4th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 2022

We enter deeper into last Sunday’s focus on the Word of God by taking a look at three inter-connected themes. The first point is centred the vocation of a prophet. He is called to act on behalf of God. He does it primarily by speaking God’s truth. Second, aligned with this mission is the certainty of rejection. “No prophet is ever accepted in his own country”. In the context of repudiation we turn our focus to the third point. For a prophet, identity and rejection are two sides of a coin. Both God’s will and the experience of rejection are tied to one’s identity and this is clearly brought out in the Gospel today.

In terms of our vocation and mission, no one is ever qualified to be called. Jeremiah, the “weeping Prophet” acknowledged that much: “Look, I do not know how to speak: I am a child”. The unworthiness that one feels with regard to vocation could also be a kind a “proud forgetfulness” that it is God who qualifies the one called. The Lord reminded Jeremiah that even though the people to whom he has been sent to would fight against him, it would be against God that they would be fighting. If we are enlisted in God’s mission and because it is “opus Dei”, we should rest assured that God Himself will be right in the heart of the mission.

This confidence that God is resolutely on our side is profoundly existential and humbling because “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you came to birth, I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations”. (Jer 1: 5). Even as Jeremiah protested his inadequacy or his lack of experience, what is inescapable is that our consecration in the womb gives us our identity. Therefore, apart from “forgetfulness” which could border on “ingratitude”, the impression that we are poorly suited to carry out God’s bidding could come from our lack of trust in Him for the identity and the qualification that He will supply.

Let us see how Jesus’ identity as the Son of God was played out in Nazareth. He has returned to His home town where, in the synagogue, He read from the Prophet Isaiah a passage which promised the Messiah. They were impressed with Him until He, straight-faced, without equivocation, pointed to Himself as the fulfilment of their expectation. Naturally, His audience gasped at what they felt to be arrogance or temerity. He had set Himself as the benchmark which for them hitherto was thought to be a mythical standard or an unattainable ideal. They could not reconcile His claim with His background.

Who did He think He was? Jesus of Nazareth whose father was merely a carpenter. Who was this audacious Son of Mary? From our enlightened pedestal we might judge the audience as narrow-minded with regard to their view of Jesus’ origin and identity. However, the question is “Are we that enlightened ourselves?”. Do we not have the same problem judging people by their origin and background?

Our present social landscape is narrowly defined by “identity politics”. Apart from judging according to religion, class or status, now we assess people according to race, age, political affiliation, gender classification or sexual orientation. In fact, identity has become even more important for us because the social fabric that has held communities together has broken down. Like Jesus, we could have references to our family and extended family of grandpas, grandmas, uncles, aunties, cousins, to our community and neighbourhood and to our circle of friends.

All these moorings should be sufficient to secure our identity but unlike Jesus, the family is now basically the nuclear family—parents and children. In some cases, as a result of separation and divorce, a father and children or mother and child. What used to be a spectrum of social ballasts for self-definition is slowly disappearing. Many of us barely have contact with our extended families—kinship gatherings are reduced to weddings or funerals. We hardly know our neighbours. On the side of technology, our social standing is scaled down to a number. Our MySejahtera ID is simply a repeat of our mobile Nr. From a medical perspective, the imposition of a vaccine passport will only drive us further into a digitalised existence. Digitally, our self-definition has to run the gauntlet of faceless barrages that come from trolling, flaming and cancelling. The present “woketopia” also complicates our sense of belonging because anachronistically, it is eager to condemn our past as not pristine or pure enough to meet the currently accepted norm of behaviour or social justice. Without the safety net of shared narratives, rejection looms large in one social standing.

These cyber-experiences, in a way, reveal to us that our self-perception is culled from or is based on a rather horizontal plane of life. This means we draw our sense of the self from what others think of us or feel about us. Take the case of bullying, which is an issue in school, at work or in cyberspace. In no way does this observation condone bullying and neither is this a counsel to remain silent. When bullying becomes such an overwhelming ordeal that debilitates a person, “could it be” symptomatic of a lack of vertical dimension in one’s self-perception?

Today we heard that the people of Nazareth rejected Jesus. They were not a nameless bunch of people. They were most certainly friends, neighbours and perhaps, even relatives. We all recognise rejection and rejection. We offer a kind act to someone we scarcely know and when that kindness is turned down, like Taylor Swift, we may shake it off and say, “No skin off my nose”. Say you are benevolent to your wife or your husband, or a close friend—in short, to someone you care enough about. What happens when that generous gesture is rejected outright? There will be drama, trauma and possibly karma. In Nazareth, Jesus was not rejected by strangers but repudiated by the very people who constituted His background, His identity.

I remember a scene from a movie on St Bernadette. She was bullied by one senior nun for over a period of 11 years—this nun could not believe how God could have chosen Bernadette instead of her. This older nun felt that she herself, rather than this lowly peasant, was more worthy of the apparition of Our Lady. Did Bernadette go for counselling? Possibly unavailable then and so no access to it. However, that is not the point and not even the fact that Bernadette bore her suffering stoically. Rather, her identity did not come from this other nun nor did she need of validation or approval from this “bullying” nun. Even the hard truth that she would not be a beneficiary of the healing powers of the waters of Lourdes did not diminish her self-worth before God. How is that possible? We find the answer somewhere in the desert where the vertical dimension of Jesus’ identity was revealed. As He got out of the River Jordan, a voice was heard “You are my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased”. The same vertical element can be seen in Bernadette’s life. Likewise, the vertical connexion that gives us our identity comes through the Sacrament of Baptism.

Our vocation or God’s calling, our mission or His sending, His Word or message, all these define who we are. It is the only identity we need more than anything in the world. Overshadowed by identity politics, we forget that personhood requires this vertical contact. Who I am is not determined solely by what other people think of me! We are defined by God because He has a relationship with each one of us even before we were formed in the womb. With our identity established in the Lord and secured by Him, rejection will not destroy us. Embracing our God-given identity we can resolutely make our journey to heaven the way Jesus, Jeramiah and Bernadette did. God has called us. He has sent us. He is our message. He will be our destiny.

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 2022

Today is the Sunday of the Word of God and both the first reading and the Gospel emphasise the centrality of God’s Word. First, through the grace of God, the remnant has returned from its exile, courtesy of King Cyrus of Persia. Imagine this insignificant group which had remained faithful and has now returned to Jerusalem. In the reconstructed Temple, the sacred space for divine worship, the Prophet Ezra proclaimed God’s Word to them. It may sound pedestrian but picture the attentiveness of the small group of returnees at hearing God’s Word in their sacred home ground. Second, there is also a homecoming for Jesus who returned to Nazara. He read and preached at the Temple to a crowd that was awed by His wisdom and authority. Both scenes are fitting reminders that our hearts should be burning as the Readings, Psalms and the Gospel are being read to us every Sunday.

These passages form a backdrop for a reflexion on the Sunday of the Word of God. It is fitting that the Pope wants us to have a firmer grasp of God’s Word because we keep hearing that Catholics do not know the Bible. Time and again the point has been hammered home that Catholics are weak in their biblical knowledge.

Maybe the Sunday of the Word of God can offer a corrective to the oft-repeated label that Catholics are scripturally ignorant. To contextualise, this lack of biblical proficiency would not have been a problem 500 years ago. This label may not have risen if we did not undergo the tumultuous division of the Protestant Reformation. Prior to Luther’s revolt, Catholics were also “illiterate” but that presented no difficulty because their “ignorance” was not what we would designate it as such today. The present measure for literacy is based on the ability to read and write. It is quite a modern standard. 500 years ago, a person who does not know how to “read” or “write” formally could not be considered as entirely illiterate.

Prior to the application of this contemporary norm for literacy, Church buildings were catechetical. The Church taught through the sacramentals of buildings, statues, stained glasses, colours, gestures and formalised rituals. In other words through signs and symbols we communicate. We learn not solely through reading and writing—not purely through the faculties of the intellect. If we consider the acquisition of knowledge beyond these two abilities of reading and writing, then we would expanded the capacity to grasp knowledge through signs and symbols. For example, the colour red is now festooned all over our Mary’s Square. What is red if not the colour of prosperity used to signify the coming Lunar New Year?

The Latin adage “lex orandi, lex credendi” is helpful to illustrate why Catholics have remained “scripturally illiterate”. As mentioned above, in the past, our knowledge of Sacred Scripture did not come solely from “studies”, understood as formal education. The term “praying theology” was used to describe the Scholastics. For the early Church Fathers and subsequently, the Scholastics, theology was as much a formal discipline as it was a praying matter. Praying or "orandi" was part and parcel of coming to know. In other words, in coming to know “about” God, they also knew God personally through praying. A theologian was also a kneeling theologian. What is different today is that one can be a professional theologian without having even to believe in the studies one is engaged in. Theology is merely an academic interest on par with reading law or biology or mathematics. St Thomas Aquinas would make an excellent portrait of what it means that theology was a praying matter and not just a speculative exercise.

If we conceive of theology in terms of praying, then we may be able to recognise that our liturgy is steeped in Sacred Scripture. Just one of myriad examples, one of the triple blessings given at the end of baptism implores that the Lord may bless the newly baptised so that he or she can keep the flame of faith of alive until Christ comes. This benediction is an echo of the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. What this means is that we may not know the Bible precisely but our liturgy is pregnant with references to Sacred Scripture.

In the 3-year cycle of Sunday Readings, Years A, B and C, we cover all four of the Evangelists. Together with the 2-year cycle of Daily Mass Readings, the celebration of the Eucharist would have allowed us to embrace a substantial corpus of the Bible. All we need is to attend Mass faithfully for the 3 complete years and we would have engaged the Bible extensively.

Catholic rites and liturgies allow us to act out the Bible in the fullest sense of the word because Christianity is a story to be proclaimed and heard. After all, “in the beginning was the Word”. God spoke and the world with all its wonders were created. John’s Gospel did not open with the line “in the beginning was the Video”. Hence, through proclamation and hearing, we are carried into the heart of God’s Word. In hearing, the best place is usually within the context of a meal where food is shared and stories are passed on from one generation to another. The Jewish meal setting became our Catholic Eucharist.

Soon, that was not enough. Incrementally, the experience had to be formalised. For Catholic, the Road to Emmaus slowly developed into an ordered “meal”. The Emmaus experience, which is the Lucan depiction of the Eucharist, slowly became ritualised. Likewise, the canon of Sacred Scripture had to be specified to avoid confusion. In due time, the Church settled on the 27 books we know as the New Testament. Long before Johann Gutenberg made his appearance through the printing press, the Bible was both heard and seen through the Eucharistic rituals. Prior to mass printing, sacred texts were painstakingly copied in scriptoria of monasteries and as such, manuscripts were rare. Hence, the seeing part and the “illiteracy of the Bible amongst Catholics”. But we were not left with no biblical imagination as St Francis of Assisi brought the birth of Christ to life through the re-enactment of the crèche or crib-set. Thus through statues and stained glassed, the Church sought to inspire the minds and hearts of believers.

What Gutenberg’s printing press heralded was the possibility of Luther’s “Sola Scriptura”. In the meantime, Catholic Scriptura remained rooted in the vast living tradition as experienced through the Church’s liturgical rites, her art and architecture and pious devotions.

There is a verse from the first chapter of John’s Gospel, imprinted on the frieze of the altar in Loreto’s Holy House of Nazareth, where Mary was born, and it states, “Hic Verbum caro factum est”. “Here the Word was made flesh” is essentially the basis for the Catholic fondness or predilection for the Sacraments. We are not sacramental for the sake of the Sacraments. Instead, there is an interplay between the Word and the Sacraments and by extension, the sacramentals. There is a reciprocity between hearing the Word proclaimed and seeing the Word in action. Pope St Leo the Great in a sermon on the Ascension memorialised Christ’s going away in a quote that asserted, “the Redeemer’s visible presence has passed into the Sacraments”. Christ is no longer with us physically but He remains with us Sacramentally. For that way, we can reinterpret St Jerome’s warning that “ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ” as “knowledge of the Sacraments is the knowledge of Christ”.

In other words, Catholics may not know the Bible the way the Protestants do but we do know the Sacraments. We know Christ through the Sacraments. In short, through the faithful and reverential celebration of the Sacraments, we live and breathe the Bible. What remains for Catholics is to catch up with formal knowledge which brings up two points for us to consider.

We ought to know our Scriptural texts, not because of the Protestant shaming us for our lack of academic, explicit and precise knowledge. At it says in 1 Peter 3:15, “Always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have”. Knowledge of the Catechism and Sacred Scripture gives us the added advantage of explaining and defending our biblically-founded faith. Secondly, how much more real and personal, as we heard in the 1st Reading, when we begin to appreciate how scripturally-steeped our liturgy is. Our Sacraments are fertile rituals that spring from a Biblical oasis.

If the Sunday of the Word of God is to make us know the bible more intimately, perhaps we should start with knowing our liturgy more deeply for it is in our rites and ceremonies of 2000 years that Sacred Scripture is alive. Time for Catholics take ownership of a faith that is biblically sound. Be proud but not in a triumphalistic manner. Be proud as in be assured that the Church founded by Christ did not deviate from the Word that He is. “All He was on earth has now passed into the Sacraments” means that we must celebrate our Sacraments with greater reverence, rigour and response so that the Bible can come alive as we begin to acknowledge how every Sacrament is Christ Himself acting for us.

We should heed the Pope. Sunday of the Word of God is the Church desiring us to be enveloped in a “sensum scriptura”, if my pig Latin can be trusted, that is, in the sense of Sacred Scripture, but not according to Luther’s “sola scriptura”. Our Catholic sensibility takes us through the liturgy where the Word is proclaimed, heard, seen, tasted, smelled and touched. To know and love the liturgy gives us a chance to appreciate God’s Word—Jesus Christ—more profoundly alive and acting through the Church. In the liturgy, touched by His grace, we gather His strength to live Him more radically and to serve Him more readily. In an age which has lost its mooring in God, we might just be the only living Bible the world may hear, see and touch.

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 2022

Once again, we seemed to have skimmed hastily through the early events in Jesus’ adult life. We have jumped directly to Cana missing out that right after the Baptism at the Jordan, He would have entered desert. There, minus creaturely comforts and without distractions, Jesus communed with the Father who loves Him while at the same time, His humanity confronted the cunning wiles of Satan and overcame his temptations. It was a period of profound and personal preparation for the future.

It began with a wedding in which Jesus and His newly gathered disciples—Peter and Andrew, James and John—had been invited. So too was Mary, His mother. Here, embarrassment was met with compassion. The bride and groom had run out of wine and it was the mother of Jesus who made the pivotal intercession on their behalf.

There are basically two perspectives on intervention. The Catholic view takes a position that the response of Jesus to His mother did not come from a space of disrespect. In fact, the exchange between them may even conceal the loving intimacy between mother and Son. Imagine if the conversation between them ran like this: “Mother, is it wise what you ask of me and do you think that this is my moment?”. Here is a filial Son asking His mother for the confirmation He needed to commence His public ministry.

This is a woman who gave no second thoughts at the Annunciation. Her endorsement cannot be more explicit than “Do whatever He tells you”. If Helen of Troy was the face that launched a thousand ship, then Mary’s instruction to the stewards is the go-ahead that kick-started the work of salvation that Jesus had come to bring. Cana underscores Mary’s important role in the inauguration of the mission of Jesus and the Second Reading can help us understand how she does it.

St Paul in the letter to the Corinthians spoke of the many charisms bestowed upon the baptised. These charisms have to be understood in terms of the effects of baptism. Through this sacrament we are incorporated into the Body of Christ. Like an organic entity, we are linked one to another as brothers and sisters in Christ. It is in the context of being members of the Body of Christ, that is, of the Church, that these charisms make sense. They are given by the Spirit to help us in building up the Church and also to further the Kingdom of God. Charisms are never given for themselves. It ties in neatly with our status as servants and stewards. Through the charisms given, we serve and of the gifts received, we are stewards.

Since we do not own the charisms in an absolute sense, meaning that we do not acquire them as if they were private possessions, we have a responsibility to discern their use. “Do whatever He tells you” leads us to ask relevant questions about how our gifts are to be applied and utilised. The saints have discovered that everything we have and possess is to be used “Ad maiorem Dei gloriam”, that is, “for the greater glory of God”. Secondly, charisms are given always for the good of the Body of Christ. This means that no gift is ever a waste unless we keep it for ourselves and do nothing about it. No matter where our station in life may be, a gift can do a lot more than we sometimes realise. It is a sad reflexion of our era that we have come to mistake efficacy with grandiosity. The bigger the better is what we assume, which is perhaps more symptomatic of our status-conscious society. For example, action movies need more destruction to make it more satisfying to watch. It is almost as if big-budgeted movie will guarantee box-office success. In that sense, we often feel that we can only be effective if we were outstandingly capable.

However, consider the one whose Gift established the Church: Our Lady. She was a nobody by any standard and yet through her sublime humility, she launched the salvific mission of her Son. How did she do it? She put her entire self at His disposal. “Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be done unto me according to Thy word”. Her example is therefore an invitation to each one of us to take stock of whatever blessings we have, no matter how small we may feel them to be. A messenger in a war is as important as a general in command of divisions in the armed forces. It is precisely this that the Church is described as the Body of Christ, in which every part, meaning every baptised, plays a role in its well-being. The sole criterion for the “effectiveness” of one’s role in this Body of Christ is to dispose oneself wholly to God, just like Mary did.

If we have no sense of the living and organic Communion of Saints, it will be difficult to appreciate that every baptised is important to the establishment of the Kingdom of God. Much of what is required to build up God’s Kingdom is complicated by our default philosophy which holds that there might not be enough. We do not believe sufficiently in God’s providence. The Kingdom’s progress is stymied by selfishness on our part—thinking that what we have belongs to us absolutely and that sharing might impoverish us personally.

In a way, our Lady’s instruction to the steward “Do whatever He tells you” is really an invitation to each one of us to trust that the Lord who has called us will be the same Lord who provides what we need to fulfil His will. Hence, if Cana symbolised the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, it also highlights the implication of our own baptism. Once we are baptised, know that Mary will be there. She is integral to the living out of our baptismal promises. St Louis de Montfort used to say: “To Jesus through Mary”. For ears sensitised by Protestant unease, this expression sounds like Marian idolatry. But once we step away from the Protestant prejudice, we might recognise how true this is. It is not an exaltation of Mary. It is more a reflexion of her complete interior disposition to do God’s will. Therefore, this woman who recognises the voice of her Saviour, is also at the heart of the mission of the Church and to each baptised, she gives the instruction: “Do whatever He tells you”. He will change whatever that is in the jar which we have filled to the brim way beyond our expectation, if we trust in and dispose ourselves fully to Him.

The Baptism of the Lord Year C 2022

The current liturgical practice marks today as the end of the Advent-Christmas season. An older tradition has the Christmas cycle extended to the feast of Candlemas or the Presentation of the Lord, that is, 2nd Feb which marks the 40th day after His birth. This season seemed to have passed rather hastily from Christmas to the Holy Family, the Mother of God, the Epiphany and now we are at the Baptism of the Lord. The visit of the Magi, a theophany, revealed the identity and the mission of the Christ. And right after the Epiphany, the feast of the giving of the Name of Jesus again highlighted His Mission as Saviour of the world. This Sunday, we continue with the same theme of identity and mission.

To appreciate the link between baptism, identity and mission, we enter into the heart of the matter which the early Church had to contend with. There was confusion about who this Man was. Was He sinful or was He truly sinless? Matthew himself registered this in the reluctance of Baptist who said, “It should be me (the sinful one) asking You (Sinless One) for baptism and yet You have come to me”. In fact, Luke’s Gospel today speaks of John’s expectation of the “Sinless One” who would baptise with Holy Spirit and fire. Instead, the One without sin submitted Himself to a baptism meant for sinners.

Such a theophany is significant in an era where biology was not fully grasped. Paternity was an important criterion in establishing one’s identity. Pregnancy itself is proof of maternity but paternity must be publicly acknowledged. We heard this as Jesus emerged from the waters of the Jordan when a voice thundered from heaven: “You are my beloved Son. My favour rests on you”.

If His identity flows into His mission, that is, who He is flows into what He does, then at His Baptism, His mission is to identify with us, that is, what He does is to be who we are.

How so and for what reason?

He who has no sin has chosen to identify with sinners. This is where it gets a bit complicated. We labour with an assumption that experience is the exclusive route to knowledge. If not, we tend to equate feelings with insight. Listen to this sentiment, “How do you know since you have not experienced it or have never felt it?”. If experience or feeling is the sole medium of knowledge, one can reasonably ask how Jesus can know what it means to be truly human if He has no sin? How does He know how to be like us when He does not sin?

How should we understand Jesus’ humanity in relation to our sinfulness? Firstly, we associate being human as fallible and this is borne out by our experiences. For example, we hear it expressed that “to err is human” or “to be human is to err” meaning that one should not be surprised that a human being sins. While concupiscence may explain why we sin but it can never be an excuse. Why? It does describe fallibility as part of the human condition but what has happened is that we take it to mean that when one has sinned, blame it on concupiscence, or one’s “human condition”. “I am only human” feels almost as if our humanity is an excuse for sin.

Secondly, sometimes we narrowly confine sin to commission or omission of wrong doing. But sin is deeper than this action or that. Instead, sin is tied to the rejection of who we truly are, which is, human. Man’s first or original sin was to exercise his freedom separately from God. Sin resulted from the attempt to establish an autonomy[1] independent of our creatureliness. To be human means to be dependent on God but that dependence is not because we are useless or incapable. It is precisely because we are capable, made in the image and likeness of God, that we have been put in charge of creation. Our “dominion” over nature is more a service than a lordship. “Dominance” describes our stewardship because the only Master of creation will always be the Creator Himself, God. Adam forgot this and Man’s history of salvation has been his record of forgetting that it is God who has been in control all along.

There is a chasm between the Creator and the creature. If our preoccupation is equality, then that gulf between the Divine and the human will always be interpreted as a form of imposition upon us or a curse on humanity. We will always be driven to dissolve the divide. Hence, when the Word became flesh, He came to reclaim the humanity we had rejected so that we will not look at the gap as an inequality but will appreciate that fullness of life comes from a true dependence on God. The Baptism of Jesus was an act of solidarity through which He showed us what it meant to be truly human. Since our identity plays a huge part in deciding how we ought to live, therefore, Jesus has come to show us that our true identity is found in our creatureliness as humans. True dependence is the start of our human transformation.

In terms of the realisation of true humanity, the liturgy throughout Christmas, Epiphany and the Baptism expresses the “wonderful exchange”, in which God becomes Man in order that humanity may become divine. This wonderful exchange of God’s abasement for man’s perfection becomes our pilgrimage of change or transformation. In this “admirabile commercium”, we become partakers of His Divine Nature.

Jesus’ true identity as both God and Man is the foundation of His Mission here on earth. In other words, identity leads to mission and not the other way around. [2] There in the waters of the Jordan, in revealing His identity as Son of God made man, His mission as God is to save humanity while His mission as Man is to show how humanity can be saved—by being human in everything except sin and by reclaiming who we truly are in relation to God. Through our baptism, in Christ Jesus, we are restored to the relationship with God in becoming His sons and daughters. And as brothers and sisters of Christ, we share His same mission to the world through our dependence on God and our collaboration with His sanctifying grace. In the Baptism of Jesus at the Jordan, man’s journey back to God through this world has begun.


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[1] Autonomy is over-rated. We stress on the agency to act according to our personal dictates. Yet, search engines and social media, Google, Facebook, Twitter, seem to have channelled our thoughts to focus on certain topics. Man in the past travelled untrammelled. They may not have the freedom of movement the way we believe we possess. Yet today, we not only need a passport to cross border, but we now require vaccine passports to travel. How “autonomous” are we compared to the “restricted” man of the past?

[2] Who we are determines what we ought to do! Not the other way around. You hear it sung in hymns like “And they will know we are Christians by our love”. Does love make us Christians? Not necessarily because there have been many a great person who loves but is not a Christian. Instead, what the hymn is trying to point out is that “If you are Christian, you should be loving”. Who we are determines our behaviour! A man who buys flowers for a wife does not a husband he makes. He could be doing it out of guilt. If you are a husband, you are faithful, you love your wife, you defend her honour, you lay down your life for her and your family.

Epiphany Year C 2022

Solemnity of the Epiphany feels like a contrived celebration designed to validate the Visit of the Magi. After all, this account is found only in Matthew’s Gospel. The word “Epiphany” derived from Greek to mean “show” or “manifest” appears narrowly specific to the visit of the Wise Men. However, the English usage of the word implies a more cosmic reality for as early as the 14th century, Epiphany was defined as “the festival of the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles”. It is a theophany of universal significance because the accent is on the Gentiles.

Today, Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, representatives of the Gentile humanity have come searching for the Saviour of the world. They did not come empty-handed for they brought with them fitting gifts for the new-born King of the universe—gold, frankincense and myrrh. These seemingly random treasures disclose the true identity and destiny of this Child. As suggested by the Prophets from of old, gold is fit for a King while incense is dedicated to the worship of God. Myrrh is in preparation for His coming death.

These gifts revealing His true identity and purpose direct our attention to His name. Jesus is not only the King of the universe. The name Joshua, Yeshua or Jesus is God who saves. Through His death (and resurrection), eternal life has been purchased for us. For Matthew, the gifts emphasise the innate and intrinsic recognition that even the Gentiles have of this Child as the Saviour. Underlying the Magi’s momentous expedition is the question of the universality of salvation. Did the Magi come looking for a mere Saviour of the Jews or were they looking for the ONLY Saviour of the world?

Acts 4:12 supplies the answer, “Of all the names in the world given to men, this is the only one by which we can be saved”. The context of this audacious or daring assertion was the arrest of Peter and John. Both were at the Temple preaching the Resurrection where they also cured a man who was crippled from birth. The subsequent interrogation by the Jewish authorities drew forth this bold statement by Peter.

This has remained the consistent teaching of the Church that Jesus Christ is the ONLY Saviour of the world. Otherwise, it makes no sense that He should claim, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life and no one can come to the Father except through me”. And for Him, before the Ascension, to command the Apostles: “Go and baptise all the nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”.

Ever since the first Pentecost, the Church has carried on the task of evangelisation. Christianity spread through Europe into the new world. But beyond Europe and the New World, Christianity’s fortune has been mixed. Now that we inhabit a global village, one of the effects of globalisation should have been the universalisation of salvation offered by Jesus. But the reality is different.

Why?

The failure of Christianity to take root may stem from our proclamation being stymied or stunted by our practice. Christianity’s history is littered by the shameful witnessing of violence and greed. Remember the Africans saying this: “When the White Men came, they had the Bible and we had the land. Now we have the Bible and they have the land”. This is not “White-bashing” or “Black-praising”. The point is not out there but rather here. It is as simple as “Do we drive differently from others or do we drive the same as everybody else?”.

More than that, while we may proclaim Him to be the Saviour of humanity, in effect, we seem to have settled comfortably into accepting Jesus as the Saviour only of Christians. Thus, the Epiphany—the coming of 3 Magi, these Gentiles, searching for salvation—challenges both our relativism and indifference. We are relativistic because some have accepted that Jesus is one means of salvation amongst others. In fact for some, the fullest means of salvation or the privileged way to God implies that there may be other “ways” to be saved. We become indifferent when we no longer see the need to proclaim the Good News of Christ’s salvation to all. We tend to excuse ourselves by referring to the possibility of salvation for those who are ignorant through no fault of theirs.

God wills to save all through Jesus Christ His Son. This salvation is mediated through the instrument or the agency of the Church for where the Head is, there the Body is too. However, the truth is while “God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel… still the Church has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelise all men”. (CCC #848). The Church is missionary in nature; her mission is evangelisation. God’s universal will to save does not abrogate our duty to proclaim to all the salvation brought about by Christ.

“To evangelise” does bring to mind the idea of “proselytisation” but the task of evangelisation is really a two-fold duty for every Christian. Firstly, can our personal and faith life stand up to scrutiny? Do we stand out as Christians? If not, our job is cut out for us. We must continually resolve to meet the standard of morality and the normal strategy is to avail ourselves of the Sacraments—Penance and Eucharist. Self-conquest remains to be our daily exercise. “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me”. Second, the strength of our proselytisation is to be found in being attractive. We convert through attraction—like a lit-lamp on a stand, we draw people to Christ through the consistency of our conviction and conduct, through the beauty of our belief and behaviour. 

The pagan world, through the Magi, came searching for the true God to worship. Today the same “unbelieving” world—be it Christian or otherwise—is still curious, seeking to know God, desiring to love God and yearning to be saved by God. To these inquirers, the words of Peter must resound through our belief and behaviour. What we profess with our mouth, we perform through our action that “there is no other Name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved”. The name that saves is Jesus. So let us come and adore Him, Christ the King, Christ the Lord, Christ the Saviour.