33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2018

The focus on eschatology—the signs and studies of the end of the world— continues today, the penultimate Sunday of the year. And the readings spread before us the reality of the four last things—death, judgement, heaven and hell. The First Reading paints the scenario which can be described as the day of reckoning or of judgement. When the world ends, we will be surrounded by crises, calamities and catastrophes. St Michael will come and rising from the dead, those who are virtuous will be vaulted like shining stars whereas those who are sinful will be shamed into eternal disgrace. The Gospel encourages believers to make preparations for such a time when judgement is called forth.

How do we conceive of the last things such as judgement with the consequences of heaven or hell? To be honest, nobody really talks about it. If at all, death seems like a sinister stranger standing in the shadow—much like the stalker biding his time before striking. We try not to think about it. Or if we do, then our idea of eternity is also shrouded in a cloudy haze. We cannot imagine heaven given that the pleasure we derive from our comfort is out of this world. Like our food—we frequently hear people saying, “It’s out of this world”.

Perhaps Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey’s One Sweet Day lends itself to this mistaken notion that upon death, all will deserve heaven. “And I know you shining down on me from heaven, like so many friends we’ve lost along the way. And I know eventually we’ll be in heaven. One sweet day...” It explains the lack of urgency evidenced by the feeling that we have nothing to lose. After all, one sweet day, we will be in heaven. Whatever that may be.

Now, no one is predestined to hell meaning that God does not create someone to say “You go to hell”.  But, the contrary is not true, that is, that no one is, willy nilly, assured of heaven. What is true is that we are promised the possibility of heaven and that possibility is not premised on the heresy that all of us will end up in heaven.

This automatic passage to heaven rhymes with the current conception of a God who is merciful—a loving God whose mercy knows no bound. He wants to save all. However, the Institution Narrative of our Eucharistic Prayers begs to differ. The salvific will of God, even though universal, must respect human freedom. Hence the “the blood of the new covenant which will be poured out for you and for many” is not poured out for ALL. “Many” sounds stingy and rather unmerciful.

Nevertheless, the truth remains that blood of Christ will save many because some might not want to be saved. God’s mercy is always tempered by justice which means that whilst He is merciful, He is also just in a manner which respects our freedom to choose. As St Augustine pointed out: The God who created us without our permission cannot save us without our permission. Only when we presume that God’s mercy is indulgent, then, there is no need for purgatory since everyone goes to heaven, anyway.

Purgatory is not a place but rather it is a process which accords with God’s mercy and justice. Since we necessarily move in time and space, we often characterise purgatory in terms which are both spatial and chronological. It is spatial when we conceive of it as half-way place between heaven and hell. Those of us who are older, do you remember the admonition not to steal? I remember as a child, my aunty used to tell me that to steal one cent is to deserve a year in purgatory. That is chronological. For all we know a person who dies is immediately purged of sins and is already in the presence of God. However, we cannot presume and, sadly, in the presumed absence of particular judgement and the possibility of hell, we fill the void with eulogies that frequently border on canonisation. And this is the kicker—the richer you are, the more you can be eulogised. Poor people, they do not really need it. An injustice is committed when a priest dies. We tell our people that there should not be eulogy given but when there is a funeral for a priest, the exception is made. Are we not all equal before God, priest or laity, rich or poor?

The appropriate response to the true mercy of God is trust not presumption. God’s justice allows for the possibility of Hell because there cannot be mercy without repentance and renunciation of sin. Just a note aside, we are hung up on mercy, for example, for the couples who are in irregular unions that they should be allowed to receive Holy Communion. What about justice for the couples who through thick and thin stayed together because of the vows they had taken. They never gave up on each other. The message we send out is this: “Well, you were stupid. You could have gotten what they are getting now. Perhaps we should not even be bothered to be good. After all, we will still go to heaven, one sweet day! We cannot presume that God is always merciful.

This explains why we pray for souls in purgatory. Those who died in the friendship of God and yet are tainted by the effects sin, not the kind that refuses God’s forgiveness, we need to keep them in prayer because they are in no position to do any good for themselves. And for ourselves, purgatory and hell become the kind of contrition, imperfect though it may be, that helps us to get to heaven faster. “O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended You, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell”. Even though, this fear of punishment as a deterrence for sin is imperfect, still it does the job of keeping us in the straight and narrow so that we can go to heaven. However, it is perfect contrition which gives coherence of these last four things. “But most of all because they offend You, my God, Who are all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life”.

Thus, it is the love of God that impels us to return love for love—in a manner of speaking, to go even beyond the last things. Heaven is good and we ought to desire it. But, it is most of all, the desire is to be united with God that should be the goal of our earthly existence. The four last things actually fit in with the month of November’s two foci—the souls of the faithful departed as well as the celebration of saints. Firstly, the souls need our prayers to assist them along the way to heaven. Secondly, the saints are our examples shining in heaven and urging us on and never to give up. Finally, do you know why our Churches should be tall edifices? If you follow Buzz Lightyear of Toy Story, tall space gives us a sense of “the infinity and beyond”. Even though heaven is not a place, looking upwards gives us a glimpse of our destiny. Let us peer into eternity and let God’s love impel us upwards so that we are not weighed down by our sin. As Leon Bloy, a French poet, says, “There is only one sadness in life—not being a saint”.

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

Today is the 2nd last Sunday of the liturgical year. There is a feeling that we are neither here nor there because the readings will be some sort of a repeat next week! The 1st Reading and the Gospel are apocalyptic enough as they warn us of the impending end time. Daniel gives a vision of the resurrection and also the reward or the retribution for how we live this life. We know that the end time will come. Just that the Gospel tells that that time is known only to God. Thankfully, we have the 2nd Reading as it ties in very well with the theme: The eternal perfection of all whom Christ is sanctifying.

The 2nd Reading is the occasion for the misunderstanding of some people of what we do here every Sunday. We celebrate the sacrifice of the Mass. But, for some time, especially after Vatican II, we began to call the Mass by any other name except that of a sacrifice. We thought of the Mass as a memorial meal because we were supposed to remember a meal that Jesus had with the disciples before His passion on the Cross. Or, in many cases, it was basically considered a fellowship meal as its function was reduced to helping us build our relationship with one another. But, the Mass is more than just a memory of the past and the occasion for fellowship. It is the perfect sacrifice of Christ offered once and for all. At this point, I would like to make a little digression here. If the Mass were basically a fellowship meal, then both the posture and the music must serve that function. For example: a less solemn and easier going posture and the music light and easy. [One of the Pater nosters that some choirs use sounds like “Puff the Magic Dragon”]. But if the Mass is sacrifice, then the posture, for example, the priest facing the Crucifix, and the music solemn makes more sense. Later, I will say more of why the posture and music is important.

But, for now, let me return to the phrase "offered once and for all" because it raises a fundamental question. There in Hebrews, it clearly says that Christ does not have to offer Himself again and again, like the high priest going into the sanctuary year after year. Thus, if Christ offered Himself as sacrifice on Calvary once and for all, then what are we doing here?

Let us see how we can answer this. First, Calvary and the Last Supper are inseparably linked because they are both the one and the same sacrifice. The Gospel of John gives you a glimpse of that close connexion. When the soldier pierced His side to see if He were dead, according to John’s Gospel, blood and water gushed out. The Church interprets the blood and water to be the fountain of sacramental life, namely the sacraments of Eucharist and baptism. You hear this beautiful description in the Preface for the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Second, if we accept that Calvary and the Last Supper were one event, then we begin to understand that there is a difference between "time" and "time". The ancient Greeks make a distinction between two experiences of time. One is chronological in the sense that there is a past, present and future. Our common experience of time is linear which means that an event has a beginning or an ending in time. As such, chronological time is quantitative because you can measure it. However, there is another time which is more qualitative and they call it “kairos” and the quality of this time is an experience of eternity. Why? Because, for God, all time is the same in which the present takes in the past as it projects the future. Even though both the Last Supper and Calvary are chronological events in the past, meaning that they happened some two thousand years ago but they are, in God, events that are still present and so in a sense, they can touch our lives here and now. Therefore, kairos transcends chronos because it is a kind of time in which a reality, even though past, becomes ever-present. This kind of time, kairos, is the basis for us to say that at baptism, we enter into the passion, death and resurrection of Christ, even though chronologically, the passion, death and resurrection of Christ happened more than 2000 years ago.

Hence, kairos is the basis for the “anamnesis” of our Mass. The command, “Do this in memory of me” is not a commemoration of the past in the sense that we are simply recollecting a past event in chronological time. Instead, it is a living memory in the sense that we are calling to mind that there is an event that has the capacity to touch our lives even now. Anamnesis means that we are present in the kairos sense at the Last Supper. The Eucharist we celebrate now is thus a sacrifice because through it, with it and in it, we are perpetually making present the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary. Now I return to the earlier point I made about posture and music. The posture of facing the Crucifix is appropriately sacrificial. We are making ourselves present to Christ being present to us in offering Himself [and we with Him] as sacrifice to the Father.

It is precisely this re-presenting that allows the theme to speak of the Eucharist as the “eternal perfection of all whom Christ is sanctifying”. Only the sacrifice of Christ can take away our sins and make us holy. And this act of Christ is only possible if we can in some way come face to face with THE event that took place chronologically 2000 years ago. The Council of Trent through the Doctrine on the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass taught that, “in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the mass, that same Christ is contained and immolated in an unbloody manner, who once offered Himself in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross... For the victim is one and the same, the same now offering by the ministry of priests, who then offered Himself on the cross, the manner alone of offering being different”. [22nd Session of Trent. Doctrine on the Sacrifice of the Mass]. Thus, the sacrifice of the Mass is the very action of Christ washing away our sins with His Blood shed on the altar of the Cross.

So, brothers and sisters, we are warned that chronological time is apocalyptic. It can come to an end and the worst possible scenario is painted by Daniel and Christ: to be caught unawares. And yet, kairotic time gives us the assurance that we will never be caught unawares, that is, if we keep before us the true source of our sustenance: Christ Himself who becomes present to us really through the Sacrifice of the Mass that we celebrate every Sunday.

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

To many people the end of the world is tragic. Christianity, however, thinks otherwise. It is not an end but rather a beginning—an event not to be afraid of. Our fear is natural because of the unknown but our fear could also mask a lack of firm belief in the resurrection.

But, given that our conception of time is somewhat linear—yesterday, today and tomorrow (past, present and future) travel in a straight line—then, it makes sense that every ending is also a beginning. Hence, the old world needs to end before a new world can come about. The best analogy is the birth of a child. The womb is a paradise of security—food and lodging are assured. Yet, a child needs to leave the security of the womb before it can experience the freedom of an independent existence. Just like what Jesus told his disciples after his resurrection—in not so many words—“Even if you all enjoy my presence, yet, I must be gone before the Spirit can come”. Something must end before a new era begins.

Therefore, the end that the first reading and Gospel are pointing to, cataclysmic as it may be, is not an ending to be feared but instead to be welcomed—just like the Apostles welcoming Pentecost. We welcome the end because we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

But, our "looking forward" to the end is tempered or “moderated”. It is a looking forward set in the present. In fact, the apocalyptic feel of the first reading and Gospel is tempered by St Paul’s focus on the present. How? The first reading speaks of the coming days marked by fiery furnace and the Gospel about the days when the Temple will stand no more. But smacked in the middle, we hear St Paul telling people to imitate him in not being idle. By profession, Paul was a tent-maker. The context of his exhortation to imitate was because people thought that the end was near and as such they found excuses to be lazy.

St Paul making tents shows us that our concern for the future should be grounded in the present. As Jesus says, “Take care not to be deceived because many will come using my name proclaiming that the time is close at hand”. What you should be concerned with is how you actively live your present calling.

The key to being grounded is patient endurance and it is active rather than passive. The word “patient” may suggest passivity in the face of a situation beyond our control. But, our endurance is active because no matter how difficult, extenuating or trying a situation may be, it is never totally out of our control. No matter how constricted my freedom may be, yet I always possess a modicum or a small measure of inner freedom over my actions and my responses. Life imposes a lot of constraints upon us and that is to be expected. I give an example which I know of—as a priest I have many responsibilities and chief amongst them is being a shepherd. The shepherd [like our stained glass] is where the sheep are. If you ask me, many of the social responsibilities like functions or BEC gatherings, etc. are not my cup of tea. But given that they are part and parcel of the pastoral duties of a shepherd, I still have the freedom to choose to be happy or to be miserable. Here I need to make a clarification just in case I get invited out. I don’t want you to think that every time I go out or am in the midst of a social function, I am suffering because I am not. I have chosen to be happy in a situation over which I often have no control—that’s the point I want to make. [1]

The same can be said of married life too. Once married, there is already a tying down, a schedule to keep. [2] You can’t simply go out until 2:30am as if you were single. You have to explain to your husband or wife. There are housing or car loan repayments and all the attendant duties that come with married life. Sometimes the person you marry may even turn out to be less of what you had expected. In a situation where the Church says clearly: “no divorce”, you can choose to go through the motion or maybe ignore the constraints through excessive drinking, smoking, eating, extra-marital affairs, shopping, reckless driving or you can choose to be happy in a marriage—choose to work out a marriage, choose to respond positively, to have hope. This is the meaning of patient endurance. When a situation is beyond your control, you still can choose to live rather than to exist.

Otherwise, we are saying that we are no better than animals because we only respond to whatever is done to us. Actually, it is a feature of our age to moan and groan about what is being done to us because we have been somewhat brain-washed into believing that we are victims of circumstances. When we have no control, we see ourselves as victims and victims often suffer passively.

Our endurance is active, set in the present because it is based upon the resurrection. The first reading is clear about that. “But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness will shine out with healing in its rays”. The good news is that Baptism has endowed us with the grace to persevere. Confirmation strengthens us with the gift of fortitude and through the frequent reception of the Sacraments of Confession and Eucharist, we are nourished in the endurance race for which we have been entered.

Finally our endurance makes sense, that the present is embraced because there is a saying in St Paul to Timothy, that if we have died with him, we shall also live with him and if we endure because we love him, then we shall reign with him. (2 Tim 2:10-12). Each time we make the sign of the cross as we enter the Church, we are reminding ourselves that we die with Christ at our baptism in order to share in His resurrection.

Footnotes:
[1] In actual fact, the line between what is “private” and what is expected of me is sometimes not clear… It is part and parcel of being a public person. Either you live with it or you end up embittered by the fact. Many of our celebrities want the fame of publicity but not the responsibility that comes with being a public person.
[2] Indian weddings illustrate this “tying” point because there is the ceremony of the thalli tied around the woman’s neck. A bit unfair because the woman does not tie her husband with the thali but it says something to us about being tied down by commitment.

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

The Gospel describes how Christians are to be like bridesmaids in their readiness to welcome the return of the bridegroom. Be vigilant. Appropriately, the question to ask oneself is: Am I ready to meet the Lord now? Am I ready to meet Him either at His Second Coming or at the hour of my own death?

The answer is most probably no. Firstly, because I still have life to live. Our notion of life is that death should only come after a long and fruitful life. That is why we speak of living to a ripe old age and also in the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, when life is cut short, we call it a “tragic” death. Secondly, I am not ready because I live in a world of uncertainty. The uncertainty of life causes me to search for meaning. In this quest, the thought of death is set aside as we pursue fulfilment in life. Fulfilment is thought of in terms of what is accomplished: “my work is done, my vision is realised, my objective is met, there is nothing to worry about, and I am free from obligation”. Thirdly, I am not ready because my vision of heaven is blurred by a picture of life which is largely materialistic. Fullness of life is presented in terms of material wealth, material gain and material comfort. In fact, many of us unwittingly postpone living or we think we can only start to live when we have everything we need. Many of us are chased or haunted by the phantoms of material wealth, believing that life will take off only after we have taken the corner of wealth.

Our vision of life without death is challenged by evangelical vigilance. It means that we must be ready to stare death in the eye because death does not work according to our schedule. Like a thief in the night, it comes a knocking when we least expect it, especially when we are working hard to achieve our goals or to accomplish our objectives.

We are invited to live in a state of readiness as exemplified by a monk’s response to the impending end of the world. This monk was sweeping the floor of a monastery and when asked what he would do if he had less than an hour to live said: I’d go on sweeping the floor. That is testimony of a person’s faith in God and a testimony that his or her own life can stand up to close scrutiny. I live in such a way that I can be at any place and in any time. It is easy to live for the future, in the future but it’s hard to live for the now.

Thus, to attend to whatever duty that a person is called to at the time is what Jesus meant by being watchful servants. In the garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus returned to his disciples and found them sleeping, he warned them to "watch and pray" (Mark 14:38). To be vigilant indicates that we live in the presence of God and it implies that we become acutely attentive to the presence of God. This idea turns people away from God simply because many of us are afraid that being in the presence of God indicates that we are being kept on our toes. Even the phrase “to stand up to scrutiny” gives the uncomfortable feeling of being watched. It is bad enough that we are being watched by our neighbours, by our colleagues or even worse, being spied upon by our government. Our understanding of watchfulness is made poorer by the image of a God who is waiting to catch us unawares and waiting to punish.

But, listen to the Gospel as it says: Happy those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. I tell you solemnly, he will put on an apron, sit them down at table and wait on them. This is our God who delights to serve us. Imagine that when our hearts are in search of God; when we live in the presence of God, God comes to serve us. Thus, being in the presence of God does not mean being kept on our toes but on the contrary should draw us more and more into a life in which we want to make things right before God. It is something instinctive in us and we silently long for this righteousness. It’s like living in such a way that we do not need to pretend and we need never to wear a mask. Unless you are a pathological or chronic liar, then lying and adding more lies to cover another lie leaves you with a feeling of dissatisfaction. We instinctively do not like to live in darkness.

Death and vigilance are friends. Because we are afraid of dying, we reject death, and as such give excuses not to be vigilant—we postpone true living [as in living in truth, living in readiness] until such time when we are “ready”. The philosopher Martin Heidegger brought out an existential truth of who we are. We are “beings unto death”. This runs counter to our accepted view of life as a journey in which one is born, grows up and then after a period of active life, slows down to enter the process of death. But according to Heidegger, we begin to die as soon as we are born. Every breath we take moves us inexorably closer to death. There is never a point in our existence where death is not a part of. Death is not alien to our existence but is in fact, built into our existential structure.

Hence, to be vigilant is to live in the shadow of death. It is not a threat. It is an invitation to walk into the presence of God because beyond the shadow of death is the light of God. We are created to see God face to face and the only way to see God is to go through the door of death. For that, we must be ready. Be vigilant.