18th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

Last week, the suggested military motif in the Gospel gave us a chance to reflect on what it meant for the Church on earth to be classified as “militant”. Whilst the word “militant” might sound politically incorrect, we explored the idea of militancy in the context of Christ’s mission and the conclusion we drew was that the term Church Militant aptly described Christians in the world, for we have been and still are engaged in the crucial struggles of our time, a struggle characterised by Evil attempting to distract Man’s search for Him Who is Truth, Beauty and Good.

This Sunday’s Gospel reveals an on-going demand for nutrition that the crowd had of Christ. Away from their military ambition for Christ, the people on seeing what Jesus could do, would not let up in their pursuit, if not to make Him King, as least, to be someone who could on a whim conjure up a feast to satisfy the pangs of hunger. This subsistent demand on Christ brings us face to face with the question of who Jesus Christ really is. How do we perceive Him and what are the implications of our perception.

Firstly, our perception of reality is perhaps much more complicated simply because we are no longer at “home” with reality. Prior to the advent of modernity, Western Philosophy simply accepted that the mind could know reality as it is. In other words, physics [ie, science] and metaphysics [ie religion and that which cannot be proven scientifically] co-existed. But, the advent of modernity made the process of knowing more complicated meaning that what cannot be proven scientifically, for example, religious, was relegated to the personal, the superstitious and the unknowable. Even in the area of science’s expertise a thing could be “known” via our theories, hypotheses or models. Or, a thing we knew could also be merely our sense impressions, according to Hume and causality was explained as a connexion of what we have been accustomed to seeing of events flowing from to another. The complication brought about by modernity was located within the process of knowing. Thus, instead of knowing a thing in itself, we began a transforming migration towards what a thing could mean for us. It was an inevitable shift and in summary, because we could no longer know the thing in itself, we began to understand reality in its relation to us. Galileo did not just inaugurate the shift from geocentricism to heliocentricism, Descartes also initiated the paradigm shift from our focus on the object to the preoccupation with the subject. Thus, the question of who Jesus Christ was (objectively), had become the question of who Jesus Christ was to us (subjectively).

This shift was quite utilitarian in its expression, much like the crowds’ intent for Jesus. But, the truth is, we are by and large utilitarian and therefore meaning does play a great emphasis in the way we understand reality. And today the crowd in the Gospel is led to understand who Jesus is rather than what Jesus can do for them.¹

Like the crowd, we are challenged to rethink that meaning is not the ultimate focus of life. For if it were, then we need to explain why a world organised along the line of meaningful existence has left trail of “empty” destruction. In the face of a formidable might to create meaning, why are we still so empty and shallow? Meaning must draw its reference not only from us but from reality itself.

Today the reality that confronts us is Jesus Christ. In the multiplication of the loaves and fish, our attention is directed not only to the nutrition we consume but to the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist we celebrate. The transubstantiation is only possible, not by science but by His power as God. Is He really God or do we just consider Him meaningful in our lives? Let me clarify that Who He is and what He means are not mutually exclusive but, sadly, the prevailing wisdom about Jesus Christ is that He can be anything except God. He scores better as a superstar. He teaches better as a guru. He saves better as a liberator. In all things, He is no better than an exemplar, the best of all human beings, the most capable of all teachers and perhaps the most competent deliverer.

The man who fed the crowd is God, no less. Acknowledging Who He is has life-changing implications. We cling to Him not only because He is meaningful but because He is life. Make no mistake that the world is not saved by meaning. The “meaningful” lives of many rich and famous and many of us are nothing but vacuous and that hollow which we want fill with adventures and fun and consumption can only be filled and satisfied by the truth who is Jesus Christ. Ultimately, who Jesus is will lead to what Jesus can do for us and how much He means to us. What begins with every human search for meaning must lead to a search for God Himself. On His part, He answers our search giving us what truly will satisfy: the Bread of Life, the Bread of Eternal Life.

^FOOTNOTE:   

¹ Meaning is a crucial component in our interaction with reality. In fact, modernity, by and large, is organised according to this one simple principle that whatever we encounter, it has to be meaningful. And meaning is often reduced to merely the palpable surge of elation we feel. A good example of how much meaning is central to our experience is the abhorrence for rituals as repetitive and therefore meaningless. Youths often lament how meaningless Mass is to them because they do not experience any palpable pleasing sensation that Catholic rituals as such do not evoke. On another matter, Catholic rituals have become “dead” and therefore unable to reach out to us because we have subjected rituals to the dictates of the “mind”—that they have to be understood in order to be meaningful. It is an emasculation of the power of rituals to give meaning.

26th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

In the Parable of the Sower, some seeds fell on rocky ground, they sprang up quickly but because they had no roots they withered and died. You may be wondering what bearing the Parable of the Sower has on the Gospel today.

Firstly, the parable in today’s Gospel was addressed to the established religious authorities of the time—the chief priests and elders of the people. These so-called religious people took offence at Jesus fraternising with sinners and the Gentiles. In the parable, the sinners and the Gentiles were represented by the elder son, whereas the chief priests and elders of the people were represented by the younger son. The sinners and the Gentiles chose to go their own way but repented and thus gained an entry into the Kingdom. The first reading says this clearly: “When the sinner renounces sin to become law-abiding and honest, he deserves to live”. On the other hand, the established religious authorities were those who knew better but yet failed to act on their privileged knowledge and as a result they excluded themselves from the Kingdom of God [1]. Again, the first reading says: “When the upright man renounces his integrity to commit sin and dies because of this, he dies because of the evil that he himself has committed”.

This is where the connexion between the Parable of the Sower and the Two Sons may be established. The seeds falling upon rocky ground can be taken to represent the religious authorities who know better but do not live their better knowledge. There is a shallowness in their behaviour that can be described as “lip-service”. But, interestingly, that they paid lip-service to God is not actually our problem here. Why? Everyone pays lip-service to one thing or another. It is part and parcel of who we are as sinners.

What is problematic is when we begin to associate “religious” behaviour as the cause of our lip-service. It is as if being religious, like the chief priests and the elders, is an obstacle to a meaningful relationship with God. An example is the use of the term “holy”. So, many of us do not like to be labelled as the “holy” type because the holy type is the hypocritical type. Isn’t this a common answer when asked to “serve” the church or in an empty church to sit in front? [2] “I am not holy” may express a genuine and humble fear of failure to live up to the standard of holiness but it actually disguises the fear that “holiness” is very close to hypocrisy. This is because the “higher” you rise, the further or harder will your “fall” be and it probably explains why we are suspicious of the “holy” types, because we keep seeing those who claim themselves to be holy but in actual fact live unholy lives. That is why people stay away from church, because "church" is a gathering of hypocrites.

Furthermore, our problem with what we term as shallow or superficial religious behaviour is compounded or complicated by the dichotomy between “ritual” and spontaneity. Ritual does not give life, spontaneity, on the other hand, does. So we scorn or disparage the “ritualistic” or regular part of life. Is it any wonder why young people have a problem with the Mass? Because the celebration of the Mass is distinctly “regular”. We understand "regular" in the sense of occurring at fixed intervals but the Latin root of the word “regula” means being subjected to rule. Rules are expressed through rituals and rituals belong to “established” religion and "established" religion is peopled by the so-called "holy" hypocrites.

That is why the Parable of the Sower might be instructive. All religions must have clear moral guidelines and elaborate rituals to maintain the semblance of what they are and to prevent them from degenerating into arbitrariness or caprice. Nothing is more destructive of your worship than a priest arbitrarily “praying” the Pater Noster at one Mass and skipping it at another Mass.

In short, religious or regular practices cannot be reduced to just primarily keeping the rules or observing the rituals. This is where we need to be on guard. Keeping the rules and observing the rituals are good but in themselves they tend to render our religious observances shallow and superficial. In the chief priests and the elders, that superficiality turned them into self-righteous judges of characters.

Nowhere in the Gospels did Jesus say, “Do not follow the rules”. And He Himself observed the “rules” by keeping the Sabbath. The Parable of the Two Sons may teach us that there are three things necessary for entry into the Kingdom. They are (1) right thinking, (2) right worship and (3) right acting. The chief priests and the elders probably excelled in right thinking. They knew the law and they studied theology. They may even observe the rubrics of worship carefully—how to bow, how to genuflect, how to sign themselves. But they, like the younger son, failed in right acting. They didn’t know how to love. They only knew how to judge those who didn’t measure up to their “superficiality”.

People today are repelled by shallow behaviour. This is more so if our behaviour does not commensurate with what we teach and celebrate. It is important to note that bad behaviour does not make the religion bad. Bad behaviour just makes the religion harder to accept. This is probably the challenge of Islam and the Western World. In the 2nd Reading, St Paul asks of us to imitate the humility of Christ. So, humility is the way to go for us who are sinners to ensure that we become beacons rather than stumbling blocks for bending knees (worship) and acclaiming tongues (teach) in search of Christ the Lord.

Right thinking and right worship have their rightful place in the way we live our lives. The ideal is for us to go beyond superficiality in the observance of rituals and rules to bear fruit in the way we behave: justly and with mercy.

We had a vigil on Friday night to pray for the country. I am not saying that we were right in what we did but I am explaining why we did what we did. Right thinking (orthodoxy) and right worship (orthopoesis) leads to right action (orthopraxis). John Paul II is insistent that there is truth to be known and to be taught. You find this teaching in the encyclical Fides et ratio. So too Benedict XVI. His insistence on “worship” is telling us something as well. We are very much guided by what he said in Deus caritas est, that “prayer, as a means of drawing ever new strength from Christ, is concretely and urgently needed. People who pray are not wasting their time, even though the situation appears desperate and seems to call for action alone”. This praying that we asked for, before the Blessed Sacrament, is important if we aim to act rightly. However, in order to act justly we need to convert a mindset. Firstly, hypocrisy affects everyone, not just the “holy” ones. Let not those who claim to be holy but are hypocritical deter us from seeking holiness. Holiness is a matter of personal responsibility and not dependent on whether or not the others are holy. Secondly, we must invert the order that “right acting” is proof of right thinking and right worship. Instead, right acting is fruit of right thinking and right worship. So, if you want justice, again I say, let’s search for the Truth (who is the Christ) and let’s worship Him.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] It does not follow that knowledge always leads to right action. Just because you know more does not mean you will behave according to what you know even though that would have been the ideal.
[2] This could probably be explained by the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. One a hypocrite and the other a sinner, who standing at the back of the temple went back justified with God.