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Somehow Pentecost and Corpus Christi seem to flow seamlessly into this first Sunday in the second part of Ordinary Time. The Readings give us a sense of God’s compassion for humanity.
In the 1st Reading, God’s care was demonstrated through the Israelites being set apart as the Lord’s people and for His glory. The Psalms reflect this truth. St Paul simply laid out for the Romans that the cost of God’s compassion is measured by the price He paid to redeem sinners. In the Gospel, Christ was profoundly affected by a crowd that was seemingly lost without a shepherd.
There is a transition between Israel and the Church. As the 12 tribes of Israel were set apart for God’s glory, now the 12 Apostles sent out as the natural successors of the 12 tribes. Christ laboured amongst the people. He fed them. He healed them. He cleansed the lepers. He gave sight to the poor. He drove demons from those who are possessed. The Apostles and consequently His Church share in the same mission of compassion to the world. We are to be His eyes and ears, His hands and feet.
The word missionary sounds foreign. For many the word connotes the days of old when missionaries were sent to foreign lands but those days are mostly in the past. Moreover, the notion of “venturing into foreign lands” fits more closely with the movement of colonising territories. For example, the Augustinians, Franciscans and Dominicans arrived in the New World after the Spanish conquistadors had subjugated the local population. As such the missionary waves may be seen as a by-product of the imperial expansions of Western European colonial powers.
What we may not realise is that that Christ’s compassionate outreach is actually reflected in the Concluding Rite. In English, “Go, the Mass is ended” does not capture what the Latin dismissal means. “Ite, missa est”. Literally it means, “Go, it is sent” which, as an imperative does not make sense. What is more coherent is “Go, you are sent”. In fact, the words Mass, Missal, dismissal are all related to sending. At the end of every Eucharist, we are sent and therefore, the days of some superior foreigners coming to civilise us are over. Closer to home the meaning “Ite, missa est” is related to our homes, our work places and our communities.
“Ite, missa est” makes each baptised an apostle. The mission to radiate and diffuse God’s presence in the world is not the preserve of or limited to a handful men or women. No longer is missionary a specialised calling for a few. It is the vocation of every baptised person. This is the full extent of what it means to be baptised as priest, prophet and king—the basis for the universal call to holiness.
Thus, to gather in Church is truly expression of our common priesthood to worship. We offer who we are and what we have to God. Our talents are not merely our own in the sense that God bestowed them for our self-enrichmentonly. Rather, through our blessings and endowment, the Lord intends to touchthe world. Therefore at the end of Mass, after Holy Communion, we bring Christ into the world. Our worship does not end within the walls of the Cathedral. We carry our worship out into the world.
That is not an easy task. Outside the Cathedral, the challenge is to allow Christ’s teachings to deeply influence our words and behaviour. But there is a problem. At the personal level, each one of us, from Pope to Prince to Pauper, struggle with individual weaknesses and sins. Whilst it is crucial to cooperate with God’s grace in our personal conversion, there is still a reality far bigger than our personal foibles and failures. More than our personal struggles, the reality is we are also encountering a world which is not only frightening but a world that is fearful. We suffered a devastating pandemic, right? And that was frightening. All we need is a bout of flu-like symptoms in the general population and the sale of mask will shoot up and that is the reality of a world that is truly afraid.
In our country, for the first time, a state within the Federation, has two rulers. Furthermore, we have at the federal level, a government of supposed unity and at the state level, a coming election that will soon pit the component parties of the same federal coalition that rules against each other. Crazy but that is a fact. In the USA, the Democratic Party is hell bent on demonising Trump and the Republican Party is set on canonising him. What we are left with, both locally and internationally, is a deep sense of bewilderment and with anything that is uncertain, we are terrified. It is not helped that the world is on the brink because Iran, Israel and US are not able to come to a negotiation table. In Ukraine, Putin and Zelensky are obsessed with mutual destruction. With uncertainty, the result is life has become more expensive especially for the poor. While we cannot escape from or avoid vested interest, whatever the situation may be, the world is hurting. Maybe insecurity can explains why we spend excessively and overeat. We are unable to process the fear that is deep within us.
We have a mission at hand to show that God has not abandoned us and that He is still with us through our compassion. Jesus was moved with pity, for the crowd was like sheep without their shepherd. We share that same mission of Christ who showed compassion and while our effort may not be world-changing, still our family and home, our colleagues and workplace, our Cathedral and our city may just need that personal touch from us to make this place, a bit better, a bit hopeful and a bit more confident in God’s enduring love for us. “Keep calm and carry on” may sound cheesy but it is definitely most helpful. We soldier on through our prayers, through Mass attendances, through Confessions, through our charity. We do all we can within our power. We dare to stay calm for God is never far away.
If Trinity Sunday is my least favourite Sunday, then Corpus Christi is my favourite solemnity. Just like the Church’s teaching on God the Holy Spirit, this feast also took time to develop. In John 6, Jesus told the crowd that eternal life is premised on eating His Body and drinking His Blood. What does that mean? In fact, the entire crowd’s response except for the 12 was a total rejection of Christ’s invitation. It is not surprising because it sounded like cannibalism. The institution of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi shows us how the Church’s understanding slowly deepened over time.
Firstly, to put into context, the principal feast that highlights the Body and Blood of Christ should be Holy Thursday. But Maundy Thursday is reverently sombre, placed, as it were, just at the time when Christ will enter into His Passion. There is not much time to ponder on the meaning of the Body and Blood of Christ. Instead, the focus of Holy or Maundy Thursday is on the gravity of Christ’s Passion and His desire to establish a priesthood of service.
Secondly, Corpus Christi is livelier, two months exactly removed from Maundy Thursday (that is, if we mark it on a Thursday rather than on a Sunday). We give thanks to God for the wonderful gift that is brought about by the total and complete change of the substance of bread and wine into the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ. We are not handling a mere symbol but acknowledging the true Presence of Christ with us. The Eucharist is truly Emmanuel. The Eucharist is God with us.
In a small town of Lanciano, Italy, a Basilian priest who had doubts about the Eucharist, witnessed with his own eyes, at the words of consecration, the transformation of the bread and wine into flesh and blood. It took place in the 8th century making it the oldest evidence of a Eucharistic miracle. Lanciano is by no means the only expression of the Church’s belief in the Eucharistic presence that is validated by a miracle. There are many and Carlos Acutis, Saint Carlos now, documented them for the benefit of our electronic age.
But without any of these miracles, according to Catholic teachings, Real Presence is literal in which Christ is wholly present—His Body and Blood, His Soul and Divinity under the appearances of bread and wine. While many Protestants struggle with the apparent unscriptural belief held by Catholics, the Bible is not silent. Jesus claimed to be the living bread which came down from heaven and that anyone who eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread which Jesus gives for the life of the world is His flesh. St Paul affirmed that the wine we drink and the bread we eat is a participation in the Blood and Body of Christ. The Docetists who denied the reality of Christ’s Body were refuted by St Ignatius of Antioch who asserted that “bread is the Flesh of Christ and the cup His Blood”. Early Church Fathers from Ignatius until Augustine, all declared that the bread and wine are the Body and Blood of Jesus Himself.
In not so many words Vatican II’s document on the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, that is, Lumen gentium describes the Eucharist as the source and summit of Christian life. The Decree on the ministry and life of the priest, also reinforced this idea by further adding that the Eucharist, apart from containing the entire spiritual good of the Church, is the source and summit of all evangelisation.
As the apex, it is the only noble or appropriate food that can accompany us on our pilgrimage and if we take Jesus seriously, it is the key to heaven. “If you desire eternal life, eat my flesh and drink my blood”. Given its lofty state, would it not be logical that the forces of hell should be arrayed against it?
The goal of hell is not to make us forget heaven. Satan’s goal is not even to convince us that there is no hell and as a consequence, there is no heaven. Rather, it is more effective, given that human nature is sacramental, to make us relativise heaven, which is to make heaven unimportant. Let me explain.
Science is possibly the only canon of truth we know and therefore it is the standard for knowledge etc. Outside of science, we discount knowledge that cannot be proven in the laboratory. Devotion is also a form of knowledge but because of the narrow parameters imposed by science, as such devotion is disdained and it is relegated to the domain of the weak or the witless. In fact, devotion is considered the preserve of the elderly and the foolish. Following this line of thinking, the Devil is not proposing that Holy Communion is not central but that it is not as important for heaven with the suggestion that maybe it is only for the dumb and stupid. Our adoration for example is attended by the devotional crowd, the seemingly insignificant ones. The sophisticated and the intellectual do not need this. They are secure in their scientific knowledge. The cultic is scorned as too enclosed and ritualistic.
How do we combat Satan? What I am going to say will come across like devotional dribble and maybe intended as fodder for the dumb.
I am not instructing you nor commanding you on how you MUST receive Holy Communion. What I am begging you is to WATCH or be AWARE of how you are receiving Him. Therefore, it is not a question of tongue or hand. The host is NOT a piece of bread SYMBOLISING Jesus. The Host IS Jesus under the appearance of bread. The exhortation to be aware is not because we are promoting devotion but rather in obedience to Christ with regard to the reality of eternal life. He has given us the only food that can accompany us on the pilgrimage to heaven. Given that Satan intends to lead astray, it means we have a battle on our hands. Satan succeeds when we do not know Whom we are receiving.
The point of heightening awareness is to avoid a performative contradiction. Much of life is like that. We profess one thing but we behave otherwise. We instinctively recognise the need for coherence and for integrity. So in the Eucharist, we profess to receive Jesus under the appearance of bread but we behave as if it is no more than just a piece of bread. What can happen for many of us is the manner we receive may send the message that the Host is a very special bread, a highly revered symbol but nevertheless still a symbol. But as Flannery O’Connor said, “Well, if it were a symbol, to hell with it”. The statement sounds rather rude but she was defending the literal meaning of the True Presence of Jesus. In the case of the Eucharist, martyrs die for Jesus. They did not sacrifice their lives for a symbol of Jesus. For Satan not to win the war, grow in a deeper awareness of Whom you are receiving so that your lives may reflect Whom you believe in.
I am envious; jealous of my Jesuit brothers who do not run parishes and hence they do not have to celebrate public Masses most especially for today. This is my most disliked Sunday of the year because we are celebrating a truth and reality which has become, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant to ordinary Catholics or Christians. We might as well be worshipping three Gods or a God who wears different masks. On top of irrelevance what is worst is that we still have to “defend” the Blessed Trinity.
Christianity stands with both Judaism and Islam within the stream of monotheism in the belief of One God and yet Christianity stands apart from these two other great monotheistic traditions. The Trinity is central to Christianity’s monotheism because it defines who God is, explains how salvation works as well as reveals God’s eternal nature of love.
Why are there three persons in One God? How can one account for this anomaly? There are no explicit mentions of this reality in Sacred Scripture, let alone the very word “Trinitas”. Nothing of these three distinct persons, equal in divinity can be traced to the Bible. However, within Sacred Scripture, what we have are the traces of the Trinity.
Think about the creation scene, for example. In the beginning the Spirit was roaming the waters. In the New Testament, the Father’s Word was incarnate of the Holy Spirit which we recite this each Sunday at the Creed. When Paul wished the Corinthians, he used a deeply Trinitarian formulation: “The grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God (the Father) and the communion of the Holy Spirit”. At the Ascension, the Great Commission is nothing more than a command to baptise in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
This last New Testament quotation is most instruction. Jesus did not send the Apostles to go baptise in the “Names” of the Trinitarian persons but in the One name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. While the Church received this fundamental expression of faith and has faithfully passed it on, however, it took a while for the articulation to be understood in the manner in which God chose to reveal Himself to us.
We cannot control how God reveals Himself. We can only receive His self-revelation and we make the most of understanding what we have received. In choosing to reveal Himself, the example of the Incarnation shows us that God is love. In His great love for an unmerited humankind, He decided to save us. That God is love is a revelation of His nature. Love, as it should be, is never “selfish”. Instead, love reaches out to the other. It is relational. In the act of loving, God invites us into His inner life to see that essentially, He is one but subsistently, He is three in relationships.
By nature, God is one. Essentially, this makes Christianity a monotheistic religion. While God is essentially one, He is also three in Persons and this reality is what drives another religion crazy. How we get to one God being three in Persons is the result of God’s internal organisation. Within this arrangement, there are two processions and four relations. But there can only be three persons.
Let us unpack this two processions and four relations.
The two processions are generation and spiration. To understand generation, we can use the process of thinking. When a person thinks, he generates a thought. Both the thinker and the thought are the same being. Here we appreciate how inthe process of thinking there is only one being but two distinct realities, the thinker and the thought. With this analogy, we can understand how Father eternally generates the Word. And the Son is eternally generated by the Father. Here already in this generation, we have two relations and two persons. The Father begets the Son and the Son is begotten from the Father.
To understand spiration, the same can be said but with a difference. Both the two realities or distinct persons of the Father and the Son together breathe. Their breath is the Holy Spirit. As the Father and Son breathe the Spirit, the Spirit is the breath of both the Father and Son. Here in this spiration, there are also two relations but only one distinct person meaning that both the Father and Son are not a new reality, a composite of the Father and the Son. Instead when both Father and Son breathe, the Spirit is the breath of the Father and the Son. He is the Love between the Father and the Son. Hence the Spirit is a Person.
In these four relations, eternally the Father begets the Son, the Son is begotten of the Father eternally, eternally the Father and Son breathe the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is the breath of the Father and the Son eternally, we can only have three persons.
The Trinity is love and it a love that reaches out to the whole of creation. Out of love, God created the world and humanity. Out of love God desires to save mankind despite man’s rejection of the original covenant between the Creator and creature.
Sin ruptured man and nature’s aboriginal bond with the Creator and thus, Christ came to bring us back into the Father’s loving fold. In coming to us, in making Himself at home with us, He revealed the inner life of the God we believe in and invited us to a share of that life. We may not know the Trinity well. But the more we pray, the more we will get to know Him. As such our liturgies and prayers are heavily imbued with the Trinitarian dynamics where we are brought to the Father, through Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit.
In 2021, Feb 17, a change was introduced into our liturgy. The Collect’s concluding doxology was changed from “in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever” to “in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever”. Why? In the Latin version of the conclusion, there is no mention of “one” and the word “Deus” refers to Christ. If you read the Collect, it is directed to the Father and it concludes with a reference to Jesus Christ. The end of the Collect used to read like this. “Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever”. We might think that the words “one God” refer to the Blessed Trinity but they do not. The word “God” is a reference to Jesus Christ and the translation which inserted the word “one”, suggests that Jesus is one God and hence the Trinity is “three gods”. The principle we follow is "Lex orandi lex, credendi". How the Church prays is what the Church believes in. The conclusion of the Collect might sound clearer in making a reference to Jesus Christ when it is reworded like. “Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, for He is God, forever and ever”. The correction after nearly 50 years of usage shows us how important the Trinity is in our lives. We worship One God but a Trinity of Persons. Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
There are two descents of the Holy Spirit. The 1st Reading is why we celebratePentecost today. But the Gospel also records an earlier out-pouring which took place on the morning of the 3rd Day when He appeared amongst them. In their midst, He breathed His Spirit on them giving them the power to forgive sins.
For historical buffs, these two out-pourings beg the question of which timeline is more accurate historically? For us spiritually and theologically, it is more important to note that Christ imparts His Spirit at a time when it is most appropriate.
In the Upper Room, bruised by what had happened, the cowed and confused Disciples gathered. Imagine a Peter who must have been weighed down by the burden of betrayal. Judas took the easier path—he killed himself whereas Peter remained paralysed by his guilt and fear. Christ came into their midst and instead of berating them for their failure, He imparted His peace and breathed on them His Spirit. He transmitted to them the power to forgive and reconcile. Now at Pentecost, the same mission of reconciliation was renewed and made universal.
The Church was born to proclaim forgiveness and to bring reconciliation to allcreation. What was evident at the Church’s inception was a reversal of Babel. The Tower is a metaphor for human pride and arrogance. Man’s pride, in trying to be like God, without God, resulted in the division which has racked humanity ever since. The ultimate truth of Babel showed us that without God, Man’s ambition for heaven will always be doomed to fail.
In the Acts of the Apostles, as the window was thrown open, the Spirit began the work of reconciliation as each person who gathered to hear Peter speak, heard the Kerygma in his or her own language. Through the Holy Spirit, confusion gives way to communion. Christ poured the Holy Spirit upon creation to heal the wound caused by disunity.
In our present experience, given how groups or factions in Church are pulled apart by claims or counter-claims of being backed by the Spirit, how do we navigate the different inspirations? In the context of Christ’s salvific mission, it is good to remind ourselves that the Holy Spirit is less a spirit of licence or spontaneity and more a spirit of consistency and self-restraint. We tend to associate the wind blowing where it wills as the licence to do what we want. When in actual reality, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth guides us to align ourselves with a conscience which is informed by the consistency of beauty and goodness. As the sequence goes. “If thou take thy grace away, nothing pure in man will stay; all his good is turned to ill’. To be free, we are led by the Spirit to “bend the stubborn heart and will; melt the frozen, warm the chill and guide the steps that go astray”.
We are invited to be humbly led by the Spirit to be Christ’s presence in the world and to present the teaching of Jesus to the world in a consistent manner. As the active agent in our living Tradition, the Holy Spirit is the guarantee that the Gospel handed on by the Apostles is not altered but is deeply understood and accepted throughout history. What was new at Pentecost was that languages, rather than divide as at Babel, has now united all who heard it in the same appreciation of the Gospel message. Instead of drawing attention to themselves and to building self-monuments, the message about God who savedus, led all to the praise and worship of God. Babel symbolised self-worship whereas Pentecost expressed the deepest human desire to worship God.
And yet, the world was not unanimous in accepting the Gospel. There is a world that is resistant to the Good News of Salvation. But hold on a minute. Was it not the case at the beginning too? When the Disciples met Jesus at the appointed mountain, some knelt and worshipped Him. Some hesitated. The Acts recorded 3000 conversions and baptisms but we also heard that there were some who resisted the Good News. They laughed and remarked upon hearing Peter and the Apostles, “They had too much wine to drink”.
The message of Christ even though beautiful and true is not always readily acceptable. Paul struggled with the Athenians who felt that their philosophy was superior to the message of a humble carpenter. Even though Pentecost reverse the confusion of Babel, we are in fact living in an era of new Babel. That is, we may be speaking the same language but still the understanding can be diversely different. A good example is our understanding of freedom. To appreciate what freedom is, we look at its etymology. In English “freedom” can be translated from the Latin words for “libertas” or “licentia”. Libertas or liberty is an ordered and lawful freedom. Whereas licentia or licence borders on licentiousness and lawlessness. True freedom, promised by the Holy Spirit, is never a licence to do whatever we want. For some, the word freedom closely resembles licentiousness. But there is a profound chasm between liberty and licence. While both are words related to the notion of freedom, liberty raises our freedom to excellence and nobility.
With this in mind, how do we bridge two opposing views of freedom? How do we bridge the gap between in a way that celebrates excellence as an expression of freedom but not condemn licentiousness as a caricature of freedom. Within a mindset that feels one is always right, to be told that one is wrong is not easy to accept and in many cases defensiveness becomes the only position one has in terms of self-protection. The test of true freedom or libertas is in the fruits we offer to God and on the way there, there is always purification. To be free there is always a letting go of what traps and spiritual freedom which is authentic should manifests itself in the "fruits of the Spirit" (Galatians 5:22): love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
As the Spirit descended on the Apostles and the flame consumed them, we should ask the Spirit to burn away our sins, our bondages and to purify us and give us the courage to cooperate in the work of grace and redemption. If burnt sacrifices symbolise an offering to God, then the Spirit consuming us in His redeeming fire represents our entire offering to God so that our minds and our wills can cooperate to bring about the renewal of the world. On our own, we cannot go far. To baptise all nations and to teach them the commandments of Jesus, we need the mighty power of the Holy Spirit. Let us pray. Come Holy Spirit come, fill the hearts of Thy faithful and enkindle in them the fire of Thy love. Pour forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created and Thou shall renew the face of the earth.
In some parts of the world, this weekend is basically Ascension. And yet it is also designated as the 60th World Communication Sunday. Thankfully, it is not an issue for us because we marked Ascension on Thursday which leaves us free to think about communication and how to foster it.
The Readings lend themselves to the theme for World Communication Sunday. The 1st Reading described the post-Ascension scenario in the Cenacle. The Apostles prayed while waiting for the fulfilment of Christ’s promise of the Spirit. The Gospel also took place in the same Upper Room but this was before Calvary, and Jesus was praying for those whom He had to leave behind. He prayed for His follower to be united based on the unity between the Father and the Son.
Unity is the goal of communication or put in another way, to communicate is to aim for a union of minds and hearts. How do we achieve this unity? The theme for this year’s World Communication Sunday is “Preserving Human Voices and Faces”. The backdrop to this theme is the inevitable encroachment of Artificial Intelligence in our interactions. The Church’s position is that the progress made in AI should aim to promote human dignity or preserve it rather than itreplacing genuine human interaction or worse still utilise it to fabricate reality.
All we need is to scroll through YouTube. How often have you come across a short movie or some snippets of talent shows and after watching it for a while, you realise that the movie or snippet is no more than click bait and the story is nothing more than an AI-generated production. What the President, the Prime Minister or the Pope purportedly said depends on the political persuasion of the content creators because AI can generate videos and speeches which support their positions. There is a possibility that elections can be won with the assistance of AI. Papers or theses are already written by AI. Everything now is AI-aided. Even the Jesus we worship can be AI-moulded. Depending on which side of the aisle one sits or stands, Jesus can be shaped to fit into that narrative.
All the more the prayer of Jesus is important.
He prayed for our unity to reflect the unity between Him and His Father. That unity is cemented by truth. And here is where AI must show its true colour by serving this purpose of upholding truth and protecting human dignity which means that augmented communication must always preserve genuine human faces and authentic voices
The first goal of communication is to reflect truth. But we know how often when we communicate, what we think to be the truth can simply be gossip or slander or an outright lie. How often have we presented the so-called truth from the perspective of making ourselves look good and those who are our enemies,look bad? And even if we do not intend to bolster ourselves, how often have we painted another person in unsavoury light. As witnesses to Christ, what we declare to be true must be done with integrity and charity and always ensuring that our words are aligned with our actions.
The second goal of communication as mentioned earlier is to forge unity. Families, communities or societies can be divided because people want different things and have different goals. More so when we emphasise individual autonomy and the freedom to choose. But buried within us is also an innate desire for union as exemplified by the attempt to build the Tower of Babel. However, that attempt to unify sprang from pride. In a way, one can say that Babel represented human pride endeavouring to stand on par with God. It was as if man could offer unity as a gift to God.
Notice that during the era of communism, the same desired for unity was forged by the imposition of a certain truths. However, truth does not impose itself. Rather it is a proposition in which people are, by virtue of their reasoning power, able to come to an understanding and acceptance of what it is. The bonum or the good of unity, be it of a family, society, community and a country, can foster prosperity and development. However, that goal cannot be purchase with the currency of coercion. The good we intend must always respect the freedom of those who are served.
Babel is a symbol of the temptation towards megalomania—the dream of dictators or fascists or socialists who believe that they are owners of truth who have been granted the divine right to impose their particular vision of reality on others.
In a way, the 2nd Reading makes sense. To bear the truth that unites will entail suffering because we are but servants and not the lords, let alone, the owners of truth. We can only serve Him which when translated it usually means having to suffer because we are on the right side of what is true, good or beautiful. It is not easy as the temptation is always to believe that one has truth on one’s side rather than seek in humility to know if one has been on side of truth.
As such World Communication Sunday is a modern response. Given that our capacity for communication has progressed by leaps and bounds, with greater speed and outreach, we are challenged to use the different media to promote the Gospel message. Sometimes it is not easy to make out which the voice of the Gospel is. The cacophony of competing certainties highlights that both to communicate and to remain silent are part and parcel of the effort to allowChrist’s message come to the fore. Given that the landscape for proclamation is noisier today because of jostling media and a shorter attention span, silence is also necessary so that the message of Christ can be heard. The advancement of artificial intelligence has rendered the ability to sift through what is true or notso much more fraught. The moral dilemma we face as a civilisation highly dependent on artificial intelligence is how we can preserve genuine human encounters free from the abuse or misuse of algorithms and the possibilities of deepfakes.
Finally, when God created Man, He made us in His image and likeness. Despite the fall, all throughout salvation history, God has kept His communication channel open. And in the last days, God has spoken and revealed Himselfthrough His Son. The primary task of communication for the Church is to manifest both the face and the voice of Christ. Our desire for authentic communication will inevitably bring us back to Jesus Christ for without a personal encounter with Him or an experience of His voice, we will be, at best, a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal that distorts His message. Without Jesus, we will struggle to preserve the human face and protect the human voice. In the end, truth is never what we possess but He whom we serve which means to communicate carries with it the possibility of suffering on account of His name and His truth. If you are on His side, He will give you the courage.
Whenever we snap a photo, we want it to be picture-perfect. Today is Ascension Thursday and the most perfect of all pictorial representations would be to see an unfinished portrait. What do I mean? Some artists have drawn, painted or visualised the Ascension with feet. Yes, the disciples are all looking up and at the upper edge of the picture, painting or sculpture we can only see the dangling feet of Jesus as He ascends into heaven. It portrays the Disciples almost like catching the last bit of Jesus as He disappears from their sight.
That is the fitting depiction of what the Ascension is about. Jesus, unlike His Blessed Mother, with His own power, ascended into heaven. The feet are a powerful reminder of who He is and the future that we will have. In Christ, we have a person who is fully human, who at the same time, is fully divine, who has ascended and is seated at the right hand of God the Father in heaven to intercede for us.
Where He goes, we hope to follow.
The human and divine natures of Christ are our template. Each one of us has a celestial destiny and yet here we are in this world where the work of salvation continues. For as long as the world endures and humanity exists, redemption is ongoing and there is work to be done.
Matthew 28 provides us with the final instruction given by Jesus. The Great Commission enjoined upon the Apostles and the Church to, “Go and baptise all the nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”. The promise that accompanies this sending is to know that through the Holy Spirit, He will be with us till the end of time.
However, the action “to baptise” is graphic or explicit and reminiscent of a watery grave or ritual. Either via immersion or pouring, one is initiated into a community of believers. Given that this is a sacramental act, it can be rather threateningly forbidding or exclusive especially in the context of diversity. The dogma of “pluralism” is currently ascendant especially in a multi-cultural context. In fact, plurality is accepted or even celebrated to the point that differences in doctrines are smoothed over in favour of ethics. The truths of doctrines, which are what we believe in, are not easy topics for dialogues or conversations but all are agreed that every religion teaches its adherents to be good and to do good. For example, Buddhism seeks enlightenment through the extirpation of desires. Therefore the goal of Nirvana is nothingness. Whereas Christianity seeks salvation because of the reality of sin and separation from God. Hence heaven is not nothing for Christians. Instead heaven is our completereconciliation with God.
These two examples tell us that even though all religions teach goodness, they do not share the same goals. Like it or not, religion ultimately cannot be reduced to ethics. This is where we might relook at the Great Commission and how to be faithful to Christ’s command. If we reword it perhaps it can allow us to work around the difficulties associated with rituals and religious doctrines. If we say, “Go and make all creation more and more like Christ”, it still sounds Christian. Perhaps “Go and make all creation more god-like, more divine”. That might sound a lot more ethical than religious.
It might make cross-religious encounter less threatening and more approachable. Speaking of the divinisation of creation or humanity makes it easier for us to reach out to others. Talk less about religion and more about what we can accomplish or achieve as a whole. Still that is not our goal. The Great Commission aims to bring creation into the knowledge of who God is and what His desires are for humanity. The Church has a sworn duty, ultimately, in obedience to Christ, to bring all creation into or incorporate humanity into the Body of Christ. Translated, it means that we must bear in mind that the Sacrament of Baptism, according to the teaching of the Church, is the ordinary means through which one is brought into the fold.
How do we propose this to the world? The challenge for us is not to look at other religions from the perspective of what is lacking or what is imperfect in them. Rather, it is to propose to humanity what is better in the proposals of Christ. Informing people that their life’s choices are no good does them no good. Rather, people are more willing to give up something good for something which is better. Is that not the marketing strategy of so many of our health products?
Finally, the feet sticking out of a ceiling is really quite literal. The Ascension marks a closing and a beginning. Christ’s earthly ministry has drawn to a close while His heavenly ministry is taking off. The authority given to the Disciples as He commissions them, signals that His heavenly ministry will continue with His presence in a Church that is empowered by His Spirit. Christianity is not meant to be a parochial religion. It has a universal mission to bring the world into the Body of Christ.
Right now, we are in a conundrum because we have walked ourselves into the corner of ethical collaboration. We need to move from ethics to being. We should stop peddling the narrative that Asia is other religions. Going against this statement is not denigrating the other great traditions of Asia. Christianity IS Asian. Look at the Philippines. Look a Timor Leste. Look at Korea. Slowly but surely, only if we believe that Christ gave us a commission to universalise His teaching and way of life. The Ascension should give us more confidence and perhaps we should have faith in ourselves first and be confident in what we believe in before we can tell the world that Jesus is the Lord of all creation and Saviour of all humanity.
We are closing in on the Ascension. Last week’s conversation took place aroundthe Last Supper. As the Lord prepared for the Passion, He centred His exhortation on the after-life and also on the path that leads to the fullness of life with God. In making sure that the Disciples know of the place pledged to them and in giving the roadmap there, Jesus promised them a Helper who will be on hand to guide them.
He has kept His promise and we read that in Philip the Evangelist’s experience in Samaria. That man, not St Philip the Apostle, was amongst the first few deacons. Subsequently, the community was scattered by persecution and despite the believers being displaced, he managed to convert the local population in Samaria. That occasioned an apostolic visit by Peter and John. Like Bishops at Confirmation, they prayed over those baptised and confirmed them with the gift of the Holy Spirit.
The season of the Spirit is upon us. In preparing for the Spirit’s descent, Christ will withdraw and later this Thursday, we shall celebrate His Ascension. The role of the coming Spirit is to accompany us. Christ had already done so by being with us until His death and even after the Resurrection. Just before the Ascension, He promised another Advocate to speak for Him and to continue His mission.
As such we are already living in the “end times”. The words themselves are evocative. They suggest that the world is coming to an end soon. But that is not the meaning of the words “end times”. Rather, ever since AD33, presumably, the year when Christ was crucified, died and rose again, we have officially entered into and still are in the end times. In other words, we have been living in the “end times” for the last 2000 years.
It is in this context that the post-Resurrection Christ made a promise to send the Spirit. But what need do we have for the Spirit? The end times is characterised by the “already” and “not yet”. We are still on the way to final consummation when Christ returns again. In this journey, we need to keep in mind the four realities which we must face and they are death, judgement, heaven and hell. We need the Spirit to guide us because Christ desires that we keep His commandments and He gives the Spirit to guide our path to heaven rather than to hell.
Our pilgrimage to heaven means that we still have to work out our salvation in the world and not in a vacuum. There is no doubt that evil exists in the world. This sounds like a statement which places evil out there, when in reality, evil runs through our hearts. Take a look around us. We all sin in many different ways. There is corruption. Scamming is on the rise. There are wars and we seem to be tethering on the edge of further destruction. What we encounter every day is that the good we desire is not always a matter of effort. That is, it is not a case where one puts in a bit more resolve and then things will be alright. St Paul describes this conundrum as “the good that I should do, I find myself not doing it and the evil I should avoid, I find myself committing it”.
Despite our struggles where evil exists, there are two things we can be sure of.
Firstly, evil, whilst ubiquitous is not triumphant. Christ is. He is victorious but the nature of the end times is that our journey in life must take us through the valley of the tears. The second thing we can be sure of is that Christ’s victory gives us hope. St Peter wrote this: “Reverence the Lord Christ in your hearts and always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have. But give it with courtesy and respect and with a clear conscience, so that those who slander you when you are living a good life in Christ may be proved wrong in the accusations that they bring. And if it is the will of God that you should suffer, it is better to suffer for doing right than for doing wrong”.
Remember the year 1999? When we were approaching the turn of the millennium, we were technologically nervous for fear that 00 will not be interpreted by computers as 2000 but instead we may be set us back to 1900. On top of that, religious dread interpreted the turn of the century under the light of the Last Judgement whereby all disasters were considered to be portents of the final apocalypse. Many of our movies reflected the fear focussing on the same trope of a dystopian future marked by the undead or the collapse of civilisation.
The turn of the Millennium did feel like the world was coming to the end but the Church was unafraid because we have with the promise of the Holy Spirit. John Paul II told the Church to “put out into the deep” or in Latin, “duc in altum…”. Do not be afraid for out in the deep, the Lord is there. Sadly, when we think of evil and how children have to face them, we can be gripped by a certain paralysis. There are couples who do not want to bring children into such a world. The point to remember is this: we cannot shield our children or our loved one from the evil of the world. They will be touched by it or even sorely tested by it. Yet what is certain is that Christ has triumphed. He is victorious. In that way, St Paul is a model for the firmness of faith.
What more with the gift of the Holy Spirit?
Those who went for the pilgrimage especially when destructive drones were flying around were witnesses not only to the power of prayer but also the ultimate truth of our faith. It was not that we were gung-ho and unafraid of death. Rather, we acknowledge that Christ has defeated death. Thus, if we lived through the bombings in it would be because God has a purpose for our lives in this present world. And if we had perished, sadly due to the conflict, then the moment of our salvation had arrived. I dare to say this because the Holy Spirit gave us the strength to trust that everything we were and had, was always in God’s hands.
We dare to stand tall, hold our heads up and even when all around seemed defeated for we know that ultimately Christ will be victorious. He guarantees that through the Holy Spirit that will descend at Pentecost. We can become the warriors that the Sacrament of Confirmation is meant for… to make us walk confidently and to face the world without fear that we will be destroyed.
