with Him after death. Remember that one soul who was invited to the wedding feast but who went without a proper wedding garment? He was thrown out for failing to meet the requirement. (Matt 22: 1-14).
Therefore, when we are presumptuous, we will give up on praying for the dead. The Catechism is quite clear about this. Paragraph 1054 of the CCC states that “those who die in God's grace and friendship imperfectly purified, although they are assured of their eternal salvation, undergo a purification after death, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of God.
Praying for the dead is a spiritual act of mercy and it is also an act of hope for instinctively we all know that souls in purgatory need our prayers. The number of names we have received, thus far, had been phenomenal. We offer Masses for the dead because to pray for them is an expression of hope in the Resurrection. As Jesus assured Martha that those who believe will live, even though they die.
Finally, death is the only pathway to eternity in Christ our Lord. But death is also a curtain. Once we have crossed the threshold of death, we enter into the mercy of God. We will not go to hell because we have retained the friendship of God but neither can we go to heaven immediately because we still need purification. That process of purification is something which the dead cannot do for themselves. The souls in purgatory, even though they can pray for us, they cannot pray for themselves but must depend on the Church Militant, the Church on earth to pray for them.
Finally, All Souls Day is dedicated to the dead, right? Not exactly. It is a day for us who are living. St John Chrysostom wrote. Now is the time of mercy. Later is the time of justice. As long as we are alive, it is the time of mercy, the time when we are repentant, to admit our faults and failures and to ask God for His forgiveness. Because later it will be the time of justice. When we die, the time for forgiveness is over. We will have to pay the price of our sins. It is infinitely better to be sorry now than later.
A major milestone for Vatican II was the universal call to holiness. Saintliness is no longer the preserve of a few but it is an invitation to all the baptised. As such, All Saints Day makes more sense as it focuses on us. Why? Of what value is there for the Saints in heaven to commemorate All Saints Day? As they would say it here in this country, “shiok sendiri kah”? No, right? Instead, All Saints is for us to mark because as St Bernard of Clairvaux said, “Why should our praise and glorification, or even the celebration of this feast day mean anything to the saints? What do they care about earthly honours when their heavenly Father honours them by fulfilling the faithful promise of the Son? What does our commendation mean to them? The saints have no need of honour from us; neither does our devotion add the slightest thing to what is theirs. Clearly, if we venerate their memory, it serves us, not them. But I tell you, when I think of them, I feel myself inflamed by a tremendous yearning. Calling the saints to mind inspires, or rather arouses in us, above all else, a longing to enjoy their company, so desirable in itself. We long to share in the citizenship of heaven, to dwell with the spirits of the blessed, to join the assembly of patriarchs, the ranks of the prophets, the council of apostles, the great host of martyrs, the noble company of confessors and the choir of virgins. In short, we long to be united in happiness with all the saints”. (This long quotation is taken from today’s office of Reading).
We celebrate All Saints to remind us that each baptised faithful has a vocation to holiness. The path to holiness begins with this first step – the admission of our sins, and of our need for God’s transforming grace. The Saints cry out that salvation belongs to our God. And those who become saints constantly beg for God’s salvation. They have the privilege of seeing God’s face. In short, we should be aiming for heaven. As St Paul reminded the Philippians, “For us, our homeland is in heaven, and from heaven comes the Saviour we are waiting for, the Lord Jesus Christ, and He will transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of His glorious body. He will do that by the same power with which He can subdue the whole universe”.
Today we come to celebrate the triumph of God’s grace in the lives of men and women, who were sinners like us but more than that we are also celebrating our potential possibility, meaning that we are reminded that if we cooperate with God’s grace, we who struggle through the difficulties of life can reach the everlasting glory of heaven. St Augustine said that God is glorified in His saints, and that when He crowns their merits and rewards them, then He is crowning the gift of grace which He has put in their hearts.
The grace that is ours is found in keeping the Beatitudes. As Jesus warned the Apostles, “If they hated me, they will hate you too”. Many of our saints bore their Cross and suffered through trials and tribulations and now they are enjoying the fruits of their faithfulness. We too can follow them by also keeping the Beatitudes.
Each one of us who decides to embrace the path of holiness must start with a personal and humble acknowledgement of our sinfulness, that is, we are sinners who long for God’s mercy and redemption. The Beatitudes thus bring us into our work, our kitchen, our Cathedral, our school, our room, our mall, our office. Holiness is found in places familiar and not in faraway places. And God’s response is always to fill us with his blessing, giving us a share in the very life of the Blessed One, so that – if we persevere in friendship with God – we might ourselves become Blessed, and join the company of his saints.
In conclusion, All Saints Day reminds us, firstly, of our divine destiny and it is the clarion call to holiness. Secondly, following the pattern of sacramental logic, the Church is the Sacrament of Jesus Christ as He as He is the Sacrament of God the Father—to have seen me is to have seen the Father. Analogically, we can say that the Saints are sacraments of holiness. If we aspire towards sanctity, how do we become holy? Perhaps All Saints Day, even though it commemorates the great multitude of unknown holiness, it is also for us to know individual saints apart from the favourite few—Theresa of Lisieux, Teresa of Calcutta, Pio of Pietrelcina, John Paul II, Carlos Acutis etc. How many of the Saints in the stained glass do you know? And of their lives? If humanity is represented by all shapes and sizes, saints too have all stripes and sorts. We have many examples to emulate. Perhaps it is time to read up and be inspired by them.
Last Sunday’s Gospel, a contrast was made between a just God and a biased judge. God cannot be compared with the unfair judge simply because He listens to the prayers of all and no one is excluded. However, the 1st Reading makes an important qualification. While He is omni-audient or all-hearing, He is also sensitive to the cry of the poor, the widow or the orphan.
In other words, there is a soft spot in God’s compassion. It is reflected in the Gospel today. Two men prayed. One belonged to an elite class. The other belonged to a despised category. The Pharisee should be the expert in prayer whilst the tax collector barely worthy or deserving to stand before the Lord.
Interestingly the Pharisee’s behaviour may be interpreted from the perspective of familiarity rather than of pride. It would be too easy to dismiss his behaviour as pride and in a way, the dismissal may lend us, the present-day readers, an opportunity to vilify him. It flows with the current trend of virtue-signalling.
What is virtue-signalling? Generally, it is to point out the deficiency of a person or a class of persons in order to make us appear or feel good. Even though the Pharisee himself may have been virtue-signalling, closer to reality is a proverb, attributed to the Chinese, which says that “makers of idols rarely believe in them”. It was not pride which kept the Pharisee apart. Rather it could be a contempt born from over-familiarity.
We all know what it is like to take things for granted especially when we are so familiar with a setting. A good example is observable within the context of sacred spaces. How often is it that we have little or no reverence or respect for the tabernacle in our Churches? Remember Moses’ first encounter with God, the Lord reminded him that the ground he stood on is sacred. Imagine someone who enters the sanctuary day in and day out. Ordinarily, when we are in front of people, we sort of make a bow or we genuflect etc but when no one is looking, it is so easy to forget that the Blessed Sacrament is reserved and business is carried out automatically, almost mechanically without second thoughts. Over-familiarity can have this effect on anyone. The Pharisee thought that as one “set apart specially for God” he was close to God and thus privileged.
The tax collector stood at a distance where he recognised his unworthiness which from the perspective of humility, presents him as a paragon of virtue. We resonate with this kind of meekness. But in truth, we do not exactly want to be that humble because in an age that needs to be noticed to be relevant, we have a nagging fear that we might be overlooked.
In the context of being the “bad guy”, nobody wants to be the Pharisee. Individuals are not alone because corporations too are rushing to identify with the “Tax Collector”. He is the only “worthy” actor in a game of who scores higher in the competition for adulation and admiration, that is, to be held up as a model of virtue or righteousness. The comparison and contrast between the Pharisee and Tax Collector could be an occasion of identification that leads to pride. “I am not like that”. While the contrast between the Pharisee and Tax Collector may be a form of virtue signalling but closer to the truth is that both the Pharisee and the Tax Collector may be alive in us.
Thus, the classifications of Pharisee or Tax Collector bring no advantage because it is the attitude that counts. These categories may have connotations associated with them but they are neutral in themselves. Neither one is about good nor bad. Rather it is the attitude that determines one’s standing before God. It does not truly matter for there may be Pharisees who are as humble as the Tax Collector and there may be Tax Collectors who are prouder than a Pharisee.
The attitude that accompanies our prayers is what concerns the Lord. The proud might struggle with humility but the reverse is also true in the sense that it is easy for a Tax Collector to become a Pharisee. For example, a poor person becoming rich may at times forget or even try to erase his or her past destitution. The point is this, the categories of rich or poor, good or bad, Pharisee or Tax Collector are not our focus. Attitude is.
When conversing with a person, we can sense how much a person is receptive to reality or to alternative points of view. When a person is full of himself or herself, whether a Pharisee or Tax Collector, it is next to impossible to get through to him or her. Likewise with regard to our prayers. We often think of prayers unanswered as if it were a God-problem. Meaning? When our prayers are unanswered we may leave with a disappointing sense that God had been deaf because He has not fulfilled our prayers. It appears that God does not deliver.
The Tax Collector who stood a distance away was heard by God because he was not full of himself. In fact, he felt his unworthiness very acutely. Sometimes God cannot or will not give us what we desire not because He is miserly but because we are too full of ourselves. When a person is full of himself or herself, nothing can penetrate, not even God. God’s silence could be due to our attitude which, in prayer, plays a crucial role in our relationship with Him. It is a reminder of how we ought to humble ourselves when we come before the Lord.
The moral we can learn here is that the Pharisee’s identity or sense of self was not shaped by who he truly is before God. In fact, he took pains to paint himself as not being an extortionist or an adulterer, as if that was enough. In a way, it is reminiscent of Adam’s postlapsarian experience. After God found them out, Adam blamed Eve for his sin. In other words, he defined himself as one whose sin was caused by Eve rather than accept the responsibility for his caving in to temptation. The Tax Collector stood before God accepting his sinfulness. That is the attitude we may want to possess when we come before God. We are nothing, not because we despise ourselves but because we are sinners who need God’s mercy. If we can stand before God, it is only because He has, as the 2nd Eucharistic Prayer reminds us, “held us worthy to be in His presence and minister to Him”.
There are 33 or 34 Sundays in Ordinary Time and the section of the Roman Missal that provides the Sunday’s Collect etc is thin and the sense that we are approaching the final Sundays of the year is when the book mark has few pages left. The theme of faith in God was covered by the 27th Sunday. Then gratitude for what God has done was taken up by the 28th Sunday. We continue to reflect on the attitudes that we bring to prayer in both the 29th and 30th Sundays.
What it means to pray is the point for today. The first imagery of prayer is Moses. Joshua was fighting against Amalek and as long as Moses lifted up his hands, the Israelite army gained the upper hand. Imagine an exhausted Moses with hands heavy from exhaustion and Aaron and Hur supporting prompting up his arms on both sides in order for Joshua to secure Israel’s victory. It is a compelling image which is, in a manner of speaking, repeated in the Gospel. The point is not to confuse the judge with a miserly God but to note the persistence of the widow. In praying persistently, the widow managed to change the mind of the unjust judge. Since God is not unjust, how much more would He listen to us if we were persistent in our praying.
Another word for persistence is regularity. Our idea of a life to the full is possibly governed by a certain notion of carefreeness. It exudes a spontaneity and vivacity suggesting that we are best when life has the least minimum rules that constraint. But the greatest freedom is not found in the absence of constraints but rather the ability to live a regular life. Regularity gives us a sense of order and stability. Ask any child who has to live with caprice. He or she will be unable to put down roots and later in life will struggle with commitment.
The Camino from which I have just returned from is the Northern route that more or less follows the coast of northern Spain. Fruitfulness notwithstanding, I did not like the passage for one reason. The section which we took to Santiago had a number of alternatives. Often enough the choices were between easy and hard. Weakened by Original Sin, human nature tends toward the lazy option. I would have preferred it if I had no choice but to walk because there was the only option available. It would have actually simplified life by reducing the temptation to embrace the path of least resistance.
The Catholic sensibility is marked by an appreciation of order expressed through rhythmic regularity. How does one describe a good Catholic spirituality? Daily prayer that keeps to a consistent schedule. Regular Weekly Mass attendance. Frequent Confession. These form good Catholic habits that will carry us along when times are rough and tough. A good illustration is driving. If you maintain a regular habit, you will soon find your habit in a way protecting you from making rash judgements and movements in your driving. For example, you are less likely to change lanes impulsively.
A regular and disciplined approach in our faith helps us to progress in our virtue and holiness. Prayer is central to this pursuit of holiness. Persistent prayer means that God is not our last resort but our first option. The journey of humanity, seen after Adam and Eve expulsion, observed in the escaping Israelites, has been marked by the struggle to put God first. We were created in the image and likeness of God but our perverted nature wants God to be shaped in our image and likeness. This we read in how soon after they had crossed the Red Sea, the Israelites already wanted a more accessible God when they fashioned the golden calf to worship.
God is faithful in our desire and effort to make His will sovereign in our lives. The idea of God’s faithfulness is a bit tricky for some of us. Somehow there is a sneaky feeling that our present understanding of God’s faithfulness is heavily entwined with materialism. He is our divine ATM, so to speak because we do say that God is providence and He provides for our material needs as He did with the manna given to the escaping Israelites.
Yet Christ hanging on the Cross is our example of what it means that God’s will be sovereign in our lives. Even as life drained out of Jesus, momentarily, He cried out at what He felt to be God’s abandonment. But in the end, He still signalled His commitment to the Father by breathing His last: It is accomplished.
Prayer, apart from asking from God, expressing our contrition, thanksgiving and praising Him is to further our commitment to follow God. Somehow God’s will is quite boring because our sense of fulfilment is shaped by the notion of how life to the full is often portrayed. Everywhere we are bombarded by imageries of plenty, of freedom and of pleasures. Doing God’s will or taking up one’s cross sounds like drudgery or even enslavement. Thus modernity offers “freedom” whereas God’s will binds and is mostly forbidding—cannot do this or cannot do that. There is no prize for guessing which we would choose.
St Paul urged Timothy to remain faithful to God’s word because sacred scripture provides the wisdom necessary for salvation. The ultimate prize to be won by our prayers is not what we ask for but what God has intended for us. That is a life which is far from material fulfilment. Submitting to God’s will is not enslavement but for Him to give us what we most need and that is our salvation.
In conclusion, prayer is the foundation of our relationship with God. It remains the surest connexion we have with God but ironically it is the first thing that we will sacrifice when faced with a wall of “busyness” and we give in to the noble reason of greater good we feel we can achieve through our frenetic activity. We give excuses that we can always pray later when in fact later, we sleep. Keep the prayer, keep the rules and later the rules will protect you and the prayers sustain you.
