Trinity Sunday Year C 2025

There were days that I had to take bus when I was studying theology in Dublin. I avoided the upper deck of the bus because the Irish, in the slums where I lived, were like some Malaysians. “No smoking” was just a meaningless sign. There were times I was forced upstairs and the scenery on the way to or from college looked different.

Like today’s Trinity Sunday. A different perspective can deepen our understanding of who God is. The lower deck of the bus represents our everyday life. When we face a reality, day in and day out, the landscape can fade into the background. Those who are clutter-blind know the experience.

Our liturgy is basically Trinitarian. We take it for granted. The common formula at the end of the Collect sounds like this: Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen. Since all our prayers are Trinitarian, do we need Trinity Sunday at all.

Trinity Sunday is like the upper deck of the double-decker bus—a reminder to step away from the everyday grind that sometimes reduces a mystery to nothing. Firstly, the Trinity is not our invention. It is a revelation from God on which our faith is based. We believe in one God even though He revealed Himself as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. While we need to be faithful to this revelation, the question remains if the formula is dated or out of touch with progress.

For example, when in the 50s or 60s under the aegis of liberation, equality, feminism, it was felt that language was inherently oppressive since its structure was patriarchal. There was a movement to neutralise language through a process of de-masculinisation or maybe emasculation. In the past, the word “everybody” carried with it a masculine pronoun, “he”. “Every Malaysian knows at least two languages and that is because ‘he’ lives in a multi-lingual country”. Today we phrase it as “Every Malaysian knows at least two languages and that is because ‘they’ live in a multi-lingual country”.

This “neutered” English crept into our liturgy. It was felt that our prayers should also be “gender neutral”. The word “neutered” is terrible because it seems to emasculate or “defang” language. Anyway, the trend was to update our liturgy to suit this linguistic development. The challenge is that we have a given formula. It is not a construct that the Church invented. Instead it was handed down to us by the Apostles.

The received formula is “I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”. It became inclusive when “We baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” OR better still, “I baptise you in the name of the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sanctifier.

Three points to note about these ancient and modern formulae. Firstly there is an agreement in the singular “name”. We are baptised in the NAME. There has never been any baptism done in the NAMES which directs our attention to the given. God’s revelation is a given and on that mount before His Ascension, Christ gave us the formula to baptise in ONE NAME and not three names.

Secondly, it is Christ who baptises. The use of the singular pronoun “I” signifies that the person or the minister who baptises, acts in persona Christi. It is the person and not the “assembly or congregation” that Christ is acting through.

Thirdly, the usage of the formula “creator, redeemer and sanctifier” arises from a confusion between personality and the job description. Whenever God works, God works as one. However, we ascribe creation to God the Father but the Son and Spirit are also working because it is through the Son that creation came to be and it is in the Spirit that life flourishes on earth. There is a relationship between the Father, Son and Spirit which is marked by unity. However, when we speak of Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier, what is missed out are the relationships between these three descriptions. What sort of relationship exists between the Creator and the Redeemer? Between Father and Son, there exists a relationship because words like Mother and Child, Father and Daughter are relational terms. The relational nature of these words are clarified when we ask this question, “Who comes first? The mother or the son”? Our logical framework is based on age in the sense that between an adult and a child, the adult has more years and therefore he or she should take precedence but in reality, no one can be a mother without a child. The minute a woman is pregnant, she is already a mother.

Coming back to the formula, creator, redeemer and sanctifier, the updated formula even though it is progressive, it cannot do justice to the relationship inherent in the revelation of God. In fact, a priest in the recent past, that is, in 2017, had his (not theirs, ha, ha) ordination invalidated and consequently, all his sacramental acts too. The Deacon who baptised Matthew Hood used this formula “We baptise you”. The clever Deacon was trying to be more inclusive. Apart from the so-called Fr Matthew Hood’s ordination being invalid, his absolution in Confessions were also not valid and subsequently all the marriages he conducted too. In the Diocese of Toowumba, Queensland, Australia, the same happened.

Just recently, we also changed a formula in the English language to better reflect our understanding of the Trinity. It is the formula used to conclude the Collect. The change took place on 17th Feb 2021. It was Ash Wednesday. “Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, ONE GOD, forever and ever” became “Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, GOD, forever and ever”. Why?

The previous formulation undermines the uniqueness of the Trinity because the translation can suggest that there are three gods. Firstly, the prayer is directed to God the Father and therefore the reference to “One God” is not a reference to the Trinity. Perhaps a rephrasing might help. “Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, for He (Jesus Christ) is God for ever and ever”. The conclusion is affirming the divinity of Christ and not referencing the uniqueness of the Trinity.

Jesus Christ is God. He is not One God for if He were One God, then we have three Gods. Our language about God has to be faithful because God chose to reveal Himself to us as Father Son and Spirit. How do we want to deal with this? In the past they dealt with it from the perspective of one and three. They had to grapple how three are not three but one. We are no different. We may not wrestle with three in one but still we may be worshipping three Gods without knowing it. Take the Taize hymn. “The Lord is my light, my light and salvation. In God I trust”. If my memory serves me right it used to be “In Him I trust”. Once again, the de-masculinising of our liturgy which in the end begs the question of whom we are worshipping. If we were to follow the trajectory to its logical conclusion, perhaps the hymn should be fully de-masculinised as “The Sovereign (gender neutral) is my light, my light and salvation” otherwise we might be pointing to the Lord and then affirming that the God we trust has no connection with the Lord whom we had just affirmed.

Language has become less a servant of speech, of unity in the search for truth. Instead it morphed more into a means of manipulation serving ideologies to influence thought, perception and social interaction. Somehow a criminal is less a “criminal” when he or she is labelled a justice-involved person. I am well aware that we live in a world where there are approved narratives and we are expected to toe the line. Woe to those who disobey this diktat.

This homily tries to talk about the Trinity in the context of a changing linguistic landscape. Expressions of speech can change and they do but there are realities which we have received and they are beyond us, no matter how we feel. The dogma of the Trinity is the foundation of creation. All created reality came to be through the Trinity. Every prayer of ours has a Trinitarian motif. While our prayers may describe the workings of the Trinity ad extra as the Creator or the Redeemer or the Sanctifier, what is also needed is to appreciate the inner life of the Trinity ad intra because all created reality came to be through their relationship with one another—as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We would do well to remember that.

Pentecost Year C 2025

There is a scientific axiom which states that nature abhors a vacuum. If we take nature in its totality then it would make sense that man does not like the unknown. We do not sit comfortably with the unfamiliar which explains the dismal state that humanity is in right now. Eve could not accept mystery’s hidden or shrouded nature and consequently took up Satan’s suggestion that promised her unlimited knowledge.

Man has this insatiable quest to know more. When rockets were launched into space, it was supposedly the final frontier but that was not the only frontier we have been trying to master. The inner thoughts and processes formed the other frontier that we have been trying to map out. The process of “conquest” continues. Just like St Thomas Aquinas in his days who speculated on the number of angels dancing on top of a pin head, in our days, we try to cram as many bytes as we can onto our ever-miniaturised data storages from the first floppy discs to the latest solid state drives. Right now we are familiar with terabytes. Soon we will be introduced to petabytes and the beyond.

Man has been trying to breach every boundary imposed by nature in this endeavour to control his destiny, to be autonomous, to be like God. Even if we have gone beyond the limits of outer space, we will still want to know what lies behind the beyond. Wise St Augustine recognised this desire to be nothing more than our hunger for the Creator, who had at the inception of creation, moulded into man’s heart a longing which can only be satisfied by the Maker.

This so-called drive or hunger can be unruly. In a way, the desire or drive mirrors a particular perception of how the Holy Spirit behaves. The scene at the descent of the Holy Spirit seems to confirm that. It was almost chaotic when we consider the rushing winds and the loud noises. This unpredictability at the appearance of the Holy Spirit lends itself to an association of freedom with spontaneity. This idea of freedom here is more of an unfettered autonomy. The arbitrariness or the spontaneity of the Holy Spirit may support or justify a perception of human freedom in the area of thought and behaviour. All of us like to do what we want and none of us likes to be told what to do or what not to do. We value individual autonomy.

What might escape our notice is that the descent of the Holy Spirit is also synonymous with the birth of the Church. Nothing is more permanent or steadfast or “boring” than the creation of the Church, for in this newly established entity, the Spirit animates the Body of Christ. The members of the Church are inspired, led and empowered to fulfil the mission that Christ commanded before His ascension—go make disciples of all the nations. In the work of transforming the world, the Holy Spirit is powerfully at work in the Sacraments that Christ bequeathed to His Body. He is reflected in the teachings of the Church. He assists the members of the Church through His gifts so that every Christian may bear fruits.

In a world where individual autonomy is sacrosanct, all the more we must be reminded that the Holy Spirit is tied to the Church. In the last 60 years, greater emphasis has been placed on discerning how the Holy Spirit works “extra ecclesiam”, that is, outside the Church. We must be open to discover where God’s Spirit is working. However, correspondingly, there arose a tendency to “liberalise” the Holy Spirit, that is, to set the Holy Spirit free, partly because we have failed to convince others that the Church, founded by Christ, is His instrument of salvation. In fact we are bogged down by our inability to convince others that we are reduced to searching for commonality in terms of the good we can do. It is as simple as “Since I cannot convert you, let me see how we can cooperate to bring about good”.

In no way is this a demeaning of the other religions. The stress on respect for experiences outside Christianity has given rise to certain theological strands that supports the speculation that Jesus Christ is not necessary for salvation “extra ecclesiam”. This is our conundrum. If every religion leads to God, what role does Jesus play in salvation and how relevant is the Great Commission in our present climate of religious plurality? The unspoken reality is that many Catholics believe that all religions are the same.

The Holy Spirit works “intra” and “extra ecclesiam”. The failure of evangelisation is not the failure of the message but the failure of the messengers. The Holy Spirit can work outside the Church but He cannot work without the Church. In fact the Holy Spirit’s task is to draw all people to God and the chief instrument that He does so is through the Church, the Body of Christ.

Thus, the Holy Spirit did not come to confirm our “inspiration”, that is, the way we want to organise or structure reality. Instead, the Holy Spirit confirms the desire of Christ for His Church through the gifts we receive. From these gifts, we bear fruits to offer to God our Father. The point is not to tie the Holy Spirit down. There is a trend these days which is captured by a concept bandied around. We hear of “paradigm shift” as a process of renewal and transformation.Latent within this concept is the idea that old is to be discarded because the new has arrived. Coupled with novelty is spontaneity—freedom, carefreeness or even “disobedience”. My novice-master once said to a fellow novice—do not use the Holy Spirit to sanctify your disobedience. If I do not want to obey what the Church teaches, I can easily use the Spirit to rationalise or justify what I want to do. While novelty is inherently exciting, the Holy Spirit is also boring or predictable because He has His work cut out—in the Sacramental economy of the Church. In the work of redemption, we need the Holy Spirit to ensure that we have full access to the Sacraments of Jesus Christ. If we celebrate the Spirit’s work “extra ecclesiam”, all the more we must give thanks to Him for the work “intra ecclesiam”. Come, Holy Spirit and fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in them the fire of your love.

7th Sunday of Easter Year C 2025

Next Sunday is Pentecost. We are just a few days after the Ascension and the Disciples are hanging around waiting. However, the Gospel is taken from before Christ’s ascent to the right hand of the Father’. The central teaching of Christ is on the unity of the Church expressed through a communion of faith and love.

Recently I suggested, at the morning Mass of the memorial of St Bernardine of Siena (20th May), that the congregation should buy “empat nombor ekor”. The number was 8647. It seems that 86 is the code for killing and 47 denotes the current US President.

The background of this lottery number is that it was spotted by the former head of the FBI while he and his wife were walking along the beach. He posted it on X and it created a political kerfuffle. Those who hate Trump supported Comey’s claim of blissful ignorance. Apparently he did not know the real meaning of 8647. Those who love Trump felt that it was yet another incitement to assassinate the President.

There is an unprecedented level of hatred arising from a political fissure that is rending that country apart. Sadly, it is not only a land far away. Hatred is also something which we may be familiar with. The whole election of the Pope was rife with speculation on who the next Pontiff would be. The betting that took place merely indicated the cracks and crevices that we have been experiencing.

Liberals wanted a Pope who will continue the pace of change so that the Church can keep up or conform to societal norms. Conservatives preferred a Pope who can roll back the perceived deviations that we had made under Pope Francis. It is lamentable that there exists such a sad division in the Church where opposing parties simply disdain the other.

Sadly, our division is sign of forgetfulness too. We have forgotten who the Church is supposed to be. Instead of praying for a Pope that we need, some have hoped for Pope to mirror their philosophical or theological stand. Right or wrong may not be the issue here. Forgetfulness is. The Church belongs to Christ. Rightly so, that before the descent of the Holy Spirit, Christ prayed for His Church to remain united.

There are two great sins against the Body of Christ. The first is the sin of heresy. Heresy is a sin against the unity of faith. The second sin against the Holy Spirit is schism. It is a sin that breaks up the Body of Christ.

Perhaps it is fortuitous that we have a son of St Augustine who has ascended the throne of Peter. Divisions are aplenty but charity must trump all else. Politics which is supposedly the art of friendship, of negotiation, of compromise has become, for many of us, a poisonous chalice. We not longer enter into a conversation but instead we are on the look-out for weaknesses to exploit, in order to gain the upper hand. Ultimately this does not serve the people because the politics of poison cannot build up the community. It destroys and renders the community even more fractured than it should be.

We are living in an age where our philosophical persuasion or theology tendency are divided and fractured which makes reaching across the aisle rather arduous. The result is that minds alike tend to create bubbles or echo chambers where tribes of the same bent can hear their biases confirmed or even amplified instead of being challenged. These safe havens provide security rather the promote self-reflection. In the end the good that we want to achieve and hope to gain is negated by the divisions we have.

Christ was correct for He prayed for the unity of his followers or of his disciples. Anyone who claim himself to be a Christian must be an apostle of love and of unity. It is true that that things can be wrong. It is true that we need to say things as we know it. In other words, we are held accountable by what we know to be true. But it is also possible that we speak the truth with love.

The challenge we face is that “truth” is now a servant of an economy hinged on material wealth geared towards entertainment and amusement. Thus we have billionaires and celebrities lecturing us on how we should organise our lives. To be fair, possessing wisdom and being a personality, a celebrity or billionaire are not mutually exclusive. A billionaire or a celebrity can also be wise in the ways of the Lord. But by and large these so-called elite have arrogated upon themselves a platform which they believe is theirs by virtue of their status or they feel themselves entitled to, to berate us on how we should live. Yet, we know that some of their private lives cannot even muster a simple scrutiny of morality.

The ability to speak truth must come from a position that recognises that we are in the world but we are not of the world. Thus, it is not wealth or fame that allows one’s voice to be louder. Rather, whether we be richer or poorer, what is crucial is that we are united in the love of Jesus Christ and animated by a faith we profess in Him. The world is diverse and plural. If there is unity to be forged, it must come from persuasion rather than pressure, conviction rather than compulsion. Differences or diversity do not have to result in division whereas imposition of uniformity will not result in unity. Instead, it will foment divisive resentment. More than ever, in a world diverse and divided, what is needed is charity and in a quote somewhat attributed to St Augustine which we might take note of: In all things inessential, let there be diversity. In all things essential, let there be unity. Above all, let there be charity.

Ascension Year C 2025

I would like to start with Napoleon and check-in with him towards the end of homily.

Apparently Napoleon threatened a Cardinal of the Church. “Your eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?” According to tradition, the cardinal was sanguine in his reply. “Your Majesty, we, the Catholic clergy, have done our best to destroy the Church for the last 1,800 years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you”.

“I will be with you always, until the end of time” is the explanation for Cardinal’s response. Christ promised just before He was taken up from the view of the Apostles that He would be with His Church until the end of time. No power on earth will prevail against her.

Christ has kept this promise. He may have ascended but we have never been alone. Sometimes we hear or read this, “He has left us the Church”. The fact is, He did not “leave the Church with us”. Instead, He has been present in His Church. At each Mass, He is present in the people gathered. He is present in His word proclaimed. He is present in the priest who acts alter Christus. Finally, He is present in the Eucharistic elements of bread and wine after consecration. This intense and abiding Presence is felt in tabernacles across cathedrals, churches, chapels or oratories that many choose to spend time in.

Either we forget this truth or Jesus has been ignored.

In these last few decades we have witnessed the explosion of news and commentaries that are very much in our faces. Politics is beamed directly into our living rooms. Even this statement sounds outdated. Events are streamed onto our devices so much so that we are experiencing an immediacy which has never been felt before. But this proximity is not entirely positive or life-giving. Given that information is power, the flow and dissemination of news and the prevailing narrative is dependent on who is in control. You may have heard of brain-washing, green-washing and now gas-lighting. More than proximity, the result is actually an increase in anxiety. A good example of an anxiety-inducing news or information is climate change. Any inclement weather is now attributed to global warming.

Whether or not global warming is real is debatable because our prevailing social or cultural narrative is dependent on who or which group holds power. The masses are just caught in the swirling eddies of prevailing political winds. How not to be depressed?

In an age of information and disinformation, a lie told one time too many becomes the “truth” and people stake their lives on whatever they want to believe. Depending on your philosophical persuasion, the Church is this or the Church is that. For some, this is a time of great trial or tribulation because their ideas are not embraced by the majority whereas those who are enjoying power believe that whatever is developing is all part of God’s will. Either way, we fail to recognise that the Church is not ours. We belong to the Church and the Church belongs to Christ.

Here we come back to the story Napoleon and his quarrel with the Church. On the side of the Church, we had Pope Pius VII who resolutely refused to submit to Napoleon’s demands. Resigned to the inevitable conflict with Napoleon, Pius VII wrote: “If our words fail to touch Your Majesty’s heart, we will suffer with a resignation conformable to the Gospel. We will accept every kind of calamity as coming from God.”

So, Pius spent 5 years in captivity until Napoleon’s final defeat and imprisonment in St Helena. There Napoleon complained to the now freed Pope of his ill-treatment and he asked Pius VII for the assistance of a chaplain. Napoleon wrote: “I was born in the Catholic religion. I wish to fulfil the duties it imposes and receive the succour it administers”. In the end, when Napoleon died, the first line of his will declared, “I die in the apostolical Roman religion, in the bosom of which I was born more than fifty years since”.

Politics will always be with us. In ecclesial context, politics reveals the human side of the Church. We can be distracted by the power changing hands failing to recognise that compassion makes the Church feel more divine. The Church as adivine institution is very much the presence of Christ in the world. Even if there are actors or players trying to destroy or annihilate Church within or without, our faith is in Christ who leads and guides His Church. The entire Sacramental economy manifests His compassion, mercy, redemption and salvation. While the Church may be powerful as an institution, she is animated not by might but by mercy.

Funny that we judge the Church through contemporary lens meaning that we tend to view the present as the worst of times. Noticed how no leader today is ever free from the inescapable phenomenon of their every word and action analysed, interpreted and explained. Everyone is an expert and everyone is a critic. For Catholics, the Pope is not immune to criticisms but we are assured that the Church has been preserved from error by the promise of Christ and despite bad popes in the past, the Church continues to survive as only a divine institution can. In her human side, she is slow and sometimes clumsy but she has never been defeated. Experiencing the human side of the Church, we can easily confuse and conflate it with temporal society and when there is failure, we also slip into despair. There is an important distinction that can prevent us from despair. The Church is not just the Body of Christ; she is forever the pure and immaculate Bride of Christ. Only we, the sons and daughters, are the sinners.

In conclusion, the Ascension signals Christ forging the path ahead for us. Through His Spirit present in the Church, we are guided to arrive where He is. Mary our Mother was the first to have reached where He is. The martyrs and the saints have followed behind. Nothing can separate us from this destiny. The Ascension is not a description of absence but a promise of Christ’s perpetual presence—a promise fulfilled at Pentecost. Hence, even if the Church weretested severely, we are not afraid but with the strength of the Holy Spirit, we fix our eyes upon Jesus so that we can run the race in which we have entered.

6th Sunday of Easter Year C 2025

Ascension is around the corner. Christ continues to teach and to prepare the Disciples to welcome the Holy Spirit. He is going away but He will not leave them orphans. He calms their anxiety by promising that His Advocate will be present to them. Within the context of the Paraclete’s coming, Jesus links love with keeping His commandments. Love and commandments are two side of the same coin. To love Him is to be obedient to His commandments.

There are commandments and there are commandments. What does this mean? Firstly, we can already discern how the Holy Spirit was at work in the early Church. In the first reading the Apostles decided not to burden the early Christians with the Jewish requirement of circumcision. What they did was to instruct the early Christians to avoid certain practices.

What does that tell us?

There is no freewheeling when it comes to love. There is a tendency to view the love and keeping the commandments as oil and water. Love is more forgiving and more accepting. Laws are a bit more restrictive. Moreover, we tend to associate love with the Spirit.

However, Christ in the Gospel was clear. He will send to Spirit to teach the Apostles and to remind them of His teaching. While the Lord will be absent but He is not an absence. He will leave them but that is not an abandonment.Instead He will be present via the Holy Spirit. We need an ability to discern the Spirit’s presence in the Church.

According to Pope Benedict, we can interpret the Church according to certain hermeneutics. There are basically two lenses to view the history of the Church. We can view tradition as continuous or discontinuous.

It is fashionable to interpret Vatican as a break with the past and therefore a divergence from the tradition that we inherited. When the Apostles took the decision not to impose circumcision, they also gave the Gentile Christians certain prohibition. There was a break from the Jewish past but it was not a complete break.

The question we need to ask ourselves is where Christianity came from. Christ Himself was a Jew. However, in academic circles, there is a growing tendency to speak of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures as if they were discontinuous. In actual fact, they are linked one to the other.

Such a kind of discontinuity tends to reduce the Holy Spirit into an “accomplice” because He is the spirit of spontaneity and possibly stands on the side of greater freedom. Sadly, discontinuity was the seed for the Protestant challenge to tradition that as a result it reduced every individual to the supreme interpreter of Christ’s teachings. Everyone is a pope.

What is closer to the truth is how continuous we are with tradition and how itacts as an anchor that allows to engage in the world that is changing fast.

In fact, a world which is in constant flux is a source of anxiety and disengagement amongst young people. Can you imagine all those denominations of “churches” that claim to have preserve the teaching of Christ in its entirety. How? God’s revelation seemed to have died in the post-Apostolic age only to resurface when this or that denomination was founded. How convenient!

Instead, what is more consistent in the matter of God’s revelation is that He reaches out to us through the ages and He speaks through the Holy Spirit,Sacred Scripture, the Magisterium and the Tradition of the Church.

Pope Benedict XVI pointed out the blessedness of Christianity’s first expansioncame through its contact with Greek philosophy. The interaction and interchange with Greece gave Christianity the language that allowed it to appreciate God’s self-revelation as the Blessed Trinity. Without passing through Hellenistic linguistic and philosophical framework, we might have had a less defined way to appreciate the Blessed Trinity.

The role of the Holy Spirit promised by Christ is to help the Church be consistent in her teachings through the ages. In fact, the Holy Spirit who is the author of the Sacred Scripture is also the author of the developing tradition and constant magisterium. Furthermore, we can see how faith and reason are not incompatible with each other. Why? Because both have the Holy Spirit as their author.

In the end, when we speak of love, we recognise that commandments or regulations or prohibitions are not alien to a life in the Spirit. The Spirit blows where it will and therefore, both freedom and spontaneity are creative qualities that allow the Church to navigate the changing tides fads and fancies. But what is also heroic is keeping the law or being faithful to Tradition. When it comes to the Magisterium and the handing down of Tradition, clarity and charity are not mutually exclusive. They are two sides of one coin. When the Church teaches clearly, it is an act of love. And the Church also manifests her love by teaching clearly.

Thus, in whatever challenges that we face, our life in the Spirit requires patient discernment and courageous acceptance of where God is leading us to. When we hear the word cosmetics, we recognise that it is associated mainly with the world of beauty. However, its etymology is far more “sedate” or “legal” than we realise. The root of the word cosmetic is cosmos and it directs our attention to the well-ordering of the universe. Perhaps a point to consider that the process of well-ordering cannot come about without commandments, restrictions and obedience. Submitting to God’s will may even run contrary to one’s desires but under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the embrace of God’s will is well-orderedfreedom and true obedience.

5th Sunday of Easter Year C 2025

We continue from the previous Sunday’s Gospel. Picture in your mind a Jesus teaching during the Last Supper and today the central theme is love.

There are two Sacraments of service that are directed to the salvation of others and the building up of God’s Kingdom. The priestly vocation and by extension, a religious calling are both expressions of the one and the same loving service. In the past, the priestly cloth and the religious habit were deemed to represent a higher calling but today, love within the context of marriage between a man and woman is considered on equal footing. The service of love is spoken of in terms of Christ’s glory and how He would give glory to the Father.

Everyone is familiar with love but what it is exactly, is not easy to pin down. The word itself is used rather loosely to mean anything when essentially, love is a virtue. It is an action and a commitment to a set of behaviour that is intended to benefit others. Sadly, the over-sentimentalisation of love has narrowed our focus more on feelings rather than on love as a choice. Love is highlyromanticised.

Love has to be more than feeling because it is a matter of willing. It is a desire to love others, even more than oneself. Therefore, it is a way of being and behaving. I remember in a class in my first year of philosophy, there was a discussion on love. The professor defined love through definitive actions. “I love by not killing”. “I love by reaching out to others”. “I love by taking care of the poor”. In other words, love does not reside in the generic but rather in the specific actions we carry out. To love, we need to draw boundaries and this is the part where we may fail to appreciate. Love cannot be anything can because it is not licentious.

I was talking to an altar server about his fellow servers and what has happened to them. I named one and remarked that I was happy that this ex-server was still attending Mass regularly. This astute young man replied pointedly that the situation is rather sad for me to be contented that one ex-server still going to Church. Then he said something else, “I have come to realise that in whatever I want to say about the Church, in my behaviour, there must be obedience”. I was impressed immensely by this young man.

Love is obedient. It has to be which is why we draw boundaries so that we can behave in a particular manner. Contrast love with lust. Lust knows no boundaries. Moreover, the idea of a celebrity screaming “I love you” rings hollow at best or at worst, they are empty platitudes. How many of our movie stars have had their hand dirtied in loving the underprivileged or the poor? Many of them are just happy to lecture us on the virtue of ecological responsibility while whizzing around in their carbon-emitting private jets.

Without a doubt, love has an emotional component to it. It is feelings but it is also more. Pope Benedict brilliantly illustrated this in “Deus caritas est” (God is love). Love is both emotion and reason. Emotion is beyond us and it imposes itself uninvited. Those of us who feel angry and cannot control the anger know the experience of being out of control. But love is also reasonable because it involves choice and action. We can choose to behave in a particular way.

If love were merely emotion, it cannot fully satisfy. Why? It drives a person from one thing to another. Ask anyone who is an addict and he or she will tell you that they are driven and the worst part of it, they are never fulfilled. In fact, the more “feeling” or emotional love is, the more exhausted, unfulfilled and depressed we will be. But when we introduce love as both choice and action, then emotions can be purified.

When Jesus spoke of the love that lays down its life for others, it is in reference to one’s self-fulfilment. It does not feel like it but you speak to anyone who has loved without self-preservation, they can tell you that they find themselves most when they have given themselves to others. That is the power of self-sacrifice.

Love one another as I have loved you. In the Catholic context, this commandment is exemplified in the two Sacraments of Service—Holy Orders and Matrimony. In the case of marriage, how best to love if not through a spouse?

Some of you who are married must be sitting next to your spouse, whom you barely tolerate but for some reasons have learnt to live and let live. Fair enough. There are some who might feel that they have no choice but to stay on in a marriage because it is too late.

But when you first got married, did any one of you enter into marriage and in your mind there was a proviso that it would not last forever? Even in the most desperate case of a marriage, when a person walks down the aisle, he or she does so believing that this is the first and the last. Otherwise why do it?

Marriage itself provides us with an answer of what it means to truly love and to sacrifice in love. The many failures in marriage are not proofs that love is not a calling to sacrifice. It is precisely when a partner enters into marriage thinking of himself or herself that the marriage will soon fall apart.

Think of Ephesians chapter 5. A man is the typology of Christ Himself. A woman is the symbol of the Church. When we read this we often hear the spiel that wife should obey her husband. In a feminine-sensitive culture, this is a definite no-no, right? How antiquated to urge a woman to obey her husband? Many fail to hear what St Paul, the so-called misogynist, taught about marriage’s sacrifice. The man is supposed to sacrifice himself as Christ sacrificed Himself for the Church. If a man wants an obedient and dutiful wife, he must be the first to lay down his life for her. Therein lies the equality of self-sacrifice. There is as much to sacrifice from both parties and when each spouse is ready to lay down his or her life out of love for the other, the marriage will flourish.

Finally, emotions or feelings are therapeutic but that is not the goal of love. Imagine Jesus issuing the commandment to love. None of the martyrs submitted to deaths because Jesus imposed upon them this duty. Instead they courageously embraced death because they loved Him and had surrendered their hearts to Him. The drive to obey Him is deeper than feelings and more than a duty. Ultimately the ability to embrace the commandment comes from a heart that has fallen in love with Jesus Christ. The only way we can ever love like Jesus,forgive like Jesus and die like Jesus is to keep close to Him, to be taken up by Him, to be graced by His Spirit because He is love. Mother Teresa herself when asked about her tender behaviour towards a leper said, “I would not do it. But I do it only because I love Jesus”. Without love for Jesus, sacrifice will feel odious and burdensome. Only love for Jesus will make the yoke easy and the burden light.

4th Sunday of Easter Year C a.k.a. Vocation Sunday a.k.a Good Shepherd Sunday 2025

Nobody likes to be nagged on things they have to do. For example, your parents keep telling you to be careful each you walk out of the door. I am sure you will get exasperated and perhaps answer, “Yeah, I know” or simply ignore them and just walk out. The Gospel today feels a bit like this. We are being reminded about the challenges of following Christ. Sunday in and Sunday out we talk about Jesus and the demands of Christian living. The repetition is tiresome like “Ah, again ah?” and you tune off.

Last year 29th Dec, South Johore Vicariate cancelled all Sunday Masses except for the one Mass here in the Cathedral to launch the Jubilee year. Quite a few turned up for the cancelled 6:00pm Mass later that evening despite the repeated announcements we had made preceding the event.

Jesus says that we can hear and hear but fail to listen.

Sometimes repeated reminders are needed for the message to truly sink in. A message which has not sunk in for many of us, in the last 60 years, is connected to this Sunday’s challenge of following Jesus. It is the question of vocation. I have raised this issue in the last couple of weeks. Priests are getting older.Where is the next generation of vocations?

Firstly, the average age of the congregation is climbing up. There was a bigger group of people who used to serve the Cathedral and they have aged and the number is dwindling due to deaths. Secondly, membership in the youth group has dropped reflecting the smaller size of the family. However, this reality does not gel with our statistics. The world’s population has gone over 8 billion. A hundred years ago, were we about 1.6 billion inhabitants? But we still had a thriving vocational scene. Young men were entering seminaries in droves. Now, with more than 8 billion, it cannot be that we are running short of human beings, no?

Perhaps what is more reflective of reality is how we have stopped listening and responding to both God’s call and invitation. The crisis of vocation is a crisis of listening and responding.

Following Christ is a life-long journey. It requires everything from us. On the one hand, we cannot give what we do not have. On the other, what is in it for us? That was Peter’s question to Jesus. “Look, we have left everything to follow you. What will we have?”. Our reward system, unfortunately, has been short-circuited by materialism. Reward is measured through instant gratification. Delaying pleasure is not our strength now. If that be the case, it is not easy to accept what God wants to give to us because at the back of our head is the incessant demand of instant gratification.

We need a vision that looks beyond the surface of materialism. It is an ability to appreciate a prize that is beyond the present which as a consequence allows us to carry on despite opposition, rejection, persecution and the Cross. Our imageof the Cross is tied to suffering—and human that we are, we tend to avoid any forms of suffering. But the Cross is the greatest symbol of love and only love can explain suffering. That is why St Paul waxes an ode to the love that is courageous in the face of difficulties and suffering.

When we think of love, we think of being loved. Whereas the vocation to the priesthood specifically and to religious life in general is to focus on others rather than on oneself. True love is never for ourselves or of ourselves. In the face of challenges, a natural response is to take things rather personally. Jeremiah may have been consecrated in the womb and yet he faced rejection. If he had taken that rejection personally, he would never have stuck on with being the prophet that he was. While rejection is often personal, we must go beyond the personal and a way to do it is to love beyond the self.

A mark of Christianity is loving to the point of self-sacrifice. In other words, the specific vocation to serve God’s holy people, as His priest or religious, is to imitate Christ, poor, chaste and humble. It is a love that lays itself down for the other. Perhaps the Easter Candle can help illustrate what it means to be loving.

A candle is just a candle when unlit. It becomes a torch when it is burnt. Its usefulness lies in burning itself out. To understand this we may have to make a distinction between selfishness and self-preservation. Self-preservation is a natural human instinct. It is not selfish per se. We draw boundaries in order to protect ourselves—our physical and mental well-being. Selfishness on the other hand is self-preservation at the expense of others—I prioritise myself and disregard the needs of others. The vocation to follow Christ will take us beyond self-preservation. A candle burns itself out so that others can see in the darkness.

Perhaps the idea of vocation or having Good Shepherd Sunday during Easter is good because the idea of self-sacrifice can only make sense when we believe in the Resurrection. Why? The instinct for self-preservation is real and it kicks in because one naturally shy from sacrificing. Nobody wants to die. Instead, everyone wants to live forever. Yet, living forever is never meant to be earth-bound. Everyone knows it. Why? When we have lost all faculties, we instinctively know that our time is up. Only when we realise what feels like a defeat is not a total loss that it is possible to lay down one’s life. The Resurrection is that assurance. Belief in the Resurrection gives one the courage for self-sacrifice.

Jesus Himself said, unless a seed falls unto the ground and dies, it remains but a single seed. But if it dies, it yields a hundred-fold. Sometimes, when I am in the car with friends and the driver is weaving in and out of traffic, I will scream “I do not want to die. I am still a virgin” and we will burst out laughing. It a joke but clearly symbolic of how earth-bound our sense of fulfilment is. Those who sacrifice for the love of Christ will never know defeat. Instead, they will reap a reward beyond their imagination. If you know it, you will never be afraid that there is nothing left of you or for you. What you dare to give up for Christ, He will give you back a hundredfold. So, young men, young women. Come. Follow Him.

3rd Sunday of Easter Year C 2025

We are about a week after Mercy Sunday and the Pope’s funeral. Christ continues to appear to those closest to Him. A feature which is common to these appearances is that they did not recognise Him.

Think of weeping Mary Magdalene at the entrance of the sepulchre. She thought Him to be a gardener. Or the two dense Disciples on the road to Emmaus curious that Jesus had no idea what had happened in the last three days. Today we have Peter and a few others after a night of empty net.

It leaves us wondering the quality of Jesus’ disciples. They consistently failed to recognise Him. Or perhaps closer to the truth is not their blindness but rather to ask what paradigm these disciples operate under.

Without a doubt the Resurrection is an experience out of this world. Perhaps what many could only fathom is Lazarus (Jn 11), or the son of the widow of Nain (Lk 7) or the daughter of Jairus (Mt 9; Mk5; Lk 8). Essentially, everyone came back to life. What happened to them was a temporary interruption. Amodern analogy would be to think of their coming back to life as surviving a clinical death in a hospital through a revival or resuscitation using a defibrillator.

But, in the case of Jesus, it was beyond interruption, termination or resuscitation. He returned to a whole new reality. He could walk through walls. He could appear and disappear from their sight.

Lazarus and all those who came back to life operated on the material plane. It is a material world, after all. The Resurrection is material too because we profess belief in the bodily resurrection. An inkling or a hint of the Resurrection is the Transfiguration. His Body was transfigured to the point that it was out of this world—what we may call the Beatific vision. A close example is St Thomas Aquinas whose theology was so sublime that he earned the monicker Angelic Doctor. At the top of his theological game, he apparently experienced a beatific vision after which he could no longer proceed. Why? According to him, whatever he had written paled in comparison to his vision of heaven. Unlike Peter who wanted to build three tents, Thomas felt that nothing could even measure up to what he had seen.

Perhaps this is where we are challenged in our Easter experience. What does it mean to be resurrected? The Pope’s passing away was surreal in the sense that he made his final journey on Easter Monday. Easter is not just the Sunday after Holy Saturday. Instead, Easter is an Octave meaning it covers the period between Easter and Divine Mercy Sunday. All these 8 days are counted as one day and because it is the Solemnity of the Resurrection of the Lord, nothing else, with the exception of funeral Masses, can be celebrated. But the Catholic world was seized by a kind of paroxysm about whether or not to have a memorial Mass for the Pope.

Liturgical law seems to prohibit a memorial Mass but because it was the Pope, different dioceses found ways to commemorate the Peoples’ Pope. Should we have had a memorial Mass for him is not a point of contention here. Rather the discussion centred on whether we should follow the law may just highlight how “materialistic” our worldview has become.

The Octave expresses Christ’s great Resurrection and nothing should obscure that beatific vision that we all have been invited to. Our eyes should be fixed on this central truth of our faith. The exception of a funeral Mass during the Easter Octave is a human consideration. All else can wait.

Could it be that our sense of recognition is as dense as Mary Magdalene at the sepulchre and Peter by the shore. We struggle to appreciate the Resurrection.

The story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus is instructive. There are two ends to their journey. The first is quite human. They were on pretty decent pilgrimage. After about a 10-kilometre walk, the two invited Jesus to a meal with them. The second end, which is spiritual, is the one to which we are invited. While they were at table, He took bread, said the blessing, broke it and handed it to them. Then He disappeared.

They hurried back to tell the Eleven that they had recognised Him at the breaking of bread. Imagine the Proddies huffing and puffing about Catholics not familiar with the Bible. Yet the Proddies fail to recognise Jesus in the Eucharist. But before we patronise them, we too may suffer the same blindness.

Frequently we do not realise that we have the greatest gift to help us recognise the Risen Christ. The entire journey of the two Disciples to Emmaus is ascriptural description of the Eucharist. It is almost a frame-by-frame account of what we have been commemorating for the last two thousand years. The part of the journey where Jesus explained Sacred Scripture to the two disciples pertains to our Liturgy of the Word. While at table, the four verbs detailing the actions of Jesus direct our attention to the Liturgy of the Eucharist. He took bread corresponds to the offertory. He said the blessing is the Eucharistic Prayer. He broke the bread is our Fractio Panis. He gave it to them is the reception of Holy Communion.

The point here is when the consecrated Host is broken, do we recognise the Risen Lord? We are definitely familiar with the other three verbs of taking, saying, giving but often enough we fail to pay attention to the breaking of Bread. Jesus broke the Bread so that the Disciples may recognise Him—the Risen Lord.

The Easter Octave should give us a view of the Resurrection unobstructed. But the experience of the Pope’s death during Octave may have uncovered our materialistic world view for we were distracted from focusing on the Risen Lord. Every Eucharist highlights the Resurrection and the Easter Octave simply emphasises this truth that not even the death of a Pope should obscure that vision. The fact that we were caught up with honouring the Pope or not revealed how earth-bound our vision has become. The devil’s victory does not lie in holding on to us forever. His victory is to mislead us to an earth-bound existence.

The Devil cannot win over us. Not because he is weak but because Christ has won the war and He will not allow Satan to dominate us. The Devil can only prevail because we allow him to. Satan wins when we lower our gaze or restrict our vision to a merely earthly existence.

Divine Mercy Sunday Year C 2025

We have a challenge here. It is having a Novena—an integral element of the Church’s rich devotional practices—inserted into the highest and most important liturgical days of the Church. If one seriously follows the devotion, one enters the Novena on Good Friday and it continues for nine days oblivious of Easter until one reaches Divine Mercy Sunday.

Having this Novena gives a sense that the devotion to the Divine Mercy overshadows the high point of our Liturgical preparation and celebration which are the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday. It feels as if we have shifted the climax or summit to Divine Mercy Sunday. For some clerics and many informed Catholics, taught since Vatican II to focus on Easter Sunday, this feels odd as if we have slipped and slid back in our liturgical development.

A way to appreciate Divine Mercy and its placement on the 2nd Sunday of Easter is to understand the meaning of Eucharistic Adoration. What is it essentially? You may have noticed that there has been a movement to downplay what had been deemed a devotional practice. What is the point of this sweet saccharine pious religiosity when the world is in such a bad shape. How much better it is for us to change the world than to waste an hour of doing nothing before the Blessed Sacrament. Action is needed, passivity to be avoided.

It is not a waste of time as taught by recent Popes. In fact, Eucharistic Adoration helps deepen one’s relationship with Christ, present in the Blessed Sacrament. Since the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Church’s liturgical life and action, spending time before the Blessed Sacrament allows for the continued worship and adoration of Christ outside of Mass. Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity spend an hour before the Lord in the tabernacle before they enter into active service. Time with Christ truly present in the Blessed Sacrament allows the sisters to transition more naturally and effortlessly to serving Christ present in our brothers and sisters. If one can appreciate Eucharistic Adoration as intimacy with Christ that leads to action, then it is possible to see the link between Easter and Divine Mercy.

In fact, there is a firm connexion between Easter Sunday and the 2nd Sunday of Easter and it is not just the Octave that binds the two Sunday together. During the Easter Triduum, the power of God’s mercy is in full display through the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus. In today’s Gospel, we see the same mercy at work; albeit sacramental in expression but still, it is real and true.

Forgiveness is a merciful breath as Jesus exhaled His Spirit onto the Disciples to give them the power to forgive sins. Power is not might or agency, competence or capability. Rather, it is the compassion to lift up the sinner. Confession is never to put a person down but instead it is mercy lifting a person up to reorient their lives. In this aspect, turn to the Gospel. History seemed to have labelled St Thomas as Doubting Thomas forgetting that in response to St Thomas’ misery and regret for not being present at the first Post-Resurrection appearance, Jesus actually gave St Thomas a chance to deepen his faith.

The Gospel does suggest that Christ berated or castigated St Thomas for his lack of faith. If we were the type who are easily hurt, that would be what we hear, that is, Christ being disappointed by St Thomas’ lack of belief, etc. But, if we are not blinded by or wrapped up in victimhood, we can experience Jesus basically saying “Great would be those who believe despite not having seen but here, my dear Thomas, come! Thread your fingers and put your hands into these wounds because they are powerful proofs of my love”. If St Thomas’ ego were easily bruised, he would have been hurt but instead, he left us an acclamation which we are now grateful for. “My Lord and my God”.

In our liturgical tradition, the Acclamation of Faith is the three we are familiar with—(1) We proclaim your death, O Lord. (2) When we eat this bread and drink this cup, (3) Save us, Saviour of the world. However, the Church IN Ireland, not the Church OF Ireland, has the liberty to reply to the “Mysterium fidei”, with “My Lord and my God”. Not sure if they have changed that after 2011 but St Thomas shows us how uplifting mercy can be and during the Acclamation of Faith, we are supposed to look up for as God’s mercy is lifted up, we are being drawn into Him.

Thus, a pertinent question to ask is if there is too much mercy. The late Pope Francis seemed to think otherwise. Regardless of how some might feel about mercy being too lenient, the truth remains that God’s mercy is limitless and His forgiveness is fathomless. The greater the sinner, the greater the right to Christ’s merciful love. The caveat is that my access to Christ’s merciful love does not stop with me. It does not end with me receiving God’s forgiveness. It is only selfish when I demand mercy but fail to extend it to others. When I ask for God’s mercy, I am meant to share that with others. We can surely recall what happened to the forgiven debtor in Mt 18: 21ff who was unable to forgive his fellow debtor.

In conclusion, Divine Mercy Sunday, logically follows the Easter Resurrection. It was the Lord who instructed St Faustina that He desired the 2nd Sunday of Easter be designated as Divine Mercy. It was up to St John Paul II to establish it. Pope Francis' focus on mercy has taught our generation that not only does God’s mercy lift us up but it also draws us into a communion of partaking and sharing of God’s benevolence. As we celebrate God’s love for us, shown through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, His Divine Mercy is an invitation to reach out to others with compassion. The less aware we are of those who are in need, the greater the absence of mercy. If we are comfortable, which is not a bad place to be, then mercy is the balm we pour onto others who find themselves caught in conflict, who are not at peace or are in trouble. The forgiveness of God that we partake invites us to be merciful to others as a gratitude to the Lord who has been merciful to us.

Easter Vigil/Sunday Year C 2025

From Good Friday’s long Gospel narrative that should allow us to enter first-hand into the drama of Christ’s Passion, Easter Vigil takes us into another journey. Easter Vigil is where we grasp the full breath of the history of salvation. We began with creation, followed quickly by the Fall. But we heard, reading after reading, how despite our treachery God has kept close to us and He promised to save us. This covenant was sealed through the supreme sacrifice of His Son.

Both the Vigil and Sunday are celebrations of the Son’s victory. Through these three sacred days, we have come to appreciate that the price of sin is eternal death but we also acknowledge that Jesus, the Son of the Father, managed to conquer death. Not only has Jesus Christ saved us but He has also pledged the Eucharist, that is, the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, as the food and strength for the journey to eternity.

Let us rejoice because He has risen. As the Exultet commands, “Earth, shake off your lethargy”. Even if life were unfair and nothing seems to work for us, still we dare to enjoy because He has risen. If He had not, then our hope would be pointless and we would be condemned to an existence which is characterised by the “here and now”. Such a dreadful vision traps individuals in a miserable existence and since there is no Resurrection, we are doomed to live it up and are driven to extract as much as we can from this life. Without the Resurrection, we are lost and winning means being ahead of everyone. It is a kiasu (fear of missing out) and kiasi (fear of death) existence. [Have you ever felt so dissatisfied that you just need to have the last say or justify yourself because you have been misunderstood? Or you feel that only revenge can satisfy your rage. These are tell-tale signs of a life “condemned” to get the most of life].

This is why we need the assurance that Christ has truly Risen so that we do not need to fear losing out. How can we be sure? If we could, take some time to slow down and to contemplate the first place that He should go after Histriumphant resurrection. Sacred Scripture is mute in this respect but we can imagine the first person to whom He would appear—Mary, His Mother.

Visualise a woman who has pondered things in her heart. She does not have all the answers in the world and yet she may have had an instinct that Calvary was not the final chapter. It was just a matter of time and at the most unexpected moment, a powerful presence was felt. We know this because of His subsequent appearance to the 11, to the 500 and to Paul. He appeared when they least expected Him to. So, He came into Mary’s presence and the first words that greeted her were “I have conquered”.

An unrecorded scenario such as this is not alien to us. During those times when we are most lost and feel that God is absent, those are moments when He is most present. We will never lose out no matter how defeated we feel. Christ conquest over eternal death gives every soul hope and a chance at life eternal. Tonight, today, the behold the wood of the Cross on Friday has become Christ the Light. Thanks be to God that Sister Death has loosened her grip as the Crucified Christ rose victorious through the Resurrection.

It is an invitation to behold the empty tomb—a commanding image of death’s inability to hold onto us forever. Christ’s conquest over death not only gives us hope but more than that, the empty tomb is a symbol of Christ’s presence amongst the living. From utter and condemned sinners, we are now sinners who have been saved.

We remain hopeful for no matter what, we cannot be lost forever. But more than not being lost, the Resurrection belongs to Christ’s desire to shape creation according to His Sacred and Saving Heart. Coming as man, He identified with us but as God, He saved us and now invites us to be part of His mission. Baptised into this mission, we reshape the world by becoming His salt and His light.

What does that mean?

It is rather simple. We are not speaking here of ending racism or terrorism, solving world hunger or chronic poverty, reversing climate change or abolishing mass migration. These are righteous intentions. Right from the beginning and even before embarking and embracing these noble quests, we should become salt and light simply by expanding “human consideration”. How so? Our parking and our driving can be a good place to start. I am not criticising anyone who comes late for Mass, you have your reasons. However, a suggestion is to leave a bit earlier from home and that might help in avoiding bad driving and indiscriminate parking. If everyone here does it, imagine what sort of experience this Taman where we are planted would have of us who regularly jam up this place? The car-wash owner has repeatedly complained to me about some of us who park where they do business. And because they are Banglas, their request is shrugged off because they are supposedly less human than we are. What sort of messaging are we giving them?

The point is that the life of the Resurrection begins with me. Not with big projects out there. Modifying my behaviour will come a long way to affecting others. People are turned off not by Christ’s message but they are turned off by me, by me personally not living Christ’s message. No matter how great the message of the Resurrection, people will find its validation in the messengers.

We are the messengers of Christ and His Resurrection. Are we convincing to others? We are going to celebrate the Malaysian Pastoral Convention next year. It is a big event. What could be bigger is not the assembly in Majodi but rather here in the Cathedral. Can we have 50 baptisms next year? Is it logistically challenging? Yes. But it would be a fruit of our messaging and most of all, our witnessing. It would be great also to have more adults who had missed their Confirmation, coming to complete their initiation into the Church. Inviting couples adrift in the limbo of irregular unions who willingly come forward toseek regularisation of their marital status would be good progress. Finally, to welcome Catholics who have ventured away from the practice of the faith to return to their true and spiritual fold, the Church.

He is Risen, without a doubt. The empty tomb is proof and yet there is a disbelieving world that challenges us, His messengers, by asking where the fruits of Christ’s Resurrection are to be found. For that, we need to look into ourselves. As we exit the Cathedral later, ask this question. Am I ready to be His salt of the earth and His light of the world? Will the face of the Risen Christ greet those who encounter me?

Good Friday 2025 Year C

We are better than we think we are. There are some of us who suffer from poor self-esteem. Those with low-esteem can be filled with such self-loathing or self-deprecation that they are unable to see themselves for who they truly are. They tend to paint themselves in rather unattractive light. However, there is another side to our poor self-esteem. We are more sinful than we think we are. Some may feel that we are not that sinful or rather our sins are just nothing compared to someone who murders or rapes or steals millions. Either perspective of ourselves is myopic.

This short-sightedness is the reason for our inability to appreciate what Christ had done for us. But then, why do we lack the capacity to acknowledge our sinfulness or even appreciate that our soul could be in danger of eternal damnation?

Firstly, the notion of sin is that it resides in others and not in ourselves. Take the case of the Woman caught Adultery and was nearly stoned to death. The crowd that gathered around her definitely felt that sin was in her until Christ challenged them. It is possible that for some of us, sin is the other person and not me. The way we look at ourselves is “I am sinful but not really”. A good example is “my spouse makes me very angry”. We justify our anger because somebody else did not behave better. We this on the roads or the government offices or services. We justify our racism because someone does subscribe to our work ethics.

Secondly, we are traumatised by pain. Thus, many lament why there should be pain, sorrow and suffering? Perhaps this is coming from our logical and rational side which considers suffering as incompatible with the idea of a good God. How can a good God allow suffering? Or we have simply forgotten that this is a fallen world. We are affected by concupiscence and are always in need of conversion. However, when we feel unjustly done to, the attendant feeling is victimhood. In a therapeutic society, one whose goal is to feel good, we have been taught that poor self-esteem is detrimental to our mental well-being. We must never be guilt-ridden.

As we become more and more entitled victims, we may find it hard to process personal responsibility let alone contemplate our sinfulness or even the possibility of damnation. Sin makes one feel guilty and since we are taught to reject guilt-feelings, it is hard to have remorse for one’s multitude of sins. Furthermore, we have reduced sins and our responsibility for them, to sicknesses or pathologies in which case we consider ourselves less culpable since we are suffering from some forms of mental illness. I have a condition that causes me to do something bad. Therefore I cannot be held fully responsible.

Thirdly, there is a sense that we also feel useless. How many of us have gone confession after confession and come out only to commit the same sin. The inability to modify our behaviour leaves one with a horrible sense of helplessness and nobody wants to be reminded of that. Uselessness or even low self-esteem besides, the point of confession is to take ownership or personal responsibility for one’s sinful behaviour. It is not on account of big sins that I go to hell. Instead it is because of the small sins I ignore that imperil my soul.

It is not a form of self-loathing to think of sin. In fact, there are three graves underneath the main aisle. Graves in the Church or Cathedral, apart from giving prominence to ecclesiastical figures—like Sovereigns or Bishops—are basically memento mori. They are reminders of death, not macabre because their presence is to encourage reflection on one’s sinfulness and also to invite one to repentance. For without contrition, it is not easy to appreciate what Christ has done for us.

The recognition of sin should lead to the awareness that we need a Saviour. But if we have no sin, then He has died for nothing which makes this rather long service a total waste of time and also confirms that we may be suffering from the disorder of self-hatred or masochism. Do we need to subject ourselves to this self-torture if that is not self-loathing? Perhaps the greatest obstacle to our conversion is found in the remark made by Pope Pius XII in 1946. The greatest sin is the loss of the sense of sin. While modern man may suffer from the lack of self-esteem, he suffers even more by the lack of conscientious acknowledgement that he is a sinner.

The Passion Gospel today is read in its entirety for a good reason. It is a form of contemplation because it basically to carry us into the scenes of what He had to undergo. We are transported to the Via Dolorosa so that we can feel for ourselves that He died to free us from the shackles of sin. “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). Good Friday is the celebration of the ultimate act of love by God for the redemption and salvation of humankind.

Thus, the fact that we are here reveals that whether we know it or not, we desire to be saved. Unless one were self-loathing, a masochist or a pain-addict, everyone is searching for the Saviour. It is by His grace that we are not in hell. Such an expression may sound rather condemnatory but if it should help one to recognise and change, then one soul is saved.

Holy Thursday 2025

To say that death takes some by surprise is not really a remarkable statement to make. Why? I realise and I am sure some of you may have an inkling of what I am talking about. This comment about death is actually played out in our lives daily because as we age, we catch a glimpse of death every now and then. To state categorically that we will all die is a statement that sounds ordinary and factual. In reality we are terrified by death.

How is death a part of the Triduum? Firstly, we are entering into the most sacred days of Lent—the Easter Triduum. And death must be spoken off in relation to the Resurrection. But here I want to speak about a kind death and its impact on us and our future.

The Chrism Mass is over. We have brought back the three sacred oils and the bottles stands proudly in our ambry. Shortly after the homily, there are supposed to be two priests who will be washing the feet of twelve parishioners. But we only have one.

If we follow Tradition, we should have had the Chrism Mass this morning and tonight, the Mass of the Last Supper. Maundy Thursday, derived from the Mandatum of Christ—is His mandate or instruction for the Church whereby He institutes the Eucharist and also the Priesthood, the two Sacraments which are necessary for the Church to carry out His mission.

In order to appreciate His mandate and the repercussion that dying and death has on the viability of His instruction, we turn to John’s Gospel, Chapter 6. The long conversation is centred on food but Jesus tried to draw the crowd’s attention to a craving for the supernatural food that allows one to live for ever. To satisfy one’s supernatural hunger, Christ told the crowd that eternal life is premised upon the eating of His Flesh and the drinking His Blood. The crowd reacted to the cannibalism implicit in Christ’s commands and even when everyone deserted Him, He did not chase after them. He did not mitigate nor soften His insistence, proving that He was firm in this requirement.

This necessary condition for eternal life poses a challenge to ensure the availability of His Body and Blood. This therefore raises the issue of how Jesus must provide for His Church, His Body and Blood necessary for eternal life.

Two issues which I would like to raise here because there are so many of you this evening.

Firstly, you may be aware that in the past, the practice was that Catholics were encouraged to marry Catholics. Why? So that we do not have the conundrum that is quite prevalent today. What faith should the children be brought up in? In the name of diversity and respect, it is not uncommon for the Catholic spouse to defer the baptism of the child or children.

However, if the Catholic spouse receives Holy Communion based on a firm belief that it is truly the food of eternal life but denies his or her child the possibility of eating the Bread of eternal life, the very act of Holy Communion would be either be (a) illogical or (b) selfish.

Why would it be illogical? It is the bread of eternal life. Parents instinctively give their children the best education, medical attention, nutrition etc. Thus, to deny an offspring the possibility of receiving Holy Communion could be that one does not really know “Whom” one is receiving. But if that were not the case then the other conclusion to draw would be selfishness.

Why would it be selfish? A parent who believes that Holy Communion is truly the Body of Christ and not feed it to the child would be plainly selfish based on the same instinct of providing the best for one’s child or children. A parent would not give scorpion to a child who ask for bread.

The Eucharist is our food of salvation. We all know this. We value it but here is the challenge. There is another side of the equation which we have taken for granted. How can we be certain that there is an assured and adequate supply of the Bread of Life.

Unless we change the rule, meaning, that it is not necessary for eternal life, then the situation would be different. However, the requirement remains. We have not changed. There is a supply chain disruption if we were to use a post-pandemic description. The question point-blank is this: Where are all the vocations needed for this mission? The reason why the Assistant PP is not here is because he is helping out in another parish whose PP is sick. Where are the young men who dare to stand up and be counted? All we need is a priest to drop dead and the whole diocese is thrown into a disarray. The journey to the priesthood is not easy and if one seminarian falls along the way, the diocese isset back by the shortage of one future priest. The next ordination will be threeyears from now.

In many countries, parishes are being closed down or amalgamated. We may not face their problem yet but we will get there soon if no one answers the call to serve as a priest. The Mandarin community regularly laments the lack of a proper Mandarin-speaking priest. Where are your sons?

As we enter the holiest days of the liturgical year, let our silence be deepened so that we can sense the sadness of Holy Mother Church, deepen our love for the Eucharist and pray for more vocation to the Priesthood. We need the Eucharist because the Eucharist makes the Church and we need the Church because the Church makes the Eucharist. Without the Priesthood, there is no Eucharist. As we accompany Jesus, it is also a moment for our young men to ponder if they would like to rise to the challenge because Christ’s Church also needs your response.

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord Year C 2025

Today we enter the holiest week of the Liturgical Calendar. To mark this period, we begin with the triumphant entry of Christ into Jerusalem. It is the Gospel of the Mass read either before the Procession or at the Entrance. We cannot miss the irony at play here. Christ enters as a victor into His own city. However, His victory culminates in His Passion and Death on the Cross. And yet that is not the final story.

The whole panoply of human reactions is on display this Sunday. The landscape of popularity is simply treacherous. Human loyalty is as fickle as the shifting sand in the desert. The Gospel read at the beginning projects victory. The Passion heard just only is wrapped in pain and sorrow. From hero to zero, Christ was acclaimed only to be condemned.

What then should our response be?

In the face of human treachery, the natural tendency is to react with outrage but the only proper response to it is silence. Holy Week marks the beginning of a powerful silence to allow us to embrace and enter the depth of what Christ would undergo for the salvation of our souls.

The week is heavy and is ordinarily filled with frenetic activities. Flowers to be arranged, statues and images to be veiled, then come Maundy Thursday—the washing of feet and adoration until midnight. Good Friday—Veneration of the Cross and the Easter Vigil—all 9 Readings and baptisms by immersion. There are many things to consider and to be done. Yet this is the week of Mary of Bethany. She sits to contemplate the Lord in His Passion. And the one path that can lead to a profound and prayerful contemplation is silence.

Silence is the language of God’s presence. It is almost like Jesus peeled back the curtain of His divinity so that we can peer behind the scenes to savour His humility at work. He speaks but mostly in silent recesses of our hearts.

It is not a silence of inaction or inactivity. Rather it is a silence which is intentionally slow. One of the foci we should have is our need. Indeed we have so many wants that we can be distracted by them. We eat, entertain, shop and travel believing that all these will make us happy. Or that these activities will complete us. However what we may fail to recognise is that they may hide our real need.

Our need to be saved. There is ugliness and there is a lot of that during this week. Even as we get first-hand experience of treachery at work, still we can be distracted because whatever Christ had to undergo and endure, it was to save us.

The challenge is if we need salvation. Nothing of the treachery makes sense if we do not require salvation. If we have no need of a Saviour, then what Jesus went through was plainly stupid and unnecessary. Perhaps Pope Francis’ primary concern with God’s mercy stems from this truth. God wants so much to save us and mercy is how He reaches out to us. The foremost image for God’s mercy, according to the Pope, is the “Field Hospital”. The Church is the place where wounded and traumatised souls are treated.

Right now, the earthquake in Myanmar is fresh in our memory and the urgency for charitable outreach is also vital. People want to help but as in many disasters today, it has also spawned a modern-day phenomenon for some have developed a taste for what is called “disaster tourism”. Have you watched videos of people who stand around filming a tragedy so that they can have the thrill of being the first to post it on social media? There are some who visit sites of calamities even with the noble intention of helping the victims but nevertheless, they are still driven by a curiosity or a fascination with disasters.

Translate that to a hospital setting. A hospital is meant for those who are sick and need treatment. Any salutary or sanitary setting which is targeted towards those who are not sick is merely cathartic or simply therapeutic. On Friday Bishop came to launch the Perjalanan Salib and I happened to sit next to him and with the new renovation, I can see outside across the street. The crawl sign flashing massage, massage, massage. A massage is therapeutic because it helps to relieve aches and tension. Feeling good is a good feeling but feeling good is not necessarily what we need. In fact, to be good is miles apart from feeling good. To be good is our goal and quite regularly one actually feels bad even as one tries to be good. A good example is to apologise. How often is it that one refuses to apologise (to be good) because it feels lousy for one feels like a loser having to be the first to say, “I am sorry”? Hence, religion or our religious observance is meant to deepen our need for salvation. Our rituals are targeted at highlighting this need. While therapy is good for our mental health and personal growth, it does not guarantee our salvation.

If we have no need of Christ’s salvation, it does not take much for our rituals to become therapeutic treatments which do not really save the soul. A spatreatment only makes us feel good about ourselves and no more.

Silence is therefore unnerving because it penetrates the darkness of our heartsthat are eclipsed by self-will and sin. It is there in our restless hearts that Christ fights to save our souls. The only way we can appreciate His salvation is when we allow the silence to challenge us, challenge our sin and challenge our apathy toward His salvation. Silence is for us to say, “I need you, my Saviour. I need you more than I need air to breathe”.

5th Sunday of Lent Year C

In this viral age of hyper-connectivity, jokes become old very fast. For this Sunday’s Gospel, Christ is presented with a woman caught in adultery. The theme of God’s mercy seems to be a continuation from last weekend’s parable of the Prodigal Son.

The Pharisees and the Scribes wanted to trap Jesus. So they brought Him an adulteress. It echoes the same dilemma they posed to Jesus with respect to taxation—to pay or not to pay taxes to Caesar. They wanted Jesus to choose between going against Moses or going against Rome. But Jesus out-manoeuvred them by returning the ball into their court. “Let him who has no sins cast the first stone”. At this point a stone landed on Jesus’ head. He had to call out, “Not you, Mother, not you”.

It is an old joke but imagine right at the beginning, Jesus Himself confirmed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Since the rest of humanity is not immaculately conceived, it is time to savourGod’s mercy even as we recognise and acknowledge our sins. As we heard earlier, the story ended well for thankfully the Pharisees and Scribes were not as self-righteous as they have been painted to be. One by one, they slinked or slipped away, aware that they were not as pure as they had judged the woman to be impure. It is a lesson on being judgemental. We necessarily judge but we should avoid that kind of condescension as if we were the standard.

Christ was not looking for a fight with the Pharisees and Scribes. It was not as if He needed to be one up on them. It was not a victory as it was a compassionateresponse. It was clear that she was an adulteress. Did she warrant punishment? She did under Mosaic Law. But in sentencing one ought to measure the degree of punishment according to the value of what one is protecting. In the case of adultery. Why is it so wrong? It breaks one’s promise made before God and spouse. It is a form of betrayal which in the end will hurt the family. The severity of the punishment is meant to protect the bedrock of society and that is the family unit for without the family, society crumbles.

However, Christ chose another way of fulfilling the intent of the Mosaic Law. He did not condemn the woman, nor did He let her go scot-free. “Since no one has condemn you, neither have I, but go and sin no more”.

Go and sin no more is what many of us fail to appreciate.

Lenten conversion requires a turning away from sin. This brings us to the Gospel which for the Elect is taken from John. The 5th Sunday of Year A is the Raising of Lazarus. Here, there is a clear connexion between Lazarus and the Resurrection. Christ raised Lazarus as a way to illustrate the profound truth of the Resurrection. Even though Lazarus was raised in a most spectacular manner, the reality is that his return to life was not the main focus. The answer is found in the question that Jesus posed to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. If anyone believes in me, even though he dies he will live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”.

The focus for the Elect is faith in the Resurrection. But notice what happened at the tomb of Lazarus. Christ called out to him and the dead man emerged from the tomb with “his feet and hands bound with bands of stuff and a cloth round his face”. Close your eyes and appreciate what this scene represents? It is a powerful portrait of the bondage of sin. Christ said, “Unbind him, let him go free”.

Many of us are caught in the bondage of sin that it is not easy to escape. The image of Jesus with the condemned woman is helpful. He judges truthfully as He calls out to us who can be living a life of sin. Yet, His judgement is compassionate. In His mercy, He invites us to shake off whatever might impede our path towards the Resurrection.

Thus, St Paul provides the perfect picture of this desire. What I want is Christ and Him alone. Today our Elect are presented with the view of life after death, that is, what happens to us after we die. We are freaked out by death. We witnessed that during the Pandemic. In no way is this a judgement about the fear of death nor does it mean that those who are fearful should be looked down upon. Rather what this fear may have revealed is an unsettling reality. We believe in the Resurrection but not really. Our struggle mirrors St Augustine’s, “Lord make me pure but not yet”.

Why our hesitancy? We have never had it so good to the point that we cannot really fathom a life better than this. Instead of life as a preparation for the Resurrection, what has happened is that we acknowledge that the Resurrection is our goal but we have no strong desire for it. For if the Resurrection were more than we can imagine, so many more would look at death as a doorway rather than fear it as annihilation and an end to who we are.

Belief in the Resurrection is the basis for a change in the direction of our lives. We live for Christ which means we turn away from sin or more likely the case, we resolve at all times to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin. Secondly, belief in the Resurrection means that we have to find a way to perceive reality for what it is. The Prayer after Holy Communion of the 1st Sunday of Advent expresses this truth very succinctly. “May these mysteries, O Lord, in which we have participated profit us, we pray, for even now, as we walk amid passing things, you teach us by them to love the things of heaven and hold fast to what endures. Through Christ our Lord”.

In conclusion, this rhymes with the movement of the season. Our earthly senses are curbed in order to heighten their celestial awareness. If we follow the older tradition, today we cover our statues and images. This liturgical action follows the traditional Gospel used for this Sunday. It is the first of a season within the season—Passiontide which stretches from the 5th Sunday until Lazarus Saturday on Holy Week. In the said Gospel of John chapter 8, verse 59, after the heated exchange with the authorities, Jesus left the Temple and went into hiding. The veiling or covering thus signifies the concealment of Christ’s divinity. In a way, His humanity is also diminished because He would be beaten to a pulp to a point of being unrecognisable. The point is not the graphic and gory detail of torture but rather a possibility of entering into a first-hand experience of Christ’s humility and humiliation for that is the price He was willing to pay for our salvation.

4th Sunday of Lent Year C Laetare Sunday

We would like to believe that our civilisation has become more merciful and tolerant. It would appear that for a community to be accepted as civilised it must show that it is warm and welcoming. With this kind of expectation, the margin has come to the centre, meaning that those belonging to the categories of the least and the lost are to be welcomed and celebrated. Thus, society, of which the Church is a part of, should strive to create a friendly, inclusive and hospitable environment where each person can feel respected, valued and at home regardless of background or beliefs. If John Lennon were here, you can imagine living life in peace.

Contrast this image with the present American experience. A sizeable portion of the USA thinks that Trump is a fascist dictator. In this way, he is no different from the two groups of people in the Gospel today. The Pharisees and Scribes have rigid rituals and are restricted by religious boundaries whereas Trump just wants to exclude and restrict migration into the US. What is more? Jesus is supposed to be an observant Jew and so they complained to Him about His choices of dining companions. Since ritual purity is central in a Jewish religious outlook, any engagement with outcasts will render one a social pariah. As they say, guilty by association.

Since Jesus welcomes sinners, the only logical assessment of the complaining Pharisees and Scribes is that they are basically hypocritical, unforgiving and unwelcoming. It is ironical though. While we may pride ourself as merciful, tolerant and much more enlightened than the hypocritical Pharisees and Scribes, all a person needs is to commit a grave sexual sin and he will be condemned for life. We are not as forgiving or welcoming as we would like to believe we are. Maybe we use a less graphic example. Remember David Walliams, one of the judges in Britain’s Got Talent. For something he had said in private he has lost his place as a judge in the show. Our merciful mindset has a particular measure or metric whereby one must not breach.

It brings us to this Sunday’s parable, found only in Luke’s Gospel and no other. In response to the Pharisees and the Scribes’ criticism, Jesus related a compelling parable highlighting God’s mercy. He profoundly welcomes those who are deemed unacceptable by whatever metrics we have of people. However, in the matter of God’s mercy towards us, we might want to think of our mercy towards God. This is such a weird perspective, not to mention arrogant too. Who are we to extend “mercy” towards God?

This view makes sense if we accept that we have been socialised into entitlement. We have been trained through our talks and theology to expect a God whose compassion envelops us. For example, a recurring motif of Pope Francis’ papacy has been on mercy as a way of leading us to back to God. The sad reality is how we may have corrupted the image of a merciful God to one who is possibly weak and incapable of anything but forgiveness. What appears to be God’s mercy toward us, we may have turn that gift into an entitlement.

When mercy becomes an entitlement, then repentance and conversion will no longer be necessary. St Thomas cautioned that mercy without justice is indulgence but he also balanced his warning by alerting us to the fact that justice without mercy is cruelty. An entitled generation is an indulgent lot andwe project that attitude into God. A good illustration is how we tend to frame God’s attitude towards what we have come to deem as the “Pharisaical concerns”, that is, we presume that this is how a merciful God views ritual or religious taboos. He is not bothered by our petty nit-picking attitude. “Does God really care how one dresses?”. Or “Do you think God is upset that we did not abstain on Friday?”.

Such questions may betray a presumptuousness. We presume that little things are unimportant because God is unaffected when in reality, it is we who have become apathetic. In a way, we sanctify our disregard by presuming God’s mercy. Perhaps, a good way to understand this presumption or our apathy is to look at how we treat a person of importance.

What happens when the King visits or a special person makes an appearance? We dress up and go out of our way to welcome them. When we assume that they do not care about our appearance, the truth is, we are just not bothered to honour them. In other words, God’s mercy must be reciprocated by a changed behaviour towards Him. In the context of Lent, when we ask God for His mercy, like the Prodigal Son, our response should be “I will return to my Father”. Conversion is a response to mercy.

Interestingly, the young man’s conversion is described of as a journey. “He came to his senses”. Thus, a pilgrimage is not just any excursion but rather a journey of conversion. It requires that we come to our senses by recognising our sinfulness and by repenting as we seek forgiveness.

The Elect this Sunday are meditating on the Gospel of the Man born Blind. He was healed by Jesus but the greatest gift that he received was not the gift of physical sight but rather the gift of spiritual sight to recognise Jesus as Lord. For the blind man, his healing was a chronicle of conversion. At first, Christ performed a sacramental act. He spat onto some earth, made a paste and daubed it on his eyes. Recall the ashes on our forehead that was made into a paste by Holy Water? The first sacramental act was followed by another as the blind man was asked to wash himself in the pool of Siloam. Thus, for the Elect,the aim of the Scrutinies is to deepen their Sacramental journey.

In conclusion, Laetare Sunday symbolises the forgotten joys that accompany conversion. Both the Prodigal Son and the Man born Blind are diaries of change and conversion. It appears that for the Pharisees and Scribes, conversion has been reduced to a dreadful duty—much like having to submit to Lenten fast and abstinence. Take the recent incident where a boy was slapped for eating publicly during fasting month. Imagine a squad who goes around enforcing the duty to fast or abstain highlighting that one can be lost in the chore of “doing” Lent correctly while missing out that conversion is a joyful pilgrimage. We are not compelled to make this pilgrimage. Conversion is a journey we joyfully desire and trustingly embrace because of God’s welcoming and compassionate mercy.