2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

We move into Ordinary Time and very immediately the focus is on vocation or call and response. In the first reading, we get a glimpse of the vocation of the prophet Samuel. The Gospel gives detailed descriptions of both the call and response of the first apostles.

What does it mean to be called and how are we to respond?

Calling is not something which happens out of the blue. In fact, creation may be said to a response to God’s calling. He called and all reality, visible and invisible, came to be. That could be considered the most basic response to God’s calling. However, creation, especially Man, the pinnacle of God’s creation, is imbued with freedom. With freedom, morality maps Man’s freedom to respond to God or not.

Today, it would be good to reflect on how we can sometimes unknowingly reject God and maybe understand what it means to respond.

Let us begin with a phenomenon known as lapsed Catholics. I am sure you would have come across people who are classified as non-practising. It is by no means a phenomenon restricted to Catholicism. All religions have their fair share of it. I once had a conversation with a lapsed Catholic and the reason given for being lapsed was that she was disgusted with how poorly people lived their faith.

Disgust may be a strong word. Perhaps discouragement would be a better description.

For example, each year we attract about 100 people for RCIA and give or take the falling out, we might baptise about 80. Statistically, this parish may have the most baptism in the Archdiocese every year and it is a fact that might just swell us with pride.

However, the call to discipleship frequently has a kind of trajectory that starts off with euphoria. But, when the euphoria dies down, then mundane reality of Catholic life sets in. This is the time when the neophyte will encounter real Catholics in whom they will observe a huge gap between what is preached and what is practised. The result may be a faith shattering dejection and soon enough a cause for staying away from the Church. But this phenomenon is not restricted to neophytes because many cradle Catholics do the same when they cannot reconcile the difference between preaching and practising.

Thus far, I have described a reason for arriving at lapsed Catholicism. To be fair, the reason is not illogical. In Confession, we examine our conscience and ask if we have caused a scandal by our actions or omissions. The etymology of the word scandal is an obstacle meaning that by our action or inaction we have caused people to stumble in their faith. An example of stumbling in faith is what you may have heard uttered ad nauseam—the Church is full of hypocrites.

But, many people also do not realise that the reason for lapsing is really a sorry excuse for the abdication of responsibility. What they are saying is that that they will be Catholics only if others behave. Perhaps, in the context of God’s call and our response, let me rephrase the phenomenon of lapsing as, “Hey God I don’t like you and I don’t want to be your friend. Why? Because these people are bastards”. Crude as it may sound but it gets the point across. What sort of response is that?

The call that God has for us, is a call that is personal to us. Everyone is personally called into relationship with Christ the Son. Through the Sacrament of Baptism each one is grafted onto the Vine, called Jesus Christ, Our Lord and God. By our baptism, our response to Him is lived out both personally and corporately. Personally because only the individual can respond and corporately, because we realise that nobody can on his or her own graft himself to the Vine. No one baptises himself. It always happens through the agency of another which makes the grafting process corporate in its nature. The nature of God’s call which is corporate is otherwise known as Church. Church is not something extraneous to calling but it is essentially a component of that call and also necessary for salvation. This is where we differ with Protestants because for them, personal faith is often restricted to an “individual’s” response. For Catholics, our personal response has a corporate structure because salvation comes through the Church. It is through her that Christ’s sacraments come to us. We cannot accept the head who is Christ and reject His Body which is the Church.

This corporate nature of God’s call makes possible the baptism of children because the faith of the parents may supply for the child’s lack of faculty in making personal decision. Parents have a grave duty to form the child to become responsible personally for the faith which they first received from their parents. At a wider circle, it means also that we need to have a greater sense of responsibility to nurture each other’s faith because by our behaviour we may encourage or discourage our brothers and sisters.

Having said all that, still it remains that our response to God is personal. The Sacrament of Confirmation is at times described as the moment when the faith of our parents becomes our personal response. Some of our youths seem to graduate from Sunday School and Confirmation to non-practice. It explains but does not excuse an inability to take personal responsibility for one’s response to God. To a certain extent, part of the blame will lie on the parents IF they did not in the first place train the child for that moment of responsibility. But, the failure to be personally responsible cannot be derived from the corporate expression of God’s call meaning that one cannot blame one’s parents or others forever. You may blame someone sometime but not all the time because after blame comes personal responsibility for a situation, no matter how dire.

In summary, faith is a personal response to God but always lived corporately through the Church. Maybe, at the beginning of the year, when resolutions are baking out of the oven fresh and aplenty, we might resolve to deepen our response to God, that is, to live our faith personally and independently of other people’s practice or lack of, but always within the bosom of Holy Mother, the Church.

Epiphany Year B

Let me begin by defining what the Epiphany is. It is the Solemnity of the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles or put it in another way, it is the unveiling of the Christ to a world longing for its Saviour. Thus, the readings speak of God’s revelation to the Jews through Sacred Scriptures whereas the Gentiles will discover God through nature. The Jews in exile are encouraged by the Prophet Isaiah with a vision of a Jerusalem restored; a prophecy which is fulfilled by Christ and in the New Israel, the Church. The Three Wise Men were Gentiles and Matthew showed them as receiving God’s revelation through astrology. In revealing to both Jews and Gentiles, Epiphany is also an invitation to communion with Him and one another. In a nutshell, apart from salvation and worship, the Epiphany is a call to communion.

Epiphany, in fostering communion, shares its intent with a phenomenon we all know as social-networking. Today, I would like to speak of what implications social-networking may have on Epiphany’s invitation to communion.

The ontological reason for the Epiphany is because the human person is made in the image and likeness of a Trinitarian God. What does that mean? Since we are made in His image and likeness, it means that we must be “worth God’s while” to manifest Himself to us. The corollary would mean that the organisation of our lives must reflect this God whose image we are moulded in. Otherwise why would God reveal Himself to us?

One of God’s attribute is holiness which again means that we are supposed to reflect holiness for without it, we are no better than an intelligent primate. Our quest to be is a quest for holiness for without it, we would become either individualists without a sense of “direction” or we are reduced to collective whole without a personal centre. Individualists of a senseless kind are those who live lonely self-destructive lives or a collective of an impersonal kind are those who live without any self-reflexion. We call this herd-mentality.

What has Face-book, a form of social networking to do with this? Firstly, let me make it clear that Face-book is amoral in the sense that in itself, it is a neutral[1]. Its morality is derived through our use of it. In itself, it is an excellent communication platform. But hidden within its use is a dark shadow because we are innocently drawn into hyper-sharing because we assume that we belong in communion. Well, that may be the case that we are already in communion but, the need for everyone to know what we do, where we are or where we go, could mask an invitation to the new temple of the Narcissist. It is a kind of individualism in full bloom.

The temptation to individualism grows stronger the more we experience fragmentation in our lives. In a fragmented world, the youths have only a vague sense of the whole without a sense that the whole is interconnected or to put in a familiar term, the whole is in communion.[2] For example, the drinking of water from bottles. We are not unaware of how much water is wasted when half-drunk bottles are discarded. It is ironical that the present generation is trying to save the sharks for a generation which does not appreciate how much plastic flows into the ocean. This is what I mean by living fragmented lives.[3]

Whilst the world outside continues to deteriorate, that is, gets more fragmented, fear drives us to seek refuge behind our gated communities or into the safe cocoon of what we can control. From the loneliness of our bubble, we try to reach the world through social-networking but instead of reaching the world, the world comes to watch us star in our movies.

Let me reiterate that face-booking is not bad in itself but social-networking even though it contains the word “social” is often narcissistic because it makes us forget who we are. We are made in the image and likeness of a God who is social in the truest sense of the word. Why? Because God is Trinity and therefore, God’s holiness is a holiness of communion. In the Epiphany, we are introduced to the fullness of the individuality and collectivity we yearn for because the true individual is always in communion—a communion which prevents us from selfish individualism; a communion which Sacred Scripture would describe as a cloud of witnesses or communion of saints or holiness.

Finally, we are challenged to ask if the Epiphany is really God’s universal revelation of Himself through Jesus His Son or have we succumbed to a narcissistic world where the phenomenon of social-networking makes Epiphany a manifestation of ourselves to God? In this narcissistic world, God comes to worship us. Thus, the relevance of the Epiphany may be lost to us especially when social-networking is really an avenue to an enclosed world where we have become the centre of attention. The revelation of God to the Gentile world reminds us otherwise. The world comes to worship the God who saves.  

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[1] Just like gambling or alcohol in themselves.

[2] Facebook tempts us with pseudo-communion.

[3] Fragmented young people want a world outside which is peaceful so that they can grapple with the internal conflicts which to themselves seem intractable. They are unable to grasp a bigger picture.

Solemnity of Mary Holy Mother of God Year B

1^st Jan marks the Octave of Christmas. Today is 8 days after Christmas. Every liturgical year, the Church celebrates two Octaves: Christmas and Easter. In some countries, 1^st Jan is also a Holy Day of Obligation. The Solemnity is important for the Church and until recently very important for the Society of Jesus. The official title is Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God. I said “recently” just now and so for the Society of Jesus, 1^st Jan was important because it was, apart from it being the Solemnity of Mary, Holy Mother of God, also the Feast of the Giving of the Name of Jesus. Recently is as recent as 2002. With the latest edition of the Latin Missale Romanum  of 2002, a decoupling took place. Mary, Holy Mother of God remained the Solemnity we mark on 1^st Jan whilst the Feast of Giving of the Name of Jesus has been shifted to 3^rd Jan. But, even for so progressive a Society like the Jesuits, for the time being, we will still celebrate today as our Titular Feast but in time to come, when our liturgy catches up with the Calendar of the Universal Church[1], the Jesuit’s Titular Feast will be shifted to 3^rd Jan. One of the reasons for shifting the Feast of the Giving of the Name of Jesus is because a Solemnity ranks above a Feast.

These are just some technical trivia so that you might ask why we should not celebrate the Giving of the Name of Jesus on 1^st Jan, after all He is the Lord. Instead, the Church has given the honour to Our Lady. The next logical question would be: “Are we giving too much honour to Our Lady”?

The question as to why we should celebrate Mary, the Holy Mother of God, on 1^st Jan lays bare a fear we may have that as Catholics we are idolaters. Putting aside the fear, let us attempt to uncover the foundation for why we give such great honour to Mary.

Not long after the event of the death and resurrection of Christ, even at the stage where the Gospels were being composed, there were already distortions about who Christ really was. There were already Gnostic tendencies within the community of St John. They did not believe that Christ had come in the flesh. How could He condescend to become human when flesh is “evil”? John’s Gospel was a response against these tendencies. By the use of the word “flesh”, John indicated that Jesus did not just take on a body as if He were putting on clothes. The Word was made “flesh” meant that Jesus was not some kind of appearance and nor was He some kind of a ghost. In fact, John’s Gospel was a detailed record of the facticity or concreteness of the event of the Incarnation. John 1—the Word became flesh; John 6—my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink; and finally, John 20ff—the post-Resurrection encounters of the Disciples with Jesus took place bodily, albeit a glorified body. “Put your finger here; look, here are my hands. Give me your hand; put it into my side”.

Furthermore, the Giving of the Name of Jesus coincides with the 8^th Day—as detailed in the Gospel—the day on which Christ was circumcised. Here again, the circumcision is a reminder that Christ came in the flesh and that He did not merely appear in the flesh.

St Paul in the Letter to the Colossians made mention of this flesh: In His body lives the fullness of divinity (Col 2: 9). Here we are brought into the fullness of the mystery which we have been celebrating these last 8 days: Christ is True God and True Man and not 50% God and 50% Man. He is not like your Toyota Prius, a hybrid car that uses both fossil fuel and battery power. This mystery of the God-made-man is called the Incarnation. And to call Mary the Holy Mother of God is to make this mystery as real as it can be.

It is upon this mystery that the foundation for the whole theology of the Sacraments rests. The Sacraments are often considered a Catholic preoccupation but they are not. In fact, Pope St. Leo the Great used to say "Since the Lord is no longer visible among us, everything of Him that was visible has passed into the Sacraments". In effect, the Sacraments would not be possible without the event of the Incarnation. This follows from what John wrote of the Jesus whom he saw with his own eyes and touched with his own hands: The Word was made flesh, he lived among us, and we saw his glory (John 1:14).

Mary is called the Holy Mother of God only because Jesus is God. And this dogma declared in AD431 at the Council of Ephesus has salvific implications. Again we quote Pope St Leo the Great: “Henceforth, He is reckoned to be of the stock, not of His earthly father but of Christ, who became the Son of Man precisely that men could also be sons of God. For unless in humility He had come down to us, none of us by our own merits could ever go up to Him”.

 So, are we idolatrous in our relationship with Mary? Or do we give too much honour to Mary? Not at all. Mary, the Holy Mother of God is a statement of our salvation as it cuts through any attempt to fudge the question of the universal salvation of mankind. Let me read you the Preface III for Sunday, both from the old and new translation that you may appreciate how important the fullness Christ’s divinity and humanity is for salvation.

We see your infinite power in your loving plan of salvation. You came to our rescue by your power as God but you wanted us to be saved by one like us. Man refused your friendship but man himself was to restore it through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Old translation).

For we know it belongs to your boundless glory, that you came to the aid of mortality itself, with your divinity and even fashioned for us a remedy out of mortality itself, that the cause of our downfall might become the means of our salvation, through Christ our Lord. (New translation).

No Marian dogma is ever about Mary alone. So, right at the beginning of the year, in declaring Mary to be the Holy Mother of God, the Church unequivocally declares that Jesus the Lord is the Saviour of the world and through Jesus’ humanity, mankind is saved.

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[1]Every religious congregation has a titular feast. It could be the Founder’s Feast Day. Since the official name for the Jesuits is the Society of Jesus, it makes sense that the titular feast should be the Feast of the Giving of the Holy Name of Jesus.

Christmas Day Mass Year B

This is the final instalment of a four-part homily. In the 1^st instalment, I spoke of salvation in terms of the "already and not yet". Christ already reigns through His Church but all the things of this world are not yet subjected to Him. Even if that may be the case, the Vigil Mass was considered joyful because we were anticipating the coming of Christ. We dared to celebrate because we acknowledged and trusted God’s providence. The focus of the 2^nd instalment was on the "already" whilst we kept the "not yet" at bay. We broke into the midnight celebration of Christ’s birth. We lingered, marvelled and rejoiced at the birth of our salvation. In fact, the appropriate posture was silence before the manger of the helpless Child Jesus. Our reverential silence allowed the mystery of God made Man to emerge. The 3^rd instalment explained the significance of the ox and the donkey in the imagination of the crib. They were there because Isaiah spoke of the draught animals as the ones who recognised their owner and their master’s crib.

Let us continue in this final instalment to deepen our experience of recognising God our Lord. The Gospel Reading which consists of eighteen verses is taken from the Prologue of John. It is not an Infancy Narrative like those found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The Prologue starts at the very beginning of time and Creation is presented as the framework for announcing the Incarnation. John makes a connexion between Genesis and his Gospel because he echoes the first verse of the Book of Genesis. “In the beginning was the Word”.  It is a profoundly beautiful poem that the custom from the early Church was for the priests of the Church to read it over sick people after anointing them and over newly baptised infants. John’s Prologue was written down and placed in lockets which the early Christians then would wear around their necks, especially in times of danger or when travelling.[1]

With the Prologue, the Mass of the Day is a profound reflexion on why we celebrate Christmas. It is not surprising that the symbol of John’s Gospel is an eagle because soaring above the celestial heights he looks from the vantage point of the mystery of God to illustrate how this same mystery penetrates the stable and enters the flesh and blood of man. “The Word became Flesh, and dwelt among us”. (John 1:14) In fact, the Credo which we will profess shortly will include the same words et verbum caro factum est and at about that time, we fall on our knees—much like the carol O Holy  Night—in humble acknowledgement that the mystery of the Word made flesh, this Divine condescension, this holy exchange between divinity and humanity, symbolised by the use of a drop of water at the Eucharist, is the only explanation we can give for why we can be saved. And so at the preparation of the wine, we say, “By the mystery of the water and wine, may we come to share His divinity as He humbled Himself to share our humanity”.

We are celebrating not just any birthday; not least of all a great man, a great guru or a great prophet. We are celebrating the birthday of our Divine Lord in time and according to Pope Benedict, “He came as a child in order to break down our pride. Perhaps we would have capitulated before power and wisdom, but He does not want our capitulation. He wants our love. He wants to free us from our pride and thus make us truly free”.

We, who come, are here to behold His glory, the glory that was His with the Father from before time. As we behold Him, as contemplate Him and as we gaze at Him, we truly see ourselves. So, before we leave the Church today, get close to the crib to stare in wonder and behold in amazement at the Son of God who came to be like us and pray that you may walk out like Him so that you may according to the first reading radiate and let His glory be manifest for all to see.

In summary, Christmas commemorates the dawn of our salvation. As we savour the mystery of the Incarnation, it is also a hopeful reminder of what we can be. Come, let us adore Him.

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[1]You know the Taoist custom of writing on pieces of yellow paper (fu), folding it and placing it in a locket to be worn? We did that too. However, here I am make a distinction between an amulet and a sacramental. There is a thin line between magic and faith. An amulet is considered to contain power in itself whereas a sacramental works on the basis of faith.

Christmas Mass at Dawn Year B

This is the 3^rd instalment of a four-part homily. In the 1^st instalment, I spoke of salvation in terms of already and not yet. Christ already reigns through His Church but all the things of this world are not yet subjected to Him. Thus, the Vigil Mass last night might be considered as a joyful celebration in anticipation of Christ’s coming. We dared to celebrate because we acknowledged and trusted in God’s providence.

The 2^nd instalment, the focus was on the already whilst we kept the not yet at bay. We broke into the midnight celebration of Christ’s birth. We lingered, marvelled and rejoiced at the birth of our salvation. In fact, we took the appropriate posture of silence before the manger of the helpless Child Jesus. Our silence allowed the mystery of God made Man to emerge.

This 3^rd instalment will cover the significance of what is traditionally called the Mass at Dawn. Originally, this was the Mass of St Anastasia because her feast was kept on 25^th Dec. She, amongst all martyrs, enjoyed the distinction, unique in the Roman liturgy, of having a special commemoration in the second Mass of Christmas. Gradually, the focus shifted from her to Christ. Thus, the liturgy now continues with the story of the birth of Jesus as found in Luke's Gospel where we find the shepherds making their way to visit to the infant Jesus.

In connexion with the 2^nd instalment homily, I would like to draw your attention to a particular feature of the crib. It is the presence of two animals. It is to St Francis of Assisi that we credit the origin of the Crib. He directed that these animals be place therein. “I wish in full reality to awaken the remembrance of the child as he was born in Bethlehem and of all the hardship he had to endure in his childhood. I wish to see with my bodily eyes what it meant to lie in a manger and sleep on hay, between an ox and a donkey”.

In our continuing silence before Christ born in a manger, what significance do the ox and the donkey have? They are not found in any story of the New Testament. Instead they become our link to the Old Testament. According to Isaiah 1:3, “The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master’s crib. Israel knows nothing, my people understands nothing”. As such, their presence shows that there is much more at stake than merely pious sentiments.

Accordingly, Christmas night opens our eyes to recognise who our Saviour is. But do we? Herod did not. In fact, Herod would try to do away with the Child. The scribes and the Pharisees, ironically, those who were specialists in sacred scriptures had failed to recognise Him who was the author of their learned field. The Gospel of Luke today reveals the real oxen and donkeys: the shepherds, and soon to be the wise men from Orient land and of course, Mary and Joseph. Furthermore, the symbolism should not be missed that the Christ-Child, in between the two draught animals, should be placed in a manger, no less a feeding trough. The animal recognised that He who lay in a feeding trough would soon Himself becoming the feed or the food for the hungry. The Eucharistic connotation is quite apparent in the placement of the Baby in a manger between the draught animals.[1]

But, failure to recognise Christ the Saviour is quite easy. For us, who think we love Jesus, it is easy to miss Him out in the Church, the community, the neighbour and the ones closest to us, our relatives and family. It is easy to turn a blind eye to Him with our smugness. Or when we become engrossed with our comfort zone, it is easy to lose sight of who is important in salvation. Finally, many of us have mistaken facts as wisdom, blinded as we are by the availability of information that we have lost a sense of wonderment of the mystery of the God-made-man.

Last night, way past our midnight Mass, a server thanked me for the “brevity” of the homily but he added that it lacked the “oomph”. My response to him was that he had missed the point. It was supposed to be simple and without oomph because the event spoke for itself—God spoke most definitively through His Word—the Christ. Human words can never measure up to the Word. So, Christmas is the time to ask God to grant us the grace of that simplicity of heart so that like the ox and the donkey, we may recognise God Almighty in the Child Jesus, as St Francis of Assisi did whenever he contemplated a crib.

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[1] It challenges us today if we understand whom we are receiving at Holy Communion. The irreverence is symptomatic of a kind of ignorance that requires so much more catechising if we were to defeat it.

Christmas Midnight Mass Year B

It is the Midnight Mass. Did you know, minus the Vigil Mass, that the timing of the Christmas liturgies, and there are three of them, revolves around the interplay between light (or its absence) and the co-called three nativities of Christ? The timing, meaning what time a Mass is celebrated, can be said to correspond to the nativity of Christ before (or outside of) time, in time and in our hearts.

Midnight with its darkness contemplates the mystery of the Only Begotten Son of the Father—a mystery written in the vocabulary of eternity—as the Credo goes—born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.

Mass at Dawn recalls the birth of Christ in time—by the Holy Spirit He was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became Man. At Bethlehem, the appearance of the Son in history corresponds to dawn dispelling the darkness of the night.

And finally, the Mass during the Day points us to Christ being born in our souls, through the indwelling of His Holy Spirit. With the grace of Christ in our hearts we are enlightened.

This timing or the interplay of light and darkness is well and good to know. There is however, another aspect of the Christmas Liturgy which I highlighted earlier this evening at the Vigil Mass. It is the “already and not yet” mark of salvation and also of Christian discipleship. Tonight, this "already and not yet" characteristic of salvation history is best expressed in the sense that we focus on the "already" as we keep the "not yet" at bay.

Why do we do that? We stress the "already" because it is a celebration of how great God is. Thus, our worship calls to linger, to marvel and to rejoice.

We linger because God has come. Have you ever been to a party where the end takes like forever? This type of experience is at times termed as “Stations of the Cross” because people take forever to say goodbye. Fortunately, that is where the analogy ends because this kind of a goodbye is tiring. But, our lingering here is not tiring. We linger because of a marvellous deed that God has done in history.

God has shown his great sense of humour. He whom the universe cannot contain is contained in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. So, we marvel at the birth of a child whom the first reading acclaims as the light that shone on a people in darkness. We, like the shepherds, hurry to Bethlehem to pay homage to the Creator of the world lying helplessly in a manger.

And here, to linger and to marvel requires a lot more courage and certainly humility. Instead of lingering and marvelling, what we encounter is the prevailing dynamo driving the spirit of Christmas—a dynamism which consists a lot more of noise and distraction. If we are not eating, then we are drinking. If we are not drinking then we are shopping. If we are not shopping then we are visiting… and so on. The courage is for us to step aside, perform a kind of paradox, to stand in silence before so stupendous a mystery as the Son of God became Man and was born in time. Without having to say anything—our silence allows the mystery of our salvation to emerge.

This is not easy for a generation oriented to results, this kind of lingering to marvel would seem unproductive. But maybe we dare not, not because we are result-oriented but because we have arrogated to ourselves the position of God? Yes, Psalm 8 proclaims that we are little less than a god and we are invited also to behave LIKE God—as in being His co-creators –but the sad reality is we often behave AS God. In short, we dare not allow God to be God which explains our necessity to act as if we were the saviours of the world.

Tonight, we are reminded that there is only one Saviour of the world and He is Emmanuel because He has come to be with us. Yes, He appeared in time as a helpless Babe but we rejoice that this helpless Babe will one day lay down His life so that the world will be restored to the Father’s glory. As we stand before the crib, the only appropriate posture is silence. So, in reverential silence before the manger, whatever problems we have, no matter how heavy our burden of sin may be, and even if the world is still not right, the helpless little Babe invite us to trust Him to bear our burden because He alone is the Saviour of the world. Come let us adore Him.

Christmas Vigil Year B

I think the people with the best eyesight in the world are Filipinos, well, rich Filipinos, at least. For security reasons, the windscreens and windows of their cars are heavily tinted. I get extremely claustrophobic sitting in one of these cars not knowing where I am or in which direction I am heading to. Analogously, there is also a quality of uncertainty in all our Christmas liturgies and it is perhaps strongest in this evening’s liturgy. There is a quality of uncertainty that is associated with the injunction to “watch and pray”.

Uncertainty is quite a  disturbing state of being especially to a generation accustomed to pressing buttons. We have come to expect that life’s solutions can be got from merely a push of a button. However, the vigil’s liturgy is pretty much that of “uncertainty” as in “already and not yet”. If you like, this is best captured by the caricature of children in a car asking incessantly: “Are we there yet”.

How can one understand and describe this notion of "already and not yet"?

Listen to the Preface II for Advent. For all the oracles of the prophets foretold Him, the Virgin Mother longed for Him with love beyond all telling, John the Baptist sang of His coming and proclaimed His presence when He came. It is by His gift that already we rejoice at the mystery of His Nativity, so that He may find us watchful in prayer and exultant it His praise.

An observation may be made here. This Mass is called the Vigil Mass. The Latin vigilia, from which we derive the term "vigil", means to keep watch. The Church designates the day before a feast or a solemnity as a Vigil because its nature is to prepare for a greater day that is to follow. Through the liturgy, this is one way the Church keeps close to the injunction of Her Lord and Saviour to “keep watch and pray”. So, in some countries, today is also a day of fasting. They fast to heighten the reception of the day that is to come.

Thus, in this so-called interim period, there is a profound sense that what we want is already here but not completely yet. It is by His gift that already we rejoice and this is important. Why?

"Already and not" yet allows us to catch a glimpse of heaven. For many of us, "already and not yet" is unnerving because we want to catch heaven instantaneously. If you take a moment to reflect, all our experiences of exhilaration are but glimpses of heaven. What it means is that we want the access to heaven on tap—as in we devise ways and means to heighten our exhilaration. Is it any wonder why recreational drugs are part of the culture of our youths?

It is not to say that we should not have any excitement or wonderment. In fact, it is a testament of trust in God that we dare leave aside our worries and concentrate on the moment, to enjoy the moment, to savour the moment… even if we are at a loss, even if we have no work and even if we are struggling to come to terms with the death of our loved ones.

Why? Because it is already and also not yet.

This is why Jesus dared speak to Judas in a way which was shocking, a way which seemed to canonise an aberration which today we are trying so hard to eradicate. He said, “The poor you always have with you”. What this means is that we may banish all hunger in the world but it is still not heaven. We may resolve every conflict in the world and we would not even approximate paradise. And the list goes on. Yet, this is not an admission of defeat as the Catechism reminds us that Christ the Lord already reigns through the Church, but all the things of this world are not yet subjected to Him. But, one thing certain is that with Christ at the helm of His Church, in a nation, in our family and of us, we dare to celebrate. In fact, when God seems to be at His weakest as in the helpless babe, we encounter His greatest providence.

Thus, this evening’s liturgy is full of hope. "Already and not yet" points us in the direction of God. Already as in God will be there and we do not need to play God. Thus, tonight, let us leave God to be God and let us joyfully wait for the moment when the Saviour of the world will burst into our lives.