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This is a pet peeve because it feels like a “hanging” Sunday. “Useless” because most of the Catholic world has caved in to the tyranny of convenience by transferring Ascension to the 7th Sunday. In general, most of us balk at the idea of celebrating our birthday a few days in advance or later because time and space are important markers for us. To give an example of how markedly defined by time and space is that nobody thinks of setting up a romantic meal with a fiancé/fiancée in a toilet.
Be that as it may, we must make sense of the readings and the Gospel. As a Sunday between the Ascension and Pentecost, the focus remains on the Priestly Prayer of Jesus.
In the 1st Reading, fullness or integrity was a consideration for the early Church. The Apostles wanted to uphold Christ’s intention for His Church. So they gathered to elect someone to take the place of Judas. They settled on Matthias. Their choice conserved Christ’s concern that there be unity amongst His followers and in terms of apostolic ministry, there be continuity.
Integrity and continuity are central to effective discipleship as Jesus acknowledges that His followers are placed in the world and yet they should not be of the world. Such a tension requires prayers and prudence because one can isolate to the point of paralysis or one can be radically co-opted by the currents of the world to be effective.
Jesus’ prayer for us challenges our conception of what His Church should be like. Are we united or are we disunited because the strength of the Gospel of His salvation rests on an unequivocal unity amongst us. The unity in belief is a powerful attraction for others to follow.
Last Sunday, Jesus commanded His disciples to love. Today He prays that they be sanctified by the truth. Love and truth are essential when we desire unity in the faith. However, truth can be weaponised as it has been by the powerful. A good example is the recent health crisis. Now that we are somewhat past the pandemic, little by little, chinks have appeared in the media-medico complex that there have been many cover-ups of the side-effects of the vaccines. During the height of the pandemic, anyone who dared to stand up against the central assertion that the vaccine was safe would have been vilified by the powerful lobby that claimed to “hold the truth”. Dissenting voices were silence during the pandemic.
Conspiracists proliferate when there is lack of transparency but what the episode has proven is that truth without love will lead to brutality. Everyone has a voice, rightly or wrongly. Somehow a person’s voice can be distorted by power. When a person of authority speaks, generally what he or she utters is accorded the status of truth whereas a statement given by a person without power is easier to dismiss. Our public space is populated by media personalities or celebrities on all sides of the spectrum who project themselves as the purveyors of “truth” as if whatever they say is gospel-truth. The point is when truth is spoken without love it leads to oppression.
On the hand, love without truth leads to hypocrisy. Yes, Christ commanded His followers to love. In order to imitate the way that He loved, we have to differentiate as He did and it involves judging. It is not judgemental as we ought to love the sinner but we are not expected to love the sin. Otherwise, it would simply be hypocrisy to pretend nothing is wrong. This form of love is tough and hard. To properly love is to be truthful in what needs to be expressed and yet be humble in how we speak the truth. This is not the easy part.
One of the challenges to truth, honesty and transparency is our attitude. For example, we hear this humble demure or deference frequently. “Who am I to judge?”. When first hearing it, it sounds deeply respectful but it is actually a form of self-reference. Such a position renders objective truth inaccessible. It is like “I am in no position to judge since my measure does not always stand up to scrutiny”. Such a frame of reference does no justice to the act or situation itself. Meaning, is the act good? Is the situation right? Instead, such a criterion cripples objective judgement by shackling it to one’s personal morality or its lack of. One’s moral scale or the lack of a moral measure has now become the canon for truth.
Today, truth feels elusive since everyone seems to be easily offended and that everyone feels that his or her truth is the standard. Christian humility becomes possible when we adopt the attitude that recognises everyone is searching for the Truth. Wittingly or unwitting, humanity is searching for Christ. Truth in love is never going to be an easy path to travel. Those who embrace this humility will almost always face persecution.
Christ Himself knows it. This Sunday belongs to the days of waiting for the strength to embrace truth in love and humility. We need the Holy Spirit as the prayer of Jesus suggests. We will be tested personally through the loss of health or wealth. We will be tempted politically or socially through the deprivation of our rights or freedom. In every possible trial, we need God’s strength. We have been sanctified, that is, set apart by Christ’s commandments and we need His Spirit to keep us in the world without becoming the world. Come Holy Spirit, come.
The Gospel today is taken from Mark’s “longer” ending. The origin of these verses, though accepted by the Church as canonical, is sometimes debated. What is interesting is that Mark alone amongst the 3 Synoptic Gospels tells us that Jesus has ascended to sit at the right hand of the Father. It should not be surprising because at the beginning of his account, Mark laid bare before us that his Gospel is the Good News of Jesus Christ, who is none other than the Son of God. While Mark’s ending ties in with his beginning, Matthew’s Gospel interestingly recorded that some disciples had hesitated when the rest knelt before the Son of God.
With the Great Commission at the point of His Ascension and the hesitation of the few to worship Him, we have our mission cut out for us.
Christ was unequivocal in His command to go and baptise all nations in the name of the Trinity. The readings revolve around the mystery that His departure was not the end but rather the beginning of the Church’s mission.
The word “mission” involves sending and we generally associate it as a movement that goes out. We have been sent into the world to evangelise, to preach the good news. The 2nd Reading provides a clue that this sending involves an inward movement.
St Paul, at the time of his writing to the Ephesians, was a prisoner. He exhorted the faithful to lead a life worthy of their vocation as baptised. We bear with each other charitably to preserve the unity of the Spirit. As there is only one Body, one Spirit called to the same hope, it makes a lot of sense that we come to the table each with our gifts to enrich the whole Body. This mission ad intra is important because the unity of the Body is both a mission and a gift.
Sadly, when it comes to the mission ad extra, we have been forced into the corner of mediocrity. The reason is because the mission ad extra is much more difficult. Ever since the beginning of the Church, we have been racked with internal divisions. Disagreements were necessary as they arose out of the need for doctrinal clarity. Once the Ecumenical Councils clarified the doctrines and established the dogmas, there should have been unity but it was not always the result. The unity of the Church is broken through schisms and heresies and Christians have killed each other in the name of God and in the name of “truth”. The mission ad intra is definitely a playground for the father of lies and disunity. Indeed, the outcome has been a disservice to the mission ad extra.
As a result we have to cook up theological gymnastics that justifies that God’s salvation is more extraordinary than ordinary. What this means is that the Church is not central to the work of Christ’s salvation. And if that be the case, then the mission to evangelise is not central to Christ’s work of salvation. Our lack of unity has made it easier to accept that all religions are the same. It is the lazier option.
Crippled by our disunity, all we can muster is to concentrate on doing good and for that we collaborate with people of goodwill. Is not presently, the greatest good to basically “reverse climate change”?
The question that is almost never asked is one which challenges as well as highlights a truth about temporality. Nobody ever asks the question if the prolongation of time and space is equivalent to salvation. Seated at the right hand of the Father, He will come to judge the living and the dead. It is uncomfortable or an inconvenient truth that no matter how we try to “save” the here and now, it will inevitably come to an end. The question of salvation must be asked by each person: Will I be saved?
It is for salvation that Christ came and now at the cusp of His Ascension, He send us on a two-fold mission which is most demanding. Firstly, go out into the world to preach the Gospel. Secondly, with signs to accompany the preaching, tidy up our life and our communities. Christ’s mission is easy to understand but infinitely a challenge to embrace. The mission is ongoing. The challenge continues—the difficult but necessary personal conversion and a concerted public witnessing to the world. He gave us a promise that at all times, we will never be alone. He will be with us until the end of time.
The imagery of the Vine and the branches remains with us this Sunday. Our relationship with Jesus the Vine, from Whom we draw sustenance, ought to be fruitful. Two scriptural examples help illustrate this truth. Both the barren fig tree and vineyard remind us that charity (love) is the sensible or supernatural fruit of our relationship with Jesus Christ. It follows since God is love and His love reaches out to us through Jesus Christ. And as we inch closer to Pentecost, the very same love of God in Jesus Christ that flows in us is now poured onto the world through the Holy Spirit.
The wind of the Spirit is already blowing in the background of today’s 1st Reading. The Church’s evangelical expansion is symbolised through the conversion of Cornelius. Last week we heard of St Paul’s conversion and today St Peter himself noted that when it comes to loving humanity, God shows no favouritism. Through the Church, the Holy Spirit will assume His pivotal role in the drama of salvation.
The Gentile universe deserves God’s love which means that every nation should enjoy the salvation brought by Jesus Christ His Son. Backed by the Spirit, the foray of the Church into Gentile territories ties in truly with the notion of God as the loving Saviour. The idea that a deity saves a narrow of band of humanity does not do justice to the concept of a loving God who saves. In, with and through the Church, God’s salvific reach is universalised. In other words, a saviour whose reach is restricted cannot be the Saviour that humanity and history have been waiting for.
God’s love for humanity is not generic. It was directed firstly towards Israel and through the Jews His love reaches out to the entire world. Through His Son who died for us on the Cross, the Father revealed His love. Now, the Son who sacrificed Himself for us invites us all to love like He has. He calls us to imitate His love.
What does the imitation of Christ’s love consist of?
We may have somehow signed into a notion of charity which is best expressed by the vocabulary of self-love. We hear this all the time. “Learning to love yourself it is the greatest love of all”. So, we ought to be good to ourselves. We need to forgive ourselves. Actually, all these are not bad in themselves. In loving ourselves and treating ourselves well, we may have forgotten that the true nature of love is sacrificial. The Christ who loved us emptied Himself so that we might have life to the full. In short, love is inseparable from sacrifice.
The chorus from the Prayer attributed St Francis of Assisi or simply the Prayer supposedly of St Ignatius are clues to the kind of sacrifices we are called to. “Grant that I may never seek to understand as to understand, to be loved as to love”. Or “Teach me to serve you as you deserved. To labour and not seek for rest”. Jesus Himself said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls on the ground and dies, it remains but a single grain”. Sacrificial love is defined by St Thomas Aquinas as willing the good of the other.
To be able to reach out to the other, there has to be a corresponding union with God because it is not easy to love sacrificially. By nature, we are instinctively selfish. The self-help philosophy merely amplifies or reinforces the drive towards self-preservation. Ordinarily, nobody in the right frame of mind wants to sacrifice himself or herself. Thus, the idea of an organic unity between the Vine and the branches shows us how important our union with God is. The ability to lay down one’s life is a supernatural strength. Allowing Him to love us gives us strength to love and to reach out to others.
We need God’s love because our union with others often takes us out of ourselves. A good example is helping the poor. Which is easier? Give RM100 to feed the poor or spend time with a poor family to listen to their woes? It is more psychologically demanding to hear peoples’ tales of woes than to conveniently salve or soothe our “guilt” by donating. The point that love takes us out of ourselves is not something new or alien to us. If you are a loving parent, you will sacrifice for your children. If you have aged parents whom you value, you will also sacrifice. If you are happily married, you give up many freedoms. Even though self-preservation may be ingrained in us but what is inherently true about us is also the noble desire of going beyond ourselves. When we consider sacrifice, it is not as if God is waiting to exact His pound of flesh. Instead, this sacrificial drive to rise above ourselves is founded on the God who first sacrificed Himself for us. A person who has fallen in love knows the feeling of desiring to return love for love. Loving another is not a duty but rather an appreciation of the love that we have received from God.
Finally, the Catholic system of penance and mortification is central to this disposition to go beyond ourselves. When we think of self-sacrifice, we often imagine a moment of heroic self-immolation or destruction. Closer to the truth is that a martyr would have died a thousand deaths before arriving at the grand gesture of laying down his or her life. Only when we have learnt self-denial on a daily basis can we die to ourselves ultimately. It starts very simply, like having to endure minor discomfort and inconveniences. The seemingly boring morning offering to the Sacred Heart of Jesus captures this succinctly. “O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer You my prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day for all the intentions of Your Sacred Heart, in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world…”. Nothing of what we endure is ever wasted in our offering to the Lord.
Ultimately, the call to imitate Christ’s love, to be Christ in the world, can only be founded upon one’s union with Him. This is probably a common dilemma. Those who embrace a regular sacramental life seem to struggle more. It raises the question of the Sacraments’ efficacy. What is the difference of having or not? Two points to note here. First, the more we desire the Lord, the more Satan will rage and plot against us. It is not the failure of the Sacraments which brings us to the 2nd point. It is a realisation that often it is we who have placed obstacles to the efficacy of the Sacraments. Thus, the response is not having less but rather more of the Sacraments. It is the lifeline to Christ because to love to the point of laying down our lives requires supernatural strength. St Paul reminds to “draw strength from the Lord and His mighty power and to put on the armour of God in order to stand firm against the devil”. Indeed the opposite of love is not hatred but Satan. To love is to stand against Satan armed only with the love of Christ.
