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The whole affair of rituals, in this case, purity, is surrounded by bad press. In fact, the word “ritual” has an unfavourable connotation. For example, “ritual killing” is closely associated with murder. More than human sacrifice, there is also a corresponding hint of restriction on our freedom as we submit to a series of mindless observance of ceremonies and customs. This renders ritual a procedure to avoid. But beyond this, what is rarely acknowledged is that rituals are indicative of a larger picture at play. A rite is never for itself. Instead, it calls attention to our relationship and the elaborateness of a ceremony is usually a clue of how important that association is. For example, the institution of marriage is surrounded by intricate customs and observances. The more important an institution is, the greater the investment and also the grander the mystery surrounding it. A good illustration is the coronation of a monarch which is steeped in the intricacies of ceremonial significance.
Sadly, we operate beneath the umbrella of utilitarianism. Under this mantle, rites are usually set against convenience. When pitted against practicality, rites will usually lose out. In the case of an “urgency” like hunger caused by calamities, rites are deemed to be even more useless. An insistence on following them will be judged as uncaring. That would be an interpretation of today’s Gospel encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees.
In terms of the current construct with regard to our relationship with God, we do not really have to fit into God’s overarching plan for humanity. Rather God must fit into “our” framework. If not solely “personal” then it would be a predominantly “human” interpretation at work. To give an example and possibly to raise a few heckles, take the cabal of “anti-vaxxers”. Under the prevailing rhetoric, these would be viewed as “selfish rebels”. These egocentric “conspiracists” do not appreciate the protection of a “greater good”. At this moment, that is how the conversation is being framed as pressure is applied on them to submit. God has been weaponised by media moguls and tech titans to name and shame the dissenters. In the interest of full disclosure, I received two doses of Astra Zeneca, (whether or not the vaccine manufactured in Thailand/Korea/Japan is approved by the EU), which I “meekly” submitted to. It was a “practical” decision against this duress of “if you do not vaccinate, you are as good a hater of mankind”.
This “our common good” proposition basically revolves around a “me and only me” frame of reference which is easily transposed into our relationship with God. “I”, and not God, am the point of reference. This has been the case for quite a while now. To illustrate, we are accustomed to the phenomenon of people dressed in pyjamas going to a hawker centre. It is not really the “I” entering into shared space out there but rather the “out there” accommodating me by being absorbed into my “personal space”. In other words, the social arena has ceased to exist. In its place it is basically my personal space extended[1]. Fundamentally, what we have is “world, you bow before me” when translated also means “God, you submit to me”.
Within this frame of reference, the relationship between Creator and creature is almost obscured in our notion of rites. As mentioned earlier, rites, which by nature, are regulatory, they stand for coercion. For us, regulations curb or curtail our “individual freedom” and we chafe at that. But religious laws are not just mandates and prohibitions. Religious laws arise from our relationship with God. This was the context of the exchange between Jesus and the religious authorities.
We are planted deep in the soil of formality simply because “limits” fall within the mould of who we are as human beings. This harmonises with the notion of mystery. What we cannot fully explain, we tend to give it a greater latitude in terms of formality or rites[2]. Somehow, we have an exaggerated sense of freedom as defined by informality because “formality” is judged to be constricting as it ties us down. We prefer the informal and the impromptu. In this spontaneity, which we believe is where freedom flourishes, we hold that relationship with God is best served by informality. What is more endearing than the image of “cor ad cor loquitor”? Who would not desire the warmth of “heart speaks unto heart”? Yet, we may have failed to note that such a familiarity is also a fertile ground for contempt.
The dissolution of boundaries set up by rituals has grave consequences which we do not fully grasp. The point of this Sunday’s exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees is not a choice of either/or but a larger picture. Jesus Himself behaved according to what is prescribed ritually. He was ritually religious.
Our reaction towards formality may have blinded us to the unwitting vilification of the Pharisees. We dislike them because we view them as religious prigs who are intent on ritual purity. At the core of this Pharisaical rigour lies a space dedicated to God and this space is where mystery exists which is why rites are important. The Pharisees may have a misdirected emphasis but their hearts are in the right place. God is to be praised and glorified. From this perspective, religious fundamentalist or even extremists like the Afghani Taliban are spot on in desiring to give God glory ("Allahu akhbar") but they are definitely wrong in thinking that God’s honour to be protected from “infidels”.[3] He does not need any protection. Instead He is glorified through when we live virtuously. Indeed, God has no need of our praise but as the Common Preface IV reminds us, “our thanksgiving adds nothing to His greatest but profit us for salvation through Christ our Lord”.
We may fault the Pharisees for having missed the bigger picture because they are fixated on the rituals themselves as if they were the “be all and end all” of Judaism. But we are no better for we appear to focus on the absence of rituals as the purer mode of contact with God. This was actually one of the Protestants’ critique against the Catholic Church for having too many accumulated traditions that prevented a more direct access to God. Ever since the Reformation, we have begun the slow process of demystifying our relationship with God to the point that science holds a view that nothing that can be explained outside the laboratory. When mystery is removed from man, his hunger for the mystical, for what we cannot fully explain because of our temporal and special limitations, will be filled with “conspiracy”. Conspiracy is just another word of mystery.
It is time to rethink “rituals” as the space where God is given His due. In this sacred place, we recognise who we are as creatures and who God is as Creator. Rendering to God what is due to Him is the basis for our appreciation of human dignity. If you like, mystery prevents us from descending into crass functionality or utilitarianism.[4] If we want to serve our neighbour, then we must give God the praise and the reverence that belongs to Him. Thus, this seemingly useless discussion on ritual ablution highlights the profound connexion between a proper religious attitude toward God and the result which is to bear the fruits of justice and mercy. This is clearly indicated in the first and second Readings. Laws connect us with God and secondly, a purity of heart allows us to serve the poor.
In conclusion, the Pharisees’ insistence, in the light of “informality” would come across as stupid and slavish. But, if we can situate their “stupidity” within the context of what is proper to God, we can better appreciate our religious rites. It is in this context that “dressing up on Sunday” will look less of a fixation with “fashion” than it is about how we want to honour God our Saviour.
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Some parents do not like to discipline their children
for fear of stymieing, stunting or thwarting their creativity, spontaneity and
initiative. This gives rise to an often-observed phenomenon of a child behaving
as if there were no difference between public and private sphere. They run
around the church during Mass as if the shared space of the church is an
extension of their playroom at home.
The difference is important as it allows us to recognise that the Eucharist is central to “ordinary salvation” because it pertains to the heart of Christ’s love for humanity.[1] In terms of its requirement, our focus is not on “extraordinary salvation” because that would be to encroach into God’s sovereign freedom. In a sense, “extraordinary salvation” is nothing more than a shameful failure on our part to cooperate with God’s grace. Indeed!
Often it is touted that God’s salvation is universal. There are more non-Christians[2] than there are Christians. A pluralistic perspective views such diversity of religions as part of God’s universal salvific will. In other words, Christianity is not that special. All religions are supposedly the same. What this outlook fails to consider is Christianity’s minority status might not arise from God’s universal salvific will but rather from “OUR” bad examples. Through the centuries, we have behaved abominably. We have not been good stewards of Christ saving love.
If anything, “extraordinary salvation” just means the Lord has to “work harder”. Furthermore, the reality that 4/5 of the world remains unconvinced does not abrogate God’s salvific will through the Church of His Son. It only means that Christians have a demanding role to play in terms of living according to our belief that the Eucharist is the source and summit of our lives.
To recap, so far, we have established that God can choose to save extraordinarily. Precisely, it must be extraordinary because any other mode of salvation other than ordinary would run counter to His salvific will. What is clear is that in heaven there is no Eucharist. However, we are not in heaven and therefore, here on earth, we do require the Eucharist as food for the journey back to the Father and when we have arrived in heaven, the sign (Eucharist) must give way to the reality of (Jesus Christ).
While on earth, the Eucharist is prerequisite for salvation?[3] Perhaps our tepid conviction is symptomatic that our world has become inverted. We live in a world where bad is confused with the good, so it seems, “badass”! And it is the same inversion noted in the debate between “ordinary” and “extraordinary”. The “extraordinary” is preferred even though “ordinary” is what God has intended.
Our usage of the word “ordinary” suggests that it is common, ho hum or mundane and consequently uninteresting. Extraordinary suggests of grandiosity etc but the etymology of the word is “order”. Hence, the Eucharist is cosmological and ordered by the Lord. Salvation is via the Church and through His Church, the Jesus gives us the Sacraments.
The centrality of the Eucharist is illustrated in the context of John Chapter 6. On many occasions, Jesus corrected His disciples misunderstanding of His teaching. For example, when He pointed to the “leaven” of the Pharisees, He told them that He was speaking figuratively. However, in the case of this Eucharistic discourse, the entire dialogue takes place during the Passover. There is a Mosaic echo which harkens back to the time when to escape the 10th plague, the Israelites were ordered to eat the unblemished lamb and splatter its blood on doorposts and lintels. Jews do not drink blood because the belief that the soul or the life of a creature is in the blood. Here Jesus was categorical, almost agitating the crowd to break this Mosaic Law by His insistence that eternal life was predicated on the consumption of His Body and Blood.
The Israelites understood Jesus perfectly and because they realised that eternity has to be purchased through the eating and drinking of the Body and the Blood of Jesus, they balked. They could not overcome their psychological and religious distaste.[4]
There is no doubt that the Eucharist is the only food fit for our heavenly pilgrimage. It is not a new teaching. Even as early as St Ignatius of Antioch who said, “Take note of those who hold heterodox opinions on the grace of Jesus Christ which has come to us, and see how contrary their opinions are to the mind of God. . . . They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in his goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes”.[5]
The Institution Narrative itself confirms what Jesus meant that we should eat of Him because the change in language takes place from a 3rd person narrative to a 1st person performative utterance. “On the night HE was betrayed” to “Take this all of you and eat of it. This is MY Body”.
In conclusion, contexts are pertinent to reflexions. As we wrap up this Johannine detour, we have also arrived at a context which makes the Eucharist even more relevant.
A reality which has not fully permeated our consciousness is the proximity of “death”. When we speak of death, we are accustomed to the generic notion that people die in the course of nature. Somehow, this “lack of consciousness” might just be emblematic that too much of our faith has been in science all along. We appear “unafraid” simply because science will save us. Thus far, our deity has been the vaccine. Now that many are “fully vaccinated”, restrictions are slowly lifted up. Yet, in these last couple of weeks, the Delta variant is making inroads into our “six-decree of separation”. Many amongst us are touched intimately by the death of our spouse, children, parents, siblings, relatives, friends and etc.
It is in the context of those who are dying around us that we must recognise that the pandemic is not only fearful. For more than a year, we have focused on staying alive to the point that we have become forgetful. We have forgotten that the Eucharist is the food for the immortality steeped in the desire to stay alive. The Eucharist is the only nourishment that can immortalise and divinise us. If we lack this sense of urgency, perhaps the explanation can be found in what I mentioned earlier about the inversion between “ordinary” and “extraordinary”. We seem to have arrived at a plane where we do not need to change for God, that is, transformed through our divinisation. In this plateau, it is God who needs to change for us by “approving” whatever choices we fancy. It is amnaesia when we forget that the Eucharist is the proper food for our immortalisation. Even as we pray for the pandemic to end, may this Eucharistic desert remind us that the Body of Christ is the only key to our divinisation. Therefore “Grant us, almighty God, that we may be refreshed and nourished by the Sacrament which we have received, so as to be transformed into what we consume”.
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[1] He saves us ordinarily through the Church. He saves extraordinarily but always through the Church because it cannot be that the Head works independently of the Body.
[2] This label is now considered politically incorrect. A term more in vogue term “Other Religions”.
[3] A question like this must be set in the context of the discussion of ordinary vs extraordinary. In a way, it begs the question that if it were required, what about the 4/5 of the world’s population? And would this question of necessity be reduced to “your god vs my god” and who is the stronger god?
[4] The Jews are not the only ones rejecting the Eucharist. The same rejection of Jesus teaching on the Real Presence can be detected from the Protestant focus on the phrase that Jesus used. “The flesh has no avail”. Grammar itself will indicate that Jesus did not say “MY flesh” but refers to the flesh which is a reference to human nature “APART” from grace or apart from the Spirit.
[5] Letter to the Smyrnaeans.
In other words, belonging to the Lord, we are to be like Him crucified to the world so that it can be saved. If to follow Christ is to walk the Way of the Cross, then the person who does it most perfectly is none other than Mary, His mother. She is the woman for whom her service to her God did not end at Golgotha or even at her earthly demise. It continues today. Therefore, if the “Little Flower” promised to spend her heaven doing good on earth, one can imagine how much more present on earth has Our Lady been in the mission of Son’s mercy.
As such, the Assumption is more than a celebration of our solitary boast. It is more of an expression of our gratitude to God for the presence of Mary. If life is a pilgrimage, then, this Marian solemnity is truly a pitstop in the odyssey through this Valley of Tears. When times are tough, we need encouragement and our consolation is to contemplate the destiny of Mary.[1] She followed Him closely and as her body was privileged to bear God’s Son, it stands to reason that she did not experience corporeal corruption and thus, united body and soul, she was assumed into heaven.
This pitstop is not as Marian as it is Christ-centred for us to be grateful to the Lord for His graciousness to Mary.[2] When we gaze at her, we can see our destiny in the distant horizon because at the Cross Jesus gave us more than a model and the type for the Church.[3] In Mary, we have hope and a guarantee.
In a particularly life-engaging apparition, slightly more than a 100 years ago, Our Lady stood before three children in Fatima. The timing is significant because she appeared in the midst of the “Spanish Flu” with a world gripped by a global conflict. She came when man needed a helping hand and a realignment of his moral compass. Given that we are stuck in this never-seem-to-end pandemic, we have the same opportunity to turn to Mary, the Mother of Hope.
In terms of hope, we may not realise how desparate we are. Technology has advanced exponentially since the time of the “Spanish Flu”. For example, genome sequencing has played a pivotal role in understanding and helping authorities respond to the pattern of Covid transmission. It is a known fact that genome sequencing for Covid-19 was accomplished in a matter of days whereas the same process for SARS, more than a decade ago, took three months to map. Genomics is central to the effective development of vaccines. Now with the inoculation speeded up, what we witness in the re-opening of countries and economies is a rise in the cases of infection.
Our hubris is technico-mechanical in a sense. Somehow, we have laboured under an assumption (no pun intended) that it is only a matter of time that we turn the corner. All we need is a faster scientific response and technological control. What may not have sunk in for many is how impotent scientific expertise has been. What escapes us is that man can shout all he wants but God’s ways are just not ours. Many of us are no more than a six-degree separation from someone we know who has passed on due to Covid-19. Before we trot out the usual catchphrase that God is capricious, we should perhaps pause.
What we may have failed to grasp is that with this Delta variant, the end may have to be pushed back as many are dying around us. The palpable despair that characterises our reality highlights our failure to appreciate an existential truth. Dependence on God is the intrinsic condition for true human existence. Thus, as rosaries were prayed during the Battle of Lepanto, in our vulnerability, we turn to Mary the hope and help of Christians. Sub Tuum Praesidium. We fly to thee of Virgin of virgins.
As the prevailing mantra continues to shout at us to “Follow the science”, we should instead “read the sign”. Mary is the sign along this Eucharistic detour. While following the science is important, we should also be aware that under the unforgiving glare of this “god of science”, fear can always be dressed up as prudence. This type of precaution should be illuminated by God’s guarantee because under that light, Mary stands signalling us not to be afraid. Our Lady of Hope and the Refuge of Sinners can help us in this difficult time when death envelopes us all.
The Assumption of Our Lady is our guarantee. Yes, we may not be immaculately conceived (even though our present-day presumption is that people are immaculately conceived) but our hope is that when we follow Christ like Mary did, then at the Resurrection, our body reunited with our soul, will enjoy the same glory that Mary has now. In the context of a predicament presented by the pandemic, the dogma of the Assumption is a definite declaration that no scientific response can ever solve the riddle of death. Only faith in the Resurrection can. The Bread of the Resurrection is the Eucharist. Thus, it makes perfect sense that we made this detour. She is our promise of the future and the Eucharist, the “Viaticum”, is the guarantee of our eternal destiny.
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[1] It is remarked that Pius XII in declaring the dogma of the Assumption left open the question of whether Mary died and rose immediately to be assumed into heaven or she went to heaven directly without experiencing death. In the East, the focus was on the Dormition, the Sleeping of Mary, that her departure was more of a sleep than a death. In the West, they sees her death more of a resemblance of Christ rather than of us, sinful men. She died not on account of sin, but she died just as her sinless Son did on the Cross.
[2] He had already graced her at her conception by protecting her from the corruption of Adam’s sin and now at the end of her earthly life, He graced her once again. The Assumption is the Immaculate Conception brought to its logical conclusion.
[3] The text of the Catechism (#966) states that “Finally the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death”. This is taken from Vatican II’s Lumen gentium (#59) which echoes Pope Pius XII’s Munificentissimus Deus.
On account of this Marian diversion, we will skip an important section of the reading from the Bread of Life discourse in John’s Gospel. For now, this week’s reflexion begins with the experience of Elijah because he is connected to our present predicament. “Your man”, as the Irish would say, might as well be the Prophet of Lockdowns! He was hounded by his enemies and cornered. In the 1st Reading, he was trapped and on the verge of giving up. Like him, we have been driven by this virulent plague into isolation. It does not help that in this country, we are hostage to a series of mindless vacillation between restrictions and relaxations. All efforts at staying put and all attempts to curb the contagion have left many struggling with pandemic fatigue. Like Elijah, our exhaustion brings us to the next point.
We may be tired out but what is the state of our souls?
According to St Alphonsus de Ligouri, “The business of eternal salvation is assuredly an affair which is to us more important than any other, and it is the most neglected by Christians”[3]. With regard to the afterlife, the Eucharist is food for the soul in the pilgrimage there. To understand what this means, we turn to a principle that is used in the interpretation of Canon Law and that is, salus animarum est suprema lex[4]. The salvation of souls is the supreme law. Simply translated, salvation is the central mission of Christ. He came to save souls. For this reason, He established the Church so that she can continue His mission. Everything must flow into this goal.
Perhaps, the “distraction” in the Gospel is also ours. The crowd was drawn towards how Jesus can provide them with physical satisfaction. We too can be side-tracked even by what is considered to be a good. Yes, what we hope to achieve as Church, as faithful servants of Christ is important. We want to heal the sick, right the wrongs of injustice, rehabilitate our political structures, make the economy more equitable and now, of course, the flavour of the month is to save the environment. All these objectives are important. But they are not the same as saving souls. The Church must align herself with Christ for ultimately, His mission was and is not the amelioration of human misery, no matter how noble or meaningful. The uncomfortable truth is that it concerns the eternity of the soul.
If that is the case, then what constitutes the salvation of souls?
The answer we give to the question of salvation will determine our response. The present protocols we have put in place seem to be centred on the conversation of the body. What about the soul? So, for the moment, setting aside the safety restrictions, meaning, we recognise that we ought to render to Caesar what belongs to him[5], a relevant scenario to contemplate is how we should render to God what belongs to Him. In other words, how to provide the nourishment necessary for the soul’s survival? Without losing sight of our material make-up, that is, our rootedness in this world, we are advised that the conversation between Jesus and the crowd was focused on salvation of both body AND soul; not body OR soul.
However, the reality is that, by and large, Catholics have been prevented from receiving Holy Communion. Public Masses are barred for valid reasons. Is there a spiritual component in this current situation? Even during the months of relaxation, some who have no reasons to, have voluntarily denied themselves of Holy Communion but would have no problems engaging in economic or recreational activities. Somewhere in this equation, the coherent picture of both body and soul is absent. Unwittingly we labour under a logic that there is less Covid danger outside the Church whereas involvement in Church could be Covid death. If we accept the premise that the Eucharist is truly the Bread of Eternal Life, then its privation must have a spiritual impact on the soul. And ultimately when Eucharist is denied to souls, would Satan not have triumphed?
Through this pandemic, in the consideration of eternal redemption, we walk the tightrope of balancing between the preservation of the body and the salvation of the soul. This juggling act ties in with our belief in the Resurrection of the body. What has happened thus far can be illustrated by a fishing technique practised in South East Asia. The "Kelong" which is a marine construction that corrals fishes into a narrow channel so that as they swim, they are moving towards their eventual capture in the net. The conventions created to contain Covid have basically acted like a “Kelong” in which we have been corralled into behaviour patterns which are somewhat disjointed or “dispirited”[6].
The whole movement towards virtual reality might seem like a life saver for so many who are isolated. This is not a Luddite criticism of those who have grown accustomed to live-streamed Masses. In this long Johannine Eucharistic discourse, the Lord has been insistent that the eating of His Body and drinking of His Blood is sine qua non for eternal salvation.[7] There is a materiality about human existence. If it were not, then the good Lord would not have required physical proximity as the means of our reproduction. But without a doubt, this pandemic is more than just a human health issue. It has psychological ramifications for in terms of mental health, there is a recognition that prolonged isolation has had a deleterious effect on the state of mind. As paranoia deepens, behaviours have changed.
Beyond the preservation of life and the promotion of psychological well-being, the fear we have built up may be indicative of how far-removed God is from the world. There is scant consideration given to the spiritual damage caused by the extended deprivation of the Sacraments. True, a priest, now Bishop emeritus, used to remark that the poor Devil gets blamed for everything and as Freud supposedly observed that “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”, we accept that not everything has to be spiritual.
But as this scourge stretches, we may have appeared to ignore how insidious “evil”[8] has insinuated its way into how this plague has been formulated as merely a human health issue. The preservation of the body has become an absolute instead of it being a relative principle for the organisation of life. Satan must be smirking on the side. He would have accomplished his mission because we have forgotten that our ultimate end lies in eternal life with God. Furthermore, stringed together like a chain of beads of a rosary from hell, the numerous botches of this blundering illegitimate government has done nothing but distracted our attention from this cosmic battle taking place before our very eyes.
If the Eucharist is our food, our viaticum to eternity, the denial of it would be one of Satan’s primary pursuit. And we seemed to have settled comfortably into an arrangement without the Eucharist which begs the question if Holy Communion was really necessary for salvation in the first place or was it merely a token. A couple of days ago, we celebrated St John Vianney. He said, “There is nothing so great as the Eucharist. If God had something more precious, He would have given it to us”. This pestilence has taught one thing. The Eucharist is not a luxury. It is life. God who loves us so much gives us nothing more priceless than the Body and Blood of His Son. We need this divine bread and drink so that our souls will not starve to death. There is nothing greater than the Eucharist; nothing can bring us to heaven except this Bread and Drink of eternal life.
