4th Sunday of Advent Year C 2024

The joyful meeting between mothers and sons of last Sunday is carried forward to this Sunday where attention is now shifted to Mary and her role in the work of Christ’s salvation. The Visitation can be viewed as a joyful response to the Annunciation. The event of the Incarnation, which according to the liturgical calendar took place on 25th of March, is the pivotal mystery of salvation. It is so central that we return to it every day whenever we recite the Angelus. It is a prayer that makes us relive the moment that God comes to Mary and from her Fiat, He begins to take flesh in her and from her.

The Collect of the Mass shines on Mary and it is basically the same prayer we recite at the end of the Angelus: “Pour forth, we beseech you, O Lord, your grace into our hearts, that we, to whom the Incarnation of Christ your Son, was made known by the message of an Angel, may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection”.

The Kingdom sprouts from events that are insignificant to most people. The description that Christ’s Kingdom is like a mustard seed may just have its origin from the moment of Christ’s conception. Hence, in the Gospel we heard, Mary’s Magnificat goes beyond the simple and almost inconsequential encounter between the mothers and sons. Look at the 1st Reading. Bethlehem that little negligible hamlet will soon take centre stage for from there the Saviour will come. Hebrews underscores that Christ by His death has replaced the old sacrifice with the one perfect sacrifice of His Body. Once again, God is working to save us.

God works great with small things. All we need is faith. Imagine a 14-year-old girl venturing out without supervision under any male family member is almost unthinkable culturally. The fact that she dared to walk alone to another place is a testament of her faith. The Child promised her by the angel gave her the confidence that He will protect her from any danger. The cousin leaping in his mother’s womb just confirmed it for Mary.

The joyful encounter now hits us. What do we do with joy? On a personal level, if joy is a repudiation of sin, then would the joy of our preparation have seen us going for our Christmas confession?

But more on a social level. Have we brought joy to others? Evangelii gaudium, you remember that? “The joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept His offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness, and loneliness. With Christ, joy is constantly born anew” (#1).

The joy of the Gospel challenges each Christ to be good news to those whom we meet. This sort of evangelisation is perfect in a country as diverse as ours. There is nothing spectacular to announce except that the inconsequential visit of Mary to Elizabeth signals that God is at work in every facet of our lives, no matter how negligible.

That being said, we are not talking here of a wholesale conversion. Rather we are speaking here of bringing the joy that allows others to give space to God in their lives. “Blessed are you amongst women and blessed is the fruit of your womb”.

Mary’s visit to Elizabeth gave voice to her benediction. Thus, can we be a blessing to others whom we encounter most especially in our daily lives. It does not have to be something grand. We can begin small and maybe even insignificant. As Christ conquers hearts one by one, so too our outreach to others is always one at a time. What we often miss out is the obvious. We often expect success in rather spectacular terms failing to appreciate the unexpected.

For example, have you ever forgiven someone who does not expect your forgiveness? Like your spouse or your child or your parent? A relationship can be so broken that one does not expect anything at all. This is where conversion takes place. Every day you interact with your spouse and you react to him or her in the usual manner, by raising your voice or ignoring him or her because in your mind he or she is like that and cannot change. Perhaps you take a different tack this time like with your aged parent is stubborn. On the other hand, you are quite certain that you hold the answer to your mom or dad’s health. Maybe you could love them where they are and not where you think they should be.

Rightfully this Sunday highlights Mary’s role as the Mother of Christ’s Body, the Church. Even though she is pivotal to Christ’s salvific mission but nowhere does the Church claims her to be saviour. Instead she is our model of faith because she allowed Christ to take flesh and gestate in her heart and wholeheartedly she shared Him with the world. She modelled for us to do the same. The little spaces which we free up by our small gestures of kindness and love can be evangelical. Start at home if we want to convert the world for Christ.

Much can be said about how sad the world is or how tough life can be for many. What can be said also is how much are we a source of sadness to the world. The Gospel is carried by the joy that permeates our soul and shines onto the world. Christmas is around the corner. You can catch a glimmer of joy in our decoration but the real joy should come from inside us, from the little spaces of our hearts where we allow Christ to take flesh, like Mary did.

3rd Sunday of Advent Year C 2024

Rejoice in the Lord for He is near. That is the general sentiment for this weekend’s liturgy. The title Gaudete Sunday is derived from the Latin antiphon: Gaudéte in Dómino semper: íterum dico, gaudéte. In English, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice”. The antiphon itself is taken from the Letter of St Paul to the Philippians. It echoes the joy that comes with Christ’s nearness and it is aptly reflected in the colour of the vestment. We dare to be joyful even in the midst of our penitential preparation because our Salvation is near.

The basis for this joy harkens us back to the moments of the Annunciation and the Visitation. In the former, Mary is visited by the Archangel and given the good news of Christ’s taking flesh in her womb. As a response, she goes to visit Elizabeth her cousin, who at that time, was already pregnant with John in her womb. The elated embrace between the two exhilarating mothers merely hides a far more profound cosmic drama. The Preface for the Nativity of John the Baptist states that “His birth brought great rejoicing; even in the womb he leapt for joy at the coming of human salvation”. Somehow I still prefer the pre-2011 translation because it is more poetic in expressing proximity for “even in the womb he leapt for joy, so near was man’s salvation”. An analogy is going to a durian farm and as you approach the farm, the ripening durian already exudes the fragrance (or the stench) we are familiar with that in smelling you can almost taste the durian.

Thus, the question is how often we recognise that Christ is near to us or that He is already in our midst. Since He is in our midst, what should our response be? The people who went into the desert asked John for signs of repentance. He gave it as sharing one’s resources, cessation of plundering or pillage and being just and honest in our dealings. We are not unawares that this is Gospel requirement. The path charted by the Baptist is no less than a whole-hearted embrace of the Kingdom’s values.

The change in our life’s direction is the beginning of joy. It is derived from our desire to love God and neighbour. When we choose to love God and neighbour, we will know joy which means that this is a matter of choice, that is, one chooses to be joyful. The writer of the letter to the Hebrew exhorts us, “Let us gaze upon Jesus, as the Author and the completion of our faith, who, having joy laid out before Him, endured the cross, disregarding the shame, and who now sits at the right hand of the throne of God”. Despite the violence that Jesus had to endure, His love for His Father and His desire for our salvation became the source of His joy.

Joy is radical for it touches the core of our being. It cannot be manufactured. For example, today, it has become almost impossible to counsel a grieving parent to be joyful. When people are suffering, we naturally shy away from asking them to look beyond their grief. And yet, the very experience of Christ, according to the author of the Hebrews, reveals us that spiritual joy is not incompatible with suffering. Such joy is far remove from the present notion that equates joy as a palpable happiness. In this sense, we may have constructed a sand-castle that associates happiness as an emotion which is to be enveloped or surrounded by creatively comfort. Every advertisement suggests that. Each newer model of a car is designed to enhance our bodily pleasures. Think of camping which is not what people do today. Instead what is sold is glamping. Glamping is a portmanteau consisting of two words, glamour and camping.

Is it possible to be joyful even when not feeling it? Take a look at John the Baptist. He is living in the desert, devoid of any creaturely comfort. How is it possible that he could endure such hardship? Perhaps it was from that single encounter with the Saviour that gave consolation to sustain him, to be his strength and hope as he embraced the hardship of prophecy and finally his own beheading. It might not be easy to appreciate this but think of a man or woman who has seen someone for just a fleeting moment but from there fell in love and yet separated for almost forever. That person lives from that moment of having fallen in love. The entire epic of the Titanic was premised on that one iconic scene where Jack and Rose stood at the bow of the ship with Celine Dion belting “My heart will go on” in the background. Joy is an ability to live for that moment which sustains us for a lifetime.

However, we have become experts at living out the so-called “joyful” part of Christmas meaning we are good at embracing and enjoying all the so-called fun part so much so that we tend to forget that there is a repentance part too. Trouble begins when we reduced well-being to material expressions that it becomes almost impossible to be joyful especially in times of trouble. Joy, like peace, is not the absence of conflict or of pain. Rather it is experienced as a serenity in spite of conflict and suffering. It is an ability to persevere despite trials. As Jesus warned the apostles of their future martyrdom, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete”. John 15:11

Joy requires that we live in the present, not trapped in the past nor frightened by the future. A way of living in the past is by unforgiveness. Sometimes we are weighed down by hurts in the past and we continually hang onto them so much so that we do not know how to let go. It is sad to be burdened by what has been that one fails to see what can be. On the other hand we can also be trapped by a fear that God cannot take care of us in the future that we no longer know how to enjoy the present moment.

For the past, we take advantage of the season because it calls us to go for confession. The practice of examining our conscience daily may be a good start before we go for the Sacrament of Confession. For the future it means we become a bit more aware of the heart’s inclination to love the wrong things. When we are fearful of the future we will begin to fill the hearts with security which we might not really need. Loving the wrong things will not give us the space to be joyful and be present to the Lord.

This Sunday, choose to be joyful. It is not a feeling but rather the attitude. It is a capacity of the heart to say to God, I am here. This attitude does not require that we go away but rather be intentional in recognising that we can choose. As St Francis de Sales used to say, “Bloom where you are planted”. John the Baptist bloomed in the desert. May be we can bloom in Johor Bahru even in the shadow of a Singapore that is soon to be extinct. (According to Elon Musk).

Immaculate Conception 2024

Today we celebrate two solemnities because we could not celebrate one yesterday. Since the Immaculate Conception fell on the 2nd Sunday of Advent and because the Sundays during Advent rank higher than the Solemnities of our Lady, it is relegated to the day after. So for today we have two Solemnities. Firstly, the Immaculate Conception. Secondly, being my birthday it is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Misconception. Jokes aside, did you know that originally 9th Dec was the date for the celebration of the Conception of Mary. At least it was in the Orthodox Church.

Is it important to celebrate this solemnity? Obviously it is because we could have skipped it, like some of the feast days, instead of moving it from Sunday to Monday. I would like to approach this Solemnity from the perspective of what the world will soon witness next month: the inauguration of a new old president of the USA. He has already started to form his cabinet. In the process of shaping his administration, each nominated member has to go through the scrutiny of the confirmation process by the Senate. It is a bruising affair. But what is interesting lies behind the process.

In the last few decades or so, the world may have finally caught up with the Immaculate Conception. By this, I do not mean that they have finally accepted the dogma. We have to look at a cultural phenomenon known as cancel culture. What is cancel culture but a tacit or unspoken approval of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. How many nominations have been or scuttled or sunk because of a past sin? How many celebrities, for the sake of their fame, have had to apologise for a mistake of the past? A singer or an actor at 20 years old twitted a racist statement and forever he or she would be coloured by a stupidity of the past, that is, when someone finally discovered that twit. In other words, the process leading to the confirmation of a cabinet member is nothing more than the affirmation of the Immaculate Conception.

Everyone who ever harbours the ambition to be a minister or secretary should be sinless. In other words, even though the world does not believe in the dogma, the truth is the world expects the dogma to be operative in everyone’s life. One is supposedly born immaculate. How have we come here? Such a notion arose from a positive philosophy that man is “naturally” good and he is capable of becoming like god through his own efforts. We can deify ourselves without God. Divinisation is God’s gift to us. The little liturgical act of adding a drop of water into the wine later recognises that. “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity”. This process of deification is God’s work on us.

Hence, in light of this great work of salvation to divinise creation, the Church proposes that only one human, apart from Jesus Christ, in all human history who is immaculately conceived while the rest of humanity is prone to sin. Two points to note. Firstly, that a person is sinful is not new knowledge. Never be surprised by the ability of man to descend to the lowest pits of hell. Secondly, true freedom is best exercised not on our own but best preserved when, like Mary, the creature answers Yes to God’s divine will. And it is this yes to God that begins for each one of us the road to redemption. A person may have a sinful past but no one is condemned to the prison of one’s history. Instead through grace, man is lifted from the darkness of sin into a future of hope. People make mistakes. They are marked by their mistakes but they are never canonised in their mistakes. Original sin is not a blight on human nature. Whether Adam ate the apple or not, humanity was always going to need the Saviour. Since humanity has been vitiated by sin, still, conversion is made possibly by grace. Even the most hardened criminal is loved by God and saved by Christ, if he desires redemption.

In summary, the Immaculate Conception is such an important dogma for us today especially because we seem to have repudiated Original Sin as exemplified by an almost wholesale embrace of cancel culture. As a result of this rejection of Original Sin, faith in the Resurrection makes no sense to a humanity caught in despair of its fallen nature. There is no afterlife because there is no possibility of redemption. Therefore, the Immaculate Conception is even more important for us because its full flowering, which is the Assumption of Mary into heaven, affords us a vision of what is possible when we die in God’s grace. Indeed Mary is the hope of tainted humanity for she is Advent of what is in store for each man, woman and child. She is our sweetness and our hope. Indeed as the poet says, she is tainted humanity’s solitary boast. If ever we want to say to God, “Hey, we are great”, it is never anyone of us, except Mary.

Mary, conceived without Original Sin. Pray for us.

2nd Sunday on Advent Year C 2024

The theme of preparation remains this Sunday even though the focus is shifted to the person of St John the Baptist. For him, vigilance and preparation must include reparation. The voice in the wilderness calls us to make straight the paths of our hearts. Asking for forgiveness does not mean we have no past to amend or to correct.

Christmas is fast approaching and we are definitely excited but in terms of preparing, is it mostly focused on the external? And we have plenty of reminders of how Christmas should look or feel like. They are simply materialistic and emotional. For example, friends have sent me fruit cakes. What do I do with them? Well, I added more brandy so that the cakes can drown in it. As you know, instinctively we are geared towards the physical preparation.

Thus, the 1st Reading is helpful. The Prophet Baruch announced to a people in exile that even in their darkest moment, the Lord has not forgotten them. They will be accompanied by justice and mercy. Those who are exiled, energised by hope, are waiting for God to fulfil His promise. Waiting for God flows into the 2nd Reading. While St Paul may speak of his affection for the Philippians, what is relevant for preparation is how one should be waiting. He exhorts the Philippians to grow more and more into the shape of Christ. In other words, hope is more than just a desire for change in one’s material status. It is also a longing for the conversion of one’s spiritual state.

With a heavily therapeutic cloud hanging over our heads, the care for our health is indeed a paramount concern. Following this focus, perhaps the state of our soul should be a consideration too. The Baptist in the Gospel urged the people to prepare the way for the Lord through the repentance for sins. “Paths are straightened, valleys are filled, mountain and hill be laid low, rough roads are smoothened. Mankind shall see the salvation of God”.

Indeed, the season for a more profound self-examination has return. But this soul-searching is not just an invitation to shine the light on ourselves. In fact, the word repentance can have a rather negative connotation because it is evocative or suggestive of a negative self-examination, a kind of chest-beating self-flagellation. It is not as “Santa Claus is coming to town” suggests, “to find out who has been naughty or nice”. The Gospel is not that. Instead our repentance must come from a positive space, that is, from opening our hearts for Christ to enter. Spiritual preparation is therefore giving space to Christ to be born in our heart. If sin separates us from God, then the return to God signals the repudiation of sin.

Even the Eucharistic Liturgy itself is really an invitation to turn to God with hope and it is more a rejoicing trust than it is a sad personal recrimination. For example, the penitential rite is never meant to be a moment of indulgent self-beating. Instead, we turn our attention to the Lord. Our penitence is based on God’s merciful love coming towards us. Listen to this appeal: “You, O Lord are magnificent in your mercy and for that we ask you, O Lord, have mercy on us”. Contrast this invocation with “We have been bad, Lord, have mercy”. There are two different foci here.

Our penitence is basically a recognition and a praise of God whereas the second is rather “indulgent”. Why? The point is who amongst us has not been bad. At the beginning of Mass, do we enter into His presence by reminding Him who we truly are? Would that be considered a wonderful discovery that we have been bad or that we are totally sinful? The fact is, there is nothing new about our sinfulness and the beginning of Mass might not be the best place for us to highlight that. Instead, if Christ’s sacrifice is anything, the Mass is where we acknowledge, remind ourselves by celebrating God’s goodness to us. That is why we come before Him.

We enter God’s presence not in fear but with confidence in His kindness towards us. Our preparation and reparation might just make better progress if we turn toward God and recognise that it is up to Him to change us. That is why we come to Him all the time despite our failures.

Think about it. We would like to be a better person but a better self is not our gift to God. A better self is God’s gift to us. How to be a better self is when we give space for God to make the changes in us. St Paul is the perfect model for us. He complained of the thorn in his side and asked for God to remove it. The Lord replied that His grace should be sufficient. From that moment on, St Paul left it to the Lord to shape him into a better person. Sadly and this is my reading of l’esprit de l’époque or the spirit of the times. Current philosophy leans heavily on the idea that we are basically good and because of that we can be gifts to God. Coming to Church is simply a good person doing God a favour. Perhaps you can detect this in one particular phrasing of the Act of Contrition? “And because You are so good, I will try not to sin again”. It is true that we have been redeemed but as long as we are here on earth, there will never be a moment when we do not need our Saviour.

In summary, Christmas preparation is still afoot for many of us. Just like the renovation is ongoing in the Cathedral, that is the state of our souls. Change is ongoing. Even as we put up the tree at home to ready ourselves for Christmas, what is central is to remember that the heart should also be prepared for Christ’s coming. Turn our hearts to Christ and offer Him the space that He needs so that we may be a part of the perfect sacrifice that He offers to God our Father.

1st Sunday of Advent Year C 2024

Even though we proclaim Christ as sovereign Ruler of a Kingdom, the truth is that He conquers one heart at a time. This Sunday we are invited to remain attentive as we begin the new liturgical year. Appropriately, in the line up to the drama of Christ’s birth, we are urged to be vigilant. To be watchful is not a stage to arrive at or a level to advance to. Instead it is a state of being, that is, we must continually be on the look-out.

As part of vigilance, we prepare. The 1st Reading speaks of God’s promise. He will fulfil His vow to Israel and Judah. On the side of God, it is certain that He will keep His promise. On our side, it is to be prepared for when that moment arrives. While St Paul highlights the preparation and diligence in terms of holiness and pleasing God, the Responsorial Psalm chimes in by letting us know the God will teach us His path which leads to holiness and pleasing Him.

When it comes to vigilance and preparation, why do we suffer from lapses?

A friend of mine used to tell me this—my memory is perfect but short. Basically, it was his get-out-of-gaol card that he uses every time he forgets to do what he had promised. It is true that our collective memory is short and for that reason, we frequently fail to learn from our past mistakes. History is condemned to repeat itself.

Man easily forgets and the history of Israel is a litany of her amnesia.

A way to forgetfulness is when we view vigilance as a feather in our cap, so much so that when we have become aware, we tend to let our guard down. There is an aspect within the Parable of the Sower that we may overlook. According to the narrative, some seed fall on the wayside. However we are too distracted by the productivity of the other seed that we overlook the fate of the seed that fall by the wayside. These wayside seed symbolise a form of inertia that is spiritually fatal. Those who are content to remain passive make it easy for the devil to pick them off.

Now imagine that everything you do in the Lord seems to be working for you. You attend Mass on Sundays and you dutifully send the children to Sunday catechism, donate to charity, are participative in Church-organised activities. You seem to have arrived and it is easy to think that nothing can touch you. Take it easy because everything appears good but is that enough.

The answer might surprise you but it comes from realm of prayer. We can be praying regularly and yet our prayers are dry. If we do not pray, dryness is at least understandable but why when we are praying and are serious about it, there does not seem to be any palpable affectivity, meaning that we feel nothing at all. Instead there is a deep sense that God is far away. God seems uncaring.

A spiritual director once remarked that such dryness is not a sign of God’s absence but could be an invitation to “duc in altum”, that is, put out into the deep. God is inviting the soul into a deeper relationship with Him. It is an invitation to leave behind the feelings of God, good as they are, in order to embrace the God of feelings. It is a challenge to trust in God for He wants us to progress further into our relationship with Him.

Vigilance is an attentiveness to the promptings of God to enter His space. But the Devil would prefer for us to remain superficial in our relationship with God—to be the seed that fall by the wayside. It benefits him because it makes his work of damnation much easier. The more passive we are, the better for the Devil.

Securing our relationship with God is mirrored in our experience of friendship. We progress from mere acquaintance to friendship. To get there, we exchange our life stories with our new-found friend. There is a natural progression in the path of friendship to enter further into surrender and trust. But how many of us are afraid? We fear losing because the other party cannot be trusted. Since we are fearful, we tend towards superficiality.

Christ invites us to a vigilance that is not superficial. However, in this invitation, He will not and He cannot remove us from trials or tribulations especially as our friendship with Him develops. This is an inconvenient truth because we tend to harbour a notion that relationship with the Lord will shield us from troubles and pain. If anything, relationship with Christ always entails an uphill climb to Calvary. St Teresa of Avila’s gentle retort to Christ is spot on for us. It may be a tongue-in-check reply but it reveals the truth. She was nearly swept away while crossing a river but Christ sustained her and she in her typical manner asked Him when He would stop messing about. His reply that He treats His friends as such only drew a quick retort that maybe it explains His lack of friends.

This anecdote teaches us that despite troubles Christ is never far away even though He would allow us to be tested terribly. Thus, it is part of vigilance to pray for strength and believe that He will keep his promise to us. Vigilance is always keeping our eyes fixed and our hearts focused on Him in good times or in bad.

Christ the King Year B 2024

Have you heard of Klaus Schwab? Maybe we are more familiar with George Soros whom Mahathir accused of damaging the country’s economy because he speculated on the Ringgit prior to the 1997 financial crisis. Anyway, the former, meaning Klaus Schwab, founded the advocacy think-tank called the World Economic Forum in 1971 and annually they meet in Davos, Switzerland. The latter, George Soros, is basically one of the billionaire participants.

Anyway, if you do not know these personalities or their plans, it is not the end of the world. More importantly, does this slogan sounds just about right for you? Building a greener, a fairer and a smarter world. These words describe the Great Reset.

The movement initiated by Klaus Schwab aims to transform the world into a better place that is fair for all. What made this dream closer to reality was the devastation brought about by the Coronavirus pandemic. It presented the perfect platform to jumpstart the world aright.

Perhaps it has escaped the notice of these great thinkers and leaders that the Great Reset is not humanity’s first attempt at “reshaping and unifying” the world. Very early in history, this very alluring idea was hatched when mankind tried to construct the Tower of Babel. The early 1900s saw Marx attempting to forge a fairer system where everyone will have access to what they need. Babel brought disarray into humanity whereas Communism destroyed lives.

Yet somehow mankind cannot help itself when it comes to attempts at setting the world aright. Given our fascination with performance indices, we are inclined to define ourselves through the metrics of achievement. There is an obsession with numbers and as a consequence, the temptation to push for a systemic reset is great. Coupled with this temptation is the hubris, the arrogance that every emerging generation seems to think that it holds the panacea to the ills of the world.

While it is noble to envision a better world, the reality is that systems can only do so much. Take for example, fines. Monetary penalty works to keep behaviour in check. The heftier the fine, the more subservient the citizens. But what if there were no enforcements? Like in this country. We have notices of fines for smoking but never enforced. In general, people tend to revert to their default position. In other words, you can take a monkey out of a jungle but you cannot take the jungle out of a monkey. Fear may be a great motivator but it is basically just that, fear and no more.

The Great Reset does not begin with grand systems. The Great Reset that we yearn for so badly actually belongs to Christ alone. The programme was already put into place two thousand years ago. He died in order to justify and to restore man to God’s favour. The price for that redemption, the Great Reset, was paid with His blood. It is an ongoing programme that continues with His Church through Apostolic Succession. Sadly, we find it hard to believe that there is already a reset or a restoration initiated by the Lord. If “system” is what fascinates us perhaps we should consider embracing His programme and it is His Sacramental system. Unfortunately, our fixation with novelty drives us to search for the better solution as if the Lord’s reset had been deficient.

Nature has been weakened by sin. Christ’s passion, death and resurrection is aimed at restoring our weakened state. To support this goal, His great reset, He left us His Church and His Sacraments. This is the part which is rather mundane and not in any way exciting. Imagine coming for Mass every day. It is a ritual which can be boring but it is there that Christ’s life-giving Sacrament allows me to be part of the Reset. Every Sacrament is Christ Himself making us a part of His programme of restoring the world to the Father.

Thus, the Great Restoration begins with me. It is an intensely personal journey. Becoming a better-quality Catholic is, by far, the most graceful answer to the Great Reset. The two great Sacraments of Reset of the Church are Confession and the Eucharist. One tends to the wounds caused by sin. One provides strength for the journey. Both the Sacraments belong to the life-long process of reorienting our compass in the direction of Christ.

Today we celebrate Christ the King. Discipleship is a daily reality. Like coming back from work and looking after a family—elderly parent who is losing her mind, young children who cannot afford housing. It is mundane and precisely the point. Christ did not conquer the world with the wave of a finger. He conquered the world one heart at a time. He did not conquered classes or races or societies but individual consciences. Temptation is always there to “reinvent” ourselves, as the Great Reset is one example. But as the Psalmist reminds us, “If the Lord does not build, then the labourer shall toil in vain”. Today we turn to the great Architect of the only reset for humanity, Christ the King and from Him we ask for the conversion of heart and the strength to follow Him closely and daily.

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

Ordinary Time is drawing to a close but unlike Year A’s focus on the end time, the spotlight of Year B shines on faith in the midst of tribulation. From trusting in God’s generosity, we continue with the theme of faith in the Lord.

From the perspective of the Readings, discipleship has a cost which can only be paid by faith in the Lord. Without faith in Him, nobody can ever bear the price of discipleship.

Following Christ through trials and tribulations only makes sense if there is an end to our time on earth. The “Eschaton” invites us to think about the afterlife. However, it is a rather uncomfortable issue for some because nobody wants to be reminded of death. Two years ago, a priest from a parish not too distant from here was found dead in the bathroom of the Diocesan Retreat House. His death was most unexpected. It was unnerving. Unwittingly, we tend to run like clockwork. We wake up in the morning to slog or to slave during day and back to sleep at night. We eat from one meal to another. Sometimes even before we have finished eating we are already planning for the next meal. There is a rhythm or cadence to life which we take for granted. All we need is a spanner in the works. We assume that life will run smoothly but a death just throws us off kilter. It was in the aftermath of a death close to the presbyterium that we began to have workshops about our health etc.

But it does not take long for us to revert to our old ways. Until the next untimely death. Whether we like it or not, we need to think about the afterlife. We can go on accumulating but when we are at death’s door, nothing of what we possess materially can pass through that portal. What counts are the good deeds which we have done, the merits we have gathered, not as a guarantee of our entrance into eternal life but as gifts which, by God’s grace, we present to Him. In other words, all the merits we have are His gifts in the first place.

To reach that place, we need to calculate the cost for the journey. Much like going on an extended trip. The destination determines the amount of petrol to pump and also the toll to pay in order to get there. Last Sunday, the two widows gave their all. What are we prepared to sacrifice so that we may enter the gates of eternal life?

In the matter of paying the price of discipleship, we may have “romanticised” it by glamorising it with “blood”. While it is true that martyrdom is bloody yet the best description for it is actually bloodless. What is required is patience that comes from daily living out the call of Christ as in the Shema and the love of neighbour. It is not glamorous at all. It is daily and it is grinding. That is the cost of discipleship.

To give an example. Before marriage, the man and woman have great dreams of their shared life together. Just after their marriage, the couple remains barren despite all attempts to remedy their childlessness. Top that with the debilitating stroke of a spouse that ends with caring for the partner’s daily needs and also balancing the responsibility of being the sole bread winner for the family. This is a bloodless discipleship arising from the vow to remain together “for better or for worse”. It is not glossy or glitzy at all. In fact, such a life weighs upon and wears down a person. It is through difficulties that one gathers merits with the grace of God.

So, when Christ spoke of the end-time, it might seem to us that it is set in the future which we have to watch out for. The truth is the end-time can be closer in the sense that we might just drop death, like the priest in the bathroom mentioned earlier. Or like anyone engaging life like clockwork only to be stopped by an untimely death.

The watchfulness that the Lord asks of us is not as much directed to that specific time in the future as it is focused on our behaviour, our duties, our discipline because we can never tell when the time is for us to make that journey to eternity. Thus, we are called to be mindful that whatever good we can do, we should and we must never waste the many opportunities granted to us to make up and to repent while we can.

This sounds rather forbidding and frightening but if we look at the warnings of Jesus we realise that He is not trying to scare us. The life we have on earth is temporal. Between temporal and eternal, there is no comparison, no measure. If anything, the trials that we undergo is but a blip in the spectrum of eternity. We ought to live for that eternity. It might be better to remember that the end-time is not out there but rather it is in our hearts. Christ’s sacrifice has defeated Satan’s power forever but the battle continues in our hearts. It is there that His victory is to be asserted.

In fact, Christ makes it a point to emphasise that all will pass away. As the author of the Ecclesiastes reminds us, “All is vanity” and so we take heed. What Christ also promises is that He will come again and with Him, our salvation is assured. We should attempt to live as if today is our last day so that when we are called, we have already said our goodbyes. Our hearts are already prepared and we have been longing for the coming of the Lord.