Triduum Part 3: Feast of St. Francis Xavier

I shall begin by re-capping the gist of what I preached about on Saturday and yesterday. On Saturday, I pointed out that we encounter shameful un-Christ-like behaviour amongst Catholics because the grace of the Gospel has not really penetrated their hearts. This experience is the result of a disjuncture or rupture between the head and the heart. Advent or even Lent is the period where we make a conscious decision and also desire to attempt the re-connexion of the head and the heart so that there is a greater consistency between what we profess and how we act. Otherwise, we risk a schizophrenic existence as exemplified in a saying of the Oirish: Paddy went to Mass and he never missed a Sunday. But Paddy went to hell, for what he did on Monday.

In the 2nd instalment of the Triduum, I spoke about healing the disjuncture or rupture between the head and the heart—between belief and action. I said that the healing of the rupture takes place once we begin to reconcile the relationship between love and duty.

Otherwise, duty will always be considered an imposition which we tolerate at best or resent at worst. The reconciliation between love and duty takes place when we begin to acknowledge that duty does not lead to love but rather love frees us to embrace duty. But, unfortunately, love is associated with feelings or emotions. Love in its truer sense is more a matter of the will as it takes us out of ourselves in order to focus upon the beloved. This is where many of us hesitate because it would mean that we lose control and may be at the losing end of the equation. When we love, we are vulnerable—like the Son of God was.

Only when we dare to put ourselves at the losing end, believing that in love, there is no loss, then will we begin to look upon duty in a new light. "Parish in love, Parish alive" was an example of duty in a new light.

We deliberately promoted the service of the community from the perspective of loving that leads to service or rather, loving that leads to loving service, avoiding the “guilt of having to serve”.

In trying to make the connexion between the head and the heart we enter into the territory of love, the territory of vulnerability. In order to do so, we begin to see how the Eucharist is important and how the adoration before the Blessed Sacrament becomes an extension of the Eucharist we celebrate. It is when we have fallen in love with Him that everything else falls into place. It is not rules and regulations that bind a people together. It is love that allows us to embrace duties enjoined upon us. But first, we must dare to love, dare to fall in love with Christ so that in Him, we will begin to love all our neighbours. Only in this sense, will we be able to bear with our vulnerability.

This is where the 3rd instalment comes in. Let me draw together a few themes to make sense of the celebration this evening: vulnerability and the building of a community. The Gospel speaks clearly of the need to evangelise the world. Our application of the Gospel is nuanced in this respect. We are in the business of evangelisation through a dialogue of life. Therefore the BECs are our expressions of this dialogue of life.

Everything that we do is geared towards animating the BECs. Even the parish groups must serve the BECs, in line with the vision of the Catholic Church in Peninsular Malaysia. When we animate, vulnerability is involved because people are not just “duties” to be performed. Animating the BECs also means that we are in need of love and of friendship. Otherwise, everyone in the BEC or in the Parish has a solution to a “problem” (in inverted commas) or a need that nobody wants to admit—our search for acceptance, friendship and love.

The Society of Jesus is good at organising because we are methodical and our training gears us in that direction. Saying that is not a statement of “hubris” or pride but of fact. The movie shown on Saturday, “the Mission” was proof of the Society’s capacity to organise. In a sense the parish reflects this strength of the Society. And yet, the strength of the Society is also her weakness. When we organise, we enter into “dutiful” relationships—we become utilitarian in the way we deal with one another. Often we become functional in our relationships. In a sense, functional relationships are easier to deal with. They are cleaner and more professional and less “personal” because personal is often fraught with vulnerability. We are afraid to spend time together. We are afraid that people might take advantage of us.

If you reflect upon it, being dutiful could also be a sign of a lack of trust in God. There is a saying attributed to St Ignatius who says that we should pray as if everything depends on God and work as if everything depends on us. The “organisational” mode makes us depend more upon ourselves rather than upon God. Now you know why I keep pointing towards the tabernacle. In a society that prizes achievement, we build our credibility or our self-esteem upon what we can achieve. The BECs can become the crowning glory of what we can do and not what God can do for us.

I am not justifying what we do here. I am giving a platform for God to work. We want to do great things for God. Yet, we forget that God has a greater role to play. Playing (lepak, doing nothing, enjoying each other’s company) is a form of trust in God. Remember how Jesus after his desert experience, went to Simon Peter’s house. He had already chosen his fishers of men. There was the mission ahead but the first thing he did was to take time off to be with the mother-in-law of Peter. In the bigger schema of things, the mother-in-law wasn’t the most important thing because the bigger schema of things should be “numbers”. The mother-in-law of Peter was not just duty for Jesus.

Brothers and sisters, I shall end with this song which we sing. “Brothers let me be your servant. Let me be as Christ to you. Pray that I may have the courage to let you be my servant too”. If we are an organisational, or a "head" people, we hear the first part of the song better because it fits with a “dutiful” mode of being: Let me be your servant. But it takes a lot more heart, a lot more vulnerability and a lot more trust in God to let you be my servant too.

On this Feast of St Francis Xavier, let us remember that as he traipsed and trudged the trenches of Asia, he missionary vision was powered also by his heart. He always carried with him the cut-out names of his Jesuit Brothers close to his heart. It was love for Christ, fleshed out in the love for his brothers that gave him the strength to embrace the duty enjoined upon him. May that grace be ours as well.